Streamlined squad control

[Neofit]

When you start getting more than a half a dozen team members, and you start to separate the researcher from the producers from the main looting and fighting posse for instance, selecting the right people becomes a chore. Like a real PITA.

Yes, I know that we have shift-click or shift-# or click-drag, but that's still way too many clicks for something that could be done by just 1 key. There are a few ways to make it simpler:

1. Like many others have suggested, a group system. Say you decide that group 4 will be the research group. You select one engineer and hit Shift-4. He becomes member of group 4. You select all of group 4 by hitting Clt-4.

Members of group n are not selected when you hit the Select-All button. If you have for instance, group 4 as researchers, group 5 for builders, group 3 for your base defense and group 1 for the main posse, what would be the point of selecting them all?

2. When someone is assigned a static task, like research, building, etc., e.g. a task that will keep him in one location away from the main posse, he should not be selectable by the "select-all" button. If you want to get to his location to check something, you just double hit his key or double click the way it is right now. But since the main focus of the player is usually controlling the main posse, there should be a very easy and quick way to select all of its members and them only, without having to Clt-click on every static worker every time you want to give a global order to the posse, trying to remember which ones are static this run, etc.

The way I see it is: the toon is assigned to build a bed. His icon is greyed out. He is no longer selectable by the select-all command. When he is done, his icon switches from being greyed-out to for instance yellowed-out. He is still not selectable by select-all (what would be the point, he is probably kilometers away from the main posse), but the player is warned that a worker is idle. You double-click on the worker to go there and change his assignment. You right-click then 'cancel order' to put him back into the pool of "all-selectable" crew members, probably when the main crew is back and there is a point in doing that.

Now, if for instance you have base, a couple of researchers there, a couple of workers as well as the main posse. You are attacked and you want to send all the toons into combat. Well, it's not like it is happening as often as when you need to select the main crew only, so here IMHO you can spend a few seconds selecting all of them by hand to send into combat. Or one could create a "force select-all" key, like Clt-+ to do the same.



I believe this issue of squad control is part of the core gameplay. A proper, non-PITA squad control system is very important imho, as this, as well as the chore involved in selling stuff (but this is an issue for another post), is currently preventing me from playing any longer. When I think of sending my crew for another round of fighting and looting, I foresee that I'll be doing more unnecessary work than having fun. I'd focus on proper control before adding more shinies.