Wound penalties?

[Jorgen_CAB]

I have played the game for a few weeks and I find this game to be very good and engaging. The only thing I miss from the tactical combat is actual penalties for wounded soldiers and aliens. This would give a whole new dynamic to the tactical game. Suppression is good but it is only temporary. Some slightly more aliens on missions would perhaps also be necessary since aliens are probably not that good at healing each other aside from those that regenerate.

I know that not everyone would like penalties such as that but I would like for it to at least be an option and something for modders to play around with.

In general I don't like hit-point based mechanics in games overall, which is in the vast majority of games. Despite it being so easy to not use it it is used because it seems to be the praxis. I would rather see a wound system where the status of your soldiers or enemies is not immediately revealed , which lead to you needing to handle your soldier more carefully.

Fallen and wounded soldiers should perhaps also give your squad as a total increase in dread (if it doesn't already) to reduce the likelihood that player use rookies as cannon fodder.

At least give us a wound penalty system as an option. But, widespread increase in dread in the squad based on the number of wounded or casualties could be a good addition separately.

Thanks for a great game worthy of the title as a true re-imagining of X-COM...

Edited January 27, 2014 by Jorgen_CAB

[Ol' Stinky]

The morale mechanics are moddable. They're in moraleconfig_gc.xml, in the Xenonauts\assets\ dir, and you can open it with the text editor of your choice. The system we have right now takes into account losses (both soldier and vehicles), leadership, safety in numbers, how wounded a soldier is, and more besides.

I see from the file that there's a morale penalty for each rookie in the squad, so that's the anti-rookie measure you're asking for. All you need to do is increase the penalty, if you think it's too soft currently. It looks like it caps out at two rookies?

I haven't played with morale myself, but it looks pretty comprehensive. Happy modding!

Edited January 27, 2014 by Ol' Stinky

[Jorgen_CAB]

I will certainly look into the morale penalty side of the game files, thanks for pointing that out...

[Chris]

The original game had a system where the % HP of your soldiers also modified their stats, making badly injured soldiers largely useless. I decided to avoid that because I quite like the missions where the single (or couple) of badly injured troops somehow manage to wipe the aliens and carry the day for the Xenonauts.

[Skitso]

The original game had a system where the % HP of your soldiers also modified their stats, making badly injured soldiers largely useless. I decided to avoid that because I quite like the missions where the single (or couple) of badly injured troops somehow manage to wipe the aliens and carry the day for the Xenonauts.

Units could at least lose TU's when hit (like in Jagged alliance) to prevent questionable situations where unit moves around corner, gets shot three times by reaction fire and is rendered almost dead, but still continues to run/shoot like nothing happened.

[OzoneGrif]

I support the idea to lose TUs when wounded.

A soldier with 1 HP remaining should have about 50% of his TUs.

That shouldn't prevent him from firing his weapons; just prevent running around everywhere basically.

[Lidhuin]

With the new TU system for shooting, perhaps it could be re-evaluated if TUs could be lost from getting wounded?

Or maybe STR would temporarily be lost, which would then cause a TU penalty?

[silencer]

The original game had a system where the % HP of your soldiers also modified their stats, making badly injured soldiers largely useless. I decided to avoid that because I quite like the missions where the single (or couple) of badly injured troops somehow manage to wipe the aliens and carry the day for the Xenonauts.

I believe it was more important what part of body was injured:

1. Arms - reduced accuracy

2. Legs - reduced TU

3. Torso - reduced energy regeneration

4. Head - Can't remember - probably bigger morale penalty.

[Caaygun]

I would also like to propose to have a chance of losing stats permanently after being severly wounded. A game called Dominions has a system of Afflictions, where a severely wounded unit might randomly get afflictions like 'Lost an Eye' (-Perception), 'Limp' (-movement) etc. Hit points still heal but afflictions are very difficult to heal. Such a punishment system will encourage you pull back your wounded more eagerly. Permanent stat loss can later be offset with experience, so you get those veterans who feel like they have really been through stuff.

Edit: Add to this, I'm a hard proponent of "Stats over Equipment" philosophy.

[Darth Draken]

Do aliens panic and bleed out too?