Hi.
I start this topic to group non-German suggestions for the X-Force developement.

First of all I think something should be done with the pathfinding algorithm. That soldier-stucks-at-another-soldier case is very very annoying. Also the way the soldier chooses the path is unlogical for me.

Next suggestion: What about showing the cost/remaining AP's at the cursor position. That shading the ground is fine but when you have more soldiers near the place you couldn't determine which one is the shading applied to. BTW maybe it'll be wise to implement some features from the original UFO/X-COM games like low AP for shot warning.

next suggestion: Soldiers are moving very slowly. Can any1 do the settings.

That's EnougH for NoW. ByE YaDo

sugestions :
1. stop soldier miving with presing ecs
2¨. when founding new base (or listening post), please show range of radar for best selecting of placement
3. certain radar enhancing technology to incease radar range (to cove small (but sometimes cca 150 000 km2)gaps between bases)
4. ground sensors having limited (cca 30% of normal sesnor range) capacity to see througt wall (with todays techs is posible to see througt wall - thermal)
5. posibility to take loan
6.ability to fight undersea (underawer missions) - if I shot down ufo in shalow waters

another series
7.confriming when sacking persone/selling ship
8.better pathfinding (sometimes choice very strange way)
9. ability to move with groups (ala C&C)
10. posibility to move directly between labs/workshop lab/warehouse
11. add morale to troops (can drop with big causalties, overnumered (see to many enemyes)... etc - of course, affecting boots sides)
12. in warehouse own button for ammunition (
like as for weapons, armours...etc)
13. ability do delete saves direcktly from game
14. option to set maximum number of mesages on screen

hm...

1. I think you can stop them by pressing the right mouse-key (or however its called).
2. There is no radar when you build a base :D
3. I think it should be possible to replace building with others (-> like equipment) (i mean it should be implemented).
4. Right.
5. Someone already scripted that i think.
6. [Nothing to say]
7. Right.
8. Move with the NumPad (works for 1. aswell)
9. Right.
10. Move the mouse to the left edge of the screen when in the lab workshop warehouse etc. (generally only not on the geoscape)
11. There were discussions about it, i think it will be implanted later.
12. I never use it so i cant comment it.
13. Right.
14. Right

1 and 8 count for YaDos

too.

The second suggestion: right.

To Cheater and
2. I not dumb, I know is no radar with new base, but with limit to 8 all types of bases (in old ufo is is no limit to bases) it is hard to cover all planet. But showing posible radar cover will realy help to chioce place for base.
3. improved radars are not currenty in game (but is posible to come with new type of radar with greater range and simply build it and after completing new radar, old simply destroy).
And will nice to have small radar (1 title, not 4) with range cca 1 000 km to serwe as something early warning system for alphatron mines (or others). I know, I can cover them with defensive towers, but this not help to detect ufos, only shot them down.

And little impovement to listening post - will be posible to build them with radar aleady build and working (for price of 200 000 (100k of site + 100k of radar) - same building as alphatron mines.
And for price od 500k I will excepting (waiting) buying new base with few working building (e.q. 1x livin quarters, 1xradar, 1x storage base), not only with lift. Mayby with increased price to 600k.

hmm...
2. was a joke, no offense. Thats a good idea, but it will have problems when are more radars defined in the gameset.
3. yup i know it isnt.
The size of the radar depends on the Gameset (on the used graphic exactly).

You can place some guard ships around the new build base until there are some automatic defenses, and I think it's possible to script that (not sure).

2. No problem with jokes.

änd another punch of ides :
15. fast (ridigous) training - soldiers/base crew gaining exps at 1,5 or 2x faster rate, but at price of 3x higher cost of normal training (and if morale implemented, RT lowering it to certain level (e.q. 40%) and after reaching it, is automaticaly turned of to normal training). And mora slowly gaining when trained (if not trained - faster recovery of morale, and morale affecting working performance - q.e. 100% of morale and 50 skill will work better than 60% of morale and 70 skill.
16. pilots for crafts - simply another type of soldier, who cvan gain exps to improve performances. Why I want this ? Simply is "funny" to have craft with more than 140 shot down of ufos, and having big problems to shot down medium sitzed ufo.
17. ability do destroy(dismantle) base or improve to another level (e.q. listenig post to base) but alphatron mine to ???
18.ability to knee down to improve shoting accuracy(and range)
19. more types of weapons - e.q. machineguns, grenade launchers, mounted grenade launchers (e.q. as M208? on M16) with ability to choise between single shoot/burts (currently N/A) /throw grenade
20. soldier say if you trying to shot at target out of range
21. ability to scrap non-full non-soldable magazines (e.q. magazine for MaJema rifle with only 3 bullets remaining)
22. add missing wheight to all items (is showing only in upragind of items)
23. ability to sell aplhatron

15. Yep
16. There were discussions about it, but i dont know if it will be implemented.
17. That would make no sense (-> if you want a second base, then build a base, not an outpost or alphatronmine)
18. I think there was something with such maneuvres (like lay down to harder to hit)
19. Yep
20. I think it's shown at the cursor if the target is out of range.
21. I didnt know its impossible =/
22. Yep
23. Who uses Alphatron except the X-Force? I would say produce Armors and then sell them =D

17. hmmm, you forgeting on limit of 8 bases total (alphatron + listening post + bases). In case of limit increased or without limit - no need to improve base.
18. I never noticed sommething to simmiliar
21. AFAIK non-full magazine dont show in storage with ability to scrap (only in equip soldier/craft)
23. a) I thing alphatron is commonly used in Earth - look at e.q. patented nicu-alhpatron batteries
b) convert over 20 000 units of alphatron (with increases over 1 500 a day) takes looooots of workers and time :-))))

24. add secrity building - witrh own troops and equpment (handled by AI) to improve base defence in case of base invaded (when implemented).
25. make differnce between surface and underground buildings - surface are cheper to build (and build faster) but are vulneable to bombardement by ufo and for underground vice versa.

ps. cheater you can post you own ideas, not only I :-)))

2. Showing radar range
Any gameset can define other ranges for the radar and there can be several different radar buildings within a gameset - which range do you want to show?
I agree that this would be nice, but to work correctly it has to search for the radar range within the gameset. And that would still be a problem in some gamesets - in "Der galaktische Krieg" there's a small radar base with a limited range (compared with the main radar base), but the small base could be placed in alphatron mines.

The programming neccessary to implement this is a lot of work compared to the effect - it might be done if we find more programmers, but otherwise Jim has more important parts to work on.

3. Radarenhancing
basically you can only build new radar buildings with increased ranges - there are no modifications to existing buildings at the moment, and I don't know if there will ever be some.
However you can place patrol planes on those points - depending on gameset again. Mine contains radar planes which carry no weapons but have a greater detection range than usual. You only need to protect them from the UFOs...

4. ground sensors seeing through walls
That is a question about game balance as well as programming. Even if such a sensor is avaible there is the question if it should be included in a gameset - the alien KI isn't the best at the moment and I don't think that the player needs more advantages...

8. pathfinding
That is already reported in the bugtracker, but it isn't easy to write a good pathfinding algorithm for a randomly created map. It will be corrected someday...

9. group moving
I think we should first discuss if this function is worth the programming - it looks nice on first view, but I think that it will produce more problems than it solves.
If you want the group of soldiers maintain their formation, some of the target places might be in a different room on the other side of a wall and some soldiers will break the formation and use other doors.
If you want all soldiers in the group moving to the same place, only one unit can reach it - where do the movement of the others end?
Such a mass moving only works good if you have to move a large number of units to places where the exact end position doesn't matter. In XForce you have a much smaller number of units, and the position of a soldier can be a tactical advantage - I don't think that I would use such a command very often...

11. morale
There have been discussions wether or not to include this, but no final decision was made.
Basically morale (like in the old XCOM) is some sort of random factor when you would loose control of one of your soldiers. And some people would prefer the tactical side of the game with only a minimum of randomness to test their skills rather than their luck.

12. Group for ammunitions
At the moment the ammunition is grouped with the weapons to help find the correct ammo for a weapon. If the ammunition is placed in their own group there has to be an alternative to help find the correct ammunition for the choosen weapon.
If you have an idea - good. Otherwise I don't think this will change.

18. kneeing or other positions
This has two problems. The big one doesn't apply to kneeing but to several other wishes: The engine can't handle units who are bigger than one field.
The other is the animation format - at the moment it doesn't have any data for actions like kneeing or standing up, and to change this would require major programming and changes in the format.
Once again - if we get more programmer working this might be done, otherwise there are more important things to do.

2. best avaivable radar for given type of base :-)))
And I currently playing only basic game set.
3. Yes, something like AWACS in basic game (witn more better radar than supersensor), but unarmed, mayby another type of craft (with auto escort (max. 4 crafts) enabled - finaly use for cronos fighter :-)))). And this give me another idea - you can group craft together to beat big ufos (simliliar to ufo stan by order and sending another crafts), but with implemented grouping (max. numbers based on size - eq. 4 figters and only 2 crusers, mayby with max. limit 4 without restricting of class).

4.simply put to aliens better sensors :-)))
9. group moving - I thing basingly for moving from hause to hause - storming them, I perorm individualy.
And for formation - mayby two options - without lock, they go for thier destination directly - e.q. you select 3 soldiers, one ending in house, then one go to hause, with lock majority (or centre of formation) rule - if selected 3 soldiers, and destination of one is house, then all remain out of hause (but moved ).

11. I thing if morale implemented properly - based on your performance on battlefield, rather than luck, the game only gaing. And IIRC, in UFO I never lost contor over soldier (oc course -except controled by aliens via mind control) due to morale, unless I perform very bad on battlefield (to many causalties to my side), and is noting better to see unarmed alien due to droped weapons caused by low morale to aliens thanks to my battlefield efforts.

12. hmmm, I thing you dont understand me, in warehause you have fista all types of weapons and after it all ammunition in one screen weapons - if you split this to two "screens" this can speed up some things - e.q. I want only order 20 pices of ammunition to Majema riffle (running out of ammo) and nothing else- in current system I must scol down from whoel wepons list down to ammunition and here purchrase magazines. If is this spliited , this save me scroling down promweapont to ammunition.
I dont want splitting this in soldiers equipement, in which is very usefull to have weapons and magazines side-by-side.


26. sea bases (mayby only listenig post, later if unersea missions completed, expanded to full bases) - and this have simple reason - cower with radar sea waste"lands" and water cover 2/3 of Earth surface :-)))

4. Aliens do not use Sensors (due to lack of AI)

9. It would really make no sense, until theres an Gameset using big armies (<- i would say to add a possibility to write scripts working while ground missions)

11. Imo morale should be without any random factor, just make losses greater and kills better.

4. Hmmm, I hope AI will be improved in future versions.

27. add misile turret please, we have projectile, laser, only rocket missing (IMO rocket - in range - will be simmiliar to laser, but have bigger damage and lower reload times) And here is one strange thing in turrets - projectiles who can travel 500km ? This range have never ben archived even with super long barell. Same problem for laser - 1000 km ? WHOA. With which type of magic is performed shooting throught earth (or curving of laser beam to copy curving of Earth surface) ?

To allow for different gamesets is one of the strong points of XForce. But this also means that there's no easy way to determine "best" radar in the different gamesets.
And this goes for other ideas as well, the AWACs are not in the basic set, but several others have them.

The plans are to make the alien AI scriptable - in a similiar way to the UFO AI that is now scriptable.

If you only play the basic set you don't see this because I put the UFO-AI-Scripts I already programmed into my own gameset, but within the "Galaktischer Krieg" (especially the new version which is not yet in the online updater) you'll find UFOs that are no longer following your fighters into the base defences (and later ones get really nasty if you try to lure them).

However the Ground Combat needs a major reprogramming to make this possible so it will probably take many months before the Alien AI improves...

By the way - if you can't read german you'll probably have missed this, but current plans are to make my gameset "the galactic war" into the basic gameset for the final 1.0 and the current basic set will be developed independently but at a slower rate - the one formerly responsible for the current basic set left the team a while ago, and while Natter will improve the current basic gameset it will take him longer to do so.

Unfortunately my gameset isn't yet in a similiar stage as the current basic gameset (mainly because I concentrated on gameset scripts instead of new research and items) and there hasn't been even a start to translate it, so it probably won't replace the current basic gameset for the next two or three versions...

you'll find UFOs that are no longer following your fighters into the base defences - but I hope, they will pursuit yours fighters if thhey are not under cover of base defences - becouse I often need shot down enemy ufo over land (and luring them in to base defence dont cross my mind).
And for ground combat - my dream is similiar to JA2 system - you have lots of weapons to use, and all weapons which have same ammo using similiar magazines - e.q. Clock 19 and Beretta using same 9x17mm ammo - and you have 9x17mm magazines (with different capacity - 7,15,30.. etc) and you can use them indepently of wepon type - you can use use the same magazine to Glock and Beretta, but in current type, ou cant use Clock magazine on Beretta. And if you use magazine with wrong type of capacity (e.q. loading 15 magazine to 7 capacity weapon) - only reload time takes twice long to reload.
And have more basic magazines types to choise from begining - common (normal) with universal characteristic, AP (armour piercing - red) for armoured targets and HP (holow point - blue) for un-armored targets. Of course AP have small damage to un-armored targets and vice versa.
Mayby you can develop new type of ammo (uranium ?) - today AP using hardened steel or wolfram bullets.
And yes - modifying weapons with scopes , ipods.. etc. is probaly imposible in this game (but this will be very nice to have).
26. auto compute ground missions (similiar to air combat) - is not funny to chase 2 aliens on big map with 12 soldiers - and limited sensors + disabled beaming).
27. emergeny beaming - you can transport only one person (to craft or from craft) per turn - for simply reason - is not funny to have killed low-health soldier (and rest with relaive good condicion) with last (or 2-4 remaining from 25) alien for unablíng to evacuate wounted soldier (feet moving from battle zone is sometimes not enough fast).

The map size is determined by the total number of units on the map - aliens plus soldiers. If you go with 12 soldiers after 2 aliens, its the number of soldiers that forces the big maps. If you use only 4-6 soldiers the maps will be a lot smaller - the combat in the galactic war (4 soldiers and a few aliens) the maps are usually only 2x3 or 3x3 rooms ...

Beaming has been disabled because it was mainly used for cheating. Plans are to include exit points into the maps, but this has not yet been programmed...