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

[Star_Treasure]

Wouldn't the obvious solution be to make more diffrent kinds of space armor, including armor with a Psi amp? Starpower armor would be pretty nifty.

[yotc]

Wouldn't the obvious solution be to make more diffrent kinds of space armor, including armor with a Psi amp? Starpower armor would be pretty nifty.

Honestly,this would be great, and if it doesn't look like ethereal armor from UFO than I'd be sad.

[doctor medic]

I wonder if it is possible for star gods to activate flame traps,is there enough space for them to fly?

[ivandogovich]

A little more work and a new corpse for the bin.  The Reticulan Elder deserved his own Bigob, imo, so here he is.

Here he is hanging out with his Stunned and Wounded cousins (From the Alt-Corpses Mod.  I should have release available this week.)

[Surrealistik]

That feel when you finally annihilate the annoying bitch Provost fucking with you through walls with her RNG bullshit.

Bare victory on a base defense with six rookies vs the Academy legions. Mininuke and Gauss Musket sniping MVP.


EDIT: Wtf, the game just hangs indefinitely with maxed out CPU usage on what I assume to be the mission end. What is this, no winning allowed?

[Dioxine]

Is this mechanic fun? Does it add more to the experience and the gameplay than it takes away? No. Fake difficulty at its worst.

At best, it's an annoying mechanic that lacks a proper, non-RNG method of defeating which guarantees losses over time, and denies player agency over its prevention.

That said I accept your challenge and I will crush this mod at the hardest possible setting despite the RNG nonsense.

Fake difficulty? It's easy to take the control of the situation, it's not a hard game to learn. If there is no RNG-based difficulty, you have a game of chess where everything is dependant on the players (and their in-head RNGs). However this is no chess, this is an actual simulation. Which means, it gives you many, many tools, but balances it out with RNG, ie random events that cannot be guessed at, simulated entropy. Shit, every shot is a random event, unless you can get 100% accuracy.

Player is not be able to prevent losses, sure. Sometimes even when not making any mistakes (or thinking he didn't... which is a far more common occurence). That's
a) Realistic - a war without losses is a dangerous fantasy, not serious Science Fiction.
b) Besides the point - preventing losses is NOT the goal of the game. The goal is to defeat the Mars Governor.

Sure there is no 100% reliable counter to psi. A 100% reliable counter would be boring as hell. You need to use multiple counters, the more the better, and have contingency plans, and neccesary soldier numbers to have reserves. This is not theory, this is what I do. And I never felt like psi is especially dangerous if you're prepared for it, more like - annoying.

If there was no RNG, no unexpected events, what'd be the role of the player? A well-trained rat in the labirynth? A good game should train your braincells in general flexibility and resourcefulness, else it's a pointless activity. A player needs to able to face the game like a human (challenges to overcome with no clear solutions), not be forced to become a trained animal who, after discovering 'way to beat the game', simply goes though the motions repeatedly until wins. At least that should be the target of game design.

Save scumming is something you simply grow out of at some point, when you discover it makes the game boring.

[Meridian]

Very nicely put Dioxine.
(Surprisingly) I agree with every single word and couldn't have said it better.

[Surrealistik]

Fake difficulty? It's easy to take the control of the situation, it's not a hard game to learn. If there is no RNG-based difficulty, you have a game of chess where everything is dependant on the players (and their in-head RNGs). However this is no chess, this is an actual simulation. Which means, it gives you many, many tools, but balances it out with RNG, ie random events that cannot be guessed at, simulated entropy. Shit, every shot is a random event, unless you can get 100% accuracy.

Yes, fake difficulty per the TvTropes definition:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FakeDifficulty

Player is not be able to prevent losses, sure. Sometimes even when not making any mistakes (or thinking he didn't... which is a far more common occurence). That's
a) Realistic - a war without losses is a dangerous fantasy, not serious Science Fiction.
b) Besides the point - preventing losses is NOT the goal of the game. The goal is to defeat the Mars Governor.

Sure there is no 100% reliable counter to psi. A 100% reliable counter would be boring as hell. You need to use multiple counters, the more the better, and have contingency plans, and neccesary soldier numbers to have reserves. This is not theory, this is what I do. And I never felt like psi is especially dangerous if you're prepared for it, more like - annoying.

If there was no RNG, no unexpected events, what'd be the role of the player? A well-trained rat in the labirynth? A good game should train your braincells in general flexibility and resourcefulness, else it's a pointless activity. A player needs to able to face the game like a human (challenges to overcome with no clear solutions), not be forced to become a trained animal who, after discovering 'way to beat the game', simply goes though the motions repeatedly until wins. At least that should be the target of game design.

Save scumming is something you simply grow out of at some point, when you discover it makes the game boring.

There is no even highly reliable counter to psi until maybe well into the game, nevermind 100%, which is a big problem (bikinis don't even come close). Essentially Psi acts as a crutch and inelegant kludge fix for the AI in lieu of an intelligent and unpredictable opponent (like aliens knowing your exact location via the 'Intelligence' stat long after they've lost LoS). It's not about black swans or simulation of entropy, so much as it is a way of shoring up weaknesses in your opponent that goes beyond a numbers and gear advantage.

Look man, I just crushed the Academy in a base defense with 6 fucking rookies; so disadvantaged, I ripped the still beating heart out of those annoying Espers and Provost that plagued my efforts despite it taking 140 turns to do so; my concern is a fair challenge that respects my inputs and punishes or rewards skill and good decisions, not discovery of a perfect algorithm to compensate for some alleged lack of skill or ability, or adaptive thinking which is clearly not applicable to me.

Also I play on Ironman in large part to avoid the temptation of reloading/scumming when I get cheated/RNGed to death by this kind of bullshit.

[Solarius Scorch]

I understand your arguments Surrealistik, but I can't see a way to fix this.

About the general difficulty and RNG issue, that's how this game works. Not just Piratez, also vanilla. It was made like this deliberately and changing this deliberate direction would be somewhat difficult. And I actually like it like this, because I simply like the random model a lot. Many people do, otherwise who would play Dwarf Fortress?

About the specific issue of psi, I'm afraid fixing it would require building a whole new mechanics. Since we don't have that, all that can be done is hammering everything in the current mechanism, with whatever leeway there is.

[Meridian]

Yes, fake difficulty per the TvTropes definition:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FakeDifficulty

I just read that article and -- in my opinion -- nothing written there applies to PirateZ.

[Surrealistik]

I understand your arguments Surrealistik, but I can't see a way to fix this.

About the general difficulty and RNG issue, that's how this game works. Not just Piratez, also vanilla. It was made like this deliberately and changing this deliberate direction would be somewhat difficult. And I actually like it like this, because I simply like the random model a lot. Many people do, otherwise who would play Dwarf Fortress?

About the specific issue of psi, I'm afraid fixing it would require building a whole new mechanics. Since we don't have that, all that can be done is hammering everything in the current mechanism, with whatever leeway there is.

Losing is expected in Dwarf Fortress though; it's basically a game of endurance to see how long you can last.

This is a strategy game by contrast where victory is the expected outcome, not defeat, and where your inputs are supposed to matter.

In Vanilla, Psi was bullshit both ways (and ultimately far more bullshit in your favour), but in Piratez, the bullshit is largely onesided in the AI's favour, particularly when the likes of Ethereals show up.

Fixing this would be taking away the AI's Psi crutch and replacing it with better AI.


@ Meridian: The outcome is not reasonably determined by the player's actions. This applies squarely to the Psi mechanic; your recourse against it is very limited until fairly late, and even then Star Gods en masse are annoying to deal with purely because of Psi abuse; not because of the AI's quality or anything that could be construed as something you materially influence or that respects your decisions.

[Solarius Scorch]

Losing is expected in Dwarf Fortress though; it's basically a game of endurance to see how long you can last.

This is a strategy game by contrast where victory is the expected outcome, not defeat, and where your inputs are supposed to matter.

Yes, it's true, but it doesn't mean that all random-based games are like that. Take Rimworld or even Diablo. (These are just examples and not necessarily good ones, but I'm trying to convey a message here.)

In Vanilla, Psi was bullshit both ways (and ultimately far more bullshit in your favour), but in Piratez, the bullshit is largely onesided in the AI's favour, particularly when the likes of Ethereals show up.

I agree, the vanilla psi mechanics is complete bullshit. And yes, the player was invincible with decent psi, which turned the otherwise complex and brilliant tactical game into a clicker. That's why the player psi had to be somewhat de-balled in this mod, and I dare say not just this one.
As for the alien side... Well, I'm not Dioxine, but it's not the first time this subject comes up. I think there are two camps: one which is more in favour for alien psi LOS, like you, and those that think it makes the aliens too weak and not inclined to use their powers, like Dioxine. At least he complicated the formulas significantly, for example making distance a major issue for enemy psionics.

Fixing this would be taking away the AI's Psi crutch and replacing it with better AI.

Better AI is better, yes.
Sadly, I think nobody outside the actual developers have ever wrote any Openxcom AI code. Meridian doesn't want spoilers so he won't touch it, I think Yankes is not interested, and the rest of the guys are more like occasional contributors.
You know how it is with mods, you wanna see it, you gotta do it yourself. Especially for something as complex as AI. Which is a shame, I wish we had an AI coder - so many options, so many issues to improve... (like shooting weapons with limited range)

[Yankes]

Fixing this would be taking away the AI's Psi crutch and replacing it with better AI.

This is not fix but creating new game, at least need similar work amount. Would be better to suggest something that could be implemented in reasonable time.

As for the alien side... Well, I'm not Dioxine, but it's not the first time this subject comes up. I think there are two camps: one which is more in favour for alien psi LOS, like you, and those that think it makes the aliens too weak and not inclined to use their powers, like Dioxine. At least he complicated the formulas significantly, for example making distance a major issue for enemy psionics.

LOS is not only way to nerf PSI, PSI can loos more power per tile, PSI can be affected by current morale (no MC on 100% morale), Instead of MC, top alien attack can be direct damage (or stun) to unit, PSI consume energy that prevent spamming it by aliens. If this is not enough is always possible to add new mechanic that will allow better balancing PSI.

Better AI is better, yes.
Sadly, I think nobody outside the actual developers have ever wrote any Openxcom AI code. Meridian doesn't want spoilers so he won't touch it, I think Yankes is not interested, and the rest of the guys are more like occasional contributors.
You know how it is with mods, you wanna see it, you gotta do it yourself. Especially for something as complex as AI. Which is a shame, I wish we had an AI coder - so many options, so many issues to improve... (like shooting weapons with limited range)

I could be Warboy or SupSuper too, but they are probably fine with current AI because its similar to original.

I could tweak AI or alter it but it will be still brain dead as today. Even AAA developers can have problems with AI.
I don't except that I will do something better than them, therefore I prefer spend my time on other things.

btw to much smart AI could be even more pain-in-but, what if aliens always sit in UFO and camp all entrances? Or throw proxy on hallways? Always first attack base facilities with blaster bombs even if there none in it, because this is better long time strategy, ignore PSI-rods soldiers and only attack valuable units :>

[Solarius Scorch]

Just for the record, I'm not expecting you to write a program to beat Kasparov at chess. I just often think that the AI is held back on the new OXCE functions that it can't use well. And maybe add a trick or two if it comes up.

[Zharkov]

Even AAA developers can have problems with AI.

I am lost for words.