Steam Deck

Yeah I get that vibe, and yes it is definitely a bit intimidating at first but here is the thing.

The biggest shift in gaming right now by far is gyroscope aim input maturing into a serious control scheme in many different contexts (primarily mobile shooters like COD mobile and Farlight 84 that also confusingly have competitive and usable touchscreen claw setups for playing shooters that most pc gaming fans are utterly oblivious about and would confidently dismiss as a joke idea).

People are starting to realize gyroscope is amazing for shooters, but what almost nobody has put two in and two together about yet is that the same fine aim control problems controllers have with shooters, they have with real-time or even turn based strategy games with complex UIs. While gyroscope isn’t as fun to use in this context, it works just as well. A “flick” shot from the center of your screen to the build menu on the side to quickly up cue some flashes, stumpies and samsons, with a quick flick shot back to center screen to give a construction unit instructions is exactly the kind of mouse movement that Gyroscope excels at introducing mouse-like precision to once you get used to it.

I can definitely share a control scheme but BAR is already so brilliantly designed with every single damn command in the game being able to be shift clicked to make it into a series of tasks for a unit or factory… that you don’t honestly need to do much. It is basically just:

What button do you want shift (as well as ctrl and alt and to a lesser extent spacebar) to be bound too? This should be comfortable and easy to press as shift clicking is at the core of BAR and TA. The back buttons L5 L4 R4 R5 are good for these controls

What button do you want gyroscope to be toggled on and off by? You don’t have to use gyro but I really recommend giving it a thorough go, if you hold your device comfortably than it will be still and thus you can just focus on the joysticks or trackpad and let your subconscious brain begin integrating gyro. Personally I always leave gyro on when playing and just use the toggle to turn it off for navigating menus

What buttons do you want zoom in and zoom out to be bound too? I recommend to bind zoom in and zoom out to the bumpers on the deck, the normal WASD and mouse template for the Steam Deck comes with this binding as the default if I remember correctly. Using a radically new control scheme can feel claustrophobic or constricting, having intuitive buttons for zooming in and out is critical to combating that in my experience

Now, you can go so much farther than that obviously. For example I found a great BAR control scheme that looked like someone put a lot of care and time into it called “BAR perfecto” but it didn’t fit my conception of how I wanted things so I just started from the factory default WASD and Mouse template.

I hesitate to build up this crazy complicated control scheme and then recommend it though, because most potential fans I can poke and prod enough to try BAR on the deck probably feel the same as you. So honestly at this point I would rather point out that just starting with the default WASD and Mouse control template and making those three choices/keybindings will get you to a point where you can genuinely play BAR and feel like the control scheme can actually work and feel good after a bit of adjustment time. From there you can add as much complexity and power as you want.

If you get frustrated or overwhelmed, take a deep breath and remember people have been figuring out how to make RTS games work well with a mouse and keyboard for decades, if it doesn’t click immediately that isn’t because mouse and keyboard is just better end of story.