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Feature request..Let me keep my loot


Thomas

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I was referring to the dropped alien plasma weapons and grenades. I don't see the point in having them dropped on the battlefield and then taken away when you return. If you can't use them or keep them why have them drop at all. I would like there to be a reason to have them drop or not dropped at all. Just a personal opinion I think it would be cool to have useful loot, but I already know loot is not what the game was designed for. I read the FAQ.

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arharrr, me hearteys! Hijacked ye say?! >cough< sorry what? >hides patch, peg leg and parrot quickly.

um, if I read Thomas' post correctly, and to summarise my own

- On the Battlescape you can pick up and use alien weapons. I recall Chris liking this.

- At the end of the mission you automatically sell them.

- My thought was that forcing the sale of such items, as cumbersome as they may be, was rather forced, and against common sense. You should be able to keep them, even if they do weigh a ton and aren't terribly useful, if you wanted to.

- Further posts involved much hand waving around the issue coming up with reasons to justify such a thing.

- In the end it came down to Chris wanting it to be in there for game play function purposes, and we'd have to live with some plot holes along the way. And that was that.

I was surprised it went on for as nearly as long as it did, because it started off with just a teensy, tiny question.

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If they are a worse choice than the weapons you get for free why would you bother to keep them?

They may be useful to grab from the floor if you get desperate during the mission but that also doesn't really make them nice to keep.

As I think I said previously I don't really have a preference either way but the way they are implemented makes it pointless to store them.

If they were to be changed to a more useful weapon then that might make a difference.

There isn't really a place for them at the moment though.

I still would prefer that the items autosold would give relation gains instead of cash though.

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From what I recall, it was that the decision was taken away form the player as much as anything that took me by surprise. Here's a situation where you get access to something. But we're not letting you keep it to use as you see fit. Still feels wrong even as I type it this time round.

It's the removal of having a choice that bothers me I think, more than what the weapon actually does.

But on function, they are more advanced than anything you have in terms of power. It's just that you couldn't move and shoot in the same turn with them and the accuracy may have been rubbish too. But useful for clearing cover and so forth perhaps? Suppression? It's important that they are so unwieldy. Imagine if they were perfect for Xenonauts and you still got them taken away at the end of a mission. No, it's good that they are the first step along the r&d map for your own plasma weapons.

If players don't want them, sell them. If you do want some, keep them in stores. At least you'd have a decision to make.

On autoselling:

Totally agree about sold items being linked to funding nations. Through improving relations, enabling them to develop their own weapons for local forces or moving the ticker to let them take out smaller UFOs earlier in the game.

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Keeping them may well fool players into think ing that they were in some way useful though.

Generally the games of this type that allow you to capture the advanced alien tech do so because it is a straight upgrade of your gear.

If you can capture and keep this stuff that looks like it should be an upgrade, and in the hands of the aliens is actually superior, but it is weaker and has major drawbacks it may be misleading for players.

I am still not convinced either way though, difficult to decide.

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Keeping them may well fool players into thinking that they were in some way useful though.

Well, they sort of are in a possible suppression, taking out walls sort of way. Not to mention the strength bonus whoever carries the thing is likely to get :)

Generally the games of this type that allow you to capture the advanced alien tech do so because it is a straight upgrade of your gear.

Yes, I see that point. I was thinking that Xenonauts promotes a bit of diversity cross weapon types, and that your "industrial plasma gun" adds to that.

If you can capture and keep this stuff that looks like it should be an upgrade, and in the hands of the aliens is actually superior, but it is weaker and has major drawbacks it may be misleading for players.

The costs of using it are pretty upfront. Your APs plummet and it takes a lot of effort to use the thing. A simple Xenopaedia fill in would reinforce this. "We have huge, unwieldy plasma weapons as our disposal. Only our strongest Xenonauts can hope to use them, and even then not too effectively. But we have them, if you need them."

It is odd, but the game has given you this equipment legitimately. It's simply having a choice around something you've earned in the game. They could shoot paintballs, but I'd still want the option of disposing of them when I wanted to and not when the game felt it had to keep them back from me, because it hadn't balanced them properly.

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From what I recall, it was that the decision was taken away form the player as much as anything that took me by surprise. Here's a situation where you get access to something. But we're not letting you keep it to use as you see fit. Still feels wrong even as I type it this time round.

It's the removal of having a choice that bothers me I think, more than what the weapon actually does.

From what I recall Chris' reasoning is that it might as well be an automated sell off of loot as in these types of games you'd keep one to use for research purposes, as Xenonauts does, then you'd simply end up manually selling the rest off after every mission. The latter action becomes tedious, especially if your equipped equipment is better than the stuff you're picking up.

I concur with this thought process, especially considering the Alien plasma weapons in this game are not all round better like they were in UFO:EU or TFTD where it was worth keeping some of them.

There's also a difference between micromanagement and just uneeded time wasting.

That said, there could be an option added to the options or the stores screen for auto sell-off of unndeed loot to be toggled on or off if people really really think they need it.

Edited by Buzzles
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Hi again all..Yes the point was the forced sell leaving a lack of player control. I don't see the purpose of them dropping if they are automatically sold whether or not you pick them up. Either have them drop and you can keep them (yes, I know the human weapons are better to use.), or don't have them drop at all is my opinion. Also, it should be a unique item in the soldier that is carrying it's pack not an item in the armory. If you wanted to carry it even further have it be able to be used, sold whole, or broken down into parts for other project or speed up research just throwing ideas out there.

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there is much more handwavium then you expect - UFO you captured also LOST without any chance for you to use it yourself.

you cant ever get some alloys or fuel or anything from it, it just GONE.

everything shoud be collected and sent to base, then player shoud decide:

use alien technology self - this will require special training and valueble ammo and will be less efficient then alien holding same weapon

disassemble alien technology to build something else

convert item into research points

sell

for captured UFO - game shoud provide large transport with or without alien technology that can be used to move crashed UFOs around.

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So, the UFO doesn't provide any alenium or alloys? Did I understand that correctly? That hardly seems fair.

Incorrect, and I've no idea where Rawcode has got his incorrect information from, but UFO's do give alenium and alloys. They considered to be salvaged straight away once the battle is over.

I think he'd like a system similar to what exists in UFO:Alien Invasion, where you have to choose between selling UFO's or storing them and then devoting scientists to first research them before letting your engineers loose on them to pull them to pieces. Personally, I don't enjoy that system because it's doesn't add much to gameplay in my eyes (at least, the way it is in UFO:AI).

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Transferring captured tech into research points is interesting - I'm not sure I want to have a 5 choice menu for every single piece of recovered equipment. If you had to take apart x plasma weapons to see how they worked that'd add in some protection against tier jumping research and have a sort of build for major research levels. I don't want to worry about 10 parts for each weapon (ok I have 10 barrels, but they're of the wrong caliber) so I'm not quite sure about disassembling them unless it's just into alenium/alloys, which I think happens for some types of recoveries as is.

Somehow disassembling 20 plasma rifles and getting 5% closer to being able to research them each time strikes me as cooler than just saying "we need 20 plasma rifles in inventory to start this" though the gameplay is the same. Given xenonauts sells them off automatically, it could just be that they examine them etc before selling them so this could still fit.

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i will provide screenshots later, captured UFO with no gain in anything expect few plasma guns, also, LARGE UFO size of chinook and completely nothing to salvage?

Nobody force you to get menu for every item after every combat - everything moved to storage, and later you can decide what to do from storage inerface, need money - sell, need to push research - give to research team, want to use self - just equip, as long as you not decide what to do it stay inside storage.

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@rawcode re: UFO salvage that sounds like a bug.

the latter idea is interesting for weapons, but I wonder if at this point they'd revamp the system to see how it works. over the course of the entire game it also might get a little finnicky. I highly doubt they'll add a ground transit system to micromanage ufo transfers, that seems a bit much.

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The principle issue with retaining and utilising alien artifacts of any description is that it doesn't matter if a squaddie using alien artifact X is less efficent than an alien using alien artifact X, if a squaddie using alien artifact X is more efficent than a squaddie using human equivalent artifact Y. It's pointless to research human-derived arifacts when alien artifacts present a better option to humans when used by humans.

An example: Keeping alien plasma weaponry. An alien plasma weapon might be less accurate in a squaddies' hands than in an aliens, but 1) that plasma weapon doesn't have to hit as often as a ballistic weapon to kill an alien and 2) a squaddie can move closer to an alien to defeat the accuracy gap. While an alien plasma weapon is less efficent in a squaddies hands, it is WAY more efficent than the equivalent ballistic weapon, so with immediate access to plasma weapons, what's the point in researching lasers? More accurate, you say? Well, the same research could go into adopting alien weapons so their accuracy modifer is offset. No ammo? Each dead alien provides another weapon. For every point one might make about "human artifact Y is better", it can be parried by "research can close the gap, and alien gear is still better".

Another example:Keeping alien UFOs. A corvette might be more cumbersome in a human pilots' hands than alien's but a flight of corvettes - or landing ships - or strike cruisers (hey, you get to upgrade without having to do lots of busywork!) would not only sweep aside puny fighters but would be able to take on the terror ships and and base builders with raw power muscling out the need for strategy. Again, research trees could focus more supplanting alien control mechanisms with human-viable mechanisms, which would lower the alien-human gap.

The way technology is handled in this game is to try and make humans more than peons who can't do anything except ape their betters. The artifacts that Xenonaut squaddies gain access to are derived from alien technology and alien materials, but are entirely human in their approach and development. Hence lasers, a principle which depends upon alien power sources and alien materials to make possible, but is entirely human in development. Hence human plasma guns, which only become available after the principles of plasma are fully understood by humans and are developed in a human enviroment. Hence tier 4, which goes beyond alien technology, representing human understanding, innovation and invention accelerating past aliens because they didn't just adapt alien technology - they learned from it. To do that, to make humans more than copycats, alien technology must be considered useless to squaddies in the field. If it isn't, then copycats will be all that humans will be capable of, because it's so much easier to copy than it is to invent.

Edited by Max_Caine
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I don't see a big problem. Xenonauts are founded by the assmelbed nations and I bet they want those guns in their labs.

There is no doubt that some soldiers probably would want to keep such weapons - but the thing is, the higher-ups would never let them. Makes sense to me, that unknown alien weapons with possible fail safes or catastrophic misuse consequences (think predator self-destruct), who aren't designed for humans hands , would be something your soldiers are not allowed to keep.

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I don't see the purpose of them dropping if they are automatically sold whether or not you pick them up. Either have them drop and you can keep them (yes, I know the human weapons are better to use.), or don't have them drop at all is my opinion.

I think the purpose is to have an emergency ammo buffer. In case you find yourself in the unlikely situation where all your ammo is spent you can pick up the alien guns and try your best to kill something.

You get to use them in the same mission but you don't get to keep them after. That is the point as far as I can tell

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I figured the point is to avoid the screams of 'I killed someone but he didn't drop his gun' and to avoid the problems some players may have with researching plasma weapons when none had ever even been visible to the player.

I quite like the current way but I wouldn't be bothered if I had to sell them myself either.

I don't like the idea of them not dropping at all though.

If nothing else it is an easier mod to change the auto sell than it is to add them all in from scratch if they don't drop.

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