Gameplay Controls

Controls

When you select a unit you can give it context sensitive orders with the right mouse button. For example, if you right-click in an empty space with your Commander selected it will be issued a move command. Right-click on an enemy and it would get an attack command. A left-click deselects the currently selected unit. This works for factories as well, so you can setup orders for as the rollout, such as a default patrol for fighter aircraft. Selecting a unit will cause the orders bar to appear on the right and, if the unit is a Commander, fabricator or factory, the build bar at the bottom.

• Left-click selects units and orders
• Right-click to give orders to a currently selected unit
• Left-click to deselect a currently selected unit or cancel a selected order Let’s first talk about the controls on the orders bar.

Move

Move is self-explanatory. You would generally use this when you want to move into a densely packed enemy area and the contextual command keeps changing to attack. When you order a group of units to move they will do so in a formation at the speed of the slowest unit. Units will continue to attack anything in range while moving. Use a CTRL-click to have units break formation and move as fast as they can. Units issued a move command after being ordered to attack a target will continued to attack that target specifically until unable to do so, allowing you to dodge Uber Cannon blasts from a Commander while still shooting it and not other units in the vicinity.

Attack

Attack allows you to perform attack moves whereby units will move to a location but stop to attack anything along the way. Also used to cause a nuke to attack a ground location. Unlike many other RTSs your units can attack while moving and therefore a move command will often suffice unless you have a particular reason to maintain your unit’s full range. Units on an attack command will not maintain formation and will move independent of one another. If you issue an attack command against a specific unit, your units will treat it as a priority target even if you issue a subsequent command.

Alt fire

Alt Fire exists only for the Commander and controls its Ubercannon. This is a short-ranged, energy expensive attack that will devastate enemy units. It is much less effective against buildings and enemy Commanders.

Assist

Assist is similar to the guard command seen in other games. A unit will follow the unit it is assisting, protect it from harm, and help it build things if possible. Fabricators can help factories build faster in this way.

Repair

Repair allows fabricators to heal units and buildings. Fabricators will automatically repair units they are assisting.

Reclaim

Reclaim is used by fabricators and combat fabricators to suck up units, buildings and trees. Metal will be reclaimed over time. It can also be used against enemy units. It’s not uncommon to use combat fabbers to power a so-called treeconomy.

Patrol

Patrol forms a patrol route based on the patrol orders you lay down. The first patrol order acts as the beginning and end of the path. Fabricators will automatically repair, reclaim and assist anything they come across.

Use

Use is for particular buildings like the Teleporter. You should never need to select this from the orders bar, it can always be issued as a contextual command via the right-mouse button. The only exception to this rule is using enemy teleporters where you will need to issue the order manually. Units will not fire on an enemy teleporter they have been ordered to use.

Unload

Unload is for transports to unload their cargo. If you’re moving a unit between planets using Astraeus transport then you need to issue the move order to the other planet first and queue the unload afterwards.

Load

Load is for transports to load their cargo. Note that Pelicans cannot carry Commanders.

Stop

Stop cancels everything that unit or building was doing.

Ping

Ping is found not on the orders bar but at the bottom of the screen by the clock. It is available at all times and forms a ping your teammates and spectators can see. Notice how a ping creates an alert at the top of the screen. Hovering over the alert provides a view of the area, and clicking the alert takes you to the alert location. Other events, such as the loss of a building or an attack on the Commander will also generate these.

Orders

Fire orders

Fire orders allow you to control when a unit will open fire. The icon changes depending on the order selected.

Move orders

Move orders currently serve no purpose. The icon changes depending on the order selected.

Energy orders

Energy orders are used to pause factory queues or disable energy expensive units as required. The icon changes depending on the order selected.

Build mode

Build mode is a contextual order for factories. Changes between normal and continuous modes. This determines whether completed units are removed from the queue or moved to the back of the queue. The icon changes depending on the mode selected.

Build Bar Commands

The build bar appears only for fabricators and factories. Fabbers will display the structures they can build, factories display the units they can build.

Fabbers

For a fabber you left-click the unit you want to build then left-click on the map to give the fabber an order to build it in the selected location. To build multiple items hold SHIFT each time you click to place an item on the map. This allows you to create a queue of build orders, and you can even mix in other orders between the build orders using this method.

Factories

The build bar for factories will show the currently queued units. While in normal build mode the number of units queued will decrease by one each time the factory starts building another unit. For example, once a factory with two fabbers queued starts to build a fabber it will reduce the fabber number from 2 to 1 to indicate the size of the queue remaining. In continuous build mode the factory will loop through the queued units and the numbers displayed will not change. There will not be an indication as to where in the queue it currently is.

The stop command can be used to cancel any currently building unit and to wipe the queue.

Units added to the queue before the enabling of continuous build mode are removed from the queue upon completion per normal build mode.

Advanced Commands

• SHIFT-click increases units in increments of 5.
• CTRL-click puts that unit at the front of a factory’s queue and excludes it from any continuous build queue.

Units queued prior to continuous build being enabled are excluded from the continuous build. Take a newly built factory as an example: you click on the Ant twice, turn on continuous build, shift-click the Ant, click the Spinner, CTRL-click the fabber. This would result in the following:

1. An Ant is produced (as the factory was inactive it started building immediately)
2. A fabber is produced (CTRL-click put it at the front of the queue but didn’t interrupt the currently building Ant)
3. Six Ants are produced
4. One Spinner is produced
5. Five Ants are produced (one less because the sixth Ant was queued in normal build mode)
6. One Spinner is produced
7. etc.

You could use CTRL-click to build additional fabbers in the future without compromising the build queue, or causing large numbers of fabbers to be produced.

Area Commands

The game provides you the ability to issue commands over areas rather than simply at individual points. Select an order, such as patrol, then click and drag. You can do this with orders for units or even factories. Below are shown some examples:

Area commands, such as patrol, when dragged beyond the planet will now encompass the entire planet. You can use this to, for example, have aircraft patrol an entire world, or build on every metal spot.