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Reaction fire suggestion


freeaxle

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So I've been playing some X-Com and reading the Xenonauts forum and discovered a mechanic that I feel could be tweaked - reaction fire. Now I've done a quick search, so forgive me if this has come up before.

For me, reaction fire was always a little unsatisfactory. I did prefer Jagged Alliance's interrupts. Basically, I'd like to see reaction fire replaced with an interrupt, though perhaps with some limitations on actions that can be taken. So for instance, an alien comes round the corner and your guy gets an interrupt, you can fill the alien with lead, or run and take cover. Possibly ban aimed shots, doing stuff with your inventory etc. and it adds a bit more depth to the tactical game.

The other thing that would be good with this system would be the ability to have interrupts during your turn. Firstly, lets say you come across a guy and he interrupts, but decides to head for cover, his moving could give you an interrupt, which would just return the game to your normal turn. The cooler thing however, would be that if you encounter an enemy (this would work for both sides) and they try an interrupt (determined by the game mechanics rather than the player) rather than rolling against your reaction stats, he rolls against you. If he wins, then he gets his interrupt to run or shoot. If you win, rather than taking your turn, you get an interrupt against him. Think of it as like a Western duel: you see him go for his pistol, so you go for yours. The nature of the interrupt turn means you can shoot him, or run (again at the risk of giving your enemy another chance to get another interrupt).

I suggest this because:

a.) Greater tactical depth;

b.) Slightly more 'realism' (as in it makes sense in the game) than (as is under the current system) if an alien begins to draw but you win the reaction contest, you keep taking your turn, maybe dig in your backpack for that really handy item, maybe spend a while lining this alien up in your sights with your super-aimed shot etc. etc. while the poor alien is frozen with his gun half-drawn.

c.) A better system for sneaking up on aliens. In the original I hated trying to stun aliens because it felt like such a gamble. You walked forward and either the alien didn't react and your soldier lived, or it did and he didn't. Instead, if you send in a guy with quick reactions, maybe the alien tries to draw, you see this (because you are suddenly in an interrupt instead of taking your normal turn) and decide to blast him with your pistol instead of running up and stunning him with your rod.

d.) It allows for reaction fire behind you. Basically, if you sneak up on an alien, they have a chance to hear you, and can spin around to reaction fire. You would have a greater chance to get the interrupt (thanks to the whole spinning around and shooting you thing) and can decide what to do from there. This instead of a system that feels arbitrary (oh you tripped the reaction modifier. I'm sorry, there isn't enough of your soldier left to bury) or unrealistic (seeing really is believing...).

EDIT: An interrupt basically replaces reaction fire with a turn for your soldier (or the enemy's if they are the one reacting) with the APs left over from that soldier's last turn.

Edited by freeaxle
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For the viewers at home, can you explain how a JA interrupt works, please?

Ha ha, whoops! I've been doing that a lot today. I told a friend the time I was arriving at the airport, but neglected the dates, but anyway...

Basically the JA system has an 'interrupt' where reaction fire is in Xenonuats. When an enemy triggers a reaction (JA uses a different system to determine this) instead of your merc (soldier equivilant) firing a few snap shots, he essentially gets a turn with the APs he (or she for that matter) has left over from their last turn. Only the mercs who 'interrupt' get the turn (meaning that one merc could get it, or the whole squad could get it depending).

If my explanation doesn't clarify things, let me know. I've not been good at explaining things for the last week (I blame uni).

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I'm not sure that letting aliens react to things behind them is such a good idea. It feels somewhat limiting and will make it more dangerous (and less attractive) to stun aliens. I don't see the upside of letting the aliens do that.

In previous versions of Xenonauts the aliens could react to things behind them (due to a bug) and players complained about it.

I think that if aliens and soldiers are supposed to be able to detect through sound it need to be an integral part of the system. Something like how it works in Silent storm, where the game marks out approximate locations of enemy unit that your units can hear.

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It sounds interesting. With large squads and larger alien numbers there's a concern that each turn becomes a bit complicated, stopping every second for interrupts. But that's not a bad thing as such.

Having each unit realistically react to event around them sounds pretty good. It's possibly beyond the scope of the game in it's current form though, as they try to push for Beta.

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Ha ha, whoops! I've been doing that a lot today. I told a friend the time I was arriving at the airport, but neglected the dates, but anyway...

Basically the JA system has an 'interrupt' where reaction fire is in Xenonuats. When an enemy triggers a reaction (JA uses a different system to determine this) instead of your merc (soldier equivilant) firing a few snap shots, he essentially gets a turn with the APs he (or she for that matter) has left over from their last turn. Only the mercs who 'interrupt' get the turn (meaning that one merc could get it, or the whole squad could get it depending).

If my explanation doesn't clarify things, let me know. I've not been good at explaining things for the last week (I blame uni).

Isn't that kind of how the old Laser Squad game used to work?
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I find breaking the turn system up that badly is frustrating.

Saving some AP for a shot if anything crosses your path works.

Interrupting the enemy in their turn to have them re-interrupt you and then get interrupted again in return is messy and doesn't appeal to me.

Yes, it would technically be possible for there to be a whole switcheroo mess of interrupts in a single alien or soldier's turn. Under the system however, it would require both trying to run towards each other on every interrupt (which you could avoid by limiting the number of times a unit can interrupt their enemy anyway). As an example, the only way it happens is if the alien comes around the corner, the human sees it and tries to run at it with their stun rod, the alien interrupts the (rather courageous) charge and then decides that it would also like to engage in close combat and charges the human. For as long as they both charge each other then yes, you would get a mess (if you don't limit interrupts as suggested above). However, I don't envisage this being a common scenario as the risks are huge (one side will go "bugger this for a game of soldiers" and blow the other side away).

So I feel that the messiness is not such a huge issue, as the main point of the interrupt is to give you a bit more choice about how you respond to an alien coming around the corner. The problem with reaction fire is it is rather limiting. For example, it is useless to the guy with the rocket launcher. Also useless if you want to get cover instead of taking what might be a futile shot against a tough enemy. I can see where you're coming from in terms of breaking up the turns however, I see at as a case of giving the player a little bit more tactical flexibility. My experience with Jagged Alliance was that the interrupt system was not hugely intrusive (though that was my experience, so YMMV).

As for the 360 degree vision, I agree that in the current system it would be unnecessarily frustrating. You sneak up and every now and then you get shot, sounds like a barrel of laughs don't it (sarcasm in case you didn't pick that up ;) ) If you implemented it with the interrupt system then I think it would work. Basically, if an alien can interrupt something behind, but has a very low chance of winning the interrupt (ie. it spins around, but your soldier gets to go on much as normal) then I think it adds interest. You then have to choose between just shooting it, taking cover or making a mad dash towards it with your stun prod. I think it works better than the 360 reaction with the current system (which people have rightly pointed out was annoying) but also better than the current system without 360 reaction fire where a dude in power armour, having fired a shot at the start of a turn can still sneak up on an alien so long as he stays behind it.

@Thothkins: you're probably right, but you can forgive a man for dreaming right ;)

Edited by freeaxle
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any additional interrupt beyond the first one just seems unnecessary and annoying. why would counter interrupts and tertiary interrupts be a good idea? How common would these be?

The particular situations you envision them coming up in is when you charge the enemy to stun him... that is the worst scenario to increase reaction fire/interrupts for, since it punishes the player (most likely to the point of frustration) for trying to take aliens alive.

There wasn't any stunning in JA, was there? I don't think copying their system right off is a good idea.

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any additional interrupt beyond the first one just seems unnecessary and annoying. why would counter interrupts and tertiary interrupts be a good idea? How common would these be?

The particular situations you envision them coming up in is when you charge the enemy to stun him... that is the worst scenario to increase reaction fire/interrupts for, since it punishes the player (most likely to the point of frustration) for trying to take aliens alive.

There wasn't any stunning in JA, was there? I don't think copying their system right off is a good idea.

Interrupts should only happen where reaction fire happens - with the same number of APs - so the difficulty of charging an alien shouldn't increase. They won't increase the deadliness of reactions, but will give you more options of how to deal with them.

Mainly what I mean by 'interrupting interrupts' is that when a reaction happens, whoever is 'reacting' rolls against the reaction stat of the other unit. Whoever wins goes into an interrupt turn. Eg a soldier comes around the corner, meets an alien who tries to react but loses the roll. The soldier's turn goes into 'interrupt mode' (letting you know that the alien is about to blow his brains out). The soldier's turn hasn't actually been interrupted yet. Continuing with the example, say the soldier decides to risk a charge. This time the alien wins the reaction roll and proceeds to blow the soldier's brains out. That is really the main bit of the system.

Beyond that first interrupt, I would advocate one more, but limit it to that. To continue the above example instead of the alien shooting when it interrupts the soldier it decides to run triggering one final interrupt from your soldier (ie. the soldier gets his turn back) and then there are no more interrupts from there. I agree that any more than that would be annoying, and so I'd leave it at that. Basically, what you have then is only one interrupt which may be ended by a good reaction roll from the unit that's had it's turn interrupted.

Hope that clarifies things :)

Edited by freeaxle
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any additional interrupt beyond the first one just seems unnecessary and annoying. why would counter interrupts and tertiary interrupts be a good idea? How common would these be?

The particular situations you envision them coming up in is when you charge the enemy to stun him... that is the worst scenario to increase reaction fire/interrupts for, since it punishes the player (most likely to the point of frustration) for trying to take aliens alive.

There wasn't any stunning in JA, was there? I don't think copying their system right off is a good idea.

There are stun granades in JA2 when i recall correctly. As JA2 1.3 uses a more realistic approach, you can't "charge" someone and survive. The shock system alone makes you more or less useless after one medium-heavy hit for some time.

And normaly you should be punished for running straight into an enemy. For me it has nothing to do with frustration (if you do stupid stuff you die, and going melee against modern firearms is one of the most stupid things), but sadly with the old XCOM "shallow" tactical gameplay, at least in times after JA2 1.3.

There should be some kind of other system to stun an enemy then just running to him. You could use ranged stun or a "sneak" system. Or suppress the enemy with mg/auto fire, use smoke grenades, flashbangs etc. There are endless possibilities that won't give an interrupt.

But i don't like the idea of the op that much, as it has to be balanced very well to work. The last example, when you run around a corner and meet an alien, but the soldier wins the interrupt roll and gets the interrupt instead of the alien, is a bad design imho. If someone is waiting around the corner he should always get the interrupt, as he will see the gun barrel. In most cases interrupting someone has nothing to do with the other units reflexes. At least if xenonauts is using the XCOM system, where an interrupt means only a option to shoot someone. If they are using the JA2 system, and someone is running in his interrupt round, then yes, your system could be good.

.

Edited by endervoid
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No, I meant that as long my soldiers had few AP:s left at the end of their turn they would be interrupting the aliens during the aliens turn and if they would have AP:s to perhaps move only one tile, I would have to order them not to do anything.

And also the aliens and civilians would be interrupting each other and dragging their turns?

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I was referring to the post by freeaxle rather than yours Raakku.

I agree that interrupts that occur with limited AP remaining are a waste of time.

You would need to be able to specify that soldiers would NOT react to enemies when you are finished with the turn or you could end up with several interrupts to cancel because you can't do anything useful.

Mainly what I mean by 'interrupting interrupts' is that when a reaction happens, whoever is 'reacting' rolls against the reaction stat of the other unit. Whoever wins goes into an interrupt turn. Eg a soldier comes around the corner, meets an alien who tries to react but loses the roll. The soldier's turn goes into 'interrupt mode' (letting you know that the alien is about to blow his brains out). The soldier's turn hasn't actually been interrupted yet. Continuing with the example, say the soldier decides to risk a charge. This time the alien wins the reaction roll and proceeds to blow the soldier's brains out. That is really the main bit of the system.

Beyond that first interrupt, I would advocate one more, but limit it to that. To continue the above example instead of the alien shooting when it interrupts the soldier it decides to run triggering one final interrupt from your soldier (ie. the soldier gets his turn back) and then there are no more interrupts from there. I agree that any more than that would be annoying, and so I'd leave it at that. Basically, what you have then is only one interrupt which may be ended by a good reaction roll from the unit that's had it's turn interrupted.

The current system is far more simple yet manages to be effective.

It doesn't allow for your troops to move in the alien turn but I don't see that as a problem.

If you are in cover then your only movement option on an interrupt would be to move FROM cover when the enemy approaches.

If you have enough AP left at the end of a turn to get into cover, and aren't already protected, then you should probably do that.

Leaving yourself in the open with enough AP to dash for cover on the off chance you get an interrupt feels like poor tactics rather than a reason to change the system.

That is one of the problems with a turn based system that you have to work with.

You don't have real time reactions to the actions of the enemy.

You need to end your turn in the best position possible to get you through the enemy turn.

The only changes I would like to see to the reaction system would be to add a way to reserve extra AP and a hotkey to temporarily override the reserve.

For example:

Add a reserve AP to kneel.

Hold down alt while clicking an action (firing, moving to cover etc) allows you to use your reserve AP without having to turn off reserve and remember to turn it back on next turn.

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Then how do you determine where the end of the soldiers turn is?

If you leave enough AP to kneel then you may have been wanting to save that for reaction shots so kneeling would not be what you wanted.

Maybe you moved someone to a building corner then move a different soldier only to find that the first one has wasted AP by kneeling when you didn't want him to.

You could end up turning auto kneel on and off so many times that it would end up being easier to just use manual kneel.

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