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Retreat Zones vs Command Groups

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After returning to Zero-K after a long hiatus, I've recently discovered the "retreat zone" feature, which sounds very useful. However, upon trying to use it it's been rather less useful than I thought at first, because its interaction with command groups seems rather suboptimal:

Specifically, I usually micro my front line using command groups by unit type, for instance command group 1 for assault units, command group 2 for artillery, and so on. If I activate retreat for my assault units, the following tends to happen:

1. Clash with enemy forces, some assault units retreat.
2. The nearby enemies are defeated.
3. Press "2" to select artillery and right drag to move them closer.
4. Press "1" to select assaults and "A" left drag to resume the advance.
5. Player notices that the heavily damaged assaults have stopped retreating and are rejoining the front line.
6. Player stops the advance, manually orders the damaged units to retreat, selects the remaining ones.
7. Player doesn't dare press "1" to select the units during battle.
8. Repaired units advance to the previous front line, where I don't see them until I take a break from fighting, wait for all units to repair, select them with "1" and order them reform.

For a feature designed to reduce micro, this seems to require quite a lot of my attention?

How can I efficiently select my battle-ready units, some of which may be returning from the retreat zone and therefore be off-screen, by type?
+1 / -0

2 years ago
In options/Interface/Retreat zones (disable simple settings check to see that) you have setting that you can adjust to your liking which includes:
- making the damaged units deselect themselves
- making the damaged units remove themselves from the unit groupes for the period of repair
- lowering the damaged units' selection priority so you can't select them without manual overrides (like holding Shift while drawing selection box or selecting only one unit with click explicitly); it also excludes them from being selected by ctrl+z command

The settings do not include:
- changing the way the repaired units behave after being repaired - they currently only inherit the last position/order they had after repair which can be suicide without paying attention. I wish there would be option added to make them remain in the repair area vincinity


The current settings are here to help avoid confusion for new players that could get annoyed about unselectable units (without knowledge how to override priorities with shift).
+2 / -0
There is a command Hotkeys -> Selection -> "Deselect units below 60% health" (unbound by default) which is useful for this.

I found the auto-deselection and auto-removal from control groups settings too dangerous. They destroy micro ability in case you do need the damaged units in the situation and hand (I, too, use control groups heavily). I have the selection priority setting off for the same reason, but good point re overriding priority with shift.
+1 / -0
2 years ago
Erm, Zenfur, I don't see the setting you mention?

With advanced settings activated, I see the following settings there:

* "Retreat overrides selection rank"
* "Retreat selection override"
* "Retreat deselects"
* "Only show my zones"

none of which appear to affect command groups? In particular, the "retreat deselects" only removes the unit from the current selection, but as soon as I press "1", it gets selected again :-(

@Dunno:
Thanks, that sounds useful, and very flexible. It leaves a small risk that a partially repaired unit will get drafted before repairs are complete, but since I tend to have plenty of buildpower around repair zones this should be rare. I am going to test this in game and report back!
+0 / -0
What settings do you have currently? I think the "Retreat overrides selection rank" side effect is to remove from groups.

And yeah I also use the deselect below 60% hp shortcut, pretty useful if you dont have the retreat set up yet or don't want it.
+0 / -0
2 years ago
"Retreat overrides selection rank" is active, but it doesn't seem to affect anything when I press "1" to select the command group, i.e. retreating units still get selected. I also tried fiddling with the "retreat selection override" without observing any change in behavior. And while "Retreat deselects" does remove the unit from the selection, it doesn't remove it from the command group, so when I press "1" the unit gets selected again.

Upon further testing, the "deselect units below 60% health" hotkey is really useful, and while it occasionally selects a unit that is not quite fully healed yet, placing the retreat zone well inside healing range can allow the healing to complete while the unit exits. So that solution is nearly perfect, and lot more flexible than I dared hope for. Thanks again!
+1 / -0
Hmm I'll test again later, since it behaves like that for me and I'm not sure why then. I'll post when I figure it out
+0 / -0