"Do you guys not have mice?"
So much this.
I was disappointed by these news. Whenever I play other games that makes me do a lot of stuff like DF does I miss how much more quickly and efficient I get things done in DF because everything is just a few rapid clicks away, and I don't have to manually select everything with my mouse. Even games like Rimworld where a mostly everything is keybound isn't as fast to navigate as DF is. When I play for example the Rimworld-like (like, really, really obviously based on Rimworld) Going Medieval the thing that bugs me the most is the lack of keyboard shortcuts.
And then there's just the punctiliousness and meticulousitude of the keyboard marker in a tile-based game, the mouse just doesn't compare to how I can just press the → button five times and have the keyboard marker mark five more tiles, whereas with a mouse I have to carefully pay attention to how many squares I'm marking so I don't mistakenly mark too many or press the same tile several times because I mis-sight-evaluated where one tile and and the next one begins.
But more than anything, the thing that makes the DF control scheme as good as it is, is how it utilises both mouse and keyboard control so you get the good of both worlds. And I think the controls with inevitably be poorer for having lost the keyboard half, no matter how much better control it gains in the new mouse additions.