The terrain button is very useful in later levels when you have more force field generators and stuff. You also get characters like the Incincerator that can set the ground on fire so it's useful to know how much damage is being done on a specific position. The quick ability button is really only for abilities that you would do multiple times in a turn like the Command skill. For something that has a cooldown, you would only do once and therefore adding a button for it on the UI is overkill. I think the one ability that each class would use a lot should work reasonably well. Will test out and see. Can you tell me which level? I'll try and fix it. The Incinerator has an incendiary grenade that can light the ground on fire so that's covered. He has an area effect fire ability but it's a line and not a cone or circle. I'm thinking a circle would be better so he can kill multiple guys huddled around a single bunch of cover so I'm going to change it in the next update.
Made some more updates: 1 - Added the hide corpses toggle in the options menu so you can now have the corpse disappear after a unit is killed. This also saves on CPU / processing so would actually improve performance slightly. I'm not really a fan of it though. 2 - Now when you end a turn, any unit that has the Hunker Down ability and can use it will automatically do so. They will still need to have sufficient action points remaining and will need to not be stunned or have their abilities disabled or anything. So with the second change, you really don't need to bother making units hunker down since they will automatically do so, if you leave them enough action points. I still need to test both changes but I think they should both be in the 1.2 patch if there are no bugs identified.
Mission 8, the room where your team starts, upper left wall (adjacent to the sleeping quarter) can be shot through. Same happens in mission 9 and 10.
Yes, I remember that issue. I know the root cause. I think I didn't fix it because the only way I know of to do so would mean rebuilding those levels from scratch. I'd like to try and figure out another solution. Will give it some more thought.
Terrain Button Just an idea for added functionality to the Terrain button. Maybe if you highlight a cell with a power-up and press it it will also tell what kind of bonus the power-up gives. Just a thought if it wasn't already suggested.
So the shooting through wall bug is also occuring in other missions (11,12,13). Seems to happen mostly with the last wallsegment before a doorway/ opening and shooting from an angle. Regarding Abilities, is it possible to show how many items (e.g medkit) have been consumed of the total number of uses? Similar with cooldown, total vs actual remainder. I'm trying to figure out the relation between the total AP available to a unit (as shown in the green bar, for me still single digits) and the AP cost of abilities (mostly double digits). Where can I find this?
Could it be that you are shooting through windows? I thought that was a feature, and missed splintering glass (the windows stay intact, would be a nice detail if they blow out and shatter). And I cannot remember that my guys ever shot through a solid wall. Seconding that, excellent idea. Also, good place to put this: The font you use for the popup with the effect details (e.g. "Unit has X more skill Y for 3 rounds") is way too small and almost unreadable on an Air1. What size did you choose? Looks like 4pt or max. 6pt to me. 10pt or even 12pt is much more eye-friendly. Yeah, I'm shortsighted and like to play without my glasses Ah, you got that wrong The GREEN bar on the lower left of the portrait displays the number of regular attacks you can fire off with that Soldier's current AP. It has a crosshair as icon on the left, as visual indicator. Example: My Missile has 100AP max. The green bar is full and shows 3: one attack for him costs 30AP, so you can do 100/30=3.33x -> 3 attacks. When my AP drop below 90, the green bar's number will drop to two. Now, the BLUE bar upper right shows your current AP, icon is a lightning bolt. @Wavelight: would be good if it showed both current and max AP, very simple as 87/100 . That applies to all 4 bars actually: Health, Attacks, and Morale should also be in format current/max. And for completeness, the lower right bar is Morale in yellow, with a medal as icon.
How does cover work? I've been on the opposite side of cover that appears full height and shot right through it.
Just checked for a window but nothing there Thanks for clarifying! Wondering what the benefit of this system is as opposed to just have one pool of AP for movement and abilties. If I understand correctly it actually is a single integrated AP pool in the background, but it's presented seperately.
It's convenient, then I don't have to do the math how many attacks I can do @snarvid: See ingame help : half-cover reduces enemy tohit by 55, full-cover by 85. So, you need at least 140 attack skill for the full 85% hitchance against half-cover, and 170 for full-cover. Also, note that some attacks like Grenades ignore cover, as they always hit; comes in handy sometimes.
I'll check it. The only real "bug" that I know of is in some levels, you can shoot through the wall at an edge of a map. I didn't set up a perimeter fence for some levels and therefore you can stand at one end of a wall that ends at the edge of a map and still shoot around it. Kind of hard to explain but I'll try. So half cover doesn't block line of sight at all. Full cover does block line of sight except for a unit that is standing on the "edge" of the hard cover. So if you have a wall of hard cover that is 3 tiles long, you can't see through it if you're in the middle position but you can if you are on either the left or right tile. Basically, the character is on the edge of a high wall and shooting around the corner of it. A lot of walls in the game also have energy windows that can be seen and shot through. These walls are just half cover.
See my earlier post, I just responded to someone else on it. Basically, full cover blocks line of sight if your character is not on the extreme right or left tile of it. Therefore, a full cover of only 1 tile doesn't line of sight but 2 or longer will provided you are not on the edge tile for that direction.
For the attack slider, I'm thinking of changing it to a variable number of bullet icons instead. So if you have 5 attacks remaining with your current AP pool, it'll show 5 bullet icons. I figure that might look better than another slider. Will see. Patch 1.1 should be out now ... it was just approved. I plan to submit 1.2 patch today, which has a tonne of new UI and functionality improvements.
No worries, just to confirm though the 1.1 patch only has a handful of changes in it. The major UI / functionality changes are in the 1.2 patch that I will submit to Apple today.
1.2 patch submitted to Apple. Here is the change log: - Updated UI with unnecessary buttons removed. - Added "Quick Ability" button to UI that allows you to activate the most common ability of each character with a single press. - When a unit is selected to move, tiles that can be moved to are now shown in two separate colours. Green tiles will allow the character to still attack and yellow tiles will not allow an attack. - Added an option to hide corpses in the Options menu. - Improved appearance of notifications during battle. - Items that the player cannot afford are now greyed out in the Shop. - Unit attack summary has been reduced in size. - Game log moved to pause menu to reduce clutter in UI. - Next Unit button moved to more convenient location on the left of the screen. - Units with sufficient action points and access to the Guard ability will now automatically go on Guard when the End Turn button is pressed. - The Confirm End Turn button will now highlight and select any character with unused action points if the player presses "CANCEL". - Collectable objects updated to make their effects clearer. - Several minor bug fixes.
More play report from yours truly Currently on Mission #12 (2nd one in Chapter 3 - Infestation), playing on Hard difficulty. Also completed Special Missions up to #15. Feels a bit more challenging, as I need to plan my attacks a little bit now. But still nothing too hard. Special Mission #15 was the first one where things got a bit tight on the first few turns, and I had to focus on healing for 2-3 turns while directing my reduced firepower on important targets (hint: go for the Firebugs first). But I still stayed out in the open, and didn't have to go into cover even once. My impression is that the AI has a problem dealing with massed heavy ranged fire, and the soldiers at the same time eating most (counter)attacks without major issues. If I had to go into close-range or - hell beware - melee and/or go into cover before attacking, I'm fairly certain I'd have a much harder time. Hhmm...makes me want to try a melee-centric play... With the fix for the failure chance on Reprogram AI (I have a plan ), I'll try the Ravager Stage (currently #10, Chapter 2 - Rescue) on Extreme difficulty. My folks are 1-2 levels higher than before, 2 on 5 and 4 on 6; and have some better equipment. But that should only make things a little easier, not totally change the game. Will report back if my tactics worked.
