I recently got a windows tablet (surface pro) and decided to install OpenRA on it. I was curious about how well it can be played with just a stylus. As you'd expect, things like navigating menus, unit selection, all work great. It's completely playable but with a few catches:
The game is playable with both the new/classic mouse schemes, but don't bother trying with a finger. My tablet did not care about my palm, so I was able to rest it on my screen while using the stylus.
It was a bit tough to scroll the map viewport - the stylus does scroll on the edges for me just fine, but I needed to be very precise when I wanted to scroll. I almost wish I could hold right click to scroll the map when nothing is selected (similar to scrolling with middle mouse button). Having radar on a tablet was a a godsend, since I found myself using the radar bin to move my viewport a lot.
Pixel doubling also was nice, I kept switching between the two but ultimately ended up with the default (no doubling).
Double tap for units was a tad finnicky, but it was doable if I was precise with the tapping.
What I miss out on is control groups, hotkeys (well that's a given you can live with), unit stances and special unit orders (attack move, stop, etc).
The verdict is it's very awesome to see this on a tablet -- you miss out on some core features yet it's still playable. Changes I feel that would improve the experience:
- Allow for scrolling on right mouse click when nothing's selected
- Have an orders palette to support the stop, attack-move, force fire, scatter etc commands.
- Having a few additional buttons on the UI displaying set control groups
Anyways, thought I'd share!