Talk:Gameplay Mechanics (EU2012)

Movement

Not sure where to put this. Soldiers have 7 movement points. Moving from one square to an adjacent one costs 1 point, and moving diagonally costs 1.25 points. Skeleton and ghost armor both give +2 movement while the Support sprinter gives +3. Mavoc 02:35, 18 October 2012 (EDT)

This is inaccurate from what I've observed. On the games files soldiers have a movement factor of 27 and going diagonally costs 1.6 (the square root of 2). And to this I've seen that in some maps you'll use more movement points to move from 1 square from the other since I've seen the soldiers moving more in some maps. Hobbes 10:24, 18 October 2012 (EDT)

I have never seen a map that had reduced movement. Assuming no obstacles, All my soldiers can always move 7 tiles (14 in a dash). Going on your numbers and assuming that the 27 is for a full dash, this would me 13.5 per action and at 1.6 per diagonal then that is 8.4 diagonal tiles per action which is just flat wrong. It is possible that difficulty affects mobility values, I have beat easy and am now doing normal and so far both of those match the numbers I have found. And before I get crap for doing easy then normal, I used easy to make all the stupid decisions and form a strat, normal is my playthough in perfecting that strat, and classic ironman and impossible ironman will be my runs of putting that strat to the test. Mavoc 01:37, 22 October 2012 (EDT)

I'm using Normal to make all the stupid decisions before I play Classic ;) I don't think difficulty (or rank) affects movement - I've already discussed this on the 2K Forums two weeks ago [1]

The actual movement stat for soldiers is 12 (27 is for sight, my mistake). The issue is how much movement points it costs to move 1 tile (or 1 space in the game, as show by the grid). With a value of 12 and with a standard 7 tile move on each action it costs 1.6 movement points per tile, with diagonal moves it's a matter of calculating the side of the triangle using the 1.6 value.

Now what I've noticed (I think) is that in some very specific maps your soldier's movement range appears limited to me. I haven't had time to check it carefully (so I may be wrong) but in the original game some tiles cost you more TUs to move than others, and it would make sense that some terrain can have a higher movement cost. Again, I've been so much distracted by other things while playing but I'll keep an closer eye on this now to see if it works or not. Hobbes 07:43, 21 October 2012 (EDT)

Morale

Does the game distinguish panic (drop weapons and freeze or run away) from berserk (start shooting wildly) as the 1993 game does? If so, the wording in the Morale section should be clarified a little. Spike 06:24, 19 October 2012 (EDT)

Looks the same to me. Soldier panics, it can do a lot of bad things like shooting at aliens or even your teammates Hobbes 07:44, 21 October 2012 (EDT)

Sound

According to this community sound is just to help find hidden aliens faster and does not account for aliens finding the player http://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/96098/dashing-vs-non-dashing-and-stalking-in-general Current information seems incorrect.

That's their opinion but they offer no evidence whatsoever. What I'll say is that to me the best evidence for the aliens also hearing your noise is when there's no active aliens and you make an action that emits a sound (kicking doors, breaking windows, etc.) and right afterwards one of your soldiers also hears something back in reply. I've also had plenty of situations where the aliens were waiting on overwatch right by the backdoor of the building that I was hoping to use to outflank them. Hobbes 15:55, 18 December 2012 (EST)

Restructuring

Further to this conversation, I wanna re-organise things a bit around this section.

Putting aside the topics that should be moved off this main "gameplay mechanics" article to separate sub-pages (once someone gets around to writing up some expanded content for them), it strikes me that attack and defence would best be merged into one "chance to hit" article. They otherwise simply approach the same subject - whether a bullet will hit - from two different angles. I'm planning to talk about critical hit chances on the same page.

I also think that flanking would likewise best be merged into cover, because again, explaining how to be in cover can't really be done without explaining how not to be.

Critical Wounds should indeed have it's own page, but I think the title is a little too ambiguous and close to "Critical Hits" for my liking. I'm thinking perhaps a re-name to "Wounded Units", which could cover not only unit stabilisation and death, but penalties for taking damage and talk about after-battle recovery time.

Any thoughts for/against?

-  Bomb Bloke (Talk/Contribs) 02:16, 27 January 2013 (EST)

I vote 'aye'. Your ideas sound good (and I was kinda hoping one of the 'testing' contributors would pick this topic). I also think Scouting name should be dropped it should be more about Line of Sight. :) ;) Hobbes 07:06, 27 January 2013 (EST)

I think an article talking about scouting tactics might have a place here, but indeed, it doesn't really work as a "game mechanic" (... the first thing you learn when sending anyone ahead of the group is "don't do that", but even THAT merits mention...). Or maybe it could fit in with something about the alien "activation" system. Dunno.

Line of sight is tricky. Difficult enough to work out intended behaviour, in that there's plenty of buggy shots, and plenty of "weird" looking shots that are still probably working within the parameters of what the devs were aiming for. I suspect something akin to the odd diagonal LOF issues in the original might've crept in (in fact, there are enough silly, obvious bugs that happen to be in the first game that I have to wonder how many of them aren't on purpose).

In any case, an article on that would certainly be good to have, though it'd probably take a fair bit of effort to get it accurate. -  Bomb Bloke (Talk/Contribs) 08:27, 27 January 2013 (EST)

Homage to Dark Heresy?

The combat system used for this game heavily reminds me of the one in the Dark Heresy tabletop RPG (of Warhammer 40K fame). In that one, actions are divided between:

• Full Actions that consume the whole turn, no questions asked and no exceptions made. XCOM example: Heavy's rocket.
• Half Actions, of which two can be done in one turn but they must be different, unlike XCOM where short-range movement is always repeatable. Unlike XCOM, there is no Half Action that immediately ends a turn no matter when it's used so it is allowed to fire THEN move but it is not allowed to attack twice in a row.
• Reaction Actions, of which one can normally be done per turn, mostly involving actions that react to enemy ones: dodging, parrying, counterattacking, etc. Some supplements give options for reacting multiple times or moving somewhere else out of turn.

I wonder, was it an intentional homage or a complete coincidence that XCOM's devs used the almost exactly same system? Maybe they chose it consciously due to how easy it is to memorize?--amitakartok 12:15, 22 August 2013 (EDT)