Dipsticks Thoughts

[[dipstick]]

Right. I have decided to create a thread to tell of my woes with UFO, and hopefully make these flaws not appear in Xenocide.

 

First, before you go to the equipment screen, shall we randomise position in the landing craft; it will make it easier to give rookies experience.

 

Umm, as I have forgotten the rest, I shall post some more when I remember <_>

[j'ordos]

I thought we'd let the player decide were to put your men in the craft?

[Cpl. Facehugger]

Yup, that is what the skyranger with the numbers in it was for on the concept equip screen.

[[dipstick]]

Apparently I had missed that one. That is even better!! Problem solved then. Don't close the thread - I will remember some faults soon

[Robo Dojo 58]

The automatic weapon distribution sucked in X-COM. Xcomutil fixed it a bit, by remembering agent's equipment. It would be nice to decide that at home base, though. And maybe if it automatically reequipped spent clips/grenades, it would be even better. It's too much trouble to give agents the proper equipment for every single mission.

 

Also some things that would be interesting:

1. Several weapons presets. That way, you have different weapon setups for different missions. (ie. pistol setup for small UFOs, lasers for PSI, heavy for large UFOs, etc.) Just like Apoc, without having to reload agents after every mission.

 

2. Having the computer equip agents automatically, based on certain parameters. Give low PSI agents pistols, hi PSI+Str agents big guns, hi rank with flying suits, etc. It might go well with autocombat, when it's too much of a bother to equip all the agents that will die, anyway.

 

Okay, so it's not dipstick's thoughts. But I'm too lazy to open up my own thread.

[Cpl. Facehugger]

The automatic weapon distribution sucked in X-COM. Xcomutil fixed it a bit, by remembering agent's equipment. It would be nice to decide that at home base, though. And maybe if it automatically reequipped spent clips/grenades, it would be even better. It's too much trouble to give agents the proper equipment for every single mission.

 

Also some things that would be interesting:

1. Several weapons presets. That way, you have different weapon setups for different missions. (ie. pistol setup for small UFOs, lasers for PSI, heavy for large UFOs, etc.) Just like Apoc, without having to reload agents after every mission.

 

2. Having the computer equip agents automatically, based on certain parameters. Give low PSI agents pistols, hi PSI+Str agents big guns, hi rank with flying suits, etc. It might go well with autocombat, when it's too much of a bother to equip all the agents that will die, anyway.

 

Okay, so it's not dipstick's thoughts. But I'm too lazy to open up my own thread.

IIRC we are using a system similar to apoc. (You choose the equipment at base, and the agents always take that equipment.)

I agree with you, with the agents replenishing their clips and such themselves.

 

1. A weapon preset would be intresting, but who would use it frequently enough to make it worth the effort to program in?

 

2. I really don't have any opinion on this one.

[MagicAndy]

Here's another thought for you Dipstick, can we increased notation of ranks on your units?

 

In the game, there where two ways to equip armour and if you wanted to make sure the best guys got first dibs, you would have to use the slowest way (throught the soldiers screen.

 

Also a tiny little rank emblem above your guy on the battle scape would be cool, so that you can keep easy track on your best guys (and know for sure when they are killed.)

[Breunor]

Saved weapon loadouts are expected for v1, as is ordered placement in the craft. Rather than a floating rank over each guy, it would be nice to have a health bar that you don't see unless you hit a key. Warcraft3 does this with Alt, press that and every unit's health bar appears. Another option is to use something like Total Anihilation, where you press the spacebar and all the player stats slide out, showing total kills and deaths for everybody. You could do that here, instead a box slides out showing all soldier health bars along with wound levels. This helps because you might have wounded off the immediate screen, and you could include the soldier ranks in case you forget who's who.

 

Perhaps this thread can be renamed to something like 'battlescape load and info display', so it has more meaning? I'll leave it to Dipstick since he's a mod. Unless he doesn't change it, then I'll do it.

[[dipstick]]

hang on, I will continue

 

How 'bout a slight tweaking of the 80 weapons limit - you can still only have 80 items, but those that you choose on a sell item type screen?

[Cpl. Facehugger]

What do you mean?

[[dipstick]]

Right:

 

One battleship approaching sir; cue base attack screen. Uhh, sir, we only have time to use 80 items. Which do you want to keep sir?? (Up pops screen like sell screen) You choose your items, then off you go to the equipment screen.

[Cpl. Facehugger]

Isn't that what the original did?

[Robo Dojo 58]

Yes, except you couldn't choose your items. Having 80 Electroflares ready for an alien incursion isn't a good thing.

[[dipstick]]

As is plenty of HP's WITHOUT clips researched

[MagicAndy]

Whats the thought on increasing the 80 items limit btw? In the original it was increadibly anoying that you couldn't even take a clip and a grenade for each person

 

 

"the man with the rifle shoots, the man without the rifle follows, when the man with the rifle gets killed, the man who follows picks up the rifle and shoots"

Edited March 9, 2004 by MagicAndy

[Albino Crow]

I'm a fan of the idea I saw in the equipt craft concept screenshot, where you order your soldiers in the craft via the numbered squares. It really doesn't have to be any simpler than that. Equipping them at base wouldn't be a bad idea either, or a weapon preset.

[Deimos]

Whats the thought on increasing the 80 items limit btw? In the original it was increadibly anoying that you couldn't even take a clip and a grenade for each person

 

 

"the man with the rifle shoots, the man without the rifle follows, when the man with the rifle gets killed, the man who follows picks up the rifle and shoots"

As far as I'm aware the 80 item limit is staying. We haven't discussed it in a while but as I recall it was agreed that as we're sticking to the original's style and we know it works (if a little frustrating at times for some people ) we'll follow the old if it ain't broke don't fix it rule

[MagicAndy]

so long as version 1+ has researchable upgrades for ship capacity

[Cpl. Facehugger]

Or even giving the "Nova" a 110 item limit or something. 80 items doesn't go too far when you have 28 guys.

[Robo Dojo 58]

Although it'd be nice to have more than 80 items, I guess there'd be some gameplay issues involved. The game was made with the 80 item limit in mind, after all.

 

Well, it did force you to use tanks, especially in the Avenger. One blaster tank counts as one item, yet holds 8 bombs. It's a good profit, IMO.

 

But, if maps are made bigger, more items may be needed. There won't be enough stuff like smoke, flares, or explosives to go around, because more area will need to be covered. If the accuracy system is changed, there may need to be more room for spare clips.

 

Moddable limits would probably be best. The appropriate item limits could then be set for each craft.

[Deimos]

I agree with you guys totally and it might be a case of the item limits will need tweaking. I guess we could discuss it till the cows come home but in the end the only way we'll know for sure is when we get to testing it all when we've got a working battleview.

 

The best plan I guess is to stick for now with what we know works and if it needs tweaking then it can be added to the list

[StarKillar]

Just adjust the system slightly, perhaps make a disposable flair-gun instead of individual flares and give 2 flares per gun (meaning in night missions you don't end up with 6 naked agents in the back cause you wanted to take a few flares)

 

That way flares still remain important, but don't end up costing you important equipment space unless you SEVERLY overkill on night missions - you could even present a 'damage' portion to flares so they can be used as incendiary devices in very close fights ?

 

You could operate the same system for 'smoke grenades' also so they become more viable in combat (and they'd look cute on the new graphics engine)

Edited August 25, 2004 by StarKillar

[Guest alex the greater]

i say get rid of the item limit for base raids and make the item limit for transports prportanial to the number of troops that can be caried

[Breunor]

Having a limit for certain items makes sense, but not for others. 80 suits of armor certainly takes more space than 80 flares. In most RPGs small items like arrows are weighed based on groups of 10, so perhaps you do the same with flares and clips, which IMHO are the 2 main item types causing trouble. Make them take .1 space instead of 1, and the problem is fixed. I doubt anybody could argue a balance issue by having plenty of ammo on the plane. I would limit this to just those items for balance, if you start including grenades, pistols and other small items it can get out of hand. Not by much, but really with ammo and flares out of the way 80 items should be plenty for everything else. That allows everyone in a 24 troop team to carry about 3 items, along with their armor, 2 clips and 2 flares.

 

Another option is to adjust the limits to allow just that, 3.5 items per soldier. So the basic transport holds 12? That's 41 items total, which allows 3 items plus 5 clips and/or flares per person. That allows a soldier to carry a pistol and clip, main weapon and 2 clips, 2 flares, and a special item like a scanner or probe. On the ultimate craft of 24 soldiers, you're looking at 84 items total. This is more realistic considering the size of the crafts involved too, the spare storage space would also vary by size. How does that sound?

[Guest alex the greater]

i was thinking count by how many scuares thay take up and alowing a sertin amount of scuares per person

 

like the skyranger can hold 14 solders so why not give them 15 scuares per person cause the skyranger origanoly can hold 80 items and the avg item size is 3 scuares (probably 2.5 but i round up) and the 80/14 is 5.7 round down is 5 5x3 is 15 and 15x14 is 210 total scuares of items you can fit into a skyranger (avg item size is 2.5 so you can probaby fit 84 total items)

 

SO...

the amount of items varys whith the size of the craft

 

eg. a skyranger holds 14 men=210 scuares=aprox 84 items

eg. a lightning holds 12 men=180 scuares=aprox 72 items

eg.an avenger holds 26 men = 390 scuares =aprox 156 items

[StarKillar]

Having grenades / ammo take less space is a good idea not sure about .1 though, as the restriction imposed a kind of materials awareness on the player (specially in Cydonia, where you'd run out of ammo and have to nick it off corpses sometimes).

Perhaps making Blaster ammo, Rockets and Heavy Explosives still take 1 because of their power (you could always pretend it's a weight thing) otherwise someone just needs to rotate a few soldiers in the crafts "supply patch" and he can Blaster-bomb the whole map :/

Edited August 29, 2004 by StarKillar

[Guest alex the greater]

grnades already take up less space

 

does anyone evean want to coment on my idea?

[Breunor]

I would leave grenades, rockets, and other items as 1 space, only reducing the space used by clips and flares. I rarely had trouble with flares, I staggered throws so that I was picking up the first ones as I threw the next set, so 1 per soldier was plenty. I also didn't use pistols as backups, so that would allow a soldier to have quite a few clips.

 

Basing the space allowed on squares could work too, as you get a direct relation between space used and the size of the graphic in inventory. So Alex's concept would work just as well, making a clip take 1/3 normal space. But it also allow scanners, pistols, and other items to brought at the same rate.