Couple of (mostly) gameplay related ideas

[anon4551]

Well first of all, I'd like to say that I am following this project with great enthusiasm.
The idea of a (soon) moddable, open source UFO enemy unknown makes me very happeh

Well then, onto my ideas:


1.) An option to have firing modes of weapons cost a fixed amount of TUs.
While this might be somewhat of a problem to implement, balancing would probably be even more difficult.

2.) Different weapon-skills/stats
Your soldiers would have stats for the most basic kinds of weapons, e.g.: assault, heavy, light, explosives
These classes would be attributed to all guns, so then the appropriate skill affects chance-to-hit and maybe
TU cost - positively and negatively.
So for an example say you give your soldier an assault rifle but his skill is lower than 20. His chance-to-hit
would be 75% of the weapons base-accuracy (?) and firing it would cost 20% more TUs.
This would render the firing (and throwing - explosives?) accuracy redundant.
But also would this bring more thought to the equipping process of your soldiers - equipping everyone with a heavy plasma
might not work out as well as it does in Vanilla.

3.) An ability to view your selected soldier's field of view.
Though I'm not certain if this isn't already implemented, a hotkey to view your soldier's field of view would imo be very helpful.

4.) Being able to see a soldier's weight limit and how much is being used up by the current equipment - in inventory window
as well as equipping screen.


Ideas 1, 4 & 3  are realized in JA2 (3 only in 1.13 i think), idea #2 I've seen implemented in UFO Alien Invasion.

Well then, that's it for my 2 cents. I hope my English isn't too bad

[Foxie]

Hmm, I like the idea of having skills in specific weapons instead of just "Accuracy". It would add some depth of strategy into the game.

Maybe something as simple as:
Light Weapons (Pistol, Rifle)
Heavy Weapons (AC, HC, Heavy Laser & Plasma)
Explosives (Stun Grenade, Explosives, Rocket Launcher, Alien Rockets)
Melee (If we intended to add that)

This would limit the choice of weapons you would give your men. If your rocketeering man gets wounded and survives a combat, you would need someone else to fill in his spot with a decent rocket skill until he fully recovers. Your Heavy Weapons guy would be really good at using heavy weapons, but work less efficient as a scout than your trained Light Weapon soldiers.

I think this might make a minor impact on the game. And showing how much a weapon/item weighs when you are moving it would be useful too!

[anon4551]

After playing some UFO Enemy Unknown again, I do have a few more minor Suggestions:

In assault/battle mode:

[minor] It would be great to have an option which, when enables, forces you to confirm any movement command.
Or if you could at least interrupt one of your soldiers while moving by pressing the right mouse button.
Might lessen the frequency of "wanted-to-select-soldier-but-made-other-move-instead" mistakes.

[minor] imho, electric-flares should have a wider illumination radius (per option). As of now, they aren't as
useful as they could be. I only know that I have never heard of someone using them. Or perhaps the ability
to research more effective illumination devices / flares? Just throwing it out there


On geoscape:

[minor] As soon as one of your aircrafts has successfully intercepted an UFO, they return back to base.
Especially in late-game when the frequency of UFOs has increased dramatically, I would prefer
if the standard command window for aircrafts (select new target - return to base - etc) was shown,
so that i don't have to select the aircraft manually first.

[minor] When clicking on a base on the globe, it opens a window the base's aircrafts. If there is no aircraft
in said base, there is no indicator of what base you have selected. I think something should be done there


That's all for now. I hope I'm not resuggesting any ideas here... sorry if i do

[Foxie]

I use flares all the time in darkness missions. They are really useful imo.

And I strongly agree with the ability to abort movement. Many times I misclick and my men begin moving without being able to stop them.

[Eeyoocah5Moh]

It would be great to have an option which, when enables, forces you to confirm any movement command.
Or if you could at least interrupt one of your soldiers while moving by pressing the right mouse button.
Might lessen the frequency of "wanted-to-select-soldier-but-made-other-move-instead" mistakes.

Maybe use left button for selecting and right for moving? And left or middle for turning around.

[pmprog]

1.) An option to have firing modes of weapons cost a fixed amount of TUs.
While this might be somewhat of a problem to implement, balancing would probably be even more difficult.

Can't see why you'd need this. You'd want to reflect your aiming time (or movement in case of melee weapons)

[minor] It would be great to have an option which, when enables, forces you to confirm any movement command.
Or if you could at least interrupt one of your soldiers while moving by pressing the right mouse button.
Might lessen the frequency of "wanted-to-select-soldier-but-made-other-move-instead" mistakes.

Hmmm, I don't like that idea, for the times I make a wrong move, I've made dozens, if not hundreds of right moves, and this would just become an annoyance.

How about just a "Undo/Rewind" move button?

[Eeyoocah5Moh]

How about just a "Undo/Rewind" move button?

Undo/Rewind is hard to implement that way it won't let you cheat. Look at The Battle for Wesnoth, they let you undo, but only if you haven't discovered anything or disabled shroud updates at your turn.

I think we should not care too much about battlescape until geoscape is implemented.

[pmprog]

How about just a "Undo/Rewind" move button?

Undo/Rewind is hard to implement that way it won't let you cheat. Look at The Battle for Wesnoth, they let you undo, but only if you haven't discovered anything or disabled shroud updates at your turn.

True, I did think about that, but could you imagine the "Are you sure you want to make this move?" every time 

[anon4551]

True, I did think about that, but could you imagine the "Are you sure you want to make this move?" every time 

I'm sorry, but that's not what I meant at all.
Look at Jagged Alliance 2. If you enable a certain option, you have to click twice on the same spot to make your soldier move there, that's it.
But I do think using left mouse for selecting, right for moving and middle for looking sounds like a good idea.

A window popping up asking you if you're sure... come on, man. 

[SupSuper]

Boy there's a lot of ideas going on here! There are a lot of minor suggestions that sound feasible, specially ones already used by similar games like Jagged Alliance 2.

But there's also a lot of major gameplay-changing suggestions that require much more thought. Thanks for the feedback though.

[pmprog]

A window popping up asking you if you're sure... come on, man. 

To be fair, I've never seen or played Jagged Allience 2. All I read was "forces you to confirm any movement command"...

Granted, I was a bit slow on picking up double clicks though 

[battlesquid]

Hmm, I like the idea of having skills in specific weapons instead of just "Accuracy". It would add some depth of strategy into the game.

Maybe something as simple as:
Light Weapons (Pistol, Rifle)
Heavy Weapons (AC, HC, Heavy Laser & Plasma)
Explosives (Stun Grenade, Explosives, Rocket Launcher, Alien Rockets)
Melee (If we intended to add that)
(...)

I take it you haven't played UFO Aftermath? This looks very familiar
I think this is a good idea also. If this project isn't too purist it could be a great improvement!

[Foxie]

Nope. I have neither played much of Aftermath or Aftershock. Neither of the games were as good as X-com!

I also never played through UFO:TFTD either. Didn't have the same feel as UFO X-Com...

[SupSuper]

Nope. I have neither played much of Aftermath or Aftershock. Neither of the games were as good as X-com!

I also never played through UFO:TFTD either. Didn't have the same feel as UFO X-Com...

Wait so are you saying you played them but didn't like them or just didn't play them?

[battlesquid]

Maybe he's talking about the graphics?