Suggestion: temporarily disabling craft weapons

[moriarty]

this is well beyond V1.0, but perhaps something worth looking into, as it goes beyond anything a mod can easily achieve but might improve gameplay...

I suggest you make the craft weapon icons in the interception screen clickable to temporarily switch them off.

especially in the early game you quickly realise that the small scout ufos will be destroyed by a missile hit. so if you actually want to shoot them down to capture that single alien (or at least kill it and take its weapons) instead of blowing it into oblivion, you have to send a cannon-only craft after it.
having one of those is a waste of a perfectly good craft that could be used for other purposes, too.

if, on the other hand, you always equip your crafts with the best weapons available, and are meticulous about shooting down every ufo you find, you will end up wasting lots of expensive avalanche missiles for tiny ufos you could also destroy with a stingray
a stingray which will however only be fired after the avalanche missile has already been fired. so most of the time you end up using two missiles on a tiny ufo.

later in the game, you might have an avenger with a plasma cannon and a fusion ball launcher. again, you will end up destroying lots of smaller ufos unintendedly while wasting fusion shots you might need for a larger ufo that pops up after you shot down the first one.

the simple solution would be to allow the player to temporarily disable one (or both, if you're suicidal) of the crafts weapons. you might even turn this into its own gameplay element: if your craft is fast enough, you could script a forced landing of the ufo that happens when your craft reaches the UFO in the interception screen. so you have the option to "run it down" instead of shooting it down  - which would only be possible by switching off your weapons.

this would also make the firestorm a good deal more valuable again, since it's the fastest craft out there. who cares that it only has one weapon: it could run down larger UFOs, allowing your troops to capture them on the ground.

what do you think?

[Volutar]

I think its rather good idea.

[luke83]

+1 from me , I always wanted the interceptor screen a little more interesting, it quickly becomes the boring part of the game for me, i would love to see more options made , maybe a advance version with a few surprises , like a ufo class that releases defence drowns to defend the enemy ships , multi UFO in combat ,Kamikaze option etc .

 i know i am most likely just dreaming but it sounds good in my head

[moriarty]

yeah, that's one of the things that really look promising in xenonauts: a more interactive tactical version of UFO interception.


but concerning my initial suggestion, is the on-/off-switching a greater problem or is there a really easy way to implement this? developers? I can think of an easy, hack-like way for implementation which would just set the ammo to "0" by clicking the weapon icon, storing the real value somewhere and restoring it with the next click of the weapon icon, but perhaps that is just a little bit too much of a hack...

[d2uriel]

Since I'm fiddling around with dogfights I'd say it's very easy to implement. Couple of lines of code ;-).

[SupSuper]

Sounds good, maybe just click on the weapons on the interception screen to toggle if they're enabled or not (and show "X" instead of ammo to indicate it).

Mind you, X-Com does support "running down" UFOs in a way, you just keep your craft in Standoff range and minimize it so it'll keep chasing the UFO until it lands or gets away.

[Zharik1999]

Sounds good, maybe just click on the weapons on the interception screen to toggle if they're enabled or not (and show "X" instead of ammo to indicate it).

Mind you, X-Com does support "running down" UFOs in a way, you just keep your craft in Standoff range and minimize it so it'll keep chasing the UFO until it lands or gets away.

This is promising to match seamlessly with the original concept.

[Daiky]

This is promising to match seamlessly with the original concept.

That's a good point. It's this kind of suggestions that are probably most useful to openxcom, tiny details that improve the game that stay in the original concept. (and doesn't require a lot of programming :p)

this includes other suggestions in the UFO interception like: showing the amount of damage done to the UFO, showing whether flying above land or water,...