How to unequip all items after missions, and how to tell how many of a particular item I own in the store view...

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rift
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How to unequip all items after missions, and how to tell how many of a particular item I own in the store view...

Post by rift »

Hi everyone,

This has been bugging me for a very long time, and it seems like a basic feature that should be in the game. This is one of the biggest flaws of this game in my opinion.

Say I go to purchase more laser rifles, for example. The store shows me that I already have one such rifle, but I KNOW that I have more than that. The problem is that it's not counting the rifles that are still equipped by the last squad that was on a mission. Same with the Gray Market - it only lists unequipped items. This is EXREMELY FRUSTRATING. I have to know how many of something I have, in order to decide if I need more, OBVIOUSLY.
The issue is made worse by the fact that there is no unequip button anywhere in the HQ, so the only option is to go to each soldier's loadout and unequip, etc. This is ridiculous!

The ONLY time we get the "Make items available" button is when setting up a new squad at the start of a mission. We need that same button in HQ! In fact it would be great to have a setting that enables automatic unequip of all limited items after EACH mission.

What am I missing here guys? How do you guys tell how many of something you have? Do you just rely on memory, do you go through your squad one by one, or what? Is there a mod that can help with this?

AAARGH!
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szmind
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Re: How to unequip all items after missions, and how to tell how many of a particular item I own in the store view...

Post by szmind »

Well, you missed something :) All equipment is automatically unequipped after mission! As soon as soldiers get fatigued and they always do - their stuff is unequipped. BUT - the stuff is automatically re-equipped as soon as a soldier leaves hospital or fatigue expires. And that might be a problem. Maybe it can be set in .ini to turn off. I do not know.
Stark
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Re: How to unequip all items after missions, and how to tell how many of a particular item I own in the store view...

Post by Stark »

You can go to the Grey market to see how many of each item you have, though I usually just hit the "Make items available" button during load-out which un-equips all items from your whole roster.

Then you can take a tally either during loadout, going to Engineering and looking at the numbers in the list of items or looking at the Grey market items you have. I think it will become less of a problem once you reach higher tier items as building them is a significant milestone and usually sticks in your head.
rift
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Re: How to unequip all items after missions, and how to tell how many of a particular item I own in the store view...

Post by rift »

szmind wrote:Well, you missed something :) All equipment is automatically unequipped after mission! As soon as soldiers get fatigued and they always do - their stuff is unequipped. BUT - the stuff is automatically re-equipped as soon as a soldier leaves hospital or fatigue expires. And that might be a problem. Maybe it can be set in .ini to turn off. I do not know.
It's funny, in your first sentence you say I've missed something, in the next you basically confirm that it's true - soldiers do keep the equipped items after their fatigue is over. So, when you're scanning between missions, every time someone gets out of fatigue they 'steal' back the last weapon/item they used, and it doesn't get included in your available item count when you're in the store or gray market. This makes no sense to me. So no I'm not missing anything. I actually thought my game was broken. Then there's the whole different problem of soldiers who dont get any fatigue, e.g. vortex on my mind controllers - they keep everything at all times, making things more difficult to keep track of. So yea, we do need to be able to unequip all between missions.
Stark wrote:You can go to the Grey market to see how many of each item you have, though I usually just hit the "Make items available" button during load-out which un-equips all items from your whole roster.

Then you can take a tally either during loadout, going to Engineering and looking at the numbers in the list of items or looking at the Grey market items you have. I think it will become less of a problem once you reach higher tier items as building them is a significant milestone and usually sticks in your head.
I'm talking about un-equipping and counting items BETWEEN missions. As I said, you only get the "make items available" during loadout on NEW missions. Equipped items are not counted toward your available items in gray market or the store, so usually I have more items that it shows. Sure, lets go with "it sticks in your head in the late game" system. Very helpful :roll:
Stark
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Re: How to unequip all items after missions, and how to tell how many of a particular item I own in the store view...

Post by Stark »

Just trying to help man. Sorry I didn't have the answer you were looking for.
rift
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Re: How to unequip all items after missions, and how to tell how many of a particular item I own in the store view...

Post by rift »

i know, I'm just frustrated at the design flaws of the game. If the available item value doesn't include equipped items, I call that a bug. And if I'm unable to easily unequip everything from everyone at any time in the HQ, that's just a basic omission by the developers. It's stupid.
Stark
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Re: How to unequip all items after missions, and how to tell how many of a particular item I own in the store view...

Post by Stark »

Yeah, it's annoying when you're sending in your covert operative and have to manually cycle through your roster to unequip a laser pistol lol. I wonder how hard it would be to move that magic button to the barracks main view ? Probably fricken hard since it's a UI element.. Oh how I envy modders. :)
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szmind
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Re: How to unequip all items after missions, and how to tell how many of a particular item I own in the store view...

Post by szmind »

rift wrote:i know, I'm just frustrated at the design flaws of the game. If the available item value doesn't include equipped items, I call that a bug. And if I'm unable to easily unequip everything from everyone at any time in the HQ, that's just a basic omission by the developers. It's stupid.
Hmm, I don't get your problem :) Why checking during loadout is not enough? You usually do not have enough resources to say order 5 new rifles or 4 new armors. It is usually one by one process. So if during loadout (after clicking 'Make items available') you lack 1 or 2 of sth, what is the problem? Can't you memorize that "after the mission I must order another carapace" or just order it during loadout? There are so much missions that this is possible every few days!
Edit: Oh, and after 'making items available' the only staff that will be re-equiped is the staff on your currentlly being equiped squad! So after the mission you have at least 4 days with no staff on any soldiers? That's not enough?? How many vortex armors do you have? 17? But after making items available vortex is unequipped as well!
rift
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Re: How to unequip all items after missions, and how to tell how many of a particular item I own in the store view...

Post by rift »

szmind wrote: Why checking during loadout is not enough? ... Can't you memorize that "after the mission I must order another carapace" or just order it during loadout?
The other commenter said something similar - it sticks in your head... You guys must play the game so often that everything is fresh in your memory. Well some of us can't play that often because we have lives outside the games. I wish I had all the time that you have, but I don't :-)

So here is the issue. Often I exit the game right after a mission. If I come back after, say, a week or two, your 'system' of committing to memory the stuff I need to buy simply doesn't work. What's worse is that if I forgot to "make items available" before the last mission, which happens because we're human, the only way to see how many items I have is by going into each soldiers loadout and counting, which is very inefficient. Also, there are periods of time when missions are not very frequent. Several days may pass in-game when I crit and destroy all UFOs without getting missions, and meanwhile the fatigued solders come back and automatically re-equip the last used items, and I wouldn't even know it. So every time I crit-destroy a UFO, I get more cash which I go spend in the store right away, but because some solders are back from fatigue and re-equipped their stuff, the store doesn't show the actual count of items I possess.

I hope you can see my issue now.

But here is my broader point... The "Make items available" feature ALREADY exists in the game, so it's not like I'm not griping about something new that's not part of XCOM. But why is it only limited to the loadout screen? What would be the downside of having that button somewhere in the barracks at all times? I doubt there is a good reason for this. I call that a design flaw.

Or, on the flip side, why doesn't the store/market show the total number of items I posses regardless of equipped or not, and maybe show a second value in parentheses just for the un-equippned items, or something like that.

The other design flaw - soldiers coming back from fatigue automatically re-equip the items. This should have been a setting or an option, not a hard coded feature. But again, if we had the "make items available" in the barracks, this wouldn't' have been a big issue.
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szmind
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Re: How to unequip all items after missions, and how to tell how many of a particular item I own in the store view...

Post by szmind »

rift wrote: The other commenter said something similar - it sticks in your head... You guys must play the game so often that everything is fresh in your memory. Well some of us can't play that often because we have lives outside the games. I wish I had all the time that you have, but I don't :-)
Well, I currently play max 30-60 minutes a day, not every day. Say - one average mission.
rift wrote: So here is the issue. Often I exit the game right after a mission. If I come back after, say, a week or two, your 'system' of committing to memory the stuff I need to buy simply doesn't work. (...)
I hope you can see my issue now.
Clear now :) I have sometimes similar pauses so I understand now if that is a common issue for you. But Long War is so long, that it does not require so precise time-management. If I forgot I just wait till any mission (a few days), make items available, order production if needed. Done. Missing those few days is never crucial. Really. Do not press yourself :)
rift wrote: But here is my broader point... The "Make items available" feature ALREADY exists in the game, so it's not like I'm not griping about something new that's not part of XCOM. But why is it only limited to the loadout screen? What would be the downside of having that button somewhere in the barracks at all times? I doubt there is a good reason for this. I call that a design flaw.

Or, on the flip side, why doesn't the store/market show the total number of items I posses regardless of equipped or not, and maybe show a second value in parentheses just for the un-equippned items, or something like that.

The other design flaw - soldiers coming back from fatigue automatically re-equip the items. This should have been a setting or an option, not a hard coded feature. But again, if we had the "make items available" in the barracks, this wouldn't' have been a big issue.
Well, apparantly during game testing, the testers of Firaxis and 2k Games did not report that as a major issue or did not report it at all :)) Just resources and staff is no problem in vanilla game. And LW developers cannot be blamed for the lack - for the same reason (not much reports from players) and for the reason that they have done enough work hex-editing the code. We bow at them for their great job :) What seems simple as a wish is sometimes a great problem for a modder.
EmptyPepsiCan
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Re: How to unequip all items after missions, and how to tell how many of a particular item I own in the store view...

Post by EmptyPepsiCan »

rift wrote:i know, I'm just frustrated at the design flaws of the game. If the available item value doesn't include equipped items, I call that a bug. And if I'm unable to easily unequip everything from everyone at any time in the HQ, that's just a basic omission by the developers. It's stupid.
It's not a design flaw, it's a limitation in the original game. In vanilla XCOM there's no fatigue, so there's no need to have a deep barracks. Consequently, the developers didn't bother making the kind of robust UI that a player running an 80 man rotation might have hoped for. And why would they have? Rotating 80 guys would be stupid in vanilla XCOM, so nobody did it.

Then came Long War, and suddenly everybody rotated a ton of troopers and it was a pain in the ass because the UI sucks. You can't sort by name, or rank, or class, or number of kills, experience, or psi level, or movement, or defense, or will, or aim. You can't assign troopers to squads. You can't assign custom colors to your guys' names. Your "unequip all weapons" button is only accessible from the Ready Room, and the door only opens when aliens attack. It's a frustrating, clunky mess.

But what did you expect? Long War did a bunch of stuff that XCOM was never meant to do. Pavonis Interactive did an amazing job, but there are limits to what a modder, no matter how talented, can do to a game.

Anyway, you've already been given a solution. You can get an accurate weapon count in the Gray Market. It's just one huge list that can't be sorted, so obviously it's a pain in the ass, but it works.

Alternatively, you could just keep a pad of paper and a pen by your computer and keep a tally of your gear. Or keep it in a spreadsheet on your desktop. Or put it in a Google doc so you can check it with your phone. Really, it's a small price to pay for a truly fantastic mod.
rift
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Re: How to unequip all items after missions, and how to tell how many of a particular item I own in the store view...

Post by rift »

EmptyPepsiCan wrote:Anyway, you've already been given a solution. You can get an accurate weapon count in the Gray Market.
Again, you cannot always get an accurate count. Read above to learn why.

What you said about vanilla vs. long war makes sense. If vanilla didn't need this feature and LW developers couldn't add it, well, it is what it is. I can't blame them for this. Certainly this is a small annoyance given everything else we get with this amazing mod. The lack of sorting in the store and barracks is the other annoying limitation.

I guess the pen and paper suggestion is better than the 'memorize' suggestion. I'll get right on that :lol:
EmptyPepsiCan
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Re: How to unequip all items after missions, and how to tell how many of a particular item I own in the store view...

Post by EmptyPepsiCan »

rift wrote:
EmptyPepsiCan wrote:Anyway, you've already been given a solution. You can get an accurate weapon count in the Gray Market.
Again, you cannot always get an accurate count. Read above to learn why.
Ok, you got me there. I was thinking that the Gray Market stayed consistent but the list in engineering changed. Seems they both change. Oh well.

Anyway, I feel your pain. Information is scattered all over the place, the UI is clunky and inefficient, and it can be a pain to find what you need. I actually run set squads, which makes it even more time consuming to get set up for a mission. Oh well. It's still a great game and an even better mod.

Writing stuff down helps a lot, especially if you take the time to make a spreadsheet to keep it all organized. I'm still trying to work out the best way to do set squads without it being too big a pain. Having a small binder with a few checklists and rosters and the like would probably be pretty handy.
rift
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Re: How to unequip all items after missions, and how to tell how many of a particular item I own in the store view...

Post by rift »

EmptyPepsiCan wrote:
Having a small binder with a few checklists and rosters and the like would probably be pretty handy.
:P

That's good advice, and not just for my office job... :-)
R-800
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Re: How to unequip all items after missions, and how to tell how many of a particular item I own in the store view...

Post by R-800 »

I'm a bit late to this discussion, but I still wanted to mention that I feel the OP's pain, as I'm suffering with the same issue myself. I would like to share my solution, which I must admit is not ideal AT ALL, but at least reduces the tedium of writing things down. Well, for me it does. Unfortunately, this trick only works if one has an image editor, such as Photoshop.

The first step is to (unfortunately) wait until there is a mission to do. Once one pops up, go to the squad planning screen. Now, before you add one single unit, first hit the infamous "Make Items Available" button. THEN, escape out of that screen altogether and go instead to the Gray Market. The items listed in the Gray Market will now, at this point, be correct, since everything was just taken from everybody.

Now comes the fun part. :(

While the Gray Market screen is still up (make sure it's scrolled to the top of the list), press the Print Screen button on your keyboard. This is a standard way of taking a screenshot on a PC. Then, Alt-Tab out of the game and open your image editor of choice. Open a new file, then press Ctrl-V to paste the contents of the screen-captured Gray Market list into that image program. Unfortunately, this will not be a complete list yet. You must now Alt-Tab back to the game, scroll the Gray Market list down to the bottom, and take a second snap shot. This is necessary because all listed items cannot be displayed on-screen at once. Then repeat the steps above. Finally, arrange these two snapshots so as to make one final file out of the two, and save it out as a jpeg or whatever. Now you have a complete and accurate list. This process is a pain. But it produces a complete tally much more quickly and reliably than writing things down.

AND of course, this process will have to be done again at some point. Depending on one's play style, It might be most efficient to do it once every game month, maybe at the top of the month, right after you get all your new money.

It would be cool if there was some way to hack the game to output these values to a text file at regular intervals. But pulling off that kind of trick would be beyond me.

Now, to many, my solution may be a cure that's worse than the disease. So take it for what it is. Some may solve the same problem by using a spreadsheet, which would be harder to set up initially, but would certainly make editing any changes to the item quantities easier after everything is fully set up. Of course, I hate spreadsheet programs, so I do this.

Below is a copy of my latest list.
Attachments
XCOMGrayMarket.jpg
rift
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Re: How to unequip all items after missions, and how to tell how many of a particular item I own in the store view...

Post by rift »

LoL R-800 :lol:
Believe me, I was laughing out loud while I was reading your suggestion! I couldn't contain myself.... :D
I'm still not sure if the whole thing was a joke or serious. I hope it was a joke... LoL

The whole point is to have an updated list after every mission, not once a month. Also, if you're gonna have an external list, typing it may be easier than photo editing. :)
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