Hi Meridian,
As promised, I made a wishlist of possible features that Dioxiner and I pulled from documentation left by Bladum. Some of them are relatively simple, others less so, but they're all things that were deemed to be beneficial.
Here it is:
1. New flag for alien mission waves: randomTrajectory.
Description: You don't make a trajectory for the UFO. Instead, you only define missionZone, spawnZone, landingZone, maxSpeed, minSpeed and numberOfWaypoints. This creates some random trajectory using this input.
Benefit: More variation and unpredictability with UFOs, plus less gruelling work for modders.
2. Item decay.
Description: When set for an item, every day there is a chance that this item will decay (desappear). For example setting it at 0.02 for Elerium means that 2% of your Elerium will disappear per day, on average.
Benefit: Unspecified as of now, but will probably be a useful tool for modders.
3. A psiScanner flag for an item.
Description: Nakes it work just like the Motion Scanner, but using psi vision. All units are visible, regardless of movement. The palette on the scanner is swapped from green to blue (background) and from orange to purple (flashing points). Alternatively it doesn't use any interface, just makes all aliens within a set radius count as spotted (are visible in the battlescape).
Benefit: A moderately cool gadget, with possible further advances if we work on alien psi more.
4. An psiCloaking flag for an armour (directly related to psiScanner).
Description: Makes the unit invisible to psiScanners. By default set to true for mechanical units and to false for other units, but you can set it manually. This flag also disallows alien Psi attacks/psi spotting unless aliens are within LOS (same for player's Psi attacks). May also make an unit impossible to scan with a Mind Probe.
Benefit: More tactical depth (units that are invisible to psi, like HWPs), more space for new armours (cloaking).
5. Melee reactions.
Description: Enable melee weapons to react like shooting weapons. Additionally, a new flag reactionFireBonus for weapons (melee weapons here, but possibly for all weapons), that would modify the soldier's reaction tests. For example, swords would have a large reactionFireBonus, which would make attacks made by them much harder to react to. I also suggest making it a new option, named Extended Reactions.
Benefit: A direct improvement to combat mechanics. Possibly more space for new weapons.
6. New kneelBonus flag for weapons.
Description: Unhardcodes bonus to accuracy from kneeling. This flag allows you to specify how much you gain by kneeling, default 0.15 (like now). Can be negative.
Benefit: New cool weapons that need to be properly set up on the ground, like machine guns. Poor accuracy when standing, great when kneeling. On the other hand, throwing knives don't get a bonus and may actually get some penalty.
7. New kneelTime flag for weapons (only relevant if the kneelBonus flag is introduced).
Description: Unhardcodes TUs to kneel and stand. This flag allows you to set these two values.
Benefit: Can be used to balance weapons with kneelBonus.
8. New isBiological and isMechanical flags for units.
Description: You can set if your unit is mechanical or living, and therefore if it can be healed.
Benefit: Right now you can't heal big units and they never bleed. This would be a big step towards a fully realized battlefield.
9. New armorRegeneration flag for armours.
Description: Analoguous to the health recovery (see BANDIT_ARMOR_P1 from Piratez for details).
Benefit: Ensuring domination of modders over mere players Will allow for new interesting units.
10. Penalties for head wounds.
Description: Head wounds give penalty to Firing Accuracy, Throwing Accuracy and Psi Skill.
Benefit: Will add more depth to the injury system. Will also be coherent with how you lose accuracy from arm wounds (assuming it was enabled in OXC).
Possible further improvement: Unhardcoding penalties suffered due to Fatal Wounds.
11. Unloading weapon on the ground.
Description: Clicking RMB on a weapon that's on the ground unloads it (at base/pre-battle only, like pre-priming grenades).
Benefit: An obvious improvement to the UI.
12. Diversify payments by rank.
Description: Allows to specify soldier salaries by their rank.
Benefit: Proper recognition for the Commander!
Possible further improvement: Adding soldier's rank to the stats that can give bonus damage/recovery/etc. to items.
13. Dependance of research on items.
Description: Modification of needItem: true in research - if given an item name instead of the boolean, it requires that item in the stores to start research.
Benefit: More research options and less awkward tree dependencies.
