5 replies to this topic

[samthetree]

Hallo! Ich bin Ami, kann aber einige Woerter Deutsch, weil ich ehemalige Soldat von Balkankrieg bin. Leider wuerde ich, um die Reste zu schrieben, mehrmals Woerter nachschlagen muessen, deshalb fahre ich auf Englisch fort!

So here are my comments from the 70 hours of gametime that it took me to complete the campaign. Using the after-action report method we shared with our Bundeswehr counterparts, I will begin with general comments, continue with things to sustain and move on to things to improve, then talk about "wishes."


General Comments:

I liked the game! It is refreshing to see plan-and-go more broadly used, it is a feature I missed from Freedom Force, the UFO-After series, and so on. I also liked the more contemporary setting: science fiction and fantasy have too long dominated this type of TRPG. I feel I got my money's worth, BUT because of the complexity of the interface and errors in the pathing programs, I would not recommend the game to someone I didn't know was already hard-core into the genre.

Things to sustain:

1) The diversity of characters and voice acting. I appreciated this about the UFO-After series, and I liked yours even better: I quite often burst out laughing and did a slow, complete takeover of Arulco, recruiting all mercs, so I could try out all the characters.

2) Characters with immutable differences and strengths and weakness that cannot be overcome through experience. Unlike in the UFO-series, where I converged characters on "standard types" (riflemen, medic/grenadier, and heavy weapons) and "standard weapons", when I took down Diedranna almost every merc was using a different weapon best suited to his role, strengths, the environment and limitations of the logistics chain.

3) Logistics: shortages in supplies and ammunition constantly forced me to try new weapons and tactics. In the end, I was employing weapons that used nearly every ammunition type so as to not run out of one type or another. While this seemed irritating at first, in fact it greatly changed my appreciation of the game. In contrast, the UFO After-series broke down into similar soldiers with identical weapons fighting from the same ranges and positions.

4) Your maps: The UFO-After maps were just "adjoining zones" that were attacked randomly. In contrast, your maps have avenues of advance, key terrain that confers different benefits, and so on.

Things to Improve:

1) You have a refreshingly tricky combat model where small details matter greatly. For this reason, your PATHING SUCKS INTOLERABLY. I can't tell you the number of times I had to reload because mercs got hung up on small objects, wouldn't move around other mercs, and so on. I like plan-and-go, but if a merc will potentially get hung up before he moves 10 feet, the game becomes not "plan and go" but "babysit and pause". This makes the game much more frustrating even though you have "done everything right", leading potential new shooter players to give up. That's why my wife stopped playing at Cambria Hospital.

2) Logistics, logistics, logistics. I can tell you how tedious managing items became. Stacks/closets/containers need to be sortable. A vehicle, or even purchasable mule, that can carry bulk items (but requires fuel or escorts, etc) would be refreshing. Also, having to run around and pick up each individual target drop after a battle was very very tedious: you could use a feature like Afterlight's "UFO Boot" to gather up target drops automatically and put them in an "Armory" (a sortable weapons rack or closet in each zone you conquer). In order to keep ammo, medical supplies, uniforms, weapons, demolitions, and misc items straight I wound up having to tediously gather all drops and then self-sort them into six different closets in each zone. Mega-yawn. Other than the fidgety pathing model, this was the main reason I would not recommend the game to someone not already compelled by this type of game.

3) Line-of-sight reversability needs to be checked. There were numerous times where a soldier with a PSG found a LOS on one of my soldiers that was not reversible, no matter the stance of my soldier. The result was the soldier could take free potshots while the merc could not return fire. The consequence was a lot of frustration and reloading that someone not thrilled with this genre already would never tolerate.

4) Some sort of indication on the recruitment page as to a merc's dislikes with other mercs would be a useful as a squad planning tool. Twice I recruited a merc trying to enable a "team player" only to find that the recruited merc was incompatible with an existing member of the squad.

5) Eliminating the level cap at 10. I don't see a reason for a hard cap at 10 when a sharp growth in XP requirement for level 11 would still prevent characters from getting ridiculously high without compelling a player to sideline his best merc once he hits level 10. If I'm trying to take down Deirdranna in 15 days, I would do it with very few mercs, and so the level of each of them would become very important. Also, given the moderate amount a character improves with a level, I just don't see the point in hard-capping merc level.

6) Next time, hire more voice actors, or even hold a voice competition from your fan base, to voice mercs. While your voice characters were very talented, it was nonetheless very clear that it was basically one female and one male voice actor and when accents for certain voice cues ("yeah?") were not very distinct, I began confusing characters. A good example of this were buzz, spider, raven, and buns. Given the size of your player base and the number of unemployed actors who would be thrilled to put something fresh on their resume for free, there's no reason you couldn't use a contest and get as many new voices and styles of diction as you liked.

Wishes for the Future:

1) I might wish for more effects from certain territories. For example, if I take a second airport, it would be great if I could land supplies there. Likewise, if I take a port, it would be useful then to use a coastal ship to attack coastal territories (or for the enemy to do the same). It would be pretty cool to Zodiac into a sleepy beach resort....

2) Armored vehicles for both sides that moves. Understandably, Diedranna's men should have more armor. I get it. But having tanks that sit just in one place, train the barrel very slowly, and fire only at range eliminates the real strategy of tank killing: respecting the armor in the open, but luring it into close terrain for the well timed LAW shot.

3) Difficulty settings. I would play the game again if I could make it harder or otherwise tweak the experience (AI squad size, AI level-up speed, etc).

4) Useful militia. After a few failed experiments, I gave up using militia, because they died and the equipment I gave them then vanished, not even available to give to the next poor sap. I quickly determined that it made more sense to save salvage equipment, repair it, sell it, and hire a merc squad to defend cities. Some ways militia could be useful is if 1) They could recieve training from mercs to improve until they could actually defend a city well 2) They could be controlled by a player like mercs but given standard voices and not allowed to leave a city and 3) If when they died, their equipment was recoverable like a dead mercs equpment.

5) A map editor or a random map generator. A comparable merc editor where a player could record his own merc voices and models and share these with friend would also be cool. (My merc would be "Dubya." He would keep talking about "Nukular" weapons, and his morale would go down if here were forced to fight beside "Old Europeans." After winning his first fight, he would declare "Mission Accomplished!")

6) Science / technical /smuggler staff like UFO:Afterlight to create or get access to better weapons and armor.

7) More morale effects, like mercs who get unhappy if they don't have a beer or cigarettes every day, or pacifist soldiers whose morale drops after killing but goes up after medical, repair, or training activities, or mercs who get happier after a day at the beach.

8)More diverse enemy squads and spoils. By the end of the game I was facing soldiers with basically 6 sets of gear and very very uniform drops (I had 71 pairs of black spectra leggings in storage on day 151, and I had tons of 9mm ammo and soviet ammor in store, but I couldn't get another 7.62 soviet submachine gun to drop to save my life). The fights thus got very similar, particularly defenses, but a rush by 15 lightly armored-shotgun wielding enemies would have thrown me into more disarray than another squad of heavily armored sharpshooters.

9) Remove squad size cap but introduce leadership effects (for example, give squad leaders leadership talents that drop off as the number of people in their squad rises or falls).

Closing:

Danke for ihre Muehe und Kreativitaet! Ich hab's echt geneissen. "Fidel, he smiling! He want to fight with you all over again (on a different map or difficulty setting)!"

[Phoenix]

5) A map editor or a random map generator. A comparable merc editor where a player could record his own merc voices and models and share these with friend would also be cool. (My merc would be "Dubya." He would keep talking about "Nukular" weapons, and his morale would go down if here were forced to fight beside "Old Europeans." After winning his first fight, he would declare "Mission Accomplished!")

i lol'ed. good idea for a mod, too

[kargan]

Hallo! Ich bin Ami, kann aber einige Woerter Deutsch, weil ich ehemalige Soldat von Balkankrieg bin. Leider wuerde ich, um die Reste zu schrieben, mehrmals Woerter nachschlagen muessen, deshalb fahre ich auf Englisch fort!

So here are my comments from the 70 hours of gametime that it took me to complete the campaign. Using the after-action report method we shared with our Bundeswehr counterparts, I will begin with general comments, continue with things to sustain and move on to things to improve, then talk about "wishes."


General Comments:

I liked the game! It is refreshing to see plan-and-go more broadly used, it is a feature I missed from Freedom Force, the UFO-After series, and so on. I also liked the more contemporary setting: science fiction and fantasy have too long dominated this type of TRPG. I feel I got my money's worth, BUT because of the complexity of the interface and errors in the pathing programs, I would not recommend the game to someone I didn't know was already hard-core into the genre.

Things to sustain:

1) The diversity of characters and voice acting. I appreciated this about the UFO-After series, and I liked yours even better: I quite often burst out laughing and did a slow, complete takeover of Arulco, recruiting all mercs, so I could try out all the characters.

2) Characters with immutable differences and strengths and weakness that cannot be overcome through experience. Unlike in the UFO-series, where I converged characters on "standard types" (riflemen, medic/grenadier, and heavy weapons) and "standard weapons", when I took down Diedranna almost every merc was using a different weapon best suited to his role, strengths, the environment and limitations of the logistics chain.

3) Logistics: shortages in supplies and ammunition constantly forced me to try new weapons and tactics. In the end, I was employing weapons that used nearly every ammunition type so as to not run out of one type or another. While this seemed irritating at first, in fact it greatly changed my appreciation of the game. In contrast, the UFO After-series broke down into similar soldiers with identical weapons fighting from the same ranges and positions.

4) Your maps: The UFO-After maps were just "adjoining zones" that were attacked randomly. In contrast, your maps have avenues of advance, key terrain that confers different benefits, and so on.

Things to Improve:

1) You have a refreshingly tricky combat model where small details matter greatly. For this reason, your PATHING SUCKS INTOLERABLY. I can't tell you the number of times I had to reload because mercs got hung up on small objects, wouldn't move around other mercs, and so on. I like plan-and-go, but if a merc will potentially get hung up before he moves 10 feet, the game becomes not "plan and go" but "babysit and pause". This makes the game much more frustrating even though you have "done everything right", leading potential new shooter players to give up. That's why my wife stopped playing at Cambria Hospital.

2) Logistics, logistics, logistics. I can tell you how tedious managing items became. Stacks/closets/containers need to be sortable. A vehicle, or even purchasable mule, that can carry bulk items (but requires fuel or escorts, etc) would be refreshing. Also, having to run around and pick up each individual target drop after a battle was very very tedious: you could use a feature like Afterlight's "UFO Boot" to gather up target drops automatically and put them in an "Armory" (a sortable weapons rack or closet in each zone you conquer). In order to keep ammo, medical supplies, uniforms, weapons, demolitions, and misc items straight I wound up having to tediously gather all drops and then self-sort them into six different closets in each zone. Mega-yawn. Other than the fidgety pathing model, this was the main reason I would not recommend the game to someone not already compelled by this type of game.

3) Line-of-sight reversability needs to be checked. There were numerous times where a soldier with a PSG found a LOS on one of my soldiers that was not reversible, no matter the stance of my soldier. The result was the soldier could take free potshots while the merc could not return fire. The consequence was a lot of frustration and reloading that someone not thrilled with this genre already would never tolerate.

4) Some sort of indication on the recruitment page as to a merc's dislikes with other mercs would be a useful as a squad planning tool. Twice I recruited a merc trying to enable a "team player" only to find that the recruited merc was incompatible with an existing member of the squad.

5) Eliminating the level cap at 10. I don't see a reason for a hard cap at 10 when a sharp growth in XP requirement for level 11 would still prevent characters from getting ridiculously high without compelling a player to sideline his best merc once he hits level 10. If I'm trying to take down Deirdranna in 15 days, I would do it with very few mercs, and so the level of each of them would become very important. Also, given the moderate amount a character improves with a level, I just don't see the point in hard-capping merc level.

6) Next time, hire more voice actors, or even hold a voice competition from your fan base, to voice mercs. While your voice characters were very talented, it was nonetheless very clear that it was basically one female and one male voice actor and when accents for certain voice cues ("yeah?") were not very distinct, I began confusing characters. A good example of this were buzz, spider, raven, and buns. Given the size of your player base and the number of unemployed actors who would be thrilled to put something fresh on their resume for free, there's no reason you couldn't use a contest and get as many new voices and styles of diction as you liked.

Wishes for the Future:

1) I might wish for more effects from certain territories. For example, if I take a second airport, it would be great if I could land supplies there. Likewise, if I take a port, it would be useful then to use a coastal ship to attack coastal territories (or for the enemy to do the same). It would be pretty cool to Zodiac into a sleepy beach resort....

2) Armored vehicles for both sides that moves. Understandably, Diedranna's men should have more armor. I get it. But having tanks that sit just in one place, train the barrel very slowly, and fire only at range eliminates the real strategy of tank killing: respecting the armor in the open, but luring it into close terrain for the well timed LAW shot.

3) Difficulty settings. I would play the game again if I could make it harder or otherwise tweak the experience (AI squad size, AI level-up speed, etc).

4) Useful militia. After a few failed experiments, I gave up using militia, because they died and the equipment I gave them then vanished, not even available to give to the next poor sap. I quickly determined that it made more sense to save salvage equipment, repair it, sell it, and hire a merc squad to defend cities. Some ways militia could be useful is if 1) They could recieve training from mercs to improve until they could actually defend a city well 2) They could be controlled by a player like mercs but given standard voices and not allowed to leave a city and 3) If when they died, their equipment was recoverable like a dead mercs equpment.

5) A map editor or a random map generator. A comparable merc editor where a player could record his own merc voices and models and share these with friend would also be cool. (My merc would be "Dubya." He would keep talking about "Nukular" weapons, and his morale would go down if here were forced to fight beside "Old Europeans." After winning his first fight, he would declare "Mission Accomplished!")

6) Science / technical /smuggler staff like UFO:Afterlight to create or get access to better weapons and armor.

7) More morale effects, like mercs who get unhappy if they don't have a beer or cigarettes every day, or pacifist soldiers whose morale drops after killing but goes up after medical, repair, or training activities, or mercs who get happier after a day at the beach.

8)More diverse enemy squads and spoils. By the end of the game I was facing soldiers with basically 6 sets of gear and very very uniform drops (I had 71 pairs of black spectra leggings in storage on day 151, and I had tons of 9mm ammo and soviet ammor in store, but I couldn't get another 7.62 soviet submachine gun to drop to save my life). The fights thus got very similar, particularly defenses, but a rush by 15 lightly armored-shotgun wielding enemies would have thrown me into more disarray than another squad of heavily armored sharpshooters.

9) Remove squad size cap but introduce leadership effects (for example, give squad leaders leadership talents that drop off as the number of people in their squad rises or falls).

Closing:

Danke for ihre Muehe und Kreativitaet! Ich hab's echt geneissen. "Fidel, he smiling! He want to fight with you all over again (on a different map or difficulty setting)!"

Fantastic Ideas.

[Mr. Gerbil]

Custom Voices:
Nice idea and easy to do too. I had already Yesterday that idea, but wasn't in the mood for recording like 100Audio Files.
My "How To Custom Music" Thread should explain too, how to add Custom Voices, but it was late, i was tired etc.

All the other stuff yes yes and yes. i dont want now to give an answer to everything, but youre right!
/full agree^^

[Goztec]

Opening post is full of win, thanks for writing down your experience/thoughts.

[denonkleo]

(My merc would be "Dubya." He would keep talking about "Nukular" weapons, and his morale would go down if here were forced to fight beside "Old Europeans." After winning his first fight, he would declare "Mission Accomplished!")

Priceless