Messages

1

Tactics / Re: storming corrupters?

« on: February 18, 2010, 02:05:02 pm »

When in trouble, barricade yourself and let the aliens come to you, as you take them out one by one. Also, heavy barrages of grenade launcher fire while carefully advancing should not be underestimated.And always move crouched.

2

Discussion / Re: Why is the "saved game during combat" thread locked?

« on: September 22, 2009, 01:46:44 pm »

A small offtopic about savegames - the most hardcore savegame feature I've ever encountered was in Warhammer 40k Chaos Gate (snip) There were 4 difficulty levels: (snip)

A somewhat similar system was used in Warlords Battlecry. It had, iirc, three levels:

* Tin man. Ordinary saves, ordinary XP.
* Bronze man. Ordinary saves, if you die, lose XP, but if you win, +50% XP.
* Iron man. If you die, it's game over. +100% XP.

The exact levels may be off, but the idea is that you get punished for playing it safe.

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Tactics / Re: How are Heavy Weapons incorportated into squad tactics?

« on: August 31, 2009, 04:34:03 pm »

My mixed thoughts on the different weapon classes:

* Heavy weapons. Made to lay down a heavy rain of fire with accuracy, even at distance. The trade-off is weight and mobility. Good for defense of strong points. My suggestion: Make them powerful, but wildly inaccurate if fired while standing. If fired crouched (which is as close to prone as we get), very accurate. Also, make it cheap in TU's when crouched.

* Sniper guns. Not much more powerful than any other rifle if one looks at the ballistics, but add some to the damage anyway, as they do tend to get more accurate hits. The same applies as for heavy weapons, require crouched to be accurate. Relatively expensive in TU's.

* Assault rifle. The jack of all trades. A trade-off between range, mobility and firepower. Gives decent accuracy when standing, decent damage and decent TU usage.

* Submachinegun. The nimble gun, the little brother of the assault rifle. Less damage than an assault rifle, less range. However, more accurate when standing, and uses much less TU's, so it's good for close quarters indoors combat.

* Pistol. Really not very useful if you have a working primary weapon. Quicker (in TU's) than the submachinegun, but less accurate, slower rate of fire, less damage.

* Grenade launcher. To launch lots of firepower at a distance, even lobbing over obstacles. Good when you don't care about accuracy and just want to do much damage to an area. Needs much better range, more powerful ammo (bigger blast), but also needs crouching for good accuracy. Even so, the grenades should not be too accurate, especially not on auto. Give them a nice spread.

* Rocket launcher. Basically, like the sniper, but with more punch and with a big blast. Good to accurately take out tough targets. Slower (more TU's).

* Knife. Seldom used as a weapon, more used as a tool.

* Grenades. Much like the grenade launcher, but with shorter range. Range is even shorter if crouched. They also need to be a bit more powerful.

* Smoke grenades. To cover an advance or retreat. Needs more area and more effective smoke.

Apply these guidelines on alien weapons as well, as applicable.

Note how I've used the standing/crouched as a way to give each weapon their own distinct usage. I know prone is not on the plan at the moment, but it would further enhance the possibilities to make the weapons more different.

In general, make the weapons different, so that your tactics will dictate which weapon to use. Avoid getting stuck in a watered down "everything is the same" balanced system.

4

Discussion / Re: Why is the "saved game during combat" thread locked?

« on: August 25, 2009, 04:13:54 pm »

Though I don't need to save in a mission for gameplay reasons, there are two possible reasons I can think of which I have not seen yet:

* Bugs. Several times when playing the game, I've been dropped out of the game or had to abandon a mission due to bugs. I don't complain about the bugs per se, they are to be expected in a game under development (to be quite honest, some of them probably comes from playing on a laptop, which, as laptops typically are, is prone to overheating), but it kind of sucks when you've spent two hours on a mission and your remaining troopers get stuck in a staircase or the game locks up. Being able to save occasionally would help mitigate that.

* Bug fixing. I work with development, and when a customer has a problem, it's much easier to fix if you can duplicate it. Being able to post a savegame so that a developer can reproduce a bug in his development environment would cut down a lot on tedious bug searching.

I just wanted to put those argument forward, in order to enlarge the view to cover what I believe is previously undiscussed terrain.

5

Tactics / Re: Tip of the Day

« on: August 20, 2009, 03:36:00 pm »

It's a classic infantry tactic dating back to the invention of the rifle (or muskets as they used to call them).

Perhaps it's just too 18th century for this game

Not really that outdated, we use similar techniques in some situations. For instance, if you have enemies outside and want to pop out and shoot through the door, one guy goes high, one goes low. Usually, one lays down a suppressive fire while the other picks targets with more precision as they run for cover. Extremely scary for the enemy and quite effective.

6

Tactics / Re: tactics for druglord map

« on: February 03, 2009, 03:28:19 pm »

Barricade yourself in the compound by one of the bridges, then just step out in the door/wall breach, fire a volley of grenades or MG fire if there is an alien, then step away. If you have several men there, you'll be able to fire many times. Let them come to you, and gun them down with concentrated fire as they approach.

Have all troops on snap fire as well, just in case an alien sneaks up unnoticed, they should be able to cut the alien to shreds before it has time to fire.

The aliens are really weak at coordinating attacks, so this is a very effective tactic, although it might cost you a couple of civilians. There should be some logic that makes the aliens team up in groups if they don't see any enemies, that would make them much tougher if you are defensive or slow.

7

Design / Re: Defending downed DROPSHIPs?

« on: January 23, 2009, 11:30:00 am »

One could even do it as a defense mission with time limit. Basically, the story would be that the survivors needs to survive for a fixed number of turns, based on how far away the rescue ship is, and that the aliens will take off once it arrives/is in range.

It would make for nice "desperate last ditch defense"-missions, where, instead of having the initiative of being the aggressor, the player must assume a defensive responsive tactic against superior forces, trying to hold out until the cavalry arrives. Maybe even some random loss of equipment in the crash?

It would make a nice change of pace and provide more variation to gameplay and tactics.

"OK, boys, dig in, and hold your fire until you see the facettes of their eyes!"

8

Discussion / Re: "Heavy Equipment" button

« on: March 07, 2008, 03:37:48 pm »

Somewhat off topic, but cool researchable technology idea:

It would be cool if the drop tanks on the phoenix could be replaced with bloodspider pods, which directly upon landing, released reprogrammed bloodspiders (maybe two or three per pod) that fight on your side. These would be in addition to your troops and would not affect troop count. The downside would be that they could not be built, only made from repaired bloodspiders that you have killed, and they would be under AI control, not player control.

Great for automatic scouting out enemies, but uncontrollable. Likely to be lost, as they'll not be as smart as a player and will likely rush into groups of aliens, and difficult to aquire, so you save them for those really hard missions.

9

Discussion / Re: My first impressions

« on: February 22, 2008, 10:08:31 am »

What about making the time rate flow the same for both players rather than differently? Or perhaps giving player 1 complete control over the time ratio? (this would work well for LAN games at least)

Or run at a fixed pace, but with a pause every new day to manage your bases and all that stuff, and with a pause when something happens (UFO/activity spotted). When an interception is in progress, the game runs at a fixed, slower pace.

Of course, it would make it more turn based and not as fluid, but given that multiplayer campaigns would be possible, it would be worth the sarifice.

----

Some more suggestions:

* Since the game is rendered in real 3D anyway, not bitmapped fake isometric 3D like the "originals", why not implement a "cool cam". When something important/cool happens, zoom in to a closeup view (as close as the current 3D models can handle) of what's happening. For instance, when one of your troops get killed, place the camera a few squares away from him, along the line of fire that hit him. The same goes for killing an enemy. This could probably be extended to include other events as well, such as "Alien spotted", "Taking fire", "Grenade thrown", "Shooting at alien", "Civilian killed", "Civilian spotted" and so on, perhaps user selectable to avoid cool cam spamming. It would probably not be that difficult to implement, all the stuff is already in place, it's just a matter of sometimes moving the camera to another position. The camera is already moved, it's just a matter of moving it to the eye level of the troops instead. It would certainly increase the immersiveness and the feeling of creepy aliens sneaking up on you with their anal probes ready...  It would feel more like being the soldier, suddenly seeing something out of the corner of his eye. It would also help giving a sense of how three-dimensional the maps are, and lessen the feeling of them being stacked slices. I know the 3D models might not be designed for closeups, but I think that for fast flashes like these, it can be enough.

* Machineguns. Why are they less powerful than assault rifles, and why does their accuracy increase so little when crouching? I would suggest giving them more power and make them wildly inaccurate when fired standing, but accurate and hard hitting when crouched. Also make them fairly cheap in TU for crouched snap fire, to simulate their capacity for suppressive fire. On the other hand, they can be heavy and cumbersome.

* I think the text is wrong after an interception. After a successful intercept, I get "You have lost a battle...". If that's a loss, I don't want to win.

* The aliens have an AI that understands "hit & run". Often, they appear, fire at me and disappear again. I like that.

* I mentioned Blue Max as an inspiration to how interceptions could be handled. Rules can be found here: http://www.eaglesmax.com/ , and an online variant of the game can be found here: http://www.youplay.it/play/main.asp .

10

Discussion / Re: My first impressions

« on: February 15, 2008, 06:59:31 pm »

And some things will probably go too far, wont be really usable or give too much development headache

I'm aware that some of the suggestions are big, especially a multiplayer campaign. I'm a professional programmer.

Still, see it as a brainstorming sessions, and maybe some of the big stuff ends up at the bottom of a todo list and manage to surface half a decade later.

11

Discussion / My first impressions

« on: February 15, 2008, 03:04:58 pm »

I've tried UFO:AI for a while now, and I have some thoughts, suggestions and reflections. These are not sorted in any way, and I realize that not all will agree with everything and that some of the ideas are probably underway anyway. Some comments will go beyond the originals, but there's nothing that says that you can't be better.

* I love it. It's like reliving the original games.

* It's beautiful, much neater than the original.

* Aircraft. As far as I can see, only three types are available, and new types can't be researched. A few more would be nice.

* I liked the "auto pause when something happened real time mode" of Apocalypse a lot, it removed a lot of the tedious ordering (such as moving a squad which happens to be at the wrong end of the map) and gave some nice "Shit! Shit! Shit!" moments when something unexpected happened. It also made gameplay faster, without losing detail. I realise that many players don't agree with me on this and that it would be a major rethink, but I just want to mention it.

* Interception. Some kind of visual depiction of the interception, instead of the geoscape, would add a lot. Apocalypse had it, since the scale was different. Perhaps some system like the old board game "Blue Max" or the newer board game "Wings of War", basically "Both sides give orders, then both sides move simultaneously, then whoever has an enemy within their fire arc shoots". Gives a nice dogfight feeling.

* 8 man squads? I miss my 36 man attack teams! OK, I can see why 36 might be difficult to balance, but a bit more than 8 would be nice and allow for more flexible tactics. Maybe 12 or 16? This could also be a way to balance tougher aliens if, as in the original games, coupled to the need to reseach larger aircraft.

* Nighttime geoscape. Simple, yet beautiful.

* I think I'm able to stuff any amount of aircraft into a single hangar (of the correct size).

* Grenades are way too wimpy. I miss the big explosions of the original games. With the current radius, I practically have to stuff the grenade down their throat to get them inside the radius. Grenades should be area clearing weapons. I want to be able to clear a room by having some grenade launcher guys launch a volley of grenades into it.

* I'd love to see multiplayer campaigns. Each player have their own bases, then when a mission begins, the soldiers are divided between the players so everybody has something to do.

* I'd love to see aliens vs human multiplayer, both in missions and in campaigns. A campaign would probably need to bend the story a little, for instance, the aliens have successfully taken over North and South America at the start and have bases there. For balance, humans would lack technology in the beginning, but have plenty of troops, while aliens are superior but few. As the campaign progress, they have the opportunity to overcome these limitations through research.

* Some missions are almost impossible to win without losses. I'm currently stuck on the Italian town mission with two bridges over a canal. There is always some alien getting a nasty long range potshot in. I'm going to try it with a team with better long range capabilities next.

* Names are repeating and sometimes stupid (I mean, having Britney Spears as a soldier?!?!). We need a longer list.

* More stuff. I want more equipment and stuff from the aliens, even if it's not very useful. It adds flavour. Perhaps energy shield, increasing protection from the front only? Not high priority, though.

* Possible future expansion: The underwater stuff, like in UFO2. Would be even cooler in a multiplayer campaign, where the different players would get different responsibilities, effectively creating four teams on two sides (land human, sea human, land alien, sea alien).

* Stealth. In Apocalypse, there was some invisibility device. Some kind of stealth device, perhaps more effective the less you move, would make some difficult maps more manageable, and also allow more different tactics.

* Nice UFOpedia pages. Kudos to whoever wrote them.

* Larger UFOs. I liked the big ships encountered in Apocalypse. Perhaps at the end of the game even large UFOs escorted by smaller, or a strike force of several smaller UFOs, so that the player have a real need to keep building his airforce.

* I want wimpy aliens as well. Imagine getting swarmed by a group of wimpy aliens as you step round a corner. Each one can be killed by a single hit, but there are a lot of them. Somewhat like a swarm of brainsuckers from Apocalypse.

* The dropship has a cannon. It would be nice if it could be operated by a soldier, in order to clear the immediate surroundings.

* The civilians needs some samples when they move, such as "Oh my god, we're gonna die!", "The horror! The horror!", "The aliens! They are everywhere!" and so on. Not that important, but adds feeling.

* It would be nice to be able to switch base even when in a sub-window on the base screen. I always have to go through all bases to find the one that just finished a research project, and having to go back is a bit irritating.

* A lot of odds and ends that needs to be finished, such as psychic abilities, implants, heavy equipment, gas grenades, proximity grenades and so on. I'm sure it will happen, so I don't worry about that.

* Much more variation in the maps than in the original game, with the possible exception of Apocalypse. Nice!

* Reports on the results of interception is a bit to discrete. It's easy to miss the loss of an aircraft.

As you might see from my comments, I personally liked Apocalypse best of the originals...

Overall, though, an excellent effort and easily one of the best open source games out there! Well done, keep it up!