List of improvement ideas from a new player

[Iemeli]

Hi folks!

I've been a huge fan of the original XCOM 1-3, and now I just got a new favorite game. Already had several days (that is, not just evenings and nights) wasted playing this one

So anyway, after "finishing" the game first time, or getting as far as I could (bug 1883915) with level hard, I'd like to share some new user experiences to you developer guys. First I have to say that if possible, this game is even much more addictive than the XCOM series, not least because of the enormous number of details to be explored. Something yet to be seen in most commercial games.

I'm a programmer myself, and could possibly try to help with some features too. For starters, here is a lengthy list of improvement ideas, usability problems, bugs or unrequested features and such. To spare the readers' precious time a bit, I tried to search the web pages, bug tracker and forum for duplicates and removed what I found, but of course I may not have found everything. (I'm running Mac OS X 10.4 and UFOAI 2.2.1, if that helps.)


Points of improvement and questions

* The civilians are horrendously stupid, it almost seems they are seeking to get killed. I don't know if this is a deliberate feature or what, but as cruel as this may sound, it somehow undermines the motivation of saving civilians when they don't even want to do that themselves. Anyway, while playing I didn't notice how the dead civilian count affects anything else in the game. Is there some connection to e.g. the happiness of nations?

* Alien AI seems to do weird things too. For example in this level with a road in a canyon, filled with tank trucks, in the last 20 turns the aliens (maybe six or so) had a strange urge to line up at the one end of the road. So I could eventually take all of them down, one by one, with my weak laser rifles, as long as I didn't leave my soldiers visible to the aliens at the end of the turn. It would make more sense (and be more effective) for the aliens to e.g. charge against my soldiers instead of sitting still in an open corner. The same thing has happened in other levels too. Maybe after the aliens have had all the nearby civilians killed, but of that I'm not sure. What is the goal of the AI player?

* At hard level, too much money seems to pour in. (Could also be an indicator that I've previously played XCOMs too much As a consequence, I wanted to build more and more bases for radaring purposes, but the limit seems to be 8, which kind of sucks.
** Ok, when later browsing the game web site, I found plans for adding separate radar/SAM base support. Good.

* How do I destroy base buildings, or can I? Well, that was the question until I found a message at the forums telling that it should be possible, and after that I found out that right click does the magic. Anyway the point is that destroying buildings is way too unintuitive. Initially I looked for some "destroy" button under Buildings, which would in my opinion be the most logical place.

* Why is recruiting scientists/workers/medics made so difficult? I mean, I'd like to have some slider/buy-sell-like interface for hiring and sacking. Currently it's very frustrating when you try to recruit 40 scientists. The interface would make more sense if it mattered which particular employees you want. Or are there any plans for taking advantage of the interface somehow?

* Has the concept of critical wounds been considered? I found in TODO that wounded units should have weakened abilities, which is at least a good feature.

* Medikits are unbelievably efficient against all wounds. It seems to be possible to heal a unit back to at least near-full health after any non-lethal wound if enough rounds for healing are used, which is somehow unplausible even with year 2084's tech. And besides, why don't the wounded soldiers get automatically healed by medikits during the trip back to base, but have to wait a long time healing in base hospital? Doesn't make sense and encourages tactics to not shoot the last alien before having all units back in full health. If the critical wounds are to be implemented, I think the original XCOM's way (only crit wounds can be healed) would be great.

* Sometimes aliens/civilians can be seen, and are always perfectly identified, from unnaturally long distances or through small gaps. This probably is because of the 3D engine features and is hard to fix, but affects gameplay nevertheless. (See an idea on the subject below under Ideas section.)

* How do the UFO hangars work? I didn't quite figure it out yet. Are they for one-time use only? Even though apparently having two large UFO hangars available, I had no choice but to sell a Harvester ship away. Before I had already recovered and completed research of two other UFOs, would that be the reason? If so, why don't the UFOs get torn apart after researching, to free up the space? It would anyway help to know a bit more about the state of UFO hangars in bases.

* How much space do the aircraft use in hangars? This can't be seen anywhere, and it even seems not to be possible to calculate that from the info given in Ufopedia.

* A progress indicator of some kind, the simplest being probably a percentage count, would be nice in production. And the production of aircraft doesn't seem to progress at all, is this a bug or do I just not notice something?

* Can anything be done after researching The Alien Mind, or is it just that the game has not been developed beyond that point yet?

* How does strength affect anything? I can't see any difference between soldiers with strength 15 or 30 and a full load of heavy stuff.

* Transferring stuff between bases is useless because it's much easier to just sell stuff in one base and buy it in another => no time delays. And the transfer UI is not exactly attractive either.

* It's somewhat problematic to have two different byu/sell and produce windows for equipment and aircraft. Why not use just one common for both?

* The tooltips suck in my opinion, they are sometimes quite unreadabe and you have to try to find a good position for the mouse pointer before being able to read the text properly. They should either always appear in a fixed place at the top or bottom of the screen (easy solution) or behave like GTK tooltips and with a one color box in the background or something. The same thing both in base view and tactical.

* In daytime tactical missions, certain types of light colored terrain make it very hard to see the light green lines of the box under mouse cursor. Maybe a red color were better?

* Grenades drop off the map when they hit the border. Sometimes makes killing borderly aliens a bit tricky, especially if the soldiers' throwing skill is not the best around. What if the terrain extended invisibly a few squares after border so that off-limit but near exploding grenades also do the damage?


Logical problems

* UFOs run out when I shoot down enough of them. Is this somehow related to the game plot not being quite finished yet?

* The initial placement of units in the beginning of a mission doesn't always make much sense. For example, initially having a soldier with full time units standing next to an alien facing towards the soldier.

* Why don't the landed UFOs or UFOs crashed by themselves show up in radar before an alien activity alert?

* The shop got 7 brand new Stingray interceptors shortly after I completed its research, which meant that I didn't need to produce the craft myself. In a way good, but a bit illogical, no? After that, the shop didn't ever get more new Stingrays.


Ideas (old or new)

* We can have PB grenades for grenade launcher, nice! So why not plasma rockets, too? Lotsa big explosions is always fun.

* In the research process, some alien items under research should also be destroyed when the scientists tear them apart. And the possibility to speed up research a bit by giving the scientists more toys to break.

* The different countries, if happy enough, could also report of airborne or other alien activity. And the possibility to see some activity stats in the spirit of XCOMs.

* Event log in tactical. Log events that the soldiers notice during my and AI's turn. Sometimes makes the mission a bit easier to control.

* Some kind of centralized control of research and production. Now it is hard to keep track of all the projects going on in different bases, especially if you have a lot of them.

* What if the units would sometimes imagine nonexistent aliens to appear and for example use their reaction fire against an apparition? This could be possibly affected by the Mind skill - weak minded units see more illusions and hear voices. Something like this would make the missions even more hair-raising. Also the current ability to identify any unit through tiny holes or even walls is kind of funny. Improving both of these is probably tricky and not to be implemented in near future, of course...


Plain old bugs

* The equipment of dead soldiers, at least armor and weapons, seems to get lost after finishing a mission. (Bug 1971857)

* The soldiers don't seem to ever get promoted. (Didn't file a bug because there seem to be already some issues with this.)

* If an attempt to save a game over a previous one fails because of disk being full, the previous save gets corrupted. Also the general game preferences are reset if disk is full when exiting game. (Bug 1971858)

* Bug in save game: click a slot, the click another slot => the first slot doesn't seem to lose focus but remains white-colored and has a blinking cursor even if the second actually has the focus. (Bug 1971859)


Things already noted earlier in TODOs or bug reports, here just to remind of them

* Equipping soldiers outside aircraft (in TODO)

* IR goggles don't work. (Bug 1780163)

* Does the aircraft particle beam need ammunition? Yes, it seems. (Bug 1882498)

[Winter]

Hi folks!

I've been a huge fan of the original XCOM 1-3, and now I just got a new favorite game. Already had several days (that is, not just evenings and nights) wasted playing this one

So anyway, after "finishing" the game first time, or getting as far as I could (bug 1883915) with level hard, I'd like to share some new user experiences to you developer guys. First I have to say that if possible, this game is even much more addictive than the XCOM series, not least because of the enormous number of details to be explored. Something yet to be seen in most commercial games.

I'm a programmer myself, and could possibly try to help with some features too. For starters, here is a lengthy list of improvement ideas, usability problems, bugs or unrequested features and such. To spare the readers' precious time a bit, I tried to search the web pages, bug tracker and forum for duplicates and removed what I found, but of course I may not have found everything. (I'm running Mac OS X 10.4 and UFOAI 2.2.1, if that helps.)

We can use all the help we can get, and yeah, most of the points you've raised are because the game is unfinished and we're perpetually understaffed.

Points of improvement and questions

* The civilians are horrendously stupid, it almost seems they are seeking to get killed. I don't know if this is a deliberate feature or what, but as cruel as this may sound, it somehow undermines the motivation of saving civilians when they don't even want to do that themselves. Anyway, while playing I didn't notice how the dead civilian count affects anything else in the game. Is there some connection to e.g. the happiness of nations?

* Alien AI seems to do weird things too. For example in this level with a road in a canyon, filled with tank trucks, in the last 20 turns the aliens (maybe six or so) had a strange urge to line up at the one end of the road. So I could eventually take all of them down, one by one, with my weak laser rifles, as long as I didn't leave my soldiers visible to the aliens at the end of the turn. It would make more sense (and be more effective) for the aliens to e.g. charge against my soldiers instead of sitting still in an open corner. The same thing has happened in other levels too. Maybe after the aliens have had all the nearby civilians killed, but of that I'm not sure. What is the goal of the AI player?

AI badly needs improvement, we all know it, but no one has the time to work on it.

* At hard level, too much money seems to pour in. (Could also be an indicator that I've previously played XCOMs too much As a consequence, I wanted to build more and more bases for radaring purposes, but the limit seems to be 8, which kind of sucks.
** Ok, when later browsing the game web site, I found plans for adding separate radar/SAM base support. Good.

External facilities were my idea, I think they're a brilliant concept, but I don't think everyone else is won over just yet.

* How do I destroy base buildings, or can I? Well, that was the question until I found a message at the forums telling that it should be possible, and after that I found out that right click does the magic. Anyway the point is that destroying buildings is way too unintuitive. Initially I looked for some "destroy" button under Buildings, which would in my opinion be the most logical place.

I think Kracken is working on dismantling buildings and bases just now.

* Why is recruiting scientists/workers/medics made so difficult? I mean, I'd like to have some slider/buy-sell-like interface for hiring and sacking. Currently it's very frustrating when you try to recruit 40 scientists. The interface would make more sense if it mattered which particular employees you want. Or are there any plans for taking advantage of the interface somehow?

The entire GUI is in need of a major overhaul, we've been creating graphics for it for ages, but again no one feels like coding it. The recruitment system is truly awful and I've been pushing for months to:

1. Allow unlimited recruitment of scientists and workers as in the old X-COMs, as long as you have enough living space,
2. Remove medics from the game entirely as they're a useless complication of the interface, automate hospitals and replace medics with pilots,
3. Completely redesign the recruitment screen to something which doesn't suck arse.

* Has the concept of critical wounds been considered? I found in TODO that wounded units should have weakened abilities, which is at least a good feature.

I think we need some discussion on this before we make a full TODO entry on it. Not that it's going to get incorporated anytime soon.

* Medikits are unbelievably efficient against all wounds. It seems to be possible to heal a unit back to at least near-full health after any non-lethal wound if enough rounds for healing are used, which is somehow unplausible even with year 2084's tech. And besides, why don't the wounded soldiers get automatically healed by medikits during the trip back to base, but have to wait a long time healing in base hospital? Doesn't make sense and encourages tactics to not shoot the last alien before having all units back in full health. If the critical wounds are to be implemented, I think the original XCOM's way (only crit wounds can be healed) would be great.

This is not the implementation of medikits that we want, but that's how it is for now due to lack of coders and restraints of the current wounds system.

* How do the UFO hangars work? I didn't quite figure it out yet. Are they for one-time use only? Even though apparently having two large UFO hangars available, I had no choice but to sell a Harvester ship away. Before I had already recovered and completed research of two other UFOs, would that be the reason? If so, why don't the UFOs get torn apart after researching, to free up the space? It would anyway help to know a bit more about the state of UFO hangars in bases.

UFO Hangars are going through a bit of a redesign at the moment, and I'm not sure they work properly at the moment. Possibly they suffer from the size class restriction that normal hangars do, which is wrong.

* How much space do the aircraft use in hangars? This can't be seen anywhere, and it even seems not to be possible to calculate that from the info given in Ufopedia.

Always 1 aircraft per hangar. The hangar system is up for a redesign as well, with the planned incorporation of player-controlled UAVs.

* A progress indicator of some kind, the simplest being probably a percentage count, would be nice in production. And the production of aircraft doesn't seem to progress at all, is this a bug or do I just not notice something?

Don't know about aircraft production, but a progress indicator sounds good to me. Just needs someone to code it.

* Can anything be done after researching The Alien Mind, or is it just that the game has not been developed beyond that point yet?

The storyline isn't complete and we're also re-evaluating certain choke points in the research tree to improve gameplay. On top of that, I've been amazingly busy lately with a day job and a commercial game writing job at the same time (and keeping up with my serial novel over at streetofeyes.com).

* Transferring stuff between bases is useless because it's much easier to just sell stuff in one base and buy it in another => no time delays. And the transfer UI is not exactly attractive either.

Buy/sell delays and price differences are also TODO.

* It's somewhat problematic to have two different byu/sell and produce windows for equipment and aircraft. Why not use just one common for both?

That's exactly what I said, but mattn keeps arguing to keep them separate.

* Grenades drop off the map when they hit the border. Sometimes makes killing borderly aliens a bit tricky, especially if the soldiers' throwing skill is not the best around. What if the terrain extended invisibly a few squares after border so that off-limit but near exploding grenades also do the damage?

That'd be nice, but problematic. You'd have to talk this over with the coders.

* UFOs run out when I shoot down enough of them. Is this somehow related to the game plot not being quite finished yet?

In a word, yes.

* The initial placement of units in the beginning of a mission doesn't always make much sense. For example, initially having a soldier with full time units standing next to an alien facing towards the soldier.

That's one for the mappers.

* Why don't the landed UFOs or UFOs crashed by themselves show up in radar before an alien activity alert?

Why should they?

* The shop got 7 brand new Stingray interceptors shortly after I completed its research, which meant that I didn't need to produce the craft myself. In a way good, but a bit illogical, no? After that, the shop didn't ever get more new Stingrays.

I hate this 'feature', I've been pushing for its removal since day one. Researched items should not be able to be bought, ever, unless it's something you yourself produced/recovered and sold off.

* We can have PB grenades for grenade launcher, nice! So why not plasma rockets, too? Lotsa big explosions is always fun.

We did once, but I've never quite liked the idea, it seems very cheesy. Maybe we'll put them back in at some point.

* The different countries, if happy enough, could also report of airborne or other alien activity. And the possibility to see some activity stats in the spirit of XCOMs.

We have a feature where nations can make and report alien base discoveries, and all alien activity reports are made by other nations to PHALANX. We don't have anything for UFOs yet though, I guess I wouldn't be opposed to the idea.

* Event log in tactical. Log events that the soldiers notice during my and AI's turn. Sometimes makes the mission a bit easier to control.

This is a good idea, I like it.

* Some kind of centralized control of research and production. Now it is hard to keep track of all the projects going on in different bases, especially if you have a lot of them.

This is planned with the GUI overhaul.

* What if the units would sometimes imagine nonexistent aliens to appear and for example use their reaction fire against an apparition? This could be possibly affected by the Mind skill - weak minded units see more illusions and hear voices. Something like this would make the missions even more hair-raising.

This . . . No. I don't think this is a good idea, it would cause a lot of frustration and only serve to draw out missions for no good reason. It's something that seems like it would be cool at first glance, but when you think about it you start to realise that it wouldn't do anything to increase fun and would most probably do more harm than good.

That's all folks!

Regards,
Ryan

[Iemeli]

Thanks for a quick reply. Some additional points:

* Why don't the landed UFOs or UFOs crashed by themselves show up in radar before an alien activity alert?

Why should they?

Because they were, in theory, airborne before landing?

Of course, this applies only to crash/land sites inside the radar inner circle.

* We can have PB grenades for grenade launcher, nice! So why not plasma rockets, too? Lotsa big explosions is always fun.

We did once, but I've never quite liked the idea, it seems very cheesy. Maybe we'll put them back in at some point.

Yes, the point was that it's not very coherent to have plasma grenades but not rockets.

But of course, if this feature disturbs the game balance too much, then the current way is fine. Just a note that this is logically not very sound.

* What if the units would sometimes imagine nonexistent aliens to appear and for example use their reaction fire against an apparition? This could be possibly affected by the Mind skill - weak minded units see more illusions and hear voices. Something like this would make the missions even more hair-raising. Also the current ability to identify any unit through tiny holes or even walls is kind of funny. Improving both of these is probably tricky and not to be implemented in near future, of course...

This . . . No. I don't think this is a good idea, it would cause a lot of frustration and only serve to draw out missions for no good reason. It's something that seems like it would be cool at first glance, but when you think about it you start to realise that it wouldn't do anything to increase fun and would most probably do more harm than good.

Yes, probably. A wild idea, though

[kracken]

The entire GUI is in need of a major overhaul, we've been creating graphics for it for ages, but again no one feels like coding it.

Well, I'd be interested in that, but I never knew there was graphics created for it for ages. I only saw some unfinished pieces of GUI. Was there some progress here ?

2. Remove medics from the game entirely as they're a useless complication of the interface, automate hospitals and replace medics with pilots,

Medics are not really a useless complication of the interface, as we already need this interface for workers or scientists. I'd rather be to make things a lot simpler, like just limiting the maximum number of soldiers automatically healed in hospital by number of medics (in current trunk, this is 2 soldiers per medic as far as I remember).

Medikits are unbelievably efficient against all wounds.

I think the way medikit are handled has been changed in trunk, but I couldn't tell you how.

Possibly they suffer from the size class restriction that normal hangars do, which is wrong.

Yes, they suffer from size class restriction, I thought they should. So you can store as many UFO as you want in a UFO hangar?

Always 1 aircraft per hangar. The hangar system is up for a redesign as well, with the planned incorporation of player-controlled UAVs.

I think the 1 aircraft per hangar stuff is only true in trunk. As far as I remember, you can store 2 aircraft per hangar in 2.2.1 (I'm not sure however).

* Why don't the landed UFOs or UFOs crashed by themselves show up in radar before an alien activity alert?

They will in future release (if they are in radar range)

I hate this 'feature', I've been pushing for its removal since day one. Researched items should not be able to be bought, ever, unless it's something you yourself produced/recovered and sold off.

I agree. Is there a reason why you can buy such items? Is it something mattn wants to keep ?

* The equipment of dead soldiers, at least armor and weapons, seems to get lost after finishing a mission. (Bug 1971857)

it's not lost, it's sold. You should deactivate the autosell option in buy/sell menu if you want to avoid that. This option should be set to 'no' by default release as far as I know.

* Bug in save game: click a slot, the click another slot => the first slot doesn't seem to lose focus but remains white-colored and has a blinking cursor even if the second actually has the focus. (Bug 1971859)

This is fixed in trunk.

[Winter]

Well, I'd be interested in that, but I never knew there was graphics created for it for ages. I only saw some unfinished pieces of GUI. Was there some progress here ?

Not all the graphics are finished, not by a long ways, but if you really would be up for coding it then catch me in IRC and I'll give you all the screenshots that Blywulf's sent me.

Medics are not really a useless complication of the interface as we already need this interface for workers or scientists. I'd rather be to make things a lot simpler, like just limiting the maximum number of soldiers automatically healed in hospital by number of medics (in current trunk, this is 2 soldiers per medic as far as I remember).

Yes they are, and no we don't. Recruitment is in need of a major overhaul, and it's not going to get anywhere if people keep hanging on to the bloody medics, whose spot in the recruitment interface would be entirely replaced by pilots which everyone seems to agree are a good idea. There is no reason for medics to be in the game! They don't add ANYTHING except the frustration and needless complexity of having to manually manage hospitals! Adding restrictions in order to try and justify their existence doesn't make them any less of a bad design choice, it just adds more bad design choices to bolster something that ought to be removed in the first place. If we're letting bad design choices run rampant for no good reason in the face of every valid argument BTAxis and I raise aginst them then why am I even here?

Yes, they suffer from size class restriction, I thought they should. So you can store as many UFO as you want in a UFO hangar?

Not quite what I meant. What I mean is, a Large UFO Hangar should be able to store one (1) UFO of size Large or smaller. A Small UFO Hangar should only be able to store small UFOs. If a small UFO is in a Large hangar when a small hangar becomes available in the same base, it should be auto-transferred to free up the larger hangar. This makes storing UFOs easier and less frustrating for the player.

Regards,
Winter

[BTAxis]

There is no reason for medics to be in the game! They don't add ANYTHING except the frustration and needless complexity of having to manually manage hospitals! Adding restrictions in order to try and justify their existence doesn't make them any less of a bad design choice, it just adds more bad design choices to bolster something that ought to be removed in the first place. If we're letting bad design choices run rampant for no good reason in the face of every valid argument BTAxis and I raise aginst them then why am I even here?

In order to nuance this issue, I'd just like to point out Kracken's argument earlier on IRC, which was basically that if we don't need medics we don't need workers or scientists either, which I think is fair to say. These people also don't add anything per se. They're just there to exploit the full potential of a lab or workshop, adding the need to manually manage them. The only difference between labs/workshops and hospitals is that soldiers can only heal so fast, while research and development proceed at a pace proportional to the amount of dedicated researchers/workers.

Now, in my opinion it's not necessary to completely remove the medics. It should be enough to reduce them to a number of hired staff, as should be done for workers and scientists. They still don't add anything per se, but they take up space in living quarters and appear on the payroll. Plus it makes more sense to have a staffed hospital, as opposed to one that is by all appearances self-service.

[kracken]

They don't add ANYTHING except the frustration and needless complexity of having to manually manage hospitals!

These are 2 different points. I don't like either to have to manually manage hospitals, it should be automatic. I just mean that the efficiency of your hospital should be limited by the number of medics you would have, just like the efficiency of your workshop or lab is limited by the number of workers or scientist you have.
Basically, player would just recruit medics when he needs them, and pay them every month.

And having medics does not imply that we can't have pilots.

[Winter]

In order to nuance this issue, I'd just like to point out Kracken's argument earlier on IRC, which was basically that if we don't need medics we don't need workers or scientists either, which I think is fair to say.

I don't think that's fair to say at all. The presence of workers and scientists on-screen is a mechanic to manage the speed and assignments of labs and workshops -- like you said, they are a hard representation on the speed of work in these facilities.

Medics, on the other hand, have no such purpose. If we moved them to a footnote under base salaries and left soldiers to heal at a standardised and constant rate, they would not be missed as a means of managing the hospital, because the hospital is not a facility that should be managed. Humans heal at a certain rate, and that's that. Giving a patient six doctors to take care of him isn't going to affect his recovery process one bit.

Medics also do not produce anything concrete in-game such as research topics and new items. Their presence is so minimal that giving them such a prominent space in the interface is both misleading and wastes space.

Now, in my opinion it's not necessary to completely remove the medics. It should be enough to reduce them to a number of hired staff, as should be done for workers and scientists. They still don't add anything per se, but they take up space in living quarters and appear on the payroll. Plus it makes more sense to have a staffed hospital, as opposed to one that is by all appearances self-service.

A footnote in base salaries is fine with me, but that's all. When you build a hospital, the inclusion of medical staff and equipment is assumed, it doesn't need to be managed. Saying that because we have a hospital we need to have medics on-screen is like saying that because we have a hospital we should manage its inventory as well, forcing the player to buy blood packs or something silly like that.

These are 2 different points. I don't like either to have to manually manage hospitals, it should be automatic. I just mean that the efficiency of your hospital should be limited by the number of medics you would have, just like the efficiency of your workshop or lab is limited by the number of workers or scientist you have.

Basically, player would just recruit medics when he needs them, and pay them every month.

And having medics does not imply that we can't have pilots.

I'd refer you to my argument about 6 doctors to 1 patient. Your proposal adds limitations to the game for no reason, forcing micromanagement on the player for no actual gameplay benefit. The player gains nothing from having more than the required number of medics, he only gets a penalty for NOT having them. That's bad game design.

Furthermore, adding pilots without removing medics would be more work than simply replacing medics with pilots, again keeping the medics for no good reason that I can see. They don't need to be on the recruitment screen. Hospitals don't need to be managed. The only other thing you seem to argue is that they should take up living quarters and draw salaries, which I don't agree with (except for drawing salaries, but that ought to be rolled into hospital running costs and only mentioned in a footnote). Space in the living quarters is already tight enough with only 20 people per living quarters (and we may actually want to reduce the size of living quarters with the incorporation of larger bases) without having to waste it on people whose only function is to avoid a penalty to soldier healing.

I'm not saying that we should remove all mention of hospital staff from the game and turn the hospitals into self-service pumps, but we need to remove the needless micromanagement which they and medics represent. Medics should not appear on-screen.

Regards,
Winter

[BTAxis]

I don't think that's fair to say at all. The presence of workers and scientists on-screen is a mechanic to manage the speed and assignments of labs and workshops -- like you said, they are a hard representation on the speed of work in these facilities.

Medics, on the other hand, have no such purpose. If we moved them to a footnote under base salaries and left soldiers to heal at a standardised and constant rate, they would not be missed as a means of managing the hospital, because the hospital is not a facility that should be managed. Humans heal at a certain rate, and that's that. Giving a patient six doctors to take care of him isn't going to affect his recovery process one bit.

Medics also do not produce anything concrete in-game such as research topics and new items. Their presence is so minimal that giving them such a prominent space in the interface is both misleading and wastes space.

You're reasoning in the wrong direction. The theory is that if there are not enough medics, soldiers will heal more slowly. The soldiers will get less attention to their injuries than would be optimal, which slows their rate of recovery. Let's leave actual biology and wound healing out of this; looking at it purely as a game mechanic I find it makes sense.

A footnote in base salaries is fine with me, but that's all. When you build a hospital, the inclusion of medical staff and equipment is assumed, it doesn't need to be managed. Saying that because we have a hospital we need to have medics on-screen is like saying that because we have a hospital we should manage its inventory as well, forcing the player to buy blood packs or something silly like that.

I can't agree with this. If you're going to reason like that, let's also remove workers and scientists. To twist the words you wrote, the inclusion of worker/scientist staff and equipment is assumed when you build a workshop or lab, right? Saying that because we have a workshop/lab we need to have workers or scientists on-screen is like saying that because we have a workshop we should manage its inventory as well, forcing the player to buy screwdrivers or something silly like that.

So no. That's not a valid argument. It's about building a facility and then staffing it. Hospitals are NOT different from labs or workshops in this respect. If you're going to think of medics as stuff to be abstracted from, you might as well abstract from the hospital itself. After all, what is building a hospital if not micromanaging a base to facilitate the recovery of soldiers? You can't look at the hospital separately from medics, as you've been doing in the preceeding.

Finally, just a footnote in the costs doesn't account for the medics living space. It just doesn't make any sense that they shouldn't need a place to sleep while soldiers, workers and scientists do. It's illogical, and it's going to raise more than one eyebrow. I don't feel comfortable with a game decision like that.

[Iemeli]

Ok, I'd like to add something to my original post -- even though medics etc. stuff sure aren't in perfect shape, it's probably not the most urgent thing to fix. So I tried and succeeded compiling the trunk version, thanks to the instructions in http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/Compile_for_Mac, and that seems to run and have some nice improvements in geoscape and base view. There seems to be at least one major problem with opening a saved game the second time since restart, leading to instant crash. This can, however, be overcome by restarting the game, which is annoying though not fatal.

But alas, there is one blocker bug: it seems I can't enter tactical by any means, that is, both entering missions in geoscape or choosing Skirmish result in completely black screen. The only working thing seems to be Esc button which leads to the menu, no good. Is this a known issue or something Mac-specific? I could try building the game in Linux or even Windows, too, if it helps.

[blondandy]

maybe start a thread in the mac forum about your trunk issue. in the past few weeks we have had a few mac coders and packagers start work (we lacked consistent mac help previously).

about the AI: chap calls himself bobbens claims he is looking at it.   

[Winter]

You're reasoning in the wrong direction. The theory is that if there are not enough medics, soldiers will heal more slowly. The soldiers will get less attention to their injuries than would be optimal, which slows their rate of recovery. Let's leave actual biology and wound healing out of this; looking at it purely as a game mechanic I find it makes sense.

It's like you didn't read my last post. You're making the player spend effort to avoid a penalty, rather than gaining any concrete advantage from having medics. And, like I pointed out and like you are admitting here, he can't gain anything from having more than the recommended number of medics because that wouldn't make any logical sense. This is not a good game mechanic and simply does not make sense from a design standpoint.

I can't agree with this. If you're going to reason like that, let's also remove workers and scientists. To twist the words you wrote, the inclusion of worker/scientist staff and equipment is assumed when you build a workshop or lab, right? Saying that because we have a workshop/lab we need to have workers or scientists on-screen is like saying that because we have a workshop we should manage its inventory as well, forcing the player to buy screwdrivers or something silly like that.

So no. That's not a valid argument. It's about building a facility and then staffing it. Hospitals are NOT different from labs or workshops in this respect. If you're going to think of medics as stuff to be abstracted from, you might as well abstract from the hospital itself. After all, what is building a hospital if not micromanaging a base to facilitate the recovery of soldiers? You can't look at the hospital separately from medics, as you've been doing in the preceeding.

To be perfectly honest, I actually wouldn't mind removing the hospital from the game that much. Its only real function is to allow soldiers to heal. That's fair enough, it is a hospital, and I don't want it gone, but when one of the main reasons people are citing for keeping medics is taking up space then we're in trouble here.

Again, it's like you're completely ignoring what I said and just confusing the issue. Hospitals are miles apart from laboratories and workshops because nothing is created there, no items, no research, nothing. The player gets no use out of medics that cannot be very easily abstracted at no loss to gameplay and to a good GAIN in streamlining and cutting down micromanagement. We do not need medics in hospitals for the game to function exactly the same as it does now. That is not true for either scientists or workers.

Finally, just a footnote in the costs doesn't account for the medics living space. It just doesn't make any sense that they shouldn't need a place to sleep while soldiers, workers and scientists do. It's illogical, and it's going to raise more than one eyebrow. I don't feel comfortable with a game decision like that.

We discussed this ages ago, man. It's right in the Living Quarters writeup. The Living Quarters supports 20 people and ancillary personnel. Medics definitely qualify as ancillary personnel because of their extremely limited scope of function and absolute irrelevance to anything going on outside the hospital.

Regards,
Winter

[BTAxis]

For everyone's information, Winter and I had a talk about this on IRC, and the issue really boils down to whether medics are numerous enough to be worth managing manually. The consensus is that they aren't. Workers and scientists are going to be the bulk of the population of the living quarters, and the medics wouldn't make any real difference. It's therefore in the interest of simplicity and micromanagement reduction to abstract the medics away.

[geever]

And what about pilots? I think they won't add as much as cost.

[Winter]

And what about pilots? I think they won't add as much as cost.

Of course they will. They'll have their own set of stats related to flying, and you'll be able to guide them through their growth into alien-killing aces of the sky. This increases the amount of actual gameplay on the geoscape and makes a nice deviation from the standard X-COM formula.

Regards,
Winter