[GC] Unconsciousness and regeneration

[Rodmar18]

I loved how Sebilians could regenerate from a near-death state in the Crimson Dagger novel. Should we  head-shot any unconscious Sebilian in Xenonauts-2 to be sure they won't awake 3 turns later? You could say that it's not fun nor of interest to have to shoot at laying down corpses, but I figure some cases were tactics could be quite impacted.

For instance, you shot a Sebilian down from a fairly large distance in a densely wooded area. Should you send a scout to finish the business? You hardly won against three Sebilian with heavy and valuable gear, but went under fire and have to leave. Should you set a C4 charge before leaving, to quickly ensure your kills, destroying any spoil in the process?

After some initial (traumatizing) experience, the soldiers could get a mean to detect if a corpse is still leaving or not.

[Ruggerman]

If you use a stun device on the aliens would that not save your morale confusion!!

[Rodmar18]

Indeed, one way to manage the situation would be to develop some injectable drug that disable or kill any unconscious alien in the same time as it takes to break open their skulls (only more silently), but that wouldn't settle the matter when the corpse is far away, or there are plenty around and you are urged by the situation.

[Ninothree]

Double tap - standard zombo protocol. Although a bunch of entrenched, self-reviving sebillians would be nigh on impossible to pacify. Maybe limit their second lives - they can regrow that arm but it wont shoot straight.

[Rodmar18]

In the novel, the revived Sebilian was still one-eyed after 10 min, and not armed anymore (it just tears a throat up with bare claws before being shot once for all). We can infer that "revived" aliens would drop their weapons and act bare hands, like sub-reapers, or as you suggest, they could suffer important penalties. A third way to limit the nuisance would be to lower their max HP each time they revive.

Edited August 30, 2018 by Rodmar18

[Max_Caine]

Here's a quote from the OP in the Xenonuats 2 Ground Combat thread. 

Quote

• Sebillians - they regenerate to full HP at the start of their turn if not killed, although their max HP is slowly reduced as they take damage (possibly they will be unable to regenerate damage from Laser weapons).

Rodmar, is that close to the kind of thing you envision?

[Chris]

I did toy with the idea of having Sebillians rise from the dead earlier in development, but there's a couple of practical things to consider. Firstly, it's (intentionally) kinda hard to target a dead alien with your weapons so killing them for good might force a rewrite of how the shooting UI was handled. Secondly, how does it work with regards to the end of the mission? If you down the last Sebillian but it's still alive, does the mission end? Might also be annoying if you kill a Sebillian and leave the area, but then later discover that it has got up and run away and you have to hunt it down again.

I think in the end I decided it might just be a bit too annoying, so just boosted their HP regen mechanics instead.

[Rodmar18]

On 8/30/2018 at 8:39 PM, Max_Caine said:

Here's a quote from the OP in the Xenonuats 2 Ground Combat thread. 

Rodmar, is that close to the kind of thing you envision?

I admit that I had already read this before. That's the third way. It's better than in Xenonauts-1 where regeneration was full scale (but not instant). "they regenerate to full HP at the start of their turn if not killed": this is what I call instant regen. In Xenonauts, lower ranks were regenerating more slowly than higher ranks. What would be best: instant (one-turn) regen + reduced max HP, or step regen + reduced max HP (Xenonauts-1 was step regen + unchanged max HP)?

About the last standing Sebillian, we'd have considered that the team do a hidden last sweep before leaving (the same as when they retrieve corpses, items, and materials). The other Sebillians should have been finished manually or else overkilled, though.

Edited September 3, 2018 by Rodmar18

[Sheepy]

Instant full regen reminds me of one of those "I am invulnerable until you find the tricky way to kill me" bosses.  Except that there is no tricky way from what I heard and you better pray that your sniper hits with her 60% chance shot and your machine gunner hits with most of his 38% shots.  May I vote no?

[Decius]

An interesting mechanic would be instant regeneration of half of damage dealt whenever an attack failed to kill it.

If we assume that the enemy starts with 100hp and regenerates half of non-fatal damage, then attacks that did 30 damage each would bring it down in six shots- compared to four shots for the non-regenerating version (50% more). But shots that did 10 damage would take 19 hits, instead of 10 hits for the non-regenerating one. (90% more), and the heavy hitting attacks that are 67-99 damage would still only need two shots, while the obliterating attacks that did 100+ would still be OHKO.

Per-turn regeneration combined with a permanent max HP reduction is roughly equivalent, but doesn't generate the behavior of needing to soften them up before hitting them with a big hit, if you can do it all on one turn; it allows for the powerful shot to come first, followed by the weaker attacks to finish it off.

Another possible scenario is limiting the total amount of regeneration per mission; either focus it enough on one turn to bring it down, or it comes back at (nearly?) full HP next turn, but it can only regenerate a total of twice its health over the entire mission... or maybe it regenerates to full health every turn, but only the first three turns it has any damage and isn't dead yet? (Yes, that can create a scenario where you want to 'tag' it once per turn for three turns before unloading on it.)

[hoangvt93]

On 9/7/2018 at 6:04 AM, Decius said:

An interesting mechanic would be instant regeneration of half of damage dealt whenever an attack failed to kill it.

If we assume that the enemy starts with 100hp and regenerates half of non-fatal damage, then attacks that did 30 damage each would bring it down in six shots- compared to four shots for the non-regenerating version (50% more). But shots that did 10 damage would take 19 hits, instead of 10 hits for the non-regenerating one. (90% more), and the heavy hitting attacks that are 67-99 damage would still only need two shots, while the obliterating attacks that did 100+ would still be OHKO.

Per-turn regeneration combined with a permanent max HP reduction is roughly equivalent, but doesn't generate the behavior of needing to soften them up before hitting them with a big hit, if you can do it all on one turn; it allows for the powerful shot to come first, followed by the weaker attacks to finish it off.

Another possible scenario is limiting the total amount of regeneration per mission; either focus it enough on one turn to bring it down, or it comes back at (nearly?) full HP next turn, but it can only regenerate a total of twice its health over the entire mission... or maybe it regenerates to full health every turn, but only the first three turns it has any damage and isn't dead yet? (Yes, that can create a scenario where you want to 'tag' it once per turn for three turns before unloading on it.)

maybe something like regeneration stop or reduce if take damage for that turn, exclusive for Seb should be if they regen to full hp the hp limit by wound will be slowly lift if they not taking damage. So at first stage stupid seb grund not a big threat as they charge right to player gun but the higher intelligent one will try to take cover or hiding to recover force player to be more active hunt them down