UFO:Alien Invasion
General => Discussion => Topic started by: Gantoris on June 06, 2010, 01:04:00 am
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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 (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?
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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.
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:
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.
Welcome to the forums!
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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.
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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'.
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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'.
Here was one try. (http://ufoai.ninex.info/forum/index.php?topic=4564.0) Too bad he seems to have gone missing, his RF idea was great IMO.
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.
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.
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.
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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It's not only that the aliens can do that (walk, kill, go to safety). Assumed the RF has a "random" component this could happen (but it should only in rare cases).
Much more annoying IMO is the behaviour of "locking" a target.
The turn-based gameplay should somewhat simulate the action game. So it is logical that you can move a unit freely until it gets into LOS of an enemy - at this point RF comes into play. The enemy now gets a chance to fire at the spotted moved unit.
After this interruption you need to decide if you try to get your unit out of sight, fire back or whatever. Every move THIS unit makes, will of course trigger the enemy's RF.
In general, you will try not to move but get another unit into firing position to cover the 1st one. The current system does not allow to do so, because EVERY movement of ANY of your soldiers will trigger alien RF on the poor looser. There's NO tactical decision you can do, the only chance you have is ending your turn and pray for the dumbness of the aliens - the 1st unit is dead meat otherwise.
This is highly annoying, irrealistic and in no way a transfer of real action into turn based strategy, just ridiculous.
2.2.1 still did it right, but somewhen in the path of 2.2.3 this has been changed unfortunately. Since then I was playing once a month instead of 4 times a week, and just to see the great efforts in graphics because battling is no more fun to me.
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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.
I agree and the system in the original XCOM games, Jagged Alliance Series, Fallout Series, Chaos Gate, Silent Storm and countless other truly great squad based combat games works just fine and does not need to be replaced by an overly complex system that doesn't work at all.
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.
This is debatable but ive always seen reaction fire as cover fire translated into a turn based system as it serves the same purpose, you advance a few men while others sit with reaction fire on to cover that advance.
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.
Thats a shame but not entirely unexpected, JA is an unappreciated gem and if you like the XCOM games you owe it to yourself to give it a go. To me it is the finest example of a squad based combat game there is and like UFO blends a non linear over map with a squad based combat system to make something truly special. And i don't literally mean just rip it of completely but just use something that works from a game that does this kinda thing so so well, to quote my father "If its not broken don't fix it".
t's not only that the aliens can do that (walk, kill, go to safety). Assumed the RF has a "random" component this could happen (but it should only in rare cases).
Much more annoying IMO is the behaviour of "locking" a target.
The turn-based gameplay should somewhat simulate the action game. So it is logical that you can move a unit freely until it gets into LOS of an enemy - at this point RF comes into play. The enemy now gets a chance to fire at the spotted moved unit.
I agree 100% and in most of the games mentioned in my post this is exactly how it works, a unit using RF should only be able to shoot at what is in his direct line of fire.
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If you wish to enable RF the way it was in 2.2.1, see here:
http://ufoai.ninex.info/forum/index.php?topic=4879.0
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If you wish to enable RF the way it was in 2.2.1, see here:
http://ufoai.ninex.info/forum/index.php?topic=4879.0
You might have noticed in my original post i mentioned that, said i couldn't get it to work and asked for help :(
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Sorry about that.
Relevant questions:
What operating system? Windows XP/Vista/7 or something else?
Do you know where the profile directory for your game is? The profile directory is very different from the base directory in the install path. In XP the path looks like this:
C:\Documents and Settings\[USERNAME]\Application Data\UFOAI\2.4-dev\base
That's the place you need to put the autoexec.cfg and you also need to have hidden files and folders viewing enabled in the Windows Folder options. I don't know the profile path for Vista or 7, because I haven't ever played UFO:AI with those operating systems.
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Ahhh i put it in the C:\Program Files part so hopefully this will work thanks a bunch.
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Here was one try. (http://ufoai.ninex.info/forum/index.php?topic=4564.0) Too bad he seems to have gone missing, his RF idea was great IMO.[...]
oh, a lot has been going on in the coding forum.
i am not a c coder myself, so i do not read there.
however, had he posted something in the design forum or even here, i would probably have noticed it, and then i would certainly have had comments.
don't know if he would have liked them, of if those things could be done that way, but maybe it would have helped with some issues.
for example, there was a problem that once a rf target is aquired, etc...
i would certainly have asked if it could be done so that only shooting at the same target gets the burst tu bonus, but shooting at another target would need more tu spent by the opponent before new opponent becomes the new target.
if he is gone, then whatever, but in the end i think it might have been possible to design a multiple shot (multiple burst) reaction fire.
the statements about breaking game balance seemed funny, though, considering that the official claim is that weapons are not balanced atm.
I agree and the system in the original XCOM games, Jagged Alliance Series, Fallout Series, Chaos Gate, Silent Storm and countless other truly great squad based combat games works just fine and does not need to be replaced by an overly complex system that doesn't work at all.[...]
if that was really intended as a reply to me, i did not say that reaction fire system should necessarily be simple.
simple and intuitive as experienced by the player does not necessarily mean simple.
as far as my non-dev opinion goes, an ideal rf system should be simple and intuitive for the player, and consistent, and enable to do the things that the player expects from the game.
and i guess it would be more like a design problem at first, and i am afraid it would take a long discussion to arrive at something workable.
i would not be against simplicity, but i am afraid that simple is exactly what the rf system is right now.
for the player, it seems like a pain in the ass, though.
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Simple is your men firing reserved TUs at enemy's when they enter there line of sight, that is completely fine and i don't understand why its been changed at all.
I agree that you shouldn't be able to attack anything that isnt in your LoS with reaction fire and i feel that you should only be able to do basic shots like snap shot other than that it should be immediate with no screwing about. As i said previously when you go into reaction fire mode you could also tighten up the characters LoS a little to represent him focusing down his sights to cover a specific area which would help balance it slightly aswell.
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Simple is your men firing reserved TUs at enemy's when they enter there line of sight, that is completely fine and i don't understand why its been changed at all.[...]
my best guess is that it was changed because snipers (or anyone with an accurate long range weapon) on reaction fire were too powerful, and the game was played not the way it was intended.
it seems that for this reason, the probability (of enemy movement in your los triggering reaction fire) was set lower.
also, the probability seems to depend on time units that are needed for the shot.
with your system, each time an alien moved 2 tu in your los you could snap shot the alien from e.g. a sniper rifle (which is 12 tu).
in fact, the previous system was very similar (the rf probability was high enough), giving you such insane reaction fire that keeping snipers crouched on reaction fire resulted in much more damage per round than shooting aliens during the player move.
see?
on the other hand, when the probability was set too low, aliens could walk in front of your soldiers freely.
this is why a system that has more reliable reaction fire, but counts time units (tu of enemy movement in your los), may start to appear very much appealing.
(disclaimer: this probability thing is what reaction fire has looked like when i have played the game)
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So because snipers are over powered the solution is to utterly breakdown a fundamental mechanic of a squad based game instead of nerfing just the sniper? Did it not occur to anyone to make a sniper rifle take more TUs to fire perhaps, or dramatically tighten the snipers line of sight so his coverage on reaction fire isnt so great. Also, and i feel this is an important point... aliens SHOULD NOT be able to walk into the open in front of player with RF set up without being bloody shot at that is the very reason for reaction fire.
What you have just described is exactly the function of a sniper in games like this and real life for that matter, you put them in a good spot with good coverage and anyone who walks into there sights gets shot. That area is covered and instead of crying the enemy must work around it by trying to flank the position or using smoke grenades, the logic of totally breaking the game rather than snipers being powerful on a battlefield is insanity.
Most games like this when you activate Overwatch/Reaction Fire ect... the unit in question will spend some TUs to raise his gun and sit there ready to fire in the direction he is facing. This will limit his field of fire quite a bit so coming around the side is very possible, also sniper rifles should take considerably more TUs to fire than they do perhaps 16-18 for a snap shot and 22-24 for an aimed which would achieve the results your after without breaking the mechanic. Also letting you take direct control of reaction fire would be nice but importantly you wouldn't be able to move at all and you can only fire at what is directly in your line of fire.
This is a system that has worked very well for this type of game for as long time and does not need to be changed at all, if you want to nerf snipers be my guest but don't destroy an entire game mechanic to do it.
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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.
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[...]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.
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If you do start a thread, please first cover those proposals that already exist in the wiki here (http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/Gameplay_Proposals/ReactionFireBlueprint) and here (http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/ReactionFireImprovements). 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.
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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 :P. 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.
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If you do start a thread, please first cover those proposals that already exist in the wiki here (http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/Gameplay_Proposals/ReactionFireBlueprint) and here (http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/ReactionFireImprovements).[...]
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 (http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/ReactionFireImprovements#What_should_be_changed.3F):
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).
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 :)
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[...]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.
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This whole topic bothered me enough to register :D
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
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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.
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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
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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.
maybe you could explain the question a bit?
if it is not about what it doesn't do, and it is not about what it should do, then maybe its is about what it does or what it shouldn't do?
somehow i feel that i didn't get it right.
maybe it is about whether it is ethical to rf?
what about reaction fire and marriage?
see, i have no clue about what you meant :'(
maybe it is that players say "wtf!!!" when they see an alien walking in front of 4 soldiers with rf.
and, you know, in the phrase 'wtf' there is the f-word, and the f-word is wrong.
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What he's saying that if RF worked the way it is supposed to be working in the current mechanics, would there be anything wrong with that?
It's not working correctly at the moment, but if the RF bugs were ironed out, are the mechanics in and of themselves okay?
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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.[...]
those two, somewhat related things.
plus burst reaction fire could get some special treatment maybe, if suddenly a swarm of contributing programmers appeared.
to put it short, it would be better if recoil did not happen before pulling the trigger.
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Alright, so basically the whole system that delays a soldier's shot by the TUs necessary to use the firemode needs to go, if I've understood the above correctly.
I don't think shots should be instantaneous, though. There should be SOME delay that prevents soldiers from taking shots at enemies that are only briefly visible (e.g. only for one step before vanishing again). Ideas?
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Alright, so basically the whole system that delays a soldier's shot by the TUs necessary to use the firemode needs to go, if I've understood the above correctly.
I don't think shots should be instantaneous, though. There should be SOME delay that prevents soldiers from taking shots at enemies that are only briefly visible (e.g. only for one step before vanishing again). Ideas?
if the reaction fire does not depend on tu needed for the firemode, then people might start using as high tu shots (and as heavy weapons) as possible for reaction fire.
that might also look like an artifact.
earlier (buried somewhere in this thread) i was suggesting to treat movement tu-s and shooting tu-s differently so that reaction fire would happen earlier (as if in the middle of the time units of the fire mode) which turned out to be a half-baked suggestion.
based on this example in the wiki text http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/ReactionFireImprovements#What_should_be_changed.3F (http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/ReactionFireImprovements#What_should_be_changed.3F), the corrected version (which i really hope is corrected now) of my previous suggestion would be like this:
time units needed to trigger reaction fire are doubled for soldier A, and the rf-triggering effect of soldier B spending tu in los of soldier A is also doubled.
shots that involve recoil happen as if the bullet left the barrel at half the tu of the firemode (when the tu of the firemode are doubled, it produces no fractional numbers).
or tripled to get the effect that trigger is pulled after 1/3 tu units of aiming, and the remaining 2/3 tu is the recoil.
or quadrupled to get 1/4 ratio.
i hope that counting the rf delay on soldier A and the effect of soldier B spending tu multiple times would not be a problem.
counting the tu multiple times is the only difference from the wiki text.
then it would not look like soldier B is running a marathon while soldier A is waiting for recoil to be over before pulling the trigger, while reaction fire still depends on firemode tu.
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Problem is, there's no real way of telling which firemodes use recoil and which don't.
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I'd rather move it more toward the old system in that reaction fire TU reservation would be multiples of 6, 7 or 8 and the RF would trigger after a maximum of that much delay had passed, but possibly earlier if the soldier succeeds in some reaction checks (using perhaps a combo of mind and speed?).
In any case if there is to be a delay system, it needs to use a lot less than full TUs for firing a weapon.
In RF mode, the soldier is basically scanning an area and once something shows its head, blow it off.
Normal fire on the other hand is
1) moving to wherever
2) spotting something
3) getting into firing position
4) aiming
5) firing
which does justify a lot more TUs required. In RF, steps 1 and 3 are already eliminated and those two are the ones that take by far the most time. I know this from experience in the army.
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Once again, I effing LOVE this game and I'm only voicing this because it's the ONLY thing I've found unenjoyable, you guys have done outstanding in all other aspects that I've seen so far, thanks!... BUT...
You guys are making this simple system way too complicated. In old X-COM games, it was designed with this in mind: both you and the enemy's turn was happening at the "same time", like a span of 10 seconds of combat (when both have moved their turns it completed 1 round). Reaction fire was made perfectly and logicaly. It was based on the soldier's reserved TUs vs the enemy's TUs with strength, stamina, and reaction being the modifiers for what took place. The soldier's reaction stat (quickness) determined how well he responded to a threat first coming into view. If he had 90 TU reserved he could make 3 snap shots costing 30 TU each in RF. If an enemy came into view with 91 TUs and the exact same stats, he would not be able to fire yet as it is not in that time frame during the turn. If it popped into view with 90 or lower the soldier would make his first snap shot based on his own accuracy (unlike what i've noticed in UFO AI's system, I have had soldiers and aliens that couldn't hit the broad side of a barn turn into dead-eyes repeatedly in RF). If the target survived or was missed, it could move to safety or return fire until it's TUs exceeded the soldier's next RF shot (60 TUs); in which he would snap off another.
On that same note, if the enemy came into the soldier's peripheral at 90 TUs, the soldier had to turn 45 degrees to face it , and the enemy's current path would be interupted with the opportunity to respond. The soldier's Reserved TU's were deducted 1 point for the turn causing him not to have enough to pop off 3 shots (bringing him to 89 TUs reserved), and he could not shoot until the enemy made another move unless his reactions exceeded the target's.
If an enemy came into sight with 30 or less TUs, the soldier was able to wrap off all 3 shots or save the remainder if the first 1 or 2 killed it. Again, the hit chance percentage was calculated as if you made that exact same shot on YOUR turn, the soldier didn't become a sniping-god-from-hell just because it was "YAY reaction fire time!" If he had a short range weap, or couldn't aim for spit, it was best not to put him in that situation. There were times when an enemy was "dug in" on reaction fire and you were forced to find other means of dealing with the problem. That added excitment, so slap what ever whiner it was who swayed you from doing it like this and please fix it, it's broken hardcore.
Unfortunately, in UFO AI, I have stopped bothering with RF as it is absolutely illogical and worthless. I've had many an alien waltz across wide open football-sized fields in front of my best troops lined up like a fireing squad with full TU's and varrying weapons, and not have one of them do anything more than smile and wave as it shoots at them and frollicks back to cover... yet the aliens seem to shoot at my troops (with better accuracy than if they were on their turn, almost god-like) with every step taken. Pistols = 4 shots/steps, rifles = 2 shots/steps, and blasters = 1 shot. I can't even begin to determine what was programmed for RF, it blows my mind as it appears to even lack consistency. What's more is some how the alien keeps firing at its target, even if i move a soldier that is in a completely different part of the map. Its like that alien just fired full-auto with a pistol on my soldier the split second it decided to engage RF... it makes no sense. You've created a complicated in-game time paradox lol. To combat this crap I've been hearing about waiting the full TU's to shoot what ever weapon is being carried because it "takes time to check target, aim, and fire, well it's the SAME CONCEPT for rounding a corner on YOUR OWN TURN and taking a shot. Why should my troop's reactions be better when its on my turn? TU's are supposed to represent "how much the character can perform in a set amount of time", and the factors governing the actions being taken should apply equally to both sides turns. But, the game is still playable if you modify your tactics to not rely RF for any reason, so if you decide to keep it like it is, oh well. It just drastically reduces the strategic parameters of the tactical gameplay.
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Alright, so basically the whole system that delays a soldier's shot by the TUs necessary to use the firemode needs to go, if I've understood the above correctly.
I don't think shots should be instantaneous, though. There should be SOME delay that prevents soldiers from taking shots at enemies that are only briefly visible (e.g. only for one step before vanishing again). Ideas?
My whole problem is that RF needs to be reliable, if i set soldiers up covering a doorway or corner i need to know that the area is covered and the aliens cant just waltz around it without challenge. There are many squad based games like UFO you can draw inspiration from and as Brasher pointed out the system in the original was just fine but if you want an original idea ill quote myself from earlier in the thread...
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.
Something like that might just be the best of both worlds as you would have a chance to run back into cover upon stumbling on some aliens set up to fire (A visual que that someone is on RF would be nice such as them having there weapon raised ready to fire) but you could also rely on your men covering an area. The % chance to proc the RF could obviously be modified by various stats allowing someone with high speed to maybe be able to run from cover to cover past people with RF without being shot up to much. I do think you should only be able to shoot people u can directly see when you RF but i appreciate my ideas about fields of vision ect probably take a lot more coding than i can appreciate.
On an unrelated note as ive been playing further into the game there's a couple more small suggestions id like to make since a phalanx commander seems to be reading this now :P. The manufacturing system could use a little work, id like it to be similar to the research screen where u can assign your available workers to various projects running at the same time (amount of simultaneous projects could be limited to the amount of workshops in base perhaps). Also training facilities for troops/pilots (pilot stats/leveling would be great) would be great with different facilities for different stats, the idea of setting up a training base to train up fresh soldiers before moving them to your front line bases could be fun. Medical upgrades from alien tech would also be nice to speed up soldier recovery and also moar weapons! specifically in the sniper category, ive played quite far now and all my guys have got nice upgraded plasma type shenanigans to shoot with but the snipers are stuck with the starting sniper rifle.
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I have not played the 2.3 dev build, so limited in what I can say, but I agree with the OP that there are plenty of solid examples of how to build a RF system that have been working since this genre was introduced, and UFO:AI indeed had a good system in 2.2 that I was more than happy with. If that has changed, then it should be investigated to see if it's the design that is the problem, or if possibly a bug has been introduced that is breaking RF.
On the recoil issue, I don't see it for the first shot. It's the soldiers reaction time that should determine his first shot and like the other posters here, I assume the soldier is sitting with his full allotted time ready to fire. Something comes into view, he has a fraction of a second to determine friend or foe and then it's time to fire, and soldiers are trained to get that time to it's absolute minimum, definitely well below a second. Recoil would affect his next shot as it would add time to how quickly he could retarget and fire. The higher the soldiers stats, the better he would be at it. But now you've also thrown out that FoF reaction time since he now knows what he's shooting at, so it equals out somewhat. And what of lasers? Rail guns? Recoil isn't as high an issue in those systems than an explosive based weapon, so now you have to take into account the weapon.
This is overcomplicating it though. Just be consistent, and to stay within the bounds of the current design, if I select an aimed shot, my RF time should be longer than if I tell him to snap shot the first thing that comes into view. I don't see a need to penalize them. Should there be an override based on how close the enemy is? For example, he's told to take an aimed shot, but he sees the enemy across the field and the creature keeps coming at him, at some point he's going to react and let lose whether he has a good shot or not. Maybe have RF dependent on how long the enemy has been in his sights? Each step the enemy takes would increase the likelihood of being RF'd. The longer it is, the higher probability that he will react.
It's true that RF can become OP, but it's not a good idea to OP the enemy either with an unrealistic god mode system where they can cross an entire field with no consequences.
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My only problem with the 2.2 system was the use of the following turns TUs instead of the reserved TUs which seemed illogical to me, buy hey at least it was reliable. As for recoil that shouldn't even be an issue, why would recoil happen for RF and not for normal firing? As far as im concerned the technicalities of weapon firing are taken into account with the soldiers stats and his chance to hit just as it is.
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omg, peeps, lol.
what the wiki says and how the game works are somewhat different, aren't they?
what about assuming that the current reaction fire in the game is more like a placeholder, and that it is probably also like band-aid over band-aid?
how could it possibly work super well?
maybe the devs are not necessarily trying to make players suffer unjustly.
and also, the devs, at least some of them, are probably reading a lot more than they reply to.
but if you look at the title of this thread, that might be a deterrent.
you would expect that it starts with a statement about how nice and great the game is, then there would be a little rant (a bit less than 1 page), and then there would be some concluding words.
those kinds of threads are almost always the same.
so, we could have discussed things here quietly, according to the 'no one does it all by himself' rule, until we are able to say things that might make some sense, and say it short.
as you can see, devs are such creatures that understand one-liners best, and now we are pressed to it : )
Problem is, there's no real way of telling which firemodes use recoil and which don't.
you mean like, lasers do not have recoil?
i was not trying to split hairs (this time), the *bang* would always appear to happen uniformly in the middle of the firemode time units, same for all weapons and fire modes, no matter if the shot really has recoil or not.
for the system in the wiki, it seems tu would need to be counted anyway, could they be counted twice?
would it be possible to determine if soldier B is using time units for shooting or something else (it should be enough if soldier B knew what he is using his time units for)?
as far as lasers are concerned, and maybe flamers, etc, maybe that would be more like burst.
if you want burst to be treated in a special way, well, i was not trying to address that problem right now, maybe later some time : )
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[..]
Unfortunately, in UFO AI, I have stopped bothering with RF as it is absolutely illogical and worthless. I've had many an alien waltz across wide open football-sized fields in front of my best troops lined up like a fireing squad with full TU's and varrying weapons, and not have one of them do anything more than smile and wave as it shoots at them and frollicks back to cover... yet the aliens seem to shoot at my troops (with better accuracy than if they were on their turn, almost god-like) with every step taken. Pistols = 4 shots/steps, rifles = 2 shots/steps, and blasters = 1 shot. I can't even begin to determine what was programmed for RF, it blows my mind as it appears to even lack consistency.
A stupid question maybe... did RF change somewhere in the dev builds in 2010? I play I think a dev-build from March-April 2010 (have to look it up) and as I said RF is pretty useless in the beginning, but starts to work again relatively consistentlyafter a few months when your soldiers have seen a few ten battles. AT least I really rely on it when storming harvesters nowadays, as I just flank from both sides of the wings and wait for stupid aliens to come out. Afterwards I enter and most of the time (due to the fact that they only see me in the last instant) the aliens get no chance at RF.
And acutally RF with Lasers if relatively godlike , too, especially on short to medium ranges.
But I agree that the fact that you and/or aliens can fire on someone, who does not trigger RF is somewhat strange.
Kobold
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the wiki says:
Reactionfire
* [done] Reactionfire problems and enhancements.
o [done] server-side logic? (There is a Gameplay Proposal I think - pretty complex stuff though.)
o [open] Check if the important stuff mentioned here Gameplay Proposals/ReactionFireBlueprint + Talk is implemented correctly.
ironic that i have computer problems atm and cannot try it out.
as far as the Gameplay Proposals/ReactionFireBlueprint (http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/Gameplay_Proposals/ReactionFireBlueprint) is concerned, i think there is something that seems to be missing in that text.
you know, there are firemodes that take like 7 tu or less, and then there are firemodes that take like 21 tu or more.
if, say, soldier B shoots a slow firemode shot, does soldier A get more than one reaction fire shot if soldier A is using a quick enough firemode for reaction fire?
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Shouldn't the agility/initiative have an effect here?
Honestly, it's difficult to simulate this with action points and turns (UFO: Aftershck did a good job tough).
the way I see it, it should go something like this.
Between two combatants, the one with higher agility/mind/initiative goes first...usually.
So let's say A walks into the field of view of B and C, and they both have RF set.
Even if A has the highest initiative of the 3, B and C and primed and ready, while A isn't. So usually, B or C would get to shoot first (being in RF mode can grant a small initiative bonus). The difference between the initiative can determine the course of action.
Let's say A has the highest initiative 90, B has 84 and C has 70. The difference between A and B is only 6 points, so A can spend 6 TU's before B fires. Since it's not enough to shoot, he can try moving, and as soon as 6 TU's are spent, B fires. If A were to try to fire, B would shoot first.
Either that, or initiative can simply determine the order in which combatants get to spend their TU's...or something else.
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Am very exited about 2.3 release and lookin forward to havin a crack (aint had time to sit down and play yet), got my fingers crossed that RF actually works now and i can actually enjoy the game. To be honest i dont really care what system is used as long as its reliable, thats pretty much the key for me. I need to know that when i cover a door that its covered.
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The current Reaction Fire doesn't work, I mean I had three squadmates cover one of the entrances of a harvester, they all had rf on, any alien that popped up should get splayed not walk into the open look and select it target, kill said target does a victory dance and then dance behind cover. I don't mind losing a guy to the alien that pops out at a angle i haven't got covered or it taking out a troop who has rf turned off (that my fault).
Reaction Fire in the previous system made sense and it worked, wasn't game breaking at all. The way RF works is game breaking cause I'm losing trrops at a rate I can't replace and 1/2 to 3/4 of those losses wouldn't have occured if RF worked as it did previously. Has there been a change to recruitment of troops in normal cause I had 16 at the beginning but it now down to 12 and half of those are in hospital. And there seems to be no more replacements. Bit annoying as there are more pilots currently available than I need. If I keep playing this current build within a month in game time phalanx will have no troops left.
And I only encounted the Tamans so far in groups of 4 with plasma pistols are actually causing more grief to me than larger groups of sometimes 12 (armed with anything) used to do in previous versions. Sure I used reaction fire, but in most games most of the time reaction fire did more damage than achieved kills. Like out of 8 aliens, in most case i get 2 with reation fire, the remaining aliens get killed in my own turn.
The losses I'm occuring in this current build are like I used to get when I didn't use reaction fire in previous builds when I was just learning how it works.So in my eyes the current implementation of Reaction Fire makes no impact on the game for the player.
Despite that I do like this game it enjoyable, it atmospheric, hunting down the aliens can be scary but the current reaction fire system is in my opinion ruining the feel of the combat.
Edit: Can any clarify how I would go about reactivating the previous Reaction Fire implementation, as I thought I had followed everything said in the fix thread but it doesn't seem to work.
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Thats very disappointing news indeed, i was really hoping that the 2.3 full release would have sorted out the problem guess gonna have to shelve my plans to have a good crack at it for a while yet as i just cant cope with the rage inducing stupidity of it. I would also really like to know how to reactivate the old system, ive tried everything people have said but it doesnt seem to work no matter what i do.
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I'm just tempted to play the old version I have despite the fact it has no alien bases, and the ai doesn't assualt yours. But combat was stilll good and reaction fire worked. It felt like they had got the combat down pat in the old version, just very few maps to play on.