Tweet
After many days of experimenting, I have come up with an efficient left-hand hotkey system for RoN. The link below is a printable chart in Excel that shows how I mapped the keys. I hope this helps someone out there. 
The basic idea was to map everything to the left-hand keys. The logic for the layout was to make things as easy as possible to memorize. Thus, unit commands and building production follow a visual pattern modeled after the Library research hotkeys. The least frequently used keys are moved to the far right side of the keyboard for use with your mouse hand's thumb.
If you are learning this hotkey setup... you don't have to memorize much. After you have selected any production building... the 'Q,W,E,R,T,Y' match up with unit creation buttons on the bottom left hand corner of the RoN control panel. The first box you see can be built by typing Q; the second is always mapped to W, etc. Furthermore, upgrading units follows the same lettering order, with the 'shift' key. At any unit production building, the 'civilian' units are always produced with the 'V' key.
The commands to build or locate a building are organized by frequency of use. The most commonly accessed buildings are located where fatigue is minimized. The resting positions 'A,S,D' match up alphabetically with some important buildings: airbase, stable, and dock. The dexterous forefinger handles the remaining military buildings, the market and library without stretching to 'R,T,F,G,V,B'.
I also grouped the economic and military buildings in according to function geographically on the keyboard. If you were an Age of Kings / Mythology player like me, you'll understand the discrepancy with the barracks being isolated from the other military buildings.... I just can't help but hitting the 'B' key.
Finally, I mapped the units with special abilities keys to '`,1,2' to keep them in close proximity to army groups 3-6 that you might create during a game.
Cheers, Fuster
The basic idea was to map everything to the left-hand keys. The logic for the layout was to make things as easy as possible to memorize. Thus, unit commands and building production follow a visual pattern modeled after the Library research hotkeys. The least frequently used keys are moved to the far right side of the keyboard for use with your mouse hand's thumb.
If you are learning this hotkey setup... you don't have to memorize much. After you have selected any production building... the 'Q,W,E,R,T,Y' match up with unit creation buttons on the bottom left hand corner of the RoN control panel. The first box you see can be built by typing Q; the second is always mapped to W, etc. Furthermore, upgrading units follows the same lettering order, with the 'shift' key. At any unit production building, the 'civilian' units are always produced with the 'V' key.
The commands to build or locate a building are organized by frequency of use. The most commonly accessed buildings are located where fatigue is minimized. The resting positions 'A,S,D' match up alphabetically with some important buildings: airbase, stable, and dock. The dexterous forefinger handles the remaining military buildings, the market and library without stretching to 'R,T,F,G,V,B'.
I also grouped the economic and military buildings in according to function geographically on the keyboard. If you were an Age of Kings / Mythology player like me, you'll understand the discrepancy with the barracks being isolated from the other military buildings.... I just can't help but hitting the 'B' key.
Finally, I mapped the units with special abilities keys to '`,1,2' to keep them in close proximity to army groups 3-6 that you might create during a game.
Cheers, Fuster
Comment