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50 Hours of Game Design Notes

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Samuel:
Gents,

I know you're writing a game on a shoestring with volunteer work, so obviously take what I write with a grain of salt. I really do appreciate that you guys are working in a genera in which none of the big-name gaming houses are even thinking of working in, and which Bohemia Interactive as a small-time outfit got royally screwed by it's american publisher for writing in with Afterlight.

Having said all this, I now have some design suggestions to heap onto what is probably a huge list of things you'd live to implement. Maybe some of mine will rise to the top.

1) Mission pacing: in my 55 hours I completed on the order of 350 missions, and was pretty (yawn) bored with them by the end of it. It's not that there weren't enough maps or variations of maps, although I did start to get tired of them, it's that you guys put me through 350 missions in 9 game months, such that I was even bored playing brand-new maps that occurred late in the game, like the subway map. You might counter that I had the option to automission some of them. I didn't, actually, because in my version (3.2.1) the only mission autmission would ever win was a base defense mission. It would lose every other mission with no Phalanx casualties no matter what the kit or experience of my troops.

Honestly, tactical missions began feeling like punishment, such that I disarmed all my SAM sites and let the UFOs come straight to my bases so as to be able to autoresolve base attacks rather than fly fighter and scout crashsite missions all day.

My suggestion is that you need to readjust the pace of the tactical game versus the strategic game. Stale maps take on new flavor when you've got new tech to employ on those maps, but if your tech progresses too slowly, than you'll have to do 25 missions before the next new tech...

2) By the end of the 9th month, I had almost 30 recruits sitting around with no job. I would have loved to have been able to employ them in a "regional garrison" that did for ground missions what the SAM sites did for air combat: autoresolve them. Imagine: the garrison could autoresolve any crash missions within it's range ring. And, from time to time, the aliens might attack a garrison directly like they do bases, leading to a new mission variation.

3) If you want to keep the grand scale and onslaught feel of "alien invasion" with upwards of 1.5 missions a day (which is what I was hitting at the end) I do suggest you allow at least partial experience on troops for automission successes. It only makes sense: if the commander is risking an asset (soldiers) then it would be good to have some improvement in those assets with success.

4) Add some single-stroke commands. Consider a task which I had to do routinely: have a troop draw a medkit from a holster, apply it to his buddy, and put it away.  This required click (open inventory) -click drag (move from holster to left hand) -click (close inventory) -click click or xx (cycle off reaction fire) -click click (open device menu and select heal) - click (select heal target) -click (open inventory) - click drag (return medikit to holster) -click (close inventory). Count them all up and that's 13 mouse commands to do one thing that needs doing over and over. Ouch!

Diablo, for example, allows the player to switch from one equipment set to another with a single stroke. Implementing something like that (but which deducted the TU's required, obviously) would help reduce all the crazy-making clicking your legacy interface from UFO:ET or XCOM creates.

5) Create some way for the player to choose which forces in a bases will be employed first to respond to a base attack. For example, my firebird troops normally carry laser weapons as their primaries, great for ranged fights, but less than ideal for base defence. But when I started keeping close combat and heavy troops in the base for a dedicated base defence, my firebird troops would be employed mostly anyway when the base was attacked. I wish I could have designated those 8 cc and heavy troops "garrison defence" so that my firebirds could have stayed well rested and ready.

6) Not sure of the role of the plasma blade. Seems to just be a way to create player casualties. I never encountered an enemy armored vehicle or drone, so I wound up just using them for my CC guys as an "oh shit" weapon. But that "throw" function? I've handled shape charges IRL as a military engineer and trust me, you aren't going to "throw" a bell shaped cone and have it stick to anything, much less even land cone-face on target.

7) A way to show rank on the character screen during battle. This will allow the commander to choose from amongst the troops who to risk (or who to give the skill-improving gimme-shot).

8) Another click-reducer: eliminate the movement interrupt for enemy spotting. For example, if I spend 25 seconds working out where I want my troop to move to, then click that square, I don't want to have to re-work the movement order 3x times if he spots 3x enemies on the move. Something like a "continue order" option would be great rather than hunting out the same square on the ground and clicking it 3 more times.

9) Consider some "intermediate techs". As it stands your tech tree is kind of bare, and the only way to improve your weapons is to jump to a whole new tech. A way to give the player to have something to research, as well as to keep different weapons types relevant as the game progresses, would be to have intermediate techs. Here are some suggestions:

"Improved DF cartridge." Upgrades the DF cartridge to hold more energy, allowing more laser shots. Or, if you wanted to avoid having to track multiple DF cartridge types, you could do "efficient lasers" that keeps the DF cartridge the same but allows more shots. Or you could even combine the two.

"Improved EM weapons" could increase the range or rate of fire of an EM rifle or decrease the cost of the magazines.

"Blast ammo": blast slugs for MG.

"Napalm shot": fire slugs for shotguns.

10) Consider battlescape saves. I realize this risks having some players turn the game into a save-reload fest. But while you're in beta-testing, allowing battlescape saves would give you some distinct advantages. It would allow players to reproduce bugs more efficiently, rather than forcing them to play and attempt to crash another mission to reproduce the bug. It would keep them from getting as frustrated by the bugs, so they didn't quit before they supplied you with good data and go back to the world and give you bad press.

I don't want all this to sound like criticism but suggestions. I know you have full plates for a non-profit project so all this is pie-in-the-sky. My last computer programming experience was intermediate pascal in college (1988) so I'm probably not going to be able to program to back up your project. But I'm available to do plot and research proposal-completion text-writing.

Lew Yard:

--- Quote from: Samuel on August 11, 2010, 05:10:08 pm ---
1) Mission pacing:
--- End quote ---

Agreed that mission frequency is extremely high compared to rest of strategic game progress.


--- Quote ---3) If you want to keep the grand scale and onslaught feel of "alien invasion" with upwards of 1.5 missions a day (which is what I was hitting at the end) I do suggest you allow at least partial experience on troops for automission successes. It only makes sense: if the commander is risking an asset (soldiers) then it would be good to have some improvement in those assets with success.

--- End quote ---

Either that, or the game should probably explicitly warn that there will be no experience gained or recovered equipment.  This might be important for a new player to know, since early on when auto-resolve might actually result in a victory, by doing so he'll be depriving himself of improved skills and loot that he may need for research et al.
 

--- Quote ---5) Create some way for the player to choose which forces in a bases will be employed first to respond to a base attack. For example, my firebird troops normally carry laser weapons as their primaries, great for ranged fights, but less than ideal for base defence. But when I started keeping close combat and heavy troops in the base for a dedicated base defence, my firebird troops would be employed mostly anyway when the base was attacked. I wish I could have designated those 8 cc and heavy troops "garrison defence" so that my firebirds could have stayed well rested and ready.
--- End quote ---

Could be partly resolved w/ equipment templates, because base defense does bring up the equipment selection screen.  e.g. define a labeled set of gear with a helpful title like "close-assault" or whatever.  That said, selecting troops would still be useful for skills... although skill matters a lot less with weapons like the flamethrower, since it *only* affects accuracy (not reloading speed, not speed of target acquisition, not speed of firing, not damage done per hit...) and at flamethrower ranges you're likely to hit even if quite unskilled.



--- Quote ---6) Not sure of the role of the plasma blade. Seems to just be a way to create player casualties. I never encountered an enemy armored vehicle or drone, so I wound up just using them for my CC guys as an "oh shit" weapon. But that "throw" function? I've handled shape charges IRL as a military engineer and trust me, you aren't going to "throw" a bell shaped cone and have it stick to anything, much less even land cone-face on target.
--- End quote ---

Well, it's been tried (ribbon-stabilized anti-tank grenades, IIRC) but as a desperation tactic when not having better gear.  PHALANX does.

My inclination would be that how the plasma blade would be used by the human side would be by using a modified shotgun shell as a sabot or the like.   Production would take a small bit of time but one plasma blade each.  Greater range and accuracy than throwing.  Use in a mini-shotgun for an extremely nasty, compact close-assault weapon; sure, reloads would be scarce, but you would be using this to e.g. back up a FT, GL or both.


--- Quote ---7) A way to show rank on the character screen during battle. This will allow the commander to choose from amongst the troops who to risk (or who to give the skill-improving gimme-shot).
--- End quote ---

FWIW, rank has minimal impact AFAICT.  The weapon skills + accuracy matter much more.


--- Quote ---9) Consider some "intermediate techs". As it stands your tech tree is kind of bare, and the only way to improve your weapons is to jump to a whole new tech. A way to give the player to have something to research, as well as to keep different weapons types relevant as the game progresses, would be to have intermediate techs.

--- End quote ---

My impression is that devs believe that there are already plenty and possibly too many human weapons available already.


--- Quote ---10) Consider battlescape saves. I realize this risks having some players turn the game into a save-reload fest. But while you're in beta-testing, allowing battlescape saves would give you some distinct advantages. It would allow players to reproduce bugs more efficiently, rather than forcing them to play and attempt to crash another mission to reproduce the bug. It would keep them from getting as frustrated by the bugs, so they didn't quit before they supplied you with good data and go back to the world and give you bad press.
--- End quote ---

Frequently requested, always rejected (see 'save-reload fest' plus another area of compatibility/maintenance headaches).

Sarin:

--- Quote from: Lew Yard on August 11, 2010, 09:26:18 pm ---My inclination would be that how the plasma blade would be used by the human side would be by using a modified shotgun shell as a sabot or the like.   Production would take a small bit of time but one plasma blade each.  Greater range and accuracy than throwing.  Use in a mini-shotgun for an extremely nasty, compact close-assault weapon; sure, reloads would be scarce, but you would be using this to e.g. back up a FT, GL or both.

--- End quote ---

Interesting idea...I'd probably go for something like M-72 L.A.W. shooting hollow-point rockets with plasma blade inside instead of warhead...trigger in the tip of rocket would activate the blade inside, and boom...

I wouldn't think that reload would be that scarse...in my game, I have already captured over thousand of plasma blades...

ZombieTickler:
Plenty of good suggestion points Samuel and I hope they consider them.

If UFO:AI could improve over the XCOM games in regards to battle screen scrolling you would get heavey praise from me. Lets face it, when ever we play games like this its usually for 2+ hours if we can manage it. In that time your mouse hand can get pretty tired and even out right sore. Less clicking would be phenominal. If we could have some way of scrolling the battle screen with keys as oppsed to having to drag the mouse it would make the entire game less torture on my hand. I'm a massage therapist so I'm prone to carpal tunnel in my profession. I tend to find myself off for 2-3 days hoping to give my hands a break, but you guys had to go and make an amazing game inspired by another amazing game I still enjoy playing. (Thanks by the way)

OmniscientQ:

--- Quote from: ZombieTickler on April 22, 2011, 12:36:36 am ---If UFO:AI could improve over the XCOM games in regards to battle screen scrolling you would get heavey praise from me. Lets face it, when ever we play games like this its usually for 2+ hours if we can manage it. In that time your mouse hand can get pretty tired and even out right sore. Less clicking would be phenominal. If we could have some way of scrolling the battle screen with keys as oppsed to having to drag the mouse it would make the entire game less torture on my hand. I'm a massage therapist so I'm prone to carpal tunnel in my profession. I tend to find myself off for 2-3 days hoping to give my hands a break, but you guys had to go and make an amazing game inspired by another amazing game I still enjoy playing. (Thanks by the way)

--- End quote ---

That feature already exists in the game. You can use the WASD controls to pan the battlescape, while the arrow keys are tied to elevation and rotation.

I'll agree wholeheartedly on the automission request, though. I'm not expecting to be able to run an entire campaign using automission (though I did try that in X-COM with xcomutil. Let me tell ya, that was a MUCH harder game.) But after I've run a few dozen scout and fighter crash recoveries within the first two months of game time, I'd like the option of handing such "routine" jobs off to someone else. There's a certain point where the challenge of the game isn't to beat the aliens, but to summon enough willpower to actually launch yet another recovery mission instead of fast-forwarding to the next event.

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