Improved rules for defensive AP

[Cyrus]

After playing at Brutal for a while and now even more in the Narvidian Dawn campaign something has been bothering me:

The way the game determines whether your Templars lose defensive AP during the enemy phase.

I regularly feel frustrated when my reserved AP is already gone for one Templar, but not another right next to him. I've been trying to figure out what exactly happens, and have found that the main condition seems to be line-of-fire or facing to be more precise. If the enemy is in the Templar's front 90 degree arc, the Templar keeps his AP, otherwise he loses one.

I understand the idea behind this, to allow enemies to sneak up from the sides or behind. I can appreciate that, but it is rather unfair to melee units that benefit greatly from waiting around a corner to force ranged enemies closer. In fact, any Templar setting up an ambush around a corner is instead trapping himself.

Here's an example in pictures:
 
This is after the first enemy phase. The Neptune (used for demonstration purposes only) keeps his AP because the xeno is in the forward arc, even if there's no line-of-fire. The scout waiting around the corner lost 1 AP because the xeno is not in the forward arc, even though it's much closer.

Neither can fire, so I pressed Turn again and got this:


Both Templars lost 1 AP, because that always happens after the second enemy phase, regardless of where the xenos are. The Neptune can fire now, because he didn't lose an AP in the first phase. The scout has the xeno right in front of his gun, but since he lost his remaining AP, he can't pull the trigger and might well be xeno food before the next turn starts.

To improve this (especially for melee units) I have these two suggestions:

1.    Change the facing code to use a much bigger angle, something like 170 degrees. In other words everything in front of the "row" the Templar is on. This still allows the enemies to sneak close if they're really to the sides or back, but allows "around the corner" ambushes.



2. Change the AP loss for the second enemy phase to be more like the first: Lose 1 AP if no enemy is in sight OR current AP is higher than 1. 
This means that if you still had 2 AP you always lose one, but if you had just one left and now an enemy is in sight, you keep the one AP.

[Cory Trese]

Sorry that you are frustrated -- the rules you're describing took a lot of time to design and even longer to get the code and view to behave exactly like that.

I'll keep going over your notes and I really appreciate the diagrams, they make the discussion more clear. I do appreciate the suggestions and will see what I can figure out.

[Cyrus]

Well, it *is* Narvidian Dawn on Brutal difficulty, frustration is practically the name of the game ;-)

The strength and sheer numbers of enemies here means I've had to rely on melee much more and against ranged enemies too. Only under those circumstances does this issue really become pressing (at least pressing enough for me to write a post about it). The thing that bothers me is that what should be a good tactic (luring ranged enemies into melee range by hiding around a corner) becomes useless because facing to where the enemy will be means you have no AP and facing towards where the enemy currently is means facing a wall, so you have AP but use them up turning towards them. Just standing in the hallway facing a ranged enemy is really not an option either when you can't shoot them.

If you examine my arguments and decide you like things the way they are now, that's fine, I'll be content that you are aware of it and just adapt my tactics. I know you've put a lot of thought into the mechanics and I wouldn't even have posted this if I didn't think the melee disadvantage was something that might have been previously unexplored because melee was less prominent before Berserkers were added to the game.

[Cory Trese]

Just give me some time to think about it -- it sometimes takes me some time to digest.

[johndramey]

I totally get what Cyrus is saying, but I think there is something that should be clarified by Cory; is melee supposed to be a viable and equal alternative to ranged engagement? I would think not, but the argument I'm going to make really hinges on the answer.

Melee is, and always has been in my opinion, a fallback option. Some of us (Cyrus is one, I am the other) are believers in the melee doctrine of warfare but I think that most players use it very little.

With that said, I think the current disadvantages that melee players run with are fairly tolerable with some careful preparation. It's been a while since I've run through Narvidian Dawn, but if I remember correctly ranged enemies always seemed to hit less often than melee enemies in general. Couple that with some spiffy Leviathan Void Armor on your soldiers and Leviathan Command for your captain (they have shielding scores of 5) as well as either Incinerator Void Armor/Neptune Void Armor (Shielding of 9 or 8, -2AP) or Incinerator Powerarmor/Neptune Powerarmor (sacrifice 1 shielding for only -1AP) and you'll be able to eat ranged attacks for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Couple those armors with a relatively conservative movement pattern and you can usually avoid damage. Focus on getting ranged enemies to close with you around corners (like Cyrus is doing above) and just eat the 1-2 shots they'll be able to take if you lose your defensive AP. Your armor will most likely nullify any hits that actually land on you. After the turn cycles? Well that's when you pummel them into a fine xeno paste with your gauntlets/axe/sword.

And for the record, here are the maximum shielding stats for each class;
Captain = 5
Soldier = 5
Scout = 5
Neptune = 8
Hydra = 9 (!)
Berserker = 4 (without shield) or 6 (with shield)

[Cyrus]

My melee-only squad was a one-off, just to see if it would make an interesting challenge. I've been playing on Brutal for a while now with my favorite composition, 2 Scouts and a Hydra. Even with Long Devastators, it can take anywhere from 1 to 4 shots to kill the 7-8 HP Narvidians that pop up everywhere, so ammo is always in short supply. I use the scouts mobility to close in and use melee whenever practical just to make the ammo last longer and most of the time it works pretty well. It's just defensive fire where things fall apart.

With my Hard difficulty squad my Templars could shrug off hits easily, but on Brutal I found that doesn't work anymore. Even with 40+ evasion they get hit regularly and while I know the scouts 3/4 armor/shielding isn't meant to stop a lot, my Hydra is running around with 5/8 and also takes big hits if I leave him exposed for too long. It seems the enemies have a minimum crit rate of roughly 5%, so 1 in 20 hits will ignore your armor and usually eat 4-5 HP, ensuring the Templar's death. Also, the Narvidian scout drones seem to have a ranged melee attack, showing the melee animation even when attacking from 4 squares away, so I figure you need Plating, not Shielding against that.

In fact, just after I posted the above, I ran into the first mission ever that made me feel my Scouts just aren't powerful enough. I had to restart "Perimeter Landing" more than 10 times due to Templar deaths and ran out of ammo even with ammo kits. It's one hell of a mission, with crazy numbers of Narvidians spawning. In the end I played to my Scouts strength and had one perform a suicide run, weaving through the Narvidians to the objective and back. Surprisingly, it worked on the very first try!

I'm definitely going to train different Templars after finishing this campaign, so I'll try your heavy armor strategy too.

[slayernz]

I've done Narv Dawn with two different captain types, the Naval veteran and the Scout. The Scout got me the 2 extra AP boosts, which was somewhat useful to get knights in the right position, but the Naval veteran doubled up the ammo. Further, with the kits, he could basically dish out 5 lots of ammo. 2 scouts with 48 rounds of ammo, and 1 neptune with 110 rounds of ammo!

I love scouts and their extra movement, but the extra ammo bonus is something you just can't ignore, especially on such a "horrible" campaign as Narv Dawn

[Cyrus]

Yeah, I've been thinking about restarting with a different captain, but 90+ battles is a lot to abandon. I'm hoping the Templar Chaplain will be available sometime soon to at least fix my "one unlucky hit = restart" problems.

[johndramey]

Because of our discussion in here I bought a new berserker in my current Black Sheep squad and have an amazing realization. Berserkers can get HUGE AP along with nice damage and fairly decent armor. My current, not fully kitted out Berserker has 8 AP (6 through skills, 1 extra from Berserker Powerarmor, 1 more from the Hunter Shield) 3 Plating, 4 Shielding, Atreus (X2, but that means nothing ) and is warded! slayernz, you might want to try running an AP specced berserker with your scout squad!