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Messages - Man in the Funny Hat

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16
Suggestions / Re: Longer space for names?
« on: October 11, 2013, 02:26:22 am »
Yeah, there's plenty of length for an actual NAME.  The desire to expand the "name" to actually include a lot of abbreviated soldier data and player-designated information is really just an indication of the gui obstructing better access to meaningful stats and gear loadouts.

17
Open Feedback / Re: Promotions
« on: September 27, 2013, 06:42:32 am »
You can always just sack your poor promoted guy. Meritocracy is an ideal but perhaps it's just politics to get commander rank :P
Or, you know, like, be given your own choice as a player on who is best to promote?  :)

18
Open Feedback / Re: Promotions
« on: September 24, 2013, 06:28:12 pm »
According to https://ufopaedia.org promotions are given according to a "promotion score".  The formula for that score has a great deal to do with a soldiers basic stats, seemingly as much or more than their combat performance or participation.  That's why soldiers sitting in your base are being promoted even when they aren't on missions - their stats have given them a "promotion score" that exceeds the troops you just took on a mission even above someone who just single-handedly took out 6 aliens and kept his cool when others panicked.  Even the most heavily-used trooper you have with gobs of kills and a dozen missions under his belt can be overlooked for promotion because some rookie schmuck you just hired to replace losses has better stats.

The advantage of officers is actually only the morale effects.  Having officers on missions provides a morale bonus when aliens are killed - as well as a morale penalty when an officer is killed.  Officers don't shoot better.  They don't resist psi attacks better.  They only adjust morale.  Because of that, the higher the rank of the officer the less you actually want to expose them to danger on a mission because it can cause a cascade in panic.  A colonel gets killed and the sergeant panics - which gets the sergeant killed and drops morale again to the point where the captain panics, and then gets killed... and then it's a massacre.  And that's just with being shot - it doesn't include being panicked or taken over by psi attacks.

Now, out here in the real world we tend to think of these promotions in terms of it being a field promotion - which should be based on your display of competence on an actual mission.  But in the game that's only part of it.  Mostly it's better that you think of it in terms of all your troops repeatedly undergoing tests and running obstacle courses back at base and the one with the best overall score in those competitions gets promoted first - with a bonus for doing well on missions.  Then every time you complete a mission those competitive test scores are checked again back at base and if there's room for promotions they get handed out again.  But you don't have to be doing missions and killing aliens to do really well on those promotion tests.

Really, that's kinda bass-ackwards from how we seem to reflexively think it should work.  It FEELS like the troops with the best in-mission performance should be the ones getting all the promotions - and then if there's a TIE the trooper with the highest stats gets the promotion.  The reality is that the trooper who just came off a really great mission will be ignored if he doesn't have good stats.  Actual combat performance is HIGHLY undervalued for promotions.

19
Suggestions / Re: Craft Repair
« on: September 10, 2013, 06:40:05 am »

20
Suggestions / Re: Craft Repair
« on: September 06, 2013, 07:29:21 am »
No, really.  I would be happy with just being able to see how long it will take to repair a damaged interceptor.

21
Suggestions / Re: New types of terrain to interact with?
« on: September 05, 2013, 05:35:24 am »
Walls.  Forcing your way through hedges or jumping over low stone walls and fences.

22
Suggestions / Re: Craft Repair
« on: September 03, 2013, 01:48:16 am »
It would be cool to see how long it will take to repair our crafts in any case.

23
Suggestions / Re: Research and manufacture options
« on: August 31, 2013, 08:55:49 pm »
Another possibility is that once a player has completed all possible research and DOESN'T then attempt to hit Cydonia within a certain time frame (according to difficulty level?) then alien attacks upon Earth and Xcom bases will continually increase in frequency and difficulty.  If you've completed the research tree then at most you need a bit of time to find and train up psi troops and to build ONE Avenger.  Maybe 1 month, after which penalties for scoring purposes will increase, awards for any accomplishment will decrease, size of UFO's to intercept starts scaling up and you no longer even see Very Small or Small UFO scout missions, infiltration missions increase, etc.  In short, you get 1 month grace period before the game starts sliding into INEVITABLE defeat short of cutting off the head at Cydonia.

24
Suggestions / Re: Geoscape labels
« on: August 29, 2013, 02:35:11 am »
I run XCom and I approve this message.

25
Offtopic / Re: Your X-COM base names
« on: August 26, 2013, 08:26:56 am »
I usually do  badly at naming them only because I ultimately find that I dont associate the name I gave it with where it's actually at.  For example my current game has bases named flashlight, daylight, nightlight, arclight, stoplight, and ghostlight.  The first one was ghostlight so of course I can remember that.  The second was actually arclight, and though I kinda remember it I still have to step in and out of screens to be sure if, for example, I'm transferring stuff between them.  After that I built the rest kinda all at once as radar/intercept bases and the names mean nothing to me.

You know what might help me?  Seeing the name of your bases on Geoscape.  like with a toggle or something so you can turn it off to get it out of the way.  Or I could just always use names like Eurocom, Americom, Asiacom, etc.

26
Suggestions / Re: Promotions
« on: August 25, 2013, 07:14:20 pm »
My recent research indicates that promotions are based on a formula that is not just based on "performance" but is heavily weighted by stats.  Once promoted to squaddie, even if he's not doing anything, the fact that a trooper just has better stats is what gets guys promoted.  # of missions and # of kills is a factor but promotions gets wierd because those seem to be heavily outwieghed by basic stats.  I'm sure it'd feel more sensible to me if the first promotions were over-weighted to number of missions and kills rather than high stats.  Better stats should be downgraded in importance to being closer to a tiebreaker between promotion candidates and a captain who sits in a base accumulating no mission credits and no kills should NEVER be promoted over someone with more missions and more kills.  Continued performance should be necessary for continued promotion.  if that formula can be changed that way then I will no longer feel that all promotion authority should be taken away from the game engine.

27
Open Feedback / Re: Promotions
« on: August 25, 2013, 06:48:58 pm »
Yeah. Been doing a bit more research on the under-the-hood mechanics and I see I have long been under a false impression about not just promotions but a few other things as well - like how to improve strength.  That too is a matter of gaining "primary xp" rather than carrying weight as I had mistakenly been led to misunderstand in error.

28
It occurs to me that a basic flamethrower would be appropriate for Xcom as well as a nice homage to "Alien".

29
Suggestions / Research and manufacture options
« on: August 24, 2013, 07:03:11 pm »
Had a couple of ideas.  One would be to be able to assign engineers to base construction projects in order to speed up their completion.  Struck me as a bit odd that they can build a spacecraft to carry 20-odd people to Mars but can't/won't pick up a drill to help assemble shelves for a new storage block.

Once a player has actually completed the research tree something should happen.  Maybe just a pop-up to let the player know that all possible research is complete so it'd be best to just sack all your scientists and destroy all the labs, if not just inform the player and then do that FOR them.  Though base construction would make removing labs problematic if destruction of a lab totally isolates another section players should not be "duped" into continuing to pay salaries to scientists who can't actually do anything.  Another possibility is to allow those scientists to still research SOMEthing.  I was thinking of options along the lines of making weapons lighter, use less elerium, build a little faster.  However, it occurs to me that the only way to do that would likely be to add a whole new set of weapons with the new stats.  Maybe they could spend their time forevermore growing 10-unit batches of elerium?

30
Suggestions / Save games
« on: August 24, 2013, 06:41:59 pm »
Just thinking it'd be nice to be able to have saved games display according to game time stamp rather than alphabetically.

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