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Author Topic: Feedback 2.3  (Read 25104 times)

Offline Mattn

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Re: Feedback 2.3
« Reply #15 on: August 02, 2010, 02:10:22 pm »

Offline bayo

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Re: Feedback 2.3
« Reply #16 on: August 02, 2010, 02:25:10 pm »
Quote
will there be a 2.3.1 bugfix version - maybe with new gui?
bugfix only, for sure

Offline tomcatmwi

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Re: Feedback 2.3
« Reply #17 on: August 03, 2010, 02:35:01 am »
Hi! Let me put my two cents.

First, this is a great game. It's the same feeling as the old UFO (or X-COM) and I am actually playing through nights with it. However there are a few points that I don't like and some even make me pissed because it spoils the fun. Perhaps worth to address.

- Reserve points. It is annoying that you can't save some TUs of your soldiers to return fire if the enemy strolls into their crosshairs. Yeah, I found the button but actually my soldiers very rarely shoot back, if ever. It was way better in the old UFO where you was able to ambush careless enemies. Nevertheless there's not even a Reaction value for the characters as I noticed. Maybe it'd be worth to implement.

- Soldiers gain experience way too slow. After fifty or more missions my best guy is still only Competent in Assault Weapons while he'd be already a superhero in the old UFO.

- The thing that pisses me the most is the "balancing" of the game, namely the better weapons you have the tougher the opponents become. Indeed there's supposed to be some challenge but not like this. I mean what the heck happened to the weapons, or are my soldiers up against Terminators? A simple Taman grunt takes more than a burst shot from a Plasma Rifle from point blank range, although it's not wearing any armor. And they tend to become wonderful snipers as well, they can hit my soldiers with a plasma pistol from kilometers without a problem. Soon it comes down to this: if the enemy sees you, you are toast, period. And it all ends up in playing "Retry" again and again - there goes excitement. It seems my soldiers have no chance, and it's not the kind of thrilling no-chance-but-we-are-heroes thing. It's the game-unbalanced-to-unfair-and-rather-boring thing.

- Have anybody mentioned that there are way too many tactical missions? It'd be useful to have a difficulty setting to set them. Actually there's an UFO landing somewhere every hour and that gives really little time for strategic playing. Also it chewes up soldiers real fast and here we get to that stupid Retry button again. (Hey, the solution is NOT removing the Retry button!)

- Talking about tac missions, it's quite boring when all off sudden an avalanche of Harvesters appear and all land in the same environment. I'm just done with the 6th farm shootout in a row and I am quite bored. But you can't just skip these.

- Why the heck are soldiers scattered everywhere around the base when an attack occurs? A long set of rounds pass by just moving them in position. Meanwhile the aliens barely move, actually they are just holding positions. I can find them always at the same spots. I don't even have to look just throw a grenade into those rooms.

- It is rather odd that a field medikit can heal a mortally wounded soldier just immediately, but it takes weeks in a high-tech hospital for them to recover. Also, recovering takes waaaay too much time.

- In the old UFO there was fatigue, soldiers lost Energy points if moved too much. Now soldiers don't get tired. It is an important game aspect, why drop it?

- Also in the old UFO, when a soldier got wounded, he lost one Health point every turn from then on, until the mission ended or he died. Now the soldiers can fight on without a flaw with half of their heads chopped off with a Kerrblade. WTF?

- It would be really useful if the radar told what size is an UFO it just spotted. One might lose less interceptors.

- For the technical side, I still can't get any sound on my Mac, but I barely get a thing of how to recompile the game. Should I really start learning a new profession just to play a game properly?

- No, I did not read through previous posts so I don't repeat what others already wrote. :)

- Yes, I still like the game, it's the best I've seen for long years.

Offline Alienator

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Re: Feedback 2.3
« Reply #18 on: August 03, 2010, 10:06:11 am »
- you can reserve TU for reaction fire. How much you save depends on the fire mode you choose (tick mark next to the fire mod). To update it you must cycle the reaction fire button back to no reaction and then to single or multiple reaction. There is a known issue with reaction fire not working sometimes... or many times.
- The healing in the tactical mission was mentioned to be changed.
- Fatigue is weird. Elite soldiers get fatigued from running 50 meters across the map?
- The radar tells you the kind of UFO if you researched it (at least on the version I play). Otherwise, you will learn to recognize them by their looks.

Offline MCR

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Re: Feedback 2.3
« Reply #19 on: August 03, 2010, 10:09:08 am »
Hey tomcatmwi !

Thanks for your excellent summary of current game design & other problems in UFO:AI.
I agree on most of your points & am confident that we will take care of those before v2.4 comes out.

VERY GOOD OBSERVATIONS & SUMMARY !!!

If you want to help us, we have multiple trackers on sourceforge, where feature requests & bug reports are stored, maybe you want to take a look & help us making this game what it deserves to become  ;)

Here in the forums stuff sometimes tends to get lost over time...

So here are the sourceforge links for you:

Bugs:
https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=157793&atid=805242

Feature Requests:
https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=157793&atid=805245

Patches (improvements are always welcome):
https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=157793&atid=805244


Greetinx & thanks for the excellent review once again. :)

Offline dfscott

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Re: Feedback 2.3
« Reply #20 on: August 03, 2010, 08:26:09 pm »
- The radar tells you the kind of UFO if you researched it (at least on the version I play). Otherwise, you will learn to recognize them by their looks.

IIRC, in the early going, it's:

770 - Scout
880 - Fighter
1100 - Harvester

Offline Duke

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Re: Feedback 2.3
« Reply #21 on: August 03, 2010, 11:11:37 pm »
tomcatmwi,
thx for the feedback :)
Some of your points sound new to me, others familiar.
Some are bugs, some are missing features and some are design aspects.

I fully agree with MCR. If you took the time to write all that down, you should also make the second step and put your points in the right places *and* watch over them until they are solved somehow, so you can fully enjoy the game in some future version ;)

If you agree to do so, we will gladly point you to those 'right' places.
MCR forgot to mention the 'proposals in our wiki' and the 'design' forum.

Offline Lew Yard

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Re: Feedback 2.3
« Reply #22 on: August 04, 2010, 12:45:23 am »
- Soldiers gain experience way too slow. After fifty or more missions my best guy is still only Competent in Assault Weapons while he'd be already a superhero in the old UFO.

Two notes --
1- I don't believe you gain any experience if you do auto-missions.

2- Some soldiers start out FAR superior to others -- e.g. stat ranges 25-40 or so.  This is a 1% random die roll.  I'm not terribly fond of this (IMHO, this should probably be somewhat frontloaded -- surviving elites joining you in the beginning -- followed by conscript-level replacements for a while, and then a greater chance of elites later once you've proven yourself and there's been time for training).  The current system encourages save-scumming because of the magnitude of impact (given that this combines with the stat-gain system to make these guys pretty much permanently superior, because they need the same XP to gain N points above starting stats as far inferior ones do... and it increases superlinearly w/ N.)

Quote
- The thing that pisses me the most is the "balancing" of the game, namely the better weapons you have the tougher the opponents become. Indeed there's supposed to be some challenge but not like this. I mean what the heck happened to the weapons, or are my soldiers up against Terminators? A simple Taman grunt takes more than a burst shot from a Plasma Rifle from point blank range, although it's not wearing any armor. And they tend to become wonderful snipers as well, they can hit my soldiers with a plasma pistol from kilometers without a problem. Soon it comes down to this: if the enemy sees you, you are toast, period. And it all ends up in playing "Retry" again and again - there goes excitement. It seems my soldiers have no chance, and it's not the kind of thrilling no-chance-but-we-are-heroes thing. It's the game-unbalanced-to-unfair-and-rather-boring thing.

Haven't really seen this.   Not unusual to clear a map against a Harvester's worth with 1-2 wounds, total.  But I don't use the plasma weapons at all, except for the plasma pistol as last-ditch sidearm -- all laser rifles, heavy lasers, and sniper rifles for the distance work (common factor:  very low spread values, even for the burst modes on the lasers).

Quote
- Have anybody mentioned that there are way too many tactical missions? It'd be useful to have a difficulty setting to set them. Actually there's an UFO landing somewhere every hour and that gives really little time for strategic playing. Also it chewes up soldiers real fast and here we get to that stupid Retry button again. (Hey, the solution is NOT removing the Retry button!)

- Talking about tac missions, it's quite boring when all off sudden an avalanche of Harvesters appear and all land in the same environment. I'm just done with the 6th farm shootout in a row and I am quite bored. But you can't just skip these.

Agreed on frequency and tedium.  Even with 70+ scientists researching three techs in three bases, and multiple UFO disassemblies occurring at one time, production/research figures are slow enough and mission variety low enough that it's extremely repetitive.

This combines with certain nasty bugs (like the fbxrd's Tropical/Harvester map where you can't enter the staircase room, and the many flashing textures on certain maps with an older ATI card) and the non-success rate with auto-mission (currently estimate automission success rate at maybe 2-3%... with heavy lasers, laser rifles, sniper rifles, nanocomposite armor, and a fair number of Proficient skills w/ one having reached Very Good... and a record of complete stomping when played manually) -- and it's very 'meh' while waiting to finish coilgun and stingray research.  Never mind the time it takes to get antimatter so I can actually *fly* the two Dragons that I've built.

From the alien's perspective, I would have expected them to pause to regroup and analyze the situation, then come back with more numbers, more toys, better skills, better tactics, or some combination thereof.  Haven't seen any Sheevars or Bloodspiders, any UFO above Harvester.

Quote
It is rather odd that a field medikit can heal a mortally wounded soldier just immediately, but it takes weeks in a high-tech hospital for them to recover. Also, recovering takes waaaay too much time.

Known weirdness.

Quote
- Also in the old UFO, when a soldier got wounded, he lost one Health point every turn from then on, until the mission ended or he died. Now the soldiers can fight on without a flaw with half of their heads chopped off with a Kerrblade. WTF?

Wounds do affect accuracy by increasing your spread values, so you don't want to engage in a sniper duel when wounded.  That said, it doesn't reduce your TU, AFAICT, and wounds don't get worse.

Offline TallTroll

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Re: Feedback 2.3
« Reply #23 on: August 04, 2010, 04:23:29 pm »
Am I missing something (research requirements perhaps) or are flashbangs / bombs / smoke / incendiary grenades not in the 2.3 release? I've never been able to buy or make them, and I'm certain they would be handy

Offline geever

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Re: Feedback 2.3
« Reply #24 on: August 04, 2010, 06:01:27 pm »
Am I missing something (research requirements perhaps) or are flashbangs / bombs / smoke / incendiary grenades not in the 2.3 release? I've never been able to buy or make them, and I'm certain they would be handy

They were removed from 2.3 because they didn't work well. I thought it's better not having unusable objects in the game.

-geever

Offline TallTroll

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Re: Feedback 2.3
« Reply #25 on: August 04, 2010, 06:23:36 pm »
Ah, right. I was merely a bit confused due to having seen several references to them in various places. Having a more limited equipment set that works is clearly preferable to cluttering everything up with broken equipment. I suppose smoke / concussion rounds for the GL / RL are absent for the same reasons?

Ideally, I'd like my "assault" role troopers (at least) to carry smoke / flashbangs for making long dashes and room clearance easier. Also, although the AI seems to be quite good at finding cover, having them being able to pop smoke to cover an advance / retreat would be even more awesome.

Very nice to see such a fast reply too, thanks

Offline H-Hour

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Re: Feedback 2.3
« Reply #26 on: August 04, 2010, 06:46:18 pm »
Currently, there isn't really a "proper" visibility system in the game. In other words, an alien can not see you if there's a wall between you and him, but he can if there isn't. The game doesn't calculate any kind of partial visibility, so it couldn't handle smoke grenades.

I agree that a whole range of fun tactics will be available with a full visibility system, and to my knowledge this is part of the long-term goals of the work arisian is putting into the renderer.

Offline tomcatmwi

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Re: Feedback 2.3
« Reply #27 on: August 05, 2010, 03:30:03 am »
OK, I think I am done with this game until it's made somewhat fair.

As I mentioned before, aliens tend to become invincible super-Terminators as my research develops. As soon as I invent some new weapon or armor, the aliens instantly have an even bigger gun, and my new toy is rendered useless. Also the opponents become smarter, way smarter than any of my best soldiers, and now we are at a point when they never ever miss a target, let it be at any distance, with any weapon.

Having an unarmored Taman mowing down my entire squad with a plasma pistol from the other edge of the map while my men are clueless about even how to fire their guns is stupid. This really has to be adjusted. A major thrill element in the old UFO was how you were able to see your new scientific developments deployed and used. This game gives the feeling that research is completely irrelevant. Regardless whatever weapon you develop, forget about using it. All you get is a few e-mails but you actually gradually lose your chances in combat. Now I have the Nanocomposite Armor and Plasma Rifles but I find it completely impossible to finish a tac mission without at least one of my soldiers killed. That would be actually acceptable if it was not that hard to acquire new soldiers and it wouldn't be that difficult to improve their abilities. (Which are, as I previously said, also next to impossible.)

A major problem on tac missions that in some cases my soldiers are dropped out to an open field, with no cover within a hundred meters. Sometimes they can't get there for two or even three rounds. It'd be much more advisable if they always started in the dropship, and not scattered around it.

Also wanted to ask why some aliens begin to cry after they get wounded? Is it supposed to mean they are losing morale and panicked?

Offline GPS51

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Re: Feedback 2.3
« Reply #28 on: August 05, 2010, 04:03:04 am »
Uhm what difficulty are you playing on? There are certain ways to beat all maps I've found even if some mean that you hide behind the dropship on the desert crashed harvester map and let the aliens come to you. Love needle guns.

Offline Lew Yard

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Re: Feedback 2.3
« Reply #29 on: August 05, 2010, 05:23:33 am »
Using plasma rifles pretty much invalidates any complaints about missing at long range.