Initial equipment

[HaJo]

I intend to enable market place only after the first mission and then make
only a few things (mostly ammo) available, then more and more each month.

That makes sense for newly developed items, aircraft-parts etc.,
but not for old-fashioned equipment like our basic weapons.

[Bandobras]

Then try and imagine some explanation... But perhaps it will be better if we wait for the new storyline to unfold, then invented explanations can be more coherent. The storyline may even have to be slighly changed to incorporate the explanation, if the game -play value of this setup is proved to be worth it.

Gamplay-wise I imagine this shortage of mainstream weapons will only last for several, maybe dozen fist missions, perhaps just the whole first stage of campaign.ufo and perhaps only its half. After that you have all you need of mainstream weapon, but you startr needing badly more than mainstream weapons...

This is intended to provide the feeling of equipment progression even when no new equipment is yet researched, or only one or two new things. This is also intended to prevent people running with 8 Rocket Launchers from mission 1 (substitute any other obvious lazy choice for the "Rocket Launcher"). If they still want 8 Rocket Launchers after trying most of the weapons in the first missions --- let them.

[Rei]

I noticed the random equipment patch.  Could you do me a favor -- either disable it by default or make it try to match the equipment to the soldier?  I get in there and the equipment is unworkable -- say, a shotgun in the hands of someone with no heavy weapons skill who would make a great sniper.  It may speed up testing a bit, but will cause problems for anyone playing a serious game.

[Mattn]

this is only for newbies - you can always deactivate this function in the gameplay options

[Rei]

Hmm.  Would there be interest in me making this function smarter, then?  An algorithm something along the lines of:

Takes all of your rocket launchers, one by one, and gives it to the person with the highest "high explosives" skill.
Same for sniper rifles.
Same for flame throwers.
Same for assault guns.

By then, everyone should have their hands full.  It then passes out ammo corresponding to their equipment, put into the fastest-accessible places (belt, holster).  

It then passes out secondary weapons in the same manner as primary -- putting them in the fastest to access place that's still open, matching them to skills, and going in order from SMG, Shotgun, Pistol, Knife, stopping when everyone has a secondary weapon.

It then does the same for secondary weapon ammo.

It passes two grenades to everyone.

It lastly puts armor on everyone, in order of weapon range (those with the shortest-range weapons get the best armor).

That should give a pretty reasonable, balanced team.  Is there interest?

[Bandobras]

Hmm.  Would there be interest in me making this function smarter, then?

Sure! Just make sure it is not worse in other respects (after it is tested and improved, etc.), because it is also used for generating equipments for aliens. E.g. it should be as random as the one currently in game, or the alien teams will become boring. Your description suggests you think about someting less random, so perhaps split it off for the initial equipment? But newbies deserve a surprise from time to time, too, e.g. dual-wielded pistols for one of their initial soldiers.

A way for keeping the randomness and other minor tweaks (e.g. that Assault Rifle rarely appears with an SMG, or primary and secondary tachyon weapons for the same alien) intact is to exchange the skills between soldiers after the weapons are assigned. But this is not easy to code...

By then, everyone should have their hands full.

A bit boring, at least for aliens, everybody gets a primary weapon...

It then passes out ammo corresponding to their equipment, put into the fastest-accessible places (belt, holster).

A problem here, because you won't fit a sidarm into the holster if there is already ammo, and no knife or plasma blade into the belt if the ammo is in the most obvious spot there... I'm also not sure if the XCom 1 setup that reloading takes constant time is not a good idea (nobody answered on the IRC two times I asked about that...)

Stopping when everyone has a secondary weapon.

Again a bit boring, isn't a guy with a pistol and a grenade a valid setup for some maps. And isn't such an alien a nasty surprise?

It lastly puts armor on everyone, in order of weapon range (those with the shortest-range weapons get the best armor).

Nice idea, I didn't think of that.

Anyway, good luck, I guess your code will be better at least for human soldiers and I'm curious how you will do that and I will surely learn from that...

[Rei]

I'm going to be a bit busy for a while, so it may be a bit before I can get to this.

P.S. - I still haven't figured out why you were chewed out on IRC last night, nor why they said that your English wasn't very good.  As a native English speaker, I had no clue that you weren't one.  As someone who has actually taken the time to try and learn other languages (I'm minimally conversational in Japanese), I have a great deal of respect for anyone who can become as fluent as you.

[Bandobras]

Thank you very much for your support.

And don't get put off. We are humans, we err, but the project is still a lot of fun and there is space in it for everybody. I've come to the conclusion I just  don't have to try and discuss with people with which I'm just incompatible for whatever  reasons. We can do our work separately and let project admins decide how to put it together.

Fortunately our project admins are persons with which I can discuss and we learned to respect each other, in particular I learned to respect their lack of time for the project and for me (what a pity they don't work on the project full time ). And there are other really nice people on IRC and the forum. That is enough.

[Bandobras]

[...] An algorithm something along the lines of:

Takes all of your rocket launchers, one by one, and gives it to the person with the highest "high explosives" skill.[...]

Karen, are you still planning on doing this? If not, I have a simple idea based on Monte Carlo and swapping skills between soldiers and I hope I can implement it quickly. It should also work well with balanced initial soldier teams patch I'll do before that.

[Rei]

I'm too busy to work on it.  Go right ahead.  

[Bandobras]

Thank you. Actually, the soldier stats are already mostly balanced in a quite an interesting way, so I may start now. I will be glad if you could test my changes, comment, perhaps look at the code, when it's complete. I've already impemented your idea about assigning armor to close weapons guys, to an extent.