Topics

61

Suggestions / transfer of items/personnel between bases

« on: June 26, 2012, 10:30:11 am »

I'm always looking for ways to make the geoscape more interesting... I have another idea that I'd like to hear your opinions about.

If you transfer stuff from one base to another, how about there's an actual transport craft that you can see on the geoscape? I don't suggest that you have to use one of your own transports, it could always be a rent-a-plane from friendly military.
it would actually fly on the geoscape as a radar dot just like one of your own craft would (perhaps a different color). aside from being a visual cue as to how long the stuff actually takes to arrive at the other base, this could spawn missions of its own:

- the craft might be attacked by a UFO (so you might think about sending one or two escorts for that transfer order of 2000 units of elerium).
- if it is shot down, it would spawn a new kind of mission: a landed ufo next to a shot-down transport craft. if you go there, it's search-and-rescue.
- it might even discover a UFO by chance (small radar range and low detection chance, but still)

62

Suggestions / different way of handling battlescape salvaging

« on: June 25, 2012, 09:56:33 pm »

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.

63

Open Feedback / progress / milestones / wishlist

« on: June 20, 2012, 10:54:08 am »

I was looking around the main page and the forum searching for info on the current progress, and maybe it 's just my inability in finding stuff... but: what's next?

openxcom is running great in my opinion, of course smaller glitches and bugs will always show up, but right now I'm at a point where I would seriously consider switching over from x-com to openxcom for casual gaming, especially since I can also contribute by play-testing that way.

I love the globe day/night terminator line shading a lot better than the original, and the pathfinding preview too... plus all the other little improvements.

okay, but here's the catch: to really enjoy playing openxcom, what I would really appreciate is actually salvaging stuff from the battlescape. I don't necessarily need research right now, but loot management would allow for actually playing the game for a while, with the economics involved - you know, shooting down UFOs, looting the stuff, making money by selling it, building new bases with the money.

could you please please please pretty please include that real soon? and while you're at it, tell us what the next milestones are? the forum has gone awfully quiet in the last few weeks... I don't know if everyone is playing Diablo III, has vanished into RL or is still in shock because of all the new E3-info on "XCOM:Enemy Unknown" 

64

Suggestions / weapon/equipment loadouts - user-defined "classes"

« on: June 16, 2012, 12:18:22 pm »

is anybody working on the weapon/equipment assignment logic at the moment? because there's a few things that are different from the original (of course, since it's unfinished), and there's a few things that could be improved, but need to be carefully done, I think.

- spare clips: the original game sometimes failed to assign spare ammo to soldiers automatically. openxcom doesn't assign the spares at all so far. how do we want to do that?
- grenades: openxcom assigns grenades to the soldiers on a one-per-person(starting from #1)-basis. smoke grenades, however, are not assigned. manually assigning them before every mission is something that's really tiring if you shoot down a lot of small UFOs. how do we plan to do this?
- I think the usual routine for weapon assigning is that there's some kind of "priority list" of the weapons, and the first guys get the "best" weapons, and from there it goes down the list. right?
- special items always get assigned starting from #1, too: the first soldier has a Heavy Plasma, a Psi Amp in the backpack and a medkit on his belt (and can only move every second turn because he's hopelessly weighed down)

I guess saving "personal" equipment and weapons is too much for this game, but maybe a simplified system could be used where soldiers are "tagged" by the user as being a kind of "class", and weapons are assigned according to "class"?
I'm thinking in terms of
"heavy" - alway gets the big guns
"medic" - light weapons, med kit
"scout" - medium weapons, not too much equipment to stay lightweight
"grenadier" - lots of grenades

this could be done with a config file, so people could define their own personal loadout classes.

65

Suggestions / alternative base defense mini-game (the one with the base defense modules etc)

« on: June 06, 2012, 03:23:43 pm »

don't you think that maybe the base defense could be improved? I don't mean the battlescape base defense mission, but that screen that tells you of your base defence modules firing at the UFO (hitting or missing), perhaps the grav-shield repelling the UFO etc.

don't you wish you could have a little more control over that?

I propose a mini-game for that. perhaps something like missile command: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_Command

the base defence modules you built would actually be used by the mini-game, but all under your control. if you are good, you might shoot down a ufo with a few missile defence modules, and if you really suck, even the fusion defence won't help you. of course, we could include an auto-play mode. anyway, it would be prettier and more immersive than "missile defence fires... hit! missile defence fires... miss! UFO lands"

66

Suggestions / alternative UFO interception mini-games

« on: June 06, 2012, 03:13:11 pm »

just an idea that crossed my mind when thinking about the UFO interception: I really like the way Xenonauts deals with intercepting UFOs, adding a whole new level of strategic combat. it's far from perfect, but cool. it actually gives you more control over what's happening.

maybe several methods could be implemented?

- xenonauts-style strategic air combat
- chess-like turn-based combat? 
- Galaga-style minigame 

what do you think? what kind of air-combat would you like to see?

67

Open Feedback / "new git build" e-mail notification?

« on: May 25, 2012, 01:33:29 pm »

I don't know if wordpress has a function like that, but could you make it possible for us to subscribe to a newsletter-type system that alerts us when a new git build is put up?

68

Suggestions / Suggestion: temporarily disabling craft weapons

« on: May 17, 2012, 11:35:55 pm »

this is well beyond V1.0, but perhaps something worth looking into, as it goes beyond anything a mod can easily achieve but might improve gameplay...

I suggest you make the craft weapon icons in the interception screen clickable to temporarily switch them off.

especially in the early game you quickly realise that the small scout ufos will be destroyed by a missile hit. so if you actually want to shoot them down to capture that single alien (or at least kill it and take its weapons) instead of blowing it into oblivion, you have to send a cannon-only craft after it.
having one of those is a waste of a perfectly good craft that could be used for other purposes, too.

if, on the other hand, you always equip your crafts with the best weapons available, and are meticulous about shooting down every ufo you find, you will end up wasting lots of expensive avalanche missiles for tiny ufos you could also destroy with a stingray
a stingray which will however only be fired after the avalanche missile has already been fired. so most of the time you end up using two missiles on a tiny ufo.

later in the game, you might have an avenger with a plasma cannon and a fusion ball launcher. again, you will end up destroying lots of smaller ufos unintendedly while wasting fusion shots you might need for a larger ufo that pops up after you shot down the first one.

the simple solution would be to allow the player to temporarily disable one (or both, if you're suicidal) of the crafts weapons. you might even turn this into its own gameplay element: if your craft is fast enough, you could script a forced landing of the ufo that happens when your craft reaches the UFO in the interception screen. so you have the option to "run it down" instead of shooting it down  - which would only be possible by switching off your weapons.

this would also make the firestorm a good deal more valuable again, since it's the fastest craft out there. who cares that it only has one weapon: it could run down larger UFOs, allowing your troops to capture them on the ground.

what do you think?

69

Suggestions / crashed aliens "digging in" - penalty for delaying ground mission

« on: February 14, 2012, 07:52:55 pm »

something that has always annoyed me is the state of downed UFOs being totally random and independent of geoscape actions. especially the fact that regardless of how long ago the crash has been, you might always find the wreckage smoking and burning and the aliens running around aimlessly.
while terror missions are painfully short-lived on the geoscape, you can wait for something like 3 days before a crash mission will disappear.

I often use this (and others probably do, too) to wait for daytime before landing near a crashed UFO. However, I think there should be a penalty for this, as well as some changes to the battlefield in general.

• There should be no more smoke and fires after a few hours, or perhaps some huge wildfires (or later, ashes from wildfires) if the crash happened in a corn field.
• If we implement civilians in farm areas, they should be already killed or perhaps held "hostage" if you arrive too late.
• The aliens might also fortify their positions, though perhaps only if a higher-ranking alien survived the crash.
• If half the alien crew died, the remaining aliens shouldn't be the ones running around with plasma pistols after more than a few hours. They would grab the better guns from the dead ones, wouldn't they?
• And the other way around: If you shoot down a UFO with an interceptor/transport hybrid and immediately land afterwards, you shouldn't find ANY aliens outside of the UFO (unless it was severely disintegrated and they were ejected in the crash, which should kill all but the toughest aliens)

... you get the idea.

anyone for or against this? of course it's not a vanilla thing. but I guess the game already keeps track of the crash site's "age", since it does disappear eventually, so it might not be too hard to implement.

70

Suggestions / playing openxcom in larger windows

« on: January 24, 2012, 11:37:35 pm »

is it possible to play openxcom in a larger window? I'm not talking about increasing the playing field or anything, just making each pixel a 2x2 (or even 3x3) pixel square. direct upscaling. these new high-resolution-monitors don't really convey the original feeling when you're looking at a postcard-sized window

71

Suggestions / Geoscape: re-launching craft with less than 100% fuel?

« on: November 16, 2011, 08:42:12 pm »

seeing the new wiki list about the differences between openxcom and xcom (https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Differences_to_X-COM_%28OpenXcom%29), I started thinking: shouldn't you be able to launch a craft that has less than 100% fuel? I remember a few situations where this could have saved lives when playing xcom.

Then again, it also served as an element of suspense and strategic planning:
- will the craft be refueled before the UFO comes closer to my base, potentially discovering it?
- should I send my Skyranger back for refueling or do I let it circle while the interceptor chases the next UFO?

what do you think?

72

Suggestions / Alien Artifacts - management of unresearched alien items

« on: October 11, 2011, 09:42:57 am »

a post in another part of the forum got me thinking about this:
the original game handles alien stuff quite simply: the shown name in battlescape is always "Alien Artifact" as long as it isn't researched, but in the base inventory and sell screens you can see the correct names. kind of oversimplified, right? you can even sell alien guns before you ever know what they do. while this is a good source of money early in the game, it really takes away some realism, doesn't it?

for version 1.1+, perhaps the base inventory could be adjusted to only show "alien artifact" (and prevent selling) as long as it hasn't been researched? of course you'd have no way of knowing what it is then. maybe every item in the list would have a small square before the name, and when mouse-hovering over it, a little "picture-in-picture" would show the item sprite?