Messages

1

Suggestions / Show how many bases are currently researching something in the research list.

« on: January 18, 2023, 01:30:25 am »

It can be a bit of a pain to start new research topics because you have to remember if you're already researching something elsewhere; and, for repeatable research topics that lead to get-one-frees, you want to make sure you're not researching it more times than there are get-one-frees left to learn.

Currently I use the "new" indicator to remind me what I'm currently researching elsewhere, but this is imprecise (eg. if you start and cancel something you have to remember to re-tag it as new) and prevents me from using it for its intended purpose.  Plus accidentally hitting the "tag all as seen" button can ruin everything.

So I suggest that the "new research project" list indicate which things you're currently researching elsewhere and how many times - perhaps a small red ^(x1), ^(x3) etc. after the research topic in the list of possible new projects, showing how many of your other bases are researching that topic already.

2

XPiratez / Re: Codex Popularity Poll

« on: January 11, 2023, 06:57:43 pm »

Here's my opinion of codices as of M5
Gray: Probably the strongest one in the long run. Offers next to nothing in the early game but makes a much smoother midgame thanks to the Astrosensorium boosting your research.

Do you consider the Shadowtech vehicles early-game?  You can get them very fast if you rush Shadowmasters and Car Thieves.

The Sapphire Jellyfish is a pretty big advantage in the early game because its laser weapon gives you a way to easily deal with heavily-armored opponents.

3

Suggestions / Middle-click vehicle icon in vehicle view to open its encyclopedia entry.

« on: January 10, 2023, 02:20:04 am »

At least in Piratez, a ton of important details about vehicles are hidden in their bootypedia entry.  You'll want to take this into account when equipping them...  but there's no easy way to get there from the vehicle loadout screen.

Or, at least, the most obvious interaction (middle-clicking the vehicle's icon, since that's usually what you do to open an encyclopedia entry) does not work.

So middle-clicking there should probably open the vehicle's encyclopedia entry, allowing you to see its stats.

4

Suggestions / Allow vehicle exchanges between hangers in different bases.

« on: January 09, 2023, 04:10:22 am »

Common annoyance in the early game:

You have two bases, with all their hangers full and no free hangers elsewhere, and want to swap two vehicles between bases.

Currently, you can't do this without a third hanger.

What I suggest allowing is the following:

If you order a vehicle to travel to a base via the map and push the "ship" button, and there's no room for it but there are hangers in use, the game gives you the option to pick a vehicle you want to swap with.

(As part of this, it checks to make sure there will be enough space for each vehicle and its contents at its base after the swap, and rejects it if this check fails.)

If everything is ok and the old vehicle is in its hanger, it takes off towards its new base.  If it's already in the air then it just gets its home base reassigned.

5

Suggestions / Have item search include damage type.

« on: January 07, 2023, 07:22:32 pm »

Often you will want to search through your weapons for a particular type of damage - eg. "I'm about to fight enemies weak to X, what do I have that does that damage?"

Therefore, I suggest that when you use the 'Q' search to filter items, if your search term is an exact match for a damage type, the results should also include any weapons that use that damage type.

This does mean that eg. the results for "laser" will include both everything with laser in their name and anything with the laser damage type, but I think that that's probably a good thing and more useful than the current behavior.

Another, related possibility would be for it to include the skills that go into using a weapon (eg. searching for "throwing" would show all weapons that use throwing, while searching for "bravery" would show all weapons that use bravery.)

6

Suggestions / Left / right buttons on research and manufacture screens to cycle through bases.

« on: January 06, 2023, 07:05:04 pm »

Often you'll want to review what all your bases are doing.  It'd be very useful to have left / right buttons on the research and manufacture screens to cycle through your bases quickly; there's even a bunch of unused space on the top on either side where the buttons could go.

A few other screens could also benefit from this (craft setup, sales, purchases) but research and manufacturing are the most important.

7

Suggestions / Showing which bases have specific items from the vaults screen.

« on: January 06, 2023, 07:02:11 pm »

When you use the vaults screen to see what items you have with the "all bases" button set, it doesn't actually seem to tell you which hideouts have those items.

Also, at the moment, clicking, middle-clicking, or right-clicking on an item in the vaults screen does nothing.  There's a lot of useful things it could do (being able to see the description, research, or uses with one of those clicks would be nice, too.)

But it could be particularly useful to devote one of those types of clicks to opening a window that shows you the distribution of an item between all your bases, ie. you click or right-click on an item in the vaults screen and it shows a list of bases that have that item and how many of each they have.  Right now you have to flip through them all to find out where it is.

8

Suggestions / Making custom deployments more durable.

« on: January 04, 2023, 10:04:07 pm »

Currently a custom deployment is lost if you add anyone to a vessel, forcing you to recreate it entirely.  This is a serious pain for what is otherwise an awesome feature - it means that, among other things, just having a soldier injured means you need to redo the entire custom deployment when you readd or replace them, every single time!

It would be extremely nice if custom deployments were retained instead - remembering the locations of anyone who died or was removed from the craft, and putting anyone else who is added in those locations.  This might occasionally result in custom deployments getting shuffled or the like, but it'd be better than losing them entirely.

Another option would be to have each spot in the deployment assigned a number in the order of units in the craft.  This would mean that losing or rearranging your soldiers could shuffle the deployment, but, again, I think it would be more useful.

A third option is to let users save custom deployments the same way we save loadouts...  and to let users modify custom deployments from the embark screen immediately before a battle.  Currently it seems like it's only possible to modify custom deployments in your base, which doesn't really make sense; the soldiers should be able to assume positions immediately before landing, allowing the user to choose from a list of their saved deployments right before battle depending on what they think they're going into.  One advantage to this (especially if combined with the above) is that if the troops end up shuffled or in the wrong places, the user can just click to quickly check their deployment before battle and fix it.

EDIT:  Someone else pointed out to me that you can make permanent ship-class-wide deployment layouts from the bootypedia view.  This is much more useful, but is hard to discover.  Perhaps tweak the interface to allow access to both the ship-specific and class-wide view from the ship menu somehow?

9

XPiratez / Re: What counts as "provoking" a faction?

« on: January 04, 2023, 02:33:50 am »

If you're asking about what counts as "provoking" the ninjas in a way that makes them start harassing you, it's a specific series of quests and resulting research flags unique to them.

Specifically, there's a chain of missions involving the Narlocks and, eventually, the ninjas.  Each mission in this chain unlocks another one, eventually leading to an outright war with the ninjas.  If you don't want to have anything to do with the ninjas, don't get involved in any missions involving them or the Narlocks.

10

XPiratez / Re: A thread for little questions

« on: January 04, 2023, 12:42:54 am »

Dynamite is also extremely effective at dealing with turrets.

(And everything else.)

11

Suggestions / Changing equipment from the basewide soldier list should update vessels.

« on: January 03, 2023, 08:39:04 am »

Currently, if you change a soldier's equipment from the "inventory" option in the base (the one that lets you equip them directly from the base itself rather than having to first transfer items to a vessel), the equipment isn't transferred to their vessel - not until / unless you remove them from that vessel and then re-add them.  If you send them out on a mission without doing so, and the vessel didn't already contain the needed equipment, they will be unequipped on the mission.

I'm unsure if this is an oversight, a bug, or if it's as-intended, but either way, if you use the base interface to change a soldier's equipment, it should probably update the gear on their current vehicle, as if you'd removed them from it and then re-added them.  The current behavior is, if nothing else, unintuitive - it took me a while to realize precisely why soldiers weren't showing up with the gear I assigned them.

12

Suggestions / Re: In the unit equip screen, allow changing pages while holding an item.

« on: January 03, 2023, 07:41:18 am »

I use those, too, but that requires replacing the entire setup.  Sometimes you just want to move one item from one person to another, not their entire equipment layout.

13

Suggestions / In the unit equip screen, allow changing pages while holding an item.

« on: January 02, 2023, 07:12:09 pm »

Only when outside of combat, obviously.  But frequently I'll want to take something from one soldier and give it to another one.  Right now, because I can't click the left / right page-change buttons while the cursor is holding an item, I have to place the item in the ship inventory, switch pages, then pick it up - which is particularly annoying with large, cluttered inventories, because there may not be space for it on the first screen, making me flip through to an empty one, put the item there, change pages, etc.

Outside of combat, being able to just grab an item and flip to the soldier I want to give it to would be much more useful.

14

Suggestions / Right-click enemy indicators in the battlescape to check who sees them.

« on: January 02, 2023, 07:09:06 pm »

The little green / red indicators that show up in the lower-right when an enemy is sighted are very useful, but currently it can be annoying when you have a large number of troops and are trying to figure out who, precisely, currently has a particular enemy in their sights, especially on large complicated maps.

It'd be neat if we could right-click an "enemy sighted" indicator to cycle through every soldier, if any, who currently has that enemy in their sights.

15

Suggestions / Have the sell menu's right-click display show purchase / construction options.

« on: January 02, 2023, 07:05:46 pm »

One major factor to consider when selling stuff, aside from what it's used for, is how hard it would be to get it back if you decide you later need it.

Therefore, I think that the display you get when you right click on an item in the sell menu (which currently just shows an item's uses, and which is usually used to see if an item is safe to sell) should also list if the item can be purchased or constructed.

As currently, ones you haven't discovered yet should be starred out, of course.  This would be useful both to avoid spoiling new players and for everyone to remind themselves if the option to buy / construct a particular item has been unlocked yet in their game.