Infiltration vs fatigue

Psieye
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Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by Psieye »

Hmm, of interest is that most discussions are focussed on soldier management. I feel like I'm in the minority that cares more about where my gear is than who is using them. Well, I care about the individual soldiers too, but when I only have 1 warden armour or 1 coil rifle, I'm much more interested in the inanimate than the plentiful soldiers.
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LordYanaek
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Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by LordYanaek »

I'm with Psieye here and think both systems should work together and balance/complement each other so that the less time you spend infiltrating a mission the more fatigue you'll accumulate. It would help prevent low infiltration abuse and force soldier rotation and could change infiltration into a bonus you can get rather than a requirement. It would then be possible to redesign infiltration so it doesn't change the number of enemies (or not much) and instead gives you more subtle bonuses which would make it easier to balance for the Devs.

Infiltration would provide different tactical benefits that would better represent pre-planning. You could rush into a mission if you have to, it would be a little harder but possible, but your soldiers would come back fatigued and you would have to rotate them anyway or you could spend time carefully preparing a mission to improve your chances and come back with less fatigue.

Some idea of infiltration effects (some already exist) :
  • Low infiltration causes enemies to get more Yellow alert shots, while high infiltration causes Yellow alert hits to become grazes (as they are totally unprepared to face you).
  • With high enough infiltration, the mission would get the effect of the Advent Loot or Resistant Agent (not sure about the names) Sitrep. Basically those give you chances to grab additional loot. You'd need the planning to learn about the loot or arrange a meeting with the agents.
  • Low infiltration prevents you from starting in concealment.
  • Very high infiltration triggers the (totally OP) effect of the Tactical Analyses continent bonus (enemies activated during your turn only get 1 action during their first alien turn)
You might be able to re-use the gear directly on a newly deployed squad but not on one who's already infiltrating so while it might make the gear more easily manageable in lower number, you'd still need enough gear to equip squads that will actively infiltrate. Ideally you'd still want to infiltrate using an hybrid system, you just wouldn't have to. Fatigue would serve as a hard limit to how much missions you can attempt and infiltrating would be desirable because it gives you bonuses without reducing your ability to handle multiple missions but not strictly required or even forced on you.
Louis Cyphre
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Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by Louis Cyphre »

LordYanaek wrote:the less time you spend infiltrating a mission the more fatigue you'll accumulate
There should be a plausible explanation why soldiers get more fatigued. Going on a mission could have a small impact on will but the rest should come from combat. Getting shot at, getting wounded, seeing teammates die...

Getting a high will penalty just because an infiltration number is low is a similar issue to infiltration magically making enemies disappear. I don't like it.
Maebalzurakin
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Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by Maebalzurakin »

I like infiltration better.

I don't see why you can't just keep both though. Infiltration is squad based. Fatigue is soldier based.
Psieye
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Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by Psieye »

Louis Cyphre wrote:
LordYanaek wrote:the less time you spend infiltrating a mission the more fatigue you'll accumulate
There should be a plausible explanation why soldiers get more fatigued. Going on a mission could have a small impact on will but the rest should come from combat. Getting shot at, getting wounded, seeing teammates die...
Have you ever done a major operation without any planning? Like "drive across the country RIGHT NOW, and oh you need to avoid every traffic jam, you've never been there before, you have to do it in a car that might not have enough fuel, there's no time to fill it"? Can you imagine having to do that on something that might KILL you? Frankly, it's implausible that your soldiers DON'T get stressed to hell from having to go on a zero-planning mission into enemy territory.
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stefan3iii
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Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by stefan3iii »

One disadvantage of infiltration I haven't seen mentioned, and is a bit hard to articulate:

The waiting period between equipping/selecting a squad and using that squad, feels... bad. When I'm making decisions to equip the squad, I don't get to find out if I made good decisions until much later in real time, could be several hours, or even days. When I do finally play the mission, I don't even remember why I made the decisions I did, or forget what I even equipped, and so I don't feel smart for making good decisions.

It sounds lazy, or even petty, but it somehow bothers me, maybe more than it should.
Psieye
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Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by Psieye »

stefan3iii wrote:One disadvantage of infiltration I haven't seen mentioned, and is a bit hard to articulate:

The waiting period between equipping/selecting a squad and using that squad, feels... bad. When I'm making decisions to equip the squad, I don't get to find out if I made good decisions until much later in real time, could be several hours, or even days. When I do finally play the mission, I don't even remember why I made the decisions I did, or forget what I even equipped, and so I don't feel smart for making good decisions.

It sounds lazy, or even petty, but it somehow bothers me, maybe more than it should.
No it's a valid issue. I alleviate it by under-infiltrating or by having recipe builds/loadouts that I don't have to change much. Even so, I sometimes have to sit down and look through each soldier before starting a mission I've finished infiltrating.
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8wayz
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Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by 8wayz »

@stefan3iii

It is called consistency. Infiltration makes it so you are less consistent, both on Geo- and Battlescape with your tactics and equipment. However, the way it does it is postpone each and every mission and make you wait for it.

There is another similar issue - if you manage to research some new piece of equipment while a squad is infiltrating, there is no way to equip them with it, short of abandoning that mission. With the Fatigue system you can equip them on the spot and send them on the mission straight away.

I am in favour of using infiltration to get bonus SITREPs from a random list generated for each mission. Making missions easier by having less and weaker enemies does not make much sense and is a metagaming way of the developers telling us "You are forced to rotate your soldiers". Which is not actually true, since an experienced play can chose to not infiltrate at all, bring a full 8-man squad and rain fire and brimstone on the aliens. This way you can do a lot of missions and get more XP from killing targets.
Psieye
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Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by Psieye »

LordYanaek wrote: Some idea of infiltration effects (some already exist) :
  • Low infiltration causes enemies to get more Yellow alert shots, while high infiltration causes Yellow alert hits to become grazes (as they are totally unprepared to face you).
  • With high enough infiltration, the mission would get the effect of the Advent Loot or Resistant Agent (not sure about the names) Sitrep. Basically those give you chances to grab additional loot. You'd need the planning to learn about the loot or arrange a meeting with the agents.
  • Low infiltration prevents you from starting in concealment.
  • Very high infiltration triggers the (totally OP) effect of the Tactical Analyses continent bonus (enemies activated during your turn only get 1 action during their first alien turn)
- +1 charge to each consumable at very high infiltration
- At very low infiltration, activating any pod sets all other pods to yellow alert and triggers Map Alert so they converge on your position
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Louis Cyphre
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Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by Louis Cyphre »

LordYanaek wrote:I'm with Psieye here and think both systems should work together and balance/complement each other so that the less time you spend infiltrating a mission the more fatigue you'll accumulate. It would help prevent low infiltration abuse and force soldier rotation and could change infiltration into a bonus you can get rather than a requirement. It would then be possible to redesign infiltration so it doesn't change the number of enemies (or not much) and instead gives you more subtle bonuses which would make it easier to balance for the Devs.

Infiltration would provide different tactical benefits that would better represent pre-planning. You could rush into a mission if you have to, it would be a little harder but possible, but your soldiers would come back fatigued and you would have to rotate them anyway or you could spend time carefully preparing a mission to improve your chances and come back with less fatigue.

Some idea of infiltration effects (some already exist) :
  • Low infiltration causes enemies to get more Yellow alert shots, while high infiltration causes Yellow alert hits to become grazes (as they are totally unprepared to face you).
  • With high enough infiltration, the mission would get the effect of the Advent Loot or Resistant Agent (not sure about the names) Sitrep. Basically those give you chances to grab additional loot. You'd need the planning to learn about the loot or arrange a meeting with the agents.
  • Low infiltration prevents you from starting in concealment.
  • Very high infiltration triggers the (totally OP) effect of the Tactical Analyses continent bonus (enemies activated during your turn only get 1 action during their first alien turn)
After some thought I have to say that I really like this idea.
At very low infiltration ADVENT would know that XCOM is planning something so it just makes sense that they're ready for combat and that you won't start concealed.

A way to visualize/describe the infiltration level could be similar to the enemy readiness that WotC introduced in those soldier rescue missions.
Very high infiltration = Enemy Readiness 1 (enemies at ease), which could mean that they have reduced detection ranges, the Tactical Analyses debuff, slow reinforcements etc.
This could go up to the readiness level that Pavonis deems necessary but each level should have clear rules that are visible before the mission starts.
cryptc
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Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by cryptc »

I think the main reason I wouldn't want fatigue in LW2 is that I can see how that will in many cases play.

You set your first squad on a mission with your best gear, they complete the mission and are fatigued. Now a new mission pops up, so you bring up your second squad, un-equip everyone in first squad, maybe redo weapon mods, etc.

If the micromanagement on setting up squads becomes even worse, I just worry I'd spend more time on load-outs than in missions. Adding weapon repair to balance the amount of gear without infiltrations to limit it would just make that even more atrocious.

I'm not sure what the best solution is, but just adding fatigue will increase micromanagement and not add anything of particular value to the fun of the game imho.
ORIONOX

Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by ORIONOX »

Make fatigue the main system, but keep infiltration around as a toned down version of it's self that presents the players with bonuses for infiltration/preparation that make sense. Keep the idea of swarming-very light , make them concrete and make them very dependent on the force level in the area the mission is taking place in and the type of mission it is, while also remove the idea that infiltration can reduce enemy numbers, instead add in more tactical helpers like starting the mission hidden, or having enemies sight reduced, reducing the enemies starting alert level, allowing the player to pick a starting location, increasing the turn timer, increasing the reinforcement timer, reducing the enemies level, start with the objective revealed, counter/choose a sitrep, maybe make it harder/take multiple tries to hack work stations that haven't been infiltrated...... ETC.

Maybe when infiltrating you could be presented with certain choices that you have to pick from that determine the "plan" or objective of your infiltration. For example you're faced with a prisoner extraction in a city, before the infiltration begins you can pick from a predetermined/semi-randomized list of objectives like "plant explosives-makes more explosives on the map," "inject mole- one of your soldiers starts the mission outside the prisoners room," "setup monitoring equipment- gives you sound waves every turn/reveals units in a certain radius," "damage surveillance-reduces sight", "damage radios- increase reinforcement times" then add to each of these a chance of to fail (meaning the bonus isn't applied) or get caught (Allowing the player to start an extraction mission to save the soldier or allow the soldier to get caught to try and complete the mission without them their bonus and while having the enemies start on high alert) based on the stealth of the soldier performing them and how use full the action is.... Plus add the idea that the more prepared you are for a mission the easier it is on the pysche and I think we've got an amazing system

OH, and because this is fucking Xcom make there be a chance that your soldiers can fail an infiltration starting a mission early, revealed with the enemies on red alert, and a major hit to will.
RookieAutopsy
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Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by RookieAutopsy »

Could you alleviate the chore/issue of the same gear constantly being unequipped and reequipped by locking it to fatigued soldiers under the guise of maintenance? Eg while a soldier is tired you cant remove any items from the as they are resting and getting their kit in order. You could still of course still field them with reduced efficiency.

I do like the idea of fatigue being the main troop rotation mechanic with infiltration for tactical bonuses/penalties.

As to squads, I never could hold them together due to wound/training timers and picking the right class for the job always messing them up so unequal tiredness isn't going to make a blind bit of difference to me.
Psieye
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Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by Psieye »

RookieAutopsy wrote:Eg while a soldier is tired you cant remove any items from the as they are resting and getting their kit in order.
Tell me how a Hypothetically Optimal Player would game your system and then ask yourself "now would that be fun?" As in a vacuum, I view a fatigue-only system to be MORE micromanagement, not less than an infiltration-only system.
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justdont
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Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by justdont »

cryptc wrote:If the micromanagement on setting up squads becomes even worse, I just worry I'd spend more time on load-outs than in missions. Adding weapon repair to balance the amount of gear without infiltrations to limit it would just make that even more atrocious.
I can't see how fatigue can make it "worse". It is already extremely bad with squads/infiltration. One thing about LW2 that I don't really miss when playing vanilla - is that I don't need nearly as much time to set up squads (and it's not only due to infinite items).

LW2 adds so much - large teams, detachable mods, finite items, general equipment variety - so in the end it takes quite a lot of time to adjust it; especially given that you don't have any helpful UI tools to deal with that (like loadout "templates" and such), at best you can only use better visualization mods (like robojumper's squad selection UI), but you'll still have to click on everything and adjust it one element at a time.
cryptc
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Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by cryptc »

justdont wrote: I can't see how fatigue can make it "worse". It is already extremely bad with squads/infiltration. One thing about LW2 that I don't really miss when playing vanilla - is that I don't need nearly as much time to set up squads (and it's not only due to infinite items).

LW2 adds so much - large teams, detachable mods, finite items, general equipment variety - so in the end it takes quite a lot of time to adjust it; especially given that you don't have any helpful UI tools to deal with that (like loadout "templates" and such), at best you can only use better visualization mods (like robojumper's squad selection UI), but you'll still have to click on everything and adjust it one element at a time.
Not saying it's good as it is, but I do claim it's better than fatigue would be yes.

In LW2 your team (and their equipment) is stuck on the mission until they return, and unless injured, they are ready to go again with the same gear (or with minor adjustments). I tend to also change the ini setting so that injured/awc training/etc doesn't unequip gear, but that's a personal preference.

With fatigue I would see myself unequipping all the gear on tired soldiers, gearing up the squad that is going on a mission, having all the previous micromanagement from LW2, but it would be like whenever you went on missions they came back with atleast a minor wound (that you could theoretically ignore and send them on another mission regardless).

I could see fatigue working for LW2, but they'd have to remove infiltration then, and put in some sort of forecasting system for missions so you can plan ahead.
viktri
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Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by viktri »

stefan3iii wrote:One disadvantage of infiltration I haven't seen mentioned, and is a bit hard to articulate:

The waiting period between equipping/selecting a squad and using that squad, feels... bad. When I'm making decisions to equip the squad, I don't get to find out if I made good decisions until much later in real time, could be several hours, or even days. When I do finally play the mission, I don't even remember why I made the decisions I did, or forget what I even equipped, and so I don't feel smart for making good decisions.

It sounds lazy, or even petty, but it somehow bothers me, maybe more than it should.
I have the same feeling, although I'd describe it more of the fluidity of the game, and after finishing WOTC, I really don't think I can go back to infiltration (I finished 4 1.4 Ironmans).

I'd prefer something where you go on the mission and play it immediately but instead of the soldiers returning to the avenger immediately, it would take them X days or whatever. You could throw in fatigue too. Obviously the % infiltration would need to change a lot but the flow of the game (mission pops up, I decide on the soldiers, pick the gear, etc then immediately play that same mission) is just smoother than having to remember what I was planning for the mission yesterday or a few hours ago.
RapidFire
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Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by RapidFire »

I originally liked the infiltration idea, but after playing LW2 some if eventually started feeling overdone. Why are all missions on a draw down by ADVENT? Surely, they would be building up forces somewhere that I might be interested in a target there.

I haven't been able to play WoTC yet, but I am on the side that thinks fatigue is the more natural system, at least conceptually.

Infiltration is a great idea, but it should not be the dominant mechanic for almost every mission. Some missions could be "more covert." And the two systems don't have to be hammered together or linked unnaturally. It won't happen in LW2, but ideally just make some of the missions lend themselves to or require some form of infiltration. The standard LW2 system would handle deviations.
deducter
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Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by deducter »

If there is a Long War 2 for WotC, it is not necessary to remove infiltration. Infiltration is different and there's already the hard fatigue system for LW1.

My idea is to borrow Darkest Dungeon's stress/affliction/virtue system and use will as a stress meter. A soldier will lose will gradually in a mission, plus losing more for getting shot at/hit or seeing the same for squadmates. They gain some will back with kills. But most importantly, once will drops low enough, that soldier could break under the pressure and become masochistic or paranoid or irrational. But there's a chance that the soldier could rise to the challenge and become focused or stalwart.

Plus the DD narrator commentary (not just a voicepack) for XCOM2 play would be the greatest thing of all times.
Jacke
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Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by Jacke »

deducter wrote:My idea is to borrow Darkest Dungeon's stress/affliction/virtue system and use will as a stress meter. A soldier will lose will gradually in a mission, plus losing more for getting shot at/hit or seeing the same for squadmates. They gain some will back with kills. But most importantly, once will drops low enough, that soldier could break under the pressure and become masochistic or paranoid or irrational. But there's a chance that the soldier could rise to the challenge and become focused or stalwart.

Plus the DD narrator commentary (not just a voicepack) for XCOM2 play would be the greatest thing of all times.
Grimy's Moral Mod already does this to some degree. Most of it works with LW2 if included when making a new LW2 campaign.
Psieye
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Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by Psieye »

viktri wrote:I'd prefer something where you go on the mission and play it immediately but instead of the soldiers returning to the avenger immediately, it would take them X days or whatever. You could throw in fatigue too. Obviously the % infiltration would need to change a lot but the flow of the game (mission pops up, I decide on the soldiers, pick the gear, etc then immediately play that same mission) is just smoother than having to remember what I was planning for the mission yesterday or a few hours ago.
Hmm... an exfiltration instead of infiltration... there's an idea. With vanilla's "final network tower" UI and/or Covert Actions to tweak the mission. From a flavour perspective, you'd need to either explain multiple Firebrands or have evac be "leave through edge of map" (like Lost & Abandoned). I could see 2 mission types: "Firebrand in, Firebrand out" vs "you get dropped off outside, instant-infiltrate to start the mission but Firebrand can't reach you due to air patrols so you gotta walk out". Maybe even tie that to strength. Perhaps you don't have to walk to the edge of map if you kill everything on the map.
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cryptc
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Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by cryptc »

Psieye wrote:
viktri wrote: Hmm... an exfiltration instead of infiltration....
Well the most logical in-game way to have that work would be a mission that just ends without extraction (just not letting you have the corpses since your team needs to "exfiltrate")
Psieye
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Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by Psieye »

cryptc wrote:
Psieye wrote:
viktri wrote: Hmm... an exfiltration instead of infiltration....
Well the most logical in-game way to have that work would be a mission that just ends without extraction (just not letting you have the corpses since your team needs to "exfiltrate")
True. I wonder how e.g. a "kill Field Commander" mission would go without Firebrand to pick you up. Vanilla plasters "kill everyone afterwards" all the time but maybe LWotC could do "either kill everyone activated or walk to this box at edge of map". Though ok, even vanilla just handwaves for Chosen base assaults, i.e. "oh cool, you killed this Chosen for good. All the other aliens still alive and active don't do anything to wound you anymore, your soldiers get out as they were the moment the Chosen died."
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dethraker
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Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by dethraker »

Surprised this has only been focused around Fatigue and Infiltration without considering the other thing that is extremely similar and could be used to mesh the two opposing systems, Covert Ops.

I mean Covert Ops are essentially Infiltration but on random issues that usually don't end up with a mission. What if instead you could integrate Covert Ops as the new Infiltration, you get to choose multiple Covert Op missions and some of them link directly to missions that pop-up or result in missions that have the enemies on lower alert levels.

Example:
-Mission appears on screen
-Clicking missions gives option to assault or conduct a Covert Op(very similar to LW2)
-If you choose to do the Covert Op after it's over a level of Fatigue is applied to the soldiers but they are then available again
-You can choose a different squad for the assault with a lower enemy readiness level

With this you still get soldiers that are made unavailable, you still gain the ability to lower enemy readiness, and you still have a very similar feel to what is already LW2, but you gain the ability to change up your squad prior to the mission. The Covert Ops/Infiltration part could be affected by gear the same way in LW2 so having non-stealth gear still has an impact, but the driving force to make sure you gear out could be that each time there is an Ambush chance (just like Covert Ops) and if ambushed then you have a certain set of objectives otherwise the enemy readiness goes back up to full.

Example:
-During Infiltration your squad isn't using silencers/etc. so is ambushed
-You are given a hack and assassinate objective or the enemy readiness will go back to full for the mission

Yes this could bring in more gear management sure, but it also could prevent it if you have a couple of "Infiltration" squads and a couple "Go Loud" squads. Played properly it can prevent addition of more missions but if you try to use a loud squad for the infiltration portion then it will likely result in failure and a more difficult mission for the assault portion.
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Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by Psieye »

dethraker wrote:Surprised this has only been focused around Fatigue and Infiltration without considering the other thing that is extremely similar and could be used to mesh the two opposing systems, Covert Ops.
I suspect part of it is that imagining a very different UI is hard when we're not sure what is feasible or not with the mod tools.
dethraker wrote: Example:

if you have a couple of "Infiltration" squads and a couple "Go Loud" squads
I do this already - you don't need Covert Actions to go loud in the current LW2. Rampaging around with minimal infiltration is one way around gear micromanagement but you haven't sold this specific use of Covert Ops to me. With this level of ambiguity in the proposal, there's too many interpretations that are bad.
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