The 80 items limit

[kkmic]

Disclaimer: I had a sleepless night and this is the direct result

I had recently browsed the OpenXcom section on the Ufopaedia Wiki and the following got my attention (in the "Differences to X-COM (OpenXcom)" article):

Since there's no 80 item limit, items in crafts count towards your Base Stores to prevent exploiting infinite storage. This also lets you freely move items between bases and crafts without storage issues.

I believe that the original XCom had the 80-items limit imposed due to practical and technical reasons (640k anyone?). The number 80 was chose probably because it will allow a commander to equip a 10 man squad with 8 items of equipment each. A loadout of 1x weapon, 2x clips, 2x grenades, 1x medkit, 1x psiamp will leave room for several extra items for a specialized class (blaster bombs, grenades, etc).

The above quote got my eye because in any troop transport, no mater how technologically improved it is, there is that much space that can be used for equipment storage. True, some transports have a large carrying capacity, but there still is a limit.

Besides, I don't believe that being able to carry your entire base armory into combat is a realistic option.

As I see it, there are two options:

• Increase the transport item limit by 30 or 50 items (you should be able to carry 130 grenades on any average transport, right?)
• Count not the items, but their weight. So basically, everything you load into the transport has a weight, and the transport can only carry that much load. Everything means soldiers, armor, tanks, weapons, ammo, corpses and other recovered items

I'm for the #2 option, but then we should guesstimate the weight of all items except equipment/corpses (perhaps using the base storage space as a baseline?).

Also, the limit should apply all the times, meaning that when returning home after a mission, if you have more equipment/artifacts/corpses recovered than the transport's maximum carrying weight, you should be asked to discard items to allow the craft to lift off (or you could have the option to send another team to recover your loot (not an actual team, just a button click) that has only a % chance of recovering what was left behind).

Comments? Opinions? Questions? Frowns? 

[Yankes]

I think that #2 is interesting idea, every craft have different max weight that can carry. and when you cant pick up all in one round you can send second one only for stuff (aka its leave base without anyone on board).

[Daiky]

I don't believe that being able to carry your entire base armory into combat is a realistic option.

True, not realistic (it's not the only unrealistic thing in the game . But I doubt a normal player will ever try to do this, as I don't see the advantage? It's just not practical to carry your whole storage space around in your craft, I don't think the game needs to hard-limit this. It's kinda limited with your base storage space and that seems reasonable. There are also limits on what your soldiers carry...

The 80 item limit was probably not ment for a gameplay reason, but a technical reason. There is no technical reason for it anymore, so it's dropped.

[kkmic]

I still believe that that transport capacity would be a nice (optional) addition to the game.

Too bad I only know PHP/MYSQL/Javascript/ActionScript/HTML/CSS. Useless junk

[Daiky]

Also take into account that at some point, when pre-equipping soldiers would be implemented, I think the amount of "spare" equipment would be even less.
If you pre-equip your soldier with a primary weapon, secondary weapon/item, 4 grenades and fill up the rest with ammo before the unit is overloaded... I think you are all set then for even the longer missions, without the need for units running back to the skyranger to pick up whatever you should bring extra.

[kkmic]

Dammit Daiky, why do you have to always be right?

[hsbckb]

because he is the God of battlecape!

[Daiky]

A god would create perfect code, battlescape so far is still far from perfect :p

There are other suggestions related to this "craft inventory" topic, which I find interesting to have, even in vanilla openxcom:
- stackable items in the craft/ground inventory grid, interesting for grenades,flares. So 10 flares is just one slot with 10 items in it. You need less scrolling as more items fit on one page.
- indication of the current weight of the soldiers equipment vs. the max weight it can carry.

So, more features to make a less annoying gameplay experience and more info on the places where the player needs the info.