Breaking the Monotony in Ground Combat

[Haba]

Like I said earlier, Xenonauts is shaping up really well. There is however, one niggling annoyance that becomes more pronounced as time goes on: the ground combat starts repeating itself.

The basic pattern is always the same: dig in and survive the first enemy wave, then clear the UFO at your own leisure.

The same problem existed in the original X-Com too to a degree, so it'd be high time a game tried tackling this. I know it is late in the production, but I maintain that those minor tweaks would really lift up the game!

Breaking the Monotony and Keeping the Players Awake

The key word here is variety. I wouldn't want all aliens doing any of those consistently, but still there should be an exception in the pattern often enough to force players stay awake and adapt to changing situations.

General combat behaviours:

- Utilizing the buildings. Alien snipers could decide to climb to the ceiling/second floor of the building and set up there. Currently you don't need to enter the buildings at all.

- Setting up ambushes instead of rushing the enemy. ATM you just go for the UFO once aliens stop coming. Smaller squads could set up an ambush somewhere, then head back for the UFO if it is breached (aliens sneaking up on your breach team... FUN!).

UFO breaching:

This is my biggest annoyance. Breaching the UFO/alien base becomes repetitive and boring.

- Time limits. Why does the player have infinite time to breach the UFO? There should be a sense of urgency. For example, the aliens could:

a.) Repair the UFO and take off

b.) Rig up the UFO to explode

c.) Roll out some heavy duty death machines

- Make breaching the door risky business. Maybe aliens could throw some grenades at you? Or maybe there could be an explosive booby trap on the door itself. Make it a concussion bomb if you're feeling generous.

- Aliens rushing out from the UFO as you approach it. Possibly in bigger numbers than you expected.

Etc etc. I'm sure there are plenty more. Doesn't need to be a major change, but something small and unexpected. We'll be doing a lot of ground combat, so small surprises like this will definitely make it more memorable.

[superbob]

Alien snipers and ambushers sound fun, but wouldn't that become a nuisance after a while? Both ideas have a common drawback - not only do they require the player to seek out the squad (if they move around they're likely to be spotted and picked off like any other aliens), they're going to be dug in and ready so the player has to approach them carefully.

What this translates to is a slow, tedious and very careful sweep of the area, very unlike the current happy-go-lucky search for aliens running loose. I'm not saying I don't want the game to be too hard, I like playing against unfavorable odds and actually having to employ tactics to deal with enemies using cover, I just wouldn't like the grind to become even slower.

One way I think this might work is varying the rewards for different missions, not just based on the quantity of aliens killed but also the terrain and aliens' types.

As for terrain, industrial and city terrain should give a bonus to the mission reward due to the increased difficulty (also it seems better not to hit a populated area with an airstrike) - each window and corner could hide an alien ambush.

Another mechanic would be aliens with the ambusher/sniper AI, which yield higher rewards somehow. Better gear maybe, like a special mind control device they use for coordinating troops? Or simply give rank-based rewards for killing aliens, and make the ambushers on par with officers.

As for time pressure and UFOs, I suppose we could have the aliens seal the UFO after a few turns (so the player has to blow up the doors) and in case the battle really drags on with the craft untouched, they could power up the weapons and cause a big explosion around the ship. As if they were trying to get the thing to fly again but scrambled to redirect power to offensive systems. Obviously unless these were turret-mounted, all they could do would be blasting the ground in front of them, but that might help keep puny soldiers away. Then the player would have to decide to either time the entry between the shots or retreat to the dropship and revisit the crash site in a few hours, to mop up the remaining aliens (once they power down weapons and resume repairs).

One more thing, I'd like to have the option for interceptors to soften up the grounded UFOs. So if I don't want another long and hard battle, but I still need to raise money to build stuff, I could have them do a few strafing runs, so the ground crew only has to clear the UFO and maybe some half-dead crew in the immediate vicinity. So for example, instead of cashing in $220k for a landing ship, I get around $110, which is still better than the $70k offered for an airstrike, but isn't as risky and won't take an hour to complete. And I still get some loot and alien tech.

This last part would open up some possibilities for making ground combat more challenging, while not forcing it on the player all the time.

[Jean-Luc]

Aliens should definitely utilize buildings, that much I can agree on.

[vaultdweller]

I agree on the use of buildings. I'd like to see more snipers on the upper floors, and even on the roofs if they're accessible (though I haven't noticed if roofs are accessible by stairs as often as the original game, due to never needing to go upstairs). Once I get Buzzard armour, I love to plunk my snipers on rooftops for the improved line of fire. I wish aliens would do the same.

[Guest]

I am not keen on going into specifics on WHAT makes ground combat less of a chore as the game proceeds, but I totally agree with OP that after a while it grows quite tedious. New challenges are missing, challenges that can either be "theatre pieces" like OP or variety in AI. But in any case, no amount of new maps will change the fundamental feeling of the total sameyness of crash missions.

I wonder if the devs have ideas or sees it as we see it regarding variety in the challenges you face as player.

1) Hostage situations - it would suit the story line not so well at the present, just throwing up some ideas

2) Flee the crime scene timer - like that one!

3) Terror mission - we got this one already, but more of those kind of templates for different kinds of tasks

4) Base attack - we got that one already

5) Race to the flag/bomb/gizmo? AI and Player team start at opposite ends and need to capture/get/see some guy first. They had those in XCOM EU from last year, tho this game had the same basic problem with sameyish missions.

PRobably not easy to make the AI do completely new tricks, but perhaps by makine "setups" like the submaps you could get some different scenarious to emerge?

[Chris]

The answer is in getting the AI finished - we're working on the aliens using grenades, and we'll also want them to come outside the UFO and attack sometimes when they see your troops outside. Similarly it'd be nice to encourage some of them to "lurk" inside buildings.

I think those three changes would make a lot of difference in themselves. Hopefully it'd mix things up enough to add a bit of uncertainty to each mission. I'm not really keen to be changing the rules of the missions at this stage though.

[Haba]

Yeah, definitely no need to do massive changes (which some of my proposals probably require). Sometimes even small things can make a huge difference.

My first encounter with Androns was quite memorable as they all seemed to descend upon me at once. That sort of intensity wasn't expected. Future encounters with them were quite lacklustre as they started taking cover and crouching for some odd reason...

Basic AI patterns will help a lot, as long as they maintain that element of surprise.

BTW, one thing that I miss from the original X-Com are the enemy morale events. Mindless clones are not as much fun to defeat as aliens who sometimes do... human-like things.

[vaultdweller]

Yeah, it would be more interesting if the aliens behaved closer to their Xenopedia descriptions. Androns definitely use cover in the last build. I'm not sure if the lizards try to stick to close range as their description implies with their bad vision, since much of my experience with them was done while the AI was stuck in turtle-behind-cover-and-avoid-LOS mode.

[StellarRat]

Chris - I'm a bit surprised that the AI doesn't consider buildings to be excellent cover already based on the design of the AI. I remember looking at the original design that J put out. To me it seems that windows would be high priority locations to set up. The aliens should naturally be "drawn" to buildings. Maybe terrain modifer values just need some tweeking.

BTW, I don't consider the ground combat to be "monotonous" in the first place. It's already better and more challenging than the OG. Also, I think when the aliens start using grenades we're going to have a lot more screaming about how tough the AI is. LOL.

Edited November 12, 2013 by StellarRat

[vaultdweller]

Also, I think when the aliens start using grenades we're going to have a lot more screaming about how tough the AI is. LOL.

Maybe - if the grenades are given more kick than they currently have. Or if the alien grenades are more potent than Xeno grenades (I admit I've never tried to use them).

[StellarRat]

Maybe - if the grenades are given more kick than they currently have. Or if the alien grenades are more potent than Xeno grenades (I admit I've never tried to use them).

Well, they'll be Alenuim from the get go, so I imagine they'll be plenty dangerous. You'll have to be extra careful about not bunching up and will have to do plenty of careful scouting. I've used the alien grenades on the aliens and they seem to have both explosive and some other property (weird blue cloud with spinning stars, stun?) rolled into one.

[Skitso]

I thought the spinning effect was a misplaced teleportation animation for gibbed unit... Guess i was wrong?

[StellarRat]

I thought the spinning effect was a misplaced teleportation animation for gibbed unit... Guess i was wrong?

I think you're wrong, but I have no idea what effect is supposed to represent. My guess is that GH has it programmed in for a reason that may be revealed once the aliens start using grenades. Unless Aaron or Chris would like to comment on this??

[Max_Caine]

If you check the files, alien grenades do quite a lot of stun and suppression as well as actual damage.

[StellarRat]

If you check the files, alien grenades do quite a lot of stun and suppression as well as actual damage.

That was my first guess. Thanks for confirming. Triple acting grenades of doom, yeesh! We'll have to face those in combat soon.

[Chris]

They don't have any special extra effect, though they are powerful weapons. I suspect Skitso is right that it was the old gib animation.

[Skitso]

But should this new gibbing effect work now, as atm I'm only getting this spinning effect when blowing my units up...?

[Chris]

Yeah, your unit should be gibbing correctly in the experimental builds.

[kenmtraveller]

I agree that the ground combat gets monotonous. When I start playing the experimental build again I imagine I'll use airstrikes a lot

just to avoid having to do the fight.

Time pressure would make things interesting -- say, the aliens are frantically destroying tech in their UFO and you're on a clock to capture it before they can do so. But, it would require rebalancing a lot of the fights, which would become much more difficult if you couldn't creep and shoot.

[Skitso]

Yeah, your unit should be gibbing correctly in the experimental builds.

Okay, so I'm experiencing some odd bug as gibbed units show only this spinning animation and vanish. Also explosion animations dont show at all. This was working in the last stable version. Reported in bug forum.

[StellarRat]

I agree that the ground combat gets monotonous.

Does anyone think it's more monotonous than the OG? If so, why? I think it's more fun than the OG because of the better graphics and IMO a better combat system.

[vaultdweller]

Does anyone think it's more monotonous than the OG? If so, why? I think it's more fun than the OG because of the better graphics and IMO a better combat system.

I generally agree, but the original did give you a few more options in the late game to mix things up a bit. Some of those options I'm glad are gone (blaster bombs and human psionics). However, I dearly miss having the ability to breach large UFO's from the top (or any other point of my choosing). The destructability of UFO's (internally and externally) did help to shake things up.

[StellarRat]

I dearly miss having the ability to breach large UFO's from the top (or any other point of my choosing).

It doesn't seem like that would be hard to add, but I do remember someone saying we weren't going to get that. Maybe things have changed? I guess you'd have to have art for tiles that represent blown out hull sections.

[superbob]

Well you can just fly in through the roof of most UFOs right now, so there's that...

[StellarRat]

Well you can just fly in through the roof of most UFOs right now, so there's that...

Unfortunately, "that" is a bug. It would be cool if we could blast our way into a UFO at any place we can place enough explosives, but I'd even settle for just perimeter of the first level. Edited November 18, 2013 by StellarRat