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Author Topic: [DONE] Melee dodge and CQC: true percentile indicators displayed  (Read 5855 times)

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Recently Meridian created two new functions:
- display of percentile chance to successfully shoot the target in CQC (when shooting from point blank);
- display of percentile chance to successfully overcome the target's melee dodge (when using a melee weapon against a target with melee dodge).

This is how this looks like (avaialble under Alt + M-click):



This X-Com agent (who happens to be a hybrid, but that's irrelevant) has 20% chance to hit the enemy in point blank and not have the shot redirected to kingdom come by their mad ninja skills.



This Floater is armed with a shooting weapon and a melee weapon. It has 51% chance to successfully shoot an adjacent enemy (overcome their CQC). It also has 32% to hit the enemy with the knife, taking into account target's dodge bonus.



Here the same Floater has 42% chance to successfully hit an adjacent enemy (overcome their CQC). Melee is not displayed, because the enemy is not in front of the Floater.

These features are now only available in a test build, because including them in any form would give the player more direct tactical data and therefore affect game difficulty, therefore one should be careful with it. Nevertheless, this feature is immensely helpful for a modder, because estimating dodge and CQC values by just eyeballing them is pretty hard. Also, the very impact on gameplay from the player's perspective is perhaps not that great, and perhaps fair.
Therefore we would like to ask the community - especially modders - whether this feature should be included in the official OXCE in some form. Should this be available as it is? Or only in debug mode? Or not at all?

Please tell us what your experience and gut feeling suggests! Feedback very much appreciated.
« Last Edit: February 01, 2023, 07:19:07 pm by Meridian »

Offline memmaker

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Re: Melee dodge and CQC: true percentile indicators displayed
« Reply #1 on: March 22, 2020, 01:13:37 am »
The information itself is not a problem to me. Since this is purely optional, modders could just decide to not give out this information, right?

I am more concerned with the presentation and how this information is accessed and presented. Not sure how a better solution would look like, but maybe the UI and placement could be.. more fitting?

Also to access it, is that Alt+Mouseclick or Alt+Middleclick?

Is that the normal alien inventory screen then? What happens to the race name?

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: Melee dodge and CQC: true percentile indicators displayed
« Reply #2 on: March 22, 2020, 01:24:18 am »
The information itself is not a problem to me. Since this is purely optional, modders could just decide to not give out this information, right?

Depends on how it's done, hence this thread. :)

Also to access it, is that Alt+Mouseclick or Alt+Middleclick?

Currently Alt + middle click.

Is that the normal alien inventory screen then? What happens to the race name?

Just middle-click as normal to see the race.

Offline memmaker

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Re: Melee dodge and CQC: true percentile indicators displayed
« Reply #3 on: March 22, 2020, 01:34:25 am »
That would be CMD+ALT+Click on my touchpad then. Have to try that.

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: Melee dodge and CQC: true percentile indicators displayed
« Reply #4 on: March 28, 2020, 11:30:23 am »
I can't believe nobody else cares about this feature... :)

Offline Nord

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Re: Melee dodge and CQC: true percentile indicators displayed
« Reply #5 on: March 28, 2020, 01:29:46 pm »
Oh. Useful feature, but not intuitive. Sadly, many players does even not know about right-click on sell items and so on. Still can provide joy for advanced players.
One should describe all new features of OXCE inside game. Maybe not only ufopedia articles, but splash messages (geoscape events!) with help. Some kind of introduction in game mechanics.
« Last Edit: March 28, 2020, 01:32:09 pm by Nord »

Offline vadracas

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Re: Melee dodge and CQC: true percentile indicators displayed
« Reply #6 on: March 28, 2020, 03:22:17 pm »
I would love to see this feature implemented, it does feel a little like cheating, however. How would we know the enemy's chance to dodge? I know the AI knows ours, but still.

Offline Meridian

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Re: Melee dodge and CQC: true percentile indicators displayed
« Reply #7 on: March 28, 2020, 03:27:01 pm »
I would love to see this feature implemented, it does feel a little like cheating, however. How would we know the enemy's chance to dodge? I know the AI knows ours, but still.

AI doesn't know ours.
And yes, it's basically a cheat.

Offline vadracas

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Re: Melee dodge and CQC: true percentile indicators displayed
« Reply #8 on: March 28, 2020, 08:27:02 pm »
AI doesn't know ours.
And yes, it's basically a cheat.
Perhaps make this an option for debug mode only? Or an advanced option that can be enabled/disabled in the options menu.

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: Melee dodge and CQC: true percentile indicators displayed
« Reply #9 on: March 28, 2020, 10:02:39 pm »
I personally don't think it's very cheaty, as it doesn't seem to have give the player that many options. Sure, it is a cheat, as the AI is at a disadvantage here, but I think it is not too bad.

Still, I consider it more of a modder tool, so I'd be 100% fine if it was only available in debug mode.

Offline memmaker

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Re: Melee dodge and CQC: true percentile indicators displayed
« Reply #10 on: March 29, 2020, 01:05:09 pm »
Having that display as a debug mode only tool makes much more sense to me.

Offline MistarRed

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Re: Melee dodge and CQC: true percentile indicators displayed
« Reply #11 on: March 30, 2020, 08:50:16 am »
For the record, other 'tactics' type games usually have this displayed, often with quite a lot more detail.  However, it's often a two-way street, where the enemy hits back in melee.  This would make sense to present to the player, if melee allowed counter-attacking by turning around.  Without that, it takes some of the magic away, does it not?

See screenshot from Fire Emblem.

HP: Self explanatory (enemy has low hp left in this case)
Mt: Final strength of the attack (attack - defense, no RNG on the attack value) x2, because speed of unit is high enough to attack twice before counter-attack
Hit: Hit chance (71 for player unit, 41 for counter-attack by enemy unit)
Crit: % chance to do triple damage (multiple of Mt value, so 1 damage becomes 3, 0 stays 0, and 10 becomes 30).

Fire Emblem features permanent death.  A lot of decision making in this game is informed by this particular screen.  The player asks "is this safe to do?" or "is this worth the risk?" or "how badly can I own this mofo?" or "can I finish this guy off? (as in the picture)"

That's probably the best example of "using this kind of feature excessively" in terms of gameplay.

P.S. May you have nightmares of melee counter-attacking chryssies~~ snip snip!
« Last Edit: March 30, 2020, 12:43:42 pm by MistarRed »

Offline spawi

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Re: Melee dodge and CQC: true percentile indicators displayed
« Reply #12 on: May 16, 2021, 12:48:57 pm »
Since this commit [1], made on May 1, 2020, one can view the melee chance by pressing F1 when in the paper doll view. Note that debug has to be enabled in options.cfg.

[1] https://github.com/MeridianOXC/OpenXcom/commit/6ebd4c0d76c09338445eca185e424f3dfd15afc6

Offline krautbernd

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Re: Melee dodge and CQC: true percentile indicators displayed
« Reply #13 on: May 16, 2021, 07:29:22 pm »
Since this commit [1], made on May 1, 2020, one can view the melee chance by pressing F1 when in the paper doll view. Note that debug has to be enabled in options.cfg.

[1] https://github.com/MeridianOXC/OpenXcom/commit/6ebd4c0d76c09338445eca185e424f3dfd15afc6
Thanks for the heads-up, I totally missed out on this!