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Losing Soldiers

Grandlion1981

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I was wondering what is your opinion on the death of your soldiers. There is a major difference between the old XCOM and Nu-XCOM. In the old XCOM your soldiers die very often and are easily replaceable, however in Nu-XCOM it goes in more the super-soldier route, where they very rarely die and if you lose too many of them the game really punishes you.

It seems to me that there is a strong difference in the type of game and how attached you can get to your men. In old XCOM you could get attached as well, but it was usually only once a guy would stand out after a few missions.

I'm wondering if you guys prefer to play a game where taking casualties is normal or you prefer the Nu-XCOM type where the goal is to make a perfect battle with no death and if possible no wounded.
 

Haba

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Eeh, it is a balance. On one hand, if your screen looks like this, you've failed in life:

Cannon_Fodder_Amiga_02.png


But on the other hand, having to reload every time your best boy perishes is not much fun either.

Really, it depends.

Old X-Com was not much fun to save scum for me, as it'd meant enduring a 15-20 minute loading time again. So I learned to accept losses. But with JA2 for example, only the crappy cheap starter mercs were really expendable.
 

thesheeep

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Save your game and you never lose a soldier.
:kfc:

On a more serious note, for me it depends a lot on how the soldier dies.
If I let a soldier walk around a corner that wasn't scoutable and there just happen to be 10 aliens firing rockets in overwatch mode, then I'll just reload.
But when there is a long firefight and I just know going in having no deaths is not realistic then I'll accept deaths.

Basically, I'm fine with fair deaths in games like the original X-Com, but will reload if the game just slaps its dick at my face.

In games like the new X-Coms, I always reload if a veteran soldier dies. The reason being that I simply don't enjoy the process of leveling them all up again. Too much of a hassle, too much time wasted doing stuff that isn't fun for me.
Guess that also speaks to the fact that I enjoy the old games much more to begin with.
 
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Vatnik Wumao
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It depends on the game, but ideally it should have a 'risk curve' for the experienced player in which with proper tactics applied the risk of your soldier's death decreases exponentially as you level, while for a new player it strikes a balance all the way.
 

whydoibother

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I've done 2 playthroughs of Darkest Dungeon:
One I was the caring commander, raising an elite army of super-soldiers, taking care of them, optimizing, and sending them on spec-ops missions, trying my best to keep them all alive and healthy.
The second playthrough I was the evil CEO of the corporation, using humans as consumables, recruiting them, sending them on suicide missions, dismissing the damaged goods, not caring much about losing runs or maintaining pros. After all, everything in Darkest Dungeons costs money, except people. People are free. A person costs infinitely less than 1 bandage.
Both runs were very long and not a rush to the end, both were ultimately successful (as its hard to "lose" in DD, you are just delayed), and both felt completely different. The exact same game, same mechanics, same look, but a very different mood and feeling playing it.
I tried to do that in the new XCOM games, but clearly the game doesn't permit one of these. You can't really have expendable soldiers. Its not only suboptimal, its just not viable. You can't be the chess player sacrificing pawns, only the noble commander not leaving any man behind.
 

spectre

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It's a balancing act between several factors: how easy/difficult it is to lose units, how easy/difficult it is to get replacements, what's the difference in performance between green and veteran units,
how easy/difficult it is to achieve veteran status.

A lot of it depends on the scale, smaller unit scale leans towards higher difference in performance, so each guy will matter. On the other hand, it's difficult to make one guy stand out when you're commanding a hundred, unless
there's a division into mooks and hero units.

Bringing this into XCOMS, this is one of the many cases in which NUSEXCUM completely fucked up the balance. If the original, you would buy your soldiers by dozens and fire half of every batch after screening the stats.
The loss of an experienced soldier was felt because of the morale hit, and also because the expensive armor would also go with them. Losing one soldier is not critical to the mission,
because you're always taking around 12 guys with you and everyone can fire a burst, throw a grenade or taze a guy. Sure, there are differences in % chances, but they tend to even out
just because of the number of troops is high and you can always buy more. The system seems well thought out and works.

Now, compare that to a system where the baseline is 4 soldiers and you slowly work your way up to 6. Progression is slow and unlocks important abilities, so losing just one guy is a major dent on your
mission performance. Hence, the dissonance - you don't really want to lose veteran soldiers, so reloading the game is an easy choice unless you are playing ironman.

A good example to dissect is Battle Brothers - unit counts are higher - 12 units per battle, replacements are relatively easy to come by, but the difference between green units and veterans can be quite pronounced.
On the other hand, veterans tend to accumulate different traits and debilitating injuries which may make them a liability in the long term, so it is sometimes more appealing to train up a new guy
from a good background and with a better mix of traits, which takes a bit but gives you a more capable unit in the end.

I think this system is very close to the sweet spot in regards to the number of units and making their lives matter.
I do not like the NUSEXCUM approach, cause it feels very claustrophobic - not a lot you can do, tactically speaking, with a 4-unit baseline, 6 units max. I think such low unit counts are only justifiable in RPGs, where you can get added value from characters participating in the story and you don't really want to be killing them off (which is a bit outside the scope of this discussion, this being tactical gaming and all).
 
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Endemic

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Old X-Com was not much fun to save scum for me, as it'd meant enduring a 15-20 minute loading time again. So I learned to accept losses. But with JA2 for example, only the crappy cheap starter mercs were really expendable.

Well in X-COM you can just pay $40k for a replacement if a muton fries them with a plasma rifle, and there's enough money to do that. In JA2, you have a limited roster of mercs and they are more specialized - but the opposition is weaker. I think either type of game can work well if appropriately balanced.
 

Galdred

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Actually, NuXCOM lets you hire experienced soldiers for a moderate cost (it may have changed over the course of the various patches and expansions, though).
I agree that it makes individual deaths too important. That said, you can usually keep going even with crippling casualties (I completed XCOM with more than 20 casualties iirc. It is nothing compared to X-COM, but much more than the average, but losing my most experienced soldiers mid campaign was what saved my playthrough from boredom), so it is certainly worse than in the older X-COM, but still not as game breaking as in Jagged Alliance.

I think for it to work, losing a soldier must be a setback but not a disaster.
The game also needs a reasonable way to replace him in a reasonable amount of time.

Btw, I really like having some kind of memorial/obituary/cemetery for fallen characters, preferable with a summary of their actions.

Eeh, it is a balance. On one hand, if your screen looks like this, you've failed in life:

Cannon_Fodder_Amiga_02.png
Cannon Fodder is a good exemple of low tech memorial!
It took me years to find out that ranks did have some purpose, but a very limited one btw(or does it actually? Maybe I recall the anwser wrong, but I think rank gave a small rate of fire increase. Maybe only when the soldier was controlled by the AI), so it is a good exemple of well done casualty system:
It is a bit better to keep your guys alive, but the game provides you rookies to replace them, and their performances are good enough.
 
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Azdul

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Firaxis versions definitely went too far in limiting squad size and making your soldiers superheroes.
Gollop's X-Com went too far in other direction, when sometimes it is worth to send out rookie to lure alien fire, because he's cheaper than tank.

IMO Long War + Long War Rebalanced is better in that aspect than both old X-Com and new one.

There are nasty suprises, like all spawns activating at once on the first turn of terror mission.
You may to decide to press forward against the odds and lose a squad, or retreat, save soldiers and lose a country.

Ship with hordes of aliens on board may land just to lure X-Com - and if you'll not recognize hopeless situation soon enough, you'll return with half of the squad.

That way losing the soldiers feels less random - maybe you were lured into false sense of security through few easy wins and not recognized alien trap, or dramatic situation with resources required taking calculated risk, and unfortunately your favorite guy gave his life for few pounds of meld.
 

laclongquan

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I hate the idea of losing soldiers. IRL commanders have to accept it as price of doing business, but I AM playing games, here. WHy would I have to accept losing soldiers?

Now, the OTHER justifications behind that one can be dealt in other way. Limited resources. Sure, you can work it out in other aspect.

Take Silent Storm series for example. If your squad get hit hard but you manage to get out with your troopers, they will lie in infirmary for a few missions, which you know and I know is, like, nearly unacceptable. That is one way to do it. (your troopers can die due to freaking accidents like too much bullets hitting at once or they can die stupidly thanks to your stupid playing. But you have to work for that.). OR classically, Jagged Alliance2. You can helicopter your wound troop to the hospital but that still remove them from equation for a day or two, which mean you can not use them for one or two battles.

That's it! Pain to motivate care into managing your troopers? Fuck you and your armchair! I dont need pain to take special care of my troop.
 

Jimmious

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I'm fine with losing soldiers as long as there's a way to replenish my losses fastly.
If I need to grind for 5 hours to bring someone to that level, then I'd rather reload - aint nobody got time for that
 

laclongquan

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UFO Afterlight limit your pool of troopers, but you can make robots to go into battle for you. A nice way to use those tin cans. The loss of XP (robot cant get xp) can be considered as good price because some mission is just too dangerous to go in with your squishies.

UFO Extraterrestrials allow you to replace your troopers like so much tissues. HOWEVER, I still manage to minimize loss to extreme level. That's how much I hate losing.
 

thesecret1

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If the game has troops grind to high levels, and balances its difficulty around expecting you to have a gang of superheroes, I won't accept losses. It would either mean having to spend ages grinding a trooper all over again, or even make progress literally impossible, as you aren't expected to reach the finale with one surviving super soldier and a bunch of rookies who were never in a fight.

On the other hand, if the game is actually designed to make troops readily replaceable (and thus grinding bonuses aren't all that important), I will easily accept the loss of units.
 

Saduj

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I think Xenonauts had a nice balance between X-Com and XCom casualty rates. I lost 19 soldiers during my run (would have been more but I did reload a few times). You can't take too many losses because you'll need an experienced squad for the end game. But losses are unavoidable in certain situations. Lost two colonels capturing an alien Praetor but it was "fair" given the situation.
 

Egosphere

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I hate the idea of losing soldiers. IRL commanders have to accept it as price of doing business, but I AM playing games, here. WHy would I have to accept losing soldiers?

Now, the OTHER justifications behind that one can be dealt in other way. Limited resources. Sure, you can work it out in other aspect.

Take Silent Storm series for example. If your squad get hit hard but you manage to get out with your troopers, they will lie in infirmary for a few missions, which you know and I know is, like, nearly unacceptable. That is one way to do it. (your troopers can die due to freaking accidents like too much bullets hitting at once or they can die stupidly thanks to your stupid playing. But you have to work for that.). OR classically, Jagged Alliance2. You can helicopter your wound troop to the hospital but that still remove them from equation for a day or two, which mean you can not use them for one or two battles.

That's it! Pain to motivate care into managing your troopers? Fuck you and your armchair! I dont need pain to take special care of my troop.
SS perma-death was annoying, especially because it would often come from some camper with a submachine gun who'd use magic stealth to stay out of sight, despite squatting in snow wearing black overalls.
 

Darth Canoli

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In the original UFO, the difficulty was part of the game along with the thrilling music and sounds effects and reloading was also part of the experience.
This system is fine as long as you can reload in an instant (if you want to reload).

Having such a deadly system without the ambient or with long loading screens would be a mistake.

I'm alright with soldiers not dying though, UFO system was great but it's difficult to get that particular alchemy.
Battle Brothers kind of did, a shame BB has no objective and such a messy quest system.
 

markec

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If my soldier stands right beside the enemy and attacks with 95% chance to hit, misses and then dies to reaction fire im going to reload.
 

laclongquan

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Take Silent Storm series for example. If your squad get hit hard but you manage to get out with your troopers, they will lie in infirmary for a few missions, which you know and I know is, like, nearly unacceptable. That is one way to do it. (your troopers can die due to freaking accidents like too much bullets hitting at once or they can die stupidly thanks to your stupid playing. But you have to work for that.).
SS perma-death was annoying, especially because it would often come from some camper with a submachine gun who'd use magic stealth to stay out of sight, despite squatting in snow wearing black overalls.
You minimize that kind of damage by using med items to buff your VP health. The lowest tier stuffs can be used by anyone with 30~ point of skill. But if they dont have that kind of skill, you can always get a medic to buff everyone every once in a while.
Also Russian winter map is high level anyway.
 

sser

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"I can spend 30,000 men a month." - Napoleon

Personally prefer the X-Com style because the games are simply better.

My issue with nuXCOM style is it infects the rest of the gameplay. If you're going the super-soldiers route, games that are specifically tailored having specific characters are simply better - example being Freedom Force, or literally just about any campaign focused party-based game. The gameplay in those are crafted, with many interesting characters to develop how you want. You have the supersoldier development aspect, but you also have better exterior gameplay around it which is superior.

NuXCOM, and any game like it, has to tailor its gameplay around a supersoldier nursery because there's a lurking game over state. In nuXCOM it's pod busting + ultra-conservative (read: boring) gameplay. In a game like Darkest Dungeon it is simply replaced with insane levels of grind.
 

Commissar Draco

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You are faggots if you care about that at all, what purpose soldiers have if not to die in glorious way for Stalin Emperor and Motherland Imperium? Never reloaded in tactical game its against its purpose how will you improve your tactics if you act like fag and reload after single time something goes wrong?
 

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