Author Topic: some simple TFTD ideas  (Read 3262 times)

Offline TrickyTriscene

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some simple TFTD ideas
« on: April 20, 2020, 04:50:37 pm »
1. in two part missions, you should be able to select (before the 2nd part) which aquanauts are doing the 2nd part and which stay home, to keep your most valuable snipers and such safe.

2. During prebattle equip, grenades should always prime at 0. To save a needless click.

(3 done in oxce)

4. The units standing behind the sub door at mission start, should face the door. (saves 2 tu) (easy rul mod actually)

5. Pressing Next and NextStrike should skip units in the sub.

6. a bit more complex one, an option "save the last partial clip" after combineclips, in the base stores. After the next mission, it is used again in the combineclips pool.
You shouldnt be able to sell them but they should take up some space in the stores.

7. If you right click on an item in the stores, you should get a full report window telling you how much you have in each base and submarine. All zeroes suppressed to crunch the report.

8. I think there is some bug in the right-click-to-turn aquanaut in some direction code. They often turn the opposite direction, maybe one of the ways of scrolling or the Next button doesn't update where the interface thinks the view is.

9. The game shouldn't save equipment changes made during prebattle phase of 2nd part of 2 part mission.

10. You should always get to know the alien type unless you attack an undamaged touchdown sub. That is because the terror site calling xcom for help phones you the alien type.
And cameras on the barracuda film the alien type of shot down subs.

11. If you hold a drill, and stand over an unconscious alien, you should be able to "kill sleeper". Likewise with thermal tazer, you should be able to "extend sleep". A medikit should be able to diagnose the amount of stun and remaining health so you can calc when it dies or wakes up.

12. there should be a shift key to alternate ingame between "show time units remaining on the floor" and "walk immediately".

14. some esc key (perhaps just Esc) should allow you to cancel selection of aquanaut in battlescape, so you are safe from moving accidentally.

15. there could be a key that lets you cycle between aquanauts on the current screen.

16. Base defending could be a whole lot less painful if you could prearrange in which facility block each aquanaut is stationed.

17. There could be a new moddable field for tanks, ion armors and drills, "zrbite use per mission". Since zrbite is fuel, I always felt that you don't need it when making the item, you need it later to fuel it. I already modded my Sonic Ox to ask no 15 on construct but require ammo. The zrbite per mission field is float and maybe the zrb storage too, then. defaults Ion armor .3, Mag 1.0, Displacers 3.0 drills
.1/.2/.3 resp. Coelacanths 0.  For convenience, any units not leaving the sub don't count.
If you vary the zrbite multiplier (50 normal) per diffi, you create a new balance feature.

19. You should be able to exchange subs between bases without need of a third empty pen.
b. You should just be able to move sub to other base by moving it there, without "transfer".

20. There could be a "send to" button beside the sell button in the manufacture screen. It lets you send the package after it is fully  made. (you choose the destination right away).

21. The craft gas cannon (and generally all sub weapons with multi shot clips) shouldn't load the next clip until it's at 150 or lower, preventing waste. Now it takes a clip if you fire just one round.

22. Tanks should also operate if you don't have full ammo for them. You should just get a warning.

23. Displacers shouldn't fly on land, or even, not operate on land at all.

24. It's convenient if you can rent some 50 emergency storage space for 150k per month or so.

25. I don't like the M.C. reader as it is now (I play with "need Line of sight" option). There should be a new item, a link stick, tu cost 10-15%, your scout uses that to link the alien and once done, it can be checked by your back crew infinitely without turning to the alien (and without need of l.o.s.)  If you find an alien with an MC reader you are lucky: all aliens are already linked into that and you can check all aliens on it that you see. As a bonus it could give you the number of aliens in the zone (remaining).

26. a new item, a mine detonator/disarmer, could give you a more elegant way of blowing up or even unpriming your mines. (the second makes more sense, apparently xcom does that to recover unused mines anyway). It could work with the MC cursor and need no line of sight. Available from the start as purchase of course.
b. Magna pack explosives and a new type of pulser you can make, could have a remote priming function, so you can throw for 25% tu from unprimed state, and some other advs like you don't die when you are stunned.

27. Why can't I store my aquanaut layout in the sub... I have to rearrange them every mission now. Like, one hotkey and when pressed if all troops are still in the sub, it stores the current layout. Every sub has just one layout and it gets overwritten, after a confirm. Any aq not in the list goes to the first free regular spot etc. If there are new tanks that can't be placed on a regular tank spot, then the layout is not used.

28. Maybe items that had run out and you replenished later (buy or manuf), can be auto-added back to your sub.
b. This is better covered by the Aq Personal Equipment post.

30. a hotkey for "reslave all slaves by their last masters". It doesn't move the masters you have to do that. Of course a report whether all were succesful. If you click it again only the failures try again.

31. An optional rule to make the game harder and a bit more realism: You need to res the corpse to be able to hold the live version in your containments.

32. A kill log in battlescape only listing totals, without ranks. It could also mention died and wounded aqs.

33. Wound message if someone gets fatal wounds, like the killed message.

34. If there is no line of sight or "unable to throw there", maybe the soldier shouldn't turn 45 degrees for it, to preserve that tu.
b. There could be a key to test whether you can shoot and throw to the current mouseover square, a separate icon for shootable and throwable.

35. Civilians should be easier to keep alive as follows. If you touch them (just reach melee range) or get eye contact (face to face <7 sq) you should be able to control them until end of battle. The purpose is to lead them to safety, not let them scout or fight. So they can't pick stuff up, and don't clear shroud. If they see an alien, control is lost and they flee right away with the rest of their tu. Under this control they are worth 40 to enemy but still 30 to you. In shipping route missions, there should be some "exit squares" behind your sub, if you lead them there they will disappear on end turn and give their 30 points. So you can leave and still have some saved civs. On the 2nd level there should be an exit too, but not on islands/ports.

36. There should be an audible diff between melee hit and miss.

37. There could be an equip sound for sub weapons.

38. At mission end, where it says "not enough to fully re equip squad", there could be a report of all clips and bombs you used up, and what their previous and new stock is at the base. Along with a mention of wounded aquanauts.

39. In "dead aliens don't give weapons" mode, you might not get a sonic pistol. If you don't get one before like April 30th, the game shouldn't req it anymore for the Sonic Osc. If you dump them, it's your own fault and you have to do without Oscs.

40. The Hammerhead can't carry tanks. Maybe after the Manta you should get a res item called Spiton, only 300 res hours, giving you a triton that uses Zrbite and has speed 2000. (not 4000; it's shape is not as streamlined as the Manta/Hammerhead).

41. A one button action to move everything in a sub (crew/equipment) to another.

42. Aquatoids and gillmen are intelligent aliens not controlled by M.C. like tasoths and lobsters. What about a game option (or fixed rule) that these races are immune. You don't need it against them anyway, and it makes missions against them more oldschool and challenging later on.

43. If the enemy hasn't seen you, melee attacks against it should be always-hit. (the backstab rule). Not to be implemented as side and back hits are always hit.

44. If your new Living quarter is almost finished, you should be able to hire new personnel already, so that it arrives when the LQ is done.

45. In Research screen, Sciendays field showing how much already done, and a log button showing how much each completed project was (how much it needed, not how much spent).

47. You should be able to sell the 3 new subs, for 2M, 2.5M and 4M respectively. More if there's a weapon attached that is full loaded. Less if it's damaged: like 25% at 99% damage.

48. If you can force-launch, Xcom should do repairs last; refuel first. I also think refuel and rearm both weapons should all go simult.

49. Perhaps you shouldn't be able to sell sub weapons at all without a sub and without ammo. Underwater weapons like DP launchers and Displacers (if we make that so), could also be made unsellable because the rest of the world fights on land. For such things there could be a dismantle feature, giving you back money and parts (like 60%) if you spend technician time on them.

50. Because of market saturation, each item could fetch less the more you sell of it. Makes the later game harder financially.

51. For craft and personnel hired halfway the month the first lease/pay should be prop lower.

52. For personnel, the init payment, what is it? Should be just 10k for tech/scient but if you sack them, you pay a full salary extra plus the part of the last month they worked.
For aquanauts, 20k initial, (for diving suit etc) and 40k death grat if they die, and the same rules as tech if you sack them.
The salaries are still 20/25/30k resp.

53. Points are rather plentiful later on. The game could be more challenging if we distinguish 2 point types: recognized and personal. Recog pts could be from Resource raids, Surface attacks and completed base attacks (syn dev down) and arte sites, with fixed amounts for the last two. The 1k and 2k for not showing up could be lower. The recog score could accumulate, so you have to avoid a certain number like -1500 instead of 2 bad months. Personal points could affect starting morale for Xcom and aliens on certain mission types, and maybe more. It could perhaps increase your funding from countries you also scored recog points in.

54. Your intercepting craft should just check the destruct level of the alien sub, and the background (like Coral/Atlantis). So you can skip the bad ones.

55. Interceptors of the same type should be groupable. They will try to join as one group after launch (from different bases sometimes), and you can then give single orders for the entire group. An extra panel of dogfight buttons lets you order simult attacks.

56. A new facility, base camp, 3d 40k 8 personnel 20 store, lets you protect base early on. Now you are vuln for 19 days.

57. Transfers should be cancellable. If a base is destroyed, this should happen automatically.

58. A hotkey to draw lines and calc distances, like follows. You press it while pointing to a square. Then while mousing around, you see the distance to other squares and whether the line is perfectly horizontal or diagonal. You could also just give (X,Y) coordinates, then we can check for X=Y or X=0 or Y=0.

59. In debriefing I want to see what I killed, not just direct kills, but also "aliens killed by aliens". Maybe just with the number, but score 0, or it could fetch some score too.

60. If you order an aquanaut move in "move directly" mode, and the aq can't make it, then it shouldn't go, unless you hold a force key (not ctrl, that makes run). This prevents some catastrophies: if you're supposed to go down behind cover and you lack the tu and you stay in the air. Or a direct path is blocked and the aq takes a long detour, or you select another aq and misclick, the prev starts moving.

61. While holding alt, the game should show the number of slaves in some way. Like text "slaves: x" in a corner or an S next to each slave's number square, or simply another color for those blocks.
In some missions you have to reslave often and forgetting one is fatal. The count is a fast way to check.

62. ((A balance rule. If you hit and run a mission, then you should get lower stat ups. It's a bit cheap, visit a colony entrance and do some grenades and MCs and leave. Perhaps div2 and round up or even down.)) I also think if you hurt an alien for less than 50% of its hp maybe the secondaries shouldn't trigger (33% for Lobs), unless you kill it. And something about the MC attacks, like in the xp rules post.
-> a simpler idea: if you don't complete a mission (just the first part of 2parter is ok), you don't get secondaries (tu sta hp str) and no mc skill.
-> a simpler rule for the 33/50%-thing is, only the one making the kill gets secondaries. The others just primaries. The rule for MCers would be: if your slave makes a kill, you get 2nds. You don't get primaries for your slave's primaries. Wounding won't do. And letting your slave die doesn't give anything.
-> Even getting primaries should require some decent attempt to do damage. So we could make a table of respectable weapons per alien, like you get none for using MB grenades on Tasoth or Lobster, a general rule is the weapon should take the alien down at max damage (150%), on the weakest rank of that alien (Lob sold is only 90 hp).

63. You can get the inv screen in the aquanauts screen with I button. Maybe the armours screen with the A.

64. If you scroll down your aq list and get details on one, the list shouldn't reset to top.
b. The order of the aq list matters for the positions in the sub, so the game should never save a Sort on Fire acc or so. That's just for checking things.

65. If two aqs are facing and adjacent there could be a "give" action on all items for 8 tu, putting it directly into his hands. (it's easier than throwing so less tu)

66. You should have direct control over who gets promoted. An aq should need to kill an alien and then you can promote, if you have rank slots left in terms of numbers. It needs a fresh kill after a promotion to be promoted again, but you don't need to be the person with the most kills.

67. If you attack a colony, you should be able to divide troops over the 2 elevators (that is, make two groups), so the whole raid doesn't fail because of a bad random split.

68. You should be able to let the troops on one elevator leave and let the others work on, in colony attack. Or even let nauts leave individually.

69. Alien colony layout should be saved so you cannot reroll and have to face the difficulty if you need one gone.
« Last Edit: May 28, 2021, 09:11:47 pm by TrickyTriscene »

Offline TrickyTriscene

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Re: some simple TFTD ideas
« Reply #1 on: July 23, 2020, 10:10:37 pm »
bump

Offline LuckyClover

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Re: some simple TFTD ideas
« Reply #2 on: July 24, 2020, 04:23:37 pm »
yes auto prime of all dye grenades would be nice and killing sleeping or unconscious aliens was always hard by shooting at them
I dont remember if making alien unconscious is lowering enemy morale or not-but I think You need to kill enemy to lower it
and yes switching places of craft with "exchanging" theire places is very cool idea  :)

Offline TrickyTriscene

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Re: some simple TFTD ideas
« Reply #3 on: February 16, 2021, 02:28:04 pm »
I play OXCE now so I removed the ideas that are in it already.
Also changed a few things and there are 60+ items now.