Author Topic: Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - N9.7.7 12-Sep-2024 Second Coming  (Read 4184793 times)

Offline doctor medic

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Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] Piratez Extended - 0.95 - 27 Sep - Combat Stress
« Reply #735 on: September 29, 2015, 01:39:05 pm »
An option to counter the extreme wealth which some people may not like?Sure

A forced game mechanic that somewhat hinders the capture mechanic?Should have been thought better.

And dont remind me of the moments when a stuned enemy is awaken and i have to search all the map,especialy if it is night and/or a terror mission.

Offline LexThorn

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Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] Piratez Extended - 0.95 - 27 Sep - Combat Stress
« Reply #736 on: September 29, 2015, 01:49:33 pm »
An option to counter the extreme wealth which some people may not like?Sure

A forced game mechanic that somewhat hinders the capture mechanic?Should have been thought better.

And dont remind me of the moments when a stuned enemy is awaken and i have to search all the map,especialy if it is night and/or a terror mission.

One more thing: every one of us plays his own story in his head, when watchin those sprites. It often feels uncomfortable when time limitations comes in, disrupts stories wariants i like.  I agree that this is good mecanics. And i am shure than many will want to use them.  But if it will be optional - that would be the best solution!

Offline Ajaxial

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Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] Piratez Extended - 0.95 - 27 Sep - Combat Stress
« Reply #737 on: September 29, 2015, 02:35:10 pm »
One more thing: every one of us plays his own story in his head, when watchin those sprites. It often feels uncomfortable when time limitations comes in, disrupts stories wariants i like.  I agree that this is good mecanics. And i am shure than many will want to use them.  But if it will be optional - that would be the best solution!

Agreed. Reminds me of UFO Two Sides. (Before it got shut down) The singleplayer of it reduced your mission score for each turn taken. I was able to take out an entire base with no losses, using only rookies and basic rifles with no armour.

But because I took it super slow and careful. The game ended up giving me a -400 score. Completely ruined the fun, and wasted a massive portion of my time.

I really like the idea of combat stress and morale fatigue. However the execution seems to leave me wanting. Perhaps a less steep stress curve or just a different implementation of its working entirely.

Offline Boltgun

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Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] Piratez Extended - 0.95 - 27 Sep - Combat Stress
« Reply #738 on: September 29, 2015, 04:24:38 pm »
An option to counter the extreme wealth which some people may not like?Sure

A forced game mechanic that somewhat hinders the capture mechanic?Should have been thought better.

And dont remind me of the moments when a stuned enemy is awaken and i have to search all the map,especialy if it is night and/or a terror mission.

That's why I have swabbies staying to guard the stunned. This makes a lot of sense. Also enemy bleeding already hinder capture (otherwise I'd have captured at least one of each enemy), which is why I use vodka on them.

Offline Dioxine

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Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] Piratez Extended - 0.95 - 27 Sep - Combat Stress
« Reply #739 on: September 29, 2015, 04:36:59 pm »
Well... I am sorry this disrupts the most profitable approach of maximum live captives, and the easiest approach of sitting and sniping. And somewhat punishes sloppy players who can't control the map and have their captives running (protip: dump unconscious patients into smoke - you have literally dozens of turns before they wake up after the smoke has dispersed, well except for rare smoke-immune captives).

I agree with the storytelling part; I'm adding the element of impeding danger to these stories. It's no picnic; a super-long mission increases the chance of something going bad, like the raiding party being ambushed by enemy reinforcements. Pirates are superstisious like that. It can be also interpreted of them going bored.

Whining is easy. Using the ways to counteract provided by the game is a bit harder (bravery-boosting & stress-lessening armors; sure they're usually worse in other ways). Is the curve too steep? In my playtesting I haven't even noticed the morale problem. At all. So I don't think it's steep. If it was a long-haul capture mission... yeah there could be a moment where people are missing half their turns due to going bananas. So what? Equipped with brass knuckles they're, you know, rather unlikely to shoot their comrades. You can even holster said knuckles to avoid dropping them. Plus, they train Bravery... which is naturally an easy abuse which has me more worried about the whole thing...

About making this more complex - nah, I simply can't. It's a simple morale drain, dependant on Bravery and outfit. Not much else can be done. Some fine-tuning might be in order (slower/faster loss rate, means to actively combat the morale loss), but that requires more experience.

In any case, this is a test run, not 1.0, and nobody is forcing anybody here... if the mechanic turns out to suck, it will be taken down at some point. I wanted to add some ticking clock mechanics, and the exploding ships were a bad idea. So this is instead of exploding ships (except the Supply Ship, Supply Ship farmers ought to know what kind of game they're playing...). We'll see how it goes. So far there were only few actual combat experiences posted here; but it wasn't clear if these people tried to adjust their teams to better fit their slow-approach playstyles, or just played as if nothing has changed (without paying attention to Bravery and imminent panic at all).
« Last Edit: September 29, 2015, 05:13:42 pm by Dioxine »

Offline ivandogovich

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Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] Piratez Extended - 0.95 - 27 Sep - Combat Stress
« Reply #740 on: September 29, 2015, 05:47:32 pm »
Ok. "Whining."

Hmm...  well, my intent was not to whine, but to discuss game design and to argue for more options for playstyle instead of narrowing them down.

But... well, it feels like that type of discussion isn't welcome.  I'm not sure if that is the intent or not.  I'll keep quiet in the future if you prefer, Dioxine.

Cheers, Ivan :D

Offline Ajaxial

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Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] Piratez Extended - 0.95 - 27 Sep - Combat Stress
« Reply #741 on: September 29, 2015, 06:06:44 pm »
Well... I am sorry this disrupts the most profitable approach of maximum live captives, and the easiest approach of sitting and sniping. And somewhat punishes sloppy players who can't control the map and have their captives running

I honestly can't tell if you are being sarcastic and somewhat aggresive in regards to less than veteran players. Or if you are genuine in sincerity?

Whining is easy.

Uhhh, it's called feedback, not whining...

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] Piratez Extended - 0.95 - 27 Sep - Combat Stress
« Reply #742 on: September 29, 2015, 06:19:53 pm »
I played a couple more missions, including two base defences, and I still haven't noticed any problem. The only single time someone panicked was when she was on fire, and I believe morale decay was a minor factor here (she was okay in the end). So I really can't see a problem.
Sure, it can be said that it's a matter of playstyle. But I don't think my playstyle is ultra fast or anything. I honestly can't imagine anyone going much slower when playing seriously.

Offline Dioxine

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Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] Piratez Extended - 0.95 - 27 Sep - Combat Stress
« Reply #743 on: September 29, 2015, 06:29:52 pm »
Whining - as in painting disastrous scenarios disconnected from the reality. Sure it does seem like forcing players to act fast, but does it actually - in combat experience - force them to act fast, or does it give enough alternatives? Is it possible to prepare to alleviate these problems, or not? If indeed this mechanic forces 'the only true approach', I agree it is bad and it will be changed or taken down. It wasn't my aim to discourage discussion. I might be unnecesarily blunt, in part because I've foreseen such a response (though I didn't specify who, if anyone, was actually whining), but it's also a bit unfair implying that I don't listen to what people say, as dozens and dozens of changes were made based on suggestions from this thread.

But let's make one thing clear - this mod is intended for veteran players. It is intended to be challenging. Making it casual was never my aim. The flip side of the 'combat stress' coin is massively decreased difficulty level on early Pogroms since 0.94 (read: the mission an unexperienced player will find the most abundant).

Yes I am sarcastic, but not in regards to weak players personally; I'm sarcastic about the notion that something which disrupts the most profitable strategies and punishes weak play is somehow bad in itself. It would only be bad if it, indeed, changed the game into some kind of one-true-way logic puzzle. Something I want to avoid.

Offline just_dont

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Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] Piratez Extended - 0.95 - 27 Sep - Combat Stress
« Reply #744 on: September 29, 2015, 06:33:50 pm »
Registered to chip in.

While I'm certainly nowhere near "experienced user" of this mod (picked it up only a week ago), I'm getting the feeling that morale drain provides frustration for no good reason. While in theory its meaning of preventing camping sounds reasonable, in practice it all goes to "everything is circumstantial". The combat is HUGELY circumstantial in the early game (and to an inexperienced player), where your resources are quite limited and you are likely to make quite a few suboptimal moves due to lack of deep knowledge on how it all works together, you don't know which weaknesses your enemies have, and so on.

And eventually, morale drain leaves you in a lose-lose situation: you either risk and press on, only to (likely) overextend and get a hand killed (which will ALSO drain morale), or you sit out, only to someone lose it, panic, and run towards enemies (and get killed, and incur more morale drain).

In my particular example, I had a very first pogrom in a fresh 0.95 game (veteran difficulty), where map was laid out in such a way so that a huge enemy cluster occupied two two-story buildings in corner surrounded by open areas. So I employed smoke and run through to avoid snipers. Well okay, but there were quite a few close-combat guys around as well, and so they happily killed two of my hands, which, combined with natural morale drain, was exactly enough to send all my surviving crew in panic (apart from 80 bravery medic with terrible stats except for bravery). Eventually, the panic spiral led to me aborting mission with two survivors.

Not like I object to the fact that I couldn't beat the mission, I object to the fact that my loss was based almost entirely on "random circumstances" - map layout/enemy spawns, and the fact that my initial hands mostly had lower than average bravery (some 10s, a lot of 20-30s, one 50, one 80).

But as I played further, I also saw that it's also quite abusable for purposes of bravery training, where (after eventually making a high-bravery core crew) I could pick a 10-bravery person, put her through a couple of "training missions" (which mostly revolved around scouting general enemy dispositions and then doing nothing until weak-willed start panicking), and end up with respectable 40 or 50 bravery.


My impressions as a whole - while morale drain may have reached the target audience (I don't know, I tend to play fairly aggressively with or without morale drain) - it also creates a bunch of early-game situations where you lose "just because the game says so", not because you made lots of terrible mistakes or got yourself in a fight that's way above your current tech level. And as you progress through the game - it also becomes self-defeating, because morale drain also allows you to quickly train people to be resistant to it (though lame gamey exploitation of stat gain rules).

In the end, I opted to edit the rules, and remove all the morale drain from armors.

Offline LexThorn

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Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] Piratez Extended - 0.95 - 27 Sep - Combat Stress
« Reply #745 on: September 29, 2015, 06:36:07 pm »
Was just trying to give feedback and some suggestions, not wining.
« Last Edit: September 29, 2015, 06:49:37 pm by LexThorn »

Offline Dioxine

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Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] Piratez Extended - 0.95 - 27 Sep - Combat Stress
« Reply #746 on: September 29, 2015, 06:58:04 pm »
There are several solutions I see here...
1. Making this an optional mod to the mod, just like the helmetless armors;
2. Reducing the problems by reducing the drain (or making it disproportionately visible for low Bravery?) and/or adding some helping mechanics (like an option to drop a whole turn for an instant morale gain);
3. Replacing the stress mechanic with something else that gives similar effect but less frustration/abuse. No idea what it'd be, yet.

Offline LexThorn

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Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] Piratez Extended - 0.95 - 27 Sep - Combat Stress
« Reply #747 on: September 29, 2015, 07:15:33 pm »
There are several solutions I see here...
1. Making this an optional mod to the mod, just like the helmetless armors;
2. Reducing the problems by reducing the drain (or making it disproportionately visible for low Bravery?) and/or adding some helping mechanics (like an option to drop a whole turn for an instant morale gain);
3. Replacing the stress mechanic with something else that gives similar effect but less frustration/abuse. No idea what it'd be, yet.

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?

Offline just_dont

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Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] Piratez Extended - 0.95 - 27 Sep - Combat Stress
« Reply #748 on: September 29, 2015, 07:18:06 pm »
In fact, I wouldn't mind some mechanic for "giving a push" to players, similar to what's seen in various roguelites (FTL, Bedlam, Darkest Dungeon), but basing such a mechanic on morale seems like a bad idea - due to spiraling effects of bad morale, and due to player's inability to do anything with affected troops until they stop panicking/berserking (short of killing or stunning them).

Although I understand that adding something like, say, "uneventful turn limit counter" (and if you run out, your team just pack and leave) is beyond current modding capacity of openxcom, extender or not.

Offline Boltgun

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Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] Piratez Extended - 0.95 - 27 Sep - Combat Stress
« Reply #749 on: September 29, 2015, 07:21:42 pm »
Speaking of Darkness Dungeons, their devs also have to handle similar problems with two game mechanics that I find totally okay. So I'll give more feedback once I have a few missions behind me.