Author Topic: Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - N10 24-Nov-2024 Aurora's Dawn  (Read 4346381 times)

Offline just_dont

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Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] Piratez Extended - 0.95 - 27 Sep - Combat Stress
« Reply #750 on: September 29, 2015, 07:27:56 pm »
Speaking of Darkness Dungeons, their devs also have to handle similar problems with two game mechanics that I find totally okay.
There are two very important differences in DD:
1) You can give up any time while not in combat, and you can attempt to give up any time while in combat. "Any time" is crucial, in XCOM you can give up only when most of your team is back in the craft, otherwise you incur heavy losses.
2) The player is given active counters on resource drain (food/heal for hp, stress heal/torch for stress - and also passive random virtues for stress).

Offline CSam

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Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] Piratez Extended - 0.95 - 27 Sep - Combat Stress
« Reply #751 on: September 29, 2015, 07:52:59 pm »
Hello, I've been playing X-Piratez since v0.92, and decided to start a new game on v0.95 to try some of the changes which looked interesting. I would like to provide some feedback on the changes I have noticed, since the author seems to appreciate this.

Since the combat stress mechanic seems to be a point of discussion, I will first give my opinion on this. After having started a new game, I found the combat stress to be negligible when recovering UFOs. Even when acting fairly cautiously, I was able to keep morale high with a kill per turn or so. During the two terror missions I have encountered so far, however, I have noticed a much greater impact. The first 2/3 of the mission proceeds normally, but when trying to mop up the spread out survivors who are usually concealed I was unable to keep morale up. I was unable to retreat my panicking soldiers to the Bonaventura before the 20-turn rule kicked in and the straggling enemy spartans finally emerged to pick off my helpless soldiers.

I like the idea of the combat stress mechanics, but I believe that the current implementation is a bit too harsh on larger maps. I play pretty recklessly, but on terror mission maps, especially ones with very dense structures such as those 5-story apartment buildings (sometimes 2 or 3 of these buildings per map even) the enemies are too spread out for me to adhere to a time limit reasonably. Maybe I just need to learn to use the motion scanners more in such situations. I suspect other large map events, such as cruiser UFOs and alien base assaults experience a similar issue.

I think that part of the problem some people might be experiencing with the combat stress is that it seems at a glance that knocking out enemies does not grant morale recovery like killing them does. If a player were to rely heavily on nonlethal weapons and attempt to take many enemies prisoner, they would succumb to stress much faster. I have not tested this directly, but I think I will use the debug mode to check it out.

If possible, it might be a good idea to reduce the stress factor on larger maps. The nature of the game simply makes it overly difficult to clear some maps quickly. Some terror maps are relatively friendly, open areas, but it's those dense city blocks with bunches of hotels, movie theaters, and apartment buildings that make it tough to deal with. Another possibility is to increase the amount of morale recovered after  panicking. Regaining ~30 morale after a panic would help a lot towards keeping your units at least partially in play, rather than being mostly disabled.


I like the stamina regeneration change. I don't know the actual formula, but I feel like my more veteran soldiers with decent stats are more able to keep their stamina up than they used to be. At the very least, they no longer rely on a less visible stat that can't be changed.

The junk piles in the base are flavorful and useful, as is the increased base storage, since the 75 standard vault was usually filled in the first mission if you recovered an engine with fuel. It would be neat if the junk piles could have a few random bonus items like assault rifles or data disks or such but I don't think random crafting is currently possible in the engine.

The nerf to throwing skill hurts a bit, I had been using fuso knives a lot in my early game to extreme effect. They're still a pretty good lightweight ranged attack, though. Less accuracy for grenades is less noticeable, since usually a slight deviation doesn't make the difference between a hit or not, especially with 3D explosions.

The change to sniper weapons provides an interesting diversity to weapons, although I already miss the super-accuracy. It seems that I can still attain perfect accuracy pretty easily compared to other weapons, and the damage scaling means that more shooting skill is not wasted on them like it used to be.

I'm enjoying the mortar accuracy buff, although I haven't gotten to try any of the new shell types yet. I usually have a gal or two plugging away with mortars or grenade launchers on top of the Bonaventura.  The indirect fire lets them pop random wanderers outside of UFO's and tear open/down building that enemies have garrisoned.

Overall, I'm a big fan of the mod, and the changes so far are very interesting and do a lot within the limitations of the engine. I look forward to future updates and encountering new content in my v0.95 game. Thanks to the author and contributors for your efforts, I know a lot of work goes into even the smallest changes.

Offline Dioxine

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Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] Piratez Extended - 0.95 - 27 Sep - Combat Stress
« Reply #752 on: September 29, 2015, 08:55:15 pm »
I think it can be 1 and 2 way together, so we wont loose mecanic and it will be possable to tune it until acceptable form.  Optionality is VERY good idea. Is it difficult tecnically?

Nah just requires hours of work, but this is nothing new. I'm starting to be convinced this is the best way to go; someone from somewhere else even suggested that 'cheat' that removes the morale drain should also nerf outfits that are either superfast or provide high resistance to morale drain. Also, while I cannot add "give up at any time" option, I'll think of some items to buff Morale directly - it is possible but yet unused function, because there was no need.

Sorry if I've offended anyone, I was prepared for the outrage and thus overreacted in defense of my ideas. Sometimes it's hard to keep calm if you invest so much of your energy and time into a project... (quite probably well over a 1000 of work hours) My fault. I will post 0.95A with revised Stress mechanics within a week or so, once more people's opinions accumulate and once the upgrades are ready. Then we'll see how it works out.

@CSam: yeah random crafting is something I sorely miss :)

EDIT: one idea to reduce the effect of the "morale spiral" would be making the drain proportional to actual Morale - so the lower the Morale, the lower the drain - maybe even going into positives at very low Morale values. It'd also make "morale training" abuses a bit harder.
« Last Edit: September 29, 2015, 09:15:14 pm by Dioxine »

Offline Hobbes

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Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] Piratez Extended - 0.95 - 27 Sep - Combat Stress
« Reply #753 on: September 29, 2015, 10:00:31 pm »
Sometimes it's hard to keep calm if you invest so much of your energy and time into a project... (quite probably well over a 1000 of work hours)

Your combat stress seems to work better than advertised: besides the units it seems to have affected you as well ;)

Offline Dioxine

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Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] Piratez Extended - 0.95 - 27 Sep - Combat Stress
« Reply #754 on: September 29, 2015, 10:29:23 pm »
Yeah I got dragged into the Tantrum Spiral myself :) I'm testing experimental revised mechanics now, based on an equilibrium: if your Morale is higher than your Bravery, you'll be losing it each turn. If it's lower, you'll be gaining it. The rate of loss/gain is directly proportional to the difference between the current Morale and Bravery.

Offline liberation

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Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] Piratez Extended - 0.95 - 27 Sep - Combat Stress
« Reply #755 on: September 29, 2015, 10:31:28 pm »
In my opinion Dioxine, people make mods/tc's for themselves to enjoy, if others like them then that's a bonus. So unless you can see maybe you have gone to far or you think to your self "ok this sucks, wtf am I doing this isn't fun" then don't worry about people whining about shit, its your project, its your ideas!  8)

If people don't like stuff, then they can mod it out.

Edit: That's not a flame to anyone, I'm not trying to be an asshole, just my opinion 
« Last Edit: September 29, 2015, 10:34:21 pm by liberation »

Offline Soyden

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Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] Piratez Extended - 0.95 - 27 Sep - Combat Stress
« Reply #756 on: September 30, 2015, 12:29:12 am »
I don't have a strong opinion on the combat stress mechanic I just wanted to chip in on feedback. It would be neat if xcom had something like a "captured" state that could occur in combat and counted for morale boosting but I'm betting that is a engine limitation. I'm in late game (I think) so my assaults are all deliberately picked for high profit low risk (star gods are left alone for now) which means mostly hitting the academy and traders. I hit the church faction only sometimes, getting surprised by their terror unit is still scary. In my later battles after the one I reported I didn't notice any morale problems other than me giggling at plasma destroyer explosions. Oh I think the rat men are genuinely creepy, good job there.

Offline Arthanor

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Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] Piratez Extended - 0.95 - 27 Sep - Combat Stress
« Reply #757 on: September 30, 2015, 04:32:45 am »
Your combat stress seems to work better than advertised: besides the units it seems to have affected you as well ;)
Actually, I'd say besides affecting the gals, it also affected the players :P Dioxine might have been a bit harsh, but it is true indeed that this is most detrimental if you play the "slow and steady, bag everyone" game, which otherwise is hugely advantageous in terms of interrogation material and ransoms for money. I think that gameplay deserves to be nerfed so that Piratez has a bit more incentive for killing and looting. Otherwise, it might as well be "Kidnapperz" (I know that might be a bit harsh, but watching Ivan's LP and my own game, there is an obvious tendency to capture and interrogate/ransom everything, which is a bit too strong compared to that for killing).

I have to say I love the idea of combat stress. Especially in the "where is that last f*cker?!? BEHIND YOU!!!" sort of scenarios. The gals are not professional soldiers, they're pirates and them losing morale faster sounds great. They're in it for the quick cash. If it's not quick they want to get out. They don't have the indoctrination to fight or the leadership of trained officers to keep them in.

BUT, it would be good to have a way to restore morale so that soldiers can counteract that, at the cost of not doing something else. Dioxine, what about a FLAG? Range 1 explosion weapon with 0 damage and +X morale, which represents the gal waving the flag about, inspiring the others to keep in the fight. And a bullhorn (upgrades to a loudspeaker) which allows a gal to inspire one further away. The amount of morale restored could be made a function of the user's morale and bravery using OXCE's functionality.

Offline Soyden

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Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] Piratez Extended - 0.95 - 27 Sep - Combat Stress
« Reply #758 on: September 30, 2015, 05:30:59 am »
That sounds neat, maybe make it like a Idol or rock star girl that keeps everyone's spirits up during combat?.

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] Piratez Extended - 0.95 - 27 Sep - Combat Stress
« Reply #759 on: September 30, 2015, 07:57:29 am »
That sounds neat, maybe make it like a Idol or rock star girl that keeps everyone's spirits up during combat?.

Or a cheerleader! :)

Offline Meridian

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Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] Piratez Extended - 0.95 - 27 Sep - Combat Stress
« Reply #760 on: September 30, 2015, 11:32:09 am »
Hi Dioxine, (or anyone,)

I have returned to creating a tech tree for piratez (I will probably fail), but I see a lot of things in the ruleset, which are really confusing me. (I've seen the same on vanilla and in FMP, but less often.)

Let's say tech A unlocks tech C and tech B also unlocks tech C... why does tech C then also have dependencies on both techs A and B?? Isn't that redundant? Why are the dependencies there? You don't need both A and B to get C, right? One of them is enough... Would it still work if the dependencies were empty? Or if there was a dummy dependency on STR_TROLLIUM or something?

Spoiler:
Example:
  - name: STR_HELMET
    dependencies:
      - STR_ACADEMY_HAZMAT_SUIT
      - STR_FLOATER_EXTERMINATOR
      - STR_GOVT_ELITE
      - STR_NAZI_STORMTROOPER
      - STR_BANDIT_GHOUL

  - name: STR_ACADEMY_HAZMAT_SUIT
    unlocks:
      - STR_HELMET

  - name: STR_FLOATER_EXTERMINATOR
    unlocks:
      - STR_ALIEN_ORIGINS
      - STR_FLOATER
      - STR_HELMET

  - name: STR_NAZI_STORMTROOPER
    unlocks:
      - STR_ALIEN_ORIGINS
      - STR_NAZIS
      - STR_HELMET

  - name: STR_BANDIT_GHOUL
    unlocks:
      - STR_BANDIT
      - STR_HELMET

  - name: STR_GOVT_ELITE
    unlocks:
      - STR_ALIEN_ORIGINS
      - STR_HELMET
      - STR_GOVT

Offline LexThorn

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Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] Piratez Extended - 0.95 - 27 Sep - Combat Stress
« Reply #761 on: September 30, 2015, 12:08:14 pm »
Or a cheerleader! :)


rock band on the truck(bonaventura ^__^), like in Mad Max))
« Last Edit: September 30, 2015, 12:43:37 pm by LexThorn »

Offline Sanbella

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Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] Piratez Extended - 0.95 - 27 Sep - Combat Stress
« Reply #762 on: September 30, 2015, 12:55:56 pm »
Do the enemies also take Combat Stress? If not, then why not?

Offline Meridian

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Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] Piratez Extended - 0.95 - 27 Sep - Combat Stress
« Reply #763 on: September 30, 2015, 01:40:07 pm »
Do the enemies also take Combat Stress? If not, then why not?

Would you enjoy playing against crippled and after several turns completely impotent enemies? If yes, then why yes?

PS: the answer is of course no; actually they lose even less morale than in vanilla OpenXcom (which is a feature of OpenXcom Extended, not PirateZ)
« Last Edit: September 30, 2015, 01:44:12 pm by Meridian »

Offline Boltgun

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Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] Piratez Extended - 0.95 - 27 Sep - Combat Stress
« Reply #764 on: September 30, 2015, 03:12:40 pm »
Do the enemies also take Combat Stress? If not, then why not?

They do, from dead comrades. :P