Tactics in 2.3

[Maciej Piechotka]

I played the 2.2 version on very easy settings and I had usually no problem with saving my solders. In 2.3 at every time I move any solder aliens are allowed to shoot. In fact it is not possible to not get killed a solder at the first turn?

Is it intentional or are they my bad movements? How to prevent it?

[criusmac]

Wow, is it that bad? I think game balancing will fix it eventually.

For example, it is planned to not have aliens able to easily see your soldiers. Visibility will be introduced.
Also, armor will be made much more effective so you can't die from 1 hit anymore.

So, for now, I expect it'll be really deadly, armor like in X-Com, and X-Com 2.. But eventually it'll be more like armor in X-Com 3.
And visibility will be introduced so you can't be spotted from across the map.

[Maciej Piechotka]

Ok. So it is before-the-balancing issue. I was afraid that I'm missing some part of tactics.

Thanks for responding and great game.

[vitku]

The new (apparently unbalanced) reaction system feels much better than the old - even if it is still pretty deadly. I like the new grenade throwing reactionary aliens.

[Viento]

Problem in 2.3 is, that one often starts right in front of aliens. They face you and they have full reaction fire in the first round. This makes attacking them deadly but running for cover (into your ship) even deadlier.

The only choice is sometimes to push "retry" and hope for a map in which the aliens don't face your squad directly.

Viento

[beebop]

on some maps the boys begin really close to aliens ; deadly as mentionned above. even with visibility implemented it could lead to tricky situations.
on the other hand sometimes all the aliens have their backs turned away, staring at the cows probably... free shooting then...

i guess having the aliens face a random direction upon spawning would easily solve the issue.

[Borsti67]

another new approach to RF? Would be glad about that.
In fact, I rarely played UFO:AI for the last weeks because the system in 2.3 (one person is moving but ANOTHER one is fired at) took about all of my motivation...

[homunculus]

reaction fire changed? i wonder if it is just the amount of time units reserved or something more.

downloading dev version atm, so i'll find it out soon enough, i hope.

afaik, the reaction fire seemed to have a probability at each move the opponent made with any unit.
the ultimate pinnacle of divine prime evil here is the _probability_, which either results in extremely unrealistic _insane_ fire rate, or sometimes no reaction fire at all.
i mean, you couldn't possibly fire a 20 tu shot every time the opponent used 2 time units.

as much as the devs like to look down upon design contributions, it makes a player like me think that a better design solution at the right moment might have prevented reaction fire from being implemented in such way.

that is, of course, not the problem with ufo-ai only.
for example, i tried x-force, which was very interesting with the interrupt style reaction fire system (you could choose your action, and even move), but the system was clearly non-intuitive not to say buggy.
when aliens interrupted your turn when some of your soldiers had moved and some had not, when your turn resumed you had all your soldiers at full time units, and it looked very much like you just lost the rest of your turn.
now, design only does not create a game, coding etc is also needed, but clearly a good pseudo-code might have helped x-force a lot, what do you think? lol.

[criusmac]

In the first 3 paragraphs, it sounds like you are trying to describe the battle system for Rebelstar: Tactical Command. In this game, what determines if the aliens *can* react to what you are doing depends on how many turn units it takes for them to actually fire. If you are moving around in their sight, the first few steps are are safe, unless they have a very fast gun. Then, after you've used up the same number of turn units they take to fire, they can fire 1 shot, and you can then continue whatever you were doing, until you use up enough time that they could fire again.

But then, in the second part of your message (everything after the first 3 paragraphs), you state you would like every person to be where they would be if they were all moving simultaneously. It sounds like you are suggesting the system used in X-Com 3: Apocalypse where every unit moved in real time, and both sides played their turn at the same time. If an alien started shooting at you in that game, all of your units were at the same instant instant, and could react to the shots.

That is where it feels you ended up with what you were saying - a real time system.

I'm not sure what you want exactly... Are you asking for a Rebelstar battle system, or the X-Com 3 battle system?

[homunculus]

[...]I'm not sure what you want exactly... Are you asking for a Rebelstar battle system, or the X-Com 3 battle system?

neither, actually i was not suggesting any battle system of any particular kind, i was saying that sometimes the logic of things also seems to be the problem, not only just punching the code into the computer.
i do like xcom apoc and i do think that the principle of interrupts is promising in x-force, but it was not a suggestion for ufo-ai tactical combat.
the x-force case was just an example of how the logic had been messed up.

btw, i got a _very_ strong impression that i got shot every 2 time units i moved.
that looked like the reaction fire was probability based on every step you take.
i was wondering if that situation, which i would call highly unrealistic, had changed.