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I've already posted it in the ground combat UI thread, but then I've decided to make a new thread as it's a specific issue. Please tell me if you agree.

Walking into fire. My people keep blindly going through fire, therefore losing HPs. This happens even when I'm careful, for various reasons - mostly because it's not always obvious where the fire is (fog of war, fire behind walls) and when moving the whole squad fast. This is exceptionally derpy.

Proposed solution: the movement paths should avoid fires. Walking into fire should only be possible when you click on the burning tile.

Hopefully it'll also prevent locals from committing suicide whenever fire breaks up.

To sum up, this is a surprisingly major issue for me. Sure, it's rare and technically can be avoided, but... it happens anyway! :) And is stupid.

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50 pages? 50 pages in a thread and not one post answered the question? Gee, the moderator is too kind to have not locked the thread, yet. You guys had a lot of fun there but, really, all the responses belong to the off-topic forum :P.

About the OP: I think that the movement path should not avoid fires but turn the square indication to red, instead of green. The same with stun gas, turn it blue. This is a fair warning and does not make you think that you cannot go through that square, just that going through it is not going to be very good for the soldier.

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About the OP: I think that the movement path should not avoid fires but turn the square indication to red, instead of green. The same with stun gas, turn it blue. This is a fair warning and does not make you think that you cannot go through that square, just that going through it is not going to be very good for the soldier.

I'm afraid this would be like extinguishing napalm with a blanket. I can see the fire pretty well myself, thank you very much. What is needed is some sort of mechanism to prevent walking into fire that you can't see - therefore I vote for changing the pathfinding system to automatically avoid flames. Stun gas, too.

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I'm afraid this would be like extinguishing napalm with a blanket. I can see the fire pretty well myself, thank you very much. What is needed is some sort of mechanism to prevent walking into fire that you can't see - therefore I vote for changing the pathfinding system to automatically avoid flames. Stun gas, too.

Hmmm...I thought I was just giving a solution to avoid walking into a fire that you can't....oh, wait! You do not mean you order your soldiers to walk blindly into the shroud/FOW, do you? If this is the case, I definitely think that you should not be allowed to avoid running into such a fire. You have to take the hit for rushing your soldier into unknown territory, IMHO.

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Ah, I lit onto the wrong idea there too.

The thing about taking a penalty for stumbling into the FOW, is that the FOW should retreat as they go, meaning that they should still see the fire and avoid it.

However, making them always avoid fire isn;t perfect either, as there have been occasions where I've sent my Xenonauts through both fire and stun. Especially stun, considering the amount of grenades I throw around.

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However, making them always avoid fire isn;t perfect either, as there have been occasions where I've sent my Xenonauts through both fire and stun. Especially stun, considering the amount of grenades I throw around.

Well, the idea is that they wouldn't enter flames unless you specifically click on the burning tile.

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But like yourself in the OP, I just want them to follow the path I've set for them. So, this way I have to click on the tile, move the guy to the tile and then move on again. I feel bad enough about taking them on a path through the fire. My cheeks would be burning with guilt at moving them onto the actual tile :)

I do see your point though. They should be smart enough to avoid it, but still be able to go through it when necessary.

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This is rapidly becoming a hot topic.

Please, let's not start that again. The coals of the last one were just beginning to cool. :(

;)

I have no issues with the system. If you want to manually trade TUs in exchange for the possibility of taking damage going through smoke/fire by making your troops go around, you can do that yourself. I'd rather conserve TU by having the game plot my path as TU conservatively as possible.

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I'm not exactly sure why, but I find myself kind of liking the fact that the pathfinding will route you through fire and gas. Maybe it's the small amount of micro that it adds to unit movement.

Um... No. xD

I'd rather conserve TU by having the game plot my path as TU conservatively as possible.

Exchanging a few AUs for 20 HPs is hardly economical. :)

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Exchanging a few AUs for 20 HPs is hardly economical. :)

This is a decision you have to make in game, in my opinion. Considering you can have equipment that negate fire damage(or stun damage) the tactical options are broad. And "a few" TUs can be as many as 24 TUs.

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This is a decision you have to make in game, in my opinion. Considering you can have equipment that negate fire damage(or stun damage) the tactical options are broad. And "a few" TUs can be as many as 24 TUs.

I believe I'm repeating myself over and over, but:

- It's not my decision when it happens at random. I want to have the ability to make that decision, that's why I said soldiers would enter fire if we tell them to (click on a burning tile), which is especially useful when I have the equipment, but I don't want to get burned repeatedly over and over because I miscalculated/didn't notice a fire. Which happens a lot. Call me clumsy or whatever, but it still happens, even when I think I am careful enough to avoid this.

Anyway, this is not a complicated matter of balancing or changing the game. I'm asking for a very simple addition to the pathfinding procedure, to make the soldiers automatically avoid fire and gas. This will likely be beneficial to civilians and aliens' AI too. What is there not to like?

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I believe I'm repeating myself over and over, but:

- It's not my decision when it happens at random. I want to have the ability to make that decision, that's why I said soldiers would enter fire if we tell them to (click on a burning tile), which is especially useful when I have the equipment, but I don't want to get burned repeatedly over and over because I miscalculated/didn't notice a fire. Which happens a lot. Call me clumsy or whatever, but it still happens, even when I think I am careful enough to avoid this.

Anyway, this is not a complicated matter of balancing or changing the game. I'm asking for a very simple addition to the pathfinding procedure, to make the soldiers automatically avoid fire and gas. This will likely be beneficial to civilians and aliens' AI too. What is there not to like?

Well aliens run into fire/gas a lot more often than I do (current campaign is 3 kills/captures by AI pathing vs 0 for my guys) and I find it highly entertaining when they do. :D If the game didn't highlight the path of travel, I would agree with you on this. But since it does, I like the idea of the default behavior taking the most direct route with you needing to manually control any deviations from it. If a player doesn't pay enough attention to see that they are ordering their soldiers to run into fire that should be their punishment for not noticing.

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Off the top of my head, here's a practical example:

Cdr Gizmo is taking a chance. He needs to get from behind the rock in front of the UFO, hopefully avoid reaction fire, and get round to the side of the UFO to safety. There are flames en route from the front to the side.

The player picks the destination point. He just has enough TUs. He lets Cdr Gizmo go. But uh oh, the player tried to be careful, but hasn't spotted that the path takes Gizmo through some of the flames (a baptism of fire for Gizmo). Now we have some options depending on the above posts.

1) Cdr Gizmo gets to the side of the UFO. He's safe but has a smoldering bad mood at having to walk through the fires. Careless players learn it's not good to play with fire.

2) Some handy red colouring on that part of the path should have alerted the player before he selected it. Cdr Gizmo will let the player have some of his fiery temper when this is over. The player should have seen the red square, but chose to ignore it.

3) Cdr Gizmo automatically stops right in front of the flame tile, even though the player selected beyond it, presenting the player with an option. A burning decision to be made.

4) Cdr Gizmo finds himself rooted (routed :)) to the spot. Is there a problem? Is he breaking down? Is he burnt out? No, the game spots the fire tile and won't let the player move into it, without selecting it as the destination first, and then allowing the player to select a second destination from that point. While cruel to send Gizmo to to a pyre, it's not as though he's going out in a blaze of glory. He has health left. Besides, the alternative was watching the devs spontaneously combust at the thought of putting in a way-point system.

5) The game spots that Gizmo is about to walk into the flames, and steers Gizmo around them. But alas, not into safety as it costs extra APs to avoid the flames. Gizmo is left out in the open and is shot by the Sebillians in their turn. Cdr Gizmo's family opt for cremation, as a fitting tribute to his incompetent player.

Keep the fire-related puns to the thread for them. Its why I never locked it after all. Gives y'all a place to vent.

Well, vents quite often act to feed the fire :) As long as the topic is getting discussed here, I don't see anything worth getting hot under the collar about.

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...haha... :)

Well, I'd go with the 3/4 option. I always pay attention to where the soldier's route ends, but not necessarily to all the transit tiles. Especially when I'm moving the entire squad across the map: click -> mouse scroll -> click -> mouse scroll -> click -> mouse scroll -> click -> SHIT I DID IT AGAIN!

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I am against your specific idea for the implementation of the idea, Solarius (ie force the player to circumvent the tile) but the idea does have merit. I'm warming to it. (No, that wasn't just a silly pun. ;)).

Just a quick clarification: Hazardous tiles include fire and stun gas. Smoke shouldn't be classified as a hazardous tile, since any effects are generally minimal.

This will likely be beneficial to civilians and aliens' AI too.

The way I see it, the only reason the developers would be concerned with this is for the AI. If the AI avoids hazardous tiles, it appears to be so much more intelligent and will make the game all the better.

If I were to do it, civilians would never walk into hazardous tiles, and local forces and aliens would try to avoid them, unless there was no other easy path through them. Later aliens that can take more of a hit, and maybe androns since they're more single minded, would be more willing to walk through fire since it either won't hurt them as bad, or they simply don't care (in the case of the androns).

This would make stun weapons less effective, since the aliens could simply not walk into the columns of gas. In the case of stun grenades this could be a good thing, since they're so OP at the moment, but perhaps we would want to make the stun weapons have a more uniform blanket of gas if it caused them to be totally ineffective.

Fires would also be nerfed somewhat, since aliens would rarely walk into them (as you'd expect. No sane alien is going to walk into a fire. Duh.)

Being sane brings up another point, if the AI unit is panicked, they should have no qualms about walking into hazardous tiles, since they're panicking.

Anyway, if this system were implemented, there would now be two different pathing algorithms. One, the current one where the path doesn't notice hazardous tiles, and two, where the path avoids the hazards. The AI for aliens and local forces would have to choose between which path to take, whereas the civilians would always take path two.

Since there would be two paths, why not give the player the option of which path algorithm to use? Have it be in the settings, disabled by default, "Avoid Hazardous Tiles."

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Since there would be two paths, why not give the player the option of which path algorithm to use? Have it be in the settings, disabled by default, "Avoid Hazardous Tiles."

And this would give me wargasm of the millenium. Perfect idea. :)

Your entire post is very reasonable - it proposes simple yet effective solutions. I really hope this will be looked upon favourably by Our Devs, Who Are in London.

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Ha, glad it would work out, on the user side of it, at any rate. Now, if the developers will implement it, that's another question. However, unlike some of my suggestions (which honestly I later laugh at some times, haha) this one is a good idea that probably should be implemented. I mean, the AI is constantly being improved, and avoiding hazards is something almost every intelligent being I know of does, especially sentient beings. This would make the game all the better. :)

I'm going to copy and repost my previous post in the Suggestions section, it would belong there.

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