The design philosophy of losing soldiers in battle

[Prince Ian]

I understand wanting to implement a mechanic in which players can experience risk taking challenges and emotions through heavy loss, but I think the way its executed is very contradictory to the strategy aspect of the game, and what it's actually trying to achieve.

Right now players have to invest signicant time and resources into promoting each soldier, but those soldiers lives are too often at the mercy of rng and unpredictability, making it far too easy to rationalize save reloads when you lose that one valuable soldier. Especially when recruiting replacements are very limited and mosty out of your control.

Here is a better idea, give the player a huge set pool of soldiers up front, when the player runs out of soldiers the campaign is over. Remove the skill promotion mechanic and let soldiers earn "perks" through out the current mission only, or maybe use a perk card system that can be used universally across all soldiers.

This way players can fight through those casualties without losing those unique tactical abilities they worked hard to build. The player would now have full tactical control.

[Cahos Rahne Veloza]

You can avoid losing so much if you don't play Ironman mode... though die hard players keep on insisting that Ironman mode is the only manly way to play.

[Scorrp10]

Strategic management of soldiers is part of game. If you concentrate on single A squad, losing a member will hurt bad. You gotta make sure that you train replacements. Wounds and long recovery times make a good mechanic here. Be sure to build GTS early and train up all your rookies to some class. Even when nobody comes back wounded, it makes sense to have someone else go on next mission or two to earn a promotion. Hurts a lot less to lose a colonel if you got a replacement captain.

[Fringehunter7719]

You could make a good game with that system (someone did, in fact - Cannon Fodder), but it wouldn't be XCOM.

This latest iteration is the kindest ever in terms of getting replacement soldiers, not only do you get them as mission rewards giving ranked soldiers (as you did in XCOM 2012), but you can get them from scan events occasionally, and very regularly from the HQ and Black market. I've just got to the end of my latest campaign and I have 17 colonels, 2 magi, 1 major and 3 captains. That's a hell of a lot of wiggle room.

There's nothing wrong with a game that doesn't have risk and reward, loss and setback as core mechanics, but these are some of the things that are truly, distinctively part of the unique XCOM experience and part of its appeal. Take them away and you've got something very different, that may not appeal to the current core audience.

[MrBloodworth]

This is all becouse of the games roots. You think this is rough? How about one granade killing an entire team before they even step out of the drop ship.

[Prince Ian]

Is there any way to copy my character customizations to other soldiers? I color code each classes armor and give them certain props depending on class. Just one more headache everytime i lose a soldier.

[red255]

reminds me of an iraq news report saying they needed more eulaphone players. and I was like... or you could just stop getting soldiers killed. not like we were in Iraq for any good reason.

point is stop getting your soldiers killed and you won't have to customize more of them. I play on legend. my guys rarely die.

[Hiddey]

Originally posted by Prince Ian:

Is there any way to copy my character customizations to other soldiers? I color code each classes armor and give them certain props depending on class. Just one more headache everytime i lose a soldier.

There is a mod for that called Uniforms Manager.

[gerzald]

Seems like it is allways the fng that gets wacked in my games. The do seem to get put on point a lot.

[Prince Ian]

Originally posted by red255:

reminds me of an iraq news report saying they needed more eulaphone players. and I was like... or you could just stop getting soldiers killed. not like we were in Iraq for any good reason.

point is stop getting your soldiers killed and you won't have to customize more of them. I play on legend. my guys rarely die.

My guys rarely die too and i just started playing the game 2 days ago, and still learning. I've already managed to master a lot of different creative tactics, and should have recorded some of my missions to show people. I was a chess champion at 9 years old so this comes easy to me. See youre not the only one with an ego.

[Joikax]

The big issue is that the AI can just throw waves upon waves of units at you with absolute disregard the entire campaign, often taking shots no sane person would ever try and that alone is the sole reason getting hit and having soldiers die on you is so painful and frustrating especially in Ironman. (I mean just look at FunLancers for example, what a dumb unit... yet it still is the number 1 killer of fun for new players and even some old timers)

The Computer can afford to make crap decisions and all it takes is 1 random lucky shot to mess your campaign/squad up completelly. You, on the other hand, cannot.

This right here is exactly why so many people opt to savescum.
In XCOM:EU/EW the computer actually had some regard for its units, played safe, was smart, didn't just rush in and use brute force to get hits. In this game, especially early-mid game, you don't have the soldiers or tools to deal with all the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ coming your way, so sooner or later you *will* start toying with RNG aswell hoping to get lucky hits, and it becomes a vicious cycle after that.





I remember the devs saying they didn't want Legend to become XCOM1's Impossible difficulty, hard but not downright abusive... Well, in my opinion, the only trouble in XCOM1's Impossible was the difficulty spike in that one first council mission with the thin men. After that it was doable if you weren't a total derp. In this game though, you just have to rely on rng in multiple situations to come out on top up until you get plasma stuff, soldiers fully promoted and upgraded, etc. The timers help it in no way either.

All in all, it's a fun game, yes, but it is incredibly masochistic if you chose to only play Legend Ironman.


Sincerelly, a "Legend Ironman"- only player

[red255]

the problem with Impossible on XCOM 1 for me was the amount of panic things spiked on things. combat wise, ...slightly more aliens on the map but otherwise mostly like classic.

I.E. the month 1 council mission and the month 2 week 1 landed large scout. were the difficult missions barring slingshot. which is purely a mission of memory since every drops in a certain spot and can be predicted.

beyond that (which i generally solve with MEC units and rockets) it was the panic spike from abduction missions. I think in classic you get 2 pips for not doing an abduction, and impossible was 3 so you can lose a bunch of countries even after the first month. since its 5 to lose.

On Classic I wouldn't lose any countries if I start in Asia or Europe. on Impossible...I'd lose several.

[Haggis]

If you're not regularly killing the entire enemy pod before they can ever shoot back at you - you're doing it wrong. You have more than enough options to wipe the floor with everything with very little opportunity for retalatiation once you reach the mid-game (really just after the first few missions when you no longer have rookies).

Sure sometimes things will go wrong, and this is why you should have a high priority on upgrading your armour. Its also why you make sure your units are in cover at all times when there are enemies alive. Its only really dangerous at the very start of the game where a lucky hit/crit can 1 shot one of your characters - by the time you have majors and colonels your guys should be able to take 2-3 hits, and really if you're letting the enemy get that many shots at you - you're doing something wrong. Sure it sucks to lose characters early on - but its not too difficult to train someone else back up to their level, and once you have better weapons/armour (and super leveled squad-mates to carry them through) leveling becomes much easier and quicker.

X-com 2 is not a game where you hunker down and have a prolonged fire-fight, hoping a lucky shot will get through. You're meant to be making aggressive moves and exterminating the enemy force before they get a chance to retaliate. Once you work out how to manage enemy pods (basically just do not over-extend, and only use the Ranger's slash ability as a last resort) this becomes fairly simple.

If the enemy cannot attack you - they cannot kill anyone on your squad. Always try to kill them all on the first turn of combat. Never advance any further ahead of your forward-most unit once you have discovered the enemy, always try to keep your squad in positions where they can assist the rest of their team (so if you have a turn where you do not discover any enemies, feel free to move everyone forward, out of cover if necessary, just so that they will be in range to help out in the next turn that you find enemies). Bring grenades, lots of grenades. Grenades are guaranteed damage, and destroy cover allows for better hit and crit chances.

Good luck.

[Prince Ian]

Originally posted by Haggis:

If you're not regularly killing the entire enemy pod before they can ever shoot back at you - you're doing it wrong. You have more than enough options to wipe the floor with everything with very little opportunity for retalatiation once you reach the mid-game (really just after the first few missions when you no longer have rookies).

Sure sometimes things will go wrong, and this is why you should have a high priority on upgrading your armour. Its also why you make sure your units are in cover at all times when there are enemies alive. Its only really dangerous at the very start of the game where a lucky hit/crit can 1 shot one of your characters - by the time you have majors and colonels your guys should be able to take 2-3 hits, and really if you're letting the enemy get that many shots at you - you're doing something wrong. Sure it sucks to lose characters early on - but its not too difficult to train someone else back up to their level, and once you have better weapons/armour (and super leveled squad-mates to carry them through) leveling becomes much easier and quicker.

X-com 2 is not a game where you hunker down and have a prolonged fire-fight, hoping a lucky shot will get through. You're meant to be making aggressive moves and exterminating the enemy force before they get a chance to retaliate. Once you work out how to manage enemy pods (basically just do not over-extend, and only use the Ranger's slash ability as a last resort) this becomes fairly simple.

If the enemy cannot attack you - they cannot kill anyone on your squad. Always try to kill them all on the first turn of combat. Never advance any further ahead of your forward-most unit once you have discovered the enemy, always try to keep your squad in positions where they can assist the rest of their team (so if you have a turn where you do not discover any enemies, feel free to move everyone forward, out of cover if necessary, just so that they will be in range to help out in the next turn that you find enemies). Bring grenades, lots of grenades. Grenades are guaranteed damage, and destroy cover allows for better hit and crit chances.

Good luck.

I'm doing all this already. All of this is common sense to experienced players. You can't always wipe out enemies before retaliation because of the rng. Soldiers WILL die, and anyone that says otherwise is lying. Soldiers can't take 2-3 hits late game, because the enemies also do more damage. You're right about one thing though, nobody should ever allow 2 or 3 hits to begin with, but we all know its the beginning of xcom that hurts, not late when you become offensively op (if you make it that far)

[Joikax]

Originally posted by Haggis:

If you're not regularly killing the entire enemy pod before they can ever shoot back at you - you're doing it wrong. You have more than enough options to wipe the floor with everything with very little opportunity for retalatiation once you reach the mid-game (really just after the first few missions when you no longer have rookies).

Sure sometimes things will go wrong, and this is why you should have a high priority on upgrading your armour. Its also why you make sure your units are in cover at all times when there are enemies alive. Its only really dangerous at the very start of the game where a lucky hit/crit can 1 shot one of your characters - by the time you have majors and colonels your guys should be able to take 2-3 hits, and really if you're letting the enemy get that many shots at you - you're doing something wrong. Sure it sucks to lose characters early on - but its not too difficult to train someone else back up to their level, and once you have better weapons/armour (and super leveled squad-mates to carry them through) leveling becomes much easier and quicker.

X-com 2 is not a game where you hunker down and have a prolonged fire-fight, hoping a lucky shot will get through. You're meant to be making aggressive moves and exterminating the enemy force before they get a chance to retaliate. Once you work out how to manage enemy pods (basically just do not over-extend, and only use the Ranger's slash ability as a last resort) this becomes fairly simple.

If the enemy cannot attack you - they cannot kill anyone on your squad. Always try to kill them all on the first turn of combat. Never advance any further ahead of your forward-most unit once you have discovered the enemy, always try to keep your squad in positions where they can assist the rest of their team (so if you have a turn where you do not discover any enemies, feel free to move everyone forward, out of cover if necessary, just so that they will be in range to help out in the next turn that you find enemies). Bring grenades, lots of grenades. Grenades are guaranteed damage, and destroy cover allows for better hit and crit chances.

Good luck.

Your entire argument is based on the assumption that you'll always hit your shots and/or get max damage rolls/crits on every single enemy every.damn.time . No mather what you do, you will never ever get such odds 100% of the time so I don't get your point here.

Also, as you pointed, killing stuff fast is the way to go, so why do you then say getting better armor is a priority? Contradicting yourself there.

[talemore]

Joikax more or less explain how the AI works in this game. You never see the enemy doing a smart move for example hunker down if the shot is very low while it's standing in 1/2 cover. Instead we have these sea of overwatches who simply tells the player to either use a grenade or target the unit with highest chance to hit. Every time the AI hijacks your soldiers when they panick, your soldiers are moving towards the enemy as if it's about to assault because the panick itself is a selector who can either shoot,throw grenade or hunker down while the AI doesn't know what action will be taken before it's selected.

Grenade, shoot, repeat 🔂