Getting attached to your soldiers.

[Gorlom]

There might possibly be a mod like that for Xenonauts too. Not likely to be an included standard ingame feuture since a lot of players like the permanent death and think it lessens the game if you include a safe mode.

Edit: and while i did usually revert to old saves in X-com the latest one i havent reloaded because of my solders dieing. and it has been kinda fun not obsessing over impossible situations, and simply dealing with the loss moveing on. I'm still playing cautiosly, but removing perma death would just make me rush in in a way that would make the game far less enjoyable.

Edited January 10, 2012 by Gorlom

[admiral]

For me the attachment to my soldiers came through the gameplay experience. One soldier would make it alive from the beginning until the end of the game, earning ranks and being the tough old "sarge" who would show rookies how it's done. Another guy would be easily panicked and/or a lousy shot but somehow he would pull through and land an impossible shot to win the mission. Another guy would be the "lucky son of a b*tch" who at first you would use as a meat shield/scout but miraculously he would survive with the alien shots whizzing inches past his face. It's these kinds of events that make you care about your soldiers.

[Slippery Jim]

I'm still playing cautiosly, but removing perma death would just make me rush in in a way that would make the game far less enjoyable.

You still have to play cautiously with the "hospital visit instead of cemetery mod". If you had too many soldiers in the sick back you couldn't fill your landing craft or defend your base properly. It added depth to the game more so than the process of reloading a save game because of death.

[Achire]

Seeing the names of the soldiers fallen in combat was one of the coolest features of Cannon Fodder. And rookies if anyone really are cannon fodder.

You could always have a difficulty setting that disables saving during combat. I don't think I could stomach playing in full Iron Man mode, but no save during combat would be perfectly reasonable (think Total War).

[Hale]

Honestly I get attached to my soldiers without any fancy features. Not that they would be a bad idea, but I wouldn't consider them necessary.

I would become too attached in X-com with them. I've got good ol' Sgt. Virgil who is as reliable as can be and never seems to get hit. Named a soldier after someone who was watching me and just happened to become my best marksman and commander. I play games with a friend who is aggressive but fairly bad at shooters, so I found a rookie with high bravery and lowest accuracy and named him after my friend. Good times and wouldn't want any of them to die.

Anyway, as long as I can name my soldiers and see a couple stats (missions, kills) then I will have no problem getting attached through their experiences. Though I would certainly welcome more features to connect me with my soldiers

[Gorlom]

You still have to play cautiously with the "hospital visit instead of cemetery mod". If you had too many soldiers in the sick back you couldn't fill your landing craft or defend your base properly. It added depth to the game more so than the process of reloading a save game because of death.

You might. I dont. Considering that you can buy more soldiers to fill in you can just rotate 2-3 sets through the hospital all the time.

[raidsoft]

You still have to play cautiously with the "hospital visit instead of cemetery mod". If you had too many soldiers in the sick back you couldn't fill your landing craft or defend your base properly. It added depth to the game more so than the process of reloading a save game because of death.

This is entirely a matter of preference, some people don't want their soldiers to die at all, some reload their games the second a soldier dies, some just play and accept the fate of their soldiers and live with the consequence of their actions. I am in the third category, if a soldier dies then he's dead for me, only reason I would reload a game is if a gamebreaking bug happens or game crashes etc. etc.

What I am trying to say here (this is not just directed at you Jim) don't push your own way of playing onto other people, they want to play their own way and you want to play yours, that doesn't mean one is right and one is wrong.

As long as there are options for the different play styles everyone should be happy Personally the reason I don't like the "safe" method where soldiers can't die is because I don't feel any actual danger in the game then and it takes away a lot from the game FOR ME (note the for me, this is MY opinion and you can feel differently and that's perfectly fine!)

[Sathra]

Slippery Jim, that was vanilla UFO:ET. Most of the mods added permadeath. In vanilla, the only way to actually lose troops was having the entire team wiped out.

This is a long running discussion too, but the final result was to make Ironman Mode optional at all but the hardest difficulty (not sure about only blocking GC saves, might be hard to code). The major criticism of all the X-com successors was the lack of expendability of your troops, and as you can see, its a heavily advertised feature of the 2k successors (Permadeath! they scream).

'Dead' soldiers in Xenonauts have a chance to be only horrifically wounded upon mission end, and will spend a long time in medical getting better. The chance is higher on easier difficulties.

[IceVamp]

...and will spend a long time in medical getting better.

Tell me about it, my sarge is on a 15 day sick leave! Damn unions!

[horrid]

Rank in and of itself could be an effective means of implementing a "command buff" to junior squaddies within command range. The experienced NCO could inspire confidence in the more junior members of a team. A mechanic like that would give you the feel of a trusted "fire team partner" but would be less tracking intensive as you wouldn't be required to track every mission logged between every member of a squad.

If there was a bonus of this type there would have to be some penalty as well. If they can put down the sarge we're all gonna die.

Another cool possibility is specialist training. From the view of the soldier screen in the finished game you could send a trooper away on a physical training course for six days for two +3 stat buffs. Similar courses offer the user the ability to choose customization for squad members with is attractive to both power gamer and roleplayer types. As long as these choices aren't gamebreakingly good this is a fantastic idea that the development team looks to be working on.

Medals are neat even if they don't confer any advantages. I remember playing Silent Storm and checking out my teams decorations just because I could (it was a silly highlight of an after action report).

The last feature I'd really like to see relating to this thread would be negative traits caused by injuries. If you get smoked by an alien energy weapons there are some things a week or two in a hospital will never change. If serious injuries had the possibility of causing effects like a bad knee or the loss of an eye it invites the player to make some weighty decisions. My favorite would be a PTS issue that might affect the units psychology and your ability to issue them orders (Bloggins is a killing machine but can he still keep it together in the field?). Good squad games should challenge a user to make hard calls when they are in a position of command. This Bloggins might be the ridiculous super sniper you farmed compulsively but what if his stress makes him unresponsive when the chips are down. Is it worth keeping him if he jeopardizes the success of the mission or the lives of his team should he freeze up again? You are the commanding officer, make the call. Epic.

.......................................................

I thought a bit more about PTS disorder and don't think that classifying as like a physical injury is valid. Too often in squad sims users have pet soldiers they want to do better than others (the go to guys who are always on the skyranger/ chinook..........You know you do it too!). It would involve a real pain in the ass worth of programming to implement and may not be worth it but consider it as a cumulative effect. All models would require a randomized "break point" much like any other stat. Constantly deploying the same models without rotation would raise the stress index. Sometimes instead of putting Bloggins on a new combat course he may need some leave/ R&R away from the front line. Maybe there would be a place somewhere in the tech tree for a branch of combat medicine that could treat/mitigate the cumulative effect of extended deployments but in the end everyone just needs some time away. From a purely game mechanics perspective this would encourage players to build a team of soldiers with diversified skill sets and encourage grooming of new recruits rather than using them as fodder.

Edited January 12, 2012 by horrid
One last thought.....mission fatigue

[Sathra]

Command 'auras' are already planned. Being near high-ranked troops increases the morale of other soldiers, and is important to counteract the panicky tendencies of rookies, and resist psionics. Of course, if they die, its going to cause a big drop unless you've got other rankers to help counteract.

Training courses might not make it in actually. Its a bit hard to think of enough courses, so it might just be a 'basic training' course and that's it. If you want to discuss this, make a new thread, to keep it all together.

Not sure about injury effects. Might be good, might be bad. Atmospheric certainly, but does make it more likely that veteran troops can lose a lot of their effectiveness as a result. Up to Chris really.

Dunno about the PTSD stuff, they don't fight all the time and have long periods where they don't have any missions. Atmospheric though.

[iamkyon]

Another cool possibility is specialist training. From the view of the soldier screen in the finished game you could send a trooper away on a physical training course for six days for two +3 stat buffs. Similar courses offer the user the ability to choose customization for squad members with is attractive to both power gamer and roleplayer types. As long as these choices aren't gamebreakingly good this is a fantastic idea that the development team looks to be working on.

Have a look at this thread on soldier training by the one and only Gazz. It's brimming with ideas and exhaustive in more ways than one.

Edited to add: I wonder if Chris has already sunk his teeth into it?

Edited January 13, 2012 by iamkyon

[Zinn]

I really like the Cannon Fodder idea and also the ranks in that game. It was a great way to get attached to your troops, and I remember cursing the heavens when a guy from the original team in mission 1 died, halfway through the game. Especially if it was to some ridiculous thing like the last enemy, accidental friendly fire or a trap! WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS, GOD? WHY WOULD YOU TAKE JOOLS FROM THIS WORLD?

For Xenonauts, I actually do something quite cheesy: I like to add myself and a friend or two to the squad. I accept permadeath but I do everything humanly possible to prevent their deaths, which adds an interesting balance, since I also want them to level up (meaning they must be in the front lines). Some sort of history would be a very nice feature, with awards or military commendations upon certain achievements (killing 10 aliens, destroying a large UFO, resisting mind control, killing X aliens in one hit and so on).

[Conrad Gray]

So, even aside from the proposed ideas (medals, medbay/cemetery visits, diaries, etc.), does each soldier already have a log that records the actions they perform in each mission? Like killed X of alien Y, was wounded to Z degree, healed A soldiers, was promoted, etc?

[Beagle]

Disclaimer, didn't read through all 4 pages, just mainly responding to the title and original post.

I don't think much more than X-Com already did is needed to make me attached to my soldiers. Less is more here - the reason I find myself attached to X-Com soldiers is because I'm responsible for everything about them, and the first elements of bonding subsequently occur as I'm naming them/equipping them before their first mission. I didn't get attached to my mercs in JA2 at all because they already had too much in the way of pre-set personalities and backgrounds, and worse, you only hired them for a set period of time. They weren't "mine", they were someone else working for me.

For this reason I would say that stuff like diaries and likes/dislikes are not even a question of whether it's worth Chris spending time on, but more whether it's a good idea at all. Everyone gets attached in different ways, but for anyone like me who gets attached to X-Com troops because they're theirs and no-one elses, that kind of stuff just gets in the way. You don't need to give them diaries and personalities, we already give them that ourselves in our minds as we play; it develops through missions, it's emergent game play that the blank canvas of your rookies lets you run with, and I fear anything that interferes with that could end up doing more harm than good.

Being attached to troops MAKES the game for me, so I see this as something really important to Xenonauts being a good game for me. There's very few games that successfully pull this off for me; Ground Control is another one, and again that's through a very simple gesture of letting you name your squads and equip them, and then making them persistent and tracking their stats. When you're attached to your troops, that's where all the tension in these games come from, which is why I'll never agree with anyone who says soldiers should be medbay'd only and not be able to die - that just takes all the tension of 'will they make it through this one' and throws it out the window.

[TheTuninator]

I'm inclined to agree with Beagle; I don't really think Xenonauts needs much more than X-COM has to make players attached to their soldiers. I wince when one of my soldiers dies in X-COM, and all I've done is give them a name. I wince because I remember everything they did, and it hurts to know that I won't be able to be awed by their exploits any more in the future.

A "diary" where players could jot down notes about what the trooper has done could be cool, but I'm not sure if it's necessarily the best avenue for Chris to focus the team on; as an indie dev, they can only do so much, and it feels rather extraneous.

The medals system will cover that area after a fashion, anyways.

[anotherdevil]

A "diary" where players could jot down notes about what the trooper has done could be cool, but I'm not sure if it's necessarily the best avenue for Chris to focus the team on; as an indie dev, they can only do so much, and it feels rather extraneous.

True, but something like this probably wont take to long to code though will it? It's basically word but in the game... no?

[Jimsin]

Just heard about Xenonauts for the first time today and am very excited about this particular thread - for me the 'caring about your soldiers' was always the most important thing about XCOM. Being able to name your troops - to remember the dangerous situations they'd managed to get through in the past, and the knowledge that every new mission could result in their permanent death made each turn gripping in a way that no other game has been since.

Just to add to some of the previous posters - I'm also with the 'less is more' philosophy - The very fact that in XCOM you didn't have a whole load of information on each soldier meant that you started to create a personality for them from your own imagination. I really do like stat tracking though, plus the possibility of them also being injured & being able to drag them from the battlefield for a period in hospital. Also ranks, either autoassigned, or to be handed out by the player themselves. For me this isn't 'polish', this is what actually makes the game worth playing.

I loved the suggestion of being able to add your own notes next to each soldier's profile, and if there were more ways of tracking them between missions then all the better. Of course some people hate their soldiers being able to die, so giving the option of having this or not at the start of a game would make everybody happy.

I just heard about the new XCOM remake which is to be released at the same time - for me the one that implements this aspect of caring for your soldiers and the possibility of losing them will be the XCOM I'll be getting excited about.

[Gorlom]

Of course some people hate their soldiers being able to die, so giving the option of having this or not at the start of a game would make everybody happy.

That however changes a surprisingly big aspect of the game and it needs to be balanced for both options. My guess is that it is going to be left out and if there is anyone really bothered by it that person will simply mod it.

[Sunshard]

I have to say, I'm very much in favour of your original squad having some mark to distinguish them. Out of all the ideas that we're still throwing around, that struck me the hardest.

[thothkins]

Just to add to some of the previous posters - I'm also with the 'less is more' philosophy - The very fact that in XCOM you didn't have a whole load of information on each soldier meant that you started to create a personality for them from your own imagination. ..For me this isn't 'polish', this is what actually makes the game worth playing.

Just tripped across this thread and wanted to agree with the well put quote above. Having a text field to put in your soldier's best and worst moments would provide a huge payoff. Just think of the screenshots appearing on the forum,

There was nothing quite like seeing three of my original squad making it all the way to Cydonia in my first EU game. >sniff<

[CVert]

I remember one of my flatmates getting 2 soldiers with the same last name and deciding they were brothers. They were always put in the same squad, one was one of his best guys and the other was a monkey with a gun. He had most of the flat periodically checking on the brothers progress as he played