Yea, I know I've spent more dev time than made sense pasting in "metal head" way too many times just to keep a test build from stalling out...
Anyway, this thread inspired the following that just came out in the 6.045 release:
* Added new chat command "load_script:(filename)" where you replace (filename) with the name (without extension) of a .txt file in your RuntimeData/ChatScripts/ directory. When run, this command will treat each line in that file as a chat line from you, including commands and cheats.
** So for example you could have a file named "test.txt" in the ChatScripts directory, with the lines:
***cmd:enable cheats
***cleanup aisle three
***ilostit,FighterII,-12300,6700,84,0
***ilostit,BomberII,-10300,4700,84,8
** And then execute that by entering "load_script:test" (without the double quotes, of course) in the chat box and pressing enter. The result is that it would wipe the currently viewed planet and spawn a group of fighters versus a group of bombers. This is probably useful for balance testing, among other things.
So you could definitely use this for 30 applications of "metal head" or 50 of "activate the omega" or whatever. Creating the file initially is a minor task, but I imagine no moreso than creating one of those macro files
Edit: of course, this doesn't bind it to a key, but it does save you from piecing the cheats together one letter at a time.