New autobattle

[geever]

There are three reasons I can think of, only one of which is a clear necessity.

1) To work around map bugs during development, like Nokim mentions.

Your reasoning if wrong .We should NOT implement a feature to workaround a bug but fix the bug.

2) To work around the fact that the missions can get pretty dull during the long stretches during which neither the aliens nor Phalanx are introducing any new species or equipment. This is better served by addressing pacing issues.

The same as above. The fact that content is yet missing doesn't justify the need of the automissions.

3) To address the (apparently non-zero) playerbase that prefers the geoscape game to the tactical game. This one's really just a question of audience choice.

I prefer the geoscape game either. But the game would be boring if I only did fast-forward, start research, send ship stuff and the core of the game is the battlescape.

-geever

[morse]

Looks like the controversy behind autoresolve feature just revealed itself: you just do not know why (or even if) do you want it in the first place. As soon as you answer to that question, it'll be much clearer what kind (if any) of autoresolve mechanism do you want.

I agree with geever on the matter that the geoscape is the crucial part of the game, so it'll be a really stupid idea to implement the autoresolve mechanism which will allow to skip ground missions completely.

The autoresolve as a fix for mission dullness can be addressed by other means: 1) make missions more difficult. Not as much as, for instance, in XCOM-1, as we do not have the ability to save during it, but twice as many aliens per mission as we have now won't hurt. Also, the situation when in the beginning of the mission soldiers and aliens are standing face-to-face at the distance of couple of squares should be avoided, IMHO. 2) make less missions. For now, every single downed UFO generate a mission (if not downed in water). If you introduce some early researchable air weapon which will disintegrate smaller UFOs, it'll reduce the number of "dull" missions much.

[H-Hour]

1) make missions more difficult. Not as much as, for instance, in XCOM-1, as we do not have the ability to save during it, but twice as many aliens per mission as we have now won't hurt.

This is something I really hope to adjust in the future. More soldiers to start with, but more difficult missions where you could lose half your squad if you're not careful.

[TrashMan]

You can loose half of your squad even now to a unlucky dice roll...
Remove the HP restoring medikit and you'll see death rates skyrocket.

[Intor]

[...] The autoresolve as a fix for mission dullness can be addressed by other means:[...] it'll reduce the number of "dull" missions much.

3) A very small chance of a special reward upon completion of each mission (without auto resolve). Some of those would only be available if certain conditions are met. Examples:

• Some ufo's could be carrying abducted civilians. For each civilian rescued, give a 1% chance of "recruiting" him into your ranks. Basically they would become available for hire after the mission, with their unit type based on what you might need the most, e.g. if you've recruited all the soldiers for this month but have plenty of the other employee types available for hire, there's a good chance the new recruit would be a soldier.
• If you manage to capture the ufo within a certain number of rounds, there is a small chance you could recover some data from its computer (provided you've completed the necessary research). The number of rounds could depend on the size of the ufo and its condition. The data recovered could for example spawn a single large (or some special type) ufo on the geospace and allow you to track it even if it's outside the range of your radar, or it could even reveal the location of an alien base, though that would be rare. Perhaps it could even boost a single research topic on alien tech, chosen at random.

[geisthund]

Personally I don't agree with penalizing people who do use it. I think it should just be an option for them, with a small degree of risk mixed in. It might be interesting to try to peg the level of risk with the player's playing style, ie a poor player has a higher risk in autobattle than a veteran- but I expect this would be way too complicated to implement.

I feel the majority of players (like myself) will avoid using autobattle and therefore be unaffected either way, simply because I feel that I can play it out better than the computer :p

[Salvo]

The true problem with autobattles is the Medkits - you can heal all the damage in the world with a Medkit during battle. Fix that and people would be twice as cautious to resort to autobattle, even if no one dies, but rather several agents become severely wounded.


Another problem is that soldiers' skills develop way too slowly (max 1 point per battle per stat). Losing a soldier hurts. If they developed faster, much faster, getting a single soldier killed wouldn't be such a big deal.


I think that once a soldier dies, the game should scan all the savegames in the save folder and remove the soldier from existence permanently. No more reloading after deaths. If someone wants to make and keep manual backups of savegames, so be it. In fact, it would advisable to make a manual backup after 4 hours of playing.


There's a reason autobattle was put there in the first place. Who was it that coded it? Who supported it? Ask those guys why it's there.


A game can become a chore. We've all been there. Having autobattle is a good thing. But autobattle should have its drawbacks, such as less loot, less soldier development, more likely civilian casualties (already there, I believe), more displeased nation where the mission takes place, etc. etc.


We DO all agree that current autobattle mechanic is... too random, right? Right?!


Perhaps opting for autobattle would be more interesting if there was a prediction of the outcome, calculated by the game? The way it would work is that the game plays the autobattle a hundred times over and then makes a statistical prediction based on the results. The prediction would read something like "High probability of more than one casualty" or "It's more than likely that all of your soldiers will die if no combat supervision is provided". It could present the best case scenario and the worst case, such as "Best case: Light casualties. Unlikely deaths. Worst case: Several soldier casualties." Or simply print out the raw data in numbers: 42.8% chance of losing 1 soldier. 1.8% chance of losing all 8.

[Jon_dArc]

Your reasoning if wrong .We should NOT implement a feature to workaround a bug but fix the bug.

But this isn't a bug—it's an entire class of bugs. I haven't dug through to find the precise timeline on which they've been introduced, but apparently-new maps that don't load have shown up on a decently regular schedule. Especially considering that automission already exists, it seems a much more practical solution to use it to allow bypassing broken maps rather than whatever the alternative is—I guess it would be a much stricter quality-control and testing phase before permitting merging with HEAD. That sure sounds like a recipe for slowing down map development to me.

The same as above. The fact that content is yet missing doesn't justify the need of the auto missions.

Especially with the existence of debug_setinterest, I agree that this is not a compelling use case. I do still argue that it is a use case, and one that at least needs some more widespread knowledge of the alternative to fix.

When you're depending largely on a volunteer community for testing, "it'll be not boring eventually" is a less than compelling line of argument—especially when alternatives are already in place.

~J

[morse]

When you're depending largely on a volunteer community for testing, "it'll be not boring eventually" is a less than compelling line of argument—especially when alternatives are already in place.

But on the other hand — it'll be stupid to invest your time to some feature, which is there only as a temporary solution to the problem of the lack of content. I'd be more inclined to develop some actual content instead.

[ShipIt]

... new maps that don't load have shown up on a decently regular schedule ...

What? Which?

[Nokim]

What? Which?

Right now I know two such maps. With bug

Could not find tile: '+craft_crash_scout' in assembly

And the same error with "craft_crash_fighter".

How much time it would take to fix them i don't know... So, if you can't guarantee absence (or quick fix) of bugs there should be a way to avoid them. A better solution then just ignore such mission.

And yes, many similar mission in row is very boring (say, six base attacks in row, all handled by 4 soldiers without casaulies), so i would like a way to skip at least a part of them.

On the subject i can suggest not to set difficulty level to map, but to use in the autobattle simplified map geometry. So, team with many long-raged weapons can't be strong on map with many small passages and vice versa - team for close combat can't be good on map with vast open space (like dam or farm).

[kurja]

I still think this is better than automission http://ufoai.org/forum/index.php/topic,6634.0.html

[Nokim]

Well, that's good variant too... But if you develop that idea, you should ask "Wait, those nations can shoot down UFOs too! Why i can't ask them?" They really can: pair of Saracen with modern missiles (no any alien technology!) can shoot down one alien fighter. This is expensive, that's why i quickly switched to lasers and particle beams later, but that is real.

[kurja]

What? Which?

what nokim said. for example in console

Code: [Select]

2012/06/04 23:10:25 ********************
2012/06/04 23:10:25 ERROR: Could not find tile: '+craft_crash_fighter' in assembly 'alienlandingnature' (maps/frozen.ump)
2012/06/04 23:10:25 ********************
2012/06/04 23:10:30 Shutdown server: Server crashed.
2012/06/04 23:10:30 Unload the game library
2012/06/04 23:10:30 Music: geoscape track changed from Crystan-Geosphere02 to Crystan-Geosphere02.

[Jon_dArc]

But on the other hand — it'll be stupid to invest your time to some feature, which is there only as a temporary solution to the problem of the lack of content. I'd be more inclined to develop some actual content instead.

I'm not sure it's quite as straightforward a decision as that, but fortunately it doesn't even matter—autobattle is already implemented. No significant time needs be invested into it.

~J