Outliner organization

[Tortuga Power]

Dear fellow commanders,

Is there any way to organize the outliner (that drop-down box on the right-hand side of the screen)? Specifically, I only seek to sort things alphabetically, rather than in the order they are created. If any kind of sorting option is available, that would be great.

I'm desperate enough that I'd be willing to edit the save file if necessary, but I'm hoping it doesn't come to that...

(...However, if it does, is the outliner information easy to find within the savegame file? Can I search for "outliner" or something similar?)

Cheers,
Tortuga

 

[Didz]

Which of the drop down menu's are you talking about?

Personally, I only ever switch on the Land Battle; Air Battle and Naval Battle drop downs, which I use as a heads up alert that something is happening. So, in my case the order isn't that important as there is rarely more than two or three listed. For finding specific units I'd use the OOB display, or the Brigade Report.

 

[Tortuga Power]

I wanted to organize my air and naval units, as I'm playing as the USA and I have named all my air and naval units with a leading "PAC" or "ATL" in their name, and then I jump into the type that squad is.

E.g. PAC Tac #01, ATL Ftr #02, etc.

So if I could only sort alphabetically, I could easily locate the desired air or naval group.

 

[Didz]

When I played USA I assigned all initial unallocated air units to a Theatre HQ, Pacific Theatre or Atlantic Theatre. So that I could quickly grab them if needed just by selecting the Theatre HQ.

Every Squadron/Wing was given a Role prefix e.g. [INT] 321st Marine Pursuit . This meant that when looking at a list of units I could easily see what type of aircraft were included.

Finally, when assigning planes to missions they would be allocated to the appropriate Army Group or Army. So I knew where they were stationed. e.g. All the planes on Midway were assigned to the Midway Defence Force (Army Group HQ) Also when grouping plane units the grouping was renamed to reflect its base

e.g.
[INT]Midway Fighter Group.
- [INT]45th Marine Fighter Wing
- [INT]41st Marine Fighter Wing
- [INT]24th Army Pursuit Sqdn
- [INT]19th Army Pursuit sqdn

I'm using a similar system for my Soviet Campaign where planes are assigned to Fronts (Army Group HQ's) and then organised into Air Defence Aviation Armies (PVO's) e.g. [INT]Stalingrad IAD PVO. or [TAC]Kiev BAD PVO. It means that by selecting the appropriate HQ one can get a quick list of the planes assigned to that front and where they are based.

The overhead of course is that one needs to remember to change the assigned HQ's if you rebase the planes.

 

[Tortuga Power]

Thanks for the help, Didz, I'm sure I could try to do things your way. I'm just a bit stubborn and wonder if there's a simple way to sort the outline (yes, the one as you mentioned with the land battles and air battles shown).

With my naming scheme already in place, if the outliner could be sorted alphabetically, I would have a great system in place to track my aircraft. It's not impossible as is, just the order is sorted by when the divisions are created instead of something sensible.

If no one knows an easier way, I'll hope the order is saved in the outliner (just tacked on somewhere under the player's nation, I imagine).

 

[Didz]

I don't know of any way to do what you suggest, and apart from the combat alerts I mentioned earlier I find those drop-down menu's pretty useless and ignore them.

They are not even consistent in how they work, in that, looking at the Land Unit drop I notice it functions on an organisational basis. e.g. A breakdown of Theatre/Army Group/Army/Corps/Unit, and includes all of the Air Units and Naval Units assigned to various commands. e.g. My Northern Front includes its Air Support Units and the Red Banner Northern Fleet despite the menu being called Land Units.

But the Air Unit and Naval Unit menus just show a random list of Air and Naval units respectively with no indication of their place in the Soviet OOB or where they are located.