TU usage as absolute, not relative

[ReCurse]

So this is a long shot, i´m not sure about it myself, but maybe someone else has a better view on the implications...

What would be, if the TU consumption (e.g. for firing a weapon) weren't relative to the maximum TUs a unit has, but an absolute value.
It strikes me that even if a soldier has way more TUs than average, all he can do is walk further (Well and more inventory re-arrangement).
Why not fire more often or throw more stuff?
Of course there are a lot ways to interprete TUs in a round based game, but it makes sense that "has a lot of TUs" means just "is faster".
That should imo apply to everything, not just walking.

Balancing should not be a problem (in terms of possible, not saying it requires no work).
Now lets not even stop there, since there are other stats, that can be included...
Lets say a soldier with 50 in firing skills takes 40 TUs for an aimed shot with an autocannon.
A soldier with 75 on firing skills may just aim faster and just use 35 TUs, so it may be possible, if he´s got really good stats he can fire aimed twice.
(left aside that autoshot would probably be better in this case )
Same may go for about any other action.

So, how about it?

[Sharp]

Well TU's is more representative of movement speed not just quick reflexes (which would come under reactions).

Put it this way, give the same rifle to a fat slob of a soldier and a lean mean athlete, both should still fire at a similar rate because the limitation is the weapon not how fast they move. That being said there are certain items which are better for high TU person like using motion scanner and medkit which are flat-costs I believe.

[Warboy1982]

there's a flatRate field in item definitions for exactly this purpose.

[Man in the Funny Hat]

I remember having brought this up in some forum many years ago.  I had realized that more TU's didn't change your rates of fire or the like because they were all percentages of your available TU's and not fixed amounts. The only thing more TU's actually got you was more movement.  Nobody grasped the idea and they thought I was delusional.
"You might be able to eventually run clear across the map in a turn but if all you do is pull the trigger you'll never fire even one more shot no matter how many TU's you start with."
"What?  Of course you can shoot more - you have more TU's!"

[Sharp]

"What?  Of course you can shoot more - you have more TU's!"

That sounds pretty silly especially as the costs in the ufopaedia specifically state %costs and not flat amounts., maybe they were trolling.

[ReCurse]

yes, that is the point... ^^
firing one shot of a laser pistol costs like 30% of your available TUs, no matter if they´re just enough to walk 2 steps or 2 times across the map.
This does seem kinda silly to me.
(And reminds me of Windows Vista, always takes up 60% of the available RAM, no matter how much there is available )

[Shadow]

I agree with Sharp in that TU use percentages are supposed to represent the technical limitations of the items a soldier is using, and that their physical stats have no bearing on the weapon's speed.

I don't find it silly at all. A more athletic trooper won't make his rifle's bullets fly faster. A weapon needs a fixed amount of time to fire a fixed amount of bullets, and whether the soldier could run 20 or 50 metres in the same time doesn't change that fact. Yes, you could say a more experienced shooter can achieve the same accuracy as a lesser one faster, but X-COM opts for simply making skilled marksmen more precise. A mod implementing a system in which you can trade TUs for accuracy and viceversa would be neat, but quite the task.

Still, if you want to experiment, you could make a custom ruleset, set all the battlescape items to flatRate: true, tinker with various fixed TU values and see what happens. I can't promise the AI will adapt flawlessly: not sure how its logic works in this regard, but in a couple of previous occasions I've found out it plans around saving percentages of their TU reserves, as opposed to fixed figures.

[Qpoter]

I think the best system would be (and I'm sure this has been posted before) one in which Auto Shots have a high % cost but a low fixed cost (limited by rate of fire, but not much aiming necessary), Snap Shots have a medium % and fixed cost (slight rate of fire handicap, some aiming time), and Aimed Shots have a non-existent % cost but a high fixed cost (the rate of fire of the weapon in question would have a negligible effect if one at all with a carefully aimed shot, but a lot of manual aiming time is necessary).

This is also my first post, hooray!

[xracer]

Hello all i had thought about this long ago and had posted about it somehwere else,

I thought that training was a good solution for all this request.
Allow for training in specific weapons type
such as pistols (handgun) rifle (assault weapons) and heavy (heavy :S)
as a unit improves in training a small percentage of the TU can be "discounted"
lets say
lvl1: novice training 1% training time: 1 week
lvl2: -----              3%                 : 2 weeks
lvl3: ---                 5%                 : 3 weeks
.                           7%
.                           9%
.                           11%
 
lvl 10:----              19%                 : 10 weeks

or something like that or keep a system that tracks the unit and after using a weapon for a long time your proficiency on said weapon increases. so it is considered "field training"

I mean it is true that as you get more proficient with a weapon its time usage diminishes, which from personal experience it is true.

[Sharp]

I mean it is true that as you get more proficient with a weapon its time usage diminishes, which from personal experience it is true.

Yes but your hiring soldiers, not untrained civvies. You don't need a lot of specialised training to pull a trigger so while proficency with a weapon decreases how long it takes to use it, it is a very short ramp to a plateau, a guy with a week's experience of firing a rifle will probably fire just as quickly as someone with a year, accuracy on the other hand is a different factor and that is sort of simulated in the game anyway that a high accuracy soldier can fire a snap shot while a low accuracy soldier fires an aimed shot but both can have similar to hit chance.
---

I think the best system would be (and I'm sure this has been posted before) one in which Auto Shots have a high % cost but a low fixed cost (limited by rate of fire, but not much aiming necessary), Snap Shots have a medium % and fixed cost (slight rate of fire handicap, some aiming time), and Aimed Shots have a non-existent % cost but a high fixed cost (the rate of fire of the weapon in question would have a negligible effect if one at all with a carefully aimed shot, but a lot of manual aiming time is necessary).

This is also my first post, hooray!

Hybrid costs are interesting, but still having flat costs puts the low TU soldiers at unreasonable disadvantage, just because you don't run very fast doesn't mean you can't shoot just as quickly as someone else. The way TU's work in the game with % costs make it so that anything with a flat TU cost implies movement speed is a factor, like moving soldiers and crouching or even using certain items (not sure why Psi-Amp is fixed cost though), flat TU cost indicate soldier speed while % TU costs indicate the action takes a fixed amount of time in the round.

It takes maybe 3 seconds for a soldier to fire an aimed shot with a rifle but in those 3 seconds soldier A might only be able to run 5m while soldier B might be able to run 10m, and soldier C might be able to run 30m but all those soldiers will still take 3 seconds to fire an aimed shot so %TU costs for shooting is fine with flat TU cost for moving.

[ReCurse]

as expected, a lot of different and valid views on that
what got me thinking about this first time was actually decades ago in the original game. i had a guy that was that well trained, he had actually enough health to survive a direct blaster shot, not kidding (was like a year in the hospital after that ^^).
enough TUs to run about anywhere on the map, so completely OP and ridiculously superhuman. but no matter what, he could not fire more than anyone else, out of a fully automatic weapon...
so, a new thought on that:
if TUs are the measurement of the speed of a unit and each round has the same duration (in ingame time)...
then anything that could be trained to do it faster would have a fixed TU cost, since TUs get more for an experienced unit and it can do it more often then.
but anything that is limited by pure time or the used equipment (e.g. scanner, non-automatic weapon, etc) would use a percentage based TU cost, so it´d never be possible more often, no matter how fast the unit is.
that may probably be interesting just to see in a test ruleset...
someone did mention that it might do funny stuff with the AI, but since their units can't get any more TUs, it might be easy just to balance the fixed costs on the percentages they´re reserving.
would probably be interesting to have the aliens get increased TU count later in game anyway ^^

[Qpoter]

Hybrid costs are interesting, but still having flat costs puts the low TU soldiers at unreasonable disadvantage, just because you don't run very fast doesn't mean you can't shoot just as quickly as someone else. The way TU's work in the game with % costs make it so that anything with a flat TU cost implies movement speed is a factor, like moving soldiers and crouching or even using certain items (not sure why Psi-Amp is fixed cost though), flat TU cost indicate soldier speed while % TU costs indicate the action takes a fixed amount of time in the round.

It takes maybe 3 seconds for a soldier to fire an aimed shot with a rifle but in those 3 seconds soldier A might only be able to run 5m while soldier B might be able to run 10m, and soldier C might be able to run 30m but all those soldiers will still take 3 seconds to fire an aimed shot so %TU costs for shooting is fine with flat TU cost for moving.

On some level I agree with you, but flat cost in my post refers to aiming time, not firing. I don't think the disadvantage would be that steep. Sluggish soldiers or rookies with low TUs will take more time to raise their weapon and align their sights, that sort of thing; whereas comparatively agile soldiers will acquire their target faster.

An unintentional effect I did not note will be that low TU troops will tend to use Auto and Snap more than Aimed since they're % based and therefore less TUs. This basically makes the Aimed Shot the 'best' shot level with high TUs. Shots are supposed to be valuable based on the tactical situation, and not just plain better.

EDIT: No TU solution is perfect. I'd actually like it if many different systems alongside the default one were implemented as advanced options.

[xracer]

Yes but your hiring soldiers, not untrained civvies. You don't need a lot of specialised training to pull a trigger so while proficency with a weapon decreases how long it takes to use it, it is a very short ramp to a plateau, a guy with a week's experience of firing a rifle will probably fire just as quickly as someone with a year, accuracy on the other hand is a different factor and that is sort of simulated in the game anyway that a high accuracy soldier can fire a snap shot while a low accuracy soldier fires an aimed shot but both can have similar to hit chance.

although I agree we are not hiring civies, the level of training for a specialization varies drastically, learning how to shoot and shooting the same weapon for a year, 2 years or so makes a huge difference, however the law of diminishing returns does apply.

Shooting a weapon is not just lifting your weapon and pulling the trigger as you say, we are talking about actual shooting, reaction, sight alignment, sight picture, trigger control, an individual with a lot of training with a weapon will shot more accurately and faster that an individual with little or no training, i can tell you this as it took me about 2 years to be come an expert marksman, able to hit 9 out 10 target at 1000 yards within 3 minutes.

Although maybe we can agree to give a range value to make it sort of random, so instead of making 2% increase make it 1-3% range and allow an RNG to assign a value.

[ReCurse]

Yes but your hiring soldiers, not untrained civvies.

judging from the hit ratio of rookies, are you sure about that?

[Camalex97]

judging from the hit ratio of rookies, are you sure about that?

i'd blame the gun, there is no way you can say its perfectly fine and leaving the barrel 90 degrees to the left!