Alien Artifacts - management of unresearched alien items

[moriarty]

a post in another part of the forum got me thinking about this:
the original game handles alien stuff quite simply: the shown name in battlescape is always "Alien Artifact" as long as it isn't researched, but in the base inventory and sell screens you can see the correct names. kind of oversimplified, right? you can even sell alien guns before you ever know what they do. while this is a good source of money early in the game, it really takes away some realism, doesn't it?

for version 1.1+, perhaps the base inventory could be adjusted to only show "alien artifact" (and prevent selling) as long as it hasn't been researched? of course you'd have no way of knowing what it is then. maybe every item in the list would have a small square before the name, and when mouse-hovering over it, a little "picture-in-picture" would show the item sprite?

[anonilsus]

1) It is only a game. You need labels other than "Alien Artifact #1" and remember that #1 was the small gun and #2 the big gun. Obviously it was a gun because the aliens used them to kill your soldiers.
2) Even ingame there is an explanation. Aside from a few exceptions all the artifacts are labeled with plain human, unimaginative names. It is not some alien language or something that allows to understand the player the inner function and construction of these things.
The grenade like object is simply called "Alien Grenade" and the weapons are called "Plasma X" or "Blaster". 

It is the same with the alien corpses. Should they be labeled "unknown" as well? How do we know their names? We don't. "Snakeman" is an obvious example. All these names are made up by humans as better labels for "unknown #3".

Same process that gives software version names like "Lucid Lynx" instead of a simple version number. It helps humans to remember what category it is.

[Daiky]

I'd have to agree with anonilsus.
If I find some kind of grenade ( maybe from world war 1 ) in my back yard. I'd call it "old grenade". I don't know the exact type or how to use it, so I would not use it, risking blowing it up in my face, but still I could sell it to a museum or a private collector.
We don't know who alien artifacts are sold to in xcom.

So, it's not that unrealistic.

[moriarty]

then, to be consistent, the battlescape names should be (for example) "Plasma Rifle (unresearched)" instead of "Alien Artifact"

[moriarty]

to bring up this thread again:

- geoscape/base view of unresearched alien artifacts is obviously not yet included in V0.4.

- battlescape handling of unresearched items is consistent with original.
a question for the crowd: do we want it to be precisely that way? for example, I think it is kind of illogical to be able to see how many shots an alien weapon has left before actually knowing anything about those weapons. perhaps the ammo display should be hidden for unresearched weapon / ammunition?

[Volutar]

really on current project stage that doesn't even a tiny matter..
as for me - original is okay. making long names with  unresearched suffixes, or making alternative item names for unresearched state is overcomplicated matter for such game.

[SupSuper]

to bring up this thread again:

- geoscape/base view of unresearched alien artifacts is obviously not yet included in V0.4.

It should be like in the original, or you mean it's not like your suggestion yet?

[moriarty]

oh, wait, right, it is like it is in the original. sorry. somehow I was expecting it to be something else. too much hoping, I guess

never mind...   I still think that the game gives you too much information about stuff you haven't researched yet but I guess that's the way it is...