Essential hotkeys and unit selection tricks in Beyond All Reason

BAR hides some of its best control tricks in custom keybinds you need to set up yourself. These shortcuts save clicks, speed up reactions, and make army management far smoother.

Tags: beyond all reason, hotkeys, selection, keybinds, ui, factory

Selecting damaged units near the cursor

One of the most useful tricks players discover involves selecting damaged units clustered around your mouse cursor. The game supports this through a custom keybind you place in your UI keys file.

Bind a key to the selectFromMouse_700+_Not_Builder_Not_Building_Not_Aircraft_Weapons_Not_RelativeHealth_65+_ClearSelection_SelectAll+ command. This grabs damaged non-builder units near your cursor so you can immediately send them back for repair while keeping healthy units on the front.

A matching command with RelativeHealth_65+ selects healthy units instead, which you might use when reinforcing a push while leaving damaged units behind.

Selecting all factories at once

There is no built-in hotkey to select every factory on the map, but you can create one. Bind selectAllMap+_Builder_Building+_ClearSelection_SelectAll+ to a key of your choice. Now a single press highlights every factory, letting you queue up unit production across your entire base quickly.

If you would rather not mess with keybind files, the Factory Dock in settings gives you a persistent on-screen view of all your factories and what they are building. It takes up screen space, but it is instant and requires no customization.

Moving mixed-speed units together

Moving bots, tanks, and hover units to the same destination usually results in a stringed-out mess because each unit type moves at different speeds. The fix: hold Ctrl and right-click your destination. This forces selected units into a set formation paced to the slowest unit type.

Use this when you want a cohesive front, especially during pushes where stringed-out units eat focused fire one at a time. The trade-off is speed. Your fast units wait for the slow ones. Plan accordingly.

Bombing in a line

Line bombing with aircraft uses the attack-ground command. Press A and click-drag a line in the direction you want your bombers to drop their payload. The trick is placing the line far enough ahead of your bombers so they have time to arm and fire before reaching the target area.

If you place the line too close to the bombers, they pass the point before the bombs release and nothing happens. Practice the timing. A few misses will teach you the right distance for your bomber type and approach speed.

Drawing movement paths

Players sometimes ask about telling units to move along a specific drawn path to their destination. BAR does support drawing movement lines, but only for single-unit selection. When you select multiple units and draw a line, the game distributes move orders to each unit along that line rather than telling all of them to follow the same route.

For precise micro on individual units, select just that unit. For group movement across a front, use the standard click commands and rely on Ctrl-click for formation keeping.

Getting comfortable with controls

New players face a heavy keybind load. The key is to add them gradually. Start with the damaged unit selector, add the factory hotkey once you are comfortable, then layer in the formation movement commands. Do not try to learn everything in one game.

[Crd] It is so easy to get on with everyone and there is zero toxicity. Just fun games of BAR which can have quite a toxic community usually.

Creed of Champions understands that learning curve. A friendly community where veterans share hotkey configs and help newcomers build their control habits without getting roasted for asking basic questions.