Hazard
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Posts posted by Hazard
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You're supposed to switch shoulders in such a situation. Now obviously, this has a negative effect on accuracy for most people, but as far as I understand shooting from the weak side is a fairly standard* part of practice for professional soldiers.
*Did that a little during my time in the FDF, and it's a conscript army.
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Based on movies and whatnot, people tend to like shooting at people peeking around corners, but never seem to hit them because of the corner in the way. Often, the ones behind the corner get suppressed by the enemy fire and have to pull their heads back to avoid getting shot in the face. There's a bit in Saving Private Ryan in the D-Day landing scene that perfectly demonstrates what I'm talking about. The only way the captain was able to see the enemy without getting shot at (and suppressed) was by using a small mirror.
The wall the soldier is leaning around should give him/her a massive cover bonus. It should be difficult to hit an opponent around a corner. Suppressing them should be fairly easy, though. Once suppressed, the leaning soldier should return to the not leaning position and apply the normal suppression stuff (crouched, no TUs, etc). This means that while a leaning soldier can see the enemy from behind a corner and is very difficult to hit, he/she is more likely to be suppressed. This also works in the favor of the Xenonauts too, since a leaning alien would be suppressed, a shotgun guy would move up and blast them while they're cowering behind the wall.
IMHO, it's a bit of a stretch to say that having a good cover spot would make you easier to suppress. While your instincts will scream to you to stay out of sight, the same thing will happen if you're in the open, except there you would simply hit the deck and try to make yourself as small a target as possible. This is where your training should kick in and help you to start acting against the enemy, by returning fire and/or moving to a better position.
Will leaning soldiers be able to fire while leaning? If so, will they have a penalty to do so? I would suggest a modest accuracy penalty with most two handed weapons, since firing a rifle around a corner is rather difficult to do with any degree of accuracy. Carbines and other shorter two handed weapons should have a minor accuracy penalty instead of a moderate one, as they are easier to control/handle. Pistols and other one handed weapons should have no accuracy penalty (we can assume that the soldiers are ambidextrous for the purposes of firing from left corners and right corners). Perhaps some guns would be impossible to fire around corners with any degree of accuracy, like maybe a sniper rifle. Ever try looking through a scope in that position?I'm repeating myself here, but why do you think shooting a rifle from around a corner is somehow more difficult than shooting from a standing, crouching or whatever position? You can brace your weapon against the corner/wall, something you can't do while standing. If anything, shooting from cover should always be more accurate.
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shooting from a corner is a cumbersome, rarely accurate but better than nothing situation
What makes you say that? Corners offer excellent concealment (at best, only half of your head, your hands and one shoulder are visible to the enemy) and potentially good cover as well, depending on building material. You can brace your weapon against a wall, which alone helps your accuracy a great deal.
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While incorporating the Cold War setting properly into gameplay mechanics may indeed be difficult, I don't really see a reason to stick with the 1979 starting point if the time period is not going to be utilized. What does it offer besides tension between superpowers? I can't think of much (at this time, it's 5 AM here
), it seems more like a limitation in some ways, available technology/equipment being one obvious example. One Finnish gaming magazine actually criticized the original a little for not taking advantage of the setting properly, and while that's quite subjective, I did and still do agree with it. It's a bit of a shame if it will stay as a lost opportunity even in this re-imagining. -
Might be a bit stupid/premature to be asking for news, but how's Pathfinders coming along? You seem to be quite interested in the possible Xenonauts 2, Chris, and I'm wondering what kind of effect, if any, that has on Pathfinders.
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...In a turn-based squad-level strategy game?
XCOM 2012, Jagged Alliance: Deadly Games and Jagged Alliance 2 1.13 all have multiplayer, to name a few.
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Whether you're waiting for a weapon to cool down or recharge its energy/ammo reserves, the end result is essentially the same.
Concerning a dedicated ammo mule, I'm not sure I understand your point. It doesn't really matter if ammo is a non-issue, as long as there is equipment that has limited uses (grenades, rockets, medkits, etc.) overloading one guy with a shit ton of that stuff may be a viable tactic, depending on how the game ends up being balanced. Unless the inventory system is extremely restricted in the style of XCOM 2012 and you can't share equipment mid-mission, but I sincerely hope this is not the direction Chris is planning to take.
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That battery system sounds almost exactly like the weapon mechanics in the first Mass Effect. There were no ammo, only overheating and increasing spread to limit your shots/length of burst. While a system like that is not bad per se, I'd much prefer a more conventional reloading mechanic combined with proper inventory management, so that the player has to plan ahead how much munitions he wants to bring on a given mission. Especially if there's going to be a preview of the map and possibly some other intel.
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I take it the strategic layer, if there's still going to be one, is much more limited in scope? Perhaps only a financial layer, mostly about hiring and firing and acquiring equipment? Personally, as long as the tactical part of the game is good I'm fairly content, but I am a bit afraid you might be making the same mistake as XCOM 2012 did with it's overly simplified strategic part.
Edit: But do correct me if I'm making baseless assumptions here.
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Considering equipment progression, is there a specific reason why you don't simply establish the enemy state/nation/empire as the more technologically advanced side? At least in certain areas like infantry small arms, personal armor and so on, or in some specific types of armament, rail-/coilguns, lasers, plasma weapons, particle weapons, pick your poison. So while conventional firearms make up the bulk of infantry weapons on both sides, and the player's side has a distinct edge here, the Pathfinders arriving with the finest space AKs around as is fitting for a spec ops force, some of the more specialist or elite enemy units have access to even better weapons based on more advanced technologies, simply because their side happened to dedicate a bit more time and a bit more resources to get these flashy blasters out of the labs sooner.
A sort of three-way system could be interesting, where you have your standard, pretty good Pathfinder gear that you start with, but can really only resupply through ammo drops which require CPs that are needed for many other, possibly more important things. Then there's the basic enemy gear carried by the local militia, reservists, grunts etc. which is more or less inferior to your guns and armor but plentiful and easily acquired. And finally, the advanced stuff carried by the enemy shock troops/commandos and of course the Proximan Guard, which is more lethal and/or accurate than your starting armament, and difficult and risky to obtain.
So basically, you start with M1 Garands, the enemy grunts have Kar 98ks, and the elite enemies got StG 44s.
...and yes, I'd imagine something like this would be a major pain in the ass to balance.
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If everyone who may take part in the counterattack is present on the strategic map at all times, then yes, I see the problem. I understood there would always be an attack of some kind, a minimum number of soldiers brought in from outside that you couldn't touch prior to the counterattack, or at best only attempt to intercept on their way to assault you. Kind of like how in JA2 the Queen can spawn groups of soldiers at the palace as long as she still has something left in her reinforcement pool.
"Invincible" was maybe the wrong word to use. Essentially, if the player knows that there's a group of elite enemies that can't be removed from the play permanently, that they just keep respawning right up until the final fight, it feels like a blatant cheat for the AI. This is my gut feeling, without much consideration for other things.
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allowing the player to gut the counter-attack by killing key Proximan soldiers prior to the final fight would allow skilled players to neuter this. That would be terrible for the pacing in the game.
But how does this differ from all the other strategic objectives the player has? Maybe I'm not getting the big picture, but wouldn't this be just another, more direct way of preparing for the final fight? They could simply be really tough, like a team of Mikes from JA2 (only tougher still
), and with a tendency to cut their losses and retreat quickly if the player gains the upper hand against them.I'm also a bit iffy on the cloning thing. I don't know why exactly, just rubs me the wrong way. Maybe because it's essentially the game saying "these guys are invincible no matter how good of a player you are, but they're still gonna stick around to fuck with you". Even though that's the whole point.
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In Long War, low cover gives 0.66 damage reduction, so 2/3 chance to reduce damage from a successful hit by 1 and 1/3 chance to reduce damage by 0. High cover reduces damage by 1. Hunkering down doubles cover DR.
This system could be enhanced to take different cover materials into account. They could give varying amounts of DR, so for example hiding behind a bush wouldn't help at all if the shot connects, but a metal wall might reduce the impact energy of a projectile quite bit.
As I see it, most XCOM maps are far too small. Even in unmodded game, it's often insanely dangerous to attempt deep flanking maneuvers, since the risk of triggering more enemies is very high. If enemies are active all the time in Pathfinders, this is potentially even more of a problem; in XCOM you'll never take fire from inactive alien pods during your own turn.
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Some points from the top of my head
- How destructible will the tactical maps be?
- How large will they be? As I see it, the kind of guerrilla action Pathfinders seems to revolve around requires a lot of room to maneuver, and the 2-action system can keep things relatively fast and fluid even on larger maps.
- If you're going with two tiers of cover, consider adding a cover damage reduction system similar to XCOM Long War mod. It diversifies cover options and helps distinguishing proper cover from mere concealment, which IMHO is fairly important, especially in an urban environment where there's bound to be a lot of things to hide behind.
- Emphasis on the use of suppressive fire and gaining local fire superiority. Pathfinders are going to be almost always outnumbered, so more gameplay mechanics to counter superior enemy numbers aside from just having more health and accuracy. Suppression in XCOM was pretty limited in scope, and sometimes quite useless; it would be good to see it in a more significant role.
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While an elite anti-special forces unit with its own distinct members operating against the player is a good idea, I'm not a fan of every tactical engagement having its own deadline, even if it isn't a hard limit. It does reinforce the point that you shouldn't stick around for too long, but at the same time it would, I imagine, limit the player's ability too much to do the job the way he wants. Since it seems that time is already an important resource on the strategic layer, I'd prefer if that was directly connected to the tactical layer and the main reason to avoid prolonged fighting. It may be difficult or even impossible to do, depending on the scope of the tactical missions and whether or not the game mechanics can be set up to support this.
Jagged Alliance 2 is an excellent example where this is mostly not true; if I recall correctly, one turn in JA2 is supposed to represent 5 seconds of real time. While it might be a more or less realistic amount, the number of turns it would take to have a real impact on the strategic layer is pretty huge. The game drops back to real time if there are no enemies in sight for a few turns, and this is where the player may end up spending a meaningful amount of time. But based on my experience, in the vast majority of battles time is really not a factor, which is in stark contrast to pretty much everything else the player has to do.
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These concepts are certainly impressive. I got a fuzzy feeling that Pathfinders just might have the means to really break the bank and earn a place among the classics of TBS gaming. It's still a long way to a final product, of course, but the foundation seems solid.
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I'm kinda hoping the combat system will end up having more than just two actions per turn. After 300 hours of playtime in XCOM I still feel that being able to do more per turn would benefit the game greatly, and if Pathfinders is going to have a wider range of different soldier actions, stances, movement options and so on, three or more actions per turn seem almost mandatory to make full use of them.
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There are no ATGMs, but a simultaneous assault with several LAWs should be enough, if they all hit. Mortars are also pretty effective, since you can just bombard the immobile tanks without much danger to yourself.
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IMHO, the management part of the OG never really felt tedious, since it didn't take that much time in the end, even though you had to do it rather often. I'm repeating others here, but it indeed was a major part of the "small things" that made the whole organization feel organic and under your control. I'd imagine this impression can be reduced quite a bit by even small simplifications.
And I must say that I really like the quartermaster system TrashMan mentioned. It seems to strike a nice balance between having to buy your starting weapons (dumb for reasons mentioned before) and having the current unlimited supply of them (reasonable, but a bit boring).
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Just for the sake of better moddability, this would be good to have. And, like the OP said, immensely useful for more accurately differentiating between otherwise similar weapons.
Xenonauts 2 - Leaning around corners
in Xenonauts 2 Discussion / Suggestions
Posted · Edited by Hazard
Ha, that's quite the off-topic twist there, but I suppose you're right and this is indeed as good a thread as any for the discussion. It's actually a little strange that Chris hasn't posted up a ground combat concept thread yet, though. The first thing after the holidays, maybe?
Anyway, as interesting as Valkyria Chronicles combat system is, I don't think it fits a more traditional-style turn-based tactical game, which is what I assume Xenonauts 2 is still aiming to be. I haven't played VC, and my knowledge of it is limited to a let's play -series I watched partially some years ago, but it seemed to lack a lot of the precision and "clarity", for the lack of a better word, that I personally associate with the best TBT/TBS games. Granted, the system has more "direct" player agency than turn-based games generally do, but I don't think it's necessarily a good thing to simply have action for action's sake. Having a fluid and active/intense feel to a game, almost any game, is a desirable goal in my mind, but in the case of the "traditional" TBT genre I feel it's better to reach for that goal through visual (animations, animation/movement speed, etc.), audio and UI design, instead of the core gameplay systems. Firaxis' XCOM is, IMHO, a rather good example of this kind of animation work; it's fast, fluid and increases the action-factor, even with all the action cams and such turned off. Also expensive as all hell, I'd imagine, which is obviously problematic for small studios...
Edit: Except that one-handed shotgun pump. That's an affront. ;P
Well, I'm not a game developer and who knows, maybe Chris and co. could make something out of the VC system, but it's not what I personally think is worth aiming for here.