Arming aircraft - possible improvement

[s300pmu1]

Dear developers,

Thanks for your truly monumental work! It is by far the most "atmospheric" X-Com clone I have yet experienced!
Still, there areas which are open for improvement, IMHO.

The source of major disdain for me is arming and equipping aircraft. It requires so many mouseclicks and its logic is not self-evident; in 2.3, it became even more incomprehensible than in 2.2.

1) The most important part of my proposal is that by left-clicking any slot on an aircraft either a pop-up menu, or a separate screen appears, where you see all the weapons or equipment available for this slot; and a second left-click should install the item of choice. That's it - just two clicks! And seeing all items available for a particular slot is also very convenient. Listing technologically available but out-of-stock items as grayed could also allow the player to fully weigh his options and adjust production que and other in-game behaviour accordingly.

2) What I see as yet more efficient way to do this is an aircraft having all slots - both ammo and eqipment - available on one screen. This eliminates the need to switch between different screens, which is superfluous. Have n slots for weapons, and in the lower part of the aircraft schematic, m slots for equipment, functioning the same way as described in item (1) above - left click to activate list of available choices, left-click choice to install.

Actually, some time after I had thought of the above, I encountered a similar mechanism in another X-Com clone, UFO Extraterrestrials, thought there it is also flawed - first you cleck the slot you want to change, then you have to click "change" button, then you click your choice. But even despite the unnecessary action of clicking the "change" button, it is by far more convenient than the one implemented in your version at the moment.

PS for people who might read this and might want to check out the other UFO clone - my observations on it:
1) by itself it is totally worthless as initially the soldiers literally can not hit anything with anything other than a grenade; as well as for other reasons
2) there is a nice modpack called UniMod which makes the game much more like the original X-Com, though it is somewhat buggy, it is quite playable
3) key observation: still, having played it for a weekend, I have found that I want to return to UFO:AI as it has much more ambiance and is a real pleasure to play. So don't expect UFO Extraterrestrials, even with the UniMod, to measure up to UFO:AI.

[BTAxis]

Actually, I made a mockup for an improvement to aircraft equipment a little while ago. Reactions so far have been positive, but I've also been told it could be difficult to do codewise. Here it is:

[Chriswriter90]

4 months to install a gun? US aircrews could do it in minutes, it's their job.

[geever]

This is just a mockup.

-geever

[Chriswriter90]

4 months to install a gun? US aircrews could do it in minutes, it's their job.

This is just a mockup.

-geever

I was just being funny/sarcastic. I do think something like that setup could be an improvement.

[s300pmu1]

Actually, I made a mockup

This is exactly what I meant, and it would be great if this went into production.
Though one thought on the "tabs for equipment types" - these, to me, appear superfluous as well. Once you click on a hardpoint, only the equipment/weapons that are applicable should be filtered out and be displayed. This would eliminate any need for tabs.

Second thought - for some reason, it seems to me that a vertical aircraft image would be more "pleasant". This is a casual observation, though, and I do not expect it to be considered. Though one could do a vote on this )))


The "no use for this space yet" could be used to show specs of the selected weapon/equipment.

[geever]

Though one thought on the "tabs for equipment types" - these, to me, appear superfluous as well. Once you click on a hardpoint, only the equipment/weapons that are applicable should be filtered out and be displayed. This would eliminate any need for tabs.

But if items can be equipped with right click as in soldier equip menu tabs make equipping easier as you don't have to travel trough the screen with the mouse every time.

-geever

[s300pmu1]

But if items can be equipped with right click as in soldier equip menu tabs make equipping easier as you don't have to travel trough the screen with the mouse every time.

Indeed; the program would have to check if the hardpoint for mounting weapon/equipment is available, and assign if so. Thanks for pointing that out.

[odie]

But if items can be equipped with right click as in soldier equip menu tabs make equipping easier as you don't have to travel trough the screen with the mouse every time.

-geever

*claps claps*
Yes! That is a very very logical suggestion that i second!

It should be that intuitive.