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Who else thinks medals should do more?


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The idea that medals should give a little stat boost for flavor was a pretty good one. But I do not think it was taken far enough. +1 bravery is practically unnoticeable. I think the stats given by medals should be boosted somewhat, up to like +3 or maybe even +5, and sometimes affect different stats other than bravery. The crimson heart for example should give bonus HPs.

What do you guys think?

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It should have negligible effect though, since medals were supposed to be fluff and such. OTHER STATS + 1 would work out fine, such as Health +1 for Crimson Heart or something.

Why so little?

I agree it should not be gamebreaking, but it should be noticeable.

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So how do these new values sound?

Orders of Gallantry, Merit, Terra: +3, +5, and +7 Accuracy respectively.

Citation for Valor, Courage, Bravery: +3 Bravery each.

Crimson Heart: +5 HP

Survival Medal: +5 HP and +5 Bravery

Military Cross: +5 Accuracy and +5 Reflexes

Crux Solaris: +5 Reflexes and +3 Bravery

Savior Medal: +5 Bravery

Service Medal, Long Service Medal, and Distinguished Service Medal: +3, +5, and +7 Bravery respectively.

TOTALS IF SOLDIER HAS EVERY MEDAL (highly unlikely):

+15 Accuracy

+10 HP

+10 Reflexes

+40 Bravery

Edited by legit1337
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So how do these new values sound?

Orders of Gallantry, Merit, Terra: +3, +5, and +7 Accuracy respectively.

Citation for Valor, Courage, Bravery: +3 Bravery each.

Crimson Heart: +5 HP

Survival Medal: +5 HP and +5 Bravery

Military Cross: +5 Accuracy and +5 Reflexes

Crux Solaris: +5 Reflexes and +3 Bravery

Savior Medal: +5 Bravery

Service Medal, Long Service Medal, and Distinguished Service Medal: +3, +5, and +7 Bravery respectively.

TOTALS IF SOLDIER HAS EVERY MEDAL (highly unlikely):

+15 Accuracy

+10 HP

+10 Reflexes

+40 Bravery

I don't see any stat other then bravery as much of reward; at least not a reward i don't get else where; personally i would much rather stick bravery as its still the stat that is hard to acquire,but that is all predicated on bravery being the late game Defense vs psychic attacks combined with the fact that getting all, or even some of the metals generally equates to doing lots of missions which already reward me with all the other stats.

Maybe my bias on this comes from the fact that i largely view the medal system as a way to level bravery and have no issues with the gain rates on other stats as of right now; so on some level to me this just seems like a buff to stats that don't need the help, oh well my two cents take it for what you will.

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+15 Accuracy

+10 HP

+10 Reflexes

+40 Bravery

Way, way too much. Medals are supposed to be fluff, not transform your soldiers into killing machines. I don't like the idea of medals giving anything other than bravery. It's too gamey.

Xenonauts big advantage over enemy unknown is it's immersion. Nearly everything makes sense in a realistic way. Medals give bravery, because the soldiers is proud of it and is has higher morale through that. That makes sense.

A Medal that magically makes your soldier better at shooting stuff doesn't make sense. It's gamey, breaks immersion somewhat and should not be added to the game.

However i do aggree with the sentiment that medals should give more bravery than +1. Mainly because there basically is no way currently to sufficiently level up your bravery. The only way is to get your soldiers to panic, which won't happen if you play proficiently. Making medals your main way of gaining bravery would be a good idea.

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Don't think of it as the medal giving your soldier a magical accuracy boost, think of it as your soldier having improved their accuracy, as proven by the kills they've made, and the medal is their reward, the "Bonus" Associated to the medal is just representative of the gain they made through their achievement.

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Orders of Gallantry, Merit, Terra: +3, +5, and +7 Accuracy respectively.

Service Medal, Long Service Medal, and Distinguished Service Medal: +3, +5, and +7 Bravery respectively.

TOTALS IF SOLDIER HAS EVERY MEDAL (highly unlikely):

+15 Accuracy

+10 HP

+10 Reflexes

+40 Bravery

Do those medals with multiple levels still stack?

So would you be getting 3 for the first medal, 5 for the second (total 8), and 7 for the third medal (total 15) or is each level shown as the total including the previous medal so the first medal gives 3, the second adds 2 (total 5), the third adds another 2 (total 7)?

The final totals don't seem to add up either way so I can't tell.

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Don't think of it as the medal giving your soldier a magical accuracy boost, think of it as your soldier having improved their accuracy, as proven by the kills they've made, and the medal is their reward, the "Bonus" Associated to the medal is just representative of the gain they made through their achievement.

But you already get this though..killing stuff. That effect is already implemented, why does getting a medal give them even MORE?

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Do those medals with multiple levels still stack?

So would you be getting 3 for the first medal, 5 for the second (total 8), and 7 for the third medal (total 15) or is each level shown as the total including the previous medal so the first medal gives 3, the second adds 2 (total 5), the third adds another 2 (total 7)?

The final totals don't seem to add up either way so I can't tell.

Yes they do stack. I'm pretty sure the stacked totals are accurate, I could be wrong though.

But you already get this though..killing stuff. That effect is already implemented, why does getting a medal give them even MORE?

Why not? Its a nice little reward after a milestone, killing 5 aliens gives you a +3 accuracy reflecting your soldier's acclimation to combat. Etc..

Meh. I'm pretty happy with them just giving a minor boost to bravery. I don't want to feel like I need to dink around with collecting them all to have optimal soldiers.

Why do you feel you need to collect them all to have optimal soldiers? I'm sorry but +1 to bravery is ultimately meaningless. I want gaining medals to feel like an accomplishment, and it be reflected on the battlefield with NOTICEABLY better stats. Again, nothing gamebreaking, but NOTICEABLE.

Way, way too much. Medals are supposed to be fluff, not transform your soldiers into killing machines. I don't like the idea of medals giving anything other than bravery. It's too gamey.

Xenonauts big advantage over enemy unknown is it's immersion. Nearly everything makes sense in a realistic way. Medals give bravery, because the soldiers is proud of it and is has higher morale through that. That makes sense.

A Medal that magically makes your soldier better at shooting stuff doesn't make sense. It's gamey, breaks immersion somewhat and should not be added to the game.

However i do aggree with the sentiment that medals should give more bravery than +1. Mainly because there basically is no way currently to sufficiently level up your bravery. The only way is to get your soldiers to panic, which won't happen if you play proficiently. Making medals your main way of gaining bravery would be a good idea.

Those are totals if you collected EVERY SINGLE MEDAL. Which is highly unlikely. Even then, +10 to a few stats is hardly gamebreaking. A soldier who earned every single medal the xenonauts could give him should perform noticeably better on the battlefield then any other soldier agreed? I hardly see how that is unrealistic. Maybe I did go a bit overboard with the bravery boosts, but a soldier with a sufficient amount of medals and experience should be pretty damn hard to affect with psionics.

Edited by legit1337
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legit, if you remember the hoo-hah surrounding the introduction of airstrikes, they were introduced primarily because people felt they needed to do every ufo. Chris didn't want people to feel commited to doing every ufo, but that episode starkly underlit the quite natural desire to commit to an optimal pathway, which was in that case the kill 'em all pathway. The more attractive medals become, the more likely it is that players will optimise their characters and their gameplay to garner as many medals as possible, especially the most attractive medals.

Take, for example, the Crimson Heart. With a +5HP bonus on the line, I can imagine an excellent strategy to get that would be to take on a piddly little scout ship with a crew that's formed mostly of privates, lead by a more experienced solider. When the last non-com is surrounded, that experienced leader will then pull out his/her pistol and at the urging of the heartless bastard behind the mouse, start shooting privates with it doing just enough HP damage to kill privates but not enough so they don't suffer too much in the way of negative HP and maximise their chances of making their survival roll. The experienced guy won't freak out (the privates will, so double bonus! Extra bravery!), the privates can't protect themselves because the Sith Lord/player chortling at the antics on the screen will have disarmed them (no berserk shooting for you!). Any privates that make it through will get their crimson heart, any that don't... eh, well, there's more where they come from! I know that sounds pure fantasy, but the score at the end doesn't matter when it comes to funding, and when you have players jogging laps around the dropship to max TUs, who would scruple at plugging FNGs so they get their Crimson Heart?

Like you, I agree that medals could stand to add better stat boosts than piddly little bravery boosts, but the more attractive and accessable a medal is, the more it will be gamed to the max.

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legit, if you remember the hoo-hah surrounding the introduction of airstrikes, they were introduced primarily because people felt they needed to do every ufo. Chris didn't want people to feel commited to doing every ufo, but that episode starkly underlit the quite natural desire to commit to an optimal pathway, which was in that case the kill 'em all pathway. The more attractive medals become, the more likely it is that players will optimise their characters and their gameplay to garner as many medals as possible, especially the most attractive medals.

Take, for example, the Crimson Heart. With a +5HP bonus on the line, I can imagine an excellent strategy to get that would be to take on a piddly little scout ship with a crew that's formed mostly of privates, lead by a more experienced solider. When the last non-com is surrounded, that experienced leader will then pull out his/her pistol and at the urging of the heartless bastard behind the mouse, start shooting privates with it doing just enough HP damage to kill privates but not enough so they don't suffer too much in the way of negative HP and maximise their chances of making their survival roll. The experienced guy won't freak out (the privates will, so double bonus! Extra bravery!), the privates can't protect themselves because the Sith Lord/player chortling at the antics on the screen will have disarmed them (no berserk shooting for you!). Any privates that make it through will get their crimson heart, any that don't... eh, well, there's more where they come from! I know that sounds pure fantasy, but the score at the end doesn't matter when it comes to funding, and when you have players jogging laps around the dropship to max TUs, who would scruple at plugging FNGs so they get their Crimson Heart?

Like you, I agree that medals could stand to add better stat boosts than piddly little bravery boosts, but the more attractive and accessable a medal is, the more it will be gamed to the max.

How is that any different then reflex/bravery training? There's no way to stop them either, but that does not prevent systems from being implemented on the grounds that they could potentially be abused.

Is +5 HP worth shooting up your own men, wasting both time, and hurting your game (soldiers need to recover) for a bonus unlikely to do anything? Really? When is the last time you have seen a soldier survive with < 5 HP?

If people want to min-max that hard let them. But I think your assessment of how many people will actually want to waste their time like that to be grossly exaggerated.

The more attractive medals become, the more likely it is that players will optimise their characters and their gameplay to garner as many medals as possible, especially the most attractive medals.

I see no problem with this. Considering that most medals involve something like killing 5 aliens on one mission, or surviving 10 missions etc. If you are able to pull it off that kind of gameplay should be rewarded.

Edited by legit1337
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What reflex/bravery training? You get +1 stat per mission if your solider wigs out or if your solider fires a reaction shot, and that's your lot. With reflexes there's nothing to train. A solider can reliably fire a reaction shot without having to go out of his way to do so thanks to artifical aids such as pistols and shotguns - there's no need like in the OG to mind-control a minion and then parade it back and forth while your soliders gradually improve their reflexes on it's increasingly bloodied corpse. With bravery, the process of shooting a solider over and over to induce a panic state for that +1 is precicely why there have been people asking for other ways to increase bravery.

Don't you remember how it used to be possible to have more than just +1 in a stat per mission and that particular system was deliberately reduced to a +1 stat gain (with the exception of TUs which is +2) precisely because it was pointed out by more than one person just how much the "do by doing" experience gain system was being abused? Chris deliberately crippled the experience gain system because it was being abused and the absurdity of such things as doing laps while carrying as much as possible to maximise both TU and strength gain was roundly mocked by the very people who did it. My assessment is based entirely on the observation of actual things happening and the consequences of those things happening, so I wish it was grossly exaggurated. But it isn't, and if you're going to say that, then please show me how it is.

I'm not keen on mono-focussing on examples, because they're.. well... examples of a larger talking point rather than topics of discussion in their own right but if we're going to discuss the Crimson Heart, then remember that you only get +1HP per five stats boosted, which means at a minimum doing you have to do five missions boosting everything at the same time to get those +5HP. The gamble of loosing a private is well worth the risk if you get at those five missions worth of HP, plus the HP bonus from ranking up to corporal (because you get a big stat boost) in one shot, as opposed to risking the same private for 5 missions for the same reward. Bear in mind this technique is best only used with FNGs, because of the risk involved (death). It wouldn't work for experienced soliders, but at the start of the game? Eh, fuck 'em.

And how hard is it to get these medals, anyway?

Things I just have to turn up for

+10 combat missions

+20 combat missions

+30 combat missions

Defend a base

Complete Terror Mission

Capture Alien base

Things I have to work for

Kill 5 aliens

Kill 10 aliens

Kill 20 aliens

Get seriously wounded

Things I have to work hard for

Capture alien leader

Kill 5 aliens in 1 mission

Kill an alien mind controlling a squaddie

Be a lone survivor

Of the medals, for 5 of them once I have a shrike I can have a guy sit in the back if I want him to get the medal. For one of them I have him sit in the command room. For 3 of them, I give a guy a sniper rifle and he sits in the back, last hitting aliens DOTA style or I can take a leaf from Anyone's book and grenade everything into the stone age. For 1 of them, the new guy's initation ritual is to see if he can survive a glock. Out of 14 medals, there are exactly 4 medals which you actually have to work for. Almost everything else you either just turn up and sit in the back (doing laps around the dropship for those TUs) or EU2012-it and zap aliens at long range, last-hitting aliens or grenading them to death. It's not very hard to pull off these things if you examine just what the precise challenge is.

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What reflex/bravery training? You get +1 stat per mission if your solider wigs out or if your solider fires a reaction shot, and that's your lot. With reflexes there's nothing to train. A solider can reliably fire a reaction shot without having to go out of his way to do so thanks to artifical aids such as pistols and shotguns - there's no need like in the OG to mind-control a minion and then parade it back and forth while your soliders gradually improve their reflexes on it's increasingly bloodied corpse. With bravery, the process of shooting a solider over and over to induce a panic state for that +1 is precicely why there have been people asking for other ways to increase bravery.

Don't you remember how it used to be possible to have more than just +1 in a stat per mission and that particular system was deliberately reduced to a +1 stat gain (with the exception of TUs which is +2) precisely because it was pointed out by more than one person just how much the "do by doing" experience gain system was being abused? Chris deliberately crippled the experience gain system because it was being abused and the absurdity of such things as doing laps while carrying as much as possible to maximise both TU and strength gain was roundly mocked by the very people who did it. My assessment is based entirely on the observation of actual things happening and the consequences of those things happening, so I wish it was grossly exaggurated. But it isn't, and if you're going to say that, then please show me how it is.

Point conceded. I still think that your example of shooting rookies is over-exaggerated though. Crimson hearts aren't just awarded for wounds, the soldiers have to be nearly dead. If you are risking killing your rookies for a measly +5 HP then more power to you in my opinion, you can play that way. I won't.

I'm not keen on mono-focussing on examples, because they're.. well... examples of a larger talking point rather than topics of discussion in their own right but if we're going to discuss the Crimson Heart, then remember that you only get +1HP per five stats boosted, which means at a minimum doing you have to do five missions boosting everything at the same time to get those +5HP. The gamble of loosing a private is well worth the risk if you get at those five missions worth of HP, plus the HP bonus from ranking up to corporal (because you get a big stat boost) in one shot, as opposed to risking the same private for 5 missions for the same reward. Bear in mind this technique is best only used with FNGs, because of the risk involved (death). It wouldn't work for experienced soliders, but at the start of the game? Eh, fuck 'em.

And how hard is it to get these medals, anyway?

Things I just have to turn up for

+10 combat missions

+20 combat missions

+30 combat missions

Defend a base

Complete Terror Mission

Capture Alien base

Things I have to work for

Kill 5 aliens

Kill 10 aliens

Kill 20 aliens

Get seriously wounded

Things I have to work hard for

Capture alien leader

Kill 5 aliens in 1 mission

Kill an alien mind controlling a squaddie

Be a lone survivor

Of the medals, for 5 of them once I have a shrike I can have a guy sit in the back if I want him to get the medal. For one of them I have him sit in the command room. For 3 of them, I give a guy a sniper rifle and he sits in the back, last hitting aliens DOTA style or I can take a leaf from Anyone's book and grenade everything into the stone age. For 1 of them, the new guy's initation ritual is to see if he can survive a glock. Out of 14 medals, there are exactly 4 medals which you actually have to work for. Almost everything else you either just turn up and sit in the back (doing laps around the dropship for those TUs) or EU2012-it and zap aliens at long range, last-hitting aliens or grenading them to death. It's not very hard to pull off these things if you examine just what the precise challenge is.

Lets look at your arguments individually.

Things I just have to turn up for

You are over-exaggerating again. You can't just have men "sit back" in the dropship. They would be dead weight on missions where you need every one of your men fighting. Unless you are talking about farming light scout/scout missions with one of the larger dropships. Which wouldn't even be that bad anyway considering that under my proposed system, all the rookies would get from those medals would be bravery boosts. Not all that useful.

Things I have to work for

If you want all of your kills to go to one guy "DOTA" style, then you are also taking risks with your other men. If that is how you want to play then fine. You risk losing men who already have those medals, trying to get more that do in a self-defeating process.

I already explained the problem with "crimson heart farming" in the last section.

Things I have to work hard for

Making every one of your men have a survivor medal is just so ridiculously expensive/dangerous as to not even be worth considering.

The savior medal is outside of player control really. It happens when it happens. So is the medal you get for capturing an alien leader alive.

So... I really fail to see the problem.

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