Langy
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Posts posted by Langy
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Nomenclature. Also, I think in StellarRat's system the penalty-to-hit-when-not-surprised was the same penalty as the penalty-to-hit-when-in-cover, so there'd be no bonus to surprising/flanking a target that isn't in cover.
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Seems like a backwards way to do this. Why not apply a penalty to accuracy if the enemy has cover And take it away when they don't or they are surprised?
I believe that's exactly what happens, except there's a bonus to-hit when they are surprised rather than a penalty to-hit when not-surprised (because that's silly).
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I doubt that an X-COM alike genre will ever be as oversaturated as Guitar Hero-types. Yes, success will likely create imitators, but that hasn't killed RTS games (see all the C&C-alikes that have been spawned over the years, and the fact new ones are still released regularly).
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Flanking also allows you to shoot at the target while he's facing away from you. This allows you to take the time to line up the shot more carefully than if you needed to watch out for him firing back at you. It also means he isn't going to be ducking or dodging your shot, because he doesn't know it's coming. This can easily justify the bonus to hit from flanking.
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There's no narrative; it's a 4X strategy game similar to Civilization but set in space. I suppose, technically, there's something of a story behind everything and a few things change around, but it's pretty much invisible and only evident in a few things like race names.
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True enough, though I actually understand why they went with class abilities and such - in reality, these soldiers would each have a distinct military occupation specialty, and they'd specialize in specific fields - you wouldn't have the heavy weapons guy suddenly start acting like a scout/sniper.
I just hope the abilities don't completely detract from realism; making it so only one guy carries a rocket launcher is fine, or the sniper's overwatch-type abilities. But making it so only one type of soldier can do something basic like flank or aim or something? That would be pretty stupid.
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I'm not sure about that - I know that sniper rifles can't be fired if you've moved that turn (so they can't snap-shot). I wouldn't consider that aiming.
I'd be fine with every basic soldier being able to 'aim' a weapon as part of the 'every soldier can do this' set of abilities. Sounds reasonable - just means the sniper gets to aim better and faster than everyone else, which is also fine.
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Yeah, I noticed it as well.
I didn't want to say anything because I don't know much about these things, I thought maybe there is some way that a dish can receive signals underground but it does look very silly. Almost like a form of artistic irony, sheep herding dogs, that sort of thing. Why is that dish even needed if they use satellites for detection? Ground radar for the base area, satellites for everywhere else? Seems weird.Yeah, I agree that it seems weird, but it's actually (relatively) realistic. It's a satellite uplink, and radio waves can penetrate the ground if they're powerful enough and at the correct frequencies. It looks a little odd, but it's at least plausibly possible. No idea how well it'd work in reality, though - don't think I've ever heard of anyone using ground-penetrating radio for ground-to-satellite communication before.
I think I can get behind what they're doing here. Increased accuracy through flanking should promote more tactical thinking. If you want more favourable shots you need to work on your positioning, setting up crossfires and such. Doesn't sound like a bad change.As for the research and the way missions come up I have a feeling much of the campaign is going to feel very scripted but hopefully that won't be the case. It's like people today don't know what to do when left to their own devices and instead need to be fed these binary choices to provide an illusion of decision making. At least the Firaxis devs seem to think so but we'll see.
I have no problem with the research bit - researching more than one thing at a time was never a worthwhile proposition in the original, so eliminating that isn't a big deal. We haven't heard enough about the mission structure for me to have formed an opinion either way, but I do like the sound of multiple types of missions at least.
I'm not a fan of 'no aimed shots', though. Flanking's a great change, agreed, but you should still be able to sacrifice a move action in order to fire an aimed shot or do suppression fire or whatever.
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Something they accidentally said gave me an idea. Specifically, it was something like "In this game, you're commanding an alien invasion." Of course, the guy corrected himself shortly after, but it gave me the idea:
How about an X-COM type game where you don't play as X-COM but, instead, play as the aliens? The tactical game would work pretty much the same, but the geoscape would have to be radically different. I think it could be pretty bloody fun.
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I'm pretty sure we'll hit $150k, so I've shifted my hopes for $190k. I really want that military base tileset, damnit! Come on, someone's got to have $50k just lying around waiting to be spent on something I want!
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Now we just need it to hit $190k so we can have the military base tileset and tileset specific soldiers.
A boy can dream, even if his dream is unlikely to come true.
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It's funny, but when Alliance was being touted about, all I read at the time was "AWESOME!!111!!!". Now they're actually going to release an xcom FPS it's all "O NOES!!!111!!". I wonder what would happen if they decided to remake TFTD and Interceptor? (esepcially if they gave Interceptor over to say, Volition.)
I would not complain about that. I desperately want Volition to get back to making space flight shooters; if they make one, hopefully they can be convinced to make another (Freespace 3, I'm looking at you).
In any case, real excited for XCOM: EU now. That trailer was pretty cool, and while they have changed things, they haven't changed enough for me to say 'screw that, I don't wanna play that game'.
The main thing that I'd change, if I could, would be randomized maps. I just hope they have enough of their non-randomized maps for me:/
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Honestly I prefer the auto-upgrade.
But if people want some type of action, i would say an upgrade button on the turrents themselfs would be the best solution. I don't like the idea of needing to manufacture, just make me think why don't i just build it and then sell the old one.
This is the second time I've seen this misspelling in this thread (and the billionth time on the internet), and I've just gotta ask.
Where are you getting the 'n' in 'turrent' from? Turret does not have an 'n' in it, and it doesn't even sound like it does. Is this some kind of extremely odd European thing? Do you guys across the pond actually pronounce 'turret' with an 'n'?
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I thought it might be the latter. Office buildings etc as I though that a base defence mission would be able to give you an underground military base and I thought base defences were already going to be included.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking, too. It'd be awesome, and could well serve as a 'downtown' type map.
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I really doubt that you've worked on games with harder to use map editing methods than the submap editor for Xenonauts. Even editing the current submaps via textfiles seems easier at first glance - at least then I know what to do. The only 'hard' part is figuring out what the various possible props and tiles are, and that's honestly not all that difficult, since you can browse through them as simple PNGs in the 'tiles' directory.
Oh, another idea I just had to spice up submaps - the ability to have different submaps for different levels/floors. That way you could have multi-floor office buildings (or ships) where you don't need to create an entire new submap just to switch out the layout of one floor. Anyways, just a few ideas - no idea how possible it'd be to implement things like that at this stage.
EDIT: Woops. Just tested the submap editor again and, while it's still horrid, it does actually show you what you're doing - it just does so in a separate window that I hadn't realized existed.
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Now I see 3 things potenitially coming out of this.
1) Someone comes in and creates a massive range of various levels using the now 6 tilesets, making vanilla awesome.
2) Chris no longer has to worry about when he will have time to make the maps. delegation
3) The inclusion of a dedicated level designer with experience might bring about a streamlining of the map creation tools.
Agreed; the current map creation tools are, well, not easy to deal with. Especially the submap one - I have no idea how to utilize it. Would be much easier if it had a graphical design tool where you could 'paint' the submap. As-is, I doubt we'll get many modded submaps, at least for a long while.
One other thing I'd like to see would be sub-submaps. Basically, allow submaps to be recursive and reference other submaps, to be randomized. That would allow for much more variation in the randomly created maps than we've currently got.
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This looks quite interesting. I'll definitely be reading the novella when it comes out, and the news introduced me to an author who writes novels in one of my favorite genres. Good news all around.
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I would not say I am exactly against it I just don't see it as a big deal.
The focus of the game is on your soldiers and their progression.
The vehicles are there to support your troops on the ground.
You can already upgrade your weapons or replace the vehicle with a different one.
That is good enough for me.
Adding crews (not just a single trooper remember but potentially a commander, gunner, driver etc) also adds complication and balance issues.
You are asking for a whole new feature to be added, it is up to you to persuade people why you feel it would be a worthwhile addition to the game.
Soldier promotion already exists in the game and has always been a core part of this genre.
Having multiple ranks in a military organisation makes sense to me.
Tank with Laser Turret being better than Tank with 50cal Turret is a nice obvious difference.
Having Sergeant Tank with 50cal being better than Private Tank with Laser Turret makes less sense.
Of course it makes less sense. You're deliberately giving an example that makes no sense.
First, the actual vehicles shouldn't 'level up'. Only the crews (or pilots, however you want to put it) should. They should be transferable between vehicles. If you can't do that, then I agree that it shouldn't be done. But an experienced crew using one vehicle should be better than an inexperienced crew using the same vehicle.
And yes, in real life not all tank commanders are the same rank or have the same skills, exactly like the troopers.
Basically, what I'm saying is - the game should be about the troopers, and the people manning those vehicles should be treated just like the poor bloody infantry. Just because they're inside of a vehicle doesn't mean they're automatically less important than the infantry, and the game shouldn't encourage you to treat them like they are - and that's what making a super-experienced tank crew be equal to a complete rookie crew does.
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I can completely understand people thinking that there could be better uses for the money, or wanting other things to go first, etc - I'm just surprised that so many people apparently don't want vehicle crew leveling no matter whether it'd be super-easy to implement and cost no resources or not. I still don't see the innate difference between 'vehicle crew' and 'troopers' if you allow vehicle crews to level up - sure, in X-COM vehicles were expendable and not at all really 'part of the team', but if you do vehicle crews right you could change that, make it so vehicle crews actually feel like Xenonauts and not just 'random sacrifice number 3'. How is giving the vehicle crews some kind of life and attachment to the player a bad thing?
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[Personally I am not a fan of vehical or pilot levelling - too much like games workshop, doesn't fit for me into the feel of everything/body is completely expendible]
I keep seeing comments like this, or mentioning 'oh, we can already level them up sorta by giving them new guns!', but I honestly don't understand it. Why are you against pilot leveling but for infantry leveling? They have literally the same exact impact. Just like infantry can switch out types of armor, vehicles can switch up to new tank hulls or interceptors. Just like infantry can switch out to new weapons, vehicles can switch out to new weapons. Both of those are already in the game. I completely fail to see why you'd resist making the similarities complete by offering vehicle pilots the option to level-up just like infantry can level-up.
If you are against vehicle leveling, can you explain why you're for infantry leveling? Or do you want to remove leveling altogether?
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Looking at other projects, I expect the final tally to be somewhere between $150k and $400k, but I doubt it'll be much more than that unless revamps in the stretch goals and reward tiers (and mentions in the press) dramatically change things.
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Soldiers gain experience and can have improved armour.
How would you do it with vehicles without ditching the vehicle when something better comes along.
By ditching the vehicle when something better comes along, just as you mention in your next statement:
Transferring drivers etc would create an extra level of complexity to implement.I agree that it'd be silly if you couldn't transfer drivers, but I see no reason why you wouldn't be able to do that. Assume 'pilot experience' includes 'pilot transfers'.
My super tank 1 might have veteran status and better accuracy, but it will still have paper thin armour.My mega tank 1, would do more dmg and have better armour anyways, due to the progression model that means vehicles stay robust alongside troops. Also a better driver\gunner might react faster, but he cant physically make the tank do more damage.
Vehicle experience shouldn't increase either damage or armor. It doesn't increase damage on Xenonauts, so I see no reason why you'd expect it would with vehicles. Armor, unlike Xeno health, shouldn't increase with experience.
But vehicle experience could certainly improve reaction times (for better reactionary shots during alien movement), improve driver ability (increasing vehicle TUs), and improve accuracy (allowing the tank to hit the enemy more often). With aircraft, it could improve turning radius/laser beam dodging capability as well as accuracy and probably a few other things.
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-dislike leveling vehicles- as we have improved ones as the game progresses
Do you dislike leveling soldiers? You've got even more options for improving them than vehicles as the game progresses without even touching the leveling system.
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A mock-up fake medal from the game but done up in actual metal with a fancy ribbon etc. Not sure on the cost of that however.
I was just about to suggest this. A cool faux military medal would be awesome. I've got no idea what it'd cost to create, though.
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I'd like to put in my vote for Vehicle Experience, or, more specifically, pilot experience. I want to be able to shuffle vehicle pilots/drivers around and make them actual characters just like your soldiers. This would even allow you to make it so pilots could leave their vehicles after they're destroyed (for example, as a rescue mission for a downed interceptor pilot, or the crew of a tank could bail if they're lucky enough that the alien plasma didn't immediately incinerate them but it did break their tank). You could also have one tank pilot/driver go from the start tank and then slowly upgrade his vehicle to newer models as they come off the production line. Would be awesome. May be too much work, though - we'll see how well the Kickstarter does.
The impact of pilot experience might be a bit difficult to deal with too, though. The main things you'd want would be bravery, reactions, marksmanship, and possibly two vehicle driving skills (one for pilots of aircraft, one for drivers of ground vehicles). Someone should work on a full-on proposal for what to do with pilot experience before fully deciding 'yay' or 'nay', I think.
Female troopers at $200k looks just fine by me. Military terror missions would be excellent, too. And, of course, new tilesets.
A new alien race doesn't seem all that needed, though. The other thing I can think of that you might want to put in for 'stretch' goals would be things like the new UI and the other bits already mentioned on the Kickstarter page.
Firaxis Games' XCOM: Enemy Unknown announced!
in Off-Topic
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That too, yes:p
(and it's Langy, one L; if it were Langley, like the CIA's headquarters, there'd be an E in there too)