Game economy and other thoughts

[eyhung]

Potential UI improvements:

1) How about showing amount of aura somewhere, and progress towards objectives (like getting 11 apples)?  I accidentally ended the 11 apple scenario early because I didn't realize I was going to reach 11.

2) If we are going to drag items from reserve to characters to equip them, how about dragging from character  inventory to character to trade? 

3) It would be nice to grey out reserve items a character can't use when you click on a character.


Design issues:

1) In the hunt for the apples scenario, some bandits are stuck in the area with two chests.  Why can't the bandits attack the bushes to escape? 

[bugfartboy]

1) In the hunt for the apples scenario, some bandits are stuck in the area with two chests.  Why can't the bandits attack the bushes to escape?

I would imagine this to be more of a limitation of the system than anything. If I remember correctly the Apple mission is randomly generated, making it difficult if not impossible for Craig to anticipate what enemies will appear where relative to the rest of the map. The only way to effectively circumvent this is to mark every bush as a viable target for the AI, which could lead to some unwanted and bizarre behavior.

[CraigStern]

They could attack the bushes--it's more a matter of programming the AI to know what bushes to attack and when. I've experimented with this capability, and in maps with lots of destructible objects, it slows the Computer's turn down dramatically to have consider every last bush and tree as a viable attack target.

To get around this, I hand-mark certain destructible objects as targets (and the game automatically marks player-created destructible objects as targets). The unpredictability of the layout on procedurally generated maps makes this technique impossible to utilize, however.

[Kletian999]

Ah I wish I read this before I posted in Bugs...  Hmm, maybe you could just draw a flight movement path from a unit to it's nearest target and flag destructible objects in that path?