Training Summary

[Gazz]

I have written up the entire concept once more... with a lot more structure and without all the half-baked ideas that lead to this version.

All numbers were made up on the spot and only serve to demonstrate the intent. Too many unknowns to scale anything just yet.

Of course others are invited to add summaries of their systems. (maybe use a different colour for the "headline"?)

Please don't start a discussion about bits and pieces of either.

I simplified several obscure mechanics from the discussion thread.

More transparent and predictable now, which should make it easy for the player to balance his troopers' advancement vs the specialist abilities they acquire.

Give everyone 10 special training courses and they will advance their stats more slowly - but have all the special perks.

Yet, the player can build his army of universal soldiers if he so desires...

Even training strategies become a possibility! "Hang on" with less educated grunts who increase their skills faster... or train them right away and get slower advancement long term. How cool is that?

That is gameplay the players can and will argue about. Real choices! =)

It makes replaying the game a real possibility because you could play with a different strategy.

Recruiting soldiers and other personnel is in many ways related because it also takes a look at the starting stats of soldier and the potential change to the importance of training.

The "Alternate Training Concept" is a far more "condensed" concept which is more suited to a strategic approach to training without micromanaging individual soldiers on a regular base.

Edited October 27, 2011 by Gazz

[Gazz]

Soldier stats

The 6 soldier stats (Accuracy, Resilience, etc) should be floating point values !

That makes it infinitely easier to scale stat gain through training.

Developing formulas around the awkwardness of integers is simply not worth a handful of bytes saved.

The player would be shown integers in the UI. Even LUA should do primitive math like that.

The fractions are then displayed (like when mousover on a stat) as a percentage to the next stat increase.

This is an important visualisation and tells the player that "training works".

This is designed as a transparent system without obscure black-box math or massive randomness.

The player decides who trains what and he gets predictable and reproduceable results.

Soldier Stat Cap

Everyone seems to assume that stats must be capped at 100. Why?

If there is no serious gameplay reason why stats must never exceed 100, there should be no cap.

It's actually easier to code if no cap needs to be checked!

With dimnishing returns from training, noone would reach far (if at all) beyond 100 anyway so it just seems to be a pointless and arbitrary limitation.

Ability Predisposition (PRE)

One issue with X-COM type games is that soldiers tend to end up as clone troopers with pretty much identical stats in the later game.

I suggest a "predisposition" of the various soldier stats.

Every soldier's variable stat range would be 1 - 92, plus 1 - 8 points of unchanging personal bonus.

This bonus is the predisposition (PRE).

Some are just not cut out to be master snipers. They can become very competent but won't be Superman.

The PRE will hardly every change for a soldier so most will never reach 100 in many stats.

Active training courses can add tiny boosts to that but never exceed the max of 8.

Dedicated training can overcome natural predisposition... to a degree.

This also takes a bit of sting out of the chance of, e.g. training a "gun inept" soldier into a sniper.

The increased PRE from those two active courses will ensure that the soldier can reach an accuracy of at least 95.

Also, a "trained" marksman increases accuracy a little faster than a trained medic because the PRE bonus shifts his entire learning table upwards.

To capitalise more on this feature, increase the PRE range from 1-8 to maybe 1-11 while active training courses give higher boni.

More soldier variance would add more colour, too.

The PRE system would give some individuality to soldiers without any complicated perk / achievement system.

Also a very neat effect of this:

A "gifted" soldier would not be penalised by dimnishing returns from training!

Since the actual skill range is 1 - 92 for everyone, the soldier with a higher PRE will reach his max skill just as easily as the clumsy one reaches his. The PRE just sits on top of that and has nothing to do with passive training.

The gifted soldier will also seem to advance faster at "equal" stat levels because PRE simply shifts the entire table.

This is why I constructed it this way. A higher max cap or a starting skill bonus are... meh.

If the soldier is "a natural" at something, this will be a constant benefit throughout his entire career.

[Gazz]

Experience / stats gained from missions

Experience points

Experience points lead to promotions only.

Practical Experience (PXP) aka learning by doing

By using their skills in the mission, soldiers get practical experience.

This greatly aids in passive training once they get back to the base.

Instead of directly gaining accuracy skill after a mission, the soldier gets one voucher for an accuracy skill increase.

Let's call it practical XP or PXP until someone finds a better term.

The player is not told exactly how much PXP a soldier has gained. His accuracy stat is marked with a star or something, telling the player that Acc is going to increase... presently.

There should be a simple cap for how much PXP a soldier can store for each skill.

Maybe 2-4 points total.

I'd actually prefer this being no counter but only a flag, which then is good for x hours of "intensive" training.

No saving up 50 PXP, then watching that stat skyrocket. That's just silly.

This keeps stat gain from missions in check and keeps passive training (as well as R&R for your soldiers!) in the game.

Otherwise passive training would become obsolete if the "good" increases only came from doing missions.

Why a flag and no counter for "15 Accuracy experience in that mission" ?

Getting "direct" increases like in fire your rifle 20 times, get 20 Accuracy PXP?

That only leads to more micromanagement as well as penalising the soldiers with heavy or more situational weapons.

If a soldier only needs to hit at an alien once (or hurt it with a demo charge, or...) to get the full training bonus,

then the player does not feel forced to switch everyone's roles and equipment around so Jim the Rocketman can now use the weapon "that gives more accuracy training".

Any need for silly micromanagement like that should be avoided.

The player should be able to just play the mission without having to worry about which soldier needs to fire the most rounds or kill the mostest aliens.

This is a team effort. All soldiers train equally well - if they participate at all.

That saves a lot of headaches when balancing weapons because no fancy hacks are required to ensure that every weapon grants a comparable amount of training.

If a point system is used then it should have dimnishing returns, such as the intensive training after a mission lasting 5 / 7 / 8 hours if the soldier has used his accuracy skill 1 / 20 / 60 times.

Something like a bronze / silver / gold training... thing... badge... pin...

Still more effort in scaling this because it needs to take into account which weapon was used. A launcher rocket should be worth more than a MG burst. See above. If MG end up rarely firing a full clip in a mission then the "usage" needs to be totally scaled on a per-weapon base.

It's just another can of worms that could be left unopened.

Edited October 19, 2011 by Gazz

[Gazz]

Ranks and promotions

Ranks are divided into crew and officer ranks.

They mainly boost morale for the soldier himself.

Officers

Officer commissions are gained by assigning the soldier to the OCS active training course.

Officer Aura

Officers have an aura in which their men "do better". The range of the aura is dependant on the officer's rank.

One effect of the aura is increased morale. (which would in turn grant psionic resistance)

Possibly morale regeneration.

Alternatively the officer get's a RALLY button he can use every X turns. Depending on rank, it adds a flat amount of morale to the surrounding troops. Definitely needs to have a long cooldown but it would be a nice incentive to keep an officer around when rookies panic.

Another aura effect is Alien Familiarisation, which is automatically included in the OCS course.

(or rather the officer gets the AF course awarded automatically - simpler in game if AF stuff is tied to exactly one flag)

Officers have to spend some time on AF study and other paperwork while their men should work more on their physical and weapon skills.

This way only the officer pays the job complexity of AF and his men gain the benefit.

Another aura effect could be a small boost to Reflexes.

This is given to the surrounding soldiers but not the officer himself.

This makes it more worthwhile to have officers - but not too many. =P

(Soldiers are more organised, having their fields of fire assigned, etc)

Promotions

Promotions can remain fully automatic.

There just won't be any cross-over between crew and officer ranks so the player doesn't automatically end up with a team of all generals.

Might require a few more crew ranks for style but that's mostly text *shrug*.

That the soldiers and officers of such "special forces" have unusually high ranks is not such a big problem when the officer population can be kept in check. =P

Edited October 19, 2011 by Gazz

[Gazz]

Active vs Passive training

Active training

Covers courses that the player assigns manually.

Once assigned, there will be no further micromanagement. The decision has been made.

These courses add specific and situational abilities but ideally, are not very useful outside the job they are designed for.

The only long term drawback to such a training course is the added complexity of piling many specalist jobs onto the soldier.

This will negatively impact his "normal" stat-increasing training

That way you can decide to train a specialist or a more well-rounded soldier who may not have the special perk but perform better at multiple tasks through having higher stat levels.

Passive training

Automatically happens at the base after the soldiers have "rested" for 8 hours.

Soldier stats are increased only through passive training.

That is the sole purpose of passive training.

I would not tie this to a special "Training Center" building.

Seems superfluous and a needless chore if you need one whenever you house soldiers, especially if passive training is an important factor in the whole training concept.

Edited October 19, 2011 by Gazz

[Gazz]

Active Training Courses

Every training course adds a cumulative Job Complexity value for the soldier.

(added amount can vary per course - balancing issue for later)

2 or 3 "jobs" should be no problem but eventually they will noticeably cut into the soldier's stat training.

The Job Complexity mechanic is important because the additional abilities are all permanent and should have a long-term cost as well.

Without that, there would be no real reason not to train anything remotely useful ASAP.

Officer Candidate School

Trains a soldier into an officer.

Automatically credits the officer with a completed Alien Familiarisation course.

Alien Familiarisation 101

Can be trained by non-officers if they have to operate away from the team often.

See below

Marksmanship

See 3 aiming ticks concept.

This unlocks the 2nd aiming tick so the soldier can use assault rifles (and other mid-range weapons) to their full potential.

Adds +1 PRE Accuracy if PRE < 8. It's not much but intensive training works.

It has been suggested that the 2nd aiming tick should also unlock automatically once the soldier gains "high" marksmanship skill in missions.

In this case:

In order to keep the Marksmanship course useful, I would then suggest that the training course also gives a weapon range bonus of

(Marksmanship Skill [assumed 1-100] * 0.04) %

I would drop this complication and rather scale the accuracy values of assault rifles so that the 2nd aiming tick does not add a great deal for them.

Sniper School (requires: Marksmanship Training, Marksmanship Skill > 75-80)

This unlocks the 3rd aiming tick so the soldier can use sniper rifles (and other long-range weapons) to their full potential.

The entry qualifications are there so the player can't just send a few unimportant new recruits to school. Recruits, that he won't miss for a few weeks.

Adds +1 PRE Accuracy if PRE < 8.

Training course also increases the weapon range (non-comulative with the above) by

(Marksmanship Skill [assumed 1-100] * 0.08) %

The training course doesn't help much at all with the use of shorter ranged weapons because the key is the 3rd aiming tick that only the very long range weapons have.

Night Ops Restriction: light armour only (it's a scout ability)

My all-time favourite trait / ability in JA.

Soldier can see further in darkness (whether at night or in unlit structures) and / or is visible to the aliens at 1 less square.

Effectively this gives the (trained) soldiers sight range equal to aliens.

Even with that, night operations are always more deadly because of everyone's shorter sight range and the resulting greater accuracy... for the aliens.

Having a "Night Ops" training course would take a bit of sting out of this while "paying" with a higher job complexity.

If the ability proves to be "very good", increase it's JC rating.

I loved the night missions in X-COM. This would be the icing on the cake.

Demolition / Heavy Weapons / Anti-Structure / Anti-Tank

Adds +1 PRE Strength and Bravery if PRE < 8.

Gives an "armour piercing" bonus when trying to damage things with really heavy armour, such as a tank or a house.

Does not simply give this bonus when shooting rockets or throwing grenades at alien troopers.

The bonus is sufficiently broad to be useable with many weapon types but still limited to "doing structural damage" against things that are typically attacked with demo charges and rockets.

Bonus applies to rockets, placed explosives, (other (accurate) heavy weapons?) and only when attacking structures or "tanks".

Gives no bonus against alien troopers.

Flamer or other heavy weapons would also be covered here because there aren't enough of them for a unique specialisation.

What bonus these could get... well... we don't even know how exactly they will work. =P

This course could also help "hiding" mines better so there is a greater chance that the aliens trip them.

See Land Mines.

Detecting Mines / IED

This is a shortened version of "Demolition" and included in the full "Demo" course.

It only gives the soldier the mine spotting ability, not the offensive abilities of Demolition.

See Land Mines.

Combat Engineer

Adds +1 PRE Strength if PRE < 8.

Can build simple cover.

Using the Klappspaten, the combat engineer can dig foxholes or the likes.

While anyone can use the Klappspaten, the CE would create "better" cover with it or for fewer AP or could improve it to a "level 2 foxhole" with consecutive digging.

Could also be implemented in an abstract way as a pile of sandbags that is generated on the map. That's just an object that can be generated on "diggable" tiles. It would also be passable (not too high) so the player could not wall in the aliens, exploiting their pathing.

Force Recon Restriction: light armour only (it's a scout ability)

Adds +2 PRE Resilience if PRE < 8.

Enhances sneakiness and recon abilities while in light armour. (don't want walking tanks sneaking around the battlefield)

Vision range + 5%,

Range of being seen by aliens decreased by 30% while in cover.

Well, until the soldier opens fire. Firing weapons would nullify this soldier's bonus and require X turns of not firing to gradually build the sneakiness back up.

Support Gunner Restriction: Burst / Auto fire modes only.

Adds +1 PRE Strength and Reflexes if PRE < 8.

Increases the effectiveness when firing any weapon in a burst / full auto mode.

This could be

- less bullet spread

- +1 or +2 bullets fired per burst

- no flat accuracy bonus! This is not a marksmanship course.

- ability to "walk the fire", increasing accuracy through consecutive bursts on the same target.

Requires soldier to stay put to get the bonus so cannot be used (effectively) in CQB but rather

in a "classic" support gunner role, hanging back and well... supporting. =P

Uses a lot of ammo, too, so it would still be useful but far less effective with an assault rifle.

(reloading, moving, switching targets... all break the consecutive bursts chain)

Best used with a MG and 100 round belts.

Close Quarters Battle (CQB) (possible requirement of at least average reaction stat)

Adds +1 PRE Reflexes if PRE < 8.

Increases effectiveness in the dreaded door-breaching and at close quarters in general.

The course lowers the alien's reaction stat (assumed 1-100) when trying to get opportunity fire on that soldier.

This malus to the alien's reaction would be

10 - ( Range To Soldier [capped at 10] ) * 20

The soldier has learned door breaching techniques for not getting shot dead immediately. It's not perfect but it's a bit of a buffer.

It also does diddly squat at longer ranges so while the course is highly useful to your frontline grunts, the snipers, marksman, or support gunners would just be wasting their time.

This course mainly affects the aliens so "CQB" could be a very good career for soldiers without exceptionally skills.

Good reaction would help, of course, but they might survive their job without being guaranteed cannon fodder.

This would be equally useful to new and veteran soldiers because it does not directly scale with the soldier's skill, like most other abilities. It scales with the alien's skill so a newbie who is hired late in the game gets the full bonus immediately, making him somewhat useful in that role without having to train up 30 points of reaction first.

Field Medic

Adds +1 PRE Resilience and Bravery if PRE < 8.

Instead of "just" binding wounds to stop the soldier from leaking all over, every "bind" action also heals a percentage of the damage with a magic healing potion. Maybe 10-25 %.

This leads to lower recovery times if wounds are tended by trained personnel.

[Gazz]

Tiered courses or abilities

Going with the idea that all training courses "cost" complexity, tiered abilities could be balanced well!

This doesn't work well for all active training courses but it doesn't have to.

Marksmanship, for instance, mainly works through enabling the 2nd aiming tick so there's little you can improve there.

The improvement will come through the soldier's accuracy skill.

Most training courses could work as tiered versions, though.

Advanced Field Medic,

for instance, would include more medical studies but get you a better medic, shortening everyone's hospital stays.

You might still want a 2nd medic on the team but would likely only need one "expert".

I feel that a "skill tree" with successive levels of courses would blow the training concept way out of proportion.

It's supposed to be one small but interesting part of the game - not the entire game.

[Gazz]

Caps / limits to courses

It has been suggested that a soldier should (for instance) only be able to take 5 training courses (including advanced levels) and that's it forever.

MMO-style he would be able to "respec to another build", forgeting his courses and learning other ones.

I'm not in favour of such hard caps. They constrict the player, limiting his choices in annoying ways.

Soft caps, like all training courses adding to the soldier's job complexity value, give the player the freedom to train his soldiers anyway he damn pleases.

It's just a trade-off against their rate of skill increase.

Edited October 19, 2011 by Gazz

[Gazz]

Alien Familiarisation (AF)

As aliens are researched, soldiers get the opportunity to become more effective at... killing more aliens.

Once the technology has been researched, all soldiers immediately gain 30 % of the AF bonus for this alien.

The basics are easy enough to pick up. (Don't use incendiaries against this alien. Fire bad.)

A soldier who has taken the AF active training course, gets the full bonus.

(maybe a sniper who works independantly more often than not)

The drawback is that this requires regular homework, increasing the soldier's job complexity and slightly decreasing passive training at the base.

The automatic AF skill of officers gives the officer himself the full bonus but also benefits the men around him.

Between the officer ranks, 50 - 90 % of the officer's own AF skill override the soldiers' lower (automatic) skill.

The range of this aura depends on the officer's rank as well.

[Gazz]

Passive Training

This is how soldiers increase their stats. It has no other purpose.

It's completely automatic and never requires any clicking for every individual soldier.

When soldiers have been "resting" in the base (not wounded), they start training automatically.

Depending on how the pace of the game turns out, this may have to be an idle time like 2-8 hours.

This delay is only there as a very abstract form of "exhaustion".

If you chase your soldiers from mission to mission as fast as the Chinook will refuel then they won't be doing any training in the 30 min of downtime in the barracks. They'll try to sleep. =P

A human also doesn't get stronger immediately after lugging a lot of weight around. First he gets exhausted. Then muscle tissue builds up.

So... whenever a "training tick" occurs for a soldier one soldier stat is randomly selected.

The Training Policy (bottom of this post) would lead to some stats being picked more often, neglecting the others.

Let's say Accuracy was selected.

Now accuracy (which is a floating point number) is increased by

Gain = ( 10 - SQR ( Accuracy - PRE ) ) * ( 1 + PRE / 100 )

The second part would give "gifted" soldiers a small learning bonus ( 1-8 % ), making their individual affinity more noticeable without upsetting the entire system. This would make a soldier's affinity much more meaningful than "just a higher cap".

That results in values like

Skill (excluding PRE) Gain

92 0.41 (0.11)

90 0.51 (0.21)

86 0.73 (0.43)

80 1.06 (0.76)

70 1.63 (1.33)

60 2.25 (1.95)

40 3.68 (3.38)

This gain will just have to be multiplied by whatever results in the desired speed of overall stat increase.

Carefully reducing the "10" above to a value as low as 9.6 means a steeper curve, making it harder to increase high stats.

Gain numbers in brackets are for 9.7.

A soldier's job complexity should probably slightly lower the Gain for normal training but far less drastically than for the bonus training (PXP) below.

The advantage of this over an "old school" system with integer values is that the player can always see progress.

It's a transparent system.

Even if only small increments are added, something is visibly happening.

Practical Experience from missions or PXP

If the soldier got awarded some Accuracy PXP in a mission, then he gets an "intensive training" bonus for... let's say the first 4 hours of training.

If he stops training (base transfer, another mission, hospitalised), the PXP flag is cleared.

Go get another in the next mission.

The bonus is applied by multiplying the Gain (see above) with... something.

The job complexity (from the soldier having many active training courses) lowers this bonus.

Bonus multiplier = 0.8 + 1.5 / SQR ( job complexity + 1)

JobC Multiplier

0 2.3

1 1.86

2 1.67

4 1.47

6 1.37

8 1.3

If you keep piling training courses onto this soldier, he will be losing some of the boost from practical experience.

It won't destroy the soldier because it's still a bonus and then there's the regular training increase...

It's comparable to the old D&D system where multiclass characters would have access to more diverse powers but level up more slowly.

Alternatively, PXP is a counter, not a flag

Works in a similiar way except that the soldier can gain multiple PXP points for a stat in missions.

Each time the bonus multiplier is applied to the Stat Gain, one PXP counter is used up.

There still needs to be a cap on how many PXP points a soldier can store for a stat.

Gut feel says 2-5 but it's a pretty wild guess with so many unknowns.

I'm not convinced that this is a good idea.

Too fiddly. Can't properly display the "intensive training" state as a simple icon because now there is a quantity to it, too.

Training Policy

The player is the commander so he gets to set the training policy.

This is a global setting for all bases and soldiers.

The player gets a list with the 6 soldier stats and gets to mark 2 checkboxes, selecting two of these.

These stats are then selected more often in passive training.

It does not boost / lower anything. It only weighs training a little to train these skills more often than other ones.

In many games, accuracy is typically a stat you have to emphasise at the start...

Supervising / adjusting every individual soldier's training does not fit the scale of the game. That's for smaller scale games like Jagged Alliance.

[Gazz]

Completely Alternate Training Concept

Stat advancement and training (courses) could work in a completely different relationship, too.

Every soldier is always in a training course but the course never ends.

You can assign him to a different course anytime.

The benefit of a training course is a very slow advance outside of missions and more inside of missions.

A training course serves as a multiplier for the stat gains from missions.

Different courses favour different stats.

Marksmanship training might be 130% accuracy, 130% endurance.

Sniper school 145% accuracy, 110% endurance.

Demolition for more strength to carry rockets or throw grenades... etc.

This system would avoid the issue of a soldier "having all courses" and effectively being done with training.

"Training" would remain a valuable feature at any point of the game.

Another advantage would be that there is a minimum of micromanagement.

Once set on a certain "career path", you don't have to pay any more attention to this particular soldier's training. Ever.

No "regular maintainance" necessary, like assigning 3 soldier to follow-up courses, for instance.

You don't have to pay attention to who comes back from which training course and when. All of the "fiddly bits" of other systems are intentionally absent.

The only time you need to change anything is if you decide to change the soldier's direction of long-term advancement.

Which course newly recruited soldiers are assigned to automatically should be a setting on the hiring screen.

The Default course that is selected at game start would be the Jack-of-all-trades setting. Not exciting but no intentional weaknesses that bite the casual player in the ass later on.

Balancing the strengths and weaknesses of certain career paths and battlefield roles is for the "experienced" player to go wild. Specialised snipers might be great at their jobs... but not at everyone's job.

Edited October 27, 2011 by Gazz

[Gazz]

OK here is my Summary.

Passive Training.

To give a visible bonus to stats without having to give huge bonuses.

You could have diminishing returns on the training to prevent troopers capping out all their stats without leaving the base.

I am not overly keen on a random stat boost so I suggest all stats increase by 1 in the period of the passive cycle (say a week) but this is reduced by the percentage of the stat. A 71 marksman would gain 0.29 points per cycle while his reactions skill of 20 would gain 0.8 of a point.

Perhaps something similar for the combat stat gains as well?

Running the numbers through a spreadsheet shows in 52 weeks of training the 71 accuracy would become 82.6 ish and the 20 reactions would become 52.1. Plus any combat gains.

Active Training.

This should avoid giving stat bonuses if possible but instead give bonuses that are not available through passive training or combat.

I know Chris said in another thread that he felt weapon based training reduced overall choice for troopers but I feel it adds more tactical depth to training.

I am leaning towards a role oriented training system that rewards training in specific fields. This should not reduce how effective troops are with other weapons but increase their usefulness with the roles they are trained for.

This involves multi tier training.

The first tier is a basic course that gives a decent bonus to two weapons/roles.

If you choose to you can then specialise in one of these roles for a speciality bonus.

The third tier is a repeatable training course that gives a smaller bonus but can be repeated as often as you want, at increasing training time per repeat.

I would also like to restrict how much training a trooper can undertake by only giving a few training points free and awarding other training points at set combat experience stages. This seems like a useful way to prevent troopers that never leave the base becoming supermen without making it impossible for them to gain anything.

Alien Familiarisation aura is separate from the morale aura of officers (which can be improved by leadership training).

This is just a quick run through of the courses, some or all of these bonuses are guesswork or incomplete.

Suggested Bonuses:

Rifleman: Unlocks Gazz's "extra aim tick" for sniper and assault rifles.

Assault Rifleman: Slight TU reduction per shot/ reload with assault rifles.

Advanced Rifleman: Small accuracy increase when using assault rifles.

Sniper: Unlocks final "aim tick" and gives slight TU reduction per shot.

Advanced Sniper: Slight optimal range increase.

Anti-Personnel: Unlocks Gazz's "extra aim tick" for Machine Guns and Flamethrowers (if applicable).

Flamer Specialist: Slight fuel use reduction per shot or TU reduction.

Advanced Flamer: Flame range increase.

Machine Gunner: Slight TU reduction per shot/ reload with Machine Guns.

Adv Machine Gunner:

Explosives: Small increase to explosion radius for Launchers or Demo Charges (include grenades?).

Rocketeer: Unlocks Gazz's "extra aim tick".

Adv Rocketeer: Slight TU reduction per shot.

Demolition: Reduced TU cost for arming charges.

Adv Demolition: Reduced armour percentage when hitting with demo charges.

CQB: Unlocks Gazz's "extra aim tick" for Pistol, Shotgun and stun baton.

Point Man: Bonus armour from shield.

Adv Point Man: Aura to debuff alien reaction shots. Start at 4 squares and increase 1 per train.

Short Range Combat: Slight TU reduction per shot/ reload with pistol, stun baton and shotgun.

Adv Short Range: Slight optimal range increase with pistol and shotgun, slight stun baton damage increase.

Support skills: Reduced TU's for medikit use and morale aura as if one rank higher.

Medic:

Adv Medic: Returns extra health points when healing (e.g. 3 per train).

Leadership: Increases radius of morale aura.

Adv Leadership: Morale aura regenerates morale points at start of turn (more per train).

Mobility: Reduced TU cost for first shot alignment with SMG's and bonus view range.

Scout: Wider view cone.

Adv Scout: Small increased TU percentage per train.

Mobile Combat: SMG bonuses

Adv Mobile Combat: Reduced penalties for moving?

Combat Xenology: Slight damage increase against aliens and small damage reduction from alien fire.

Xenology - Weaknesses: Gain an aura to increase friendly damage slightly against aliens.

Adv Weakness: Small increase to damage bonus per train.

Xeno Weaponry: Aura with slight damage reduction from alien fire, alien weapons have extra shots.

Adv Weaponry: Gain small increase to damage using dropped alien weapons and small increase to damage reduction per train.

Basic course

Specialist course

Advanced courses

Rifleman (sniper and assault bonus)

Assault Rifle or Sniper specialist training

Advanced Assault Rifle or Sniper.

Anti-Personnel (MG, Flamer)

Machine Gun or Flamer specialist

Advanced specialisations

Explosives training (rockets and demo)

Launcher or Demolitions speciality

Advanced specs

CQB (Pistol, shield and shotgun bonus)

Point Man or Shotgun specs

Advanced specs

Support (Medikit and Morale aura bonus)

Medic or Leadership (morale)

Advanced Medic or Leadership

Mobility (SMG and movement/view bonus)

SMG and Scout specs

Advanced SMG or Scouting

Combat Xenology (Alien Familiarity)

Alien Damage reduction or Alien damage bonus

Advanced damage bonus or reduction

*edit* Should have mentioned that not all of this was originally my idea and combines some of Gazz and catmorbids ideas amongst others!

.

[Gazz]

My inputs were pretty much already included by Gazz and Gaudlike, with the exception of the thought of Unified Experienced. I.e. I don't want the way soldiers improve in combat to change, i.e. learn through use should remain. But the way experience is calculated should be turned into unified experience, so that it can be used in Passive Training to improve those who remain idle at base. And for this, fractions can be used to keep measure of remaining experience.

The difference being, that while passive training is safe, it's also random and much slower, while actual combat experience can give more immediate results, but the soldier is of course risking his neck every single time. But doing passive training wouldn't be useless, since it would count on top of any experience gained from actual combat. The core idea: No points are lost, no measure of training is worthless, and there's no need for any artificial means of maximizing exp inputs or something, because everything adds up together with predetermined rules. Priority being with combat experience and the training stuff only after that.

I can't get the overview list to format properly so I drew it out how I see it. Ignore the points cost on the diagram though. I am still not certain if a shorter training time with a points cost or a static month per course is a better idea.

It seems like we're re-posting here for sanity's sake

What became my eventual take on training:

Passive training: You're either in it or you're not, therefore you either get the bonuses or you don't. Can't (by itself) increase stats. Researched alien specific bonuses are given through this also.

If you gain a stat from combat and are in this "passive training" - You gain one or two more stats than you would have.

"Active Training" - Requires a training slot (just like passive) is solely for rookie training (end result is increase in rank, and small increases in stats that would be comparable to someone who earned the rank by being in combat).

Hmm, I'll repost mine I guess.

Passive training gradually increases stats over time after a time period idle, and also unlocks stuff like aiming ticks, psi-resist, alien familiarisation and other researched stuff. The chance for the unlock is based on the trooper's stat value for the relevant stat/s, with higher stats being more likely. Bravery, Accuracy, Missions/Kills, etc.

Passive unlocks are just the things that you'd ALWAYS want to activate, and are mostly general purpose. Rather than spend time having soldiers unavailable while they train them, they unlock automatically. They just unlock faster for troops engaged in combat alot. Its also where soldier bonuses from research go (like jump armour training and tier mastery). Anything that doesn't fit in a battlefield role (or is a non-specific role, like grenadier) would be a passive unlock.

Active training all unlocks abilities connected to battlefield roles and a small stat increase. Takes about 1-2 weeks. Minimum stat requirement maybe.

Stuff like:

Sniper: having a 'scope overwatch': reduced (and with sniper rifles extended) view cone, but increased reaction chance during overwatch. Requires alot of reserved TU or a full TU bar at turn end.

CQB: get a priority bonus for reaction moves (dodging during aliens turn).

Medics: heal stun and health damage (healing health heals a little bit of stun, and vice versa) and maybe some bonus healing.

Heavy: Not sure. Maybe only take 'moved' acc penalties if they use more than 50% of their max TU.

Assault: having some kind of reaction penalty aura during their own turn.

All of them should be useful when in another role, but work best when acting as the role. Don't want the training system too big since anyone could die, making it a bit of a waste, so each active course has only one tier, and training could make the trooper unavailable.

As a uber veteran nerd of unit design, I would naturally offer some suggestions to be taken into consideration:

The unit advancement system could be more streamlined, less needy of micromanagering and offer more reasonable options and customization possibilities. My biggest concern in too much complexity is that training new soldiers becomes a tremendous chore thus encouraging (almost enforcing) loading the game when one of your soldiers die. I like the idea of a little expendability. People die in wars, y'know.

Training should consist of picking a single "main class" training which determines the soldier's primary role (sniper/medic/leader/heavy weapons/scout/assault etc). There should be a handful of these primary options. If I understood correctly, there will be quite a large number of soldiers under your command, this would help creating some order and shape into your army, and most of us - if not all - will always want to assign some kind of core roles to all of their units.

However, just picking a single class is boring. We want to customize. Therefore: secondary trainings, which give some non-skillpoint boosts and let you customize your units to your taste without too much micromanagering. The amount of secondary training slots would go up with the soldier's own experience level, I would say start from 0 and reach a maximum of 4 or 5 -- however keep in mind that these would offer substantial bonuses. Once you have opened a slot, the time spent training should be relatively small in order to encourage both using your slots and having fun in ground combat.

So, what kind of bonuses would secondary roles give? These bonuses would be general in nature, but also interchangeable between primary classes, which would result in more interesting primary-secondary combos. They could give 2-3 non-point bonuses each, such as more firing speed, more ap, more dmg versus certain enemies, more accuracy, more interrupts, better sneaking, more carrying capacity, faster reload, automatic weapon expertise etc -- pretty much anything you can think of.

The prerequisites for trainings should be removed because they really contribute nothing and are just micromanagering. Also that would make it possible to lessen the micromanagering even more -- you could order a group of soldiers to be trained in a certain way by selecting several soldiers at once and setting a shared training path for them. For "chaff" you could even preset those paths so that the soldiers would automatically start training as you ordered when they reached a new secondary slot for example.

Also: first post. Hi everyone!

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[Gazz]

some unnecessary clutter. Take PRE for example -- that holds no other function than to make you micromanage your units roles so they get maximum stat increase.

It does not require micromanagement and without such a system all soldiers end up as generic and faceless clone troopers.

I don't know why anyone would want that.

Micromanaging players will find a way to micromanage in every system. There is no point in trying to prevent that because that's what they enjoy doing.

Since your first thought was "micromanaging to maximise stats", you are apparently one of them. =P

[anotherdevil]

You've been busy! Will give these a read later and will get back to you. Go you!

[Wolfpox]

These are some amazing suggestions, but I have one concern to tack on at the end:

- Integrate new stuff as much as you want after the game is released, patch, DLC, or sequels. You guys have an engine and the parts, tweaks, changes, and improvements should be made later, I would certainly be interested in paying for them.

[sloan_55]

Hey! I feel represented. Thanks Gazz!

[MickeyC]

wow ... a very thorough summary of your thoughts Gazz. To look at, such a lot of explanation etc, to me it feels like to is too complex, but ... after actually reading everything you have makes sense.

I love the practical experience from missions having an impact on the effectiveness of training, even the "loss" of this bonus if leaving the base again.

Being able to specialise through specific training regimes is good, one of the few things I liked in UFO:Extraterrestrials. The issue I had with them is each course gave a flat bonus to certain things, and if you already had that bonus it was removed from the bonus of any other courses, i.e you could get a +1 to a skill from course A, but if course B also involves that +1, it does not become a +2.

From the look of how you are structuring things, with formulaic percentages and with the lovely law of diminishing returns, it seems that no course will give a 0 bonus to an involved skill (except perhaps at very high levels - or more likely a + 0.00000001 ), so there will always be an advantage to put soldiers through a training course.

That said putting everyone through as many courses as possible and, as you say, ending up with soldiers who are all the same is not desirable. So I like your PRE idea, with soldiers being pre-disposed naturals in some an area would really help to make differences I would add also though the idea of having a -PRE, something that a soldier is just not equipped to do. If we take your suggestion of the PRE being a 1-8 level, then the -PRE could either be a -1-8 as a direct opposite, a -1-4 to be a lesser effect. Or to really make something stand out the -PRE can go to a static -15 or even as much as -25.

Now I know some may think that if these are meant to be elite troops, there is no way they would be "that" bad at something. But consider if we take it that stats are capped at 100, then even at -25, that has a stat total possible of 75, which realistically is still in the very high level, or if as Gazz suggests stats not be capped, but the higher a stat is the lesser the gains, then the -25 only really means that the stat that they are pre-disposed against will just reach the higher levels a little slower. To really exacerbate that deficiency the -25 might not be a flat static i.e GI Joe has base accuracy stat of 50, but is disposed against marksmanship so starting accuracy with a flat -PRE is 25 - that bites even for a rookie. But say the -PRE is not a static 25, but is actually a hit against how quickly they advance, therefore Joe's accuracy still starts at 50, but his -PRE against accuracy means that the first 25 points he would gain through training are negated. So 10 missions in say, Joe has earned sufficient experience and has fired enough that he has gained 28pts towards his accuracy, his natural difficulty with accuracy means his stat level is only 53, but from here on he will gain normally, but the -25 still hits his figures, so for future advancement purposes the formula runs as though his skill is 78, not the 53 that is actually utilised.

Now I allow that this may be too difficult to implement, but it does, to my mind, give a realistic spread of soldier levels, though thinking now - particularly with the last para I have above about the -PRE, I think -15 would be better than -25

and FIN

I'll consider more later and see what else I come up with

[Leto]

Wow started reading this and this feels like a wet dream if most of that would ever be implemented ...

I almost love every aspect, except maybe that people shouldn't be bothered about micromanaging in missions to train soldiers. I actually love that part of the original X-COM games, I mean a soldier mainly equipping heavy guns or rocket launchers isn't your typical guy that needs accuracy, so he shouldn't be 'jealous' of the 'snipers' in his team. But I agree he should then gain some other stats or any other form of reward for being part of the team.

Also I think you mention too many forms of training, I like the blend of active and passive, but the training in the bases should be limited, the missions should have the most impact.

This being said I haven't read everything yet so you might have hit that issue later on.

[Chris]

I will actually read this at some point, though I've not got round to it yet.

[Gazz]

Also I think you mention too many forms of training, I like the blend of active and passive, but...

This thread is the result of the work of many posters and many threads on the old forum.

I admit that much of it is mine - especially when I got to shaping it into a coherent concept.

And it's also true that there is more than one concept to begin with, even with just "mine".

It's all just suggestions. Ideas and features to be used or discarded as needed.

What's actually feasible to implement is an entirely different kind of animal.

Personally, I won't bet any money on the more complex systems seeing the light of day. No way, no how.

The "Alternate Training Concept" is a far more likely candidate.

It allows the player long-tem control over his soldiers' direction of advancement (careers), allows for the "tweaking", that so many armchair-generals desire, yet it does not enforce any micromanagement whatsoever, which makes such a system palatable to the console generation.

And let's face it, these people are customers, too. The "moral superiority" of a niche game is probably not a great concern for Chris. =P

Xenonauts should not become the avatar of ardous mouseclicking-orgys. The goal is undoubtedly to offer depth of gameplay without excessive micromanagement.

And that's an achieveable goal. It just takes more careful planning than cramming features in for the hell of it.

[Leto]

Sad to see the word 'console' popped up again, and it's popping up everywhere destroying the good games. I just hope it doesn't happen here. Considering playing a game like this on a console already gives me the shivers, but heck so do FPS games on a console and for some reason people buy that as well, more every day, screwing the future of first person shooters.

While I don't want a discussion started around this, I just hope I don't have to face any gameplay decision from the devs based on something that can't be done because it has to be playable on a console too. That would really scare me off and I'd be sorry for my money that I used to pre-order it. I didn't plan on paying a penny for that

I'm 30 years old and I still remember things from the TFTD games I played when I was 14, I know that's sick, but I'd be sad if another attempt of making a decent sequel would be ruined by some non-pc issues.

A lot of mouseclicking is involved in the first 2 x-com games, I never minded that at all, heck I still don't (yes I still play TFTD!). A big part of the game for me is the development of the soldiers, heck I cared more for them than finishing the game really. I loved trying to get the rookies some confirmed kills while my higher officers had their back. I can't really explain it but after TFTD I never seen any game where I felt so involved, and that development was the biggest reason I think.

Micromanagement can be cool, but that's just my opinion Details make a game for me, I just hate it when they let some out on purpose to please some idiots who like to play the game on a console more, the list I encountered is endless and it makes me sad.

That said, Xenonauts makes me happy I have a lot of suggestions myself but I've seen things I really like from a lot of fans here and I discovered this project late so I doubt I could contribute anything at this point when the game is like a half year from release.

Edited October 29, 2011 by Leto

[Sathra]

Its wierd, I didn't mind the mouse-clicking at all before.

Then after playing with the loader I'm using for the LP, then playing a game of TFTD on the side...ugh, so much annoying clicking.

But I agree, I love having growth on the battlefield completely up to me. Makes me feel more involved than having something rambling in the background upgrading stuff.

[Loki45]

I actually played the first X-com game on the Playstation and I was hooked from the start. It was a port from the pc, so there were some annoying issues, but nothing that killed the game for me. Console gaming can be done right, but I think the issue here is more the demand of general users of consoles as opposed to console gaming itself.

[Hoywolf]

wow I love all the features mentioned above!

I have some questions about the specializations, will they appear to be like a skill/talent tree, and will other ability take into effect other than just having better use of AP or weapons? Such as the point man having more vision, the heavier tanky classes take less damage (not including armor)?