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Tactics and stuff


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The combat in V4.2 is getting better (especially now the aliens aren't virtually invincible), but the missions do get a bit samey after a while.  I have thought of a few things that would greatly improve it:

1.  I still think that a prone-position should be added that gives maximum aiming and protection values (a prone soldier makes a much smaller target for a rifleman than when they are kneeling or standing, with kneeling offering a bit more stability and smaller target than standing). Getting down into prone shouldn't cost many TUs but getting up should cost quite a few. It would offer you a (realistic) option if you're caught in the open and don't have enough TUs to make it to cover.

2. Different types of cover should have different blocking values; sometimes you can see the enemy fine but something that would never actually stop you shooting at someone has a block value of 100% (eg a bush).  Even a fence apparently affords a fair amount of protection!! (like, 30% or something).

3. Shooting from a superior height should get a bonus, whilst having to shoot upwards should get a penalty.

4. You should be able to throw grenades over walls.

5. If you are in a square next to a door, then it shouldn't be a 100% block for the soldier to fire around - you use walls adjacent to doors as cover and shoot around the corner. Imagine a square cut into quarters.  The middle horizontal line is where the wall & door are, and the vertical line is the junction of the wall and door.  The soldier is in the lower left quadrant, so the door is to her right. If she fires at an alien in the direction of the upper right quadrant there should be no hindrance to the shot and she gets, say 70% protection from any return fire. But if the alien is in the direction of the upper left quadrant, accuracy gets reduced a bit but she gets more protection.

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1) It tends to look dumb and just function as a super-crouch aliens can't use properly.

2) ?

3) That would be an interesting in a old-style XCOM-like. The new XCOM has this sort of feature. In Xenonauts I feel that the maneuverability bonus from height is already a significant advantage. But it could still be interesting, and of course an incentive for flying. Hmmm...

4) Yep. Can't you already? Or maybe you have a bad arc?

5) UFO doors were more flexible in Xenonauts 1. But I like this lean mechanic in general. Seems like it would require slightly less restrictive FOV?

Edited by Bobit
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No, you can't. Even standing just outside the door you can't shoot through it at any angle except straight in. I was directly in front of the door, opened it and could not shoot nor even toss in a grenade except down the row directly into the ship. One square either side, 100% blocked.

Had one guy on each side of the door with aliens in LOS but shots were 100% blocked by the door. Tactically unrealistic to the point of silly.

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The delevopers already commented in other places to points 4 and 5

4) grenades are not yet properly implemented. They just use the same blocking mechanic as a direct shot at this point. This is still something on their todo list:


5) The thing with firing angles was already reported in V1. Chris saird it was supposed to be fixed "in the next few builds", however appearantly they did not get around to fix it and the people that tested since V1 just got used to it and did not report it again...

Regarding the other ideas:

1) why not? It is a realistic thing. It may look dumb but save the life. However I guess it would be a lot of work to implement it properly if the developers would decide to do it. Some things to consider:

  • turning as fast as standing/crouched should not be possible. There should be a TU penalty of turning in crouch stance, or even make it impossible
  • if soldiers can prone, they should be able to crawl forward rather than getting up for each small move. This would need to be balanced out that crawling should cost more TU than running, so crawling one or 2 tiles would save TUs against standing up, running and going prone again, at further distances it needs to cost more
  • Someone who is prone on the ground right before you is just as easy to hit as he was standing. So it should not just have a fixed hit chance modifier it needs to change with distance in a way that prone makes no sense in a close quarters situations

Therefore I don't think the developers would implement such new feature at this point.

2) Wonder why bobit answered with "?", I understand the issue. A bush might block the view by 100% but bullets just go through it unobstruced unless they by chance hit the wood. Don't know how hard this would be to implement at this point, since the game currently seems to assume that you can't shoot what you can't see. Regarding fences, I was not aware they had 30% block chance. In X1 it was like 10%.

3) Xenonauts 1 had an advantage to viewing distance by height which made climbing up with a sniper worth it. But I am not quite sure I understand the bonus/penalty you suggested. Damage bonus would not make sense. I think there already is a penalty to hit chance (I.e the edge of a cliff has a blocking chance if you shoot up but not other way round.), this could be polished further. Or are you talking about TUs? This could again kind of make sense (i.e. needing less TU to raise the gun if you shoot down but more if you shoot up).

Edited by wulf 21
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51 minutes ago, wulf 21 said:

The delevopers already commented in other places to points 4 and 5

4) grenades are not yet properly implemented. They just use the same blocking mechanic as a direct shot at this point. This is still something on their todo list:


5) The thing with firing angles was already reported in V1. Chris saird it was supposed to be fixed "in the next few builds", however appearantly they did not get around to fix it and the people that tested since V1 just got used to it and did not report it again...

 

Thanks Wulf, I wasn't part of the original open beta and haven't scanned through all the posts yet. Good to know it's in the pipeline.  

As for point 1), I agree with you completely.  I don't know the first thing about coding so I have no idea if it would be hard or not (maybe someone could enlighten me?). But it would be worth it IMHO.  

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in some games they just temporarily [for that action?] disable the adjacent terrain cover for the unit who's firing behind it [Warhammer games?] something like that seems to have been done in Xcom:EW [and I think even Xcom:Apoc, ..to an extent?] where units could kinda peek out from behind cover, shoot, then peek back in again..

this seems to be using the occluded cover piece method but also adding in the little peek in/out animations to make it all look smooth & consistent?

 

..last night I was doing my first mission in xenonauts 1 and there were what seemed to be 3 bales of hay just outside of the alien craft's doors but my guys couldn't really make use of this cover? I had to manually do all the actions, and that would draw reaction fire.. it kinda made the cover redundant? still, i'm new to xenonauts and not 100% sure of how these thins are working. 

 

great game, btw..

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