Reserving AP's

[deelad]

When you click to reserve AP's, would it be possible to keep that selection active when you change soldier? As it stands, if you set 'soldier 1' to reserve AP's for snapshot, move him, then switch to 'soldier 2', it resets to not saving AP's. This means if you want them all to reserve AP's then you have to select it for every soldier.

[Aldazar]

I agree you should be able to reserve APs on a squad-wide basis (matter of fact I think you should be able to do almost everything reasonable on a squad-wide basis to minimize unnecessary clicking)...

I also think it would make sense to allow you to reserve APs for as many things as you want (for example, to specify enough AP to kneel, turn within a 180 degree radius, and fire 2 snap shots)... I remember in the original X-Com, reserving enough for an aimed shot in order to ensure that I would have enough AP to kneel and still take a snap-shot in reaction. I would then have to turn off the reserve for aimed shot at the end of the turn in order to kneel and face the appropriate direction. Pointlessly annoying, I think...

[Chris]

The difficulty with this is having a suitably intuitive interface to do it. I'm not against it per se (again we're working on a new GUI for the combat to make everything easier to use), but the most intuitive function for the Reserve buttons is for them to work on a soldier-by-soldier basis. I mean, a guy with a rocket launcher won't want the same Reserve settings as a guy with a pistol will.

Perhaps you could have a pop-out window with a custom reserve section in it, with different settings you can choose, but that's a reasonable amount of coding time for quite a specialist part of the game and it'd be quite low on our priorities.

[deelad]

All I was thinking with this was like on UFO:EU where if you pressed reserve for snapshot, the next unit selected would already be set to reserve for snapshot. I have no idea about coding, but would it be a simple enough option, or even possible, to have it so when you click one of the reserve AP options, said option is set to default?

[Chris]

That's how it used to work, but people complained. What happens is this:

You have a soldier with a rocket launcher, and you run him into a UFO with aimed reserve selected. Then you get a soldier with a pistol to run into the UFO, with snap reserve selected. Then you change back to the rocket launcher soldier because he was facing in the wrong direction, and rotate him 180 degrees. Then you realise that he's not got aimed reserve selected any more and in fact you've just used too many APs for him to be able to use aimed fire.

Then you come on the forums and tell me I've made the game wrong

[deelad]

I don't recall encountering that problem, but yea I can see how that would annoy some people lol. Point taken.

[anotherdevil]

I can think of 2 ways to fix this:

You could have the reserve button divided in 2 parts: the larger side is for the individual soldier, the smaller side is for the whole squad. One side could have the image of a single soldier (/bust silhouette), with the other side a group of them. This way you click the larger one for that soldier, or the other one for the whole squad. Here's a bad example of what I mean:

The second method is to have the option to choose one option before the mission starts. this way you can choose to get all soldiers on snap shot reserve before the mission starts, and then you can modify the individual afterwards. It does in the least mean you don't have to do everyone every time, the majority should at least have the right amount left.

[Sathra]

Or alternatively, you could be able to set one as default during a mission (r-click? like auto-cast) and that will be used until the soldier get an individual setting. Either global for all troops, or maybe just for soldiers carrying the same class of weapon (pistol, smg, rifle, etc)

[Hoywolf]

it would be nice if you could have the aim setting per individual solider since different guns will want different setting anyways right?

[Sathra]

That's the current plan, but its seems some people would rather have/like having global reserve states instead/as well.

[Nuttss]

my vote is for individual. I always micro manage it; I'd never use it if it was global.

[Loki45]

That was one aspect of the original X-com that I didn't like which was keeping the reserved AP's for the next soldier when you switched to him. I can't remember any time where I wanted everyone to have the same reserved AP's. For me the way you have it now is ideal.

[Sunblinder]

Maybe have the ability to set the default in the soldier loadout screen - either per soldier or per weapon type.