Design: Soldier stats

[Hoehrer]

Small comment on current "special" skills. See base/ufos/weapons*.ufo [1] and search for "skill" to see what weapon is made better by what skill (e.g "close", "heavy", "assault", "precise", etc...)


@PsyWarrior: as mentioned in my first post in this thread, just look at the  base/ufos/medals.ufo [1] file. There are not only the rank-names defined bt also the requirements for these ranks.

Werner

[1] The SVNview service seems to be down currently.

[Malick]

I see very nice ideas and news.

Regarding ranks, I agree that it's better to keep them simple. Four or five ranks, not more, and all must be quite different.

Private/Rookie
Sergeant/Squad Leader
Lieutenant
Captain
Commander/Colonel (make this one very rare, why not unique ?)

Regarding "medals", I don't know how you wish to implement them yet, but I think it's a very good idea. Even if they do not give any bonus to the soldiers, it allows to give them a character and a story. What I'd really like to see implemented is a little file for each soldier. For example, a soldier right now has a name, a rank and a set of variables reflecting his abilities. Maybe, adding a little zone where we can input some text could add to the atmosphere.

Or an editable log: "On April 23rd, 2084, was promoted to Sergeant after killing 3 aliens during a dangerous mission. On June 2nd, 2084, was awarded Earth Defence Medal for Heroism on the field. On June 5th, 2084, was heavily wounded during a mission, transfered to hospital for a 16 days healing period."

On the other hand, I do not know how hard such a thing could be to code...

Malick

[PsyWarrior]

Yes, I do like the direction that this is heading - the more immersion, the better. Enterable text fields may be a little too much, as there's a good chance that over 5-6 bases you're going to have quite a lot of troops...

But I do definately like the idea of the medals, and a little personnel file (the log of past events is a good idea) would be welcome. It would make you a little more attatched to your minions, and would be a good place to show off the medals.

Name-
Rank-
Stats...

Awards...

Events...

Incidentally, I picked up quite a lot of experience making rank insignias and commendations (medals, essentially) for my clan. I custom design everything, and they are unique. If / when it's needed, I'd be happy to photoshop some insignias and medals for you (since I can't code/model/anything).

@Hoehrer: Ah, roger that. Looks like Sourceforge is malfunctioning at the moment, though.

-PsyW

[Malick]

Well, considering that an enterable text field shouldn't be more than a string of characters, it shouldn't be too much, IMHO. I agree otherwise that it could increase the size of the saved files, but's that shouldn't be too great a problem. Oh well, that's just my thought after all. Coders might know better  :roll:

I should put my self back to learning C++, damn it !

Malick

[Hoehrer]

But I do definately like the idea of the medals, and a little personnel file (the log of past events is a good idea) would be welcome.

Just for the record, we already have some sort of a log file (a global one and not that fancy yet). Promotions and deaths of soldiers are already reported with name, rank and time. As well as construction messages, mission-start/end and some more.

Werner

[Hoehrer]

Incidentally, I picked up quite a lot of experience making rank insignias and commendations (medals, essentially) for my clan. I custom design everything, and they are unique. If / when it's needed, I'd be happy to photoshop some insignias and medals for you (since I can't code/model/anything).

The medals will not be needed until we have a sane medal system (which will not happen in the next time), so we don't know yet what medals will be needed. Ranks already exist, but they are generated from 3D-models (see trunk/base/pics/hud/rank* - i'm working with blender/gimp here).
But we are short of artists anyway, so if you do know how to do other things as well (mainly textures, backgrounds, interface-design, etc...) please contact me or mattn.

Werner

[PsyWarrior]

Regrettably, I can't texture because I never put the time in to learn to do it...

I'm always around if you need commendations, awards, logos. I'd love to do some interface stuff, but I don't have the time to get into that right now (it's a lot of work to design interfaces that match what another designer has done / even more work to design the whole interface)... By the time I have time to do it, you probably won't need it any more :roll:

I like the rank insignias, they are unique, and I always prefer custom-designed stuff to people just ripping / copying US / Generic Ranks...

Apologies for the off-topicness.

-PsyW