Solar's wishlist

[Meridian]

My view:

A/ Instead of writing even more, I would write less. Many articles are too long, involve tons of math and only discourage the player from reading them; and ever using the weapon. Instead of all that math maybe writing something like "Best in the hands of a brave gal. Requires VooDoo skills." would be more user-friendly.

B/ For geeks, nerds, and number-gasm-folks, we could have a button "Stats for nerds", which opens a pop-up with full ruleset definition, either raw or slightly formatted.

[bladum]

@Meridian

1) In my fork based on yours 3.5 i did some ufopedia improvments, to allow moder to add less description. interested in merging ?

2) or in general are you interested in UI improvement. ?

[Solarius Scorch]

B/ For geeks, nerds, and number-gasm-folks, we could have a button "Stats for nerds", which opens a pop-up with full ruleset definition, either raw or slightly formatted.

That would be pretty cool. I mean, moving stuff to another place to make room for more stuff is the point of this request, right?

[Dioxine]

That is the best solution, to be honest. Writing so much maths is not only user-unfriendly, it's also a crazy amount of work and makes articles overloaded with unclimatic info. Bladum's expanded Pedia article looks already too busy, and it still doesn't cover much; that's certainly not the way to go. I'm not saying that Pedia is already perfect, but moving math info to a separate pop-up would be the best.

There is space at the top for one more button, let's place the nerd button there. Also to keeps things clear and nice, the popup shouldn't be fullscreen. Also Bladum proposed extra stats on the battlecape attack bar. I'd be fine if damage range was displayed, but maybe not on the bars... As it would be cloned for every attack type. Better to display it in the inventory somehow (r-click popup? Examine button?).

[bladum]

extra stats for battlescape

just tell me how it should look like e.g. screen from other game i will make some code update and we will see if it work or not

[Eddie]

I'd be fine if damage range was displayed, but maybe not on the bars...

I would love this. Could be displayed near the target crosshair next to ufoextender accuracy (won't work for melee though). This would help a lot to better understand the weapons. I would also go as far as including the target attributes like resistances and armor in the calculation. It's a bit metagamey (you wouldn't know what that thing is resistant too), but it is far more helpful to the player that way. If you don't like it, make an option to turn it off, but less experienced players will profit immensly from it. What I would also like is for the display of melee attack accuracy to be corrected for enemy dodge.

Idea for peadia: Clip size could be displayed by a simple number drawn over the ammo type (see picture).

[Arthanor]

Nerd pop-up screen would be cool, as would a simple number written on the clips (or x5 for a 5 bullet clip).

What I'd like to see in the attack bar, instead of the rng, are the actual minimum and maximum damage for the gal that has the weapon equipped. So the numbers you have now (ex. 0-200%) but multiplied by the weapon's power calculated for the gal specifically, with her current stats.

Then you know how effective a gal is with a given weapon when you're just about to use it and you can get away from cluttering your brain trying to scale stats and stuff. If you're not sure, you just equip both weapons and on the next mission you can check which is better on T1 while waiting.

[bladum]

something like this ?

accurancy %
average damage

i display debug values now:
 base power from weapon or ammo
 bonus power from weapon or ammo
 power lost to distance

[Arthanor]

I was thinking just in the attack bar, next to your hit chance. Power loss would be cool on the cursor though, for sure.

[Dioxine]

Looks good, better than cluttering the attack bar.

Including target's resistances in that number would be a straight cheat, though.

[Arthanor]

Yeah, actually playing around with the image in paint, I agree that just "weapon power" is enough under the hit %. It saves some space, can represent power drop with distance, and the RNG range is something the player should be able to calculate (50-150% or 0-200% are not hard calculations, the important, annoying number is the A*X+B*Y+C of listed power)

[bladum]

ok so now just convince Meridian to merge my pull request with OXCE+

[Meridian]

@Meridian
1) In my fork based on yours 3.5 i did some ufopedia improvments, to allow moder to add less description. interested in merging ?
2) or in general are you interested in UI improvement. ?

1/ no, it's too different from vanilla, I prefer making more subtle and optional changes... in this case the "stats for nerds" button discussed above
2/ yes, just share ideas here on forum... or post links to your repo

ok so now just convince Meridian to merge my pull request with OXCE+

I don't see any PR...

Anyway, PR is not my preferred way, if you just publish the link to your repo/branch, where the change is located, I'll cherry-pick/merge it after review and potential small changes. You'll be credited of course.

PS: To explain, I must keep number of commits in my fork to the minimum, so that I can continue merging with vanilla (with bigger changes, I need to revert some commits, then merge with vanilla and then re-implement the breaking changes again)... so PRs usually get processed into a single commit before I merge them. Only way to keep this going without losing my mind (or at least I don't know of any better way).

[Arthanor]

I second posting links to repos, that way I can merge them in even if Meridian doesn't like it (like the awesome, cheesy but so much easier to use that it's worth it scanner)

[Eddie]

Including target's resistances in that number would be a straight cheat, though.

You could only display it for researched enemies. I think that is doable and would not be cheaty. The point is to hide the math from the player. Think Blowpipe vs Osiron Security. Another example: Self Charging Laspistol vs Mechtoid. Takes a lot of shots, but you can kill a Mechtoid with that.

Now that I'm thinking about enemy info: The mind probe should show resistances too, and not just armor. Would have to solve the display space problem first though.

Yeah, actually playing around with the image in paint, I agree that just "weapon power" is enough under the hit %. It saves some space, can represent power drop with distance, and the RNG range is something the player should be able to calculate (50-150% or 0-200% are not hard calculations, the important, annoying number is the A*X+B*Y+C of listed power)

The thing is, if a weapon is 0-200% or 50-150% is not always clear. If that were explicitly stated in the Bootypeadia, I would say it's not that important (something for the nerd button). But right now I still have to look in the ruleset from time to time because I'm not sure about the damage range. I would still prefer to have the damage range, because why no. It does not use that much more space and saves me a little bit of math.

We still need ideas how to display this stuff for melee weapons though, because they don't have a target crosshair. And melee weapons is where this would be most helpful because these are the bulk of stat dependent damage items.