soldier equip screen access from basescape?

[moriarty]

I was just thinking: now that we have soldier's equipment "sticky" (a.k.a. the game will try to equip the soldier in the same way he was last equipped), perhaps we should allow the player to equip soldiers from within the basescape?

If you agree, I have a suggestion about where to put that possibility: I propose using the "soldier" screen, where clicking the soldier's rank insignia in the upper left-hand corner could transfer you to the equip screen. so wherever you are, that icon would be used to toggle between the equip screen and the stat screen, just like in the pre-mission equip screen.

[luke83]

Sounds like a good idea to me

[DiceMaster]

I always loved X-Com: Apocalypse for this feature.
But maybe it is better to have two switch buttons with clear names like "equipmen" and "stats"?
Soldier's rank sign was always a bit unintuitive.

[luke83]

Can we not just add another button?

[Warboy1982]

i've looked into implementing this, and the problem is this:

the soldier equip screen is a function of the battlescape.

how should i solve this? implement a new "state" or temporarily create a fake battlescape?

[moriarty]

ah, I should have known there would be a problem... of course, there's no battlescape in the baseview, so that's difficult... uh, I don't know.

there's also the problem that soldiers in the transport craft should only have access to the equipment that's loaded onto the craft, while the soldiers not assigned to a craft should have access only to equipment present in the base. so if you try to equip soldiers from the basescape, you have access to both groups, but each has a unique "pile" of equipment to access.

I guess it is not easy at all.

I would say that for sake of simplicity, perhaps you could include a button "equip soldiers" in the craft view (the one where you see the overview of what's on the craft, not the item list), which invokes a fake battlescape with the craft's contents - clicking on "OK" returns you to the craft view. what do you think?

[luke83]

Maybe its time to create a sort solider position on craft  screen and add the equip solider screen  to that menu.

[54x]

ah, I should have known there would be a problem... of course, there's no battlescape in the baseview, so that's difficult... uh, I don't know.

there's also the problem that soldiers in the transport craft should only have access to the equipment that's loaded onto the craft, while the soldiers not assigned to a craft should have access only to equipment present in the base. so if you try to equip soldiers from the basescape, you have access to both groups, but each has a unique "pile" of equipment to access.

I guess it is not easy at all.

I would say that for sake of simplicity, perhaps you could include a button "equip soldiers" in the craft view (the one where you see the overview of what's on the craft, not the item list), which invokes a fake battlescape with the craft's contents - clicking on "OK" returns you to the craft view. what do you think?

Right, ideally the solution when it comes time is to actually remove equipment from crafts altogether, and have soldiers own the equipment directly, and equip them directly from the base's stores, with an opportunity to dump or redistribute items at the beginning of each mission. (Or pick up usable items from the stores during base defense missions)

[moriarty]

I wouldn't call soldier-"owned" equipment ideal, it's just a different approach with its own drawbacks and pitfalls.

It's what xcom:eu does. While it works nicely for the most part, you run into trouble when you want to (or have to) rotate soldiers into and out of your team, but don't have enough advanced (=expensive) weapons/equipment for all soldiers.

[54x]

I wouldn't call soldier-"owned" equipment ideal, it's just a different approach with its own drawbacks and pitfalls.

It's what xcom:eu does. While it works nicely for the most part, you run into trouble when you want to (or have to) rotate soldiers into and out of your team, but don't have enough advanced (=expensive) weapons/equipment for all soldiers.

I say soldiers owning the equipment is ideal because then soldiers will maintain their equipment loadouts in base defense missions. (Also it allows you to have equipment "follow" soldiers when you transfer them between bases) Otherwise the current system is sufficient.

And yes, it would run into issues rotating soldiers, so there's no perfect system. One way to help with that is to have soldiers "drop" their items if wounded and only attempt to pick them up once they're healthy again, but yes, if you want to rotate uninjured soldiers then that's probably the one thing a soldier-centred model would be worse at.