That reminds me that I volunteered to write an article about it. As the reaction on my proposal wasn't too enthusiastic, that slided down my priority list...
Ok, here is a 1st draft...
Destructible terrain
I found a paragraph in the Manual/FAQ section of the wiki that could be reused here.
Saves in battlescape:
First, it's a thoughtful design decision of the devs that are in the lead of the project. They simpy do not *want* it, and that is enough reason.
The idea is, that being able to restore after a bad move would take a lot of the tension away, making it a different game.
No reasoning brought up in the past did change their mind. Among the reasons were:
- after playing successfully, my favourite soldier is killed by the last alien remaining.
Solution: keep up you concentration and caution until the mission is really done.
- after playing successfully for several hours and 30++ rounds, it's 4 am and I need to go to bed.
Solution: start to play earlier in the evening. With some experience gained, you will also play faster.
- restrict the saving somehow so it can't be exploited. Attempts included: only autosave every 5th round, allow reload not before 12 RL hours have passed,...
Result: each and every restriction suggested could be proven to be exploitable.
- make it a configurable option at campaign start.
There would be no reason to disable that option.
There is also a technical reason. Adding that feature is not just like two more function calls somewhere in the battlescape code.
There is quite some additional data in battle which the current code doesn't have load/save routines for, including position and morale of the soldiers, aliens and civilians, dropped items and corpses on the ground etc.
So in addition to being unwanted, this feature would also require quite an amount of work.
Engine change
coming up later...
