Switching Middle Mouse Button and Rt. Mouse Button

This isn't possible at the moment, sorry.

I'de also like Double-Click to select all units of type rather than alt-click. Is there a way to set these things up?

Basically I'de like Sins to use the mouse the way 90% of all other RTSs use the mouse. I see plenty of customizable keyboard functionality... but can I customize the way my Mouse is set up?

Would you want double-click to select:
* All owned units of type on-screen at current zoom level?
* All owned units of type in the current gravity well?
* All owned units of type, period?

That third option feels to me like it would be counter-intuitive. Do you really want to grab all your ships off their picket lines across the solar system to race to the other end of it for a particular battle?

To me, the second option seems most useful; though there's a twisted sense of logic to the first as well (less intuitive, more flexible).

Well,

a fourth option, and best IMO, would be a similar to the first... where double-click would intelligently grab all the units of that type in the group.

This is how most modern RTSs handle it anyway. It used to be units of that type on screen, but somewhere around SupCom and maybe even DoW, it would intellegently grab all the units of that type within a certain tacticallly significant area. So if i had 9 light frigates on the left side of my screen, and 7 on the right side, it would only select the group i clicked in. Or if i zoomed way in on the group of 9 and double clicked, it would select all 9. Guessing intelligently "here's a group of frigants."



However, i think there are pip groups in the empire tree that can be used for such things.

Selecting all frigs in the grav well would work too. That's what Alt does. Which is all i'm looking for.

The more I play Sins, the more frustrated I get with how little you can do just from the mouse. It's nice to be able to so much from the keyboard, but it's also nice to be able to do a whole bunch from just the mouse. Sins seems rather primitive in the way it supports the mouse, particularly the fact that you can't modify it all.

I'm not sure many RTSs let you toy with the mouse set up, but many of them seem to have better setups, IMO, so it's not an issue.



I love the game. Really I do. I criticize because i love.

The Report Dialogs are another area where mouse implementation feels primitive, and I dare say even Hackey.

This feature is a very prominent, very power interface element... but it REQUIRES keyboard input to use. How many times have I had a glass of water in my hand and been mousing around my empire to see a report come up and go "oh, lets check it out." Go down there, fumble around with left click, right click, middle click... realize I can't get where I want to go without putting my water down and say "oh never mind." I realize it's a nitpick, but little things like this add up and make the game feel clunky rather than elegant. Besides, the game is supposed to be a slower paced, more leisurely experience. Why the heck shouldn't I be able to play it with a drink in one hand? I mean I can play DoW (the most twitchy RTS there is) using only the mouse... but not SINS?!

Right now, the report dialogs require keyboard input, and they only use 2 of perhaps 7, maybe more, different inputs available from the mouse.

Here's a solution to the report dialogs that would feel more sleek, modern, and less "hacked."

Right Click on a dialog takes you there.
Double Left Click on a dialog takes you there too... because people double click on things expecting it to do something.

Single left click on dialog will select the dialog box, at which point you can use the mouse wheel to scroll up and down the the recent event list. While selected, you may right click the dialog box to go to the event, or left click it again to deselect. (this does not have to interfere with your current unit selection)


Left-Clicking and Right-Clicking to scroll through a list?! It just feels so crude, especially when my mousewheel is sitting right there. The only justification I can think of for avoiding the mousewheel is because left and right click is easier to program... there's a word for these kinds of decisions.


I love the game, but I am beginning to lose patience for these, what I percieve to be, less than thoughtful interface decisions that fail to take into account standard software interaction conventions.



EDIT: I don't mean to be a jerk about such things. Ironclad and Stardock have done such a great job designing new interface innovations that seeing them drop the ball on such rudimentary things like effective mouse implementation really chaps my hide. And the fact that I know you're listening makes me even more prone to speak my mind and tell you what I really think. Thanks for listening. Do you think the mod tools will be capable of implementing some of these things?

If we want to make and uber interface we can also create keyboard commands to access these things too... where Ctrl-Tab selects and scrols through the 4 event Reort Dialogs, once selected you can use the up and down arrows to scroll through the list of reports, and enter to go to it. (which will clear all selections) This way you can use only the keyboard, or only the mouse, or any combination you like.

Ctrl-Tab, mousewheel, enter. That sounds nice. Clean, efficient, simple... INTUITIVE!

Substitute space for enter if you like, but enter feels more appropriate for a thing that will jerk my camera across the galaxy... it says "YES! This is my selection! Though Shalt Now Move my Camera!" The Spacebar doesn't carry that kind of clout.


EDIT: The more i think about this, the Hungrier I get for a Sins witha really well thought out interface. Will I be able to Mod these thigns into the game any time soon?

I too would like the MMB and RMB camera functionality switchable. I keep pressing MMB in thoughts of rotation and RMB in attempts to slide and I keep getting a rude awakening Its not all bad though, I typically get to appreciate the pretty engine with smooth camera movement. I simply love the engine overall.

(this would have been an edit, but i can't edit the post for some reason)

"Hungrier I get for a Sins witha really well thought out interface. Will I be able to Mod these thigns into the game any time soon? "


I guess as an RTSer what I'm looking for is an interface designed to reduce the number of clicks and keystrokes required to do anything. My solutions require 2 clicks at the most... the current solution seems stupidly click-happy by comparison. Which reduces the amount of time and energy I have available to click on my units...


Again, I understand this is probably not a priority for you guys... but it'de be great if it were moddable.

I think the 1st one should be for double clicking and the 2nd for ALT+clicking ^^. Or the other way around, whatever suits best. I would say that selecting all units in a gravity well is for manouvering out from the gravity well, while selecting on screen could be used for battles, not sure though, and if not then double clikcing should definitely be selecting all units in gravity well. ^^

k... after even more time with the game, I think most of these things are acceptable actually. The Report dialog system does fine and isn't used enough to warrant some elaborate interface system. Switching mouse button zoom would be nice, but it's acceptable.

Starcraft used ctrl+click to select all unit types, we can use alt+click. Every game since then has used double click for this functionality, but here the double click is used to lock the camera to targets... so which shoudl be what? That's an argument that could go either way, i cede to ironclad on that one.

But there are still a lot of other interface issues that show that IC and Stardock were not in the mood to create a sleek, streamlined RTS designed for speed, efficiency, and power using. I'll post about these in seperate threads.


Sorry to be so gruff about things... but It's a great game, and I get really annoyed when clumsy interface gets between me and the game.

I'd just like to chime in with my agreement that the inability to change mouse settings in any way is really frustrating.

I'd just like to say that I love the interface as is. It's one of the best I've used, better for me than Supreme Commander (and I'm a big SC fan). I am looking for the way to do what Ctrl-Z does in Supreme Commander. I'd like to turn off all my Dark Fleet summoning, but I'm not sure how to select all my phase stabilizers at once. I came across this thread in my search--I want to say that this guy is right in the sense that people should be able to customize down to the mouse click (maybe in files), but I strongly disagree with the idea that this "Stardock were not in the mood to create a sleek, streamlined RTS designed for speed, efficiency, and power using" or that it is a "clumsy interface."

In fact it is exactly all of those things, and it's a shame that prior learned habits are preventing some people from seeing that. That's a good enough reason to include a few more customization options, I guess.

I just found this topic and there is a way to change the mouse buttons. In the file C:\Documents and Settings\[user]\Local Settings\Application Data\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Setting\uimappings.setting is an area that looks like this:

CURSOR_BUTTON_0
NumMappings 1
Mapping
Device "MOUSE_BUTTONS"
DeviceInputID 0
isAltDown FALSE
isCtrlDown FALSE
isShiftDown FALSE
CURSOR_BUTTON_1
NumMappings 1
Mapping
Device "MOUSE_BUTTONS"
DeviceInputID 1
isAltDown FALSE
isCtrlDown FALSE
isShiftDown FALSE
CURSOR_BUTTON_2
NumMappings 1
Mapping
Device "MOUSE_BUTTONS"
DeviceInputID 2
isAltDown FALSE
isCtrlDown FALSE
isShiftDown FALSE



The important part is "DeviceInputID" 0 = left, 1 = right and 2 = middle so by changing those you change how the game responds to those inputs.

Just to ask, as I do not yet own the game.

If your mouse has four buttons (Left, right, Back and forward buttons) will it still be able to operate like a middle mouse button on a standard mouse?

One major problem with Dawn of War is that it didn't support a non scroll mouse so one couldn't zoom. Much more hindering for a game such as this.

The back and forward buttons are probably DeviceInputIDs 4 and 5. That will let them work like the scroll wheel when you click it like a button. However, scrolling is done differently and I don't think you can remap buttons to act like the scroll wheel but there are zoom in/out hot keys.

I'm left handed, and for whatever reason, Sins didn't inherit the fact that I switch my mouse buttons in Windows. That config change works like a champ, though. Thanks for posting that.