sub groups for numbered groups

[cedar cipher]

@torn lodge i made the thingy

[torn lodge]

Having a thread here gives your idea way more visibility than a few messages in main

I personally like the idea a lot, as it allows you to play multiple roles more easily, so for example air and front, as those roles usually have overlapping keybinds for their main units

[open fern]

Feel like this would be too much ui bloat.
10 auto groups is already more then enough. If you need to select a certain unit, just double click it, or use q

[wooden axle]

I think its a great idea. If it works it would be great for micro.

[torn lodge]

Well, you could have the subgroups show what they're doing by hovering over them. This would not change anything about how the general UI looks like

[cedar cipher]

the main reason i want to do this is because all the keys that i use are like immediatly reachable with my hand which are mostly left side of the keyboard

like its so uncomfortable to move my hand and then go back to the resting position for that reason i dont use anything above 5

[torn lodge]

Additionally, in certain scenarios, you're forced to play multiple roles, and then you suddenly have your ground units and your boats on the same keybind, and you need to redo your alt groups just for one match. I feel like with this option, you could play multiple roles more easily, which is a good thing in my opinion. For example always put ground units on sub-group 1, sea on sub-group 2, and so on

[rancid bolt]

After you tell the reasoning i just realized you cook

[cedar cipher]

make sure to light bulb react

[wise owl]

There is a selectcycle command which cycles through selected units, this is extremely useful for small groups of units. I think your suggestion could be implemented similarly, it would just cycle through unit types in the selection. Maybe with a numeric argument to specify which type to select.
Don't even need an interface or anything, just a hotkey that does that. I would love to have this hotkey myself (and in fact I suggested it before).

While we don't have this feature yet, you can use hotkey tricks to achieve something similar. For example I use a hotkey to select the closes unit and another to select the same type of unit around the cursor or with a selectbox_same boxselection command. This is so useful I don't even really use autogroups anymore.
This is of course completely different from what you suggested, but if your goal is just to quickly select a specific unit type, then this might help you.
Should I get the hotkey code for you?

[delicate zodiac]

I'd rather manually left click one of many unit-types in the group than cycle through them.

I like the sub-group idea. Solves my issue with multi-role gameplay, I could then Hold-1-Press 1 for ground, -Press 2 for sea, -Press 3 for air. Werugood idea. 💡

[wise owl]

I think I didn't explain well. It doesn't help that selectcycle is not even a documented command with a hotkey bind by default as far as I know, so most players don't know how useful it is.

The main thing is that this works with any selection. So if you have 3 ticks selected and send them to the enemy, then with each press of the hotkey, you select the next tick out of those 3. This is an extremely quick way to micro those individual ticks to hide behind mexes or whatever.

And my suggestion is that a similar hotkey could be made that would cycle through unit types in the selection. It wouldn't need a control group, it would need a selection only. So for example you could select your thugs and the commander and a tick that provides vision on the frontline. Now if you press this hotkey, it would select the commander, if you press it again, it would select all the thugs on that frontline, and if you press it again, it would select the tick, then back to the commander, etc.

So this achieves the same exact goal as the original sub-group idea, but without the need of so many key presses and without the need of the control groups.

Your suggestion can already be achieved with autogroup presets. My suggestion would be able to work as you described, but it would also work with the usecase I have in mind.

[last surge]

Good idea

[delicate zodiac]

Cycling doesn't work for me when I have Thugs, Tigers, Assault Frigates and Fighters on group 1 and Termite, Destroyer, Shuriken, Demolisher on group 2, then artillery group 3, 4/5 AA/VisionJammer and so on.

In those uncommon games where I have a mix of all those units, cycling is not helpful.

Micromanaging a few of the units by cycling units could be good, I agree there. Personally I use Ctrl + Q to halve selection - usually I don't need more than that.

Also Commander is on Tab anyway, no point in grouping Commander

[wise owl]

In my original message there is this sentence: "with a numeric argument to specify which type to select". This is to allow the usecase you described, only the default behavior would be cycling.
Like there would be a command select_type_in_selection on let's say the d key to cycle through the selection by type. And you could bind select_type_in_selection 2 to d,2 to select the 2nd type in the selection directly if you press d and 2 quickly enough.

Your example was this: "Hold-1-Press 1 for ground, -Press 2 for sea, -Press 3 for air". My solution would be: press 1, then d,1 for ground (or just d). Or d,2 for sea (or d twice). Or d,3 for air (or d three times).

Also, again, autogroup presets can do exactly what you want already! With that feature you would pick the 1st preset and could select the 1st control group in that preset for thugs for example.

All I'm saying is that I think this subgroup feature shouldn't depend on the control group! It should work with all selections and with the default behavior being cycling through the types since I honestly think that's what most people would use it for.
The "Thugs, Tigers, Assault Frigates and Fighters on group 1" is just not a common usecase. Fighters and scouts in one group is, and in that case I could press 4 for example to select both fighters and scouts, and could press d to select only the scouts, or d twice to select only the fighters, then d again to go back to scouts.

I mentioned the selectcycle command because that can do the same thing with individual units so you can try it out right now to see how it works. Bind that to a key, then select your weird group of unrelated units but have only one unit per type and just try it out. I want the same thing but without the need of having only one unit per type (and with a numeric argument).

[visual ibex]

Someone told me in starcraft there are f selects for microing units? Like if you had grunts thugs and rockets selected, holding f1 would only issue the command to the grunts, f2 to the thugs etc. That sounds neat.

[hearty terrace]

Or rebind the button to the desired unit during the game. For example, mine is set to the number 3 pawns by default, but I change it to stanbots during the game.

[gaunt verge]

I agree that 10 groups is not enough for everyone, and someone who feels it is enough doesn't have to use them.

But as described, groups 1-3 would only have 2 sub-groups. If this gets implemented it would be better to have number-letter sequence. That's 260 different selections on a US keyboard, enough for the player to have multiple homogenous groups for every unit type, if they desired, that's great for maps with multiple lanes. Or you could divvy up the map so that there are 8 grid cells and have 26 groups for each, and still have 2 more sets for construction units and whatever other special groups you need.

[visual ibex]

There are 100 autogroups, but yeah, not for regular groups. There's no 'memory' for what a particular unit has been in.

[gaunt verge]

How do I use more than 10?

[visual ibex]

Alt+shift+[num] will go to a new set of 10 autogroups. So for example early game you might have ticks on 1 and pawns on 3. But late game you might want both on group 1 . So can have alt+shift+1 with the first setup and alt+shift+2 with the second layout.

Or you could have a 'land' setup in alt+shift 1 with all your land autogroups set up nicely. And then alt+shift+2 would have all your air units autogrouped, alt+shift+3 all your navy etc.

[fleet cairn]

Better would be to press 555 rather than 53. Seems like it might get overly complex to remember what you've set?

[cedar cipher]

im ok with either system being implemented
i agree that it can get overly complex but at that point like just revert to default and scale backa bit

[shrewd rune]

The easy fix would be to not limit groups to 10 and then you could bind whatever you want.

[torn lodge]

That would be an easy fix, but not a good fix. It would still require you to change your unit groups in the middle of the game, for just that game, and change it back the next game

[shrewd rune]

So the same with auto groups then? 😉

[torn lodge]

Sub groups would allow you to have all the units for unit group 1 still in that group, but different sub groups

[shrewd rune]

Subgroup is just another group in the end,no ? Why use complicated structure if simple will do

[torn lodge]

So, you could have grunts on 1, and fighters on 1, but one is on subgroup 1, the other on subgroup 2

[shrewd rune]

Have grunts on 1 and fighters on 24232 and bind these to keys which are handy for you

[torn lodge]

That would require to put it on some obscure keybind, when the units on those groups tend to fill the same role, but for different mediums (air, sea, land)

[shrewd rune]

How is it different from having subgroups? You have to press something to select subgroup

[torn lodge]

How I imagine subgroups would work is by pressing the number for the group (for example 1) and then press the key for the subgroup. Having them be different groups would require them being on different keys by default, which would not solve the issue why people requested subgroups in the first place imo

[shrewd rune]

Just bind them to 1,1 1,2 and so on

[torn lodge]

Can you do keybinds like that currently? So the keybing being pressing 2 keys in a specific order?

[shrewd rune]

Yes, that is how all toggle binds are done (and they suck because of that xD)

[torn lodge]

Gotcha. Ignore what I said then, as binding them like this would work

We just need some easier options to actually set groups like that then in my opinion

Possibly something for new lobby?

[shrewd rune]

You mean new UI? I would add some group-bind-shortcuts. For example

bind 1 init-group 1

And then it will set group add, group remove, autogroup, etc for key 1.
And then, there will be something like
bind group-select-modifier any
bind group-auto-modifier alt

Etc etc

[torn lodge]

I mean some part in the #🏛️｜new-client that allows it to do it easier than it is now

[wise owl]

I think there might be a simple solution that addresses everyone's need.

I think that suggestion was ignored maybe because I was describing it as a programmer would, and also I assumed people know for example that hotkey sequences exists.

@shrewd rune , can you please validate my suggestion?

A command cycle_type_in_selection. We could bind this to let's say the d key.

If we have any selection that contains multiple unit types, then pressing d would cycle through those types.
So if we have 1 grunt and 10 thugs selected, then pressing d would select only the grunt, pressing d again would select only the thugs, pressing d again would select the grunt again, etc.

This command would also accept a numeric argument. We could bind cycle_type_in_selection 2 to d,2, which would select the 2nd type in the selection directly. Or we could bind cycle_type_in_selection 0 to d,0 to select the whole original selection again.

This command could be used to achieve everything that was mentioned in this thread. But it would not depend on control groups at all, it would work with any selection so it would be much more versatile.
The only issue I see with it, is that we can't actually decide which type is 1st, 2nd, etc, so we would have to learn that with this particular control group, d,3 is the fighters for example. But I think that's a minor issue and also can be solved with autogroup presets or with even more custom hotkeys.

As an 1v1 player, I could select all the random bullshit I have on the frontline and by pressing d I could easily issue commands for each unit type there separately, hopefully there's no need to explain how extremely useful that would be.

[shrewd rune]

if I understand correctly that would require me to select all units first and then cycle through selection? Why not just use group where I could select what I need with a single bind?

[wise owl]

No you wouldn't need to select all units first. It's like, you know the panel on the bottom left shows the units types in the current selection, imagine this command is just clicking on those unit avatar icons one by one.
It doesn't matter what you have selected and how you get that selection. The bottom left panel works with all selections, this command would work the same way.

[shrewd rune]

I guess it's an equal solution. In the end it comes down which one would be preferred by someone actually using this functionality

[wise owl]

I guess it's hard to see based on some text how it would be different and in my opinion significantly more useful.

Because of this, in my original suggestion I also mentioned selectcycle which was probably a mistake since maybe that's a command only I use.

If you're curious, please bind selectcycle to a key and try it out. Select multiple units in any way you want, then press that key multiple times.
I want that, except instead of cycling through individual units, it would cycle through unit types (it would select all the thugs in the original selection instead of just one, and it would have more features).

[shrewd rune]

your solution:

• I don't have to bind each group/unit type - it goes by the order in my current selection (there is a key to select 1st unit type, other key to select 2nd, and so on)
• I can't have the same keybind for specific unit type because it depends on the order of appearance (if I select 3 unit types, fighters might be 3rd, but with 2 unit types, they will be 2nd - the key I have to press changes)

my solution

• i have to keybind each group/unit type manually (group/unit type because I assume you will have autogroup containing specific unit type)
• i press the same button for each unit type each time

let me know if I got yours wrong. For me, these are very similar but focus on different parts of the problem. I don't have this problem so I don't know which part is more important 😄

[wise owl]

It's a fair summary though incomplete.

My solution filters an existing selection. For example I mentioned the 1 grunt and 10 thugs example. My solution would select the grunt, then would switch to the 10 thugs.
The group based solution would select all the grunts, and then all the thugs you have on the map. (This can be achieved with my solution to be clear, it simply works with any selection).

My solution is dynamic, I can simply add a rez bot to that selection and now it will cycle through grunt, 10 thugs, rez bot.

Cycling is an intuitive and quick way to select things. Assuming we have control groups or selections that contains only 2-4 unit types, then cycling through them is just extremely quick and easy. Nobody would bother pressing d,3 when they can just press d until they have the unit type they want.

I think it should also be mentioned, that the group based solution is already possible in multiple ways already (autogroup presets, custom hotkeys). For example I don't have radar and jammer units in control groups, I have a hotkey to select them around my cursor with space+4.

[gaunt verge]

I think what you're describing here is keeping all of the original selection but then having a dynamic filter to give orders to a subset of what is still selected.
Otherwise if you switch the selection contents exclusively to your subgroup, how will the game remember which other units were contained in the previous selection now that the current selection contains only a homogenous group?

[wise owl]

It could remember the original selection exactly the same as it does with selectcycle. This is just an implementation detail I think.

[torn lodge]

This has the disadvantage that you would only have one type at a time. The point where you most likely need subgroups would be, when you have to play multiple roles at once. In that case, you'd have multiple ground units on 1, and possible multiple sea units on 1. You'd still want to move all ground units togethet

[wise owl]

Only one type at a time is absolutely a disadvantage.

I guess the issue is, that we all have different usecases in mind.

For a Glitters player, this whole topic is probably irrelevant.

For an isthmus geo player, the subgroups you have in mind would be very useful. At some point you might have a fatboy, a bit later you might have hovers, a bit later you might have ships too. Though to be honest, autogroup presets can already help this geo player a lot, in fact that's probably 80% there of the way to what you want.

I'm an 1v1 player, I will have bots and vehicles and air units at the same time. Autogroup presets can't help me. I barely even use the normal autogroups because there are just too many fronts, too many unit types to control.
What I need is that if I select units on one front for example with box select, and if those units are medium tanks and pounders and some wolverines sprinkled in there, then I want to control just the pounders extremely quickly. And more, I almost certainly want to control the wolverines too a second later. For this usecase cycling through the types in selection is just absolutely perfect and no other suggested solution would help at all.

[torn lodge]

So, for your usecase another hotkey for the cycle function would help. That's different though from the reason why people requested the subgroups in the first place (though there are various reasons why people wanted the subgroups)

[wise owl]

But it's not that I want exactly what I need and I don't care about others. I honestly think that the solution which would help me actually would help all other usecases too. I simply think, that if this feature would exists, then you could make the perfect autogroups to be used together with this feature to achieve exactly what you need.
You probably wouldn't have ships and fatboy and hovers in one group, instead you would probably have destroyers and subs in one group, and fatboy and spybot in another. You could still use the spybot and the fatboy separately and extremely quickly with this feature.

Now, you probably have groups based on role, so pawns and dolphins in the same group. My solution doesn't help you there. But with my solution you could have units based on composition or I'm not sure how to describe it. You would have pawns and rocketbots and maces in the same group.
You want to control them separately so now you have them in different groups. With my suggestion, you could control them separately while having them in the same group.

Please someone could explain how the original suggestion is different than autogroup presets? It's only different in the suggested hotkeys right?

[torn lodge]

I've explained here why it would not help for the usecase that I would want it for. If I play air, and my sea player leaves, I am now forced to completely redo either my alt groups for air or sea. Sea has multiple units which I have on the same autogroup. Being able to cycle through the groups, and only having a single unit type would not be helpful for me, as I would either want to control the air units on that group, or the sea units, but not just a single unit type

[wise owl]

I probably sent [this](#1434593432894181508 message) while you were still writing, that probably answers your concern.

[torn lodge]

I actually have my figs, pawns, thugs, maces etc. in autogroup 1, as I normally either play air, or ground, or sea. That's exactly the issue I am having. As soon as I am forced to play multiple roles because of someone leaving, I am forced to move all units for one role out. And not just for autogroup 1, but also 2 and 3, as 1-3 are generally the groups I have for combat units

[wise owl]

I think you identified a solution to your exact problem, see that my suggestion is not that so it just seems useless to you.
But I think it's still a solution to your actual problem, just not the same one you have in mind.

[torn lodge]

How is it a solution? I group multiple units, because I want to move them together. By cycling through them, I could only give commands to individual types. That's actually worse than giving a command to different kinds of units

[wise owl]

You have figs in group 1, and I assume you have bombers in group 2, and maybe air scouts in group 3.
You have maces in group 1, and I assume you have centurions in group 2.

In other words, you group units by some definition of role.
You want to press 1, then 1 again to select figs if you are an air player. But if you are on land, then you want to press 1, then let's say 2 to select maces. You want this, because both unit types are on group 1.

Have this same group setup, but also set up an autogroup preset. First preset should only have figs on group 1, second preset should only have maces on group 1. There, your issue is now solved.

What I'm suggesting:

Group units by composition.
Have figs, and bombers, and scouts on group 1. You can press 1 to select them all. Then d to select only figs, press d again or d,2 to select bombers, etc.
Have maces and centurions and even pawns on group 2. Press 2 to select them all, or if you only want to control the centurions, press 2 then d.

Can you see, that you still would have the same ability narrow down your selection to a specific unit type, you still have the ability to control multiple unit types together, and you even need to use the same amount of keypresses or fewer?

[torn lodge]

So, if I understand you correct, your proposition would allow you to select a single unit type from all selected units?

[wise owl]

Yes, whatever the selection is. Though it would be hard to select one specific type if there are too many types in the selection.

And I'm not saying that it would directly solve all issues. I'm saying that at least in an indirect way it would help us all.

Like many players probably have a dedicated control group just for air scouts. With my proposal, you really wouldn't need that anymore, you could have them together with figs (and maybe bombers). You could control both figs and scouts together, but if you want only figs or only scouts, then that's just a button press away (or two).

So now we have a control group freed up to do something else with it, that objectively would help even with your usecase right?

[torn lodge]

Well, but I usually have 2-3 unit types on any auto group, which I have on that group, because I want to control them together, so only being able to control a single type would do more harm than that it would help

[wise owl]

This is what you said earlier: "I actually have my figs, pawns, thugs, maces etc. in autogroup 1"

You obviously don't want to control those together.
You have the figs in that group, because when you are an air player, you want to control figs separately from bombers and scouts. You probably have those in group 2 and group 3 respectively.

My proposal would allow you to have figs together with scouts in group 2.
Then pawns, thugs and maces could remain in group 1.
Now if as an air player you also make a bot lab, you will have a dedicated group for bots, and a dedicated group for air units, and you could still control just the figs separately (and just the pawns separately, and just the scouts, etc.).

[torn lodge]

What if I have t1 figs and t2 figs? Would I want to control those seperately? What about bombers? Would I want to controll T1 and T2 bombers seperately? And when I'm playing air, I wouldn't just want to have pawns if I need to play ground as well. I might want to have maces as well, which would be on the same auto group as pawns. And what if I want centurions as well? Those would be the same auto group

[wise owl]

T1 figs and t2 figs and similar is an issue I also recognized.
I think even if not solved, it's still not a huge issue because you still probably wouldn't have T1 and T2 scouts. So like, you could control the whole group together and then separately control just the scouts, it would still be useful.

But it's an easy issue to solve. This feature could simply have a json or something where we could define which units should be considered the same type. Maces = Thugs, T1 figs = T2 figs, etc.

So in the end, it wouldn't switch between the actual types, but between these defined types.

I wouldn't just want to have pawns if I need to play ground as well. I might want to have maces as well

But that's exactly how it would work! You still would have the same group that includes both pawns and maces.
You wouldn't have the figs with that group. You still can control the whole group, you would just have an option to control only the pawns or only the maces separately.

[torn lodge]

Okay, what do I do with my Rocketeers and sheldons then? Another unit group? And what about my radar and jammer bots? Another unit group? My unit groups generally contain multiple units which I use together. So, they kind of are a group. This would bring me to at least 12 groups needed for just those groups. You're right, that it would help with unit groups with singular units, but I generally use 3 unit groups for combat, which contain multiple different units

[wise owl]

Everyone plays the game differently. For example I actually don't have a group for radar and jammer bots. I have a hotkey instead, literally a dedicated hotkey that selects radar and jammer bots around my cursor.
So my control group would be just sheldons and sumos. And if I have that group, obviously sometimes I would like to control just the sumos for example, so my proposal would be very useful for me.

The way you play the game is different and it's very hard for me to describe how my suggestion could help you exactly. I think this is just something you would have to think through yourself.

But for example you could have sheldons and radar bots and jammer bots in one group. You could control them all together but if you want to issue a fight command, you could do that just for the sheldons. Or you could also define a type for the radar and jammer bots together to switch between them and the sheldons.

I don't even really see what all your issues are and seemingly you always have just one more.

Also, you didn't answer for example my question about autogroup presets. Isn't that something that already exactly what you want?

[torn lodge]

My issue is, that you are not understanding how your suggestion is not useful for my case at best. It very much differs from the suggestion others and I had. I'm not saying your suggestion is bad, just that it does not solve the issue that I (and others) have.

I did answer your question about compositions:
Having all ground units on 2 (like you suggested with the compositions) would not help at all, because of the reasons I've layed out over the past 3 messages.
Most of the time, you want more than just 1 unit type from the composition. That is something that might work in 1v1, but not in anything where you actually have an army, and aren't forced to split to 5 different fronts

[wise owl]

The original suggestion:

number grouping system has like, sub groups. Like number 5 is like 3 different units. To select all you just press 5. To select one of them you just press 1, 2, or 3.

This is exactly what I'm suggesting, my suggestion is just more! Still, in your opinion my proposal is somehow not relevant, or I don't understand.
The original post didn't define the exact way this feature should work, so we all invented our own versions of it. My version is simply not what you have in mind.

Your version is that those subgroups should have anything we want in them like actual control (auto)groups. And your usecase is that sometimes as an air player you need to play ground too. If this is a fair summary, then I need to ask again: why group presets can't solve this for you?

Maybe you don't know what group presets are: You are on group preset 1 by default. You can switch to group preset two with alt+shift+2. Now you have 10 different control groups you can set up for air units for example. You have 10 group presets. This is exactly what you want right?

I did answer your question about compositions

I'm not sure what questions I asked about compositions and I don't see how that answer is relevant to anything I said. Also based on that answer, I just don't think you imagine my suggestion correctly.

[torn lodge]

I see, I did not understand your suggestion correct then, and it is indeed relevant for this!

[wise owl]

I think it's just hard to describe exactly how a feature should work and hard to understand it based on text only.

When you read the original post, you probably imagined those subgroups as actual control groups. Like a whole group for group 5, but also a subset of that group on 5-1, 5-2, etc.. But to me, that's just what group presets are.

So what I imagined instead, is that if we press 5 for group 5, then we will see some unit icons on the bottom left panel (the selected units). Let's assign a number to each of those icons so we can access them directly, not just with a mouse click.

But because that panel shows unit icons not only when we use a control group, but with any selection, this feature should work with any selection.

This also means, that we won't have a fixed place for the units. I mean, if the control group has 4 units but currently we only have the first and what's normally the 4th, then we will only have 2 icons on the panel with numbers 1 and 2.
This is not intuitive, so to make it more intuitive and usable, let's also allow cycling through those icons.

That's it, literally this is my suggestion.

[gaunt verge]

Number-number collides with itself, we can't do that. People would have to clear selection any time they want to operate with a different group of units or deal with clunky timings to get the selection they want

[visual ibex]

I could get dangerously close with:

bind meta+shift+sc_2 chain force selectcycle | selectcycle | select Visible+_InPrevSel+_ClearSelection_SelectAll+
bind meta+shift+sc_3 chain force selectcycle | selectcycle | selectcycle | select Visible+_InPrevSel+_ClearSelection_SelectAll+```

However select cycle will happily go through the same type of unit so I can't pick the order. I.e. select 5 grunts, 5 thug, 5 rockets. and this would get 5 grunts with 1, or 5 rockets with 2, but the third select cycle happened to be a grunt again and so 5 more grunts with 3.

[wise owl]

Yeah I couldn't make that work either.

For a brief moment I was considering to make a PR to add some extra features to selectcycle, like numeric argument, a way to get the original selection, etc. Then it could be easily extended to deal with types as well (or defined types).

But then I found out that this is an engine feature and this is its code. I just don't have the knowledge to do that. I mean I am a programmer but I don't use C++ much and I don't know what kinds of methods are available in game to use there to achieve what I want, like even how to define attributes.

I might look at the code more later, maybe I can figure something out but for now I think it's not something I can do.

[grave forum]

I had a very similar idea: F1-F4 could define "unit group sets". You select a unit group set (default would be F1), use usual shortcuts to define unit groups like ctrl+1 or alt+1. If you press F2, unit group 1 is now empty and you can assign different units to it...
Reasoning:
I'm a noob but I think you generally move certain unit groups together. Frontline, then artillery, then support, etc. E.g., an attack formation on left side gets assigned to F1. F2 contains right side front line. F3 is air, F4 is sea. You can cycle through these groups quickly: Press F1, move attack units, then F2 and adjust another front, etc. These units are close to each others so handling them in "one go" would be very convenient and intuitive, I think.

The obvious problem is sacrificing the camera position hotkeys, but it could be an option. Players could decide if it's worth it. I would use it, especially since I could just put buildings in F4 and use those as camera positions. I'm only using that feature to cycle through bases anyway.

[ruby dome]

Why would number number collide with itself?
Just have it as Number*holdkey then the other different numbers can be used along with it clearly, you are just not allowed to repeat the same number you are holding [not 1.1, but allowed 1.2-3-4-5-6...I dont know how big everyones hand is to reach around]. I would suggest to limit this to the closest 4?maybe numbers next to the original number keypress [pressing 1 would have 2-3-4-5; 5 would have open options 3-4-6-7 as available subgroups for the 4?/6? first types of units on the Numbergroup]

It would make sense to have it based on groups/autogroups rather than a manual selection of units in the sense as you can memorise what number actually controls what within the selection.

Have the subselections match the types of units gathered in the selection in the order they appear on the UI.

But nothing stops you from additionally also creating the manual selection subcontrols. If that is also desirable

[gaunt verge]

Because there is no way for the UI to interpret whether the user meant to select subgroup 2 of group 1, or select group 2 very shortly after selecting group 1 and issuing an order or something. Forcing a timer on it will screw with people issuing commands. You can say, hold down the group number and then use another key as a combo stemming from that original selection command, but then if you want them to be explicitly structured (like hold 5 and press 2 to get group 5's 2nd subgroup) then the subgroups have to skip the number of the overall group and it's just weird.
With there actually being 100 possible groups at any given time currently, there's not really any point to solving this just for subgroups imo

[ruby dome]

You are saying cant detect you holding a number with a finger and pressing another number with a different finger?

Press 2 - select group two (hold), press 1 - select subgroup 1 meaning first type of unit on the selection.

You would have repress 2 if you wanted to go one level up to the main group I guess but that would be expected

[gaunt verge]

Okay, now what if you want the second unit type of group 2

[ruby dome]

Keep hold of 2 as you had press 3. If that is not doable by code because there is no background memory you may have to release the 2 press and go 2hold - 3

[gaunt verge]

And how do you handle if there are more than 9 other unit types

[ruby dome]

Well, use the other f autogroup. There are more numbers to use you know? you picky bast 😂

[gaunt verge]

I'm sure anyone of us could design a system that serves our own needs flawlessly, but something like this in the UI has to be playstyle-agnostic

[ruby dome]

Does your finger hand stretch across the whole keyboard or what? How do you expect to go from 2 to 0?
You shouldnt have more than 5-7 units in a group number.
If you have more than 9 units in a group then you dont get access to the 10th

It is more than fair, use the other numbers you hoarder

[gaunt verge]

Well, if I knew I had to make that input, I'd press 2 with my pinky and 0 with my thumb. Would definitely have to look at what I'm doing because I don't have muscle memory for anything past 6 lol. But yeah stretching is always gonna be awkward, USB num pad to the left of the keyboard is the only real way to solve that

What about like, holding the group number brings up a radial wheel on the mouse cursor, which gives an even pie slice for every unit type in the group? There's an upper usable limit to that but I think it's probably more than 9.
Auto scaling icons, perhaps swapping between the unit png and the strat map icon depending on space available.
They could also be cleverly sorted so that air units are on top, surface land and surface naval for left and right, submersible/amphibious at the bottom, making for practically gesture based selections

[ruby dome]

Radial wheel additionally to the numberic system above sounds very cool, the wheel could remind you the numbers too graphically if you do not want to memorise/look at the corner of the screen and count