Poll: Hotkeys for priority buttons or control groups on galaxy map?

[x4000]

1. The number keys should remain control group selection even on the galaxy screen. I don't know about anybody else but I often want to move ships after seeing this map and having to hop back out and in this screen is a pain and I often end up with a priority number by mistake. As button exist for the priorities, and assigning them is not a high priority activity, keeping the shortcut for control groups (which have no other means of being selected on this screen) would be better IMO.

Hmm... I'm potentially open to this, but I'm curious what other people think.  I actually do use the hotkeys for the priority setting, but I could do otherwise if I had to.  Bear in mind that if I were to make this change, it would only be able to select ships at your current planet (or it would switch planets, as it currently does).  The game does not support having ships from multiple planets selected at once.  So, to me, it seems a little awkward.  I think, for things like this where it's a judgement call and I'm not confident in my opinion on it, I'm going to start opening polls to let the community vote and decide.  I don't have any other solid way of gathering player preference data.  This is going on my maybe list, and I'll open a poll about it.

[Blam Stokel]

I voted for control groups because I use priorities as well but the ability to grab a pile of units from afar from the map would be nice. I would suggest remapping priority keys to something like alt-(0-9)
I don't have a particularly strong opinion either way, I like the current system just fine.

[Fiskbit]

I'm going to side with priorities on this one primarily because units can't be selected cross-planet. I agree that it'd be very awkward in practice and I don't really see the drawback to leaving the galaxy map for a moment to select the desired control group. The amount of information you get by selecting the group on the planet view seems worthwhile to me, too, and not something easily portrayed on the galaxy map. If I wind up wanting to send a control group to another planet via the galaxy map, normally I'll have them selected before going to the map in the first place, too. I suppose one could argue that this would be a helpful feature for sending multiple control groups through a wormhole without leaving the galaxy map, though this is countered by selecting multiple control groups at a time with shift on the planet view and then issuing a single command on the galaxy map (the drawback being that you can't do this for sending control groups through different wormholes without leaving the galaxy map).

If this were going to be implemented, I feel like additional information about currently selected ships would need to be present on the galaxy map to work against the ships-on-different-planets problem and just to make it more clear what ships you just selected when you hit a control group number. Even with this information, though, the feature still strikes me as unnecessary and lacking in ease-of-use (and I like the priority buttons ). Just my two cents!

(Also, glad to see the game's getting some good attention, Chris. Congrats!)

[x4000]

Thanks for the Kudos, Fiskbit, and thanks for everyone for weighing in!

I'm going to leave this poll open for another few days, but I'd like to clarify a few things based on some excellent points that other posters brought up:

1. Even if I change the hotkeys on the galaxy map to correspond to control groups, the priority buttons will still be there.  You'd just have to click the buttons manually instead of selecting them directly.

2. If we change to the control groups instead of the priority buttons, Alt + the 0-9 could work for priority, as Blam Stokel suggests (I had been thinking Alt was already used in combo with 0-9, but that is not the case).

3. I think I am going to add a "selected units" button on the galaxy map, on the left sidebar, which would work just like the current selected units button on the main view.  I'm going to do this either way we go, because I think it will be helpful in general.

4. If the control groups hotkeys start working on the galaxy map, that does NOT mean that other quick-selection hotkeys will also work here.  Quickly selecting other specific non-control-group units is not going to be something that is possible, nor is quickly dividing your ships in half or selecting just the first non-idle unit from your selection (another requested feature).  Maybe we could make an exception for the selection-modifier keys, but those would be it -- we need the rest of the hotkeys for other functions on the galaxy map (primarily display button toggles), and I'm really not trying to duplicate too much unit management functionality on the galaxy map simply because you're doing those selections and giving those orders fairly blind.

My personal feeling is still that this will be more awkward than it is helpful, but I suppose that it's one of those things that only advanced players will really use anyway, so I could see the value of potentially adding it.  We'll just see what the majority wants after a few days (or whatever -- I won't close this until I'm ready to work on it, or it's been too long to be relevant anymore).

Thanks for weighing in, everyone!

[keith.lamothe]

I vote for control groups because
- even early on I tend to separate my attack fleets into ship type groups (1=fighters, 2=bombers, 3=missile_cruisers) because they need to go through the gate in a specific order and I find the galaxy map easier for giving gate orders than ctrl-right-clicking the actual wormhole.
- I like to have the interface be consistent between planet and galaxy map, and the shift in 0-9 function is a difficult to adjust to
- I'm not likely to be setting priorities nearly as often as I'm giving multi-group fleets orders to warp
- I like control from the galaxy map, though I understand that's a philosophical difference between what I want and the intention of the game

Thanks for asking for input,
Keith

[sypher]

Control groups in the galaxy map would be useful if they could be selected across planets, but since they can't, it would be fairly useless.  Let's keep priorities for the galaxy map.

[x4000]

Hi sypher,

Welcome to the boards, and thanks for registering your vote!

[Quitch]

Even though cross-planet makes it way less useful than it would otherwise me, I prefer the idea of keeping the hotkeys consistent as I do keep trying to select control groups from this screen, so clearly I want it even if I'm unsure why.

[x4000]

Well, at the moment certainly those in favor seem to be in the majority.  I'm now leaning that way myself, since the Alt+0-9 will still let priority selection work.

[keith.lamothe]

For that matter, I don't mind 0-9 staying as they are and making alt+0-9 the control group selection, it just seems to make sense to keep the same keys for that function from one screen to the next.

[x4000]

Yep, I think that consistency is best.

[x4000]

Okay, I'm closing this poll.  The majority is with the control groups functioning on the galaxy map, so the next prerelease (today) will have this.