3945 replies to this topic

[Borggod]

Hello !

Will there be a german translation?

[Jackforce982]

In response to post #19707614. #19785579, #19786784, #20207555, #20224724, #20225729, #20257194, #20257894 are all replies on the same post.

@ Insufferable Smartypants Well, that's interesting. Yeah, customizing all my soldiers to look just how I want them, with armor styling, color, and helmets, make the game look way cooler. It's bizarre to me that they'd miss the appeal of doing that.

[whismerhill]

On the subject of fatigue
some people including those that use Long War, don't like fatigue
heck who likes fatigue anyway ?
I mean it's a great mechanic cause it forces you to have several teams of soldiers instead of just 1 that does it all

however there might be times that you did a mistake by getting a fatigue wound on soldiers you wanted for 1 more mission

this suggestion is to try to relieve that pressure by providing a "panic button"
why not some sort of meld infused syringe that could straighten up a soldier from fatigue or wounds much more quickly ?

a bit like there is a quickbuy, this would be quickheal/quickfix
to balance it all it could have a hefty meld cost, and since meld is so precious it would really be a waste to use it constantly to get your A team back online, heck you would probably run out of meld with this kind of cheap strategy
it could also debuff the soldiers with a "dizzy" effect -5 aim - 5 will for the following mission (since the healing is so strong it's a bit like having too many drugs in your system)

thoughts ?

[thecanyon]

There seems to be this weird disconnect when doing terror missions - I'll try to give context.

It seems the intention of terror missions is to give players an incentive to go in and kill aliens relatively quickly and save as many civilians as possible - that's why the 'random civilian death' mechanic exists, which is honestly okay, for the most part. But the problem is that I don't really see much of a difference between civilians saved when I change tactics for a mission. The first mission where I saved all 18 civilians was one where every soldier was one dash from the extraction point (I was honestly thinking of bugging out, I was in a horrible tactical situation at the get-go, but somehow only lost a rocketeer in the process). As a matter of fact, I simply do better on terror missions when I treat them exactly like an abduction mission, and I don't think that captures how a terror mission should be played.

So I've been trying to think of ways to improve how to make a 'tough, but fair' terror mission, but at the same time may be something that isn't too difficult to mod or isn't hardcoded in the game or engine, here's what I got:

1. No random civilian death, but at the beginning there are some number of aliens that start activated (Maybe the quantity depends on the difficulty setting and panic level. Say one alien for one or less bars of panic on normal, and up to 5-10 for high panic on brutal/impossible difficulty). This means civilians get killed by some actual moving/walking threat, and the player feels less cheesed by randomness.

2. Having civilians more likely to run toward player units if an XCOM soldier is in sight range, maybe more likely to run away from aliens if they are in sight range, but just the first one would be helpful (it really takes me out of the game when I'm creeping up, see civilians in sight, and in the next turn they run away someplace where I'd have to be a complete dummy to explore). The random deaths can be kept in, and the players would be more willing to go faster to find more civilians - provided they think it would actually affect them long-term. Sometimes with the high panic terror missions I sort of treat them as a training mission for mid/low tier troops.

3. Aliens are more likely to prioritize XCOM soldiers than civilians. This can be a panic-level thing, too. If panic is low, they might be more likely to kill civilians (with the mindset that this is a more or less desperate attempt to raise panic, as their numbers won't be strong enough to take on an XCOM team), and if high, they will swarm the XCOM units (with the knowledge that the country is pretty much in the bag and this is a good chance to land what can be a heavy blow on the player). The latter scenario would mean the player doesn't feel like the terror mission is a simple waste of time and they have a good chance of minimizing civilian death by activating the aliens. It seems the mod likes the 'push-pull' scenarios, and some of my favorite times were when I was desperately trying to reduce panic in a continent so I could get the bonus I wanted, and the aliens were also focusing hard at removing that continent from the map. But I'll be honest, this is likely the least ideal solution.

I guess what I'm saying is terror missions are kind of incomplete, and this isn't the fault of the modders - it was a poorly implemented thing to begin with and Firaxis could have come up with something better than the terror missions.

There may be some fundamental thing of terror missions or the mod itself I don't understand, I do know its possible to have units sort of warp in, activated from nowhere (council and exalt missions), and I do know that the aliens must have some way of prioritizing what they'll shoot at. I'm pretty sure though that the civlians don't really have any sort of AI and most of their actions are completely random.

Either way I'm really enjoying the mod. Do you guys have a patreon or something? I want to know how to donate in a way that is slightly more direct than nexusmods.

Edit: Oh yeah, and this might be a shot in the dark, but I was thinking of some sort of rookie-only ability, we can call it 'beginners luck' or something, where grenades are more likely to do the max damage.

Edited by thecanyon, 29 November 2014 - 03:13 AM.

[Thunder_GR]

In response to post #20410299.

To begin with, only LW has the fatigue system from all X-COM mods I know and some people do like sweeping through a campaign, thus, they do not like the fatigue system.

The thing here is that, due to the number of missions, the troopers would level up way too fast, without fatigue. The fatigue system is there to prevent that and make the game interesting. If you do not like it, you can mod it out(check the modding long war thread). Then, you will realize that the game is practically unplayable(due to low challenge factor) without fatigue.

[johnnylump]

In response to post #20427199. #20431544 is also a reply to the same post.

Thanks for a thoughtful post. A problem with civilians in B14f involves some of the pod randomization mechanics we use, so we're hoping the missions get better in 14g.

On your specific proposals:

1) We have not figured out how to have pods come pre-activated. I strongly suspect the out-of-view fatalities to civilians would go much higher if we did.

2) Civilians do have some rules to run away when an alien is in view -- sometimes this causes them to run into the arms of another alien (might be worse with Long War's increased alien counts). We played with their AI some to make them more mobile.

3) It's actually technically quite complicated to tell the tactical game the panic state of a country in the strategy game -- the two games are mostly separate, with a limited set of information that can pass between them. We have ways around this, but it isn't trivial to code. I'd also note that terror missions can raise panic on the entire continent, so you almost always want to save civilians on these missions.

We could look at making the terror mission AI more apt to attack soldiers, I suppose, but going after civilians is strategic behavior, and I'm hesitant to mess with it much because it advances the aliens' goal of gaining countries, even if they don't zap that many XCOMs. It would be a hard thing to get right, but I wouldn't rule it out.

We've also talked about making the aliens actually roll a die when shooting at civilians, but that isn't an easy fix, either.

The "drop-in" aliens are coded in via a system we haven't fully cracked yet, so we are unable to add them to any other missions right now.

... And thanks for thinking of us. We do not have a Patreon, just a donate-via-Paypal button up in the top right.

Edited by johnnylump, 29 November 2014 - 04:36 AM.

[johnnylump]

In response to post #20403374.

No one has completed one.

[thecanyon]

In response to post #20427199. #20431304 is also a reply to the same post.

Somehow I completely missed the donate button, derp. I guess I assumed that donations through this site wouldn't be direct.

I figured you guys were doing work on the nuts and bolts of the terror mission mechanics, the complicated nature of how the terror missions work is pretty understandable, as that was likely one of the parts the original developers spent the least amount of time on (kind of like how some games have swimming mechanics that only get used for one or two levels - they end up having a lower development/refinement priority).

Though I'm not a fan of actually doing terror missions, I really do like the thrill of somehow snatching a 90 - 100 panic country from the aliens after a month-or-two long slugfest, I just wish there was a better tactical/strategic element of saving civilians.

[whismerhill]

In response to post #20410299. #20429629 is also a reply to the same post.

yeah I agree with you hence why I said it's a great mechanic

that wasn't my main point though

[Antifringe2]

thecanyon:

 

I think that a significant part of the reason that terror aliens prioritize civilians is because it's the winning move for the aliens to make.  Let unpack that a bit.

 

90% of all ground missions in X-Com are the player interfering with alien operations.  The consequences of failure are limited, and the benefits of victory are gigantic.  For the most part, the player benefits when UFO activity increases (to within the saturation limit of your interceptors). Terror missions are the one time a month (sometimes 2 times a month) that the alien "player" gets to be on the offensive. 

 

The tactical game is balanced so that X-Com will almost always win, and with limited casualties.  It kind of has to be that way.  If we traded soldiers 1-to-1 with aliens, and if each mission had a %50 chance of success, the game wouldn't last past the first month.  The aliens ignoring the civilians and attacking X-Com is the worst possible thing they can do from a strategy perspective.  They would be trading away a certainty of progressing their goal (panic increase) for a microscopic chance of total victory.  If I were programming the AI and I had to bet my house on whether or not the AI won the game, "kill the civs" would be my preferred choice for terror-related behavior.

 

Narratively, the aliens have demonstrated suicidal fanaticism before (the aliens in bomb missions are happily trying to blow themselves up), so my mind isn't blown by terror troops being fanatics/psi-slaves.  Gameplay-wise, terror missions are the one time that aliens get to advance their goals and pose a real strategic threat, instead of being a strategic opportunity and merely posing a chance to gain loot.

Edited by Antifringe2, 29 November 2014 - 02:01 PM.