Bibidibop
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Posts posted by Bibidibop
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Having tried things out in the most current build, I think left clicking definitely needs to dismiss firing mode rather than relying only on clicking the weapon image. It actually took me a long time to realize clicking the image dismisses the mode, and my first reaction, after rolling the scroll wheel, was left clicking. That is, unless my suggestion is used to keep the wheel exclusively for soldier selection. Maybe, middle clicking could be used to dismiss weapon mode.
Soldier portraits don't have to be constantly visible, but they should at least pop up when pointing at the miniature stats. It also needs to be considered that having constant portraits better exploits the art, and makes it easier to see who is who at a glance. However, those mini-stats are really what is important, because it means I wouldn't have to cycle through my soldiers to find everyone's levels. I could tell if there is any movement or fight left, at a glance. The current selection buttons are also far too fiddly for comfortable use, at least at 1920X1200.
Having the alien portraits at the right works, because, as far as I know, there is no telling how many aliens will be on screen at any given time. Putting them along the GUI could leave too little space. However, if that's not the case, then putting them along the bottom would be really nice. I just don't like looking all over the screen for randomly popping information. I do think there needs to be some way to show which soldier is the one detecting an alien.
The new build has the color coded reserve pathing. It works nicely. Green is walkable, yellow is reserve, red is non-walkable.
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It does but its not used very often. I've seen it in elite units like honour guards. The army and marines still train with bayonets. I never saw a use for them though. I figure if someone was that close to me then I was doing something wrong.
The last bayonet charge was by a British squad in roughly in 2003, in Iraq. They ran out of ammo against a superior force, and scared them enough with the charge that the enemy ran off.
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I suggested the following before, but it bears repeating. What if the empty hand automatically has a knife in melee attack? Expanding this, what if it automatically has wire cutters against fences? This way, there's no added micromanagement, and empty hands are suddenly useful.
The implications are, knives and wire cutters have their own pockets, always carried, and extremely easy to draw.
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I just thought of something. We can destroy walls, and free standing objects, and floors will collapse. Does this mean we can attack wall/ceiling sections directly to make holes so we can shoot down and up to other levels?
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Unfortunately I can't say definitely, but 60's to modern times would see a lot of curtain walls, non load bearing walls, except for the World Trade Center which was unique for reintroducing load bearing walls. One thing to watch out for though are steel frame buildings where all the columns are in the outer wall. That's still a curtain wall design, at least I think it is because the wall is secured to the beams, rather than the floors to the walls. Also, lumber houses, using 2X4 construction don't have load bearing walls, but the frame of the house is in the wall and it amounts to a similar effect.
The theme is, if the walls aren't load bearing, you can blast them off, as long as the frame is intact. Blast the frame enough and the building should come down. For me it comes back to just treating the walls like a bunch of columns, and using a variable for how much the outer walls support.
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but not allowing soldiers to die at all would be madness even on the easiest difficulty setting.
I actually have to agree. I love the new build and how all the shots are now tighter, and how it's actually a fight to keep my soldiers alive.
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How do you know what signifies ranks in the Xenonauts? They may not follow the same rules as the rest of the world and, frankly, whoever it is that controls a paramilitary organisation with the most advanced technology on the planet will probably still get plenty of respect even if they were wearing a Private's uniform.
Anyone who uses that particular insignia is going to have a rank structure originating with the US, because the US is the only one to use that symbol. If they're actually generals, then they need something which fits the theme of generals around the world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_%28OF-2%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_officer
If you're going to argue them having different rules, then they need to show different, but consistent use of rank insignia. One of the issues I have with the way the officers change is that the epaulets become inconsistent with the breast insignia. Even going from one, to two, to three, to four bars would be better, and does fit ranking trends. But, non-general staff will need different symbols or coloration of rank. It's also counterproductive to make a purposefully confusing rank system.
On the matter of respect, it is too ingrained in a hierarchical system to avoid it. The only way to make a low rank leader work would be to strip the top man of rank, and give him a civilian administrator title, and the right trappings of officer. Otherwise, the first reaction of generals is going to be, "Captain, show me to the base leader," and they won't be able to help themselves from giving orders on how to run the place, and ignoring what they're told, even if they're not in the chain of command.
On the matter of reverse order, I have seen it before. A similar style is used in some FPS games, where the player avatar becomes more beaten, thus weaker, the higher the difficulty becomes. Actually, regardless of rank order, if you gave the successively higher ranks puffy eyes, sallow cheeks, and messier uniform, it would be a fun indication of greater stress. Even that alone, with non-changing rank would work wonders.
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Just thought this was very interesting. Firaxis is making an X-Com remake in the proper style, and what jumped at me is their base design. It's from the side instead of top.
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I wish I knew enough facts and math for this, so I hope I can help anyway.
In older buildings, the facade is load bearing, but past a certain point, large buildings no longer use load bearing facades. For the most part, or to the degree of older buildings.
Assuming load bearing exterior walls, the facade, just as a complete guess, will carry around 50% of the load, or more. You could treat every exterior, non- window or door frame surfaces, as a load bearing column section by dividing all of that by the amount of total wall load. You should end up with each wall section carrying less weight than the sparse existing columns. For instance, a building with a load of 100,000 kg, 50 load bearing facade sections, taking 50% load, and 8 columns, taking 50% load would put 1,000 kg on each working wall section, and 6,250 kg on each column. Then you stack those layers of 100,000 kg. Can that be turned into collapse data?
In a modern construction, the wall doesn't support the structure at all. You'll have more, or stronger, columns, and wall destruction won't do anything. Some structures may be like a hollow, columnless box, except for columns right at the walls. For sake of ease, you could make all structures work modern, even ones which look old.
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why would anyone want their soldiers to DROP their weapon? I realise that AP wise it might be cheaper, but how is that for an immersion breaker?! Oh my soldier drops his weapon every time he throws his grenade, not stows it in his backpack or holds it in one hand like a real soldier might, no instead, the elite of the worlds military decide to drop their weapons in a combat zone...
The drop only happens to one of two items if you hold two separate items. If you wanted, you cold leave one slot open at all times, only putting a secondary item into it, such as med pack, once needed.
If you have a two handed weapon, the weapon stays put, but costs more, because two handed weapons can be temporarily held with one hand, or by strap.
Otherwise, two items in two hands, if one item is automatically stowed and retrieved, it should cost more than throwing with a two handed weapon. Either way it involves manually leaving an empty hand for the cheapest throw, but not you lack the option of a drop-throw. Imagine that if you are 1 point short.
I rather have the drop throw available either by defaulting it, or by having it as a selectable throw option. If the style of stow and throw are selectable, with a slider that works like buttons, then it's a moot point.
Those would be useful, too, especially for determining panic.I agree with the ones that I've left up here. Also for certain conditions (passed out, dead, paniced, etc.) perhaps some sort of symbol could also appear over the top of the appropriate soldiers portrait?
You're right, I was thinking over another style of turn based play. However, I still think the path should always show without clicking. Instead, it would be click to lock, click again to walk. If you don't like the placement, either click elsewhere to replace, or right click to go back to constant pathing?It should NEVER cause walking in one click. Always 2, so that you have the chance to plan out your move, see if it will work, see how much AP it requires etc. Especially if you wish it to work with your next suggestion...
The totals at the pointer are just so you don't have to look back and forth so much, so the arithmetic is slightly easier. One option is to show what will remain at the pointer, instead of what will be taken, since I find the former more important.Agree with this fully. Though don't see the need for the totals being there, they're already by the bars on the GUI -
Grenades w/One Hand, Two Hand
With two hands filled by separate items, can you have two throwing modes, one where the item drops, and one where the item is placed away before the grenade is thrown? This would be similar to how the firearms have fire modes. Perhaps, right click either throw weapon to set Drop or Stow mode. You could use a little open downward hand, or backpack as symbols, or just the letters D and S. Actually, those symbols could appear on the right side object, to show that the action will happen to it. So, maybe the symbols need a little grenade above them.
When holding a two handed weapon, one hand can be dropped while still holding the weapon non-functionally. Two handed weapons should incur a lower AP cost than the previous stow-retrieve-throw, but more than the drop-throw. A more complex, system would take into account the weapon weight, and have the AP cost go up for heavier two handed weapons held in one hand, while a throw is made. This wouldn't apply to naturally one handed weapons.
The cheapest throw should be with one naturally empty hand. The grenade should also default to whichever hand is empty, regardless of side, with no handedness penalty, just to keep things simple. Who wants to miss a throw just because they didn't keep their left and right in order? Bleh.
On the topic of the weapons, clicking them the first time should give the reticule, but left clicking again should remove the reticule. Pointing at aliens should also automatically bring up the reticule.
For feeding new grenades into the two slots in from the other six slots in the belt, why not just slide everything over from right to left? Everything feeds from the bottom right most column and row, moving left, and ending up on the right most column, one row higher. It keeps moving left, until it is in the accessible slot for throwing items. Anything that can't throw from the belt stays in position and is jumped over by throwable items.
Soldier Info
The current colors are good. They're all bright without being painful, they're in order of importance, and I think in color of importance. Although, you might want them in order of which declines fastest, AP, HP, morale. I know it's a weird consideration, but that way, the end of each turn avoids a jagged pattern in an outward flowing hill.
Also, clicking the big soldier image should center the camera on that soldier.
Soldier Scroll
I've discussed it previously, but I really need some way to organize the soldiers on the fly. With the introduction of small portraits, you can have a web browser style tab system, where you drag soldiers' portraits into position to change their order! You could also have the name pop up above the portrait when pointing at a portrait. These wouldn't be tooltips, but little tags integrated into the image frame, and which cross over the tops of adjacent frames. The furthest left would have the tag hang into empty space to the left while also overhanging image 2 by an equal amount, and the right would do the reverse. 2 would overlap 1 and 3, or empty space and 4 if the name were large enough.
Dead soldiers should automatically move all the way to the right, lose their number, and should drop by the height of the three miniature statistics bars. That little drop could say it all. Passed out soldiers need something else, or a variation.
Perhaps double clicking a soldier on the main map should move a soldier image left by one notch, and all subsequent single clicks, with an unbroken focus on that soldier, should move him left by one notch each time.
The scroll wheel should not change from soldier selection to weapon firing increments. Instead, it should be controlled by right clicking.
Pulling the wheel toward me should progress through the numbers upward.
I hope Testname becomes a final name. I know it's a joke, but it sounds kind of real, and it is funny.
Camera Levels
These are far far far too small. They should take the placement of the soldier scroll buttons, which is more practically taken by the mouse scroll wheel, and clicking tabs on the top row.
Still on the camera, holding the middle mouse button should allow rapid panning. Edge movement should default to a faster rate, and should work at the bottom of the screen through the interface tray.
Map
If you narrow the AP Reserve slightly, make the main portrait the inventory, and shrink the stats to move them left, and alter the turn button into a vertical strip of the same amount of area, and cut the camera buttons, there should be more than enough space for a mini-map. It would be even better if clicking the minimap expands it to full size.
Soldiers, Paths, Selection
Those three things really need to appear through solid objects somehow. Either wall and objects need to ghost, or the three things need to be transparent through walls and objects.
Walk Path
The walk path should always show, and cause walking with one click, unless pointing at an alien directly, or when the reticule has been activated. Or, we need a walk distance grid, which shows all the in-range squares, and works for multiple soldiers at once.
AP
You might want to show a darkened portion on the AP bar to show by how much the bar will reduce before actions are taken. On the path end, you might want to show not only the cost, but the total current AP/cost. Same when firing AP/cost.
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Some of these are good ideas actually. I'm not convinced by the soldier death and alien reactivity ones, as I think they're important to the game even in easy mode. I rather like the starting base / starting resources one and the alien infiltration mission ideas though, I'll add them to the 'possible things to implement in beta' list.
The way the soldiers die I think is the best one. In the old forum I think I even suggested something similar.
It might be best to have an over all difficulty slider, as well as individual sliders for customization. That way everything could be hard, but death could be easy, or everything is easy with a hard base to start.
I'd say that as far as difficulty goes, for most players just changing in statistics such as soldier vs alien health and accuracy, prices of items and gains from succesful missions and problems caused by failed ones, maybe time required for research would be pretty much enough. No need to change AI, scripts etc.The problem with stat changes are they are simplistic, can act like cheats, and can be boring. Normally, I like a certain pacing in games, and when the hit points of of opponents goes up, I don't find it harder, I find it slower. If they were purely better at dodging and blocking, and still die in the same number of hits, then that's great.
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I think it's a good idea listing what will happen at different funding levels. I don't think it is tacky. It's practical, open, and should result in a good motivator for further purchases, as long as you can spread the word. You should probably combine this with a thorough walk through of the latest build, and expectations for how the game will finish off without these features. You do not want people thinking the game currently lacks funding to be finished to an enjoyable level.
In order of importance.
- #11 depends on what the difference in time will actually be, but I suppose this should be at the top.
- #8 is very important, the environment is currently far too static.
- After the first two, #9 and 10, are definitely highest in importance.
- I like #5 a lot. In addition to the stat page, will we also see the soldiers in dress uniforms wearing those medals at some point?
- #2 justifies #1, otherwise I don't think there is a point to #1. My preference is for the starting weapons to be diversified into an eclectic collection, and not a West East dichotomy. But having Eastern combatants drop appropriate weapons is worthwhile.
- #3 is nice, because it will help avoid having an over abundance of twins and triplets in my ranks. But, I don't care much about #4. If you were having aliens die different ways depending on the weapon which kills them, that would be completely different, and I would be for that idea.
- #6 An intro movie in the Homeworld style can be nice, but it's the sort of thing I watch once and never again. I rank this very low.
- #7's community prizes could be good as long as the amount of work you get out of the money is much greater than using your own people you are already paying.
- #11 depends on what the difference in time will actually be, but I suppose this should be at the top.
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I'm going to have to try to get as far as possible and see the tech descriptions. I bet I can come up with very slight alterations to the wording that will allow non-linear research.
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Odd. Just dropping items on the ground does not cause a crash in itself. Anyone else had this? Had the medpack been used at all?
Just before this I had tried using the medpac, twice, on the holder of the medpac, at maximum level. I had forgotton, and it was the whole reason I needed to transfer the pac in the first place. There's a small chance I used it even earlier on someone else, but I don't think that is likely.
Not yet, maybe in beta. I can see the use but it's not a high proirity issue for me.Maybe the soldier inventory could show a ghost inventory overlay of the adjacent soldiers on the current selected soldier's inventory? If there is more than one adjacent soldier, you control with tabs which ghost inventory shows?
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It's not important to gameplay, but since so much work is being done on prettying up the game, successfully, I felt it worthwhile commenting on the work. It's just a matter of consistency.
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When you change the difficulty level, the avatar's rank changes. I like this a lot, but how low the rank is really struck hard. In practical terms a Lieutenant and Captain is right for commanding 30-50 people, but we're talking about a completely new international military, with the potential to grow into multiple bases in a very short time, and even the starting base can grow very fast. Another issue is, if the top man is ranked so low, he won't be able to properly command respect with existing militaries, and politicians. Modern militaries have generals buying uniforms, the whole mindset is that your ability to think is proportional to your rank. As wrong as that might be.
If this were real, the goal would be to establish the officers with the expectation of expansion, and with parity of respect. That means the top officer needs to be at least a Brigadier General. It would result in a very officer heavy organization, but only at first.
If the organization were actually a subset of another military, then the lowest rank of the top officer could be Colonel.
Another aspect just occurred to me, the rank goes up with the difficulty, but shouldn't the rank go down with difficulty? It may seem a bit counter intuitive, but presumably in the harder difficulty, you have less of everything, an everything is harder. One way to spin that is, everything is harder because you, in-universe, has less experience, less political pull, less support in general. As an example, being higher ranked in lower difficulty could explain countries hanging with the Xenonauts longer, against poorly handled invasion activity.
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On another forum I saw a very good set of proposals for how difficulty levels could work in a very innovative way. The best comparison is to the current implementation of how alien invasion escalates based on difficulty. Instead of buffing and debuffing stats, key features change in severity. I think some of this may already be in the works, but I'm not sure.
Soldier Death
- Easy: Soldiers only get knocked out.
- Normal: Soldiers get knocked down when "dead" and slowly bleed out, only being insta-killed by high-damage critical shots. (This adds another gameplay element where players can risk their men to recover and heal their wounded.)
- Hard: Soldiers die.
Alien Infiltration
- Easy: Aliens rarely infiltrate. If you kick their asses, the country will renege on their pact and rejoin the UN.
- Normal: If you kick their asses, the country will renege on their pact and rejoin the UN. (This makes infiltration a reversible event, allowing players who want to dig their heels in to set the pace of their own campaign.)
- Hard: Alien infiltration as normal.
Alien Missions
- Easy: You will be notified of alien missions, even if they are outside of radar range.
- Normal: You will be notified of important / long alien missions, even if they are outside of radar range.
- Hard: You will only be notified of alien missions after they happen unless they are within range of a friendly base (forces you to patrol aggressively).
Alien Reactivity
- Easy: Aliens will continue with missions as in the original.
- Normal: Aliens will prefer to pick areas of operation where you have had the relatively least amount of successful interceptions/missions. Aliens will search for your bases in areas where you have had over [threshold] successful missions.
- Hard: Aliens will aggressively search for your bases. Aliens will attempt to stage simultaneous operations attacking places where you are entrenched while performing other important missions (infiltration, terror, etc.) in areas where you have little presence. Aliens will not be slowed down for a time by shooting down their ships.
Base size
- Easy: Large starting base with everything you need, ready for expansion.
- Normal: Starting base has all the essentials, maybe not everything you need for a running start.
- Hard: You begin with only the bare essentials: living space for your troops, just enough storage to hold a little gear and a hangar.
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I was going to drop a medpack to transfer it to another soldier, and the moment after I let go of the medpack on the ground portion of the inventory, the game crashed to the desktop. The ground was clear before dropping the pack, and I had the soldier standing near two other soldiers.
This was my second battle, and I had several new soldiers, with several aliens already killed during this second mission.
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I hope it is changed, my expectation was to have both projects, and I assumed only pistols were in place.
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I still think the best explanation for why the aliens are here, doing what they're doing, is they are Space Assholes. Crop circles = graffiti. Cow surgery = cow tipping. Red neck sodomy = frat initiation.
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The melee animation could be made to show a knife when not holding a rifle, but not have a knife as an inventory item. Or, knife fighting could even be a training option, and result in the automatic knife animation.
I think the knife should be automatic and not an inventory item, because it's such an extremely versatile and common implement.
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I don't like spider charts, they make the information more confusing. Instead of looking one dimensionally and seeing which stat highest without thinking, you have to look five different directions, hold each point in mind, and compare.
You can scrap the numbers with the linear arrangement, too, so it's not an advantage of the spider chart. Either way, removing the numbers is bad, because you do need precision when the deviations can be as minor as 1 point out of 100.
Ace Combat uses the spider chart and does not use icons, but words. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lof7eTZKG0&feature=player_embedded
It's only advantage is when used with items which have strong biases across multiple very different statistics, or to fit a very large grouping of data in a smaller space. Otherwise it is style over substance.
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Good points are brought up here, though there are other issues. I enjoy the new direction of the interface, as a folder with layers of notes; however, the inventory windows need the same level of refinement.
Spacing is inconsistent. Only the top and bottom spacing on the left set of items are the same. They also need to keep with the theme.
For spacing, I would look better if, of the left group, the top item were moved up to match the left spacing, and the bottom down to match the left spacing distance. The right side should all move up, with the second item on the right closing the gap, so it matches the gap between the two weapon hand windows.
Another break from the theme is In the upper left, orange rectangle, where it says the information is downloading. I found that amusing.
Rather than free floating inventory windows, what if they were easel supported boards or tables... in the image. The idea is your manipulations are out of context, but that the final image is in context. Instead of having med packs and ammo floating in mid-air in mysterious black boxes, those med packs and magazines are sitting on shelves and tables, while the two adjustable stats are either in the image, standing on that easel, or it's yet another stapled note.
The weapons table to the right can be a literal table of weapons, or, a mini folder, or brochure held on with the paper clip.
Lastly, in the bottom left I added an All button to ASSIGNMENT. I have actually found it annoying I couldn't just have everyone available at once. On several occasions I have reconfigured combat loads for the wrong personnel, because I missed their assignment.
I almost forgot, I used a blur, and very minimal oil paint brush filter on the color stat bars. It makes it look more like someone used a highlighter to make the marks. I also tried making them a bit darker, to show some age to the marks, also because I imagine old highlighters not being so intense as modern ones.
In Personnel, if the individual stats were stuck at the top, then the player doesn't have to click the name to go to the soldier load out window. One click, and you have the concise individual stats, while maintaining the extreme utility of the spreadsheet.
Don't get me wrong, the ability to go straight to a soldier in the Soldiers window through the soldier's name in Personnel is extremely useful. It's just about critical for my comfort with the interface, but that one little repetition adds a whole new layer of utility. If you could figure out a way to jump back to Personnel from Soldiers that is just as easy, without hitting the top tab, it would be amazing.
Fuel Gauge
in Xenonauts General Discussion
Posted
When the fighters are ready to engage the alien ships, we get a pop-up saying who is facing what. But, we're missing a very important piece of information. How much fuel do the fighters have left? If the fighters are down to 10%, I would just forget battle, but with the current system I can't tell until I'm in battle, unless I was watching the fighters the whole time very carefully.