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Losing Soldiers

Thal

Augur
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Apr 4, 2015
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413
My first playthrough of UFO: Enemy Unknown was in the 90s, and that time I reloaded every time my dude got scorched. Like many others, I couldn't stand losing them and I also didn't have the patience for a more cautious playstyle. The game was massive fun even then, but there's no question that the game is even better ironman. The reason for that is that it's not actually very punishing. Even if your best dudes get wasted you are still progressing in the game. You may have captured an alien leader or gotten heavy plasma, or your hard won battles have earned you more funding. In fact, the only battle you that you have to win is the last mission. Everything else in the game is building up to that and trying to stay alive while doing so.

Recently I played couple ironman starts on a browser until the game froze, and I can say that you get over losing your guys pretty fast. Now I consider losing 2 guys per mission a success. The game even acknowledges this approach by withholding from you the info on psi strength of each soldier, which happens to be the most important stat in the game. So in the start of the game you don't even know which one of your guys is even worth keeping. There's no reason form attachments then, especially since soldiers are cheap and sometimes rookies even come with pretty good stats. And the bad ones are ideal to be sent on the frontline. If you don't want to sacrifice anyone, send in a tank. The real training begins when you get psi powers, but that's when you have flying suits and blaster launchers. Hell, your best guys would most likely never even leave the ship with their psi-amps. The game is quite brilliant in this sense. Your strategy in battlescape will go through multiple iterations throughout the game, which makes the game stay fresh despite going through dozens of battles.

JA2 and Chaos Gate it doesn't work quite the same way though, as there is a limited amount of mercs. Ironman is doable of course, but I think these games is designed to take advantage of save/load. Ironman here is an added challenge. In UFO it really isn't.
 
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Self-Ejected

Lilura

RPG Codex Dragon Lady
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Jagged Alliance 2 is more fun in Ironman/Dead-is-Dead mode.

You've got a pool of 63 mercs (give or take a few due to variables), so it's viable even on Expert mode.

01.jpg


02.jpg


01.jpg

When some get KIA, it hurts. Others can just be "sacrifices".
 

SymbolicFrank

Magister
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Mar 24, 2010
Messages
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Now I consider losing 2 guys per mission a success.
Only two? I do sometimes have missions like that, but I consider a mission a success if there is at least one survivor. The trick is in being able to continue even after the destruction of a complete team or base. It's not common, but accidents with mind control and/or blaster bombs do happen.

Start building that second base immediately, and make sure you have plenty of soldiers in reserve.
 

Thal

Augur
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Messages
413
Now I consider losing 2 guys per mission a success.
Only two? I do sometimes have missions like that, but I consider a mission a success if there is at least one survivor. The trick is in being able to continue even after the destruction of a complete team or base. It's not common, but accidents with mind control and/or blaster bombs do happen.

Start building that second base immediately, and make sure you have plenty of soldiers in reserve.

Hmm...I'm going to rephrase. Basically, I agree with you. Losing two is the expected scenario. If I lose half of the team, I probably made some tactical mistakes. However, if I fly home with just one survivor and a live sectoid leader, the mission has been a resounding success.
Also, it seems to me now, that UFO is actually a strategy game and not "turn-based tactics", for the reasons you've outlined. One mission doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.
 

Galdred

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
JA2 and Chaos Gate it doesn't work quite the same way though, as there is a limited amount of mercs. Ironman is doable of course, but I think these games is designed to take advantage of save/load. Ironman here is an added challenge. In UFO it really isn't.
I am not sure casualties are not replaced in Chaos Gate. I am pretty sure some of my dead were replaced with new marines on the roster screen, but I don't know whether it was a bug, or intended (and whether these were even actually usable as I didn't need to go that deep into the roster).
 

Taka-Haradin puolipeikko

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JA2 and Chaos Gate it doesn't work quite the same way though, as there is a limited amount of mercs. Ironman is doable of course, but I think these games is designed to take advantage of save/load. Ironman here is an added challenge. In UFO it really isn't.
I am not sure casualties are not replaced in Chaos Gate. I am pretty sure some of my dead were replaced with new marines on the roster screen, but I don't know whether it was a bug, or intended (and whether these were even actually usable as I didn't need to go that deep into the roster).
There's prisoners in some missions that act as replacement troopers.
 

Chaosdwarft

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Okay so tried my luck at a new XCOM2:WOTC Classic Ironman campaign, and I already lost 3 troopers in 5 missions. First 2 missions went smooth as butter. Then came the TIMED mission, that is generally where I do very badly, losing one trying to blow up an uplink. Then came the 1st terror mission, oh boy I go to rescue 1 civilian, and it turns out it's the fracking MIMIC that bashes the skull of my rookie (so nothing important lost). Meanwhile the rest of ADVENT is having a field day killing the rest of the civilians. I do manage to complete the mission but not before my medic bleeds out ( he was carrying the only medkit).

so in DF terms, it was FUN:hmmm:
 

Nutmeg

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Another axis to consider is how "work" like developing characters is as opposed to "game" like.

In other words, if the end goal is all the player cares about and getting there is a slog then yeah, any set back is going to be met with a reload.

But the more stimulating moment to moment gameplay is the less likely.

I've posted about this before, but a lot of games, especially Western made games, suffer from the fact that the gameplay is actually just super shallow going through the motions. Once you make a plan, executing is boring, repetitive mindless stuff. This is definitely true for X-COM (1994) less true for something like Civ 4.

If I had to come up with a formula I'd say (glossary at the footer):

P(reload-when-miss) ∝ remaining-gauntlet-length * (1 - P(forced-miss)) / (moment-to-moment-fun * remaining-misses-before-perceived-failure)

Although it's not complete because also moment-to-moment-fun ∝ 1 / remaining-misses-before-perceived-failure.

If we call the proportionality constant in the latter fun-gain-per-miss we get:

P(reload-when-miss) ∝ remaining-gauntlet-length * (1 - P(forced-miss)) / fun-gain-per-miss.

So, this model reveals three ways to get players to reload less often:
  1. Decrease gauntlet length.
  2. Increase the probability at which misses occur not at the fault of the player (counter intuitive but think about it --- it's true. I call it the "slot machine principle").
  3. Increase the amount of fun the player gains for the rest of the gauntlet when they make a mistake.

Glossary:

Gauntlet
--- time between reset points on failure e.g. time to the next checkpoint, or time to victory
Miss --- i.e. mistake --- an event that moves the player unambiguously towards a failure state e.g. losing a unit or health
 

Norfleet

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[*]Increase the probability at which misses occur not at the fault of the player (counter intuitive but think about it --- it's true. I call it the "slot machine principle").
I believe this just brings us back to my point on "increase expendability". If units are more expendable and expending them is expected, then the loss of an individual unit becomes less unbearable, as it becomes that much less feasible to avoid it. If losing a man is seen as a cost of business rather than a failure of play, then the player will accept it.
 

SymbolicFrank

Magister
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Mar 24, 2010
Messages
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In UFO, officers are in limited supply and they are valuable for their morale boost. If they die, many soldiers will panic.

To get a steady supply of officers, you need to keep a lot of soldiers around. Most of my officers are shipped to other bases and my teams consist for at least a third of rookies, some squaddies and sergeants, and one or two officers. And I make sure the officers stay in the back of the transport. That way, I can always assemble a new team and I have plenty of good soldiers for the last mission. And my other bases are defended well.

So I only use a crack team for the last mission.

in X-Piratez this is even more important, because the teams are much smaller, there is a big difference between the soldiers you can buy and the superhuman Gals, and those are in very limited supply. And this is also the part I like the least.
 
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I'll be the devil's advocate here and observe that just because you've got a gun pointed at an alien point blank, doesn't mean they can't dodge before you pull the trigger.
A bullet travels at maybe a kilometer a second. Your target is maybe half a meter away from the bullet. If he chooses to dodge right as you fire, he has to move his face maybe ~0.1 meters from standstill
Doubtful.

and then stop in ~0.0005sec (otherwise his head goes flying off into the distance at ~200m/s)
:lol:

which gives us an a an acceleration and then deceleration of about 1.6 million Gs. This guy's brains will undergo the force of being accelerated with over 25 times the power of a railgun and then brought to an equally sudden halt in the span of the aforementioned 0.0005 seconds.
:M


Opinion time: a medium range weapon like a rifle should have an accuracy malus at short range, which becomes more severe at point blank, unless equipped with a CQB mod. This will promote the use of back-up weapons such as pistols and make weight min-maxing more of a risk.


Losing soldiers in a strategy game is inevitable. Giving those soldiers enough personality that you actually feel the loss beyond "I need to spawn another unit" makes it more impactful on the player, which is a good thing. It creates that emergent gameplay aspect and allows you to have your own personal story inside the game (the best games to LP are always the ones where you can and will lose soldiers).

If you can't afford to lose individual soldiers you're not playing a strategy game, you're playing an RPG masquerading as one.
 

the_shadow

Arcane
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Dec 30, 2011
Messages
1,179
I'll be the devil's advocate here and observe that just because you've got a gun pointed at an alien point blank, doesn't mean they can't dodge before you pull the trigger.
A bullet travels at maybe a kilometer a second. Your target is maybe half a meter away from the bullet. If he chooses to dodge right as you fire, he has to move his face maybe ~0.1 meters from standstill and then stop in ~0.0005sec (otherwise his head goes flying off into the distance at ~200m/s), which gives us an a an acceleration and then deceleration of about 1.6 million Gs. This guy's brains will undergo the force of being accelerated with over 25 times the power of a railgun and then brought to an equally sudden halt in the span of the aforementioned 0.0005 seconds.

If he's that superhuman that his brains can withstand being scrambled in his skull with 25x the force of a railgun, he doesn't NEED to dodge bullets.

I'm thinking more that the alien dodges the human handling the gun, rather than the bullets. No alien is going to stand still when the gun barrel has come into contact with its forehead, it's going to jump out of the way before the human steadies their weapon, decides to pull the trigger because they realize they have a guaranteed shot, and then pulls the trigger. More experienced soldiers with better accuracy and reflexes can adjust for this and move their weapon accordingly to keep a bead on the alien as its attempts to move out of the way of the gun barrel. You don't need to be faster than a bullet, just the knucklehead who is trying to aim at you.
 

Galdred

Studio Draconis
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I'll be the devil's advocate here and observe that just because you've got a gun pointed at an alien point blank, doesn't mean they can't dodge before you pull the trigger.
A bullet travels at maybe a kilometer a second. Your target is maybe half a meter away from the bullet. If he chooses to dodge right as you fire, he has to move his face maybe ~0.1 meters from standstill and then stop in ~0.0005sec (otherwise his head goes flying off into the distance at ~200m/s), which gives us an a an acceleration and then deceleration of about 1.6 million Gs. This guy's brains will undergo the force of being accelerated with over 25 times the power of a railgun and then brought to an equally sudden halt in the span of the aforementioned 0.0005 seconds.

If he's that superhuman that his brains can withstand being scrambled in his skull with 25x the force of a railgun, he doesn't NEED to dodge bullets.

I'm thinking more that the alien dodges the human handling the gun, rather than the bullets. No alien is going to stand still when the gun barrel has come into contact with its forehead, it's going to jump out of the way before the human steadies their weapon, decides to pull the trigger because they realize they have a guaranteed shot, and then pulls the trigger. More experienced soldiers with better accuracy and reflexes can adjust for this and move their weapon accordingly to keep a bead on the alien as its attempts to move out of the way of the gun barrel. You don't need to be faster than a bullet, just the knucklehead who is trying to aim at you.
Indeed, when you are next to someone with a gun, you would be trying to be hard to aim at, or actively deflect the muzzle with your hand. Not wait for the other guy to have pulled the trigger to move.




The guy in the video gets killed a lot, but certainly not 100% of the time.
Actually, I am not sure a bayonet wouldn't be more effective at point blank range against this alien.
 
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the_shadow

Arcane
Joined
Dec 30, 2011
Messages
1,179
I'll be the devil's advocate here and observe that just because you've got a gun pointed at an alien point blank, doesn't mean they can't dodge before you pull the trigger.
A bullet travels at maybe a kilometer a second. Your target is maybe half a meter away from the bullet. If he chooses to dodge right as you fire, he has to move his face maybe ~0.1 meters from standstill and then stop in ~0.0005sec (otherwise his head goes flying off into the distance at ~200m/s), which gives us an a an acceleration and then deceleration of about 1.6 million Gs. This guy's brains will undergo the force of being accelerated with over 25 times the power of a railgun and then brought to an equally sudden halt in the span of the aforementioned 0.0005 seconds.

If he's that superhuman that his brains can withstand being scrambled in his skull with 25x the force of a railgun, he doesn't NEED to dodge bullets.

I'm thinking more that the alien dodges the human handling the gun, rather than the bullets. No alien is going to stand still when the gun barrel has come into contact with its forehead, it's going to jump out of the way before the human steadies their weapon, decides to pull the trigger because they realize they have a guaranteed shot, and then pulls the trigger. More experienced soldiers with better accuracy and reflexes can adjust for this and move their weapon accordingly to keep a bead on the alien as its attempts to move out of the way of the gun barrel. You don't need to be faster than a bullet, just the knucklehead who is trying to aim at you.
Indeed, when you are next to someone with a gun, you would be trying to be hard to aim at, or actively deflect the muzzle with your hand. Not wait for the other guy to have pulled the trigger to move.




The guy in the video gets killed a lot, but certainly not 100% of the time.
Actually, I am not sure a bayonet wouldn't be more effective at point blank range against this alien.


Funnily enough, melee attacks have a 100% chance to hit in nu-XCOM.
 

SymbolicFrank

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Mar 24, 2010
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In movies, heroes get hit in their shoulder a lot, because it seems like a "safe" place. IRL, it blows up your shoulder and shatters all the bones. Say goodbye to your arm. And you would bleed to death in minutes. A hit in your arm might shatter the bone, but at least you can restrict the blood loss. You probably lose your arm, but survive.

In short: any hit is very bad.
 

Jimmious

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Another important point generally is that in order to make losses an acceptable mechanic, leveling should not be the main power increase tool.
I mean sure, characters should get better and more valuable over time, but not living gods like in nuXCOM.
The difference between a rookie and a seasoned veteran should be within reasonable measure. Not +15 abilities some of which are godly powers of immortality...

Therefore equipment and other resources should be more important. That way you can accept losses if they provide you more of said resources.
If the most important resource of the game are soldiers them selves then obviously you won't accept loss easily..
 

Galdred

Studio Draconis
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Another important point generally is that in order to make losses an acceptable mechanic, leveling should not be the main power increase tool.
I mean sure, characters should get better and more valuable over time, but not living gods like in nuXCOM.
The difference between a rookie and a seasoned veteran should be within reasonable measure. Not +15 abilities some of which are godly powers of immortality...

Therefore equipment and other resources should be more important. That way you can accept losses if they provide you more of said resources.
If the most important resource of the game are soldiers them selves then obviously you won't accept loss easily..

Indeed, that reminds me of the countless discussions we had regarding Zodiac Legion about making losses acceptable:

We ended up having the artifacts level up too instead of only the characters to mitigate casualties (actually, it were not the artifacts directly, but the places they were linked to). A character inheriting an artifact from someone else would require some time to be attuned to it, but that would be much shorter than unlocking the artifact"s power in the first place.
For the main character, we also had to find a way to allow him to die, while having a proper player avatar, so we decided to have the player be the "spirit of the Zodiac" that would act through the appointed commander, instead of him being a mere mortal, because no medieval commander worth his salt would command from afar.
So in the end, it gets close to the Bloodlust tabletop RPG in which the player play a sentient sword.
 

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