Hiya, I've updated my Tiered Grouping mod with some new features and for FA.

It probably wont work on vanilla, so use at your own risk there.

Get it at the mod vault! (search for my name under Created By)

From the Readme:

***********************************************
| ADMIRALZEECH'S TIERED GROUPS MOD - FA EDITION
***********************************************

This mod splits grouping into 2 layers - 5 Battalions, with 5 Squads
each. It also contains some handy functions for manipulating groups.

Note: This mod cannot be used at the same time as Goom's Advanced
Groups mod.

----------------
|Overview

Instead of 10 groups as normal, now you have 5 Battalions, each with 5
Squads.

Detailed keylist is below, but generally:

Keys 6-0 selects the Battalion Keys 1-5 selects the Squad

-----------------
|Onscreen Display

On the top right of your screen, above your ACU avatar, is the Tiered
Groups display. It shows your currently selected Battalion and Squad
in the format:

Battalion : Squad

You will always have a current Battalion. However, sometimes you wont
have a current Squad, in which case the Squad indicator will show "X"


-----------------------
| Key and Function List

[1]-[5]
- Select all units in Squad 1-5. Factories will not be
selected.

- Pressing multiple times will select each unit in the
squad one by one. To select the whole squad again, clear your
selection by left clicking on some empty space, or select another
squad and then switch back.

- This will deselect your currently selected units regardless of
whether the desired Squad has any units or not.


[Ctrl + 1-5]
- Make selected units be the desired Squad under the
current Battalion. They will be removed from their old squad. (Units
can only belong to one squad at a time in this mod.)


[Shift + 1-5]
- Appends currently selected units into the desired
squad. The selection will remain unchanged.


[Ctrl + Shift + 1-5]
- Adds the desired squad to the current selection. It's the same as
Shift + 1-0 in the normal game.


[6]-[0]
- Selects all units in Squads 1-4 of the specified
battalion. Squad 5 is a special squad, and will not be selected. (See
Tips below)


[Shift + 6-0]
- Changes the current Battalion without changing your
selected units. Handy if you've selected some units and want to add
them to a different Battalion.



[Y]
- Makes selected units be the current Battalion, sorted by type.
Performs the same thing as below, but on the current Battalion.

[Ctrl + 6-0]
- Makes selected units be the desired Battalion. Each type of unit
will go into a seperate Squad, from 1 to 4.
(Units will be removed from their old squads.
Squads 1-4 in the desired Battalion will be cleared. Squad 5 will be
unaffected.)
If there are more than 4 types in the selection, they will be
sorted by Tech Level.

[Shift + Y]
- Makes selected units be the current Battalion, divided evenly.
Performs the same thing as below, but on the current Battalion.

[Ctrl + Shift + 6-0]
- Makes selected units be the desired Battalion.
Units will be divided evenly between Squads 1 to 4. Different types
of units will be evenly divided between Squads. (Units will be
removed from their old squads. Squads 1-4 in the desired Battalion
will be cleared. Squad 5 will be unaffected.)



[G]
- Filters current selection to only those that belong to the
current battalion. Useful if you want to select all members of a
battalion in a particular area, just shift-dragbox everything in the
area and hit G.

[Shift + G]
- Selects factories in the the current squad. If there is no current
squad, it will select factories in squad 5.

[Ctrl + G]
- Removed selected units from any squads.



( Shift + [ )
- Sets all selected units to HOLD FIRE.
Might be handy in conjunction with Cascade Fire Mode, see below.





-----------------------
| CASCADE FIRE MODE

( ] )
(ie. the right bracket key)
- Cascade Fire mode. An experimental feature, dunno if its useful.

- Basically it takes the CURRENT BATTALION, and sets all units to HOLD
FIRE. Then, after one second, the first squad is set to FIRE GROUND,
after 2s, the second squad is set to FIRE GROUND, etc.

- It's intended to be used for T2 PDs, Arty, etc. Just divide them up
into 4 squads, hit ], and each squad will fire one after the other, rather
than everything firing at once (and possibly overkilling targets)

- Normal ] = 1 sec delay
- Shift + ] = 2 sec delay
- Ctrl + ] = 5 sec delay



-----------------------
| Tips and notes

So basically you divide up your groups into Battalions and Squads. For
example, you could have Squad 1 to have Tanks, Squad 2 to have Mobile
Artillery, and Squad 3 to have Mobile Shields.

You can then have multiple Battalions of this type of
structure. Eg. Battalions 6 and 7.


Assigning a factory to a Battalion:Squad works the same way as normal
SupCom. All units it produces will be also assigned to that
Battalion:Squad.


Note that Squad 5 is special. Pressing a Battalion button will only
select Squads 1-4 of that Battalion. Also, the auto-fill-Battalion
keys (Y, Shift-Y, Ctrl + 6-0, etc) wont touch Squad 5.

This is handy so that you can assign factories to Squad 5. All units
it produces will also be assigned to Squad 5, and then you can easily
select them with the "5" key and assign them to other squads, or use
Auto-Fill without affecting the factory.

You could also use Squad 5 for units you dont want to move together
with the rest of the battalion (eg. non combat units, scouts, AA) or
for temporarily gathering a lot of different units so you can select
each type and assign them to different Squads.


Another handy feature is, when you have a Squad selected, pressing the
Squad number key again will allow you to scroll through the units in
the squad one-by-one.

So, for example, you can have all your missiles in one Squad, and then
by repeated pressing the Squad number key, you can select and fire
them each at different targets individually.

Another handy use is to double-click all your Metal Extractors and
then assign them to a Squad. You can then upgrade them one by one
using this feature.


Finally, I added the Y and Shift-Y keys after finding that
Ctrl+Shift+6 etc was too much of a reach for my fingers. I've left
those original bindings for Auto-Fill Battalion in, but you should
probably try to use Y and Shift-Y versions instead.


Hmm, however, I dont use groups much in SupCom normally, so far I've
only used the features of this mod in select circumstances. We'll see
what happens once I get used to it :/

-----------------
| Changelist

I've removed the V / Ctrl-V swap since Goom has released his mod "GUI"
that allows for user-edited hotkeys.

Added coldboot's change that sorts types by Tech level when dividing
up into battalions. Thanks coldboot!

------------------
| The End

This mod is mainly for my own comfort and use, so it's provided "As
is". However, if you have a feature request and have a good reason
for it, tell me and I'll think about it.

Of course, Bug Reports are always welcome.


Special thanks to Goom for letting me use his Advanced Groups mod as a
starting point, and for providing lots of help along the way.

This mod was written using EmacsW32, together with lua-mode.el

Bye-Be!
-AdmiralZeech

first: great mod, simple and useful.

second:i took the liberty to modifi your mod slightly - just deleted the the ctrl+v / v swap, nothing big.

Just for you to know.

Feel free, the point is to make the game more comfortable and useful for yourself after all.

May I ask what you use the V function for? I never really use it.

late response >>

the V is a temporary substitute of the SCA middle mouse button - i don't play with minimap on, so a quick V and a a rapid zoom in allow me to go anywhere on the map in a blink

AdmiralZeech I love your mod.

The split battalion function is very useful in toning down number of units you move together in formation. This helps a lot because of the path-finding issues. Moving 4 smaller groups is always better than moving 1 big group.

There are too many hot keys to remember though heh.

Thank you :D

Yeah, its the feature I've always wanted for any RTS. It would have been sooo incredibly useful for Homeworld...

But yeah, a bit too unintuitive. Heck, I dont even use all the hotkeys myself :P

But I often find myself wishing I had more groups available... but no room left on keyboard :(

very nice! haven't had a chance to make a large army with the mod to utilize all of its potential, but it does seem to be very handy! thank you!

Great mod , unfortunately it is incompatible with Goom's UI mod. I guess this is due to overlapping keys .I guess the remapping key feature of gooms mod overwrites mapping of your mod.

Is there any way to make them compatible? I tried to add "After " option in mod

after = {"4fb56516-9d9c-11dc-8314-0800200c9a66" } to mod_info.lua

but it didnt help

I have an update for TieredGroupsFA. This an update to AdmiralZeech's version 2 found in the vault.

Before when you added units to a Battalion, if there were more than 4 types of units selected, it would add units in a round-robin style, sorted by unit ID. So you would have this:

Type1 -> Squad1, Type2 -> Squad2, Type3 -> Squad 3, Type4 -> Squad4
Type5 -> Squad1, Type6 -> Squad2, Type7 -> Squad 4, ... and so on

This would result in the tech levels among the squads to be really mixed up.

I've patched it now so it makes the lower tech level units go to the lower-numbered squads and the higher tech units go to the higher numbered squads.

AdmiralZeech, can you apply this patch and update your mod? I've attached a unified diff file that can be applied with GNU patch, but if you're not a programmer and don't know what that is, I've also attached the updated files in their entirety.

Here is the patch: (cd into TieredUnitsFA and use "patch -p1")
http://pastebin.com/f5771f8ee

Updated files:
groupinterface.lua: http://pastebin.com/f403ac336
mod_info.lua: http://pastebin.com/f7808215c
README.txt: http://pastebin.com/f4026d708

--
- coldboot

Rockin' TA since '96 and Supreme Commander since Vanilla Beta

okies, I've added your code. I've left the mod_info alone and did my own changes to the docs though. Thanks coldboot!

Do you not want to up the version to v3? If you don't, then people won't really know to download a new version...

You should also include a changelog with a summary of changes from each major and minor version so it's easy know what version you have, and what progress has been made.

I'm updating the mod again to make an "add to battalion" feature that will put unit types into squads that already have that unit type.

- coldboot

The vault automatically updates the version.

BTW, I've uploaded another version, v4, with the default starting battalion set to 6.

Setting it to -1 at the beginning causes evil, I dont like it.

Yes, there's a bit of evil there, but they should work together ok. One thing that happens is if you press F1 for the hotkey window, GAZ_UI will blast Tiered Grouping's keys. But it should work fine otherwise.

In the GAZ_UI mod, you have to unassign keys 1-0 to make it play nice with my mod, then it will work ok even if your press F1.

Hmmm... actually you cant unassign keys in GAZ_UI mod. What I did myself was to edit my game.prefs (its stored in Documents and Settings/Local Settings/Application Data/Gas Powered Games/Forged Alliance) and deleted the entries for those keys.

I'm going to add the feature to unassign keys to GAZ_UI soon...ish.