If "PHALLANX" troops are the elite of the elite...

[Rani]

I second that.

Most so - aliens should be faster ,better armored,
and react faster then starting human soldiers.

Also, you should up thier damage.

I want to recreate the tesntion that was in ufo:eu.

[LordHavoc]

I second that.

Most so - aliens should be faster ,better armored,
and react faster then starting human soldiers.

Also, you should up thier damage.

I want to recreate the tesntion that was in ufo:eu.

I third that.

Although I'm not familiar with UFO:EU.

I'd rather be impressed by the soldiers' skill and still be challenged to win, than be impressed by their lack of skill.

[Bandobras]

The problem with uber-aliens is that you end up running away with all your soldiers and shooing over you back, sacrificing weaker soldiers so that the aliens are stopped for a moment to get him out of a closet and smear him over the walls.

I know what I'm saying, because I used to play TD1 of UFO:AI at difficulty 7. At the end, only the size of the map and availability of obstacles that aliens would be reluctant to climb decided if you had any chance to win. Trying to make them kill themselves by reaction fire was the most offensive tactics I could find.

[HighXplosive]

Then all that needs to be achieved is a certain balance then. Probably a technology thing. What should happen is that your soldiers should be crack troops that are armed extremely well in human terms, but to the aliens, you may as well be using muskets vs automatic rifles.

However, what should happen is the technology gain as you research should augment this battle problem and the climb of technology only becomes steeper as you move up the difficulty. Alternatively, you could provide immediate access to full alien technology for the aliens so as they appear as "welled armed in alien terms to invade Earth" but augment the climb by research times.

Essentially, what you should strive for is a system wherby even the best human technology with the best troops struggles until they make a technological breakthrough and reverse the enemies weapons on them.

"I know what I'm saying, because I used to play TD1 of UFO:AI at difficulty 7."

What I'm suggesting is significant vitality boosts or technology that augments damage taking ability for aliens such that they are difficulty 7 quality without the insane accuracy or shooting or time units.

Human force should be afraid of aliens due to their apparent technological superiority and physical supremacy but not swept away by them.

In retrospect, the battles should be more like XCOM apocalypse was except in turn based mode, with your soldiers in intense firefights with the enemy threat intially and adapting to them, rather than the "heavy plasma rush" you got in XCOM Enemy Unknown and "paper personal armor" effect.

Or even better, imagine XCOM Enemy Unknown soldiers with human rifles and pistols as accurate as the heavy plasmas versus mutons. That would have been a better reflection of what I'm trying to say. The human weapons shouldn't be less accurate, just less effective.

[Bandobras]

Do I hear "increase alien HP"? A good idea, at least for Ortnoks, but this requires some coding. Also some more coding would be necessary to implement soldiers incapacited and bleeding by HP < 0, but not dead until HP < 50. Without this stronger aliens are too cruel IMHO.

BTW, do you play on Hard or SuperHard?

[Sacrusha]

What this question comes down to is the usual "realism vs gameplay" argument.

Yes, elite soldiers missing like that is somewhat unrealistic.

Yes, elite soldiers battling turn-based is even more unrealistic.

I dont' know if the story is just as unrealistic or slightly less, tough call. Nevertheless it's extremely unrealistic.

In game development gameplay is always more important than realism. However, depending on the details involved, realism can improve gameplay - altough often it does not. Currently the miss chance is intended make the game more fun. If soldiers would always hit and the aliens had more hit points it would make the game simpler and probably less fun, because you know you have to shoot an alien exactly 3 (for example) times before it dies. The miss chance brings a kind of action to this turn based game.
Right now you can miss and by taking a risk and moving closer you can lessen the chance to miss significantly, or you can hope you're lucky.
I've had multiplayer sessions where a soldier missed three times in a row, and despite being somewhat humiliating it was fun (damn stupid bastard, hit, him, HIT, damnit..). Of course it's even more fun if the enemy comes around the corner, you've got 10 hp left, he shoots, misses and is out of TUs (and it's his last soldier *evil*)

[kable]

What about letting the soldiers go prone?  It could maybe triple sniper-rifle accuracy, but at the expense of a limited field of view...

[Sacrusha]

Letting the soldier go prone was discussed before. The advantage is that it gives the player more options.
What speaks against it is the fact that going prone (assuming it gives dodge and hit bonuses) will reward sitting in a spot over moving, and once prone it will penalize you (cost TU) for deciding to move. This might make AI a less fast paced game.
Another reason against implementing going prone is the work for the animators.

 To know for sure how it affects the gameplay one would have to implement and playtest it, of course. But right now AI is designed such that moving close fast is high-risk high-reward and you will have to do it every so often if you want to win (at least against enemy players).

[HighXplosive]

Well realism I think needs to have a certain grasp here imho. I mean, I wouldn't care about realism if it was giant bunny rabbits with machine guns, but your basing this on real objects (i.e. humans) in a fictional background.

Personally, I'm a realism nut, but thats a discussion for elsewhere. Regardless of what I am, you have all basically agreed its stupid how inaccurate your soldiers are. Thats the problem.

[Irinami]

Not to dig up a dead horse, but well, I'm good at it.

Game systems tend to be models of situations--they are representations with similar end results to what you'd expect in the real world, but the specifics are muddied. Hopefully that muddying makes an enjoyable experience.

For example, I wouldn't expect my soldiers to miss so much at close range. But I do expect poor planning to pay off in my men turning into bodybags, and I do expect good planning to pay off with alien corpses to. That works out in this game. Another example, external to UFO:AI: If I use the same tactics in Panzer General as I do in Steel Panthers, I get the same result, despite PG being a much more "Beer-n-Pretzels" game.

In the end, if I take UFO:AI as a simulator, it sucks. My troops can't hit jack, essentially; they couldn't qualify with any of the weapons I've given them. On the other hand, if I plan properly and don't get ahead of myself in the execution, my men do well. In aggregate form, the game is a good model even if it is a poor simulation.

As for elite... I was under the impression that this was some cockamamie UN-sponsored group that nobody really takes seriously at the start of the game. So you'd get misfits offered to you at first. Could be wrong there though.

[Noone]

i think its good as it is now, if you improve accuracy of the Soldiers it would be boring because all Aliens are shot at far distance by reaction Fire when they show up. Well increasing theyr hitpionts will perhaps fix that, but then there is the Problem that it will be very annoying if such an pushed-up Alien stepts through a door you covered with your team, gives a damn on your close range-reaction fire an kills half of your team before it runs out of time units.

In aftermath they used very strong aliens but that was gone over the top i remember one Alien Base-mission my whole team was shot by one Alien with plasma-Launcher before i had a chance to leave the startpoint or to even spot the alien.


One Way to fix maybe different kind of Aliens are more resistand to some kind of Damage so that you cant kill everything by using a Sniper. You would have to use different weapons and strategys to be successfull. Maybe some slime-Like Alien would be 95% resistant to tachyon an bullets but can be easyly burned by using plasma or explosives.

One explanation of the lack of accuracy could be that aliens have some Kind of psionical shielding that confuses Human brains and makes the ALiens more difficult to spot and to aim at.

[papabob]

You shouldn't be impressed by the perfect accuracy that Hollywood's snipers have. It's unrealistics at every level. A sniper rifle might have an effective range of 2km, but at so long distance simply the blood pressure can move the target half degree, which is about 2.5m. And our troops aren't in prone position...

Same ocurrs with the other weapons: an elite soldier have to train hours and hours (and hours and hours) to have a perfect accuracy at 25-50m in a field target with a rifle/pistol. But a quiet and clean field target isn't a guerrilla combat in a urban area with scary aliens shooting everywhere and the pressure to not hit a civilian.

Anyway, our troops were the elite of the elite 'when fighting against other humans'. The war against aliens is a new type of war that mankind hasn't known before, and the training that our soldiers can get in the past might not be the adecuate  

[Noone]

Effective combat distance for Snipers is 800m above that it is indeed pretty hard to hit even under good precondition (no wind or Rain) but under 800m it becomes pretty accurate. I disagree with you that you have to train that hard to hit a Target at 25-50m its pretty easy to hit a Target of Men size at that range even with a 9mm Pistol that isnt that Accurate at all, i tryed it myself and im not kind of trained Soldier   , but that is about standing targets, hitting a moving Target (and thats how it is in Combat-Situations) is much harder, hitting an running Enemy with Sniper RIfle at 800m moving horizontal or even diagonal to your Position is really really hard. Think of what you have to calculate. There the ballistic curve of the bullet, the time between shot and arrival and the relative speed of the target (you dont know how fast it moves actually you only can guess) then you have to compansate the wind and so on.... men shooting a moving Target over that distance is incretible difficult.

[Irinami]

Yes, this being why snipers consider waiting 6 hours for a good shot to be "pretty quick." What we have in UFO:AI and the like are "Designated Marksmen" or "Battlefield Sniper." The person in the squad who's most accurate. The Dragunov SVD rifle in fact is designed for such a role, not a traditional sniper role.

Hell, a real sniper class could be like Researchers. You'd assign them, but not use them personally. If there's a spotting, you'd assign a sniper, then wait a while (he makes a Sniper check every hour?), and when you get a reply that he's in place you can send a mission. Every turn he'd make a Sniper check on every enemy and report their location to the team on a success. Maybe you'd even have a "SniperShot" option; he'd have one per rank or something, and it would be a free shot at 75% accuracy at any target. Or something like that.

But would that really add anything to the game? Probably not, no more than having a "mortarman" class doing a similar thing. I know that I wouldn't ask for it; I'd probably say it's against the meme of the game.

I know a few combat troops, and even more troops deployed to the sandbox for security duty. Like I said, our guys "can't hit for shi..." But the aliens aren't all that tactically savvy. Suppressing fire doesn't work as well as I'd expect... but even plasterboard walls block explosions and bullets. So in the end, despite details being inaccurate, the result is believably accurate.

As for being spooked by aliens... if they're elite, something like that would just piss our boys off LOL. And they'd love the big-headed aliens. "Hey Joe--" BLAT BLAT "--headshot LOL." "Cheater."  

[ngoj]

Wether elite or not gameplay is too tough,
soldier with shotgun can easely miss
enemy in front of him/her ...