Battle group UI is smart

from AshesoftheSingularity Forums

I've not played any RTS games with a Battle Group kind of setup, but when I finally figured out these two things below, I was smiling ear to ear. How clever!

1. Why, when I select a tier 2 unit, does the unit building UI show up? That seemed like a bug, until I realized (sadly after an hour) that you are asking a factory to fill up battle group slots with the requested units! When the units come out, they are already part of the battle group, and act accordingly. That's genius!

2. If you have a rogue squad of tier 1 units, right click on a tier 2 unit, and it will become part of its battle group and act accordingly. Love it!

Sorry if this is such common knowledge that I seem like a noob. But I am really floored by this.

10,673 views 9 replies
Reply #1 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Well damn.  That's good to know and thanks for sharing.  I had not figured that out yet!

Reply #2 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Good eye! :)

SoundPackager - Customize the Windows sound scheme
Reply #3 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Had no idea! need to test it now :D

Thx :grin:

Reply #4 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Yea, I noticed this as well. It's a great feature for filling battlegroups without the need of selecting each unit and pulling them in. 

Reply #5 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Tier 3 units seem to allow up to 16 subordinate tier 2 units. You cannot assign tier 1 units to a tier 3 unit.

Tier 2 units seem to allow up to 5 subordinate tier 1 "pips", where a pip is a tier 1 squad. You cannot assign engineers to a tier 2 unit.

You run into a problem when you start trying to reinforce a tier 3 battlegroup with slots open for tier 1 units. Selecting the tier 3 unit and issuing tier 1 build requests results in building the tier 1 squad but that squad is not assigned to any tier 2 subordinate, so it's not part of the battle group. Selecting a tier 2 subordinate with open pips and issuing tier 1 build requests does the same thing. So the only way to build up the battlegroup with tier 1s (without deconstructing the who battle group)  is to select the new tier 1 squad and right-click the tier 2 subordinate unit (either on the map, but more easily in the unit frames). Obviously that's way too much micro.

I can conceptualize the logical difficulty. If you select the tier 3 unit and issue a tier 1 build order, to which tier 2 subordinate should the new units be assigned? If the UI requires selecting the tier 2 subordinate to issue the tier 1 build order, that's a lot of micro to replenish the tier 1 ranks as you'd need to click each partially empty tier 2 subordinate and issue the build orders.

So, good luck fixing this one, devs. I do not envy you.

I said "tier" so many times the word is starting to look weird.

Reply #7 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

I just now remembered two more tricks worth mentioning.

1. If you have a big blog of units of various tiers, some in battle groups some not, select them all, then right click a T2 or T3 unit with open slots. Those units not currently in a battle group will be placed into one, and the rest will be left alone. You may have to repeat a few times to get all of them assigned.

2. The unit frame UI provides a quick way of making battle groups so you don't have to go searching for them on the map. You can select T1 or T2 units there and then right click the higher tier unit frame to be the battle group leader. You can shift-click multiple unit frames to do it in bulk. I find this very useful because sometimes T1 units get orphaned in the course of battle, and now you can easily reassign them in seconds. Furthermore, until the T3-battle-group-build-request-with-units-not-assigned situation I described in reply #5 gets resolved, this is the fastest way I know of to get those reinforcements into the battle group.

Reply #8 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top


1. Why, when I select a tier 2 unit, does the unit building UI show up? That seemed like a bug, until I realized (sadly after an hour) that you are asking a factory to fill up battle group slots with the requested units! When the units come out, they are already part of the battle group, and act accordingly. That's genius!
I found this to be quite the boon while playing.  The only problem I had with it is this:  I can't figure out how to get the units to come out of any factory other than the factory the unit came from?

I think the game should automatically queue your requests in to the "closest" factory to the "parent" unit in the Meta-Unit.  Is there already a feature or option for this?  If not, would it be possible to add one?

Reply #9 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Quoting X-Astra, reply 8


Quoting ,
quoting post

1. Why, when I select a tier 2 unit, does the unit building UI show up? That seemed like a bug, until I realized (sadly after an hour) that you are asking a factory to fill up battle group slots with the requested units! When the units come out, they are already part of the battle group, and act accordingly. That's genius!

I found this to be quite the boon while playing.  The only problem I had with it is this:  I can't figure out how to get the units to come out of any factory other than the factory the unit came from?

I think the game should automatically queue your requests in to the "closest" factory to the "parent" unit in the Meta-Unit.  Is there already a feature or option for this?  If not, would it be possible to add one?

Yes -- I've been playing around with this feature and noticed the same thing.  I assume this is in the works, but it's worth noting.

People probably already figured the following out as well, but you can assign engineers to build multiple structures one after another by selecting something like a metal extractor and then clicking multiple times.  The buggy thing I noticed with this piece, is that if you select multiple engineers and tell them to build multiple structures, only one engineer "gets" the order to build the additional buildings.