Ground mission playback

[RedBleeder]

I would love for there to be mission playback feature so that after a battle that went notably well - or more likely comically and catastrophically wrong - I could save it for later playback and review, perhaps as an Extras option ala Supreme Commander 2. I realise something like this is probably waaay out of scope but I think its something that would extra value and I'd be interested to hear what others think.

[Yoshio]

I was actually just thinking about this myself - however not just a basic playback.

I'd love there to be some sort of engine (might be a bit complex) that records your entire game and is able to play back everything in "Realtime" or close to it. It would basically move all your units and the enemy's units at the same time based on back-to-back turns. It would need to check for conflicts of actions that effect each other (like blowing up an obstacle then moving through it in the same turn) and delay certain things so that everything layers properly but I think it could be done. Just using the players actions wouldn't be enough because we want people firing weapons together with aliens, soldiers falling, while others toss grenades, etc!!

I've already thought about some of the checks an engine would need to do, but the end result would be a seamless playback of all your soldiers and the enemy soldiers running around, crouching, taking cover, exchanging weapons fire... Even multiple shots from a pistol would play back quickly as if fired in succession. If an enemy runs by and your soldier takes a reaction shot and hit, the alien continues running and the playback would show the alien run without stopping, get shot in mid-run, and continue.

I think the map would be completely revealed too. Player controls would be play/pause, and navigate around the map. To add an extra layer - an auto record/export feature that ignores your pauses, but uses the camera angle you position during playback.

I assume this would take a large amount of work (leave out the record/export part if thats the bottleneck), but the reward would be probably the coolest thing I've ever seen and put this game on the map for a lot of people I know. I'm getting excited just thinking about. Think of all the awesome youtube videos!