451
-
Posts
14 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Downloads
Posts posted by 451
-
-
I love the idea of separating the officers from the enlisted; immersion is a massive part of games like this to me and having a squad of colonels irks me in a way I didn't think possible.
Some ideas if you want officers to be secondary combatants. I'll preface this with a real life example. Officers are far and few when compared to enlisted, however they're expected to be the most competent and thus lead by example. This is what is framing my thoughts on the following suggestions.
Officers should be readily more capable than the new enlisted man. If this truly is an extra-governmental agency and is being funded by multiple governments then it would stand to reason that your selection of officers is the cream of the crop. Example: NASA selects only the best pilots from the US military to pilot its spacecraft.
So where does this stop an officer from being the only unit fielded if they're better than grunts? Two items combine to one effect for me. One is to create officers in a facet where they are beneficial primarily to grunts which I'll elaborate on shortly. The second is to limit the number of promotion slots for officers or the number of officers available for recruitment based on total number of soldiers*.
To facilitate a game play difference among officers and enlisted (if that's the chosen vernacular) I would make officers a passive/active buff element. First, the active buff, would be a command issue order that provides an immediate and powerful bonus to the effected troops e.g. on a grenade like grid all enlisted soldiers within fire two bullets per single fire attempt without an accuracy penalty. This would cost TU's or an AP, whichever system you elect to use, and thus use up that officers ability to fire.
The second would obviously be a passive ability much like morale lost reduction on a soldier dying but we could bring in variety to this. One officer may have a LOS range bonus called recon for the squad, another may have an accuracy bonus for the squad, so on and so forth. This would reflect differences in personality with the characters and may even reflect a players strategy e.g. a player may hunt for offense oriented officers or morale boosting officers pending on which suits their play style.
So to conclude, the last thing I want to see is 6 colonels on the field fighting aliens. It's highly unrealistic (though what is unrealistic when aliens are shooting plasma at you?) and is a consistent reminder that the player is playing a game. To me, these options add variety and spice to a game that already has wild variety in its play.
*Side Note: I would like to see fielded ground forces increased in size from 8, up to around 20. This is more in the platoon range of sizes and represents the one advantage xenonauts have, immediate and overwhelming numbers in a localized area.
-
These are not bad ideas. I like the idea of specialization and of having groups as I do something similar with my X-Com game already. It does have the potential to be a little OP, but I think it'll help alleviate the sense that players have when they're trying to decide what role a particular individual should fill.
Overall, I support this, Cityonhill.
-
Yes, just as the title says, this is a thread about recollecting the soldiers you had in X-COM or what have you that stuck out to you. It could be any number of them, just let your story go and tell us why.
I'll start with saying Shigeru Noguchi. The name is apparently also the name of a famous go player, but he happens to be my first X-COM Commander. His rise to prominence included killing two sectoids in one mission with a single reaction burst, so I had a feeling he was eventually going to be someone special.
-
I guess officer promotions would have to be based on experience gained as a group somehow, then you choose who to promote. It can't simply be based on buying soldiers because that's not right. Presumably we could do something where all the experience gained by units at Sergeant rank and above goes into a pot and once it reaches a certain amount, you can promote any of your Sergeants or officers by one rank?
Being able to choose to promote NCOs or Officers is an interesting idea. I'm not sure if it's inherently better than just having limited promotions above Sergeant (chosen by you) and then REALLY feeling it when they die. It's more complex, but not necessarily better - bear in mind troops will increase their stats independently of their ranks.
I just saw this from Chris. While I can see this being effective, I'm a little reluctant to let go of the notion that you have to have x amount of troops before you can get a higher ranking officer. The experience pool for choosing an officer is a great idea. I know Xenonauts isn't a 1 to 1 remake of X-com, but even then X-com didn't force you to have too many soldiers for a commander to be brought in (30 for 1 commander).
I also enjoy the idea of making it a finite resource much like the original X-com. Maybe allowing 1 of each rank to be open immediately, then expanding based off of numbers would be a better solution.
-
top rank is colonel, second to top rank is commander
And Chris England (lead dev) is British
Are you talking about Xcom or xenonauts? XCOM EU has the highest rank a Commander, where Captain is the highest in TFD if that's the case.
-
TFD used naval ranks where as X-Com EU used shortened Army ranks with Commander being the highest.
-
Forgot to reply to this part.
It didn't really matter about the rank so much to me.
Your better troops would regularly be lower ranks when they can still gain stats when there is no promotion available.
If you take your commander along but hang back and avoid getting into the fight (or leave him in the base so he was safe) you would eventually find that your squaddies who had no available rank to progress to had better stats than your high ranks.
It becomes much more devastating to lose an experienced squaddie in that situation than to lose the commander.
The commander is having no real influence on the fight while the main combat role has moved from your elite (but low ranked) soldier and given to a rookie.
If promotion is not limited by a pyramid structure then you always know that the higher ranked trooper has gained more stats than the rank below him.
That is one of the many reasons for the discussion about using non real world ranks for progression.
The ranks show how much the soldier has progressed, it doesn't really relate to their role in the fight as a real world rank would.
There is an active discussion about how higher ranking individuals affect morale when a soldier is killed. Bringing out your one commander on a mission would be beneficial to a mission you feel you're unavoidably going to lose soldiers in, because you have to assume that risk in order to maintain combat effectiveness.
As to your earlier statement about how you work your squads, yes, it is a play style, but my understanding of Xenonauts and X-Com is that it absolutely rewards you for having a greater area of coverage, which means bringing up multiple squads to man these stations. If you sank all of your high-ranking operatives into one base, you would have a disparity in the effectiveness of your squads to maintain cohesion when the inevitable losses occur.
I firmly believe that if you have a morale bonus or loss due to an inherent bonus from a rank then it is necessary to have a pyramid style rank where it becomes a finite resource. If the ranks are only mean to associate with a level it becomes the opposite, morale should be a static gain or loss unaffected by how many captains or rookies you have.
-
That was posted by Gazz last year though. I'm not sure it's still valid.
Doesn't that depend on how the pyramid structure works? If you can only have 1 colonel 3 captains and 5 lieutenants then you can't have 12 colonels in your active team.
Needing x lieutenants to promote one to captain also prevents that.
Or am I misunderstanding what you meant?
As far as it stands, unless there is something to the contrary that I am missing, it stands as is with what Gazz has stated.
Pyramid structured ranks means that after x amount of soldiers have been recruited, a slot opens up for promotion and is granted to the most meritorious individual. Example: After 6 soldiers have been recruited in X-com, you can get your first sergeant. After 11 soldiers, you can get your first captain, and another sergeant slot opens up. It continues to progress like that, with one overall commander allowed for up to 250 soldiers, 10 colonels, 22 captains, 50 sergeants and unlimited squaddies and rookies.
You were absolutely meant to protect your officer types (Sergeants, captains, colonels and commander) because not only was there a huge penalty to morale immediately, but the loss of the mitigation towards future losses could be devastating for rookies you're trying to bring up.
-
why do you believe that? where exactly have your research found any indications that this game will not have a pyramid rank structure? as far as I know the rank mechanics aren't done yet and I seem to be the only one in this whole thread that doesn't want a pyramid structure? (might be someone else that can do without it, but the majority seems to want it.)
This is direct from the FAQ pinned at the top of this particular section of the forums.
That's from Gazz and as far as I know that is what will be in the game.Q. How do soldiers increase in rank, and what attributes does it offer?A. Soldiers are promoted once they have earned a set number of attribute increases on the battlefield (in any statistic), with later ranks requiring more attribute increases to attain promotion. Rank is not tied to the number of soldiers the player has – you can have a team entirely comprised of Commanders if you are skilful enough!
Increased rank provides a bonus to the morale of the rest of the team (and therefore psionic defence). This also works in reverse, so bringing newly recruited Rookies along to the fight actually provides a morale penalty to the team, at least until they have earned their stripes in battle and been promoted to Corporals.
I can see that type of logic affecting the current XCOM re-imaging done by Firaxis considering that you only have 1 base, but playing the original XCOM where I would build up to 3 or 4 response bases coupled with a few manufacturing bases I would have anywhere between 40 to 90 soldiers, while rotating high-ranking officers to new bases so to have the veterans spread around with the influx of new recruits. Xenonauts seems to reward you for building extra interception bases as you can effectively cover more of the world and respond to alien threats more often. The missions that they would run, which would be very frequently, would mostly comprise of A captain or colonel, 2 to 3 sergeants, and the rest being 6 to 7 rookies and squaddies for the interception crew, with a small contingency back at base in case of an emergency base attack.The pyramid structure is nice on paper.However if you have an active team of 12 troops with another 100 back in the base your active team are almost certainly going to be your 12 highest ranks anyway.
The only time the pyramid structure works is at the start of the game in general.
Personally I don't really care either way.
As long as there is some progression and my active troops benefit from it the most I am not going to be overly concerned.
-
I believe it is as you said, Xenonauts promotes based off of stat increases gained, which leads to situations where your entire army is compromised of Captains or what have you.I don't think Xenonauts and X-com promote their soldiers on the same basis. It was my understanding that Xenonauts get promoted based on how many skill points they have gotten? Have I gotten that wrong? How does Xenonauts get promoted?
If there was an option to check where the rank structure was a hierarchy or not, I would be for that. However, this is not the case, it seems to be from my research on the forums that the base game will have one set rank structure, which is a completely meaningless one were it's only representative of a level gained by your soldiers.Heh, funny. Most people on this forum champions giving players choice, this is one of the few times I see someone else advocating limitations
My posts have been about advocating a pyramid rank structure and why I feel it's beneficial to the game. If you're talking about the OP then I believe he was just talking about the rank names that could potentially be in the game, I was talking more about the benefits and ramifications where limited ranks and bonuses (and penalties) to morale coincide.Still I'm confused by the discussion. It seems you are assuming a pyramid structure in your argument why you prefer pyramid structures over letting everyone be top ranked. It wouldn't be as huge a risk to have my captain up front if i have 6 captains. You know what? I've completely lost the thread here.
I don't believe you'll be the one having to do that.That's fine. I'm still going to mod out the pyramid structure for my own personal enjoyment (that does not affect anyone else)
-
You could do all sorts of balance mechanics to counter your whole team panicking after the second captain dies. Like for instance let captains take less of a hit to their morality when a soldier of same or lower rank dies.
I'm not sure I think not being allowed to play with my best dudes because my team would panic if they died is good game design. I want panic to be in the game but I don't want to be forced to have my chinook babysit my high ranking soldiers.
If you want to play the game that way and protect your high rankers then go ahead and do that. you obviously get enjoyment out of it. Me, not so much.
The high ranking individuals in Xcom for me were, more often than not, not the better individuals in the squad. They did get the rank bonus for when they leveled up, but after a short while in the game the squaddies eventually surpassed them with getting battlefield experience.
In talking about good game design, I believe that it is. You can send your captain or colonel out first, but you're assuming a huge risk for minimal gain based off of stats not to mention acting short sighted in the grand scheme of the game, it's not as if the game simply refuses to let you use your high-ranking officers in dangerous scenarios.
Overall, I believe that having ranks being a finite resource based off of the number of soldiers present adds a level of complexity to the game that fits right in with the overall terrifying feeling of the game.
-
For the most part I agre with this (especially the PTSD definition) But I'm hopeing that I will be able to mod out
I want all my soldiers to be captains (or whatever). There is no chain of command so there isn't any point of a pyramid structure imo.
If a soldiers rank has a modifier to how much morale is lost when they or someone else dies then I want that to be limited by having a smaller pool of high-ranking officer types to lower echelon troops.
It would make a high-ranking morale-loss-reducing individual a finite resource while also causing it to be a tragedy when they are unfortunately struck down in the heat of battle. That was part of X-com, keeping the captains and colonels back while the squaddies and rookies do the dirty work.
That would be the point of the pyramid style structure.
-
I believe that the XCOM system of having promotions as a limited resource is a system that immerses you in and is superior therein. I do agree that the change needed to it would be to have control over who becomes promoted, though this needs one more change. Have it be where a meritocracy is what takes control - soldiers who actually preform on missions gain promotions away from corporal (I assume that's the equivalent of squaddie) can be selected for promotion to sergeant and higher.
It was a simple change that made it more realistic in my mind. Immersion is an important part to me and it makes me behave much more realistically.
Xenonauts 2 - Soldier Morale, Officers & Ranks
in Xenonauts 2 Discussion / Suggestions
Posted
I'll clear up as much as I can.
First, I use the nomenclature US Military because I'm speaking about multiple branches.
Second, yes, all pilots are officers but not all pilot officers are from the air force. Pilots selected by NASA come from the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, all of which have their own air operations.
Third, in every one of those branches the pilots are expected to know as much about their planes as their ground crews while also knowing how to pilot the plane and have escape and evade training, thus strengthening my statement about being more than capable.
I figured as much. Though not a main point of my post it's loosely tied into some tactical changes I feel should be made, however there isn't an appropriate section yet for these thoughts.