Why not “Bash” and “Attack” since attack and strike both have six letters? Now you might say, “But they’re both still the same thing!” No, I disagree. You didn’t “attack” the window, you bashed it in. “Attack” is clear in the intent of the action you want to take. You have an enemy you want to attack so attack it.
I thought the melee options were quite obvious after playing with bash for a while (and your object taking damage when you use bash implied it was not a proper use of the weapon) before even getting access to the Neurazer.
Strength was pretty obfuscated but now i’ve read this thread that said “str = 10hp” that fixes everything.
They should add a loading screen tip that says that 
I would argue that if you had to play with it for a while, it wasn’t obvious 
Also the loading screen is the last place such important information should be displayed (if it is there already, then I have missed it 
)
Just replace “Strike” with “Taze”.
Problem solved. You carry a big tazer.
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Have to agree they’re synonyms and the icons aren’t clear, although without using weapon specific words I’m not sure on alternatives.
I guessed based on shortcut keys and their position in the menu and got lucky. I like the idea of changing the icon to a swinging sword, that implies to me using a weapon as designed, rather than bashing with a rifle butt or pistol whipping which is more of an improvised melee. Of course if they ever added bayonets that might confuse things.
I’m going to sidestep the whole strike/bash part of the problem and focus on the paralysis status being confusing for a number of players.
-if paralysis damage is applied, some players seem to be confused out the 8/40 or similar that pops up and wonder initially if the target is already paralyzed.
-some players think that since a paralysed unit is still on the board it has to be killed to be captured.
-reference to strength is confusing, as looking into the info panel shows no str value to beat.
this is very notable in blind lets plays, where I have seen the above problems pop up (on top of bashing with the neurazer…yep he thought the resist that then shows against the shock damage meant the paralysis was resisted) they all figured it out fairly quickly though…not the details (like max HP = str X10, and it can be reduced by blowing off limbs)…just that they had to beat the /X valeu in paralysis count and not let the unit die.
Also of note is that partially paralysed units lose action points.
Do these players skip tutorials? But right, paralysis can be little bit confusing.
This should be solved with:
- tutorial poping up after first hit of paralysing weapon.
- developed pop up screen when you hover mouse over enemy
How they figured it out like this? Again tutorial after first hit should help here.
Info screen should be reworked to show all unit stats and how HP are dependant on the strength.
some do, most don’t. There is however at this moment in time no tutorial specific to paralysis (I think there is a pop up), so I don’t think it would have mattered a whole lot.
the ones that do skip the tutorial tend to be the ones that have already played a hour or so to get all the settings right. so they skip the basic hoops the tutorial jumps through.
I’m going to dig around a bit and see if I can link a couple of examples of lets players running into problems with the paralysis system.
EDIT:
christopherOdd’s first encounter with paralysis
Christopher is a veteran turn based tactical lets-player, playing on legendary difficulty here. the vid is from back in december, but the system hasn’t changed a lot since then. he’s notably confused after applying it at roughly 8 minutes into the vid, and tries to figure it out through the info menu. he eventually concludes that to lower the “strength” he probably has to damage his target more.
While BASH is present since the beginning and obviously means a “hit with a physical weapon with no shot” - damaging the weapon itself. Its a last ditch option when close to enemy and with no 2APs or more to shoot. It can trigger retaliation shoots like general ammo hits if enemy has reaction fire.
“Resisted” is mark that enemy did not get dazzled (lost a turn due to confusion) that can happen due to heavy and hard hits from cannon or close encouter enemy (like being hit in a head).
Strike does sound odd for using the real weapon as well as its exponation. I would put simple “use” or “hit” - a strike at least to non native English speaker sounds a bit odd.
By “playing with” i mean, using it a couple times, the damage to your weapon (and i’ve lost a few weapons to using bash) is definitely heavily implying you shouldn’t use it. Also the fact that all those heavy bash kills never knocked the target unconcious.
To me the solution is simple, “melee” and “strong melee”, with icon actions placed next to each other and that portray the difference clearly, for example a fist, and a fist with a star around. The neuralizer should have only one icon: “use”, or even better: “neuralize”, with its own separated icon.
Easy.
Why devs are unable to do something as simple as this is beyond me.