Saving game & replacing units

[Sacrusha]

LOL !? where is the fun of building an experienced squad, selecting the best soldiers, improving each other through missions on certain skills, "training" specialists from average soldiers, etc etc?

This isn't a RTS game, and as you have put it (as being intended), it's a major flaw of any TBS game!

I can provide some insight into the design decisions that were made some years ago - but I need to mention that I have been out of touch with the game for quite a while before checking it out again recently, so those decisions may well have changed.

The problem that had been observed from some other TBS games, was that the games often required you to have perfect wins (in some way or another). Due to this, higher difficulty settings on such games often involved several frustrating save-reload-until-luck-favors-the-player moments. In order to avoid such moments, mid-mission saves were excluded from the game and it was agreed to limit the difference between veteran soldiers and recruits to a reasonable level.

I have not played any recent version except 2.2. In 2.2 while playing on "hard" difficulty I lose somewhat less than 1 soldier per mission on average and am drowning in new recruits*. Almost all of my initial soldiers are dead as of 13 august '84, and except for convoy there was no particularily difficult map.

*I'd be in favor of a minimum and maximum number of recruits that are available at any moment, to avoid running out of soldiers, or drowning in them.

[sirg]

Replacing the soldiers to easy would merge this game into a RTS, where you pop units like popcorn without any worry towards loses.

However, TBS games like this one can have a certain roleplay factor, because you can customize (similar to leveling in a role playing game) your soldiers, give them names and so on. That's why even a checkpoint type of save feature would help alot, alowing harder, longer and more complex missions to be made - which everyone would like.

Maybe it's just me, and I played to much Jagged Alliance and Fallout games, but those small roleplaying elements were quite something.

[Aarontu]

While I would prefer a save feature and optional iron man, I fear the developers decided already against. But what about an autosave evertime you exit battle which gets deleted after loading? I don't think any sane person would abuse this consequently by copying the file.

Could we at least have an autosave feature like this? Autosaving when you exit the game or something?  Like a single combat-autosave we can reload if we have to exit the game or it crashes mid-battle.  In Diablo II, you can't save the game, but it autosaves whenever you exit and then you load your save next time you play.

It's fine with me if it's never implemented, though.  When I started playing X-com, I used load/save during combat a lot until I figured out how to not die all the time.  Now, when I play, I let people die when they die and only save/load when I have to go somewhere or everybody gets blaster-bombed in the Skyranger or something.  I always save before combats so I'm fine without an in-game save (I just hope there aren't any SUPER long missions).

Oh, and I believe this is the greatest open-source game I've ever played, and it's not even finished! 

[Jagger]

I absolutely support the Devs decision on multiple points.

Whilst I agree with the porponents of saving in mission due to lives, well, I have a job, family, etc. I only play when I have the time. It's not a lunch break game, go back to adventurequest.

I think the solution to that is a "Save and Quit" option, with no "Save and Continue". You can leave and come back, without ruining the game (As I believe it would)

In support of the current system:

The dev's did not really make the game for the players, they made it for themselves and for the players who will develop it. They do want regular players to enjoy it too of course, but it's not the main focus.

I save before each mission, I do. If I lose more than say, two people, I load, because I can't handle that much replacing, pisses me off. I still don't want to go back one turn and survive it, I feel it detracts from the game. Oh no, lost my sniper, well that makes it harder, and I'll replace him, hired a guy who's not a sniper? Well I just changed my lineup, and it's forcing me to change tactics slightly, hey, I'm learning how to play better. YAY

It's not so much ironman mode, as it is fun, more realistic consequences, with different priorities. Makes me think "Is it worth loading from before the mission?" Well I lost that one, or lost half my crew, so yes. I lost two, and they're replaceable enough, so no, I'll muscle on.

Ranks don't mean too much atm, that extra TU will help a bit, but it's probably not going mean you will survive when a rookie wont. And a rookie can have a higher, Assault skill, for example, than a soldier trained in assault, These Rookies" are the highest soldiers from armies all over the world, they're rookies within Phalanx, and at fighting aliens. Military training will help, but an army rookie would be nothing compared to the "Rookie"'s you're hiring.

[BTAxis]

I would remind you that one of the reasons (and one of the more important ones) is that in-mission saving is hard to implement. It brings with it a whole family of potential issues (especially maintenance and compatibility) which we just don't want to deal with.

[Tekky]

From reading this thread, I have come to the conclusion that both sides have many valid arguments.

I would suggest the following compromise:

Let the player decide at the start of the game, in the window with the difficulty settings, whether battlescape saves should be permitted or not. This would give both sides exactly what they want.

Of course, nobody can demand that a dev implements such a feature, especially if none of the devs are interested in this feature. However, I hope the devs would at least permit such a patch to be included into the official source code, if someone else were to implement it cleanly. Even if such a feature makes it harder to maintain the source code, I believe that it would be worth it, since this thread has shown that many people want this feature.

[geever]

Battlescape saving is not for discussion. You can make (and maintain) your own mod for yourself, ofc.

-geever

[alexg]

After reading the post i think that we can conclude - Most of the players want the save option, but it just hard to implement.
I'm also agree that it's more fun to have the save option and also to make the battle harder to win.

As i see it the main fun in the game is the battle so if you stay more time in the battle -> more fun.
Few more reasons:
1) You like your charactres and you know their strengths and weaknesses so you dont want to replace them...it's a real tragedy if someone dead. (for me at least)
2) It's too time consuming and not fun to look for a new soldier

I can agree that save during the battle demands smarter aliens and complicated serialization but i think it's worth it.

[Hertzila]

Except if you can save during battlescape, it can and will boil down to a save&load fest. Which, as I understand it, the devs don't like.