Group Defend & Ambush

[ineffable]

When a group of units is selected the orders menu doesnt have the Defend or Ambush commands even though, when selected individually, the units do. Is this an intentional UI design choice ?

[SteveMcClaire]

Group selections should (and do) have the Defend or Ambush orders available. Can you give me an example where this happened to you? How did you select the group? Is it possibly the first unit in the group selection was dead?

[nikolascc]

I have encountered this many times as well

[ineffable]

I think I see the problem. In the pic below all 3 units are selected but the two without command circles dont have Defend or Ambush shown on their order menus. The BAR with the cmd cicle (also the unit shown in the Soldier list) does get those orders on its menu. Which raises another question - how does the game decide which cmd circle to show in a group selection?



Also, there's a white line that appeared when I opened that orders menu thar goes from the lower left of the menu to the BAR with the command circle?

[SteveMcClaire]

Hmm. I think I see what's happening. If you have the mouse over a unit when you go to issue an order that unit is considered the 'target' of the order. If you selected FIRE in the example you posted you should get a failure with 'Those are our men!'

Defend and Ambush are directional orders so they don't appear when you have a target unit. If you repeated the example but targeted the order at the ground instead of one of the friendly units then Defend and Ambush should show up. You can also invoke Defend/Ambush in that scenario using the short cut keys N / M.

I'll look at changing this so units under the cursor don't prevent Defend/Ambush orders from showing up in the menu.

The first unit in a group selection is the 'main' unit orders are based off of. For a group selection created by dragging a box around the units this will default to the order of the units you see in the unit list on the left of the screen. You can change which one is the main unit by left-clicking on any unit in the group selection.