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POLL: Auto-resolve battles


Do you want the option to auto-resolve some battles if you so choose?  

93 members have voted

  1. 1. Do you want the option to auto-resolve some battles if you so choose?

    • Yes
      50
    • No
      43


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Autoresolve doesn't sound like it should never be as good as playing the combat manually. I'm not talking just about getting less loot. It should be a decision between skipping it or autoresolving it. A penalty rather than just decreasing your profits.

Perhaps auto resolving means at least one or two people dies even when you have the absolute best odds of victory the game will allow you.

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I can see how balance would be very difficult to do. I was looking at the formulae Serben presented in his thread leading up to this, and straight off I could think of a way to quite seriously abuse it. spinaljack has the right idea - base it more on player performance than anything else!

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Basing it on player performance seems odd to me. What about when aliens show up with new weaponry for the first time and everything has gone well up to that point. Wouldn't that make the autoresolve easier or more appealing then it should be?

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The problem I see with this is how to balance it. I can sort of see the need for it but it seems like it'd be hard to get right...

Well, here's an option for you - Authorize local force intercept.

You tell the local forces 'Go ahead, deal with the UFO', whether it's in the air or a crash site. No need for the player to send out their own interceptors or troops.

For UFO's in the air:

90% chance UFO escapes into space, no effect.

4% chance UFO destroyed or generates crash site, nation rating goes up 50% of what you would get if you shot down the UFO yourself.

6% chance UFO shoots down aircraft, nation rating goes down equivalent to a minor bad event.

For crash sites:

10%: UFO captured. X-Com gets technology / benefits as though it completed the mission well (but not as much of a nation rating boost since the nation took care of it).

80%: UFO destroyed during battle. X-Com gets no alien technology, but you do get a minor nation rating boost (about 10% of what you'd get if you did the mission yourself and did reasonably well).

10%: Disaster. Aliens hold off ground forces until rescued by other aliens, nation rating drops as a moderate bad event.

That way you can 'auto-resolve' by telling local forces to engage, and while most of the time you'd do better if you did it yourself, they'll do reasonably well. You could tie X-Com's research into these chances for success, so as you discover technologies you can improve the chances that ground forces have a positive effect. The key is to generally allow auto-resolved battles to turn out in the player's favor (because, really, most player-resolved battles will resolve in the player's favor) - that way it's not suicidal or harmful to choose to auto-resolve something, but to also always make the rewards less than you'd get if you did it yourself, thus providing incentives to not let local forces take a crack at every UFO.

All that said, I personally would rather see the main effort focused on just making combat interesting enough in both air and land that it's something I actually want to engage in over and over. A feature like auto-resolve would be handy every once in awhile, but maybe as an extra if there's time towards the end of development. If the game feels like there's 'too much combat', that should mostly be balanced within the game itself or make combat awesome enough that it's just plain fun, and people won't mind doing it again.

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I have to disagree with Comassion.

I can't see that idea working at all.

for one it questions the game itself, if local forces can fight off the aliens why is xenonauts needed?

why did they pay xenonauts at all?

if it was an option to skip battles this way it should heavyly punish the player relationshsip with the country he is in for not doing his xenonauts duty.

The play needs to be punished for auto-resolved, it can't be something a 10% chance of negative relations in crash combat. overwise the amount of combats 90% would give you enough to balance the 10% chance.

Edited by radister
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i voted no,

personaly i think autoresolve doesnt belong in the game even if it is optional i would never use it

it's just like the other who voted no say it takes away precious development time wich could be used to polish up the game, remove bugs,glitches,...

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Well, here's an option for you - Authorize local force intercept.

There is no real down side to doing that.

There is no balance of risk/reward.

You either get rewards without risk or you lose a small amount of nation rep that you will more than likely earn back on a couple of missions anyway.

You aren't risking your own troops, there is no chance of losing people and having to spend time re-hiring, rebuilding their equipment, getting new recruits up to the standard of the troops you lost.

Few points to consider when looking at that suggestion:

You should get no positive nation rep no matter the outcome as you have had nothing to do with the operation.

In fact you may even lose rep no matter the outcome, after all you have told them that you aren't willing to protect them even though they are funding you and then if they win they have proven that they don't need you, if they lose you have cost them the lives of their soldiers.

That could be a balancing factor, you may not have to do it yourself but it costs you nation rep to make them do it for you and you are risking losing the support of your funders by making them look after themselves.

You should get significantly reduced technology as the nation that did all of the work would be likely to keep most of the spoils.

Maybe you should get to keep the first piece of new tech that you haven't researched and at most half of the mission spoils, possibly depending on your relation with the country in question.

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There is no real down side to doing that.

The downside is that you can do better by sending your own troops, and you're far likelier to get alien technology and goods if you did it yourself.

There is no balance of risk/reward.

You either get rewards without risk or you lose a small amount of nation rep that you will more than likely earn back on a couple of missions anyway.

The particular balance can be fine tuned, but overall, missions done with auto-resolve should resolve in your favor. Why? Because if you sent your own troops and did it yourself, there's a very high chance for any given mission that you'll recover the UFO. This is a much lower chance of making that recovery successful.

You aren't risking your own troops, there is no chance of losing people and having to spend time re-hiring, rebuilding their equipment, getting new recruits up to the standard of the troops you lost.

You also aren't training your own troops or (usually) obtaining alien technology. Less risk, less reward.

Few points to consider when looking at that suggestion:

You should get no positive nation rep no matter the outcome as you have had nothing to do with the operation.

In fact you may even lose rep no matter the outcome, after all you have told them that you aren't willing to protect them even though they are funding you and then if they win they have proven that they don't need you, if they lose you have cost them the lives of their soldiers.

That could be a balancing factor, you may not have to do it yourself but it costs you nation rep to make them do it for you and you are risking losing the support of your funders by making them look after themselves.

You should get significantly reduced technology as the nation that did all of the work would be likely to keep most of the spoils.

Maybe you should get to keep the first piece of new tech that you haven't researched and at most half of the mission spoils, possibly depending on your relation with the country in question.

Getting 'significantly reduced technology' is already in there. Most encounters will get you none.

For the rest of it, if you make the system too harsh then nobody will elect to auto-resolve battles, and while I must again emphasize that this is a feature I don't want at all, if it's going to be implemented then it should be implemented in such a way as to make it something people might actually use. If auto-resolve is worse than doing nothing at all (as might be the case if you always lose rep), then nobody's going to use it.

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wouldn't the best trade off be then:

Do it youself: Normal

leave it alone: you get nothing

Auto-Resolve: get some tech, lose some rep

that way your trade off is some items and stuff to sell and you loss rep for chosing this. this means leaving the crash site alone has benfits of not losing rep and Auto-Resolve has diffrent rewards.

I think this is more fair becuase then auto-resolve has a price.

Just to comment: i still don't actually want auto-resolve.

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Comassion I have to say reading your suggestion again I still disagree with how you see it.

There is no down side.

If you were to auto resolve it then you have no risk but a chance of a reward.

There is no incentive at all to NOT use auto resolve.

You don't need to do anything, you don't need to expend anything and you get rewards for it.

If you choose to skip a mission you get nothing, but you also risk nothing.

No risk, no reward.

If you run the mission yourself you are risking your troops and expending your time in order to get the rewards.

Time investment and risk, good chance of reward.

If you use the auto resolve as you originally suggested it you risk nothing, lose nothing and still get a chance of big rewards and reputation gain.

Even with only the 10% chance of recovered tech you suggested that is still a significant portion of the time where you would gain a large influx of cash and tech for no risk whatsoever.

90% of the time you will actually get a reward, even if it is only a nation rep boost (for forcing them to fend for themselves and send you any tech they get doing it).

The mechanic is skewed towards using the auto resolve.

My suggested changes were aimed towards making the use of that mechanic a choice.

I wouldn't necessarily use both, or either of them.

They were suggestions of ways to make the player think before clicking the auto button.

Do you auto resolve and lose rep with the countries you aren't properly protecting or do you do your job and risk yourself in order to reap bigger rewards?

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I honestly feel the trick is not to make it easier to skip a battle, but more to add stuff to make each battle so unique and fun that you NEVER want to skip it.

How do you do that? take the time you would code and test and balance the auto-resolve button and make it more variations in ground battles like better more unpredictable AI, better NPC interaction AI coding, better neutral Soldier interaction with xenonaut soldiers, perhaps neutral vehicles movement AI, etc, etc.

Perhaps make it a "hidden" trigger in the game like "IF (number of ground battles last 10 days > 5) then (NPC soldier spawn = multiply by 10 on next mission). So that the next battle (except major battles like terror), you have it easier time and you can make it end much faster because of the friendly help.

I woudnt mind an "auto-resolve" button, but quite frankle the coding and balance testing you would need to lose time in, i can imagine a dozen things that would make the ground battles even better and the keyword is more "unexpected and diversified".

Edited by Knightpt
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So what are the penalties one could use for auto resolving a ground battle?

-No loot (obviously). Not really a penalty but we list it anyway.

-Negative reputation score.

-Soldier lives

-Money

-other resources. (planes, alienium, alien alloys, currently equipped gear or something yet to be created.)

The first three can occur in a normal player controlled ground battle, but only the first 2 seems to be explored in the last few posts. Monetary penalties or additional resources for Autoresolves hasn't been discussed at all.

Should autoresolving be an alternative to playing the ground battle manually or be an alternative to skipping the battle entirely? Obviously autoresolving is for when you don't actually want to play the battle so I think that it should be more in line with being an alternative to skipping than to playing.

Any positive outcome should be balanced by an equally negative outcome. If you get loot you lose a few soldiers, if you get rep you lose money, if you get new research you loose the transport to engine troubles and your soldiers has to hitchhike home.

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I think perhaps we need PILOT skills and performance ranks. That would be ok. Also didn't the XCOM games auto-resolve flight combat?

I would also like a option to tell my crew in a chinook to parajump in order to save them when an unavoidable encounter is detected. Damn sneaky alien fighter jets, piss me off.

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Should autoresolving be an alternative to playing the ground battle manually or be an alternative to skipping the battle entirely? Obviously autoresolving is for when you don't actually want to play the battle so I think that it should be more in line with being an alternative to skipping than to playing.

I think that is where Comassion and diverged.

I was showing it as an alternative to skipping a mission while he was (I think) looking at it as an alternative to playing one.

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If an "autoresolve" feature were to be added that was essentially "let the world forces take care of it", it would be interesting to have the results be somewhat monetarily negative for Xenonauts, but positive in the long run for those nations. Essentially as nations defeat the aliens they will be capturing the technology and decipher it themselves thus becoming personnally stronger and needing Xenonauts less (and thus giving less funding). Based on their level of strength it would influence the likelihood of their alien ship assaults going well.

This is going on a bit of a tangent from the purpose of the thread, but along with this idea maybe nations could be made more dynamic and interesting by allowing negotiations with nations and establishing infrastructure with them. For example, maybe you could make a $200,000 investment in the USSR to tie their radar installations data in with Xenonauts' with the effect of a 5% chance / x amount of time of detecting UFOs over their territory. Another idea would be negotiating with nations about what responsibilities each organization has in the defence of that region with say Africa handling Scout class ships in their region in exchange for Xenonauts prioritizing the defence of their region (higher penalties for failing to deal with terror sites and large assault craft).

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I wouldn't use it so I would say no, I can just see people basically saving just before attacking a site, doing auto-battle and reloading the game until they get a good RNG and nobody dies etc. granted you could argue that if that's how they want to play then who am I to tell them they can't but you could say that about anything.

Voted no because I wouldn't use it and I think it doesn't really seem fitting for the game (imo) if you don't want to do a battle then something else is wrong, the combat should be compelling enough that you should never feel it's a chore to do in the first place thus not needing autoresolve.

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I wouldn't use it so I would say no, I can just see people basically saving just before attacking a site, doing auto-battle and reloading the game until they get a good RNG and nobody dies etc. granted you could argue that if that's how they want to play then who am I to tell them they can't but you could say that about anything.

That's easy to prevent, Civilization games (atleast IV, IIRC) store the RNG seed value, so the result doesn't change at all despite savescumming.

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I know that you can just use a system that will rng the same on each resolve but that doesn't solve people for example saving, using auto-resolve and if they get a good result they keep it, if they don't they reload and do it themself..

But I guess it still comes down to allowing people to play the way they want, just something I personally would never do (I never even reload my games if stuff goes bad) but I can't speak for other people, just my opinion :)

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I could definitely see it for air battles, but I don't think it should be in for land battles. The game is about your soldiers, it's not an RTS with faceless units . Also it seems like if you had money you could just RNG battles and keep hiring rookies.

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I'm always for OPTIONS that would improve the enjoyment of a game for other people.

Ideally the battles will be so fun that people won't want to skip them. However, even if the battles are more fun than sex I could still see scenarios where a person might simply want to skip them. Having an option to have the battles auto-resolve takes nothing away from people that DON'T want the option.

Just stick a toggle in the options to enable/disable the auto-resolve option. That way people that will never use the auto-resolve will never even see that it's there.

I never really understand why some people are against options that might make the game more fun for other people. It's like the option that they will never use magically makes the game less fun for them somehow simply by existing.

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