Base Simplification Ideas

[thothkins]

Gazz wrote:-

What if the barracks (or LQ) get destroyed during an attack? Do all the soldiers perish after you win the battle because they no longer have a place to sleep?

If we were to extend the functionality into repercussions of destruction in a base attack, then you wouldn't be able to hire any more soldiers until you built a new Barracks. Behind the scenes, the soldiers would be crammed up in the same place the the admin staff live. There may also be penalties in recovery and training (if there is such a thing).

Likewise, should living quarters be destroyed then it would prevent you hiring further scientists/ engineers and I'd also put a penalty on research and manufacturing times.

Just to reiterate Trashman's point that although Gazz's idea of a cost per project, including staff seems nice, it allows you no flexibility to add or decrease personnel from it.

Gazz also wrote

Game design also means removing the features that do not present the player with a decision or challenge.

Basic facilities are: Command Centre, Garage, Hanger, Laboratory, Long Wave Radar, Medical Centre, Missile Turret, Short Wave Radar, Storeroom, Training Centre, Workshop

I can see that each of these has a function but at a push you could get rid of any one of them in the same was suggested for living quarters and it wouldn't make a jot of difference.

How do people get into the base? The Access Lift has already been hand waved away. No one in the original game bothered about a garage. That could go. Just say they get repaired in the workshops. Hangers could go, by saying that the craft are now stored above ground. After all, the aliens are going to spot all that radar anyway. Why do we have ground penetrating radar, operating from underground? I hope that missile defence roof works.

Do I need to see a medical centre to know that my guys are getting healed? Do I need a training center (obviously not if it goes) to see that my troops keep active. What happened to a rec room (like UFO:AI) has? Just say it's part of the barracks. Except we haven't one. Part of the living quarters then (if it stays).

The command centre is there as a goal in a base defence mission. Much in the same way that holding a UFO for x number of turns works. It's nice. Would I have missed it if it weren't there already? No, I wouldn't have. Someone already suggested that any other facility could suddenly become key to a base defence. If aliens infiltrate General Stores for 5 turns they activate that Alien Power Source and that's all she wrote for your base, for example.

The command center is the least functional of them all in day to day game terms. In aesthetic terms it's very nice. It links up with the menu screen and the new Geoscape screen. It gives you the feeling that you are overseeing an organisation. Just as control over scientists and engineers also gives you that feeling.

I'd argue that the management, not micro-management, of your personnel enables you to make more decisions in a game than waiting for a Base Attack (a la Missile Defence/ Command Center).

As HWP wrote

Micro-management is bad. But not all management. Remove enough non-critical elements, automate things enough, make enough assumptions... and in the end there won't be much of a game left.

Still for keeping the management of individual scientists and engineers as above

Edited February 23, 2013 by thothkins
"hand waved" not "had waved"

[GizmoGomez]

Someone mentioned medical facilities above.

What do they do? If nothing, how about having a medical facility decreases the time for wounded soldiers to heal?

It'd add more to the decisions a player can make.

Also, in response to Gazz

Game design also means removing the features that do not present the player with a decision or challenge.

Why would you take out these features? Would you rather have all the maps be steel grey? Wireframe, even? It wouldn't change gameplay. There's no difference in challenge or decisions. Well-rendered maps, or troops, or anything of that sort is superfluous, then, right?

By that same reasoning, the soldiers could all be nameless, indicated by numbers only. The backgrounds written up for them, their nationality, etc is meaningless. There is no difference between a soldier from the Ukraine and one from South Africa, so why include that information?

The list of unimportant features goes on and on...

That kind of thinking, that only the "important" things need to stay and everything else can go, is dangerous. Without "unimportant" features, without the little things, a game will suck.

And I agree with thothkins, individual hiring and firing scientists and technicians should stay.

The barracks can house soldiers, there's no problem with that. If it gets destroyed, perhaps troops can't rest/heal from injuries (unless there is a medical facility, see top of this post) and you can't hire any more.

This system could be extended to labs and workshops as well. I say that they should house lab coats and techies, up to 20 or so. If the buildings get destroyed, you don't lose your staff, they just can't do anything until you rebuild the lab/workshop, or you can fire them if you aren't going to rebuild.

Edited February 24, 2013 by GizmoGomez
Adding last paragraph

[thothkins]

I guess if there's no medical facility, or it's destroyed then the soldiers could do one of the following:-

- Die before they get proper treatment

- Have permanent stat reductions

- Simply sit there in limbo until you build one

- take x times as long to heal they're whisked off to local hospital.

- Fortunately Herbert West has joined the Xenonauts (unfortunately scientists are just numbers in the game, but he's there)

Actually, since this is in the context of base design, repercussions of lost facilities never seems to be threatening enough for anyone to have any redundancy in their bases. Just another thought for making those base building decisions more interesting and meaningful. Assuming there will be any base facilities once we've pruned out all the ones that don't offer a "challenge"

[crusherven]

In response to removing the starting hunters, I'd say give the player one. Those of us who are experienced can intelligently decide if we want one or not, but new players will have no idea. It's a really expensive piece of equipment, and if they start with one they can at least get an idea of whether they like it or not, instead of gambling a large chunk of money on an unknown.

[thothkins]

re: Hunters. It would encourage new players to understand why there's a garage as well as play around with vehicle allocation, armaments, and shrapnel wounds when the thing get blown up in it's first mission.

[Gauddlike]

Storages store a specific amount. You need them to store allenium and everything you produce. Depending on capacity, you may need more than 1 in production bases.

Not true in Xenonauts.

Storage space is infinite once you build a store room.

Lab/ workshops and living space

You could just add another hatch (like the one in the control room tiles) to each lab and workshop building when seen in ground combat.

That would be the entrance to the secure living area located under each facility, doubling as the bolt hole in case of attack.

Or you could make bases be multi layer with the upper layer having living quarters over the related facilities.

You could also add some supply tunnels/ air vents for the aliens to infiltrate if you want to make things a little tougher for the defenders.

Reapers in the tunnels would be downright scary.

That would remove the need for living quarters completely without removing the representation of living areas.

I would also build the workshops and labs without staff but have each one provide living/ working space for 10.

Again it simplifies the base a little and removes the pre-requisite of the LQ without losing the management side.

The other bonus is that the living quarters tiles can still be used on this second level of the base and only need to make spaces for at most ten cots.

[thothkins]

You could just add another hatch (like the one in the control room tiles) to each lab and workshop building when seen in ground combat.

oh come on. I'm all for the hand waving and adjusting things to fit as I posted above. But I draw the line at forcing my employees down hatches at the end of their shifts. It's going to seriously affect the eggs they lay for the staff canteen

Not true in Xenonauts. Storage space is infinite once you build a store room.

To be fair, I had to catch myself before posting something similar. As they stand, stores do nothing whatsoever. You just have to have one. Following some of the logic earlier in the thread, you could argue easily enough to remove it entirely. My preferred option would have been to add some management to it. Want to hoard everything? Then it's going to cost you precious base space. Which was one of the ideas behind the OP.

But hey, I'd also have linked Xeno-hoarding to the funding nations. If Xenonauts refuse to share anything they collect and research, their relationships should suffer accordingly as nations struggle to defend themselves. Further, it should delay the ticker point at which funding nations can deal with the smaller UFOs.

[Gauddlike]

There isn't all that much to store in Xenonauts though.

You can stockpile Alenium and alloys, maybe keep some alien craft parts like power sources (if they aren't automatically broken down into Alenuim and alloys rather than used as you find them), and the weapons/ammo you have built for your squad.

Everything else is likely to be auto sold.

It doesn't seem worthwhile to add functionality to the game to manage storage space when there appears to be so little to manage.

Forcing your employees down the hatches wouldn't be difficult.

That's where their feed bins are.

[thothkins]

As I was typing my last post I was thinking about the infinite weapons and where they all go. I imagine that their Quartermaster (not ours), would order a fair number from the infinite pool to have handy. That's possibly best left alone. "Oh, funding nation armory is just that part of the Warehouse over there. Yes, that bit does look like a Tardis now you mention it."

Likewise, the autoselling of the alien bodies you don't need for research that get sold by the site recovery team to passing farmers it would seem, or shady people hanging around industrial warehouse districts.

Then there's the autoselling of alien weapons that could be reused, but is hand waved away, not that I would rant about such a thing.

So, all that's left is the alien articles that don't come under hand waving. I wouldn't want to pile up Alien Power Sources too closely, so that should take up a fair bit of the warehouse (possibly even with a limit that works like the Garage) Those UFOs have to go somewhere to be stripped down.

A different approach to that one is UFO: AI that has off site UFO storage facilities (where do the recovery teams put them after all). Then there's a base facility to break them down.

Then there are the articles required to manufacture items. The components have to go somewhere ahead of production. Then there are the finished articles themselves.

So, there are ways to make it useable. But, as I've said previously you could just as easily do away with nearly any one of them. It's about what makes for a better gaming experience (which may or may not be due to game design by the numbers). I'm for some management, but not micro management.

Forcing your employees down the hatches wouldn't be difficult. That's where their feed bins are.

With feeding, egg laying and sleeping going on down there, it's sounding a bit complicated. There should be some sort of management system in the game to reflect it, shouldn't there?

[crusherven]

I like the idea of having living space be incorporated into labs, but you still can individually hire/fire scientists.

[erutan]

I'm disturbed that xenonauts base staff are humanoid chickens who eat omelets.

[thothkins]

do they eat the unfertilised eggs they squat out? That can't be good.

[TrashMan]

There isn't all that much to store in Xenonauts though.

You can stockpile Alenium and alloys, maybe keep some alien craft parts like power sources (if they aren't automatically broken down into Alenuim and alloys rather than used as you find them), and the weapons/ammo you have built for your squad.

Everything else is likely to be auto sold.

It doesn't seem worthwhile to add functionality to the game to manage storage space when there appears to be so little to manage.

And hiring/fireing scientists is the height of managment?

First of all stores SHOULD have limited capacity.

Secondly, have you seen the size of some of those UFOs? Even if you strip it for parts, it's gonna take up a lot of space.

1 unit of allenium may as well be 1 cubic meter of the stuff.

Maybe even make stock weapons take up space. You don't have infinite of them - altough you can buy/sell them for 0 credits (since you can just order them). Start with a small arsenal, but you have to order aditional weapons. You have to order aircraft misssiles, ammo and guns for your people.

If you want to have a stock of missiles, you need to manage storage. There you go. Managment. Decisions.

Do I run on minimal supplies or do I build another storage?

I really, REALLY love hte way UFO:AI did it. You dont' magicly get materials and stuff from UFO's. you have to study the UFO to determine how to dissasemble it, then dissasemble it (in a special ufo dissasembly facility...even if you keep the UFO off-site, the dissasembly takes place on-base.) only THEN do you get the materials.

Not only does it keep your workers busy early game, but it gives you things to research and makes sense.

Edited February 24, 2013 by TrashMan

[Gazz]

Teach engineers how to take something apart? Weeeell, all ya'all need in this here weldin' torch and...

[thothkins]

In The Day the Earth Stood still would remember the baffled engineers outside it... unable to make the slightest impression on it's surface or how to get into the thing. Yet it was built and it was put together in some fashion. It's a pretty close X-Com analogy.

In Independence Day, researchers, including engineers had since 1945 to figure out how the make the thing work, and um... couldn't. Even some of the basic things about it eluded them. Another parallel for X-Com purposes.

Currently, there are aspects of Xenonauts that seem pretty underutilised. Having a MIG to build doesn't provide much in the way of choices early on. Likewise, adding choice making through use of stores, and other facilities, could also add to the game, without it being unwieldy.

[Max_Caine]

Gazz, the research lead-up to tier 2 is all about teaching engineers how to take alien alloys apart and put them back together again.

[Gauddlike]

And hiring/fireing scientists is the height of managment?

Higher than building a new yard to store your alloys yes.

As it stands the only management you would require would be to sell off your alloys and Alenium every now and then or build another storage building if you were to add a limit to stores.

The current stores is a central place to keep track of your supplies.

It doesn't specify that every single unit of alloys is actually kept in that room.

As you suggested a single unit of Alenium could be a cubic metre, however it could also be three grains of sand which would allow you to store several hundred units in the average bathtub.

Adding more complexity to several other features just to try and make one useful doesn't really fit under the simplification umbrella for me though.

I think the appropriate term would be feature creep.

[GizmoGomez]

I like that you don't need to build additional storage. Since most everything is auto-sold, stuff doesn't accumulate nearly as much as in UFO:EU. If you do end up with tons of alenium and alloys, maybe it's just assumed that they dig under the floor and build another level of storage? Or maybe they did that in the first place, and we have more space than we will ever need?

Also, as for the free tier 1 stuff being auto-managed and infinite, it makes perfect sense. Why couldn't the quartermaster just have a large stockpile of the things, and when someone uses something he orders a replacement? Like, someone uses a grenade. There are only 199 left, so the QM orders another one. It's basically impossible for you to go through all of the other grenades stored up before more arrive, so for all intents and purposes you have infinite grenades stored up as they are replaced pretty quickly after being used. I mean, whatever country your base is in probably has truckloads of the things, just waiting to ship to you when you ask. Since it'd just be busy work worrying about that, let the QM do it. It's his job, after all.

As for living space being under the labs and workshops (as far as base combat is concerned), I like that idea. Just add a ladder in the corner, leading either up/down to the living quarters tiles. Not difficult, and shows that the lab coats and the techies don't just vanish at the end of their shifts. I also liked the idea of having ventilation shafts and tunnels and stuff, that'd add more creepy-factor to the base missions.

[RawCode]

Simplification is required.

1) Lab is ok, but ability to hire\fire individual sientist is not needed, lab == 10 sience points that you can distribute over projects manually or just let it work automatically.

If you need more points - build other lab that will work automatically if you not stated othervice.

2) Barracks shoud include everything needed for your xenonauts, including medical care, training, place to sleep, everything, size can be set to 2*2 and named something like "military installation".

Also it shoud be automatically upgraded if you discover new technology.

3) Workshop shoud include storage, work just like lab, distributing production power automatically, storage size shoud stay infinite.

4) Only one type of radar that automatically upgrade when new technology discovered

5) Garage\hangar shoud keep single unit combat ready and other unit mothballed, in case of existing unit lost in action, this will provide ability to recover in 24 hours by recomission of mothballed unit.

6) Hunters and interceptors shoud not be right from the begining, it shoud be option - shoot enemy units airborne and get easy ground combat or get ground combat with support of hunter.

7) Base size of 5*5 will be fine, this will allow player to build specialized bases, just to place hurge amount of radars or sience facility.

everything at once base shoud not be possible.

[TrashMan]

I think the appropriate term would be feature creep.

And I think the appropraite term for what ou are suggesting would be "dumbing down".

You can handwave ever building or every feature away if you want.

Why have barracks? Soldiers too can be housed off-base. Why even have research on base and not distributed over a dozen science institutes over the world?

The point is that you want the player to have things to do and decisions to make - and not all haveto be terribly complex ones. After all, what is the difference between the player deciding if the new base he is building will be a interception base (with lots of hangars) or a research base (with lots of labs) or a production abse (with lots of workshops) in comparison to storage base (lots of storages...altouhg it's more likely for a production base to contain both)

So yes, I would like to see storage not be infinite.

I would like to see living quarters stay, the research/workshop routine could be simplified in other ways....as explained earlier.

For an example:

- labs/workshops have a capacity of how many peopel can work in them. They have a fixed mantainance cost wich includes keeping X personel on standby

- Living Quarters limit how many people can live and work in the base. (you could possibly do without it - all personell must live off-site which is inefficient and provides a significant penalty to research/production)

- So if you have living space for 30 that's the maximum number of scientists + workers that can be assigned to all projects in the base at once.

- Assigning a scientists/worker to a project moves him from the standby and into active, on-base status..he is paid more while he works. Which is basicly like hering him.

- Removing a scientists from the project puts him back in the standby, lik he is fired

Basicly the number of labs/workshops determines the number of scientists/workers available to you. The capacity of living quarters determines how many can work on base.

So if you have a living capacity of 30, that means a total of 30 can work.

If you have 2 labs and 1 workshop, you have 40 potential scientists and 20 workers - but only 30 can work (in any combination).

You can push research and put 30 scientists to work, but you have no room left for workers. You can go 20 scientists/10 workers.

Either way, you control your finances in a simpler way that fumbling around the hire interface. The number of people working on a project affects your expenses. You want to save money - put less people on a project.

It's effectively the same as sacking them, and everything is done from 1 screen.

Edited February 25, 2013 by TrashMan

[TrashMan]

* SNIP*

"No" to everything you said.

[Gazz]

*shrug*

Labs and workshops have gameplay attached.

Attach some gameplay to barracks and I'm all for keeping them.

Like a cumulative soldier experience gain bonus per barracks in the base because they also house the training facilities. That would put them on the same level as labs / workshops and make them part of the base management. Just having to build one and that's it? That's the absence of gameplay.

Barracks wouldn't even have to have a troop limit. That's fiddly bits and not interesting. Like stores, you'd only need one... but it would be desirable to have several so they actually compete with other buildings for the space!

Store rooms are much harder to find a gameplay purpose for.

One way would be that every store room adds a trivial sum to base maintenance but also reduces the total maintenance / upkeep cost of the entire base by maybe 10%. Improved logistics.

Also a boost to soldier morale because the quartermaster can store diet coke and pepsi. And stuff.

Again, that would give store rooms a purpose, keep them in the decision process of building/upgrading the bases.

With barracks and store rooms both being desirable in multiples, the base building space wouldn't have to be shrunk, either. I bet that these two alone would more than make up the "savings" from dropping living quarters off the building list.

The reason why I suggested dumping LQ / barracks / stores is not that I have a special hate against those types of buildings.

It's because that currently there is no gameplay attached to them. Fix the cause and you can forget about doctoring the symptoms.

[TrashMan]

*shrug*

Labs and workshops have gameplay attached.

Attach some gameplay to barracks and I'm all for keeping them.

So do barracks. Barracks are the place where you equip and keep your soldiers.

The idea that there is no gameplay attached is retarded.

I could easily get rid of labs and workshops and claim that they are not *REALLY* needed as buildings.

Heck, I can claim that BASES are nto really needed -it could all be abstracted away.

Just having to build one and that's it? That's the absence of gameplay.

no lab = no research

No barracks = no soldiers

That's no absence.

Barracks wouldn't even have to have a troop limit. That's fiddly bits and not interesting. Like stores, you'd only need one... but it would be desirable to have several so they actually compete with other buildings for the space!

you know what I find not interesting? Everything you ever said. Ever.

[Max_Caine]

Gazz, regarding "desirability of several" re. barracks. Referring to the 19th Feb development update post by Chris:

Chinook only carries 8 soldiers now, with the Hunter filling 2 slots if taken (squad size with final dropship still caps at 16)

And the inital post on this thread, also by Chris

Living Quarters to be abolished, replaced with Barracks that can hold 8 soldiers each.

Combining the two, it would seem "desirable" to build a pair of barracks to accomodate the ground team on a mission and a garrison/ replacement soliders when the ground team comes back from a mission. Then it would be desirable to build a third barrack when one upgrades from the Chinook to accomodate more troops on the dropship while maintaining the garrison/spares. That degree of desirability is not immediatly evident, but is that the kind of thing you're getting at?

[crusherven]

You know, in most RTS games--Age of Empires II comes to mind--you have buildings that produce troops and buildings that are simply needed to progress through the tech tree, usually with some upgrade possibilities attached to each. Houses in AoEII certainly didn't have "gameplay attached;" they were your least important and most boring structure, but building prudently them was part of the strategy.

I don't think barracks need some additional gameplay element to make them interesting as long as they have a limited capacity (such as 10). Then the player has to consider whether to spend the money and space on additional barracks and plan ahead. You could tack upgrades on as a possibility but as long as building the barracks is a choice with pros and cons, they're fine.

I like 10 as a barracks size better than 8 because 8 feels too small to reasonably only have one. With a size of 10, you could feasibly get by with a single barracks but would gain flexibility with two.

Edited February 25, 2013 by crusherven