different way of handling battlescape salvaging

[moriarty]

okay, this one I already posted in a thread in the "open feedback" part of the forum, but by right it should be here, too:

this is something I'd like to see in the game, because I always thought "how do they fit all that stuff into the skyranger?". come on, really, you manage to kill all the aliens in a "supply ship" type UFO, and within seconds they fit 3 UFO Power Sources, 4 UFO Navigation, 20 Alien Food, 2 Alien Surgery, 141 units of Alien Alloys and 150 Units Elerium-115 in a Skyranger with an 80-item-limit cargo bay? seriously? actually, even worse, the stuff is magically teleported back to your base, hours before your troops ever return!

I'd rather have that handled a bit differently. I guess we have no other way but to assume that all the stuff will fit into one of your transport craft, but perhaps it takes some time to dismantle all the stuff and move it into the transport. My proposal is as follows:

- when the battle ends, the crash site remains, and the game saves the "inventory" of the crash site as well as the inventory of the transport craft: everything that's on the ground stays at the crash site, everything inside the transport and on the xcom soldiers goes in the transport. perhaps once the last alien is killed, you are even informed that okay, this was it, but you may continue to pick up stuff for a few more turns in order to bring more stuff home immediately. then, when the transport arrives back at the base, the actual inventory is checked against a previously saved list. anything on the transport that's "too much" goes into base storage. anything that's missing is replaced by corresponding base storage content. if there's nothing there, you get an error message so you have the option to re-equip before your soldiers fly out to the next battle with empty rifles.

- the stuff that's left at the crash site needs to be picked up by a transport craft. I would like to see an option at the end of the battle to either "go home immediately" or "mop up". the latter would mean that the transport craft stays on site for, let's say, a few hours (might even be different amounts of time depending on the size of the UFO, the amount of stuff left and the number of operatives on your transport). after that time, the crash site inventory is transferred to the transport inventory, the transport leaves, the crash site disappears, everything else happens as above. or you could send a different transport to do the mopping up.


this would add a whole new layer of strategy: defend the crashed UFO until the mopping up is completed. or perhaps deliberately leaving the crash site in order to lure a (bigger?) UFO there and ambush it while it is on the ground.

[Daiky]

I would "fix" it the other way around: when battle ends, just put the skyranger back in the base and pretend that the game did a little fast-forward in time and skipped the boring part of mopping up and travelling back to base... I know I would be happy with that :p

[moriarty]

what? heretic!               LOL

no, seriously, I think the geoscape action could do with some improving. as it is, most of the actual game-time is spent in the battlescape, and I'd really like to see some more geoscape tactics. plus anything that might help bring some use to the "orphan craft" (firestorm, lightning) would be greatly appreciated. and advanced tactics on the geoscape might just be the way to achieve that.

[Volutar]

Dear moriarty, for your information, that kind of salvaging would quickly become very boring for more than 90% of xcom fans. I doubt even you will be patient enough and stay same calm after salvaging of 30th ufo.
This gameplay simplification is quite OK with one "but" - salvaged cargo probably
shouldn't come to the base before transporter returns.

[moriarty]

Volutar, I can see your point. having to send a second team would probably be a nuisance, if it was necessary. that's not what I had in mind, though.

my main point was that the collection of stuff should take some time.

sending a second team to do that would only serve as an optional way - the usual way would be to just tell the transport already on-site to mop up. I don't think that would be boring in any way: you simply click one button. everything else is done automatically, it just takes a little longer than in the original before the transport craft actually returns to the base.
it could add to realism and suspense, though: if you shot down multiple UFOs, you will have to decide whether you:

a) want to take out all the aliens quickly (fly there, kill them, take off without mopping up, immediately flying to the next crash site, kill the aliens, then start collecting stuff) or
b) rather go to one important crash site (fly there, stun a high-ranking alien, mop up and take it to the base, then try to reach the second crash site before it disappears).

I'd like to hear some more opinions on that

[luke83]

I like one aspect of your suggestion, maybe the craft should stay landed for a few mins ( maybe 15-30 mins) whilst your team automatically salvages the ship ( exit to geoscape whilst waiting). Then there would be a chance of a alien ship coming to the aid of its shot down vessel and attacking you whilst your still salvaging.  Then you could spawn a defend the wreakage mission where the aliens all attack from within there UFO whilst most of your men are in the original shot down craft. They continue the attack for X amount of turns until they wipe out your squad OR beside to flee to stop you from getting 2 UFOs.

I guess you would need to add one of my earlier suggestions into the Mix.
https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,354.0.html

[moriarty]

luke83, yes, that's what I was trying to suggest

my first post might have been overly complicated, because I wanted to give the player the option to "not salvage right now - mop up later".


oh, and I think that 15-30 mins is okay for a small UFO, but for larger UFOs it should take longer - you need to give the aliens some time to send the second UFO, after all *evilgrin*
I was thinking something like "salvageable items" divided by "number of soldiers available". for a Supply Ship (total of 320 loot items, plus about 15 Aliens on veteran difficulty with 7-8 items per alien makes around 130 items, for a total of 450 items) being salvaged by 8 soldiers this would be 56 minutes. does that sound reasonable? it actually sounds too fast for me. perhaps multiply by 2?

[Daiky]

It sounds complicated to me. What with the battlescape debriefing, you get a debriefing before or after mopping up?, what with the scoring?, injured soldiers stay on site and risk to die? together with stunned aliens? So many possible issues... Lots of luck to the guy that wants to program it :p

[luke83]

So thats a No from Daiky

Simply spawn a second mission using the same basic MAP layout as the first mission, just pick one side of the the original map and add more mapblocks so you can land the new UFO. That covers the debriefing screen.

As for mop up it should be simply , leave with what your troops are carrying OR wait X amount of mins to salvage everything.

Injured soldiers , IF you have a medikit you should automatically stop the bleeding of any injured units, but there health stays the same. If no medikit ,Add message box Warning when you exit to geoscape " Mr Smith could die if you salvage the wreckage" ,Then make your choice.

Stunned aliens , keep stunning them 

IF you landed in a friendly country , they can send army solders to patrol the perimeter in case of alien retaliation (NPC- Civilians with guns).

Does that cover all the complications ?  Now other than Daiky , who can program it

[moriarty]

Injured soldiers , IF you have a medikit you should automatically stop the bleeding of any injured units, but there health stays the same. If no medikit ,Add message box Warning when you exit to geoscape " Mr Smith could die if you salvage the wreckage" ,Then make your choice.

I'd say that critical wounds should be stopped automatically. really, the med kit is a way of fixing these wounds in combat situations. even with only basic medical training, any soldier should be able to stop any bleeding within 5 minutes.


as for the debriefing, the screen would list the aliens killed/stunned etc as usual, but instead of "items recovered" it would list "items on site", along with an estimated time for the salvaging operation. then you get to choose between "salvage now" or "salvage later".

score points for captured alien artifacts should be avoided when they arrive at the base, anyway. 

[DiceMaster]

Please say NO to creeping featurism!
Salvaging should be simple, without tons of management and "excelent new features".

It is a game, realism should be limited here. How do they fit all that stuff into the skyranger? Who cares!
Player should do missions, research technologies, build facilities, but should not manage boring stuff.

[luke83]

It simply should be a optional feature, in the original game there was very little strategy to geoscape and i think that needs to be changed.

 if i had this option activated it would change the way i build my bases, how many crafts i would need and which mission should i target first.,Also it would spawn a new type of mission , all positives in my mind. Would it be for everyone  , No,  but its a interesting Idea.

Openxcom needs to be made the same as the original for download, all we are asking for is some special rules to be built in for veteran players to change the style of the game to our own  tastes, why bother coding openxcom if you do want special options added, you may as well play the original game in dosbox . The reality is i cant code and i am not sure about Moriarty, so it most likely will never be added anyway .

[moriarty]

precisely, I can't code either. but I'd like for someone to at least create the possibility to make this like you said, if we don't make openxcom as moddable as possible, why make it at all?

[Amunak]

A little bump for this thread...

I have to agree that the wreck salvaging should be kept simple. BUT I'd fix that bug (It's illogical, so I think it's a bug) where you can use or sell things from the crashsite before the craft that takes them to base lands.

AND to make it more realistic, maybe adding half an hour / two hours / three hours (depending on the ufo size) to the time before they leave the site would be nice (with the option to abandon the site immediately and take nothing but equipment and things they can take from there in no time). It'd add more tactics to the times when there's one huge ufo probably heading to your base where are no soldiers to defend it, but it'd be almost no burden for the player (he'd just have to think which button click on the last turn before debriefing).

Now I read it again and I'm not sure if it's understandable. Just two options before debriefing:
- stay for some small amount of time and take everything as usual
- abandon the site and don't dismantle the ufo - you'd get just corpses, weapons, artifacts, etc. but no alien alloys and other parts of the UFO like navigation or entertainment panels.

[pmprog]

I have to agree that the wreck salvaging should be kept simple. BUT I'd fix that bug (It's illogical, so I think it's a bug) where you can use or sell things from the crashsite before the craft that takes them to base lands.

Working for businesses in real life that sell things; selling something before they've got their hands on the product is not that usual. In my current job, we often buy parts in for a sale - which means we get the sale first, then buy the part. It might sound odd, but it happens.

Regarding the recovery. When you finish battlescape, do you return to Geoscape with the same clock time? Maybe the geo should return with (n*2)+30 minutes added (where n is the number of turns in the game). Or something like that. Though you'd probably need to be careful to update research, manufacturing, and any other craft flying on the globe.

Personally, I'm happy with the way it was in XCOM, but I'm sure it'd be easy enough to add a "Cleanup" status to the craft that forces them to wait 30m before returning