feature wishlist of things rather easy to implement

[Elbenfreund]

Heya,

after *ix refuses to let me play ufo i finaly got a snapshot compiled on my win, and I made a list of things that might be helpfull for daily game-work and are easy to implement (at least I suppose so). As most of them are shortcuts and the likes I felt that sf might be the wrong place for this, thats why I post on the board. Enuf talk, here we go:

--cancel button--
we all know the situation. you send some guy somewhere just to notice that you had the wrong one selected. To prevent wasting all you TUs some button (esc?) to stop proceeding with the current action (not undo) might be helpful. basicly it would be the same as recon a new enemy.

--"next-soldier" button / shortcut--
far more important (just for me ?) than switching to the next known enemy I consider having a button for the next soldier. I know you could just do 1-2-3-4-5-6... but thats a pain in the ass compared to "n" or something like that...

--reload/changing inv - TUs tooltip--
would be nice if we could add some info about the TU-consumption for reloads / moving things in the inventory / change weapon to the according tooltip

--"inventory"-button--
also, not realy a thing that saves lives but makes it easier: some keybinding to open and close the inventory

###now some maybe more time consuming improvements###

--loot-list--
as suggested in some other tread some loot-list after finishing a mission would be nice, or at least some message like " the stuff you fund was sold for $$$$$ bucks" because this auto-sellout-feature is realy undocumented and makes the ignorant wonder what happens to those things...

--choose weapon for RF--
I know RF is under construction right now and me as well as everyone else has a lot of ideas how it should work *g* im not going to spoin this tread with em
instead i wanna limit my wishes to the possibility to select a weapon to be use for RF. its very annoying if your close combat / stun soldier always throws the granade he is holding in his left hand (yes, im away of a workaround by going him with one weapon only - but its nothing more than an anoying workaround)

--change soldier order--
as each soldier is given a number from 1-8 it would be nice if one could change this order to form some kind of "groups". like 2 squats: 1-4 and 5-8 - together with the "next soldier" thing this should make live easier I guess...

--direcly exchange items in inv--
maybe I'm just to dumb, if so im sorry. but right now its not possible to just "exchance" weapons in the inv, or even the "equip" screen. you have to move the item to a free spot,  to free the soldiers hand, so you can give him a new weapon. Maybe it would be possible to just chance the "location" of those to items without needing a free spot to swap things.
hope I made my point clear, sounds a bit confused but I hope you know what I mean...

--employees salary--
depending on hop important management is suposed to be it might be a good idea to show prices per employee on the hire/fire screen.

--keybindings-screem--
do you think it would be possible that we creatre a keybindings page within the "options" menue ?

--continue-button--
especially at the beginning of some maps (e.g. dam) the first to round basicly are just getting your folks into position. maybe some "continue path" button could help here. Like if you click some place out of reach, it remembers this order so you can continue to go there, if nothing interrupts of cuz, with just one more click.

ok, I guess thats enough for now. If I left anything unclear or doubtful please feel free to say so. Im not sure about all those keybindings, if its "just" editing some files without need to realy dig into the code I might be able to do this as well if someone points me into the right direction.
Hope to have helped improving this great project, keep up the good work, Eric.

[Mephisto]

I like the idea of a "continue-button" and a stop-all-actions-key

[Merion]

I like most of the ideas and find them useful.

Especially the "abort action"-button and the keybinding of the inventory (possibly to the letter "I"  :wink: ) would be real time- and trouble-savers!

[Zako]

I like the ideas with the "loot-list". I didn't know what happened to the stuff my soldiers picked up until i read it here I think the weapons should be put in the storage and then be sold if they are not needed

An abort action button would also be nice, and an abort mission function (maybe like UFO: EU, get your soldiers in the dropship and choose abort). It could be useful if things go badly and you don't want to lose all soldiers (have them shot or abort the mission).

[Elbenfreund]

hey !

im not sure if this is what you are looking for. But you actualy can abort a mission. just do ->options -> abort / retry
but i think all your soldiers are lost then ;( well, at least I never missed a "retreat" feature as im usualy to proud to let the cpu win.... i prefer to retry, retry, ..... retry untill i finaly managed to get a result im ok with, even if it takes ages ... as nowdays when i can hardly cope with those tachyon sniper... grml
enjoy the game, eric

[sirg]

Some of my ideas:

1) Sort/organize soldiers by rank, kills, stats, missions, etc. I would put the top brass first anyway. It is logical to have the best soldiers, or your favourites, first and the lousy ones at the bottom. Give names to squads.

2) I think the undo move feature is cheating. I think you can make a compromise - you could use undo if the actor hasn't fired or detected an alien/civilian. Still feels like cheating though. Better fix the movement interface.

3) Display a summary of the loot at the end of the mission with the option to keep any item, instead of autoselling everything. It's annoying to spend precious TUs for "stealing" alien stuff.

4) Corridors and blast doors for connecting rooms in the base, for better base design. I wouldn't place the power plant just next to the entrance

5) Each craft should have an actor as pilot - more intercepts better flying skills etc.

6) The possibility to take scientists in missions, for .. let's say, hacking an alien system, recovering some tehnology.
The squad should be more diverse, thus there will be less repetitive missions. Think about missions where you have to download the location of an alien base from a crashed UFO's computer, or disable a temporary landed UFO...

[Zako]

Some of my ideas:

2) I think the undo move feature is cheating. I think you can make a compromise - you could use undo if the actor hasn't fired or detected an alien/civilian. Still feels like cheating though. Better fix the movement interface.

An undo move is cheating, but a stop button that cancels whatever the soldier i doing at the moment (walking somewhere because I've clicked wrong for example) would be useful.

5) Each craft should have an actor as pilot - more intercepts better flying skills etc.

Mabybe have pilots as a special category in the employment screen?

6) The possibility to take scientists in missions, for .. let's say, hacking an alien system, recovering some tehnology.
The squad should be more diverse, thus there will be less repetitive missions. Think about missions where you have to download the location of an alien base from a crashed UFO's computer, or disable a temporary landed UFO...

I think they come along afterwards, when the situation is not as dangerous. Still, I like the idea of non-combat personell, it could make the game more challenging as you have less soldiers and at least one guy who isn't very good at fighting.

[kracken]

--cancel button--
we all know the situation. you send some guy somewhere just to notice that you had the wrong one selected. To prevent wasting all you TUs some button (esc?) to stop proceeding with the current action (not undo) might be helpful. basicly it would be the same as recon a new enemy.

I really do agree with that. I would think the right mouse button is a good choice for cancelling action, because each time I made a bad move, I click on the right mouse button as if it could change something... but it doesn't !

[kable]

--cancel button--
we all know the situation. you send some guy somewhere just to notice that you had the wrong one selected. To prevent wasting all you TUs some button (esc?) to stop proceeding with the current action (not undo) might be helpful. basicly it would be the same as recon a new enemy.

I really do agree with that. I would think the right mouse button is a good choice for cancelling action, because each time I made a bad move, I click on the right mouse button as if it could change something... but it doesn't !

I'd like left click to complete the current move, right click to cancel.  Don't mind about giving orders to other soldiers while the first moves, I'd rather have an easy way to 'turbo-speed' the current move then make another.

[sirg]

Regarding point 6) - bringing non-combatants, like scientists into missions, I say.. think about missions in SF series, like Star Trek, or Stargate. In real life, a squad is made of specialized people (or multispecialized), so it's logical to have someone good with alien devices, or explosives or a medic to bring along.

I think they [scientists] come along afterwards, when the situation is not as dangerous.

Well, the idea is to have some interesting missions in which the scientist you brought along has to do something underfire, like planting a tracking device on a landed UFO, or disabling a forcefield, whatever. Don't expect some grunts to know how to operate an alien console at first glance.

X-Com has its roots in Laser Squad, an old game, which was oriented on combat. My opinion is that if you carry only soldiers in missions, after 10 missions or more, the game will get repetitive and boring. The old X-Com managed this by having very large maps. However, if you would need a scientist, a doctor, a xenobiologist, whatever, in some missions (not all) the missions will be much more interesting and less repetitve.

[Zako]

If you read the whole answer to 6) I think it's not too hard to see that I agreed with your idea, but gave a possible explanation to why it isn't that way now.