Misc Ideas For Geoscape/Basescape

[TurkishSwede]

1. Allow mouse wheel scrolling over arrows in Craft/crew screen to move soldiers up or down without clicking?
2. Allow Human player to manually name discovered Alien Bases?
3. Allow Engineers to be assigned to damaged craft to decrease repair time?
4. When advanced option "Storage Limits" is OFF, display Alien Containment (current/max) storage in Base Info screen anyway?

Opinions, comments?

[Falko]

2,3,4 nice to have
1: if i mouse_wheel one up the soldierB (position 12) he goes to position 11 and soldier G goes from pos 11 to 12 correct? - now after the mousewhheel up soldierG is at position 12 , i did not move my mouse, soldierG is under it, the next mousewheel up moves soldier B down, soldier G moves up... i assume introducing timeouts or "until mouse moved" makes its use a bit unreliable/unpredictable but i am no GUI expert

how about if you click on an arrow and don't let mouse button go
first step after 0.0 sec, after 0.5 sec the solder wanders the next step, followed by a step every 0.3 sec until mouse key released or first place(times defined by options.cfg)

[Solarius Scorch]

1. Allow mouse wheel scrolling over arrows in Craft/crew screen to move soldiers up or down without clicking?

I agree Falko it would have to be cleverly designed, or it'd be hard to control and counter-intuitive.

2. Allow Human player to manually name discovered Alien Bases?

Oh, yes please! Or at least race should be indicated when we know the race of a Supply Ship that docks there.

3. Allow Engineers to be assigned to damaged craft to decrease repair time?

This idea has been floating around here for ages. I am not against it, but it raises a question of whether craft is being repaired when Engineers are busy with something else, or not present al all.

4. When advanced option "Storage Limits" is OFF, display Alien Containment (current/max) storage in Base Info screen anyway?

You'll probably be asked to provide a mockup screen to show where it would fit. But I think it'd be very useful.

[Aldorn]

1. Allow mouse wheel scrolling over arrows in Craft/crew screen to move soldiers up or down without clicking?

Perhaps just not forget this was not possible at all to change soldier sequence before that great improvement

IMHO, may be improved a bit in the future, but to be considered at low priority, as current solution,  combined with use of right clic, is very, very comfortable as is

[TurkishSwede]

This idea has been floating around here for ages. I am not against it, but it raises a question of whether craft is being repaired when Engineers are busy with something else, or not present al all.

I see it taking Engineers away from manufacturing for a small economic hit when you need extra hands to fix your planes. Of course, only extra/unassigned Engineers can help fix a plane. Currently, aircraft heals one point of damage every hour automatically, presumably using non-combat Hangar personnel, since this happens when no other paid personnel is on base. Adding engineers could increase healing by 1 (or 0.2, 0.5) extra point an hour each. I am asking this because the Avenger can take 1200 damage before it goes down, 1% damage to an Avenger is 12 damage, taking 12 hours to heal, so 10% damage to an Avenger takes 5 days to heal. 20% damage takes longer to heal than it takes me to build a new Avenger.

You'll probably be asked to provide a mockup screen to show where it would fit. But I think it'd be very useful.

It already fits in there just fine when Storage Limits is ON. I am asking for this because I used "Alien Containment Limits" when it didn't enforce item storage and stopped when it did for one main reason: I like to wait for my transport to return to base before I sell off captured alien equipment. I can't do that reliably with Storage Limits enforced, as I would often be forced to sell off anything extra I had immediately after a mission. Too much force I think, feels like babysitting to me. I can't leave the screen or even access the options screen until I've sold off enough stuff to bring it back under the limit, and forget about transferring stuff to other bases. I like to manage my storage on my own, vanilla already disallows purchasing or transfer if a base's stores are full. With it OFF, I can actually sell live aliens to make room for new ones coming in instead of having to kill them, I just can't use the Base Info screen to see where my alien containment storage is at.

Perhaps just not forget this was not possible at all to change soldier sequence before that great improvement

IMHO, may be improved a bit in the future, but to be considered at low priority, as current solution,  combined with use of right clic, is very, very comfortable as is

Well, you have an excellent point there. Being able to move them at all is pretty awesome and pure vanilla had not this invaluable feature. I just thought I'd throw the idea out there since it occurred to me, but it does seem superfluous, just extra unnecessary coding for another time perhaps. I don't hate clicking and the system that's in place currently works great and I love it. I didn't even notice before what right-click did there, that's awesome. I just noticed that the mouse wheel doesn't currently do anything over those soldier placement arrows, and I wondered how hard it would be to make it do something useful there, not that it's particularly needed.

[myk002]

I just noticed that the mouse wheel doesn't currently do anything over those soldier placement arrows, and I wondered how hard it would be to make it do something useful there, not that it's particularly needed.

Well, it does do something -- if the soldier list is longer than one screen's worth, the mouse wheel scrolls the list.  If the changeValueByMouseWheel option is set to a value greater than 0, then scrolling is usually disabled when over the up/down buttons and it changes the values instead.  What you are suggesting is similar enough to this feature that it might fit in, but even changeValueByMouseWheel is controversial due to the "unexpected" behavior of not causing the list to scroll "sometimes".  Moving soldiers with the mouse wheel has the same potential for confusion.

[TurkishSwede]

Well, it does do something -- if the soldier list is longer than one screen's worth, the mouse wheel scrolls the list.  If the changeValueByMouseWheel option is set to a value greater than 0, then scrolling is usually disabled when over the up/down buttons and it changes the values instead.  What you are suggesting is similar enough to this feature that it might fit in, but even changeValueByMouseWheel is controversial due to the "unexpected" behavior of not causing the list to scroll "sometimes".  Moving soldiers with the mouse wheel has the same potential for confusion.

Yeah, you're right, it does do something in the screen itself, it scrolls the list - UNLESS the cursor is over the arrows that move the soldiers up or down. THEN it does nothing. I have changeValueByMouseWheel set to 4 and still the mouse wheel does not scroll my long soldier list when I'm over those arrows, and that's fine, besides I'd also not want a soldier moved 4 spaces per wheel-spin. I'd rarely want to move a soldier up or down by any more than 1 at a time ever, but scrolling up or down by 4 is helpful. I recently learned of the right click function in that screen (never even thought about it until Aldorn mentioned it) and that adds something, but not the quick precision I'm after. My idea involves the mouse wheel moving a soldier one space up or down exactly like a normal click on the respective arrow and ONLY when over the arrows (like how scrolling the mouse wheel up a notch over an up OR down arrow in the buy screen will increase a value but otherwise scroll the list).

This is really only for clarity. I just hope I didn't make it more confusing.

I tend to ramble.

Further thoughts on the Engineers fixing planes; maybe a damaged plane is a temporary manufacture type thing with each point of damage taking 25 Engineer Hours to fix. (This would roughly translate to the work it takes to make a complete craft from scratch; every 22.5 EH on a lightning adds 1 HP, and every 28.33 EH adds 1 HP to an Avenger in manufacture, I'm thinking 25 is a good middle ground.) This manufacture project would be accessed via a button on the damaged craft's screen, taking you to a small dialogue to simply assign free engineers to the craft, and they start working on fixing the plane.

I further postulate:
1. is just a whine for more and more unneeded "convenience" that wouldn't be worth the time to code. What's there now is perfect for 1.0 and I shouldn't expect or ask for more. It was just a thought I had.

2. The ability to manually name the bases ourselves would, I believe, be the easiest to code in without needing to add triggers and automatic functions for counting floater bases vs sectoid bases. When we know the race, we name the base. We could even give them ominous names, like Waspite Nest or Snakeman Laboratory.

3. is also unneeded for 1.0 imo. I just have to be really f*&#ing careful with my Avengers, they can take too much damage and be useless for a month. Should let my Firestorms take the hits instead, send them in first. That's X-Com, baby!

4. just seems to me like good record keeping. It shouldn't be dependent on whether the limits are strictly enforced imo, if the info can be shown why not always show it? It makes the base info screen look... um, more informative. Maybe make it only show up when a base actually has an Alien Containment facility? I can only imagine coding hell coming from that idea. Sorry. Unnecessary. IGNORE ME!!

[SupSuper]

1. Done.

2. We've been debating this a lot given how often it comes up, but I don't know if we'll have a proper solution before 1.0.

3. ~~vanilla~~

4. Showing Alien Containment when limits aren't enforced would just be confusing. FWIW, if you have "sell live aliens" enabled, then any action that gets rid of them will automatically sell them.