TrashMan
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Posts posted by TrashMan
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On 1/1/2020 at 7:50 AM, Max_Caine said:
You should play Phantom Doctrine then, and see what it's like to give and receive off-map support in a squad-based tactical shooter. It gets very boring, very quickly. The only saving grace is off-map support can't destroy buildings, no matter how ridiculous that would seem (e.g. you can hide in a straw hut and a fully tooled up Hind D can't wreck it).
Game X implementation not being good is not a good argument against a mechanic.
There should be a cost associated with it, limited uses and reasons why you would not want to use it (risky, need alien craft in tact, etc..).
Also, alien AI would need to take it into account. You bring in mortars? They scramble inside houses, hide in bushes or fall back into the alien craft.
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I very much agree with OP.
Armor is so often done poorly. The one thing I'd like that should be brought in from original X-Com is armor coverage - with armor covering different body parts and each part having it's own integrity. Naturally, armor wouldn't be equally as thick everywhere (front torso is usually thickest, arms and legs usually thinnest), nor would every armor cover as much, so there's always risks involved.
Front torso, back torso, left/right arm, left/right leg, head
My ideal armor system would also work in the following fashion:
- each armor body part has a %coverage and protection value. Depending on what weapon hits, %coverage can degrade, maybe every protection value, depending on weapon (some scy-fi weapons or compounds could weaken the armor). If a body part is hit, roll coverage to see if armor protects. If success, then apply full armor protection calcs. If fail, either full damage is done or perhaps with some minor reduction (your undersuit should provide SOME protection)
- armor has a maximum damage value that it can absorb harmlessly (your high-tech power armor will shrug off pistol bullets completely, as long as no weak spot is hit). Heavy armor can render you virtually invulnerable to weak weapons, but there's always a risk of lucky shots (and shots in the back).
- hits above a certain damage treshold will penetrate, but will be reduced (percentage reduction).
- Weapons can have have an armor penetration multiplier that doesn't multiply final damage, only damage for armor penetration calcs. For example, a railgun would do 25 damage with a 3x armor penetration modifier, thus armor will treat it like it does 75 damage, but will still do 25 damage to the soldier, simulating overpenetration with a tiny, ultra-fast round. Thus you can simulate different kinds of weapons. The coverage degradation modifier could also be part of a weapon, which specifies how good the weapon is at stripping away armor. In the above example, a railgun round would make a very tiny wound/hole, resulting in little armor coverage degradation, while something like a plasma gun or explosive could melt/shred entire pieces off.
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You're saying this as if an improved Xenonauts is a bad thing and it has to be something completely different.
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I personally don't like having super-accurate data.
I'd rather have rough visual cues (bleeding, enemy damage model/decals or posture/animation change) or as Jagged Alliance 2 did it, general description (Healthy, Injured, Near Death, etc..)
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22 hours ago, Coffee Potato said:
I'm a little surprised we haven't seen as much of the pixel style approach if just using improvements on old tech to make it work. Namely take Jagged Alliance 2, and use that to make an XCOM game
As good as JA2 was (and it was one of the best games ever made, period) , getting back to pixels is a lot of work and a lot of detail is lost. If you have a 3d engine, you can make full use of it to make things easier.
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On 11/10/2019 at 3:28 PM, Chris said:
It's not just the Access Lift itself, though - once it has finally finished you can then only build four buildings around it. This is particularly an issue if you want to build say three hangars next to each other rather than doing some weird arrangement around the starting lift. It was less of a problem in X1 because the starting building there is 2x2 instead, and has a larger surface area to build from.
Why not add a "dig" function, as in prepare the area for building. It would cost a little, but you can designate as many "blocks/squares" as you want and they would be prepared fast. Once prepared you can build whatever you want. Basically, you can clear the area for all 3 hangars as you finish the lift, for a small time and cash fee.
The only question is - should the adjecent squares be auto-cleared/prepared when you build an access lift?
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4 hours ago, Bobit said:
Trashman's #2 is nice if it's balanced right: cover is WYSIWYG, accuracy falloff makes sense. But let's all agree, in UFO defense it just meant cover was completely useless and kneeling sucked. Whereas in XCOM2, cover as a flat CTH reduction meant that hunkering in high cover was exceptionally effective, which was a nice touch. I don't think Goldhawk should bother with it, let PP spend their millions perfecting it.
One thing I'm hoping for that probably won't happen (because it doesn't in any vanilla XCOM game) is getting a very different tech progression every time. Some games I want to go mostly shotguns, others rush plasma, others rush explosives. Fmpov XCOM games have always favored a more balanced/boring campaign game where you get a normal amount of everything, maybe giving each mission more room for tactical decisionmaking, but not making games very diverse.
XCOM (NUCOM) has terrible shooting implementation. The bullets are not tracked, they do not exist as physical objects. The entire burst is treated as one "hit" (either all bullets hit or all miss) and accuracy calculations are all over the place. Cover is a simple flat reduction that is as soulless as it is nonsensical.
This often ends up a problem with these seemingly simple systems - they end up being not so simple requireing tons of patches and updates for special cases, and even then behave wonky. Remember Xenonuts1, all the issue with cover, corner shooting and elevation shooting? How many times it needed updating?
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A good approach might be the Master of Orion or BOTF one? You can research multiple things at once (which makes sense, because omnidisciplinary scientiests really aren't a thing. That astrophsycists is going to be useless if you put him on xenobilogy research).
you wouldn't have a singular lab, but SPECIFIC labs. Astrophysics lab. Biology lab. High-energy lab. Materials lab. Each lab would allow you to research a different branch:
For simplicity sake, each lab would be automatically filled with proper scientists (they would be abstracted?)
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If you're talking about UI layout, that might have some merit. But again, the game you're referring to is a TWITCH-based game with a single fighter, and the UI reflects that. It just doesn't work well for an entire squadron. And visually? Too cluttered, too colorful. A bad match for Xenonauts, which is more realistic
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That's a literal top-down shooter. I don't think that translates well to a more tactical game where you control MULTIPLE fighters that aren't insanely overpowered as such shooter fighters ship always are, taking on entire alien armadas by themselves and what not.
I get that you like the game, but it's mechanically a very, very bad fit for Xenonauts. Aside from the equipment slots thing, but that is confirmed to already be in X2.
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As the name implies. What would you like to see in Xenonauts 2 the most? Be detailed.
1. Multiple bases and base logistics. To quote myself:
QuoteResearch should be globalized (all science labs can work on the same project, regardless of which base they are in. The magic of internet and data sharing.)
Production should be localized, so you would have production bases, with a practical limit as to how many people can work on something (simply throwing more people on something only works up to a point, especially when working on smaller things, like a rifle)
Resources should be shared between bases with the logistics abstracted. Could be as simple as a connection/line between bases that simulates supply lines. Aliens could attack those lines damaging your supply lines, which would impart temporary maluses to the base (increased production time, staff morale penalty). Would make SAM sites more valuable and give your interceptors more to do - like chasing off enemy craft. Could even generate convoy defense missions.
The way I'd implement it is that each base has it's own storage, but as long as supply lines are in tact, every base has access to materials from other bases - although there is a small fixed penalty when working on things were resources aren't local (like +5 hours to production time, to simulate shipping time).
Supply lines would work sorta like the internet routing - as long as one base can trace a connection to another, it can get resources from it. Players would place supply lines between bases manually and each supply line would have to be maintained. There would be a cost associated with it, and the distance would also factor into the cost (so a 4000km long supply line might cost 4000$ monthly to maintain). What this means that you CAN connect every base to every other base, but it would cost you a lot, so it might not be the most optimal solution.
The beauty of this system is that it's simple and intuitive without being clunky and requireing tons of micro-managment. With the added bonus of it tying into the goescape and battlescape, due to supply lines being interractable.
In terms of generated missions, alien could attack in 2 ways: air strike or ground ambush.
Ground ambush would generate open maps with roads or train tracks, where a train or military convoy would be on the defensive. AI controlled soliders, in the form of train/convoy defense, would be on the map. Possibly a crashed cargo plane map?
Air strike would be geoscape only, with your interceptors scrambled to defend, with convoy escorts and local defenses buying time.
2. Actual use of 3D for hit detection and accuracy
Basically, each weapon has a fire cone - deviation from the straight barrel line. The final maximum deviation is affected on top of that by equipment (scope, power armor stabilizers), solider accuracy and battlefield conditions (stance, smoke, etc..). A bullet is fired with a random deviation within that cone. Recoil basically increases the deviation of the next bullet in a burst, at a certain pace (depending on recoil strength), up to a maximum.
An example: a rifle with a 3° fire cone, with a soldier having power armor that reduces that by 10% (2.70°), shot by a high accuracy soldier that basically halves the cone (1.35°). Crouching might reduce it by another 0.1 degree.
The game just picks a random angle and applies deviation, then traces that projectile from the weapon barrel to the end point. Easy to check if the projectile hit cover or the enemy.
But how would hit percentage be calculated? Answer: you don't need it. Something Phoenix Point did is switching to weapon barrel view so you can see exactly from 1st person perspective how vulnerable the enemy is. This gives more than enough information to the player for a good guess. If you REALLY must have some magical hand-holding, you can use the approximate system - instead of giving a percentage, just give a rating depending on the visible (from the guns point of view) enemy surface area. And this entire system leads to:
3. Localized damage and targeting - arms, legs, chest, stomach, head. Front and back. Makes battles more interesting and armor more interesting. Since you could have a breaching armor that's extra strong from the front, but weak from the back. Different parts of the armor having different armor values (arms and legs being weakest). Leg wound? Xenonauts slowed depending on injury severity. Or he may collapse, requiring spending TU's to get back up. Arm hit? Accuracy penalty. Or weapon dropped. Have a one-handed backup might be handy. Chest hit? Breathing difficulty, loss of TU's, chance of being knocked out temporarily. Gut shot? Good old fashioned pain. Headshot? Assuming you survived - confusion, disorientation, blurry vision.
And since armor degrading would also be localized it again makes thing more interesting and dynamic. And body part targeting? It's a simple as pointing the gun at the center of the body part - the fire cone and natural size of body parts does the rest, without the need for special accuracy tables or bonuses/penalties for shooting at a specific body part.
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Sad to hear, but at least the project can move forward faster now.
That said, there were some interesting ideas in this thread, so you should probably read it and take a few notes for later. Ignore the last page though.
My suggestion would be to copy Birth of the Federation combat model.
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On 10/19/2019 at 10:01 PM, Solver said:
This also happens to be why I'm highly skeptical of any X1-style approach. The Xcom genre is turn-based combat, with a smaller grand strategy part. Top-down arcade shooters are incompatible with the genre due to rewarding a very different set of skills and providing an experience that feels very different.
I don't actually see a problem with that. What is wrong with mix and matching and rewarding different skillsets?
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That might actually be a more preferable scenario, since you would have troops on the ground ASAP, rather than having to send your troop transport. Basically, you'd have no friendly casualties or cargo losses at mission start, which you would/should have if you're scrambling to assist.
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The way I'd implement it is that each base has it's own storage, but as long as supply lines are in tact, every base has access to materials from other bases - although there is a small fixed penalty when working on things were resources aren't local (like +5 hours to production time, to simulate shipping time).
Supply lines would work sorta like the internet routing - as long as one base can trace a connection to another, it can get resources from it. Players would place supply lines between bases manually and each supply line would have to be maintained. There would be a cost associated with it, and the distance would also factor into the cost (so a 4000km long supply line might cost 4000$ monthly to maintain). What this means that you CAN connect every base to every other base, but it would cost you a lot, so it might not be the most optimal solution.
The beauty of this system is that it's simple and intuitive without being clunky and requireing tons of micro-managment. With the added bonus of it tying into the goescape and battlescape, due to supply lines being interractable.
In terms of generated missions, alien could attack in 2 ways: air strike or ground ambush.
Ground ambush would generate open maps with roads or train tracks, where a train or military convoy would be on the defensive. AI controlled soliders, in the form of train/convoy defense, would be on the map. Possibly a crashed cargo plane map?
Air strike would be geoscape only, with your interceptors scrambled to defend, with convoy escorts and local defenses buying time.
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On 10/18/2019 at 1:25 PM, Alienkiller said:
Trashman, I don´t say 1 super-special base. The Mainbase have to be special with all Workshops (Production for Parts of every Description, Weapons, Armors etc.) Laboratorys (Research of Everything), Coordination (Everything from Missions, UFO-Interception, etc.) and so on.
All others Bases are Cannonfodder, because they are Front-Bases. There are the Main-Interceptors, Hangars, Technical Personal, Radars / Scanners, Soldiers. Upgrades on Interceptors and the Buildup from in-house development-Interceptors / Troopships will be fully completed here from the produced parts of the Mainbase Workshops.
What I mean is, that the Frontbases don´t have Workshops and Laboratorys. What the Airfight / Intercepton belongs we will see then. It should come out with the new Version (V.9). I have only raise concerns that X2 will be only a small Modernised Version from X1 with the Things come in again without changes. Best Example is the Base-Buildup Concept without the Change as Main-Base (Atlas-Base) and Cannonfooder-Bases with Buildup-Limitations (no Labs, Worshops).
How is that not a special base? It's only one that actually matters
I never liked, nor ever will like that "all eggs into one basket" concept. It makes no sense and there's no real risk involved.
Research should be globalized (all science labs can work on the same project, regardless of which base they are in. The magic of internet and data sharing.)
Production should be localized, so you would have production bases, with a practical limit as to how many people can work on something (simply throwing more people on something only works up to a point, especially when working on smaller things, like a rifle)
Resources should be shared between bases with the logistics abstracted. Could be as simple as a connection/line between bases that simulates supply lines. Aliens could attack those lines damaging your supply lines, which would impart temporary maluses to the base (increased production time, staff morale penalty). Would make SAM sites more valuable and give your interceptors more to do - like chasing off enemy craft. Could even generate convoy defense missions.
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On 10/19/2019 at 9:49 PM, Charon said:
Even if it means to alienate all players who are on the opposite site of your liking, and like topdown shooters for what they are ? There is no solution which everybody likes, you are just advocating to morph a genre into something which it is not.
How is it something it is not if X1 had it?
Xenonauts always had and will have air combat. the only difference is in it's implementation. That does not change the genre, regardless of HOW it is implemented. Yes, it could be a 1st person in-cockpit simulation, a turn-based clicker, a top-town twich shooter - it would still fundamentally be xenonauts
QuoteYour mindset is that of the strategic one, consider that other people have different tastes. Like 100% of Starcraft 2 players. They appreciate more control over less control.
As someone that played Starcraft I can tell you you are wrong.
Control is only desireable if it's meningful and not a boring chore.
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On 10/19/2019 at 5:40 PM, Charon said:
There is only a tiny fraction of players who like both ( weirdos ), because those 2 fundamental skills talk to 2 very fundamental different destinations in the brain.
Are you calling me a weirdo?
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On 10/15/2019 at 2:11 PM, Alienkiller said:
The Question from cardbpardMike is entiteld. And the Answer is yes to many things. Some are Good, others are Bad. The good ones with upgrades bring a better gameplay and / or eayser Base Managing. To bring in the older Base layout as a interim solution is ok too, until something better get found. But be warned, the Basebuildup-Screen looks exactly like in X1.
The Main Bad thing atm is that the Main-Base isn´t a special Base anymore. That did UFO: Extraterestials much better. That the Devs are thinking to bring in the old Airfight again (the one which you break your fingers), it´s an absoulutely no Go. Only acceptable, if it´s done as a strategic / tactical Gameplay and not as Arcarde-Shooter.
This is the age-old problem of different people and different tastes.
You want 1 super-special base? I don't. I don't like that idea at all.
Also, the air combat won't be exactly as in X1. Chris did say they are looking for different solutions
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On 10/11/2019 at 3:00 PM, Ninothree said:
I'd agree with the orders you were suggesting if they weren't just determined by the conditions of the fight itself. i.e. you need something else in there to influence your choice (my examples were resources and other things in the strategy layer). The altitude and terrain stuff is good. Maybe clouds as a variable would work too. But my issue is still the same. If all the variables are based within the aircombat system (munitions, altitude, terrain, UFO-type), then there is a predetermined best-choice for what orders to give. Once you figure out the best choice, aircombat is a solved system and you will always use the same attack pattern (essentially just a grind, even if it is a bit rock-paper-scissors). For aircombat to stay interesting through the whole campaign, it needs to be really closely interrelated with other elements of the strategy layer.
"Win At All Costs" is an order I deem useless, since how much risk your craft undertake is easily handeled by more specific orders. And as you point out - your global resources are ALWAYS a consideration. How many aircraft you have will always inform your decisions and the level of risk.
for example - let's say that plasma weapons have damage falloff with distance..or worse chance to hit at distance. Then, ordering your aircraft to fight at maximum range even if they don't have long-range missiles isn't pointless. Your own aircraft looses out on firepower (since it tries to keep inside the range of it's longest-range weapon, and thus might not get into cannon range at all, effectively reducing the firepower for increased safety). On the other hand, getting in close and personal means your fighter will get into cannon range, but will expose itself to more danger.
Flying high is good for going fast and lobbing missiles, bat bad for visibility (get detected easier) and mobility (thin air provides less force on your control surfaces)
Flying low makes it harder for you to get picked up (especially in hilly terrain), and you are more mobile in dense air, but it also gives enemy missiles fired from high altitude more speed (as gravity helps them accelerate) and you cannot go as fast.
Just like in ground combat you need to know the strengths and weakneses of the enemies and your troops, the same should go for air combat. Knowing where the enemy craft performs well and where it does not. And the same for yours. Then equipping them to either maximize their strengths or to reduce their weakneses (both are viable).
So, knowing that your fighters excel at low-altitude turning fights, you'd go low, into hilly terrain, forcing the enemy to go after you (since it would be difficult for him to aquire a lock, and it would be easier for you to escape the missile).
honestly, if the entire fight looked like DCS's Tactical View (google it), it would be great.
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On 10/4/2019 at 3:04 PM, Ninothree said:
The crucial thing is to calibrate everything such that those orders are each useful in their own right. In my head, I can see myself always plumbing for 'assault' over 'evade' because the whole point is to win a fight, not dance around. Instead of having orders relating to how to win the fight, construct them to influence the outcome:
Win at all costs: incur damage but splash the UFO (good for intervening in the alien's plans)
Protect the territory: maybe lose the UFO but maintain relations (boosts income, no need for ground combat)
Capture: down the UFO carefully, keeping alien artifacts intact but permitting loses elsewhere (good for your scientists, bad for your engineers and pilots)
Why wouldn't they be useful? Every order would maximize something at the expense of something else, so it would be kinda like rock-paper-scissors, except it wouldn't be an automatic loss/win.
The order you suggest are too broad and make little sense - why would you ever choose anything besides Win At All Cost?
Let me give you an example:
Assault - pilot closes in aggressively at max speed. Reduces evasion, increases speed. Would work best against enemy bombers or craft engaged with another enemy. Makes the aircraft more vulnerable to flanking.
Strike - pilot slows down to attack from max range. Good for fighters with a lot of missiles. Less useful for fighters who focus on short-range guns
Etc.. you get the idea.
The entire system depends on how complex you want it to be. It also depends on what stats the aircraft have.
For example, fighters could have 4 stats - HA-HS (High Altitude High Speed perfomance), HA-LS (High Altitude Low Speed), LA-HS and LA-LS
HIGH ALTITUDE - enemy missiles have a reduced Time To Live if going after high altitude targets (they are fighting gravity and drag more, expending fuel faster - meaning the missile can fizzle out before it reaches you). Increased fighter speed. Increases your own missile TTL against low altitude targets
LOW ALTITUDE - the opposite. Enemies attacking your from high altitude with missiles can do so from longer range and with better accuracy. Flying over flat terrain makes it even worse. Flying over hilly/mountainous terrain gives you defense bonuses. But low altitude gives you better manouverability (in general)
Tough I think this is too complex for the goal of simple fight mechanics. Then again, what is complex depends on the person. To me such as system is simple and intuitive because I have a decent understanding of how arial combat works in RL, which is amusingly enough both incredibly complex and really simple at the same time.
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On 10/2/2019 at 6:25 PM, Max_Caine said:
Here's a thought. The idea is to have a real-time combat system that's sufficiently simplified that it's a minigame not a full game in its own right, while not being a stop/start/stop/start like it was in X1 and have sufficient customisability to make each UFO interesting.
Why not rip off the real time system from the Final Fantasy series? The Final Fantasy RTS system has seen a number of evolutions through the years, but at its heart is a real-time system that gave you time to think about what you're doing, and nowhere was that more evident than in FF VII. You could have the UFO on the right-hand side of the screen fleeing and the Xenonaut fighters on the left-hand side of the screen pursuing the UFO so while the fight is static, it looks as if everything is in motion. When the Active Time Bar for a fighter fills up you can issue it offensive instructions (such as what weapon to use or where to target). When the Active Time Bar for the UFO fills up, you get the chance to issue a defensive instruction (such as where to evade) to the plane or planes that the UFO is targeting.
Why use bars at all?
An auto-pase with fixed duration turns means no reflexes involved at all and minimum fuss. No timing issues.
Couples with simple orders:
Assault - close in agressively
Strike - attack from range
Evade - focus on defense (may still take pot shots at the enemy)
Flank - try to flank
Circle - if turrets are in, this would be useful
etc.
Each move would have it's advantages depending on craft used and weapons equipped.
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On 9/20/2019 at 8:47 PM, Ninothree said:
I had a little look at Birth of the Federation. It seems interesting. I like the idea of a turnbased/realtime meld.
From what the top post says, Chris is looking for something that doesn't involve much micromanagement in the interception mini-game. It has got to be smooth. The idea being that you push all the management towards creating your aircrafts' loadouts in the base management screen. Essentially, the choice of loadouts are the key to this phase of the game, not your orchestration of the dogfight. In Xenonauts, tactics happen on the ground. Ultimately, when a wave of UFOs launches you want excitement (stuff is gonna happen), but you don't want tedium (fighting a long series of repetitive aerial battles). In my mind, it should be almost cinematic.
Agreed. This is one of the reason I suggested BOTF system. It looks/feels cinematic, allows for more variables, and flows rather fast.
But if equipment is 99% of air combat, there's no need to any player input at all, and it can just be auto-calced.
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16 hours ago, Max_Caine said:
A (possibly) unintended result of having a global pool of staff as opposed to a local pool is that I've developed a 3rd type of specialised base after the Factory and the Research Institute - the Habitation Dome. By sticking all the living quarters in one base, I can create some startling efficiencies within my main base. I think it would be worthwhile looking at the consequence of what happens if a whole lotta living quarters were suddenly destroyed by a base raid. I also think it's worthwhile looking at specialised bases more deeply. At the moment, a specialised base consists of the same thing done over and over - the factory for workshops, the research institute for labs, the hab dome for quarters. the efficiencies gained are the concentration of staff and facilities in one place, instead of spread out everywhere. I was wondering whether it might be worthwhile examining the pros and cons of specialised bases and possibly deepening and broadening both pros and cons (perhaps specialised bases generate lots of noise that ufos pick up on? Perhaps factories generate pollution, and research institutes need more resources?)
The only case where specialized bases could have an advantage is workshops/production. And even then only for big items.
Scientists can easily work in a distributed fashion, cooperating via remote communications.
Putting all habitation in one base makes no sense whatsoever (traveling to a different base to work would be grossly inefficient)
In the Defence of Armour
in Xenonauts-2 General Discussion
Posted
If I had to choose, I'd rather have no armor than a poor armor system. It just ruins things if it's too simple. A good, balanced system of armor and injury can give rise to very varried situations that enhance gameplay.