More flares on night missions OR let us decide how many to take per soldier.

[StellarRat]

Can we make flares available on the equipment screen or somehow have a default night loadout where we can control the number of flares? I'm finding that two per soldier isn't working out.

[thothkins]

auto equipping two with the option of more seems solid enough.

[Lt_Parsons]

Auto-equip has one downside - you can not have them if your backpack is full, so it is automatically means -2 equipment squares for everything else, even for day missions (you can try to calculate arrival time, but i always seem to mistake on slow speed of Chinook).

[GizmoGomez]

My packs are rarely full, due to weight constraints. (I increased the weight of C4 to 2.5 instead of 1, so that helps keep space free). Plus, armor weighs a lot compared to the 5kg of your basic stuff, so once later armors are obtained I don't think it'd be too much of a problem.

[thothkins]

I would likely forget to put them on the soldiers if they didn't go in automatically. So, I like having them added for me on night missions.

I don't think I've had any space issues with them yet, and I put a fair amount on my troops.

[Akavit]

I've done two terror missions at night thus far and I agree that two flares per soldier isn't cutting it. I was lucky in the first mission that the aliens were missing me and that I killed them all after covering just half the map. I was out of flares and explosive rockets though by the end of the mission and if more aliens were out there, killing them would have been near impossible. In the original XCom I'd give my first troops out of the dropship about 8 flares each.

Currently there's no method of creating light outside of explosive rockets and flares. There aren't any incendiary devices to use, rockets are heavy and consume a lot of space (and are risky to use around civilians) and flares are rationed out.

What I think would work the best is to have flares put into the equipment screen for the players to choose if they like. On night missions, the game would also add 2 more flares to every soldier's inventory as long as free slots existed. This would be enough to get by on minor missions or help out the players that forget to equip their soldiers with them. Having the option to take more allows the players to make provisions for the longer and more dangerous night missions.

[StellarRat]

I've done two terror missions at night thus far and I agree that two flares per soldier isn't cutting it. I was lucky in the first mission that the aliens were missing me and that I killed them all after covering just half the map. I was out of flares and explosive rockets though by the end of the mission and if more aliens were out there, killing them would have been near impossible. In the original XCom I'd give my first troops out of the dropship about 8 flares each.

Currently there's no method of creating light outside of explosive rockets and flares. There aren't any incendiary devices to use, rockets are heavy and consume a lot of space (and are risky to use around civilians) and flares are rationed out.

What I think would work the best is to have flares put into the equipment screen for the players to choose if they like. On night missions, the game would also add 2 more flares to every soldier's inventory as long as free slots existed. This would be enough to get by on minor missions or help out the players that forget to equip their soldiers with them. Having the option to take more allows the players to make provisions for the longer and more dangerous night missions.

I agree this is the simplest and most straight forward solution. It also would require very little additional coding.

[Sathra]

While it was annoying sometimes, UFO:ET's method of having the equip screen pop-up before every mission was really nice. It let you double-check equipment, add new stuff as appropriate to the mission (i.e. Craptons of heavy weapons if there'll be Destroyers).

Wouldn't actually mind it in Xenonauts. Having flares as an item in the equip screen would work good with it. I agree that 2 is a bit small, 3-4 would be nicer.

[Gauddlike]

Yeah I also thought that allowing the player to manually equip some would be nice as well as adding two automatically as a backup just in case none are present.

Incidentally if you open items.xml you should be able to change the flare from capped to unlimited and they will appear in your base under equipment/other in the equip screen in infinite quantity.

[Akavit]

While it was annoying sometimes, UFO:ET's method of having the equip screen pop-up before every mission was really nice. It let you double-check equipment, add new stuff as appropriate to the mission (i.e. Craptons of heavy weapons if there'll be Destroyers).

Wouldn't actually mind it in Xenonauts. Having flares as an item in the equip screen would work good with it. I agree that 2 is a bit small, 3-4 would be nicer.

Speaking of ET...

Grayfiend just released his latest version of the UNIMod for the game. I played it last night and the game is starting to balance out nicely now. He's also just a couple versions away from turning UFO:ET into a game that has nearly all the features of X-Com plus extra features and an improved UI. The next two versions of UNIMod are slated to implement bodies that can be carried and allow all bases to have full functionality.

And yes, I think that UFO:ET did a very good job on the equipment/dropship aspect.

[Akavit]

Incidentally if you open items.xml you should be able to change the flare from capped to unlimited and they will appear in your base under equipment/other in the equip screen in infinite quantity.

Thanks for the tip. I will have to give it a try.

[thothkins]

I notice that the ET site now has Battle for Mercury as the title banner on the pages, but still references Shadows over Earth elsewhere. Looks a bit muddled (he typed hoping that there isn't one but two ET games coming out in quick succession, but fearing that something has gone a bit wrong.)

[Max_Caine]

At the risk of derailing this thread further, it's entirely possible that Shadows Over Earth has been reworked into Battle For Mercury.

[thothkins]

that's going to get some people emotions to flare up. There, I mentioned the thread. But one of the issues with ET was that by removing it from earth, you lost some of that emotional connection. Of course, there was a pay off on that, but it was pretty late on.

So, to seemingly move it from something possibly earth based, to something a little more sci fi and possibly solar system based seems odd. I'd wonder why, if there was a glint of a ray of a possibility of any information ever launching a successful escape attempt form them. Not knocking the change as there simply isn't any information.

[Max_Caine]

Well, Chaos Creations has written themselves into a corner. Anything that the Commander in Shadows over Eath did would ultimately be pointless, because

the aliens win

. With SoE being a prequel, it would have a grim ending. BfM is likely to be more uplifting, because there is something to fight for.

[thothkins]

you know, it's been so long, I'd forgotten if it was a prequel or not.