Gaining Bravery

[Khall]

From gameconfig:

<braveryProgress pointsToProgress="1" maxPointsInSingleBattle="2" globalMaxProgress="100" comment="A progress point is earned whenever a soldier panics in battle" />

Right now bravery is earned by panicking in battle which I think is not the best system. It's counter-intuitive, rewards bad gameplay, doesn't come into play until later, more difficult missions (the only time my soldiers have panicked is when a terror mission goes terribly wrong) and when you get high morale it becomes increasingly hard to get your soldier to gain more.

I would change it to a system where every time a soldier sees an alien, they gain a progress point, and when they get say 10 points (numbers just an approximation) they gain +1 bravery. It would make more sense, a soldier who is a veteran and has seen many aliens would be less likely to panic, rather than a guy who panicked so much he stopped panicking. Also it would give it a better risk/reward mechanic, your soldier can't just sit in the chinook and panic to gain bravery, he has to go out there and see some aliens.

The only problem I can see is that people could exploit it by simply turning around and looking at the alien again. The obvious solutions would be to set the limit they can earn in a single battle low (but I would like soldiers who survived a particularly hard mission to get a good boost to bravery) or make it so you only get 1 point from each individual alien (if that's possible)

What do you think?

[Vivisector 9999]

I agree, awarding it for panicking isn't the best way.

Actually, a better method might be awarding it for killing an alien, rather than merely seeing one. That would reinforce your soldier's feelings of "They're not so tough" or "See, we CAN kill them" or "Welcome to Earth, motherfucker!" (and thus bravery). That would solve the exploit/1 point per alien problem, as well.

[Khall]

Or maybe combine them so it's awarded when they see an alien killed.

I say this because for me at least it's usually the sniper or machinegunner that makes the killing shot, , so it would even it out more, or else your guy who has been on 15 missions and in countless firefights never gains bravery because he never lands the killing blow.

[thothkins]

Back in ye olden days of X-Com the Bravery stat would increase if the soldier's morale fell below a certain level (50), but the soldier didn't panic.

Which makes a bit more sense than the current system, for all the reasons the OP said.

[Gorlom]

I kind like the idea that you get it hen you panic. It would be rare to get bravery but hen you really need it you would gain it pretty quickly.

Stop looking at it from a point where it should make sense as to why a soldier gets braver. Look at it as a hidden game mechanic. As long as it has something to do with the stat anything works really. Seeing or killing an alien has less to do with the stat then how it works now or how Thotkins mentioned it works in X-com.

I think soldiers would gain bravery too quickly with the systems suggested in this thread. If the game got balanced around that fresh recruits would be a serious disadvantage in the later fights... probably never able to catch up properly.

[Khall]

It would bring bravery advancement more in line with other stat increases, right now I'm getting nothing unless I mess up and my squad panics, which is a bad rewarding scheme.

It would be rare to get bravery but hen you really need it you would gain it pretty quickly.

You would gain it rather slowly in the beginning and faster later on, simply due to the increased amount of aliens. (Also if it was a "see alien killed" system the max-progress-in-a-single-battle cap should be removed to accomodate this)

As to balancing, yes a rookie would be at a disadvantage in later fights but he would also be at health disadvantage, AP disadvantage, etc., I don't how it differs from other stat balancing.

[Gorlom]

It would bring bravery advancement more in line with other stat increases, right now I'm getting nothing unless I mess up and my squad panics, which is a bad rewarding scheme.

Why would you even want it to be in line with the other stat increases? It's a completely different system here if you overlevel on it you aren't even going to notice it's effects... until one of your soldiers dies and you have to replace him with a rookie that is screwed so bad it would be better if you didn't even bring him along as he can never get any experience when all he does is panicking 24/7. (And since he doesn't gain bravery from that anymore he won't be able to break out of that downard spiral)

You would gain it rather slowly in the beginning and faster later on, simply due to the increased amount of aliens. (Also if it was a "see alien killed" system the max-progress-in-a-single-battle cap should be removed to accomodate this)

Your system is still magnitudes faster then the "increase when making a panic save roll" system. And it's fast when you don't need it to be fast. Why would you want to effectively remove a status debuff for your veterans only, but have your rookies suffer endlessly?

Wait why should single-battle-cap be removed? That will just make the issue worse (assuming that the devs intends the veterans to be panicking as ell at some point in the late game)

As to balancing, yes a rookie would be at a disadvantage in later fights but he would also be at health disadvantage, AP disadvantage, etc., I don't how it differs from other stat balancing.

It differs because having low other stats means they will have a harder time... but it will be doable.

Having low bravery (and not ranking it up when he panics) means he will be panicking, ergo he will not be doing stuff that will let him skill up anything else. (assuming you have come far enough that your super brave veterans are supposed to be effected by panic attacks) He will never catch up to the veterans either. It ill be a big-ass hurdle that the rookie will stumble on every time.

Having the skillup be on a failed save roll means the issue auto resolves itself eventually. And you don't get this large gap generated by countless of missions where veterans were farming bravery before panicking even became an issue.

PS. You know what, I'm going to have to settle for the statement: "it is going to have to different balance schemes and I'd prefer it to not be yours."

Edited August 14, 2012 by Gorlom

[Khall]

I think you're overestimating how much rookies will be panicking in the late game

From the wiki:

Panic - Panic causes a soldier to lose all APs for the turn. The chance of a soldier panicking is 2% for each point of morale below 50 the soldier has, capped at 50%

Negative Modifiers

Xenonaut Death: All soldiers suffer a penalty to their morale dependent on the rank of the soldier killed.

Rookie – 10 morale point penalty

Squaddie – 15 morale point penalty

Sergeant – 20 morale point penalty

Captain – 25 morale point penalty

Lieutenant – 30 morale point penalty

Major – 35 morale point penalty

Commander – 40 morale point penalty

Colonel – 50 morale point penalty

Wounded: A soldier suffers a 1 point morale deduction for every 2 points of damage they receive.

Civilian Killed by Aliens: This provides a 3 morale point penalty, capped at 15 per turn.

Civilian Killed by Xenonauts: This gives a 10 morale point penalty to the soldier who killed the civilian.

Xenonaut Soldier Killed by Xenonaut: This gives a 15 morale point penalty to the actor, and a 5 point penalty to all other Xenonauts. This is in addition to the death penalties listed above.

So apart from civilian deaths (which there is only a limited amount of and is capped at 15 deduction per turn) all of these are direct outcomes of your decisions, so it is doable. The rookies will have a disadvantage, but as long as you play well, it shouldn't really affect you. They won't be paralyzed 24/7 as you seem to think. This is why I don't like the panic system, it relies on you making mistakes (which you will granted), but having a mechanic based around it is bad.

A "see alien killed" system wouldn't rely on soldiers getting killed or you screwing up to improve bravery.

I would like a larger difference between veterans and rookies, I'd like my veterans to be hard to panic, rather than them all have more or less the same chance to panic when a captain gets killed

Edited August 14, 2012 by Khall

[Gorlom]

That's how it would work with the current system. It would not be balanced for your system.

You can't really say that I'm overestimating how much the rookies will be panicking (if I have continuously stated that I'm assuming the panic inducing penalty will be scaled to fit with your rampant bravery growth) by quoting the current system, a system that you want to change. (Yes, that system will have to change too if you want to increase the amount of bravery you gain)

If you kept this system to induce panic together with your system of gaining bravery you could just scrap the panic mechanic all together. There wouldn't be any point to it anymore.

PS. I admit to not knowing how the panic mechanic works. I assumed it to be scaling with which aliens showed up. I see even less point of having such rampant growth now that I know it's not scaling beyond which rank of Xenonauts dies. I think you are just obsessing over gaining as much stats as possible.

Edited August 14, 2012 by Gorlom

[Gauddlike]

If there was no cap you could potentially gain 15+ bravery in a single terror mission if you were on or near the front lines.

That is too much.

I could see a chance of a single point increase for each victory, as long as there is a hard cap on how many you could gain in total.

Remember when you start talking about large increases to the soldiers bravery it could also have a huge effect on the suppression system now as that is based off bravery.

On the other hand you could use the suppression system as a way to increase bravery as well.

Rewarding the player for keeping your troops safe, even when they are taking fire feels better than rewarding them for getting people killed.

I am pretty sure Chris mentioned that resistance to psi attacks would also be bravery based.

I would be very wary of major increases to that stat until we know what kind of gameplay effects and uses it will have.

[Khall]

If there was no cap you could potentially gain 15+ bravery in a single terror mission if you were on or near the front lines.

That is too much.

I could see a chance of a single point increase for each victory, as long as there is a hard cap on how many you could gain in total.

You would have to see an alien get killed around 10 times (just an approximation) to gain +1 bravery. Looking through the files a Ceasan battleship (which I'm guessing would have one of the highest amounts of aliens) would have at max 27 aliens. So the maximum you could earn is +2.7 bravery. You wouldn't need a level cap per mission because the number of aliens spawned would naturally limit it. Early on it would take a couple of missions and be directly involved in firefights to improve +1 bravery, but will gain it faster in later missions.

Remember when you start talking about large increases to the soldiers bravery it could also have a huge effect on the suppression system now as that is based off bravery.

On the other hand you could use the suppression system as a way to increase bravery as well.

Rewarding the player for keeping your troops safe, even when they are taking fire feels better than rewarding them for getting people killed.

I am pretty sure Chris mentioned that resistance to psi attacks would also be bravery based.

I would be very wary of major increases to that stat until we know what kind of gameplay effects and uses it will have.

I'll admit I hadn't considered that.

That's how it would work with the current system. It would not be balanced for your system.

Increase the numbers slightly then, it wouldn't need a major overhaul (though I would like to the morale system to be more sight based, e.g. lose more morale if they see a xenonaut killed rather than a global deduction, lose a little morale when the see an alien, etc. but I'm kinda going off at a tangent here). As long as they don't get casualties they are unlikely to panic and when you do get casualties they are, like the current system.

The point of a "see alien killed" system is it allows you to (slowly) gain bravery early on, and faster later, and takes a bit of risk to get it, rather than no increase until you screw up a terror mission and everyone panics. If I play a perfect mission with no human casualties I gain no bravery, which is isn't right.

I think you are just obsessing over gaining as much stats as possible.

I'm not obsessing over gaining stats, I would just like to see a larger diference in the bravery between veterans and rookies. When things go wrong, there should be a clearer distiction between the rookies that will (probably) panic and the veterans that (probably) won't.

[Gorlom]

I see your point and I don't think it would be fun. I guess we just have to agree to disagree.

Edited August 14, 2012 by Gorlom
edited my post so i'm not tryingt to get the last word after trying to agree to disagree.

[Khall]

I admit my suggestion has its flaws, but I just don't like the way the current system awards bravery for the reasons I've already stated. I do see the thinking behind but I think there are better ways to do it.

Fair enough, I agree to disagree

[Gauddlike]

Yeah the current way is counter intuitive.

As far as your suggested system goes I would tie it in with their current bravery to make someone with a higher bravery gain less than someone with a lower one.

Higher ranks would naturally have higher bravery if they are your more active troops, they have seen more so are less likely to be impressed by yet another alien.

The higher ranks should also have the morale aura ability at some point, by which they can boost the morale of lower ranks nearby.

This is likely to be a flat increase to their bravery or a reduction to morale penalties when they are near a higher rank.

I don't think Chris has said how it works, only what it is intended to do (roughly).