Scientists and Egineers

[Chiko]

Is there a way to make them actual soldiers so they appear in base defense? Or even so we can load them in troop transports and send them on missions.

I can't seem to find their IDs in the rulesets, just the starting amount, costs and initial numbers.

[Nord]

Now they are not units, just pure number. Create a new units class is not hard, but change research mechanic may be difficult, because it is hardcoded.

[Chiko]

It wouldn't really be changing the research mechanic. I was hoping for it to be a value in items or in a similar ID strings coz that way would be as easy as to add the value to another ID but if it's hardcoded then there's nothing I can do about it.

[ohartenstein23]

The issue is that engineers and scientists are not treated in the game engine the same way as soldiers.  Soldiers actually exist as separate entities in your living quarters, and are all handled by the game on a per-soldier basis.  Engineers and scientists are just a number tacked on to a base - if you went into a living quarters where they supposedly stay, all you'd find is a note saying how many live there.

This is a change that's been requested before, making engineers and scientists act the same as soldiers, but problems arise when you'd want to do anything with them; you'd have to assign each one to a job individually.  That would get very tedious for 10+ of either.

[robin]

maybe trying to make them into hwp?
they won't be able to use equipment though (it would be fixed, like an hwp).

[7Saturn]

IIRC, then Hobbes' Terrain Mod adds allied units to the game. For example, on some terror sites, I found allied soldiers an police men, which were controlled by the game but opposed to the aliens, too. This way, one could also treat scientists and engineers. But I'd strongly suggest, not to take all of them. Otherwise, one will end up with a base full of allied soldiers. I usually end up with around 100 scientists and far more than 100 engineers. 200 Units, that's an awful lot for any mission.

[Nord]

Thinking of... an idea: civilian units(engineers and scientists) in base defense mission. Not all 200 of them, of course, but 3-5. But how to make killing them count as decrease of amount of personell...

[Meridian]

Thinking of... an idea: civilian units(engineers and scientists) in base defense mission. Not all 200 of them, of course, but 3-5. But how to make killing them count as decrease of amount of personell...

I have volunteered implementing that, but there was no interest in it:
https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,4520.msg68451.html#msg68451

Instead manufacturing of scientists, engineers and soldiers was added.

[7Saturn]

Thinking of... an idea: civilian units(engineers and scientists) in base defense mission. Not all 200 of them, of course, but 3-5. But how to make killing them count as decrease of amount of personell...

Well, in the same proportion. =) up to 10 civies, one standing for at least 10 people (so when having 50, it's 5 civies). If you reach a labor base of more than 100 people in addition to soldiers, one civilian counts for 1/10 of the number of civilians, evenly distributed to scientists and engineers.

Example: 100 engineers, 80 scientists, distributed to 10 civies: one civilian counts for 10 engineers and 8 scientists and you have 10 of them.

Or the starting situation as an example: 10 engineers, 10 scientists, making 2 civilians, each one counting for 5 scientists and 5 engineers.

And one additional thought on that: Scientists start at labs, engineers at workshops. If the appropriate facility is not available (transfered the engineers one day to early, the workshop isn't ready, yet), then they start at the living quarters.

But I'm not to sure about what their agenda should be. Hobbes set it this way, that the guys tend to go to the main access lift. (at least in my base layout they do.) That's making the mission more difficult as it already is. This way they are running exactly towards their demise. But what should they do instead?

[yrizoud]

I don't see it as a fun game element.
- If the non-fighting personal is controlled by AI, the player finds it unfair that he can't stop them doing something stupid - Apart from doing something even more stupid-looking, ie. zapping everbody with cattle prods and carry them away like meatbags.
- If the player has full control, in the first turn the player will ALWAYS rush them away from entry points, and then park them in closets during the entire battle. There's not much choice or challenge.

In any case, proportional losses is difficult to accept at the scale of the vanilla game. "Only one sectoid was able to take a single shot, and I still lost 15 scientists "

[Chiko]

Aww... well, I guess I'll have to shelve the idea. What I had in mind was for them to be actual units with unique abilities in the field. For instance, I implemented EMP damage which is good against machines and aliens with implants and I wanted engineers to have built-in melee attack that deals that damage. Another idea was for them to be able to wear HWPs like armor.

I had the inventory sprites and everything. xD


Also, I never really liked the idea of having that many scientists and engineers for R&D projects in vanilla game. So I was also thinking about scaling the numbers down in buildings and increasing their costs/payment.

[yrizoud]

These are nice techies working on our aircrafts, but I think someone has made labcoat sprites for our lab rats (Oh and in battle, you may want a clear difference of color to differenciate them from unarmored soldiers)

You should look at how XCOM Apocalypse handles it, you'll probably like it :
- scientists / engineers are less numerous, and actual individual people.
- you recruit by choosing from a number of candidates, from each category (biology/physics/engineering/soldier)
- people typically ace in their specialy, but if you're undermanned, anyone can be put in any role and be better than nothing.

I think this system could work very well in (an alternative branch of) openxcom for UFO. The basic hiring categories would be soldiers, researchers, engineers - but it could also cover pilots and medics, if these parts of the game mechanics are expanded, and agents are given piloting and medical science stats.

[Solarius Scorch]

Well, X-Com never had classes, every soldier can do anything (I like it, because I don't like classes - they're fine for some types of games, but not X-Com). So I imagine that the best course of action would be adding new stats - primarily Science and Engineering - to everyone in the game, except soldiers would have it at a minimal level while Scientists etc. would have very poor combat abilities. But they all can learn with practice!

[Arthanor]

 

From experience, takes a lot longer than even a Piratez playthrough to become competent in science

Joking aside, I dislike classes too and very much like that XCom doesn't have any. It seems like having multiple soldiers types with different starting stats would pretty much cover this need, provided that you could define new stats (akin to the Apocalypse science ones) and could assign soldiers to research where they contribute, say, biology stat/100 per day to biology projects, etc. Current scientists would be 100 in every science. Would make it possible to convert certain units, like converting Espers who are great at voodoo research but hate biology, or reticulans that are good engineers.

Assigning "soldiers" to research/manufacture could be done with a button on the assignment similar to the one for pilots in OXCE+.

[Solarius Scorch]

For normal people yes, but aren't these ones the best and finest that the Earth population of suckers has to offer?

From experience, takes a lot longer than even a Piratez playthrough to become competent in science

Joking aside, I dislike classes too and very much like that XCom doesn't have any. It seems like having multiple soldiers types with different starting stats would pretty much cover this need, provided that you could define new stats (akin to the Apocalypse science ones) and could assign soldiers to research where they contribute, say, biology stat/100 per day to biology projects, etc. Current scientists would be 100 in every science. Would make it possible to convert certain units, like converting Espers who are great at voodoo research but hate biology, or reticulans that are good engineers.

Assigning "soldiers" to research/manufacture could be done with a button on the assignment similar to the one for pilots in OXCE+.

Oh I like you so much.

But custom stats would be great anyway, because it would mean more freedom to the modder. You could for example add different accuracies for different weapon types (like splitting into normal weapons and heavy weapons or something), if that's your creative idea, or separate Biology from Physics like in Apocalypse, or add yet another Psi stat to use in formulas... Or just made some cheesy voodoo-related for some guns. Or, well, piloting ships.