Having played the original and XCOM remakes and looking at this game there is one thing I dont understand that bugs me like crazy:
There is a limited overall storage space in this game sharing this across all bases. So far so good, this is to streamline the storage management in bases
Player needs to produce all pieces of equipment. I loved this from the original so great to see it return (even of ammo :)) BUT it does mean that equipping soldiers is very expensive
Soldiers on planes can be reequipped instantly. This would also be fine by itself as it does away with the plane storage MGMT of the original BUT consistency issues occur at this level as we are now able to use a single set of equipment for all strike teams (and feels funny to do this instantly across multiple teams around the world)
There is no âUnequip allâ or âMake all available optionâ on the loadout MGMT screen to address the loadout micro like in the latest remake. This, in combination of the above results in crazy amount of micro
There are ambush missions that seem to be designed around the idea to punish players if they leave their soldiers unequipped (as opposed to other mission types loadout cannot be edited before these) further increasing the crazy amount of micro
So the game seems to be designed around the mechanic of:
Equip the team that is going to finish a scan first or initiate a mission next (to be determined manually and withouth concrete time values)
Unequip team right after the mission withouth an âUnequip allâ button and withouth filters on the personal MGMT screen
Repeat Step #1
Due to time and resource constraits the above approach is so beneficial that it must be done but the amount of micro is so intensive the likes of which I have never seen in a game
Am I missing the obvious here or is one of the below 2 the case:
1.There is a bug in the game and one of the above points should not be the case (maybe equipping from store on the plane?) - seems very unlikely as it would break the streamlined nature of the game
2. The mechanic is working as intended and thus both the approach and micro is intended - This I also cannot believe considering the crazy amount of micro we are looking at here
So what is going on here?
If the game is working as intended, the best course of action would be to implement some buttons to quickly unequip all soldiers or soldiers of a particular plane or base.
Loadout presets have been tested by Xenonauts but not sure if would work here due to ammo being produced so even with the above maximum 50% of the macro can be eliminated (some is derived from the lack of lifter options in the personal MGMT screen). The rest is still a huge amount for the player to consider reloading a save after an ambush is triggered to streamline the process:
Equip the team that is going to go into a tactical battle next
Unequip team right after the mission withouth an âUnequip allâ button and withouth filters on the personal MGMT screen
If ambush triggered, reload last save and repeat Step #1
Ambush arenât repeated, reload will most likely get an event instead.
With your suggestion perhaps itâs better do like XCOM1&2 with most items bought once.
I donât see much the problem because firstly I play difficulties forcing buy recruits equipment, secondly because I donât bother totally optimize to max before each combat. I like setup a new equipment set for a team before a combat and this also depends of combat type. But yeah I donât change everything constantly.
I think itâs a strong point of PP that equipping has a very nice depth and diversity. In XCOM itâs mostly just pick the best weapon and armor available, and eventually some thought on items in backpack. But PP way is causing you problems and this is certainly increased by difficulty level and recruits with few or no equipment.
I donât know, if you want max optimize but skip a complex reequip before each combat, I see only one way, XCOM1&2.
Well yeah. The reason it feels funny âto use a single set of equipment for all strike teamsâŚinstantly across multiple teams around the worldâ is youâre not supposed to.
Equip your people before putting them in the field, period. If playing on Hero or higher, recruit, equip, and only then put them on a plane.
The complexity of equipment or even reviewing the equipment is not an issue - like I said I did enjoy the original more for its handling of ammo and having to produce them
The interesting problematic here is that streamlining has lead to a situation where there is a way of doing things that is wastly more efficient. The player can of course ignore the existence of this option but it is there. Like putting buttons for instant resoruces on the UI: it is difficult to not notice and is always looming around
Ok so if this is not suppose to happen why can we do this? Is it a bug then?
Imagine this: have you never included any additional peace of equipment to a team member after the plane has left even after conducting multiple missions and depleting ammo? If we say that should not have been done, is it kinda like cheating the game or does the game rely on you doing that (aka balanced for it) ?
This is a fundemental mechanic: a player would spend around half of the resources to equipment if this âoptionâ is ignored, which can instantly be reduced to a third (or even more depending on how many teams you field) when utilized all the time.
I would assume that this guarantees a win if the game is not specifically balanced for it. And if it is: is it balanced to occasion âcheatingâ or full utilization of the systemâŚ
Thereâs a huge HUGE difference between "include[ing] any additional peace of equipment to a team member after the plane has left " and running around a second naked team and swapping all the equipment from the first to the second between missions.
Youâve taken an inventory management simplification for convenience sake, somehow extrapolated that the game was designed around completely swapping a single set of gear among teams between every single mission as a result, invented a bunch of problems resulting from that conclusion, and decided that if not the case it must be an unintended bug or exploit.
Mechanically and logcally there is none The only difference is immersion.
Immersion wise there is a huge difference I agree that is why I noticed it: assuming at first we are operating under the original games rules I assumed there is no backfill after the plane has left but then notcied that the game relies on extended sorties but does not have dedicated storage to carry the ammo like in the old game. Immersion is broken either way by the simplification the question is by how much and what the developers intetion is
The player is able to swap but should not in some cases, ok which cases are these?:
Ammo - likely yes
Medkits - ?
Small handguns - Likely not then
Larger guns - probalby not
Armor - ?
What abouth salvaged items during the missions that particual plane has collected that also end up in the general pool? Do you evne remember what and how many of those items per plane ther were?
The answer to these question determines your experience with the game as it effects difficulty
If we say it is up to the player to decide which ones were intended and which ones dont that is what we call bad game design but there might be other options as well:
B: Its a feature not a bug
C: The design was intended to be something else but did not have time to implement/test properly and may or may not be patched in later. Solutions obvously inlcude the options I mentioned or even dedciated storage space for planes
If what you say is true it is per definition an exploit which some developers dont like to have in their game and might consider to resolve later: would you be agains such a resolution?
In general, your game should not have too many exploits, a solid system of rules ensures this needless to say
The scenario in this regard is like the heavy laser manufacture and sell exploit from the original: if the DEVs were told before launch that this is a thing would they have changed it? Maybe yes, likely not but it doesnt hurt to know especially considering that this one might erode immersion either way the player reacts to it which was not the case of heavy laser tycoon exploit (it actually made a lot of sense to sell your high-tech laser gun to the worls under siege and make a killing profit of it to the point where I am not even sure it wasnt intended in the first place :))
But even if we look past the above fact, why would you think it is a bad thing to point it out?
If I noticed this, others have as well, trust me I am not that smart, just apperantly the only one taking the time to register a login to post it
One think I noticed causing confusion is how vehicles are reloaded which stems from the same conflict between the mechanics: what does into a plane wand what not: in this case most new players seem to have ran into the mutang offspring of this issue and casued some confusion
Some solutions to address the topic might be:
Have dedicated storage per plane (lots of work so if not done yet likely not intended though I find this the most immersive and might cause interesting scenarios with the new extended exploration mechanic: player would need to weight ammo, medkit and weapons on board when deciding to push forward)
Autofilter all items from the common storage that are not inteneded to be swapped on the fly (this is a simple fix but of course does not address the underlying confict fully such as the one leading to empty tanks). That might be be better addressed if the ammo for them also need to be produced but is expensive to do so player canot rely on them solely (assume this was the reson of the restriction in the first place). If so then the ammo for APC can be prompted for produciton like hand held item ammo is
I agree that this is immersion breaking and would personally like equipment storage to be more locally restricted to either the base or Ship at any given time. Either that or perhaps we could have some lore around how PP created Teleportation technology soley for inanimate objects?? This does harm the feeling of immersion in game as things stand. I can see the other side of the coin here as well but Iâd personally prefer a lore based reason if the Devâs stick with the âEasyâ route.
What if we said that planes have a small replicator (3D printer + preprepped elements) on board that enables the âmanufacturingâ of ammof for small and medium guns?
That would do away with the inconsistency for the planes and explain why APCs cannot be reloaded: their ammo is beyond what can be deplicated on sucha small scale
Now that I think abouth it the original game had the answer for the APC ammo as well: by restricting the carry weight of the craft, you could not cram in too many tanks and ammo in them. I particularly enjoyed having 3 fire teams + tank with low tech weponry and do not care abouth soldier preservation that much. Needless to say there must have been a reason why carry capacity is not a thing here so lets take this as granted.
Repharsing the creation of additional ammo when on planes as disabling sharing from base(s) to planes and between soldiers might be a valid idea?:
Heavy ammo cannot be replicated on the spot so naturally APCs cannot be reloaded it s intiuititve
Rephrasing salvaged item recovery by adding: âhas been sent to central logisticsâ makes it obvious why it is not available for equiping (though it does incetivise opening the boxes in-game. Though not sure if would be a bad thing it would be inconsistent why they can be used on the spot but not after the battle)
No sharing between soldiers on the craft does away with the need of having to implement dedicated cotnainers for the crafts and code their interaction with the base(s) hub
By not sharing with the bases, the soldiers are left using only what they have brought with them + the items salvaged within tacticle battle. It makes the containers within those engagements wastly more important and a prolonged mission for a craft more expensive as it needs to produce new ammo when on mission instead of utilizing the surplus from the central hub
Optionally, I would even remove medikits from the list of items that can be deplicated (or only on higher diffciulty levels). This would give more meaning to medical bays as currenlty it is farily easy to heal all soldiers âon the flyâ even if they were seriously injured before. This way the player needs to think how to utilize the limited amount of medikits available and risk the life of soldiers for the sake of covering more POI
Drawback of the above is that it does not address the instant sharing mechanic between bases, and why wepons cannot be swapped between team members on the fly even if they are in the same team - this would then need to be done on the tactical map though this likely does not occur too often as soliders tend to fill in specific roles due to their perks and likely do nto swap roles too often espeically within an existing fire team
Ideally though (if we are allowed to ascend to the theoretical planes of makebelive :)) a central items MGMT screen would serve the purpose best, where dedicated capacity of planes can be simply managed. Such a screen would show all the inventroy brackets of all the bases and planes in one place, where they are located (planes landed in a base are positioned next to the inventory segment of that base) and how much time it takes from each to get to the other. Once a shipment of items is sent, a convoy takes route on the geoscape and provides opportunity for new missions where Pandorans or enemy factions can raid them - such idealism is diffcult ot bare though
Item only teleport is a totally valid suggestion, it makes 100% coherent the current system, and itâs fully compatible with SF approach. itâs simple and efficient, and solve all immertion problem some players have. Ships and Vehicles would be too big for that.
As I quoted itâs only text fixing, Sazkai, found the right fix.
Why not teleport a bunch of explosives into pandorian lair then? Why do you have to drag around a vehicle, canât you teleport it? How much energy such device would take?
You are opening a can of worms with such idea.
No can of worms, itâs just SF, not Hard SF but SF. Some people can bear only Hard SF but they arenât the majority seeing sells of SF books, at least in my time, I doubt it changed much seeing modern SF moviesâŚ
Yes, there is plenty of crappy Sci-fi came out in recent years. When writer creates a technology that works only in one specific way, only because it serves a plot of the movie/novel - itâs just a bad writing, not a âsoft SFâ. Do you really think you can fix or improve someone immersion by throwing some âSci-fiâ nonsense tech into the bin? And why bother giving explanation to such game mechanics when half of the game is like this anyway.
Inventory management needs a fix, if inventory is generalized and is suppose to be accessible by any team at any point of time then âUnequip Allâ should be there, so player doesnât have to waste time on dragging items. If equipment is not suppose to be shared, then vehicles should have individual storage space. Having âAmbushesâ being some sort of deterrent to re-using equipment will just annoy players as itâs a meta mechanics in a current case.
PK D.i.ck, Ray Bradbury, C. D. Simak, Jack Vance, AE Van Vogt, ton more, you donât know much of SF if you think Hard SF is defining SF, nope. Itâs a minority sub genre.
On start, why bother argue on this ârealismâ element if anyway all the game is SF incoherent? Common.
EDIT: Double click to unequip. Unequip all means equip all which is as much boring, push players do it looks like a false good design idea.
I donât care which genre you are referring to. You are missing the point by a mile, you can have a shit writing in a hard sci-fi, as science part can be logical and well thought out but action of characters can be motivated by plot instead of their own core characterization. That would be a bad writing too.
Is it so difficult to grasp? Using some tech/magic that can only do one thing just because itâs convenient for the story is a bad writing, regardless of the genre.
So why are you defending it then? We both want this game to be better. Adding some explanation that are outside of gameplay, doesnât improve said gameplay. This is not helpful.
What that even suppose to mean? âUnequip allâ is a simple function in Firaxis Xcom where all equipment carried by any other soldiers outside of the current squad is removed and added into common pool. If you donât care about such feature, then donât use it and donât argue against it.
Coming late to the party, there are 2 competing elements here: the gameplay and the rationale .
From a gameplay point of view, I would not be at all surprised if this is a problem the devs havenât figured out a fix for yet. We raised it in BB4 or 5, only to be met with a deafening silence. I suspect that finding a way to compartmentalise kit into individual bases is simply a step too far for an overlaoded development team at the moment. They may get round to it later, or some modder might come up with a solution, but for the moment it is what it is, and the devs havenât included an âEquip/Unequip Allâ button because running multiple teams with one single set of equipment was never on the agenda.
So weâre left with a weird situation where once youâve built a piece of hand-held kit, you can instantly teleport it to your personnel all around the world.
My âcrap pseudoscieneâ rationale for that is that we have 3-D Fax-Printers in all our installations which can replicate an up-to-armour sized object using MadeUpNamium, but only by destroying the original. So if you want 2 copies of your nice new Synedrion Sniper Rifle, you have to figure out how itâs made and manufacture a new one, but if you just want to transmit the one you currently have to Base Foxtrot, you can 3D Fax it.
Itâs a bullshit explanation, but no more so than: âThe world is being overrun by a mutated alien virus and youâre the only ones who can stop it - but weâve forgotten where our bases are, so youâll have to find them first and figure out why we fell apart in the first place.â
Just go with it And if you want to exploit the loopholes in the system to optimise your teams on a mission-by-mission basis, expect to engage in a fair bit of micromanagement, because thatâs your choice, not theirs
For the rationale, the teleport items that arenât very big is a perfectly valid solution, if you canât bear such SF this is the whole game writing you canât bear.
EDIT: For the solution I donât see any without a serious level of micro management for players that canât resist do it even when do it again and again is total boredom.
Dev didnât cameup with this teleportation idea, you guys did, so donât drag game writing into this. We are providing feedback to devs and we ask of this âfeatureâ to be fixed or properly implemented, itâs up to the devs how it should be done. Adding some flavor text to lore, doesnât fix gameplay.
If global pool of items is the design devs are going for, then we just need some polish for making it work better in a more use friendly way. If itâs NOT suppose to be a global pool then mechanics should be changed, otherwise it feels like unfinished feature added for a convenience sake.
The only difference is immersion.
