UFO:Alien Invasion
General => Discussion => Topic started by: Xeinar on November 26, 2012, 02:28:21 pm
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I am a veteran with X-Com (I bought it for the Amiga version, the terror missions took ages to load...), through Apocalypse and the latter Aftermath and so on. I find UFO AI a great game, really devoted to the spirit of the original game and the most amazing thing is that it is developed by volunteers and with a freeware license - I'd like to help in translating it in italian once I'll have completed my first campaign.
So far, the only thing I really don't like is the way reaction fire is implemented. I've read and understood how it works in 2.5, but to me it is a non-sense. Let me explain.
Theoretically, when saving TUs for RF, it means that I'm using only part of the actions I could take in my turn for using them later. So my soldier is basically on guard, scanning for movements in front of him; this means that he should be ready to fire.
In the way it is implemented now, instead, my enemies can perform many actions, and I could not be able to fire at them: for example coming out from a door (no TU as they appear), take another step in my direction (2TU), then back (2TU)and then again in the room(2TU). Even with a simple snap shot I couldn't have the chance to fire at them; so, in the end, I'm penalized for not having used all my TUs in the previous turn (I could have thrown a grenade instead, to maintain the same example).
Having a sniper in reaction fire mode is useless: it is almost impossible to see an alien fired with an aimed shot, and the snap shot is unaccurate even at close range.
In X-Com (I know, it is a different game) the soldiers shooted as soon as an alien walked in front of their LOS; as far as they reserved TUs in the previous turn for the selected shot, they were able to fire immediately, and I feel it is the right way to use the RF factor. The only exception I can understand is if the target is "quicker" and has an extra movement allowed (I see you while turning to your direction, I jump in cover). This could be handled by the soldiers/aliens stats.
Another thing I'm not able to understand: how is it possible that the aliens can RF even if I'm not in their LOS? I could understand they shoot me after I've fired and they survive... but before? When shooting at their backs? Is it a matter of telepathy? ;)
Ok, this is my two cents. I hope this could give ideas and a different look at the aspect! :)
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The problem with the method you describe is that it promotes excessively defensive tactics. By giving the inert unit a shoot-first advantage in all encounters, you increase the incentive to camp your soldiers in a defensive place and you decrease the incentive to make contact with the enemy.
In the original X-Com, this was mediated by the fact that often aliens could see you and shoot at you from farther away. It was up to the player to make contact or he risked being picked off from the shadows. We don't have a visibility-at-distance mechanism in the game or an AI that could effectively take advantage of this.
Because we use a straight TU system, managing your low-TU firemodes is crucial to effective use of reaction fire. You may want to look into pistols or other low-TU weaponry. (Side note: this was supposed to be one of the roles the Shotguns play, but I can see now that the 10 TU firemode undermines this and so I will probably reduce it).
Regarding the use of Snipers for effective reaction fire: there is a very big danger of making snipers overpowered if they can quickly execute an aimed shot in reaction fire. This is exacerbated by the fact that many of our maps are quite open and the AI is not smart enough to hide indoors in most cases. I understand the broader point you are making -- that in real life a sniper would zero-in on an area and then be able to shoot fairly quickly. But I'm not convinced we have the mechanisms to balance this properly at the moment.
I hope eventually we will have some kind of "focus" mechanism that might, for instance, allow me to spend extra TUs to designate a small area of "focus". The soldier would then gain an advantage in response time when sighting an enemy in that area, but may lose the ability to see or respond to targets quickly outside of that area. Such mechanisms might allow a properly balanced implementation similar to what you are seeking.
I also hope that, eventually, we will have some stat that effects reaction fire, so that soldiers could become quicker at it over time. In the past we have had problems with reaction fire being very inconsistent, and this leading to a lot of confusion for players. This is why 2.5 features the very straightforward reaction fire mechanism it does -- and trust me, it's a lot better than what was there before (thanks to aDuke).
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As above, pistols are the way to go, averaging 5 TU for a Snap Shot for the base human pistol, 4 for the Alien Pistol which means they'll be getting reaction shots every turn without fail until you have Plasma Pistols. Of course then they move up to Plasma Rifles which mitigates the reaction fire.
Second, mostly the problem is the wide difference in the amount of TUs necessary for movement versus the TU's necessary to shoot. When aliens gain the ability to crouch, that appear, step back and fade would provoke a reaction shot. 9 TU versus 6 TU.
Speed should be the governing ability for reaction fire. Considering an average 20 speed, it means that the enemy has to spend the 8 TU for a snap shot before the soldier can shoot. If you have each point of speed above that and each below modify the Reaction fire, a soldier with 18 speed would have to have them spend 10 TU for the same snap shot, while one with 22 could fire after only 6. Just as an example. This also means that more experienced soldiers would have a better chance of getting off a reaction shot, making them more able to survive, while at the same time making it more useful to ensure those soldiers survive earlier.
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First of all, congratulations with implementing a great and reasonable (imo at least) system of reaction fire. I like it very much and if I may I'd like to suggest a possible improvement to it.
I disagree that raw speed should determine the proficiency in reaction fire. In my opinion, total available TU's should be used instead, taking encumbrance modifiers into account. Using ratios of used TU's to total TU's to determine reaction fire chance would be more precise, I think.
So, if an unencumbered soldier with 45 TU's available is standing on guard with a shotgun snap shot of 10 TU's, a moderately encumbered alien (with 30TU's, let's suppose) should spend 7 TU's in soldier's arc of sight to trigger reaction fire (7/30 > 10/45, BAMM). I definitely agree with game's point that reaction should preceed the last triggering action. Maybe speed can be used to adjust this value a bit, but I think that would be unreasonable: after all, we've already taken speed into account when we calculated units' total TU's, haven't we?
This would be in accord with intuitive feeling that faster units should generally react, turn and aim and pull their triggers more quickly then slow ones.
Also this would make unarmoured soldiers a more viable option (although the latter might be a drawback instead)
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This is not a bad idea, but I think it will lead to the previous problem we faced where it was very unpredictable, and this led to confusion and frustration. It also faces a key problem in that aliens do not have the same TUs as soldiers. Many have a lot more TUs. So the effect of a system like this would be to make reaction fire more rare, which isn't really the intention. Our TU-to-TU numbers are not really set up to balance this, and giving some aliens a lot more TUs is part of their "identity".
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I see, what I suggest would really mean that ultra-fast aliens would never get reaction shot at under the current system. While sounding realistic (they're ultra-fast after all), this certainly does seem to ruin game experience.
Well then, looks like we have to wait for improved system with soldiers focusing on specific areas like H-hour mentioned in the second post.
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I agree the things I read here for the most part. My question about the reaction fire is, is it not a translation of the more classical "action-order" where the faster player using the faster weapon play more often ? In my opinion turning on the RF in UFOAI is just a way to ensure you wont loose your turn facing an advantaged ennemy for the action "rank" or "order". It is how I feel it.
The problem with the method you describe is that it promotes excessively defensive tactics. By giving the inert unit a shoot-first advantage in all encounters, you increase the incentive to camp your soldiers in a defensive place and you decrease the incentive to make contact with the enemy.
I personnally take very seriously the need to save civilians, and in most of cases I move a lot to discover the map just due to the fear of leaving a civilian undefended. I think this is the good way to unpromote the "sitting duck" defensive tactics.
For me, the most defensive unit (due to his advantage when well positioned and crouched), the sniper, is effectively bad at reaction fire and it is not a bad thing. A sniper should see the ennemies from far in the normal cases. When he doesnt meet one facing him, he should (in my opinion) use his TUs to look around. There, if I can add a last thing, there could be an improvement by introduction of an "horizon tour" action to watch around in a circle in one click (which should cost some appropriate TUs). But it is another story...
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I disagree that raw speed should determine the proficiency in reaction fire. Maybe speed can be used to adjust this value a bit, but I think that would be unreasonable: after all, we've already taken speed into account when we calculated units' total TU's, haven't we?
I would say the Weights system has really boosted the utility of the Strength stat, pretty much nixing and surpassing what small effect the Speed stat had, at least as far as your speed effects TU. Changing your weight encumbrance(the 3 weight classes) has a much more drastic effect....
So with Speed, Up to 91 points per mission : Speed Skill and TU by encumbrance modifier:
1000exp = Up 3.98 @91-->11 Missions //Skill 15-->42 @ 1 -->29.4 @0.7 -->16.8 @0.4
2000exp = Up 6.03 @91-->22 Missions //Skill 20-->43 -->30.1 -->17.2
4645exp = Up 10 @91-->52 Missions //Skill 25-->44 -->30.8 -->17.6
Half @45.5-->103 Missions //Skill 30-->45 -->31.5 -->18
//Skill 35-->46 -->32.2 -->18.4
Note: I looked in my stats.txt, with the last 52 instances(little over 6 missions) I saw an average of @41.4exp-->113 Missions
So your Speed will at most go up 10 levels, which means your actual TU will only go up by 2 while light, 1.4 while encumbered and 0.8 under penalty from your starting Speed Stat. Joi??
I'd like to see Speed to have a greater effect on gameplay then that. Also my own 2 cents, in most games crouching is considered stealthy, walking somewhat, and shooting announces here I am.. here its like there's a 4 piece band following me around :o
That said, as is, I kinda like the simplicity of reaction fire.
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There’s more to RF than just TUs.
Range is an issue. I've never seen a RF shot anywhere near the full sniper rifle range even with skilled soldiers getting a 35%+ chance to hit. Flamers don't seem to RF out to maximum either, two tiles of movement and two plasma pistol shots ought to trigger a candlelight RF but I've lost soldiers to that.
Line of Sight affects RF. Breaking full LoS resets the RF/TU count and I'm not sure the RF code checks the full sight distance or just a fixed range out from your soldiers. Playing on the Dam map I have noticed that I can provoke RF from aliens (plasma blaster, not crouched) on the other side of the dam, but my snipers will not RF back at them during the alien turn even when they move and fire two bursts.
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I have one more suggestion to improve RF system, or rather make it more manageable. It may be somewhat offtopic here, but I don't think it's worth it to start a new thread for such a small thing.
For now, RF is only triggered if your soldier is explicitly set to use reserved TU's for it. However, there's no other use of leftover TU's after you have completed your actions. I'd suggest that any leftover TU's at the end of turn are automatically useable for reaction fire (with the cheapest possible firemode, if none is specified).
It seems to me this suggestion takes away some unnecessary micromanagement burden from the player.
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To H-Hour: I understand your point; while I share Krilain's attitude of actively check any single square of the map, for someone the camping could be an option. Moreover I don't have historic knowledge of the development of the game so I could easily miss something. Still, even if the dev team wants to keep this method, I believe that something should be tuned.
I see RF as an active way to fight, not as a last resort. At the moment RF with a pistol is useless or with a snapshot (rifle), as the damage delivered is so low that it is way better to use the remaining TUs to find an adequate cover. A possible compromise could be to set a standard TUs amount needed to activate the RF, regardless of the kind of RF you reserved (aimed, snap, 3-shots and so on). To avoid camping, you could set a maximum number of rounds to complete the map, or as the very old Spellcross game when camping for too long your unit could lose morale (like frightened of being in the same place). So if you reserve too many TUs each turn you lose morale and end in panicking (just an idea that bounced in my mind right in this moment).
I also share the concerns from Telok, as I've experienced both issues/behaviours. The reset of TUs count together with the current RF system is a real killer of my unit (and believe me, I LOVE to finally risk to have all my team wiped out every mission - it is so challenging!!!).
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Telok: I have seen RF go out nearly 2/3 of the base map, so I know it can activate over large distances. And it was with a very low-probability-to-hit firemode, so RF must not take these things into account. I've also seen RF from my soldiers across the dam map.
Nanomage: It's a difficult trade-off. In some cases I may want to tell my soldier NOT to RF -- if I know the aliens will be moving out of range and don't want to waste ammo, or if there are civilians around and I don't want to go spraying machine gun fire. We tend to err on the side of extra control, but it is a lot of micromanagement.
Xeinar: I don't agree that RF with a pistol or rifle is useless. In these cases you need to team up your soldiers. Just last night I used two soldiers with a shotgun and an assault rifle to close down a corridor on ferry. It took both of them to knock down the shevaars that appeared. Regarding your other ideas, I think making all RF TU costs the same would really undermine other core mechanics regarding the different firemodes. Setting max rounds or losing morale for not moving would alter the game in ways that aren't justified for this feature (there is already a very large upper limit to rounds passed with no aliens seen).
RF is always going to be a very contentious mechanism because it deals most frequently with those situations where your soldiers are dying. This is a classic case of gamer vs. game. Gamers want to win, they want their soldiers to be better, stronger, faster -- able to cope with every situation. But the game has to set out challenges. Managing RF is a major part of that challenge. RF requires careful management to improve your odds and abilities, but if it becomes too powerful it will crowd out other mechanisms. Your soldiers will not be able to overcome every scenario.
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Thanks H-Hour, understood: better things as they are rather risking to mess up the things. I love that frightening feeling of losing my soldiers, so let's stay in this way (and yes, I agree on your answers to me: you have a wider and internal view on the game, so you know its mechanics and possible drwabacks).
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I have one more suggestion to improve RF system, or rather make it more manageable. It may be somewhat offtopic here, but I don't think it's worth it to start a new thread for such a small thing.
For now, RF is only triggered if your soldier is explicitly set to use reserved TU's for it. However, there's no other use of leftover TU's after you have completed your actions. I'd suggest that any leftover TU's at the end of turn are automatically useable for reaction fire (with the cheapest possible firemode, if none is specified).
It seems to me this suggestion takes away some unnecessary micromanagement burden from the player.
Nanomage: It's a difficult trade-off. In some cases I may want to tell my soldier NOT to RF -- if I know the aliens will be moving out of range and don't want to waste ammo, or if there are civilians around and I don't want to go spraying machine gun fire. We tend to err on the side of extra control, but it is a lot of micromanagement.
As many of us on this topic, it is not I want absolutely a change on how reaction fire works, but just any slight change which could give UFOAI RF more sense, and make it more captivating. And on this way, I tend to agree the first quote due to nanomage. The answer from H-Hour is also fully reasonnable, but in principle shouldn't we look always on how to give a feature the more amount of fun or "colour" when possible at low price? (I insist on at low price of course)
I'll try to expose exactly why the nanomage idea allows a great gain with nearly no change. It will take just a few words and it's just for illustration of why I hear by "colouring the game".
Currently the RF is a choice which contains an arbitrary fixed efficience. The things can be arbitrarily fixed, that's a developer setting, and a part of a large set of all strings attached settings. It's ok.
Whatever, the player would comply easier in general with a setting if he is given a reason for this, a reason to believe on it directly or not. Here comes the advantage of the nanomage's idea, because I see a good reason for a soldier to use automatically his TUs reserve for saving his own life, or for he meets a moment of panic. This gives the colourizing I was talking about, an human behaviour brings something to the game. Moreover it explains some arbitrary choices by linking it to the soldier's mood (of course arbitrary in real world).
Last thing interesting also, is the fact that the different soldiers we recruit could have different single internal moods. For instance, some could be more nervous at auto-RF, and others more phlegmatic. This property could appear onto the face designed by the game-artists, or could be linked to a stat (mind?), or just be correlated to their rank (a newbie should panic easily).... Moreover a nervous soldier should never be promoted as a sniper, but could be the perfect fireman. I may be wrong, but I find that funny.
Ok, I hope I didn't disturb too much this excellent thread. I just intended to share what is a philosophy of giving easily an added value to a feature, discussed or not.
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I understand the philosophy and the appeal behind what you're talking about krilain. The idea that inside the game is a living, breathing world that is beyond my control is an intriguing premise and central to a lot of claims made in open-world games like Eve or other MMORPGs. But -- and I am only speaking for myself here -- I think the premise is lot more appealing than the result. And that is especially true in a strategy game like this one.
Every aspect of our game is premised on the ability to control all the details. That is not realistic, of course, but that is also what makes it fun. You can lose control of soldiers if they freak out on the battlefield, but this is when things go terribly, terribly wrong. It's a punishment, not a regular part of the game.
I know that some players desire aleatory mechanisms which mimic the way in which objects in real life can never really be controlled or anticipated. I can only say that I'm not one of them.
Ok, I hope I didn't disturb too much this excellent thread.
No problem. I appreciate threads like this where people recognize there are trade-offs involved with new features and understand we're not necessarily going to agree on every mechanic in the game. It's much better than the threads which begin: "This game is totally ruined because of [insert minor feature]."
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The idea that you can set reaction fire and just 'sit' is one that the aliens seem to use, this perhaps creates the impression of reaction fire favouring the aliens. And to a certain extent I agree, however this is almost the only 'tactic' the aliens take any advantage of.. so just in terms of keeping your troops from entirely running them over (and making the game no fun) it has a place.
On the human side there are so many advantages/tactics that the aliens don't employ (or employ poorly): wide array of weapons and tech (the aliens have one tech line), true sniper weapons (with through-wall capability), the use of 'area of effect' weapons in the form of splash radius/splash damage in close(grenades), mid(grenade launcher), long (rocket launcher), a cohesive 'group' attack with true support (medikits to using suppressive fire to human RF)....
But specifically in terms of reaction fire, I can attack this numerous way(ways the aliens won't); directly by using flash bang grenades to disable alien RF, indirectly by using smoke grenades to obscure alien lines of sight or even using incendiary to discourage aliens from taking certain positions** or at least softening them up if they do. Even avoiding it, walking around to attack from the side or coming in from the back.. (most time on spotting you IN their turn, the aliens either shoot and stop or just stop..)
I mean you consider that the majority of the missions are urban/guerrilla warfare and your opponent has the tactical intelligence of a newt (augmented by the alien tech being kick-arse + supa high stats so their tech in their hands is even more kick-arse) then gameplay / balance is has to be considered. IE I havn't played multiplayer, but there a truly robust RF system would work, both sides are fully capable of employing/exploiting tactics.. trying to take that robust RF and just dropping it into the campaign??? I pity the fool.
I ramble but, some Q's: **When the Alien takes it turn does it account whether the player has RF engaged? Enough that it discourages them from entering LOS?? Also with the light and heavy sub types for aliens, does that 'help' with the aliens taking full advantage of the alien weapons? So even if they rely entirely on primary, you can at least switch the primary in each sub class.. or um.. ???
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Also with the light and heavy sub types for aliens, does that 'help' with the aliens taking full advantage of the alien weapons? So even if they rely entirely on primary, you can at least switch the primary in each sub class.. or um.. ???
This is a temporary work-around for the Taman species only. They go from unarmoured to lightly armoured to heavily armoured throughout the course of the campaign. In order to keep them from being too fast at the beginning of the game (when they wear no armour and so carry little weight) to being too slow late in the game (when they wear heavy armour), we created these duplicate variants of the Taman species. In the future we'll be able to do this within a single race without all the extra fuss, but for now this is the only way to get this balanced properly.
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2krilain: that's some impressive reasoning, I wasn't actually meaning that. For me, auto-RF with remaining time is just a matter of convenience, so that I wouldn't have to cycle through the soldiers once more to find those who still have time for RF, or to check that tiny button or press x to make soldiers advance carefully.
I think that current UI regarding RF is more a thing of the past when TU's from the next turn were used for it, and then you had strong incentive to not RF. An option for disabling auto-RF, rather than enabling RF, would seem more convenient for me. idk how do other players regard that though.
As for hurting friendlies with FR: I believe the game has already some checks for this. I often tried to make aliens waste ammo or shoot each other with RF, but it seems to me they have checks to not shoot when target is off range or when LoF is broken, even in clear sight. With this in place, how difficult would it be to add the check for friendlies near LoF? I tried once to code something for this project, but my meager c skills failed me through those heaps of code. maybe it's time to try again.
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The reason the AI just sits and RF's is because it's got enough TU that it can get four or five reaction shots so it doesn't have to advance just sit and wait until you do something stupid like attack. Thankfully they do seem to be only capable of snap shot reaction fire, otherwise the game would be unwinnable.
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Disclaimer: I don't know if its possible to implement a more realistic RF without destroying the gameplay, but here are some cloud castles-
RE: Reaction Fire / once more unto the breach
Consider Offensive Issue
'So my soldier is basically on guard, scanning for movements in front of him; this means that he should be ready to fire.' - Xeinar
'... reaction should preceed the last triggering action.' - nanomage
'Range is an issue.' - Telok
'.. give UFOAI RF more sense, and make it more captivating.' - krilain
Consider Defensive Issue
"... excessively defensive tactics. By giving the inert unit a shoot-first advantage in all encounters, you increase the incentive to camp your soldiers in a defensive place and you decrease the incentive to make contact with the enemy." - H-Hour
- Premise: Instant RF (Of some Form)
Argument: ..but this favours a defensive camping tactic.
- Give each soldier a limited Instant RF Pool from which to draw from, X amount of shots. Any shot, any TU cost. Once depleted normal RF rules apply (Cheap SHOT!)
If a person wanted to they could just camp and 'save', using their RF pool that way, doesn't address defensive issue.
- Allow unlimited IRF pool, but access to pool is retricted to first X turns (GUNG HO!)
Promotes aggressive activity; In that sitting and waiting essentially wastes IRF opportunity
More tactical players will feel like they are being rushed into combat
Once IRF pool is closed, how jaring will the the diff be? Intense firefight-BAM!>-BAM!>-BAM!>-BAM!>----BAM!>----BAM!>Everything slows down and stays that way for rest of battle
Certain maps/spawn points, itll take longer to engage enemy as first few turns are moving will feel like play is penalized/lose IRF time
- Option to enable TEAM REACTION FIRE, IRF mode that lasts 1 turn. Either one per mission, or rule: Cannot be used in X consecutive turns (X turns = recharge time)
Players get to choose 'When', making it a more viable offensive tool (it is easier to determine when you start attack vs when alien will start attack you)
Feels like a party buff, sounds llike a party buff, does this game have party buffs??
And See also,
- H-Hours Plan 'I hope eventually we will have some kind of "focus" mechanism that might, for instance, allow me to spend extra TUs to designate a small area of "focus". The soldier would then gain an advantage in response time when sighting an enemy in that area, but may lose the ability to see or respond to targets quickly outside of that area.'
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'Side note: this was supposed to be one of the roles the Shotguns play, but I can see now that the 10 TU firemode undermines this and so I will probably reduce it).' H-Hour
That would be cool, and thanks for the clarification re: Taman sub classes.
until you do something stupid like attack.
:o...so there are at least 2 reasons to stop picturing my soldiers semi-clad with red bandana's wrapped around flowing locks... ???
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It seems that a defender can and will shoot first if their TU cost is equal to or less than the acting character's and the aliens use this a lot. If the defender isn't winning ties they probably should (so an active player firing a weapon will fire after a reactor firing the same attack) but I think they do.
Really I think the issue is more that the aliens are more accurate and have lots of TUs, so we see them killing our people with RF but green soldiers can't do the same. With advanced troops I can bet on a small squad gunning down an alien coming out of cover before it can fire.
Another slightly cheap trick. Flash bangs are quicker to draw and throw than nearly any RF attack in 2.5. If you have only one enemy or they are clustered you can disable them and fire at will. Flash bangs also don't cause friendly fire so you can do this at very close quarters. I fear the day the aliens develop flash bangs.
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I fear the day the aliens develop flash bangs.
I fear the day aliens start to use their plasma grenades again. ???
About reaction fire, you should take into account that a change will affect the player and the AI the same way.
Maybe we could take the stats/skills into account. Based on the current system, a high minded (=good situational awareness) soldier with a high speed stat who is proficient in his weapon skill should be able to fire his weapon quicker than a rookie, lowering the TU costs for his reaction fire.
Maybe, if we could have critical hits implemented, we could also give the reaction fire a higher chance there.
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Unless something has changed since the nov 1 version, they still should be tossing nades. They do in mine at least. Unless we've gotten lucky and the aliens are penalized by the weight system as well, and no longer carry them. Which would be awesome.
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The only time I've seen the Aliens toss a plasma grenade was my first time on the Dam map, my soldiers all grew beards (even the females) in the time it took me to cross. I'm still not sure if the aliens ran out of ammo, or were so thankful ( it was a hot day and my snipers were fanning them from across the map ), but one threw down its weapon and ran, when I finally closed it appeared in a doorway and tried to toss a plasma at me. The grenade hit the door frame and blew up the tossee.
It would really make sense that a person with RF engaged, watching an area would benefit from a critical hit. I'm leery of the aliens stats though, if they get critical RF hits I am going to develop some serious 'avoidance' issues.
On flash bangs, it would be nice if there was some kinda indication of whether or not you hit or failed to hit the alien with the splash radius. The stun rod and tazer (and gas grenade?) use 'stun' damage, while the flash bang uses 'shock' (I think..heeh). So there's no animation for the damage type. Seeing as its my number one move to disable alien RF, its me hawk-eying my flash lobs and counting squares.. usually I toss 2.. if I'm unsure (and I think I am). Better then thinking, well maybe and getting blasted (to death).
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That's odd. The only time I saw an alien draw a grenade it also blew itself up.
I've seen this once in over 90 completed battles in 2.5. I think something is discouraging them from trying, possibly the blowing themselves up :)
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I want to add something to nanomage's comment about automatic RF.
Fallout Tactics had a system where your units would automatically shoot only if you had a certain percent chance to hit (eg. 33%, 66%, 90%, never) numbers may be off but that isn't important. Instead of manually setting RF each turn I want the ability to set a percentage to hit threshold where my units would use leftover TUs to fire at enemies above the threshold. This system allows so much more control and on top of that it reduces tedious micromanagement because your troops only have to be set once. And then if you really feel like you don't want to shoot the alien for whatever reason, you can simply change the mode to "never" when the situation pops up, instead of changing the mode *every* *single* *turn* you *do* want RF.
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So the proposed change is...
You no longer select RF or not, instead you set a threshold to perform RF at. If you've got the TUs you fire when your chance meets the threshold.
Hmm, assuming we keep the mode of selecting RF type the same and considering we can still reserve TUs using the TU reserver (which I never use now, I use the RF marker for that too for simplicity) I don't see a problem.
The biggest issue would be getting people to use the TU reserver to reserve for RF. I'm not sure this fixes moist of people's problems but it would be a nice option to have.
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2krilain: that's some impressive reasoning, I wasn't actually meaning that. For me, auto-RF with remaining time is just a matter of convenience, so that I wouldn't have to cycle through the soldiers once more to find those who still have time for RF, or to check that tiny button or press x to make soldiers advance carefully.
I must apologize here for I often dont understand everything and more :) English language is not my natural one (french). But even if we disagree with the maneer we should extend the RF, extinguishing it for you (if i understood !) , or pushing it further like a natural behaviour for me, we at least agree to the fact it doesnt get for the moment his maturity. But hopefully it will with the time and the developers job. I must add here that i dont really know today what should be this maturity. The intersting point for the moment I think, is to ear each others opinions.
As for hurting friendlies with FR: I believe the game has already some checks for this. I often tried to make aliens waste ammo or shoot each other with RF, but it seems to me they have checks to not shoot when target is off range or when LoF is broken, even in clear sight. With this in place, how difficult would it be to add the check for friendlies near LoF? I tried once to code something for this project, but my meager c skills failed me through those heaps of code. maybe it's time to try again.
In fact Friendly Fire on Reaction Fire should add something to the game if only it evolves (decreasingly) with the soldier/alien XP. Anyway that adds something more to the tactics.
You no longer select RF or not, instead you set a threshold to perform RF at. If you've got the TUs you fire when your chance meets the threshold.
I take the occasion of your quite good synthesis to argue again about the fact that the reaction can be also viewed as a free range of behaviour for your soldier. It could be also a part of a bigger "Reaction Freedom", including any action - as reloading or crouching, or looking around. I already exchanged some point of view with H-Hour at page 1 about this, so I wont say more, but reaction could also be the way to give every soldier a single personality (leading the game slightly further in RPG style). The day (if it comes such a day) the soldiers will be more like RPG characters (with a wide-range XP system) it will be a possible way to bring them such a shade (human-like reactions).
I didn't say an important thing. All that would give the possibility for the player to manage his team with more macromanagement (choose of a general set of soldier's behaviours) and less micromanagement (only move orders and some explicite shots) which sometimes, after repeated missions, would be more relaxing.
Omg I'm still adding remarks :o Ok last, but not least. I would really like to share this ultimate point of view. It is I see that the team is for the moment a set of different lonely soldiers not so much linked each others (there is not team action like grouped RF as said on the thread), and I would like to be able to make the team more like a single entity which I would be able to expand on the map and manipulate eventually at a micro-scale (as much as at a more deployed-team-scale). In the second style (deploying one entity), more (and suffisantly predictable) self-determination given to the soldiers is wished. For instance, maybe some of you played already games such Gunship2000. It is approximatively the model to which I refere. In this tactical game at least there were the 2 maneers for deploying his team (helicopter team). - Here in UFOAI , Reaction is the only way I see to build a bridge for doubling the game set of playing styles.
Sorry again for the bad english :/
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If I'm reading the code correctly then hovernets take 10 TU per shot. Is this right?
I'm doing reaction fire tests using a Dam map save.
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That's correct. 10 TU for a hovernet shot. Same TU for a combat hovernet's burst.
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Using this save under v2.5(I think it's the right one, Dam map with 3 snipers and 3 plasma rifles). I've run it five times now and have some data. One note is that my snipers are using Aimed Shot at 20TU, this is a new compile but I don't know if it's an artifact that got in the code or a reversion from the 24TU it had in my last compile.
All the sniper action is across the full length of the dam, soldier spawn fence to past the fence on the opposite end. All the plasma action is from the soldier spawn fence to targets near the pipe on the near side of the dam proper.
Interesting actions
1) A taman provoked two sniper RF at 26% chance to hit when he uncrouched, dropped a weapon, and spent 16TU moving. This is RF obviously working as intended.
2) A hovernet fired three shots without moving. Two snipers had 24% shots, one fired and the other didn't. Shooter: speed 23, accuracy 35, mind 35, sniper 32. Non-shooter: speed 24, accuracy 30, mind 34, sniper 31.
This same hovernet fired 3 shots without moving for the next five rounds. The same two snipers failed to RF until that last round. Same shooter RFed, same one didn't.
3) One taman fired two plasma rifle full-auto blasts. Three snipers at 25% chance to hit didn't shoot. Two of the three soldiers armed with plasma rifles did RF a shevarr who fired a plasma blaster burst (16TU), they had 20% chances to hit.
4) A hovernet moved and fired two shots, two snipers with 27% chances to hit did not RF. The second shot hit one of the snipers. A shevarr moved at a longer range and the wounded sniper took a RF shot at 15% to hit. Next round the hovernet fired three shots again (30TU), but neither sniper took RF that round or the next round when it fired two more shots and moved. Those RFs would have been at 27% and 16% for the wounded sniper.
% chances of RFs taken, these do not include the "Interesting actions" shots taken or not.
Sniper: 20%, 26%, 25%, 23%
Plasma Rifle: 20%, 25% (twice), 23% (one soldier did and one soldier didn't)
Action TUs and %s or RFs not taken, these do not include the "Interesting actions" shots taken or not.
move 5, shoot 16, 15% chance
move 9, shoot 28, 25% chance
move 20, shoot 10, 10% chance
move 2, shoot 20, 27% chance (two soldiers)
move 32, 23% chance
shoot 30, 10% chance (blocking thin pole), 23% chance, and 24% chance
shoot 28, 15% chance
shoot 32, 23% chance (two soldiers)
shoot 24, 25% chance
shoot 28, 10% chance (wounded sniper, at plasma rifle range)
So um... I can't see any real pattern in all this. I did note that sniper rifles with a 45%+ chance to hit will take unobstructed RF shots. There seem very little chance for RF at chances less than 25%.
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Dam has a lot of clutter that can complicate visibility (and thus your results). Try skirmishing on the attached map which will provide unobstructed visibility. If you've never set up a new map, place the .bsp file into /base/maps and have a look at /base/ufos/maps.ufo in a text editor. You can create your own /base/ufos/maps_temp.ufo, copy the dam mapdef from maps.ufo, and edit the names to match test_reaction.map.
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Is that "clutter" the fence posts? Because that's the only thing I can see here. I did note the one instance where a post blocked one of three possible shots.
I am trying to account for those posts, but almost every single sniper shot was into the same area. On #2 both snipers had equally unobstructed LoS and full TUs available. On #3 the plasma rifle soldiers were using the snap RF which takes 8TU compared to the alien provoking by using 16TU, but they only shot once each and never hit the alien. On #4 the LoS were not blocked by anything and the hovernet could obviously get a good line to the soldiers for 30TU multiple times.
I'm using the Dam map because it allows me to force the AI to stay at range and provoke RF. I'll check your map but don't expect any changes. By the way, shooting plasma rifle bursts and sniper aimed shots across the dam did not provoke RF from the aliens, ever. But 3/4 of the time that I used medkits did provoke alien RF.
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The test_reaction map will force the aliens to stay a decent range away.
Our visibility traces are minimal. I think we only draw one line between the alien and the soldier. If that line is obstructed, the alien is "not visible" regardless of whether or not other parts of the alien are visibile or if the thing obstructing that single line is very tiny. That means it's easy for very small obstructions to cause anomalies in the visibility.
There may be some kind of chance-to-hit calculation going on for reaction fire. You'd have to dive into the RF code to find out.
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The test_reaction map will
Man, that map isn't going to work. I can't control enough variables to get a good idea of what's going on.
1) It's a much shorter range than the Dam. I normally lost one or two soldiers (and more wounded) to enemy fire on the first turn, making it hard to tell if they used RF and what the %hit chance was. A starting sniper with 20 sniping and 22 accuracy had 30% to 33% chances to hit on this map, on the Dam a 30s skill sniper has ~25% chance to hit. There's no range issues here and range is one of the aspects of RF that I'm trying to quantify.
2) The aliens charge. If an alien advances towards the soldiers and provokes RF in the middle of the movement I can't tell what the %hit chance was. The Dam was good for this because the AI couldn't charge and had to move laterally. Plus they're so clumped up that I can't always tell which alien is being shot at.
3) Skirmish is lousy for this. I use 3 sniper rifles and three plasma rifles on the Dam so that I can tell who is getting RF at what ranges and %s. With skirmish I'm ending up with one or two of each weapon and I can't always tell who is shooting what.
I think a Dam map with the railings edited out would be much better for this. Then I could compare my current information with the edited map information and we could get a feel for how much the railings actually contribute.
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Here's an adjusted file. Aliens are now the same distance from your soldiers as on dam map. Aliens can not charge. I've set up an invisible wall. You can shoot and see through it, but aliens will stay on their side.
You can choose your own squad for Skirmish. When selecting the map, there should be a Team tab on the right. Choose that and then click new. You'll get a squad equipment window to equip your soldiers.
There are three "hostile" firing channels and two "safe" firing channels. You spawn looking down the two safe ones. This should let you position just the soldiers you want.
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Ok, this version of test_reaction is pretty near perfect. I fooled around with skirmish, that's not perfect but it is useable. I'm now running six random (I didn't bother to check their stats) newbie soldiers through it. I have some very preliminary data on sniper rifle RF.
The walls are 67 squares long, aliens use the first 7 squares and the invisible wall is at square 8. If you limit the aliens to Phalanx weapons then the only things shooting at you are the hovernets. Well one alien had a sniper rifle and another had the light-weight minigun, but that was over about 10 runs through the map with 12 aliens on the map each time. I station my soldiers at square #58 (9th square in from the end) and set up the sniper rifle aimed shot RF. Accuracy is surprisingly consistent, soldiers with 10 points difference in sniper skill and three points difference in accuracy only vary by one or two percentages in the reported %hit. Wounded soldiers were taken off RF, dropped their weapons, and got to play decoy.
Aliens at square #1, accuracy 22%, 37 out of 45 possible RF shots taken
Aliens at square #2, accuracy 23%, 17 out of 40 possible RF shots taken
Aliens at square #3, accuracy 23%, 16 out of 40 possible RF shots taken
(Gap in the data here, aliens don't like to hang around in squares 4 and 5)
Aliens at square #6, accuracy 25%, 11 out of 23 possible RF shots taken
Aliens at square #2, accuracy 26%, 9 out of 14 possible RF shots taken
Now since hovernets take 10TU to fire a shot or burst and my sniper rifles take 20TU to RF then I ought to get RF after every second shot or before the second shot if they moved. That’s true about 60% of the time, the rest of the time they are making or have just made their third shot when the RF occurs. This bit is really kind of hard to quantify due to the speed things happen at.
One thing I can confidently report is that enemies in the line of fire are not considered when a soldier takes RF (if a hovernet provokes RF but a taman is blocking the LoS your soldier will shoot through the taman). I do need to check if that is true with allies though.
After this I'll start checking longer ranges. Then I'll go and do other weapons, I do know that MGs will RF at %hits as low as 2% but the maximum range they will RF at is lower.
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I reconstituted the Phalanx soldier team so they all have 20 to 22 sniper and accuracy skills. These guys never have more than 1% difference in their %hit chances. All shots are Aimed Shots with Sniper Rifles.
Previous team at square 58 had 89/141 RF chances taken (63%)
This team at square 58 has 77/167 RF chances taken (46%)
This team at square 62 has 127/237 RF chances taken (53%)
When everything that shoots back is dead I check the %hit reporting.
At 23% and 24% reported chance to hit I got 56/272 hits (20%)
Once again I need to mention that RF occurs almost half the time after a hovernet has moved and shot twice or has shot three times.
I did also find two interesting occurrences. First was the message "An alien has revitalized" followed by a bloodspider standing back up. It had already taken two sniper rifle hits, and putting it down again took two more hits.
The other was a crash out of skirmish to the menu that generated an error code in the console. "ERROR: CL_ParseServerMessage: Illegal server message 10 (last cmd was: 9, eType: 23)" If this is useful, good. If not then feel free to ignore it.
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The other was a crash out of skirmish to the menu that generated an error code in the console. "ERROR: CL_ParseServerMessage: Illegal server message 10 (last cmd was: 9, eType: 23)" If this is useful, good. If not then feel free to ignore it.
That depends, how old is your build?
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That depends, how old is your build?
November 30th build.
At square 66 the soldiers took 70/144 RF shots offered by aliens. The %hit reports were 18% to 22% and RF was taken on aliens at both extremes.
Soldiers are not going to shoot through another soldier to RF, but may hit other soldiers due to the weapon spread.
Soldiers will shoot through one alien to RF the one behind it. I'm not sure about shooting through 2 aliens. This may also be because sniper rifles are "through wall" weapons.
I'll do the next test at square 70, three squares beyond the end of the wall. After that I'll move to machine guns and then assault rifles.
Finished a MG test.... Interesting.
At square 62 a MG using the short burst has a reported 1% chance to hit. 61/357 chances at RF were taken. Actually that number is significantly lower than I'm reporting. The MG short burst takes 14TU, so a hovernet that fires three times should provoke twice. Also the soldiers have 29+ TU available and should be able to RF twice. Of those 61 RFs taken exactly three were doubles, and there were lots of triple shots from hovernets, easily a third of RF chances I recorded.
The interesting bit is that the RFs taken came in clusters. Data
set{1} 4/5, 1/5, 1/5, 0/7, 1/9, 0/3, 1/12, 2/3. set{2} 6/6, 6/18, 6/6, 6/6, 0/24, 1/15, 0/50, 1/27, 1/15. set{3} 1/3, 3/3, 1/6, 1/6, 2/3, 1/3, 2/3, 0/36, 6/12, 6/12, 0/18, 0/29.
Also, the hit rate of MGs is pathetic compared to sniper rifles. They compare to heavy slow SMGs, and really only seem to work at SMG range. Plus it takes 3+ hits to down an unarmored taman. I'll do assault rifles in a few days. MGs are just too depressing to deal with.
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Alright, illegal server message bugs should be fixed in latest builds, but now I noticed: a blood spider stunned by sniper rifles? That doesn't seem right.
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in general this is right and can happen - but not for bloodspiders of course. there should be a restriction. i think this happens if a particular threshold is reached (hp verus stun value).
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Some data on the assault rifles. It took a couple of tries to get a RF range here, this set is at square 45 with %hit chances at 11% to 15%. Because the snap shot RF on ARs is 8TUs I tracked how many times the hovernet fired and how many times the soldiers could respond. I only counted hovernet shots, not movement which never seems to provoke RF any way.
At square 45 the soldiers took 21 out of 530 RF shots. I think one of them might have hit. And I'm seeing shot clusters again.
set[1] 1/1, 6/6, 0/6, 0/6, 0/6, 0/6, 0/6, 0/6, 0/6
set[2] 1/6, 0/12, 0/10, 0/14, 0/10, 0/10, 0/4, 1/8, 2/11, 0/8, 0/8, 0/10,
0/6, 0/9, 0/6, 1/6, 0/6, 2/9, 0/9, 0/6, 0/6, 0/9, 3/9, 0/9, 0/9, 0/9, 0/9
set[3] 0/12, 0/12, 0/12, 4/6, 0/18, 0/18, 0/15, 0/10, 0/12, 0/8, 0/10, 0/9,
0/9, 0/9, 0/9, 0/6, 0/6, 0/6, 0/8, 0/6, 0/4, 0/4, 0/4, 0/4, 0/4,0/6, 0/6, 0/6,
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in general this is right and can happen - but not for bloodspiders of course. there should be a restriction. i think this happens if a particular threshold is reached (hp verus stun value).
I know that when hp <= stun actors are stunned, here the question is: where the stun damage is coming from? robotic actors have a hardcoded immunity to stun_gas and additionally all booodspider and hovernet variants are scripted with a very high (999) resistance to both stun_gas and stun_electro, not to mention that sniper rifles don't cause stun damage in the first place (@Telok you weren't using stun weapons right? at least didn't mention stun weapons at all in your previous posts), so it seems something isn't right.
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Two ideas.
1. I know from my tests before that any weapon will do 1 damage even if an alien resistance is more than the damage. So perhaps it's just hitting those very tiny thresholds of 1-2 stun damage.
2. When aliens are "hurt" at the start of the map, are they given any stun damage?
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Hmmm.....
1) Telok said it took two more hits to down the bloodspider, which, had already taken two hits, that means that when it was stunned stun damage was at least about 1/3 of its total HP -- assuming the last of four hits made minimal damage the first two should have done nearly 2/3 damage to its HP, so not likely.
2) Yes, but robotic actors have hardcoded immunity against this (stun damage, they can still receive normal HP damage)
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It was a combat bloodspider, one of the tough ones.
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@Telok I didn't mean it is unlikely for the boodspider to have taken 4 hits, I had assumed it was a combat model, I meant that if it still had enough HP to need two hits to take it down, it is very unlikely that it received enough stun damage to stun it, considering that with 999 resistance to stun it would receive only 1 stun per hit, that is unless there is a bug, which is what I'm thinking (or maybe you modded in a stun weapon with 1000+ damage that you aren't telling us about ;))
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There was a commit change recently addressing a RF bug that may explain the aliens seems to move and fire for full and then take full RF later. Hadn't seen an announcement and I know this irritates the crap out of people so I thought I'd mention it.
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I've updated to the Dec 18 nightly and found something I absolutely did not expect.
I ran another pair of sets at square 45 with assault rifle RF using single shot. They took 7/494 RF chances at 11% to 15%.
Then I tried burst fire RF.
At square 45, 8% to 11% hit chance, 28/30 RFs
At square 55, 5% to 7% hit chances, 202/341 RFs
At square 65, 4% to 5% hit chances, 22/48 RFs
So, um, weird. At a lower %hit and costing more TUs the soldiers RF 20 times as much. I guess this explains the MG numbers to a point. The more shots that will be fired means the more likely an actor will RF once the TU requirement is met. And soldiers using ARs won't RF if an alien is blocking LoF, even though soldiers with a sniper rifle will.
I'm not modding anything and definitely not nuclear stun ammo.
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I played a bit with MGs and SMGs.
Your chance of getting off an RF shot is proportional to the number of shots you will fire. Soldiers with MGs will fire on every single RF provocation at 70+ squares of distance using full auto while standing. They will not hit anything. The same thing happens with SMGs except that you have to be in targeting range. Based on the MGs (I have to go back and confirm it) it looks like you need a minimum 1% reported chance to hit to take a RF.
So this is what I know so far.
RF is based on:
1) Being in targeting range, but closer is better
2) Clean line of fire (green targeting line) except for through_wall weapons
3) Enough TUs spent by the target to provoke RF
4) The number of shots the RF will fire
5) Maybe a >=1% hit chance
I may need to start modding weapons if I want to find exact numbers but the trend is obvious, more shots = more RFs.
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I've played with the plasma rifle this time, because it has three RF modes.
Everything in this post is at a range of square 68.
Standing Auto-fire, 1% reported hit rate, six tests run.
1) 16 out of 150 RFs taken.
2) 4 out of 102 RFs. 10.6%
3) 2 out of 97 RFs. 3.9%
4) 5 out of 67 RFs. 7.4%
5) 1 out of 187 RFs. 0.5%
6) 24 out of 148 RFs. 16.2%
Notes: On tests 1, 2, and 6 the hovernet bugged and moved around invisibly while it's model remained in one place. On tests 1 and 2 this happened on the 11th turn of combat (13th turn since starting the map) and the soldiers stopped taking RFs at it. On test 6 it happened on the third turn of combat but the soldiers continued to RF until the 10th turn, no more RFs after turn 10. Also interesting is that test 5 had only one hovernet to shoot at while test 6 had two hovernets and four other aliens to soak up ammo. Soldiers using auto will try to RF through blocking aliens.
Crouched snap shots, 4% to 6% reported hit rates, three tests.
Zero out of 496 RF shots taken.
Depressing.
Crouched burst fire, 2% to 4% reported hit rates, three tests.
1) 3 out of 206 RFs. 1.4%
2) 0 out of 101 RFs. 0%
3) 4 out of 106 RFs. 3.7%
Notes: Test 1 had it's first RF in the second round, the last RF in the last round (24th of combat), and the middle RF about in the middle of he combat. Test 3 had all four of it's RFs in the very first round. Interestingly test 2 had only one hovernet to shoot at while test 3 had two hovernets and two other aliens.
Next I abandoned Phalanx soldiers and selected a team of Tamans (off topic: a squad of hovernets with miniguns equipped looks hilarious), these buggers have 75+ accuracy and 80 to 90+ assault skill. This makes a difference.
Standing auto-fire, 2% to 4% reported hit rate, two tests.
42 out of 47 RFs taken.
An 89% RF rate, utterly amazing. Even better is that they actually hit once in a while.
Plus they tried to shoot through blocking enemies again.
Crouching snap shots, 11% to 13% reported hit rate, 4 tests.
1 out of 682 RFs.
It's infinitely better than 0, but that's not saying much.
Crouching burst fire, 6% to 8% reported hit rate, 6 tests.
1) 27 out of 47 RFs. 57.4%
2) 19 out of 19 RFs. 100%
3) 6 out of 114 RFs. 5.2%
4) 21 out of 44 RFs. 47.7%
5) 11 out of 17 RFs. 64.7%
6) 11 out of 51 RFs. 21.5%
Notes: Tests 2 and 3 are when I really started to realize that the target environment may be having an effect on RFs. I was double checking my scratch pad when I realized that test 2 had two hovernets, a shevarr with an assault rifle, and three other aliens. Test 3 had a single hovernet. Tests 4 and 5 had s single hovernet and three filler aliens. Test 6 had a hovernet and two filler aliens. Again they shot through blocking enemies.
Conclusions: Actors with 30s skills RF far far less than actors with 80+ skills, no surprise there. The number of shots fired is vastly more important than the accuracy of the weapon. Multi-shot RF modes will try to shoot through a blocking alien, I need to try with the particle rifle or something to confirm single/multi through alien shooting. And I need to do follow up testing on the target environment because it looks like a target rich environment gets more RFs than a single target.
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Any way of added a 1 tile movement mechanic to the reaction fire, I.e. After you take your reaction shot your soldier moves to a previous designated square. I notice that on the aliens turn a marker appears if you try to move your soldiers showing the path they would take perhaps when selecting reaction fire giving the option to click a point on the map to retreat to would be like leaning around the corner. at least giving the reaction shot a chance to seem like you have "stunned the alien for 2 T.U's?
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There was a commit change recently addressing a RF bug that may explain the aliens seems to move and fire for full and then take full RF later. Hadn't seen an announcement and I know this irritates the crap out of people so I thought I'd mention it.
If it was committed then it's not fixed as of the Dev 2.5 build for Jan 10th, as I'm experiencing quite a high frequency of aliens happily moving sizable distances, firing off shots, and then hammering my squad with RF come my turn.
It is extremely irritating, as you've noted, as it's incredibly unfair and unfun.
Without diving into the code, I wonder if aliens have their TU replenished during the human turn (therefore allowing them have a massive amount of RF) rather than during their own turn.
As an aside RF seems to have other issues in this game, it might be a design choice, but I find it extremely odd that aliens don't RF often if you move about in their LOS, but go RF crazy when you try to shoot (often killing your squad members before they can complete their action).
(Nb, first post. Be gentle :) )
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It's based on the TU cost for whatever you're doing. Since moving is only 2 to 3 points (more for awkward terrain) and firing is 4TU and up then moving often won't trigger an RF response. From what I understand it's based on view. If an alien has you in view and has a weapon set for snap RF that takes 8TU to fire, you need to spend 8+1, 9 TU in view at one go. Dodging out of sight and back into sight resets this. But fire, often goes over this limit and the alien gets RF fire. If the weapon mode their set to requires more TU to fire you can spend more time in view before needing to dodge out of view again.
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FYI, as of yesterday, the RF threshold has been removed in 2.5-dev. Reaction fire should no longer be prevented from firing if the chance to hit is too low.
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H-Hour, did the team take into consideration the idea of not resetting the count when a unit moves between covers? This would trigger RF more easily, and would make more sense (if I see someone moving into cover, I know he'll come out from there).
I think that if the count is not resetted, the RF would seem more natural.
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We have considered it, but it's technically (close to) impossible.
For the code, it's visibility on/off. So the code can not distinguish between
a) walking behind a broken fence and
b) dodging behind a crate and
c) walking into a house and out of it through the backdoor.
The latter is certainly a non-RF situation imho.
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I'm not entirely convinced by that rationale. I struggle to think of a single map we have where (c) could actually happen within a single soldier's field of view. (a) and (b), however, can happen very frequently on some maps.
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You know the code, I don't, so most probably you are right :) , but what about creating a number of counters for each unit in game? I mean, each of my soldiers will have as many counters as the aliens in play (and viceversa). While in visibility, the counter add the TU spent (triggering, in case, RF). At the end of the turn the counter is resetted.
From a logic point of view is it not so hard to implement but again, I'm a profane with no knowledge of your work so far :)
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This is how reaction fire works already. The only difference is that when a unit can no longer see a target the counter is reset.
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I just had a soldier on reaction fire, an alien turned up and fired, and after it had done so, a soldier took reaction fire. Alien took no action (spent no TU's) after rf had taken place. This goes against my understanding of rf, I though rf was supposed to happen first? Is there an exception to order of actions if TU cost=TU threshold for RF or something like that?
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I just had a soldier on reaction fire, an alien turned up and fired, and after it had done so, a soldier took reaction fire. Alien took no action (spent no TU's) after rf had taken place. This goes against my understanding of rf, I though rf was supposed to happen first? Is there an exception to order of actions if TU cost=TU threshold for RF or something like that?
Noticed the same. Aliens steps out, walks two grids, fires PB-Rifle, soldiers fires back with Plasma Blaster. Alien dies, Soldier dies from wounds.
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This is how reaction fire works already. The only difference is that when a unit can no longer see a target the counter is reset.
Yes, this is exactly what I meant: if the reset is disabled, RF would be more coherent with reality, with the expected behaviour of RF from the users.
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Noticed the same. Aliens steps out, walks two grids, fires PB-Rifle, soldiers fires back with Plasma Blaster. Alien dies, Soldier dies from wounds.
Maybe it's actually the act of alien shooting first that counted for TU spent that triggered RF? But I can understand how in such situation RF may seem a tad silly and achieving little (though it's always one less alien to be shot by someone else).
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Maybe it's actually the act of alien shooting first that counted for TU spent that triggered RF?
Afaik rf should take place before the action that triggers it?
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Afaik rf should take place before the action that triggers it?
Please update. :)
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About reaction fire, just remember, they can't fire at what they can't see, and your actions only count on their reaction calcs for units they can see. Just assume they will get the first shot no matter what you do, and plan accordingly. Also, watch how they attack you for clues on how to beat it.
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I would say the Weights system has really boosted the utility of the Strength stat, pretty much nixing and surpassing what small effect the Speed stat had, at least as far as your speed effects TU. Changing your weight encumbrance(the 3 weight classes) has a much more drastic effect....
So with Speed, Up to 91 points per mission : Speed Skill and TU by encumbrance modifier:
1000exp = Up 3.98 @91-->11 Missions //Skill 15-->42 @ 1 -->29.4 @0.7 -->16.8 @0.4
2000exp = Up 6.03 @91-->22 Missions //Skill 20-->43 -->30.1 -->17.2
4645exp = Up 10 @91-->52 Missions //Skill 25-->44 -->30.8 -->17.6
Half @45.5-->103 Missions //Skill 30-->45 -->31.5 -->18
//Skill 35-->46 -->32.2 -->18.4
Note: I looked in my stats.txt, with the last 52 instances(little over 6 missions) I saw an average of @41.4exp-->113 Missions
So your Speed will at most go up 10 levels, which means your actual TU will only go up by 2 while led lighting (http://www.niceledlights.com), 1.4 while encumbered and 0.8 under penalty from your starting Speed Stat. Joi??
I'd like to see Speed to have a greater effect on gameplay then that. Also my own 2 cents, in most games crouching is considered stealthy, walking somewhat, and shooting announces here I am.. here its like there's a 4 piece band following me around :o
That said, as is, I kinda like the simplicity of reaction fire.
it is awesome game for sure.. Love to play it when I do get some time but the post helps me in understanding it bit more... So thanks
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Note that if you are playing 2.5-dev, the recent stat changes (http://ufoai.org/forum/index.php/topic,7845.0.html) should make speed stat increases more effective. You still won't acquire enormous TU gains, but should see more than a 2 TU jump for veteran soldiers. I'd estimate 5-10 TU increases, but this one was harder to pin down than other stats.