Some thoughts on ground mission grind

[Hiawata]

I've played the game a bit now, though not as much as I would have liked (not enough time), and I just wanted to share a few thoughts.

OK, first of all, I think the game is awesome. I love the graphics - I've yet to see a 3D game that can make a map as clear as a 2D game can. Oftentimes, I actually prefer 2D graphics. (By way of example, I prefer Civ2 graphics to Civ4 graphics.) On top of being clear, the graphics are nice. I think a lot of thought went into balancing the game as well. I love how you can only be content and within your comfort zone for a while, and that's if you play well. As soon as you think you've got your soldiers trained up, or your air power up to scratch, something new happens, and you have to adapt. I even like the little things, such as the attempt to explain in the Xenopedia why the aliens start out invading with small ships at first, even though they have a massive fleet.

There is one major thing in ground combat that I don't like, though, and I wanted to share my thoughts about it. Obviously, the game is, as I understand, not going to be developed anymore after 1.5, but I still think it would be a nice discussion.

First, I'm playing a Veteran Ironman game. I find that Ironman mode forces you to really engage with a game (whichever game it is), of course if the game is designed to be playable without save-loading. You have to think about what you do, you have to be careful, etc, because the consequences stick. Veteran also forces you to be careful. Thusfar, I haven't had problems with the ground missions. I've won all of them, usually with none to few losses. I always move from cover to cover, I always crouch, I always make sure I cover all possible directions where the aliens can come from, I wait for all my soldiers to be in good positions before moving on, etc. Well, to the extent that these things are possible in a given situation.

Now, the ground combat has clearly been designed to be playable and winnable if you play it this way. However, the missions tend to turn into a grind because of this. For example, I carefully walk out of the dropship, take cover if there is some, if an alien shows up I concentrate my fire, then I take a few turns to better position my troops, then I carefully move a few soldiers to explore a bit more, while keeping other directions covered, etc. When I need to explore a building, I will normally position some soldiers to keep an eye on all possible directions that the aliens can come from, then carefully send a few others into the building, I will always save TUs for reaction fire, move from cover to cover, send two-man teams into rooms to be able to bear down more firepower on an alien if one is inside, etc. The problem is, it takes, oh, I don't know, 20 turns to go through one building then. Perhaps it's less, I don't know, I've never counted, but it feels like a long time. And, it proves to be pointless in the vast majority of cases, as there are no aliens inside.

So, a good part of a ground mission for me is turns of more or less nothing happening. But, if you play ironman and veteran, you can't really risk trying to speed things up by sending scouts to their likely deaths or by assuming that there's no alien in this or that building, or behind that patch of trees, as it might just happen that that's exactly the time an alien really is hidden somewhere. And that soldier or two you'd lose due to your carelessness might just be those $20,000 that you'll have to dish out for new soldiers, that you'll then lack for a radar or a foxtrot. I guess what I'm saying is that I feel like this is a situation where you are kind of forced to go through a big-ish number of boring turns. It's like a trade-off between more risk or more boredom, except that it's not a real trade-off, because if you chose more risk, you're also chosing to lose the game.

Actually, this is not limited to Xenonauts - I had the same problem in Jagged Alliance, for example. I only played Firaxis' X-Com a bit at a friend's place, but that one seemed quite a bit more dynamic in this respect. I don't know why that is. Smaller maps, perhaps? Fewer soldiers (due to the smaller maps, I guess)? The lack of an action point system? Whatever it is, in the short time I played it, I never felt it had a large number of turns when not much was happening, so as to prepare for a situation in which in the majority of cases not much happens.

Edited January 4, 2015 by Hiawata

[NuclearStudent]

Firaxis' Xcom has a faster pace more dynamic because Overwatches were far more reliable. As long a soldier in that game saw the starting and end position of the enemy, the soldier had a guaranteed shot. In Xenonauts, there's absolutely no way to find out how likely your soldiers are to reaction-fire without opening the game files or doing exhaustive numbers of tests by reloading a save file dozens of times. In Firaxcom, I can Overwatch three soldiers and know I have a 90% chance of killing an incoming enemy, making me feel safe enough to move forward. In Xenonauts, leaving soldiers with high TUs on watch will either succeed or fail, and it's difficult to even guess what will happen.

Firaxcom UFOs are large enough to be explored. They have large entrances, multiple corridors, and many doors to explore. Firaxcom UFOs are search and destroy missions. In contrast, Xenonaut UFOs are so small you know just about exactly where the enemy is, and indestructible walls railroad you forward. Xenonaut UFO breaches are like WW1 trench assaults-a long, repetitive stakeout spent chucking in canisters of various substances and taking odd potshots, followed by headlong suicidal charges in which someone is eventually going to die out of sheer bad luck.

Firaxcom hit percentages are extremely easy to calculate. You can see the natural aim percentage your enemy has, and quickly add and subtract the various percentages that apply to it. In Xenonauts, you never find out the exact stats of your enemies and alien stats are randomized. In Firaxcom, it's easy to guess how far your opponent can move in a turn. In Xenonauts, because enemy stats are quite heavily randomized, you usually can't charge forward into cover because you don't know if your enemy can advance into the area.

In Firaxcom, it's easy to tell if an enemy is overwatched or not, and there are ways to avoid overwatch damage. In Xenonauts, you can't tell which enemies have reaction fire TU because you usually can't see what kind of shot they took the last turn and don't know how many action points they have left.

Aliens tend to kill you with one shot with the majority of weapons, but humans either can't do the same or are have negative incentives against it. In the original Xcom, for example, killing enemies with grenades tended to leave artifacts intact. If you wanted to confirm the kill, you can risk probably destroying an artifact by using two grenades. In Xenonauts, using explosive weapons will reduce your income and explosive weapons do not deal reliable amounts of damage.

In general, my main complain is that there really seems to be optimum ways to play this game as far as effectiveness goes. There's no real debate that going slowly from cover to cover is always the best way to sweep maps. There's no real debate that flashbangs and stun grenades should be used to breach the light scout and small scout UFOs whenever possible. It always seems to be the best to have a shield start an ordinary turn by scouting. There's plenty of easily repeatable formulas you can use, like blowing up every single building with C4 as you advance. You get something new, learn the game, spend hours repeating the formula on it, get something new, learn it, spend 5 hours on it, and so on.

I'm not saying Firaxis' Xcom is a better game. It suffers from similar problems for worse reasons. However, Firaxcom, for better or for worse, covers up its own problems by giving the player interesting visuals and sound effects to keep immersion.

While some game design decisions are fantastic and bring me to recommend this game, the game feels too sparse to compass the amount of time a single campaign takes. I remember Head Developer Chris England saying that the player was only expected to do 25-30 mission in an entire campaign. If so, why is the player rewarded with extra money for a mission, and skipping a mission via airstrike is mechanical and unrewarding? When a player has to skip a mission by airstriking it, it feels like a failure or a denied opportunity.

Again, Xenonauts is still a good game, and more importantly easily moddable for extra content. As the player, I can see too easily where cuts had to be made because Goldhawk didn't have the money and time, like the lack of opening animations.

Edited January 4, 2015 by NuclearStudent

[Chris]

The Firaxis XCOM actually suffers from the same issues because you never want to activate a "pod" of aliens by spotting them late in your turn, so the optimum playstyle is extremely cautious advancing, usually backed up by a Squad Sight sniper. Xenonauts obviously also suffers from it for the reasons you stated above.

It's only partially a game design issue because really it's a result of the player finding the optimum playstyle and then exploiting it (which is exactly what a strategy game is about). Potentially the optimum strategy could have been made more aggressive, but it's difficult to do that and still be realistic given real combat is generally about picking people off from superior cover rather than getting up in their faces ... or certainly that's the case if you want your soldiers to survive dozens of missions.

It is something we're bearing in mind for our future strategy games where we're less constrained by a "realistic" setting, although it's not necessarily an easy thing to find a non-contrived solution to.

[Hiawata]

As I said, I only played Firaxis X-COM for a short while - an hour or two, or a few missions - so I haven't gone that far into the game as you did, to be able to see the "pod" issue you mention.

Back to Xenonauts, would making maps somewhat smaller change something? Together with that, you could potentially reduce the number of soldiers and aliens, so that the ground mission isn't overcrowded, but everyone would still spot each other sooner, and there would be fewer empty places to check out. It's really not about having to move cautiously, it's about nothing happening on most of the turns. For every 10 times you prepare cautiously for something, something ends up happening 2 times.

Or perhaps the number of aliens could be larger? Though clearly that would require rebalancing.

Or they could be more effective (at least some of the species) at acting like a team, advancing towards you, flanking you, changing positions, moving across the map to support those who are under attack. Now they seem to do that last thing only if they're close by, and after I kill a few, at least some seem to retreat back to the UFO and camp out there. (But again, I can't risk assuming that all of them did that, so I still have to sweep the whole map very carefully - even though in most cases there really are no aliens left except in the UFO.)

Edited January 4, 2015 by Hiawata

[Hiawata]

As I side note since we're mentioning maps - I really totally like them. They are gorgeous, they look realistic, they are interesting to move around through, they don't seem to give an advantage to any side by design (though in a given situation they might, which is great), the cover system really works well. There are a few features that I would like to see, but I'll reserve the suggestions for when more a concrete discussion gets going about your future game, or for the CE subforum. In any case, really, hats off to the people who made them - both the developers and the modders (I'm playing CE).

[phantra]

I'm actually playing both games, xcom: enemy within (with long war mod) and xenonauts (AND_GREAT's xenophobia mod reconstruction) at the same time sortave, they are both quite different from one another, xenonauts being more realistic combat and xcom being more puzzle-solvery combat. I think you might be playing a bit too cautiously.

my expirience in xenonaus so far has been quite action packed in the ground combat, I start off securing the Landing zone then move to secure the civilians then move to find the UFO and cleanup any leftover xenos scum...that doctorine of play of mine definetly didn't leave me with turns of "nothing is happening" o_O

[Hiawata]

I thought a few times whether I was playing too cautiously, but then two reapers ran at me and promptly got mowed down by my soldiers, and then I thought again that my caution pays off. I once assumed that there just couldn't be an alien in the last two tiles between two buildings, because I had covered all the ground around them, and any alien surely would have showed up in one of the many turns that had passed. And then mister space lizard who surely would have showed up actually showed up from exactly those two tiles. Through sheer luck a soldier survived a direct hit, and it took me some 10 turns to rearrange my soldiers, cover all the directions (in case more space lizards slithered out of somewhere), heal up the guy who got shot, and flank the space lizard. That was tremendous fun, but now I check every bit of the map, and most of it does not contain space lizards to have fun with.

I also tried high-tailing it to the UFO, but if it works, you get less money because you leave some aliens alive. That would be fair enough if you also took less risk, but in most situations you actually expose yourself to more risk, as you are likely to have left some areas unchecked, and the last thing you want is some alien sneaking up from behind you while you're setting up your breach. Also, an alien might spot you as you are moving towards the UFO, but if you just want to clear the UFO, you might ignore the alien and move on. Which is fine until you run into another couple of aliens, and then the one you escaped from catches up as well and you end up wishing you had been more careful and thorough in sweeping the map. The holding the UFO victory condition is really there so you don't have to hunt down that last alien, or so that you can leave that last alien in that covered, tucked away position (e.g. in a difficult to assail building) and not send your soldiers to be cannon-fodder. Which is really a very neat and creative piece of gameplay design. But, it just isn't there to speed things up in general, just in very specific situations.

That's at least my experience with caution.

[phantra]

I actually don't try going for a UFO capture victory my expirience with UFO breaches is very bloody especially in my first playthrough, ussualy take the UFO area, kill anyone who is outside the protective door, leave a sniper/machineguner and anyone who is at risk of dying (supports/wounded/broken shields etc) overwatch them there and scout the maps remainding hiding spots with the remaining team...sortave laying siege to the ufo ship from sniper/LMG range off to the side of the door and using the little defensive position i created as a regrouping camp for the rest of the team i send scouting, only ever breach the ufo at the end. breaching is alwais the hardest part for me, you never know when some wiseass xeno will decide to stroll out of the door burst fire your breaching setup and run back inside singing trolololo

[Dranak]

It's always interesting hearing how other people play this game. Personally, I almost always use all my TUs on all my troops every turn. It both helps me cover ground rapidly, and avoid dragging out missions excessively.

[Hiawata]

What I normally do is have several troops behind cover, and then move a soldier or two into some new cover. The ones that stay behind are there for reaction fire, the ones that are moving may spend all of their TUs, if that's needed to get to cover and crouch. But, if they can get to nearer cover, crouch and have reaction fire, then I do that. The next turn it's the ones that stayed behind that move to new cover, and so on. If I'm breaching a UFO or entering a building, I will always save TUs for reaction fire with everyone, as far as possible. And, I will always try to position my troops in good spots before doing anything further with them. So, it takes a lot of time.

Don't your soldiers get killed easily when you play as you described? I'd think that lone soldiers would easily end up facing several aliens, or getting attacked from directions that aren't covered.

[phantra]

I do keep them together when scouting , the main wounded /killed are ussualy the guys who take that first look into a window or behind some building, sometimes its fine and sometimes the alien just sits there with full TUs on overwatch and he gets a reaction fire. I realy don't know how to minimize casulties in that regard other than taking that look from further away or with a shield guy(which is why those ussualy have broken shields by the end of the mission if not worse) .

but i do lose several guys a month allot of those from RNG shenanigans, I once had a 95% rocket miss its mark and make goo out of my machineguner...ever since then i never have anyone 90 degrees infront of the rocketlauncher even at 95% "charles got the rocket launcher out! run! run damnit! save yourself xenonautss!!!!"

[Dranak]

Don't your soldiers get killed easily when you play as you described? I'd think that lone soldiers would easily end up facing several aliens, or getting attacked from directions that aren't covered.

No, because I rarely end turn anywhere aliens could have LOS. My normal movement plan is for a couple high TU scouts (in Buzzard once I get it) clearing terrain and then popping back behind LOS breaks, then the rest of the team moves fairly aggressively through the cleared terrain. On contact, everyone with a reasonable shot takes it and then the scouts (normally the only one to be in LOS, ducks back to safety).

Here's an example of a carrier assault.

I get to cheat a bit here because my scouts have great TU, but I essentially play the same way with slower scouts, just with a bit more gradual advancement from them.

[llunak]

I get to cheat a bit here because my scouts have great TU, but I essentially play the same way with slower scouts, just with a bit more gradual advancement from them.

That "a bit" of course only holds if one doesn't count all the exploiting of the game deficiencies that you appear to be so good at finding. The attack would be less of such a shooting gallery even already with X:CE 0.32, where some of those you use don't work so well anymore. Hmm ... could I somehow lure you to defect to the other side? I still want to tweak the AI more on higher difficulties, and it would seem you'd be a good fit for taking part in that (and I have a hunch that rooting for the other side might make the game even more fun for you).

[StellarRat]

IMO, Xenonauts is supposed to be chess like in ground combat. It's turn based and that gives you ample opportunity to make sure you aren't being stupid and careless with your moves. "The grind" of having to move slowly and carefully in ground combat is very realistic (this also applies to JA2.) I understand that it makes the game take longer to play, but I can't really think of a way to speed up the process without degrading the mental challenge of the game. I suppose some type of tactical AI could speed things up a bit. These are used in Rainbow 6 and the Combat Mission series to allow the playing to be a little more hands off, but mostly because both games are real time and there are simply too many things for one person to handle at once. I pretty much like Xenonauts the way it is. I should also point out that you don't have to do all the ground combats that are available. I airstrike probably 8 or 9 out of 10 missions available to me by mid-game.

BTW, props to whoever has been tweaking the AI between 1.0 and 1.5. I'm finding the aliens much sneaker and dangerous than the used to be. They are hiding and moving around behind my troops much more. I don't know if it's better initial placement of the aliens or better maneuvering or both. It's really upped the challenge.

Edited January 5, 2015 by StellarRat

[Hiawata]

@Dranak I watched a bit of how you play. I can see how advanced tech can make things somewhat quicker, plus the map is relatively small and it's a farm, so it's relatively open as well. But, you are exposing yourself to a lot of risk, and things could have gone differently. I don't know what exploits llunak is talking about, but whatever they are, I am probably not using them, at least consciously, and I'm also playing CE, and apparently, some of the exploits aren't in it.

@llunak What exploits were you thinking of?

@StellarRat As I said, I totally don't mind the "grind" when there's an an enemy somewhere. I do want to think through my moves, take cover, reaction fire, flank the enemy, etc., etc., etc.. The grind for me comes in situations where you advance carefully, but there's no enemy anywhere, most of the time. I'm still in the early stages of the game, so I can give an example from there.

Basically, an industrial map will have 5 or 6 buildings, plus all the other stuff, plus the UFO. It will have, say, 5 or 6 aliens. Usually, 1 or 2 will be near the dropship. I'll kill those, and a come across another one or two soon. And then I'll spend two or three or four times the number of turns I spent fighting in searching the rest of the map. So, I'll put someone behind a car to look down a street, but I can't go down that street yet, until I've swept the buildings to the left and right of it, because I might get killed if there are aliens in them. I'll keep another two-three soldiers covering other directions, in case aliens come from there, and use the remainder to search the buildings. First one on one side of the road, then another one on the other side. Since I don't want to risk it, it'll even take me 2 turns just to cross the road between the buildings, and then a lot of turns to sweep both buildings. And I won't find aliens. Then it'll take me a few turns to position my troops to be able to move down the street, and then I'll move carefully, and then I'll come to another building, and the whole process is repeated.

Most of the time, the last two-three aliens will actually be in the UFO, so I'll be spending an inordinate amount of turns sweeping an empty map, because of those few times when there actually will be an alien in one of the buildings, or behind some LOS block. And that one time, if I'm not careful, I can easily lose two-three soldiers. So I can't risk it.

I can see how this is a much bigger problem on industrial maps, and I see that people on the forums mention often that they skip them "because of so many corners", but, really, all that means is that the map necessitates very, very careful and slow movement. Realistic, perhaps, but not fun. Again, it's tremendous fun when there are aliens to fight, but quite boring when sweeping an empty map. Other maps suffer from this as well, just to a lesser extent.

As for how many missions I need to do, I feel like I have to do every mission I can, at least in the beginning. I got my ass whooped several times in the strategic war, and this time around, in order to have a proper air force and radar coverage, and defense for my two (soon to be three) bases, I did some rough calculations, and figured that I can't really afford it without the cash from the ground missions. Perhaps that changes in mid-game, I don't know.

Edited January 5, 2015 by Hiawata

[inRain]

I used to employ a strategy i dubbed the "sidewinder", where my strike force would stick to a side of a map, and move to the ufo, avoiding the aliens as much as possible, breach the door with c4, and then gas the aliens into submission (or frag them if Androns). I used mostly assault rifles and a few snipers. It was a decent strategy that kept my squad together, limited the number of aliens fought at one time, and taught me to use concentrated fire effectively.

My current tactic is to move a sniper block from good position to another, using scouts (with buzzards once possible) to scout for enemies, and then taking them out with massed sniper fire from a position beyond the alien visual range. I plan to augment this doctrine with a few mg:s. (Now that I know that the ufo-door can just as well be breached with an mg, making lobbing the c4 by the door obsolete method. I used to do the breaching with an rpg, but the amount of rpg soldiers that died doing that convinced me that c4 was safer.)

I really like bringing a hunter scout car with a pulse laser or plasma cannon with me for additional firepower, though it has kinda fallen out of favor for a while (after one blew itself up by hitting a lamp post that I somehow managed to overlook). Really good for base defense too. I don't think a tank is worth the additional 60k, since it generally takes just one more hit to blow up anyway.

For me the biggest and hardest thing so far has been the economic side of the strategic air war. Good thing I really enjoy micro-managing the air battles.

Really, really early on I experimented with suicide tactics using c4, was kinda sinister stuff.

Edited January 5, 2015 by inRain

[Dranak]

That "a bit" of course only holds if one doesn't count all the exploiting of the game deficiencies that you appear to be so good at finding. The attack would be less of such a shooting gallery even already with X:CE 0.32, where some of those you use don't work so well anymore. Hmm ... could I somehow lure you to defect to the other side? I still want to tweak the AI more on higher difficulties, and it would seem you'd be a good fit for taking part in that (and I have a hunch that rooting for the other side might make the game even more fun for you).

I'm always willing to discuss things, but I don't have a ton of free time available for doing a lot of mod playtesting. I could probably do a little sporadic testing of things.

[StellarRat]

@StellarRat As I said, I totally don't mind the "grind" when there's an an enemy somewhere. I do want to think through my moves, take cover, reaction fire, flank the enemy, etc., etc., etc.. The grind for me comes in situations where you advance carefully, but there's no enemy anywhere, most of the time. I'm still in the early stages of the game, so I can give an example from there...

You can greatly speed up your map search by using a vehicle. The Hunter is available early in the game and it's a great scout. I'll usually use C4 to blast a path right through the middle of map for my Hunter if there are obstacles that prevent it from moving easily (like the industrial maps.) Also, unless you're doing a terror mission, you can just go straight for the UFO and not trying to kill every alien on the map. If you don't get them all the reduction in score isn't very big. Just make sure that you position troops to cover the sides and rear of your squad as you advance in case a straggler tries to sneak up on you. I usually have the guy at the back turned to the rear at the end of every turn to make sure this doesn't happen. Edited January 5, 2015 by StellarRat

[NuclearStudent]

The Firaxis XCOM actually suffers from the same issues because you never want to activate a "pod" of aliens by spotting them late in your turn, so the optimum playstyle is extremely cautious advancing, usually backed up by a Squad Sight sniper. Xenonauts obviously also suffers from it for the reasons you stated above.

It's only partially a game design issue because really it's a result of the player finding the optimum playstyle and then exploiting it (which is exactly what a strategy game is about). Potentially the optimum strategy could have been made more aggressive, but it's difficult to do that and still be realistic given real combat is generally about picking people off from superior cover rather than getting up in their faces ... or certainly that's the case if you want your soldiers to survive dozens of missions.

It is something we're bearing in mind for our future strategy games where we're less constrained by a "realistic" setting, although it's not necessarily an easy thing to find a non-contrived solution to.

That's true. While it's somewhat necessary that slow creeping is the best strategy, there's a lack of varied weapons to choose for the same role.

I'm going to compare Xenonauts to to the indie spaceship RPG Faster Than Light. In FTL, the basic "beam weapon" has many variants that might start a fire instead of doing ordinary damage. That means many different strategies are possible, and while many strategies are simply worse than the others, there are many strategies that turn out to be equally good. There's only a few unique weapons in Xenonauts.

In Xenonauts, RNG doesn't really create many new situations to deal with. If a soldier hits some lucky shots, good for him, I've won an engagement and nothing further happens. If I'm unlucky, somebody dies, but I can usually have someone pick up their gear and keep going. There are no weapons, soldiers, or pieces of equipment that feel special or are super necessary. You could hand me a team full of rocketeers, of riflemen, or of pistol wielding grenadiers, and that wouldn't really change the basic tactics I'd have.

No unit or vehicle can act as a "tank" because no armour, shield, or other item can reliably soak hits. A tank can reliably take a burst shot from one alien, but that's only provided you know his weapon and are absolutely certain that there is only one, meaning that "tanking" is pointless.

There's no real point in having a SWAT style raid on buildings, because a player can always camp outside it and wait for the AI to move into a vulnerable position.

I'm rambling, but my point is that there isn't as much variety in terms of tactics as I would like. Thankfully your game is highly modable!

Edited January 6, 2015 by NuclearStudent

[Chris]

I think your tactics would be rather different if I handed you a team full of shotgunners or a team full of rocketeers, but I understand the point you're making. Again, a lot of it is constrained by "reality" and I'm looking forward to being able to make things a bit more interesting in the sci-fi setting of our upcoming game.

[Dranak]

That map is pretty standard for a late game UFO, carrier/battleship maps pretty much all have that same long rectangle shape. But yes, my tactics have pretty much evolved to ones that are (mostly) totally safe against the vanilla AI. I believe CE aliens are less afraid of doors, and I have a pretty absolute lack of respect for alien grenades once everyone is into decent armor (partly because I think I've only ever seen two thrown at me).

[llunak]

And that soldier or two you'd lose due to your carelessness might just be those $20,000 that you'll have to dish out for new soldiers, that you'll then lack for a radar or a foxtrot. I guess what I'm saying is that I feel like this is a situation where you are kind of forced to go through a big-ish number of boring turns. It's like a trade-off between more risk or more boredom, except that it's not a real trade-off, because if you chose more risk, you're also chosing to lose the game.

Well, first of all, I myself like playing carefully all the time, since that what IMO the game is about, it's "realistic", and I find it fun. And if it gets boring, there's also Real Life out there (although I understand that may be hard during the first playthough ).

However, I expect those $10k for a soldier might be too much and as such wrong. Having missions that barely pay off puts players into a certain mindset and it's one that I'd say doesn't fit the game. Soldiers should by dying in this game. Maybe making soldier hire cost be different from upkeep (or even make it zero) could make an interesting difference here. That'd make it more obvious that soldiers are what they are, cannon fodder.

Or they could be more effective (at least some of the species) at acting like a team, advancing towards you, flanking you, changing positions, moving across the map to support those who are under attack. Now they seem to do that last thing only if they're close by, and after I kill a few, at least some seem to retreat back to the UFO and camp out there. (But again, I can't risk assuming that all of them did that, so I still have to sweep the whole map very carefully - even though in most cases there really are no aliens left except in the UFO.)

As I've already hinted, that's what currently I intend to work on for X:CE. The AI actually does already some of this (e.g. coming to help others), but there's still a lot of room for improvement left. If there was somebody to help me with tweaking the values, the AI could get ... nasty.

(That's an invitation to join, if it wasn't clear.)

BTW, props to whoever has been tweaking the AI between 1.0 and 1.5. I'm finding the aliens much sneaker and dangerous than the used to be. They are hiding and moving around behind my troops much more. I don't know if it's better initial placement of the aliens or better maneuvering or both. It's really upped the challenge.

Frankly, assuming by 1.0 you mean 1.09, I don't think there's been anyone like that, not even GJ. It's possible that changes in some other areas such as LOS fixes helped the AI in some ways, but AFAICS the AI in 1.5 is about the same as in 1.09, even aiprops.xml is the same.

@llunak What exploits were you thinking of?

Let's see, just from the top of my head:

• Opening and closing doors, which abuses both door opening not triggering reaction fire and AI not knowing how to deal with such a situation at all. I've already implemented reaction fire in X:CE, it'd just need tweaking and enabling somehow (which is a question how, because there seem to be a number of people scarred of the possibility of not being able to shoot aliens like fish in a barrel anymore). I may also implement aliens sometimes simply locking themselves in, which would force the player to blow the door (although that'd be also a problem for some people not having a clue how to get in). Or I might perhaps simply teach the AI how to make the aliens repay back kindly in the same way and see how people like that.

• Leaving a soldier on the other end of a lower floor of a UFO than the one from which the rest will attack, which abuses the bug that aliens ignore floors when choosing the direction to face at the end of their turn (see how those Sebilians in the final room of Dranak's video watch intently the wall and leave their backs to be shot in?). I've fixed this for X:CE 0.32.

• Spotting aliens with one soldier with good reactions and squad-sight sniping them from a safe distance with others, which abuses the fact that reaction fire is considered only for whoever did an action, so all the spotting soldier needs to do to stay safe is to stand still. I have an idea how to handle this, but this is indeed a bit tricky.

• And so on. Some people might call this "tactics", but since it relies on limitations of the game rather than mechanics, I consider things like these exploits.

[hakimio]

As I've already hinted, that's what currently I intend to work on for X:CE. The AI actually does already some of this (e.g. coming to help others), but there's still a lot of room for improvement left. If there was somebody to help me with tweaking the values, the AI could get ... nasty.[/Quote]

Why not just use the AI from XNT mod? I have played a lot of TBS games and imho it's the best AI I have encountered.

Opening and closing doors, which abuses both door opening not triggering reaction fire and AI not knowing how to deal with such a situation at all.

Doesn't work with XNT AI. If you just stand behind UFO doors, aliens will come out and shoot you down.

Spotting aliens with one soldier with good reactions and squad-sight sniping them from a safe distance with others, which abuses the fact that reaction fire is considered only for whoever did an action, so all the spotting soldier needs to do to stay safe is to stand still. I have an idea how to handle this, but this is indeed a bit tricky.

No longer having snipers shooting at aliens from safe distance (obstacles and distance still being an issue) and scouts spotting them imho would be a game breaking change.

Edit: here is another exploit which you can't fix - position your soldiers on teleporters to make sure aliens can't use them.

Edited January 8, 2015 by hakimio

[Hiawata]

You can greatly speed up your map search by using a vehicle. The Hunter is available early in the game and it's a great scout. I'll usually use C4 to blast a path right through the middle of map for my Hunter if there are obstacles that prevent it from moving easily (like the industrial maps.) Also, unless you're doing a terror mission, you can just go straight for the UFO and not trying to kill every alien on the map. If you don't get them all the reduction in score isn't very big. Just make sure that you position troops to cover the sides and rear of your squad as you advance in case a straggler tries to sneak up on you. I usually have the guy at the back turned to the rear at the end of every turn to make sure this doesn't happen.

In my current game, I'm waiting until I build a garage and a vehicle, until I've set up a proper air force. I have used the Hunter Scout Car before, and I found it very useful in night-time missions. In day time, though, it replace two soldiers, still gets killed with a few good shots, and has a steep cost.

As for going for the UFO, every time I did that, I ended up fighting aliens from two sides, and at least some soldiers were exposed. I really think that holding the UFO is a good option when you've safely moved towards it, killed everyone inside, and don't want to search for that last alien somewhere, or you know where it is, but you think it's too risky to kill it. But, going directly for the UFO is too risky for me, especially since you don't know where it is, and often times I do find it at the last bit of the map I check. Which means that I anyway have to sweep the whole map carefully first.

[StellarRat]

In my current game, I'm waiting until I build a garage and a vehicle, until I've set up a proper air force. I have used the Hunter Scout Car before, and I found it very useful in night-time missions. In day time, though, it replace two soldiers, still gets killed with a few good shots, and has a steep cost.

As for going for the UFO, every time I did that, I ended up fighting aliens from two sides, and at least some soldiers were exposed. I really think that holding the UFO is a good option when you've safely moved towards it, killed everyone inside, and don't want to search for that last alien somewhere, or you know where it is, but you think it's too risky to kill it. But, going directly for the UFO is too risky for me, especially since you don't know where it is, and often times I do find it at the last bit of the map I check. Which means that I anyway have to sweep the whole map carefully first.

Your Hunter shouldn't be getting killed too often. I use mine like a scout soldier, it moves and looks around, but I make sure that it is back under cover if there is more than one alien that can shoot at it AND I make sure my soldiers are around to engage and kill anything it spots. You can't move it out into the open and leave it there between turns. The aliens LOVE to fire at vehicles because they know how dangerous they are. I avoid all night missions period (vehicle or not.) Only a terror mission is worth the risk and even then you can usually time it to arrive in the daytime.