Again on reaction fire

[Xeinar]

I am a veteran with X-Com (I bought it for the Amiga version, the terror missions took ages to load...), through Apocalypse and the latter Aftermath and so on. I find UFO AI a great game, really devoted to the spirit of the original game and the most amazing thing is that it is developed by volunteers and with a freeware license - I'd like to help in translating it in italian once I'll have completed my first campaign.

So far, the only thing I really don't like is the way reaction fire is implemented. I've read and understood how it works in 2.5, but to me it is a non-sense. Let me explain.

Theoretically, when saving TUs for RF, it means that I'm using only part of the actions I could take in my turn for using them later. So my soldier is basically on guard, scanning for movements in front of him; this means that he should be ready to fire.
In the way it is implemented now, instead, my enemies can perform many actions, and I could not be able to fire at them: for example coming out from a door (no TU as they appear), take another step in my direction (2TU), then back (2TU)and then again in the room(2TU). Even with a simple snap shot I couldn't have the chance to fire at them; so, in the end, I'm penalized for not having used all my TUs in the previous turn (I could have thrown a grenade instead, to maintain the same example).
Having a sniper in reaction fire mode is useless: it is almost impossible to see an alien fired with an aimed shot, and the snap shot is unaccurate even at close range.

In X-Com (I know, it is a different game) the soldiers shooted as soon as an alien walked in front of their LOS; as far as they reserved TUs in the previous turn for the selected shot, they were able to fire immediately, and I feel it is the right way to use the RF factor. The only exception I can understand is if the target is "quicker" and has an extra movement allowed (I see you while turning to your direction, I jump in cover). This could be handled by the soldiers/aliens stats.

Another thing I'm not able to understand: how is it possible that the aliens can RF even if I'm not in their LOS? I could understand they shoot me after I've fired and they survive... but before? When shooting at their backs? Is it a matter of telepathy? 

Ok, this is my two cents. I hope this could give ideas and a different look at the aspect! 

[H-Hour]

The problem with the method you describe is that it promotes excessively defensive tactics. By giving the inert unit a shoot-first advantage in all encounters, you increase the incentive to camp your soldiers in a defensive place and you decrease the incentive to make contact with the enemy.

In the original X-Com, this was mediated by the fact that often aliens could see you and shoot at you from farther away. It was up to the player to make contact or he risked being picked off from the shadows. We don't have a visibility-at-distance mechanism in the game or an AI that could effectively take advantage of this.

Because we use a straight TU system, managing your low-TU firemodes is crucial to effective use of reaction fire. You may want to look into pistols or other low-TU weaponry. (Side note: this was supposed to be one of the roles the Shotguns play, but I can see now that the 10 TU firemode undermines this and so I will probably reduce it).

Regarding the use of Snipers for effective reaction fire: there is a very big danger of making snipers overpowered if they can quickly execute an aimed shot in reaction fire. This is exacerbated by the fact that many of our maps are quite open and the AI is not smart enough to hide indoors in most cases. I understand the broader point you are making -- that in real life a sniper would zero-in on an area and then be able to shoot fairly quickly. But I'm not convinced we have the mechanisms to balance this properly at the moment.

I hope eventually we will have some kind of "focus" mechanism that might, for instance, allow me to spend extra TUs to designate a small area of "focus". The soldier would then gain an advantage in response time when sighting an enemy in that area, but may lose the ability to see or respond to targets quickly outside of that area. Such mechanisms might allow a properly balanced implementation similar to what you are seeking.

I also hope that, eventually, we will have some stat that effects reaction fire, so that soldiers could become quicker at it over time. In the past we have had problems with reaction fire being very inconsistent, and this leading to a lot of confusion for players. This is why 2.5 features the very straightforward reaction fire mechanism it does -- and trust me, it's a lot better than what was there before (thanks to aDuke).

[Triaxx2]

As above, pistols are the way to go, averaging 5 TU for a Snap Shot for the base human pistol, 4 for the Alien Pistol which means they'll be getting reaction shots every turn without fail until you have Plasma Pistols. Of course then they move up to Plasma Rifles which mitigates the reaction fire.

Second, mostly the problem is the wide difference in the amount of TUs necessary for movement versus the TU's necessary to shoot. When aliens gain the ability to crouch, that appear, step back and fade would provoke a reaction shot. 9 TU versus 6 TU.

Speed should be the governing ability for reaction fire. Considering an average 20 speed, it means that the enemy has to spend the 8 TU for a snap shot before the soldier can shoot. If you have each point of speed above that and each below modify the Reaction fire, a soldier with 18 speed would have to have them spend 10 TU for the same snap shot, while one with 22 could fire after only 6. Just as an example. This also means that more experienced soldiers would have a better chance of getting off a reaction shot, making them more able to survive, while at the same time making it more useful to ensure those soldiers survive earlier.

[nanomage]

First of all, congratulations with implementing a great and reasonable (imo at least) system of reaction fire. I like it very much and if I may I'd like to suggest a possible improvement to it.

I disagree that raw speed should determine the proficiency in reaction fire. In my opinion, total available TU's should be used instead, taking encumbrance modifiers into account. Using ratios of used TU's to total TU's to determine reaction fire chance would be more precise, I think.
So, if an unencumbered soldier with 45 TU's available is standing on guard with a shotgun snap shot of 10 TU's, a moderately encumbered alien (with 30TU's, let's suppose) should spend 7 TU's in soldier's arc of sight to trigger reaction fire (7/30 > 10/45, BAMM). I definitely agree with game's point that reaction should preceed the last triggering action. Maybe speed can be used to adjust this value a bit, but I think that would be unreasonable: after all, we've already taken speed into account when we calculated units' total TU's, haven't we?

This would be in accord with intuitive feeling that faster units should generally react, turn and aim and pull their triggers more quickly then slow ones.
Also this would make unarmoured soldiers a more viable option (although the latter might be a drawback instead)

[H-Hour]

This is not a bad idea, but I think it will lead to the previous problem we faced where it was very unpredictable, and this led to confusion and frustration. It also faces a key problem in that aliens do not have the same TUs as soldiers. Many have a lot more TUs. So the effect of a system like this would be to make reaction fire more rare, which isn't really the intention. Our TU-to-TU numbers are not really set up to balance this, and giving some aliens a lot more TUs is part of their "identity".

[nanomage]

I see, what I suggest would really mean that ultra-fast aliens would never get reaction shot at under the current system. While sounding realistic (they're ultra-fast after all), this certainly does seem to ruin game experience.
Well then, looks like we have to wait for improved system with soldiers focusing on specific areas like H-hour mentioned in the second post.

[krilain]

I agree the things I read here for the most part. My question about the reaction fire is, is it not a translation of the more classical "action-order" where the faster player using the faster weapon play more often ? In my opinion turning on the RF in UFOAI is just a way to ensure you wont loose your turn facing an advantaged ennemy for the action "rank" or "order". It is how I feel it.

The problem with the method you describe is that it promotes excessively defensive tactics. By giving the inert unit a shoot-first advantage in all encounters, you increase the incentive to camp your soldiers in a defensive place and you decrease the incentive to make contact with the enemy.

I personnally take very seriously the need to save civilians, and in most of cases I move a lot to discover the map just due to the fear of leaving a civilian undefended. I think this is the good way to unpromote the "sitting duck" defensive tactics.
For me, the most defensive unit (due to his advantage when well positioned and crouched), the sniper, is effectively bad at reaction fire and it is not a bad thing. A sniper should see the ennemies from far in the normal cases. When he doesnt meet one facing him, he should (in my opinion) use his TUs to look around. There, if I can add a last thing, there could be an improvement by introduction of an "horizon tour" action to watch around in a circle in one click (which should cost some appropriate TUs). But it is another story... 

[Wolls]

I disagree that raw speed should determine the proficiency in reaction fire. Maybe speed can be used to adjust this value a bit, but I think that would be unreasonable: after all, we've already taken speed into account when we calculated units' total TU's, haven't we?

I would say the Weights system has really boosted the utility of the Strength stat, pretty much nixing and surpassing what small effect the Speed stat had, at least as far as your speed effects TU.  Changing your weight encumbrance(the 3 weight classes) has a much more drastic effect....
So with Speed, Up to 91 points per mission :             Speed Skill and TU by encumbrance modifier:

1000exp = Up 3.98   @91-->11 Missions       //Skill 15-->42 @ 1   -->29.4 @0.7   -->16.8 @0.4
2000exp = Up 6.03   @91-->22 Missions       //Skill 20-->43          -->30.1            -->17.2
4645exp = Up 10      @91-->52 Missions       //Skill 25-->44          -->30.8            -->17.6
   Half @45.5-->103 Missions                       //Skill 30-->45           -->31.5            -->18
                                                                  //Skill 35-->46           -->32.2            -->18.4   
 Note: I looked in my stats.txt, with the last 52 instances(little over 6 missions) I saw an average of @41.4exp-->113 Missions

So your Speed will at most go up 10 levels, which means your actual TU will only go up by 2 while light, 1.4 while encumbered and 0.8 under penalty from your starting Speed Stat. Joi?? 
I'd like to see Speed to have a greater effect on gameplay then that.  Also my own 2 cents, in most games crouching is considered stealthy, walking somewhat, and shooting announces here I am.. here its like there's a 4 piece band following me around
That said, as is, I kinda like the simplicity of reaction fire.

[Telok]

There’s more to RF than just TUs.

Range is an issue. I've never seen a RF shot anywhere near the full sniper rifle range even with skilled soldiers getting a 35%+ chance to hit. Flamers don't seem to RF out to maximum either, two tiles of movement and two plasma pistol shots ought to trigger a candlelight RF but I've lost soldiers to that.

Line of Sight affects RF. Breaking full LoS resets the RF/TU count and I'm not sure the RF code checks the full sight distance or just a fixed range out from your soldiers. Playing on the Dam map I have noticed that I can provoke RF from aliens (plasma blaster, not crouched) on the other side of the dam, but my snipers will not RF back at them during the alien turn even when they move and fire two bursts.

[nanomage]

I have one more suggestion to improve RF system, or rather make it more manageable. It may be somewhat offtopic here, but I don't think it's worth it to start a new thread for such a small thing.

For now, RF is only triggered if your soldier is explicitly set to use reserved TU's for it. However, there's no other use of leftover TU's after you have completed your actions. I'd suggest that any leftover TU's at the end of turn are automatically useable for reaction fire (with the cheapest possible firemode, if none is specified).

It seems to me this suggestion takes away some unnecessary micromanagement burden from the player.

[Xeinar]

To H-Hour: I understand your point; while I share Krilain's attitude of actively check any single square of the map, for someone the camping could be an option. Moreover I don't have historic knowledge of the development of the game so I could easily miss something. Still, even if the dev team wants to keep this method, I believe that something should be tuned.

I see RF as an active way to fight, not as a last resort. At the moment RF with a pistol is useless or with a snapshot (rifle), as the damage delivered is so low that it is way better to use the remaining TUs to find an adequate cover. A possible compromise could be to set a standard TUs amount needed to activate the RF, regardless of the kind of RF you reserved (aimed, snap, 3-shots and so on). To avoid camping, you could set a maximum number of rounds to complete the map, or as the very old Spellcross game when camping for too long your unit could lose morale (like frightened of being in the same place). So if you reserve too many TUs each turn you lose morale and end in panicking (just an idea that bounced in my mind right in this moment).

I also share the concerns from Telok, as I've experienced both issues/behaviours. The reset of TUs count together with the current RF system is a real killer of my unit (and believe me, I LOVE to finally risk to have all my team wiped out every mission - it is so challenging!!!).

[H-Hour]

Telok: I have seen RF go out nearly 2/3 of the base map, so I know it can activate over large distances. And it was with a very low-probability-to-hit firemode, so RF must not take these things into account. I've also seen RF from my soldiers across the dam map.

Nanomage: It's a difficult trade-off. In some cases I may want to tell my soldier NOT to RF -- if I know the aliens will be moving out of range and don't want to waste ammo, or if there are civilians around and I don't want to go spraying machine gun fire. We tend to err on the side of extra control, but it is a lot of micromanagement.

Xeinar: I don't agree that RF with a pistol or rifle is useless. In these cases you need to team up your soldiers. Just last night I used two soldiers with a shotgun and an assault rifle to close down a corridor on ferry. It took both of them to knock down the shevaars that appeared. Regarding your other ideas, I think making all RF TU costs the same would really undermine other core mechanics regarding the different firemodes. Setting max rounds or losing morale for not moving would alter the game in ways that aren't justified for this feature (there is already a very large upper limit to rounds passed with no aliens seen).

RF is always going to be a very contentious mechanism because it deals most frequently with those situations where your soldiers are dying. This is a classic case of gamer vs. game. Gamers want to win, they want their soldiers to be better, stronger, faster -- able to cope with every situation. But the game has to set out challenges. Managing RF is a major part of that challenge. RF requires careful management to improve your odds and abilities, but if it becomes too powerful it will crowd out other mechanisms. Your soldiers will not be able to overcome every scenario.

[Xeinar]

Thanks H-Hour, understood: better things as they are rather risking to mess up the things. I love that frightening feeling of losing my soldiers, so let's stay in this way (and yes, I agree on your answers to me: you have a wider and internal view on the game, so you know its mechanics and possible drwabacks).

[krilain]

I have one more suggestion to improve RF system, or rather make it more manageable. It may be somewhat offtopic here, but I don't think it's worth it to start a new thread for such a small thing.

For now, RF is only triggered if your soldier is explicitly set to use reserved TU's for it. However, there's no other use of leftover TU's after you have completed your actions. I'd suggest that any leftover TU's at the end of turn are automatically useable for reaction fire (with the cheapest possible firemode, if none is specified).

It seems to me this suggestion takes away some unnecessary micromanagement burden from the player.

Nanomage: It's a difficult trade-off. In some cases I may want to tell my soldier NOT to RF -- if I know the aliens will be moving out of range and don't want to waste ammo, or if there are civilians around and I don't want to go spraying machine gun fire. We tend to err on the side of extra control, but it is a lot of micromanagement.

As many of us on this topic, it is not I want absolutely a change on how reaction fire works, but just any slight change which could give UFOAI RF more sense, and make it more captivating. And on this way, I tend to agree the first quote due to nanomage. The answer from H-Hour is also fully reasonnable, but in principle shouldn't we look always on how to give a feature the more amount of fun or "colour" when possible at low price? (I insist on at low price of course)

I'll try to expose exactly why the nanomage idea allows a great gain with nearly no change. It will take just a few words and it's just for illustration of why I hear by "colouring the game".

Currently the RF is a choice which contains an arbitrary fixed efficience. The things can be arbitrarily fixed, that's a developer setting, and a part of a large set of all strings attached settings. It's ok.

Whatever, the player would comply easier in general with a setting if he is given a reason for this, a reason to believe on it directly or not. Here comes the advantage of the nanomage's idea, because I see a good reason for a soldier to use automatically his TUs reserve for saving his own life, or for he meets a moment of panic. This gives the colourizing I was talking about, an human behaviour brings something to the game. Moreover it explains some arbitrary choices by linking it to the soldier's mood (of course arbitrary in real world).

Last thing interesting also, is the fact that the different soldiers we recruit could have different single internal moods. For instance, some could be more nervous at auto-RF, and others more phlegmatic. This property could appear onto the face designed by the game-artists, or could be linked to a stat (mind?), or just be correlated to their rank (a newbie should panic easily).... Moreover a nervous soldier should never be promoted as a sniper, but could be the perfect fireman. I may be wrong, but I find that funny.

Ok, I hope I didn't disturb too much this excellent thread. I just intended to share what is a philosophy of giving easily an added value to a feature, discussed or not.

[H-Hour]

I understand the philosophy and the appeal behind what you're talking about krilain. The idea that inside the game is a living, breathing world that is beyond my control is an intriguing premise and central to a lot of claims made in open-world games like Eve or other MMORPGs. But -- and I am only speaking for myself here -- I think the premise is lot more appealing than the result. And that is especially true in a strategy game like this one.

Every aspect of our game is premised on the ability to control all the details. That is not realistic, of course, but that is also what makes it fun. You can lose control of soldiers if they freak out on the battlefield, but this is when things go terribly, terribly wrong. It's a punishment, not a regular part of the game.

I know that some players desire aleatory mechanisms which mimic the way in which objects in real life can never really be controlled or anticipated. I can only say that I'm not one of them.

Ok, I hope I didn't disturb too much this excellent thread.

No problem. I appreciate threads like this where people recognize there are trade-offs involved with new features and understand we're not necessarily going to agree on every mechanic in the game. It's much better than the threads which begin: "This game is totally ruined because of [insert minor feature]."