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Fixing and balancing door opening/closing


llunak

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Making the big doors impossible to close and only close automatically during the alien turn is sufficient, and that is in fact a solution preferred by Goldhawk, and was planned before the game's release.

I thought Chris was against not being able to close the doors (though maybe that was more specifically not being able to close the doors on the turn they were opened, but being able to close them otherwise).

Also, re: when door spamming is used: you're overlooking its use in combination with suppression. Aliens that are suppressed won't move to come and attack you if you're behind a closed door, which generally makes it a very powerful (if dull) way of dealing with command room aliens generally (IIRC, Trashman does this quite a lot in his videos). So, I'd make a case for all UFO/alien doors (not just large ones) being impossible to close manually.

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In agreement with disabling the ability to close all UFO doors, including bases. It doesn't make sense that Xenonauts can freely manipulate UFO doors, for one. Secondly, door spam is only possible if you can close the door and hide your units. Once it remains open, you leave yourself open to reaction fire on your turn, your units can be shot at on the aliens' turn, re-positioning is riskier, etc.

I would like to see reaction fire on door open applied to every door type in the game, but to resolve the issue of door spamming the simplest and most effective method, imo, is to take away the door close option on specific types. With this, I don't think the auto-close feature needs to be adjusted at all.

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I don't see door spamming as common or important except for UFO outer doors and command room doors on small alien bases. That is where door spamming is useful. Anywhere else is uncommon, or dangerous.

The "I don't see" is metaphorical I presume? Because I do see it as common, and I'm literal about it. I watch some youtube LP's (guess where the inspiration for all the other exploit fixes comes from), and door closing to get somebody safe is almost as common as throwing flashbangs. Watch any LP after episode 5 and there's a pretty good change it'll be there, and it doesn't matter what kind of door and where it is.

You can try to exploit the door in a Corvette for instance, but the aliens can just as well walk up to it and shoot you point-blank during their turn. No gain for you there.

No, they can't. They're too far, or they're suppressed.

That just highlights again that in many cases (small alien base!) door spam is a problem of the mapping. Look at modular UFOs to see examples of where it is not a problem.

No, it is not. Some maps may make it even more useful, but it works with any door.

The only reason why door spamming is powerful is the ability to close the door immediately. Without that ability, you'd be left wide open for any aliens shooting back at you during their turn. It will make the tactic of lining up at the door, opening and shooting a very risky one.

Again, no. You've made up a specific example in your mind that you've found another solution for, and you ignore all the other cases for which your solution does nothing (for example, a single soldier inside a building opening door to get a guaranteed first shot).

Making the big doors impossible to close and only close automatically during the alien turn is sufficient, and that is in fact a solution preferred by Goldhawk, and was planned before the game's release.

[citation needed]

Also, while this may count in, it doesn't mean we can't do it better.

Some of the other proposals here so far are acceptable but "engineered" solutions - they will work, but they are crap game design.

Being unable to immediately close door again is not engineered crappy design, but getting door opening to work more closely as it works in reality is?

Edited by llunak
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I am not overlooking suppression, I am aware it is powerful - I am saying that it's only useful in a few locations, namely UFO outer doors and small command rooms in bases, most of the time. Both solved through the non-closing mechanic.

I'm not sure what your case is for arguing that door-spamming is only useful in those locations. It's perfectly effective for dealing with command room aliens in UFOs and in alien bases generally, at least in my (admittedly outdated, since I don't do it any more) experience.

The only argument I can see you give against this is your example of the Corvette. But - this was my point - aliens won't be able to come and attack you if they're suppressed, hence risk of counter attack isn't something that I think negates the usefulness of door-spamming in those instances. You could argue that door spamming isn't as useful relatively speaking in those instances compared with the locations you're focusing on, but I'm not sure there's a good case for saying it's not useful at all.

(Basically, I agree with you but I'm not sure why you wouldn't want to make all the small interior doors work the same way as well, since they can be put to equally good effect.)

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While there's a bit of sidetracking here, my point actually revolves around this.

Again, no. You've made up a specific example in your mind that you've found another solution for, and you ignore all the other cases for which your solution does nothing (for example, a single soldier inside a building opening door to get a guaranteed first shot).

Good. That is how it should work. Despite what you say, mutual surprise applied in the original game. The inability to open door without walking through them was fixed in basically the original's equivalent of X:CE (and in TFTD), and then opening a door (no walking) invoked the mutual surprise rule and involved no reaction fire.

If it makes you more comfortable, think of it as soldiers kicking down the door and getting the drop on their enemies so.

Being unable to immediately close door again is not engineered crappy design, but getting door opening to work more closely as it works in reality is?

What reality? Where you quadruple TU costs to open a door so it takes as long to open a door as it takes to walk across a big room? And yes, for big doors, not being able to close them at will makes sense if you imagine them to be something like blast doors. Which they are.

[citation needed]

https://trello.com/b/kxjRG3md/xenonauts-work-tracker

Ultimately, I do not see why it should become a bigger issue than it has to be, but specifically reaction fire on opening doors is absolutely unacceptable as a change to the default game. I am all for treating it the same way I treat balance issues that are, in my opinion, highly important - make it possible to edit in XML, and then just play with the preferred settings on.

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Good. That is how it should work. Despite what you say, mutual surprise applied in the original game. The inability to open door without walking through them was fixed in basically the original's equivalent of X:CE (and in TFTD), and then opening a door (no walking) invoked the mutual surprise rule and involved no reaction fire.

Mutual surprise did apply in the original game, and it was consistent. Handling door was not special in any way. Mutual surprise does not exist in Xenonauts, except for this half-assed exception with door. So again, if OG is your argument, then OG was consistent, so Xenonauts should be then consistent as well.

If it makes you more comfortable, think of it as soldiers kicking down the door and getting the drop on their enemies so.

I don't see why soldiers kicking door (or a huge gate) should give them a drop on their enemies and e.g. jumping from behind a corner should not.

What reality? Where you quadruple TU costs to open a door so it takes as long to open a door as it takes to walk across a big room? And yes, for big doors, not being able to close them at will makes sense if you imagine them to be something like blast doors. Which they are.

Ok. That's blast doors. What's the excuse for normal building door then?

There's a question mark at the end.

Ultimately, I do not see why it should become a bigger issue than it has to be, but specifically reaction fire on opening doors is absolutely unacceptable as a change to the default game. I am all for treating it the same way I treat balance issues that are, in my opinion, highly important - make it possible to edit in XML, and then just play with the preferred settings on.
  • Having options to disable (more or less) exploits is just plain silly. What would be the point?

  • Why would this specific case be absolutely unacceptable change to the default game? X:CE already comes with a number of changes that change the default game: AC AI that makes AC harder. Vaulting through windows that allows new paths. LOS changes such as peeking that provide more/less vision. Reduced autoresolve chance on low fuel that may make autoresolve harder. Not showing damage/stun numbers for non-visible aliens, which makes locating them harder. Alien base size displayed on the Geoscape, which gives away information that should not be available (I'd like to actually turn this one off by default and have mods enable it if needed - so using your argument, I can, can't I?). Not being able to close door quickly again, if you have it your way. And so on.

    So why has this one case be so special? Especially when the majority here seems to support the change (if I counted right, it's only you and vaultdweller against, and Steelpoint is against quick closing). So what makes this "absolutely unacceptable" ?

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I don't really mind the suggested change but I also don't mind the current system. I don't use door spamming so it isn't an issue to me and I don't really care if someone else wants to abuse the system in a single player game, it has no effect on me.

It could make for some interesting situations though and promote a bit more thought around what is supposed to be one of the more dangerous moments in any map involving an assault so I say go for it.

I have a few questions:

1) Will the reaction fire trigger just be on the person who opens the door? The last time something similar was suggested the basic idea as for a check on everyone in sight (if I recall correctly) which I feel is a bad idea.

2) and 3) If opening a large door costs a significantly higher proportion of the soldiers TU doesn't that mean large doors will already have a higher chance to cause the player to suffer reaction fire, due to the larger decrease in their initiative score? Isn't the extra penalty for the person opening the door a little redundant?

4) I like the auto closing doors and I think with a reaction fire system it would actually make breaching potentially more dangerous. Doors should definitely not close at the end of the player turn though, only the alien turn. The player should have to live with their choice to open the door and potentially give all the aliens a free shot in their own turn before having to open it again in their own turn before they can return fire.

As an aside I would quite like to see suppression removed faster from aliens when there are no player troops in sight and they cannot be seen in return. Close the UFO door at the end of your turn and the aliens know they are now in very little danger so lose their suppressed status, suddenly you are facing aliens with full TU in their next turn because you chose to remove the immediate threat and they can mobilise to prepare or retaliate. If this happened alongside reaction from door opening it would be a much more dangerous proposition.

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Mutual surprise did apply in the original game, and it was consistent. Handling door was not special in any way. Mutual surprise does not exist in Xenonauts, except for this half-assed exception with door. So again, if OG is your argument, then OG was consistent, so Xenonauts should be then consistent as well.

OG did mutual surprise arguably better, but it did apply to doors there (but not only doors). The current door mechanics in Xenonauts mimic that mutual surprise, although yes it is half-assed.

I don't see why soldiers kicking door (or a huge gate) should give them a drop on their enemies and e.g. jumping from behind a corner should not.

Because it is better design, not because it makes some super-logical sense.

Ok. That's blast doors. What's the excuse for normal building door then?

I don't care how normal building doors work, really. In my experience, abusing the doors there is less common than with the big blast doors.

There's a question mark at the end.

Don't get ridiculously pedantic. I can likewise say that the question mark is due to them being unsure if they can easily do it in time for release (which they did not).

Having options to disable (more or less) exploits is just plain silly. What would be the point?

This is a balance problem. I do agree that it is unfortunate, but such is the original gameplay. It's a great thing to enable mods that fix this balance issue, but you should not just go ahead and change balance in a major way like that at will.

Why would this specific case be absolutely unacceptable change to the default game? X:CE already comes with a number of changes that change the default game

Well, let's see...

AC AI that makes AC harder.

Maybe a bit borderline, but fine by me. Here is why: it is difficulty-specific AI behaviour, and not a major change overall. Enabling some more sophisticated AI on higher difficulties is fine by me. AI improvements in general are fine most of the time.

Vaulting through windows that allows new paths.

That was a bug.

LOS changes such as peeking that provide more/less vision.

Bug. The current LOS works as it was intended to originally.

Reduced autoresolve chance on low fuel that may make autoresolve harder.

Again, bug. You know from the code that it was supposed to take fuel into account.

Not showing damage/stun numbers for non-visible aliens, which makes locating them harder.

Obvious bug.

I can add more to the list - for instance as of 0.28, critically wounded soldiers get recovered less frequently after a mission. It's a gameplay affecting change, but works as intended now and the old calculation was bugged.

Alien base size displayed on the Geoscape, which gives away information that should not be available (I'd like to actually turn this one off by default and have mods enable it if needed - so using your argument, I can, can't I?).

Which is why I first asked Chris if it was intentional for base size not to be visible. Had he said that it was his intention, I would not have allowed it by default, but as it is, there was no such intention, so it can be chalked up to general clarity.

Not being able to close door quickly again, if you have it your way. And so on.

So why has this one case be so special?

And this (specifically, reaction fire from door opening is the main issue) goes against what Chris has explicitly stated was his intention. See the difference? Doors are intended not to trigger reaction fire. It's not a bug in the game. It's not something they didn't have the time to code. It's not something they do not care about - it's a thing that is deliberately not implemented.

That makes it fall under the category of things that should be for mods. I personally think the game is far better when alien bases grow independently, and when terror missions reward saving civilians, but that was not the original intention, therefore mods.

Besides, I maintain that the ease of assaulting UFOs is mostly a problem with UFO map design. Just compare a Landing Ship or Scout and a Corvette. The Corvette does not let you suppress everything without exposing yourself. You have at some point to enter a room in a risky way. The Landing Ship or Scout in the meanwhile have a layout perfect for machine guns, where one burst can suppress most of the defenders. Or compare the command rooms in a small and medium alien base. The small room is perfect for suppression again, the medium base has a layout that causes some problems.

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Don't get ridiculously pedantic. I can likewise say that the question mark is due to them being unsure if they can easily do it in time for release (which they did not).

I'd appreciate it if you stopped using condescending BS like 'completely unacceptable', 'ridiculously pedantic' or 'changing things at will' on me.

The todo item has a question mark. That can mean many things, but it's unlikely to mean 'this has to be done'. As such, it alone means nothing, because, as you say yourself, it can be interpreted as anything. It can also be e.g. a quick late hack that didn't get much testing (and so it wouldn't be the only thing that didn't work out as well as it should, such as the final version of the heavy fighter, which I consider to be a noticeable regression in practice - not everything that's made it into the game is right).

I'm not going to comment on the rest of the items, because I think there's first a major topic to sort out:

And this (specifically, reaction fire from door opening is the main issue) goes against what Chris has explicitly stated was his intention. See the difference? Doors are intended not to trigger reaction fire. It's not a bug in the game. It's not something they didn't have the time to code. It's not something they do not care about - it's a thing that is deliberately not implemented.

That makes it fall under the category of things that should be for mods. I personally think the game is far better when alien bases grow independently, and when terror missions reward saving civilians, but that was not the original intention, therefore mods.

The way I see it, you prefer X:CE to stick as close as possible to vanilla, even if it meant missing out on a possibility to improve. And I disagree on that. The description of X:CE says that the intention is to improve the gameplay without fundamentally altering it, and that's vague enough to be open for interpretation. For example, I don't not see reaction fire on door opening as a fundamental change, but as a fix/improvement. For me, X:CE should be a further improving game, and if it means slight changes in order to improve something, so be it. I wouldn't mind getting extra 'xcebalance' mod to keep the distinction clear, but I find the idea of having to explicitly install a mod to fix exploits to be ridiculous.

X:CE has 'community' in its name. Even Chris in his post about X:CE says that it is in the hands of the community. As such, if out of 10 most influential contributors 8 were for a feature, 2 were against, and Chris was against too, the conclusion for me would be rather clear, and I would do the change, or I at least would not oppose it. And, I'd like to point out, even if you provide a citation of Chris saying something, it's still you interpreting how it affects the discussion. It's not like Chris has never changed his mind over time or after seeing arguments, not to mention that even though opinion of Chris matters, we do not have to do everything exactly as he said.

And what would you do in this case above? That is a serious question for you, and I want to know the answer. Because if you see X:CE as community-driven, then you should reconsider the way you act in this discussion. And if not, then you should make yourself clear on how you see X:CE and other contributors.

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1) Will the reaction fire trigger just be on the person who opens the door? The last time something similar was suggested the basic idea as for a check on everyone in sight (if I recall correctly) which I feel is a bad idea.

I'd like to try out changing this too, as I find it abusable as well, but it is really a separate issue.

2) and 3) If opening a large door costs a significantly higher proportion of the soldiers TU doesn't that mean large doors will already have a higher chance to cause the player to suffer reaction fire, due to the larger decrease in their initiative score? Isn't the extra penalty for the person opening the door a little redundant?

Good point. But it largely depends on the numbers. I wasn't thinking opening should be as costly as to make a significant difference in reaction fire scores.

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Merits of reaction fire capabilities aside, I disagree with reaction fire variable change across difficulties as well. The reflex penalties or boosts alien get should already account for what you are aiming for (other indirect variables such as accuracy, weapon damage etc. exist as well) so it is just needless changing the fundamental battle-scape mechanics.

The game is hard enough for some people, and e.g. requiring new players to learn everything and then additionally also good breaching tactics would be IMO way too much, and there'd be no end to the complaining (or rather, there'd be a rather quick and definite end to it). So while I myself would also theoretically prefer to not have this distinction, in practice I think this is the best way. And per-difficulty scaling is not changing fundamental mechanics, it can be seen as yet another stat (since the stats you mention probably wouldn't scale enough for the different difficulties).

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I'd appreciate it if you stopped using condescending BS like 'completely unacceptable', 'ridiculously pedantic' or 'changing things at will' on me.

I apologize for my tone - this has indeed started to read like a bad LKML exchange. While I think we can both handle a frank discussion with no sugar-coating, let's keep this civil.

The way I see it, you prefer X:CE to stick as close as possible to vanilla, even if it meant missing out on a possibility to improve. And I disagree on that. The description of X:CE says that the intention is to improve the gameplay without fundamentally altering it, and that's vague enough to be open for interpretation. For example, I don't not see reaction fire on door opening as a fundamental change, but as a fix/improvement. For me, X:CE should be a further improving game, and if it means slight changes in order to improve something, so be it. I wouldn't mind getting extra 'xcebalance' mod to keep the distinction clear, but I find the idea of having to explicitly install a mod to fix exploits to be ridiculous.

I think we are not far apart on this.

I am not a purist, nor am I against improving the game. What we have here is in fact a difference of interpretation. You interpret reaction-fire on doors as a fix, I interpret it as a fairly significant gameplay change. And when it comes to significant gameplay changes, my conception of X:CE is that it should stick close to what the original developers would have done, not just avoid changes for the sake of sticking close to vanilla. We have some gameplay changes of various significant in X:CE. Thus far though, they happen to be things that the developers would have liked to have - like most notably the fixed LOS mechanics.

The issue from my point of view arises with a specific change that I consider to have a significant gameplay effect, and that explicitly goes against what the developers did and wanted. Obviously Chris has changed his mind on issues, but opinions on game mechanics are a LIFO structure - and the last statement at this time is that doors are not intended to cause reaction fire.

Therefore also my disagreement on classifying this as an exploit. Exploits are, in my interpretation, uses of game mechanics in ways that were not intended, and maybe not even foreseen, by the developers. Like the (now fixed) exploit with multiple shields. Door spam is a stupidly unbalanced tactic instead.

And what would you do in this case above? That is a serious question for you, and I want to know the answer. Because if you see X:CE as community-driven, then you should reconsider the way you act in this discussion. And if not, then you should make yourself clear on how you see X:CE and other contributors.

I do not mean to dismiss the issue or to give the wrong impression, but I find such a hypothetical hard to discuss. That sort of thing comes easier as things naturally evolve.

Now, aside from my disagreement that reaction-fire on doors is a bad idea gameplay-wise, I think a strong partial solution lies in the capabilities that X:CE will acquire with the new mod launcher. That will give X:CE much more freedom in shipping with a variety of minimods (disable aircraft auto-recovery, enable reaction-fire on doors, enable maximally challenging air combat, randomize UFO spawns, etc) that can be toggled on and off at will, giving people a much more customizable experience of X:CE. This would be similar, except better, to XcuSetup of XcomUtil, which I assume you are familiar with. There are many hypothetical changes that I would strongly oppose as X:CE defaults, but be happy to see as such toggle options.

It may, if it seems necessary, be better to split this discussion off from the discussion on the actual gameplay solutions to door spam.

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Medium to Large UFOs, and Alien Bases, should be designed around allowing the player the ability to more effectively move their troops into the UFO without heavily exposing them to enemy fire.

The usage of opening and closing the door is the symptom of the somewhat poor UFO design, well by not poor from the aliens perspective that is. Preforming this 'dooring' tactic is not only extremely viable but is outright demanded in order to not take unneeded casualties.

Allow me to elaborate, I'll be using the Corvette design here, but also referring to other designs and alien bases. This is the corvette design I am talking about (took me forever to find a image online):Image

----

That image above shows heavily encourages the player to hang back and use the 'dooring' tactic. Moving you soldiers inside the corridor leaves them horribly exposed, with not enough TU's to move anywhere useful, and the Aliens can move into the area and take free pot shots at the exposed soldiers.

Alien Bases are often worse, the control rooms offer no real initial cover for the humans, feature a very long corridor down to the control room usually guarded by several aliens who keep opening the door and shooting.

The game can often come down to pure luck on moving soldiers up and hoping the aliens are not all stacked up on the other side, pop out, and kill half your team during their turn. When your playing on Ironman that becomes even more annoying to deal with.

----

The design of the UFO needs to allow the attacking soldiers some breathing space to move into cover, not be immediently exposed to heavy alien fire but also force the humans to enter the UFO instead of hanging back shooting from a distance.

I recall assaulting a Large Alien Bases control room. As soon as I opened it I was greeted to about eight defending aliens. I simply could not move any of my soldiers into the room as they would be horribly flanked on all sides. I had to use the 'dooring' tactic in order to clear the room.

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I'd like to try out changing this too, as I find it abusable as well, but it is really a separate issue.

2) and 3) If opening a large door costs a significantly higher proportion of the soldiers TU doesn't that mean large doors will already have a higher chance to cause the player to suffer reaction fire, due to the larger decrease in their initiative score? Isn't the extra penalty for the person opening the door a little redundant?

Good point. But it largely depends on the numbers. I wasn't thinking opening should be as costly as to make a significant difference in reaction fire scores.

Apologies, I misread the original post where you mentioned increased costs for closing a door on top of the increase for opening it. I read it as a very high amount of TU for all door actions.

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I don't know, I go away for a while and I miss all the interesting things.

I did some research about how reaction fire had been pre version twenty. Prior to the initative system, reaction fire was based on a reflex test when a target came into view. Here are some samples of the many, many comments on reflex tests.

From Skitsos random thoughts on 19 stable

Skitso:

How can I open UFO door without walking through it? I'm getting slaughtered by reaction fire whenever I try to breach the UFO's. Small Scout's layout is maybe a bit too annoying and lethal to breach as a frist UFO type that should be more like a tutorial for a noob player...

In response

Josef Broz Tito:

1. Opening a UFO without entering: stand next to it, hover over the door until you get the door open symbol, then right-click. Faster UFO clear, highest risk method.

2. Alternately, you can blow up UFO doors with c4, grenades(ineffective) or rockets. This will kill/supress aliens near the door and keeps your troops safer from reaction fire. However, alien corpses/aliens killed will gib and you will lose out on equipment. Fastest clear method, safe, but lose equipment.

Option 3 for opening UFO's (my favorite): Use gunfire to open the door. Click your weapon, then hover over the door until it turns green with a % accuracy amount, then select your aim level. It may take a few turns to shoot it open, but you don't damage any corpses behind the door and have an unobstructed view to rake the inside w/ gunfire. IMO it's the most cost-effective way to breach and the safest. Takes the longest though.

From My strategy for breaching

Mike V37

I used smoke to a point, but once they set up their alien bases in Europe, NA and USSR, I had to do something about it but my men were woefully under-prepared. I had half my men in jackal armor and they'd get hosed by the terminators standing in cover one tile away from the door. If I threw a smoke I'd get so much reaction fire it killed a few guys right there.

From Reaction Fire

Xintrosi:

This is my thought process that I've learned from experience:

Know aliens are around the corner? Flashbang.

Not sure if aliens are around the corner? Flashbang.

Pretty sure aliens aren't around the corner? Don't flashbang, then be surprised when you get reaction-fired to death despite your best intentions.

4 FB/Shock 'nades and 4 smoke on every soldier is how I roll. I rarely use them all, but when I am in a desperate situation I've never regretted having them.

As for leaving the dropship and getting insta-gibbed? That's Xenonauts, baby! I got 3 members killed in first contact in an andron base because my first soldier's turn triggered wild reaction fire. I should have dropped smoke, apparently.

There were specific, rather than general frustrations concerning breaching/reaction fire. As an example in the alien base the final room in the first map designs was considered frustrating because there was only one entry point, so all the aliens would reaction fire down it. These same frustrations were repeated for the Scout, as it was in essence a mini Command Room, where 5+ aliens would lie in wait.

Stepping in front of a door to open it was considered to be very dangerous as reaction fire was all but guaranteed. This prompted specific strategies to minimise the risk inherant in opening a door. One of the most effective strategies was to destroy the door, rather than open it. The reason for doing this was that shooting a door was not an action that was associated with a solider therefore it would not prompt reaction fire in return. StellarRat swore by (and still does, I believe) leaving C4 by a door. Others preferred to shoot the door from a distance. In either case a strategy was formulated which circumvented the established ruleset and had a much larger positive than a negative.

If reaction fire were guaranteed when opening a door the strategies developed in the reflex test era would reassert themselves more strongly. The most common strategy would likely be to shoot or blow up doors, because that action isn't directly linked to a solider opening a door therefore reaction fire wouldn't (under llunaks proposal) be triggered. This would see a rise in the use of rocket launchers, C4 and LMGs as players would look to circumvent the established ruleset and minimise risk. This becomes exasperated mid-late game when the player hits plasma and has an entire weapon class that can destroy any sort of door, alien or human without recourse to specialised weaponry.

The conclusion I draw from this is that nothing really changes. The strategies to minimise risk are already established and there is a playerbase who had previously used these strategies in the reflex test era who remember how things worked and how they would work again. This playerbase would then inform those players who did not know what the best strategies to minimise risk were and the knowledgable playerbase is large enough and persistent enough that information would be disseminated quite quickly. There would be a shifting of attitude, but this attitude already exists. It would not provoke new thoughts but a return to older ones. Furthermore, guaranteed reaction shots on opening a door only really works when you can't easily destroy the door - i.e. tier 1 and tier 2. Tiers 3 and 4 have the raw firepower to blast the door and circumvent the test, restricting the real value of this proposed system to early and early-mid.

Edited by Max_Caine
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Good analysis, Max. I remembered there being a lot of frustration with the slaughter of anyone opening doors in previous versions, but didn't have the evidence to back it up. At the time, it seemed like opening a blast door (instead of blowing it) was seen as suicide for the poor sap that does it, even with the more powerful shields that we had back then. There always seemed to be threads about how to properly move through alien bases without being massacred trying to pass the first door.

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I got distraced by other things, but let's not let this just fizzle out completely.

I do not mean to dismiss the issue or to give the wrong impression, but I find such a hypothetical hard to discuss. That sort of thing comes easier as things naturally evolve.

It is not hypothetical, it's more or less this exact case. Most of community people that I consider significant contributors have either expressed their support for this change, or at least don't mind. You're more or less the only one dead set against it (and other two people who I don't really remember otherwise, sorry if I missed any contribution there).

Now, aside from my disagreement that reaction-fire on doors is a bad idea gameplay-wise, I think a strong partial solution lies in the capabilities that X:CE will acquire with the new mod launcher. That will give X:CE much more freedom in shipping with a variety of minimods (disable aircraft auto-recovery, enable reaction-fire on doors, enable maximally challenging air combat, randomize UFO spawns, etc) that can be toggled on and off at will, giving people a much more customizable experience of X:CE. This would be similar, except better, to XcuSetup of XcomUtil, which I assume you are familiar with. There are many hypothetical changes that I would strongly oppose as X:CE defaults, but be happy to see as such toggle options.

But that doesn't solve the problem. As I've said, it's silly to expect people to install mods to fix exploits (and it doesn't matter if you call it stupidly unbalanced tactic, it's still the same). People should get good X:CE out of the box, and I expect many people using Steam willl not bother with altering mod settings, for multiple reasons. I know I can mod the hell out of the game, but the game should have a good default. A game where door opening is not a silver bullet is a better game than a game with door spamming, even if the later has Chris' release blessings.

It may, if it seems necessary, be better to split this discussion off from the discussion on the actual gameplay solutions to door spam.

Actually I think I've otherwise mostly gotten from the discussion what I wanted, so I'll just code both the suggested ways into 0.29 and make two mods for testing them out. And that'll hopefully show that on easier difficulties it in fact helps the player, on veteran it evens itself out, and things get harder only on insane, all of which should be good results.

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I appreciate that gameplay comes before realism, but any arguments about new player expectations should come from real-world logic. So why not apply some?

It makes sense that for a door that opens quickly, the attackers should have the advantage since the person opening the door can perform a count-down to indicate when the door will open, which the defenders have no idea about. Even if they have cameras on the outside of the ship, they may not see, or correctly understand, the signal given from the door opener to the rest of the attackers as to the timing of the door opening.

A door that takes some time to open (like the blast doors in Star Wars) effectively loses the initiative for the attackers and puts both groups on equal footing. For example there's a big clunk before any door movement, alerting everyone, then the door slowly opens.

Assuming reaction fire is what it claims to be, therefore in the "small door" scenario, the attackers should get a reaction modifier bonus, but this would likely mean that the attackers with highest reflexes get a couple of shots off before the defenders highest reflex guys can return fire. In the "large door" scenario, the attackers just don't get a bonus, so highest reflex wins. Note that if the player wants to turn off this reaction fire for their attacking team, they should be permitted to do so in order to be able to use their TUs as they please. "Hold fire lads, only shoot when you've marked a target" kind of thing.

The defenders not having a way to remotely open or close a door on their own ship is ridiculous. Even if we assume that because of there being aliens out in the field, they do not lock the door, they would have a method of opening it remotely, locking it open, and locking it closed (although perhaps the latter would be bad for gameplay if the player had brought no breaching devices). Assume that in order to access the door, the attacker has to hack it, and that it takes longer than a normal door open. Once open, the door cannot be closed by the attackers as the hack has destroyed the mechanism. The option to open should not be "open", but "hack".

If the door always closes at the end of a turn, it should be the alien turn, and one alien should have to spend some TU to do it.

With normal (non-alien) doors on the rest of the map, door spamming is a legitimate tactic, in that you could do it in real life, but it should trigger aliens to use explosives or heavy weapons to blow the door (and the door spammer) away. Any character opening a door themselves should get an aim penalty if they shoot a two-handed weapon in the same turn. They are moving their body and not steadying their weapon.

I would also point out that the TU cost for opening a door implies that someone is actually DOING something. If we're agreed that it's hacking, then fine I could buy that a larger door has more security so hacking has a higher TU cost. If we're talking about pushing a button, then it's silly. The button-pusher should not be penalised in TUs for a door being slow to open once initiated.

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From the OP:

1) Opening door will trigger reaction fire.

I'm analysing something that's written as the first item of the proposal.

EDIT: If you want to consider it a refutation, fair enough. I don't - I don't see anything either good or bad about the proposal. What I see is nothing really changes as a consequence of it, as older and still viable strategies come to the fore to circumvent the new ruleset.

Edited by Max_Caine
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I'm analysing something that's written as the first item of the proposal.

Fair enough, so you're analysing your interpretation of one sentence from the proposal, since already the very next sentence makes it explicit that the reaction fire would not be guaranteed.

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Fair enough, so you're analysing your interpretation of one sentence from the proposal, since already the very next sentence makes it explicit that the reaction fire would not be guaranteed.

In fairness, you're ignoring the main point of Max's argument by reducing it down to a sentence the literal meaning of which doesn't matter very much.

To paraphrase Max's point: it doesn't matter if reaction fire always happens, mostly happens, or sometimes happens when the door opens. So long it happens often enough that it's never worth the risk, the various strategies that Max has indicated kick in. In which case, you've simply replaced one set of strategies for another (and you need to make a case for why those other strategies make the game better rather than just different).

Alternatively (and this goes back to the point that I made upthread) if it doesn't happen very often/is easily negated by current practice (e.g. use of high reaction-modifier weapons), then it makes little to no difference. In which case, is it there any point doing the work?

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In fairness, you're ignoring the main point of Max's argument by reducing it down to a sentence the literal meaning of which doesn't matter very much.

I picked only the most obvious problem with the analysis, there are others like assuming that problems with the old reaction system apply even with the new reaction system. The whole thing just basically boils down to "players get frustrated if reaction fire happens too often" and "it will be the same like in beta".

I wouldn't be bothered with this discussion if I just wanted to make things way too hard (except for Insane, which I do want to make harder, as a skilled player can easily outplay the increase in mere stats, watch e.g. Silencer wipe the floor with aliens in his LP).

To paraphrase Max's point: it doesn't matter if reaction fire always happens, mostly happens, or sometimes happens when the door opens. So long it happens often enough that it's never worth the risk, the various strategies that Max has indicated kick in. In which case, you've simply replaced one set of strategies for another

Arguing that reaction fire on door opening doesn't make a difference because players can beat aliens with better breaching tactics instead of (ab)using door spamming looks to me a lot like arguing that not implementing blaster bombs and psionics for humans didn't make a difference because players can beat aliens with better squad tactics instead of (ab)using blaster bombs and mind control.

(and you need to make a case for why those other strategies make the game better rather than just different).

I'm rather sure I did that already before. Didn't I?

Alternatively (and this goes back to the point that I made upthread) if it doesn't happen very often/is easily negated by current practice (e.g. use of high reaction-modifier weapons), then it makes little to no difference. In which case, is it there any point doing the work?

What-if's are only theories as long as they are not tried out in practice. I see this one worth trying out, and so far I don't consider any of the points against strong enough.

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Arguing that reaction fire on door opening doesn't make a difference because players can beat aliens with better breaching tactics instead of (ab)using door spamming

I don't think that the gamey strategies once used to avoid reaction fire on UFO doors represented better breaching tactics. It was just another variety of cheese.

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