Topics

1

Suggestions / Key modifier for a unit to walk on max speed

« on: November 24, 2022, 02:06:24 pm »

Key modifier for a unit to walk on max speed.
During late game, when you have many soldiers on a map, sometimes it becomes tedious and time consuming to move them all. Right now I only speak about time spent on soldier's walking animation. I know, walking animation can be changed in settings, but it is also tedious (you must change it back later and, since this control is analog, you cant' be sure that you really set it exactly how it were before). I wish there were something similar to "SHIFT" modifier, when soldier move ignoring spotted enemies. I wish there were a key (for example "S" - speed), so that if you move a soldier while holding it, that soldier's walking animation would be in maximal speed.

2

Suggestions / Add an option to alight soldier names in CTRL+E window

« on: November 24, 2022, 02:06:13 pm »

Add an option to alight soldier names in CTRL+E window.
CTRL+E window in battlescape is and incredibly useful feature that shows which soldier's haven't contributed yet during this mission (and will not get any experience). There is one tiny problem with that: soldier names are not aligned, so it is harder to read. Many XCOM players (including me) put some marks on soldier's names to indicate something. I, for example, put "#" to indicate that this soldier is maxed out on basic stats, so it does not need to get experience on every mission. But, since names are not aligned in CTRL+E screen, it is hard to filter out such soldiers. Aligned list don't have to be with only one column.

3

Suggestions / Soldier's diary on inventory screen

« on: November 24, 2022, 02:05:37 pm »

Soldier's diary on inventory screen.
Right now soldier's diary can be accessed only from Bases --> Soldiers --> Soldier screen, which makes diary almost unusable in decision making process. The only time you really need soldier's diary is when you are in an inventory screen equipping a soldier with appropriate stuff. But you can't access soldier's diary there. I very strongly wish you could.

The most logical place for a new button (in my opinion) would be inside "additional actions" menu that is available if you enable "additional controls" in game options. That will leave base UI unchanged if it is a bad idea to put there another button. It would be nice to have a key-shortcut for soldier's diary as well.

4

Suggestions / Make it obvious which tiles are lit at night

« on: November 24, 2022, 02:04:58 pm »

Make it obvious which tiles are lit at night.
As everyone probably already know, units at night has reduced visibility. But if an enemy unit is standing near a light source, then it is visible as good as during daytime. In a base game aliens has the same night vision as day vision, so it is useless to hide player's soldiers in the dark. But in modded games (like XComFiles) putting your troops in a dark place is a matter of life and death. And here is a problem: right now it is very hard to figure out which tiles are actually considered to be lit. (Slightly lit tiles often are considered as dark tiles.) I see 2 possible fixes to this problem.

First is to make a color gap between lit tiles as unlit tiles bigger. Right now there is a linear gradient between fully dark tiles and fully lit tiles. If only there were more contrast between minimally lit tiles that are considered lit and maximally lit tiles that are considered dark.

Second is to make something similar to "night vision" mode (space or scroll lock). In this mode it is very well visible your unit visibility range. It would be great if another mode would exists to see lit tiles.

5

Suggestions / Let's make Pain Killer useful

« on: September 26, 2022, 11:30:48 am »

As you probably already know, Pain Killer part of Medi-Kit is totally useless and nobody use it. It is much easier and beneficial to just kill an alien to restore morale lost from a wound. And, what is even worse, there is no indicators of "soldier's pain" in the interface, that is you can see that soldier's morale is below 100, but you can't tell if it can be improved with Medi-Kit.

The most simple solution to revitalize Pain Killer's mechanics is to make pain more "persistent", so that pain prevents achieving maximal morale. If, for example, a soldier has 20 pain, that it's morale cannot be increased above 80 no matter how many aliens are killed. This will make pain more "visible" in the interface and it will be somewhat important to use Pain Killer to remove that pain and increase morale to 100.

I know, if implemented this will be a downside for a player with no benefits, but realism aspect of a game will improve.

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Another somewhat related issue is penalties from fatal wounds on body parts.
https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Fatal_Wounds
According to this article's text in normal font, a soldier will receive penalties for being wounded depending on injuries on different body parts.
According to this article's text in italic font and my personal observation, this is a lie and penalties received are not related to body parts.
So let's convert this lie into truth and revive another dead mechanics: body parts.

What do you think about all of this?

6

The X-Com Files / Night missions lighting problems

« on: May 28, 2022, 11:39:38 am »

After a lot of research about unit visibility during night missions I found several important info:

• During night missions units have reduced visibility.
• When a unit is lit by a light source it is visible like during a day.
• There is no such thing as "brightly lit" or "slightly lit". Either a unit is visible like at night or like at day.
• In a base game aliens (player's only opponent) at night see as good as at day, so it was irrelevant for a player to hide his units in darkness.
• In this mode, however, putting your agents in dark areas is a matter of life and death.
• Game does pretty much everything to prevent player to know with certainty if a specific tile is considered to be lit or not.
• According to this article https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Night_Missions there is a "cosmetic" lighting. That is it looks like a light, but it is not.

The big question is: is there a way to know with certainty if a specific tile is lit or not?
More specific question is about Dragonfly craft. It has light sources that produce very strange asymmetric shadow with some parts being slightly lighter then others. Agents stationed beneath the Dragonfly often are targeted by enemies even from afar with no obvious spotters near by. I know, enemy soldiers are capable to shoot at places where they saw player's agents even few turns earlier, so maybe this is not due to agents are actually standing at light, but who knows?