Accidental beacons

tummy_yummy · October 2013

Does anyone have any tips for avoiding accidental beacons? I bind my observatories to various numbers and use keyboard shortcuts to select + scan (which I do a lot), but then to go back to medpack dropping mode I click on a player and then start mashing E->S. But sometimes it seems like I can't change selection from the obs (clicking on a highlighted marine doesn't *always* change the menu focus / select the actual unit), so I get more and more paranoid about it because if the focus doesn't shift the E->S combo will trigger a beacon. Most of the time I'm on top of it but occasionally when things are getting really cray cray I miss a selection (for one reason or another) and off goes the beacon.

It would be really awesome if I could re-bind the beacon button to D or F or something that isn't the same button I'm almost constantly hammering for medpack drops, but in the meantime are there any tricks I can use to guarantee a 1-button deselection of the obs under all circumstances? Like hitting 'esc' in Supreme Commander...

One thing I've been considering is setting up a bind at the start of the round for all marines (e.g. bind to group 1) and then hitting 1 before every medpack drop.

Does anyone else have this problem?

godrifle · October 2013

The S button is too frequently used for other things... I wish we could have it somewhere far off, like M.

SquishpokePOOPFACE · October 2013

Nothing sucks worse than watching a beacon go off at the wrong moment...

RedSword · October 2013

Yes please allow to bind beacon to a special key or place it to V or Z or something harder to hit (than s at least...).

tummy_yummy · October 2013

Squishpoke wrote: »

Nothing sucks worse than watching a beacon go off at the wrong moment...

It's a feeling of dread and shame that is unique to NS2, especially now that you can't cancel them!

BestProfileName · October 2013

I think even worse is the bug where you hit your hotkey to get your structure up (in this case the obs) and when you hit the next key it doesn't do anything; you have to re-click on it, by which time it has become too late...

Zomb3h · October 2013

It's more than just accidental beacons, its the lack of customizable commander keys.

casan0vax · October 2013

You use your obs to scan? I hotkey my [main] observatory to my "1" key, but I never select it except to research phase tech.

To scan, I just do "E" -> "F". It 100% removes the chance to accidentally beacon. The only time I EVER press "1" is if I'm beaconing.

tummy_yummy · October 2013

Aha! Perfect! So that just uses any obs that's available?
Damn I wish I'd known that before...

darkhunt333 · October 2013

Unbind any general keybinds you have for it. Set custom ones each match, tailored to each base.

maD_maX_ · October 2013

casan0vax wrote: »

You use your obs to scan? I hotkey my [main] observatory to my "1" key, but I never select it except to research phase tech.

To scan, I just do "E" -> "F". It 100% removes the chance to accidentally beacon. The only time I EVER press "1" is if I'm beaconing.

Oh... I feel sheepish.

Mestaritonttu · October 2013

The only time you can accidentally bacon is when you start to research phasegates. If you manage to press S instead of Z. Other than that, there's no reason to access the obs so there's no risk of baconing either. Of course stuff always happens, but dats just laiff.

lordfarva · October 2013

I love accidental bacon. It's the best bacon.

It's Super Effective! · October 2013

Squishpoke wrote: »

Nothing sucks worse than watching a beacon go off at the wrong moment...

It's like a slow train wreck as I watch my map, look for problems, find nothing, then prepare to facepalm through the remainder of the recall.

Also had a Div 3 Comp player command in our pub, double beacon'd because he has a habit of pressing that button, so there went 30 res.

And the one time he should have to beaconed for an incoming Onos and two gorge base rush, he jumps out before beaconing.

Blarney_Stone · October 2013

Yeah, just don't use the obs for scanning and it won't be a problem

tummy_yummy · October 2013

I'm just trying to work out how I never realised the scan option was in the E menu: I've *always* used the keyboard shortcuts for meds and ammo, since NS1, so I never actually looked at that menu to see what was in it

I will NEVER accidental bacon again. Today is a good day.

Nordic · October 2013

Squishpoke wrote: »

Nothing sucks worse than watching a beacon go off at the wrong moment (As a marine)...

Corrected.

Accidentalss beaconsss aress thess gloriousss undoingsss ofs thosess insolentss humansss! (Alien voice)...[/

Omega_K2 · October 2013

One of the more annoying accidental things.

But there is more! Like having buildings or drifters on alien com walk over the entire map by accident.

soccerguy243 · October 2013

problem with E > F is how do you know which obs its coming from? What if you E > F scan then want to beacon but your base obs has no energy?

kalakuja · October 2013

soccerguy243 wrote: »

problem with E > F is how do you know which obs its coming from? What if you E > F scan then want to beacon but your base obs has no energy?

i see what you did there :DD

X3N0 · October 2013

I don't know if this has been changed, but a similar problem I had when first comming was that c was bound to both map and recycle building by default. That was interesting explaining to my team

elodea · October 2013

Why on earth would you want to fix bindings, when it'd be better to fix the underlying issue here - that buttons are not always reliably executed by the game.

zeq · October 2013

There was a time where I wanted to suggest the ability to cancel a beacon, but after a short bit of thinking about it, I realized that this would mostly be used for beaconing to scare off base attackers, then cancel once they leave. Mostly they just need to work on improving the commander interface, especially so I don't start researching a shift hive every time I check the map.

Vetinari · October 2013

I always had map on M, like in every other game. Problem solved.

ellnic · October 2013

I did this a couple of days ago, embarrassed is what I would descirbe my self at the time

Blarney_Stone · October 2013

zeq wrote: »

There was a time where I wanted to suggest the ability to cancel a beacon, but after a short bit of thinking about it, I realized that this would mostly be used for beaconing to scare off base attackers, then cancel once they leave. Mostly they just need to work on improving the commander interface, especially so I don't start researching a shift hive every time I check the map.

I believe that you used to be able to cancel beacons, and exactly that problem emerged. Aliens bolted as soon as they heard the alarm go off, so you could use it to scare them off without actually beaconing. Accidental beacons are annoying but they are preferable to that broken aspect.

As for the commander interface, I'm a bit perplexed as to why UWE has never just allowed us to customize commander hotkeys, it's been an issue for the entire time the game's been around and nothing has been done. Though I'm not a programmer I can't imagine it would be difficult to come up with a separate control customization screen for commanders.

F0rdPrefect wrote: »

I always had map on M, like in every other game. Problem solved.

Some people don't want to use M for map, as it's very far away from most other keys that are used... More customization is never a bad thing. The developer should be solving problems created by the users, not the other way around.

Accidental beacons

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