[V1.30] General - Armour of dead soldiers & Armour production bug

[thixotrop]

Lost soldiers with Warden armor in ground combat missions.
Thought that all items of soldiers were retrieved from the mission, but surprisingly I ran out of Warden armour. I had two more than the number of soldiers so I didn't see it immediately.
When tried to equip a new soldier, I had no Warden armour anymore.
Ist it a bug that armour is not retrieved?

 

So I started to produced new ones, 9 in total for all soldiers without.
When it said that Warden armour ist produced in Geoscape view, I checked Engineering which produced 1 of 9, with 8 still open.
However now all my 9 spare soldiers in Armory screen have Warden armour again.
Did the game brought all lost armours back because I produced one new?
Or is it a bug that produces all required in one go here?

Its reproducable with these two saves:
Load user_day_69_manual_save_before_warden_is_back-4.json, check spare soldiers in Armoury only having the tactical suit. No other armour exists. Then wait in Geoscape view until it says Warden armour produced. Check soldiers again, all 9 have it. Check engineering, 8 still to go.

In this save they all have it again: user_day_71_manual_save_warden_armor_back-3.json

[Chris]

On 8/12/2023 at 11:37 PM, thixotrop said:

Lost soldiers with Warden armor in ground combat missions.
Thought that all items of soldiers were retrieved from the mission, but surprisingly I ran out of Warden armour. I had two more than the number of soldiers so I didn't see it immediately.
When tried to equip a new soldier, I had no Warden armour anymore.
Ist it a bug that armour is not retrieved?

 

So I started to produced new ones, 9 in total for all soldiers without.
When it said that Warden armour ist produced in Geoscape view, I checked Engineering which produced 1 of 9, with 8 still open.
However now all my 9 spare soldiers in Armory screen have Warden armour again.
Did the game brought all lost armours back because I produced one new?
Or is it a bug that produces all required in one go here?

Its reproducable with these two saves:
Load user_day_69_manual_save_before_warden_is_back-4.json, check spare soldiers in Armoury only having the tactical suit. No other armour exists. Then wait in Geoscape view until it says Warden armour produced. Check soldiers again, all 9 have it. Check engineering, 8 still to go.

In this save they all have it again: user_day_71_manual_save_warden_armor_back-3.json

I imagine the issue is that soldiers only "claim" their equipped items when they are put in the dropship, which is why you can equip all the unassigned soldiers with whatever items you like. If you put them in the dropship then the correct numbers will be used.

[thixotrop]

Hmm, so I had all the Warden armor all the time and they were not "in my books"?
But I couldn't equip them. And even when I tried to put that warden-less soldier in the dropship it didn't magically get an armor. And also not when I re-selected the soldiers current role.

I will take a close view on that in the future.
 

[SoftwareSimian]

I'm still having this (or related issue) in 1.32c

Queued 8x Warden armor to build, got 4 of them built by the time a crash site came up. Equipped first soldier with new armor. Now I have zero. If I unequip him, I have 1. If I wait until another is produced, I have 2.  If I kick everyone off the dropship, I now have 5.  I can get the team properly equipped, but only if I kick everyone off the dropship, equip them with armor, then reassign them.

It didn't used to be like this in my previous playthroughs (~v1.10)

[Kouki]

On 8/20/2023 at 12:34 AM, thixotrop said:

Hmm, so I had all the Warden armor all the time and they were not "in my books"?
But I couldn't equip them. And even when I tried to put that warden-less soldier in the dropship it didn't magically get an armor. And also not when I re-selected the soldiers current role.

I will take a close view on that in the future.
 

I downloaded your save, took a look at it and it all seems fine? I swapped out a bunch of soldiers and was able to re-equip the warden armour (this was instantly after loading the save, so before the the queue to make more armour was done). It might show "Warden Armour[0]" on the dropship screen, but if you remove soldier A from dropship and check another's(let's say Soldier B's) loadout, it'll become "Warden Armour[1]" because 1 copy of Warden Armour was moved to base storage after you removed Soldier A from the dropship.

As Chris explained, the equipment is only claimed from storage when they are in the dropship. So if let's say a soldier with a loadout that uses Warden Armour is garrisoned, it doesn't remove one from the base storage until they are added in the dropship. Conversely, if the soldier is in a dropship and has a Warden Armour equipped, it won't show in base storage because it's already being used. Hope the explanation helps.

 

[SoftwareSimian]

On 9/2/2023 at 12:41 PM, SoftwareSimian said:

I can get the team properly equipped, but only if I kick everyone off the dropship, equip them with armor, then reassign them.

I think I may have found the unexpected behaviour I was seeing: I believe after I equipped my first soldier with the new armour, I updated the role equipment to include the new armor, and that automagically re-equipped other soldiers on the dropship of the same role with the remaining stock of armour. I don't believe older versions would automagically update soldier layouts on other soldiers that you had already configured, and that might cause surprises if you had customized a certain soldier's loadout that is now silent changed.

[Chris]

10 hours ago, SoftwareSimian said:

I think I may have found the unexpected behaviour I was seeing: I believe after I equipped my first soldier with the new armour, I updated the role equipment to include the new armor, and that automagically re-equipped other soldiers on the dropship of the same role with the remaining stock of armour. I don't believe older versions would automagically update soldier layouts on other soldiers that you had already configured, and that might cause surprises if you had customized a certain soldier's loadout that is now silent changed.

So the intended behaviour has always been that if you update the equipment in a role, it will automatically update the equipment for all other soldiers that share that role UNLESS their loadout did not match the previous loadout (i.e. if their loadout was in some way unique).

Is that what was happening here? Or is it working incorrectly?

[SoftwareSimian]

9 hours ago, Chris said:

Is that what was happening here? Or is it working incorrectly?

That's probably what's happening here, but from the user perspective it seems unexpected.  At least to me.  I see soldier loadouts as a starting point, but I only expect them to be invoked in one of two circumstances: when I change a soldier from whatever they currently have to a new loadout, or explicitly set click the button to update them to the current version of their current loadout. Having armor "disappear" by being silently assigned to other soldiers in the dropship is confusing at best.

I do like the concept that armor is automagically unassigned from not-on-dropship soldiers (usually when they're sent to hospital). I wish it would be extended to other manufactured items (notably weapons) because we still have to walk through the injured soldiers after a battle and collect their laser rifles to give to somebody else.