Feature: UI: Alt+Click to track a group of units (Homeworld)

In Homeworld you could track a unit or group of units very easily by holding Alt and drawing a bandbox around the units you wanted to track. When you held "Alt", a eyball would appear near your cursor, and the focus would change as soon as you were done click-drawing a bandbox around the units.

Here are the advantages over the regular "Track" function:

1. It's slightly faster than selecting and pressing T
2. You can track any combination of allied, enemy and your own units
3. You can track different units than the ones selected without losing your selection

Here's a quick video that demonstrates the idea:

Re: Feature: UI: Alt+Click to track a group of units (Homewo

Didn't the T key do this?

Re: Feature: UI: Alt+Click to track a group of units (Homewo

Yes but it's slower, and you couldn't track multiple units (fixable without this feature), and you can't track enemy units or a combination of enemy, friendly and allied units with regular track.

Re: Feature: UI: Alt+Click to track a group of units (Homewo

Can't track multiple units? Why not? What's stopping them from making the "T" key track several units? Especially since the game can zoom out to show all of them if needed?

Also, how is it faster? In both cases you push an extra button along with selecting a unit, just that in one you press "T" afterwards, in the other you press "alt" beforehand. Not to mention, "alt" + number keys is usually reserved to something else, while "T" will work even if you first choose the group, then press "T".

Re: Feature: UI: Alt+Click to track a group of units (Homewo

It's ever so slightly faster if you change focus several times in succession. You never have to let go of the Alt key.

Also it doesn't clobber your selection no matter how many times you do refocus, which saves you time.

Re: Feature: UI: Alt+Click to track a group of units (Homewo

I rarely ever needed to follow units using T at all, in any RTS, especially in SupCom with it's zoom. If you save a few milliseconds each time over maybe 10 times (a REALLY high estimate) that you might follow units in a game, you will save a second or two throughout the game. Not something I would find worth bothering over. I think using follow commands was more for sitting back and watching a fight than playing seriously anyway. From what I can tell, using commands to follow a units in itself hampered gameplay far more than helping it as you can't focus on everything going on on the field, rather than just your units. This would be more helpful in a micro RTS, like SC (which is STARCRAFT, NOT Supreme Commander).

Re: Feature: UI: Alt+Click to track a group of units (Homewo

the T key did this in TA, and yes, it could track multiple units although it did this somewhat poorly since it took the average point in the middle of those units. If those units scattered, or one wandered off you could find yourself looking at the middle of nowhere.

But that's not really the point. Yes, it's been done before. Since our developer was the technical lead there's a fair chance he even wrote that code himself back in the day. I'm sure they'll have something.

Re: Feature: UI: Alt+Click to track a group of units (Homewo

That's not what I remember. If you had multiple units, T would cycle through them one by one. T would also track the weapons fire from some units, like from a Bertha - that was pretty epic.

Re: Feature: UI: Alt+Click to track a group of units (Homewo

And you would happen to be the person who was remembering right. Only problem I had with the tracking was how it would keep moving back to the next shot fired. If you wanted to watch the full shot being made, you would either have to fire at nearby units, use slower attacking units, or stop the unit from firing after each shot. Otherwise, it really was epic.

Re: Feature: UI: Alt+Click to track a group of units (Homewo

+1 @ OP.

Re: Feature: UI: Alt+Click to track a group of units (Homewo

T works fine, but +1 on multiple unit following with perhaps a weighted average being taken so outlier units didn't detract the camera to looking at the wonderful wasteland in between the dumb ai pathfinding... either that or fix pathfinding to make that problem completely null!

Re: Feature: UI: Alt+Click to track a group of units (Homewo

It's handy for tracking moving enemies that you want to target individually, or your moving planes that you want to issue individual orders to. If your camera is zoomed in or zoomed out, it doesn't matter, the units will still be moving away from your mouse cursor, unless you're tracking them, and tracking only one unit will make you lose the rest of them if the group splits up.

That and what I said before, focusing on a unit won't clobber your current selection. A nice benefit.