About soldier's progression

[Moxar]

Hi everybody.

I assumed that you've noticed, as I did, that soldier can (and will) improve their differents statistics within the missions. Thus, there are, I believe, some flaws. I will split this reflexion around each single stat, to keep a clear point of view.

For a better understanding of this mechanic, please report to section "soldierDevelopment" of the gameconfig.xml (line67 on v18.3)

Note: PtP = Point to Progress

Soldiers develop their attributes by using them. Each time the soldier performs a certain action, he will gain a "progress point" in that attribute. Once he reaches the "pointsToProgress" value, the attribute will increase by one point. These progress points are cumulative and are stored from mission to mission.

To make my purpose clear, I will use "Rookie", wich is a... good rookie, 60 all stats, and "Commander", 80 all stats.

Time Units (TU) (300 PtP, +2 max after mission)

A progress point is earned every time a soldier spends a TU on a mission

The more you the xenonaut acts, the more he can act. Something bothers me however: the progression depends on the number of UT spent. This means that an experienced soldier (80UT) can, and will, progress faster than a rookie (60UT), in this case, 33% faster. It is a shame, because I believe that the better you get, the harder it is to get even better, so this system is counter-realistic. It's not a big deal, but maybe their could be some easy improvement, such as, for instance, counting the percentage of UT spent instead of the flat number.

During the mission, "Rookie" spent 300 UT. With the current system, he will gain 1 UT (300 PtP reached -> +1 UT). "Commander" spent 300 UT. He will gain 1 UT too (300 PtP reached, +1 UT).

Let's assume that the threshold is not 300UT spent but 300% UT spent.

Repported to his stats, rookie spent 500% of his AP. He would gain +1 UT and +200 PtP, while "Commander" would gain +1 UT too but only 75 PtP.

Strength (20PtP, +2 max after mission)

Points are given when soldier moves one tile while carrying more than strengthCoeff (80%) percent of its maximum carry weight.

I love the idea, I hate the application. Let me explain:

Everyone want his xenonauts to get stronger, to be able to carry/use big weaps/armors. So, everybody makes them carry as much as possible without impacting the UT pool of the soldier. This means that whenever your soldier is strong enough to carry his default gear (a shotgun, a jackal, two or three grenades for an assault for instance), you will "feed" him as much as you can with grenades, rockets, and bricks just because you want him to get stronger... It's boring, and it's not a bad design, because you do not give them the extra-gear "in case of emergency", but only to improve their strength.

A sollution would be a rollback : setting the StrengthCoeff over 100% (105, 110 %?). This way, improving your xenonaut's strength would be a strategic choice... But we would behave the same way (stuffing our xenonauts) at str max + 1. Who cares losing 1 UT (over 60+) when it allows you to gain strength ? The gameplay would be the same.

Another solution would be to discrease it to 0%. A xenonauts earns strength when he moves and that's it. It's a shame, but it avoids us boring minutes of brainless-grenade-gearing. Should anyone have an idea, please feel free to share it!

Accuracy (4PtP, +2 max after mission)

Points are given when a soldier attempts to fire at a valid hostile enemy within weapon range * 1.5"

Again, I love the idea, but their are flaws. First, your machine gunner improves this skill much too fast due to the range of the LMG. Everytime I use one, he gets more accurate than my snipers! Same issue with the rocketlauncher. This could be solved by discreasing the range of LMG and Rocketlancher, but it could/would cause other balance issues.

Another flaw is that (while i'm not sure of it), you can improve your skill with nonsense shoot. Let us say you've spotted an alien inside a UFO. The sniper (or gunner, or any creature of the creation!) outside, which LoS is blocked by a UFO wall, can try to shoot the alien.... So he can improve "freely" his accuracy. Moreover, does burstfire count as One or Several attempts ?

A solution would be to gain PtP when the xenonauts manage to hit his target, instead of attempting, and removing the range limit. This way, a sniper succeding a shoot from far away (more than range x 1.5) would gain a PtP, and the machinegunner hitting eveything but the alien would keep a low accuracy stat. If so, the PtP must be reduced (to 3, I believe).

Reflexes (3PtP, +2 max after mission)

A progress point is gained when a soldier performs a Reaction Fire test (it doesn't matter whether he passes or fails it)

Despite hard tries to improve this skill, it grow veeeeery slowly. Maybe we should reducte the PtP to 2 ?

Bravery (PtP1, +2 max after mission)

A progress point is earned whenever a soldier panics in battle.

I never saw any improve. Well, I never panicked. I have no comments about this.

Resilience (4PtP, no max after mission)

A progress points is earned every time the soldier gets a skillup in any other attribute.

I like it as is. maybe we shoul gain PtP when hit (+1PtP when soldier get hurt). No, please, don't voluntary hit your dudes!

What do you think of it ?

Edit: Apologies for the topic title, a "E" snicked within!

Edited April 24, 2013 by Moxar

[Shaska]

TU

I agree, it should be based on how many percent of a soldiers TUs he spent, rather than a flat number. Increasing the amount of TUs spent needed to increase it based on individual soldiers TU capacity would also be a decent way to handle it.

Strength

Your first solution is probably the best of the 2, but you still end up with the same problem: Loading up a soldier with enough gear to level him up. It is a bit more interesting than the current system however, and I can't really come up with anything better at the moment.

Accuracy

I would say remove the range limitations. Assign more points for hitting the target than missing it. Only assign points if something was targeted, and there was a clear line of sight to the target (So you can't just aim at an alien behind a wall and farm XP, but don't count partial cover in the equation), assign more points for hitting the target from a longer range, and finally assign more points based on the amount of TU's that went into the shot, so aimed shots gives you more experience than a couple of quick snap shots.

This would be a more interesting way to handle it, but it's also rather complicated unfortunately.

Reflexes

Aliens don't currently move much, so it's hard to get a good idea of how well this stat currently improves.

Bravery

Unit cap is not currently very high, so you won't feel the effect of morale much till either the unit count increased or bravery is nerfed.

Resilience

I like it the way it is. Might be a bit too good though, as highly trained soldiers can take quite a beating.

[Moxar]

about strength, moving the threshold to 120% could have interesting effects on gameplay:

do you want this soldier to get stronger ? If so, you will have to sacrifice some UT (not just one or two, but something like 10).

When you practice sport, you have to surpass ourself to get stronger. If you just do what you usually do, you only maintain your skills.

Thus, it would be a bit frustrating not to be able to increase the strenght of your boys without a severe penalty, especially in a game so crual with rookies.

[Shaska]

It might work well for assault troops and the like, but it would severely limit the usefulness of untrained heavy weapons troops. They need that extra strength to properly fire their weapons, and they are often the ones most loaded down by equipment they actually need. Combined with the fact that their weapons take a really long time to fire, you pretty much have a unit that is either doomed to be useless until his stats improve, or using a different weapon till they can use heavy weapons properly.

A better solution might be to have loads above 80% capacity negatively effect your accuracy as well, meaning that you wouldn't just load up units that should be light on their feet and accurate, like a sniper, with all the junk they can carry, but a heavy weapons unit who isn't as negatively affected by the accuracy penalty would still be able to function.

Another solution of course would be to bring back the energy stat from X-Com.

[Gauddlike]

I don't like the idea of forcing the player to overload his soldiers just so he can boost their strength.

The current system has the advantage of allowing a player who isn't trying to game the system to increase the troops strength while playing.

Overloading your troops is not a good idea so a player who is playing in a 'realistic' way would rarely gain strength as they would be unlikely to overload their troops.

Someone who wants to boost their troops strength and doesn't care about gaming the system will load up to the gain threshold if that is 80% or 180%.

In short adjusting the gains to be high and incur large penalties would only impact on the player who is trying to look after his troops and not adversely affect the min-maxer who doesn't care as long as his troops all end up superhuman.

Keeping the gain threshold below the penalty threshold means both will be able to gain strength while playing in their normal way.

[Moxar]

@Gauddlike: I agree, but this means that the threshold is useless.

I like the idea of reducting the accuracy when the threshold is reached. It would, for instance, push us to equip our snipers with light armors (indeed, light armors grant a better LOS -> sniper do not care as they have no reflexes and they use squadsight), and better mobility with jetpacks (again, sniper do not care as they don't move much).

In a way, it would make the heavy armours (Jackal, Wolf, etc...) penalizing accuracy.

Shortly :

Keep a threshold at 80%.

Any Kg over threshold reduces accuracy by 1.

Any Kg over 100% reduces UT by 1.

direct consequences :

your assault troops use heavy armors. A shotgun is meant to point blank shoot, an accuracy penalty is not a problem.

your long range troops use light armors, to maintain a fair accuracy.

[crusherven]

Yeah, reducing accuracy (or something) when heavily burdened sounds interesting to me. It doesn't really make sense that I'm constantly loading everyone up as much as I can with no downside.

[Moxar]

... no downside other than wasting time right-clicking on grenades to reach the green-but-not-red TU threshold!

[Gauddlike]

@Gauddlike: I agree, but this means that the threshold is useless.

No the threshold is where you begin to gain strength, that is far from useless.

The point where you begin to take a penalty is at 100% of capacity.

That is the point where you can no longer manage the load without it having a negative effect.

It makes no sense to me that you would start to take penalties at 80% of this capacity.

You are penalising people for taking what appears to be a reasonable load for a soldier.

You are also incorrect on your evaluation of the armour types.

The heaviest armour in the game is designed to use heavy weapons, not close combat weapons.

Any other armour type has a penalty to accuracy for moving with a heavy weapon.

The lighter ones are designed to be your scouts so will likely be closer to the enemy and therefore more likely to have shorter range weapons and light weapons to make the most of their sight range and manoeuvrability.

I don't like the idea of making the armour that is most likely to be at the back (due to AP penalties and being less able to move and shoot) also being the ones you give accuracy penalties to.

[Moxar]

No the threshold is where you begin to gain strength, that is far from useless.

If 80% means that you can increase your strength without any drawback. a threshold over 100% would be usefull (thought I don't like this idea), but 80% means "you have a choice : load less than 80% and grant nothing, or load between 80% and 100% and up your strengh". No-brain choice.

My purpose is simple: If you want the player to make a choice about how heavy he loads his soldier to get more strength, their must be a drawback.

If you just want strength to increase along the missions, then delete this threshold, because 80% meanse everyone can get it without any kind of penalty.

Once this game-design question is solve, then we can look further for ideas (for case 1), and I like the one proposed by Shaska (Acc reduction).

However, any opinions about the other stats ?

About armors, I agree and disagree.

Your assault troops (shotguns) are indeed in first line, so they need a good LoS (light armors). Thus, they are very exposed (reaction fire, squadsight)... so they are the one who take most of the damages (heavy armors). A Hard choice!

[Gauddlike]

If 80% means that you can increase your strength without any drawback. a threshold over 100% would be usefull (thought I don't like this idea), but 80% means "you have a choice : load less than 80% and grant nothing, or load between 80% and 100% and up your strengh". No-brain choice.

Remember that Chris is looking at the inventory system to make it more of a choice when selecting your gear.

I don't know if that is going to be weight changes, alteration of the amount of storage space or some other system.

That is bound to have an effect on the strength gain as well.

If you can barely bring everything you need for a mission then replacing some of it with a half ton of other stuff just to boost strength is less appealing.

It still makes no sense taking penalties at 80%.

That would look like a reasonable loading amount, not a cutoff.

I would prefer if the penalties began at 100% because that is a much clearer system.

Maybe at 100% you begin to take penalties to your reaction stat but gain points towards strength progression.

Carrying bulky gear will make it more difficult to react quickly after all.

After 110% (for example) you start taking AP reductions.

That could be a major problem to your front line troops.

It doesn't really matter if you moved the penalties to the current 100% setting or just adjusted the numbers so the current threshold became 100%, as long as it was clear at which point you are going to be penalised.

I would tie accuracy gains to damage done to an enemy.

There wouldn't need to be a maximum range really as you would be less likely to damage an enemy out at long range.

I say damage instead of hit the enemy because if you need to do damage then you are not going to be as able to shoot the same enemy repeatedly with a low tier weapon just to try and skill up accuracy.

Not sure how this would work with rocket launchers though, even a miss could potentially do damage.

If rockets are very expensive then it isn't much of an exploit to get a great shot but bankrupt yourself in the process I suppose.

[Moxar]

About strength: Let us wait Chris's cooking, I long for the "new" inventory managment system. I agree that a 80% threshold which gives you penalty would be stupid, or counter-instinctiv... As is, strenght progression is... broken ?

About accuracy: why not, and to avoid the rocket issue, let us say "hit AND damage".

Though, we both fear the training camp: "everyone gets a pistol, fire at will on the lone sebillian. Do not kill him, just shoot, or you're fired!". Thus, would you risk one of your boy's life by:

• taking low tier weapons (weight waste)
  
• not killing an alien within range on purpose, given that he shares loss with his harridan boyfriend or the-andron-who-carries-a-big-plasma-canon
  
• not killing an alien who would'nt care about training as long as he manages to kill you!
  

I believe that every attempt (with clear Line of Fire regardless covers), no matter the range, should give a ptp. In short, remove the range pre-requisite, and add a Line of Fire pre-requisite.

[Chris]

Hmm. A lot of the stats are a bit broken. Strength is under discussion here: http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/4754-Soldier-Carrying-Capacity-Strength?p=59894#post59894

For accuracy, the idea is not to penalise troops that are bad shots - if you require a hit then you are doing that. It might be better to only count shots that are in range and have more than 5% chance to hit? Also, I'm not sure if burst fire counts as multiple shots. The anecdotal evidence from machineguns suggests it counts each bullet separately, which isn't how it should work..

Reflexes - there's not really much opportunity for reaction fire anyway. We need to change the AI before that happens.

Bravery - soldiers don't panic much anyway. We should probably increase their chance of panicking.

Resilience - I quite like this the way it is.

[Moxar]

For accuracy, the idea is not to penalise troops that are bad shots

I deeply agree, but both LMG and rocketlauncher have a big range, which means it is easy to increase accuracy with those weapons. Moreover, a soldier with a shotgun is rarely at optimal range (8 tiles) so he will very very rarely gain acc.

It might be better to only count shots that are in range and have more than 5%.

Why keep the range condition then ? If you have 5% chance to hit, that's good. You should both gain accruracy for trying to hit from twice the optimal range or for trying to hit at optimal but behind heavy cover and smoke cloud. Maybe 5% is to low, maybe 20% would be better.

Edit: thanks for the title correction, it made my eyes bleed.

Edited April 25, 2013 by Moxar

[Gauddlike]

No worries, the extra E will be stored in case you need it again in future.

[Moxar]

Ehh... thank you gauddlike!

[Gauddlike]

I think you just used it.

[Orangehat44]

Something about strength and tu's gained just doesnt quite feel right as it has a suggestion on how to play or do certain things. With the way soldiers progress give everyone a lmg, or primary + rocket launcher, and be right at max weight and you'll have supersoldiers quite quick as long as you scurry around and use lotsa tu's you'll gain strength, acc, tu's like crazy. Lmg needs something to do with its role vs skill progression. its a suppressing fire weapon and if you gain a fair amount of accuracy just for tooting off shots... on top of it having rediculous range. Maybe just a really short range would help with some tweaks to spread and weapon damage after "range" so it still does its role as suppresssion as bullets in the ball park can cause suppression, but doesnt make your guy mark walburg from shooter in 4 missions.

I feel you get Tu's way to quick. I mean these guys are suppose to be coming from military outfits are they going to get 15% faster in 4-5 missions.

This character progression is so intertwined with the pacing and feel of early game play makes it a very difficult thing to balance but so critical!