General > Discussion
New to UFOAI have some questions / critisisms / suggestions
Gantoris:
Hi, first up id like to congratulate the developers on this amazing open source project im not ashamed to admit that i made a small mess in my pants when i realized what this was as im a huge fan of the original XCOM games. I started playing the 2.2 version for a few days and recently switched to the developer version 2.3 r30221 when i saw what new features where in there and was initially very pleased with what i found. However after playing for a short while i have hit a wall of frustration that for me has broken the game, that wall is reaction fire. At first i thought i was doing something wrong as my men failed again and again to ever use this feature and then after awhile i thought this must be a bug and began searching these forums for answers...
What i can figure is that someone complained so much about it that a system that has worked fine in various squad based games for years was changed to one where an enemy literally has to use enough TUs to walk up to you, shoot you in the face then teabag your corpse before your soldier reacts. This is just complete madness and the whole thing makes no sense at all, in my mind reaction fire, overwatch or whatever its called in whichever turn based game you are playing is basically your soldier looking down his sights and staying ready to fire in an effort to cover his friends. The idea that a soldier doesn't fire his weapon the very second an enemy comes into a view is to be quite frank retarded, bears no resemblance to reality and renders the feature worthless.
I have played many similar games notably the original XCOM and the Jagged Alliance series and reaction fire as it is was fine, tactically useful and needed no changes and i just cant wrap my head around why it has to be the way it is. If the enemy is using reaction fire against you then you pin them down and flank them (have the area there hiding in covered with your own reaction fire units then work other soldiers round the side) as you would in real life, or use a smoke grenade and approach under cover. I understand 2.3 is an incomplete build and from what ive read this issue is under development but its my humble opinion that all you need to do is have it as it was in XCOM or Jagged Alliance and not try to create some crazy system of only reacting when the enemy has used X amount of TUs. One idea to offset reaction fire slightly might be to tighten the soldiers field of fire as he readies his gun and looks down his sight thus making it harder to cover a huge area, if possible a clearly visible cone could show this field of fire for you and your opponent if your playing multiplayer.
Now that ive had my little rant i also have a couple of small suggestions which id like to make, firstly to clearly see how much exp a unit has/needs before leveling and to also maybe have training facilities to build in your bases where you can train various stats on your soldiers. Also i love the addition of pilots for craft, its a nice feature but would be awesome if they had there own unique stats and could level up like soldiers and effect craft speed, defense and accuracy ect.
Thanks again for resurrecting this great game, keep up the good work!
Gantoris.
P.S. I found this thread http://ufoai.ninex.info/forum/index.php?topic=4879.0 which supposedly sets the reaction fire system back to the 2.2 build but i have had no success making it work. Maybe im just being retarded but i followed the instructions, made the file and added the text yet it has no effect could someone perhaps help me with this?
Hertzila:
--- Quote from: Gantoris on June 06, 2010, 01:04:00 am ---What i can figure is that someone complained so much about it that a system that has worked fine in various squad based games for years was changed to one where an enemy literally has to use enough TUs to walk up to you, shoot you in the face then teabag your corpse before your soldier reacts. This is just complete madness and the whole thing makes no sense at all, in my mind reaction fire, overwatch or whatever its called in whichever turn based game you are playing is basically your soldier looking down his sights and staying ready to fire in an effort to cover his friends. The idea that a soldier doesn't fire his weapon the very second an enemy comes into a view is to be quite frank retarded, bears no resemblance to reality and renders the feature worthless.
--- End quote ---
Unless that soldier of yours happens to be a particularly trigger-happy machine gunner, he will NOT shoot ANYTHING the very second it comes to his view. At least one second goes to checking who you're targeting (might be half a second since the aliens are fairly different from humans so checking is easier) and unless the hostile happened to walk right into his sights perfectly, your guy also has to aim. Depending on the weapon in question, it could take from ½-second (shotgun, machine gun) to something like 10 seconds (sniper).
The reason why machine gunners are partially excluded from this is because they usually got enough ammo to spray a little.
This poster got it right and the proposal is reasonable IMO:
--- Quote from: cerevox on May 24, 2010, 10:39:33 pm ---It seems to me that there are two different kinds of RF. Aimed and non-aimed. Aimed is where the TUs are spent aiming the gun and only the very last TU involves any actual firing. On those it would make sense for the target to spend that many TUs in the line of sight of the reactor, since it takes that long for him to aim. A sniper isn't going to shoot unless the target is in the crosshairs.
On the other hand are the non-aimed shots. An machine gunner is not going to line his target up perfect, he will just get his gun pointed in the right direction and spray until the target dies. However, if an alien peaks around a corner for 3 TUs, he shouldn't get a full 25 TU burst to the face.
So, here is my proposal. for aimed shots, they need the full TU time to take the shot. For non-aimed like full auto and burst, its a partial shot. For every TU the alien spends in his line of sight, he gets to fire a TU on his gun. Alien spends 6 TU walking into the middle of the street, so the MG gets to fire 6 TU of his 25 TU burst at the alien. Alien steps to next square for 2 TU, and the MG fires his next 2 TU, so his 25 full auto is down to 17 TU left of shooting. You would have to be able to pause the burst mid-fire and to pause every step to let the MG fire, but this way the alien takes an amount of fire equal to what he actually does.
--- End quote ---
Welcome to the forums!
Gantoris:
Thanks for the welcome, i don't however entirely agree with your assessment.
A don't for a second believe a trained Spetznaz, US Ranger, SAS or any highly trained soldier would only be able to react to an enemy during an engagement after he has walked 15 yards and taken a shot and your troops in UFO are after all supposed to be the best of the best. The quote you linked does make one point i would concede to with regards to aiming the shot, reaction fire is by definition not a carefully aimed shot but a way of offering cover fire which is made useless by the current system. A very simple solution in my opinion would be to limit reaction fire to snap shots and perhaps lower the accuracy on machine gun fire slightly.
Also realism aside this is a game and you need to balance what works and the system used in every other similar game i can think of DOES work and the one in 2.3 does not (This is quite obvious when an alien can walk 5 steps in front of 4 soldiers with RF, kill 2 of them and then return to cover without any soldier doing a damn thing). Just copy Jagged Alliance 2 tbh, the game is a masterpiece.
homunculus:
if i attempt to be really serious, then in my opinion a well thought out reaction fire system improves the game more than any storyline or new equipment or even equipment balance.
the question about implementing a nice rf system is probably not about 'if' but 'who'.
Hertzila:
--- Quote from: homunculus on June 06, 2010, 08:38:57 am ---if i attempt to be really serious, then in my opinion a well thought out reaction fire system improves the game more than any storyline or new equipment or even equipment balance.
the question about implementing a nice rf system is probably not about 'if' but 'who'.
--- End quote ---
Here was one try. Too bad he seems to have gone missing, his RF idea was great IMO.
--- Quote from: Gantoris on June 06, 2010, 02:17:41 am ---A don't for a second believe a trained Spetznaz, US Ranger, SAS or any highly trained soldier would only be able to react to an enemy during an engagement after he has walked 15 yards and taken a shot and your troops in UFO are after all supposed to be the best of the best. The quote you linked does make one point i would concede to with regards to aiming the shot, reaction fire is by definition not a carefully aimed shot but a way of offering cover fire which is made useless by the current system. A very simple solution in my opinion would be to limit reaction fire to snap shots and perhaps lower the accuracy on machine gun fire slightly.
--- End quote ---
Running 15 yards takes a bit more than a couple of seconds so of course a soldier who knows how to use a gun would use it. He wouldn't even have to be a special force guy to hit him too, unless training standards have gone down when I wasn't looking.
I'm not so sure RF is actual cover fire. Cover fire is usually done to keep the enemies heads dows and is exceptionally badly aimed. Reaction fire, on the other hand, is a method to make defensive play possible and make this seem more like actual combat (aka. real-time instead turn-based). Eg. a shot from shotgun when the alien has moved right in front of you is not exactly covering fire.
--- Quote from: Gantoris on June 06, 2010, 02:17:41 am ---Also realism aside this is a game and you need to balance what works and the system used in every other similar game i can think of DOES work and the one in 2.3 does not (This is quite obvious when an alien can walk 5 steps in front of 4 soldiers with RF, kill 2 of them and then return to cover without any soldier doing a damn thing). Just copy Jagged Alliance 2 tbh, the game is a masterpiece.
--- End quote ---
Agreed, when it's realism vs. gameplay, the gameplay should win but a reasonable use of realism tends to be positive.
I haven't played JA2 so I don't have any opinions on that. However, the devs have said (a long time ago) that pure copying is not preferable.
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