Gazz

It does not require micromanagement and without such a system all soldiers end up as generic and faceless clone troopers. I don't know why anyone would want that. Micromanaging players will find a way to micromanage in every system. There is no point in trying to prevent that because that's what they enjoy doing. Since your first thought was "micromanaging to maximise stats", you are apparently one of them. =P

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Completely Alternate Training Concept Stat advancement and training (courses) could work in a completely different relationship, too. Every soldier is always in a training course but the course never ends. You can assign him to a different course anytime. The benefit of a training course is a very slow advance outside of missions and more inside of missions. A training course serves as a multiplier for the stat gains from missions. Different courses favour different stats. Marksmanship training might be 130% accuracy, 130% endurance. Sniper school 145% accuracy, 110% endurance. Demolition for more strength to carry rockets or throw grenades... etc. This system would avoid the issue of a soldier "having all courses" and effectively being done with training. "Training" would remain a valuable feature at any point of the game. Another advantage would be that there is a minimum of micromanagement. Once set on a certain "career path", you don't have to pay any more attention to this particular soldier's training. Ever. No "regular maintainance" necessary, like assigning 3 soldier to follow-up courses, for instance. You don't have to pay attention to who comes back from which training course and when. All of the "fiddly bits" of other systems are intentionally absent. The only time you need to change anything is if you decide to change the soldier's direction of long-term advancement. Which course newly recruited soldiers are assigned to automatically should be a setting on the hiring screen. The Default course that is selected at game start would be the Jack-of-all-trades setting. Not exciting but no intentional weaknesses that bite the casual player in the ass later on. Balancing the strengths and weaknesses of certain career paths and battlefield roles is for the "experienced" player to go wild. Specialised snipers might be great at their jobs... but not at everyone's job.

Passive Training This is how soldiers increase their stats. It has no other purpose. It's completely automatic and never requires any clicking for every individual soldier. When soldiers have been "resting" in the base (not wounded), they start training automatically. Depending on how the pace of the game turns out, this may have to be an idle time like 2-8 hours. This delay is only there as a very abstract form of "exhaustion". If you chase your soldiers from mission to mission as fast as the Chinook will refuel then they won't be doing any training in the 30 min of downtime in the barracks. They'll try to sleep. =P A human also doesn't get stronger immediately after lugging a lot of weight around. First he gets exhausted. Then muscle tissue builds up. So... whenever a "training tick" occurs for a soldier one soldier stat is randomly selected. The Training Policy (bottom of this post) would lead to some stats being picked more often, neglecting the others. Let's say Accuracy was selected. Now accuracy (which is a floating point number) is increased by Gain = ( 10 - SQR ( Accuracy - PRE ) ) * ( 1 + PRE / 100 ) The second part would give "gifted" soldiers a small learning bonus ( 1-8 % ), making their individual affinity more noticeable without upsetting the entire system. This would make a soldier's affinity much more meaningful than "just a higher cap". That results in values like Skill (excluding PRE) Gain 92 0.41 (0.11) 90 0.51 (0.21) 86 0.73 (0.43) 80 1.06 (0.76) 70 1.63 (1.33) 60 2.25 (1.95) 40 3.68 (3.38) This gain will just have to be multiplied by whatever results in the desired speed of overall stat increase. Carefully reducing the "10" above to a value as low as 9.6 means a steeper curve, making it harder to increase high stats. Gain numbers in brackets are for 9.7. A soldier's job complexity should probably slightly lower the Gain for normal training but far less drastically than for the bonus training (PXP) below. The advantage of this over an "old school" system with integer values is that the player can always see progress. It's a transparent system. Even if only small increments are added, something is visibly happening. Practical Experience from missions or PXP If the soldier got awarded some Accuracy PXP in a mission, then he gets an "intensive training" bonus for... let's say the first 4 hours of training. If he stops training (base transfer, another mission, hospitalised), the PXP flag is cleared. Go get another in the next mission. The bonus is applied by multiplying the Gain (see above) with... something. The job complexity (from the soldier having many active training courses) lowers this bonus. Bonus multiplier = 0.8 + 1.5 / SQR ( job complexity + 1) JobC Multiplier 0 2.3 1 1.86 2 1.67 4 1.47 6 1.37 8 1.3 If you keep piling training courses onto this soldier, he will be losing some of the boost from practical experience. It won't destroy the soldier because it's still a bonus and then there's the regular training increase... It's comparable to the old D&D system where multiclass characters would have access to more diverse powers but level up more slowly. Alternatively, PXP is a counter, not a flag Works in a similiar way except that the soldier can gain multiple PXP points for a stat in missions. Each time the bonus multiplier is applied to the Stat Gain, one PXP counter is used up. There still needs to be a cap on how many PXP points a soldier can store for a stat. Gut feel says 2-5 but it's a pretty wild guess with so many unknowns. I'm not convinced that this is a good idea. Too fiddly. Can't properly display the "intensive training" state as a simple icon because now there is a quantity to it, too. Training Policy The player is the commander so he gets to set the training policy. This is a global setting for all bases and soldiers. The player gets a list with the 6 soldier stats and gets to mark 2 checkboxes, selecting two of these. These stats are then selected more often in passive training. It does not boost / lower anything. It only weighs training a little to train these skills more often than other ones. In many games, accuracy is typically a stat you have to emphasise at the start... Supervising / adjusting every individual soldier's training does not fit the scale of the game. That's for smaller scale games like Jagged Alliance.

Alien Familiarisation (AF) As aliens are researched, soldiers get the opportunity to become more effective at... killing more aliens. Once the technology has been researched, all soldiers immediately gain 30 % of the AF bonus for this alien. The basics are easy enough to pick up. (Don't use incendiaries against this alien. Fire bad.) A soldier who has taken the AF active training course, gets the full bonus. (maybe a sniper who works independantly more often than not) The drawback is that this requires regular homework, increasing the soldier's job complexity and slightly decreasing passive training at the base. The automatic AF skill of officers gives the officer himself the full bonus but also benefits the men around him. Between the officer ranks, 50 - 90 % of the officer's own AF skill override the soldiers' lower (automatic) skill. The range of this aura depends on the officer's rank as well.

Caps / limits to courses It has been suggested that a soldier should (for instance) only be able to take 5 training courses (including advanced levels) and that's it forever. MMO-style he would be able to "respec to another build", forgeting his courses and learning other ones. I'm not in favour of such hard caps. They constrict the player, limiting his choices in annoying ways. Soft caps, like all training courses adding to the soldier's job complexity value, give the player the freedom to train his soldiers anyway he damn pleases. It's just a trade-off against their rate of skill increase.

Tiered courses or abilities Going with the idea that all training courses "cost" complexity, tiered abilities could be balanced well! This doesn't work well for all active training courses but it doesn't have to. Marksmanship, for instance, mainly works through enabling the 2nd aiming tick so there's little you can improve there. The improvement will come through the soldier's accuracy skill. Most training courses could work as tiered versions, though. Advanced Field Medic, for instance, would include more medical studies but get you a better medic, shortening everyone's hospital stays. You might still want a 2nd medic on the team but would likely only need one "expert". I feel that a "skill tree" with successive levels of courses would blow the training concept way out of proportion. It's supposed to be one small but interesting part of the game - not the entire game.

Active Training Courses Every training course adds a cumulative Job Complexity value for the soldier. (added amount can vary per course - balancing issue for later) 2 or 3 "jobs" should be no problem but eventually they will noticeably cut into the soldier's stat training. The Job Complexity mechanic is important because the additional abilities are all permanent and should have a long-term cost as well. Without that, there would be no real reason not to train anything remotely useful ASAP. Officer Candidate School Trains a soldier into an officer. Automatically credits the officer with a completed Alien Familiarisation course. Alien Familiarisation 101 Can be trained by non-officers if they have to operate away from the team often. See below Marksmanship See 3 aiming ticks concept. This unlocks the 2nd aiming tick so the soldier can use assault rifles (and other mid-range weapons) to their full potential. Adds +1 PRE Accuracy if PRE < 8. It's not much but intensive training works. It has been suggested that the 2nd aiming tick should also unlock automatically once the soldier gains "high" marksmanship skill in missions. In this case: In order to keep the Marksmanship course useful, I would then suggest that the training course also gives a weapon range bonus of (Marksmanship Skill [assumed 1-100] * 0.04) % I would drop this complication and rather scale the accuracy values of assault rifles so that the 2nd aiming tick does not add a great deal for them. Sniper School (requires: Marksmanship Training, Marksmanship Skill > 75-80) This unlocks the 3rd aiming tick so the soldier can use sniper rifles (and other long-range weapons) to their full potential. The entry qualifications are there so the player can't just send a few unimportant new recruits to school. Recruits, that he won't miss for a few weeks. Adds +1 PRE Accuracy if PRE < 8. Training course also increases the weapon range (non-comulative with the above) by (Marksmanship Skill [assumed 1-100] * 0.08) % The training course doesn't help much at all with the use of shorter ranged weapons because the key is the 3rd aiming tick that only the very long range weapons have. Night Ops Restriction: light armour only (it's a scout ability) My all-time favourite trait / ability in JA. Soldier can see further in darkness (whether at night or in unlit structures) and / or is visible to the aliens at 1 less square. Effectively this gives the (trained) soldiers sight range equal to aliens. Even with that, night operations are always more deadly because of everyone's shorter sight range and the resulting greater accuracy... for the aliens. Having a "Night Ops" training course would take a bit of sting out of this while "paying" with a higher job complexity. If the ability proves to be "very good", increase it's JC rating. I loved the night missions in X-COM. This would be the icing on the cake. Demolition / Heavy Weapons / Anti-Structure / Anti-Tank Adds +1 PRE Strength and Bravery if PRE < 8. Gives an "armour piercing" bonus when trying to damage things with really heavy armour, such as a tank or a house. Does not simply give this bonus when shooting rockets or throwing grenades at alien troopers. The bonus is sufficiently broad to be useable with many weapon types but still limited to "doing structural damage" against things that are typically attacked with demo charges and rockets. Bonus applies to rockets, placed explosives, (other (accurate) heavy weapons?) and only when attacking structures or "tanks". Gives no bonus against alien troopers. Flamer or other heavy weapons would also be covered here because there aren't enough of them for a unique specialisation. What bonus these could get... well... we don't even know how exactly they will work. =P This course could also help "hiding" mines better so there is a greater chance that the aliens trip them. See Land Mines. Detecting Mines / IED This is a shortened version of "Demolition" and included in the full "Demo" course. It only gives the soldier the mine spotting ability, not the offensive abilities of Demolition. See Land Mines. Combat Engineer Adds +1 PRE Strength if PRE < 8. Can build simple cover. Using the Klappspaten, the combat engineer can dig foxholes or the likes. While anyone can use the Klappspaten, the CE would create "better" cover with it or for fewer AP or could improve it to a "level 2 foxhole" with consecutive digging. Could also be implemented in an abstract way as a pile of sandbags that is generated on the map. That's just an object that can be generated on "diggable" tiles. It would also be passable (not too high) so the player could not wall in the aliens, exploiting their pathing. Force Recon Restriction: light armour only (it's a scout ability) Adds +2 PRE Resilience if PRE < 8. Enhances sneakiness and recon abilities while in light armour. (don't want walking tanks sneaking around the battlefield) Vision range + 5%, Range of being seen by aliens decreased by 30% while in cover. Well, until the soldier opens fire. Firing weapons would nullify this soldier's bonus and require X turns of not firing to gradually build the sneakiness back up. Support Gunner Restriction: Burst / Auto fire modes only. Adds +1 PRE Strength and Reflexes if PRE < 8. Increases the effectiveness when firing any weapon in a burst / full auto mode. This could be - less bullet spread - +1 or +2 bullets fired per burst - no flat accuracy bonus! This is not a marksmanship course. - ability to "walk the fire", increasing accuracy through consecutive bursts on the same target. Requires soldier to stay put to get the bonus so cannot be used (effectively) in CQB but rather in a "classic" support gunner role, hanging back and well... supporting. =P Uses a lot of ammo, too, so it would still be useful but far less effective with an assault rifle. (reloading, moving, switching targets... all break the consecutive bursts chain) Best used with a MG and 100 round belts. Close Quarters Battle (CQB) (possible requirement of at least average reaction stat) Adds +1 PRE Reflexes if PRE < 8. Increases effectiveness in the dreaded door-breaching and at close quarters in general. The course lowers the alien's reaction stat (assumed 1-100) when trying to get opportunity fire on that soldier. This malus to the alien's reaction would be 10 - ( Range To Soldier [capped at 10] ) * 20 The soldier has learned door breaching techniques for not getting shot dead immediately. It's not perfect but it's a bit of a buffer. It also does diddly squat at longer ranges so while the course is highly useful to your frontline grunts, the snipers, marksman, or support gunners would just be wasting their time. This course mainly affects the aliens so "CQB" could be a very good career for soldiers without exceptionally skills. Good reaction would help, of course, but they might survive their job without being guaranteed cannon fodder. This would be equally useful to new and veteran soldiers because it does not directly scale with the soldier's skill, like most other abilities. It scales with the alien's skill so a newbie who is hired late in the game gets the full bonus immediately, making him somewhat useful in that role without having to train up 30 points of reaction first. Field Medic Adds +1 PRE Resilience and Bravery if PRE < 8. Instead of "just" binding wounds to stop the soldier from leaking all over, every "bind" action also heals a percentage of the damage with a magic healing potion. Maybe 10-25 %. This leads to lower recovery times if wounds are tended by trained personnel.

Active vs Passive training Active training Covers courses that the player assigns manually. Once assigned, there will be no further micromanagement. The decision has been made. These courses add specific and situational abilities but ideally, are not very useful outside the job they are designed for. The only long term drawback to such a training course is the added complexity of piling many specalist jobs onto the soldier. This will negatively impact his "normal" stat-increasing training That way you can decide to train a specialist or a more well-rounded soldier who may not have the special perk but perform better at multiple tasks through having higher stat levels. Passive training Automatically happens at the base after the soldiers have "rested" for 8 hours. Soldier stats are increased only through passive training. That is the sole purpose of passive training. I would not tie this to a special "Training Center" building. Seems superfluous and a needless chore if you need one whenever you house soldiers, especially if passive training is an important factor in the whole training concept.

Ranks and promotions Ranks are divided into crew and officer ranks. They mainly boost morale for the soldier himself. Officers Officer commissions are gained by assigning the soldier to the OCS active training course. Officer Aura Officers have an aura in which their men "do better". The range of the aura is dependant on the officer's rank. One effect of the aura is increased morale. (which would in turn grant psionic resistance) Possibly morale regeneration. Alternatively the officer get's a RALLY button he can use every X turns. Depending on rank, it adds a flat amount of morale to the surrounding troops. Definitely needs to have a long cooldown but it would be a nice incentive to keep an officer around when rookies panic. Another aura effect is Alien Familiarisation, which is automatically included in the OCS course. (or rather the officer gets the AF course awarded automatically - simpler in game if AF stuff is tied to exactly one flag) Officers have to spend some time on AF study and other paperwork while their men should work more on their physical and weapon skills. This way only the officer pays the job complexity of AF and his men gain the benefit. Another aura effect could be a small boost to Reflexes. This is given to the surrounding soldiers but not the officer himself. This makes it more worthwhile to have officers - but not too many. =P (Soldiers are more organised, having their fields of fire assigned, etc) Promotions Promotions can remain fully automatic. There just won't be any cross-over between crew and officer ranks so the player doesn't automatically end up with a team of all generals. Might require a few more crew ranks for style but that's mostly text *shrug*. That the soldiers and officers of such "special forces" have unusually high ranks is not such a big problem when the officer population can be kept in check. =P

Experience / stats gained from missions Experience points Experience points lead to promotions only. Practical Experience (PXP) aka learning by doing By using their skills in the mission, soldiers get practical experience. This greatly aids in passive training once they get back to the base. Instead of directly gaining accuracy skill after a mission, the soldier gets one voucher for an accuracy skill increase. Let's call it practical XP or PXP until someone finds a better term. The player is not told exactly how much PXP a soldier has gained. His accuracy stat is marked with a star or something, telling the player that Acc is going to increase... presently. There should be a simple cap for how much PXP a soldier can store for each skill. Maybe 2-4 points total. I'd actually prefer this being no counter but only a flag, which then is good for x hours of "intensive" training. No saving up 50 PXP, then watching that stat skyrocket. That's just silly. This keeps stat gain from missions in check and keeps passive training (as well as R&R for your soldiers!) in the game. Otherwise passive training would become obsolete if the "good" increases only came from doing missions. Why a flag and no counter for "15 Accuracy experience in that mission" ? Getting "direct" increases like in fire your rifle 20 times, get 20 Accuracy PXP? That only leads to more micromanagement as well as penalising the soldiers with heavy or more situational weapons. If a soldier only needs to hit at an alien once (or hurt it with a demo charge, or...) to get the full training bonus, then the player does not feel forced to switch everyone's roles and equipment around so Jim the Rocketman can now use the weapon "that gives more accuracy training". Any need for silly micromanagement like that should be avoided. The player should be able to just play the mission without having to worry about which soldier needs to fire the most rounds or kill the mostest aliens. This is a team effort. All soldiers train equally well - if they participate at all. That saves a lot of headaches when balancing weapons because no fancy hacks are required to ensure that every weapon grants a comparable amount of training. If a point system is used then it should have dimnishing returns, such as the intensive training after a mission lasting 5 / 7 / 8 hours if the soldier has used his accuracy skill 1 / 20 / 60 times. Something like a bronze / silver / gold training... thing... badge... pin... Still more effort in scaling this because it needs to take into account which weapon was used. A launcher rocket should be worth more than a MG burst. See above. If MG end up rarely firing a full clip in a mission then the "usage" needs to be totally scaled on a per-weapon base. It's just another can of worms that could be left unopened.

Soldier stats The 6 soldier stats (Accuracy, Resilience, etc) should be floating point values ! That makes it infinitely easier to scale stat gain through training. Developing formulas around the awkwardness of integers is simply not worth a handful of bytes saved. The player would be shown integers in the UI. Even LUA should do primitive math like that. The fractions are then displayed (like when mousover on a stat) as a percentage to the next stat increase. This is an important visualisation and tells the player that "training works". This is designed as a transparent system without obscure black-box math or massive randomness. The player decides who trains what and he gets predictable and reproduceable results. Soldier Stat Cap Everyone seems to assume that stats must be capped at 100. Why? If there is no serious gameplay reason why stats must never exceed 100, there should be no cap. It's actually easier to code if no cap needs to be checked! With dimnishing returns from training, noone would reach far (if at all) beyond 100 anyway so it just seems to be a pointless and arbitrary limitation. Ability Predisposition (PRE) One issue with X-COM type games is that soldiers tend to end up as clone troopers with pretty much identical stats in the later game. I suggest a "predisposition" of the various soldier stats. Every soldier's variable stat range would be 1 - 92, plus 1 - 8 points of unchanging personal bonus. This bonus is the predisposition (PRE). Some are just not cut out to be master snipers. They can become very competent but won't be Superman. The PRE will hardly every change for a soldier so most will never reach 100 in many stats. Active training courses can add tiny boosts to that but never exceed the max of 8. Dedicated training can overcome natural predisposition... to a degree. This also takes a bit of sting out of the chance of, e.g. training a "gun inept" soldier into a sniper. The increased PRE from those two active courses will ensure that the soldier can reach an accuracy of at least 95. Also, a "trained" marksman increases accuracy a little faster than a trained medic because the PRE bonus shifts his entire learning table upwards. To capitalise more on this feature, increase the PRE range from 1-8 to maybe 1-11 while active training courses give higher boni. More soldier variance would add more colour, too. The PRE system would give some individuality to soldiers without any complicated perk / achievement system. Also a very neat effect of this: A "gifted" soldier would not be penalised by dimnishing returns from training! Since the actual skill range is 1 - 92 for everyone, the soldier with a higher PRE will reach his max skill just as easily as the clumsy one reaches his. The PRE just sits on top of that and has nothing to do with passive training. The gifted soldier will also seem to advance faster at "equal" stat levels because PRE simply shifts the entire table. This is why I constructed it this way. A higher max cap or a starting skill bonus are... meh. If the soldier is "a natural" at something, this will be a constant benefit throughout his entire career.

I have written up the entire concept once more... with a lot more structure and without all the half-baked ideas that lead to this version. All numbers were made up on the spot and only serve to demonstrate the intent. Too many unknowns to scale anything just yet. Of course others are invited to add summaries of their systems. (maybe use a different colour for the "headline"?) Please don't start a discussion about bits and pieces of either. I simplified several obscure mechanics from the discussion thread. More transparent and predictable now, which should make it easy for the player to balance his troopers' advancement vs the specialist abilities they acquire. Give everyone 10 special training courses and they will advance their stats more slowly - but have all the special perks. Yet, the player can build his army of universal soldiers if he so desires... Even training strategies become a possibility! "Hang on" with less educated grunts who increase their skills faster... or train them right away and get slower advancement long term. How cool is that? That is gameplay the players can and will argue about. Real choices! =) It makes replaying the game a real possibility because you could play with a different strategy. Recruiting soldiers and other personnel is in many ways related because it also takes a look at the starting stats of soldier and the potential change to the importance of training. The "Alternate Training Concept" is a far more "condensed" concept which is more suited to a strategic approach to training without micromanaging individual soldiers on a regular base.

The last three posts about file / resource formats were on this exact topic. Any means of modding that requires replacing original game files is completely out of the question when using Steam. Adding to a Steam "content" folder is no problem at all since the new files are not part of Steam's checklist. They do not. Steam can produce a "working folder" that exactly matches your current alpha builds. The real problem is that currently, the only way of modding is to overwrite core game files that must be part of Steam's "check list". The auto-update function would then routinely "repair" those files, removing all mods. That's why I (and others) suggested file / data structures to allow modding in a way that does not conflict with any core game files. It is perfectly possible to add to a "SteamApps" folder without Steam. That is exactly how modding X3 (which exists in a Steam version) works. All modding there is added on top of the core game files and the engine reads the new files instead of the older core files. This particular system is still quite limited and creates a lot of headaches on it's own. A "good" system would allow to change only part of a file without having to duplicate the entire resource file with the changes included. That is the base for combining more than one mod, which is a major headache with replacing entire files.

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That's the idea. The flamethrower is not a very popular weapon IRL - with the people who use it. =P If you twitch and put a rifle round into a wall in front of you, you get a few harmless stone shrapnels. Do the same with a flamethrower and... just don't. And if there are hidden civilians around, a flamethrower is not an ideal weapon. (otherwise SWAT teams would have them. They are great for room clearing! =) The range vs AOE size balance is not only realistic (a finite amount of fuel), it's a matter of game balance. If you shoot at close targets you get a larger AOE but the closer to you, the higher the chance to get hit with the backlash. At longer range it's safer to you but you get less of a chance for a very dense or encompassing effect. In fact, I would model this as fire modes. The soldier can decide to pull the trigger longer and get a longer reaching jet, more fire, more fuel consumption. For short range engagements it's quite suicidal to just keep spraying. Short controlled bursts... if you don't want to end up real crispy yourself. In principle the same as single / burst / auto, except that the range is affected, too, ... and through it the potential AOE. This would make the flamethrower a very tactical weapon. And a very dangerous one to use. =P The damage would stay the same with these fire modes. Only how many aliens you can hit at once (and if you survive it) would change. Damage While I think that shooting around corners is not a thing that must be avoided at all cost, I agree that there should be an advantage to LOS shooting. And in the case of flamethrowers, it's obvious. Anything that is lit up by a FT burns for... the duration. Splash tiles (and anything that was standing in them) burn for 0 - 1 turns in addition to the firing turn or 1 - 2 turns total. (but always keep burning during the aliens' next turn) The initial impact tile burns for 1 turn longer or a total of 2 - 3 turns. That is because whatever was standing directly in the fuel jet got totally drenched. More fuel, more burn. So with LOS shooting ( = more risk) you can do more damage. This also prevents "stacking" flamethrowers, making them more of a tactical weapon than something you give to every single soldier. Yes, the initial damage in the firing turn stacks but the burn duration does not. If an alien gets hit with 3 FT jets, it takes 3x the initial damage. Then it keeps burning for 1 - 2 turns afterwards. A simpler variation would be that a direct hit does nominal damage (for the same "totally drenched" reason), splash damage only whatever fraction is decided on. Something like 2/3. Can't be too low because that is the purpose of a flamethrower and the fuel burns the same. Just more briefly if there is less of it. Therefore damage should also not get lower (like with a grenade AOE), the farther you are from the blast. If you get hit by the burning fuel, you get hit. However, a huge jet of fire that just goes out like a little match at the end of the turn... that's neither very realistic nor cool. I suggested a random burn duration because there will always be puddles that burn longer than the rest. Balance There are built-in ways to balance this system. - How the remaining range / power of the jet is translated into AOE (I used (remaining power x 2) times for the loop) - How much "remaining power" it costs to splash into an already burning tile. (I used 0.5) That controls the likelyhood of consecutive shots "filling" the remaining blanks in the original shot's AOE or building a bigger fireball. If the cost is high, you cannot "flood" the area with multiple flamer shots.... which would be a pretty cool thing to do. (pouring oil into the fire... literally) Upgrades New fuel can be researched later that burns hotter (not much) or longer (very likely!). Fuel that burns longer would increase the tactical value of the FT because the splash damage would do a greater percentage of the direct hit damage. And even a substantial upgrade would not turn the FT into an instakill weapon. It takes a few turns to do it's dirty work. That would also increase the weapon's value as an area denial weapon. Aliens should be... reluctant to step into a wall of fire. Fuel containing Fulminating Pop Bits (insert technobabble) that splashes further. Adjusts the factor for how many times the splash loop runs so with the same jet of fuel, more tiles are lit up. Fire Extinguisher Don't leave home without it if the boss told you to use a flamer. *gulp* Seriously. A one-time use item that the flamer soldier can use to extinguish himself... or something that got in the way but isn't supposed to get crispified. .

To clean out those bunkers the flamethrowers were not used as direct fire weapons. FT were used because the fuel and heat would propagate into the available space. So yes, shooting around corners is the entire point of the weapon. However, a useful ability like that can not come without negatives. And there is a big (and hot) one... When I read "Flamethrower Mechanics" - without reading any of the post - the immediate thought was fluid mechanics / hydraulic jet. Flamethrowers work like that. It cannot be a projectile with an AOE effect but the heat and burning fluid... propagate. The suggested "pooling", while somewhat vague, goes in that general direction. The flamethrower throws a hydraulic jet of combustible fluid. In theory (and for a simulated FT we can go with that) the jet reaches it's end when all fuel has burned. So the farther the jet travels, the weaker it gets. Jet / Splash propagation When the flamethrower jet is fired, it has a "power" that is = it's weapon range. For every tile that the jet travels through open space, it loses 1 power. When it reaches max range, it has burned out and fades into nothing. If it hits an obstacle, it splashes. The more "power left" in the jet, the more splash. The impact tile is added to an array as the first "splash tile". A loop is run (remaining power x 2) times. - A random splashed tile that has adjacent "unsplashed" tiles is selected from the array. - A random unsplashed tile adjacent to the selected tile is splashed and added to the array. + If this tile has already been burning (from a previous FT shot), it is handled normally but 0.5 loop cycles are added back into the power / loop counter. end loop The flamethrower target zone propagates in a random fashion. That is both easy to calculate... and quite realistic. Flamethrowers are hard to control. One of the most "unsurgical" infantry weapons. Best of all... if you shoot a flamethrower at a wall directly in front of you, you burn because it splashes right back on you. (Don't do that at home, kids) Unlike with a fixed area effect (like a rocket / grenade AOE), the player cannot reliably shoot around corners because the direction of propagation is random. Just like a fluid it could splash into any damn direction... but not though walls because a tile behind a wall would not be adjacent to a tile before the wall. Cannot propagate. Shooting at a tree with an alien hiding behind it, the flame may envelop the tree and hit the alien... or may splash right the other way. Consecutive flamethrower shots would increase the area - but not geometrically like 2x shot being 2x the area. The areas overlap but even "skipping" an already burning tile costs 0.5 tiles. The total flame area is usually getting denser through repeated shots (lighting up tiles that were previously "missed") but should not grow more than 20-30% tops. I'd have to run a few simulations on this but it's definitely no infinite growth. That would be the most fun flamethrower model I've seen in a game so far and the calculations are rather simple. The loop that sets tile after tile on fire wouldn't have to run instantly. It's actually the opposite. It should be slow enough so the player can watch where the fire flows. That's no extra coding cost beyond a wait statement but it's infinitely cooler than an instant AOE boom. Since range directly affects the area that is hit, a short ranged Flame Pistol is also a possibility. It would be less hazardous in close quarters because of the far smaller back-splash. (The potential splash area is directly proportional to weapon range) .

There has been quite the argument on building the perfect flamethrower... or at least any believeable one. This. very this. you could also increase the damage in the center of the stream slightly to replicate the extra fuel burning there. Yeah, that would be the difference between real life and the gaming niche. honestly, I think that 6-8 squares is probably enough range for it to be useful, but that will have to wait until we get to playtest to see if it feels right or not. after all, if the enemies see you at 13 squares (like in XCOM) then you would be hard pressed to use the weapon effectively. it would own the hallways on anything larger than a medium scout though. unrelated, but I have no issues with fire being able to curve around a corner; since we're not going to model the sheer amount of heat as a chance to harm the enemies, it's a useful trick to get enemies that we couldn't otherwise hit. after all, we would have to know that the enemies are there first, right? using it to burn around a corner is still the same niche: nailing an enemy that is behind cover. it's just a little harder cover than usual is all.

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While it hasn't exactly been confirmed, yet, there have been some educated guesses on how the game will end. Possible SPOILERS ahead! OMGZ! Well I was mostly just waxing philosophical, these kind of things don't have to be and even work better if they are subtle. (something that Ayn Rand *shudder* and bioshock are not) And you are probably correct that the deeper elements of my musings are in fact ourt of the scope of this project. but let me try and explain a little better. scenario 1: Traditional ending open play until the "final fight" you go squash the foe at his home. This is satisfying at plays on the themes of the underdog made good, vengeance for wrongs, human superiority. Nothing wrong with this and the traditional approach, but it does stray firmly into a black and white arena in regards to the conflict. Scenario 2: A more Civilization-esque multiple "victory condition" type end game. You could implement multiple game ends up to and including an Alien victory. But the key elements hear would be things like maintaining relationships with world governments and working towards specific goals occasionally at the expense of others. tactical choice would be key here, Combat ability vs. Diplomacy, striking at aliens vs. aggressive defensive operations, etc... this would be probably largely out of the scope of this project but could be a very interesting game and the themes invoked would be more dependant on the players path than anythign else. Scenario 3: A "best we can do scenario" with essentially a counting clock (being a known or unknown) time period and the goal being saving as much as you can before"time is up". This would be a scenario where-in the aliens being vastly more advanced/powerful/numerous the best hope is to limit damage rather than even be able to truly "strike at them". This would be able to be managed with the same game mechanics in place but the tone is drastically shifted away "kill the aliens" to "Stay alive". It's the difference between the Action genre and the horror genre. With this endgame Terror sites become things to truly fear because they are actively harming your diplomacy which would be your first priority in trying to keep humanity together and alive. This is what i was talking about the above being only 3 of many possibilities but your could see how themes and in fact game play and strategies would be effect by which particular endgame is in place. The themes evoked by a game only serve to create an immersion and make things interesting. But really anything done well is worth checking out. I'm writing in bullet time.

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Since the issue is near and dear to my heart, I'll hang on to all that expended brain sweat. =) Flat attribute boosts would be a Bad Idea™ because they annihilate the need for soldier experience. What is a much better approach is to let an armour give a % increase to a stat. A 130% strength armour is not going to turn a 30 strength soldier into the Hulk. It only goes up to 39. This way a heavy suit of armour can let a soldier use very heavy weapons that unaugmented soldiers can't use or can't use very well. For the really good stuff you still need a naturally strong soldier, though, so soldier experience always stays valuable.