OpenXcom Forum

OpenXcom => Suggestions => Topic started by: evoron on June 28, 2014, 01:29:43 pm

Title: Sodier specialisation
Post by: evoron on June 28, 2014, 01:29:43 pm
Can you imagine tactical simulator without military specialisations? Yes, you can. It's XCOM: UFO Defence.
Guys, common! It's year 2014.
We must have
1. Sniper (operative with fine accuracy and, WOW!, a Sniper Rifle!  :) SVD or AWP.
2. Support (operative with LMG-MMG (like M60 or PKM) and tons of cartriges.
3. Assault (operative with Assault Rifle like AKM (AK-47) or FN FAL).
4. Medic (operative will treat wounded soldiers).
AND
5. <insert Your terminator here>

We don't need even "classes" like Battlefield or Baldurs Gate. Just apropriate weapons and equipment. Just like Jagged Alliance games did.
Title: Re: Sodier specialisation
Post by: Falko on June 28, 2014, 01:40:11 pm
i have specialisations :
boom-maker = blaster/rocket-launcher [+grenade launcher if i use this mod]
supporter = mindprobe/psi/highrank keeps in the back of the battlefield
spotter = rookie - only rifle
attacker = laserrifle/heavy plasma/ grenades
psi fodder =  no weapons/medikits let the aliens control them
[i tried a sniper mod but found it unbalanced for me]

they are not your specialisations but still specialisations :)
Title: Re: Sodier specialisation
Post by: Solarius Scorch on June 28, 2014, 02:33:11 pm
No thanks, it's not an FPS :D
Title: Re: Sodier specialisation
Post by: niculinux on July 07, 2014, 01:39:48 pm
No thanks, it's not an FPS :D

yep :)
Title: Re: Sodier specialisation
Post by: Sturm on July 07, 2014, 07:58:02 pm
Any soldier with a few high skills and other medium/low is a specialist.

One thing that would be nice would be ability to define equipment sets and quickly assign them to soldiers.
Title: Re: Sodier specialisation
Post by: Solarius Scorch on July 07, 2014, 09:55:21 pm
One thing that would be nice would be ability to define equipment sets and quickly assign them to soldiers.

Hmmm... If we could link equipment presets with Warboy's Statstrings, it could work. Not a bad idea.
Title: Re: Sodier specialisation
Post by: Arcalane on July 07, 2014, 10:08:45 pm
Linking it to statstrings? Sounds awkward, and also not ideal for folks who either don't use them, or people who use their own unique designations and aren't interested in figuring out how to make the custom statstrings play nice with their own preferences. Why not have Save/Load Preset buttons off the Soldier Equipment/Inventory screen that can only be seen when using the Hangar/Craft loadout function?

Hit either button and it pops up a little screen/list like the save menu where you can create/delete/overwrite equipment profiles.
Title: Re: Sodier specialisation
Post by: Muukalainen on July 07, 2014, 10:17:07 pm
Luckily OpenXcom does not limit you how you can equip your soldiers. You are free to make them specialize in any way you want.
Title: Re: Sodier specialisation
Post by: Vulgar Monkey on July 08, 2014, 06:01:21 am
Yep, I've always liked the idea of specialisms being down to an open interpretation of their stats by the commander. It's just one other thing you need to think about, and I like thinking. :D

What I will say, however, is that I personally never bothered with statstrings, and for purely cosmetic purposes it'd be nice if you had a separate UI element to indicate an assigned specialism, just as a nicety. To some extent the new abililty to colour-code armours may fill that role.
Title: Re: Sodier specialisation
Post by: El Yahpo on July 08, 2014, 09:48:04 am
Any soldier with a few high skills and other medium/low is a specialist.

One thing that would be nice would be ability to define equipment sets and quickly assign them to soldiers.
This sounds like the idea behind the soldier equipment templates.
Title: Re: Sodier specialisation
Post by: Muukalainen on July 08, 2014, 02:56:31 pm
Yep, I've always liked the idea of specialisms being down to an open interpretation of their stats by the commander. It's just one other thing you need to think about, and I like thinking. :D

What I will say, however, is that I personally never bothered with statstrings, and for purely cosmetic purposes it'd be nice if you had a separate UI element to indicate an assigned specialism, just as a nicety. To some extent the new abililty to colour-code armours may fill that role.

Yes. This could be good idea. Let's say we had a collection of icons to select from. Crosshair, red cross, skull, brains, star... and these were shown with the soldier name.

Now I tend to put "a" for people with good reactions and "s" for accurate ones and it does look a bit silly.
Title: Re: Sodier specialisation
Post by: Hobbes on July 08, 2014, 03:22:03 pm
Now I tend to put "a" for people with good reactions and "s" for accurate ones and it does look a bit silly.

"If it looks stupid but it works, then it ain't stupid" :)

I use A for reactions, S for firing, H for strength, R for TUs/Stamina, G for grenade tossing and C for cowards. So my soldiers can end up being "John Doe HSARGC"
Title: Re: Sodier specialisation
Post by: yrizoud on July 08, 2014, 03:22:51 pm
IMO the experience system of UFO and OpenXcom works contrary to class specialization :
Put your more accurate soldier on sniper duty (heavy laser), and he'll get 1 or 2 shots per mission, no more.
Put your faster soldier in UFO entry duty, and he'll auto-shoot sectoids at point-blank range.
Over time, the second soldier will catch up and become a better sniper than the first.
Title: Re: Sodier specialisation
Post by: Muukalainen on July 08, 2014, 04:04:02 pm
IMO the experience system of UFO and OpenXcom works contrary to class specialization :
Put your more accurate soldier on sniper duty (heavy laser), and he'll get 1 or 2 shots per mission, no more.
Put your faster soldier in UFO entry duty, and he'll auto-shoot sectoids at point-blank range.
Over time, the second soldier will catch up and become a better sniper than the first.

I looked at my soldiers. I did not see too much difference between my best snipers and assaults on how much they gained accuracy.

You probably need to snipe more :) Take the high ground, the best positions so they can at all situations provide support fire. Well not even support. They should be the main fire power you use as your assaults and scouts need to save time units for reaction fire if the aliens counter attack. Well at least that is my basic tactic.

Heavy laser? I can't remember using that too much on my snipers as it has lower accuracy than rifle or laser rifle.

On UFO duty soldiers don't live long and I rather send in my rookie assaults than the more experienced ones first, so I can have at least some experienced assault/scouts on the outdoors duty alive.
Title: Re: Sodier specialisation
Post by: yrizoud on July 08, 2014, 04:44:51 pm
On the contrary, if I put even more soldiers on "sniper" role, they will get on average even less shooting experience - because there's still the same number of aliens in the open with no hard cover. The assaulters will have even more aliens to kill, and if they use rapid-fire low-damage weapons like pistol and laser pistol, they easily maximize shooting experience. If I follow the figures on Ufopaedia, such assaulter will progress 800% faster than a sniper who shoots twice and gets 2 kills (which is already pretty good for an average-size mission).
Title: Re: Sodier specialisation
Post by: Hobbes on July 08, 2014, 08:22:18 pm
With the current system the two ways to make classes unique are class restricted weapons/armor and soldier stats.

After your main squad has completed a number of missions the tendency will be for their individual TUs/Stamina/Health/Strength and even Firing Accuracy of these 10-14 soldiers to reach or be close to the limit for those stats. They'll be less 'unique' but they'll be able to take any roles on the battlefield. The main exception is Reactions, which is very difficult to train since reaction fire often ends in death to the soldier attempting it, so the main division between soldiers during the mid/late game will be in Reactions.

This means that, with the current stat system, different classes may start with different stats but at the end the soldiers will most likely end up with similar stats, regardless of their class.

   
Title: Re: Sodier specialisation
Post by: Sturm on July 09, 2014, 02:52:52 am
On the contrary, if I put even more soldiers on "sniper" role, they will get on average even less shooting experience - because there's still the same number of aliens in the open with no hard cover. The assaulters will have even more aliens to kill, and if they use rapid-fire low-damage weapons like pistol and laser pistol, they easily maximize shooting experience. If I follow the figures on Ufopaedia, such assaulter will progress 800% faster than a sniper who shoots twice and gets 2 kills (which is already pretty good for an average-size mission).
Increase reaction/accuracy of the aliens. You won't have experienced assaulters :P .

Also, to me assaulter suggests a dude with high strength and throwing and lots of grenades.
Title: Re: Sodier specialisation
Post by: luke83 on July 12, 2014, 01:06:02 am
I always wanted to pick Special skills on levelup ( rank increase in OXC), have a list of possible options presented to you when one of your soilders changes rank  you then pick form a small selection of skills(a small selection of total possible skills, every person can not be allowed to be the same)  All skills should have a graphical icon presented within the Overhead STATUS window ( see my old thread https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?topic=1551.0) so as i cycle through units i can look for this info also.

Skills could be thing like, weapon preferences ( increase skills with that weapon), hatred of enemy type, Bonus for particular skills ( so you choose markmen as a option, so he gets instants increase in accuracy and additional % bonus as he increases in this skill in the future) 

This will give you more "Feelings" for a particular solider which is always a good thing.
Title: Re: Sodier specialisation
Post by: Aldorn on July 12, 2014, 02:55:00 pm
I always wanted to pick Special skills on levelup ( rank increase in OXC), have a list of possible options presented to you when one of your soilders changes rank  you then pick form a small selection of skills(a small selection of total possible skills, every person can not be allowed to be the same)  All skills should have a graphical icon presented within the Overhead STATUS window ( see my old thread https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?topic=1551.0) so as i cycle through units i can look for this info also.
Some kind of RPG   ::)
+ 1
Title: Re: Sodier specialisation
Post by: Solarius Scorch on July 12, 2014, 05:17:28 pm
For a theoretical total conversion, yes. For X-Com, please no.
Title: Re: Sodier specialisation
Post by: luke83 on July 13, 2014, 05:45:03 am
For a theoretical total conversion, yes. For X-Com, please no.
Sure its not for everyone but still i think we need Level up options, even if stage 1 just allows you to upgrade stats at players discretion.
  If any coders were to decide to work on this feature i would provide them a financial reward :)
Title: Re: Sodier specialisation
Post by: yrizoud on July 13, 2014, 04:03:40 pm
Since there tends to be a lot of soldiers, manual tweaking should be minimized - I don't think anyone wants to assign dozen of points after each mission. One mechanism that could help this is to select a "growth profile" for each soldier. Then, as soldier gain experience, the profile determines which stats get improved. A "general" profile improves a bit of everything, other profiles are more specialized for marksmanship, or reactions, or physical prowess etc.

I made an experiment with "kill-based experience (https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?topic=2067.msg20157)", it may be a start to award stat increases. The selected "current profile" could be set in the soldier name.
However, in its current state it recomputes the stats from scratch, so it won't let you have soldiers who spend some time with a profile, an then some time with an other profile.