UI AI Problems

[JusH]

Hello,

I played more than 30h and have have run into big (for me) problems in game. First of this is a comfort troubles:

1. The battle does not end if the last of the enemy group is not killed.

2. Scripted enemies do not move, even if their lives are in danger. Hello warden, you died trough the window a lot of times. And 4 yours bodyguard stayed in their room, while you shoot him.

3. When the mercenary is one level higher, when you select it, the camera still switches to the ground level. All is transparent and isn`t convinient, very very very.

4. Small maps and very small maps.

5. Transparent walls are very uncomfortable. From a tactical point of view, you do not understand where the window is, where the obstacle is.

6. The camera angle is terrible, because of the abundance of debris and the vertical view, you cannot understand where the aiming lines will be visible and from what point.

7. A lot of trash in mapdesign. I fell myself like a bum who digs in a landfill all game. And this interferes with the planning of tactics very much. I understand that you will object that this was planned, but let's try to go through the game yourself.

8. Mercenaries recover in a day, why hire others, if one team can go through the whole game? In JA 2 severe wounds could take a week to heal, and holes in the defense had to be plugged with the last effort.

9. Craft cannon body kits from garbage kills tactics, only rifles are needed, not even knives.

10. Treatment of gunshot wounds with plantain causes laughter.

11. What abou 9dmg from 7.62? 

12. Assault rifle RIP. Remember those days when you took the enemy at close range in JA 2 in one burst. Now you are in the role of an imperial paratrooper. In 10 meters. Lol. But if you have 60 acc with rifle, you god of shooting.

13. Mines and demining is not the subject of the game, but a joke to piss off the players.

 

All that I said is to make game better, it has a lot of potential. But now the game is not adapted for passing without saving, unfortunately, and now it is very uncomfortable to play.

Edited July 25, 2023 by JusH

[D13]

To add to 5. and 6.:

In this situation Igor cannot walk through the doorway, because when I try to click "through" the floor behind it, the game will interpret it as "close the door":

So I turn the camera to look at it from the other side. But now the ceiling/wall gets in the way and it looks like this (but at least now I can click on the floor, I just don't see anything):

Edited July 25, 2023 by D13

[D13]

3. It's generally difficult to tell which floor I'm on, and on which floor I'm clicking, and on which floor an object is.

14. After every turn the active merc is changing back to one particular merc, and with it the camera. Hunting down the last enemy in endless turn-based is even worse if you have to select the correct merc and camera position every time.

15. Related to 14.: it should be possible to play an entire battle in Overview camera mode. For some cluttered sectors it's the better camera. But after every turn it goes back to normal camera.

[MateKiddleton]

These are good points, esp transparent walls, floor levels and not going back to real time when enemy is not sighted for a couple rounds. Don't agree with map size. I like the variety in sizes, some maps are small, others are truly enormous (eg Port Cacao).

[D13]

16. When giving a merc tactical movement instructions, it should be possible to display the route they're going to take. In JA2 you could press Shift or Ctrl to display a line of footsteps. In JA3, environment and movement options are more varied, making path finding less predictable (between different floor levels I've had many surprises)

17. During turn-based movement, allow us to set a destination outside our current turn's movement range, and then each turn walk as far as that turn's AP will take us (makes coordinated squad movement less annoying if turn-based doesn't go back to real time)

18. Make it more convenient to repeat turn-based overwatch every turn until cancelled (consuming APs each time, of course). If I want to cover a building's front entrance with Buns, Kalyna, and Grizzly, while Igor sneaks towards the building's back door, and it takes him 6 turns to get there, I should not have to set the identical overwatch 18 times. In previous JA this was implicitly handled by the old interrupt system, with overwatch it quickly gets repetitive.

[GODSPEED]

On 7/25/2023 at 5:42 PM, D13 said:

camera position every time.

 

- I wish the game had a toggle to disable auto-cameras. ESPECIALLY during my own turn!
I can set my own camera position, thank you! I understand auto-cam on enemy turns.

- I wish there was a way to COMPLETELY hide UI panels related to quests and attack effects.
I know my quests, don't need to have constant large panels open in tactical view. The other day I had something like 3-4 panels on the side taking up so much real-estate for NOTHING. Annoying in tactical view where I want to see more, not less.

- All the pop-up information windows should have either a timed notification, or a key to disable them all together.
Going through inventory is really annoying with constant info panels taking 15% of the screen.


Just a little bit of nitpicking; the UI, overall, could use a little polishing. It's very "large" and obtrusive.
It feels in beta/placeholder/testing phase. A little transparency here and there and a little reduction in overall size would be very much welcome.

The overall design and look of the UI doesn't make it feel very modern. So maybe some scaling would be useful. I also wouldn't want it so tiny that those on large 4K TV's can't read it. But the way it is now, I get the feeling I'm playing a game back in the early 2000's (not in a good way).

[MateKiddleton]

On enemy turn, UI seems to be disabled, and camera zooms to the relevant enemy. This is problematic as you can't see who they're shooting at (target is usually off-screen), and how much damage the target is taking. When it's the player's turn again, sometimes you don't even realise one of your mercs needs first aid cos they've been shot off-screen and you had no idea.

[J1v1n]

Good remarks, both @D13 and @GODSPEED! 🧐

[D13]

19. The "repair items" operation asks the player to select items to be repaired. Players should be able to select any items that belong to a merc in the same sector as the mechanic. Currently, only items belonging to mercs on *the same squad as the chosen mechanics* can be selected. The "treat wounds" operation already allows us to treat patients in the same sector irrespective of squad association with medics.

[D13]

20. When I craft explosives and my mercs' inventories are full, and the explosives are of the type that cannot go into the squad inventory, then the explosives disappear. Or at least I can't find them in tactical view, and they're not in the sector inventory either.

[D13]

21. Caged hyenas that are configured to turn hostile the moment I open their cage should not count as killed civilians.

[D13]

22. Bug report window has UI bug 😂 Pressing TAB (to switch between input fields) switches mercs in background, potentially changing the scenario that is about to be reported. All game input should be disregarded while the bug report window is open.

[D13]

23. Merc was killed, after combat the dead merc's voice points out a newly discovered item (probably his own body which can be looted).

[D13]

24. Tactical should indicate dangerous tiles for "burning" areas, just like it does for tiles affected by gas. After walking over the red rectangle area, Omryn is on fire, and not in a good way. That Red would burn after walking over the smoldering planks to the bottom left is more reasonable, but was also not clearly foreseeable (all flames had already gone out). That's the UI part... 

25. ... as for the AI, it doesn't seem right that AI will happily step into flames and set itself on fire. Flames should be a deterrent, at least more than tear gas, which enemies seem to avoid where possible.

 

[D13]

26. Outposts controlled by the Legion should not send out Army assault squads, but Legion squads. This is actually important to deduce who is in control of a distant sector.

27. On a related note - Army and Legion should fight each other while in the same sector, at least in tactical view. (Unless I'm missing some plot detail.)

[ldierk]

On 7/30/2023 at 1:42 AM, D13 said:

19. The "repair items" operation asks the player to select items to be repaired. Players should be able to select any items that belong to a merc in the same sector as the mechanic. Currently, only items belonging to mercs on *the same squad as the chosen mechanics* can be selected. The "treat wounds" operation already allows us to treat patients in the same sector irrespective of squad association with medics.

Is that even true? What happens if you select two Mercs from two different squads in the same sector to repair?

[D13]

18 minutes ago, ldierk said:

Is that even true? What happens if you select two Mercs from two different squads in the same sector to repair?

Then I can repair items carried by the members of those two squads. I do in fact have two squads and separated my two mechanics as a workaround.

If you're seeing different behavior, please share, as that may even help the developers. I can only describe the issues I'm  experiencing in my one playthrough. It's always possible an issue requires certain conditions I may have unknowingly met.

[D13]

28. When moving mercs in tactical at night or underground, there should be an indication if the target tile is considered dark or lit.

29. During the deployment stage, the light indicator shows all mercs as standing on a lit tile. Only after deploying, the light indicator changes to show the correct light status:

[D13]

30. Light indicator seems bugged or at least unreliable even in tactical. After the light source has moved towards Omryn, he is promptly spotted as being "in the light"...

... yet the light indicator was dark the entire time:

 

 

[D13]

31. Bug - squad and mercs disappear after killing last enemy.

Buns aims. Second squad watches in awe:

Buns delivers. Conflict resolved, second squad gone:

Mercs gone too:

[D13]

Patch 1.1.0 fixes issues 31 and 19.

-----

32. Attack on enemy warns about potential friendly fire:

 

[wilku]

reg. 25 (sort of 25.1): The enemies are able to 'teleport' when not in your LoS, so they WILL go through any AoE and not suffer the consequences (if you have Livewire and Intel you can clearly see them teleporting instead of moving along the path).

33. None of the explosives cause knock-down - all characters are basically Terminators. (Even the flashbang that has explcit mention of knock-down in the description doesn't work).

[D13]

34. The "walk" movement type introduced with 1.1.0 (Ctrl+Shift) works only if movement is initiated by right-clicking. If the setting (exploration mode) has been changed to move after left clicking, Ctrl+Shift does not move mercs at all.

35. Starting a new game offers certain default options (show tutorials, exploration mode, ...). At least some of these settings will then also be applied to separate, unrelated campaigns. For some settings (exploration mode) I cannot even find a way to change them back from within an ongoing campaign, but even if there is a way, campaign-specific settings should not interfere with each other.

35.2 Exploration mode setting is missing (already described in other forums, and probably reported by now)

[D13]

36. Speaking to "Bonecrusher" instantly heals wounds of the merc doing the talking, can be used with multiple mercs.

[D13]

37. Game occasionally goes back to "combat resolved" and real-time in the middle of a firefight, enemy can then be "surprised" multiple times. I had not seen this prior to 1.1.0. Three weeks ago we were complaining about the game staying in turn-based for too long; this is the opposite: