Using Spring

This is a fairly exhaustive description of controls, interface and features. For basic information, check the most current README.html (should be mirrored here)or Getting_Started. For an introduction to the strategy and overall gameplay in XTA (and most mods based on the original Cavedog units) check out the Spring_guide!. Other mods should have more specific documentation on their web sites or on the Wiki. Please see the links in the Mods section.

For more advanced/current information check the most recent changelog or the TA Spring Forums.

Camera Controls

There are four camera modes in Spring. To change camera modes use CTRL+Middle Button (Mouse 3), CTRL+J or CTRL+Backspace (Also SHIFT+[Mouse 3,J or Backspace]). Middle button, Backspace or J toggle "free look" mode for the current camera view. This allows you to move the camera around using the mouse.

Camera Modes

There are four different camera modes in Spring. Everyone likes a different one. Try them all out to decide what you like best.

Classic Overhead(TA) Style

The default view, very similar to the view OTA had. Use the arrow keys or move the mouse to the edge of the screen to pan around the map. The scroll wheel zooms in and out. Ctrl+Scrolling will tilt the camera. Free look mode (click the middle mouse button) also pans around the map. It always "faces" straight north.

This is the easiest view for OTA players to use. It functions exactly the same as the OTA camera, so no new tricky controls are needed to properly enjoy the game. This view has recently had camera tilt added (see above), but still does not really show off the full glory of the Spring engine, as you are limited to one compass direction. It is the favorite view mode for most people, as most people played OTA or other similar RTS games with a traditional top-down view.

Total War Style

The same camera system used in the Total War series of games. It runs at a fixed height above the ground, which cannot be changed. Use the arrow keys or move the mouse to the edge of the screen to pan around the map. Scrolling the scroll wheel tilts the camera. Putting the mouse in the top corners of the screen rotates the view. Free look mode (click the middle mouse button) pans around the map.

This mode is good for those familiar with the Total War games. Like the OTA camera, it does not allow for full freedom of movement, so it does not show off the engine as much as it could.

FPS Style

In this view the camera is controlled just like in a first person shooter. Use arrow keys to fly forward/backward and strafe left/right. Hold the middle mouse button to aim the camera. Use the scroll wheel to zoom in and out.

This is the easiest camera to position. However, it can get quite tedious trying to control the camera in the middle of a battle. Its good for screenshots and FPS junkies.

Rotatable Overhead Camera

This is a new camera system invented by the SY's. You can change the camera height by scrolling. Use the arrow keys to pan around the map. The scroll wheel moves the camera up and down vertically. Free look mode (click the middle mouse button) lets you aim the camera from its current position.

This is perhaps the best camera, as it allows for totally free movement and aiming, but with some handy restrictions on the height. It is the second most popular view besides the OTA view. It's useful for both screenshots and actual gameplay.

FPS "Mode" (C)

Press 'C' to toggle "First Person Shooter Mode".

Controls:

• Up Arrow: Move in the direction the unit's base (legs or tracks) is facing
• Left Arrow: Rotate Legs to the left
• Right Arrow: Rotate Legs to the right
• Mouse: Aim default gun. The gun will lock on to any targets the cursor moves close to, making tracking and firing at targets much easier.
• Left Mouse Button: Shoot whatever guns the engine has decided to let you shoot at the current target.
• Right Mouse Button: Click to enter Free Fire Mode. In this mode, the AI will aim and fire for you as you move.

General Function Keys

For the most part, the function keys control what the camera sees, so they are listed here for lack of a better place for them.

• F1: Toggles Contour Markings On/Off. These color coded contour markings represent the height of the map. One iteration through the colors (ie: red-green-blue-red) is 32 units high.
• F2: Toggles Path map On/Off. The path map works the following way:
  • Mobile Unit Selected: If you have a mobile unit selected, then the pathmap shows where that specific unit can move (green) and where it cant (red). The greener the map, the better the unit can walk on that area. Zones that can't be walked or driven on are always solid red.
  • Builder Selected: When you have a builder selected and have clicked on a building in its build menu (i.e. a Kbot lab), the path map will show you where you can build that building. Its fairly easy to understand, with the green zones representing buildable areas, and the red zones representing the areas where you cannot build. Note that the marks represent the "center-point" of the build, so if your mouse cursor is over green, you can build there, even if there's red within the building's border.
• F3: Moves the camera to the position of the last message. Messages can be from units or alerts placed on the minimap by your allies.
• F4: Toggles Metal Map On/Off. If the map is green, there is metal there. If the map is black, there is no metal. If the map is white, there is lots of metal and it would be a good strategic place to hold. The camera automatically switches to Metal Map mode when placing Metal Extractor structures, and switches back when you stop placing these structures.
• F5: Toggles the GUI On/Off. Good for taking screenshots.
• F6: Toggles Sound On/Off. Self-explanatory.
• F7: Toggles the Dynamic sky. If the game is running slowly, try turning this off to speed it up a little bit.
• F8: Save the Game. Not currently supported.
• F9: Show/Hide Unit Status. Unit Status bars are: Health, Building percentage, experience, and group numbers.
• F11/F12: Screenshots. Takes a screenshot and saves it to TASpring/Screenshots/Screenshot###.jpg, where ### is the number of the screenshot.
• Pause: Pauses the game. While the game is paused, you can still scroll around the map and issue orders, but nothing actually happens until the game's unpaused.

Snapping/Panning Camera to a Specific View

Right click(MOUSE2) on the mini-map to snap the center of the view to that point on the map. Right click and drag to move the camera around the map.

Press F3 to snap the camera view to the point of the last "message" ("Unit is under attack", "player 1 has placed a point: look here!").

Press T to lock the camera to track the currently selected units. The camera will move so that the selected units are always centered. Move the camera manually to stop the tracking.

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 Thread has some good documentation about using the selection editor.

Default Selection Controls

Most of these controls can be customized in the selection editor.

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 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 toggle selection. Units in the selection will be removed from it, units not in the selection will be added to it.

Double-left-clicking a unit that's not in a group 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 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 all units in the selection. If you select a bank of 5 solar collectors, it will show the total health of all those units and the total energy they're producing. If you move the mouse over a "build-pic" in a list of units that can be built, 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. If your mouse is over a unit, it will show stats for that unit. Otherwise it will show 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 assigning units to numbered groups. 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 just these units by pressing that #, or add them to the current selection with SHIFT+#.

If a factory is set to a group, all units built by this factory will also be automatically assigned to this group. This is not a good idea with combat units unless you ungroup the factory before sending the units into battle, as it can prevent you from assigning certain orders, and result in newly-produced units doing stupid things.

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

Assigning a unit to a group overides normal double-clicking behaviour. If you double-click a member of a group, all units in the same group will be selected.

Also note that when you CTRL+# a group of units the old group with that number will no longer exist. 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. A shortcut for this is holding down both SHIFT and CTRL and pressing a number(#) to add the current selection to that group, and select the entirety of that new group.

Advanced Unit Groups with GroupAIs

It is possible to use more than groups 0-9, but additional groups from 10 and up are controlled by a "Group AI".

See Select AI (CTRL+Q) for information on these "Group AIs".

See Assign/Select Current Group (Q) to learn how to select these groups and add units to them.

Issuing Orders/Building

Left Mouse Control (Mouse 1)

As covered in Selecting/Deselecting Units, left clicking is the primary control for selecting units. If 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

Holding down SHIFT while giving a unit an order adds that order to its queue. 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 in the order they were given without any more input from you. For example, if you you want a Construction Vehicle to build a line of defences around your base, you can select the structure you want, hold shift and click where you want them few times. The construction vehicle will now go and build (or try to build) all of the selected structures while you go and pay attention to other things. You can queue any order, and any number of orders. 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 the unit's order queue. Green lines indicate movement orders, red lines attack orders, light blue lines patrol orders, dark blue lines Guard orders, and purple lines reclaim orders. Green rectangles will show where you have construction orders queued. If you have a construction unit selected, you'll see ghosted images of the buildings that unit is going to build inside the green rectangles, linked by green "movement order" lines.

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 to issue complicated movement orders. Say you want your army to attack 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 enemy's 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 back towards it, by queuing up two or more move commands, this problem can be successfully avoided. Or you could tell 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.

This is also good for building complicated patrol paths. Note that units given a patrol order will return to their starting point after executing the last patrol order, so queuing up other orders after a patrol order is very pointless.

When you issue a order without holding shift, it clears the unit's queue and immediately starts it executing that order.

Learning how to use your units' order queues is a vital part of the game.

Building Buildings

When a contruction unit is selected you will see images in it's command list (menu on the left) representing the buildings that it can build. These are referred to as "buildpics". Mousing over a buildpic will make the tooltip show information about the structure or unit. Clicking on a structure's buildpic will select it for contruction. If multiple units are selected, all available structures (and mobile units) will appear in the command list. Choosing to build a building when you have multiple units selected will usually assign all units to help build those buildings if this is a valid command.

When you build a unit with a non-factory you will need to choose a ground plate for it to be built on (represented by a grid on the map under your cursor).

If the grid is green, you can build at that location.
If the grid is green with some yellow-green squares in it somewhere, it means the groundplate is blocked by a mobile unit or reclaimable feature. This situation should be resolved automaticly by the constructing unit.
If the grid has any red squares in it, this is an invalid build position, the non red squares of the grid represent unobstructed parts of the obstructed grid.

Build (select structure then left-click)

Builds whatever structure selected in the location clicked by moving the builder unit selected there.

Build Queue (select structure then shift + left-click)

Puts the build order into your unit's order queue, just as with any other order.

Build Line (SHIFT)

(select structure then shift + left-hold-drag then release left mouse)

Adds a straight line of the selected structure into your unit's build queue starting where you first depressed the leftmouse and ending at the location you release the leftmouse.

Shift-Build

Build Grid Line (SHIFT+CTRL)

(select structure then shift+ctrl+left-hold-drag then release left mouse)

Adds a straight line of the selected structure into your unit's build queue starting where you first depressed the leftmouse and ending aligned to the location you release. This line, however, will be either vertical or horizontal and aligned to the map's grid.

Shift-Ctrl-Build

Build Perimeter (SHIFT+CTRL+ALT)

(select structure then shift+ctrl+alt+left-hold-drag then release left mouse)

Adds an empty square or rectangle box of the selected structures to your unit's build queue. The location you first depressed the leftmouse is one corner border and the location you release is the opposing corner. If you move the mouse straight up your box will look like a grid alligned vertical line.

Shift-Ctrl-Alt-Build

Build Block (SHIFT+ALT)

(select structure then shift + alt + left-hold-drag then release left mouse)

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

Shift-Alt-Build

Build "Wall" (select structure THEN shift + ctrl + left-click a Unit)

Add a wall of the selected structure surrounding the clicked unit to your builders build queue.

Shift-Ctrl-Build

Space Build (MOUSE4/Z and MOUSE5/X)

(select structure then shift + ctrl + mouse5/mouse4 or z/x)

Spring allows you to automatically specify the spacing between buildings for batch (line, perimeter, block, wall) orders. This spacing is set with the z (decrease by one) or x (increase by one) keys. The default spacing is zero, with the buildings pressed right up against each other. Each level of spacing gives you an extra 2x2-sized (LLT-sized for OTA-based mods) space in between each structure on all 4 dimensions. Similarly, each click of the spacing contract button(z) removes that amount of space. You cannot remove spaces when structures are already placed with no spacing between them. This is most useful when you're holding down SHIFT+CTRL, SHIFT+ALT, or SHIFT+CTRL+ALT to give a line/perimeter/block order. When doing this, you can actually see the spacing between the structures increase or decrease. Note: The mapping of this function to Z and X is as of 0.70b1. As Z and X are used by many players for other units, it's valuable to note that the key mappings for "mouse4" and "mouse5" can be changed in the "uikeys.txt" file in your spring directory. If you have a 5-button mouse, buttons 4 and 5 are probably the side buttons. Experiment with your mouse to find out where they are on it.

Spaced-Shift-Ctrl-Alt-Build Spaced-Shift-Alt-Build Spaced-Shift-Ctrl-Build Spaced-Shift-Build

Building Mobile Units (Building with Factories)

Click on the picture of the unit you want to queue up for building. You can queue up many units this way. A number will appear over the buildpic, showing how many units of that type are in the queue.

Hold SHIFT while clicking a buildpic to order 5 units at one time, hold CTRL while clicking to order 20, hold CTRL+SHIFT while clicking to order 100. Hold ALT while clicking a buildpic to cancel the current construction and starting the constuction of that unit immediately. Right clicking a buildpic will cancel 1,5,20 or 100 orders for that unit using the same SHIFT and/or CTRL modifiers mentioned before. Note that you can use, say, ALT+SHIFT to put five build orders for that unit at the start of the queue.

Assigning a group number to a factory will cause the factory to pass this group number to the units it builds.

You can give factories a Move, Guard, Patrol, or other order and the factory will pass it on to the units it builds. You can use this to choose a better place for new units to go after being built, or to send them straight into construction or a battle without micromanaging them. This includes assigning queued orders (for example: multiple move points to get a unit out of the base in a straight line and then a guard repair order on a specific large unit under construction and then a guard order back on the original factory to increase build speed). You can also issue orders to the unit currently under construction by clicking on it first instead of the factory.

Note that it is currently possible for units to get stuck in factories. Thus, it's a good idea for the first order to always be a move order that takes the unit directly out of the factory doors.

Construction/Repair units can be assigned to guard a factory to increase the speed of production for each of the units the factory makes. They can also be assigned to Repair the unit currently under construction to just help with its construction.

Commands and Defaults and Hotkeys

It is assumed that if a unit does not have an ability, it will not be able to perform that action, and will ignore any orders of that type given to a group it's part of. Priorities have been noted.

Active State (X)

This command toggles the "active state" of a unit, turning it on or off. 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. 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, the selected unit will move to follow it and continue to attack it. Note that units are very stupid about this, and will continue to execute this order even if they come under heavy attack.

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) a certain distance before returning to their starting 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 nearby 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 his laser will likely detroy the target before it is captured.

Cloak (K)

Makes a unit inivisble to the enemy's units. Enemy units will not be able to see a unit while it is cloaked, but will still be able to spot it (and fire at it) if they can see the unit VIA radar. Note that this usually uses an immense amount of energy, uses even more energy when the unit's moving, and units uncloak for a few seconds when they shoot. This means that you might want to set the unit to Hold Fire, so the unit doesn't accidentally reveal itself. Cloaking a unit also causes atacking units to lose their target lock and move on to a new target, unless they have radar coverage.

DGun (D)

Disintegrator Gun. A weapon used 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.

Fire State

Fire States are fairly simple to work out, and are fairly self explanatory. There are three different states, each with their advantages and disadvantages.

Fire at Will

This is the default setting for all new units. It makes units fire at any visible enemy unit within range. It is good for general destruction.

Hold Fire

This makes units never fire unless ordered to. Even if they are attacked, they will not do anything. This is good for sneaking units around the back of a base, as they will not draw any attention to themselves, or for units that draw a lot of power when they fire, or which have a long reload time.

Return Fire

Units only fire at untis that shoot at them. Again, this is good for sneak attacks, but makes them a little smarter and better at defending themselves.

Guard (G)

The current selection will "guard" the target owned or allied unit.

When a unit is ordered to guard another unit it will:

1) Attempt to follow it's target anywhere, staying relatively close to it.

2) Defend the target if it becomes threatened and the guard has weapons.

3) Repair if the target if it gets damaged and the guard has repair capabilities.

4) Assist in any construction projects the target is working on if the guard can repair. This also applies to construction units guarding a factory.

5) Repair a unit that has been just resurrected (if capable). But it will not attempt to assist in the actual resurrection, even if the guard can resurrect.

Guard orders "chain". So if Unit 1 guards Unit 2, Unit 2 guards Unit 3, and Unit 3 is told to build or repair or attack, 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.

With some mods, units may gain extra firepower or a larger area of effect when told to use High Trajectory mode.

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. In this case, formation 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". Units will try to move into a nice, organised formation. However, this rarley ever works, as units tend to shove each other out of the way when trying to get into position.

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 units will line up. The longer the line, the more the units will be able to 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 with the "Square Move" command.

Notes: Certain formation commands might not work on every type of aircraft.

By turning on Repeat, units will move back into formation when shoved out of position. However, this should be used with caution, as it can lead to problems when trying to move units later.

Left-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.

Move State

Like Fire State, this controls how the unit will maneuver in response to enemy units. Units set to Hold Position will not move very far from their current position, if they move from it at all. Units set to Maneuver will move a moderate distance from their current position while chasing enemies. Units set to Roam will move however they want to.

Maneuver is usually the most sensible setting here, as Roam leaves you open to a clever enemy pulling your units into heavy defences.

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. A construction unit will aid in construction projects, a combat unit will engage enemies, etc. 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 (or under contsruction) 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)

Reclaiming will break down something and give you metal/energy from it. Only certain units (namely, construction units and the Commander) have reclaim capabilities. Wrecks, enemy units, features, and your own units are reclaimable.

Energy and metal will be added to storage when reclaiming process is complete. You must have enough storage space to hold the energy/metal, or you will lose it!

Default Behavior

Simply clicking on a feature, a wreck, or an enemy unit with a construction unit will reclaim it by default. Hitting 'E' and dragging with the left mouse button issues an area reclaim order, and tells the unit to reclaim any wrecks or features in that area.

Assigning multiple units to reclaim a target will increase the speed at which the target is reclaimed. Note that units will not do this automatically when guarding other units.

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. This percentage is set per-mod, and many mods have it set to zero, making repairs free. 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 but also increasing the rate at which your resources are consumed.

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 and units currently being constucted.

This is the default command for owned and ally units that are not at full health, including units being constructed by other units and factories, when a construction unit is selected.

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.

Assign/Select Current Group (Q)

This key has a double function.

If you have one unit belonguing to a group selected, when pressing Q it will select all the units that belong to this group.

If several units are selected, and one belongs to any group, then, when pressing Q it will assign ALL the selected units to this group, and after that will select the group.

It works with AI groups as well as user-specified groups.

See Default selection Controls for more info on groups.

Repeat

When turned on, 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 useful when building units. If you want a factory to continuously pump out a Samson, then a Flash, then two Stumpy's, issue the orders, turn on repeat, and watch the units roll out!

Restore

Drag an area of terrain to restore the terrain to it's original form if it has been "deformed" by explosions or 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 opponent's 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 resurrected.(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.

Select AI (CTRL+Q)

Press Control+Q or choose "Select AI" from the Menu to assign a "Group AI" to the currently selected units.

Setting an AI will generate a "group" from that selection of units using a number above 10.

In Spring, the term "Group AI" stands more for an aid or "helper" than for a Complete Control AI (as NTAI, ZCAIN, JCAI).

Currently available Group AIs.

None
Simple Formation
Central Build AI
Metal Maker AI
Default = Will assign default AI for that unit (?)

Self Destruct (CTRL+D)

Will detonate the selected units/buildings in a very spectacular 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 the selected units stop any queued commands immediately. They will not automatically stop attacking units, unless their fire state is set to Hold Fire, but they will cancel any ongoing attack orders, allowing them to select and engage targets based on their default AI.

Wait (W)

Start issuing your chain of commands (Holding Shift). BEFORE a command that you want your units to wait for a go command to execute, hit Shift+W, then continue queuing up orders. Now, to cancel the first wait queued on this group, and have them continue with the rest of the queue, select the units when they're waiting and hit W. Many of these wait waypoints can be chained together. Note that if you hit W before some or all of the selected units have completed the command before the wait, only those that have completed the preceding command will continue.

Units are automatically issued a "stop waiting" command when loaded into and unloaded from a transport.

Chat, Cheats, and Text Commands

Pressing ENTER will bring up a "say:" prompt which you can use to communicate with other players or issue "Text Commands". To send a message to all who are connected, type your message and press ENTER. To send a message only to your allies, preface your message with "a:". To send a message to any spectators, type "s:" then your message and press ENTER. To enter a Text Command, simply type the command and press ENTER.

Basic Text Commands

Command	Effect
.info	Shows you what colour each player is, its CPU usage percentage and their ping delay in the bottom right corner of the screen. This is on by default.
.clock	Shows you the elapsed game time in minutes and seconds in the bottom right corner of the screen. This is on by default.
.take	Places all allied units that are owned by players who have lost connection to the server under your control. It is generally considered polite to consult with any still-connected allies before doing this. In a Commander Dies, Game Ends game, a player only loses once they have lost all their Commanders, and this mechanism will give them a second one.
.setmaxspeed #	Changes the maximum speed multiplier (default is 3.0)
.setminspeed #	Changes the minimum speed multiplier (default is 0.3)

Cheat Codes

Cheat Command	Effect
.cheat	enable cheats - Cheats don't work in multiplayer until the host types this
.nocost	Insta-build; everything is built immediatly. (doesn't work on things already under construction, only on new ones)
.spectator	Allows you to see the entire map... but you lose control of your units
.team 0, .team 1, etc.	Change player
.give ARMCOM, .give 10 CORKROG, etc.	Place 1 or specified number of specified unit. Valid units are the internal names of units as specified in the unit definition.

Map Doodles

Hold the ` key to draw on the screen with the mouse. This is the main gameplay screen, not the minimap. Only you and your allies can see these marks. Use this tool to mark out territory or warn of impending attacks, or mark enemy bases or play tic-tac-toe before the game... Be creative but not annoying.

Hold ` while pressing the left mouse button (MOUSE1) to draw a line.

Hold ` and double left click, then type a label then press ENTER to add a labelled point. This also causes a minimap ping and chat message notification.

Hold ` while clicking the middle mouse button (MOUSE3/Scrollwheel Button) to add an empty point. This also causes a minimap ping and chat message notification.

Hold ` and clicking the right mouse button (MOUSE2) will erase lines or points.

Note: Apparently on some keyboards, the ` is replaced with §, and it is also known as the ~ or tilde key. Usually this is the key between the Tab and Esc keys in the upper left corner of the keyboard. It can also be changed within the "uikeys.txt" file if you still can't figure it out.

On azerty keyboards * and ù (near return) works but not ~

Customizing keyboard shortcuts

Well there are several categories of keys in spring.

• Unit action keys

This are the usual keys, present in many games, and in TA.

Look at this section of the readme for details.

These keys are hardcoded, which means, cant be changed.

However, you can still map this keys in uikeys.txt but when any unit is selected, Unit action keys will have priority.

• User Interface keys

Many keys related to the user interface are editable through uikeys.txt found in spring main folder.

The usege of this file is evident to anyone who has played quake 1.

• Selection keys

This is the best part.

Im sure you do remember Control+C key. Or Control+Z.

Well this keys, as all that is related to "selected units" is now fully editable.

i.e. You can map a key to do the same as Control+C BUT without the "center on commander" part.

This offers tremendous flexibility and enhaces control and gameplay to crisp levels.

Look at this thread to learn more on editing this selection keys through selectioneditor.exe.