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XCOMUFO & Xenocide

Rules & Equations


jollyrobert

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It needs some work I think, but it looks pretty good.

The Stress stat is pretty much how well the soldier can deal with battle conditions, right? Such as, losing a bunch of fellow soldiers?

 

A few things to add:

 

3.4. Damaging:

3.4.1. Types of damage.

3.4.1.1 - Damage from conventional weapons (bullets, Armor Piercing)

3.4.1.2 - Damage from Laser Weaponry

3.4.1.3 - Damage from Plasma Weaponry

3.4.1.4 - Damage from Explosive Weaponry

3.4.1.5 - Damage from Incendiary Weaponry

3.4.1.6 - Damage from Stunning Weaponry

3.4.1.7 - Damage from Shrapnel?(Anti-Personel)

3.4.1.8 - Other damage effects

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Pasted the text here for ease of reading, make sure to use rtf extensions in the future so those without Word can access it:

 

What I can help with

By Jolly Robert 28 April 04

 

Notes:

Stuff that was written by other people is in blue.

Stuff that isn't in the original xcom is in red. Note that I don't remember all of this….

1. Intro

1.1. Rules:

1.1.1. Relationship of stats to battlescape performance

1.1.2. Battlescape interactions (shooting, moving, spotting, communicating)

1.2. Modeling

1.2.1. How weapon systems might work

1.2.2. How this works for game balance

2. Stats

2.1. Soldier Stats (as is, taken from the design doc. My comments are in red.)

NOTE: currently there are no formulas for the effects of specific stats, especially in relation to each other.

2.1.1. Speed: (TU's?) How far a soldier can go during one turn. How much energy/time it takes a soldier to move during combat.

2.1.2. Strength: The amount of gear a soldier can carry before penalties to their other stats. fatigue starts increasing at a higher rate. Also helps determine how far can throw grenades.

2.1.3. Aiming: When combined with the accuracy of the weapon being used determines the accuracy of the shot.

2.1.4. Throwing: How far and accurately the soldier can throw items.

2.1.5. Read some comments about a melee skill? Would affect attacks with stun rods, etc., and how likely to be hit by enemy melee attacks (reapers, chrysalids, etc.)

2.1.6. Stamina: How long a soldier can move during consecutive turns before needing time to relax. Determines how quickly a soldier gets fatigued and how much fatigue they can take before they go unconscious.

2.1.7. Fatigue: How tired a soldier is. Affects how many TUs has available, how likely to go unconscious, and affects accuracy and reaction time. Also affects how quickly they gain stress.

2.1.8. Intelligence: Who knows. (that is ironic isn't it?) Determines how quickly soldier gains new skills (consider hiding this stat), might determine reaction time (i.e., how long it takes for a soldier to get an opportunity fire interrupt)

2.1.9. Reaction time/Reflexes: If you don't want to keep intelligence for modeling reaction time, make it a stat in itself.

2.1.10. Charisma: We might not even include this one...but it refers to the unit’s ability to get along with other units and cooperate. Only useful if the soldiers are treated as individuals, not just units; this would allow for them to work together, and might mean that some units would be worth firing. Consider renaming 'morale.' Consider morale "mental stamina", and stress "mental fatigue."

2.1.11. Constitution: How much life the soldier has. Related to stamina.

2.1.12. Stress: Pretty much like their morale. This determines how likely the soldier is to panic, berserk, and perhaps makes them more susceptible to mind control. I would model this as the fatigue stat for morale. Also affects accuracy.

2.2. Vehicle stats: stats for vehicles or HWPs. Pretty much the same as soldier stats, except for the following:

2.2.1. No charisma, intelligence, stress stats.

2.2.2. 'stamina' and 'constitution' closely related. Vehicles lose time units, accuracy, and possibly control as they take damage.

2.2.3. Several 'operational' stats might be more relevant for vehicles: field of vision, reaction time, amount of TUs it takes to cross certain terrain, etc. These can be paramterized differently.

2.3. Noncombatant stats: Same as for soldiers/humanoids in most cases, but add to this 'what side they are on' and certain skill levels (engineer skill, scientist skill). Plus, stress/morale distribution should be much lower (if you have scientists in a base, they should be able to fight at last ditch, but should suck at it).

2.4. Weapon stats: Stats for how effective a weapon is:

2.4.1. Maximum range: How far the bullet will travel

2.4.2. Short/Medium/Long effective range: How far you can aim the weapon.

2.4.3. Aimed shot and snap shot accuracy: How accurate the weapon is if you take time to line it up, vs. how accurate the weapon is if you just point and shoot.

2.4.4. Recoil/Control: How much prior shots affect your accuracy. First round of a burst is just as effective as an aimed shot - its those second/third/etc. rounds that are all over the place.

2.4.5. Weight: How much the weapon weighs.

2.4.6. Damage: How much the weapon will destroy.

2.4.7. Damage type: What kind of energy the weapon deals damage with. I've noted a lot of talk in the forums about this, and think it's pretty important for modeling the armor.

2.5. Battlespace object stats:

2.5.1. Constitution: how much damage until it's destroyed.

2.5.2. Concealment: how much it affects the accuracy if you're firing through it, how well you can see through it

2.5.3. Luminescence: Whether it emits light.

2.5.4. Cover: How likely a shot is to penetrate it without destroying it (sort of like an armor value) - if you want to poke holes in walls, for example.

2.5.5. Hardness: How much damage it takes from attacks.

2.5.6. Time units: How difficult it is to walk over (ground), climb over? swim through? jump over?

2.5.7. Hazard: do we want the possibility of terrain that deals damage?

2.6. Craft (UFO, aircraft) stats: to be discussed later

2.7. Base stats: later.

2.8. Nation stats: part of the economic model; to be discussed later (and maybe by someone else?)

3. Battlescape interactions:

3.1. Moving:

3.1.1. How you interact with the environment - opening doors, climbing stuff, crouching behind stuff, looking through stuff

3.1.2. Types of movement

3.1.3. Types of positions for soldiers, vehicles

3.2. Shooting:

3.2.1. Direct, aimed fire

3.2.2. Direct, snap fire

3.2.3. Direct aimed bursts

3.2.4. Direct, snap bursts

3.2.5. Direct, blind fire (firing at places because something might be there or might move through there). Consists of suppressive fire and automatic suppressive fire. May also be related to terrain fire.

3.2.6. Terrain fire (firing at stuff to break it)

3.2.7. High-register direct fire (throwing/launching grenades/rifle grenades/mortar shells at stuff you can see)

3.2.8. High-register indirect fire (lobbing that stuff over other stuff)

3.2.9. "Through the window" indirect fire (lobbing grenades through the window or around corners)

3.2.10. Fully automatic indirect fire (somebody spotting where machine gun rounds are landing (also known as "the beaten zone") and telling the machine gunner where to move it.

3.2.11. Gas! How gas works, whether it blows in the wind, what it does to peeps.

3.3. Spotting:

3.3.1. How soldiers detect enemies.

3.3.2. How soldiers react to detected enemies.

3.3.3. How the terrain affects this.

3.4. Damaging:

3.4.1. Types of damage.

3.4.2. Terrain damage - damage caused by terrain on fire, the roof collapsing on you, shrapnel from a high explosive rocket in the chicken coop, the "chunky salsa" effect (grenades inside close quarters/bunkers)

3.4.3. Other stuff.

 

 

I don't have time to thoroughly look at this (boss floating around the office), but so long as this is stays within the parameters of the original stats it should be fine. I believe Cpt. Boxershorts recently finished the XML files for the attributes of items in the game, based on what I've seen of it, it should include all of these statistics. The sourceforge mailing list for programmers has this information, the archive there should give you all the info on what his XML docs involve.

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And in fact I am starting to layout the design of the Weapons/Items system from the programming side, so the cross input from both jollyrobert and Cpt. Boxershorts is going to be needed... I will be releasing a draft design in the weekend (if I finish the draft, have lots of drawings to make) so stay tuned to the mailing list...

 

OffTopic: If anyone knows of a good graph drawing application (free) let me know by PM.

 

Greetings

Red Knight

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