X-COM XCOM 2 + War of the Chosen Expansion Thread

[Zeriel]

The "time units are a sacred cow" shitposting brigade sure are out in force in this thread.

 

[Zombra]

1) Since you can spend TU on anything, and since attacking is so crucial to success, the incentive is to not move very much, just find a good spot and attack attack attack. This makes battlefields less dynamic.

This can be solved by attaching a TU cost to crouching/going prone (by 'good spot' I assume you mean a well-protected spot).

What? That just makes it worse. I spent all those TU to get in a defensive position, I better not stand up again or those points are wasted.

It's the 2-AP system that makes battlefields less dynamic - it heavily incentivizes sticking to cover, because once you go out of cover, you only have 1 AP left and there's very little you can do, and because moving two steps is the AP equivalent of firing a rocket launcher. It's quite literally popamole in that sense.

Hmm, I see what you mean. It's very true that moving out of cover in XCOM was clearly the "wrong" move.

I'd say both systems have their pros and cons then - TUs still incentivize sticking to one spot. With 2AP, you have no reason not to run around every turn.

It's also very rigid/inflexible, once you spend your 2 AP's you can't even perform minor actions like flip a switch or something, your turn is automatically over.

Well, XCOM did have "zero point" actions like opening doors and grabbing Meld. If we're adding "this can be solved by" clauses, this can be solved by not ending your turn automatically after spending your 2AP.

As a side note, I want to be clear that I don't think TUs are shit and 2AP rules - I was just replying to a guy who asked rhetorically what 2AP does better, and was parroting some justifications I'd heard.

 

[Galdred]

This can be solved by attaching a TU cost to crouching/going prone (by 'good spot' I assume you mean a well-protected spot).

It's the 2-AP system that makes battlefields less dynamic - it heavily incentivizes sticking to cover, because once you go out of cover, you only have 1 AP left and there's very little you can do, and because moving two steps is the AP equivalent of firing a rocket launcher. It's quite literally popamole in that sense. It's also very rigid/inflexible, once you spend your 2 AP's you can't even perform minor actions like flip a switch or something, your turn is automatically over. It simply isn't very fun to play with.

Actually, sticking to cover makes sense in a firefight.
Anyway, 2 AP didn't really solve the main issue of giving a strong incentive to crawl and shoot. In neuXCom too, it is better to take your time, and advance your whole team very slowly, even in terror missions as long as you manage to save 1 civilian.

 

[Gozma]

They're not being coy with the terrorist thing, huh. Looks like the handholdey tutorial is you attacking a fucking parade or something

They should copy Liberal Crime Squad

 

[Average Manatee]

I have no problem with the 2 AP system, but the TU system isn't really the pinnacle of good game design. AP's make sense in Jagged Alliance, where you have a shit-ton of actions your mercs can perform, in X-Com you can't even go prone or gradually spend your points for higher hit chance, so it's redundant. It could be streamlined to something like 4 ponints for movement and 4 points for action, where every movement point covers a couple of meters, and different actions cost different amount of action points.

Someone has clearly never had to do inventory management during a fight, or prime/use grenades.

Also JA's spend-TUs-to-aim thing is actually rather less realistic than X-Com's. Aiming really doesn't give a linear time:accuracy ratio like JA would suggest. In combat that isn't long range your options are to shoot quickly without taking your eyes off the target or shoot with sights. That's it.

This way you don't fucking have to count your moves every time you move or act, and you learn use your points more efficiently, without ending your turn with 13 useless points, when the cheapest action costs 14, because reasons.

Yeah, they should add some kind of button you could press to restrict movement and save TUs for a shot rather than letting you go 1-over. Or you could just git gud.

In most instances you spot an enemy and have 40-60 TUs to fire with, from which it requires some fairly intuitive decisions in how you spend those TUs to arrive at a maximum number of hits in combination with potential crouching for more accuracy or saving TUs to get into cover.

What the hell is better about [2AP system]?

I did see one explanation that was interesting. There are a couple of bad things about a full AP system:

1) Since you can spend TU on anything, and since attacking is so crucial to success, the incentive is to not move very much, just find a good spot and attack attack attack. This makes battlefields less dynamic.

Counterpoint: This makes pre-contact positioning of the utmost importance, which adds greatly to strategy and dealing with the map. With aliens being highly mobile and able to come from multiple directions, this means a lot of balancing of the firepower has to be done to deal with every possible angle, since if you have to move to shoot you probably won't get the kill on this turn (especially with harder enemies) and will then probably eat plasma with at least one soldier on the alien turn.

In a 2TU system, especially the way nuxcom used it, there is basically 0 relevant positioning before battle. Starting a fight with all of your soldiers in cover is no different from starting it out of cover, your soldiers use their first move to get into cover and shoot just the same. To the point where people just huddle groups of 4/6 walking 1-2 steps at a time all out in the open, because there's no penalty to being exposed and it massively decreases your risk of contacting multiple groups. It's a joke to watch and it's a joke to play.

2) There is the thing where you step around a corner, attack, and then hide again with NO RISK of being counterattacked. Some players may love exploiting this, but enabling this behavior is actually lame.

That's exactly what the interrupt system was for. It wasn't an "exploit". If the alien had TU's to spare for a shot you were basically assured of return fire (X-Com's interrupt system making interrupt 100% likely if you were out of TUs, no matter your reaction stat or the enemy's reation stat). This then led use to the mind probe which could check the enemy's TU count and see if it was risky to attempt such an action. Good gameplay systems here.

 

[Gozma]

The big exploit of old X-Com is that aliens never get reaction fire on you if you and the alien spot each other simultaneously. So what you can do is use half of a guy's TUs to move forward and clear fog of war, and if he spots an alien the rest of the squad shoots it using squad sight. If he doesn't see anything, he can move back to the same position he started (out of sight) and do the same thing again next turn. It's pretty much an unbreakable turtle setup. If a map doesn't have a lot of blind corners you can clear any map this way easily. TFTD made it kinda worse because aliens don't get to reaction fire on a dude opening a door, so you can exploit doorways the same way (in X-Com 1 you can use smoke to exploit the "we saw each other at the same time reaction tie" inside UFOs and bases but it's trickier, since only TFTD allows you to manually open doors without walking through them). I don't really know how to fix that - how does Xenonauts handle it?

I totally stopped doing the "move around in an overwatching huddle" thing in Long War, mostly because there is a lot of good stuff to do with with an entire move. Like if you blue move + steady aim (a universal ability that isn't in vanilla) you have to take a shot before moving next turn to get the aim benefit. So you end up moving your "scout" (the actual role, not the class, the guy that makes the first move of the turn), your rocketeer, infantry (because he can shoot twice a turn, using the blue then the yellow move, you don't want to move him after contact) and sniper in ways where you worry about LOS and cover even without seeing any enemies.

Plus you get a lot more situational awareness about enemy placements because you can bring battlescanners on way more people than just one on a sniper like vanilla. You'll do stuff like see an enemy group on scan and move proactively to attack it before any more patrols move into the area.

The enemy groups are also so much tougher such that you are often going to have to fight a group over multiple turns instead of having the vanilla situation where half your soldiers can wipe a 3-man group trivially, which also makes cover and getting maximum firepower from every unit more important.

 

[Average Manatee]

The big exploit of old X-Com is that aliens never get reaction fire on you if you and the alien spot each other simultaneously. So what you can do is use half of a guy's TUs to move forward and clear fog of war, and if he spots an alien the rest of the squad shoots it using squad sight. If he doesn't see anything, he can move back to the same position he started (out of sight) and do the same thing again next turn. It's pretty much an unbreakable turtle setup. If a map doesn't have a lot of blind corners you can clear any map this way easily. TFTD made it kinda worse because aliens don't get to reaction fire on a dude opening a door, so you can exploit doorways the same way (in X-Com 1 you can use smoke to exploit the "we saw each other at the same time reaction tie" inside UFOs and bases but it's trickier, since only TFTD allows you to manually open doors without walking through them). I don't really know how to fix that - how does Xenonauts handle it?

That's not really the whole story. As soon as you appeared to an enemy in x-com the whole map of enemies knew where you were, and "just" ducking back a few spots left you likely to be shot by the next alien to show up, especially on higher difficulties where aliens had enough TUs to cross half a screen of black fog and then shoot you. Its only really fullproof if your scout is a tank with 100 TUs and infinite stamina, but due to the mechanics of simultaneous spotting tanks often ate reaction fire anyway.

Also entering UFOs in TFTD basically requires suiciding troops, since several aliens on each ship were scripted to hide in alcoves with full TUs that could not be approached without taking fire. No way its easier, it's hell.

Xenonauts is actually worse thanks to flashbangs. Just lob one in and you disable a whole room's ability to reaction fire for the rest of the turn.

I totally stopped doing the "move around in an overwatching huddle" thing in Long War, mostly because there is a lot of good stuff to do with with an entire move. Like if you blue move + steady aim (a universal ability that isn't in vanilla) you have to take a shot before moving next turn to get the aim benefit. So you end up moving your "scout" (the actual role, not the class, the guy that makes the first move of the turn), your rocketeer, infantry (because he can shoot twice a turn, using the blue then the yellow move, you don't want to move him after contact) and sniper in ways where you worry about LOS and cover even without seeing any enemies.

Plus you get a lot more situational awareness about enemy placements because you can bring battlescanners on way more people than just one on a sniper like vanilla. You'll do stuff like see an enemy group on scan and move proactively to attack it before any more patrols move into the area.

Battlescanners are exactly the thing that ruin Long War. The whole concept of strategy is planning for the unexpected, when there is no unexpected then even a moron can figure out where to place soldiers. I'd consider LW's nigh-infinite battle scanner spamming a far greater exploit than anything else in the X-Com series barring psi.

 

[Gozma]

I've cleared the monthly supply ships approximately a thousand times in TFTD superhuman by exploiting the doors. Against smaller stuff on open maps nothing will break the anti-reaction turtle. When I have people die it's in bases, battleships and terror missions where I have to check closets over and over, which is why I haven't finished a game of TFTD since like 2000.

My main problem with Long War is that it rewards turtling and using squad sight offense almost as much as '90s X-Com, because the AI doesn't know how to push its firepower advantage when it can't see anyone even when activated. The only way to make it work is to bribe the player with shit like Meld cans to get you to move, and to give you the means to not walk into a 5-grounp gangbang with scanners/concealment scouts/bioelectric skin. When you get into lategame base missions and large UFOs and there's no Meld it just doesn't work, and the LW guys have a "simulationist" structure where your reward for playing well is that you get to do more damn large UFOs and bases and therefore get mad loot.

 

[Zeriel]

I've cleared the monthly supply ships approximately a thousand times in TFTD superhuman by exploiting the doors. Against smaller stuff on open maps nothing will break the anti-reaction turtle. When I have people die it's in bases, battleships and terror missions where I have to check closets over and over, which is why I haven't finished a game of TFTD since like 2000.

My main problem with Long War is that it rewards turtling and using squad sight offense almost as much as '90s X-Com, because the AI doesn't know how to push its firepower advantage when it can't see anyone even when activated. The only way to make it work is to bribe the player with shit like Meld cans to get you to move, and to give you the means to not walk into a 5-grounp gangbang with scanners/concealment scouts/bioelectric skin. When you get into lategame base missions and large UFOs and there's no Meld it just doesn't work, and the LW guys have a "simulationist" structure where your reward for playing well is that you get to do more damn large UFOs and bases and therefore get mad loot.

The one map I felt did a good job of forcing the "lots of pods active on you" event was Exalt HQ, as soon as you engage it feels like every enemy on the map goes active and comes beelining for you. If the new structure of missions in XCOM 2 causes that to happen when you break concealment, it could be a much better game than EU.

 

[Galdred]

In a 2TU system, especially the way nuxcom used it, there is basically 0 relevant positioning before battle. Starting a fight with all of your soldiers in cover is no different from starting it out of cover, your soldiers use their first move to get into cover and shoot just the same. To the point where people just huddle groups of 4/6 walking 1-2 steps at a time all out in the open, because there's no penalty to being exposed and it massively decreases your risk of contacting multiple groups. It's a joke to watch and it's a joke to play.

Actually, this has nothing to do with the 2 actions sysem, it is a consequence of the aliens activation on discovery system which prevents them from ever being ready to surprise you (and partly due to squad size reduction which makes losing people more punishing than it was). If they started activated, walking in the open like you are encouraged to do now would be suicide.

 

[Darth Roxor]

in X-Com you can't even go prone

oh, but you can

:apocalypse master race:

 

[Raghar]

Why not add TU to allow use of inventory. Frankly I remember I ran for new payload to aircraft and had a plenty of spare ammunition in aircraft in case of problems. Removing inventory killed this stuff.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

I can't think of a single value added by the move/shoot system. Talking about vanilla here, I'm one of the people who never understood the willingness to devote time to fixing shit games into playable state by mods. It's just there to simplify the game as much as possible and although the whole mechanics got severely dumbed down, it still manages to clash with its own rules, like forcing soldiers to move through poison clouds. Or why the hell does shooting end a turn even if it's the first action? Any reason for that except for sticking to the source material (tactical jrpgs) as close as possible?

And people who claim that this makes combat more "dynamic" should check their head for brain tumors asap. On higher difficulty/ironamn this games basically requires you to move at a snail's pace, since one "accidental" triggering of a spawn can basically lose you a game.

 

[Zombra]

It still manages to clash with its own rules, like forcing soldiers to move through poison clouds.

For whatever it's worth, this has been specifically fixed in the sequel.

Or why the hell does shooting end a turn even if it's the first action? Any reason for that except for sticking to the source material (tactical jrpgs) as close as possible?

Again, the idea is to make it so you don't just stick your guys in a spot and have them sit there shooting. You may think that's a dumb reason, but it is a reason.

 

[Raghar]

TU means go one tile, turn left and right, then another tile...
Two short move actions, or one move action and one attack action, or one long move action at least prevent to move slowly and check everything which would be disaster in multiplayer. (And yes making this restriction because of multiplayer is stupid.)
And when you have move action and attack action. Which order should it be? If you could move after attack with rookie, it would be potshot and relocate, thus combat would end potshot after potshot. When you have attack normally ends turn, it encourages aggressive play, and only shock troops who have short range weapon needs to relocate if they miss or don't kill theirs target, or when they shot one opponent, find that shit hit the fan and they need to relocate.

So the decision to need special skill for shooting, then moving, or shooting twice per turn, was actually reasonable. The lack of inventory, and terrain that has guaranteed destruction wasn't

 

[Goldhawk]

I think a lot of people here are conflating a 2-action system with the XCOM 2012 combat rules. In my opinion, as implemented in XCOM 2012 there are two key issues with the 2-action system:

• The pod activation system means that you can't use the added mobility you get from largely decoupling movement and shooting, because if you try and flank the enemy you run the risk of activating another pod of aliens and making the situation far worse than it was before. The optimal choice is therefore to sit still behind cover, preferably using squadsight snipers.

• The movement system doesn't have waypoints, so you can't path around specific areas that contain hazards or that you know are going to trigger reaction fire.

It certainly looks like they've fixed the second one for XCOM 2, but the pod activation system was the biggest problem with the combat. I'm pretty sure I know why they use the pod system, but I don't want to derail this post halfway through so I'll add that in the bottom. Anyway, a 2-action system in theory does have some pretty serious advantages over TU, both of which have already been mentioned:

• A TU system that governs both movement and shooting encourages a more fluid battlefield (negated in XCOM 2012 by the pod system). If you're in a firefight and you're using a TU system, the optimal thing to do is just to spend all your TU on shooting rather than moving because it usually has the best damage output and lowest risk. Combat is therefore ends up being very static.

• Move-shoot-move can be abused if a unit is popping out from behind a building or wall etc. An overwatch / interrupt system can partially counter this, but it still gives the advantage to the attacker. Move-shoot-move is extremely easy to do and has no opportunity cost, whereas going onto overwatch to defend against it requires you to know where the enemy are coming from and means you're committing to spending TU that may not actually deliver a shot (e.g if the enemy move-shoot-move once and then decide to go elsewhere). The burden falls disproportionately on the defender and it's actually kinda lame - and I think this would be far more evident if you played a game like original X-Com multiplayer rather than against the AI, as people would exploit it all day.

Decoupling movement and shooting is a really good idea imo, and of course there's no reason why "shooting" couldn't be broken down into more than one sub-action provided it stays separate from movement. The problem with XCOM 2012 was the pod system rather than the 2-action system, and I'm pretty sure it's down to the way they control the pacing of the levels.

If any of you played the Xenonauts betas 6-12 months prior to release, our terror missions had the aliens spread realistically through the map and active right from the start of the game in order to give a realistic tactical experience. However the way it played out was that as soon as the player stepped off the dropship pretty much every alien on the map would sprint towards them and start shooting. If you brought along enough heavy weapons to survive being zerged by a couple of dozen geared-up alien terrorists, the rest of the mission was just finding and killing the remaining stragglers. It was kinda cool to experience once but it got incredibly repetitive very quickly and anyone who wasn't expecting the alien zerg rush pretty much always squadwiped on their first terror mission. So the pod system allows the aliens to be spread through the level, and only "activated" when the player reaches them. It's not as good a solution as just having active aliens that don't leave their spawn zone ... but even that solution makes gamers complain about "bad AI" that doesn't help out its friends under attack only a screen or two away.

 

[Jimmious]

Supposedly pod activation is also kind of different due to the "stealth" mechanics.

 

[Average Manatee]

In a 2TU system, especially the way nuxcom used it, there is basically 0 relevant positioning before battle. Starting a fight with all of your soldiers in cover is no different from starting it out of cover, your soldiers use their first move to get into cover and shoot just the same. To the point where people just huddle groups of 4/6 walking 1-2 steps at a time all out in the open, because there's no penalty to being exposed and it massively decreases your risk of contacting multiple groups. It's a joke to watch and it's a joke to play.

Actually, this has nothing to do with the 2 actions sysem, it is a consequence of the aliens activation on discovery system which prevents them from ever being ready to surprise you (and partly due to squad size reduction which makes losing people more punishing than it was). If they started activated, walking in the open like you are encouraged to do now would be suicide.

That would require the aliens to have 3 actions, which is not a 2 action system. Aliens spot you on a move->move to cover->no action left for an attack. Only aliens that don't rely on cover are "gimped" by this, and if they were unhobbled it would just make already-powerful units god tier (and in fact the sectopod already can overwatch immediately, which is close to the same).

It certainly looks like they've fixed the second one for XCOM 2, but the pod activation system was the biggest problem with the combat. I'm pretty sure I know why they use the pod system, but I don't want to derail this post halfway through so I'll add that in the bottom. Anyway, a 2-action system in theory does have some pretty serious advantages over TU, both of which have already been mentioned:

• A TU system that governs both movement and shooting encourages a more fluid battlefield (negated in XCOM 2012 by the pod system). If you're in a firefight and you're using a TU system, the optimal thing to do is just to spend all your TU on shooting rather than moving because it usually has the best damage output and lowest risk. Combat is therefore ends up being very static.

See my previous response to this. Combat in real life upon contact IS very static, real life prioritizes buckling down and shooting at an exposed enemy until it becomes safe to move over moving under fire. You're opposed to having consequences for not planning before enemy contact correctly?

• Move-shoot-move can be abused if a unit is popping out from behind a building or wall etc. An overwatch / interrupt system can partially counter this, but it still gives the advantage to the attacker. Move-shoot-move is extremely easy to do and has no opportunity cost, whereas going onto overwatch to defend against it requires you to know where the enemy are coming from and means you're committing to spending TU that may not actually deliver a shot (e.g if the enemy move-shoot-move once and then decide to go elsewhere). The burden falls disproportionately on the defender and it's actually kinda lame - and I think this would be far more evident if you played a game like original X-Com multiplayer rather than against the AI, as people would exploit it all day.

This is a problem ONLY with overwatch. Defending behind a corner with full TUs gives almost a 100% chance of properly getting a first shot off unless the enemy knows the exact tile you are located on and looks up the corner-spotting grids on the wiki to figure out how to achieve simultaneous spotting.

I have actually played X-Com multiplayer. The simultaneous spotting mechanic almost goes unused because players don't stand in open fields where both sides spot each other at the same time. The real problem is that both sides end up resorting to simply carpetbombing the whole map with explosives and never even see each other. Have to put in rules to prevent that.

 

[Goldhawk]

Combat in real life upon contact IS very static, real life prioritizes buckling down and shooting at an exposed enemy until it becomes safe to move over moving under fire. You're opposed to having consequences for not planning before enemy contact correctly?

There's no additional effect for "good planning" if the only strategy is to stand still and fire as many shots as possible. Your soldier is still dead pretty much immediately even in a game like XCOM 2012 if you've planned badly and left him out in the open prior to enemy contact, the only difference is that a TU system encourages all the (correctly placed) soldiers in cover to stay there for the entire duration of the battle. A system that splits out movement and shooting encourages even well-placed soldiers to move and try to flank each other, opening up options for a superior player to outplay their opponent.

My friends in the army assure me that real life combat involves hours of lying in the dirt and exchanging long range automatic fire with enemies that you can hardly see, then calling in an airstrike. But as that probably wouldn't make a very entertaining game it may be best to avoid using realism as a proxy for effective game design. I'd take your point if we were talking about simulations, but we're talking about strategy games, no? The objectives in each genre are subtly different.

I have actually played X-Com multiplayer. The simultaneous spotting mechanic almost goes unused because players don't stand in open fields where both sides spot each other at the same time. The real problem is that both sides end up resorting to simply carpetbombing the whole map with explosives and never even see each other. Have to put in rules to prevent that.

Fair enough. My post was making the possibly naive assumption that there wouldn't be any tactics even more overpowered than move-shoot-move; I'll correct myself to say that in an otherwise balanced system I think the way that move-shoot-move is far more onerous to defend against than it is to use would quite quickly become obvious.

 

[Average Manatee]

Combat in real life upon contact IS very static, real life prioritizes buckling down and shooting at an exposed enemy until it becomes safe to move over moving under fire. You're opposed to having consequences for not planning before enemy contact correctly?

There's no additional effect for "good planning" if the only strategy is to stand still and fire as many shots as possible. Your soldier is still dead pretty much immediately even in a game like XCOM 2012 if you've planned badly and left him out in the open prior to enemy contact, the only difference is that a TU system encourages all the (correctly placed) soldiers in cover to stay there for the entire duration of the battle. A system that splits out movement and shooting encourages even well-placed soldiers to move and try to flank each other, opening up options for a superior player to outplay their opponent.

My friends in the army assure me that real life combat involves hours of lying in the dirt and exchanging long range automatic fire with enemies that you can hardly see, then calling in an airstrike. But as that probably wouldn't make a very entertaining game it may be best to avoid using realism as a proxy for effective game design. I'd take your point if we were talking about simulations, but we're talking about strategy games, no? The objectives in each genre are subtly different.

The "good planning" is ensuring that soldiers are in position to stand still and fire as many shots as possible. That's superior military strategy and superior play, having your units in the right positions before contact and being able to dictate the terms of battle rather than being caught off guard and being forced to react defensively to enemy movement.

No, in XCOM 2012 you have no penalty if you are standing out in the open before enemy contact. See the previously mentioned "everyone huddles together and takes one step at a time" gimmick, which is the 100% best strategy in vanilla and only slightly deterred in Long War by adding more firepower to experienced soldiers who can save their move action (but even still there is no direct penalty or vulnerability to activating an enemy while you are out of cover, and often it's still superior since you can just retreat and then set up 8-soldier overwatch traps).

Your point about realism being boring would have merit if a single fight in X-Com involved hours of shooting each other before calling in an airstrike, but it doesn't. Fights in X-Com go quickly while rewarding players who utilize proper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounding_overwatch strategies (Arguably Xenonauts is even better at this thanks to suppressive fire mechanic). Both defense and offense have certain strengths and weaknesses that need to be exploited to tilt the odds in your favor.

I have actually played X-Com multiplayer. The simultaneous spotting mechanic almost goes unused because players don't stand in open fields where both sides spot each other at the same time. The real problem is that both sides end up resorting to simply carpetbombing the whole map with explosives and never even see each other. Have to put in rules to prevent that.

Fair enough. My post was making the possibly naive assumption that there wouldn't be any tactics even more overpowered than move-shoot-move; I'll correct myself to say that in an otherwise balanced system I think the way that move-shoot-move is far more onerous to defend against than it is to use would quite quickly become obvious.

Nah, even when you limit explosives its not a huge problem.

Have you ever camped outside a UFO in OpenXcom (where aliens are all scripted to leave the UFO after turn 20)? Now that's an exploit. Aliens try to utilize the move-shoot-move strategy that you think is so overpowering, but it falls flat on its face and the aliens die before getting off a single shot because they lose the reaction roll every time (unless multiple aliens are coming out in the same turn, in which case the AI is utilizing the same human wave tactics that players sometimes need to).

The only reason move-shoot-move seems overpowered is that the AI in X-Com doesn't really know how to defend against it except by accident. This should be understood to be a correctable flaw in the AI, not an inherent flaw in the system.

 

[Goldhawk]

The "good planning" is ensuring that soldiers are in position to stand still and fire as many shots as possible. That's superior military strategy and superior play, having your units in the right positions before contact and being able to dictate the terms of battle rather than being caught off guard and being forced to react defensively to enemy movement.

No, in XCOM 2012 you have no penalty if you are standing out in the open before enemy contact. See the previously mentioned "everyone huddles together and takes one step at a time" gimmick, which is the 100% best strategy in vanilla and only slightly deterred in Long War by adding more firepower to experienced soldiers who can save their move action (but even still there is no direct penalty or vulnerability to activating an enemy while you are out of cover, and often it's still superior since you can just retreat and then set up 8-soldier overwatch traps).

Your point about realism being boring would have merit if a single fight in X-Com involved hours of shooting each other before calling in an airstrike, but it doesn't. Fights in X-Com go quickly while rewarding players who utilize proper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounding_overwatch strategies (Arguably Xenonauts is even better at this thanks to suppressive fire mechanic). Both defense and offense have certain strengths and weaknesses that need to be exploited to tilt the odds in your favor.

We're arguing somewhat at cross purposes here I think. Placing your troops in the correct position to stand still and fire lots of shots in X-Com and Xenonauts is indeed the most skilful way to play the game, but it's only an example of "good planning" because it's successfully executing the optimum strategy in a TU-based game. However, a game with a more fluid movement system is still able to reward good planning, it just does it in a different way - e.g. a well placed unit could flank and easily inflict lethal damage on an enemy. Your implication in your first reply was that decoupling movement and shooting means that the player no longer gets any reward for planning well, which is untrue imo. It's just the optimum strategy is different when mobility is emphasised more than raw weight of fire.

I also agree that there's no penalty in singleplayer XCOM 2012 for standing out in the open before enemy contact, and the best tactic is a slow huddled advance. But my point was that is a factor of the XCOM AI rather than the actual game rules, and people being critical of the 2-action system are usually actually raising complaints with the XCOM AI. If you play XCOM multiplayer against a human being there's plenty of risk leaving a soldier out in the open, because there's a substantial accuracy and crit bonus against a soldier who is not in at least half cover.

Thus I think the 2-action system is fine because it doesn't inherently dumb down the combat or make planning less important, whilst also making the combat more dynamic because units are not obliged to stand still for the duration. Unfortunately the implementation in XCOM suffers from AI / pod system limitations that negate many of those advantages, but that doesn't mean that every game that ever uses such a system (perhaps including XCOM 2) will automatically suffer from those same limitations.

 

[Average Manatee]

I also agree that there's no penalty in singleplayer XCOM 2012 for standing out in the open before enemy contact, and the best tactic is a slow huddled advance. But my point was that is a factor of the XCOM AI rather than the actual game rules, and people being critical of the 2-action system are usually actually raising complaints with the XCOM AI. If you play XCOM multiplayer against a human being there's plenty of risk leaving a soldier out in the open, because there's a substantial accuracy and crit bonus against a soldier who is not in at least half cover.

It's not really possible to "fix" neo-XCOM's AI unless you ditch simultaneous enemy movement. As I said before, the AI generally isn't "gimped" in its reaction to seeing you. It has to move to you, see you, then move to cover. That's 2 AP, all used. The alternative would be to have aliens move to you, see you, then shoot and remain out of cover for the player turn. That would be insanely exploitable. Players are different, X-Com soldiers in MP aren't busy doing stuff on the map and are always combat-ready with a vague idea of where the enemy is, so they can prepare.

Thus I think the 2-action system is fine because it doesn't inherently dumb down the combat or make planning less important, whilst also making the combat more dynamic because units are not obliged to stand still for the duration. Unfortunately the implementation in XCOM suffers from AI / pod system limitations that negate many of those advantages, but that doesn't mean that every game that ever uses such a system (perhaps including XCOM 2) will automatically suffer from those same limitations.

But that's entirely not what a 2AP system accomplishes. You could have very nearly the same movement-based gameplay with a TU system where all guns required 51% of TUs to fire, rather than the 20-30% of X-COM. Absolutely nothing "lost" from what makes 2AP supposedly superior, and gaining everything good about the TU system (more diverse actions and aiming types, inventory, stances, etc). And losing the latter in a 2AP system does certainly dumb down the system. Whatever you think 2AP adds, and whether or not you think what you think it adds outweighs what it takes away, you can't say that losing that complexity that it takes away isn't dumbing down.

 

[Goldhawk]

You make some valid points, but it's worth noting that a particular gun doesn't have to only have a single fire mode like it does in XCOM - I mean a rifle could fire an aimed single shot, a short burst or a full auto suppression burst etc all for the same "1 action" cost. Quite a lot of the complexity is missing because Firaxis chose not to include it, rather than because it's impossible to do.

EDIT - I've got a bit sidetracked because that's almost certainly something they won't fix with XCOM 2, but I still don't think it's evidence that TU are the only way forward for serious strategy games.

 

[Jimmious]

I just realised that Goldhawk is a xenonauts dev. Nice to meet you mate, good job. Impressive seeing you supporting the nuXCOM design choices and quite cool I would add.

 

[Galdred]

In a 2TU system, especially the way nuxcom used it, there is basically 0 relevant positioning before battle. Starting a fight with all of your soldiers in cover is no different from starting it out of cover, your soldiers use their first move to get into cover and shoot just the same. To the point where people just huddle groups of 4/6 walking 1-2 steps at a time all out in the open, because there's no penalty to being exposed and it massively decreases your risk of contacting multiple groups. It's a joke to watch and it's a joke to play.

Actually, this has nothing to do with the 2 actions sysem, it is a consequence of the aliens activation on discovery system which prevents them from ever being ready to surprise you (and partly due to squad size reduction which makes losing people more punishing than it was). If they started activated, walking in the open like you are encouraged to do now would be suicide.

That would require the aliens to have 3 actions, which is not a 2 action system. Aliens spot you on a move->move to cover->no action left for an attack. Only aliens that don't rely on cover are "gimped" by this, and if they were unhobbled it would just make already-powerful units god tier (and in fact the sectopod already can overwatch immediately, which is close to the same).

How so? During the alien turn, they move (to cover), then overwatch OR open fire. You don't need 2 move actions for that, unless there are no cover available, but that is mostly a mission design issue then.
That would also punish stupid positionning, as you'd be dead meat if caught by surprise in the open, if only the aliens were allowed to be on patrol or on overwatch...

It certainly looks like they've fixed the second one for XCOM 2, but the pod activation system was the biggest problem with the combat. I'm pretty sure I know why they use the pod system, but I don't want to derail this post halfway through so I'll add that in the bottom. Anyway, a 2-action system in theory does have some pretty serious advantages over TU, both of which have already been mentioned:

• A TU system that governs both movement and shooting encourages a more fluid battlefield (negated in XCOM 2012 by the pod system). If you're in a firefight and you're using a TU system, the optimal thing to do is just to spend all your TU on shooting rather than moving because it usually has the best damage output and lowest risk. Combat is therefore ends up being very static.

See my previous response to this. Combat in real life upon contact IS very static, real life prioritizes buckling down and shooting at an exposed enemy until it becomes safe to move over moving under fire. You're opposed to having consequences for not planning before enemy contact correctly?

Actually, X-Com seems more tailored after special forces or SWAT operations than regular armies. Its prequel, Laser Squad featured many commando missions (enter building, destroy terminals, or assassinate someone).
Btw, if we follow the rl argument, moving in real life looks more like neuXCom than x-com, because you spend an awful longer time looking for opponents, or keeping your head down, than moving in the open : in other words, the "moving" part of a rl move action only represents a short time compared to the look for threats, and try not to be a too easy target while doing so.

I also agree that there's no penalty in singleplayer XCOM 2012 for standing out in the open before enemy contact, and the best tactic is a slow huddled advance. But my point was that is a factor of the XCOM AI rather than the actual game rules, and people being critical of the 2-action system are usually actually raising complaints with the XCOM AI. If you play XCOM multiplayer against a human being there's plenty of risk leaving a soldier out in the open, because there's a substantial accuracy and crit bonus against a soldier who is not in at least half cover.

It's not really possible to "fix" neo-XCOM's AI unless you ditch simultaneous enemy movement. As I said before, the AI generally isn't "gimped" in its reaction to seeing you. It has to move to you, see you, then move to cover. That's 2 AP, all used. The alternative would be to have aliens move to you, see you, then shoot and remain out of cover for the player turn. That would be insanely exploitable. Players are different, X-Com soldiers in MP aren't busy doing stuff on the map and are always combat-ready with a vague idea of where the enemy is, so they can prepare.

It would pose no problem actually :
either send scout from cover to cover, or leave it in the open, and as soon as 1 scout sees agents, the rest of the squad (who should not have used their action), takes position and opens fire. Still no need for 3 actions.

Thus I think the 2-action system is fine because it doesn't inherently dumb down the combat or make planning less important, whilst also making the combat more dynamic because units are not obliged to stand still for the duration. Unfortunately the implementation in XCOM suffers from AI / pod system limitations that negate many of those advantages, but that doesn't mean that every game that ever uses such a system (perhaps including XCOM 2) will automatically suffer from those same limitations.

But that's entirely not what a 2AP system accomplishes. You could have very nearly the same movement-based gameplay with a TU system where all guns required 51% of TUs to fire, rather than the 20-30% of X-COM. Absolutely nothing "lost" from what makes 2AP supposedly superior, and gaining everything good about the TU system (more diverse actions and aiming types, inventory, stances, etc). And losing the latter in a 2AP system does certainly dumb down the system. Whatever you think 2AP adds, and whether or not you think what you think it adds outweighs what it takes away, you can't say that losing that complexity that it takes away isn't dumbing down.

Actually, if you have all guns require 51% AP to fire, then your whole AP system becomes irrelevant. On top of that it is very akward to use melee with an AP system (things like charge are much easier to represent with discreet actions than TU, as it is both a move and an attack).