StellarRat
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Posts posted by StellarRat
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Exactly. The pilot ranks in the US Air Force are loaded with Lts. Captains, Majors, Lt. Colonels and even full Colonels.It's not a regular army, it's special team. In the group ALFA, the russian spetsnaz no any fighters in rank less than 1st lieutenant. In majority they are captains and majors. -
Damage is highly variable just like it was in the original game. As in real life a shot may just graze your soldier or it might hit him right between the eyes. The damage from a hit is multiplied by .5 to 1.5 randomly. The damage numbers you see are the base damage. So, a weapon that does 30 damage could do 15 - 45, but the AVERAGE will be 30. You need to play very cautiously to avoid getting your soldiers killed at Veteran level. That mean ending your turn under or behind cover and crouched. Never leave a soldier out in the open. He'll likely be killed if there are any aliens around. At the start of the game especially your troops are extremely vulnerable to any type of hits. Most alien weapons can one shot your troops until you get to Wolf armor. Pretend you're the one getting shot at and try to figure out what you would do to stay alive with a bunch of snipers waiting to shoot you, but still trying to carry out your mission.
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Well, that explains it! I don't play RTS games, so I never played Command and Conquer.
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Can someone please explain this "GDI" and the golden bird that Jean-Luc posted? Apparently, there is some gaming history here that I never experienced.
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I've created a new thread about officers, so you can discuss it there. However, I prefer the more passive system for officers - albeit one where they still act as force multipliers, but not in an active way. I think things start to get a bit too cartoony when you've got people shouting orders and buffing their units to superhuman feats.
Your officer approach is what I would want in a game of this type. A passive boost to the troops.
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Yeah, it pretty much stopped whenever any of your soldiers had a chance to take an action during the enemy turn. You could, of course, elect to do nothing. Yes, JA2 turns could be pretty long, but it was a very detailed game.As Jean-Luc suggests, you could have a complex reaction/interrupt system but that (I imagine, having never played JA2) would almost certainly slow the game down considerably since any time the enemy does something play needs to stop to give you the chance to interrupt if you want. (Indeed, that seems like it would be really clunky. Was it like that in JA2 or was there some way that this was mitigated?) -
If you make the reaction fire system fine enough the situation will resolve pretty realistically. The results can appear to be simultaneous for all intents and purpose. Both soldiers could be shot at the same time. However, that also requires giving up some freedom to the AI during the enemy turn. If you want something better you'd have to go to a real time system or a WEGO system. Turn based isn't the best approach and you'll always end up with some kind of hybrid system that will have it's own issues.Move-shoot-move is not how it works in real life (nor is it realistic), because real life actions resolve simultaneously. If a guy runs round a corner you can just shoot him while he shoots at you, even if you've not telepathically saved up a bunch of action points specifically for that purpose. -
The move shoot move exploit can more than just mitigated with a good reaction fire and aiming system. It can be pretty much eliminated. That being said move shoot move IS how real soldiers fight in cover dense environment. Watch any video of street fighting and you'll see that's exactly what they do. Even in a simple FPS that is the standard tactic. I guess I'm saying that I disagree with your assessment. However, I agree that if there are a LOT of bad guys some streamlining will probably need to be done.
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An improved reaction system would be a good start. Reaction fire should be able to happen anytime and influence enemy actions BEFORE they are completed. For example: You have a soldier watching a doorway. The enemy opens the door and throws a grenade. In Xenonauts there is no way to stop that from happening at best you'll shoot the alien AFTER he throws the grenade. In the NEW system I am thinking of the action of opening the door and throwing the grenade is broken down into individual time units by the software and each "increment" of time is analyzed to see if one side or the other can do something using modifiers for weapons and reflexes. In the example above the enemy might get shot THROUGH the door before he even has a chance to open it all the way OR maybe he opens the door and gets shot before he can get the grenade off OR maybe he gets shot in the act of throwing, OR maybe after he throws, etc... it all depends on how many time units are used in the presence of an alert defender. Obviously, it could also be possible that the enemy is very quick and pops open the door and shoots your guy before he can do anything.
What I'm not proposing is that you have do this "breakdown" through players orders. No one wants to issue a move up to door, open door, pull pin, throw grenade set of orders (well at least I don't). It would simply be a finer breakdown of the Xenonauts reaction system done by the computer to produce more realistic and interesting results.
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Any semi-auto or full auto weapon will still have a huge advantage over a scoped single shot rifle in close combat, of course. If the sniper misses with his first shot after opening a door, etc... he's probably going to die.Sniper rifle was just used as a generic term for a scoped rifle and doesn't cover every potential option for barrel length, scope option etc etc, but then it was never meant to. It was supposed to get across the general idea of a high powered, long range, high magnification scoped rifle in a way that was easier to type and easy to identify with. It is of course perfectly possible to fire such a weapon at short range and score a hit, or even just clobber someone with the gun. -
Let the rookies do the scouting and the veterans do the killing. Some of the rookies will make it and others, well, you get the idea.
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"Sniper rifle" is also a very flexible term. In the hands of trained marksman nearly any rifle can be used for "sniping". There's a lot more to it then just having a scope and accurate rifle. It's a skill that you have to learn and train for. Also, at close range, you can simply sight down the barrel of a rifle or just point it by instinct and fire accurately enough to get the job done. The only thing you give up with a "sniper rifle" is rate of fire and pointing speed. Even that can be eliminated with the right kind of scope. There are scopes that also allow you to see through the "iron sights" on a rifle for close combat. I'm in Chris's camp on this.I also don't agree that the only way to make a sniper rifle viable is to give it a minimum range. -
The probability rings that someone suggested would solve the issue nicely, IMO. If you had 50%, 70%, and 90% rings the player would know what the odds were. So the inner circle would mean 50% of the shots will be within this circle, the next ring out 70% will be within this circle, finally 90% will be within this circle.Except then the player loses the ability to easily calculate the chance of hitting something using the green circle. If the head of the enemy fills half of the green circle, you'd expect a 50% chance of hitting it...whereas in fact you might actually have an 80% chance of hitting etc.You might dismiss a long range shot where you have a 30% chance of hitting a tiny exposed part of the enemy because it's only a few pixels wide, not realising how effective it would be (of course the AI would can crunch the maths instantly so wouldn't be handicapped in the same way you are).
Aim Point*---------50%----70%--90%-outer edge
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I guess if the probability is that you will hit closer to the center of your aim point than the edges that works fine.The lack of reliability is already implied by the fact it's a circle, rather than a specific pixel you hit every time you shoot. There's just a limit of how much you can miss by. -
Max: Just to be clear my definition of wild shot is NOT shooting someone standing beside you OR even 45 degrees off the side of the target like we had in early versions of Xenonauts. I'm just talking about a RARE shot that doesn't land in within the predicted "circle" of possible hits. That happens sometimes. I would still expect even a "wild shot" to impact close to the target zone. There is no such thing a 100% reliability in any system human or mechanical.
As far as distribution it should be more hits at the aim point and less and less as you move away from the center. You can't use a simple X, Y, Z randomness because that will end up drawing a spherical or circular shot distribution pattern around the aim point. There are formulas for circular error probabilities: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_error_probable
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You're going to lose soldiers from time to time. I'd say my average on Veteran is one per mission. On terror and base missions you may lose a lot more. The biggest problem beginners have is moving too fast so that there are no soldiers with enough TU to fire or return fire when an alien is found AND no TUs to move under/behind cover. Another problem big problem is failing to end your turn with all your forward troops under cover or completely behind cover.
Maybe if you tell us how your guys are getting killed and what all happened on that turn we can make some suggestions. Screen shots are excellent too. It's probably something easy to fix. You shouldn't be losing half your men on Lt. Scout recovery missions.
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A few thoughts/questions to consider:
1. Is wild shot impossible or would something have to happen to the shooter in the act of firing to throw the shot off? Also, it's quite possible to have bad ammo or simply a very inaccurate weapon.
2. Realistically, no one ever really knows with 100% certainty if they will hit a target or not. They just "feel" whether or not they have a good shot. So, I'd say that you should have UI options that allow the % chance and "hit circle" to be modified, "fuzzy" or turned off completely.
3. Will you allow parabolic missile trajectories? These can be greatly affected by differences in vertical plane of the shooter and target.
4. If you going to implement a proper shooting system you'll allow have to allow for recoil effects from automatic weapons that are gunpowder/chemical propellent based i.e. the first shot will be the same as any other shot, but the succeeding rounds will have muzzle climb (or other types of aiming deviation thrown in.)
5. Will the movement of both the shooter and target be taken into account? If so, will the relative angles be taken into account? For example: A person running straight toward or away from the shooter is much easier to hit than someone going across the line of fire. This effect is magnified by speed. If both the shooter and target are moving it gets real messy.
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They're all Red Shirts to me.Red Shirt #12 -
My opinion is that opening doors should cause a full reaction fire calculation to take place, be it the UFO outer doors or interior doors of any kind, no bonuses or modifiers except below Veteran level. Blowing the doors should only trigger "normal" reaction fire calculations i.e. the reaction fire is triggered after the door is blown and a Xenonaut or alien moves/shoots within LOS during same turn. Proper beaching tactics should always be needed i.e. by using a person with very high reflexes to make the entry or using a combination of explosives, smoke and stun/flash weapons. (Grenade throwing attempts should probably also trigger reaction fire i.e. you could be cut down in mid-throw, but I'm afraid that would require a complete rewrite of the reaction system.)
I think putting in the code than allowing some extended play testing would be the best approach. I have a feeling it would be good change, but you never know.
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I know this isn't "real life", but no soldier in their right mind would stand right in front of tank that is firing it's main gun. The muzzle blast can kill you.
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Well, if nothing else Goldhawk has proven that a better XCom is possible with enough persistence. It's almost unfortunate they started with an XCom Redux because I'm certain that given the experience Chris has gained he would do a much better job of it now in a lot less time, but such is the nature of learning how to write software. Mind you, I'm not saying Xenonauts is not good, but it could have been an "A" or "A+" game instead of a "B+" game.And that's totally fair. Still, the successful publishing of Xenonauts bring me hope that there will one day be a better XCOM.
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I'm not too sure I want another "better" XCom from Goldhawk right now. You really have to enthused about a game to put in the hours required to get it done. By the end, you are sick of working on it even if you started off excited. To start another game based on the exact same theme without a break is a good way to go crazy. Battlefront did three WWII themed games with the same engine and then switched to modern warfare because in their words, "If we had to do another WWII game we just wouldn't do games anymore." i.e. they were completely sick of WW II and the engine they were using. Instead they took a couple years off rewrote their engine and released a modern warfare sim. Now, over 12 years later they are doing WWII again. So, I'm glad Chris is on to something different now.
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I received my disk today from the Royal Mail! Woot! I live on the west coast of the US, BTW.
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This is a cool idea. Even if the aliens have emergency lighting it won't be as bright as normal lighting, so I can see/justify switching to night mode on the destruction of the second power core.
Xenonauts V1.52 Experimental Released!
in Xenonauts-2 Releases & Patch Notes
Posted