General > Discussion

New user, with a suggestion you've heard 100 times, and some feedback

<< < (3/7) > >>

Noordung:

--- Quote from: anonymissimus on October 28, 2015, 03:50:14 pm ---This so-called taboo is garbage out of a bad reason and an easy excuse for not needing to implement and maintain battlescape saves. Something that's true for all parts of the code however. People will always find a way to cheat if they desire to anyway. In those roguelikes mentioned you just have to copy the savefile while the game is shut down and copy back after quit. In UFO:AI you can cheat in other ways already, such as saving immediately before playing a battle and retrying if it doesn't go well enough. Just in case the "retry" feature gets removed.
Moreover, the lack of battlescape saves make reproduction of battlescape bugs a nightmare and thus leads to instability.
Lastly, whenever maps are redone, they tend to grow larger than they had been. Thus the time needed to play maps has increased over the years. At some point UFO:AI becomes unplayable without battlescape saves. This was not thought of at the time this so-called taboo was instantiated I presume.

--- End quote ---
actually there was very big map with a house and all walls around house in 2.4 never saw that map after 2.4 only part where there is house with basement and helipad exists. that map got smaller, but it still takes a lot of time. while i would actually like to see battlescape save also beter AI would solve long battlescape play. AI that would find you better like they do now.

Rodmar:
As for v2.5, this map comes in several version indeed.
The largest one is still used, when it's an harvest mission (or whatever?), with a Harvester landed on the heliport, and the Phalanx transporter on the tennis court.
As the harvest missions become scarce in the late game (why, by the way?), it's no wonder you don't see this map very often after a while.

On this map, and its little sisters, you end in knowing where the alien spawns so that it gets a little quicker, because they don't open certain doors.

Back to the topic of time consuming maps, I think that the alien base or the base defence are exceptions, and well, a few long maps won't hurt. In the first half of 2085, the most long maps are now those with a landed corrupter. I believe I rather shot them down into the sea when I have powerful enough interceptors...

ShipIt:
Those problems are well known. However, saving the battlescape will not solve them, it would be more of a workaround. The goal should be to keep the time required to play a mission within a reasonable range.

In 2.6-dev, alienbase, basedefence and mansion maps are already using mission targets to give players a shortcut in those scenarios. I was thinking about doing the same for mission with large UFOs, not sure about that, though.
Next step would be to find a way to adapt the map size to the number of actors involved, which unfortunately is a major task.



--- Quote from: anonymissimus on October 28, 2015, 11:58:25 pm ---Geever has his own opinion.
None can ignore my points about battlescape bug reproduction and increasing map sizes however.
I wonder how much devs play the game still ? Naturally, developing a game time-conflicts with playing it - perhaps there was more interest in battlescape saves if devs had more time for playing ? When did you last play one of those 5+ hours attacks on an alien base ?

--- End quote ---

I am sure geever spent more time for this game than you did. So I doubt you are in a good position to question him.
I am for sure would be able to ignore whatever you write if I just wanted to.
I do. Yes, it naturally does, as one can do only one of those things at a time - doubt about the latter. Never - maybe I just don´t care enough about my squaddies.

Rodmar:
It seems so.

Is it the map and the AI, or is it the way we play?

I mean that if I'd play more aggressively like the nowadays military, or as is depicted in the Hive Mind novel, the missions would be a lot shorter (12  soldiers squad): take cover, run, ... and if no cover, then crouch; no smoke/anti-alien gas/fire grenades to secure your path and your back. I realize that I tend to wait for all these effects to end, before I can launch another ones and jump to the next secure location. I wait for the aliens to wander in the open and face 4 guns, or I move blindly into the smoke, and send forth a scout at the beginning of each turn to say pick-a-boo and unleash hell on the poor aliens who asked themselves where I was gone. I play very defensively because I don't want ANY loss and sometimes the aliens do use their full TUs. I would be ashamed to post on YT a video of a storming of a corrupter: it can take one hour or more if there are 5-6 aliens inside!

Reflecting on my way of playing, and comparing to other game types, it's quite the same: I'm a defensive, cautious, turtle gamer. Back to Starcraft 1, I would take hours to fully build base, secure expansions, and finally move toward the enemy base. I won every time (against the AI). Not because of my tactical skill, just by exhaustion, the AI having no more resources left and having spent all of them on suicide, non coordinated attacks... Btw, it's why I shun Warcraft and the like: they were designed for aggressive players, who don't care about the death of their units (more are coming behind).

damiac:
Yes, more consistent map size and better alien AI would help with long mission times, but still, battlescape saves are always going to be a helpful thing, you never know when you'll be interrupted to deal with real life, or maybe you have 20-30 mins to play sometimes, but can't commit to a full battle. 

I know this is a big task, but it would be nice if the game didn't select big maps, like the military base, or the military bunker, when there's only 3-4 aliens to fight.  They're easy scenarios, but it's not a fight to overcome the aliens, it's a fight to continue playing safely for 2 hours instead of just having my guys run around like idiots so I can just finish the mission already.  I have lost quite a few soldiers that way, and it's unfortunate that the most optimal way to play is so tedious on those sparsely populated maps.

Still, from what I understand the AI is much better than it was in 2.4, so obviously you guys are making improvements. 

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page