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1

Discussion / Re: An Open Letter to the Developers

« on: September 06, 2013, 03:08:50 pm »

Life is hard, you know.

but shouldn't the hard part be the strategy, instead of using the interface?

Right off, maybe, put some armor on that and it takes time to equip, if yer just buying decoys then yeah.

even with equipping all those items its alot faster than repairing. fully equipping a ship doesn't take more than 2 days. repairing takes over a week easily.

But the value of your workshops is their ability to produce items you can't buy on the open market (ie - fabricating items no one's ever produced before).

then it might be better to not have a workship and engineers at the beginning of the game - another point to make it easier for newbies.

How many games do you play that give you numbers during an encounter?  There is often an abstraction of the fight.

yes and that's ok. xcom also didn't give numbers. but in UFOAI, when i lose a fight, i only get the information this information. i don't know how close i was to killing the UFO (therefore i don't know if i should send another fighter after it) or if my weapons had any effect at all. or if the long range weapons were of better use than the short range weapons. when i win the fight i don't know if it was pure luck (maybe the ufo does much damage on one hit but didn't hit often) or not. XCOM paused the game when a fight began and then let me see the progress. that was sufficient information to take decisions. i think in XCOM it was too easy to escape an UFO btw. of course it would be best, if a damaged vehicle loses speed.

anyways, i'll just come back next year or so, and see if i like later versions better =)

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Discussion / Re: An Open Letter to the Developers

« on: August 05, 2013, 10:42:36 pm »

That's my error though.

yes that's the point: it is too easy to make errors concerning soldier movement. especially for newbies.

You don't have to cheat, you know.

it doesn't even feel like a cheat, because it's so obvious. and no, they don't repair fast enough. i had 2 fighters and while i waited for one of them to be repaired i lost serveral ufos until i decided to just sell and rebuy one. maybe that also changes with the new pace in 2.5, but it's still a problem that selling and buying is a fastrepair.

Hit the slowest speed button just before you engage, 5 seconds  I think.

i did that, but i still didn't know what happened. i have no clue about craft distances or damages done. i need numbers.

Options -> Gameplay -> Confirm Actions -> Moving Only (Setting Yes will ask you to confirm when shooting as well as moving)

that sounds painful. i have enough "are you sure you want to do this?" in my windows. i don't need it in games too. an automatic highlight on mouseover would be perfect. this is not the highest priority and i assume it would take some time to implement. but definitely a very nice to have.

If you're looking for a production economy, 2.5's changes are probably not what you expect.

not like xcom had, that was just stupid. but it should be cheaper to produce something myself compared to buying it on the open market.

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Discussion / Re: An Open Letter to the Developers

« on: August 04, 2013, 05:06:26 pm »

Hello and thanks for taking the time to read this.  Thanks for making this game on your own time and resources.  While I would like nothing more than to claim that I registered to thank and praise, I have to admit I want to humbly submit some criticisms.  I'm just a gamer, nobody important, and much of what I say below are simply my personal opinions, not truths.  So you are welcome to take what I said with a grain of salt or ignore them entirely.  Discussion of differences is a healthy part of any community and I hope you all understand that regardless of the level of criticism, I will do you no wrong and hope you continual successes in the future.

i can only second this. i am only posting improvement suggestions for good games. othere are simply not worth it.

i've been watching this project with great interest for a long time. i also try to play it every now and then, but i never keep playing much longer than the end of the first month, because the interface is so cumbersome. i loved xcom and i am grateful for every remake. but maybe you could put a little higher priority to make playing the game easier. i'm not talking about the difficulty level, i am just talking about the interface. some of my issues may already be solved, but i couldn't find information for such hotkey or similar. my last try just ended (version 2.4, around may 16th game time, was fed up with aircraft management and air combat). ok, so here it goes:

better highlight active soldier in battlescape - i often moved the wrong one
"next soldier" hotkey in battlescape and an option to set a soldiers turn finished (so he won't turn up again when i hit next soldier)
hotkey to deactive reserved time units for active soldier, or let me use the action that the units have been reserved for, without cancelling the reservation first
show grid in battlescape, i often moved to the wrong space
Show the movement path that my soldier will take before i click
add soldier information (stats etc) in ufopaedia. i would like to read up there, how movement points are calculated for example.
add melee weapon (knife etc) stats in ufopaedia
add aircraft stats in ufopaedia
option to quickly launch an aircraft for a patrol mission (suggestion: right click on base)
a button to access my soldiers inventory from soldiers menu (something like this is planned i think)
remove the repair aircraft cheat. it's alot faster to unmount everything, sell and rebuy the aircraft (suggest to make price depending on aircraft health at least, and remove sold aircrafts completely). this is an interface issue for me, because it is like a fast repair option, that requires many clicks. alternatively speed up ship repair speed by ALOT or add a single click cheat button.
show aircraft health when i can select one for a Mission, and also in the message about won air combats.
show me how the air fight went. i just see "lost a battle" but i have no clue why or how i lost it. this makes fitting aircrafts very frustrating because i have no clue how the air combat goes.
take me to the proper screen when i click a message (for example when i click a research finished message, take me to the lab, when i click a lost combat message, take me to the battle site etc)

some non-interface issues:
it would also be good to add a shipping time when buying anything, like xcom
pricing issues for crafted items have already been discussed and are worked on in 2.5, as far as i read
medikits can heal soldiers quite easily, but when i leave them wounded in combat they take forever to heal (i think also already being worked on in 2.5)
somewhere i read that aircraft armor has unfixable serious balancing issues. why not just take it out instead of letting us waste time with it?