Using Spring

More Exaustive Decription of Contols, Interface and Features. For Basic information, check the most current README.html (should be mirrored here)or Getting_Started.

For more advanced/current information check the most recent changelog or the taspring/spring forums.

Camera Controls

There are four camera modes in Spring. To change camera modes use CTRL+Middle Button (Mouse 3) or CTRL+J. Middle button or J toggle "free look" mode for the current camera view. (expand idividual controls for each camera mode)

FPS

Default View. Use free look to point where you want to go, use arrow keys to fly forward/backward or strafe, use the scroll wheel to adjust distance from surface.

Classic Overhead(TA)

Edges and arrow keys move, scroll wheel zooms in and out.

Total War

Edges and arrow keys move, scroll wheel goes from "on the ground" to "over head", mouseing in the corners rotates view.

Rotatable Overhead

Edges and arrow keys move, scroll wheel zooms in and out, mouseing in the corners rotates view.

FPS "Mode" (C)

Press 'C' to toggle "First Person Shooter Mode":
Conrols:
Arrow UP= Move in the direction the legs are facing
Left Arrow= Rotate Legs to the left
Right Arrow= Rotate Legs to the right
Mouse= Aim default gun
Left Mouse Button= Shoot whatever guns the engine has decided to let you shoot

Selections/Groups/Group Commands/Group AI

The Selection Editor

SelectionEditor.exe is a program installed in your install directory, which is used for editing your selectkeys.txt configuration file, allowing you to make your own shortcut keys for selecting/filtering selection.

This forum topic that should be duplicated here, with cleaning up and additions made... and permission probably.

Default Selection Controls

Selecting/Deselecting Units

Unless you have issued a pending command(see Left Mouse Control (Mouse 1)), left-clicking(Mouse Button 1) a unit will clear the current selection and select the left-clicked unit, if a spot with no valid selection is clicked(empty space, ground, unowned units), the current selection will just be cleared. Left-clicking and dragging will draw a box, any units within this box will be selected when you release the mouse button.

Shift+Left-clicking(including dragging a select box), unless you have a pending command, will add units to the current selection.

CTRL+Left-clicking (including dragging a select box), unless you have a pending command, will remove units from the current selection.

Unless the unit is in a group Double-left-clicking will select all visible(camera bounds) units of the clicked type(Shift+Double-left-clicking will add all units of the double-clicked unit's type to the current selection).

CTRL+Z is a shortcut (which can be eddited in Selection Editor) to select all owned units of the current selected type. For example, if a peewee and a brawler are selected, all peewees and brawlers will be selected.

CTRL+A is a shortcut (which can be eddited in Selection Editor) to select all owned units.

"Tooltips" are displayed in the bottom left of the current interface, if units are selected this information is the sum of all information about the selection (aka, select a bank of 5 solar collectors and it will show the total health and total energy being produced). If you mouse-over a "build-pic" in a units command list it will show you the costs and stats associated with the unit represented by the "build-pic". If you have no selection, the tooltip will show information about what your mouse is over at that time (unit stats if it's a unit, otherwise information about the terrain).

Commander Selected Terrain Hover (No Units Selected)

Metal Extractor Buildpic Hover Repair Command Hover

Group of units Selected

Basic Unit Groups

Spring supports what could be called quick control groups. Basically you can assign the currently selected units to a numbered group with CTRL+# (where # is a number key) which will put that number(#) above all selected units, then later, you can quickly select these units by pressing SHIFT+#.

If a factory is set to a group, all units built by this factory will also be automatically assigned to this group.

Units can only be in one group at a time, so assigning a new group number to a unit will remove it from it's current group.

Assigning a unit to a group overides normal double-clicking behaviour, if you double-click a member of a group, it's group is selected instead of the units of the same type in range.

Also note, when you CTRL+# a group of units, the old group with that number will no longer exist. Therefore if you intend to add aditional units to a group, you must first SHIFT+# the current members and then add (by holding SHIFT) the additional units to the selection group and the use CTRL+# to re-assign all the units to that group.

Issuing Orders/Building

Left Mouse Control (Mouse 1)

As covered in Selecting/Deselecting Units, left clicking is the primary control for selecting units. If, however, a pending order is issued using the menu that appears on the left side of the screen or using a Hotkey, the mouse pointer will change to a symbol representing this action. If there is a pending order and you left click on a valid target for the action the selcted units will perform this action on that target, otherwise the units will "do their best" to perform the action(which could mean just cancelling the Order.

The menu will show all available commands for all selected units, except for wait and self destruct, in the menu, mousing over a menu item will also display the Tooltip for this item.

Right Mouse Control (Mouse 2)

Right clicking will always give the selected units the default action for the target, if the order is invalid for some members of the group, it may or may not choose a suitable action for those units to perform.

Queueing Orders

Use Shift to queue orders. Queueing orders means that you can tell a unit, or a group of units to do multiple tasks, and they will go off and do them with out any more input from you. Just say you want a Construction Vehicle to build a line of defences around your base. Select the defence building you want, hold shift and click around a few times. The construction vehicle will now go and build (or try to build) all of the selected structures, and you can just sit back and watch. You can queue each and every type of order there is in game, with no limits. It would be possible (but not very smart) to order your commander to build a whole base for you while you go off and have lunch!

If you have a unit selected, holding shift will show green outlined "ghosted" building for all units the selection has been ordered to build and simple green squares for all buildings that are queued for other units. Also, when holding shift, a path (white line) will be shown representing the selected units order queue (even if there is only one order for that unit; aka a line to the building the unit has been ordered to build and the ghosted building).

You can remove an order from the order queue by holding shift and repeating the same order. This doesn't work very well on area or movement type orders but can be useful for cancelling the construction of an un-needed building.

Another use for this, is for issuing complicated movement orders. Say you wan your army to attck your enemy, but you want to attack from the side, where they are their weakest. just issuing one move command to attack the side of their base would send our units moving THROUGH your enemys base to try to get to the side. This is not very good. But if you tell your units to move to a location AWAY from the base and them attack from the side, by queuing up two or more move commands, this problem can be successfully avoided. Or you could tel your units to attack certain buildings in a certain order, for instance attack all the outlying metal extracors, and them go for the power plants in the base, they will follow these orders oblivious to anything else, while you go in and attack the other important things.

learing how to sucessfully queue orders is a vital part of any game, and you will be lost with out it.

Build (select structure + right-click)

Builds whatever structure selected in the location clicked by moving the builder unit selected there and nanolathing it into existance. All Queued orders are cancelled

Build Queue (select structure + shift + right-click)

Puts the selected structure and location into your unit's order queue.

Build Line (select structure + shift + right-hold-drag)

Adds a straight line of the selected structure into your unit's build queue starting where your right hold first depressed and ending where you lift the key.

Build Box (select structure + shift + alt + right-hold-drag)

Adds a filled in square or rectangle box of the selected structures to your unit's build queue. The location your first depressed rightmouse is one cornered border and the location you release is the opposing corner. If you move the mouse straigt up your box will look like a vertical line.

Space Build (shift + mouse5/mouse4)

Gives your line and/or box structure queues an ammout of spacing between structures (default spacing starts at no space). Each click of the spacing expand button gives you an extra LLTbased size space in between each structure on all 4 dimentions. Similarly, each click of the spacing contract button removes that ammout of space. You cannot remove spaces when structures are already placed with no spacing between them.

List of Orders, Behaviour, Valid Targets, Defaults and Hotkeys

It is assumed that if a unit does not have an ability it will not be it's default action, priorities have been noted.

Active State (X)

This command toggles the active state of a unit. If a unit can be turned off this will usually stop it's prodution and/or use of energy and/or metal and/or stop it from doing something and/or change it's stats. For example, turning off a radar jamming building would make it stop drawing power and prevent it from jamming radar, or turning off a solar collector would stop it from producing power and cause it to "close up" increasing it's armor. This behaviour is unit-scriptable so it could technically do anything the designer of the unit wants it to do.

Attack(A)

Orders the unit to attack the target or location. If ordered to attack a unit, the selected unit or building will keep firing at the targeted unit/building until it is dead. If the targeted unit moves out of range, or out of sight(sp?), the selected unit will move to target the targeted unit again. If ordered to attack ground, the unit will never stop until told to do so by the user. Note that units automatically attack any visible enemy units inside their range, and will pursue them(depending on their Move State (see below)) to a certain distance before returning to their selected location.

Capture

The unit will move up to the targeted unit or building and attempt to convert it to your team. So if the enemy has built a Geothermal power plant , and forgotten to protect it, grab a near by construction unit and try to capture it! Note that this takes quite a while, and it is not a good idea to try to capture a unit that is shooting at you. The closer the unit is to 0 health the faster it will be captured. Be careful to set your Commander's fire state to "hold fire" if you are trying to capture a unit with him, as you will likely detroy the target before it is captured.

Cloak(K)

Makes a unit inivisble to the enemys units. Enemy units will not be able to shoot a unit while it is cloaked, but can still shoot it if it is on radar(I think?). Note that this uses an immense amount of energy, and unts cannot shoot while cloaked(?).

DGun(D)

Disintegrator Gun. A weapon held by the commander. It is a very powerful gun that will kill ANY unit in game. Use it in early game to ward off rushes, or against super units like the Krogoth, or the Goliath. Be careful, as it also destroys your units and buildings at the same time! Uses alot of energy to fire, so make sure you have the required energy before attmpting this, cause if it does not work, your commander will be a sitting duck.

Guard(G)

The current selection will "guard" the target owned or allied unit.
When a unit is order to guard another guarding unit it will:

1) Any unit that is order to guard another will attempt to follow it's target anywhere.

2) The Guarding unit will Defend the target if it becomes threatened and the guard has weapons.

3) It will also Repair if the target if it's damaged and the guard has repair capabilities.

4) Or it will Assist in any constructions the target is working on, if the guard can at least repair. This also applies to guarding units capable of repairing who are assigned to guard a factory.

5) A guarding unit will: Repair a unit that has been just resurrected (if capable). But it will not attempt to assist in the actual resurrection, inspite of the guard's capabilities.

6) If say 3 units were each told to guard eachother such that: Unit 1 guards Unit 2, Unit 2 guards Unit 3, and Unit 3 is told to build or repair or attack or whatever. Units 1 and 2 would also join unit 3 in doing what it was ordered to do.

High Trajectory

If this option is available, click the button to toggle this state.
A unit with High Trajectory mode enabled will shoot almost vertically, allowing it to shoot over hills as well as other units and masking the direction/source of the shot.
Using this mode reduces accuracy greatly and also the increased distance of the higher trajectory will increase the amount of time a shot will take to reach it's target.

Move(M)

There are 4 ways to move a group of units in Spring:

1) The usual move to point (works for single units or groups, pretty standard.)

2) Holding down on ctrl while giving a move order issues a "Move in formation" command. (Which in this case means whatever formation or configuration the units were in when they were given the order.)

3) Holding down Alt during a move command issues a "Move into a square". (Which expirence will show isn't as easy as it sounds as ground units tend to shove past eachother while going to their possitions, so the square is typically less than perfect for that reason. But it can be properly organized with a little work.)

4) Click and drag at the waypoint and it issues a "Move to this line" command. (In this case the line can be oriented however the user wants. The shorter the line the deeper the back the units will line up. And by contrast the longer the line the more the units will line up along with it. If there's enough units in the group they will form double or even triple lines, which may cause some shoving as stated in #3.)

A note, certain formation commands might not work on every type of aircraft.

And right clicking with a unit selected is usually as good as pressing the "M" key if the selected point doesn't have any objects at that location.

Patrol(P)

A unit given a command to patrol will move back and forth between its current position and the taget location. Holding CTRL when giving a patrol command to a selection with more then one unit will cause the units to move to a location relative the the target point compared to the distance of the unit from the center of the selection. Holding SHIFT while issueing a series of patrol orders will cause the unit to repeat this command, moving from current location to the targets and "circle around" through the points on the queued path.

When a unit is patroling it will do whatever it can to "help out" along the path of it's patrol route. How far it will go out of it's designated route is partially defined by line of sight, radar coverage, move state, and fire state.

Examples of Patrol Behaviour:

• If a unit that can repair patrols within range of a damaged owned or allied unit, the patrolling unit will repair the damaged unit.
• If a unit that can attack patrols within range of an enemy it will attack the enemy unit.

Reclaim(E)

"Sucks in the meatal/energy of a unit/feature and add it to your storage."
Valid Targets are enemy units, owned units, ally units, features and wreakage.
Default Action for wreackage for units without Ressurect capability.
Default Action for features.
Default Action for enemy units for units without Attack or Capture capability.
Dragging as an area command draws a circle in which all features and wreakage will be reclaimed.
Reclaiming a unit will slowly drain the life from the unit.
Energy and metal will be added to storage when reclaiming process is complete.
Assigning a group of units to reclaim will increase the speed at which the target is reclaimed.

Repair(R)

When repairing a damaged unit, uses a percentage of the metal and energy costs associated with a damaged unit to increase the speed at which a unit regains health. When repairing a unit that is still being constructed the unit will help build the target, increasing the speed at which the unit is completed. The repair command is cancelled when the target's health reaches 100%, so if a unit under construction is damaged the repair command will complete the building of the target and then continue to repair until the unit is at full health. Valid targets are any damaged units(need to check but I believe this includes enemy units) and units currently being constucted. Default behaviour for owned and ally units that are not at full health, including units being constructed by other units and factories. The more units that are assigned to repair another unit, the faster the unit will be constructed/restored to full health, but the energy and metal costs will increase accordingly.

Repeat

Moves any orders that have been completed to the back of the order queue. For instance, If you tell a unit to more to one side of the base, and then to the other side of the base, it would keep going back and forwards forever, because when it completed the first move command, it would place that command at the back of the queue again. This is most usefull when building units. If you want a factory to continuously pump out a Sampson, then a Flash, then two Stumpy's, turn on repeat, and watch the units pump out!

Restore

Drag an area of terrain to restore the terrain to it's orriginal height if it has been "deformed"(damaged by explosions or flattened by the contruction of a building).

Resurrect

In XTA only the Arm F.A.R.K. and the Core necro can use this order. Use this to ressurect dead units. If you see some wreakage on the map from some dead units, select a FARK or Necro and ressurect the dead units to have them fight along side your army. A good way to gain the upper hand later in game is to ressurect your opponents army after a battle. This does take a lot of energy and metal(half as much as building the unit originally), and ressurected units will start on 1 health, so are very vunerable.
Ressurect is the default order for corpses from destroyed units, this unfortunately includes wreackage that can't acctually be resurected.(Tip: if you cannot tell what unit the wreakage was then most likely you cannot resurrect it)
Dragging this order as an area will cause all selected units to ressurect all valid targets in that area. If multiple units are given a common ressurect order, the target will be resurrected faster but only one of them(probably the one the engine decides acctually completed the process) will try to restore it to health. In the case of an area command the units who do not stay behind to repair the target will move on to a new target.

Self Destruct(CTRL+D)

Will detonate the selected units/buildings in a very spectcular explosion after a specific count-down(default is 5 seconds). Use this when destroying units/building that are in the way, or when detonationg mines or crawling bombs. A way to literally go out with a bang is to press Ctrl+A (Select All), Ctrl+D(Self Destruct). Note that this will make you lose the game, but is very spectacular!

Stop(S)

Makes them stop any queued commands, and stop moving. They will not automatically stop attacking units, unless their fire state is set to Hold Fire.

Wait(W)

If issued at some point in a command queue (holding shift for multiple commands) the unit will wait at that point in the queue until it is queued another wait command(which should cancel the other one out), or unitl it is given a non-queued order (no-shift, cancels command queue aswell as normal). If it is loaded by a transport while waiting, it will cancel the wait command once it has been unloaded. (I Haven't Tested this functionality, someone should try it out and see what it acctually does... got this from the forums [1])

Random Tips That Will Eventually Be Put Into This Doc

• alt clicking on a unit in a factory prioritizes it (cancels unit being made atm) Source = Min3mat