I was only helping, how the forum works you could not have select the right thread. I won’t apologize anyway, I comment what I want comment, your post is out of topic, and plain wrong there’s no 10 SP per mission done.
It will be:
I didn’t knew, it’s no way reality, just some plan evoked, not even any date.
So now no arguing on training centers because a future possible change will change it? That’s bizarre.
You’re bang on right about the procedural generation. I was wondering the other day; should the difficulty level of a given me mission, be influenced, in part, by the level of your troops that you take on it? So you’ve just suffered a heavy loss, and now have to bring some level 1 guys along, should the game director ease off a little bit in order to allow those level 1 troops a chance to get up to speed?
Does anyone know whether that 10SP is in addition to the XP gained in mission? - i.e. you don’t have to level up only through gaining XP in the training centres?
My guess is that mission XP won’t change. You’ll still gain XP as usual, but also gain 10 SP regardless of contribution.
Generally I like the proposal. But I don’t like that there will be no SP cap for soldiers.
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Mmm procedural generation and tactics is a very rude topic. XCOM2 without last DLC I never played is showing it so well, many maps/missions will feel the same despite it’s one of the most sophisticated procedural generation of detailed 3D with tactic design.
In Ultimate Space Commando many campaign missions don’t have any procedural generation beside around enemy placement. The reason, too hard to do and keep tactical design tuning and keep missions unity.
It’s quickly said, a lot harder to do. And in my opinion the game is already suffering in this area, multiply even more combats will only increase the problem. But it seems we are going to it anyway, so we will see.
The topic looks basic, but I think it isn’t because it involves a lot of parameters and balances:
- SP cap will make pointless global SP at some point. I don’t see it minor, it will stop makes any sense to combats for greedy aspect. Increase drops to counter balance, economy balance damaged.
- With those new SP addition, the difficulty to choose use global SP. You invest them on a soldier and later it becomes a lost through the cap and soldier SP increased from combats.
- SP rounding down, 25SP left before cap and 30SP skill not allowed.
- SP rounding up, let delay 30SP skill until there’s only 5SP left before cap.
EDIT: Lol, I forgot the main problem, balances. The point of cap is to generate different builds, but then SP cost of skills and attributes need be very balanced to not push to a short amount of builds. Current system is more compatible with a less tuned design on that aspect. Tune it well is certainly long and difficult.
It takes too many missions to level your toons to 7. If you lose a lot of soldiers, you have few if any cadres available to take up the reins. If you’re supposed to take losses, then replace them with suitably leveled soldiers.
It’s not just about replacing loss, but there’s also some roster increase to manage.
XCOM1&2 cheap hiring of high level soldiers didn’t trigger so much complain and training centers had some more depth, just saying.
Dev planed change is only 20SP per level up, and 10SP per soldier per combat. A soldier only trained will reach level 7 and 120SP in 10 days with 5 training centers. It’s far to be a current level 7 soldier with 300SP. It’s less SP than a soldier level 5.
At Easy it will be a lower penalty because attributes start at higher level. At Normal it should be still quite manageable for some classes powerful with only few skills. At Legend it will be quite more trickier but it’s Legend.
For me the main problem of this change is to favor grinding, but just this change will target many points for which there are complains:
- Suddenly PP base defense will become extra cool, with a bit of organization you can gain 160 soldiers SP with one defense, and it’s the ideal combat to have rookies not participating much to a combat.
- Scavenging missions will become a much more effective grinding tool. Most players will stop not made most of them. This doesn’t mean there isn’t other problems to fix for those missions.
- Ambush will become bless for easy grinding, this counter balancing a lost of an event.
- Pure training isn’t as effective than training though combats.
- Fully trained soldier still have more training to do in real combat.
- Exploring will become less powerful compared to do combats, this could balance better the aspect, but this aspect is mainly broken by the auto scaling during first month.
It seems it will also add changes that don’t look bad:
- Training centers usage will gain some complexity, and be even less basic than XCOM1&2 system.
- Roster management will be more complex with more care and management to train level 5/6/7 rookies. Two planes team will probably become extra powerful to level up rookies through bigger teams.
- Many combats will be rougher with some rookies in the team. This will trigger many traps without enough care on what soldier level 7 is rookie and what soldier level 6 is super hero.
- When bring a trained rookie in combat will involve more choices. At level 5 the training time is much slower and soldier will start level 5 with 80SP. At level 6 it’s longer but still quite faster than level 7 and it’s respectively 100SP and 120SP.
I’m more negative on those effects:
- Vehicles will be broken, lost 30SP per combat will make them a weak choice.
- Supermen with max attributes and all skills will become more common.
- Grind will be an effective tool to lower the difficulty. It looks cool but in practice this setup different difficulty depending of player preferences.
- The increased number of combats will increase game weakness related to lack of variations, this point is very dependent of player taste/preference/play style.
- For a same roster it will mean more combats to level up at same level than before the change.
- It will push use smaller rosters, a problem for me, hardly for all players.
I experimented with this yesterday evening (made a quick mod to implement the behavior). I must say that I like it. The start is a bit slower because you level up quickly but your skill points are lower. Ambushes in early game are an easy SP farm. Scavenging sites bring more than resources. I currently have soldiers I used since the start, level 5, much more powerful than my level 4 soldiers through training centers.
I find it nice until now. Will see how my soldiers become über with time.
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Obviously it will add depth in first parts of a campaign, all problems will appear later, and many only with some players. I know per experience from other games that the tolerance for grinding is very different among players, and in Western, a good tolerance is minority, particularly when a game starts sell to more players, then it becomes tiny minority.
I play on Mac and won’t bother switch to windows to try such mod. But I could try if it was Mac compatible.
I think that’s a valid point - and it is its own issue, I think ultimately that vehicles shouldn’t take up 3 solider slots.
Putting aside what is/isn’t grinding for a sec, do you have any data on that? I’d be interested to see how different groups respond to ‘grind’.
No stats, I don’t remind any single poll on the topic. Many thread on this topics but I didn’t bother extract stats.
Now there’s clues that some dev did some analysis and it ended in significant amount of western players not liking grinding for single player games, for example:
- Some JRPG classic remake with anti grinding options.
- Plenty RPG removing grinding.
- Some tactical games, even more those with very tuned difficulty, limiting a lot grinding.
- A game like Fell Seal Arbiter’s Mark, based on a classic with the heaviest grinding I ever saw in single player games, very focused on allowing minimize it a lot, at least not for extreme difficulties.
For players, it’s hard to categorize when not having minimal information to setup categories.
Clearly some players want grinding to have a tool to manage difficulty, but isn’t this more for RPG? Have tactical tuning and difficulty broken by grinding, what tactical player want it, not that much I suppose.
Grind to power can justify anything for some players, ok but how well it can fit a tactical game?
Grinding means repeated combats, sure there’s procedural generation, but even XCOM2 much more advanced on that doesn’t manage that well the problem. And LW2 even with all mods adding new missions maps variations is repetitive before end of campaign.
Ok let say it’s too much guess, I’ll stick to:
- Grinding breaks difficulty management which isn’t good for a tactical game.
- Grinding force to more combats, even if they are the core of fun of the game, it leads to more repetitions, I have to play a similar game that endure much grinding without generating combats that feel repetitive when too many are played, and LW2 is a clear failure on that for me.
- Combats diversity isn’t the strong point of the game, grinding will make it even weaker. Lairs/Citadels/Nests/Ambushes/Scavenging feel already repetitive along a campaign. For me late Haven Defense with ridiculous tiny maps also end feel repetitive. For me only Haven defense not late in campaign don’t feel repetitive, but some players already complain on that, more grinding will make it worse.
- Grinding will break even more the balance of a campaign between combats versus other stuff as explore/events/story parts/more.
- Many single players just don’t have any time for grinding.
- Grinding in let’s play is total boredom, go find some complete FFT let’s play.
So it’s not necessarily a minority then? - Just because ‘some’ games do this.
It is an RPG mechanic in origin, but a lot of games now introduce weapon/power/skill/level ups a means of giving (an illusion of) progression. Look at the top played games on steam at the moment Steam Charts In how many of those does the player develop their abilities through playing the game? GTA is probably the one I have most experience of and you get quicker by running, if that isn’t grind I don’t know what is. Even if that’s the only one, there’s over two hundred thousand people playing it, it’s hardly putting off end users because they have to play the game in order for their character to get better at it. On the flip side, how many of those games allow characters to improve whilst sitting in a training centre? - Only the ones that monitize and want to exploit the player.
For TBS games in particular, it’s actually quite common to see characters progressing during the course of the game, but again it’s primarily via playing the game, not some time spent off duty. If you find playing the game to be grind, then maybe you need to be playing a different game that is more interesting to you.
I’m with you on that, but it’s a separate issue. Hopefully one that gets resolved by incoming DLC.
Mutiplayer games? Out of topic, you should try again, but with single player.
RPG origin doesn’t change it’s not the same constraints between RPG combats and tactical game combats.
What are you even talking about? Your arguments change like the wind.
Of course it’s not the same contraints, but mechnics move between genres all the time - It doesn’t happen because those mechanics are unpopular amongst the majority of western gamers.
Where are your TBS games that don’t have progression driven by gameplay if you think its such a bad thing?
I’m very curious about how your experience turns out to be. Did you implement all the changes in your mod?
@Zzzz I for one share your concerns about grinding, but it’s hard to say until we see it in action. Also, it will depend on how this change interacts with all the other changes that will be coming at the same time.
I have feeling that the game will play very differently after DLC 1.
I quoted single player, no change here, I shouldn’t even have quoted it, SP and MP is a lot too different.
Bad thing? RPG elements isn’t RPG. Grinding breaking combats difficulty match better RPG than tactical game.