Readiness mechanics discussion

[betatester]

my idea is if nobody has attacked this turn +1 readiness (perhaps to a maximum of X% (50%?) to avoid readiness recuperation on bughunt)

[Alex_D]

I don't think you literally meant "experience = fatigue", so something more specific is needed - and it would have to be creative.

Not literally. More or less whatever caused experience would also cause fatigue in a proportional way.

[Bananas_Akimbo]

I have ambivalent feelings about the readiness system so far.

I like how it forces you to rest your soldiers between missions and expand your roster as a result.

I am mostly indifferent about the in-mission effects. Mostly it feels like added complexity without an increase in gameplay value.
The stamina meter, though simplistic, always seemed adequate at simulating physical exertion in a long battle. Easy to understand, easy to manage, very punishing if you run out at the wrong time.

About the morale effect, I must confess I haven't even noticed that one until I read about it here. I guess I must have been lucky. Bughunting never took me long enough for my soldiers to freak out.
Still, I don't like the idea of punishing the player this way. Punishing campers I understand, but it isn't always up to the player how long a mission lasts. Searching for the last enemies after a successful fight can't be that stressful, at least not any more stressful than the preceding combat.
I also can't think of any scenario, where soldiers would be so mentally depleted after a long battle, that they start losing their minds and possibly shooting at their comrades. That's a bit extreme.
What would make sense, is if soldiers low on readiness took higher morale damage from the usual sources. That could also apply to stun.

The first item is to agree on what a game turn is. Based on numerous posts, it appears each turn is equivalent to 1 to 2 minutes of real life. This means a base defense or Cydonia, with 100 turns can be between around 1.5 to 3 hours of fight.

Strange, to me a turn seems very short. Based on the actions a soldier can perform with full TUs, like shooting a bunch of rounds on full-auto (+time for aiming) or running a short distance, I was thinking mere seconds. No more than 30 seconds. Very short turns would also explain rookies' inaccurate firing, since they don't really have much time to take aim in a frantic combat situation. It would also explain how they run out of stamina so fast.
All of this is assuming, that a lot of the actions, which happen within a turn, are happening at the same time or at least overlapping.

[Yankes]

Altering redlines by EXP grain is possible.
First will be calculated on end mission hook, we can easy access current values of exp from `unit.Exp.*`

Case of using TU is not possible right now but I can fix it, simply I need delay updating TU after bonuses for mana are calculated.

[WaldoTheRanger]

If it's possible to do it based on xp, then that's what sounds best to me.
aside from the benefits already mentioned (readiness reflecting actual combat stress rather than how long they were in the field), it would also make it so that readiness is only deducted after a mission, rather than during it, which I think makes more sense.
I would go with the idea that each turn is only about 10-30 seconds. given that, I don't think it's realistic to say that someone will become more tired over the course of 10-20 30 second periods. their adrenaline would carry them through until afterwards.
this also solves the issue that some people have with readiness of reducing the effectiveness of slow and careful tactics.

as for a formula or a model, I've only played 2 missions so far, but I would think that something like 3 xp to 1-3 readiness lost sounds good. (i.e., for every 3xp gained, there is an Rng roll for between 1-3 readiness lost)
Rng would make it so you can make it seem realistic without having to fine tune what stats affect readiness how much.

I don't know. like I said, 2 missions. just throwing something out there as a starting point for further discussion.

[Rubber Cannonball]

Experience points which are used to determine stat gains after mission seems like a good proxy for how intense a mission was for an agent.  So the more experience points gained in the battle, the bigger the readiness hit.  Just going on a mission should also be a significant readiness hit.  Number of turns the mission lasts probably should be only a small readiness hit.  Reason being if the player sends only a few units to a battle, those fewer units will get a lot of xp each and will burn more turns to finish the mission.  If the player sent a bunch of troops to that battle instead, each unit would only gain a few xp and the battle would take less turns.  So xp and turns are positively correlated and both are negative correlated to number of troops player uses.  The advantage xp has over turns is that variation in play style eg "slow and careful" isn't penalized over other play styles.  Bug hunts for last enemy units or maze like maps that burn turns shouldn't penalize readiness significantly more than the wide open no cover maps.  Using this approach might also somewhat discourage stat farming as it would incur larger readiness hits.  Note I'm assuming experience points aren't capped at 12 which is the most needed for max stat gain.  Going into a battle with underpowered weapons that will need a bunch of hits to bring down the enemy is much more stressful than going in with OP one shot multiple kill AOE weapons or letting the robotic HWP do all the work.  Experience might also be double counted for a melee weapon that trains melee accuracy and reactions but taking a knife to a gunfight should be more stressful.

PS. I haven't played this mod yet and normally don't read this subforum to avoid spoilers, so apologies if any of the assumptions I made above are wrong for this mod.

[Bananas_Akimbo]

Hmm, it's not perfect, but I quite like the idea of making readiness depletion dependant on xp gain.

The only downside I can think of, is that it doesn't really account for failure.

Imagine a mission going pear-shaped. Your squad gets shot at a lot, panicked, maybe even mind-controlled. You decide it's not worth it and abort. Your squad gets out mostly unharmed. Because they didn't land a lot of hits, their readiness only drops a little. That doesn't make much sense to me. An unsuccessful mission, where your soldiers were in a lot of danger, should be at least as taxing as a long successful mission. Then again, most missions won't be like that, or else your campaign will be a short one.

Another example: Consider an unskilled soldier swinging wildly at an enemy, missing again and again. Another soldier comes along and knocks out the enemy in one swing. The first soldier loses no readiness in this case, even though he should be losing more than the second one.

In both cases I doubt the player would even notice, that readiness wasn't impacted as much as it should have been realistically.


I don't think it's possible to have a system, which is very close to realistic, without being overly complicated or unfun.
Tying readiness depletion to xp gain seems like an okay solution to me.

[WaldoTheRanger]

Good points.
Maybe if you factored in total morale lost (like the xp gain formula + morale lost/4 or something) then it could be more accurate without being too complicated.
course then you'd have to track that. so maybe it'd be easier to do ending morale, but I think total morale lost would be more realistic.

[Yankes]

btw I push some time ago fix that change order when stats are updated (each stat update see values from end of previous turn).

Now you can aggregate "lose" of stats to another stat.

e.g.
if you have 0% TU then next turn only have half of energy regained.
if you have less than 50% TU you lose one point of mana each turn.

[Rubber Cannonball]

e.g.
if you have 0% TU then next turn only have half of energy regained.
if you have less than 50% TU you lose one point of mana each turn.

TU seems like a tricky one for a modder to use in this way.  For instance, it could reward the unit that uses the reserve TU for aimed shot button but doesn't shoot anything since the player was trying to maximize reaction shot opportunities.  Likewise it could penalize the unit that uses expend all TUs button to prevent reaction firing his rocket launcher.  Energy level could be used as a proxy for TU and might make more sense for the mana loss example, although stim usage can interfere with that too.  There might be some interesting things modders could do with previous turn's stun level value though.  A unit that had more than 50% stun might only get 70% of its TUs for next turn for example.  Or maybe accuracy stats get adjusted based on stun level.  Kind of like how a boxer gets worn down in the later rounds of a match from all the punches he's received in the bout.