Calisthenics -- I /HATE/ them

[Waladil]

In the most recent experimental build, we got a very controversial new feature (or "feature," depending on your point of view) where fighter craft will be auto-salvaged even upon death. I'm not looking to discuss that particular feature, but one of the reasons cited is that there would become large gaps in the game-states of highly skilled players (who never lost a plane) and unskilled players (who lost many planes).

However, there is another way that game-states can become highly differentiated by player skill. Or, more accurately, player patience.

Powerleveling. Grinding. "Training" (if you wish to be polite). Or my preferred calisthenics. All names for the same process of intentionally doing certain things in order to ensure max skill gains in each combat to result in having more skilled troops later on.

As of right now, here are the things each soldier has to do in each mission to ensure max skill gains:

1.) Spend 600 APs

2.) Move 40 tiles while carrying at least 80% capacity (Note: 160-240 TUs, not counting rotating)

3.) Shoot 8 times at an alien within 1.5x effective weapon range (Note: 160-400 TUs)

4.) Be party to 6 reflex rolls (successful or not doesn't matter)

5.) Panic twice

If a soldier were to do all of these, they would gain 2 points in each attribute except resilience -- they'd gain 2.5 points in that.

Of course, I've never seen panicking be part of the game yet, except for psionic influence, so panicking twice is essentially off the table. Additionally, I find reflex rolls to be part of the game not worth bothering with (they clash with my central combat philosophy of "don't let the enemy take initiative") so I don't bother with those. Other people do, of course.

If we assume a rookie soldier has 60 TUs (either a skilled rookie or someone with a few missions under their belt), they still have to spend 10 turns utilizing all of their TUs each turn in order to cap out on TU gains. Since I want to do well, I'm prone to trying to maximize my skill gains, even if that's not a wise tactical decision. So I might secure an area, ensure good fields of vision, and spend 4-5 turns doing nothing but ordering all of my soldiers to crouch and uncrouch repeatedly by holding 'C'. Do I have fun doing this? No. It's boring. Does it increase the amount of joy I get at the victory? No. It just wastes my time.

As a game progresses, the differences between people who powerlevel and people who don't is going to become quite notable. (In fact, my last playthrough had at least 3 occasions where a soldier went down to 1 HP and lived. If I'd not powerleveled those soldiers they would have died!)

I find this mechanic to be boring, wasteful, etc. I discussed this somewhat in a different thread that picked up a bit of conversation, titled "Ways to address the soldier skill gap." The general consensus seemed to be "Eh, whatever. Train the noobies up, too."

What if we had a Xenonauts where powerleveling wasn't a thing? Where it became difficult to use these little tricks to get more skill points, and (this is important), balance the game around that?

So, goals:

1.) Remove the boredom of powerleveling from the "skilled" players' games.

2.) Mitigate the gap in soldier competence between the games of those who powerlevel and those who don't. Assume that casualty rates are identical in both cases.

Suggestions:

As always in my suggestion sections, I don't necessarily think all of these suggestions are good, and I definitely don't think they all should be included. I'm just coming up with ideas, some are bound to be good, some are bound to be bad.

1.) Rework all skills so they're gained on harder-to-powerlevel things. For example, changing accuracy from "shots taken within range" to "shots hit" or "damage dealt with bullets."

2.) Institute squad-based skill gains. I mentioned this idea much earlier in a thread about how to rework the strength system specifically. The idea is to have a centrally-set "skill points per soldier per mission" value that the game is balanced around you earning. Then, individual soldiers are rated in the mission and gain skill points based on their relative usefulness in the mission. So if the game was based around you getting 4 skill points per soldier per mission, and you had 5 soldiers survive a mission, they'd all be ranked. The best soldier (no matter how good or bad he did in absolute terms) would get 6 skill points in various attributes, the one who came second would get five, etc. etc. down to the very worst soldier who'd get a single skill point. On average, you'd always get 4 points/soldier/mission.

3.) Simply lower skill requirements/institute a flat skill rate. I don't like this idea, but I include it because this idea is ESSENTIALLY the current game state for people who powerlevel. My soldiers get 2 accuracy, 2 TUs, and 2 strength (and possibly a reflex) per mission, and therefore they get 1.5 resilience as well. Unless I mess up. Switching to this system would be only a benefit for powerlevelers, because they get the same game without the wasted time. The only people actually affected then would be those not trying to powerlevel, and their soldiers would be raised to the same standard that some people already reach.

Subsection: Stupid things I do to powerlevel

I'm going to list here the stupid actions I take to powerlevel my troops. This only includes things I do that are actually stupid, as opposed to tactically beneficial that ALSO happen to powerlevel troops. If you guys have any stories of similar tricks, feel free to suggest them.

Accuracy: Have as many troops as possible shoot wildly inaccurate 20 TU shots at an alien in cover. I don't care if I hit. Just shoot more bullets.

TUs: As I mentioned above, spending entire turns having my force do nothing but squat-thrusts.

Strength: Yeah, I know you guys won't be firing off 200 bullets and throwing 15 grenades in this mission. Take the extra kit anyway.

Reflexes: This one isn't mine, it's someone elses, but they were discussing cornering Sebillians (with their short sight range) and having pistol-wielding troops take reaction shots each time they moved from 14-18 tiles away.

[Max_Caine]

Part of the problem (perhaps only a small part) is there's no reason not to grind for stats on every mission. There's no sense of urgency to get on with the mission. If a civvie dies? Fuck 'em. If a friendly NPC dies? Fuck 'em. You get a small point loss, and killing all the aliens goes a long way to boosting relations with a funding bloc. I'm not one for proposing that a game should be all stick and no carrot, but the player needs to have a greater sense of urgency to get on with the mission, and not to fuck around grinding for stats.

[Waladil]

Starting to play with it more, and analyze things more. I'm coming to the conclusion that Accuracy is the biggest offender here.

1.) It's important enough to warrant consideration (as I mentioned, I consider Reflexes and Bravery to be beneath notice)

2.) It's the one most likely to be missed out during normal play.

3.) The current ruleset makes it very easy to be powerleveled.

The rule for accuracy gains is that you shoot at a legal alien target within 1.5x range... and nothing else. So you can shoot at an alien protected by indestructible terrain (such as UFO walls) and train accuracy, even though it's absolutely tactically useless. Firing dozens of rounds at an alien in cover will give a lot of accuracy points to your entire squad, but running a single assault troop around to flank and putting a slug into its skull gives almost no accuracy points. I think this is probably the source of people's complaints about troops who have unsatisfactory accuracy at later levels. If you kill "too efficiently," the game punishes you.

The other important stats will still be gained at a rate near their maximum, even if not at their maximum during non-powerleveled play. If a troop with 60 TUs runs in a straight line for a single turn they're over a third of the way to their maximum strength gain. Even short missions should have at least two turns' worth of running, so gaining 1.5 strength/mission would be about minimum. TUs are harder to max out, but it seems unlikely to be able to finish a mission using under 300 TUs/soldier (6 turns), so long as you ensure that every soldier uses all their TUs every turn. However, accuracy is very easy to miss out on. If you kill an alien in an average of 4 shots (Playing tactically and relying on accurate shots over moar dakka this is quite reasonable), then a light scout will only give a total of 4 points of accuracy spread out across your entire squad. And heaven forbid you have a few star troops who shoot more than eight times! They're stealing accuracy gains!

So my "bare minimum" recommendation would be to change accuracy to "Points of damage dealt with bullets." With a little bit of code somewhere preventing players from farming Sebillian regeneration.

[ThunderGr]

Well, all this sound reasonable. But I have a better one. Make the aliens threatening. Sure, take your time shooting at that alien behind cover. Next turn, 2 soldiers down, because the aliens heard the commotion and came around your flanks. Where is the gain now? In order to have a gain, your soldiers have to survive, first.

[GizmoGomez]

Well, all this sound reasonable. But I have a better one. Make the aliens threatening. Sure, take your time shooting at that alien behind cover. Next turn, 2 soldiers down, because the aliens heard the commotion and came around your flanks. Where is the gain now? In order to have a gain, your soldiers have to survive, first.

Agreed. Lets wait until the aliens are actually up to snuff, or at least keep that into consideration. In the future, you shouldn't be able to run around the Chinook, or do squats to up your stats. Aliens will show up and mow you down, hopefully.

[Waladil]

You guys are assuming that the AI's going to be, eventually, up to snuff. While I can hope for a good AI, let's all be honest with ourselves here: Many many games have made many grandiose claims about how smart their AI's going to be, but it so rarely ends up being even one-tenth of believable.

Besides, as you get to the bigger ships it becomes less and less believable that ALL the aliens would come out and attack you. If the AI is good, they'd keep a few guys (officers, psions, praetors) behind because you don't throw officers into the meat grinder. So once you get through the initial herd, you've still got all the time in the world to derp around bumping stats.

And my claim, unlike yours, is supported by the way the nascent AI is operating, with aliens being assigned to offensive or defensive roles. Yeah, you probably cant grind stats that well on offensive guys but the defensive ones who wait in or around the UFO? They'll give you all the time you want.

[ThunderGr]

And my claim, unlike yours, is supported by the way the nascent AI is operating, with aliens being assigned to offensive or defensive roles. Yeah, you probably cant grind stats that well on offensive guys but the defensive ones who wait in or around the UFO? They'll give you all the time you want.

Yeap, but this can be avoided if you code the AI in such a way that the roles can change during the mission. So, if you are low on offensive guys, you pick some of the defensive and roll them to the offense. This is all very general talking, of course, since I have absolutely no idea about the plans of the developers on how they will implement the AI. I know what I would do and that is quite more complex than just offensive and defensive stuff.

[Ol' Stinky]

Is a number 3 style system really so terrible? The current system is completely hidden from the average player. How do you find out that giving your soldiers backpacks full of rocks is a good idea, because it increases their strength? You either look through the .xmls or learn about the system from someone who has.

Has the "perform action to gain xp in action's school of magic" style system ever actually worked in a game? I'm trying to think of cases where it's implemented and I've enjoyed it, and not having much success.

Morrowind's the main one I remember having such a system. I never got far in the previous Elder Scrolls game (Daggerfall?) because it'd always crash at a set point for me. What I remember about Morrowind is powerlevelling like crazy, becoming a god, and then giving up before I got to the end out of boredom.

Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup is the most recent one I can think of, and they abandoned that system in favour of a more traditional "get XP by killing enemies" type deal, iirc. (I haven't played it since around 0.9, I think.)

Yeap, but this can be avoided if you code the AI in such a way that the roles can change during the mission. So, if you are low on offensive guys, you pick some of the defensive and roll them to the offense. This is all very general talking, of course, since I have absolutely no idea about the plans of the developers on how they will implement the AI. I know what I would do and that is quite more complex than just offensive and defensive stuff.

There's also the fact that when the devs reset the number of aliens in each UFO, they also removed the variation. When they're happy with the average number of aliens in a craft, there's nothing stopping them from putting in 0-3 defensive and 3-6 aggressive to keep the player guessing.

Edited July 7, 2013 by Ol' Stinky

[svidangel]

As awkward as it might be for powerlevelling, I would be fine with a system that rewarded success. Soldier hits or kills alien, stat gain. Soldier heals another soldier damaged by aliens, some sort of stat gain, etc.

Honestly, I would prefer an XP based system based on such accomplishments, where you could spend stats gains on whatever soldier stat you wanted. You could have your high reaction high strength characters and your high aim high TU characters. Etc. And since it rewards you for accomplishing things in combat, there would be less slow-down (maybe remove the healing if people are inclined to get soldiers wounded by aliens).

Even better, you could have gradual stat bonuses to ALL soldiers over time (alongside the XP gains), so that recruiting new soldiers at your second base didn't completely suck and basically require them to either be overgeared or all carry rocket launchers to complete missions after month 4.

Hell, maybe even change the combat stat gains to "I've fought Sebillian's in 10 missions now, I get 10% accuracy and damage on them with all dat XPsies" and a month to month stat game based on training they have done outside of combat. Snot like you'd just have soldiers lazing around the base 95% of the time like they do now.

But that wouldn't be OG XCOM.

[svidangel]

Also Seb herding doesn't work in 19+

[Ol' Stinky]

Yeah, I'd remove the healing one. I guess my only concern with an XP system for causing damage is suppressing Sebs while allowing them to regenerate. Poor lizardmen, they can't seem to catch a break!

[TrashMan]

No game systemis perfect and at the end of the day, any sistem can and WILL be gamed by some people.

If some poeple are min-maxers/powergamers... so what?

One has to ask oneself if time taken to try to make it harder on them is even worth it.

Powergaming is considered by some as cheating.

Well technicly, so is save/load.

I just don't see much worth in wasting time on fixing unfixable things.

[ThunderGr]

I just don't see much worth in wasting time on fixing unfixable things.

The whole point is that the leveling system can be improved and I agree with that. Who will be the first to give a realistic, yet unexploitable, leveling system? Who ever it is, it will always be referenced as the one doing so for many generations, because noone really likes the "kill bad guys to gain xp and use them to increase whatever stat you like", since it is unrealistic, albeit easy to implement and impossible to exploit, while the, more natural, "do actions to increase stats related to these actions" is, still, exploitable, because noone has put enough time in it to perfect it. Bethesda has taken some steps to make it utterly boring and difficult to exploit in Skyrim(trying to powerlevel most skills is impossible and the rest, simply, do not worth it), but that is an RPG game.

[Ol' Stinky]

No game systemis perfect and at the end of the day, any sistem can and WILL be gamed by some people.

If some poeple are min-maxers/powergamers... so what?

One has to ask oneself if time taken to try to make it harder on them is even worth it.

Powergaming is considered by some as cheating.

Well technicly, so is save/load.

I just don't see much worth in wasting time on fixing unfixable things.

The worry is that the aliens will be either be balanced around supersoldiers and be aggravating to play against if you play normally, or they'll be balanced around normal soldiers in which case supersoldiers will carry a player through the game. Also soldier weapons. I've had soldiers able to reload and fire a rocket launcher in one turn. That's a pretty big jump in effectiveness.

It's not really unfixable. Tie XP gains to mission score or simply give an amount of XP after completing a mission.

Save/loading can be considered a cheat, which is why some games make efforts to curb its effectiveness. This game will have an iron man mode, games like Dark Souls autosave constantly and don't give you control over loading, and games like Civ 4 can predetermine dice rolls to stop players loading after losing combat. I vaguely remember a Civ 4 dev talking about how in testing, once players found out about an exploit, many of them would be unable to stop themselves using it. Letting things slide because not everyone takes advantage of design flaws isn't a good idea.

[Dranak]

With the number of TUs you have to use for Str/TU increases, there's really no point in going out of your way to perform extra actions because you generally will hit those thresholds on most missions anyway. I do agree that accuracy shouldn't improve from shooting at targets on the other side of a wall, so maybe change that to taking a shot in range with >1% shot at hitting, with shots that actually hit an alien counting extra.

[RawCode]

xp shoud be gained from allien kills only, no running around, not pistol shots over entire map.

For dealing with X alliens on Y UFO all patricipating xenonauts shoud recive Z xp each (ever if they stay still entire GC) and X*P xp distributed over xenonauts based on potentional damage dealt versus alliens.

regeneration wont have any effect on this, xp granted on killing allien and distributed based of potentional damage dealt by all xenonauts who shot it.

if xenonaut shot allien, no matter hit or not, potentional damage recorded.

alliens killed by civilian forced and eachother without xenonaut interaction score shared XP, total amount of XP will be constant.

xp shoud automatically improve stats based on weapon used, sniper will recieve more accuracy, shotgun more TU.

[thothkins]

I use the overloading of the backpack before missions.

I make sure soldiers use their AP if not involved in combat "exploring the map"

I will shoot the last alien once everyone has taken a last stroll.

[smoitessier]

I will shoot the last alien once everyone has taken a last stroll.

That's so easy to fix, so let's say you have a soldier in front of an alien ready, finger on the trigger, looking over his shoulder waiting for the last of his team to finish his lap,... wait for it...

Alien shoots the guy in the face with reaction fire as soon as possible while another xeno is doing his 3rd but crunches in the Charlie.

Simple. Alien's reaction fire is not based on the guy shooting him, but on all targets in his LoS.

[thothkins]

Nice try, but I'd never leave the trooper about to shoot right in front of the alien.

I just get everyone to have their stroll., move the assault troop in to suppress, and then a second trooper in to grenade/shoot it.

[Black Cat]

I wonder why we level up so much anyways. I also wonder how you can have multiple high ranking soldiers when you only have maybe 20-30 on your roster between all your bases.

How about the idea of making the only skill ups you get when the soldier actually ranks up. Add to that, as the ranks get higher the number of possible soldiers who can hold that rank depends on the total soldiers you have on roster.

So if you only keep 8 soldiers around there is a max non officer rank they can attain. After that say 1 sergeant and 1 lieutenant.

So mabey something like this

Rookie

Private

Corporal

Sargent

Lieutenant

Captain

Major

ect.. ect..

As for numbers..

per 5 guys 1 Sargent

per 15 guys 1 Lieutenant

per 45 guys 1 Captain

Adjust numbers as you see fit. But if you limit the number of ranks available with a hardcap vrs total soldiers. And you limit skill ups to ranks. You can easily stop the super soldier creep.

It just feels wrong when my entire squad is rank Major or higher.

[TrashMan]

The whole point is that the leveling system can be improved and I agree with that. Who will be the first to give a realistic, yet unexploitable, leveling system? Who ever it is, it will always be referenced as the one doing so for many generations, because noone really likes the "kill bad guys to gain xp and use them to increase whatever stat you like", since it is unrealistic, albeit easy to implement and impossible to exploit, while the, more natural, "do actions to increase stats related to these actions" is, still, exploitable, because noone has put enough time in it to perfect it.

No one. Because it's not doable.

Any and all mechanics are approximations. Abstractions. Simple mathematical forumulas. Someone, somewhere WILL find the most optimal route, the best way or an exploit.

Not, that doesn't mean a system can't be improved, just that if the ultimate goes is to make it "un-exploitable", then you will never reach that goal.

It's very similar to what is going on with othe balance threads atm. People wanting a one-size-fits-all solutions. Complaining that good player and a bad player will have too different an expereince. Well DUH!

Games like X-Com have alwasy been very unforgiving and the early game was ALWAYS vital.

I just keep seeing people attempting to fix what isn't really broken.

[RawCode]

there is no way to exploit in system i described, for combat X xenonauts will recieve Y xp, no matter what you do and how, amount of xp predefined.

[Ol' Stinky]

At the end of the day it's probably more practical to improve rookie's starting stats while decreasing the max stats you can gain per mission. So in that spirit, does anyone know how to alter the stats a soldier starts with? The levelling up stuff's in gameconfig.xml, along with the geoscape cost of a soldier and other misc. info, but nothing about the initial stats.

I reckon all I need to do to make rookies better while not making them overpowering is give them some more TUs. (Maybe +4? +8?)

Also, in response to ThunderGR, I and a bunch of people I know like the "XP for killing bad guys" system, because we don't really care about realism in games. It doesn't bother me that Mario starts with five lives, nor do I care that my character in shooter games can regenerate health rapidly by hugging a waist-high concrete wall, nor do I care that eight guys are stopping an alien invasion.

Edited July 8, 2013 by Ol' Stinky

[Person012345]

This topic ignores the fact that this is a 1 player game and that if you want to do stupid power grinding, that is a deliberate action by you to exploit the game mechanics and is entirely your business. You don't have to do it (I never have and never will). The interceptor problem is an entirely different one in that interceptor balance inherently affects everyone, exploit or not (the alleged "problem" is that skill levels alone can dramatically affect your outcomes, not any sort of exploit). Comparing the two doesn't work.

Edited July 9, 2013 by Person012345

[Dranak]

there is no way to exploit in system i described, for combat X xenonauts will recieve Y xp, no matter what you do and how, amount of xp predefined.

Yes, there is. The system you proposed actually would create an even larger incentive for taking lots of low percentage shots at an alien to run up the "potential damage" amount.

Personally I feel that the game should be balanced based on normal playing, and if people want to go out of their way to squeeze out a few extra points on their guys, they aren't harming anyone but themselves. Strength should be adjusted though to at least be more transparent to newer players.