: Even as intuitive and slick as Halo Wars' control system was, the whole game
: still felt like a truncated RTS. Balance was simplified, resource
: management was narrowed, and gameplay was optimized for large masses of
: units duking it out on open battlefields. A lot of features that are
: standard in RTSs were removed because there wasn't enough buttons for
: them, like command queues and hotgroups.

HW supports command queues. Hold X and/or Y to queue. Hot groups, from what I recall, had some sort of support in the engine, but of course didn't ship with it.

: I wanted to order Marines to set up GPMG turrets and capture Shades. I wanted
: to set up flanking maneuvers between Scorpions and Wraiths. I wanted to
: order infantry into buildings for cover. I wanted the game mechanics from
: the Halo trilogy lock, stock, the whole freakin' lot. And Company of
: Heroes comes closest to that, without getting bogged down in the details
: like Men of War did.

The HW engine supported building placements (on top of the current socket system). Not sure if the decision to release with fixed placements was due to scheduling or the feature being incomplete.

Another ability, with some of its assets were left in, was placing mine fields.

Indeed, it would be interesting to see the buildings in base sockets support garrisoning of infantry. Perhaps as an additional upgrade, on a per-building basis (much as you would with base turrets upgrading to anti-infantry, etc). This way you can really fortify crucial bases in the longer games (when you have extra resources to spare for upgrades).