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Ship overkill may be a bit much.


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Disclaimer: I haven't played the game at all yet. I've just been reading design threads.

I found out that currently if you overkill an alien ship during air combat, there's zero chance of obtaining a crash site from it. Since you have early elements like the MiG that players can obtain (and will want to) that will overkill some of the early craft, players who haven't done their research are going to definitely be doing this (or it'll happen out of necessity in an air combat).

Instead of reducing the chance of getting a crash site from overkill results, I think you should consider simply reducing (but not eliminating) the chance of getting a crash site - say, if the damage is over the 'overkill threshold', drop the chance of getting a wreck by 30-50% or so (you could even have tiers, where each 5% above the overkill level drops the chance by 10%, so if players are using a nuke or something against a small scout then it'll be completely gone every time). Savvy players are still rewarded for being careful about how they attack alien vessels, but non-savvy players don't get screwed out of crash sites entirely.

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I think that introducing a RNG to decide if you get a crash site, is far more treacherous then an absolute threshold. One that says before this amount of damage you have 100% to get a crash site, and after this amount you have 0% chance. (The way it now. Im a bit confused by the way you phrased the first sentence in your second paragraph)

Most (if not all) players won't notice the correlation between damage dealt and chance for crash site by themselves. Your solution doesn't eliminate the problem, it just makes it harder to notice and something that will most likely backfire later on in the game against more advanced UFOs. What you are essentially suggesting is breaking the games learning curve. It would make it possible to play halfassed and still make it possible to make it to the late game. Where you will probably end up failing miserably without understanding why.

I know it's not your intention and I'm not trying to sound harsh, but I don't think this is the way to go.

Raising the overkill threshold or informing the player about the absolute threshold somehow (or both) seems more feasible.

Edited by Gorlom
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i've over killed some like light scouts early on, could only use 1 sidewinder missle, then had to use the cannon or i'd have no crashsite. and dunno if this is a bug, but the fighters both regular and heavy both get destroyed even when i use just the cannon on them.

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Easily fixed.

If you overkill an UFO, have one of your advisors pop up and say you should try to down one, not destroy it.

"Sir, while destroying that UFO is a great, we should try to avoid damaging it too much. The lab boys would prefer it if we forced it to crash, rathen to desintegrate in mid-air.

I suggest we avoid using missles on heavily damaged aline craft, and prefer cannons."

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Hey, that's really good idea! But where do you get this line an advisor in game? There are none so far. Maybe in the small talk in the redesigned UI? I can see that annoyed scientist scolding you for not crashing UFO's. :)

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i've over killed some like light scouts early on, could only use 1 sidewinder missle, then had to use the cannon or i'd have no crashsite. and dunno if this is a bug, but the fighters both regular and heavy both get destroyed even when i use just the cannon on them.

Not a bug: fighters (heavy or otherwise) and bombers are too small to leave crash-sites, and so always come up as destroyed. It's a deliberate game-play decision.

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I do think Chris mentioned something about maybe uping the overkill threshold, or I could just be remembering it wrong.

I do want to believe players today are smart enough to notice the connection between weapons used and crashed or destroyed. Even if they don't know the exact workings of it all, they ought to know what makes what or thereabouts.

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Indeed...it wasn't that hard to figure out.

The only thing that was throwing the deduction process off was the fighters.

Overkill was the first thing that came to my mind, so I treid to carefully bring one down with just one fighter with a cannon. And I did. And it exploded. And then I figured something is whacky.

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I think we will turn up the overkill percentage for the UFOs in the next build. A lot of people seem to fall foul of it.

Yep, also it adds the wrong idea that we are probably stronger than the aliens in some point. We should always feel "small" and desperate... being in the risk of overkilling an alien (even a small scout) just ruins a little the feeling that we are having a hard time and we have a very hard battle on our hands.

One of the major things that set the mood for x-com was that we ALWAYS felt we were in a terror and unpredictable (almost losing) battle.

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Yep, also it adds the wrong idea that we are probably stronger than the aliens in some point. We should always feel "small" and desperate... being in the risk of overkilling an alien (even a small scout) just ruins a little the feeling that we are having a hard time and we have a very hard battle on our hands.

One of the major things that set the mood for x-com was that we ALWAYS felt we were in a terror and unpredictable (almost losing) battle.

And you don't think it would be worse if you could steamroll the aliens? Sending out three aircrafts in a wing and just give it all you got, and always end up with a crash site? That would be an easier and safer option that would imo severely diminish the feeling you are after.

You need a penalty to steamrolling gameplay if you want to conserve the "losing battle" atmosphere.

The overkill threshold actually makes you play less cautiously and provides an additional tactical aspect.

Edited by Gorlom
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The easist method for downing UFO's and getting a crash site if your struggling (this might be slightly out of date i havn't played since v9.0) is to fire off two and only two sidewinder missles and then close the distance and finish it off with the cannons, i've not had any issues getting a crash site this way (unless it was over water of course)

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50% seems a tad much IMO. Not sure about what weapons will be in the game at higher tiers, but right now it feels pretty much impossible to overkill a corvette, in my experience. Fighters never generate crash sites anyway, and I get the feeling 50% would make overkill almost impossible to achieve on anything larger than a scout.

Just my two teef, of course.

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