UFO:Alien Invasion
Development => Artwork => Topic started by: BTAxis on March 02, 2011, 11:14:25 pm
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I'm making this thread because I think it's time we made a clear list of aliens we ultimately want to have in the game, which would be helpful for graphics contributors. I think the discussion about this should be done in two steps:
* First we need to determine what kind of enemies we want to have in the game, in terms of what the role of the enemies is in tactical engagements, what sort of hazard they represent to the player (and by extension, what sort of tactics they entice from the player), how they behave and how they complement the other enemy types.
* Second, we have to fill in the details for the enemies. Once we know what an enemy is supposed to do in the game, we can talk about what it should look like, what sort of innate abilities it should have, etc.
I'm starting off the discussion by first listing what we have, and then by making suggestions for how I think what we have can be extended.
What we have
This section lists the aliens that are either already ingame or are in an advanced stage of planning. What you read here should be considered set in stone.
Taman
* Role: Physically weak enemy with somewhat sub-average combat abilities, but with lots of mental capacity. Serves as a weak enemy for the early game, and a dangerous psionic foe for the later game.
* Implementation: Done (http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/File:Alien_commander1.jpg).
Ortnok
* Role: Tough and strong, this enemy is a foot soldier fighting at the front. It should be used by the AI as a shock troop, preferring a direct assault over careful tactics.
* Implementation: Done (http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/File:Alien001.jpg).
Shevaar
* Role: The Shevaar is the aliens' secondary infantry combatant. It is meant to be fast, with a lot of TUs available for moving and firing. It should also have different inherent armour than the Ortnok, so different weaponry works well on it.
* Implementation: Done (http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/File:Shevaar.jpg).
Bloodspider
* Role: The Bloodspider is more or less to UFO:AI what brainsuckers were to X-COM Apocalypse: small, fast and highly dangerous if you let them get too close. They don't have ranged weaponry, but are dangerous in melee. Their primary role is to harvest organic material though, so they aren't meant for combat.
* Implementation: Done (http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/File:Bloodspider.jpg).
Hoverbot
* Role: Hoverbots are flying, mechanical units. They have limited firepower compared to ground based units, and they serve mainly as scouts and air support for other aliens.
* Implementation: Done (http://ufoai.ninex.info/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=5828.0;attach=6478;image).
Breeder
* Role: Breeders are half-organic, half-mechanical vehicles meant to infuse victims with XVI. In battle their primary role is to find civilians and turn them into alien drones, but when attacked they can retaliate with strong psionic attacks as well.
* Implementation: Rough sketch (http://cs.streetofeyes.com/downloads/UFOAI/breeder3.png). Open to improvement or complete redesign. Note: 2x2 unit!
Alien wormhole device
* Role: It's not an alien as such, but it behaves like one in base missions. The wormhole device channels the psionic abilities of the hive mind on the other side of the wormhole, so while it can't move or attack normally, it can use psionic attacks in tactical combat.
* Implementation: Done, I think? Again my knowledge of our artwork fails me. Tell me if you know.
What could come next
This is my personal idea of how the bestiary could be extended. The goal is to provide a number of enemies that require different approaches to beat, without going overboard and making too many similar types.
Alien tank
* Role: The purpose of this unit would be to be very tough and heavily armed. It's an enemy to attack from cover, because a direct engagement would result in almost certain death. It should be a 2x2 unit, so it can't enter confined spaces. It should also be mechanical. Mode of movement could be tracked, wheeled or legged, whatever works. Think ground-based, alien UGV.
Alien flier
* Role: Another aerial unit for the aliens, this time something more combat-oriented. Since the other flier is mechanical, this one should probably be organic.
Combat Bloodspider
* Role: An upgrade of sorts for the Bloodspider. The Bloodspider is a harvesting tool with offensive abilities, but this version is a straight up combat droid. It should be faster, tougher and deadlier than the regular bloodspider, and it should appear somewhere in the mid game.
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Good idea.
Hoverbot
* Role: Hoverbots are flying, mechanical units. They have limited firepower compared to ground based units, and they serve mainly as scouts and air support for other aliens.
* Implementation: Done, though I don't know of a picture. Help appreciated here.
I am not aware of any artwork done for this. Anyone else?
Breeder
* Role: Breeders are half-organic, half-mechanical vehicles meant to infuse victims with XVI. In battle their primary role is to find civilians and turn them into alien drones, but when attacked they can retaliate with strong psionic attacks as well.
* Implementation: Rough sketch (http://cs.streetofeyes.com/downloads/UFOAI/breeder3.png). Open to improvement or complete redesign. Note: 2x2 unit!
I think this could be a good candidate (http://ufoai.ninex.info/forum/index.php?topic=4849.msg39041#msg39041) if we changed its description to be predominantly or fully organic. If you agree, the first step is tracking skorpio down and getting the files. I don't think he ever shared them.
Alien wormhole device
* Role: It's not an alien as such, but it behaves like one in base missions. The wormhole device channels the psionic abilities of the hive mind on the other side of the wormhole, so while it can't move or attack normally, it can use psionic attacks in tactical combat.
* Implementation: Done, I think? Again my knowledge of our artwork fails me. Tell me if you know.
We have a model. It's from Vedrit I think? It raises another issue, though, which is how to integrate it into the alien base style I am working on. But that can be dealt with later or separately from this thread.
What could come next
This is my personal idea of how the bestiary could be extended. The goal is to provide a number of enemies that require different approaches to beat, without going overboard and making too many similar types.
Each of those ideas seem reasonable to me. The flier and the combat bloodspider are just upgrades from a tactical point of view, but that's not a bad thing. We will want upgrades for mid- to late-campaign.
Now a couple other questions/thoughts to guide the process:
1. Do we want to plan aliens to have different AIs, or should we focus on diversifying them by the existing stats/damage types? At this point we barely have a single AI.
2. Rather than ranking their defensive capabilities just in terms of strong/weak, it would be good to set out particular strengths and weaknesses. Perhaps ortnoks are more vulnerable to penetrating weaponry while the tank is more vulnerable to explosive weaponry? Which aliens are weak against laser attacks, which are weak against kinetic attacks? Setting out a diverse set of enemy weaknesses will also encourage the player to carry a more diverse package of weaponry. In an ideal world, it would be nice if research expanded options rather than just moved the player from one tech level onto the next, but of course some techs are going to become obsolete. You've probably got better ideas on this than me, but it would be nice to set those down in your list above so we can see how they all stack up.
A couple of ideas to throw into the mix:
Alien tank
Perhaps this could be given a weapon that was powerful and deadly but slow to deploy and maneuver. The idea would be that you must try to catch it on its flanks or rear. It could even be a kind of tracked vehicle that had legs to mount a secure firing platform. This is excessive in scale and deployment time, but it shows what I mean about being mobile but deploying legs to brace itself (http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.web4homes.com/rendezvous/Cannon%25208-inch%2520railway%2520insert.png&imgrefurl=http://www.web4homes.com/rendezvous/artillery.htm&usg=__3cvvmfwXnBQE937VwbReb6cNDwI=&h=330&w=750&sz=227&hl=en&start=64&sig2=XZSsA3O7VQrmpPxkocVHTg&zoom=1&tbnid=3tmFxYlKv2NsNM:&tbnh=78&tbnw=177&ei=VMhuTcmKMMaO4QbxpNySDQ&prev=/images%3Fq%3Ddeployed%2Bmobile%2Bartillery%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26sa%3DN%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-GB:official%26biw%3D1600%26bih%3D717%26tbs%3Disch:10%2C1140&um=1&itbs=1&iact=rc&dur=329&oei=QshuTY7oJMqChQf8r61H&page=3&ndsp=32&ved=1t:429,r:5,s:64&tx=49&ty=39&biw=1600&bih=717).
Alien flier
Since it is organic, perhaps it could also play a role late-game as a psi-amplifier (a kind of battlefield comms unit). Destroying this unit could reduce the cumulative effect of any other psi units.
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I only have a minute or two right now, so I can't type out a full post on this right this second, but I had a discussion about details for ideas for a hovering, organic alien that would "float" and behave much like soldiers with the jetpacks/jumpsuits (and therefore not require too much additional coding to implement). The discussion was on IRC earlier today, and it starts around this point in the logs:
http://colabti.org/irclogger/irclogger_log/ufoai?date=2011-03-02#l101
I think this would fill nicely for the "alien flier" slot.
I hadn't thought about it having psi powers or not, but now that H-Hour mentioned it in his post it might be a nice addition to the idea I've come up with. My idea already involves a fragile floating alien that can't even use large and heavy weapons anyways (as mentioned in the discussion in the link), and could be shot (and made to explode) rather easily, so adding psi abilities might make it more challenging, in addition to the issue of being too close to it if it ruptures and sprays acidic gas.
Again, as I said in the IRC I'm open to changes and back-and-forth discussion on my idea that I talked about there, potential changes all across the board, and I also have additional ideas to add to what I talked about there, although I really have to go again now, so I'll have to get back to this forum thread a bit later. Until then, I'd encourage reading what was discussed in IRC, the the log I gave a link to.
I also want to comment on the other stuff as well, but I don't have time for it right this moment, I'll have to get back to this.
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I am not aware of any artwork done for this. Anyone else?
I see some models that might be intended for this use in data_source:
see the hovernet here (http://ufoai.git.sourceforge.net/git/gitweb.cgi?p=ufoai/ufoai;a=tree;f=models/aliens;hb=refs/other/data_source), and a hoverbot (http://ufoai.git.sourceforge.net/git/gitweb.cgi?p=ufoai/ufoai;a=tree;f=models/psawhn/hoverbot;hb=refs/other/data_source)
I think this could be a good candidate (http://ufoai.ninex.info/forum/index.php?topic=4849.msg39041#msg39041) if we changed its description to be predominantly or fully organic. If you agree, the first step is tracking skorpio down and getting the files. I don't think he ever shared them.
In data_source:
monster (http://ufoai.git.sourceforge.net/git/gitweb.cgi?p=ufoai/ufoai;a=tree;f=models/monster;hb=refs/other/data_source)
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I think this could be a good candidate (http://ufoai.ninex.info/forum/index.php?topic=4849.msg39041#msg39041) if we changed its description to be predominantly or fully organic. If you agree, the first step is tracking skorpio down and getting the files. I don't think he ever shared them.
Only if we absolutely have to, I'd say. The philosophy behind the Breeder is that it's an abomination of flesh and machine, an engineered, living sack of XVI that enslaves humans to the alien hive mind. That's the horror element we were looking for. That said, I think this is an option we should keep in mind.
1. Do we want to plan aliens to have different AIs, or should we focus on diversifying them by the existing stats/damage types? At this point we barely have a single AI.
Both, ideally. What we'll end up with depends entirely on what we can achieve, but the objective is to diversify the aliens in both behavior and parameters. Going only with the latter is second best.
2. Rather than ranking their defensive capabilities just in terms of strong/weak, it would be good to set out particular strengths and weaknesses. Perhaps ortnoks are more vulnerable to penetrating weaponry while the tank is more vulnerable to explosive weaponry? Which aliens are weak against laser attacks, which are weak against kinetic attacks? Setting out a diverse set of enemy weaknesses will also encourage the player to carry a more diverse package of weaponry. In an ideal world, it would be nice if research expanded options rather than just moved the player from one tech level onto the next, but of course some techs are going to become obsolete. You've probably got better ideas on this than me, but it would be nice to set those down in your list above so we can see how they all stack up.
Absolutely. I didn't mention any of this in the OP because I don't have a clear idea on how each alien should be configured, but for some time now I've been meaning to make each alien vulnerable/resistant to particular types of attack. I want to achieve this through "inherent armour", which is a set of armour values intrinsic to the alien species. Each member of the species would get those armour bonuses whether they were wearing any armour or not (wearing armour would stack with this). This seems the most elegant way of dealing with aliens that don't wear any armour at all, too.
Like I said, exact configuration to be determined, so do feel free to discuss this as well.
Alien tank
snip
Would be very cool if we could pull it off.
Alien flier
Since it is organic, perhaps it could also play a role late-game as a psi-amplifier (a kind of battlefield comms unit). Destroying this unit could reduce the cumulative effect of any other psi units.
Possibly. I like how that would make it a priority target.
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Thanks for pointing the models out DarkRain. The monster model appears to be an earlier version. The tail is up rather than down, like the screenshot. I've attached a screenshot of the hovernet model in our data_source. I'd consider it a place-holder at best.
Alien Flier: I think Destructavator's idea is fine, but we ought to decide whether we want a combat flier, as BTAxis suggested, or a weaker gaseous flier as Destructavator described. Of course, we could always have both: an advanced, mechanical combat flier; a weak but psi-enhancing organic floater.
Damage Types
Is this list of damage types (http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/Damage) up-to-date?
Anyway, here's my thoughts based on the categories on the wiki, entirely for discussion:
normal
Medium-speed kinetic projectile weaponry
Effective against: Unarmored or lightly armored organics
Ineffective against: Armored organics; Mechanical aliens
blast
Explosive, high-speed, area-effect, projectile weaponry
Effective against: Unarmored and armored organics; Mechanical aliens
Ineffective against: ??
fire
Burning, area-effect weaponry
Effective against: Organics in all but a sealed, life-supporting armor
Ineffective against: Mechanical aliens
shock
Electrical shock weaponry
Effective against: Fully mechanical aliens
Ineffective against: Organics and mechanical-organic mixed aliens
laser
Low-damage, burning, long-distance weaponry
Effective against: Armored and unarmored organics
Ineffective against: Mechanical aliens??
plasma
Medium-speed projectile, high-temperature burning
Effective against: Lightly armored and unarmored organics; Mechanical aliens with weak armor (scouts)
Neutral against: Heavy armored organics and mechanical aliens
Ineffective against: ??
particlebeam
High-speed projectile weaponry
Effective against: Medium and heavily armored organics and mechanical aliens
Ineffective against: Lightly armored and unarmored organics and mechanical aliens with weak armor (scouts)
stun
Disabling weaponry via sounds/drugs
Effective against: Organics
Ineffective against: Mechanical aliens
Now with this, I could see a couple of possible changes:
1. Do we need two levels of blast damage? I'm thinking about how we model the difference between the effect a grenade might have and the effect a rocket with a large payload might have on a medium or heavily-armored tank unit.
2. Normal damage types seem to be made obsolete by plasma and laser. Both share all of normal type's effective range and adds to it. Any ideas on how we can preserve normal damage type late-game? Could the Plasma be a high-speed projectile that doesn't work well on unarmored organics? Perhaps the normal damage type is effective against scout mechanical aliens?
Perhaps there are other ways of preserving normal damage types. Laser is weak so there might still be good reason to not give up normal damage types once laser is available. Plasma: is it less accurate than some normal weapons?
Or maybe normal is just destined to be made obsolete...
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1. Do we need two levels of blast damage? I'm thinking about how we model the difference between the effect a grenade might have and the effect a rocket with a large payload might have on a medium or heavily-armored tank unit.
Just for the record, this is doable already because of the way damage weights are implemented (see armour mechanics (http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/Gameplay_Proposals/Armour)).
2. Normal damage types seem to be made obsolete by plasma and laser. Both share all of normal type's effective range and adds to it. Any ideas on how we can preserve normal damage type late-game? Could the Plasma be a high-speed projectile that doesn't work well on unarmored organics? Perhaps the normal damage type is effective against scout mechanical aliens?
Don't forget that needler guns use normal damage as well, as does the coilgun, which is one of the few human-tech weapons that should remain effective until the late game.
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Maybe you should publish your list on the wiki and point to it
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I'll soon have a very rough, simple basic concept model together for my idea of the floating (organic) alien, and I'll then put a shot of it here in this thread.
I've also got to say, I like that picture of the hoverbot, I think it would work quite well for something, and I'd hate to see it go to waste.
Alien wormhole device
* Role: It's not an alien as such, but it behaves like one in base missions. The wormhole device channels the psionic abilities of the hive mind on the other side of the wormhole, so while it can't move or attack normally, it can use psionic attacks in tactical combat.
* Implementation: Done, I think? Again my knowledge of our artwork fails me. Tell me if you know.
Didn't Sitters finish the wormhole device model a long time ago? I remember someone spent a long time on it, quite a ways back, and it was completed.
It might already be in the data_source, although I can't check myself right this second because I'm still trying to figure out how to make TortoiseGit work with the data_source as well as the master.
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wormhole is in game already. It is used in alienbase, and I think it can be used in new version of base.
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You can check an pic of the wormhole device here (http://ufoai.git.sourceforge.net/git/gitweb.cgi?p=ufoai/ufoai;a=blob;f=models/sitters/wormhole_device/wormhole.jpg;hb=refs/other/data_source)
BTW there is also an (unfinished) alien tank in data_source (http://ufoai.git.sourceforge.net/git/gitweb.cgi?p=ufoai/ufoai;a=tree;f=models/arthur/alientank;hb=refs/other/data_source)
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I'm interested in designing some new aliens in flat 2D concept artwork to later be made into 3D working models. I would like to work with someone who knows how to make 3D models and would like to make them based on my concept art. If anyone's interested let me know.
Some ideas I have are inspired by XCom Apocalypse.
Such as the giant slug alien that when killed spawned several smaller alien slugs. It doesn't have to be a slug, but I always liked the idea of killing an enemy only to have it spawn several more to kill. This always required special strategy in the game like using grenades or fire.
Another xcom inspired idea is "the spitter". It was this humanoid alien with a giant funnel for a head that could shoot some sort of acid. I was thinking on a more realistic approach to this alien. Something more inspired by a spitting cobra or something similar. Something with a real head anyhow.. and spit that had some sort of special property to it, like psi control, or stunning or something like that. Maybe the spit has an area of damage?
Another idea I had was a feral alien. In one of the UFO AI research reports it says that the aliens became unintelligent and primal when seperated from the hive mind. My idea is to have an alien who is completely feral, wild and unpredictable. Very quick and agile. I was thinking of some sort of gland on the hands of this alien, when the victim is grabbed or touched by the alien he could be killed, stunned, psi controlled, etc... by a special substance leaked through the gland and absorbed through the victims skin and/or armor. This alien would need to be killed from range, and would not want to be fought via melee. Although these aliens would be rather weak, they would be quick with lots of turn points and could jump around a corner or off a rooftop and grab a soldier. Very sneaky.
And flying.
I don't have any real design ideas yet for this alien but I was also thinking of some sort of flying alien. Something that could fly and shoot would be ideal. Maybe just an alien with a jetpack.? Can soldiers acquire suits capable of flight in UFO AI? I haven't seen that yet, but i havn't completed the game.
Anyways, my ideas for the new aliens serve to diversify the ranks a little. Instead of just having aliens with guns or aliens with melee abilities. Specialized aliens with special appearances and special jobs within the alien army. I was thinking these new aliens would be a product of the perverse and twisted bio experiments on other alien species, kind of like the ortnok, i like that idea.
I also like the idea of an alien tank of sorts. But less tank like and more mech like? Something that wouldn't be restricted by huge tracks or wheels simply because I don't think aliens would make that kind of thing. But a half machine-alien is cool for sure. Something biomechanical.
So does anyone know where i can post my artwork? Here? there? anywhere? Let me know if ya know, thanks.
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wheel83, could you take a look at the posts in this thread and make it clear how your proposals relate to what has already been suggested?
At this point we are not too interested in the lore behind the aliens, but are focusing on the tactical role they might play. It's not clear to me that your "spitter" or "feral alien" would differ significantly from the Breeder unit proposed by BTAxis, and we've already specified multiple flier units.
The alien that spawns more aliens after being killed faces a bit of a barrier in the realism department, but of your proposals I think it is the only one with a tactical role distinct from what's already been proposed.
@BTAxis and others, I am still trying to find the time to figure out exactly how the armour system works to flesh out the damage types better.
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I have read all the posts. I'm just throwing ideas out there, didn't think it would hurt anything to brainstorm a little, different strokes for different folks i guess. I'm not so sure about the realism being thrown out the window on the spawning more creatures creature. There are lots of animals in the real world who carry their young with them. Many species of spiders, frogs, mammals, etc.. My idea was the creature would be carrying these smaller creatures inside of it, when destroyed the smaller creatures would emerge.
anyways, just throwing around ideas, sorry if I caused some sort of disruption.
Although my opinion is that there can be such a thing as too much realism. I mean really what do we know about realism anyhow? We do not know what kind of aliens there could be in the universe, why would it be so far fetched that there could be an alien which carries it's young inside of it? Or an alien that spits? If a spitting alien is unrealistic then I guess a spitting cobra is too?
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my idea for the feral alien would be a cross between the Sheevar and the Breeder, although it wouldn't be a vehicle, it would be a humanoid alien capable of traveling anywhere on the map as it would not have big clunky tank tracks.
And my idea for the spitter alien would be like the breeder i guess, but it would be capable of psi control from a short to medium range depending if the shot hits and the mind level of the target.
I don't know, I think these are pretty valid ideas and they are different from everything else that's been talked about here.
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wheel83, your suggestions are too much of copying XCOM3 aliens. I would rather like to see original (unique) monsters in UFO:AI! (Not even talking about the possible copyright issues with the copied ones.)
-geever
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didn't think it would hurt anything to brainstorm a little
No, it doesn't. But since we're trying to nail down a set of tactically diverse aliens it helps to have a clear sense of precisely where you think it will fit in. Your next post did that.
I understand your point about the feral alien, but I think probably the Combat Bloodspider already fills the role of a fast-moving, deadly melee enemy. The glands are different but from a tactical point of view not so different to be worth making a separate alien. Instead, it might be worth asking whether we want the combat bloodspider to have a XVI-capable attack or not. Personally I think the number of aliens with XVI attacks ought to be kept to a minimum, so that it poses a very specific and localised late-game threat. But of course that's open for dicussion.
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I like the consept of having little aliens that still fill many tactical roles. (The current way things are going) Less stuff to memorize. But we could use a "cannon fodder" alien, like grunts on Halo. Tamans aren`t really cannon fodder since they will hawe the PSI-abilities.
P.S: I hawen`t seen a shevaar since 2.3.1 came out! What has happened to them???
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Idea about the "splitting alien":
Biomechanical (a thing that has both biological and mechanical parts, correct?) alien that has four or so smaller drones that it can "lay"/deploy and that will automatically deploy on death. I'm not terribly sure of what the main alien would do but I think it would end up as being the "tank" of a team, as well a having a (somewhat weak) medium-to-long range attack. Something you wouldn't be terribly afraid to go against but the damage would add up quickly enough that seeking cover would be preferable.
The main feature of the thing would be the four (possibly replaceable, more on that further) drones, something akin to somewhat smaller bloodspiders. These guys would instead be glass cannons: weakly armored, fragile but hellish things if they get close to an agent. They could also act as spotters for snipers when the AI permits and would be hard to see once/if visibility gets added. In case the host alien ends up 2x2, they would also be suitable for house cleaning. Their main attack would be fast melee attacks that would add up quickly if TUs permit.
They could also be replaceable whenever the host has less than four under it's control, somehow. My current ideas would be to either spend a full turn or two to refill or eat a corpse and then spend a turn.
When the alien dies, the four drones would be released, somewhat damaged and berserked. As such, they would simply rush straight at the PHALANX while ignoring cover. One twist that could be added is that since the host would be their link to the XVI, when they get released on death, they berserk against anything in short range, whether PHALANX, civ or fellow alien. Thus killing the host would be risky as it can take a lot of punishment but managing to do it in the middle of the enemy would leave them badly damaged, giving you a nice advantage. It's risky, because the enemy could just flank you or simply rush you while you try to shoot the damn thing.
The background/lore could be something about an alien race the XVI modified on a grand scale to fit a better job inside the hivemind or that they modified genetically one of their existing aliens races into another breed, this guy.
The mechanical side is there to cover the possible illogical side of keeping seperate aliens inside of the host.
If you want, you can think of this guy as somewhat like the Half-Life series' poison headcrab zombies. Not much, but the same "tank host that has smaller glass cannon/fragile speedster units do most of the dirty work" combo would be in effect.
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Hell yeah the Breeder sounds like a Chryssalids/Tentaculat. I hate/loved these aliens and they really scared me. :)
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Biomechanical (a thing that has both biological and mechanical parts, correct?) alien that has four or so smaller drones that it can "lay"/deploy and that will automatically deploy on death.
Beside that I don't like the idea to copy the multiworm, I don't think it is even possible. If I'm right we can't spawn players to any position of the map because we cannot be sure they can reach every other point of the map (it would also need extending the code to ensure that the cell isn't a wall actually). On our maps the mapper places spawnpoints and he guarantee that the point is valid and the map is playable if alien/soldier/civ placed there.
-geever
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Beside that I don't like the idea to copy the multiworm, I don't think it is even possible. If I'm right we can't spawn players to any position of the map because we cannot be sure they can reach every other point of the map (it would also need extending the code to ensure that the cell isn't a wall actually). On our maps the mapper places spawnpoints and he guarantee that the point is valid and the map is playable if alien/soldier/civ placed there.
-geever
I see, well, that pretty much kills any splitting things and such. Oh well.
What's a multiworm BTW? One of the enemies of XCOM? Because I haven't played any one of them. The first game that's "XCOM-style" that I have played is this one.
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I think at this point we're setting out an ideal set of aliens so we know what to work towards. We don't have the different AIs or flying implemented, either, but we can still plan aliens to take advantage of this. So I don't think the lack of implementation is a barrier to an alien that spawns more aliens.
One way around the technical problem would be to use the pathfinding to see if a unit can move from the dead alien's grid to an adjacent grid. If that is possible and the grid is not occupied, a child alien could be spawned there.
In terms of gameplay, I think we would need to be very careful about the number of children spawned. Even if they are easy to kill, four children could occupy four soldiers for at least a turn. With only 8 soldiers available now, that's quite an investment. I would think their attack would need to be very weak so that soldiers could withstand them for a couple turns or so.
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My ideas for the aliens are inspired by X-com yes, but isn't this whole game inspired by x-com? I didn't say anywhere that i think you should completely replicate aliens from x-com. Nobody holds the copyright to an alien that spawns other aliens at death..I dont think..
I think the feral alien idea at least diversifies the ranks a bit more than putting another mechanical spider in the game. I don't care what you do for a quick stealthy alien, but why just make an alien thats so similar to an alien already in the game? Its a waste of an alien I say. The combat spider would be a bigger badder version of the blood spider right? If so I think this idea is kind of a waste, no offense intended to whoever came up with that idea, but it should be something thats not already in the game i think. Why not just modify the existing bloodspider? Right now they are not very deadly anyways, and they could look deadlier too.
I see i'm not the only one that thinks a multiworm inspired alien would be a cool idea. If it can be done I think you guys should try it.
Hertzilla, I agree the smaller drones would be difficult to fight but there could be strategies around this. I know in x-com if you stun a multiworm it's spawns don't emerge. Also killing them with fire works well. Or maybe just blowing them to shit could work as well.
Geever, I understand you want the game to be original and not copying x-com but i don't think you should reject ideas so quickly just because they are inspired by x-com. X-com were very good games because of these ideas and since playing this game I went back to playing X-com apocalypse and found that it is so much more fun because of these ideas. I think this game should be original and something different than x-com, but so far from a tactical standpoint these aliens are boring to fight.
I think some of the best things tactically in x-com were the multiworms. And the brainsuckers that would hatch from dead alien's inventories unless you got to them in time. That and the stun and fire grenades. area damage.
Again, i dont think you should simply rip off these ideas but keep them in mind when making your new aliens because tactically thats exactly the kind of thing this game needs. Take those ideas and create something new from that.
Like maybe a flying alien that drops smaller aliens, or a vehicle that aliens can embark from unless you destroy it in time.
Or maybe a multiworm inspired alien but you have 1 turn to destroy the eggs/drones/whatever before they hatch/activate.
Or maybe a quick stealthy type alien that has a strong chance of causing panic if it touches you.
Make players think about how they should go about thier missions instead of just shooting and taking cover.
anyways, thats my 2 cents for the day. good luck with the game.
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wheel83... u shouldnt discuss too much of ure ideas here in the forums. people that work on artwork have often a hard time here. i guess when u post a simple grafic the chance that all love it is quite high. sometimes an image says much more than thousand words and for many people its much easier that way.
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why just make an alien thats so similar to an alien already in the game? Its a waste of an alien I say.
Because then the player can inherit all he has learned from a previous alien and apply it to the new alien, rather than having to learn an entirely different alien. We are not looking for as many different aliens as possible. We want a diverse set that is small enough for the player to get to know the strengths and weaknesses of each alien.
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oh, well i guess i misunderstood the purpose of this thread. I thought this thread was for discussing ideas for new aliens. I can see why it would be difficult for artists to get an idea of what to do.. I myself was going to submit artwork for this game, that's what led me here, but I gave up on it because I couldn't find out what anyone wanted.
So to clarify, the only aliens that artwork is wanted for are the ones described at the top of this thread? Those are for sure going to be in the game?
sorry for any confusion i've caused for any artists, i was just brainstorming ideas because i thought that's what this thread was for. Although if I were to create art for this game I wouldn't get into anything I didn't know until i knew what was wanted for sure. Unless I wanted to do it for my own fun.
If you want people to get started on artwork for anything you should definitely make up a list of things that are for sure wanted in the game, and descriptions of what aspects and details of any specific alien you want to look like, etc..give as many hints as you can, this will make the artist's job so much easier. Also artists should be ready to rework and redesign their art if needed. This is graphic design 101. Artists should keep this in mind, unless they don't mind their artwork possibly never being used, and they're just doing it for fun.
anyways, about the combat spider thing, I guess it's just a matter of opinion. I for one would find it more entertaining to encounter a brand new enemy in which i would be forced to come up with a whole new set of tactics to fight against than to just use more firepower killing the same enemy with the same tactics. Although I think it would be cool if somewhere along the game the aliens decide to upgrade thier bloodspiders to be more combat effective and render the bloodspider obsolete with a "combat spider" which still had the ability to gather corpses and such.
once again, just my 2 cents,
(note to artists, do not draw my ideas)
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Doppleganger/Puppeteer
Concept: An enemy that registers as a civvy until close proximity. (I don't write code so not sure if that would work out). This unit could be mechanical and constructed by billions of nanobites that can stretch, compress, and change texture/color. Alternatively it could be a biological unit with the same capabilities as stated before or even a parasite that drives the host(and possibly spread to others???). Plenty of scifi/fantasy inspiration out there for this type of unit.
WARNING-TERROR WEAPON I remember a movie called something like "Puppet Masters"(alien parasite controlling host concept). Military was finally made aware of the alien invasion and set up blockcades with orders to shoot on site to contain the aliens....well about 50-100 kids ranging from ages 4-10 start walking towards one of the blockcades and it is lost due to the hesitation. Whats scarier then having all those civilians be the death of your entire team for lending a helping hand?
Details: Like I stated before, not to sure if you could have them appear as civvies until close enough distance with the coding. No range weapons, only melee. Think Terminator 2 for a morhpic mechanical weapon or if its organic the parasite could of caused a mutation in the host for claws or retractable spikes. If regular civilian AI was written so they would actively flee towards Phalanx agents for safety/cover it would make this unit deadly and would make the player have to think about how they should handle civilians(Stunning them for there own safety, taking the penalties to just kill them outright, or possibly losing a team mate or more.
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Doppleganger/Puppeteer
Concept: An enemy that registers as a civvy until close proximity. (I don't write code so not sure if that would work out). This unit could be mechanical and constructed by billions of nanobites that can stretch, compress, and change texture/color. Alternatively it could be a biological unit with the same capabilities as stated before or even a parasite that drives the host(and possibly spread to others???). Plenty of scifi/fantasy inspiration out there for this type of unit.
Seems you're not aware what XVI is, neither read this thread throught. See Breeder in the first post!
-geever
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Just googled XVI and feel a little less ignorant now. I read the entire thread earlier, but unlike the breeder the puppeteer is an unknown threat till it closes in. Goes with the concept of civilian management as if those jerks don't already get in the way enough. Less about multiplying, more about camouflage.
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I got an idea for one. now this one is inspired by the mechs from falling skies
It would just be a large robotic shock troop. It is unable to enter buildings due to its size, so it marches through the streets shooting anything in its path. A good strategy would be to move your troops inside of a building or behind cover, and use explosive and/or energy weaponry to take it down.
dispatched from orbital entry pods dropped by carriers (so, a carrier can send several down into a city and keep on flying to provide distraction if it is attacked).
could maybe act as an upgraded version of the "alien tank"
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Or it could just be the 'tank'.
Practicality issues for bipedal mechs in a combat zone aside, it'd probably be a nice fire support unit. And maybe also a decent tank untill heavy firepower came into the game.
And since there aren't any AT missiles in this game, that might take a while. Say up untill you can mass produce coilguns and twin mount them onto UGVs.
Make it two storeys tall, heavily armed and rather vulnerable (for a machine, anyway) and you get something of an annoying glass cannon that wipes out most of the stuff it can find in the open and petty much anyone who can pop up on the roofs of the desert houses.
You could just make it a precursor to the standard alien tank that simply can't take much damage (legs suck in combat).
Hey, you could mix up the standard aliens with mechs gig and make the them into tetrapods! It'd be a bit fresh. Ish.
Of course, now I wish there was a human version so I could mount gatling guns on it. But that'll pass.
But still. Mechs are only really god for intimidation and reaching hard to get places. Like sniper nests. One proper hit and the thing will either fall apart like Nazi Germany or crash like the Western Empire*. Depends on where you hit, really. And how hard but that's where the 'proper' comes in.
*Only difference being that unlike said states, it'd wouldn't need assistance after the initial push.
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While bi/tri-pedal or quadruped UGVs (even 'mechs) might sound good on paper, legs prove to be an extremely fragile mode of locomotion - especially in combat situations. One good example is the 'Dog' quadruped UGV. I'm sure it's still on youtube if anyone cares to look. Has about 70-80kg carry capacity last I checked, enough for a decent weapon loadout or carrying injured soldiers. But unless heavily armored (thus reducing mobility/capacity), the legs aren't meant to survive any kind of directed weapon fire.
That's why wheels or tracks are so much more popular for combat-type UGVs as they have less weakpoints. If you wanted a 'tank', just use riot shields (which really has no business being in a hostile tactical situation). Otherwise, use rookie fodder as tanks. But if you need a tank, then you're being too reckless. Just use standard tactical procedures like bounding overwatch and using more cover. And stun those pesky civvies. It's a damned pity you can't direct civvies to safe zones. ("Evac is right THAT way, ma'am.") As if it's not bad enough they run into your line of sight, they have the annoying tendency to wander into "hot" zones.
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Actually, that's probably one of the reasons Science fiction uses the things to such an extent. Well, aside from the usual rule of cool.
What better way to show how advanced the enemy is than to have a mech at least as though as the best tanks you can throw at them?
And as I said. It does work lovely for intimidation.
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Looking ahead a bit to the possibilty of a new visibility system, a dedicated sniper type might be a neat idea. With extended vision range compared to other units, and possibly limited ability to see through smoke (if any future visibilty system supports that) they would be better than other aliens (and probably a little better than PHALANX troopers) at acquiring targets. They should prefer accurate weapons over more damaging ones, and crouch and use aimed fire more often, to maximise their hit chances.
On the minus side, they should be physically quite weak (low HP, low natural armour), unable to wear heavier armour, and especially vunerable to flashbangs (due to oversensitive eyes, similar to the Tamans stated vunerability, although probably for slightly different reasons), but quite resistant to stun. They should also be quite rare, appearing at quite a late point in the alien progression, and only normally present at all on larger UFO types, and generally only in small numbers then. They would effectively be deployed as a Marine contingent on larger UFOs, providing long ranged support to the run'n'gun Ortnoks, and heavy firepower of the alien tank units.
Since they are introduced later in the alien ranks, they should have quite a range of weapons to choose from anyway, but it might be appropriate to also add an additional weapon just for them, with relatively low damage, high accuracy and only aimed and snap fire modes, and a medium TU cost. The objective is to model a Designated Marksman Rifle, *not* a true sniper rifle.
Doctrine is to use several well placed shots to kill / wound, not volume of fire. The weapon should still do appreciable damage to end-game PHALANX armours, around 80 points wth low variance perhaps - enough to allow a one-shot on low HP troopers with no armour, and still enough to worry a high HP soldier with good armour if he cant find and deal with the shooter quickly. Preferred method of attack would be to sneak out of cover and take a snap shot or two at mid range, or stay fairly still and take a couple of aimed shots at very long range. Unit TUs should therefore be fairly high, but not outrageous. It should probably have a fairly small clip as well (more like the 8 rounds of the bolter than the 30 of the AR).
As a comparison, the human sniper rifle does 105 damage (more than proposed for the new weapon), and costs 12 and 18 TUs to fire. If the "alien sniper rifle" takes the same TUs for the same fire modes, giving the sniper unit around 40 TUs would seem reasonable. That's faster than most PHALANX units, enough to fire 2 aimed shots whilst retaining a minimal ability to move, crouch / uncrouch, or 3 snap shots, or quite a bit of movement plus a snap shot, and so on.
The total *maximum* damage output / round would be around 240 (3 snap shots). If the best PHALANX armour had a resistance against the damage type of 50 (which seems possible given the planned progression of armour), that would bring actual damage from 3 hits down to about 90, enough to worry even the toughest trooper, and kill weaker specimens.
That would however almost certainly leave the sniper stranded in the open, though. Note that 3 shots at 12 TUs consume 36 of a max of 40, leaving a max of 4 left (enough to walk out of cover in a straight line, shoot 3 snaps, then take a 2 TU step back, or crouch before shooting from an exposed position, but not to move whilst crouched, then shoot, then move back into cover, for instance). Clearly, sniper AI should prefer to either aim to end a turn in cover and take what shots that TUs can be spared for, or try and stay at long range to take advantage of their superior range and accuracy
Although there is little firm detail about the proposed psionics system, I suspect using a psionic scan of some kind would be one of the best ways to locate these little monkeys, or UGVs whose relatively thick armour should serve them well here, enabling them to soak up several hits without undue damage.
Whether any new weapon is considered or not, the alien sniper would fill a gap in the aliens tactical makeup, allowing them to compete better in long range engagements, which is currently quite a weakness for them. They would logically spawn outside a UFO more often than other types where possible, to make maximum use of their talents.
If a specialised weapon was added for them, perhaps it should only unlock considerably after the snipers have started appearing, to give PHALANX a decent chance to get good armour and weapons fielded. These guys should certainly be scary, and able to punish sloppy tactical play, but not ubersoldiers with instagib guns.
Thinking about it, under the proposed health / medikit changes, an accurate, low-damage weapon would make even more sense for the aliens, since you'd have a fair chance of a soldier who has been hit several times having several bleeding wounds, and needing very swift medical attention to stop them from bleeding out, taking not only the wounded soldier out of the line, but also the soldier, or soldiers, needed to do the doctoring, possibly for several turns
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Attached is a quick graph of the resistances of the current aliens to damageweights.
These are aliens WITHOUT any armor effects. New graph has armor as well.
Also, here is a quick run-down of the damageweights and which weapons can cause each particular weight.
normal_light XXXXXX smokegrenade,pistol,pistol2,smg,grenl,stunrod
normal_spray XXXX shotgun2,shotgun_micro,chaingun,xaw95
normal_medium XXX assault,machinegun,vhs
normal_heavy XXXXXXX needlergun,needlerheavy,sniper,coilgun,shotgun2,bolterrifle,ugv_chaingun
normal_steelblade X knife
normal_monomolecularblade XX knifemono,kerrblade
blast XXXXX fraggrenade,plasmagrenade,rpg,grenl,shotgun
fire_light
fire_medium XXX incgrenade,rpg,grenl
fire_heavy
fire_flamer X flamer
shock X flashbang
laser_light X laserpistol
laser_medium X laserrifle
laser_heavy X heavylaser
plasma_light X plaspistol
plasma_medium X plasrifle
plasma_heavy XXX grenl,plasblade,plasblaster
particlebeam_light X pbeampistol
particlebeam_medium X pbeamrifle
particlebeam_heavy X pbeamcannon
stun_electro XX electrolaser,stunrod
stun_gas X stungrenade
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A rather large and unwieldy graph showing weapon damages sorted by damagetype. Things to note:
1. Splash damage and regular damage are simply added together. No account is taken for distance from splash damage so it's like a max-damage rating in which splash damage weapons may score higher than they deserve.
2. Damage from any shots after the first (burst or multi-shot weapons like shotguns) is halved to try to account for the fact that a burst shot will usually not hit with all shots. My thinking is that this is still scoring higher than they deserve.
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I have put the alien bestiary in the wiki (http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/Proposals/Alien_Bestiary) for safe-keeping and expansion. But the forum is still the place to discuss ideas.
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Out of all the ideas discussed here, the one for an alien sniper seems the most well thought out and most needed. Long range sniping is where humans utterly dominate, especially with laser weapons. Having these guys pop up in the last third of the game would suddenly make taking cover and flushing out sniper positions quite important indeed.
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Frankly, I'd completely change the damage types for something that's imspler and more intuitive.
DAMAGE TYPE:
- ballistic_small (size of the pojectile)
- ballistic_large
- laser
- fire
- plasma
- particle?
- gas(?)
- electro
Alternatively, one could differentiate balistics by speed, not size. So you'd have balistic_normal, and balistic_hyper (for hypervelocity/relativistic rounds)
And DAMAGE_DELIVERY (sub)type.. How damage is applied.
- ripping/tumbling (wepons designed to tear flesh)
- penetrative (armor-piercing. Kinetic weapons with hardend tips)
- focused (lasers generally.unles we're talking pulse lasers)
- continous (is the damage applied over time or not?)
- pulsed(? also possible for lasers)
- splash
- area (?)
Or something similar
So a sniper would be balistic_large, penetrative
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Frankly, I'd completely change the damage types for something that's imspler and more intuitive.
This. A thousand times this.
I've looked around at the weapon balance a few times before and was stopped dead in my tracks by the dauntless numbers of damage types and resistances. Not to mention the wiki weapon tables (http://ufoai.org/wiki/Weapon_tables) are woefully out of date. (I've been working on a little lua script to parse the data to better compare weapons/armor... I don't suppose anyone has a working program to do this already? or perhaps it isn't very convenient to use...)
The convoluted amount of damage types are detrimental for both developers and players. On the developer side, with so many variables it is practically impossible to properly balance weapons, armor, aliens, etc. On the player side, it is incredibly confusing when your weapons one shot ultra powerful brutes in one mission, and are completely ineffective against fragile twig-men the next. Not to mention the disconnect in expectations (ever play a point and click adventure with those "simple" puzzles that you needed a manual for?) "... what do you mean bloodspiders are resistant to shock!? they are completely electro-mechanical! No amount of electrical shielding can stop yadda yadda"
It would be really nice if we had something like the taylor knockout formula (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_KO_Factor) for ballistic projectiles. It is roughly: damage = mass * velocity * diameter of bullet
There are other factors for sure, such as bullet shape and composition,but its a good guideline.
I dunno if I should post here or somewhere else, but some initial thoughts for a proposed change:
ballistic (physical)
- physical projectiles
- cut/stab/bludgeon
- blast (concussion)
energy
- electric
- plasma
- laser
- fire
- blast (eg. from plasma grenade)
hazmat
- stun gas
- poisons
- blinding flash (from stun grenades?)
- mind controlling spores
Three damage types may be a pretty extreme change from the current 30 (hush... its hyperbole), but look at it this way: damage isn't the only variable we have to play with. It makes no sense to have sniper bullets have a different damage type to pistol bullets. Anything that a .22LR can hit a .50 BMG will hit harder. No exceptions. But that just means that 22s can have less recoil (less TU), cheaper ammo, more capacity, etc.
The example is a bit weaker for energy & "hazmat" but the principle is the same: KISS. Reduce the extraneous variables and only work with ones that give meaningful results. I can probably think up counter examples and reasons not do put flash/poisons together but is it really worth it to have them separate? How many weapons use the mechanics of the flash grenade? or stun gas? Is there a vital reason why an alien would be weak to stun gas but not flash grenades (other than *arbitrary* story fluff)?
I would also love to have more varied ammo types, so for example there would be your standard ball, but also armor penetrating, AP incendiary, AP plasma etc. AP rounds would get a bonus vs ballistic armor, incendiary would apply energy damage over time, plasma applies large instant energy damage. I dislike using stock alien weapons. I would much rather take their technology and turn it into something human. I know there were a few threads discussing franken-weapons: alien weapon models with human modification on them which would be awesome. (If I ever get into modeling again I might have a go at some)
heh, thats a lot of text. I've got to stop making these giant walls...
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It's not as difficult to properly balance the existing weapons as it appears at first. Once you dive into it, you will realise that a lot of damage weights have only one or two weapons associated with them, so you can have pretty fine control. Adding new weapon concepts is difficult, though, without adding new damage weights (this was done for the Encased Plasma Ammo).
I have toyed with the idea of a new damage model as well. But I'm not yet convinced that it is actually simpler for the player -- what seems simpler from a conceptual point of view (ie - the developer) is not necessarily simpler for the player. If I have to calculate damage by analysing an armour penetration rating, mass, velocity or other elements, that may just be more ambiguous than a simple damage number. I'm not yet sure about this, though, and my primary concern was to expand the ability to better model a weapon's interaction with armour.
The real problem we face with the current implementation is that the player is not given information on the real damage weights protection/resistance for armour and aliens. So he's unable to make a simple addition/subtraction comparison with a weapon. Including this information as the result of an autopsy would be a nice incentive for completing autopsy research, and the same information should be made available upon researching alien armour.
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Hooray, another wall of text from your bedsick fellow complaining about more stuff :) I do it because I love.
(should this be split to a separate thread? I don't really want to drive the thread off-topic)
It's not as difficult to properly balance the existing weapons as it appears at first. Once you dive into it, you will realise that a lot of damage weights have only one or two weapons associated with them, so you can have pretty fine control. Adding new weapon concepts is difficult, though, without adding new damage weights (this was done for the Encased Plasma Ammo).
Some damage weights make sense, and I'm pretty sure it would be fine to have a half dozen or more if it meant keeping fine control, but in the resistances graph you linked to there are types like normal light, spray, medium, heavy, fire light, medium, heavy, flamer etc. I can't imagine why there would be a difference in *TYPE* for a light/medium/heavy damagetype.
I have toyed with the idea of a new damage model as well. But I'm not yet convinced that it is actually simpler for the player -- what seems simpler from a conceptual point of view (ie - the developer) is not necessarily simpler for the player.
I suppose... do you have any specific examples though?
If I have to calculate damage by analysing an armour penetration rating, mass, velocity or other elements, that may just be more ambiguous than a simple damage number. I'm not yet sure about this, though, and my primary concern was to expand the ability to better model a weapon's interaction with armour.
I agree, there is a balance between realistic simulation and fun intuitive gameplay.
Lots of games have AP, its an easy enough concept to understand. Damage range falloff also makes sense: it realistically models projectile drag, laser light scattering, etc. I'm curious on what your thoughts are for weapon armor interaction. I've done a lot of searching on the wiki and forums and have only ever found really old out of date discussion on the topic (which frustrate me to no end*). In my view, armor is there to reduce damage. Either by subtracting a flat amount, or reduced by a fraction, or both. I dislike the general idea of minimum damage (eg. armor blocks 10000000 damage and pistol damage is 10 -- minimum 5 goes through) I'd rather have better reduction/damage values. (eg. armor blocks 15+50% and pistol damage is 20 -- 2.5 damage goes through) and I dislike* pistols,shotguns,rifles etc. having different damage reduction types (on top of different damage values) as it contributes to the confusion of how much damage does my weapon actually do?
I play a lot of Zero-K and its motto is no special damage types -- and it works wonderfully. Armor is modeled by more HP, weapons and units are balanced according to the physical interactions and limitations, it is dead easy to determine how much damage a unit will do, and how well it will stand up to punishment. I'm not suggesting going to that extreme, just trying to give perspective.
*The one thing that bugs me the most and I would like to see changed is the light/medium/heavy damage types -- heavy plasma can be modeled by shots doing 100 damage, light plasma can have shots do 20 -- they are both plasma and it doesn't make sense to have them separate.
The real problem we face with the current implementation is that the player is not given information on the real damage weights protection/resistance for armour and aliens. So he's unable to make a simple addition/subtraction comparison with a weapon. Including this information as the result of an autopsy would be a nice incentive for completing autopsy research, and the same information should be made available upon researching alien armour.
With so many damage types I wouldn't want to compare values with every alien/armor/weapon combo even if I had them automagically pop up side by side. Having fewer damage types would mean it would be easier to naturally infer resistances/weaknesses, which could counteract the benefit of autopsy research, but that means that I don't need to make tons of addition/subtraction comparisons! To compensate for that we could give the player a small 5% increased damage buff vs that type of alien -- or some other fun little perk. Either way it would be nice to have that information in the autopsy, I wholeheartedly agree.
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When I first saw this system I completely cringed. What's listed in UFOpedia seemed simple and elegant like Fallout, which uses modifiers to handle penetration.
However I now think this system is the way to go. Rolemaster used a similair super detailed system and the idea is very realistic if you can have a computer doing the math. The downside of any reasonable complex damage system is it is nearly impossible for the player to calculate damage on the fly. On the other hand if the general system is intuitive not being able to get exact results in your head can be a good thing.
I think what's needed is a more formulaic approach to the subtypes and adding a few rather than trying to simplfy the system. With a little clean-up and continuing attention to detail this probably is the best way to model the interaction of weapons with various armor types.
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@maackey: the main reason we have the damage weights (spray, light, medium, heavy, etc.) is to be able to model armour. The SMG, for instance, uses normal_light, and can be effective on Tamans early in the game. But as soon as armour is introduced it becomes pretty obsolete, because armour's protection against normal_light drastically reduces the damage potential. Having separate damage weights allows us to model the effectiveness of armour differently for different weapons. Assault rifles (normal_medium) get a lot weaker against armour, but the sniper rifle (normal_heavy) still packs a powerful punch. If we tried to do this just with higher damage values, we'd end up under-powering or over-powering weapons in the distribution.
As I said, I'm not entirely happy with the damage weights system, but I'm not in any position to change it at this time. I've also just finished a pretty comprehensive rebalancing of the weapons. I'm interested in riding the system we've got for a while and seeing how it plays out.
Personally I like the idea of modelling more abstract weapon parameters which define the interaction with armour and the wounding process, but I'm only half-way through my campaign with the new weapon balance and I'm really happy with the weapon balance we've got (pre-Needler, though, this could get rough!). Maybe the system does work, even if it doesn't appear as elegant under the hood, and I'm not going to beg a coder to rewrite a system that works unless I'm really convinced the benefits will be worth taking their time away from other features.
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@maackey: the main reason we have the damage weights (spray, light, medium, heavy, etc.) is to be able to model armour. The SMG, for instance, uses normal_light, and can be effective on Tamans early in the game. But as soon as armour is introduced it becomes pretty obsolete, because armour's protection against normal_light drastically reduces the damage potential. Having separate damage weights allows us to model the effectiveness of armour differently for different weapons. Assault rifles (normal_medium) get a lot weaker against armour, but the sniper rifle (normal_heavy) still packs a powerful punch. If we tried to do this just with higher damage values, we'd end up under-powering or over-powering weapons in the distribution.
Would a better solution be to tie armor penetration values to ammo?
That way there is no need to have special damage types - ballistic/kinetic is one type, period.
Then depending on the muzzle velocity/bullet it does different amount of damage to different targets.
Armors have damage reduction, which is negated by armor piercing.
So armor has 10 DR for kinetic, is hit from a pistol with 2AP and 10 damage, as a result the hit is treated as 10-2=8 DR and the shot does 2 damage.
If it's hit by a coilgun with 30AP and 20 damage, the effective DR is 0 (or you can even add bonus damage) so the shot does full 30 damage (or 40). Technicly you could model overpenetration.
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Continuing with the offtopic discussion of weapon balance...
If it's hit by a coilgun with 30AP and 20 damage, the effective DR is 0 (or you can even add bonus damage) so the shot does full 30 damage (or 40). Technicly you could model overpenetration.
Overpenetration is modeled by simply setting damage to 50 ;) No need for special bonus damages or redundant code to check wild corner cases.
But I do think that an armor piercing value would be useful, and then armor can be drastically simplified as well.
@maackey: the main reason we have the damage weights (spray, light, medium, heavy, etc.) is to be able to model armour.
No, the main reason we have damage weights is because that was how they were first implemented, and noone has yet to change them to a better model :P I know that I'm coming into this from a fresh-slate perspective, while you are probably very used to the existing system and know its intricacies inside and out. I don't want to barge in and start telling everyone how to do things my way (the correct way :P ), but just give some fresh perspective from someone who isn't tied up in the existing system. I've tried a few times to go through the code and change stuff, but the documentation is incredibly sparse, and I wouldn't want to work on something that gets immediately rejected because it'd be too radical of a change (happened before, don't want to go through that again...) without some consensus first.
Having separate damage weights allows us to model the effectiveness of armour differently for different weapons.
This is 100% true. But its also 100% garbage. What is the **reason** for armor acting differently for different weapon types? I know the game has flavor text in regards to things like lasers and fire and explosions and stuff, but having the sniper rifle react completely independent of an assault rifle is flat out retarded. I'm sorry, that makes no sense to me from the perspective of a player or a developer, and doesn't contribute to realism in the slightest. There are LOADS of other ways to balance weapons irrespective of damage type! Reload time, ammo capacity, rate of fire, weight, size, accuracy... I could go on and on. What is the reason to have it but for added complexity and confusion (and the lazyness of the devs to change something already "done" :P)?
You mentioned re-writing the engine, but doesn't the engine already support armor piercing? If so, no engine work is needed and fixing the damages only requires editing the configs to get rid of the redundant armor categories and minor changes to weapon stats.
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How about a disgusting worm-like parasite that burrows into people and lays eggs in them, and after a few turns infected people die and lots of new worms burst out of them.
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How about a disgusting worm-like parasite that burrows into people and lays eggs in them, and after a few turns infected people die and lots of new worms burst out of them.
Exponential explosion. Players would not like it. Original X-Com handles it better: host are not a problem as long as not shot at.
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Personally, I'm not over-satisfied by some weapons' designed effects and renditions.
These ideas below are only to give ideas for a better rendition, for a better "durability" of some weapons, and always more tactical choices. In no way they are to teach prospective physics to the designers!
- Plasma
rifle blaster Rapid Fire/3-shots Burst modes:
Because I think it's WIP, I won't tell here much. Simply, all plasma projectiles should be "low" speed, finite balls, and no mid-range beams. - Plasma fire rendition: a suggestion if feasible
Game lore tells that plasma weapons are short/medium ranged because the plasma bullets end in breaking their containment shell, and then rapidly cools down in the air.
What if this shell would deform a bit along its fly path, instead of staying unchanged from starting to ending point? However, persistence of vision would be taken into consideration, hence no round shape at the beginning. The shell would start oblong (shorter as currently) and end more elongated (longer as currently, or as currently). - Laser fire modes: Continuous Wave vs. Pulsed Wave
I can only understand that a Pulsed Wave is a shorter time, higher intensity wave. That is, for a given weapon size and stored energy, higher power is achieved to the beam duration's detriment. Higher power is required to "overload" the target's thermal defenses. To my sense, a Pulsed Wave hit from a lighter laser weapon would only have the same effect as that dealt by a heavier, more powerful laser weapon in Continuous Wave mode. It's like an "overload" fire.
In-game renditions are the same for both mode: orange beams. Pulsed Wave is said to be 6 hits and is rendered with a 3-beam sequence, whereas Continuous Wave is rendered by 1 longer beam. To me, it's essentially the same as a 3-shot burst, as compared to a single shot (except the beam durations).
What if (I don't know if it's possible), the laser weapons (or only the heaviest ones) would have more, diverse fire modes:
- Pulsed Wave, single pulse: the soldier actions the trigger and the weapon fires a power calibrated beam.
Rendering would be the same as Pulsed Wave but with only one beam. - Pulsed Wave, semi-auto: same as currently; several pulses are fired in sequence once the trigger is actioned. As far as targeting is concerned, those pulsed beams are quite similar to ballistic weapons and other "one shot" directed beam weapons: target is hit, the wound, and then it's safe unless the shooter has enough TUs left.
The heavier the weapon, the broader and the longer duration the beams (e.g. if the current Pulse Wave beam would belong to the pistol or rifle, current Continuous Wave beam would belong to the heavy laser).
Also, I wonder if the TU cost shouldn't be higher (e.g. single pulse would cost the same as current Pulsed Wave, and 3-pulse would cost more): I figure that emitting a pulsed wave is demanding on the generating and firing weapon parts, and that a kind of cool-down is needed. - Continuous Wave:
Game lore tells that a laser pistol could cut through any armor providing it could be operated several minutes long. Moreover, let's think about an immobile soldier in the open: the more TUs, the more rounds/blasts/pulsed beam could reach him. On each hit, the armor penetration and wound tables would be checked. Possibly for some weapons, and irrespective of the rendering effects, semi-auto shots could still be considered as single, more inaccurate but more powerful shots. Now, if on actioning the trigger, the laser weapon would emit a beam until the trigger is released (as for automatic fire) (that is, up to several seconds), what would a continuous (durable), low intensity hit mean for the target? One armor check only? A kind of a DoT? Still several possible wounds? Remember that the laser weapons get build-in focuser and stabilizer (probably through laser technology).
Continuous Wave mode would count toward keeping the laser still worth face to the particle beam weapons.
Suggestion:
- Continuous Wave would be the only reaction fire mode for the laser (save the heavy laser?).
Reason: firing a continuous wave is like "switching the light on" (only as compared to charge a pulsed beam, of course).
Or, if the TU for Pulsed Wave are risen, the reaction fire mode would be self-limited by this large needed TUs. - Continuous Wave rendering would be thinner than Pulsed Wave (but possibly broader for heavier weapons). For instance, a pistol would emit a barely visible orange ray (as if a "dotted" line). The sound at the shooter would be milder too (like a buzzing electrical transformer).
- Continuous Wave effect could be like the following, and basically a full-auto firing mode:
- - Once hit, the target would be in a state IsHitByCW(weaponPower, 0) and armor penetration and wound tables would be used. Both reaction and aiming times and skills would be considered for this initial hit stage (like any normal shot).
- - Every 3 TUs (2TUs?) left, the beam would deal additional damage, but WITHOUT any new hit determination, thanks to the auto-focusing weapon system. Only LOS and target coverage would be checked, as a loss of LOS would mean that the beam is interrupted, and coverage would be properly applied to lower the base damage when relevant.
- - On each of these subsequent "time segments", the target would either (fixed percentage or based on target's size and max TUs) receive a new low power hit (status IsHitByCW(weaponPower, 0)), or endure the same hit as before (status IsHitByCW(weaponPower, N). For each N above 0, armor protection would be lowered by a cumulative number to simulate that the beam is cutting through it at roughly the same location. Thus, the more time the target is exposed (still in LOS and not well covered), the more efficient the beam gets over time. On a full turn, it would left the target with multiple superficial wounds (burnings) or with an important health loss because the armor would have been cut through.
- - To balance this, ammo consummation and laser armor penetration should be reviewed, of course.
- Continuous Wave fire would get a maximum shots (or TUs) limit per turn, balancing this fire mode, and allowing the firer to have time left to deal other actions if the firing occurred at the start of his turn. But after all, a PRL man doesn't move a lot on the same turn he fires a rocket.
- Also, laser beams should be silent at impact (if we neglect searing sounds). I don't know where the sound effect occurs in-game, but it should definitively be at the firing laser weapon. Having colored beams are enough for all (simulated) tactical purpose. The effect's sound volume should be lower too (less range than that of an assault riffle) and depend on the weapon power.
- Dispersion effects for directed round/beam weapons:
I don't know if the hit and wounds system may manage this, and it could be applied to any weapon effects (such as a distance-related damage for blast effects), but I think that plasma and laser weapons could be the ones to begin with. The purpose of this suggestion is only to augment the difference between weapons, thus making tactical choices more interesting, and some weapons worth the use all over the game.
- Plasma weapons:
Instead of stating that one meter more in the air means zero damage, we could have a distance (travel path length) related diminution of the damage caused by a direct hit. I don't know about the rule (linear, quadratic, etc.). A threshold would be possible, starting the diminution only after a minimal distance (lower than the current practical range). Maximum practical range could likely be risen a bit. Spread damage would still be based on direct hit damage. I mean that the spread (inaccuracy) effect and the short/medium ranges are perhaps not enough to "specialize" this weapon family (though the blaster "canonball" mode is superb for that purpose). - Laser weapons:
Now that smoke is operational, we'd naturally wish that laser beams are less accurate or dispersed by it. To a lesser extent, if weather effects are implemented ever (rain, fog, snow storm), they could similarly hinder laser beams (have one of the map_properties a dispersion coefficient?). Laser should pass through fire squares if I understand what waves are (fire is not plasma), but often, fire means smoke... Also, on some map, when destructions occurred (wrecked UFO,...) there's already fire and smoke. Perhaps those squares should be marked as "misty" even if no mist is rendered.
Back to the smoke effect, we could have the same distance-based computing as with plasma projectile: each traveled-through smoke square would lower the damage by a percentile (higher than if a "rainy" square). One could questions why the build-in weapon stabilizer wouldn't be impaired in turn: perhaps, the weapon spread could be altered by the weather, are more simply, each smoke square would also lower the practical range.
Now, it would be simpler to have the laser beams blocked by any smoke square. Let's say a smoke grenade is an anti-laser defense device too.
- Directed particle beam weapons:
I think they are correctly modeled: instant (pulsed) hit, whitish ray (plasma generation that lasts through persistence of vision)), quasi pin-point wound like a Pulsed Wave laser beam.
Now, I have a few questions:
- Does the beam penetrate armors the same way high velocity, hardened round do?
- Isn't a particle beam less focused than a laser beam, given a weapon size?
- Couldn't a particle beam cut through a unarmored man to reach the other behind (with less power)?
That's why, perhaps,
- the beam rendering could have a fade away effect. I don't know how this wouldn't be the case for lasers (if the laser is invisible and generates a plasma too), how in this case the two plasmas would be different, and how the persistence of vision would change the overall visual beam effect (Fading or not? How long a time?).
- the beam rendering could be more fan-like (say, up to 2 square wide at max range?)?
Or, a "sectoral" fire mode could be added, that would be a wider area emission through a fast deviation of the internal focusing system in the horizontal plane (no need to strafe with the weapon). In this mode, dispersion (spreading of the damage) should be handled (distance-related as above?).
Rendering would be a flat whitish 10° (30°?) sector that would flashes a shorter time than the current beam. However, this address a problem of visual occlusion (even if very short?), and lack of realism if LOS in not granted in all the sector (cutting through rocks and walls?). Perhaps, given that in this case, the plasma density would be less, only the sector's first meters could be rendered, or the whitish color would be more transparent (this, plus a flash). - the beam could be allowed to penetrate cover, windows, doors, light walls, ... and people, although at a great power expense.