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Feature Requests / Some suggestions

« on: September 29, 2014, 01:35:21 pm »

Hi everybody,
I think the game is absolutely great and really captured the flavor of the old x-com series!
Here are some suggestions/observations to improve gameplay:

• You should be able to send ships to arbitrary locations on the world map, this way you can scout and eventually find alien ground bases.
• You should be able to make your ships follow UFOs from a safe distance, so you can attack the UFO as soon as it has landed and grab the intact UFO and not just the damaged one, and also be able to follow it to alien ground bases. As an extra gameplay element the UFO could realize that it is being followed and start attacking, or try to flee, maybe even a stealth device for the own interceptors or drones could be possible.
• You should be able to sell live and dead aliens on the market (as well as alien tech), I am sure something like an international weapons company/science community would be interested in stuff like this and they even could start producing alien weapons for the international market after a while. This would somehow more logical than a tiny lab/workshop on the base being able to produce a lot of high-tech stuff, at least for some things.
• After the shotgun and the plasma blaster where great, but then there is no good weapon for close combat, so after a while I just had to change the profession of my close combat soldiers, in skirmish mode there is a double barrel shotgun, but I did not find it (yet? I just finished production of power armor) in the campaign.
• One of the coolest weapons is the grenade launcher, I think it deserves flash, gas and smoke grenades.
• There should be a less steep learning curve in the beginning, I think the first missions, especially after the first month are somewhat brutal.
• Initial base design is far from ideal (the alien containment is right besides the dropship hangar and living quarters are far away, the workshop is on the opposite side of the dropship hangar and you have to defend/take two entry points), maybe there should be an option to assemble the initial base in the campaign instead of using the standard layout.
• Another suggestion (this one will probably much more complicated to implement): What about the possibility to hover over the map first and see the surface (maybe even try to shoot some aliens with an onboard cannon) and choosing a landing site, there could be places where the dropship could land and places, where the team had to go down on ropes or parachutes. I think this would add another tactical element to the missions. If the dropship stays in the air, there could even be some airsupport (not only with the board cannon, but also with visibility like in the base defense missions), of course this would have to be balanced and the AI would need some counter strategy and the ability to adapt to this (e.g. like staying in buildings, being able to shoot in the air...).
• Here are some other observations, I don't know if they are bugs or if I just did not figure it out:
  (1) After a while zero bombs showed up in the equip solders menu, but I was not able to purchase any of them or make them in the workshop.
  (2) I think the magazine in the guns get used up even if the guns are not fired during a whole mission. I did not realize this until I got needlers where ammo is somewhat scarce.
  (3) I was not able to find out what smoke was good for.

cheers,
moebius

my ufoai version is 64bit, 2.5-1~getdeb1