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"Private Sniffy, run back to the ship and get the bazooka"


squigoth

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I'd like to see am equipment stowage bin, perhaps the size of 4 or 5 backpacks, on the transport craft where a player can load up extra equipment for the troops to grab should they need it. Maybe have a load up button in transport screen where you place the troops in different locations on the ship.

Given the size of the transport craft, a Chinook carrying 8 soldiers, I fail to see where this would be unrealistic or unbalance the game (seeing how you'd have to run back to the craft to get stuff). It would also help for those times you fly from one crash site to another.

Thanks...

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I'd like to see am equipment stowage bin, perhaps the size of 4 or 5 backpacks, on the transport craft where a player can load up extra equipment for the troops to grab should they need it. Maybe have a load up button in transport screen where you place the troops in different locations on the ship.

Given the size of the transport craft, a Chinook carrying 8 soldiers, I fail to see where this would be unrealistic or unbalance the game (seeing how you'd have to run back to the craft to get stuff). It would also help for those times you fly from one crash site to another.

Thanks...

That's been suggested and I think it's a good idea. The OG had storage. However, there is a workaround. On troop setup screen before you go on a mission load up your troops until they can't hold anymore stuff. Don't worry about them having no TUs because they're so overloaded. After you land, on first turn while there still in the dropship just move all the extra supplies they're carrying to the ground. Their TUs will return to normal and you'll effectively have cache of extra equipment in the dropship. Obviously, it's a cumbersome work around, but it does solve the problem.
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It's an oft-requested feature, but not one that's an easy thing to implement unfortunately. The OG has equipment assigned to dropships instead of soldiers, which is why they don't have permanent loadouts and you have that 80 item limit for your whole team.

When we designed Xenonauts we decided it'd be much smarter to have the equipment assigned to individual soldiers instead. And it is - but it means we don't assign inventory items to dropships like the original game does.

Long story short, it is something we'd possibly consider doing but it would be quite a lot more work than you're expecting. Plus also involving new UI elements, which is it bit tricky to do now the "final" UI is in place.

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It's an oft-requested feature, but not one that's an easy thing to implement unfortunately. The OG has equipment assigned to dropships instead of soldiers, which is why they don't have permanent loadouts and you have that 80 item limit for your whole team.

When we designed Xenonauts we decided it'd be much smarter to have the equipment assigned to individual soldiers instead. And it is - but it means we don't assign inventory items to dropships like the original game does.

Long story short, it is something we'd possibly consider doing but it would be quite a lot more work than you're expecting. Plus also involving new UI elements, which is it bit tricky to do now the "final" UI is in place.

I'm not sure if any of you guys have tried OpenXcom, but they managed to change around how item assigning works. Items are still assigned to dropships, but then they are sub assigned to the soldiers and you can change their loadout at the base and at the mission. Either way it'll save what they last used and re-equip them unless the items are no longer in the ship.

Personally I think that's the most ideal method. I really don't like having to throw the equipment around everywhere when I rotate soldiers around. Money is hard to come by, and building extra equipment to make life easier simply isn't an option.

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I'm still against it.

Mostly because it removes the hard choice we've got now:

Does Private Sniffy

A) Take a rocket launcher with him when he's loading up in case we come across something that needs a rocket to the face, meaning he's less good against general bad guys as he's only got a pistol to use on them.

OR

B) Take an assault rifle and grenades so as to be good against a general threat, but run the risk that if something does need a rocket to the face then we can't supply it?

Allowing a dropship locker does allow more tactical options so I can see why people want the feature especially in light of the fact they get no pre-launch mission information to tailor their squads with, but in my view having a dropship locker would mean the player doesn't have to make a hard choice before launching the transport and it also means they don't have to deal with making the wrong choice.

I should point out I always play Ironman and don't savescum, which should give you an insight as to why I'm very much in favour of making people live with their choices.

Edited by Buzzles
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I'm in agreement with Buzzles.

Yes, it would make sense to bring some extra items on the Chinook. Yes, the original did it. But it removes the element of being concerned about bringing the right equipment, and enough of it. It would mean I can kill aliens outside a UFO, then switch to a full shotgun loadout and storm the UFO. Or that I can equip 4 guys with rocket launchers and in addition to their backpacks also have another 20 rockets in the chopper.

Not having extra cargo is one of the things that makes resource management important.

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Then we agree to disagree; if you want to play a resource management heavy game then don't use the bin.;)

A stowage bin would help with flying form on crash site to another and keeping the squad equipped. Also you'd still have to run back to the transport to get different equipment or more ammo. If the AI is aggressive and your squad is being pressed Pvt Snuffy might be too late with that bazooka.

Add a stowage bin when you can.

Edited by squigoth
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Not having extra cargo is one of the things that makes resource management important.

But there is already extra cargo, as StellarRat has pointed out, it's just that it's rather inconvenient to use. Besides, all my soldiers except for snipers actually carry rifles as their primary weapon and have their speciality in the backpack, they don't even need to be that strong to handle it. So this would be just a convenience feature (and it presumably makes it even less of a priority if it's not easy to implement).

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Actually you can't use the take extra stuff and drop it in the choppa trick if you plan to hit another site in one run, anything on the floor at the end of the mission is lost, including anything in the charlie. Tried this one out and due to stunning two guys with stun smoke I arrived at the next site with two totally empty handed guys and no extra equipment in the charlie. :(

Pretty much as it is now you can only hit one large (bigger than corvette) ufo in a flight.

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I'm still against it.

Allowing a dropship locker does allow more tactical options so I can see why people want the feature especially in light of the fact they get no pre-launch mission information to tailor their squads with, but in my view having a dropship locker would mean the player doesn't have to make a hard choice before launching the transport and it also means they don't have to deal with making the wrong choice.

Well then we need a way to get rid of the packmule option too. Pretty hard to solve in my opinion.

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I do agree that you would want to cover as many options as possible when going to an unknown site, against unknown foes.

In practise, I used the extra dropship capacity once in all of the X-Com games I played.

I've felt the need for it on a couple of occasions in this game. At least one of those was going through scatter laser ammo faster than I thought I would. On the other occasions it was on builds where starting troops could also get armour, making weight more of an issue. Currently I carry plenty of spare ammo and there's plenty of versatility in the squad.

With the additional option of picking up and using alien weapons, it's even less of an issue.

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If that was done your main squad at the start of the game could be down to 4 people if you took a vehicle, 6 if you didn't.

This has been discussed before but I am still not convinced it adds anything to the gameplay and certainly not enough to justify the extra time needed to get the system into the game and working properly.

I would be more in favour of increasing the number of available troops on the starting dropship so you could have more varied equipment loadouts.

I expect a lot of people would still run with duplicates of the same basic templates though.

Adding storage space to a vehicle was suggested previously which I personally think is the best compromise.

It makes vehicles less expendable in missions and more desirable to take as they replace some of your troops.

Could be very expensive if they get destroyed with your whole stock of extra weapons though.

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Cant you make an invisible pack soldier that automatically drops everything the moment you arrive in the mission? leaving all his equipment in the ground so as if it was a storage locker? As if it was an alien that just died when you arrived on the "locker" space.

I agree that it doesnt add a lot to the gameplay but it does add to the immersion, having to manually manage my pack mules every time a mission start just sucks.

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Mostly because it removes the hard choice we've got now:

A) Take a rocket launcher with him when he's loading up in case we come across something that needs a rocket to the face, meaning he's less good against general bad guys as he's only got a pistol to use on them.

It's not a hard choice at all.

You just assign a couple recruits to be pack mules and load them up with equipment you don't plan for them to ever use and have them sit in the dropship.

but in my view having a dropship locker would mean the player doesn't have to make a hard choice before launching the transport and it also means they don't have to deal with making the wrong choice.

I'll respond with the same criticism that has been thrown at new XCOM time and time again.

"Fake difficulty. Fake choices."

It's one thing to live with the choice of using a valuable soldier and possibly getting him killed. It's another to deal with artificial and contrived choices for the sake of choices.

"You can take grenades or medkits. No, you can't take grenades and medkits and only a pistol. No, you can't take just grenades and medkits. What will it be, grenades or medkits?"

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I think you are misrepresenting the arguments.

All of those options are perfectly possible in Xenonauts and that wouldn't be altered in any way by adding a storage locker to the dropship.

You are free to make any equipment choices you want before the dropship launches, within the parameters of the game limitations such as carrying capacity and inventory space.

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