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Buy Menu Revamp
The following is a rundown of my proposed buy menu revamp. Please feel free to comment in discord with suggestions and changes.
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Open buy menu and see faction picker view -> button for each faction as well as a button to change the craft at the top somewhere. If you've got a specific faction set (either cause you bought from them last time you opened the menu and maybe hit a buy and save faction button or something, or cause they're your metagame team, skip this step). Clicking the craft would take you to a screen like in 2 but showing craft.
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Item picker view -> Show all the actors for your faction, as well as buttons to change factions, change craft, or go straight to weapons/tools/bombs. Clicking an actor would take you to step 3, shift clicking (middle clicking maybe? Need to figure out useable inputs to do this on keyboard/controller too) would allow you to add multiple actors to your selection so you don't have as much menu back and forth. Clicking one of the craft/weapon/tool/bomb buttons would take you to a similar screen to this but showing the equivalent category, with the same category changing buttons. If you add actors to your order, you'd be taken to 3, otherwise if you only have weapons/tools/bombs you'd be taken to number4.
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In this screen you equip your actors. Probably would be nice to have a panel to the left showing stats about the actor where possible (e.g. reasonable carry limit, suggested equipment, any other special information). To the right of that you'd have a multi-column panel where you can pick any weapons, tools or bombs to give the actor (by default it limits things to the faction you pick, though you'll also have the change faction button like above). Each category would be in its own column probably, or maybe weapons also get subdivided (so pistols, snipers, heavy weapons, etc are in separate groups) and everything is grouped and columns created based on that. Either way, a wider menu so there's less vertical scrolling. Once you've picked all your equipment, you hit a ready button and, if you have more troops to equip, get the same screen again for the next troop (with some clear indication you've moved on to the next troop) or if you don't, move on to 4.
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This is the order confirmation screen, here you can see everything you're buying as well as probably a stats panel on the craft you're using. Tools/weapons ordered loose would be in a loose items category, actors would be in another category, bombs would be in yet another. If you have bombs as well as other stuff, either a warning shows up saying you may blow your guys up or, way more cooly, the game/ai knows to make the bombs drop first to clear the lz. Other warnings would show up if you don't have the money or the craft doesn't have the passenger/mass capacity. If you're unsatisfied with your order you can click the relevant item to remove it, or the relevant category to go back to that view. When you're satisfied, you click buy and your order gets made.
Also, in all the screens where you select stuff there should be a checkbox to show all techs, so people who want to dig through can do that. Maybe also some ways to customize the all techs view a little so users can decide if they want the techs to be shown like they are now with scrolling, or as separate pages you move through.
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This doesn't touch loadouts at all. Should loadouts remain and if so, how should they be revamped? Should they be built into this as part the item picker view (section 2) so you can quickly click loadouts? Should they still include crafts or should that be separate (I'd argue it should).
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This was put together before weegee's added owned and prohibited items. Obviously it'll need to adhere to this but should owned items display very differently and should prohibited items be visible in some way?
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For craft with 0 passenger limit or 0 mass limit, things should function differently. No actor screens should show up for craft with that can't hold passengers, and buying crafts with 0 mass limit should be very quick and simple, since there's nothing you can do with their contents.
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What am I missing, what should be changed, etc? I also generally tend to think about mouse and keyboard but this also has to be user-friendly for controller users and keyboard users.
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Add a button to copy the last actor and equipment from the buy menu. Probably on the actor item picker view (screen 2).
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For presets, they should work as follows: There are 5 (or some number) of categories of presets, you go to presets you see these categories and have to select one to advance. There you can see all the presets in that category in a more compact view showing numbers of actors, weapons, etc. possibly with icons. Additionally, you'll be able to pick a random preset for when speed is of the essence. In this view you can also see what's currently in your cart and choose to save it as a preset in this category, or remove the last preset in this category (if we still want this). If you select one of the presets it'll open a more expanded view similar to the equipment view (page 3) so you can see exactly what's in it, clear it and possibly modify it. At the bottom of this view you'll have a button to add the selected preset to the bottom of the cart or to overwrite the cart and just put this.
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In addition to the normal buy menu pie button, there'll be a quick-buy preset button which opens another menu (maybe a pie menu, maybe a very modified buy menu) that lets you pick a category and get a random preset in it so you can order quickly. This would only pick ones you can afford to not make things confusing, and each category would only be pickable if you have a preset in there that you can afford.
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Crafts won't be part of presets. For the quick menu this means either it'll have to figure one out or you'll have to pick it (I prefer the former). Possibly if your order can't fit in the current craft the menu should swap to one in your available techs that it can fit in? Alternatively, maybe crafts do get saved with presets for this usage only.
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The cart window as it exists right now will either not be shown or it'll be better organized with (hopefully collapsible) indented branch style so you can easily see what's sitting directly in your craft vs in each actor's inventory. As said though, may remove this in favour of just having the order confirmation screen (page 4), depends how it feels to not have a cart to look through.
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You shouldn't be able to add things to the cart when it'd put you over your actor/mass limit.
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Buy menu should have, and respect, display modes. Compact just shows item name and to see sprite you have to mouse over the item. Full looks more like normal. This should be able to be different for each player and should probably be remembered in settings.ini or something.