Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - N9.7.7 12-Sep-2024 Second Coming

[Dioxine]

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.

And there you have it, the moment I've decided I went overboard (lol) and trying to make the game harder, ruined the fun, defenders of the Combat Stress arose. Well... the new revised system is much less hardcore - there's an equilibrium point equal to gal's Bravery, and Morale always increases/decreases to hit this target. So only gals with Morale 40 or less will panic on their own now... but there's much less Morale buffer for everyone else, so even losing a single hand can send others panicking. Otoh, high-Bravery gals now recover from very low Morale (eg. caused by psi attacks) really quickly. And you can't train your Bravery over 50 by abusing game mechanics. We'll see how it works, I like it, but it's more like improved, more pronounced Morale mechanics than Combat Stress...
I really like the idea of morale-restoring, upgrade-able battle standard, I'm considering either standalone item, or my own idea - "Commissar's Armor" which has a similar item built-in (and gives massive Bravery boost to the wearer). But I'm not sure if it's even needed anymore. In any case, it would be a large, heavy item with >90% TUs use cost.

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?

Well, it seems that if techs A, B, C all unlock tech X (as in the example - you need to interrogate just one of 5 guys to get a hidden, cost=0 tech, which is one of prerequisites for a better armor), tech X needs 'dependencies' on techs A, B & C. This is copied straight from vanilla's Alien Origins tech, which work exactly that way (has dependencies on any and all alien interrogations). If the dependencies were empty, I guess unlocking wouldn't work? My understanding of 'dependencies' is "allow to research the tech if all dependencies are satisfied, OR if any one unlocks the tech'.

Do the enemies also take Combat Stress? If not, then why not?

I think Meridian sufficiently replied, why not. I was actually considering giving them slow & steady Morale regen (for years I thought the game actually works like this, lol), to reward fast & aggresive player action, but there are players who enjoy picking them off one-by-one, and it takes time, and they would be kinda sad if their ninja methods would not result in enemies panicking. AFAIK the enemies in OXCom take less Morale damage than in vanilla, if they're in high numbers (which makes sense). Small enemy crews should take as much Morale damage as in vanilla.

[Arthanor]

haha sorry Dioxine, I've been stupidly busy these days and not looking enough at the boards (and not playing at all  )

The new morale system is interesting and I guess the "lose morale until morale = bravery" part of it can still be considered to be combat stress. The effect is quite different though. Previously it was favouring fast action because you're losing morale every turn and need to finish things quickly/kill stuff to get the boost. Now, after you have reached the "stable point", it favours really slow and careful action since losing a gal is much more of a risk to cause mass panicking. I guess it will depend on how fast you lose morale compared to how fast you gain it by killing enemies.

I'm not 100% convinced by the "gain morale when below bravery" but my guess is that it is a needed side effect of implementing the changes? Maybe "Lose morale if above bravery" without the "gain morale when below" could be a good enough "nerf" of the initial combat stress. I'm not sure we need gals to recover faster when panicking.

I'm glad you like the idea of the standard I think pirate flags are a big part of the imagery that's still somehow missing from the mod. Commissar armour sounds interesting too, provided it comes with a gun that does damage to the gals but boosts morale a lot and provokes reaction fire from the gals getting shot at

Regarding research, you indeed do need the dependencies, otherwise the project would be available at the start. I am not 100% sure if you need all of them, or if they could all be replaced by a STR_HAS_TO_BE_UNLOCKED fake project, but I also always have listed all unlocking projects in dependencies. If anything, it makes the information more available!

[Dioxine]

The new morale system is interesting and I guess the "lose morale until morale = bravery" part of it can still be considered to be combat stress. The effect is quite different though. Previously it was favouring fast action because you're losing morale every turn and need to finish things quickly/kill stuff to get the boost. Now, after you have reached the "stable point", it favours really slow and careful action since losing a gal is much more of a risk to cause mass panicking. I guess it will depend on how fast you lose morale compared to how fast you gain it by killing enemies.

I'm not 100% convinced by the "gain morale when below bravery" but my guess is that it is a needed side effect of implementing the changes? Maybe "Lose morale if above bravery" without the "gain morale when below" could be a good enough "nerf" of the initial combat stress. I'm not sure we need gals to recover faster when panicking.

From my limited experience, it rather creates 2 ways of fighting - first, go in with guns blazing and be immune to mass panic through keeping the morale very high; second, if you play carefully from the start, you can still do so, but you need to be even more careful than you were before. Naturally, your low Bravery gals (40 or less, although 40 takes a LOT of time to panic, at least 10 turns) will eventually panic none the less.

About the faster recovery - the formula is as follows:
Morale Change = Bravery * 0.2 - Current Morale * 0.2
So eg. a gal with Bravery 80, reduced to 20 Morale, would regain 15 Morale before panic tests are taken. A gal with 50 Bravery, reduced to 30 Morale (a common border case IMO), would regain 4 Morale before the test, so it wouldn't change that much.

Not sure if it's possible to block (at least partially) the auto-recovery of Morale - I'd need to really get into what's possible with square and cubic powers and roots Yankes' code allows. Amateur mathematicians help is welcome - I'm not math idiot, but I've gotten rusty

...Going back to Sanbella's question, this mechanic can be added to all enemies as well - it would be somewhat detrimental to the player, since bog-standard enemies have Bravery of 80, and the biggest cowards - 60. It'd be a bit easier to break them, but they'd pretty quickly stop panicking.

[Yankes]

I think one way of restoring morale could be bat, It could do very low damage but will add big morale and stamina boost. And weapon attack sound would be "Move!" or "Attack!"

[Dioxine]

Hehehe, morale restoring, Orky-style. I could add a morale buff to every hit with a Handle... the weapon has fallen into some disfavor. And make the damage dependant on Bravery. This could also be used to kill 2 birds with one stone - make the Handle a bit less lethal, and a bit more powerful. Incidents of killing captives by the use of the more effective stun weapon - knuckles - can, alternatively, be made more often...

[Sanbella]

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)

Because it's a game rule? Why is it okay for mutant pirates to panic for taking too long to finish a mission but the same should not be applied to the enemy? From a in-lore point of view, it would make sense that the rather frail and non-war minded Academicians castes, along with other low-ranking enemy units like Humanists Activists or Raiders. They also would prefer to live to see the next day like the pirates would prefer to live to get the next day's booty.

Your ship was just shutdown by criminals mutants, who want to kill you and take your treasure or take the treasure AND you back to whatever hell-hole they crawled from.

Or your are in a raiding/pogrom party, killing (and looting) civilians (and mutants) when out of nowhere an ship lands and from it a sizable enemy force disembarks, intent in stopping and killing you. You have no way to escape as quickly as the new enemy reinforces arrived. Why not panic? The mission has gone Awry for you.

And when the last standing enemy is hiding, running around in the shadows while a force of +10 Pirates are searching for him. How is he keeping himself calm?

I would rather not have to try and herd a force that's going to end up crippled and several turns later become completely impotent unless the AI is also playing by the same rules.

There's an equilibrium point equal to gal's Bravery, and Morale always increases/decreases to hit this target. So only gals with Morale 40 or less will panic on their own now... but there's much less Morale buffer for everyone else, so even losing a single hand can send others panicking. Otoh, high-Bravery gals now recover from very low Morale (eg. caused by psi attacks) really quickly.

This sounds quite balanced and a lot more stable ground for a soldier's morale. This seems more like Combat Stress, your more constantly going up and down during the battle, doubts and hope coming quickly as they fade.

From my limited experience, it rather creates 2 ways of fighting - first, go in with guns blazing and be immune to mass panic through keeping the morale very high; second, if you play carefully from the start, you can still do so, but you need to be even more careful than you were before. Naturally, your low Bravery gals (40 or less, although 40 takes a LOT of time to panic, at least 10 turns) will eventually panic none the less.

[...]

...Going back to Sanbella's question, this mechanic can be added to all enemies as well - it would be somewhat detrimental to the player, since bog-standard enemies have Bravery of 80, and the biggest cowards - 60. It'd be a bit easier to break them, but they'd pretty quickly stop panicking.

And this adds a good tension to the game, it becomes a game about hunting the hunter. I really enjoy how Combat Stress seems to works now. ETA for a new download?

[Arthanor]

@Dioxine: When time becomes a bit more plentiful on my side (and assuming I don't spend it killing and looting), I might take a look into more advanced formulas if you are interested. Just let me know what kind of behaviour you are interested in and there should be a way to (on average) get it.

Because it's a game rule? Why is it okay for mutant pirates to panic for taking too long to finish a mission but the same should not be applied to the enemy?

Because there are a lot of limitations and/or predictability that is forced on the AI through spawn points (why does the enemy always spawn all over the place, to be picked off by the player?), routes (why do they wander off and stupidly step out of their craft/building instead of ambushing the player? Why do they stand in front of windows at the end of turn?) and other necessities imposed by it being an AI, all of which are already a huge disadvantage for the AI.

From a in-lore point of view, it would make sense that the rather frail and non-war minded Academicians castes, along with other low-ranking enemy units like Humanists Activists or Raiders. They also would prefer to live to see the next day like the pirates would prefer to live to get the next day's booty.

Raiders come from a bigger gang than you (but are probably the one faction where it is most sensible to see panic), Humanists are fanatics, Mercs are pros. Academicians and even traders have professional security troopers to take care of them, know that they are part of one of the main factions of the world, that they are worth a lot of money to whoever is coming which their wealthy faction will be willing to pay and most of all, they can expect a rescue.

Time is totally playing in their favour. The longer they survive, the more likely someone will come get them, which is exactly why the gals get panicky after a while: the longer they take, the more likely it is that that gunship full of power armor troops and cyberdiscs is gonna get here. You can make whichever in lore story you feel like but, in the end, the only one that matters is Dioxine's story as he is the creator of the lore.

Your ship was just shutdown by criminals mutants, who want to kill you and take your treasure or take the treasure AND you back to whatever hell-hole they crawled from.

Or your are in a raiding/pogrom party, killing (and looting) civilians (and mutants) when out of nowhere an ship lands and from it a sizable enemy force disembarks, intent in stopping and killing you. You have no way to escape as quickly as the new enemy reinforces arrived. Why not panic? The mission has gone Awry for you.

But they do panic (as you kill more and more of them), but not because of time, as time is in their favour. Time cannot be against both sides. With this system, it looks like Dioxine has decided that time is not on the gals side, so it must be on the gals' victims' side.

And when the last standing enemy is hiding, running around in the shadows while a force of +10 Pirates are searching for him. How is he keeping himself calm?

But he isn't.. enemies lose morale every time you kill one of them, and they panic pretty quickly when there's even only a handful of them, let alone one.

I would rather not have to try and herd a force that's going to end up crippled and several turns later become completely impotent unless the AI is also playing by the same rules.

But the AI is not playing by the same rules.. They have crappy predictable routes and a list of if-statements dictating what they are going to do. Warboy did a great job making the AI as good as it is, but it is still not another player. Could you imagine if the other side was played by a human? You wouldn't last nearly as long, especially in Piratez against the more advanced factions.

This sounds quite balanced and a lot more stable ground for a soldier's morale. This seems more like Combat Stress, your more constantly going up and down during the battle, doubts and hope coming quickly as they fade.

And this adds a good tension to the game, it becomes a game about hunting the hunter. I really enjoy how Combat Stress seems to works now. ETA for a new download?

All that said, I'm glad you're looking forward to the new system.

[Boltgun]

From my limited experience, it rather creates 2 ways of fighting - first, go in with guns blazing and be immune to mass panic through keeping the morale very high; second, if you play carefully from the start, you can still do so, but you need to be even more careful than you were before. Naturally, your low Bravery gals (40 or less, although 40 takes a LOT of time to panic, at least 10 turns) will eventually panic none the less.

About the faster recovery - the formula is as follows:
Morale Change = Bravery * 0.2 - Current Morale * 0.2
So eg. a gal with Bravery 80, reduced to 20 Morale, would regain 15 Morale before panic tests are taken. A gal with 50 Bravery, reduced to 30 Morale (a common border case IMO), would regain 4 Morale before the test, so it wouldn't change that much.

Not sure if it's possible to block (at least partially) the auto-recovery of Morale - I'd need to really get into what's possible with square and cubic powers and roots Yankes' code allows. Amateur mathematicians help is welcome - I'm not math idiot, but I've gotten rusty

...Going back to Sanbella's question, this mechanic can be added to all enemies as well - it would be somewhat detrimental to the player, since bog-standard enemies have Bravery of 80, and the biggest cowards - 60. It'd be a bit easier to break them, but they'd pretty quickly stop panicking.

I just finished a simple ship attack and I really like the idea, it reinforce the feeling that you are making a heist. The problem is that you do not gain anything for stunning enemies and this battle was a simple scout ship, so a situation where you'd rather take out the harpoon gun to get some ransom money. I had no panic but I finished with most of my gals under 40 morale.

That new formula you are suggesting sound better so all the gals under 50 have to be trained (I wouldn't sell this abuse at this point, bravery is hard to raise). Then there could be morale raising abilities.

And we do not want this mechanic on enemies, not with the current formula. They'll drop their weapon and move all the way to the other end of the map and we'll end with both sides disabled.

[Meridian]

Because it's a game rule?

1. I can use the same argument... it is a game rule that you suffer battle stress and they don't. Btw. they actually lose morale... even more(!) than you... because you are killing them! The average expected result for an average battle for even a below-average player... is victory with 100% losses on alien side and not more than 30% losses on Xcom side. After killing just a few of the aliens and a few turns... it would be basically instant victory for Xcom with all remaining aliens panicking in the corners.

2. This will sound harsh, but it is really the only thing I am able to say... if you want them to panic all the time, maybe you should try playing Solitaire instead and let us have fun. I don't want Xcom to become Solitaire... please for the love of Cthulhu, have mercy.

And when the last standing enemy is hiding, running around in the shadows while a force of +10 Pirates are searching for him. How is he keeping himself calm?

That's exactly the point, he's not calm! He already has 0 morale... which he lost when you killed all the others.

[Sanbella]

1. I can use the same argument... it is a game rule that you suffer battle stress and they don't. Btw. they actually lose morale... even more(!) than you... because you are killing them! The average expected result for an average battle for even a below-average player... is victory with 100% losses on alien side and not more than 30% losses on Xcom side. After killing just a few of the aliens and a few turns... it would be basically instant victory for Xcom with all remaining aliens panicking in the corners.

Talking about humans and mutants that make sense to here, like people not really trained for war like The KKK Humanists, Academicians, Engineers, that sort of people, not the aliens, boy.

2. This will sound harsh, but it is really the only thing I am able to say... if you want them to panic all the time, maybe you should try playing Solitaire instead and let us have fun. I don't want Xcom to become Solitaire... please for the love of Cthulhu, have mercy.

Wow, calm your fingers down and relax. I'm not going to hack into your PC and github and change all the files and rulesets so that all the versions of xcom you have is "Solitaire". Take some time to breath, there's no need to get this agitated over my comments or my opinion. Forcing other people to play something the way you want it is a silly thing to do, right?

That new formula you are suggesting sound better so all the gals under 50 have to be trained (I wouldn't sell this abuse at this point, bravery is hard to raise). Then there could be morale raising abilities.

And we do not want this mechanic on enemies, not with the current formula. They'll drop their weapon and move all the way to the other end of the map and we'll end with both sides disabled.

God, no. The new formula sounds better by mileages, it's something I'm looking forwards to. Just saying, having the enemy also suffer from it would add in a certain balance and "filling" to the mod, a rather nice touch I'd say.

[Arthanor]

@Meridian: Well now! Solitaire is hard. What's your win ratio at Solitaire? Mine's much worse than at XCom.. (considering every battle a "game", or even every campaign a "game", but that reduces the numbers significantly).

Joking aside, I agree, especially since Dioxine stated that he did not consider Piratez an entry mod, but rather something for veterans. I think the introduction of new challenges (like actually needing melee and lots of captives, or starting with enemies in personal armour who take a lot more to wound than puny sectoids) is one of the key components of Piratez and what makes it so interesting. New content is easy to add, just add new stuff. Adding new challenges though, that's hard but that's also something that Dioxine is great at and the reason I value Piratez so much even though I am not usually a big fan of pirates (I usually am more of a good guy than a bad gal type..).

I think beginner level Piratez is plenty approachable, even though it is harder than beginner XCom. Soon, there will be Meridian's LP to guide people who have issues (as I am certain Meridian will be able to deal with his issues, in Superhuman), and even Ivan's LP is not a bad start to see how he got through the early part of Piratez.

Talking about humans and mutants that make sense to here, like people not really trained for war like The KKK Humanists, Academicians, Engineers, that sort of people, not the aliens, boy.

Boy? Anyhow.. the humanists are fanatics (and soldiers trained to at least some extent) and regarding the Academy, Traders and Raiders, as I said above, time is on their side. They are not unlikely to get a rescue force coming since they are of major world factions, compared to the gals who are getting stressed because of the likelihood of said rescue force coming in. The Academy and Traders also have professional soldiers to take care of them, and the knowledge that their ransom will be paid.

Wow, calm your fingers down and relax. I'm not going to hack into your PC and github and change all the files and rulesets so that all the versions of xcom you have is "Solitaire". Take some time to breath, there's no need to get this agitated over my comments or my opinion. Forcing other people to play something the way you want it is a silly thing to do, right?

So very right, and so very ironic. It is indeed a very silly thing to do. Especially trying to change the way a mod someone else writes plays so it plays more the way you want it. Again, I agree with Meridian and would let Dioxine play around and cook all the challenges he can into Piratez, as that's what I really enjoy from this mod.

[/quote]God, no. The new formula sounds better by mileages, it's something I'm looking forwards to. Just saying, having the enemy also suffer from it would add in a certain balance and "filling" to the mod, a rather nice touch I'd say.[/quote]And others say it'd be a rather bad touch. Enemies already suffer much more heavily than the player's force from morale.

Maybe it was said a bit harshly, but given we were late to the Combat Stress party and others have already made Dioxine reconsider his work (which we liked), I think it's understandable we are making a bit more noise now to balance things out.

[Dioxine]

Yeah I can add this new Morale handling to enemies as well, for the sake of general consistency, just warning: this is going to make them to persistently panic much harder, as there are no enemies with Bravery below 60; Guild Bodyguards will be basically guaranteed to never panic with their Bravery 90 (it was almost impossible to make them panic before, maybe when a Bodyguard was one of the last few remaining enemies). Naturally I can also reshuffle the Bravery of enemies from 60-100 to 50-100 scale... But this is more work.

As for the release, couple of days I think. Depending on my time and energy, I want to add some other stuff as well.

[Arthanor]

How will that interact with incendiary weapons fire damage? Did enemies take morale damage only on hit? It'd be rather sad that a bodyguard who panics because he is set on fire, then recovers because of his high bravery even though the fire is actually killing him. Or maybe he's just that brave...

[Sanbella]

I'm no longer talking about the timed decay of morale Combat Stress, I'm talking about the newer one. The way it waves back and forth adds a certain realism that picks my interest up and I would love to see it added to the enemies that make sense. A soldier is a soldier, he's not going to start panicking easily, but his non-battle buddy? He will have a harder time, he was never trained for war like the soldier was, he's a mook, a rookie.

And while one could expect to be ransomed for money, how they know that's what is actually going to happen? And the Guild's pilot, in the lore it says how well they take care of their ships, since losing the ships could make you a Debt-Slave to the guild. I would be jumpy if I were on his shoes.

On the Raider's case, they are as much outlaw organizations as we are, and are Fractured. Raider is the catchall term here for all the groups that go around pillaging and attacking people, reinforces from another Raider Sub-Faction is not likely. The local Gov't would strike back sooner or later with how they keep going after their civilian zones (which is why we don't go around striking random civilian zones and carefully shot down their ships every once and while) and with us in the battlefield means more time spent on said war-zone then getting out with the loot. Of course, our gals would be jumpy too if the Gov't thought WE were the actual raiders.

Yeah I can add this new Morale handling to enemies as well, for the sake of general consistency, just warning: this is going to make them to persistently panic much harder, as there are no enemies with Bravery below 60; Guild Bodyguards will be basically guaranteed to never panic with their Bravery 90 (it was almost impossible to make them panic before, maybe when a Bodyguard was one of the last few remaining enemies). Naturally I can also reshuffle the Bravery of enemies from 60-100 to 50-100 scale... But this is more work.

As for the release, couple of days I think. Depending on my time and energy, I want to add some other stuff as well.

Could you give me some insight in what the work you need to do would be like? Not just with the current subject but in general too, but no need to put too much information on it, just the bullet points.

[Meridian]

Boy, eh? Why do I even try...