New to UFOAI have some questions / critisisms / suggestions

[H-Hour]

You know, you really did make your point in the first post. I don't know why you keep repeating the virtues of a working RF system. No one has disputed that.

As previous work has shown, the devs are open to patches for how the RF programming works . But it's a work in progress, not everything is going to be perfect yet, and the devs are pretty focused on getting 2.3 out the door now. Since you're new to the forums, you may not realize that a dev has not yet posted in this thread, so you haven't really been having a conversation with anyone involved on the coding side of things.

I think you should calm down a bit and show a little modesty. This is a big game of which RF is one component. It's important, but there's a lot to do. If you want the game to get somewhere, please help out. But don't start accusing people of destroying game mechanics when you don't really know anything about what's actually happening with the RF system.

[homunculus]

[...]snipers (or anyone with an accurate long range weapon)[...]

it is not only snipers, but also, heavy laser, or in fact, almost any weapon.

and the fixes that you just suggested would need some more coding than changing one variable somewhere (i guess that would be the probability of reaction fire getting triggered on enemy move).

i would assume the devs would have nothing against having a few reaction fire desingns, some simple and some more complex, so that when the 'who' (i.e. someone who might want to try coding it) appears, there would be some spec-s ready that might be at least somewhat detailed and consistent (at least some designs that have been looked at by several people in an attempt to remove inconsistencies).
we are wasting time here anyway, uselessly ranting about it, maybe we might try to become at least a little bit more constructive and make such reaction fire topic in design forum.
i think i would find such discussion interesting, i might be able to maintain it (by editing the first post) for quite some time.

the first post in the thread would be something like:

**** 1. ****
(date)
short description / main idea
features / how it would work
maybe what variables and functions would be required

**** 2. ****
(date)
...etc.

if someone like yatta who has looked into the reaction fire code could participate or at least comment on what might be easy to do and what might be near impossible, i think it would be awsome.

[H-Hour]

If you do start a thread, please first cover those proposals that already exist in the wiki here and here. And get in touch with a dev on IRC or somewhere to learn the status of the RF project. If ideas are going to be useful, they do need to be coordinated.

[Gantoris]

Fair enough, i apologize if i seem abrasive because im genuinely impressed with the project but every time i play it in its current state i rage within 5 mins and feel like ranting somewhere . I just feel that some small tweeks to TU costs and Line of Sight ect from the 2.2 version would have been preferable than a complete new system but i guess thats a topic for elsewhere. Ill read through those links suggested by H-Hour and make a proposal of my own, which i know works and is balanced because its tried and tested elsewhere.

I still cant seem to get the fix to reset the system back to how it was in 2.2 to work however, no matter what i do my men VERY rarely RF yet the aliens have no problem at all which is contributing to the aforementioned rage problem so if one of you gents could help me with that id be grateful.

[homunculus]

If you do start a thread, please first cover those proposals that already exist in the wiki here and here.[...]

thanks for the quick input, and indeed i was not aware about those texts in the wiki.
i was thinking about discussing the way reaction fire could be triggered, which would be a subset of what is written in wiki.
having read those texts, it looks like a nice rf system, and i am getting doubts about starting the thread, because there might not be enough to discuss there.
could be a collection of various rf proposals maybe, but atm it seems people have already written about their concerns, and the thread might end up inactive.

especially i like this part in the wiki text:

Soldier A is on reaction fire, holding an assault rifle which is set to 3-round Burst for reaction fire. This costs 12 TUs per shot. Let's assume for the sake of the argument that the reaction time penalty is 3 TUs. Soldier B, who is soldier A's enemy, strays into the line of sight of soldier A. Soldier B now has 15 TUs to take action before soldier A takes a shot at him. Should soldier B use this time to dive for cover, Soldier A will not take the shot and no TUs will be taken from his next turn. However, should soldier B stay into soldier A's line of fire for too long, for example because soldier B himself is trying to fire or because another soldier of that player uses more than 15 TUs for actions, soldier A will shoot at soldier B and will pay 15 TUs for this. At that point, soldier B has another 15 TUs to move, providing he survived the attack and providing he has that many TUs remaining.

i think it is nice that the tu that counts is only the tu that starts in the line of sight of soldier A (moving from around the corner into los of soldier A does not count), and that the reaction fire is triggered before soldier B gets to perform the action with the tu cost that would exceed the reaction fire tu of soldier A.
as i understand it, if soldier B is doing something that is exactly the same tu as the reaction fire tu of soldier A, then soldier B gets to complete the action (would apply to both shooting and moving out of los by soldier B).

other than the proposal for special treatment of burst reaction fire, it seems like all that there is to say is:
the tu of a shot involves targeting (the tu before pulling the trigger) and the recoil (the tu after pulling the trigger).
with the current proposal, not only targeting but also the recoil happens before the shot.
now, if the first thing the soldier B does after appearing in the los of soldier A is shooting, then if targeting tu and recoil tu have the same proportions for each weapon, it would not matter.
but should soldier B be able to run around in los of soldier A for the whole time it takes for soldier A to both point the gun and recover from recoil?
i think the tu to trigger the rf should be less than the time to shoot (including the recoil).

[Gantoris]

I think the TUs of the victim shouldn't even be a factor, what im gonna propose is basically your soldier goes into RF mode and readies his gun looking down the sights. This action will tighten his field of vision considerably, more so for scoped weapons such as sniper rifles, and any enemy walking into his field of vision becomes a target for RF which should be reliable. If people still think RF setting of immediately is to powerful then perhaps have a % chance of it procing very low when the victim enters LoS but rising very fast for every action taken say 10% when he enters LoS 25% if he takes a second step still in LoS 50% for a 3rd step 80% for a 4th and 100% for the 5th. This would give someone walking around a corner and encountering an enemy a chance to quickly duck back behind cover before being cut to pieces, attempting to shoot at someone set up ready with RF while in there LoS should proc it however. I think this would make it possible to not get totally cut to shreds by folks with RF but also avoid the madness of an alien walking around a corner right in front of 4 men with RF shooting 2 of them then walking away without even being attacked.

The idea that you have to use the same amount of TUs as someone set up covering an area before he will react is insane and quite obviously doesn't work, in games like this RF is the primary method of killing your opposition as it should be. Soldiers don't run and gun in real life they move into cover and shoot while there friends move into cover then shoot and vice versa. What would also be nice but probably a lot more difficult in terms of coding is taking control of the RF when it triggers and picking your target (limited to those in your direct LoS) and shot type. Any problems with certain weapons being overpowered in RF can be easily solved with tweeks and balancing of the specific weapons and there TU cost.

[Larthalalyss]

Hello all, I'm brand new to the forums, so behold my first post.  Been playing UFO for a couple months now and I've been quite impressed, as well as overjoyed to find an Xcom-like game.  Thank you all of you programmers.  Actually a big thank you, I'd lend a hand, however, I can program about as well as a cement block can fly...

Now to the topic at hand, thanks for the above wiki posts to refresh me and get me up to date, again.  Honestly, I have no issues with the rf, real life it doesn't make complete sense, however as the Devs pointed out, game balance does not equal realism.  The only idea I could think of to contribute (and I apologize if this was said before) is that perhaps your individual weapon skill OR speed skill gave a minor discount to the reaction fire TU's needed.  No clue how hard that would be to program either, perhaps impossible.  If not, the full basis of the idea is someone who is fairly new/inexperienced to live combat and their weapon, will not react at the same speed as someone who's done it often.  Familiarity breeds speed.  Also to clarify, since it was vague on my part.  A person reacting would still upon reaction use the full TU's, however, it'd be the triggering TU's that get a discount.  For instance, someone using a machine gun and doing 5 round burst is 14 TU's.  Generally the alien needs to do about 14 TU's of action in line of sight for the reaction fire to occur.  However, perhaps this soldier has Very Good speed or heavy weapons, thusly it might be discounted to 12 TU's.  Alien does 12 TU's of action, machine gunner reacts and the full 14 TU's are subtracted as per normal. 

Hmmm, after typing this out, I also thought perhaps Mind would play a role.  Speed to react, but Mind for Target Recognition, that way you aren't filling a civilian full of lead.  Oops. 

As for me personally, I'm fine with how it is.  Different rules require different tactics, I can deal with that.  And it does make sense that small light weapon snapping off a quick shot is going to be faster than a big rifle trying to aim a shot (especially at extreme ranges).  Thanks all.

[homunculus]

basically what is being said here is that for, say, in the case of a 12 tu rf shot (according to the current wiki), the alien must run around in the line of sight of the soldier for 13..14 tu, which is like taking 4..7 steps.

if the alien shoots then it would look a bit better, because shooting would take more time units than moving.
but, if the alien's shot only took, say, 9 tu, then the alien would have 3 tu to jump back to cover without any risk of getting harmed by reaction fire even if your soldier could take the shot and live.
and this is because the soldier that was on reaction fire was waiting for the recoil tu before pulling the trigger.

i think it sounds like a suggestion that might not add too much work and would help with the situation:
every tu spent by soldier B, except for tu spent on shooting that involves recoil, counts double (or maybe triple) for triggering rf of soldier A.

no problem with 13 / 2 = 6.5 because we do not divide : )
if it counts double, the effect would be as if pulling the trigger was exactly halfway between the time units that the shot takes.
if triple, then 1 / 3 of the tu of the shot would count for targeting before pulling the trigger and rest would be for recoil.
the reason for that uniform 1 / 2 or uniform 1 / 3 would be that both aiming and recoil of a heavier weapon might take more tu (which is, of course, a simplification).

I think the TUs of the victim shouldn't even be a factor, what im gonna propose is basically your soldier goes into RF mode and readies his gun looking down the sights.[...]

that would certainly be playable, you could take your hardest shot from your most heavy cannon.
except that, afaik, the evil devs want to motivate players to use as low tu shots for reaction fire as possible.
actually, i think the sight range reduction would be nice.
or maybe some tu added for turning in the direction of the alien.

as for the interrupt system that would let you choose between, say, a pistol and a stun rod, i do not remember anyone being too much enthusiastic about it in the past.

[Gantoris]

I think you mistake me slightly, when i say reduces line of sight i don't mean the range is reduced but the angle. Imagine a cone going out from the point in front of the soldier which is his field of fire, he should only be able to target foes within this cone when he is reaction firing.

[homunculus]

I think you mistake me slightly, when i say reduces line of sight i don't mean the range is reduced but the angle. Imagine a cone going out from the point in front of the soldier which is his field of fire, he should only be able to target foes within this cone when he is reaction firing.

yeah, actually i understood it as angle, just messed up the words.
i must have sounded weird talking about sight range and turning towards the alien.

[Gantoris]

Did seem a tad odd

I strongly feel it should be impossible regardless of weapons involved to walk in front of someone who is set up with RF and take a shot without being shot first, the person on RF is ready the alien wandering around the corner is not. As it stands we have situations where 4 soldiers are knelt covering a door and an enemy can walk into the opening, take aim, fire and then get back under cover. No one will ever convince me this is possible even with a pistol vs a machine gun.

except that, afaik, the evil devs want to motivate players to use as low tu shots for reaction fire as possible.

I don't have a huge problem with this, being limited to snap shots or 5 round bursts on machine guns would be fine as long as you can at least rely on your RF troops to do something.

I know i must sound like a broken record but i do strongly urge people to look into other turn based/squad based games and you will see that reaction fire is not over powered and any problems are simply balance issues for individual weapons. In Jagged Alliance 2 for example when you soldier gets an interrupt he can perform any action at all that he still has action points to perform including throwing grenades, dropping prone or running away. The idea that this is over powered is kinda laughable when you consider it is one of the hardest games i have played, its also worth playing simply cause its a great game

[homunculus]

[...]interrupt[...]The idea that this is over powered is kinda laughable when you consider it is one of the hardest games i have played, its also worth playing simply cause its a great game

did anyone say it was overpowered?

btw, i am already starting to have a feeling that there is... an inconsistency... in this:

every tu spent by soldier B, except for tu spent on shooting that involves recoil, counts double (or maybe triple) for triggering rf of soldier A.

[DerKobold]

This whole topic bothered me enough to register

To be honest I was very upset too going from 2.2 to the 2.3dev build, about the way Reaction Fire changed (meaning basiscally not working at all).
But after a while I realized that my tactics really changed a lot due to the change in RF, that I use now many more different weapons than before and to be honest reaction fire starts to work again after your soldiers have enough experience after a few months game time.

It is not on the same level as before, but reliable enough then. IMO before 2.3dev I was using the basic "Advance under cover" approch basically all the time, which really got boring. Nowadays my tactics varies depending on the map type and available weapon types and are much more variable. Sometimes very catious, sometimes really rushing at the start of a level.

So, just my two cents about RF...

Kobold

[BTAxis]

Does anyone know what is actually wrong with the RF system? And I don't mean a description of what it doesn't do and what it should do. I'm asking about what is WRONG with the system itself.

[DerKobold]

I am not sure if there is anything WRONG in the meaning of faulty with it. In my opinion it is just that the soldiers are not good enough at the beginning to use it at all. This is partly true also for aliens, but as I said that changes as soldiers get more experienced. And nowaday I think it makes for more versatile gameplay, as I said above, so I kinda like it actually.

Kobold