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Ground Combat UI improvements


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I'd be in favor of choosing which numerical order your squad is listed, to explain, If I want a to play fast it would be useful if i could know that soldier 1-4 is team A and 5-7 is team B, soldier number 1 and 5 could be the scout followed by LMG or assaults.

All that's missing is on the Charlie positioning screen, at the bottom where you see all the portraits, that you could drag them from left to right to assign them their numbers.

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I just watched a vid of Jagged Alliance Online, and kind of liked the solution they had as far as showing movement costs. When you select a soldier and hover the mouse around, it highlights the tile and shows the movement points required. That alone would be a huge improvement for me.

I just don't like how you currently have to click (and create a path) to see the movement cost (and if you can make it there), as hovering would be more convenient, and you could sweep around and see multiple options, rather than click, cancel, click, cancel...

The current system does have the risk of you accidentally doubleclicking and moving when you were only trying to see your movement range.

Edited by ladlon
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yatagarasu in this thread had no idea that moving/crouching/turning with a sniper rifle incurs a heavy penalty to-hit. The various penalties to-hit need to be expressed in a better way so that the player knows why a solider with one weapon has a crappy to-hit when another soldier doesn't. At the very least, something like red text next to the crosshairs with something like

- moved

- blocking terrain

- out of range

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Come to think about it, the intro mission in XCOM:EU was a great way to have a standardized combat between preset troops and introduce the combat. A similar combat, maybe at the Iceland incident fighting a pre-set group of troops vs a pre-set group of enemies would be a nice introduction. If it scaled by by difficulty level, it would also give you an EARLY indication of whether your tactics in ground combat were probably up to the level of the difficulty you had selected.

And you can always make it skippable after the first time on a given difficulty.

And I would like to second smoitessier's suggestion about being able to rearrange the number/order of troops. That or at least have a TOGGLEABLE (don't hate me for cluttering ;p) button that displayed health/TU/soldier number over the soldier sprites in combat.

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Perhaps I'm one of the few people bothered by it but the camera auto-focusing on soldiers is a fraction irritating. Following the track of the bullet is fine but sometimes it decides then to recentre itself on your chosen soldier, sometimes it doesn't - I still can't figure out why it does either. Following the track of the bullet is good, but once it's done maybe it should just be left there centred on the thing you hit.

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I dont know if this has been suggested but I would like to be able to cycle through units via a single keybind instead of using the mouse scoller. The scoller feels weird and I simply cannot get used to it. I would much prefer Tab as cycle with shift+tab as cycle backwards. That leaves the mouse scoller itself unasigned so I would want it to be elevation level, which is perfect for me.

This. Cycling through soldiers with a next/next+ignore button and mousewheel for changing levels. I can't get used to clicking the level buttons between soldiers tbh.

Grenade should have an arc/path like weapons, with tiles where it can land marked visually somehow, say red for 90+% chance, yellow for 50%+ chance, anything less unmarked, lest the whole map turns grey and the game grinds to a halt. Lots of great suggestions already in this thread.

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Make hovering over an alien auto target with primary weapon if available. It's imo rather bumpy to constantly select/unselect the guns when you want to fire (usually the added problem is finding a free firing arc aka the soldier with the best shot probability). Imo the most general thing you want to do to aliens is make them dead so it would be smoother that way.

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It could be a good idea to add a small state icon (similar to bleeding icon) in soldiers portrait for heavy weapon penalty, panic, in cover, suppressed and other states too with additional tool tip information on bonuses and penalties affecting the unit. BTW, I think there should also be a penalty for being hit. If you are shot, it should reduce AP, aim, reflexes etc for the next couple of turns.

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I know the old game had drastic penalties to all stats based on how damaged you were, but I haven't really noticed much of that in this game. Anyone know if it's in?

Also, if they did the icons, they'd need to make sure they had room for every icon at once, just in case.

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Haven't noticed a degradation of accuracy after getting injured in this build, and agreed that it would be nice if your stats would get affected especially during a few rounds after getting hit, and like someone suggested they get suppressed and loose accuracy a hefty bunch depending on the severity of that round. Would make for some interesting tactics for certain entranced bugers in their bases

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The Xenonauts fly in via the Helicopter, it seems bizarre that they wouldn't at least have a cursory knowledge of the area they are landing in. Obviously they wouldn't know where the Aliens themselves are, but they would know the location of buildings, landmarks and the crashed ship just on the basis that they have had an aerial view. It makes sense that they would at least make a cursory survey of the area before dropping troops in. I think it would be good to have the map revealed, but not in FoV. So we would be able to see buildings etc and where the ship crashed down (not like it can move heh) but its all fogged out. Instead of having it completely black.

I would also like to see a cover indicator on pieces of cover so I know from where my soldiers are protected and possibly if it is full/partial (like the half shield and shield of XC:EU) because as it stands it is sometimes difficult to tell if this is a full cover rock or which directions it covers from.

Having the projected move path of a soldier follow the cursor automatically would be awesome as well. I can't say the number of times I have accidentally moved a soldier by accidentally double clicking a square.

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The view from the dropship has been covered extensively in a few other threads.

Personally I still feel anyone who flies a fragile helicopter over a well armed and hostile enemy just to get a quick look at it deserves to be shot down and lose all hands :P

If they came in low then they would not get the view you suggest but would be safer.

Feel free to chip in on one of those threads if you have anything new to add to the discussion.

I prefer not seeing the whole map from the start as I think it detracts from the exploration side.

It goes from slowly extending your knowledge of the map by carefully exploring the unknown until you locate your objective to just scrolling around until you see it then going that way.

Hopefully the cover indicator is coming back as Aaron (I think) suggested it was being looked at to make it easy to use.

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I think at the very least the area around the LZ should be automatically uncovered. I mean there are windows, the crew just did fly in and saw the area on landing. Having it blacked out is rather daft, and its one of the things the original X-com did wrong. Other than that I would not want the game telling me the entire layout of the map zone.

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The view from the dropship has been covered extensively in a few other threads.

Personally I still feel anyone who flies a fragile helicopter over a well armed and hostile enemy just to get a quick look at it deserves to be shot down and lose all hands :P

If they came in low then they would not get the view you suggest but would be safer.

Feel free to chip in on one of those threads if you have anything new to add to the discussion.

I prefer not seeing the whole map from the start as I think it detracts from the exploration side.

It goes from slowly extending your knowledge of the map by carefully exploring the unknown until you locate your objective to just scrolling around until you see it then going that way.

Hopefully the cover indicator is coming back as Aaron (I think) suggested it was being looked at to make it easy to use.

You can see a lot on the approach there is no need for "fly over". You're definitely right about "flying over" being stupid.
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I would suggest that being able to give the Chinook a view range that cleared the black shroud (but didn't uncover enemy units) would be useful.

Then anyone who wanted the map to be pretty much clear could ramp that value up while others could keep it lower for a more enclosed feel.

That would also mean that inside buildings could remain dark and you would not know what was behind the buildings that you could see which maintains some of that mystery and exploration.

Wonder if setting the Chinook as a light source would have a similar effect?

It would basically be one big flare.

It would be better though if there was a setting to only clear the shroud but not spot enemies.

That would more accurately reflect what you could see on the approach to me as well.

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Don't know of this has been suggested, but when clicking on one of the alien icons it should not just center on the alien, but also bring up the weapon crosshairs. This way you don't have to play "hunt for the invisible alien" if your soldier spots an alien that is obstructed from your view, or in blackness.

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Don't know of this has been suggested, but when clicking on one of the alien icons it should not just center on the alien, but also bring up the weapon crosshairs. This way you don't have to play "hunt for the invisible alien" if your soldier spots an alien that is obstructed from your view, or in blackness.
Those hidden ones are supposed to have a little halo around them so they are easy to locate, but for some reason it hasn't worked in the last build or two. It was working at one point.
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I support setting the Chinook (and other dropships) as light sources. One thing, light sources like flares shouldn't let you see aliens (or civilians, local forces, etc). Ideally, it wouldn't even show anything until you got in range. I mean, are we throwing them across the entire map now? You shouldn't be able to see anything until you actually have a guy close enough to actually see it.

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