FUN with coding

I was on the valentines day mission with someone. The one where you kill Snaptooth.

Anyway, I noticed the second we entered the course she knew exactly where he was. Everytime we entered the mish. (No matter where he went).
I asked her HOW. She replied with this.

type /macro T "target_name snap"

At first I had no idea what she ment, but I understand it really well now.

When in the typing bit of your chat box.

Type

/macro T "target_name snap"

Now I edited it in a way that appeals to me.

/macro Snap "target_name Snaptooth"

I know it doesnt matter that I replaceced "T" with "Snap", but it looks nicer.
Also It doesn't matter what part of Snaptooth I have in there.
e.g.
snap / tooth / too / oth / nap / sna
as long as its in the word snaptooth it will find him.

Now this macro becomes a tempeory power in you powers. It is very handy when searching for Enemies, Friends, Hostages OR even items like Detonator OR crate.

You can also edit it by right clicking on the power & replacing "Snaptooth" with the name of the thing your looking for.

e.g.
/macro T "target_name Eochai"
OR
/macro T "target_name Percy Winkle" (that midnighter can be a bastard to find in the COT mission)

You can even have a few of the.
I dedicated page 3 of my powers to the target macro.

I have....
/macro Frost "target_name Frostfire"
/macro Eoch "target_name Eochai"
/macro Perc "target_name Percy"
and as a spare 2 edit
/macro FIND "target_name ???" (replacing ??? as & when I need to).
(I'll add more when I mission more)

I can't stress enough how useful this is & such a time saver.

I hope this macro helps alot of you out there..!!

Uncles Aces Guide to Useful Binds

I have got loads of binds and macros that make life easier and I am happy to share them all (long post here we go)

Targetting Enemies

First tip of the day from uncle Ace is to use the number pad - its great for targeting enemies and friends a like. Here are a couple of binds to show you what i mean:

We all know the situation - your in perez park, a lowly lvl 10 trying fight your way through a load of hellions. You target one, kill it then hit the tab button with the hope it targets the next one in sequence and what does it do? targets an entirely different group over 100yds away. You hit tab again, no good, and again, no good. You scream you shout, you throw your keyboard through the monitor! Well no need for that anymore simply use Uncle Aces miracle bind below and you will always target the enemy nearest to you.

/bind numpad0 "target_enemy_near" - targets the nearest enemy to you by hitting the 0 button on the number pad.

Targetting Friends

Ok heres another one for all you empaths out there - this bind targets a member of your team so you can easily focus on them to heal or buff them without any frantic clicking of the mouse.... so....

/bind numpad1 "unselect$$team_select 1"

this will select the person at slot one in your team (change the number for different person etc. The number pad is great for this because it gives 8 numbers - one for each team member and number 9 can be the power you use to buff or heal the most. So for example, Ace has Speed Boost bound to keypad 9 but empaths could have heal other, thermals could have cauterise. You get the idea. So the bind in question would look like this:

/bind numpad9 "powexec_name heal other" (change the name of the power to the one that you use the most).

Inspirations

Now for inspirations. Inspirations can be quite easily accessed using the shift+numbers on the keyboard. here are my examples:

/bind lshift+1 "inspexec_name respite" - executes respite when hitting shift+1
/bind lshift+2 "inspexec_name catch a breath" - executes catch a breath when hitting shift+2
/bind lshift+3 "inspexec_name luck" - executes luck when hitting shift+3
/bind lshift+4 "inspexec_name sturdy" - executes sturdy when hitting shift+4
/bind lshift+5 "inspexec_name insight" - executes insight when hitting shift+5
/bind lshift+6 "inspexec_name rage" - executes rage when hitting shift+6

You will not believe how life saving it is to have respite bound to shift+1 - trust me!

Tray Management

You have 10 trays all of which can be completely customisable. So use them. I personally have a tray for normal powers (tray 1), a tray for toggles (tray 2 - bound by the ctrl key) and a tray for situational powers that I use sometimes but not often tray 3 (alt key).

But what about the other trays. I actually switch between my trays regularly. Ace's tray 1 is designed for group play and has his group mez, terrorise, and his kinetic powers all lined up, tray 4 is his tray for soloing difficult enemies like elite bosses and includes big powers like the blackwand and sands of mu. Tray 7 is used for solo play and has all his general damage powers and a few handy kinetic ones. How does ace switch between them? with a bind of course!

/bind shift+numpad4 "goto_tray 4" - goes to tray 4 (switch the number for the right tray you want)

Statements

There are many things that you will repeat over and over. Summer Goddess generally says "Gather for AM" a lot, or even "Kill [target] last cos he is the anchor for my debuffs." I generally bind them to the numberpad using the ctrl key. For example:

/bind ctrl+numpad1 "say $target is the anchor for debuffs" - the word "$target" will be replaced with whoever summer happens to be targetted at that time.
/bind ctrl+numpad0 "Gather for AM" - informs the team Summer is about to fire off AM and so they know they need to be near her if they want the buff.

And Finally...

Once your comfortable with your binds and macros, you will want to save them so you can load them on all your toons. two simple commands for this:

My keybinds = c:/program files/city of heroes/keybinds.txt
/bind_load will load your saved binds
/bind_save will save your current binds to the above folder

I hope you find these commands useful. Ace, Summer and Winter would all be lost without them

ever seen heroes that when typing have a comment above their heads? here is the bind!

/bind enter "startchat$$afk typin message here"

another useful bind is one where you bind a power and phrase to a key, andwhen pressed does both commands!!

/bind O "group Hey $target, FREEZE!!$$pow_exec_name Freeze Ray"

changing the bind key, the phrase and the power name to suit your needs