OpenXcom Forum
OpenXcom => Suggestions => Topic started by: moriarty on June 25, 2012, 09:56:33 pm
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okay, this one I already posted in a thread in the "open feedback" part of the forum, but by right it should be here, too:
this is something I'd like to see in the game, because I always thought "how do they fit all that stuff into the skyranger?". come on, really, you manage to kill all the aliens in a "supply ship" type UFO, and within seconds they fit 3 UFO Power Sources, 4 UFO Navigation, 20 Alien Food, 2 Alien Surgery, 141 units of Alien Alloys and 150 Units Elerium-115 in a Skyranger with an 80-item-limit cargo bay? seriously? actually, even worse, the stuff is magically teleported back to your base, hours before your troops ever return!
I'd rather have that handled a bit differently. I guess we have no other way but to assume that all the stuff will fit into one of your transport craft, but perhaps it takes some time to dismantle all the stuff and move it into the transport. My proposal is as follows:
- when the battle ends, the crash site remains, and the game saves the "inventory" of the crash site as well as the inventory of the transport craft: everything that's on the ground stays at the crash site, everything inside the transport and on the xcom soldiers goes in the transport. perhaps once the last alien is killed, you are even informed that okay, this was it, but you may continue to pick up stuff for a few more turns in order to bring more stuff home immediately. then, when the transport arrives back at the base, the actual inventory is checked against a previously saved list. anything on the transport that's "too much" goes into base storage. anything that's missing is replaced by corresponding base storage content. if there's nothing there, you get an error message so you have the option to re-equip before your soldiers fly out to the next battle with empty rifles.
- the stuff that's left at the crash site needs to be picked up by a transport craft. I would like to see an option at the end of the battle to either "go home immediately" or "mop up". the latter would mean that the transport craft stays on site for, let's say, a few hours (might even be different amounts of time depending on the size of the UFO, the amount of stuff left and the number of operatives on your transport). after that time, the crash site inventory is transferred to the transport inventory, the transport leaves, the crash site disappears, everything else happens as above. or you could send a different transport to do the mopping up.
this would add a whole new layer of strategy: defend the crashed UFO until the mopping up is completed. or perhaps deliberately leaving the crash site in order to lure a (bigger?) UFO there and ambush it while it is on the ground.
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I would "fix" it the other way around: when battle ends, just put the skyranger back in the base and pretend that the game did a little fast-forward in time and skipped the boring part of mopping up and travelling back to base... I know I would be happy with that :p
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what? heretic! >:( :o :'( ::) LOL
no, seriously, I think the geoscape action could do with some improving. as it is, most of the actual game-time is spent in the battlescape, and I'd really like to see some more geoscape tactics. plus anything that might help bring some use to the "orphan craft" (firestorm, lightning) would be greatly appreciated. and advanced tactics on the geoscape might just be the way to achieve that. :)
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Dear moriarty, for your information, that kind of salvaging would quickly become very boring for more than 90% of xcom fans. I doubt even you will be patient enough and stay same calm after salvaging of 30th ufo.
This gameplay simplification is quite OK with one "but" - salvaged cargo probably
shouldn't come to the base before transporter returns.
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Volutar, I can see your point. having to send a second team would probably be a nuisance, if it was necessary. that's not what I had in mind, though.
my main point was that the collection of stuff should take some time.
sending a second team to do that would only serve as an optional way - the usual way would be to just tell the transport already on-site to mop up. I don't think that would be boring in any way: you simply click one button. everything else is done automatically, it just takes a little longer than in the original before the transport craft actually returns to the base.
it could add to realism and suspense, though: if you shot down multiple UFOs, you will have to decide whether you:
a) want to take out all the aliens quickly (fly there, kill them, take off without mopping up, immediately flying to the next crash site, kill the aliens, then start collecting stuff) or
b) rather go to one important crash site (fly there, stun a high-ranking alien, mop up and take it to the base, then try to reach the second crash site before it disappears).
I'd like to hear some more opinions on that :)
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I like one aspect of your suggestion, maybe the craft should stay landed for a few mins ( maybe 15-30 mins) whilst your team automatically salvages the ship ( exit to geoscape whilst waiting). Then there would be a chance of a alien ship coming to the aid of its shot down vessel and attacking you whilst your still salvaging. Then you could spawn a defend the wreakage mission where the aliens all attack from within there UFO whilst most of your men are in the original shot down craft. They continue the attack for X amount of turns until they wipe out your squad OR beside to flee to stop you from getting 2 UFOs.
I guess you would need to add one of my earlier suggestions into the Mix.
https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,354.0.html
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luke83, yes, that's what I was trying to suggest :)
my first post might have been overly complicated, because I wanted to give the player the option to "not salvage right now - mop up later".
oh, and I think that 15-30 mins is okay for a small UFO, but for larger UFOs it should take longer - you need to give the aliens some time to send the second UFO, after all *evilgrin*
I was thinking something like "salvageable items" divided by "number of soldiers available". for a Supply Ship (total of 320 loot items, plus about 15 Aliens on veteran difficulty with 7-8 items per alien makes around 130 items, for a total of 450 items) being salvaged by 8 soldiers this would be 56 minutes. does that sound reasonable? it actually sounds too fast for me. perhaps multiply by 2?
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It sounds complicated to me. What with the battlescape debriefing, you get a debriefing before or after mopping up?, what with the scoring?, injured soldiers stay on site and risk to die? together with stunned aliens? So many possible issues... Lots of luck to the guy that wants to program it :p
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So thats a No from Daiky ;)
Simply spawn a second mission using the same basic MAP layout as the first mission, just pick one side of the the original map and add more mapblocks so you can land the new UFO. That covers the debriefing screen.
As for mop up it should be simply , leave with what your troops are carrying OR wait X amount of mins to salvage everything.
Injured soldiers , IF you have a medikit you should automatically stop the bleeding of any injured units, but there health stays the same. If no medikit ,Add message box Warning when you exit to geoscape " Mr Smith could die if you salvage the wreckage" ,Then make your choice.
Stunned aliens , keep stunning them :P
IF you landed in a friendly country , they can send army solders to patrol the perimeter in case of alien retaliation (NPC- Civilians with guns).
Does that cover all the complications ? Now other than Daiky , who can program it 8)
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Injured soldiers , IF you have a medikit you should automatically stop the bleeding of any injured units, but there health stays the same. If no medikit ,Add message box Warning when you exit to geoscape " Mr Smith could die if you salvage the wreckage" ,Then make your choice.
I'd say that critical wounds should be stopped automatically. really, the med kit is a way of fixing these wounds in combat situations. even with only basic medical training, any soldier should be able to stop any bleeding within 5 minutes.
as for the debriefing, the screen would list the aliens killed/stunned etc as usual, but instead of "items recovered" it would list "items on site", along with an estimated time for the salvaging operation. then you get to choose between "salvage now" or "salvage later".
score points for captured alien artifacts should be avoided when they arrive at the base, anyway. :P
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Please say NO to creeping featurism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_creep)!
Salvaging should be simple, without tons of management and "excelent new features".
It is a game, realism should be limited here. How do they fit all that stuff into the skyranger? Who cares!
Player should do missions, research technologies, build facilities, but should not manage boring stuff.
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It simply should be a optional feature, in the original game there was very little strategy to geoscape and i think that needs to be changed.
if i had this option activated it would change the way i build my bases, how many crafts i would need and which mission should i target first.,Also it would spawn a new type of mission , all positives in my mind. Would it be for everyone , No, but its a interesting Idea.
Openxcom needs to be made the same as the original for download, all we are asking for is some special rules to be built in for veteran players to change the style of the game to our own tastes, why bother coding openxcom if you do want special options added, you may as well play the original game in dosbox . The reality is i cant code and i am not sure about Moriarty, so it most likely will never be added anyway :-[.
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precisely, I can't code either. but I'd like for someone to at least create the possibility to make this :) like you said, if we don't make openxcom as moddable as possible, why make it at all?
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A little bump for this thread...
I have to agree that the wreck salvaging should be kept simple. BUT I'd fix that bug (It's illogical, so I think it's a bug) where you can use or sell things from the crashsite before the craft that takes them to base lands.
AND to make it more realistic, maybe adding half an hour / two hours / three hours (depending on the ufo size) to the time before they leave the site would be nice (with the option to abandon the site immediately and take nothing but equipment and things they can take from there in no time). It'd add more tactics to the times when there's one huge ufo probably heading to your base where are no soldiers to defend it, but it'd be almost no burden for the player (he'd just have to think which button click on the last turn before debriefing).
Now I read it again and I'm not sure if it's understandable. Just two options before debriefing:
- stay for some small amount of time and take everything as usual
- abandon the site and don't dismantle the ufo - you'd get just corpses, weapons, artifacts, etc. but no alien alloys and other parts of the UFO like navigation or entertainment panels.
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I have to agree that the wreck salvaging should be kept simple. BUT I'd fix that bug (It's illogical, so I think it's a bug) where you can use or sell things from the crashsite before the craft that takes them to base lands.
Working for businesses in real life that sell things; selling something before they've got their hands on the product is not that usual. In my current job, we often buy parts in for a sale - which means we get the sale first, then buy the part. It might sound odd, but it happens.
Regarding the recovery. When you finish battlescape, do you return to Geoscape with the same clock time? Maybe the geo should return with (n*2)+30 minutes added (where n is the number of turns in the game). Or something like that. Though you'd probably need to be careful to update research, manufacturing, and any other craft flying on the globe.
Personally, I'm happy with the way it was in XCOM, but I'm sure it'd be easy enough to add a "Cleanup" status to the craft that forces them to wait 30m before returning
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Working for businesses in real life that sell things; selling something before they've got their hands on the product is not that usual. In my current job, we often buy parts in for a sale - which means we get the sale first, then buy the part. It might sound odd, but it happens.
Well selling was maybe a bad idea. But it's really odd that you can start researching things you salvaged before they are at the base. If it's intended, why it doesn't work with transfers too? :)
Regarding the recovery. When you finish battlescape, do you return to Geoscape with the same clock time? Maybe the geo should return with (n*2)+30 minutes added (where n is the number of turns in the game). Or something like that. Though you'd probably need to be careful to update research, manufacturing, and any other craft flying on the globe.
Yes you do. There are few ways to handle this:
- the one this is handled now. Mission takes no time on geoscape. That's weird, but missions are very fast (assuming you do a large scout mission on approx. 6 turns) - it's about 3 minutes. And that can be probably ignored on geoscape.
- you could move the timeforward after mission (or better after each turn - then you could easily recognize saved games). But what about the rest of geoscape? If there are some aircrafts on move or in fight, if there is ufo heading towards your base... Would you move those corresponding to the time that pased, or would you just "stop" them in time? The former could be very dangerous for player, and the latter is illogical.
- a "proper" solution is maybe to keep the time before mission, but wait with the skyranger for about turns*30sec on ground with status "on mission". It could be maybe a little weird but because the player is no "entity" in-game (like general or something), you don't have to explain it in any way so it shouldn't look weird.
Well this was another long post, sorry. I'm happy with the way it's now too, but little tweaks are never bad :)
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- a "proper" solution is maybe to keep the time before mission, but wait with the skyranger for about turns*30sec on ground with status "on mission".
this.
IMHO, that's the only correct way. you can't just fast-forward the geoscape, because things might happen in the meantime: there are occasions where a skyranger reaches a crash site while an interceptor is tailing another UFO, waiting for it to reach land to shoot it down. if you just skip forward, what happens in the meantime? there could be decisions made.
For me, it sounds right that the transport craft should stay on the ground for (battlescape turns * 30sec) in an "on mission" state, followed by another (to be determined) period of time for the salvaging operation.
For the most part, this won't really be noticeable because geoscape time really goes by quite quickly. But it opens up a few options for modding...
I think items shouldn't arrive at the base before the transport does. That was a bad hack in the original, resulting from an over-simplification, resulting from the fact that geoscape and battlescape were two separate games (with separate executables!) that just passed values back and forth. The battlescape.exe simply told the geoscape.exe that xy was salvaged, and the geoscape.exe simply stuffed it into base storage.
This also doesn't really affect the game noticeably in terms of gameplay, it only adds a bit of realism. Plus it opens up another option for modding...
...I'm still dreaming about a mod that makes transport craft more vulnerable, with UFOs retaliating against them in the air (i.e. on the way to an alien base) as well as on the ground (i.e. while the salvaging operation for a downed UFO is still running). ;D
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Well selling was maybe a bad idea. But it's really odd that you can start researching things you salvaged before they are at the base. If it's intended, why it doesn't work with transfers too? :)
Fair point. That was fixed in XCOM:Apoc, and shouldn't be that difficult to implement (he says without looking) here ;)
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Adding a frustrating, useless delay in between finishing a battle and getting the rewards for it, is improving the game experience ? I must be having another idea of a good game experience :p
So I assume when you guys play the game, after you finished a battlescape you actually make rule for yourself to wait for X hours before you let yourself research/sell items you salvaged? Because it's soo much more fun? ???
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Sorry about my rant, but I played original xcom this weekend, and I found it very enjoyable to be able to sell and research things before the skyranger returned.
It's like: I did a good thing, I want a cookie now :p
It's not because it's unrealistic it's a bad thing: In chess you can move towers, that's not realistic. In TFTD you can throw grenades under water...
If it's for a greater mod, I can understand it.
Another example is, if you can instruct a skyranger to unload it's salvaged items in another base than it's homebase (for example if you have a base with a lot of storage space, you immediatly let the skyranger drop it's stuff there, instead of having to drop it at home base and transfer it). Then you can't have the items automatically put in the base.
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It's not because it's unrealistic it's a bad thing: In chess you can move towers, that's not realistic. In TFTD you can throw grenades under water...
That's perfectly legit if it flies no more then two meters away and blows up your face afterwards :D
But really... The fact is, that it might be simpler to be able to use the items like in original. But it's much more realistic to have the aircraft with the items wait there for sime time. Maybe make it optional?
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It's realistic to sell items you don't own, as pmprog says. However the fysical transaction will take place when the skyranger returns. It's just the paperwork and the payment you do beforehand, while the skyranger is still in the air.
It's also realistic to start up the research of an item you salvaged, when you give the order to start the research, what happens is that the labs or alien containment are prepared. The scientists are paged to come back from their holiday, because they have to start working, the coffee-machine is booted..... This all happens while the skyranger is flying back, and when it lands at the base, the item/alien is transfered to the lab/alien containement and actual research starts.
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I just wanted a new mission type :P
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It's also realistic to start up the research of an item you salvaged, when you give the order to start the research, what happens is that the labs or alien containment are prepared. The scientists are paged to come back from their holiday, because they have to start working, the coffee-machine is booted..... This all happens while the skyranger is flying back, and when it lands at the base, the item/alien is transfered to the lab/alien containement and actual research starts.
You made me laugh. But what's more, it's actually true! :)
What do you think about pinning the skyranger on the crashite for some time? That's the other thing we were discussing here.
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Adding a frustrating, useless delay in between finishing a battle and getting the rewards for it, is improving the game experience ? I must be having another idea of a good game experience :p
So I assume when you guys play the game, after you finished a battlescape you actually make rule for yourself to wait for X hours before you let yourself research/sell items you salvaged? Because it's soo much more fun? ???
Personally, I'm happy with the way it was in XCOM
I'm not saying it's "improving" or more "fun"; but it's more consistant - you have to wait for the craft to return before you can rearm/refuel it.
XCOM:Apoc also forced you to bring back recovered items before you can research them, but from watching MetalCanyon's Let's Play, bringing the stuff home first makes very little game difference. Considering you can fly home in a second if you speed up time.
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I actually (try to) make myself wait until the skyranger lands, because I always considered the item-teleporting a bad hack :)
(of course I am prone to the occasional premature selling... especially towards the end of the month, when I'm not sure if the skyranger will be back before the end-of-month calculations, and I need those extra 2 million dollars to pay for my huge army of scientists...)
seriously, while selling stuff you don't have (yet) is common in actual economics, I don't think it has a place in this game. to use that as an explanation is just a cover-up of something not being done properly: namely, the transfer of items from a battlescape to a transport and then to a base.
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to use that as an explanation is just a cover-up of something not being done properly
Obviously the Gallop brothers agreed because they added it to Apoc; but when designing and writing a game, one of the problems is feature creep; and a question that you always need to ask yourself is "Does this add anything to the game?". If it doesn't, cut it! Even if it makes things a little less "accurate".
Games are supposed to be fun. I don't play most RPGs because they require you to "grind" repetitively in order to level up so you can progress. I'd happily pick up Street Fighter, or Mario Strikers (if I still had my Wii), etc.
I suppose you could argue XCOM is kind of like an RPG, but they give enough variation to prevent it from just grinding UFO's to level up.
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I'd probably better not mention that in original xcom an injured soldier gets removed from the craft and starts recovering even before the craft has returned :p
Also, don't soldiers in real battle get their promotion after they succesfully got back to base? You know, their transport can still be intercepted meanwhile :p
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You know, their transport can still be intercepted meanwhile :p
Oh man, you just give me a great idea ---- ambush!
Give the aliens some ambush AI. They send out a small ship to just hover around one of the bases, and after the battle, a much larger ones appear. Might seem a little evil though, but it'll make the presence of a base more obvious
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Oh man, you just give me a great idea ---- ambush!
Give the aliens some ambush AI. They send out a small ship to just hover around one of the bases, and after the battle, a much larger ones appear. Might seem a little evil though, but it'll make the presence of a base more obvious
that is a) a mod and b) precisely the kind of stuff I was trying to prepare for the whole time :)
seriously, there's a whole lot of untapped potential for geoscape tactics, but that requires some preparation, namely realistic handling of cargo. who cares if your transport is shot down on the way home if the loot has already been teleported there... with all the money from the loot, you can buy two new transports. including the soldiers. but if you actually need to worry about getting home... of course, it would be downright mean if the transport was simply blown out of the sky, but if the UFO just forced you to land, it would even give you the chance to counter-ambush: go and sweep out a tiny UFO with a transport full of elite troops, trying to coax the larger UFO into coming down to get you, then taking that one out as well...
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This will need one new thing in game, UFO can be aggressive. you cant run way from combat because UFO chase your plane :)
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that would be nice. it would have to be used sparingly, though... just imagine starting a game and having all your aircraft shot down within a few days... terrible.
perhaps it will only be triggered if the xcom troops are too successful... kind of like a special retaliation-type mission.
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Just wanted to Bump this old thread, 2 years on but there are still some topics i would like to discuss again now version 1.0 is out and the modding community is here.
To Recap:
Transport craft remains on ground for X amount of secs to alloy salvage to take place ( allows for new mission type).
Alternately, Salvage team could be dispatched from base OR friendly nation to salvage UFO ( creates a different type of mission possibility)
Give AI ability to intercept our planes ( both Xcom and friendly nations), once again, more mission types.
More Active geoscape with friendly and non friendly nations to be active on geoscape...governments, gangs, alien, civilian...a whole world of possibility.
Side effects:
Stock arrives once you return to base
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I'd say that the only thing "fair" and that would not be "nofun" is that instead of having the goods magically teleported back to home base, ANY item on the floor at mission end (then also dropped items by Xcom troopers) is instead automatically filed for *transfer* to the Mop Team home base.
That would follow the rules for tranfers between bases already in place, maybe with extra time due to the mop up.
I guess that should include injured troopers as well as live captured aliens.
Mechanics could be following:
- Skyranger pinned to the crash site for ~15/30 min (minimum regroup time, site setup for the mopupteam and non-emergency takeoff)
- Crash site disappears at take off and in Skyranger's home base you can see the goods being tranferred in the "transfer" management panel...just like it was sent from another base, but it isn't...it was 'sent' from the crash site.
- Leaving Skyranger is NO LONGER FORCED TO GO TO HOME BASE DUE TO LOW FUEL (this was a cheap trick in the original to avoid having to handle inventory and team status if one wanted to go on 2+ consecutive battlescapes w/o returning to home base).
Of course inventory is updated right after debriefing from UFO recovery, and so is the team...a consecutive mission would require to use a reduced inventory.
Pros:
- no boring management of mop up of crash sites
- no useless management of transport crafts (which already isn't there for transfers between bases).
- a little bit of consistency, a little bit of value added to geoscape (a VERY little bit), adds a little bit of depth
cons:
- I guess requires a little bit of programming ;D
- Not sure it is worth the shot of messing with the code.
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not sure about the 15/30 min waiting but the rest i like
+1 :)
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I guess that should include injured troopers as well as live captured aliens.
[...]
- Leaving Skyranger is NO LONGER FORCED TO GO TO HOME BASE DUE TO LOW FUEL (this was a cheap trick in the original to avoid having to handle inventory and team status if one wanted to go on 2+ consecutive battlescapes w/o returning to home base).
Of course inventory is updated right after debriefing from UFO recovery, and so is the team...a consecutive mission would require to use a reduced inventory.
very resasonable, I like that approach. the ground time for mop-up operations should be ruleset-configurable, of course... default should probably be 0 to be most vanilla-like...
... of course I would absolutely like it to be non-0, plus I would love to have the possibility of recovery-retaliation missions... maybe something along the lines of "if there is a UFO on a less important mission (scouting, terror, research...) nearby ("within x thousand kilometers"), it will immediately fly towards the site and try land and attack the xcom troops on the ground...
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very resasonable, I like that approach. the ground time for mop-up operations should be ruleset-configurable, of course... default should probably be 0 to be most vanilla-like...
I think that around my proposal the core mechanics are already 'there' in code:
- inventory and team are updated as soon as the mission ends
- loot is transferred to the base in zero time
so , I guess the only 2 thigns that needs tweaking or right out implementation in code are:
- transfer time of the 'looted' goods MAY be non-zero (ruleset determined, will need implementation most prolly)
- skyranger pinned to the crash site for X minutes (ruleset determined, MAY be already partly implemented....takeoff time is NOT zero in openXcom)
Wild guessing the moves on the codebase
- tranfers are already there in code, only thing is that there should be a factory somewhere that spawns a transfer at mission end, following the same rules about distance between bases, but originating from the crash site coords.
Time should be MORE than a simple base tranfer but not "realistic" (it could take MONTHS to demolish an ufo to retrive the alloys ::) ), implying there IS some mop up to do (not only the shipment of goods)
The "more factor" could be ruleset'ed of course, as a factor or a fixed set of ranges (1 day for a small scout, 2 days for a large one, 1 week for a terror ship, etc...). Of course "vanilla mode" makes all there ZEROS
- Skyranger behaviour is already coded and I suspect there is ALREADY a takeoff delay, maybe not retrating from missions thou....and bottom line THIS is really irrelevant in the general terms of my proposal.
All in all, seems feasible from an external point of view with not ALL THAT MUCH tweaking the code, bit I could possibly be grossly mistaken.
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not sure about the 15/30 min waiting but the rest i like
+1 :)
Talking Game time not actual real world time right :P
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It could be full day (or more) of waiting for stuff, in 99% cases it will be 1s of play time. Every craft could have custom salvage time. Longest would be for clearing alien base, then supplyships and battleships and finally small scout that be one hour + delivery time.
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I like the Transfer idea for the new stuff. It's logical, simple and consistent with the game as it is now.
The other stuff... I don't think it would make any difference before the aliens learn to react to your movements and for example attack your craft.
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I should need to clarify a thing thou, I was thinking of pinning the Skyranger (or any other craft) to the crash site for 15/30 min of game time for the troops recovery ONLY.
The scavenging would be done 'offline' by a specialized team and craft which is completely transparent to the player, exactly as it is now for the transfer between bases.
I think I got where one should modify the code to have the materials scavenged "transfer" instead of magically poppin' to the home base.
Methinks the relevant code is here: https://github.com/SupSuper/OpenXcom/blob/master/src/Battlescape/DebriefingState.cpp#L926
Anyway looking at the code, I now understand that my proposal needs A LOT of changes:
- craft is re-equipped instantly as well some lines before the one linked, that should change also.
- team status is consequently updated elsewhere, and that ALSO should be changed.
All in all, definitely NOT trivial. :o
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All in all, definitely NOT trivial. :o
I guess you're right. we should also consider that it would make sense for the player to decide which items are taken into the skyranger directly instead of salvaged by other means. this should be restricted to small (aka equippable) and researched items, obviously.
once you have researched plasma weapons, for example, your soldiers will definitely take the alien's clips (and perhaps weapons) before leaving, lest they have another close encounter on the way home and lack the firepower to deal with it.
so yeah, not trivial at all, but worth it, I'd say ;)
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How about simply putting all the stuff in transfer mode to your base, like the transfer after a purchase? It would be neater if you could decide which base the stuff gets transported to but then you would need an extra menu screen for that.
Thematically it absolutely makes sense that xcom employs some mop up personell that cares for this kind of stuff.
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How about simply putting all the stuff in transfer mode to your base, like the transfer after a purchase?
yes, that is precisely what we are suggesting as a basic mechanism. unfortunately, it is not that simple...
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I guess you're right. we should also consider that it would make sense for the player to decide which items are taken into the skyranger directly instead of salvaged by other means. this should be restricted to small (aka equippable) and researched items, obviously.
once you have researched plasma weapons, for example, your soldiers will definitely take the alien's clips (and perhaps weapons) before leaving, lest they have another close encounter on the way home and lack the firepower to deal with it.
so yeah, not trivial at all, but worth it, I'd say ;)
How about simply putting all the stuff in transfer mode to your base, like the transfer after a purchase? It would be neater if you could decide which base the stuff gets transported to but then you would need an extra menu screen for that.
Thematically it absolutely makes sense that xcom employs some mop up personell that cares for this kind of stuff.
Well, this two things match, we could bring up a menu (like the transfer one) once debriefing ends, selecting target base for transfer and the items transferred.
Same applies to what you would like to put in the skyranger, thou.
But I think it's a bit overkill and detrimental from a gameplay perspective....too much paperwork after mission.
also:
once you have researched plasma weapons, for example, your soldiers will definitely take the alien's clips (and perhaps weapons) before leaving, lest they have another close encounter on the way home and lack the firepower to deal with it.
This implies that the Skyranger is not forced to go back to base with the low fuel trick to make sense(/use)....haven't yet looked in the code but this HAS to be somewhere else and, besides the clips are ALREDY counted and packed after mission so that you can recover bullets based on the actual number of bullets fired and then available in ALL the clips on the battlescape and ship's floor.
All in all, I'd be in favor of only touching the code to have the items not directly added to the base but transferred, this would be the sanest way to go IMHO., and could be kept vanilla simply havinf a transfer time of ZERO:
- Less tinkering with the codebase
- Simple modification in gameplay with no "hassle".
Strictly speaking, it's not trivial but it's far from impossible and MAYBE even close to 'manageable' adding a screen after debriefing and stuff...but I for one would NOT like to have it...it also clashes a bit with 'enforce storage limits', even if in part woulld be playing along ("hey I'm out of storage space...lemme CHOOSE what to plunder from that pesky Small scout recovery!").
So....dunno, maybe I should try forking the codebase and tinker there....but this gotta be really beyond my skills.
ALL of the other thigs being suggested are surely interesting but border EXTREMELY close to feature creepin' in.
Aggressive UFOs for instance are interesting, but they make for a COMPLETELY new game, which could be XCOM but NOT this openxcom....or even reinforcements during an ufo assalut/recovery.....intersting but mostly a chore in the current battlescape mechanics.
Also, say goodbye to your avengers against a battleship if we decide that UFO may pursue your crafts.... ::)
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You would have to 'mark' the items the soldiers brought with them or devise another belonging rule if you don't simply return everything to their homebase straight away. Otherwise even your flares would show up on the mop up transfer list.
Since I am daydreaming anyway, how about missions taking their time on the geoscape, i.e. having the skyranger landed and unavailable for a certain period of time, depending on how many turns the battle took? If that was implemented you could create an option like "collect all carryable stuff into the skyranger" at the end of mission, binding it for another few hours or so.