How hard would it be to allow renaming HWP-type units? It doesn't have to be all that involved, just alias would do fine, if I use up my Reaper to manufacture Mutated Reaper, and lose the one I renamed to Teddy Bear, I won't cry, I can just rename him again.
Short answer: on a scale from easy to hard... really hard! (read until the end for one possible option)
Long answer:
In Geoscape, soldiers are represented as individual objects with attributes (e.g. tu, stamina, days wounded, number of kills, etc.). Each soldier is handled separately, you
cannot make an action on multiple soldiers at once... the only action which can involve multiple soldiers at once is buying them (because they don't exist yet as individual objects).
Scientists, engineers, HWPs, weapons, aliens, etc. are represented as a string identifier with a number (e.g. "STR_PARROT: 5" ... that's literally
the only thing the game knows about all your parrots in geoscape). You can sell 5 parrots at once, you can equip 5 parrots at once, you can move 300 engineers from one base to another at once... because they are just a number. That's why Solar's "everybody can do everything" request makes no sense... imagine having to click 300-times on 300 different lines in a transfers table to move all 300 engineers to a different base (same as you have to do for soldiers today).
In Battlescape, based on rules of the object/hwp type (note the difference: not object/hwp, but object/hwp
type)... a HWP is constructed from thin air into a BattleUnit, which is an object and has properties (remaining TUs, morale, left-hand weapon, backpack size, thermal vision and so on...). After the battle this object (which could potentially have a name during battle) is
deconstructed into thin air and all that remains from it is "+1" for the hwps of the same type already in the base.
Summary:
- everything, which is not a soldier (or a craft) cannot have properties (like name), because it doesn't really exist
as individual (in geoscape)... i.e.
with current architecture/game design hwps cannot have names.
Options:
1. instantiate hwps also in geoscape... this would require quite some amount of work (guesstimate of 100+ hours) and would totally change the architecture... if SupSuper, Warboy or Yankes changed anything in OXC/OXCE, I would not be able to merge it... because there would be nothing left from original code to merge into... so anything even remotely related, I would have to implement separately myself...
2. I can give you an option to rename your hwps during mission briefing... and keep their names during a single mission... however the name would be lost after the mission once the hwps are dematerialized into a number
3. instead of using hwps, why not use soldier types? I added support for "manufacturing" them, added things like inability to be a pilot or exclusion from promotion system... there's almost nothing more preventing you from using a separate soldier type as a hwp type... and if there is, we can probably add it.... and they can have names... you can even specify/force the name during manufacturing as I demonstrated in the "bruce willis" example somewhere earlier
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EDIT: for those people who didn't understand the technical bla bla, imagine it like this:
1. your stores don't actually contain 5 heavy plasmas, 4 flares and 2 tanks... they contain only a sheet of paper which says there are 5 heavy plasmas, 4 flares and 2 tanks here... but you will not find them
2. your alien containment doesn't actually contain sectoid Alex, floater Bob and snakemen Cyril and David... it contains only a list saying there are 2 snakemen, 1 floater and 1 sectoid in here... but you won't see them anywhere like in a zoo
3. your living quarters actually do contain 20 soldiers (Anna, Beatrice, Claudia, Diana, Eve, Filomenia, Georgia and Helene)... and you can go and chat with them... but they don't contain any scientists or engineers; just a sheet of paper which says there are 200 engineers and 15 scientists living here
