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XCOMUFO & Xenocide

Pre-mission Organization


Darkside

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If I remember the old X-Com correctly, we would load a vessel like the Skyranger with whoever we want to attend missions, and load on whatever equipment we wanted. Then when a mission came up, we send the Skyranger, it lands and we are given a screen to equip the soldiers then start the mission.

 

Based on some concept drawings for Xenocide, I see that we are allowed an extra convenient feature of choosing seating position, so we decide who goes out first etc.. but other then that it looks like it will follow same model (equipping soldiers during each mission)

 

My suggestion, is during the regular Geoscape screen, we not only load a ship with soldiers but we also equip individual soldiers with what we want them to use at each battle. Then we load them on the skyranger and we can load any any additional equipment which will be on the floor during the mission, or you can tweak how someone is equipped before you launch the mission. Not only that, but when initially loading someone to a craft, you decide right then and there where they should sit, which you can also tweak once you get to a mission if needs be.

 

This will reduce alot of micromanagement in re-equipping people and assigning seating positions every time a mission starts.

Edited by Darkside
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  • 1 month later...
Correct, it is a planned feature that you can equip each soldier at the base with a standard loadout, so when you arrive everything is in the belts and backpacks from mission to mission. You'd still be given the option to swap things around, but by default you'd just jump right into battle. No more loading up the same stuff on the same guys every time.
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It would be nice if the "Equipment configuration" for a single soldier could be stored in some kind of "Database" or "Standing Orders" in their base. Of course also allowing us to name that configuration as we wish as well.

 

For instance:

- Anderson: Standard Crashsite loadout.

- Johnson: Demolitions loadout.

 

And so on.

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So you'd like a template loadout that you could assign to a new soldier? I can see the benefit of that, but then you have to have it check the base's supplies and all that too. Would you really have so many new soldiers to justify the feature, when you might use it once or twice? What I mean is if it was something players do a lot in the game, it would be a very handy feature. I'm just wondering how much you'd use it, "coding cost/game time saved" analysis. What do others think about it? Would it be used a lot?
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How much I would use the feature is kinda difficult to answer I think. Of course I understand the point about coding time. I think I would use the feature some when transfering soldiers from one base to another and setting up the squads. And I have a tendency to always want everything to be "just so". But I guess play-testing the first version(s) would reveal wether there is a need for it or not at least.
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i dont think it would be so much of a coding problem. You could even not have it in from the start. You could create them yourself. Then you have a list of your favorite equiptement types. When you click on it, and then chooce a soldier, it would equipt that person with that gear from the skyranger. If there aint enough, it would just say "not enougth equiptment onboard skyranger. 2 heavy plasma clips, 1 heavy plasma, 1 motion detector, is missing" or something along those lines.

 

You could even create a whole skyranger team with it. then it would just take the equiptment from the general stores.

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i dont think it would be so much of a coding problem. You could even not have it in from the start. You could create them yourself. Then you have a list of your favorite equiptement types. When you click on it, and then chooce a soldier, it would equipt that person with that gear from the skyranger. If there aint enough, it would just say "not enougth equiptment onboard skyranger. 2 heavy plasma clips, 1 heavy plasma, 1 motion detector, is missing" or something along those lines.

 

You could even create a whole skyranger team with it. then it would just take the equiptment from the general stores.

xcomutil pretty much gave a similiar feature to ufo/tftd. after a mission, the equipment soldiers were carrying was stored and then loaded on the start of a mission (equip screen). of course it also leads to crazy bugs like there not being enough soldiers for the saved equipment (can lead to devastating over-equipping problems and may get u stuck in the game) but it's still handy and just an option.

 

sure hope for an equip feature similiar to apoc. the way soldiers were "auto-equipped" in the start of battles was pretty basic and frequently led to trouble. also, like HappyOwl said, if u didn't edit the names of ur soldiers u could easily end up not knowing to whom each weapon belongs to.

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In my opinion a feature like this is urgently needed. If you want people to play this game nowadays you have to offer modern usuability. I don't think anyone would like to play a game, where he has to do the same dull mouse movements again and again at the beginning of every mission.

Cool graphics and nostalgy may be nice, but old weaknesses should be corrected, too.

 

Dr. Retro

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Would be good to be able to do it with everyone. So if the base gets attacked everyone will have equipment set. If they don't have anything they better get to the general stores quick! Would give the impression that the soldiers are ready for battle any time :D
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  • 4 months later...

Hi there, first post here. Hardcore Xcom fan.

 

Anyways, I was really releived when Apoc had individual equipping of soldiers, HOWEVER it had its own unique annoyance in that you had to keep feeding them ammo! They would never Re-equip themselves! I always wished that when you equipped them, that they would try to maintain that by drawing on the base stores where they're stationed.

 

I hope you guys do something like this.

 

Btw, I wanna help with the music...

I can play a little guitar, and I'm not totally unfamiliar with noteworthy composer.

Do you have any need for instrumentalists?

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Would this be a good place to re-introduce my idea of "Red Alert -Button"?

 

You can set a base on full alert when you think it is getting attacked soon. Your soldiers will get to their battlestations, non-combat personell is evacuated, and maybe base defences get extra shot because of extreme alertness.

If this is not properly operated, everyone is scattered across base quite like in original, engineers, scientists and janitor are all in the way of fight as whole thing is uncoordinated. Minus side is that all research and manufacture gets stopped for about an hour.

 

Just felt kind of stupid that i couldn't set people on alert when i knew about approaching battleship on retaliation mission. -_-

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  • 3 weeks later...

Just a few more words.

 

Although I understand some players like to prepare their soldiers for each mission, I was personnally fed up with this pretty quick. It just got in the way since I know I wanted to give everysoldier this big gun except that guy with a biggy other thing etc.

 

I think it would indeed be convenient to set a profile per person. Not necessarilly a template (even though I like the idea ;) but with the following goals:

- if a soldier is at a base and does not change crafts, it should be pre-equipped with the same equipment as last mission

- after a mission, if some equipment is missing in the craft's assignment, it should be automatically loaded from the base's stores

- after this operation, automatic re-order / manufacturing of the goods should be triggered (added to the list of things to produce, at the end of course).

 

(We could therefore set a certain quantity used as a buffer at the base, the buffer being on the one hand used by the after-mission soldiers, and on ther other hand automatically re-filled.) I might get to write the algorithm if you want. ;)

 

So that logistics can be handled more easilly, and we can concentrate on getting the green guys... ;)

 

Am I the only one to want this?

 

 

Yan

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  • 3 months later...
Although the game itself is fairly weak, UFO:AM handled equipment very well imho.  Can't go through it now for those who are not familiar with it as I am at work.

I agree, I only tried the Demo, and teh missions were al LOT less painfull because of teh easy mission interface... Not as good as XCOM, but a good game in it's own right... (Heck, it's not the same SETTING) ^_^

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  • 4 months later...

Each soldier has a 'standard loadout'. You can either customize it or choose from templates. You can also save a current load-out as a template if you found something you liked. They would always grab equipment when they planned to depart for battle.

 

I think you should get an option to choose different guys before each Intercept/Raid what guys are going on the Skyranger. Most of the time you would keep them the same, but sometimes you want rookies or experts. Maybe you could have 'Mission Templates', that is missions you want a soldier to go on(you name the mission templates). A soldier could be assigned as many mission templates as you wanted. When the order for a transport to lift off was given, you would choose the mission template that applied. You would still get the option of manually editing the missio nlist if you wanted.

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