Author Topic: [QoL] Option to skip ground assaults if craft only have pilots aboard  (Read 229 times)

Offline Tamren

  • Captain
  • ***
  • Posts: 52
    • View Profile
In vanilla xcom interceptor pilots are abstracted and thus fighter type aircraft do not have any crew. In modded games your soldiers often double as pilots and any craft capable of mounting weapons will have at least one soldier aboard. This creates a problem, if there are crew aboard a craft that shoots down another craft, the game will assume it to be a dropship and immediately ask you if you want to attack the crashed target regardless of the player's intentions. This is annoying and slows down the gameplay a lot, particularly in the lategame when you often sortie multiple craft at once.

So the idea here is to add an option that skips the ground assault popup if your craft only has pilots aboard. There is a very easy way to detect this, all you need to do is check the craft inventory for equipment, if there is nothing at all then clearly the player does not want to use this craft for ground assaults under any circumstances.

Offline Juku121

  • Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 1796
  • We're all mad here.
    • View Profile
Re: [QoL] Option to skip ground assaults if craft only have pilots aboard
« Reply #1 on: October 30, 2024, 07:18:46 pm »
Already exists as 'allowLanding: false'. Perhaps not in full generality, but neither do I think is yours applicable to 100% of cases (what if the pilot is a Terminator, werewolf or psion capable of soloing the battle without equipment?).
« Last Edit: October 30, 2024, 07:21:43 pm by Juku121 »

Offline Delian

  • Colonel
  • ****
  • Posts: 469
    • View Profile
Re: [QoL] Option to skip ground assaults if craft only have pilots aboard
« Reply #2 on: October 30, 2024, 07:55:56 pm »
I guess the suggestion would be a per-craft player setting. If a player wants one of their crafts to act as an interceptor-only, there could be a way for a player to manually select that, just like the player can manually disable a craft weapon.

Offline Tamren

  • Captain
  • ***
  • Posts: 52
    • View Profile
Re: [QoL] Option to skip ground assaults if craft only have pilots aboard
« Reply #3 on: October 31, 2024, 06:45:40 am »
Already exists as 'allowLanding: false'. Perhaps not in full generality, but neither do I think is yours applicable to 100% of cases (what if the pilot is a Terminator, werewolf or psion capable of soloing the battle without equipment?).

Well that's not much of an issue because if you want to deploy solo operatives with this optional rule active, all you have to do to make an exception is load a single piece of equipment onto that craft to allow automatic landing prompts again. This could be literally anything, a banana would suffice.

I guess the suggestion would be a per-craft player setting. If a player wants one of their craft to act as an interceptor-only, there could be a way for a player to manually select that, just like the player can manually disable a craft weapon.

I did think of that, you could make a button on the intercept screen that toggles ground assaults on and off just like any other craft weapon. But that would require substantially more work than just making a global rule for "If craft inventory = 0, disable ground assault prompt", so I suggested this instead as the minimalist approach.