Decius

X1 had tactical air combat, but it wasn't particularly deep tactics. If the autoresolve wasn't 100%, take over, fly behind the enemy, and then deliver the entire ordinance into the back of the enemy. Repeat Repeat Repeat There's very little change between air combats, and there's a lot of them.

We will worry about having the Xenonauts readjust to civilian life after the invasion after we ensure that there will be civilian life after the duration. In the meantime, the firing range is going to be retrofitted to allow tear gas to be deployed there, so that they can practice shooting under pressure.

Bravery is pretty simple to train- it's the thing that keeps people from panicking, so you practice literally everything in increasingly harsh circumstances.

I think a situation where local forces can provide enough assistance to make a difference in the air combat, but not do it by themselves, might be an interesting compromise. Something like SAM missiles that either do damage or limit the maneuverability of the UFO, or 'free' radar coverage from integration with their forces.

If you wanted to incentivize a rota, you could have a system where 'training XP' were gained at a faster rate (or outright capped) when total 'training XP' was less than some multiple of 'combat XP'. That also helps represent that the two are very much not the same thing- the right place to learn muscle memory for shooting is not when people aliens are shooting at you, but it's also very hard to fully master the fear reflex in safe, controlled conditions. If being actively involved in 20% or so of expected missions was enough to train at the full rate, two or three full squads would be possible to manage training for (including alternates that need to be available for wounded soldiers and the likelihood that at least some soldiers will end up on the flank that doesn't see any action on a given mission).

I wasn't aware that the CE made it 100% for the 1/8 that it provides protection for. Still, there needs to be a way to protect yourself from any two adjacent squares, and if you pick one of eight facings and get protection from a disjoint set of attackers for each facing, that can't happen.

On the 11 o'clock news: "The entire Xenonaut combat team was killed in action this morning, in what senior REMFs are calling 'a significant but not catastrophic setback'. This afternoon, they started recruiting for new combat troops, with the only major qualification listed being opaque to plasma. A source close to the recruitment process also indicated that people who were interested in a combat role but were transparent to plasma could also be accepted."

You're free to disagree, but I find it odd that you pack enough ammo to suppress enemies before you can see them, or that if you can suppress the 3+ enemies before opening the door you'd use a shield at all, when shotguns are much better at close range than pistols. I found that a shield will handle 1 to 3 hits before catastrophic failure, and has about a 75% chance of intercepting an attack coming from the frontal arc, which is about 1/8 of a circle. Boosting that to take 3-5 hits before disintegrating and having a 100% chance of absorbing a hit from three octants would justify not packing a primary weapon or a 'secondary' weapon that is just as powerful. And fielding a shield wall should be a viable tactic for some situations; that's why they're part of SWAT team loadouts.

On the subject of attack vectors that the alien armor doesn't cover, anyone remember that the endgame weapon in X-COM: Apocalypse is a glorified paintball, in part because it doesn't trigger the alien shields the way bullets or energy weapons or explosions do, and in part because it's a chemical weapon engineered to disrupt them specifically? Some kind of "It kills them much more than it kills us" gas, dust, smoke, or aerosol-based weapon makes sense at the point in the weapons tech above the equal-quality weapons, or even as a prerequisite for a mission to fill an alien base with the stuff. (Obviously it can't just finish all of the missions, because that would be boring).

If the only useful role of the shield-bearer is to take reaction fire, at least make them exceptional at that- they should actually provide sufficient protection when used as intended (instead of having a chance of being bypassed completely and only absorbing 1-2 hits if it does work), and cover a 3/8 arc instead of a 1/8 arc (so that there's never a case where you can't prevent an alien from taking one step and being outside of your front arc and bypassing your shield).

I always thought that the heavy plasma and blaster launcher were the intended endgame weaponry in UFO Defense. The lasers were strictly better in the field than the firearms, and more accurate than the plasma, even if they did less damage, so the damage on target was higher with lasers if you had moderate accuracy troops, and higher with plasma once you had good accuracy. Suggesting that alien weapons are optimized for alien ergonomics, and as such are awkward for humans to use (higher AP costs, lower accuracy) seems reasonable, especially as it justifies the synthesis technology where once you can build a plasma rifle, you can build a plasma rifle designed for humans to use that doesn't have those penalties.

History If packing a shield replaces your primary weapon and doesn't make the wielder literally invincible, how can it be made useful? If the secondary weapons that can be used with a shield aren't up to par for putting aliens down, then it doesn't matter how many shots the shield soaks; the wielder is combat ineffective from the moment their equipment loadout is selected, barring the cheese case of using them as expendable spotters for a sniper or HMG, or the other cheese case of using an OP shield vs an AI incapable of ignoring a non-threat. One thought would be to allow SMGs with a shield, and make SMGs up to par as a close weapon. That puts the SMG in the same niche as the shotgun, as the close range finisher. Another thought would be to give the shields the best melee attack, which is reasonable given that riot shields are often used by police to pin targets; having a big rigid shield with a person on top of it is a tough grapple to break, and even if a target is able to push back against the shield they wouldn't also be able to fire a rifle at the same time. A third though is to give the shieldbearer a grenade-heavy loadout; depending on weight balance maybe that just works out fine. But I see the six-shot main weapon grenade launcher and wonder if a smaller, single shot grenade launcher firing one of the same projectiles makes sense as a secondary weapon for shield bearers. Something inspired by the M79 grenade launcher could reasonably be fired one-handed, and is no harder to reload one-handed than a pistol. If it fires the same projectiles as the larger main weapon GL does, then it won't alter the balance of non-shield users (since they could just as easily pack a full grenade launcher for the same effect). Anyone else have any other thoughts?

Odd, the first time I fired the M9 from a crouch I barely managed to keep the weapon pointed downrange as I fell over backwards. Maybe there's a posture where you can use a knee as a platform and still get a sight picture, and maybe it gets taught to people with the center of gravity that allows them to fire a SAW from the shoulder while standing. In any case, changing to that posture would take more time than aiming a shot.

The shield is tactically interesting, but does require some kind of plausible offensive option with it. A one-handed SMG is a plausible option, as is a heavy pistol: Either lots of lead with limited accuracy, or a small amount of moderate hit at short range. Melee attacks are also a possibility, but they would need to be credible in their own right. Would it make sense for the shield to have a melee attack superior to the melee secondary weapons, integrated into it? One of the current uses of riot shields is to charge a target and press them to the ground or wall with the shield itself, disabling them. Scale that idea up to a shield capable of deflecting or absorbing a couple of alien weapon hits on the approach and then hitting the enemy with the shield for a live capture seems like it would be interesting. If the only real role for shields is to protect spotters for snipers or HMGs, I think a possibility is going to waste.

What's the line of logic behind the SMG being a secondary weapon, if all of the other ones are 1-handed? I think it might be better to rebalance it to fill a primary weapon role, maybe with a reaction fire bonus compared to the rifle but lower damage?

Shields, when equipped, are held in the wrongest possible orientation: Horizontally, bisecting the soldier. When fired on by an alien in their front arc, they protect the solder from taking damage by crashing the game. output.log recording_4.rec

The issue with incenting the multiple base as launch positions for soldiers is that, in order to involve interesting options, you would have to assign soldiers to bases in advance of the missions being known (otherwise just teleport the soldiers that you want to the base they launch from, do the mission, and then teleport/assign them back, and it's just adding steps to the same squad being everywhere). In order for the choice of which soldiers to station in which base to be a decision, rather than a random allocation, the player needs some amount of information relevant to the question of where they want their soldiers deployed. For that decision to be meaningful, the player needs to be able to know, at the time of the choice, what the benefits and downsides of each option are. And that requires a game design that can tell them that. Long War 2 makes players do meaningful decisions about squad makeup for each mission, but LWS did that without having multiple barracks, just by having lots of missions, not all of which are known and not all of which should be initiated. Doing that in a manner appropriate for a primary game mode is going to take more design than Firaxis was willing to do. Just saying.

The logic of a good dynamic soundtrack requires integration between the person designing the soundtrack, the person programming the logic, and the people designing the gameplay. Figuring out which music to play when a mission is complete should depend on much more than whether the primary mission objective counts as "complete"; one soldier limping back saying "I'm all that's left on either side" deserves bittersweet, unless only one soldier set out... and that's just the mission end, not figuring out when the action started.

Apocalypse had a similar corner problem, but there was no reason to walk around the corner rather than open the wall. And their falling terrain system allowed a single sheet of drywall to hold up a building.

Even in the modern world, it's common for soldiers to receive wounds that cause them to be permanently unfit for duty without being fatal. A moderate advancement in cybernetics would have them back to near 100% in only a few years. With Alien Magic Sufficiently Advanced Technology, that time can be reduced to the amount appropriate for gameplay, and costs set at whatever is balanced. Something like a broken ankle, that currently has a recovery time of a few months, can instantly incapacitate someone as a soldier for the duration of a mission. (Maybe some of them can still shoot while immobile, but even trained soldiers won't be very accurate when dealing with that amount of pain). Fallout's level of abstraction assumed that almost all bullet "hits" were grazes or deflected by armor. Based on the ease of recovery, a 'crippled' leg was barely a flesh wound.

An interesting mechanic would be instant regeneration of half of damage dealt whenever an attack failed to kill it. If we assume that the enemy starts with 100hp and regenerates half of non-fatal damage, then attacks that did 30 damage each would bring it down in six shots- compared to four shots for the non-regenerating version (50% more). But shots that did 10 damage would take 19 hits, instead of 10 hits for the non-regenerating one. (90% more), and the heavy hitting attacks that are 67-99 damage would still only need two shots, while the obliterating attacks that did 100+ would still be OHKO. Per-turn regeneration combined with a permanent max HP reduction is roughly equivalent, but doesn't generate the behavior of needing to soften them up before hitting them with a big hit, if you can do it all on one turn; it allows for the powerful shot to come first, followed by the weaker attacks to finish it off. Another possible scenario is limiting the total amount of regeneration per mission; either focus it enough on one turn to bring it down, or it comes back at (nearly?) full HP next turn, but it can only regenerate a total of twice its health over the entire mission... or maybe it regenerates to full health every turn, but only the first three turns it has any damage and isn't dead yet? (Yes, that can create a scenario where you want to 'tag' it once per turn for three turns before unloading on it.)

For gameplay reasons, it should be harder to get a full squad kitted out with the best equipment than to complete the final mission with that squad.

Psi powers that grant full control are essentially one-hit kills, especially if other enemies attack the control victim. More interesting options for psi control might be more fun; what if a psi power caused a unit to fail to see a particular enemy (that isn't attacking it?) forget about the presence of a hazard, or to hallucinate a target where there was none? Or to be convinced that their magazine/charge cell was empty/depleted, and replace it? If the aliens have goals in a mission, could making one of them think that their goals had changed be effective? What about gaining the situational awareness of the target, such as where their allies are and what enemies of theirs they are aware of? Psi abilities that don't do direct damage can even be balanced with the attacker being safe from the defender, since the actual attacker needs to be there.

Why, why in any possible world, would you want the program fine-tuned for a situation that isn't the actual final game? An algorithm that is good with units that aren't the ones it will be controlling, or good against units that aren't the ones it will be fighting, is unlikely to be good at its actual job. A fun system will end up accentuating the intended strengths of its units and not negate the intended weaknesses except in a way that is appropriate to the units being simulated. A reaper aware of an enemy far across an open field will run towards it, because that's what reapers do, even though a better tactic would be to hide in a blind corner until within or behind enemy lines and attack suppressed troops from behind. Six weeks straight of programming might not be the most efficient use of time/money. A few iterations of candidates sent to beta testers with the instruction "Find the cheap strategies that are way too effective", followed by algorithm or combat balance adjustments that make those strategies not excessively effective is probably the way to go.

Next on the list: Claymores?