Scientists and Egineers

[Meridian]

To be honest, I don't think you will ever find a developer, who will implement the "everyone can do everything" feature.

And if you somehow find them, then the result should be renamed to something else than OpenXcom... because it will be as incompatible with vanilla as fuck. This is not a "missing feature" or an "engine limitation"... it's a completely new game.

[Arthanor]

Oh I like you so much.

  Thanks? ! I like you too but.. hum.. let's keep this professional..

To be honest, I don't think you will ever find a developer, who will implement the "everyone can do everything" feature.

And if you somehow find them, then the result should be renamed to something else than OpenXcom... because it will be as incompatible with vanilla as fuck. This is not a "missing feature" or an "engine limitation"... it's a completely new game.

There are plenty of games where "everyone can do everything". XCom almost gets there with only 3 classes and apparently the aim was to have "everyone can do everything" since Apocalypse has that.

Now I understand that it is unlikely that we could find an OpenXCom developper willing to spend time in this, but hey, this topic is for dreaming of a better world for engineers and scientists than just being numbers. And honestly, if you could make soldiers as pilots work, which needed to invent everything about pilots, I'm surprised it's impossible to make soldiers as scientists or engineers work. I was going to suggest a mechanic, but that almost always comes off as a "I know better and you're stupid for not being able to program it" and I am certainly not able to program it myself nor do I think that you'd say it's impossible if it weren't, so I will refrain.

[Meridian]

It's not impossible.
It is very much possible.
Just saying it wouldn't be (Open)Xcom as we know it anymore... I want to help the project, not create a new one.

[Countdown]

This is an interesting idea. Having a much smaller number of scientists and engineers, but making them cost much more and be "real people" that you can name and use on missions/base defense would be a cool feature. It's more realistic too in the sense that you'd have maybe a 3-10 scientists researching that alien corpse ... not 150. Seriously, how do 150 scientists research a corpse?

It sounds like it could get very complex with the physics/biology/etc specifics, but a "simple" way to do it would be 3 classes with 2 extra stats added, "Engineering" and "Science." Soldiers would have 0 for both of those, Scientists would have a number 1-whatever for "Science" and likewise for Engineers.

Anyway, probably not something that would happen, but a cool idea nonetheless.

Thinking of... an idea: civilian units(engineers and scientists) in base defense mission. Not all 200 of them, of course, but 3-5. But how to make killing them count as decrease of amount of personell...

This seems like the most realistic implementation of this, just using the allied civilians mechanic. But rather than have 1 civilian be worth 10+ scientists/engineers, you could have them count as one and cap the total number at 10 or something. Those would be the ones that didn't evacuate in time or something.

[Chiko]

Well, X-Com never had classes, every soldier can do anything (I like it, because I don't like classes - they're fine for some types of games, but not X-Com). So I imagine that the best course of action would be adding new stats - primarily Science and Engineering - to everyone in the game, except soldiers would have it at a minimal level while Scientists etc. would have very poor combat abilities. But they all can learn with practice!

Having Science and Engineering as stats is a good idea. The more R&D projects they get involved with, the more they increase those stats. Allocating people for R&D could work like you do with Psi Training, maybe. As I mentioned before, the scale of living/working space for them should be decreased because honestly you don't need that many people to research stuff when you can have actual brilliant staff instead, the rest of the people are pretty much people moving crates, samples, etc. So:

-Living Quarters should house less staff.
-Both Labs and Workshops should have less working space.
-Labs should have working space like Workshops do so researching some stuff uses more room, meaning you can fit less people inside.

[Meridian]

I give up.
I think now I truly understand why SupSuper and Warboy don't answer threads like these.

[yrizoud]

? This is modding/experiment forum. Nobody is asking you to code it... Nor suggesting to force such a huge change on the players of ALL openxcom-based games. (edit: In case it's not clear : I am aware and convinced that such change would highly incompatible with the original data model and engine, so a branch like this has no chance to be reconciled into a single system later, or even to receive updates from the main)

Chiko : The reduced research numbers have been tested successfully in Piratez (and X-Com Files).
Personally I'm not a big fan of the (vanilla) manufacturing space mechanism... I'd really prefer a system where the player freely chooses any number of people as "manufacturing", and the game automatically computes and displays the work efficiency. This can take skill into account, so that the player can see that in a very undermanned workshop, adding inexperienced hands helps significantly, while in an overworked base, one extra expert makes barely a difference.

[Meridian]

? This is modding/experiment forum. Nobody is asking you to code it...

I am trying to say that this change is beyond what can be considered "modding/experiments".

It's easy just saying it in one sentence, but try to think about it in your head and just imagine all the GUI and game logic changes it would require (not to mention actual coding work). It would need a change in basically all basescape GUIs and in a majority of game logic in geoscape & basescape (even battlescape would be affected in some pre-battle and post-battle logic)...

Nor suggesting to force such a huge change on the players of ALL openxcom-based games.

... (in my opinion) there is no way we could possibly reproduce vanilla with these changes... and that goes against the primary goal of the project.

[yrizoud]

Well, there are some happy surprises.
If any coder ever wants to have a try, I think he'll be glad to find this thread where there is a discussion of the expected benefits, problems and challenges of such a variant.

[Hobbes]

IIRC, then Hobbes' Terrain Mod adds allied units to the game. For example, on some terror sites, I found allied soldiers an police men, which were controlled by the game but opposed to the aliens, too. This way, one could also treat scientists and engineers. But I'd strongly suggest, not to take all of them. Otherwise, one will end up with a base full of allied soldiers. I usually end up with around 100 scientists and far more than 100 engineers. 200 Units, that's an awful lot for any mission.

It also adds non-combat personnel during base defense missions as civilians

[7Saturn]

Wasn't meant exclusively. =)