Messages

1

Discussion / Games dragging on / Coward aliens...

« on: April 30, 2012, 12:20:09 am »

I'm sure this has probably been raised before but I want to raise it again, cos I just had to abort what seems to have been a 2-3 hour terror/harvester mission on the mansion level (with the crashed helicopter) as there was a single alien left *SOMEWHERE* on this gargantuan map and I just could not find him.

It gets to a point where the whole tactics thing goes right out the window and I resort to simply sending guys out on their own in all different direction just trying to find this idiot alien.

Please can something be implemented to make this less annoying; some ideas I was thinking of:

A) Maximum turn limit - if the aliens don't kill all  your soldiers in X number of turns then they fail by default
B) Much more agressive aliens - stop freaking hiding!!
C) Autoresolve battle - I think if you abort the mission it already autoresolves to a degree but its silly. I aborted the mission with all 8 soldiers at 100% health and there was 1 taman left and after aborting the mission I lost 5 soldiers. I don't want to abort as such but just autoresolve the battle with a realistic outcome - ie no casualties and a nice dead alien!

2

Discussion / Re: Alien activity too intense?

« on: August 25, 2011, 01:10:42 pm »

Well I'll try to get back on topic...


Personally I think there are way too many ufos, especially given the high casualty rate they suffer. Also having to constantly fight easy but time consuming manual battles trivialises the experience and makes it boring super quickly. Even with a good autoresolve system there are still far too many of the darn things whizzing about and getting blown out of the sky.

Perhaps if the attacks could be more bursty so that you may have a period of a week or two where there are little to no attacks but then suddenly a wave of intense activity in a particular area; preferably near the player's base/s for gameplay reasons. During the quiet period you would see almost exclusively scouts who will by default try and flee if they don't feel they have a high chance of winning. Then during the intense period you will see mostly fighters and harvesters intent on landing and wreaking havok.

Of course that would put your base/operatives under great pressure for a short period and you may take heavy casualties both to people and equipment but you would have that breathing space in between to get yourself organized for the next major attack. At the start of the game the quiet periods will be long and the intense periods will be brief but this will change over time to become the opposite (rate of change depending on difficulty level).

Also I think the likes of harvester/terror missions need to be much more difficult from the get go with maximum number of aliens for a map with a mixture of taman/ortnok ALL in armour with plasma rifles or better to really put the hurt on the player and make them feel totally inferior.

3

Discussion / Re: Autoresolve ideas

« on: August 25, 2011, 12:22:39 pm »

As a suggestion, the game should gather statistics on how you complete the missions and given similar balance adjust for your skill level, that is if I tend to complete most missions with max 2 soldiers wounded, it should boost up my success rate in autoresolve as opposed to when I get my soldiers killed on average, my autoresolve should accordingly have higher fatality ratio.
Why this makes sense? Because many of us don't have too much time to invest in every mission, yet after 2-3 autoresolves the squad is shredded to nothing, while with the same squad played manually I get maybe 1 dead in 4 missions (I do retry).
I am not sure what the exact learning algorithm should be, how complex to make it, but I guess it should rely on current system, just adjust success/failure chances via learning curve considering fatalities, number of wounded, soldiers XP level.
Any ideas?

Just want to say that I agree with your original point. In medieval total war and games similar each army (I use the term army loosely) that was led by a lord/general would gain command stars as you win more and more battles and I think you lost stars (even going negative) if you lose battles.

These command stars are then used in part to decide the outcome of an autoresolve battle along with number of troops on each side and the quality of said troops. I really like that system because you put effort into fighting the manual battles to train up your generals so that in future you can autoresolve with confidence that the outcome will be favourable.

However UFO AI lacks any clear leader of a squad since ranks are gained automatically rather than being appointed by the player's choice. I would prefer to clearly designate a member of the squad who will act as the leader and then any battles won/lost will confer command experience to them. Also I think the automatic rank ups should be changed from ranks to simply a measure of a soldier's experience in battle. So instead of private -> lance-corporal -> corporal etc you would have rookie -> Junior -> Experienced -> veteran -> hardened veteran etc... This could act as a guage of troop quality in combination with a scoring system for the gear they are using.

Would be nice if other ranks could be appointed like lieutenant and seargents and they will receive a portion of command experience (higher amount for higher ranking officers) so they can get some passive training and when you build a new base you don't have to start completely from scratch as you can make your lieutenant the commander for the new force and promote all the others to fill the gaps.