For some time now I’ve felt that the makers of real time strategy games have been, unintentionally, included what I consider to be a flaw into their games. This particular flaw may seem inconsequential to most but for an RTS veteran it’s pretty serious. To put it plainly the flaw is that RTS games do not support custom hotkeys and the ones they ship with are typically bad.

The ‘bad’ hot key system I’m referring to is of course the alphabetical one. Almost every RTS game released in the last decade has used an alphabetical type system, popularized by StarCraft, to ‘logically’ assign hotkeys. For example, building a Marine from a barracks in StarCraft is hot-keyed to M. That makes sense, Marine starts with M so building one should just be a press of the M key away. But just because something’s logical doesn’t necessarily make it efficient and that is where my grievances with the alphabetical system begin.

When using that system most new players (who it seems to be designed for) need to look down at their keyboard and press M to know they are building a marine. In this particular case, building a unit, they might as well just click on it instead of using a hot key. In my opinion hot keys are intended to save time not waste it which is exactly what the default system does. It is important to note there are many other circumstances which have similar out comes to the example above, using unit abilities, attack moving, holding position ect, ect.

So to summarize my opinion, I believe that the entire ‘alphabetical’ system of hot keys is completely redundant. It’s mechanically wasteful and requires far too much movement, memorization and attention on the behalf players, both new and old, to be of serious use in game. In the hands of an experienced player that system can be used effectively however it’s not nearly as effective as a grid keys.

So what are Grid Keys? Well they are exactly what they sound like, hot keys assigned according to a grid rather than the alphabetical system. I think of them as WASD keys for Real Time Strategy games. Let me elaborate, almost every RTS has a grid in the bottom right hand corner in which orders for your units/structures are placed as clickable buttons. What gird keys does is line up these ‘orders’ with the keys on your key board.  So as an example, the top left section of the in order grid would be mapped to the key ‘Q’ on your key board, the second from the left on the top row would be ‘W’ and so on and so forth.

Addendum: It is important to note that at the time of my writing this Starcraft 2 had not been released. In it they included an option to use grid keys.

The pros of using grid keys.

• I find it is easier to learn hotkeys based on position rather than memorization, you probably will too.
• They easily allow for quick and precise reactions in combat, just like normal hot key expect tighter.
• Like normal hot keys they free up your mouse cursor to be used as it should be, to command and position units.
• You don’t have to move your hand across the key board in order to issue commands as all the keys are clustered in one place to save you time. This makes it easier to accurately issue orders.

The Cons of using grid keys.

• They are unofficial and so files must be manual edited by fans to enable them to be used.
• These files must be shared between grid key users like me on forums or sites like this one.
• When the game is patched the manually edited key files are almost always over written. This means they must be re-edited or installed before you can use grid keys again.
• Expansions and other such major content patches require re-editing of the key file to include new units, abilities and structures or they will not have a hot key assigned to them.
• Once you go grid keys you don’t go back! Most players simply cannot play with normal hot keys once they discover grid keys. After a patch a grid key user without grid keys is like a declawed cat, they are harmless.

Alright so, let’s say you want to install grid keys! To get them working with your copy of Company of Heroes 2.601 you’re going to need to replace some files in your Company of Heroes directory. These files are named “RelicCOH.module” and “WW2Data_KeyDefaults.sga”. Now remember it is critical that you back these files up because without them you won’t be able to patch to the next version of the game when/if it’s released. If you are own a Steam copy of CoH these files are replaced regardless when you patch so it’s not such a problem for you. It is however a problem for people who have boxed retail copies or purchased Company of Heroes from another digital download service.

As a special note this version of grid keys only supports default VS mode in CoH. The ‘operations’ do not have hot keys assigned for them. There are also some errors with them when playing as the Panzer Elite. Mostly these have to do with their Tier 1 building the Logistics Kommand and unit production, but that building is useless so no big deal.

Here are the edited files you are going to need.

Direct Download

Install Instructions

1) Download the above files and Unzip them some place handy.

2) Navigate to your CoH install directory and look for the RelicCOH.module file. Rename that file to RelicCOHmodule.bak to back it up.

3) After you have renamed the oringal .module file replace it with the RelicCOH.module file that came with the download. It’s located in the un-ziped folder.

4) Next you are going to need to navigate to your <CoH Install Directory>\WW2\Archives and then locate the WW2Data_KeyDefaults.sga, if there isn’t one just skip to step 5. If that file is there rename it to WW2Data_KeyDefaults.bak just like the .module file.

5) Place the WW2Data_KeyDefaults.sga located in the zip file in the archives folder.

6) Done!

As a final note I did not edit the files myself someone else did. I simply had these laying around and wanted to share. Props to whoever did edit these! Also if you have any technical issues with the install post below and I’ll see if I can’t help you out, but no promises.