No Saves in Battlescape Wastes 3 Days of my life!

[Tobeus]

Okay guys, before I rant, I really want to say that I love this project and have been playing for several months now.  I love this game and have found myself really enjoying the new look/feel as compared to the old-school originals that I fell in love with so many years ago.

Now the rant...I get that we want to feel like our troops are on the battlefield risking their lives and whatnot, and I've had fun with that so far.  It makes the game more challenging.  However, I started a terror mission 3 days ago on my home computer with the Mansion map, which if you haven't played it is freaking enormous.  I loved the idea at first and thought, wow, what a time I'm going to have with so many layers and such a huge map.

I played this map for hours, and then decided to go to bed at O-Dark-thirty in the morning.  No problem, just leave the game running.  I came back after work the next day and played for a few hours more before retiring.  Same problem, no saves, so I had to keep the game running.

Next morning, Wednesday, is a normal work-from-home day, and I'm working from home, but needed to turn the sound off so I can use my computer for work tasks without the sounds blasting all day long, so I go into options and turn the sound off.  Today, after finishing my duties, when I turn the sound on, CRASH!  The game crashes and now I'm really not happy with the fact that there is no save games in battlescapes.

I really don't think it is not worth having to keep the game open for hours just to loose all of your progress because of a bug (which I can live with the bug since it is not a commercial game and all) in order to make it "FEEL" more realistic.  Just let the player decide whether to "cheat" and turn on the save games in battlescape, or maybe we could set up a save game that is attached to a permanent save spot in the game, and if you want to continue where you left off, it wipes that game so you can't cheat.  I really don't care if people want to cheat to make themselves feel better since they would only be cheating themselves.  But for sanity's sake, PLEASE consider making at least some kind of "continue" save in the battlescape so as to not hold our computers hostage and waste our time.

Just my opinion.

-Tobeus

[Visitor]

I am afraid that while it was already talked about in the past, general decision was to not implement any in-battle save feature - most people can finish most battles in up to one hour (yes, including mansion map) of really careful movement, taking time to think etc (in fact, I am surprised how one can continually play one battle longer than a couple of hours) and save right after - thus making the option kind of demanding in effort for little gain it provides.

[korda]

Problem is not lack of saves but map being way too big and complicated IMHO. I've beaten it pretty fast yesterday (still two hours is a bit of time) but only because aliens weren't hiding inside structures. Also I once played on very similar mansion (the main building and some tunnels were the same) but much smaller, I wonder if it was randomly generated or simply some parts where reused making this map, maybe reducing maximum map size in generator is enough?

I think map that big shouldn't be in game, or at least there could be a option to disable the biggest maps, if someone doesn't feel like spending few hours on battlescape (for example if someone is playing 2-3 hours daily and wants to be sure that he will manage to finish his battles).

Also because of huge number of aliens automission was a defeat every time, so this won't help too.

There is other problem too, because someone put a LOT of work into that map, so throwing it out wouldn't be nice thing to do...

(just to clarify: I don't mind big maps like the one in which harvester landed in fields but this map is big in all dimensions with many layers, rooms, tunnels making it much bigger in terms of time needed to cover whole map)

[H-Hour]

Discussed to death. You want it, you code it.