General > Discussion

Encumberance

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eleazar:

--- Quote from: BTAxis on February 19, 2008, 01:24:06 pm ---I see no reason why it wouldn't work. My gripe with "classic" encumbrance is that strength is already (planned to be) used for a lot of other stuff. People want it to affect melee damage, recoil and throwing range, and probably some other stuff that I've missed. If strength also starts heavily influencing what equipment you can take on a mission, then strength becomes THE most important stat in the game, and I don't like that.

--- End quote ---

IMHO a relationship between strength and what you can carry is more compelling and obvious than anything else on this list.  I think all those other things combined would add less to the gameplay, than a basic implementation of encumbrance.

But it is (more or less) redundant to penalize weak soldiers for heavy equipment by:
1) subtracting TUs, and
2) lowering accuracy via recoil

... because taking away TUs will tend to force the user to choose a quicker, less accurate fire mode, anyway.


Since the armor you equip IIRC is planned to effect your TUs, it will be necessary to display a soldier's TUs (for the current equipment config) on the equipment screen, so the player can evaluate his choices.
With a "TU Meter" already in place, it will be much easier to communicate the effect of BigGuns+WeakSoldiers, if that also simply effects the soldier's TUs, than to somehow display a drop in accuracy for various weapons.

nemchenk:

--- Quote from: eleazar on February 20, 2008, 06:23:59 am ---...penalize weak soldiers for heavy equipment by ... subtracting TUs

--- End quote ---
Again, this depends entirely on the threshold at which Encumberance kicks in! Strength kg seems fine to me, as soldiers with Average skill will then be able to hike 20-29kg with no problems. Then we need to decide what happens afterwards: again, a 1TU/kg penalty seems realistic and simple to me. So, your Average soldier  can carry at most about 50-60kg.

Encumberance is a major issue for the infantryman, so it seems odd, in a game which aims to be realistic, not to bother with it.

You can always turn it off in the main campaign by not specifying Weight values for equipment, or setting them to 0.

Surrealistik:
I don't find the argument that the strength stat will prove too impactful to be a convincing argument, assuming the implimentation of various proposed uses. This is because accuracy, and speed are still, in my humble opinion, just as, if not more important, speed dictating the efficiency of a soldier per turn, and its ability to engage in reaction fire, and accuracy dictating, well, the chance to hit with the myriad of weapons availible to PHALANX. Perhaps the range of things these stats influence isn't as extensive, but they are certainly no less important than what strength would impact. Personally, I'd rather have a weak trooper with essential gear, light/medium armour, reasonable speed, high accuracy and a laser rifle, than an ox with high strength, heavy armour, a bunch of additional utility equipment, a minigun, and either low speed or low accuracy (though I certainly like the latter better conceptually, lol). In short, interesting choices are good, while being able to heft just about everything your soldier's carrying space will permit without penalty is bad.

shevegen:

--- Quote ---If strength also starts heavily influencing what equipment you can take on a mission, then strength becomes THE most important stat in the game, and I don't like that.
--- End quote ---
Well pure strength is not everything, endurance is important too, but it is a fact that someone who is physically stronger simply can carry more stuff than someone is weaker. If that wont be the case in UFO, it will look weird why the 50kg guy can carry as much as the 120kg muscle machine

eleazar:

--- Quote from: nemchenk on February 19, 2008, 12:39:26 pm ---...the XCOM way of dealing with encumbrance.
--- End quote ---
For those of us not in the know, could someone describe how XCOM did this?


--- Quote from: nemchenk on February 19, 2008, 12:39:26 pm ---Something simple like ( AvailableTUs + Strength - TotalWeight) would work for me.

--- End quote ---
Forgive me if i'm rehashing old stuff, but i haven't found anything else about this.

Something like nemchenk is describing makes sense to me (but not in concert with "recoil").  It seems that TUs are one of the most important things to a soldier's survival and victory, thus the player would probably be interested in ways to optimize how many TUs each soldier has.  Currently it's totally out of his hands.

How it could work:  Every significant item has an "encumbrance value" (hereafter abbreviated "EV")-- sort of a hybrid between "weight" and "unwieldiness".  This slight abstraction make it easier to fudge the numbers for balancing purposes, and we don't really care about "weight" anyway -- but about how much an object slows the soldier down.  Heavy armor would have the highest EV and stuff like pistols, grenades and small-arms clips would have 0, or a very low EV.

You add up the EV of all a soldier's equipment.  If the number is higher than the soldier's strength, the difference is subtracted from his TUs.

But the player shouldn't have to do any math.  Along side the soldier in the equipment screen should be an interactive meter that displays his TUs with the current equipment, compared to his max possible TUs.


Thus the player has easily accessible the strategic options to outfit a lightly-armed/armored speedy scout, a slow-moving juggernaut, or anything in between.  I.E. it's not an attempt to achieve greater realism through more number-crunching, but an attempt to expand the strategic options available to a player.

IMHO something like this would justify the existence of a Strength better than the combination of all other ideas i've seen for using this stat.  It has an interesting and significant effect on the game.

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