TrashMan
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Posts posted by TrashMan
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2 hours ago, Bobit said:
There's nothing complex about soccer/football either, except physics, which are immensely complex.
Realspace/parts-based damage makes no sense in a game with no realspace accuracy. There's no way to guess how it will work, far more complex than the proposed level system. Doesn't add any depth, only makes things more random until you research them. Only upside is realism, which is not a real upside.
Parts based damage makes a ton of sense in Phoenix Point, because it both has realspace damage and parts that will be wounded for the remainder of the battle and each have their own effects. But that's not simple, it needs a lot of mechanics to work well.
Yes there is. There are plenty of other games that had such system, it's simple in how it works.
You either use 3D collision detection to determine which body part is hit (my preference), or a simple probability modifier depending on body part (I.E. - first roll to hit, then if it's a hit roll to determine which body part is hit). So, for example you'd have a 50% chance to hit torso, 10% head, 10% left/right arm and 10% left/right leg.
If you want to go the extra mile you can add the abillitiy to target specific body parts, which would increase the odds of hitting. Fallout had that a million years ago and it's an ancient game. It also had specific body part damage consequences too.
Damage to limbs and body parts can range from bleeding, AP loss, daze/confusion, accuracy loss, blindness, immobilization, inabiltiy to use two-handed weapons (if arm was disabled), etc.
All of these are interesting because they add more variable to the battlefield. Having to drag one your knocked out/immobilized/wounded men into cover, having to switch to pistol because your arm is shot. All of these are interesting and ad more gravitas to the battle.
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I'll also add that turned-based games with too many troops are a slog, and that squad sizes shouldn't be too big. I'll never bring more than 12 troops.
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On 5/29/2020 at 6:48 PM, Chris said:
Similarly, any armour system where every individual body part has its own individual armour is going to be way too complex when you're managing up to 16 soldiers in your squad, so that's a non-starter too.
I am going to LOUDLY object to this patiently false statement. There's nothing complex about it. Every turn you are going to be selecting and moving your troops, so you are going to be seeing the armor of every trooper. Not that the detailed armor info is THAT important, since limbs are less likely to get hit to begin with.
It is also a false assumption that a player needs to have ALL the information and that it has to be super-accurate.
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On 5/29/2020 at 4:38 PM, Max_Caine said:
Trashman, I must confess I have some difficulty believing that you didn't know the thread existed. You see, I can see that on April the 23rd you checked out the Xenonauts 2 features board - which had the Armour discussion thread, which was titled "New Damage/Armor system" - went to the orbital bombardment thread and gave your opinions on Orbital Bombardment. Are you saying you went to the orbital bombardment thread and didn't once check out the armour thread? If you are, fair enough, but that day when you went to the specific forum on which that thread was advertised would have been your opportunity to give your two cents.
Max, I don't want to sound confrontaional, but I do not care. I'm telling you as it is, weather you believe it or not is not my concern.
These boards are slow so I generally only drop by 1-2 times a month (or when I'm bored) to see what's new. I have no idea how I missed that discussion. There was nothing to draw my attention to it I guess. Perhaps because the armor thread itself was so inactive.
Either way, you checking my posting history... assuming I'm a liar even tough I have been here from day 1 and never lied nor do I have a reason to lie....you sure aren't earning any trust points from me.
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On 5/28/2020 at 1:36 PM, Max_Caine said:
A quick reminder to everybody, address the arguments made, not the person behind them. I'm not going to speak for Chris - he's more than capable of speaking for himself. What I can say is that the post regarding his proposed armour system was put up Feb 26, the last reply to it was March 12, and it has only been removed at some point in May, so there were at least 2 months where it sat for anyone to have a look and comment on. If it's going to sit uncommented on for a month and a half and only garner 8 comments in the time it was up, then the interest from the community in a fundamental system really wasn't there now, was it?
I would have commented... IF I KNEW THE THREAD EXISTED. How the hell was it even up for 2 months with so few noticing? Lul in activity? Corona?
Then again, I'm not camping on those forums 24/7, such important things should be advertised. Especialyl if there were few replies, the devs should have gone and placed a big "Look guys, we need feedback on this, please take a look" message on the top of the forums.
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19 hours ago, Max_Caine said:
Again, unfortunately I can't - Chris has wiped all the threads I guess in prep for the upcoming version. However, I can do a summary:
Locational Damage
Raher than weapons doing 50-150% of damage, a body location is randomly chosen and has a damage multiplier depending on the body part. The examples given varied from 50% to 200%. at the moment, all locational damage will do is determine the damage multiplier but Chris has suggsted that this can form the skeleton of a more complex system which could become DLC later down the line.
Armour HP
Armour provides a squaddie a seperate pool of Armour HP that absorbs damage before the unit takes damage to their own HP. Armour HP is s permanently used when it stops damage, so 20 Armour HP is only ever going to prevent 20 incoming damage.
Resistances
The current armour system, which is a percent deduction from the damage caused by the weapon will still be present, this represents natural or implied resistances, e.g. wearing a rebreather will give 100% damage resistance to gas-type weapons.
Weapon Level & Armour Level
So, this is the complicated bit. It had me scratching my head at the time. All weapons and armour is assigned a "level". When the projectile from a weapon collides with armour, the weapon "level" and the armour "level" are compared. If the weapon "level" is higher than the armour "level" the weapon projectile gains an armour penetration bonus which ignores reistance and armour HP, if the armour "level" is higher than the weapon "level", a percentage of the damage is ignored. The degree of the bonus that either the weapon or the armour gets is dependant on the difference betwen the weapon and the armour.
E.G. If starting heavy armour had an armour level of 2, and the starting alien MAG pistol had a weapon level of 1, then the armour is 1 level higher than the weapon and gains a relatively small bonus, say, 30% of damage is ignored in addition to any natural resistances. However, if an alien plasma rifle had a weapon level of 5, then the weapon is 3 levels higher than the armour, and gains a much larger bonus, say, 90% of damage penetrates the armour and ignores armour HP and resistances.
That the entire system went by without enough feedback from the community is dishartening.
Reading that description, I can't say I like that system. Still better then nothing.
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On 1/3/2020 at 12:33 PM, Coffee Potato said:
You could always throw in the Silent Storm system on top of a more basic system. All the benefits of a locational system without the technical fudgery. (There's an option in SA that turns on critical debuffs, which give all manner of different injuries, from busted limbs, to bleeding, blindness, unconsciousness, etc. You could have a unit in a mech suit suddenly get knocked out by a sniper shot getting through their armor. Felt really cool)
Is what I proposed really that complex?
7 armor pieces (or 5, if left/right arm and left/right leg are mirrored, but that make asymetrical armor impossible), each with 2 protection variables.
I don't see what is hard to understand, if the armor has 50 protection and 70 coverage on the arms it simply means the armor covers 70% of the arm effectively with 30% being a weak spot, hence a 30% chance to hit a weak spot if the arm is hit. I don't think it is possible to simplify this system further without loosing all the good part about it.
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On 5/9/2020 at 3:40 PM, Max_Caine said:
So the way "Mind War" in X2 currently works is, if a soldier is affected it by it you have a full turn before it kicks in to do something. If you kill the alien who used Mind War on said soldier then it stops before it even starts. Otherwise, you can do things like drop the gun the soldier is carrying, or send the soldier off somewhere they can't be a problem. Or you can build mindshields which go into the secondary slot. There are options. It only really gets annoying if you have qute a few aliens using Mind War at once.
Speaking of Mind War, I can think of 3 different ways to spice it up/make it better, since 1 turn to activate it seems cheap: The soldiers fighting back during the Mind War.
1) The higher his willpower, the higher the penalties on all attributes while the soldier is MC'd. Even if he cannot fully break out of it, he can shoot worse than a star wars stormtrooper
2) The solider under MC gets a semi random TU cost increase for all actions (dependent on willpower)
3) The soldier under MC can at semi-ranom intervals (depending on willpower) simply suddenly stop and loose TU's
All of these simulate a soldier fighting back.
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It doesn't fundametally change much. Weather you research a weapon upgrade/addon like a stabilizer/silencer/scope or whatevr, you build a new gun. It is still new research and new production.
The difference is aplicability. While a completely new gun would be self-contained, a scope might be fitted on different guns.
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1 hour ago, Xeroxth said:
Dude. The first game we already have our soldiers using singularity cannons, mind controlling psychics and aliens that can replicate themselves with eggs that grew in a pace that defied the common laws of thermodynamics like the Reapers. Xenonaus is NOT hard in any sense of the word. If we want the game to be actually hard sci-fi the aliens would just nuke the hell out of any big cities and ask for our surrender.
That would be an interesting mechanic.
The game has the alien mothership moving around the map, nuking big cities, with smaller UFO's hitting smaller settlements and doing terror attacks.
You would be in a race against time to find a way to stop the mothership while there's still something left to save (and before humanity surrenders, although technically, you could still keep the game going after that, since you refused to surrender)
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On 5/3/2020 at 9:03 AM, Bobit said:
Codexes are cool and fun to fight. Archons are stupid, so ornate with an artillery strike that can be dodged by everyone. Faceless are too, but they would be cool if they were actual shapeshifters and not just bad chyrssalids (melees which can burrow until enemy is in range or you use a scanner).
I can see why Trashman would dislike Codexes, since they are pure teleportation. But they are a digital enemy, a way to give a face to a power that doesn't actually have one, just like the Matrix. So it makes sense that they don't follow physical laws.
Nah, the annoying gameplay gimmick aside, the concept itself is what I hate.
The idea of data having a physical form, ignoring the laws of physics and being defeated with bullets is so utterly retarded it offends me on a deep level.
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13 hours ago, Max_Caine said:
I can't find the posts now, but I think the original scheme was that you'd have two weapon trees, energy-based weapons and kinetic-impact based weapons (hence the thermal and kinetic damage types currently in the game). You'd have the option to progress down one or both of the weapon trees, hence the early introduction of enemy MAG and then plasma weaponry. However, I suspect that has changed and the progression of weapon types is closer to X1. Based upon my experience of fiddling about with the data files, and having played the damn game since v1 I believe it is more likely now each weapon family will have it's own quirks and flaws and research is linear so you have to research weapon families in a particular order who will be, quirks and flaws notwithstanding, objctively better in the areas that count.
BOOOOO. Hiss, hisss!
I can kinda accept weapon families being researched in an order, but only if it's not the research end, but rather the start of research. That is to say, you unlock ballistic, then lasers, then plasma, but as you move on, more research in ballistic and lasers is unlocked. Basically, new application of newly mastered tech on already existing weapons.
Most people seem to have a very limited thinking of "high-tech sounding and looking = better than low-tech sounding and looking", which has no connection to reality whatsoever. A lot of high-tech things are horribly inefficient, expensive and can have some serious downsides that are way too often ignored.
I find it funny that 40K of all settings tends to be a lot more realisitc in many aspects despite it's over-the-top nature compared to some settings that are supposedly more grounded. Plasma guns in that setting are powerful, but can overheat and explode in your face and have low rate of fire, which is why you want mixed weapons in a squad.
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Earth tech >>>>> filthy xeno tech
Ballistics is king.
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On 4/20/2020 at 10:30 AM, indaris said:
XCOM 2 had even more better ideas. I really liked ALL the Advent troops, but that's a specific "Aliens have won" scenario so I won't touch on that here. There are three really good designs that I love. Archons, Faceless and Codexes.
I find Codexes extremely stupid.
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On 4/29/2020 at 9:45 PM, Max_Caine said:
For example, I would imagine that Androns, Gun Drones and any other kind of bot will be less resistant to thermal damage than kinetic, because that helps push players towards the laser, plasma and EMP families and away from the basic ballistic family. But hey, it is easy to mod that all away and just make each weapon family ++damage. When the game's close to release, I'll probably go over the files and do that for you.
Why do some many devs hate the ballistic family?
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On 4/29/2020 at 9:24 PM, Comrade said:
As long as any asymetry can be easily modded away, I'll be fine.
That "asymmetry" you mentioned from the first XCOM wasn't "tactical" for me. It was just extremely annoying to deal with.
It lead to laser weapons being something you researched and then kept using into the late game because plasma sucked ass against sectopods.
Lasers were only good against sectopods and nothing else, so you had one soldier carrying around a laser into the endgame that could only kill sectopods and nothing else.
Very annoying and I would HATE for that to happen to Xenonauts 2.
Why is that annoying?
It's like complaining you have to carry an AT missile to kill a tank.
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3 hours ago, Bobit said:
The only good part of making weapons completely obsolete is that the lategame will play very differently from the early. Restricting player choice is actually pretty important, otherwise players will choose to play the same way every time, because that's how you win. In XCOM usually this means putting one of every class / weapon on the battlefield, very boring. There's a balance to be had between making all strategies viable and forcing the player to pick a strategy actually results in small-scale tactical diversity. Imo all XCOM-likes have leaned too far towards forcing the player, but it is possible to lean too far the other way.
How is it playing differently? You replace a 10 damage weapon with a 20 damage weapon. There's no change in playstyle at all and there is no choice to make.
It doesn't play any differently at all.
As for the bolded part, it is completely the opposite of what you claim, as it restricts the player even more.
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I am supposed to pick and choose.
Low-tech isn't bad tech necessarily. If I whack you on the head with a big hammer, no high-tech armor in the world will save you from a concussion.
You speak as if refinement doesn't exist. If I make an unobtanium bullet for a ballistic rifle, isn't that "new" tech? Or it still a regular rifle and therefore "uncool"?
Lasers aren't inherently superior to bullets in every way, you have a very binary, game-y mentality of "types=tiers".
Why not Ballistic 1 -> Ballistic 2 -> Ballistic 3, Laser 1-> Laser 2, Plasma 1 -> Plasma 2, etc?
Increasing in lethality with more refined weapons, but different pros and cons. Why do you want to REMOVE all choice in a game that's about planning and choices?
In the specific example you mentioned, THAT laser isn't supposed to be used like a spray-and-pray machinegun. (or it just need a balance pass)
It is logisticaly a good weapon in that you can stay in the field without returning to base and not worry about ammo, basically allowing continous deployments. Nor does it tie your fabrication shops with ammo production. It's not good in prolonged assaults against multiple opponents. As long as you fight in theatres where you don't expect you will be draining it's energy store, it's good.
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It makes sense you'd know the layout of buildings. It's not secret info, there are city maps and google maps. Hell, with Street Cam you could probably watch their every step!
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Given that flying back to base or another mission easily takes a few hours, that's more than enough time to rest
I rather love the JA2 way of doing things in combat. You had stamina that certain weapons and actions (running, climbing, carrying really heavy stuff) depleted it. Stamina was something that you recovered quickly, but led to interesting gameplay.
A shotgun blast to the gut wouldn't damage you if you had armor, but it would knock the air out of you, putting a big hit on your stamina. If you were already low on it, it would knock you down.
That's why you had energizer syringes on you. And bandages and regenerators. Because you had to treat the wounds, no magical instant HP restoration.
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On 4/14/2020 at 10:53 AM, indaris said:
I am a little sad to see Cesareans going back to Sectoid designs. Little grey men are a hilarious idea, but it makes no sense biologically speaking.
Why?
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And since we are on the topic of weapon asymetry and weapons, what weapons would you even want to see in the game?
LASER FAMILY.
- pulse lasers: your typical 40K lasgun or star wars blaster in visual looks. Releases a lot of energy in short pulses, delivering a lot damage to the target. Works like a normal rifle in that regard. Can overheat. Small damage falloff with distance?
- continous lasers: a real beam weapon. Functions a bit differently in that it does NOT miss. However, the damage you do is equal to the hit chance. So, for a 100 dmg C-Laser, with a 69% chance to hit you'd do 69 damage (at optimal range). This basically represents your ability to keep the beam on target as it moves and hides in cover.
BALLISTICS:
- conventional/basic: starter guns. Lots of dakka, can be upgraded and can use different ammo types.
- ETC (electrothermalchemical) guns: using more advanced propellant ignition systems (plasma spark) and propellant, a more reliable rate of fire and greater muzzle velocity (up to 4km/s) can be achieved. This is actually a real thing (look it up). They are like more practical railguns, that don't suffer from the insane energy requirements and RoF issues, but don't have quite the same oomph. Also, they can use different ammo types. Pretty much conventional guns on steroids.
- railgun: simplest implementation of electromagnetically propelled weapons, by simply putting a metal spike between rails and inducing a magnetic current. The vibration and bending of the rails is an issue, causing the weapon to be less accurate with each shot and the rails to degrade fast and need replacement. In practical terms, that would mean that a railgun ammo clip would come with spare rails, making it heavy.
- coilgun: projectile accelerated trough a series of ring that have to be charged in a precise sequence with milisecond precision. Requires a lot more electronics (making it more sensitive) and more capacitors, but the rings don't bend or wobble, making it more accurate and capable of far more shots before replacements are needed.
Both the railgun and coilgun suffer from Rate of Fire issues.
OTHER:
- flamethrowers: self-explanatory. Sets things that can be set on fire on fire.
- Plasma thrower: huge quantities of plasma. VERY short range. Sets things that can't be set on fire on fire.
- grenade launchers
- missile launchers
- acid guns?
- sonic weapons? I guess thermobaric would count.
For POWER ARMOR:
- heavy cannons: as in, actual heavy cannon, not a machingun. Short range, slow fire, BIG round, brutal punch. Like Hellcannon from Phoenix Point.
- HMGs.. like 50 cals. Basically the standard Predator gun in Xenounauts 1
- Gattling guns. Good old painless. Say goodbye to your ammo and everything in front of you that isn't behind heavy armor. Supplying this with enough ammo would be the biggest problem. ETC gattling gun? Now THAT is a scary thought.
- shoulder mounted mini-missile/grenade launcher?
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On 4/19/2020 at 9:09 PM, Comrade said:
Apart from the current state of the laser guns that have a small ass ammo pool and slowly regen rather than reload all at once (Very annoying by the way) is there plans further on to make the weapons more asymmetrical? One of my favorite features of the original game was that unlike the original XCOM, a new generation of weapons was objectively better than the previous version. Unlike in original XCOM, you could safely upgrade all your equipment to the latest version without worrying about some enemies being more resistant to the new weapon, or the new weapon having some annoying gimmick.
I'd also like some community comments about this feature. Maybe I'm in the minority for hating asymmetrical weapon upgrades, or maybe not.
Wait, you WANT a static, linear progression?
That would make you and me mortal enemies.
I hate...HATE that concept with an intensity of a million burning suns. It's dull, soulless, boring, uninspired, brainless.
Every type and tier is the same, just +1 with different graphics. It's so lazy it's an immediate turnoff for me.
Different weapons families should behave differently (but that's not to say you can't have upgrades within a family)
So plasma guns (short range, slow to fire, no plasma snipers, can actually set you on fire) would behave different from lasers (supper accurate, no shotguns, damage fallof with distance?) would behave different from conventional ballistics (high RoF, eats ammo), etc..
But you can upgrade a weapon family. The early, bulky plasma guns could be upgraded to more refined ones with overall better performance, then to high-grade ones (that can maybe go around some limitations?)
So you have variety, with different weapon types exceeding in certain roles, with some overlap (the handgun/rifle role all would share); and you have linear progression. And it all makes sense and fill up the research tree nicely.
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On 4/19/2020 at 8:58 PM, Comrade said:
Isn't the "large bomber" that needs protection the Foxtrot? They removed that specifically because they felt it was too specialised. I do believe the system we are heading towards is 5 or so general-purpose airplanes that only get better through upgrades.
Personally I think that is not the right decision as it makes the air combat more samey, but apparently the devs have other plans to expand on the upgrade system rather than adding new planes.
Agreed. Linear progression of "the same thing, only better" is as soulless as it gets. Especially for weapons.
In the Defence of Armour
in Xenonauts-2 General Discussion
Posted
How is what I described a random status effect?
It's not random (depends on what is hit and how hard) and it doesn't last a turn. A crippled arm doesn't heal itself in a turn or two.
That is a terrible way. Not only is it less coherent and sensible to have random, pointless limits like that, but it also screams ARTIFICAL. OR are you telling me you wouldn't have to explain that to the users, but something as natural as bleeding or broken arm is too complex to understand?