A tactical benefit to autopsy research

[Sgt. Hatter]

I've been thinking about this lately, and I've come to the realization that autopsy research really doesn't serve much of a purpose outside of developing stun weaponry and storyline research.

Basically, if you're just looking to kill alien scum, focus your research elsewhere.

I'd like to see biological research topics affect the battlefield a bit more tangibly.  To that end, I'd like to propose the ability to examine enemies in combat.  Here's how it might work...

Against enemies you have not researched: Nothing happens.  The enemy is displayed as "unknown alien race."  You gain no other information on them.

Against enemies you have researched: Not only is their race revealed, but you can now get additional information on the target, provided that someone currently has line-of-sight to the target.  The amount of information is dependent upon the highest MIND score of all the soldiers that currently have line of sight to the target.

• 0-19 MIND: You can only identify the race of the subject.
• 20-39 MIND: You can identify the race of the subject, and get an idea of its health, as an adjective ("Unhurt", "Wounded", "Seriously Wounded", "Nearly Dead")
• 40-59 MIND: In addition to the health adjective, you get another indicating stun damage ("Fit", "Dazed", "Wavering", "Nearly Unconscious")
• 60-89 MIND: You can determine the enemy's morale.  ("Stable", "Shaken", "Fearful", "Terrified")
• 90+ MIND: Superhuman mental capability has given you the ability to replace each of the adjectives above with an exact number.

Now, I realize that this idea might be quite powerful.  There may need to be limitations.  One might be that examining enemies is an actual action in combat, requiring you to spend a few TUs to size up your subject.  Doing so would only be valid on the turn you do it, and only against the targetted subject.  An unexamined enemy simply shows you their race.

Fluff-wise, you can justify this by having soldiers be briefed on the enemies that DivBio has researched, with their MIND score indicating how well they paid attention and remember those briefings.  "This is a Taman.  Here's where the vital organs are; aim your gun at these.  Here's what happens when you expose one to high concentrations of CHOKE..."

Advantages To This Idea: Requires no rebalancing; has no effect on battle beyond providing the player with information.  Some elements are already present in the game (battlescape already takes into account whether the enemy is researched or not.)  May provide a more "even" playfield for players (depending on whether or not the AI "cheats" and has access to your unit stats when determining its tactical actions.)

Disadvantages To This Idea: More work, including testing.  May provide players with information they shouldn't have.

[thunktone]

I quite like this idea. It also made me think of a simpler alternative: increase the damage of aimed shots against aliens you have researched.

[Sgt. Hatter]

increase the damage of aimed shots against aliens you have researched.

This is exactly what this idea is intended to avoid, actually.  Damage buffs are probably easy to code, but they affect game balance quite directly.  My idea was something that improves quality of life and gives the player a tactical advantage, but requires some skill and planning to use and does not directly affect game balance.

[thunktone]

I did specify aimed shots, perhaps I should have made that clearer.

[Sgt. Hatter]

I did specify aimed shots, perhaps I should have made that clearer.

Sorry about missing that, but regardless, it makes some crazy things possible and could directly jeapordize game balance.

I'm also rather... personally opposed to outright buffs and debuffs.  IMHO, I'd rather deepen gameplay and provide a more subtle advantage than simply slap a few extra numbers onto that damage roll.

[thunktone]

Fair enough. I like your idea better too btw. Mine was just meant as an easier coding option.

[MCR]

A very good concept, but hard work to implement...

[homunculus]

the idea of increased damage on aimed shots on researched aliens is logical, though.
what do you mean by unbalancing?
the increased damage does not need to be tenfold, does it?
if it would be 1% increased damage then who would even care?
if it would be something like 20% increased damage i would guess it wouldn't unbalance anything.
also, why bring so much mind stat dependent accuracy into it?
if you have researched alien psychology then you might get some more info out of a visible alien, i think it would be more simple that way, too.

actually the increased damage should depend on how accurately you hit the point you were aiming for.
i mean, if you aim for the center but you hit the leg then that should not give you increased damage.



oh, well, now that i started... if anyone is amused by this, probably very low priority idea, i guess i might as well write all i got to say about the anatomy research generated damage bonus, but it will take a bit longer.

i do not know how damage randomness is handled in the game, and i have not been playing the game for some time.

i hope we know such things like shot distance and the spread (non-accuracy) of a single aimed shot.
then we should be able to calculate how accurately the shot hit whatever the soldier was aiming for (which, afaik, in game is the center of the alien, but assume the "center" is a vital bodypart).

if we do not know what to aim for, or if we are not aiming for any vital parts, the damage could be, say, 50..100% at random.
that is because we might accidentally hit something vital even if we were not aiming for it.
but if we are knowingly aiming for something vital, then the damage would be something like

50+50*(1/(1+miss^2))..100%

where miss is the distance from the center of the alien. a perfect center hit would be miss=0. maybe it should be like miss^4 rather than miss^2.

so, if we hit perfectly accurately (which presently means the shot perfectly hits the center) then we would do 100% damage, dropping very quickly to the non-aimed random 50..100% if we miss the "center".

and some more about the alien health estimations.
i would prefer numerical % estimations rather than words like 'wounded', because the player would need to memorize what % the word 'wounded' corresponds to.
in my opinion, in the most preferred way, there could be 2 additional variables for a non-researched alien that would be maximum and minimum health estimations.
if a shot hits a non-researched alien then we do not know how much it was exactly, but if damage is between 50..100%, then we could know the lower and upper bounds.
so, each time an alien is hit, the two variables would be updated.
btw, this is different from giving randomly inaccurate numbers based on alien's real hitpoints.

[Sgt. Hatter]

the idea of increased damage on aimed shots on researched aliens is logical, though.
what do you mean by unbalancing?
the increased damage does not need to be tenfold, does it?
if it would be 1% increased damage then who would even care?
if it would be something like 20% increased damage i would guess it wouldn't unbalance anything.

Logical, maybe.  Yeah, you could make the argument that you know where to shoot them to make it hurt more, or disable them more quickly. But consider this: how much damage can you safely add to make it useful with all those weapons, without breaking any of them?  If it's only 10%, then the damage is probably not worth it; people are not going to give doing autopsies an increase in priority.  It'll have no meaningful effect on gameplay.  If it's something like 30-50%, you risk making weapons with already-high damage (like the coilgun or particle beam rifle) broken in endgame fights, since armor seems to be subtractive, rather than divisive.

also, why bring so much mind stat dependent accuracy into it?

What else does Mind do right now?  Psionics aren't implemented yet, so right now Mind is pretty useless.  This idea would give it a use, without meaningfully affecting game balance.  Even once psionics are around, this would make it beneficial to have non-psionic soldiers with higher Mind, since they can glean more info from researched enemy types.

It's also the only stat I could think of that would justifiably apply to this.  If you got a better stat for this to depend on, by all means, say so.

[Yatta]

Im currently working on some prototyping on my test build, and one of the thing I added is "critical hit".

Now critical hit is not just "add damage", depending on the hit type, the effect can vary to making the enemy fall (for powerfull weapons, grenades ...), making him drop his weapon (lucky shot in the weapon ! but the enemy takes no damage), and so on ...

The two real damages buffs are a damage multiplier (<2) and an armor bypass. I think those criticals could be "unlockable" depending on the research made on the aliens and the armors, and would fit that "research gives battle advantage" idea, and since its only on critical hits (very low % chance), i dont think it would be a threat to the game balance. What do you think ?

[MCR]

That sounds great, Yatta 

[Hertzila]

Im currently working on some prototyping on my test build, and one of the thing I added is "critical hit".

Now critical hit is not just "add damage", depending on the hit type, the effect can vary to making the enemy fall (for powerfull weapons, grenades ...), making him drop his weapon (lucky shot in the weapon ! but the enemy takes no damage), and so on ...

The two real damages buffs are a damage multiplier (<2) and an armor bypass. I think those criticals could be "unlockable" depending on the research made on the aliens and the armors, and would fit that "research gives battle advantage" idea, and since its only on critical hits (very low % chance), i dont think it would be a threat to the game balance. What do you think ?

Not for network games, or at least you should be able to turn them off.

Other than that, great idea! Perhaps you could make so that the damage modifiers are unlocked on autopsies and armor bypasses on armor research? And another thing, you could make so that the enemy drops his weapon in case you hit it in the arm. I remember that there was talk about damage done on different body parts. Not regional damage but instead that if you hit the guy in the arm, accuracy lowers and TU for shooting increases (head: big accuracy loss, sight worsens; legs: momevent cost increase etc.). If critical, guy drops his gun. Not yet implemented but you could make it work now that on some crits the guy loses his gun and receives normal damage.

[Yatta]

Me: I think those criticals could be "unlockable" depending on the research made on the aliens and the armors

You: Perhaps you could make so that the damage modifiers are unlocked on autopsies and armor bypasses on armor research?

Me : Huh ?

About damage localisation, afaik theres no support for that in the game source. Im not sure if the engine even allows it, nor if that would fit the game design. Theres just a small % chance, when you do a critical, that the enemy will drop his weapon.

[homunculus]

What else does Mind do right now?

i thought it might make the soldier learn faster. and maybe there will be some psionics some day. strength, afaik, does not do anything either, but some day it probably will.

what i thought of as not so nice was to bring this 'supernatural perception' thing into the game.
i got the impression that this is not this type of game where such thing would sound good.

btw is there some explanation of damage randomness in ufo:ai somewhere where i could read it?
or is there none at all?

[Hertzila]

*talk*

About damage localisation, afaik theres no support for that in the game source. Im not sure if the engine even allows it, nor if that would fit the game design. Theres just a small % chance, when you do a critical, that the enemy will drop his weapon.

Sorry about that. I have a bad habit of jumping over small amounts of text; in this case, specifically over that "and armor" part.

What I was basically saying is that I think it would be better if that crit would cause normal damage in addition to dropping the gun.

what i thought of as not so nice was to bring this 'supernatural perception' thing into the game.
i got the impression that this is not this type of game where such thing would sound good.

How else are we going to explain XVI and future psionics?