handling engineers

It seems like i've found the answer accidentally myself while studying the changelog 0.50:

• F1 now correctly cycle selects the player’s engineers

Thanks.  I tired every combination of selecting in the left pane but did not know about F keys,

good to know that i do not only "talk to my hand".

but it does not cycle (all the time, sometimes it does).  It does show the first idle but if there is more than one idle, it won;t switch to the next one.  You have to get that first engineer doing something then F1 to the next one.

Also, if you click on the unit in the top left pane, it selects but does not move view to that unit so you don't know where it is.

Can we have like a small icon in the top left corner to help us cycle through our idle engineers and to see how many we have on idle state? Like Warcraft III had? I'm not really keen on using F1. At all. Personal opinion 

P.S: I'm not sure if it was in warcraft III, but i'm really sure i've seen it somewhere

Yes I'm not keen on using f1 either.  Because I have no idea where the game is going to jump me to.  I think it would be best if we got an additional button that selects any idle engineer that is currently on your screen.  Also, a button to select ALL idle engineers on your screen.

Although i'm still a proponent of having engineer icons on every single engineer

Quoting shurtugalll, reply 6

Although i'm still a proponent of having engineer icons on every single engineer

On every single engineer? That would be...a bit too much. One icon and a small number in the corner of it to show you those that are idle should do the trick. If you click it, it should cycle through them. Also a hotkey ( *points to F1 winner  *).

YEEEEEESSSS!!!!

It would not be to much at all.

I mean the devs are pretty clear about not never placing icons on units or buildings.  There's no problem having 20-60 ish engineers icons on the map.  Especially because they are arguably the most important unit in the game.  Remember, this game doesn't have the need for engy spam like FAF does.  Even on the large maps, I think I was only using 40-50 engineers, and most of them were just assisting factories (so you forget about them).

Perhaps even an option where an IDLE engineer has an icon, but engineers that are doing something do not.  There is a UI mod in FAF that does this, where an additional icon was added on the top of idle engies.

Point I want to stress is to leave players with options.  How much effort could it take to code in icons for something as critical an engies?  How hard would be to code those icons to a toggle?  I'm guessing not difficult at all.  If we leave this option in, everyone can be happy and there is no negative created.  

There's also no need to literally create 1 icon per engineer. What about having one icon per x number of engineers? I.e. the game/UI automatically group engineers together and slap an icon on top that somehow indicates how many are in that conceptual 'group'. You can then see at a glance how many are grouped in each area. It could also LOD based on zoom level - the groups become more fine the closer-in you zoom. Not sure if that should be only for idle engineers as shurtugalll said, or not. Just an idea

Yes much agreed tatsujb.

I think the group mechanic is over complicating the issues HateDread.  This is essentially what R.U.S.E did with all units.  It worked very well there since all units used it, but it would see rather.. off.. if it was just used for engineers.

Again, I want to stress that you will only ever have so many engineers, and a good chunk will just be assisting factories.  It's already very clear that you don't need hundreds of engies like in FAF.

I think shying away from icons is a GOOD thing.  However, what I think is a BAD thing is the attitude of "no icons on absolutely anything, find any work around possible to have no icons".  I think that's just a little close minded.  I really don't think there is any better way to mark engineers than just with icons.  If meta units and engineers had icons, it would still be far far away from what FAF creates in terms of the icon amount.

Yepp, was just thinking of alternatives To be fair, if you had icons for groups of engineers, you could have a cycle or quick selection mechanic (whatever that may be) to grab one unit out of a group.

I do like the sound of icons for meta-units and engineers though, that could be nice (provided that they were significantly different, obviously).

Didn't know about the F1 trick, though this seems like it might not be useful for how you'd actually want to use it. Example, my first idle engineer is in my seed base. I'm zoomed into a forward base a good 2 minute journey away, maybe with enemies in the path. F1 is likely not a viable choice for choosing an engineer to go to this base.

Idea: F1 should select the closest idle engineer to the center of your screen.

Disagree. What if you want to quickly go to an engineer that is really far away from your screen?

F1 = Cycle through the idle engineers (+ an icon for that) and highlight them in a way on the minimap. 

Yep. That's pretty much how it's supposed to work right now. Kind of missed what I was pointing out, so let me elaborate.

I just got done taking an enemy position in the middle of the map and want to fortify it. I need an engineer for this, and scouring my nearby bases is remarkably tedious. I've got it! I'll press F1. Huh, it selected an engineer nowhere near where I'm looking. OK. F1 again. Still not close. F1, F1, F1, repeat until you happen to stumble on an engineer that's close by and has a relatively safe path to where you want to build. Depending on the map size and how many engineers you have (this has the potential to be quite a large number), this could take a while. And if in your flurry of pressing F1 to try and find a suitable engineer you happen to press it one too many times? Oh well. Nothing I like better than wasting time finding construction units.

Maybe F1 selecting an arbitrary idle engineer is useful. Maybe you just want to know if any of your old bases have engineers available for building more stuff in that particular base. So, F1 could arguably have a purpose.

Maybe make F2 select the closest engineer. Maybe give it a different key, or a button, it doesn't really matter how they implement the feature's control. I just don't want to have to play hide and seek with engineers in nearby bases when I should be focusing on getting things built as quickly as possible and orchestrating my next move.

Ok, that's shaping pretty good:

I press F1 and select the closest idle engineer (from my screen position), BUT if i press it again, it selects an engineer closer to the previous one, so on and so forth. That would be neat and quick. We have a winner! 

The plan for F1 is to cycle through idle engineers.

We also plan to add engineers to the empire tree so you can see who is idle where.

We are also looking at adding engineers to the mini map.

Awesome!

and I think F1 now goes to idle repair units which is not good.  Just engineers please.