Suggestions to Reduce Inventory Management

[osiyeza]

One of the most annoying things of Long War 2 compared with Vanilla, is that with the removal of squad upgrades, the weapons modifications now being swap-able and the huge amount of soldiers managed, there is a ton of unnecessary frustrating inventory management.

This can be mitigated with some minor updates:

- Soldiers, wounded or undergoing training always keep their assigned gear. This way we don't need to reassign the same equip over and over again to all soldiers. I understand that that may be done so we can use limited gear in troops going to a mission easily, but most of the time we will have all the squads properly equipped, and this mechanic actually wastes more time than it saves. As an alternative wounded soldiers can still lose their assigned gear, but this should not happen when using training facilities, that keep the soldiers away for just a few days and are used a ton of times.

- Add a way to change the current soldiers gun (maybe in the loadout screen, an extra option to use when we upgrade the soldiers gun to a new tier) so the modifications and name of our current gun are automatically transferred to the new one. It can be as easy as to pop a message every time we change weapons if we have modifiers installed and we are selecting a fresh gun without modifiers to ask to transfer gun mods. To do this manually for every soldier every time we update the weapons is a totally unnecessary nightmare.

- Maybe the gear items, Pistols, grenades, skulljacks, drones, vests make more sense to be upgraded all at once with different upgrade projects than being micromanaged one by one.

[cryptc]

from 1.5 patchnotes

- Add NoStripOnTraining option to XComUI.ini, next to NoStripWoundedInventory. If true (defaults to false) soldiers will not have their equipment stripped when they are placed in staff slots. Affects GTS rookie training, Psi initial training, and LW2 officer and AWC training. Psi level-up and AWC respec training do not strip items in vanilla and are not sensitive to this flag.

I was very happy for it

[Torquemada]

One of the most annoying things of Long War 2 compared with Vanilla, is that with the removal of squad upgrades, the weapons modifications now being swap-able and the huge amount of soldiers managed, there is a ton of unnecessary frustrating inventory management.

This can be mitigated with some minor updates:

- Soldiers, wounded or undergoing training always keep their assigned gear. This way we don't need to reassign the same equip over and over again to all soldiers. I understand that that may be done so we can use limited gear in troops going to a mission easily, but most of the time we will have all the squads properly equipped, and this mechanic actually wastes more time than it saves. As an alternative wounded soldiers can still lose their assigned gear, but this should not happen when using training facilities, that keep the soldiers away for just a few days and are used a ton of times.

- Add a way to change the current soldiers gun (maybe in the loadout screen, an extra option to use when we upgrade the soldiers gun to a new tier) so the modifications and name of our current gun are automatically transferred to the new one. It can be as easy as to pop a message every time we change weapons if we have modifiers installed and we are selecting a fresh gun without modifiers to ask to transfer gun mods. To do this manually for every soldier every time we update the weapons is a totally unnecessary nightmare.

- Maybe the gear items, Pistols, grenades, skulljacks, drones, vests make more sense to be upgraded all at once with different upgrade projects than being micromanaged one by one.

It's true that you often wish soldiers to keep their equipment but the fact is supplies are short and you often need to have one item used by many. A better solution IMO would be to have all weapons, armor, attachments and items available in the list and when you tried to equip it you could but were somehow warned that the equipment was in use by another.

[LordYanaek]

Maybe a more simple solution would be to auto-strip "normal" guns but not named ones so once you think a soldier is important enough to have his reserved gun specially outfitted for him kept in reserve for when he will be deployed, you just name it and it won't be removed automatically. OTOH, your random rookies-squaddies will use the common pool of poorly upgraded (if at all) weapons.

Of course you should still be able to remove those named guns if you need to, but they would automatically be re-assigned their owned when (hopefully) the soldier who borrowed it comes back.

[Dong101]

I do like the ideal of Torquemara on soldier loadout. Essential we keep the soldier prefer loadout but not the actual equipment. When go on mission, the game will try to load the loadout of the chosen soldier. The challenge is how to effectively let the player know what is missing.

[MrAnimaniac]

I have one idea how to simplify inventory management: the definition of standard equipment for a soldier. This equipment is only applied if available. If not, nothing or the next best equipment is applied. For example your favourite Grenadier uses a gauss SMG with advanced scope and a frostbomb in a non-grenade-spot. But right now there is no gauss SMG available. The advanced scopes and the frostbomb are out of stock as well. Therefore the next best things are equipped: a magnetic SMG with normal scope. Since there is no next-best technology for a frostbomb, nothing is equipped.
Quite important for this to be useful is, that the user is pointed towards changed or missing equipment i.e. by colours behind the weapons/equipment. A changed composition of the weapon mods could be pointed out by a blinking colourful background behind the weapon.
Hence, you can assess the changes quite straightforward and decide to bring a elite scope and a plasma SMG on your Grenadier.

For this system to work, weapons, modifications and equipment can't be bound to a soldier. Instead all is in a pool and every soldier tries to grab his favourite stuff when he goes to a mission. Therefore this system would be incompatible to that one currently in use.
Nevertheless, the ability to flag a weapon as not re-deployable might be useful. Hence, the weapon in question is bound to a soldier and taken out of the aforesaid pool.

To set a standard equipment of a soldier I would suggest to “add” a new equipment screen, diverging to the one currently in use by the circumstance, that you can equip everything you can produce or own without limits. For example, you can equip the frostbomb 2 times although you only posses one. Consequence will be, that the second soldier who wants to use the frostbomb at the same time in action can't have it.

Implementing a button to update the soldier equipment to the newest technology known to XCOM (except weapon mods if they're not producible yet) might be a useful gimmick as well.

Since I have no experience in modding xcom 2 I don't know if those suggestions are realizable. But I can think of a MATLAB-code doing this... so it might be possible.
If anyone could point me towards some information about how xcom 2 handles weapon deployment it would be appreciated. Perhaps I'll find a way by my self to implement this for me. Nevertheless feel free to do the work for me. :]

[Dong101]

I have one idea how to simplify inventory management: the definition of standard equipment for a soldier. This equipment is only applied if available. If not, nothing or the next best equipment is applied. For example your favourite Grenadier uses a gauss SMG with advanced scope and a frostbomb in a non-grenade-spot. But right now there is no gauss SMG available. The advanced scopes and the frostbomb are out of stock as well. Therefore the next best things are equipped: a magnetic SMG with normal scope. Since there is no next-best technology for a frostbomb, nothing is equipped.
Quite important for this to be useful is, that the user is pointed towards changed or missing equipment i.e. by colours behind the weapons/equipment. A changed composition of the weapon mods could be pointed out by a blinking colourful background behind the weapon.
Hence, you can assess the changes quite straightforward and decide to bring a elite scope and a plasma SMG on your Grenadier.

For this system to work, weapons, modifications and equipment can't be bound to a soldier. Instead all is in a pool and every soldier tries to grab his favourite stuff when he goes to a mission. Therefore this system would be incompatible to that one currently in use.
Nevertheless, the ability to flag a weapon as not re-deployable might be useful. Hence, the weapon in question is bound to a soldier and taken out of the aforesaid pool.

To set a standard equipment of a soldier I would suggest to “add” a new equipment screen, diverging to the one currently in use by the circumstance, that you can equip everything you can produce or own without limits. For example, you can equip the frostbomb 2 times although you only posses one. Consequence will be, that the second soldier who wants to use the frostbomb at the same time in action can't have it.

Implementing a button to update the soldier equipment to the newest technology known to XCOM (except weapon mods if they're not producible yet) might be a useful gimmick as well.

Since I have no experience in modding xcom 2 I don't know if those suggestions are realizable. But I can think of a MATLAB-code doing this... so it might be possible.
If anyone could point me towards some information about how xcom 2 handles weapon deployment it would be appreciated. Perhaps I'll find a way by my self to implement this for me. Nevertheless feel free to do the work for me. :]

Come on. Do not rely on other. Go figure it out and implement it. You need to work for your enjoyment.

Then post your mod to benefit other

[osiyeza]

One of the most annoying things of Long War 2 compared with Vanilla, is that with the removal of squad upgrades, the weapons modifications now being swap-able and the huge amount of soldiers managed, there is a ton of unnecessary frustrating inventory management.

This can be mitigated with some minor updates:

- Soldiers, wounded or undergoing training always keep their assigned gear. This way we don't need to reassign the same equip over and over again to all soldiers. I understand that that may be done so we can use limited gear in troops going to a mission easily, but most of the time we will have all the squads properly equipped, and this mechanic actually wastes more time than it saves. As an alternative wounded soldiers can still lose their assigned gear, but this should not happen when using training facilities, that keep the soldiers away for just a few days and are used a ton of times.

- Add a way to change the current soldiers gun (maybe in the loadout screen, an extra option to use when we upgrade the soldiers gun to a new tier) so the modifications and name of our current gun are automatically transferred to the new one. It can be as easy as to pop a message every time we change weapons if we have modifiers installed and we are selecting a fresh gun without modifiers to ask to transfer gun mods. To do this manually for every soldier every time we update the weapons is a totally unnecessary nightmare.

- Maybe the gear items, Pistols, grenades, skulljacks, drones, vests make more sense to be upgraded all at once with different upgrade projects than being micromanaged one by one.

It's true that you often wish soldiers to keep their equipment but the fact is supplies are short and you often need to have one item used by many. A better solution IMO would be to have all weapons, armor, attachments and items available in the list and when you tried to equip it you could but were somehow warned that the equipment was in use by another.

This may be the perfect solution fot inventory items. Just have then available, first show as usual not assigned items, then items assigned in other squads marked in yellow And finally in red if there is only available items assigned to other soldiers in the mission.

[Phaseless]

I have one idea how to simplify inventory management: the definition of standard equipment for a soldier.

Yes this is exactly what they did in xenonauts and it was immensely helpful.
Basically an equip-profile for every class.

If you could have as many profiles as you want, with names you can edit, that would be golden. Because there are so many builds for every class.

[osiyeza]

Maybe a more simple solution would be to auto-strip "normal" guns but not named ones so once you think a soldier is important enough to have his reserved gun specially outfitted for him kept in reserve for when he will be deployed, you just name it and it won't be removed automatically. OTOH, your random rookies-squaddies will use the common pool of poorly upgraded (if at all) weapons.

Of course you should still be able to remove those named guns if you need to, but they would automatically be re-assigned their owned when (hopefully) the soldier who borrowed it comes back.

I dont like this option for many reasons.
- First is complicated, i dont want to name all the guns just in order not to lose them. Also the automatically search for the best technology available it will be complex to use and a nightmare to implement.
- Is kind of pointless and unrealistic, i choose carefully the upgrades to synergize with the soldier abilities, a gun is a central piece of the soldier built, and i never change soldier guns but in really rare occasions, and in reality this never happens. It is just unrealistic that soldiers interchange guns, this never happens in real life as a soldier is responsible of keeping and maintaining his gun.
With armors is even more weird, since this is a totally personal equipment, which is supposed to have a particular color and being somewhat personalized. I actually share armors more often cause in game there are just no differences from soldier to soldier if they have the same armor tier. But precisely for this, the make armors available option is more than enough.

With guns the basic behavior should be always staying with their soldiers. This is actually not only simple, but the most realistic inmersion-wise, and the most obvious gameplay-wise cause it helps immensely to get attached to your soldiers and build histories as their guns become a part of their personality. It also is, at least to me the most time saving alternative and with an option to automatically carry the weapon upgrades you use to a new gun (usually a new tier) it would help to bring in a more natural way this element, saving a lot of time, and feeling each soldier has a distinct flavor.

[osiyeza]

Just think about the iconic soldiers of predator, poncho with the grenade launcher and jessy ventura with his chain gun.., or in aliens with the smatgun of vasques or the shotgun of hicks. Think about the magnum of dirty harry or the sniper riffle of Jude Law character in enemy at the gates, which is the same model you see his grandfather using at the beggining of the film... there is a reason an iconic gun belongs to an iconic character, as for the player in a way they define each other, and give that in-battle special connection that xcom should have.

[LordYanaek]

there is a reason an iconic gun belongs to an iconic character, as for the player in a way they define each other, and give that in-battle special connection that xcom should have.

That's exactly why i suggested keeping named guns. If you think a gun is iconic enough to belong to one specific character and you went through the trouble of giving it custom colors/patterns, then it deserves a name. Otherwise it's just a random gun hanging from an armory rack. I can give you as many examples of movies/TV shows where you see soldiers quickly grabbing a weapon from a rack full of similar weapons than you gave us "iconic" guns examples.

Keeping ALL guns tied to soldiers would certainly be a nightmare game-play wise as i never have enough high tech guns for all of my guys so apart from a few A-team (or otherwise important) soldiers i definitely want to have an easy way to switch guns between them while they are recovering or training. The same is true for Weapon upgrades as i regularly strip all of them to cycle them between soldiers.

Then again, there's a few soldiers i wish could keep their guns untouched with all the upgrades. Those are my iconic characters with iconic guns. I wish we had a way to preserve those guns. It could be a checkbox somewhere, but it requires adding UI elements while simply re-using the existing customization requires nothing but code. The name is certainly attached to the gun object (code-wise) otherwise guns would change name when you switch them to other soldiers so it's probably the easiest solution (again, code-wise). I also think it fits well with our shared vision of iconic guns so i don't really understand your objections - apart from not wanting to name the guns but if they are truly iconic, don't you think they deserve a name?

[osiyeza]

there is a reason an iconic gun belongs to an iconic character, as for the player in a way they define each other, and give that in-battle special connection that xcom should have.

That's exactly why i suggested keeping named guns. If you think a gun is iconic enough to belong to one specific character and you went through the trouble of giving it custom colors/patterns, then it deserves a name. Otherwise it's just a random gun hanging from an armory rack. I can give you as many examples of movies/TV shows where you see soldiers quickly grabbing a weapon from a rack full of similar weapons than you gave us "iconic" guns examples.

Keeping ALL guns tied to soldiers would certainly be a nightmare game-play wise as i never have enough high tech guns for all of my guys so apart from a few A-team (or otherwise important) soldiers i definitely want to have an easy way to switch guns between them while they are recovering or training. The same is true for Weapon upgrades as i regularly strip all of them to cycle them between soldiers.

Then again, there's a few soldiers i wish could keep their guns untouched with all the upgrades. Those are my iconic characters with iconic guns. I wish we had a way to preserve those guns. It could be a checkbox somewhere, but it requires adding UI elements while simply re-using the existing customization requires nothing but code. The name is certainly attached to the gun object (code-wise) otherwise guns would change name when you switch them to other soldiers so it's probably the easiest solution (again, code-wise). I also think it fits well with our shared vision of iconic guns so i don't really understand your objections - apart from not wanting to name the guns but if they are truly iconic, don't you think they deserve a name?

Sure enough there should be an easy way to make everyone happy. As i totally feel the opposite of you regarding the gun issue.

The only difference we have is because to me add a name for all guns i want to preserve, is as annoying as it is for you to preserve all guns by default. As im totally nice with that last option.

I also think that the ideal solution for you is just to have everything avaliable allways by default. But the default behavior should be configurable in the .ini to offer options for everyone. Like

never losing the guns
always losing the guns
losing the guns on wounded
losing the guns on wounded and training (and fatigued maybe)

With maybe an option for guns and armor and another for gear. There is something already in 1.5 just not enough for me.

Im sure there will be users on both sides. But i think there may be a simpler way. I liked the solution somebody posted about the gear. Why not just make available the guns attached to "busy" soldiers but with some indication that they are currently in use for a wounded soldier or soldier in training?

Another easier solution may just be a button to make equipment from busy soldiers availiable.