Thoughts on increased randomness

[StellarRat]

Would it be possible to add onto the accuracy skill so your more experienced troops have a higher damage output than the greenhorns?

Like say a Major can shoot between 50-70 damage

while a corporal can shoot between 40 and 70?

Those guys are going to get more hits because they're better shots and can fire more often anyway. Should even more damage be added on top of that? I'd say no.

[Mytheos]

I have been asking for this concept for awhile now, and I know, StellarRat we've had conversations over it before.

But in the end the game needs to "feel" right, and feeling right means it makes intuitive sense.

If I point blank an Alien 3 times, and miss twice with a shotgun, it doesnt feel right, because that is almost never going to really happen.

So in simulating shooting an Alien with a rifle at "max weapon range" you can simply say something basic like Min damage = 5, max = 20

Hand/foot = 5 damage, Arm/leg = 10 damage, 15 = chest, 20 = head.

At max range hitting 6-8 times out of 10 feels ok, and if you said you hit 7 times for example, and the result was (3) Chest, (1) Head, (2) Leg/Arm and (1) Foot/hand or 15, 5, 15, 10, 20, 15, 10 would feel like a good average result.

But standing at point blank, I would think (4) Chest (2) Head (1) Arm or 15, 10, 20, 20, 15, 15, 15 would "feel" better (Because it would better match reality)

Standing point blank and getting 10, 5, 5, 10, 5, 5, 5 would make you say "Man what is that crap?" and if you saw that just as often as 20,20,20,15,15,20,15 then it can be easily detected as "Not right"

You could always do a roll between 1-20 for a 10 damage shot (100% variance), and then make the damage = result + per tile bonus.

So the closer you were, the tighter the possible damage range.

That would work and fit in with the current style the Devs seem to be using and would be better than a blanket toward center solution...

I mean saying 1-20 damage (100% variance on a 10 damage base), and 1-20 range, with the averages weighted based on range would be best but more complicated...so you'd still be able to hit for 1 damage at point blank range but it would almost never happen and your average experience was hitting 15-20.

And at max range hitting maybe 8-12 damage on average.

[Mytheos]

@StellarRat

You have to admit that having an equal chance to do between 5-15 point blank and at max range isnt a realistic result.

When shooting at a bullseye your spread increases with distance, you still hit the target, just not the bullseye at longer ranges.

Not to mention I think people "aim differently" based on range in real life. You dont aim at a heart with a pistol at 100 feet, you aim at the chest, however at 3 feet you probably aim at the heart.

[Mytheos]

Yes, but the game doesn't "place" hits. So, a hit's a hit. The damage will work out to the middle amount for each weapon over more than one hit. It will naturally assume a bell curve. We don't need an increasing damage amount for closeness just due to center hits. In the end the math take care of itself because you'll get more hits at closer ranges. Adding another factor just complicates the calculations. If you come up with a reason why this would be useful or change the tactics people use that might convince me. If you could select what part you were aiming for, head, leg, body (ala JA2) then your argument holds water in my book. But in JA2, those shots have different hit probabilities not a uni-probability like we have in Xenonauts. Also, one has to assume Xenonaut armor provides the most protection in the most vital areas which tends to mitigate the damage.

I dont follow. Dice has 6 sides, your chance to roll any side is equal.

[Mytheos]

The weighted average idea is fine, but doesn't necessarily seem an upgrade to me (just equally valid but not what we're using). It makes "special" events rarer, but then I don't think that's necessarily a good thing. Pure random provides more variation and therefore more interesting events.

Well if you are assuming damage is where do I hit, which I cant understand it being anything else...

A flesh wound does less damage than a headshot. Agreed?

So assuming that, having an equal chance to shoot a finger or head point blank and having an equal chance to shoot a finger or head at max range...that doesnt seem off to you?

It will have a strong effect on the feel of the game.

[EchoFourDelta]

The weighted average idea is fine, but doesn't necessarily seem an upgrade to me (just equally valid but not what we're using). It makes "special" events rarer, but then I don't think that's necessarily a good thing. Pure random provides more variation and therefore more interesting events.

More variation/randomness =/= more interesting. I mean, yeah, things can be both, but often aren't, and it's probably erroneous to simply conflate the two and assume they're somehow inextricably connected, especially in a strategy game. Granted, sometimes good plans go to waste, but if you can't plan anything due to the sheer degree of randomness to which values get applied or with which events occur, it's not "interesting," it's just randomness for randomness' sake.

[Mytheos]

You're not going to cripple multiple soldiers to drain enemy TUs. Nobody's suggesting that soldiers shouldn't take any damage' date=' just that the price of a bad roll not be so severe.[/quote']

Agreed, but IF you KNOW you wont die if you walk in a room and trigger a reaction shot...(Because math told you so)

Are you scared at ALL to walk into the room? No.

Can you walk in trigger a shot and live? Yes

Can you walk in, get hit, walk out, walk another guy in, get and and repeat that until the Alien is out of TUs? Yes.

And that is bad. And really its the way you'd end up doing it in many situations toward towards the end of a mission when you knew there was probably only 1-2 Aliens left like after you clear the map and are on the top floor of a Cruiser/Landing ship.

Why not just walk in and absorb reaction shots 1 soldier at a time?

A with a 5% chance of getting 1 shot killed for example, it really shouldnt be a big deal. But you'd still rather find a better way.

With 0% chance of death, who cares, just do it cheesy.

[Mytheos]

If I remember correctly their (the OG developers) intention was to have hit placement matter, but they never got that far. The soldier diagram did show you where the damage was, but other than requiring you to heal the correct location it had no other effect in the game from what I could tell. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

I believe you are right, they just used variable damage to simulate the difference between hitting a foot and a head

[StellarRat]

I dont follow. Dice has 6 sides, your chance to roll any side is equal.

Yes, but TWO hits (even if separated by time) is the same as rolling two six-sided dice, three shots three six-sided, etc..., so that gives you a bell curve. With two dice odds of "rolling" a 2 are only 2% while your odds of rolling a 7 are around 16% (the most common number with 2d6), rolling a 12 is also 2%. Over time with more shots you're going to get average damage that right at the middle of the weapons damage range.

Mathematically this nearly perfectly simulates aiming at the center of the target without any further complication. The model only fails when you have a greater 100% chance to hit. Meaning you can choose to aim for a more vital area and have a decent chance to hit (like the head.) That's not possible in Xenonauts because hit probabilites are capped at 95% (or they used to be anyway.) I could work out all the math for you, but I'm not going to spend all day doing that.

The only problem I see with the current Xenonauts model that is related to your proposal is that units crouching behind cover that are hit should probably take extra damage if the cover is still intact and the weapon isn't hypervelocity as those hits would HAVE TO hit upper chest and head.

Edited August 19, 2013 by StellarRat

[Mytheos]

@StellarRat

Sure, but what I am saying is roll 1 die and then add a per tile bonus, to simulate the fact that at point blank you arent going to be doing mean damage, nor would you be doing mean damage at max range.

Yes I agree 0-10 average damage over 10 shots is 5.

But do you think taking 10 shots at max range and 10 shots at point blank would result in the same damage?

Thats like saying if you were playing darts, you'd have just as many bullseyes at 5 feet as you would have at 20 feet...you wouldnt. (Assuming you have ever thrown a dart in your life...and I am assuming our Soldiers have shot a gun a couple times)

You're still 10 for 10 on hitting the board, sure, thats accuracy...but the points are the damage. You cant honestly tell me two equally skilled player are going to have the same points one at 5 feet and one at 50 Feet? Even if both players can hit the dart board at 50 feet 100 out of 100 times (100% accuracy), that has nothing to do with the number of Bullseyes you would expect.

[Mytheos]

And I am just telling you for fact that if the mean damage at 100 foot with a rifle is the exact same mean damage with your barrel 12 inches away from the guy's forehead...its going to be weird.

Just like missing 2 out of 3 shots point blank with a shotgun is weird. It will have an effect on the feel of the game, I promise.

But again this is all stuff, that you notice but you dont notice if you feel me...because its based on feel.

The damage not varying, yeah I knew with plasma I was hitting for 80 all the time just about, and I might not have called that out during the first 20 hours of playing the game...but if you just simply added random damage, I'd play it for awhile and say yeah this is better, it "Feels" more realistic.

And then if you based random damage on range...it'd feel even more right.

This is no different than saying your chance to hit is higher the closer you are, in the same sense your chance to hit critical areas is higher the closer you are.

Really just doing random damage, and then having critical chance bonus damage that the chance of doing a critical increased the closer you are to the target would probably work just as well.

Edited August 19, 2013 by Mytheos

[StellarRat]

Mythos - You're looking at this as two separate systems when in reality they can be simulated as one system. You have to think of the target as an infinity small point in the center of the alien and base the rest of your outcomes on that. In your example, the 10 the shots at max range are going to hit far less often, so overall the damage is going to be a lot less than your 10 shots at point blank that all hit. Here's another way to think about it, suppose your dart board is infinity large, but you're always aiming for the center. Mathematically the damage variance is really just another component of the weapons accuracy or vise-versa. You could easily roll them into one formula called "damage by range" and not even bother with hits and misses the outcome would be mathematically the same. Even if you went to the extent of determining where every shot hit on the game characters and assigned different amounts to different parts, there would be an average damage by range that could be easily calculated.

Like I said the model fails when you are over 100% chance to hit. You're example about the 12" shotgun to the head is valid, but in Xenonauts the closest you can get is one tile or about 5 feet. Believe it or not people have missed at that range in close combat. (If you expand the ground scale to match true weapons accuracy the closest you can get is about 50 feet.)

If anything is missing from the calcuations that probably shouldn't be it's target size. A Harridian should be much harder to hit than a Sebillain and a small flying disc should be REALLY hard to hit. Only vehicles are penalized for being large and they're probably over penalized. You should get a to hit bonus/penalty when firing at extra large or small targets.

Edited August 19, 2013 by StellarRat

[Mytheos]

In fact at first thought that'd work really well perhaps. 10 Damage weapon, with +/- 50% = 5-15 damage.

But you could roll a 2nd time to see if it was a critical, the chance higher the closer you are...and you could just add critical damage, or switch to a critical damage range of 10-15 instead of standard 5-15.

Of course you could always just do it the same way with accuracy, and just like you have a close range accuracy modifier, you could have a close range damage modifier.

[Mytheos]

Mythos - You're looking at this as two separate systems when in reality they can be simulated as one system. You have to think of the target as an infinity small point in the center of the alien and base the rest of your outcomes on that. In your example, the 10 the shots at max range are going to hit far less often, so overall the damage is going to be a lot less than your 10 shots at point blank that all hit. Here's another way to think about it, suppose your dart board is infinity large, but you're always aiming for the center. Mathematically the damage variance is really just another component of the weapons accuracy or vise-versa. You could easily roll them into one formula called "damage by range" and not even bother with hits and misses the outcome would be mathematically the same. Even if you went to the extent of determining where every shot hit on the game characters and assigned different amounts to different parts, there would be an average damage by range that could be easily calculated.

Sorry I'm not good enough to explain this. I know we've been down this path before lol.

If you have a shoot out at 10 yards, 50 yards and 100 yards with pistols...between two teams of 10 guys with identical skills.. Do you expect identical levels of casualties vs wounded?

So at 10 yards you would expect the same number of headshots as at 100 yards? Really?

Again you fight till everyone is hit. And you think adding up what body parts are hit, there would be no variance?

Really? Each distance you would think it was completely normal with having 3 leg, 3 chest, 3 arm and a head.

You wouldnt expect more head/chest shots at 10 yards than at 100 yards?

Again it's a shoot until hit, so again accuracy is yes I hit, and damage is where I hit.

And when all 10 people get hit, where they get hit is going to be effected by range, its just a fact. And where they get hit, is not accuracy, its the damage.

Edited August 19, 2013 by Mytheos

[StellarRat]

Sorry I'm not good enough to explain this. I know we've been down this path before lol.

If you have a shoot out at 10 yards, 50 yards and 100 yards with pistols...between two teams of 10 guys with identical skills.. Do you expect identical levels of casualties vs wounded?

So at 10 yards you would expect the same number of headshots as at 100 yards? Really?

Again you fight till everyone is hit. And you think adding up what body parts are hit, there would be no variance?

Really? Each distance you would think it was completely normal with having 3 leg, 3 chest, 3 arm and a head.

You wouldnt expect more head/chest shots at 10 yards than at 100 yards?

Again it's a shoot until

No, I wouldn't. But, I would expect a easily quantifiable table that could tell me how many dead and wounded to expect at any given range within a standard deviation. I wouldn't need two different formulas to tell me that. All I'm saying is that is already achieved with the current accuracy formula (since the current accuracy formula already reduces hits with increased range) the effect is basically the same as what you're proposing. Also, weapon damage is already scaled by range. I think what you're really saying is that you don't think the current effects are strong enough. Edited August 19, 2013 by StellarRat

[Ishantil]

So with the current formula there is a base damage, modified by the damage skew (+/-50%), with the top end representing a critical and the bottom end representing a glancing blow.

Thus, when you speak of 5-15 damage, the 5 represents the glancing blow and the 15 represents the critical hit. As the game currently stands, there are no hit locations, thus no damage modifiers based on them.

[Mytheos]

I am just saying the whole point of this is to simulate the fact that while shooting you have a "spread" And that spread is based on distance.

And the fact that the spread isnt not linearly effected by distance. 1 foot vs 2 feet doesnt double your spread, nor does 50 feet vs 100 feet.

That spread indicates "mean" or average hit location, but deviation from that spread increases with distance.

So yes if you are going to do it right, you need spread (Damage range), but you also need deviation from spread as well, which will increase just like spread does with distance.

So point blank your damage range should be tighter. And at max distance it should vary more.

So back to the max distance 1-20 damage, middle range 10-20 damage, and close range 15-20 damage "average" results.

You still need to be able to roll a 1-20 at any range but based on range you would have a weighted result of more 20s at close range and fewer 20s at max range.

Do I think the current game mechanics simulate this? No.

Do I think damage being more varied is interesting? No, I dont look at it from an adds spice angle, I look at it from an adds tactical advantage angle.

And if all you are doing is adding spice, fine better than nothing, but really I should know the closer I get, the better my chance to hit, and the more able I am to hit for higher damage on average.

[StellarRat]

So with the current formula there is a base damage, modified by the damage skew (+/-50%), with the top end representing a critical and the bottom end representing a glancing blow.

Thus, when you speak of 5-15 damage, the 5 represents the glancing blow and the 15 represents the critical hit. As the game currently stands, there are no hit locations, thus no damage modifiers based on them.

Weapon damage also reduces by range or it used to anyway.

[Mytheos]

So with the current formula there is a base damage, modified by the damage skew (+/-50%), with the top end representing a critical and the bottom end representing a glancing blow.

Thus, when you speak of 5-15 damage, the 5 represents the glancing blow and the 15 represents the critical hit. As the game currently stands, there are no hit locations, thus no damage modifiers based on them.

Yeah chance of shooting someone in the face feels the same point blank as it does at max range.

[Mytheos]

Weapon damage also reduces by range or it used to anyway.

I'm not sure, do you know where a variable is for that, or maybe its hard coded?

It would be hard to test it now due to the random damage...but I felt like without cover I was hitting for the same damage most of the time.

[kabill]

Weapon damage also reduces by range or it used to anyway.

There's a fair chance I'm wrong about this, but does that not apply only beyond operational range?

[Ishantil]

The velocity drop at the ranges in this game (and even within their effective ranges) is not significant enough to bother modeling. This assumes you are talking about ballistic (kinetic) weaponry.

In the case of lasers, the lore indicates they work well enough in atmosphere, so their drop in effectiveness would be nil. And the accelerated plasma weaponry uses a graviton to hold the plasma bolts together. So they would travel pretty far too.

Simply put, damage shouldn't be reduced by range for any of the weapons unless someone is throwing spears or something. The velocity is too high.

Edited August 19, 2013 by Ishantil

[StellarRat]

The velocity drop at the ranges in this game (and even within their effective ranges) is not significant enough to bother modeling. This assumes you are talking about ballistic (kinetic) weaponry.

Depends on if you believe the weapon ranges are true ground scale or greatly compressed. I'm in the compression camp. I think as far as weapons are concerned each tile is effectively about 10 yards. If anything else were the case no one would ever miss.

@kabill and mytheos - I think it was hard coded and I can't remember if it was past op range or all distances. I'm leaning toward kabill's memory though.

[Mytheos]

I just tested it, if you turn the damage varience to 0, the damage doesnt seem to vary based on range.

I quickly tested it, and by no means was it a solid test, but after about 20 hits on something without cover and varying ranges, the damage didnt vary a single point.

So that would strongly indicate that it doesnt now.

So now there is only a +/- 50% damage, and range has nothing to do with it.

So headshot at point blank is the same chance as head shot at max range.

[Mytheos]

The velocity drop at the ranges in this game (and even within their effective ranges) is not significant enough to bother modeling. This assumes you are talking about ballistic (kinetic) weaponry.

In the case of lasers, the lore indicates they work well enough in atmosphere, so their drop in effectiveness would be nil. And the accelerated plasma weaponry uses a graviton to hold the plasma bolts together. So they would travel pretty far too.

Simply put, damage shouldn't be reduced by range for any of the weapons unless someone is throwing spears or something. The velocity is too high.

We arent talking from a loss of velocity, we are talking from the aspect that you are more likely to hit someone in the chest at point blank range that the foot.

Basically Chest shot when aiming at chest at point blank = 90% chance, Arm/leg 10%.

Chest shot when aiming at chest at max range = 50%, Arm/leg = 50%

And where you hit is why the damage varies. Headshot = 20 damage, blew someone's finger off = 5 damage.

So if you have variable damage, which is good, you should have it just like accuracy should be effected by distance.

10 base damage and +/-50% varience = 5-15 damage range.

So at point blank for 3 shots you should see 14,12,11 - 15,13,10 - 10,12,14 as expected results

And at max range (8-7-12) (6-13-9) (11-9-5) as expected results

So getting a 15-15-15 at point blank would be uncommon but a reasonable expectation...where as at max range hitting 15-15-15 would be like winning the lotto/a miracle.