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PLEASE add an option to auto-resolve air/ground combat!


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I am personally bored to tears by the mind numbingly slow and dull ground combat that takes ages to finish, and the air combat is kind of neat but it could also get annoying after a while, so PLEASE add an option to auto resolve combats. You could have a percentage counter telling you the chances of the combat being successful, and the higher it is the less casualties you suffer and the more loot you recover. That way you can skip easy battles that you have a high chance of wiinning and concentrate on the really hard battles where your direct participation can be crucial to the outcome.

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Something is seriously wrong if you want to skip ground combat. I have a few questions to ask.

1) When you say "takes ages to finish". Could you talk a little more about that, please? What about the ground combat "takes ages" for you?

2) Also "slow"? What is "slow" about the ground combat? You're quite vague about this.

If it helps to answer those questions, here are some thoughts: Are you shooting at aliens soon enough for your liking? Are you shooting at enough aliens for your liking? Are you finding you have to hunt for aliens in every nook and cranny? Are there too many downed alien ships?

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It's a perfectly reasonable request. Shogun was an RTS that had auto resolve option, if you don't want to use it you don't have to. Usually auto resolve chances are pretty harsh in games but having a choice is better than no choice right?

I actually find the air combat pretty samey once you've mastered certain ship types, I always do the same thing for fighters, fire 1 missile, wait a few seconds, fire the rest then turn back. Always the same and 100% victory.

Fighting new types is fun though or tricky combinations, but I'd love a skip button for the boring bits.

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but I'd love a skip button for the boring bits.

True. But I'm confused as to why he picked up Xenonauts in the first place if he finds both the air combat and the ground combat to be the boring bits. The ground combat is pretty much the core of the game and its selling point.

Besides its too early to ask for such things as neither are feature complete or balanced yet. proper AI will probably add a lot to the game.

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I don't see the problem with having an option to autoresolve the more trivial fights. But of course, the need for it is bit distorted with people starting over much more commonly than with the real thing, so those trivial fights occur much more often than they will in the final product.

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Something is seriously wrong if you want to skip ground combat. I have a few questions to ask.

1) When you say "takes ages to finish". Could you talk a little more about that, please? What about the ground combat "takes ages" for you?

2) Also "slow"? What is "slow" about the ground combat? You're quite vague about this.

If it helps to answer those questions, here are some thoughts: Are you shooting at aliens soon enough for your liking? Are you shooting at enough aliens for your liking? Are you finding you have to hunt for aliens in every nook and cranny? Are there too many downed alien ships?

Why do you care? What difference does it make to you why i want an auto resolve feature? If you don't want to use it, don't. I'm not asking the devs to scrap combat entirely, just give those of us who want to skip certain battles a choice. I want it because i like the geo-scape aspect of the game a whole lot more than combat. That's what i want to focus on, not boring battles. That's why i want an auto resolve feature so i can skip the small insignificant battles that occur every 5 seconds and only concentrate on the big, important ones.

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I suppose he could have meant "something is seriously wrong" with the game or with the player, one is a reasonable question, the other is just a rude attack on a person.

Here is an article from John Walker about being able to skip any part of a game you find irritating or not fun, even combat:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/02/23/escape-escape-embracing-skippable-combat/

Basically you should let a person play how they want, if they want to play with loads of money just add a funding slider, if someone doesn't want to watch a cut scene it's reasonable to let them skip it, the same should be true of any part of the game. You might think the person is weird for skipping all the ground combat but it does not affect your game, you don't need to tell them how to play and you don't need to tell them to stop playing. That makes no sense at all.

If you really feel the need you can lock out the really easy option till you've lost a couple times like in Devil May Cry but I'm against locking out options for arbitrary reasons (like hard mode in Diablo 3)

Edited by spinaljack
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On the other side of the argument, why buy a game where the majority of the gameplay doesn't interest you?

I think the argument of gamesmakers having to pander to every individual's tastes, as suggested above, just highlights the overblown sense of entitlement people seem to have these days.

Serban - Max was trying to get feedback for the purpose of the alpha. If you're not enjoying combat, what could possibly change that for you, and make you want to play the missions rather than skipping them. No need for the attitude at all.

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If you skipped the whole game then sure, it was a waste of money, but some people like playing differently, some people like just strolling around in Skyrim and never do the main quest, doesn't mean they shouldn't be allowed to play. Serban likes the macro game so let him play the macro game. Someone can read a magazine backwards if they want, they paid for it, they can do what they want.

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Skyrim, as an open world game allows for that style of play though, I get that.

But Xenonauts is and always has been a game where the ground combat is a core aspect of the experience. There are games out there without combat missions that allow world building and economy management, but that's never been what this game's about, that's all I'm saying. To be fair, my last response was more arsey than I'd usually post because I think Serban's tone towards other posters was uncalled for when they're just trying help out.

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Serben, I genuinely would like to know what your issues are with ground combat. That is why I have not written a dismissive comment like "duh, it's an alpha", which I could have easily done. When you SHOUTED your request for an auto-resolve button, you describe the issue you have with the game in the vaguest of terms and the most generic of language. That isn't going to get Chris to pay attention. Consider spinaljack. spinaljack articulates his issues with air combat quite specifically - that once a strategy is worked out, it can be done every time. Rince - repeat. Boring. So yes, I do ask questions, to draw out the issues that you have with ground combat.

EDIT: And yes, I do mean "something is seriously wrong" with the game. Xenonauts is at the end of the day, all about the ground combat. So if that's not enjoyable and engaging, then something is wrong with it.

Edited by Max_Caine
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Fine, Max Caine, get ready for a wall of text. The short answer for why i want an auto resolve feature is that the ground combat as it currently stands is boring, as i mentioned in my first post. It's as simple as that. That's why i want an auto resolve feature to be able to skip as much of it as possible.

The long answer is that the many issues i have with ground combat would take far to much time and effort to resolve on the part of the devs to ever get done. A few examples:

Turn based. I think turn based combat is more boring than watching paint dry. This is 2012, and i don't want to play "chess with guns". It's too slow paced, and i would much rather have either a real-time combat mode or a hybrid real time/turn based like in the game "7.62: high caliber" (if anyone's ever heard of or played it). This is hardly going to happen.

My second issue is that currently, it takes AGES to process a turn. This is strange seeing as there are never more than 20-30 PC's or NPC's on a map at once, and it can't possibly take that long to process their turns with modern CPU's. My guess is that the game plays their animations "behind the scenes" while processing their turns, which hold the game up. This will probably (hopefully) get fixed in the future.

My third issue is with weapons. I LOVE gun porn and would really like MUCH more attention being paid to the guns. Currently you only have 1 weapon of each type as far as i can tell (1 shotung, 1 AR, 1 MG and so on) and there is absolutely no weapon customization what so ever. I would like to be able to customize each weapon to suit different roles, by adding various scopes, laser sights, foreward grips, under-barrel grenade launchers, different stocks, longer barrels and so on which would have an effect on each of the weapon's statistics and its ease of use. For example adding a holographic sight would make snap shots more accurate, and ading a telescopic sight would increase the accuracy of long ranged and aimed shots.

The argument could be made that there are already normal AR's and sniper rifles in the game that fit these roles, but i want each weapon to be able to fit multiple roles, like in real life. A dedicated sniper rifle is good for long range sniping, sure, but it's worthless in short or medium range combat. An AR with a medium power scope could bridge this gap between the current sniper rifle and unscoped AR. And besides, gun porn is AWESOME, so they should add it just for that reason.

Another issue i have is a lack of different ammo types. In real life there are typically 3 types types used, at least for smaller calibers. These are:

Hollow points, which have low penetration but expand upon impact causing massive internal soft tissue damage.

Armour piercing, which is a fully jacketed round with a penetrator made typically of solid steel which offers maximum armour penetration.

And finally you have an "in between" round which isn't a hollow point but also not a full AP round, for example the U.S. m885 which is a semi jacketed round with a steel tip and a lead core. It offers better penetration than a hollow point, but not as good as an AP round, and also better soft tissue damage than an AP round, but not as good as a hollow point, since it tends to fragment on impact sending fragments flying everywhere inside the body of your foe.

There are also more "exotic" types in the larger calibers. For example, the .50cal comes in the standard varieties but also with explosive and incindiary tips. Same goes for shotgun shells. There are more types there than you can shake a stick at. And as i mentioned previously in regards to the turn based combat, this is also not likely to change.

So to summarize the long answer as to why i don't like the combat: It's turn based, it's slow, and there is no gun porn. And since most, or even some of these things are very unlikely to change, a much simpler and better solution would be to be able to skip combat entirely. It would seriously only take a few lines of code to implement.

You start by assigning a "combat value" to each soldier and piece of equipment based on its stats. Then you basically just sum up the combat value of your own forces by adding up stuff like the number of soldiers you have, their skills and equipment and do the same for the enemy. Then you divide your own combat value by that of the enemy.

If the ratio comes out as 1, then you're evenly matched and there is a 50% chance of success. If the ratio comes out as <1 then the enemy is more powerful and the chance of success decreases linearly until the ratio reaches say 0.5 which means the enemy is twice as powerful and the chance of success equals zero. Likewise, the chance of success will increase lineraly when you outmatch the enemy, until the ratio reaches 2, which means you're twice as powerful as the enemy and the chance of success is 100%. Then after you have the chance of success you apply it to each squad member before displaying the final battle result. The chance of success then determines if that squad member survives the mission or gets wounded. The chance of death/ injury should be 1-(chance of success). So if the chance of success is 49%, we get (1-0.49)=0.51. There is a 51% chance that a given soldier will die/be injured. This "roll" will be applied to each soldier after the battle to determine who dies/gets injured. The first roll determines whether a soldier will die. If he survives the first roll, the second roll will determine if he gets injured or not. And if he "wins" this second roll he gets out unscathed.

Pretty simple if i do say so myself.

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Eh. Gun porn doesn't really have a place here. The weapons themselves already define the role you want that soldier to accomplish. That said, there probably will be mods that add more variety, but IMO, the base game doesn't really need that. It's nowhere near being the main focus of the game. Besides, it'd get all wonky by the time you get laser/plasma/whatever weapons, which would throw away most if not all weapon modifications, as well as ammo types.

And if you consider turn based to be as boring as watching paint dry... why did you even buy the game? That's kind of the core gameplay here.

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And if you consider turn based to be as boring as watching paint dry... why did you even buy the game? That's kind of the core gameplay here.

Because when i bought it back in 2010 or whenever it didn't even have combat yet. It only had a geoscape map that you couldn't even do anything with. It was in VERY early alpha basically. I bought it because i've always loved "x-com: apocalypse" (i never could get into the older ones due to the shitty turn based combat) which had real time combat, and because i ASSUMED that since this was 2010 and not 1978 it wouldn't have exclusively turn based combat. The least they could do is add the option to switch to real time combat like "x-com: apocalypse", or let players skip it for those who can't stand turn based combat.

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We already know that inconsequential ground fights will be skippable via the "cruse missile" option and that low level UFOs will be phased out as the game progresses so this should, for the most part, get rid of any chores. But, as I said, release and all that.

...i ASSUMED that since this was 2010 and not 1978 it wouldn't have exclusively turn based combat.

That was a very big and unsafe assumption to make. Even the Firaxis remake has purely turn based combat. Turn based gameplay isn't inherently antiquated, you just thought it was because you don't like it.

Edited by Jean-Luc
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Because when i bought it back in 2010 or whenever it didn't even have combat yet. It only had a geoscape map that you couldn't even do anything with. It was in VERY early alpha basically. I bought it because i've always loved "x-com: apocalypse" (i never could get into the older ones due to the shitty turn based combat) which had real time combat, and because i ASSUMED that since this was 2010 and not 1978 it wouldn't have exclusively turn based combat. The least they could do is add the option to switch to real time combat like "x-com: apocalypse", or let players skip it for those who can't stand turn based combat.

But why are you still interested in this game after you realized that it would only have turn based ground combat? What aspect of it do you still find appetizing?

Have you thought about asking Chris for a refund?

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Ok, ok, Hicks, as funny as you might find this situation to be, Serben has stuck with a game whose fundamental principles he disagrees with/hates. You gotta respect someone who will stay the course no matter what, so personally, I don't think that lol was in particularly good taste. However, Serben, asking for an auto resolve button because you disagree with the fundamental principles of the ground combat system is unlikely to get you a "yes", regardless of how easy you think it is to implement. Equally, asking for an auto resolve button because the ground combat is "slow" or "boring" will not get you a positive response either. Chris, like me, would be more interested in "why?".

To be honest, the game(s) that I can think of that most closely match what you have described are UFO: Aftershock and UFO: Afterlight. And quite possibly more Aftershock than Afterlight, as that has more gun porn. Have you tried either of them? I don't think you'd be disappointed.

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