Geoscape labels and hiding alien transports

[nick87720z]

I had complex situation while on geoscape, where i had potential alien base search point (i could catch exact coordinates only after transport left base, though even with almost fine positioning base doesn't appear several days), two more transport approaching (one already corrected course to possible destionation), and for better aircraft load - 1 scout, 2 harvesters (unclear, which are hunting) and 3 missions with 1 terror (can't wait).

To cope with that i had hercules, two saracens and stingrays (using rarely, if no other mean reachable like lure craft, due to pressure of work) and firebird, which i keep specially for alien base search, staying long on same place.

Problem is that transport ufo are more important for tracking, because there is no events for ufo, disappearing by going to base. For now it needs to be manually tracked by transports. One time i waited about week, just keeping 3 crafts just covering disappearance point, and still not found. After reloading to moment of transport approach, i did it in just a day after by finest aircraft placing transport hide point with full zoom). But it was the only job for moment, now it is way harder. For another base i could not remember exact location, because crafts where busy, and determined it exactly only when catched it taking off, but placing on exact takeoff point seems to need much longer than previous case.

Would be very useful to be able to place custom labels, which either don't have functions unlike crafts, installations or missions, or have just one - send some craft to these coordinates, which acts like for mission, but doesn't trigger any actions on arrival, and craft just stays here. In addition, event system could have special events for ufo hiding and unhiding (different from appearing and disappearing in space), where hiding could automatically add label (which may be manually removed when not needed) and unhiding - just like appearing transport - allow to stop time or just make notification.

There could be more uses for labels, such as drafting objects before actually instantiating, for better planning. Some alternative for draftable objects, which may be created like objects, but don't begin build, unless confirmed.

Edit: Added screenshot with all objectives.

[geever]

Agreed. I plan to add support for custom markers when re-implementing the geoscape rendering.

-geever

[nick87720z]

Waited unless new incoming transport appeared. However, it disappeared at some distance from base, probably because noticed two crafts (empty firebird with saracen) staying here. It approached only after i managed to send saracen from position before it could be detected. Looks like just one craft is enough to detect, as next time single stingray detected it in minutes or hours of game time after barely made it to rendezvous with transport, moment before it entered to another base.
These labels still could be useful, so that next time you know, where transport is heading after course correction.

P.S. Strange - i enabled reply notification for start message, but still did not get notification (though i got it for another threads, from discussions group).
Update: it is ok now - by some reason email ISP allowed two replies to incoming, while others and next where moved to spam before downloaded.