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Fallout Tactics (in 2020)

Zboj Lamignat

Arcane
Joined
Feb 15, 2012
Messages
5,523
Funny you would mention Incubation, which is often considered as incredibly puzzly, including for the reasons you mention.
Which has what to do with anything, exactly? I think you need to be clearer here.
I am sorry if you see Game Design 101 as "rationalization", but yes, it is not because X works in game Y that it will work in game Z.
Rationalization is defending porting combat mechanics from a simplistic, single character crpg that's not even combat focused to a series of pre-designed scenarios which mostly aren't even all that interesting and calling it a tactical game, because apparently if you tried to make it more interesting it wouldn't work. Notice how you try to defend FT with JA2 comparisons, but JA2 actually has ways to quickly kill/get killed and careful management of wounds/recuperation etc?
Healing in Fallout takes AP, so if you want to do it in combat you need to either disengage or sacrifice AP. I am not going to defend the "only 2 AP for heal" of Fallout, that's a design mistake and has been there since Fallout 1, but not enough to thrash the whole game, especially if you play it RT (where typically your character would have between 0 and the minimum HP to shoot between combat, so you won't be able to fully that quickly).
Don't act obtuse, please. The issue is that combat and scenarios in FT usually don't require tactical approach at all. One of the reasons for it is that combat is not really threatening for your squad and it's ridiculously easy to keep them maxed out hp wise all the time. At least you do admit how the game copies all the shitty parts of F1-2 combat system almost verbatim.
Until mid-game, you don't have unlimited resources either. The game takes a turn for the worse by end game when you start having Power Armors.
Oh, so it's "be completely literal all the time otherwise I'll pretend I don't understand" now. Yeah, you can have soldiers carry 6 assault rifles with 2k ammo by mission 2, but ammo is not unlimited in FT, either.
There are plenty of other tactical games where, once out of combat, you can heal your guys fully and not have in your team a limping dude : Chaos Gate (in theory you have limited space but well, let's just say it is not a constraint), Silent Storm provided your guy is not unconscious iirc, the sadly unknown-but-great I am not a Monster, or even RT games like Syrian Warfare where Russian elite soldier can shrug off an HE shell a few meters from them and then heal fully if they are given some time out of combat (Syrians without body armor would be dead though).
Yes, let's put SS on the same shelf as FT, because they share a flaw.
 

ValeVelKal

Arcane
Joined
Aug 24, 2011
Messages
1,605
Rationalization is defending porting combat mechanics from a simplistic, single character crpg that's not even combat focused to a series of pre-designed scenarios which mostly aren't even all that interesting and calling it a tactical game, because apparently if you tried to make it more interesting it wouldn't work. Notice how you try to defend FT with JA2 comparisons, but JA2 actually has ways to quickly kill/get killed and careful management of wounds/recuperation etc?
As I said twice already, FOT has you killed with one rocket/missiles, or one heavy machine gun at short range until you get power armor. The level with super-mutant trenches can go very quickly very poorly as the SM are not easy to see in their trenched and can quickly stand up and shoot. Metal armor may allow you to survive a couple burst of heavy machine guns, and in RT you don't have the AP to heal between two shoots except if you use the (rare) super-stimpak. So there are those 1 shoot killed. And you can also get killed by normal rifles if you are not careful with what you are doing. And if you are careful with what you are doing, then you are playing it tactically ?
In JA2, most of the people you will lose will be when you have your team wounded (because as you said, wound management is well done) but you keep fighting instead of pulling out to fight the next day.


In addition, level design in FOT is sometimes total fail (first map for instance), sometimes really great (like that Beastmaster mission where you have some sorts of "mini-mission" like saving someone without detonating a bomb, etc).


The game is definitely on the easy side and on the simple-ruleset side, but if "being threatened" is your point of comparison I rarely feel threatened in JA2 either once I passed let's say 40% of the game - there is no "one-shot" kill in JA2, so most of the danger comes from those aliens and pumas, enemy mortars and of course dudes waiting you behind a door, especially underground. Yes, and once or twice in your playthrough an enemy will shoot at you with a LAW that you could not prepare for. Due to this, I would go as far as to say that the tactical challenges of JA2, once you have put your hands on good rifles, is pretty limited, all the more since enemies all look the same (either red or black, with the few exceptions like the hillbillies, and until they start shooting at you you don't know what weapon they have). I feel more threatened in Chaos Gate when I see an enemy with a multimelta or a enemy armor, and due to this I feel Chaos Gate offer more tactical challenges. More than this, I even think JA1 was tactically more difficult than JA2. It does not stop JA2 from being awesome.
Heck, thinking about it as I write this, I feel more threatened in FOT than in JA2 because you need to play it in real-time and in real-time shit can go wrong very, very fast and your snap decision to save your squad may make the situation even worse.

Because, yes, again, you have to play this game in real time. In turn-by-turn it has no interest whatsoever. I stated this in my first message in this thread and I actually mentioned that in turn by turn the resilience of your team (that can hide & heal once it is their turn) is too high :

I like it, but you have to play it as a real-time game or the missions are too long and stuff like units surviving grenades after bullets is ... weird. Turn by turn it is really terrible

Again, I am not saying it is a great game, but it deserves more credit than you give it and that I liked it.

Oh, so it's "be completely literal all the time otherwise I'll pretend I don't understand" now. Yeah, you can have soldiers carry 6 assault rifles with 2k ammo by mission 2, but ammo is not unlimited in FT, either.
There are few tactical games I actually ran out of ammo for "normal" weapons anyway. Even in XCOM it rarely happens. JA2 and even more JA1 are the exceptions.



Yes, let's put SS on the same shelf as FT, because they share a flaw.
Or rather, let's realize that flaws don't make a game necessarily terrible, and that you cannot take one flaw and then say "LOOK ! LOOK ! THIS IS THE PROOF THIS GAME IS SHIT !"
 

Cael

Arcane
Joined
Nov 1, 2017
Messages
20,292
That's some nice rationalization and I know you can die in FT. The real question is - how many times do you actually die and do you even feel your soldiers are in any kind of danger most of the time? How many of the games you mention, tactical games, allow you to facetank damage all day, because right after your guy is done getting shot at with high caliber ammo you can just instantly patch him up to full hp with 65747 healing items in your inventory and he won't mind one bit and status effects can be done away with quickly as well. Put X from game Z into game Y and it won't work is a weird argument and it sounds dangerously like a variant of the tired "but it's shit by design!!" trope. The point is that these games actually present interesting tactical scenarios and challenges. Incubation is strictly build around the idea of having a small core squad with losses being pretty much unacceptable and yet even the lowest of the low enemies will shred you if you aren't careful. It also has morale, proper inventory management/item economy...

Funny you would mention Incubation, which is often considered as incredibly puzzly, including for the reasons you mention.

I am sorry if you see Game Design 101 as "rationalization", but yes, it is not because X works in game Y that it will work in game Z.

Healing in Fallout takes AP, so if you want to do it in combat you need to either disengage or sacrifice AP. I am not going to defend the "only 2 AP for heal" of Fallout, that's a design mistake and has been there since Fallout 1, but not enough to thrash the whole game, especially if you play it RT (where typically your character would have between 0 and the minimum HP to shoot between combat, so you won't be able to fully that quickly).

Until mid-game, you don't have unlimited resources either. The game takes a turn for the worse by end game when you start having Power Armors.


There are plenty of other tactical games where, once out of combat, you can heal your guys fully and not have in your team a limping dude : Chaos Gate (in theory you have limited space but well, let's just say it is not a constraint), Silent Storm provided your guy is not unconscious iirc, the sadly unknown-but-great I am not a Monster, or even RT games like Syrian Warfare where Russian elite soldier can shrug off an HE shell a few meters from them and then heal fully if they are given some time out of combat (Syrians without body armor would be dead though).
Not only AP, but a LOT of AP. 10 for First Aid and 15 for Doctor, IIRC.

The idiot doesn't know what he is talking about, it is plain. He is projecting like hell because of it, as he is rationalising his hate by comparing FOT with mechanics that doesn't work with the FOT mechanics. It is like saying a Rolls Royce Phantom is shit because it doesn't fly like a cropduster can.
 

Ol' Willy

Arcane
Zionist Agent Vatnik
Joined
May 3, 2020
Messages
24,574
Location
Reichskommissariat Russland ᛋᛋ
Russian elite soldier can shrug off an HE shell a few meters from them and then heal fully if they are given some time out of combat
the prime minister protects.
Nah, it's just buffs from Cleric actually working

fa3c06dbb7f47430fd10530634d3e322_i-93.jpg
 

snoek

Cipher
Joined
May 5, 2003
Messages
1,125
Location
Belgium, bro
It wasn't too bad. We even played some local MP games and i tried some online but the meta was too much for me.
As far as I can remember (and from what I've seen in the thread here) the game went to shit as soon as it became all about the robots. It got really boring. I completed it but honestly I can't remember the ending.
 

Cael

Arcane
Joined
Nov 1, 2017
Messages
20,292
Question: I heard the burst mode bug has been patched out through hex editiing. Is there a patch for it or does it come only with other mods?
The only fix I have heard of turns the burst mode into single target only. That is how they got around the whole "hitting everyone else automatically": They made it so it never hits anyone else.
 

Cael

Arcane
Joined
Nov 1, 2017
Messages
20,292
Question: I heard the burst mode bug has been patched out through hex editiing. Is there a patch for it or does it come only with other mods?
The only fix I have heard of turns the burst mode into single target only. That is how they got around the whole "hitting everyone else automatically": They made it so it never hits anyone else.

That's just weird. The whole point of burst mode is to spray multiple oponents. Burst mode shotguns were FUN FUN FUN.
There are actually two modes in FOT that allows you to hit multiple opponents at the same time (not including explosives and the like, of course).

1. Burst mode - This is what most guns have.
2. Cone - This is what shotguns have. They will hit multiple opponents with single shots.

However, I believe cone mode only uses 1 round of ammo per shot, so it can't be used as a fix for the burst mode bug.
 
Glory to Ukraine
Joined
Nov 22, 2020
Messages
2,164
Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming!
I can't remember the ending.
I only remember that the final boss was a PC that didn't move and didn't attack. It was just standing there until you blew it up.

You probably mean the "racist" BoS general who gets captured by supermutants and then taken by the robots who turn him into a cyborg. You can find a recording of his message to his wife and play it to him, which then makes him regain his personality and he wont fight you then. The ending of FoT is actually fairly nice:

You storm the super-Vault and get to the computer that runs the robots, you can then decide to kill yourself and let your own brain take control of the robots (good ending), let the general run the computer ("human supremacist" ending), or destroy the computer (robots stop working, wasteland remains a shitty place, but BoS is in charge, more or less)
 

laclongquan

Arcane
Joined
Jan 10, 2007
Messages
1,870,144
Location
Searching for my kidnapped sister
That's some nice rationalization and I know you can die in FT. The real question is - how many times do you actually die and do you even feel your soldiers are in any kind of danger most of the time?

"in any kind of danger most of the time" is a nitpicky and/or retard feature. People is not built to deal with try to solve "in any kind of danger most of the time". This is basic psychology and biology design. Even horror games are not designed that way.

"in any kind of danger some of the time" is more like it and good games try to force this to create tensions logically.

In Fallout Tactics, this happen three or four times in missions. The first mission when you deal with Deathclaws, since it's different target than raiders. The first mission when you deal with Supermutants because they are different from raiders and deathclaws. The first mission when you deal with Robot because you are not geared for fighting with robots. They are all likely to cause your loss of characters.

It's same way with jagged alliance 2, actually (the 1.12 version). The first, drop zone mission because you are not familiar with the game commands. The first assault on anti air zone because they are tougher than normal. The mission with Mike because named character are waaaay tougher than normal. The bug assault mine because they are different. The first mission with super elite troop. The first mission with tank.
 
Last edited:

Cael

Arcane
Joined
Nov 1, 2017
Messages
20,292
Question: I heard the burst mode bug has been patched out through hex editiing. Is there a patch for it or does it come only with other mods?

Burst bug has been fixed in two mods, Equilibrium and Redux, but I dont know if it's been released as standalone fixpatch.
Both of which change the game in ways that, to me, spoil the experience. Redux has that 12.7mm sniper rifle... >.<

I was already invincible with the normal sniper rifle. With the super sniper, well... just no.

And I think they "fixed" it by making it single target only.
 

laclongquan

Arcane
Joined
Jan 10, 2007
Messages
1,870,144
Location
Searching for my kidnapped sister
Which is why they said from start, and I repeat, that they are mods, not patch. Vanilla experience need not apply. I do mind vanilla experiences have been changed quite a lot. but I already play FT to death, so might as well try something new(er).

And looking at it from that point of view, both Redux and Equilibrium make some new experiences. The game paces, the tactics, are changed quite a bit.
 

Bigg Boss

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2012
Messages
7,528
Doesn't really matter because redux is the way to go whether you like it or not. Either that or play a harder/buggier game.
 

spekkio

Arcane
Joined
Sep 16, 2009
Messages
8,278
Question: I heard the burst mode bug has been patched out through hex editiing. Is there a patch for it or does it come only with other mods?
Fixed .exe from the Redux 1.3 Mod (should fix the burst bug and some others)

Are there any must-have mods for Tactics?

First mission is a bit of a force fight. You have to play with two more characters forced on you without configuration. And not very well configured. So 1st mission is not good. 2nd is better because you can build your team.

Fallout Tactics Enhanced Characters Startpack

Both posted here.
 

spekkio

Arcane
Joined
Sep 16, 2009
Messages
8,278
^
Yup. But I haven't tested it extensively. Just installed the GoG version and checked if the exe crashes the game. It does not. But I haven't checked if the burst bug is fixed or anything. I plan to play the game using this exe in the future.
 

razvedchiki

Erudite
Joined
May 25, 2015
Messages
4,265
Location
on the back of a T34.
is high char worth it? supposedly you get better recruits and better equipment earlier, though i play with redux and dont know if they have changed how recruits work.
 

Cael

Arcane
Joined
Nov 1, 2017
Messages
20,292
is high char worth it? supposedly you get better recruits and better equipment earlier, though i play with redux and dont know if they have changed how recruits work.
It doesn't. But you need a Cha of about 8 at least to get it to work. It basically gives you the next tier of recruits earlier (and access to the Divine Favour perk). Generally, from a min-max point of view, you go Cha 1 or 8.
 

laclongquan

Arcane
Joined
Jan 10, 2007
Messages
1,870,144
Location
Searching for my kidnapped sister
From the effective issue, the only one worth a Charisma 8 is the main character. So you can rank up earlier thus can get more troopers easier (and maybe get some extra goods in store to buy but I am not sure and which mod). Later on you can get divine favour which push your highest stat beyond your 10 I think. Seriously, if Cha8 is not on your main character, the gain is too minimal to worth the investment.
 

razvedchiki

Erudite
Joined
May 25, 2015
Messages
4,265
Location
on the back of a T34.
i played some with redux and equilibrium and with 2 char i get 6 recruits to choose in redux and around 10 in equilibrium after the first mission.
 

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