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Add some Jagged Alliance 2 features like...


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- during combat, soldiers can't be healed, just assisted to stop the bleedings or to recover from unconsciousness. Healing needs to be done in the hospital facility at base.

- training facility were Xenonauts who stay in the base can develop their skills. Xenonauts can be assign to train less skilled soldiers to increase the rate of development.

- prone position

- stealth - sound awareness

- ability to climb to roofs from the outside of buildings (ex: wall ladders)

- add wire cutters to open wire fences

- disable the possibility to destroy walls with bullets. This needs to be acomplished with explosives or explosive ammunition (ex:rockets).

- add face equipment (ex: gas mask - to deal with smoke or enemy/friendly chemical weapons)

- critical hit = chance of getting unconscious

- units with health below 25%, when damaged = chance of getting unconscious

Edited by Antr4cite
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A number of these require oodles of new sprites to work in the game, effectively ruling them out - wire cutters, prone position, gas masks etc.

There has been a training facility for most of the builds, but looks to be on it's way out :(

I agree about the medikit to a point. Although who knows what it injects them with, so they may feel better, even when they aren't really.

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Stealth and wirecutters don't seem to fit xenonauts very well - JA2 had a lot of infiltration (and was real time outside of combat).

I do wish we had prone and duckwalking, but too much sprite rerendering, engine limitation.

Not sure about the unconscious stuff - we have panic/psionics/suppression already, and it'd be a bit too much work at this point to add in an energy bar ala JA2 (and not as useful given no stance changes).

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Stealth and wirecutters don't seem to fit xenonauts very well - JA2 had a lot of infiltration (and was real time outside of combat).

I do wish we had prone and duckwalking, but too much sprite rerendering, engine limitation.

Not sure about the unconscious stuff - we have panic/psionics/suppression already, and it'd be a bit too much work at this point to add in an energy bar ala JA2 (and not as useful given no stance changes).

About the wire cutters: tools to bypass obstacles are essential to make flanking maneuvers. I think this is very important to a tactical game. If the game has explosives to bypass walls, why not add wire cutters to bypass wire fences. They already have the interaction animation (healing), its a matter of adding the wire cutter sprite and the code to make the fence sprite disappear.

About the unconscious state: I know it would make the game hard, but why not? And there's no need for an energy bar. When a critical hit is given to an enemy or xenonaut there's a chance for that unit to become unconscious. This also applies if the unit health is below a specific value (ex: 15%) and it suffers any kind of damage.

About the stealth: this is the most difficult feature to implement and I don't believe the development team will do it. They would need to add sound awareness to the game AI and make some changes in the AP mechanics (reduce AP in stealth mode). But I do think this feature has a place in this game because It would improve its tactical aspect. Ex: Flank enemies (or be flanked) with high probability for a first shoot/action without interruption. Spot (or be spotted) enemies with the same advantage mentioned before, Etc.

Edited by Antr4cite
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I don't think wire cutters are essential to flanking in the game, but the heal animation would work well for it so I imagine it wouldn't be too hard to incorporate. I don't think they're as useful as in JA2 (the game has smaller sections of fence that already have some holes, generally speaking it'd take more APs to make a new hole than use an existing one) but I could see them adding some interest for assault role soldiers.

I don't think unconscious is really necessary given other methods that take control away from a character, but I don't see it as "bad" either.

Stealth would also require new animations, and without real time move out of combat it'd get very annoying.

I've started/participated in a few bring in stuff from JA2 threads in the past. :P

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Well, another idea thrown into the arena:

In JA2 you hire repairmen and doctors just like any soldier, with name, picture, combat stats.

As Chris wants to change how the base works, why not make "science" and "manufacture" both a stat (how good is an employee?) and an occupation. Thus the faceless scientists/engineers become persons. If done like in JA2, the player would hire x employees, select them from the list, put some of them in the Chinook, some in the lab and some do manufacturing. Of course the science/manufacturing stats go up used.

Advantages: As mentioned, all employees become someone the player can relate to.

Also, it allows more flexibility in the gameplay: Do I replace the wounded guy with a scientist - bad combat stats and risking a scientist - or do I hire a new soldier - costing money. Do I need more science right now, or more MiGs?

To be honest, I like the XCOM1993 approach to scientists a bit better than above idea, but as Chris wants to change it it would still be better than dumbing down to the EU2012 level.

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Stealth would also require new animations, and without real time move out of combat it'd get very annoying.

No, new animations are not necessary...but they would be nice.

All you need is some kind of visual indicator someone is in stealth mode. It can be an icon similar to the "supressed" one or you can do it like JA2 did it - the selection circle of someone in stealth mode is yellow (in Xenonauts case, it should be visible even when the soldeir is not selected).

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I guess you could just slow down the animation speed of the current run, but I think it'd look odd.

Also just thinking of how long it'd take to move around stealthed while still keeping enough APs for a reaction shot. :P JA2 was more infiltration so you could have blood/shadow/whoever pick off sentries moving stealthed in realtime, and if you didn't see enemies in buildings you could move stealthed realtime until one popped up. I generally didn't keep stealth on if I was in extended turn based mode (vs moving into position after it started).

Edited by erutan
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A text bubble could pop up announcing "STEALTH" in big letters (a la Fallout/Fallout 2)?

Because nothing says stealth more than a giant sign hovering over our soldier. :)

The worst thing that can happen to the game now is feature creeping.

Creeping...like stealthily? I suppose a particularly hated Xenonaut could have a giant "Creep" sign instead of the "Stealth" one...

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Long story short, JA2 is a game with a different scope than Xeno.

Everything happens on a smaller scale. A few mercs on a small island. No world-wide organisation doing major construction and research.

As a result, everything in the game is smaller scale and more detailed on that scale.

When you only have 3 or 6 actors, it's okay to do more fiddling with their individual equipment. Decide on which gun to mount a laser aim or x4 scope.

If you keep increasing the game's scope, detail must be reduced to keep up the game's flow.

That's why you don't get to equip every individual soldier in Command & Conquer. Mk1 soldier, one piece.

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All being said, wirecutters are growing on me. Make them large/heavyish so they take up at least 2x2 square (so there is some thought on who should have them). Having to roll over a piece of fence with a tank or toss a grenade seems a little odd - though perhaps once you get laser/plasma weapons the point will be moot.

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The comments made so far don't seem to have a problem with sci-fi weapons shooting up fences, just ballistic weapons. A special case is therefore being made for a tier of weaponry which will last, what, 2 game months? (accounting for research and production). I can't see that being a very forceful argument. "Please spend money and development time including wirecutters whose function will become obsolete when I research lasers".

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Would lasers destroy a chain link fence? I figured it'd just be plasma+. I guess you could abstract it as someone cutting a two vertical lines through the fence to cut down a section of it.

If the AI won't be aware of sound (e.g. proximity to a weapon being fired out of LoS based on caliber) then there's basically no point for wirecutters. I imagine it wouldn't take a massive amount of resources to do - have a boolean for tiles it can destroy, someone does the medic anim and the tile disappears. It's not like stealth that would require rebalancing in many different areas.

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Cpt erutan: Darn. The UFO is behind this fence and we can't get through.

Sgt thothkins: But our laser rifles...

Cpt erutan: No, the beams are..um...too narrow and in single bursts. We'd be here all day.

Sgt thothkins: We could use wirecutters. It's a terror mission, and there's a shop on this map.

Cpt erutan: No wirecutters won't work.

Sgt thothkins: What? Look. It's just over there. I'll be right back.

Cpt erutan: Try acting it out first thothkins.

2 mins later

Sgt thothkins: Hmmmm. There's something very wrong here, isn't there?

Cpt erutan: We could always climb it.

2 mins later

Sgt thothkins: Yup, something very wrong. We'll have to sneak round to that gap way over there.

Cpt erutan: Sneak? How do I do that?!

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Long story short, JA2 is a game with a different scope than Xeno.

Everything happens on a smaller scale. A few mercs on a small island. No world-wide organisation doing major construction and research.

As a result, everything in the game is smaller scale and more detailed on that scale.

When you only have 3 or 6 actors, it's okay to do more fiddling with their individual equipment. Decide on which gun to mount a laser aim or x4 scope.

JA2 has 18-20 mercs. Plus you have milita.

And the action takes place on a large map, so "small scale" is kinda of untrue and true. JA2 is small-unit tactis. UFO and Xeno are also small unit tactics.

Now I doubt you are going to have 20 squads in Xenonauts - that's just too much of a micromanagment hassle.

Yeah, I WOULD like to decide where to mount a laser scope..but that's something for Xenonauts 2

If you keep increasing the game's scope, detail must be reduced to keep up the game's flow.

That's why you don't get to equip every individual soldier in Command & Conquer. Mk1 soldier, one piece.

Technicly, you could make a hybrid. I know there were a few RTS's that let you design your own units. Mix, match then mass produce.

The Xeno is not on a army, massive battles scale.

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