A few ideas that occurred to me

[XenoNUT]

Greetings all, new here and really loving what I see so far. Been playing for about a week on 9.2 and now 9.3/9.31. However I have come up with a few suggestions, nothing too drastic, take them or leave them. I looked through most (perhaps not all) of the suggestions posted so far, so hopefully there are no repeats. Obviously I wouldn't expect any of these to be implemented in the first public release, but by beta or final product would be cool.

So, here goes...

In no particular order but grouped by game module:

1. Geoscape

a. Ability to select aircraft whose status is 'airborne' which are within range on the intercept window. I know you can click on the squadron icon from the geoscape and click 'redirect,' but when a new ufo is detected I think it would be helpful to be able to redirect directly from the intercept screen that appears.

b. When a ufo is intercepted, give some indication on the geoscape of where the intercept is occurring (maybe concentric circles radiating from the spot?)

If you have several planes or squadrons on an intercept course at the same time- when given the option to engage you can not necessarily tell which target has been intercepted, if the ufo is over water and which direction it is heading (such as out to sea) and therefore it makes it difficult to decide whether to tail until over land, or engage. Also sometimes it is obscured behind the 'UFO Intercepted' window that pops up.

c. When multiple icons overlap on the geoscape (say a mig squadron and a grounded ufo), clicking in that spot on the zoomed out map should bring up a context menu to choose either the squadron or the ufo. Currently it is hit and miss or you have to zoom all the way in to select the one you want.

d. Show the base stats in the upper-right when mousing over a base, rather than having base stats always displayed on the geoscape map when zoomed in. In some terrains (especially during the day) the text is hardly visible.

Were it to show in the upper right (where 'Key Information' appears), that would place it on a black background making it visible regardless of base location, and visible without zooming in- just by mousing over the base location at any zoom level.

e. Allow joining squadrons midair- they would split and become two separate squadrons when one aircraft runs out of fuel or ammo, and each aircraft would still return to its respective base. Clicking on a joined squadron would give you a menu with an option to split the squadron back to their original aircraft/squadrons.

2. Air combat

a. "Camera" tracks ufo and interceptors with an "auto" zoom level feature (similar to how Star Control II mêlée worked)

Seems to me more desirable than having to continuously zoom and pan manually to follow the battle.

b. Squadron-level orders (retreat, afterburner, evasive/roll, formations or predetermined attack patterns?)

I know you can pause combat and give each aircraft their orders and unpause, still...

3. Ground combat

a. Either incorporate pilot/copilot into the current grounded chinook/dropship artwork (not the briefing screen) or keep the roof always visible on the front of the craft as in the chinook hangar artwork (so you wouldn't see empty chairs up front. Seems quite odd your soldiers have managed to arrive without a pilot- or maybe pilot and copilot have gone for a smoke while your Xenonauts clear the area?

Well that's all for now, I am sure I will think of something else. Hopefully what I wrote makes enough sense that most will have an idea what I am talking about. Please let me know what you think, if you agree or if you think any of these are not feasible/desirable.

Thanks for taking the time to read through these.

[Chris]

Yup, thanks. A lot of these are interface nits we'll have to sort out after the Kickstarter and finish the Geoscape coding, when we bring in the new UI. They're good suggestions but fixing them up now is a bit of a waste of effort given we'll be hacking a lot of the code out again.

I particularly like the base information suggestion though, that's a good one I'd not thought of before.

[XenoNUT]

Thanks, Chris. Glad it makes sense to you, as that's what matters most!

[XenoNUT]

Ah yes, one more for ground combat: armored vehicles/tanks can move to an occupied tile effectively running over an enemy. Although that may require additional animations, I suspect it might look a little strange with the current death animations. I know the vehicles don't currently have limited ammo, but sometimes you don't have enough AP to shoot, and if they're close enough, why not? I think by default the vehicle path should avoid running anything over, be it farmer, office-worker, Xenonaut or alien- but maybe a shift- or ctrl- click to tell the game engine "Yes, I really do want to crush this thing under my treads."

[XenoNUT]

OK one more and I swear I'll stop for a bit!

For Xenonaut soldiers, the ability to assign an actual 'Callsign' so for instance I could have Piotr "Full Auto" Kalashnakov or Michael "Whitey" White. The callsign would appear below the soldier's full name since I'm pretty sure there would not be room in the existing field.

[Gorlom]

OK one more and I swear I'll stop for a bit!

For Xenonaut soldiers, the ability to assign an actual 'Callsign' so for instance I could have Piotr "Full Auto" Kalashnakov or Michael "Whitey" White. The callsign would appear below the soldier's full name since I'm pretty sure there would not be room in the existing field.

Xenonut you can currently give them a callsign that overwrites their name in certain fields (I believe there is a "name" field in the soldier equipscreen that will allways show their original name)

Do you mean something different from this or have you just not noticed that it is possible to give them callsigns? In what fields would it appear below their real name?

[XenoNUT]

Changing the callsign seems to change the soldier's name everywhere but the soldier information screen (where the full name still appears with the stats). I guess I'd like something along the lines of SGT. Jimbob "Hick" Jones (inline) instead of having the name change to SGT. Reaper everywhere.

If there is not enough room for the callsign on the same line I'd like to see something like this:

SGT. Jimbob Jones

"Hick"

[Gorlom]

Hmm I see what you mean. But I'm not sure I'd like to have the rest of the name everywhere. If the lenght of the name field is lenghtened you could allways change his callsign to both name and callsign the way you want it.

Seems like the after mission report with status updates shows the real name without the callsigns though. That could use some field with the callsign.

[thothkins]

Agree that the name filed is not large enough. I'd like to keep the full name, but also have room for a decent sized nickname.. Even better, would also have a little field where I could put any specialisation or squad function, such as sniper, scout etc. to give me a hint of their weapon load out.that goes when they get injured.

[The New Romance]

Agree that the name filed is not large enough. I'd like to keep the full name, but also have room for a decent sized nickname.. Even better, would also have a little field where I could put any specialisation or squad function, such as sniper, scout etc. to give me a hint of their weapon load out.that goes when they get injured.

The latter is already planned in form of "role badges" that you can freely assign. It's only hinted at in the manual, though, not in the game itself.

[thothkins]

that's really good to know. It's a small thing, but with a big pay off

[winterwolves]

1. Geoscape

a. Ability to select aircraft whose status is 'airborne' which are within range on the intercept window. I know you can click on the squadron icon from the geoscape and click 'redirect,' but when a new ufo is detected I think it would be helpful to be able to redirect directly from the intercept screen that appears.

This would be great, and would kind of make c not required.

e. Allow joining squadrons midair- they would split and become two separate squadrons when one aircraft runs out of fuel or ammo, and each aircraft would still return to its respective base. Clicking on a joined squadron would give you a menu with an option to split the squadron back to their original aircraft/squadrons.

Are you aware the max number of aircraft in a combat is 3? I could see the benefit of it though.

[thothkins]

As for pilots, I guess that the XNauts are trained to pilot the craft, and then move into the deployment area where you see them when the battlescape loads.

Or the craft is operated remotely, but this would seem unlikely in the cold war setting.

[Gorlom]

Obviously they exited the craft greeted the local forces standing just offscreen and started playing strip-poker. While you would think this would make for some really awkward flights home sometimes, the pilots really like the feel of the seats against their naked skin so EVERY flight home is awkward.

Since this game is trying to avoid a mature rateing Chris can obviously not show the naked pilots.

(PS. wth is wrong with my brain?)

Edited April 21, 2012 by Gorlom

[thothkins]

(PS. wth is wrong with my brain?)

Nothing that electro shock therapy won't help with. That's what my therapist always tells me, at any rate