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Why the infinite ammo thing?


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And for the infinite ammo, I can understand why people may not like the idea and there were a lot of complaints on the forums when we first suggested it...but the vast majority of players said it was an improvement once they'd actually tried it.

Chris, do you remember when during Kickstarter campaign some people demanded female soldiers in game? You did an e-mail survey back then and in results majority of people voted No. Silent majority, as you called them back then. Since such poll was possible to do back then, maybe it’s worth trying again? Infinite ammo is a rather drastic change in the design and I’m sure people would respond to it. Not everyone is following forums regularly, including me. I didn’t know about the ammo thing until I tried previous stable build.

[EDIT]

Since we are on topic of infinite things, what about the flares in inventory? I see it as another bad decision. not only it makes equipment preparation less significant, the night missions are less tense now in result, since soldiers may light whole maps.

Edited by Rutger
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Rutger - there's a few issues with that idea, the first being that Kickstarter backers are a minority of our pre-orderers. We don't have the contact details for those that buy the game through Steam / Desura / Humble Store etc, and so any Kickstarter poll would only involve the Kickstarter backers. If we did it on the forums, it'd only include those who check them regularly...and you can see the regular players of the game are in favour of the change, and wouldn't include the silent majority. (Also, the silent majority regarding political issues like equality in the game is different from the silent majority with gameplay issues).

Secondly, it's not a change we're going to roll back as we made a decision on it a long time ago and playetesting has just solidified our view that the ammo change was an improvement. You can't expect us to update and improve the original game but then question our judgement when we make a change you don't like on paper; if you're not a regular playtester of the game and don't experience the results of the changes firsthand you've just got to trust us to make a game where the final sum of the parts is an improvement over the original.

Almost all of the regular forum users here are extremely experienced X-Com players, and have also played a lot of Xenonauts. If you're an experienced X-Com player but haven't played much Xenonauts, it's sometimes worth taking the views of people who have played a lot of both on board. After all, most of them are saying they had the same views as you before they actually tried the changes for an extended period of time and felt they were an improvement.

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Infinite ammo is one of those things that I didn't like but came to like quite a bit, though I would like slight changes to be introduced.

I wanted ammo to be limited initially for the same reasons. That's how it was in X-Com, it added to the atmosphere, and all that. After a few dozen hours of playing Xeno, I played some X-Com again, and it's illuminating. I notice that I just buy rifles and their ammo in huge quantities that it doesn't really matter. I vividly remember heavy plasma mags to never be an issue at all, usually I'd be selling them in fact. Aircraft missiles were the only ammo type to somewhat matter, and even then only until replaced with better weapons.

X-Com did not offer ammo management as part of the strategic Geoscape gameplay. It only offered an illusion of ammo management. Purchasing/producing didn't really matter, and in fact ammo didn't even matter in tactical combat. How often did you have to reload heavy plasmas when a mag had 35 shots? I know I'd equip my soldiers with one extra mag, but having even one soldier reload on a mission was rare.

Now, what I would still like would be for some ammo to have a rearm cost. Chris, come on? I'm talking just about heavy weapons like aircraft missiles and rocket launcher rockets. Having a small cost to rearm them would mean you have an incentive not to shoot 6 missiles at every scout, or not to use 20 alenium rockets on a ground mission.

Overall, I must say I'm very impressed with Chris and the design team in terms of how they've managed to strip away some details of X-Com without actually removing things that matter. Some of the changes that initially appear not to be so good actually seem good once you've played more Xeno and then gone back to X-Com to compare.

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Now everybody talks about how the original is flawed and this and that. But instead on proper balancing those aspects and increasing them in complexity, unlimited ammo is fine and streamlines the gameplay.

All I have to say is enjoy!

Thanks. Those of us that are actually playing the game mostly are. :)

Look, a lot of us shared your objections to free ammo. Then we actually played the game after the change and found that while we were philosophically opposed to it, on an actual playing-the-game level it was fine and that it probably made the game better or at least not significantly worse. In terms of choices with actual effects on gameplay, this one was pretty minimal (especially relative to the amount of discussion/criticism it gets).

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Now everybody talks about how the original is flawed and this and that. But instead on proper balancing those aspects and increasing them in complexity, unlimited ammo is fine and streamlines the gameplay.

All I have to say is enjoy!

All I have to say is try it, you might like it :P

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Chris, let’s forget the poll part and focus on what I did ask for in my first post.

Secondly, it's not a change we're going to roll back as we made a decision on it a long time ago and playetesting has just solidified our view that the ammo change was an improvement. You can't expect us to update and improve the original game but then question our judgement when we make a change you don't like on paper; if you're not a regular playtester of the game and don't experience the results of the changes firsthand you've just got to trust us to make a game where the final sum of the parts is an improvement over the original.

At no point I did ask for a feature rollback, what I did ask on beginning is option allowing disabling/enabling: indestructible aircrafts, auto research, unlimited ammunition. Both sides would be pleased and it shouldn’t be that hard to implement in game, but this rather reasonable solution was ignored, like my question about unlimited flares.

I may not be a regular playtester, yet I do give a try to the builds uploaded on Desura. I don’t see how cutting features or simplifying them is improvement in this case. Currently the Geoscape part of game is forgivable with indestructible planes and less engaging - I don’t have to spend money on equipment. Since there are still features to be implemented or not finished (and balance), I prefer to wait with commenting more how the game feels overall. There are many features I do like and look forward to play Xenonauts after a proper release.

Speaking of veterans players, when I read their older post, I do get impression they are just interested only in Ground Combat or played too much Firaxis XCOM. Calling purchasing ammunition an unnecessary micromanagement is just ridiculous. It’s nothing when compared to Civilization series. I don’t mean the Geoscape should be a major part of game, but making it less relevant just because some of regular posters prefer Ground Combat above is not a wise decision. In past you had an interesting idea of buildings upgrade taking few days but it was quickly scraped just because few people in same thread didn’t like it. That doesn't look good at all.

Edited by Rutger
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Hmmm, I don't think I've ever changed a feature in the game simply because people on the forum (or elsewhere) don't like it. You need a persuasive argument to get me to change a feature, as there will always be people in favour of / against any idea.

It's not a simple task to allow the player to enable / disable various options as you ask. If we include those options in the game when it is released, we'll need to make sure the player has an enjoyable and balanced game if they select those options. If it's a checkbox in the game, we're implicitly endorsing the player playing the game with those modes active...and I don't think it's possible to make the game as enjoyable with them enabled. So it's really not simple at all.

However, all of those things can be modded into the game by anyone with a text editor, destructible interceptors being as simple as a true / false switch. They'll have to figure out the balancing themselves, though. Most people seem to think it's only a small change, as you do, so I'm sure you guys can handle the balancing too :)

However, purchasing ammunition is unnecessary micromanagement in my view. Not only does it require an entirely new "Buy" UI screen for the game, it doesn't bring anything useful to the game. Clips are so cheap compared to fighter jets that every player would just start the game by buying 200 rifle clips (with minimal effect on their finances) and then never have to worry about it for the rest of the game. The point isn't that it's an impossible amount of work for the player, it's just that it is essentially pointless work.

EDIT - and for the flares, we've made them unlimited because they cost more AP to throw. AP is the main resource in combat so it's not really making the game easier to give the player as many as they want but make them spend a bunch of AP every time they want to use them, it's just making the game less arbitrary.

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At no point I did ask for a feature rollback, what I did ask on beginning is option allowing disabling/enabling: indestructible aircrafts, auto research

Would you please care to explain what do you mean by indestructible aircrafts and auto research?

Indestructible aircrafts and auto research are in the game?

Edited by Grotesque
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I don’t see how cutting features or simplifying them is improvement in this case. Currently the Geoscape part of game is forgivable with indestructible planes and less engaging - I don’t have to spend money on equipment.

You must be kidding. Ammo management in OG was a tiresome hassle that added nothing to the game but frustration when one forgot to check on something as "expensive" as a smoke grenade and had to wait several days to get resupplied. And _everything_ in the OG is forgivable. While in most games one has to start over after a screw-up, in the OG you can keep going and make up for it, and that was an excellent feature that even Xenonauts right now doesn't have balanced properly right now. But indestructible planes are actually about right the way they are - since unlike in the OG air combat is actually challenging here, everybody is bound to lose them on occassion, and if they'd need to be rebuilt, the game would be either unplayable, or the cost of that would need to be reduced so that effectively the game would be just like it is now, except that you'd need to do manually what the game now does automatically.

Speaking of veterans players, when I read their older post, I do get impression they are just interested only in Ground Combat or played too much Firaxis XCOM.

I've never played the Firaxis game, and I played OG even this, er, I mean last year. If there's anything ridiculous here it's considering beancounting of ammunition that costs next to nothing to be an important feature. And BTW I think you'll find enough people who'll claim that will all the air combat and so on Geoscape is actually more important in Xenonauts than in the OG.

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Would you please care to explain what do you mean by indestructible aircrafts and auto research?

Research that gives no in-game benefit and just serves as lore does not take scientist time to research, and if your interceptors are shot down they are put out of action for a number of weeks instead of being permanently destroyed.

The latter has come about being we improved the balance and added complexity to the air combat, just as infinite ammo is part of a larger upgrade of the ground combat to make it more balanced and complex.

To be honest, I would suggest you just go here. We're making a game that is more complex and balanced than X-Com overall, but you seem to want every tiny facet of the game to be the same or more complex and things just don't work that way. You will at least still be happy with the original though.

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For the record I bought the firaxis xcom when it was on a steam sale sometime in the middle of last year but never bothered to complete it as I got bored.

This was mainly due to the way enemies spawn which really irritated me and had nothing at all to do with missing buying ammunition.

I play the original x-com at least once through per year, if not several times and yet rarely if ever desire other games to mimic its deeply flawed economics system.

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Research that gives no in-game benefit and just serves as lore does not take scientist time to research, and if your interceptors are shot down they are put out of action for a number of weeks instead of being permanently destroyed.

The latter has come about being we improved the balance and added complexity to the air combat, just as infinite ammo is part of a larger upgrade of the ground combat to make it more balanced and complex.

To be honest, I would suggest you just go here. We're making a game that is more complex and balanced than X-Com overall, but you seem to want every tiny facet of the game to be the same or more complex and things just don't work that way. You will at least still be happy with the original though.

Thank you for the link! It made my day.

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It's an important point that the original X-Com was not perfect. It's an amazing game, and the concepts are all amazing, but the balance simply doesn't hold up to modern standards.

Once you get some laser manufacturing up, literally every other aspect of money earning becomes unimportant. Early ammo was way too cheap, late ammo (along with guns) was so plentiful you had to sell it to avoid having all storerooms full. Several of the weapons in the game were largely useless.

Ideas of economic management were great, but the balance was way off. Today, a game that's better balanced can be designed, and Xeno does exactly that.

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One way I think the people who are up in arms about the whole "ammo" situation might be satisfied is to simply wait for a mod that makes it so you have to produce your own (starting from laser tech onwards) like they did in the UFO: After(drabble) series.

At least this way, you are forced to spend money on ammunition since it needs to be produced and forces you to tie up resources to produce them.

Starting ammunition would still be free, since you are fighting to defend the homeworld and are backed by every single major power in the world, after all...

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Maybe a studio like firaxis with its resources and sizeable team could do it but they also chose not to.

They gave us the pick-one-of-three-missions which screws both continents you didn't pick, bloody satellites to manage both money and nation happiness, and on topic for this thead, completely unlimited ammo.

I'd rather they didn't attempt it.

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It's not a simple task to allow the player to enable / disable various options as you ask. If we include those options in the game when it is released, we'll need to make sure the player has an enjoyable and balanced game if they select those options. If it's a checkbox in the game, we're implicitly endorsing the player playing the game with those modes active...and I don't think it's possible to make the game as enjoyable with them enabled. So it's really not simple at all.

I’m aware of that. One of solutions could be giving a pop-up warning saying “This is a feature for to make Xenonauts more challenging and may lead to unbalanced game.” so people who decide to use it will be aware of risks it brings. Xenonauts would have updates after release and since you already get a feedback on already existing features, there would be probably a bunch of people giving feedback about extra options as well. Some equipment could be useful in mid-game or even later if it's done properly. One such item in OG is Proximity Grenade, since Aliens didn’t have resembling technology and it was useful to secure entrances. In Xenonauts it could be Flamethrower (if it wasn’t cut out?) since like in case of Proximity Grenades, aliens don’t have similar weapon. Simple example I just thought of now.

However, all of those things can be modded into the game by anyone with a text editor, destructible interceptors being as simple as a true / false switch. They'll have to figure out the balancing themselves, though. Most people seem to think it's only a small change, as you do, so I'm sure you guys can handle the balancing too :)

Indeed but I think would be much easier if it could be done in collaboration with community like other features are. This would at least assure there will be no situation of being stuck just because some changes may require source code.

EDIT - and for the flares, we've made them unlimited because they cost more AP to throw. AP is the main resource in combat so it's not really making the game easier to give the player as many as they want but make them spend a bunch of AP every time they want to use them, it's just making the game less arbitrary.

I think this is where to problems lays. One of great thing about OG is not just fighting aliens but how ruthles and unforgivable is when you make mistakes. This is what made it so memorable, when you either get away victorious from a tense situation or lose everything in unexpected events.

How it does have anything to do with flares? Imagine situation in OG where you don’t have enough flares or you throw all the ones you had already. It means either going back for more to ship beucase soldiers couldn't cary more or picking already thrown ones. Sometimes it can lead to a risk of being shot by something you can’t see or not. The awareness itself of having something limited leads to more tensions and require more careful preparations. Now when you have flares unlimited like in Xenonauts it all disappears and in the end leads to a forgettable experience.

To llunak: Not in a single post of mine I wrote that OG has done it right. I did spoke about Xenonauts doing it better, therefore your response is nothing but a strawman.

And BTW I think you'll find enough people who'll claim that will all the air combat and so on Geoscape is actually more important in Xenonauts than in the OG.

While it is more advanced and tactical, the importance is the very same: Taking out UFOs as soon as possible.

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If the dev team suddenly find enough time to fiddle around with this I have several other suggestions that I think would add much more and can't be modded as easily.

Have a look into the files and mod the changes yourself to see how it plays with them and then report back.

If you get stuck because something can't be adjusted then post the problem and someone may be able to help or the devs may be able to work around your problem.

If you upload the mod then there will be people who will give it a try.

You never know, if the reaction is favourable enough to your mod then it might persuade the devs to try that approach.

Better be quick though, the game won't be in development forever.

If I remember rightly flares can be made limited by editing two or three lines in the xml.

Most of the other changes are not far off the same.

Oh and the flamethrower was cut due to engine limitations being too costly to work around.

I will miss it but will probably mod in some incendiary grenades or rockets to torch some aliens in its honour.

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But indestructible planes are actually about right the way they are - since unlike in the OG air combat is actually challenging here, everybody is bound to lose them on occassion, and if they'd need to be rebuilt, the game would be either unplayable, or the cost of that would need to be reduced so that effectively the game would be just like it is now, except that you'd need to do manually what the game now does automatically.

Dont' know about that.

Airplanes SHOULD be a lot more expensive than soldiers. The problem here comes from trying to equate the two... why woudl one even try?

You want Ground Combat to be more important than Air? Why again? Because it was like that in the OG? So what? Is the OG the holy grail of defense simulators? And why would it make it "more important". Both are important, each in it's own way.

Yes, the coast of an aircraft is massive compared to that of a soldier, and most of your budget would be spent on that.

But I don't see a problem there. Things on a macro scale (geoscape) should be more importnat and resource intensive than those on the micro-scale (ground combat)

Without aircraft there are no chrashes and there is no salvage.

But without troops that salvage can't be captured.

That said, you could easly increase the cost of all manufactured soldier items.

***

And while I agree with Chris that there is little sense in buying ammo for a M-16, having limitless supplies of plasma and alenium batteries does not follow the same logic. Yeas, they are teachnicly cheap money-wise and easy to make. BUT they require alien materials and workshop time.

There's your bottleneck. It's not about the money, it's about prioritizazion of resources and workshop space.

It's not NECESSARY to have to manufacture ammo, as the game CAN work nicely without it, but at least for me it makes sense and does add that little bit of detail. And the devil is in the details.

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A brofist to TrashMan for a eloquently post

Suspension of disbelief is very important in a game and omitting details are no help to that.

Details that enforce this are scrapped and more, are seen as the enemy of gameplay fluidity in nowadays games.

Losing an airplane should be a big deal and just having it in the hangar after being destroyed by a UFO feels like cheating.

I could live with conventional ammo for weapons and aircraft but never with the nonconventinal that requires advanced techniques for manufacturing and scarce alien materials.

If the game economy is balanced properly, anything is possible.

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