An idea for the next MekHQ

[T.S. Hawk]

I was wondering if it is possible that a journal or log could be put into MekHQ.  This way you can talk about oh this person has been promoted blah blah blah.. just for the ordinary mundane stuff to give it more of a realistic feel?  I mean hey its an idea...

[Crazy S]

I put that kind of information in the biography for the character. Just add the game date, and you're all set!

[T.S. Hawk]

Actually it wouldn't be related to the biography. New forces added would actually be part of the force description on the TO&E, but if I wanted to say I promoted this character I wouldn't do it in my main two characters biography.  And no way will I write up biographies for the cannon fodder   See I also want to write up about what they are doing on the planet in between scenarios.  The other thing too is that with the journal you could go more into detail about say your character had to send either a holovid or a verigraph to the families of a slain trooper

[Taharqa]

Are you talking about a general log for writing anything or something specifically tied to personnel, units, etc?  I have thought about providing more automated logging for personnel to track various things. We already do this for kills, for example. But a user-entered log that was tied to personnel would just seem to duplicate the already editable description.

[DaddyHolby]

Sorry to hijack this a bit, but...

We already do this for kills, for example.

Is this new in v11?  I have never seen this before and have been doing it myself manually in the BIO.

I have thought about providing more automated logging for personnel to track various things.

Since you mentioned more automated tracking here's a few ideas I've had about it:

• hire date
  
• rank changes
  
• unit assignments
  
• force assignments
  
• scenarios particpated in
  
• missions particpated in
  

Having the time stamp when each of these happened would be great too.

[Jayof9s]

Sorry to hijack this a bit, but...

[quote author=Taharqa link=topic=491.msg2410#msg2410 date=1323882314]
We already do this for kills, for example.

Is this new in v11?  I have never seen this before and have been doing it myself manually in the BIO.

I have thought about providing more automated logging for personnel to track various things.

Since you mentioned more automated tracking here's a few ideas I've had about it:

• hire date
  
• rank changes
  
• unit assignments
  
• force assignments
  
• scenarios particpated in
  
• missions particpated in
  

Having the time stamp when each of these happened would be great too.
[/quote]

Yes, the kill tracking is new in 0.1.11

And I like that list for things to track for personnel, I used to track just about everything listed when I was still doing my campaigns in (massive) spreadsheets.

Also, I've been meaning to ask about the Dragoons Rating, would it be possibly (or are you already planning) to add a way to manually input 'starting info' for a unit? For instance I have a few campaigns that were tracked on spreadsheets before I started using Megamek so they've actually completed a lot more missions (successfully and unsuccessfully) that MM is unaware of, also several had contracts that had to be completely deleted while using 1.9 to continue with new ones. This would also be a good way to add any commander quirks (if applicable) that affect the rating.

[T.S. Hawk]

Are you talking about a general log for writing anything or something specifically tied to personnel, units, etc?  I have thought about providing more automated logging for personnel to track various things. We already do this for kills, for example. But a user-entered log that was tied to personnel would just seem to duplicate the already editable description.

I love that you added the kill stats for characters it makes it so much more easier to keep track than having to do it if you played on MM separately.  And what Daddy talked about is what I was thinking of asking you to see about doing for the individual characters.  But what I am talking about is more like a journal you could find on the menu bar for where the personnel/hangar/repair bay tabs are and just talk about what is going on with the contract or just post your thoughts.  It doesn't have to be something for everybody you could have a box in the campaign options where you check it or uncheck it like the Dragoon ratings.  Because this log could also be used for writing up planetary data as well. I am currently using the 3025 handbook for Kurita and they don't do a whole lot of all the worlds just the key ones.

[Sir Chaos]

Speaking of logs, it would be nice, somewhere down the road, if MHQ kept a log of where the unit was at which time, i.e. arrival and departure time at the planets themselves, and on what day they jumped from where to where.

Then, I would like to see the ability to pick what information I want to go into kill tracking. That big fat "(***** CRIPPLED *****)" for example takes up a lot of space and doesn´t really add any information, because ALL kills are "crippled". I can do both without that and without the name of the player the killed unit belonged to, so by now I assign all kills manually in order control what´s in the entry. That said, it would be cool to have the option to include the location of the kill (i.e. what planet the unit was on when it happened) and perhaps the kill´s pilot quality.

Speaking of cripples, would it be possible to introduce another category of damage to distinguish between mechs that have lost arms and side torsos, but can still move around, and those who lost a leg and thus cannot move around usefully?

Edited to add:
Since kills exist as a data category independent of the pilots, it shouldn´t be too difficult to create a "kill chronicle" tab which lists all the kills the unit has accumulated so far. There, it could then be possible to edit the information of the individual kill entries - because right now, they can only be edited by going directly into the save game file with a text editor, which is a bit inconvenient.