No 'Next'/'Next+Ignore' actions?

[llunak]

Hello, I'd like to ask if 'Next'/'Next+Ignore' actions are planned for the game.

I've seen this asked for quite a number of times, but if the development is to be finished in a month and I don't see it in the work tracker, then it looks like this is not going to make it in , despite this improving the ground combat much more than e.g. reducing the number of soldiers in the strike teams. You know, I mean those 2 buttons in the OG that allowed one to quickly go through actions for all soldiers in one turn, instead of having to handle it manually as is needed in Xenonauts.

It may seem like a minor feature, but it makes a huge difference. I've already so many times either forgotten to move a soldier or worse moved a soldier that I had already moved once that turn (and that happening is a pretty good way to see somebody die). Sure, I can avoid that by being especially careful, but why should I do what the computer can do so easily? Even if it's just a couple of seconds for every turn, it adds up to a lot of time (and annoyance).

And it can't be that hard to code. Add two flags for every soldier, ignoreForNext, wasSelectedForNext. Clear both at the start of a turn. Clear wasSelectedForNext for all soldiers whenever a soldier is selected in any other way than these two actions (such as mouse wheel or pressing 1 to get the first soldier). Set ignoreForNext if 'Next+Ignore' is used for the soldier. And if either of the actions is used, set wasSelectedForNext for the soldier (and clear for all soldiers first if this would make it set for all soldiers) and then select the closest soldier that has neither flag set. This way, the actions will semi-intelligently select soldiers conveniently (unlike mouse wheel, which is practically useless).

Given all the gameplay improvements compared to the OG, I can't understand how this can be missing. I'd code it myself if I could :-/.

[Gauddlike]

It would also require a redesign of the ground combat UI unless you want it purely as hotkeys with no buttons attached.

I generally just look at the little squad bars to see who has TU left so I haven't really missed that function as much as in the OG where you couldn't tell without selecting someone.

[TasothCommander]

Hovering the mouse cursor over the End Turn button could highlight the squad tab of any soldier/vehicle with full TUs to remind you that you have yet to move them this turn.

[Skitso]

That would actually be a rather intuitive way to tell the player that there's still TU's to be used.

[llunak]

It would also require a redesign of the ground combat UI unless you want it purely as hotkeys with no buttons attached.

Ground combat UI redesign ... you mean like this?

I'm sure it could be done better, I spent only like 15 minutes quickly hacking this together.

But yes, even shortcuts alone would do.

I generally just look at the little squad bars to see who has TU left so I haven't really missed that function as much as in the OG where you couldn't tell without selecting someone.

That's what I resort to as well, but it sometimes feel so tedious. I either have to keep the status and purpose of all my soldiers in my head, or I have to repeatedly scan the squad bars for so-what-soldier-is-going-to-move next. Both is needless, tedious, and error-prone, especially when some of the soldiers do not have to use up their TUs. If I setup a soldier to guard somewhere, I don't want to move them accidentally. If I move a soldier into cover with few TUs left, I don't want to accidentally move them again (I did already twice just today). The fact that the health/TU/morale status bars are in a non-intuitive order isn't helping either.

It's like ammo management in the OG, just backwards . You have to explicitly pay attention to it all the time, because if you don't, it'll cause you trouble sooner or later.

[llunak]

Hovering the mouse cursor over the End Turn button could highlight the squad tab of any soldier/vehicle with full TUs to remind you that you have yet to move them this turn.

That maybe helps with forgetting to move a soldier (and is a manual hassle again anyway), but it doesn't help with anything else. There's no big difference if I have to manually check the squad tabs often when I want to switch to another soldier, or if I have to hover the mouse somewhere to get highlighted soldiers that perhaps may be the ones that still need moving and perhaps not.

[kottis]

Just my two cents. Maybe I don’t get the point but see some issues with a next+ignore button/hotkey. My problem is:

When did I set a guy to next+ignore? E.g.

1) He has no/very few TUs left

2) He is in nice cover and ready for reaction shot

3) He is idling/ waiting for other guys

For point 1, here is not necessary since there is a TU bar indicating he can’t do anything this turn (maybe it should be more present in the GUI)

For point 2+3, why should I set him to next+ignore at all? If some alien appears due to scouting of other guys he should still be able to react (move+shoot) and he should still be present in my sense. (which would not be the case if I have set him to next+ignore)

My problem here is, that there are so many situations where setting next+ignore is suboptimal, that I will not use it at all. Unlike in XCOM2012, here soldier 1 can do action A, waiting for solder 2 doing B, now doing C, waiting for soldier 3 doing D, now doing E and so one. So there no optimal point for next+ignore.

However this is my opinion and I can see that there are situation which would make soldier movement more clear. Additional a “next” hotkey would be fine too.

[llunak]

Ground combat UI redesign ... you mean like this?

[ATTACH=CONFIG]3586[/ATTACH]

I'm sure it could be done better, I spent only like 15 minutes quickly hacking this together.

But yes, even shortcuts alone would do.

Ok, turns out the GUI is very configurable (I can switch hp and ap bars by just editing a file, I'm impressed).

So if there was code to implement this functionality, I could handle the rest in text files etc. Seriously. Deal ?

[llunak]

If some alien appears due to scouting of other guys he should still be able to react (move+shoot) and he should still be present in my sense. (which would not be the case if I have set him to next+ignore)

You've never played the original game, have you? "Ignore" for a soldier in this case merely means not selecting the soldier again for "next" in the current turn. In Xenonauts, you have to manually handle selecting your soldiers, check how much AP their have left. In the OG you moved a soldier and either "next+ignore" or "next" depending on whether you were happy with where the soldier was or maybe you wanted to move the soldier again that turn later. If something unexpected happened, you could still manually select any soldier you wanted. The convenience that Xenonauts lacks is that in the normal cases you could just keep hitting these two actions and when it no longer did anything, you were sure you were done with that turn. No soldier that you forgot to move, it was unlikely to move again a soldier that you had set up for reaction fire, and that all without repeatedly checking their status bars.

[TasothCommander]

That maybe helps with forgetting to move a soldier (and is a manual hassle again anyway), but it doesn't help with anything else. There's no big difference if I have to manually check the squad tabs often when I want to switch to another soldier, or if I have to hover the mouse somewhere to get highlighted soldiers that perhaps may be the ones that still need moving and perhaps not.

Well, maybe they could make it so instead of ending the turn, clicking the button would jump to the first "unused" xenonaut. Of course you should be able to toggle this behaviour in the game options. Even better, there could also be a hotkey that jumps between soldiers with more than, say, 50% of their TUs left. Xenonauts with less than that would be automatically excluded this way, eliminating the need for a "Next&Ignore" button/hotkey.

[Chris]

This potentially would have been a good thing to add - although the little stat bars do cover some of the same function. However with three weeks left to go it's unlikely we'll get round to adding it. Sorry!

[StK]

One of the most used buttons in the original and I didn't catch it was missing.

Shame on me.. -.-

But then the stat bars and the ability to select every xenonaut via his/her portrait kind of make up for it.

Would've been nice but.. yeah.

[llunak]

Yes, I understand this is not the best time for this. Still, I personally find this pretty important and I'd be willing to go pretty far to help make this happen (if Xenonauts was open-source, I'd simply do it all myself, but here I can't).

Is there anything I could do to help the chance that this makes it into the game somehow? And I don't necessarily mean the upcoming release, including this in some bugfix 1.1 release somewhen later or making this possible as a mod would do for me too.

I've had a look and it looks to me like this would need:

1) the code to perform the two actions

2) keyboard shortcuts handling

3) modifications of the GC toolbar .lua

4) graphics for the GC toolbar

1) doesn't seem possible by just modifying game files, this needs coding. The best I could do here is to write the code for this separately (Xenonauts is C/C++, right?) together with a test app, using which I could test this and it'd also show how to integrate it with the codebase, so that it'd cut down the developer time needed to integrate it with the codebase to the bare minimum. The feature stands and falls with this.

2) This needs (little, hopefully) coding too. I had a look at gameconfig.xml, but either I did something wrong, or the keymappings there just specify the defaults. This part is also strictly not necessary.

3) This seems fairly easily doable in the .lua , as long as 1) makes it possible to trigger the actions using GUIEventHandler(). I can do this, even as a mod.

4) I'm no artist, but I could already do the mockup above using the art that's already in the game, so I think I can do something acceptable the same way as 3).

[Gauddlike]

Personally I wouldn't mind if this was a single toggle button, like the crouch button, rather than multiple buttons.

By default the soldier is in the rotation of whatever method you use to cycle troops, when you press it to toggle modes then that soldier can only be selected by clicking the (possibly greyed out) button along the top or pressing its hotkey number directly.

The buttons in the mockup earlier were way too small for my liking.

I would either move the last part of the UI across or change the function of an existing button.

Trying to cram more functions into the current amount of space looks forced and would really make it difficult to use for me.

If it was reduced to a single toggle button then halving the size of the end turn button and using the bottom half as the toggle could work.

I keep clicking the soldiers portrait to try and get into the inventory so I would consider replacing the inventory button on the UI with the toggle and using the soldier portrait for inventory for personal use, no idea if that would be acceptable to others though

[Chris]

Maybe we'll look at it after release, but it's unlikely at this stage. I understand you're keen on the feature, but eventually we just have to say the game is complete and move on - we may feel a bit more relaxed if the game comes out and makes loads of money but if not we're going to be focusing on the next project instead.