Hotkeys list & ship selection?

from Sins Forums
I pre-ordered this a couple days ago. Mainly because of Stardock's involvement and how impressed I've been with GC I & II. I also like how Stardock implements their betas, giving their customers the opportunity to get involved with the game early.

Anyways, I do like the game. When I started the tutorial I sat there awestruck at how great the game looked at this stage of beta. I probably spent the first few minutes doing nothing but moving the view around.

One thing I can't help but think helpful would be a list of hotkeys to be able to print out and have in front while I'm learning them. I definitely see hotkeys being important to learn. I've rarely felt the need to use many of them in other games beyond creating groups of units. But in this game it got old using the scroll wheel to constantly zoom in and out of systems and move around.

Also is there a way to bring up a list of ships and select one? For example, I know I have siege frigates and colony ships "somewhere". I don't want to build more (resources, fleet size restrictions) and would like to just pull up a list and select them and have them move to where I need them. Even when I know which system they're in, if there's 20+ other ships it's difficult to find and select just that ship.
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Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
I don't think there's a finalized list of hotkeys or buttons, ATM, as I believe they're still changing them.

As to your other comment, all I know of is the ability to assign ships to fleets, but I agree it would be highly useful. Both to find the ships outside of assigned fleets (above and beyond any assigned systemic pickets in system), and possibly use the same system to allow you to pick specific ships inside a fleet (for example, if I wanted to detach a couple of light frigates to explore the nearby systems).

Another thing that would be useful is a way to remove ships from a fleet other than manually de-selecting them and then hitting the ctrl+Number combo again. Maybe use control + minus key + the number.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
One thing I can't help but think helpful would be a list of hotkeys to be able to print out and have in front while I'm learning them. I definitely see hotkeys being important to learn.


There's no printable list at present that I'm aware of, but you can view/change most of them in the Controls section of the game's options.
Galactic Civilizations III
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

Hotkeys are pretty simple and universal throughout the game.  On the control panel in the lower right, the top row is always: QWERT. And the bottom row: ASDFG.

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

Hotkeys are pretty simple and universal throughout the game.  On the control panel in the lower right, the top row is always: QWERT. And the bottom row: ASDFG.



Oh. I saw the hotkey reference when using the options but never really paid attention to them, much less that they were the same keys. For whatever reason I was thinking that each option had it's own key (like there's enough keys for that, lol) -- you know like you could select the planet/asteroid system and hit a certain key to queue up a specific ship type w/o having to go through the options. Thing is I can never remember all those hotkeys so I think I'll like this setup.

Unfortunately, I can tell I'm going to really like this game. Over 10+ hours on a game yesterday, finally calling it at 2:30am. To think, this is only beta w/o a limited set of ships and all.

I do hope that there will be objectives which can be set for games. A way to declare victory w/o having to literally obliterate an opponent. It was down to two of us and I had control of two star systems and the opponent one. I know given a couple more hours I can destroy him, but at some point it would be nice to reach a point where the game is conceded w/o having to wipe out every last planet. I'd rather spend that time on starting a new game than mopping up.
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
On ship selection, I just had an idea: When you mouse over fleets / the ship point indicator, you get a list of vessels and the associated numbers (sova x 3, kol x 2, etc etc etc). Why not let you somehow "lock" that tooltip on (a mouse click, but how?), then click on a ship class to "scroll" through the ships in that class same way you'd scroll up / down an info card report (the things on the lower right hand of the screen).
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
then click on a ship class to "scroll" through the ships in that class same way you'd scroll up / down an info card report


Can you be a bit more specific about what you mean exactly?
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
I think he's saying:

"If you group a whole bunch of ships, and then mouse over the number icon in the Empire Window, it pops a little window showing you exactly what's in it in the bottom right.

It would be nice if you could select ships using that window instead of opening it up and alt clicking."

I don't really see a point if you can just alt+click a ship and select all of them that way.
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top


Can you be a bit more specific about what you mean exactly?


OK, you know the little cards in the lower right hand card? If you left/right click on those, you go through various events in the que. Do the same thing, only let me click on the individual ship classes, and it'd "scroll" through the various ships, focusing the view on whatever ship has the "focus" at the time.

E. G. something to the following effect:

I need one of fleet 1's light cobalts to detach itself from the fleet and jump down the jump lane to find out whats at the next (unexplored) line in the chain, because I haven't been able to sneak scouts past the enemy screens this far. I can either hunt through the entire system its in to find one, or...

Put the mouse over the "1" shield, then Alt+R click on the shield to "lock" the infocard indicating ships in the fleet into its open position, then scroll down to the cobalt line. Every time I click on the "cobalt" category, it centers the view on a given Cobalt in the fleet. If I right click, it backs the selection up one, if I left click it advances one (in the "list" of ships -- even though the ships are displayed in one line there, you can see by tabbing through fleets that the fleets "remember" which order ships were added to it, so there is some kind of list there).

Understood?

I don't really see a point if you can just alt+click a ship and select all of them that way.


Because... sometimes I'm hunting for a given ship across my entire empire (e. g. that one colony cruiser that was over here... somewhere...), or I just can't find my light frigates in the rather messy combat over here...
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
I need one of fleet 1's light cobalts to detach itself from the fleet and jump down the jump lane to find out whats at the next (unexplored) line in the chain, because I haven't been able to sneak scouts past the enemy screens this far. I can either hunt through the entire system its in to find one, or...


Or in this case you could just expand Fleet1's node in the empire tree, and click a cobalt icon. I see what you're getting at, but it'd only really be useful for ungrouped ships... and in that case there's no group infocard to start from.
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
Or in this case you could just expand Fleet1's node in the empire tree, and click a cobalt icon. I see what you're getting at, but it'd only really be useful for ungrouped ships... and in that case there's no group infocard to start from.


Yes there is -- the fleet point counter! If you highlight that, you get a readout of how many ships are taking up how many points... Wouldn't that work too? (Edit: And don't I feel stupid for not knowing you can expand the fleet list...)
Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top
If you highlight that, you get a readout of how many ships are taking up how many points... Wouldn't that work too?


Ah. But perhaps a better (more consistent, anyway) way of doing that would be to just have a toggleable "fleet" node in the tree that shows all ungrouped ships. I believe there's been comments in the past about some other high-level planet/ship management screens or something that currently aren't in the beta as well, and if that's the case we'll have to wait and see what happens.