OpenXcom Forum
Modding => Released Mods => The X-Com Files => Topic started by: Slaughter on May 15, 2020, 09:46:12 am
-
Hi. Loving this mod to bits. No Computer so can't study or work on my jobs. Playing on my phone. It's really helping keep my mood up during Quarantine.
Anyway... I have been thinking about a thing. Is the way Troop Deployment works in this mod unfair? Namely: Why most missions seem to start with my team surrounded by multiple enemies?
And I don't mean like vanilla, with a few enemies. I mean completely surrounded. By, say... Twenty zombies within attacking distance. Or pretty much the entire cult cell you are supposed to attack - all twenty of them pointing guns at your team.
Perhaps I am a scrub and it is totally possible to get of a situation with a dozen men in all possible directions pointing guns at four agents out of a van, ready to fire Olympic Shooter-tier scarely accurate snapshots at the smallest movement.
This is especially important because unlike vanilla, you can't just throw rookies in a meat grinder until you win.
It feels a bit luck-based to me. I like X-COM and I feel that stuff like save-scumming is innapropriate for it, but I am feeling to do it, just to try and actually have a chance of success on some missions.
Enviado de meu moto e5 play usando o Tapatalk
-
Because you play on Superhuman.
And Superhuman is by definition unfair.
On lower difficulties, there's a lot less enemies and they don't all face in your direction at the beginning.
-
Happens on lower difficulties too, bit not that often.
-
Happens on lower difficulties too, bit not that often.
It doesn't!
It's astronomically unlikely that 20 enemies would all face your team.
Already on Genius, the chance is about 0.003%.
On Veteran, Experienced and Beginner, there's not enough zeroes on my calculator to even show how low the chance is.
if (Position::distance2d(node->getPosition(), craft) <= 20 && RNG::percent(20 * difficulty))
dir = unit->directionTo(craft);
if (dir != -1)
unit->setDirection(dir);
else
unit->setDirection(RNG::generate(0,7));
-
Solarius has specifically stated this mod is not intended for Superhuman. Other mods may be.
Also remember, this mod is hard, but since there are no base assaults pre-invasion (2000) that I know of, you effectively can't lose the game And in general the goals of the early game are not obvious: money and mission success are worth very little, exp will stay relevant forever, but research is the goal.
-
Yeah, it's pretty common for me to end up surrounded unless I'm in a corner (in which case I'm just backed into a corner).
Turn 1 is just free reaction fire for the enemy. You come marching down the ramp, and hopefully they miss. My current strategy is to draw incoming fire with four dogs (also good for scouting) and then follow that up with a shield wall. Probably not going to work once I tech past armored vests.
On one hand, it makes sense for the enemy to see you coming and get into position. On the other hand, it REALLY does not make sense to just park two feet away from the cult base's front door.
-
While being surrounded from all sides without recourse isn't a thing that often happens, I do admit there are situations where enemies are close and aware enough, while the players troopers spawning near them enough that (presumably without excessive save-scumming) it's impossible to move some of the units without them being shot, sometimes lethally.
I think something as simple as resetting all enemy units TU to 0 on the first X-Com turn so they cannot just reaction fire your troopers down before you even can reposition them anywhere would be enough for me to make such situations nearly nonexistent. For most other situations, opening up the battle with smoke grenades and similar may help a bit, though such things are admittedly less effective in this mod than one would assume.
-
If you have an AI Scout unit around, you can try using a smoke screen for some cover. Alternatively, you can try to improvise with extinguishers.
-
I do have a bit of an issue with missions, in which human enemies are scattered all over the map in a sort-of even distribution. Not a problem with beasts and zombies. It makes sense, that they would be spread across the landscape until you arrive. Also managable, difficulty-wise. Usually.
But with human(oid) enemies it often leads to situations, where casualties are nigh unavoidable, due to being surrounded on turn 1 with inadequate cover. More importantly to me, it often makes very little sense for all the baddies to just be randomly spread across the map. The worst offender for me so far has been the first Cult of Apocalypse mission. It would be far better, if the deployments would be more similar to what you normally find in a cult safehouse mission. That is, the bulk of the enemies, including all the priests, huddled around the altar and then dispersing upon your arrival. And only a couple of sentries dotted around the map, to keep you on your toes. It would be more realistic and play better. Instead you arrive in a wild mess of enemies, as if everyone was just wandering around aimlessly on their own.
This is made worse by the fact, that the number of enemies in that mission is enormous (for that map size). And I'm only playing on difficulty 2! So far, I was able to win this mission only once. My transport spawned at the edge of the map, with the open door pointed toward it. That way, I could exit the craft into smoke cover, without getting pummeled by rockets immediately and getting swarmed by cannon fodder from all directions. Every other time I had at least one rocket launcher pointing directly at me. Deploying smoke would cause reaction fire into my transport. Besides, there's riff-raff all over, that can see into the smoke.
So I aborted the mission immediately each time.
Now, that is not a catastrophe, there's even a positive side to it. I kinda like, how I am sometimes forced into unwinnable situations. X-Com is just a small agency at first and ill-eqipped for its duty for much of the campaign. As it should be. You are way in over your head and your enemies don't play nice and wait for you to prepare and leave the hard missions for later. So every so often you get into a bad situation and you must accept taking casualties or play it safe and retreat. That is immersive. It also speeds up the game. I'm always tempted to play every mission I can, for the loot and experience. That can get monotonous. Unwinnable missions improve the flow of the campaign.
That being said, I have to repeat, that this approach to populating a map works with some missions, but not with others.
Zombies meandering through the desert without purpose. Sure, they're zombies, they don't organize.
Cultists loitering in the streets and squatting in random buildings. Fine.
Aliens spread throughout the city in a terror mission. Obviously. They are hunting civvies after all.
Red Dawn fighting a rival gang, but there is nothing like a battle line, just a tangled mess. How did that happen? The Osiron warehouse mission does it better.
Cultists stumbling around through bushes and inside caves, solitarily, all over. Why is there barely anyone inside the hideout?
Of course you can explain this sometimes, as the enemy having seen your craft approach and taking defensive positions before your landing. If only there wasn't so many of them without any cover even close to them.
It always looks worse, the more enemies there are and the more flat and open the map is. Throngs of baddies just standing out in the open, disorganized, gazing in random directions. It looks absurd
Eh. I am making this sound like a bigger problem, than it is. But it takes me out of the experience sometimes. And then the game feels like a complex, abstract puzzle, not like X-Com.
-
somewhere on the forum is a script which reduces enemies' tu at mission start by some random percentage. maybe this will solve some of the frustration?
-
its not all bad, they reaction shot themselves on accident too ;)
Just get decent armor and kill the guys with launchers first...
-
Because you play on Superhuman.
And Superhuman is by definition unfair.
On lower difficulties, there's a lot less enemies and they don't all face in your direction at the beginning.
Yeah but I always thought Superhuman = The Real X-COM Experience.
Also, I'm going to get mocked forever in RPGCodex if I ever show up there saying I play bellow Superhuman.
Solarius has specifically stated this mod is not intended for Superhuman. Other mods may be.
Also remember, this mod is hard, but since there are no base assaults pre-invasion (2000) that I know of, you effectively can't lose the game And in general the goals of the early game are not obvious: money and mission success are worth very little, exp will stay relevant forever, but research is the goal.
Its not? I do not understand. Most missions seem fairly tackable, its the missions with bases and the random chance of being surrounded by twenty cultists at turn 1 which are the problem. They seem like luck-based missions to me.
Cult Base Assaults would be hella cool. Wish it was a thing.
And seesh this mod really makes you feel the difference between shitty rookies and experienced agents.
Yeah, it's pretty common for me to end up surrounded unless I'm in a corner (in which case I'm just backed into a corner).
Turn 1 is just free reaction fire for the enemy. You come marching down the ramp, and hopefully they miss. My current strategy is to draw incoming fire with four dogs (also good for scouting) and then follow that up with a shield wall. Probably not going to work once I tech past armored vests.
On one hand, it makes sense for the enemy to see you coming and get into position. On the other hand, it REALLY does not make sense to just park two feet away from the cult base's front door.
In vanilla it makes sense for the Skyranger to get surrounded, its a big VTOL plane. You can't stealth with it. On the flip side, enemy fire will only come from the front. But a car or a van are far more subtle.
If you have an AI Scout unit around, you can try using a smoke screen for some cover. Alternatively, you can try to improvise with extinguishers.
Wait, you can use extinguishers to create smoke clouds? Seriously?
I must try this at once.
somewhere on the forum is a script which reduces enemies' tu at mission start by some random percentage. maybe this will solve some of the frustration?
That could be an interesting way to get some mileage out of some vehicles. Imagine if, say, the car allowed you to start with the enemy having less TUs.
Enviado de meu moto e5 play usando o Tapatalk
-
Yeah but I always thought Superhuman = The Real X-COM Experience.
In vanilla xcom, certainly. In the xcom-files? Well, only if you want upwards of 100 UFO's in a month sometimes.
Also, everything in xcom is about the right mixture of luck and skill.
-
Yeah but I always thought Superhuman = The Real X-COM Experience.
Also, I'm going to get mocked forever in RPGCodex if I ever show up there saying I play bellow Superhuman.
Its not? I do not understand. Most missions seem fairly tackable, its the missions with bases and the random chance of being surrounded by twenty cultists at turn 1 which are the problem. They seem like luck-based missions to me.
Cult Base Assaults would be hella cool. Wish it was a thing.
Wait, you can use extinguishers to create smoke clouds? Seriously?
That could be an interesting way to get some mileage out of some vehicles. Imagine if, say, the car allowed you to start with the enemy having less TUs.
Playing Piratez or X-Files at Superhuman is pretty much reserved for video-playthroughs that don't care about having their units grinded to dust every ingame month or so. It's not feasible without metagaming, because not only do more enemy troops appear, certain negative events trigger up earlier (for example, aliens showing up much earlier than "expected). So save yourself the trouble, no-one cares about the size of your e-peen.
If you believe 20 cultists is bad, imagine having to deal with say 60 zombies in a mission due Superhuman.
Extinguishers produce smoke, which in theory can be used for cover, I believe, but it's a last resort thing since it consumes a lot of TUs.
Finally, there's a mod somewhere in the Released mods subforum that does exactly that: Reduce available TUs for enemy units during turn 1. No idea if it works for X-Files.
Either way, base defense is not as important (nor tedious) as Piratez, but it's still there. Keep your eyes open...
-
Main thing about setting the difficulty to Superhuman is there is no early-game lose condition. So you really have no idea if it will be the appropriate difficulty when the invasion begins.
-
Fire: hot
Water: wet
Sky: blue
Superhuman: unfairly hard
What the hell is wrong with this community? Why are we even talking about such obvious things? You all act like levels 1-4 were some kind of tiered tutorial levels. Why on Earth would anyone thing that?
And about artificially decreasing the AI units' starting TU: how about we lower your TUs instead? Will this be fair and fun? Will you enjoy it? If not, why are you trying to penalize the poor AI, which stands no chance against a human brain anyway?
-
Holy shit the Extinguisher Smoke trick really works. Been using it all the time, now. Its hilariously surreal to have secret agents improvising a fire extinguisher as a Smoke Grenade. This is pure gambiarra.
Enviado de meu moto e5 play usando o Tapatalk
-
Fire: hot
Water: wet
Sky: blue
Superhuman: unfairly hard
What the hell is wrong with this community? Why are we even talking about such obvious things? You all act like levels 1-4 were some kind of tiered tutorial levels. Why on Earth would anyone thing that?
And about artificially decreasing the AI units' starting TU: how about we lower your TUs instead? Will this be fair and fun? Will you enjoy it? If not, why are you trying to penalize the poor AI, which stands no chance against a human brain anyway?
Uhh... Because they are?
I always thought anything lower than superhuman = tutorial levels for noobs and prancing nancy boys. Like playing Doom in anything lower than Ultraviolence. UV is clearly the way the game was actually meant to be played, with Nightmare being an ultra insane mode for masochists.
It ins't?
Thread is because Cultist Outpost/Safehouse/Base missions are luck-based, pretty much. Its pretty much the RNG deciding between dropping over a dozen dudes surrounding your four dudes in all directions or not.
So it looks like X-COM literally starts the mission by honking and yelling "COME FITE US CULTISTS" while driving straight into ALL the dudes. Its weird.
Enviado de meu moto e5 play usando o Tapatalk
-
Holy shit the Extinguisher Smoke trick really works. Been using it all the time, now. Its hilariously surreal to have secret agents improvising a fire extinguisher as a Smoke Grenade. This is pure gambiarra.
Enviado de meu moto e5 play usando o Tapatalk
Well, you CAN create a minor distraction of sorts with the use of a fire extinguisher, especially in the movies, a thing which the game tries to replicate here with this trick. However, it can harm the agent using it (Stun damage) due of the smoke produced. However, note that smoke grenades CANNOT extinguish fires, so watch out if one of your units is set on fire!
-
Sometimes I think the starting deployments are ridiculous and unfair. Then I remember that I have a free mission abort button ready to go at the start and if I walk my agents into an unwinnable gunfight that's on me. Cult missions proc enough that you can pick your battles, or trade agent lives and roll the dice on a sketchy landing. All up to you director.
Now Ski Resort missions where we let our agents get fully surrounded and outgunned in a building with 0 real cover, no idea why we do those. Early retirement resorts are what they call them in the locker rooms now.
-
Uhh... Because they are?
I always thought anything lower than superhuman = tutorial levels for noobs and prancing nancy boys. Like playing Doom in anything lower than Ultraviolence. UV is clearly the way the game was actually meant to be played, with Nightmare being an ultra insane mode for masochists.
Sarcasm noted and appreciated. :)
Thread is because Cultist Outpost/Safehouse/Base missions are luck-based, pretty much. Its pretty much the RNG deciding between dropping over a dozen dudes surrounding your four dudes in all directions or not.
It's true to a degree, I honestly don't intend to argue. Sometimes you start badly and need to simply GTFO. It's totally fine IMO.
So it looks like X-COM literally starts the mission by honking and yelling "COME FITE US CULTISTS" while driving straight into ALL the dudes. Its weird.
Maybe not actively, but parking a car - or worse, landing a VTOL aircraft - right by a paramilitary base will obviously give the inhabitants a heads-up.
Now Ski Resort missions where we let our agents get fully surrounded and outgunned in a building with 0 real cover, no idea why we do those. Early retirement resorts are what they call them in the locker rooms now.
Yeah, that's why you start in a building now. It wasn't so in the past, but this change was introduced back in 0.9.9.
-
Sometimes I think the starting deployments are ridiculous and unfair. Then I remember that I have a free mission abort button ready to go at the start and if I walk my agents into an unwinnable gunfight that's on me. Cult missions proc enough that you can pick your battles, or trade agent lives and roll the dice on a sketchy landing. All up to you director.
Now Ski Resort missions where we let our agents get fully surrounded and outgunned in a building with 0 real cover, no idea why we do those. Early retirement resorts are what they call them in the locker rooms now.
Ski Resort Missions are viable at night. Just toss your flares right and you will see the enemy, but they won't see you. Hope there's nobody too close. You can then snipe the enemy from outside of night visibility range, while leaving your soldiers with close-range guns and melee ready in case enemies march out from the dark. Extinguishers help.
At day through... Yeah nope, that little lodge has no cover at all. Early Retirement Resorts indeed.
Enviado de meu moto e5 play usando o Tapatalk
-
Ski Resort Missions are viable at night. Just toss your flares right and you will see the enemy, but they won't see you. Hope there's nobody too close. You can then snipe the enemy from outside of night visibility range, while leaving your soldiers with close-range guns and melee ready in case enemies march out from the dark. Extinguishers help.
At day through... Yeah nope, that little lodge has no cover at all. Early Retirement Resorts indeed.
Enviado de meu moto e5 play usando o Tapatalk
Agreed, night time with melee and crossbows is a bit more manageable. I've also had some luck in day time by popping copious amounts of smoke, but it's just not quite worth it. The beach missions tend to be far easier despite coming later and having tougher enemies.
-
Agreed, night time with melee and crossbows is a bit more manageable. I've also had some luck in day time by popping copious amounts of smoke, but it's just not quite worth it. The beach missions tend to be far easier despite coming later and having tougher enemies.
Interesting. i always found the ski missions a lot easier than beach. Beach is just pure horror...
(i do both at day though, usually with crossbows)
-
What the hell is wrong with this community? Why are we even talking about such obvious things? You all act like levels 1-4 were some kind of tiered tutorial levels. Why on Earth would anyone thing that?
Absolutely nothing. People here have various ideas, talk, agree or disagree about things but it's pretty regular stuff. I don't think people act like anything, some just point out where they see what issues relative to their expectations. It can be disregarded, addressed, opinion changed but just because it's mentioned - there's nothing wrong.
And about artificially decreasing the AI units' starting TU: how about we lower your TUs instead? Will this be fair and fun? Will you enjoy it?
Simple logic: will doing so solve the issue people mention in thsi thread without introducing bigger issues? If so, yes, but I am pretty sure that wouldn't do anything, if anything - it'd make the issue reported bigger.
If not, why are you trying to penalize the poor AI, which stands no chance against a human brain anyway?
Because it's not a matter of AI, it being poor or not, being hard or not but whether it's okay start of certain rounds, at least according to some players, is fair or not. People's issue doesn't lie in making AI better/worse right now, but in the fact that sometimes no matter how good or bad player would be they're being punished before they even get to do something that would warrant that punishment.
And sure, someone can say "sometimes things are unfair" but that's an obvious design flaw unless the idea of them getting into such situation is intentionally planned - in which case telling them so would probably make the whole exchange shorter.
-
Absolutely nothing. People here have various ideas, talk, agree or disagree about things but it's pretty regular stuff. I don't think people act like anything, some just point out where they see what issues relative to their expectations. It can be disregarded, addressed, opinion changed but just because it's mentioned - there's nothing wrong.
Sorry, but this is more that that. It's some pervasive dumb meme which leaves me dumbfounded and get in the way of proper conversation. I wouldn't mind one or two people being like that, but it's way too pervasive. It's dumb and unhealthy.
Simple logic: will doing so solve the issue people mention in thsi thread without introducing bigger issues? If so, yes, but I am pretty sure that wouldn't do anything, if anything - it'd make the issue reported bigger.
Because this is a soft version of "win nao" button.
Because it's not a matter of AI, it being poor or not, being hard or not but whether it's okay start of certain rounds, at least according to some players, is fair or not. People's issue doesn't lie in making AI better/worse right now, but in the fact that sometimes no matter how good or bad player would be they're being punished before they even get to do something that would warrant that punishment.
And sure, someone can say "sometimes things are unfair" but that's an obvious design flaw unless the idea of them getting into such situation is intentionally planned - in which case telling them so would probably make the whole exchange shorter.
Who on Earth has ever said that a game has to be fair? Why would anyone ask that X-Com should be fair? It's been unfair since the very beginning, that's the whole point.
Excuse me, but I find this simply confusing. This isn't a sport game.
-
Why not put an extraction point on the other end of the map for the ski mission? Would give you a fighting chance of making it out since it is at night.
-
Why not put an extraction point on the other end of the map for the ski mission? Would give you a fighting chance of making it out since it is at night.
Possible, but I'm not sure such a setup would be universally great.
-
Sorry, but this is more that that. It's some pervasive dumb meme which leaves me dumbfounded and get in the way of proper conversation. I wouldn't mind one or two people being like that, but it's way too pervasive. It's dumb and unhealthy.
It's pervasive exactly because/but it's not just a meme. It's a common attitude/idea and one you may disagree with but it doesn't make it any less/more meme or dumb, just less likely to be listened to since in the end it all depends on you, we just provide feedback - including one that may sometimes annoy the hell out of you :P
Because this is a soft version of "win nao" button.
Not being surrounded/shot at by enemy units before the player does anything during first round is a "win nao" button? Or having player's TU lowered is a "win nao" button? Neither seems to be such decisive thing unless someone claims that either players win every battle at the beginning of the first turn or they somehow win by having TU lowered - neither seems reasonable to me.
Who on Earth has ever said that a game has to be fair?
Most game developers ever, I'd suspect but it depends whether you see risky challenges as part of it being fair. Either way, developers may make the game challenging, offer obstacles and risky situations but most games of any kind either have progression in the boundaries of certain rules player can understand or the few that don't make that the main challenge to overcome. UFO/XCOM is the former, however.
Why would anyone ask that X-Com should be fair? It's been unfair since the very beginning, that's the whole point.
Not at all! Even Julian Gollop, as I recall from his presentation on EGX admitted that he simply is most interested in simulation aspect and that he even added stuff like hush-hush dynamic difficulty in UFO that was slowing down alien progression if the player was having hard time and resuming it once said player was getting better - literally admitting it's because he had hard time and no idea about balancing and it was such stuff that, again, in his opinion made the game playable.
I dislike autobalancing to be honest, but it does underline that even by the design game being unfair was never "the whole point". Even XCOM was meant to be hard but balanced, just with some random curve balls to pose a challenge kept in mind. It just, well, as Gollop admits wasn't ideal at it. Now, we can disagree whether changes in this or that direction would negatively affect that balance, make things too hard or too easy, but like every game, some fairness and consistent boundaries are necessary for it to be a game.
Excuse me, but I find this simply confusing. This isn't a sport game.
Probably doesn't have to be. Though I guess the difference here is based on opinion where the fairness is. I don't mean "every situation offers same difficulty to each sides allowing initial equal chance of success" (a trait of most sport games), but I find important to limit situations with player being screwed over by no fault on their own under circumstances they couldn't really prevent or manage (prefering harsh but understandable screw-ups due to tactical/strategic mistakes and taking risks) even if you'd consider it a fair challenge.
-
Adjusting difficulty breaks a lot of strategy games. So it's not a bad idea for some mods to be designed around being fairly winnable on superhuman. Modders would be better off manually changing the difficult modes to their tastes but that's a lot of work. XCOM works best at a fairly hard difficulty and ironman.
-
its supposed to be hard. its not even supposed to have every single battle winnable.
so there are losses. There are some losses you can't do anything about it, otherwise it´d be "play perfectly and win every time".
on "normal" difficulties like veteran, what the game is balanced for, its not that much an issue.
Superhuman is possible. (at least some people claim they did it)
So basically you´re just complaining that a) superhuman is too hard or b) you´re not good enough. Whats the point in that...
-
its supposed to be hard. its not even supposed to have every single battle winnable.
But that's not the issue. I am pretty sure OP, whose side I kinda-sorta take, isn't having issue with some battles being unwinnable, but with being surrounded at the very beinning. When the vehicle just stops and the agents unboard, they do so right under the scopes of the enemies and before player manages to make them take even one step, they can fire off.
Unwinnable battles are alright, there's evacuation button just for that. But it's more fun and the design's better when the player evacuates because the battle was hard and tactical errors were made, rather than skipping out of the whole mission at the very beginning of first turn because the driver parked in kissing distance of armed enemies - a situation which is understandable on superhuman level of difficulty, but happens semi-commonly on most others as well.
-
But that's not the issue. I am pretty sure OP, whose side I kinda-sorta take, isn't having issue with some battles being unwinnable, but with being surrounded at the very beinning. When the vehicle just stops and the agents unboard, they do so right under the scopes of the enemies and before player manages to make them take even one step, they can fire off.
Unwinnable battles are alright, there's evacuation button just for that. But it's more fun and the design's better when the player evacuates because the battle was hard and tactical errors were made, rather than skipping out of the whole mission at the very beginning of first turn because the driver parked in kissing distance of armed enemies - a situation which is understandable on superhuman level of difficulty, but happens semi-commonly on most others as well.
Explain it like this-"when you are fighting cults, sometimes they ambush you and you ned to get out."
Good, problem solved.
-
It's pervasive exactly because/but it's not just a meme. It's a common attitude/idea and one you may disagree with but it doesn't make it any less/more meme or dumb, just less likely to be listened to since in the end it all depends on you, we just provide feedback - including one that may sometimes annoy the hell out of you :P
Pssh. Common where? It's not common among players.
And if it's true, well, I don't really care. All the more reason to do some correctional work. :P
Not being surrounded/shot at by enemy units before the player does anything during first round is a "win nao" button? Or having player's TU lowered is a "win nao" button? Neither seems to be such decisive thing unless someone claims that either players win every battle at the beginning of the first turn or they somehow win by having TU lowered - neither seems reasonable to me.
Except it doesn't make sense. You start with full TUs despite just having landed, why wouldn't the AI units have it worse? IT's illogical.
Most game developers ever, I'd suspect but it depends whether you see risky challenges as part of it being fair. Either way, developers may make the game challenging, offer obstacles and risky situations but most games of any kind either have progression in the boundaries of certain rules player can understand or the few that don't make that the main challenge to overcome. UFO/XCOM is the former, however.
A friend of mine remarked while playing Stalker: "Western games say 'come play with me, it's good fun!', whereas Eastern games are more like 'What the hell are you doing here, player? Get out, I don't like you!'
A combat game is supposed to be hostile. That's what a combat game is: propagation of violence. Making it friendly is a sign of confusion. It's supposed to be hostile and you're supposed to beat it anyway. (Dioxine called this "the aggressor principle" or something similar.)
When a game approaches you with kiddie gloves, then it makes your experience feel fake. If you struggle too much, this is precisely what difficulty settings are for.
Not at all! Even Julian Gollop, as I recall from his presentation on EGX admitted that he simply is most interested in simulation aspect and that he even added stuff like hush-hush dynamic difficulty in UFO that was slowing down alien progression if the player was having hard time and resuming it once said player was getting better - literally admitting it's because he had hard time and no idea about balancing and it was such stuff that, again, in his opinion made the game playable.
I can't speak for Julian Gollop, but I think he meant a simulation in a specified range. You simulate ground battles, but you don't simulate the Geoscape level, because dynamic difficulty is directly contradictory to simulation.
Anyway, I don't think it is in any way relevant here.
I dislike autobalancing to be honest, but it does underline that even by the design game being unfair was never "the whole point". Even XCOM was meant to be hard but balanced, just with some random curve balls to pose a challenge kept in mind. It just, well, as Gollop admits wasn't ideal at it. Now, we can disagree whether changes in this or that direction would negatively affect that balance, make things too hard or too easy, but like every game, some fairness and consistent boundaries are necessary for it to be a game.
Well, I'm not good at balancing myself. Actually, balance is not even on my list of objectives. I only aim for things making sense, and also to show all parts of the game properly.
Frankly, the term "balance" makes zero sense to me in a single player game. There is only "experience".
Probably doesn't have to be. Though I guess the difference here is based on opinion where the fairness is. I don't mean "every situation offers same difficulty to each sides allowing initial equal chance of success" (a trait of most sport games), but I find important to limit situations with player being screwed over by no fault on their own under circumstances they couldn't really prevent or manage (prefering harsh but understandable screw-ups due to tactical/strategic mistakes and taking risks) even if you'd consider it a fair challenge.
Fair. But I disagree that opting out from a battle is being "screwed over". If you decide to do the battle and then inevitably lose, then yeah, you may be screwed - but it was totally your fault. And I agree it wouldn't be cool otherwise.
Sorry to speak so, umm, directly, I do not invite confrontation and frankly I don't even think we disagree, but I think there is a bit of miscommunication. So I'm just explaining my position, hopefully well enough.
Unwinnable battles are alright, there's evacuation button just for that. But it's more fun and the design's better when the player evacuates because the battle was hard and tactical errors were made, rather than skipping out of the whole mission at the very beginning of first turn because the driver parked in kissing distance of armed enemies - a situation which is understandable on superhuman level of difficulty, but happens semi-commonly on most others as well.
I totally agree, but in order to achieve a more polished experience we would have to sacrifice randomness (prepare special starting areas and such), which IMO would really be too much of a cost.
-
Hey. Will try to keep it shorter (especially since it probably will be already quite big) as while we kinda-sorta may understand each other by now, it does seem we moved from debating idea itself to what beliefs regarding gameplay we have for why we want/don't want it. I mean, it's not a bad conversation either but I suspect you have better things to do :P
Except it doesn't make sense. You start with full TUs despite just having landed, why wouldn't the AI units have it worse? IT's illogical.
Alright, keeping your "makes sense" priority in mind:
Why it'd make sense from the standpoint of logic/believability: X-COM likely doesn't mill around before round starts. I imagine that when the battle begins it's immediately after sudden surprise insertion, when geared up agents just jump out of vehicle or, in case of covert mission are not being paid too much attention to and are just breaking cover.
From the standpoint of mechanics: AI has infinite, constantly regenerating, trained and geared up enemies it populates each mission with at no cost. It doesn't, need, can or should concern itself with saving or maintaing any number of them outside of appearances of self-preservation. At the same time, it simulates them as detached groups or single units present in location doing their own stuff. It doesn't have it worse either way.
The point of the game is after all aggressive sudden strike with teams of costly, trained agents disrupting enemy plans after all, but the player gets no proper preparation phase safe for gearing up (which is in place of doing so at the base), cannot choose any entry point, decide angle of attack etc; even when attacking enemy installations he doesn't approach them from safe distance, his units can just pop right in the middle of it all. Since we don't really have stealth mode of Firaxis' XCOM2 that is used to mitigate similar issues, something helping situation where only player is really suffering any lasting losses anyway, especially due to plunging into the middle of enemy group which IS illogical - would help.
I can't speak for Julian Gollop, but I think he meant a simulation in a specified range. You simulate ground battles, but you don't simulate the Geoscape level, because dynamic difficulty is directly contradictory to simulation.
Anyway, I don't think it is in any way relevant here.
Yup, he realized that himself but decided to put in it because simulation on its own doesn't always mean decent gameplay and some things have to be worked around. I suspect simulations in games often lack a lot of factors and elements to be truly realistic and often those who do still need elements handwaved to make the simulation manageable and the game fun.
Anyway, that was in regards to any "it was intended this way/that's the point of the game" arguments, to point out that even the creator himself didn't plan a lot of how the game is seen, just didn't manage it as thoroughly.
Well, I'm not good at balancing myself. Actually, balance is not even on my list of objectives. I only aim for things making sense, and also to show all parts of the game properly.
That is some sort of balancing consideration. Balance doesn't have to always mean "everyone gets the same" after all, even more so in a single player game - a thing which I think we got in agreement on, too! That's also why the idea of giving player certain capabilities AI doesn't have as AI/player already have different capabilities and the rest serves the way of presenting gameplay.
Fair. But I disagree that opting out from a battle is being "screwed over". If you decide to do the battle and then inevitably lose, then yeah, you may be screwed - but it was totally your fault. And I agree it wouldn't be cool otherwise.
Let me differentiate - I agree that in general, having a hard battle it's better to evacuate from is alright, hell - it may make for some cool, dramatic scenes. It's the exception of one situation I hope to resolve: sometimes you don't experience the battle and miss the experience. Without some sort of management of enemy actions in the very beginning, the player doesn't even get to realize the battle is undoable as upon just embarking agents suffer loses in the first turn, with game offering no way of handling that save for savescumming.
Also, only slightly related - would be nice if missions one evacuated from still provided points for things the player did manage to achieve (killed enemies, secured artifacts), not just subtracted for losses and with every civilian in the area automatically killed with no chance anyone escaped or hid.
Sorry to speak so, umm, directly, I do not invite confrontation and frankly I don't even think we disagree, but I think there is a bit of miscommunication. So I'm just explaining my position, hopefully well enough.
Noted. For future reference, as I am sure we may have different approach to other things in general, I bear you or anyone else I talk 'bout stuff with no ill will either, offering feedback and thoughts hoping for the game to improve as much as possible/solve some issues as I see them. It's unlikely people will agree on everything ever and that's uderstandable as well.
I totally agree, but in order to achieve a more polished experience we would have to sacrifice randomness (prepare special starting areas and such), which IMO would really be too much of a cost.
True. I would imagine it'd best depend on the mission (investigating rumors about stuff in the area and getting ambushed /stumbled upon said "stuff" vs planned attack on stationary enemy base). Plus I understand that'd be pretty huge undertaking. It's only because of that I drop such "quick & dirty" ideas like the TU cut - in hopes of getting at least slightly similar result but without having to work on something huge. It's certainly not ideal but, eh, not many other ideas of handling OPs issue - and that is, even if not big, is just kinda a meh thing (wouldn't guess so given how big walls of texts I make, would you? :P).
-
Why it'd make sense from the standpoint of logic/believability: X-COM likely doesn't mill around before round starts. I imagine that when the battle begins it's immediately after sudden surprise insertion, when geared up agents just jump out of vehicle or, in case of covert mission are not being paid too much attention to and are just breaking cover.
From the standpoint of mechanics: AI has infinite, constantly regenerating, trained and geared up enemies it populates each mission with at no cost. It doesn't, need, can or should concern itself with saving or maintaing any number of them outside of appearances of self-preservation. At the same time, it simulates them as detached groups or single units present in location doing their own stuff. It doesn't have it worse either way.
Indeed, this is covered by the "alien hordes are endless" handwavium in vanilla. Here it's a little less abstract, but we still can assume that enemy organizations have at least thousands of members and don't struggle with personnel numbers as a result of X-Com actions.
The point of the game is after all aggressive sudden strike with teams of costly, trained agents disrupting enemy plans after all, but the player gets no proper preparation phase safe for gearing up (which is in place of doing so at the base), cannot choose any entry point, decide angle of attack etc; even when attacking enemy installations he doesn't approach them from safe distance, his units can just pop right in the middle of it all. Since we don't really have stealth mode of Firaxis' XCOM2 that is used to mitigate similar issues, something helping situation where only player is really suffering any lasting losses anyway, especially due to plunging into the middle of enemy group which IS illogical - would help.
Oh, it would be great to be able to at least select the starting location (like for example in Aftershock). But we can't and that's it.
I feel that limiting AI TUs is not the naswer here, but of course this is subjective.
Yup, he realized that himself but decided to put in it because simulation on its own doesn't always mean decent gameplay and some things have to be worked around. I suspect simulations in games often lack a lot of factors and elements to be truly realistic and often those who do still need elements handwaved to make the simulation manageable and the game fun.
I totally agree... If I went for 100% simulation, the mod would be much less fun to play. :) (And the tory probably wouldn't make any sense.)
Anyway, that was in regards to any "it was intended this way/that's the point of the game" arguments, to point out that even the creator himself didn't plan a lot of how the game is seen, just didn't manage it as thoroughly.
That is some sort of balancing consideration. Balance doesn't have to always mean "everyone gets the same" after all, even more so in a single player game - a thing which I think we got in agreement on, too! That's also why the idea of giving player certain capabilities AI doesn't have as AI/player already have different capabilities and the rest serves the way of presenting gameplay.
Yeah, not gonna argue with this principle. But since the AI generally has it worse, boosting player's options, or in this case actually debilitating the AI, so not something I'd do lightly.
Let me differentiate - I agree that in general, having a hard battle it's better to evacuate from is alright, hell - it may make for some cool, dramatic scenes. It's the exception of one situation I hope to resolve: sometimes you don't experience the battle and miss the experience. Without some sort of management of enemy actions in the very beginning, the player doesn't even get to realize the battle is undoable as upon just embarking agents suffer loses in the first turn, with game offering no way of handling that save for savescumming.
Yes, won't argue with this one either. I just think it's something we can accept as an inevitable part of this gaming formula.
Also, only slightly related - would be nice if missions one evacuated from still provided points for things the player did manage to achieve (killed enemies, secured artifacts), not just subtracted for losses and with every civilian in the area automatically killed with no chance anyone escaped or hid.
That's a big subject, happy to discuss it later :)
Noted. For future reference, as I am sure we may have different approach to other things in general, I bear you or anyone else I talk 'bout stuff with no ill will either, offering feedback and thoughts hoping for the game to improve as much as possible/solve some issues as I see them. It's unlikely people will agree on everything ever and that's uderstandable as well.
Glad to hear. I never assumed otherwise myself.
True. I would imagine it'd best depend on the mission (investigating rumors about stuff in the area and getting ambushed /stumbled upon said "stuff" vs planned attack on stationary enemy base). Plus I understand that'd be pretty huge undertaking. It's only because of that I drop such "quick & dirty" ideas like the TU cut - in hopes of getting at least slightly similar result but without having to work on something huge. It's certainly not ideal but, eh, not many other ideas of handling OPs issue - and that is, even if not big, is just kinda a meh thing (wouldn't guess so given how big walls of texts I make, would you? :P).
You've very welcome to open a thread on this, and I'll be interested in reading it, but naturally it will be addressed to the developers.
-
That's a big subject, happy to discuss it later :)
Looking forward to it!
You've very welcome to open a thread on this, and I'll be interested in reading it, but naturally it will be addressed to the developers.
Keeping the "quick and dirty" approach in mind, I was thinking more about it being work in regards to mapping. Adjusting each map and enemy spawn so one would be some distance from them during base assault (as usually most of them does seem to be inside their outposts), but could still risk being surrounded as it is right now in regular "strange creatures" missions.
-
Maybe would it be possible that vehicles would create smoke cover on arrival ? It would make sense when you are fighting cultists that your Firefly or hell even the chopper would smoke the landing zone to prevent this exact situation ?.
Or atleast making smoke grenades accessible more early ? Like some cheaper, weaker version the XCOM can either buy ? (Like some illegal fireworks from Asia or something)
-
Or atleast making smoke grenades accessible more early ? Like some cheaper, weaker version the XCOM can either buy ? (Like some illegal fireworks from Asia or something)
It's called a fire extinguisher.
-
I could add smoke projectors to some vehicles :)
-
I could add smoke projectors to some vehicles :)
The Mighty Mudranger, make it even more tantalizingly useful and out of reach!
Also, addressing the general concern of the thread does this setting "percentageOutsideUfo:" apply to cult missions and their buildings? I'm pretty neutral on the subject of starting deployments, they can be punishing but imo reasonable since they are entirely avoidable but maybe tweaking this setting would work for some?
-
The Mighty Mudranger, make it even more tantalizingly useful and out of reach!
:)
Also, addressing the general concern of the thread does this setting "percentageOutsideUfo:" apply to cult missions and their buildings? I'm pretty neutral on the subject of starting deployments, they can be punishing but imo reasonable since they are entirely avoidable but maybe tweaking this setting would work for some?
I doubt this setting works, since the ruleset reference specifically says that it applies to UFO land/crash sites, and this mission is not one, even though it features a UFO.
-
Certain vehicles are much less vulnerable to being "ambushed" at the start and so don't really need a smoked ramp.
For example if you try to deploy all 16 agents out of the Osprey under heavy enemy presence, smoke or not you're gonna have a bad time as your agents will basically spend their whole turn advancing under enemy fire (it's just so LONG). Or if you deploy out of a Helicopter (nevermind the 6 agents) you'll be totally at the mercy of RNG.
But if you're using the mudranger, well you have multiple closeable doors and an alternative escape hatch which can be used as a safe spot for peeking out and sniping.
If you want to nerf "ambushes", then maybe it would be a better idea to add more doors than to add smoke projectors. Smoking the ramp without thermovision means you'll mostly be using close-range weapons and greandes until the dropsite is clear, but more doors just gives you more options.
-
Adding more doors is tempting, but also kinda hard to do well.
And yes, the Mudranger is generally agreed to have the best defensive layout. :)
-
Adding more doors is tempting, but also kinda hard to do well.
And yes, the Mudranger is generally agreed to have the best defensive layout. :)
It's too bad it has such a shit range, even the Airborne variant, that it can only be used in very specific situations, limiting its usefulness.
-
It's too bad it has such a shit range, even the Airborne variant, that it can only be used in very specific situations, limiting its usefulness.
I just did something to make it more relevant: you start in it in some Dimension X missions.