Vigilantes > Suggestions & Feedback

Game Pacing

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Nomad:
After moving away from the starting gun, I haven't really had any issues with pacing. Just the amount of time waiting until it's my turn again.

I think the pacing (of the default starting difficulty) is fine.

ushas:
Hehe, sorry, got it mixed with the battle pacing. No general thoughts on the game's pacing yet. So please feel free to move my posts anywhere else.


--- Quote from: Daithi ---Accepting orders while animation is playing out would be work intensive.
--- End quote ---
Sad to hear that. Would it be easier just for some actions? I mean End Turn is remembered here and there already. After all that time still ordering prematurely when changing hands  :-\


--- Quote ---There are now limits on the number of enemies that can be spawned at once, capped at around 13 for higher danger levels with a full party vs church. The remainder will spawn as reinforcements. An area that could be worked on is rebalancing the stat system (which would like to do for multiple reasons) and further reducing the number of enemies active at once.
--- End quote ---
Yeah, I initially meant to talk about the culpit no #1: number of enemies. Then critically failed the roll against befuddlement. (don't underestimate the smoothness of the player's turn flow though)

So obviously high number makes you wait a lot (aren't turns also more computationally intensive?). Cooked dinner during one such battle (on Vigilante, v15). In v16 had fun playing with Sam alone on Hard Boiled (says one whose ideal number of units to govern is around 14).

Even 13 seems too much for a battle (in total). For Churchers it is indeed interesting gang specific attribute - a swarm. But even then it would be more interesting if higher numbers are more for special situations like a facility attack, or tiles around, etc.

As far as I got the sense what influences this: 4 party members will face at min 8 survivalists at danger 1 and at max 15 churchers at danger 3; and 1 party member faces min 2 max 4 enemies. What is bad on 4 vs. 4-7? Just for the sake of waiting the upper hard limit should be lower, more like 8 enemies. Reinforcements would make it slightly better paced indeed, but can angry players if done unpredictably. And even that will eventually wear down.

Of course if there is be something to do (eg. reaction fire) or interesting happening to watch (barks, grenade catching, turn-timed events) in between turns, then the same number of enemies becomes less taxing.


--- Quote from: Daithi ---AP systems (rather than the 2 action system in more modern games) generally results in slower pacing
--- End quote ---
Not buying. Technically yes battles in this AP system may last longer than in TU system, TU can last longer than 2 action system... uh, 2 action system is for sure slower than real-time...

Don't all just have different challenges to face when addressing pacing and balance? I dunno, Achilles' heel of fallout-like AP systems being number of units and usage of AP currency.

Daithi:
@Nomad - the starting gun has been mentioned before - at least it can be replaced soon. Glad you feel the battle pacing is reasonable enough. Hopefully I'll be able to tune it a little more.


@Ushas - Should have been more specific, is battle pacing most interesting at the minute. Battles are close to fixed, so a better thing to hone in on.

Feeling on queuing orders: the majority of the time is spent in completing the action (moving, shooting, melee animation). Outside that, there's a brief lapse (usually a bit of slack to allow animations to complete), and then input is accepted again. The only gain would be the player's time to react to input being accepted, maybe in the region of a 1-2 seconds. The input is tied into a lot of things, displaying info, querying tiles, triggering animations, managing hand positions. Assuming it's possible, it would likely take days to make the changes and days to handle the bugs. Unfortunately, Benefit Vs Effort isn't good.

Am with you on the enemies - think it's the easiest way to improve the pacing. If we look at a full party 4 (player) vs 13 (enemies) = 17 -  if the character system and stats can be balanced to bring that down to 13 total, that's around a 25% gain. As characters are among the most complex things being drawn, it would help a small amount with performance too. It should be possible to decrease characters more than that, as you suggested, and bump the numbers up for special encounters, like gang leader and facility battles. 4-7 might be low, would like to maintain the idea that you're outnumbered, but this is a promising area to investigate.

Danger level buffs could be increased, to manage the difficulty of battles, rather instead of increasing enemies. A lot of pieces to the puzzle :)

Nomad:
It looks like lesser numbers might be the way to go (if coding faster enemy moves is a problem).

Hmm.... would it be possible/easy to have an option where the enemy move animations are increased? So the enemy sprints?
It would need to be an option as some would like to see what's going on. I just prefer for them to get on with it and then when it's my turn, I'll check out where things sit.

Less enemies would be the other alternative.
I think the balance comes down to some maths. Work out what you think a baseline for the characters are, and then work out chances to hit at an average range versus the enemy's chance to hit at that range. Then look at what damage both sides do and then the health's of the two parties.
That will give you an idea of how long a fight should take.
Throw some numbers at me if you'd like me to crunch them and let you know the results.

Eg: If a solo player has a gun that does 8 damage and an accuracy of 33%, it will take them approximately 9 turns to kill an enemy with 17-24 health.

ushas:
Nomad, the best way how some games do this is offering those two sliders for movement speed for your units and for enemies separately. So one can then adjust both to his liking.

Math is a good servant. A bit worried about interpreting such results though.


--- Quote from: Daithi on May 18, 2017, 01:24:29 PM ---Am with you on the enemies - think it's the easiest way to improve the pacing. If we look at a full party 4 (player) vs 13 (enemies) = 17 -  if the character system and stats can be balanced to bring that down to 13 total, that's around a 25% gain. As characters are among the most complex things being drawn, it would help a small amount with performance too. It should be possible to decrease characters more than that, as you suggested, and bump the numbers up for special encounters, like gang leader and facility battles. 4-7 might be low, would like to maintain the idea that you're outnumbered, but this is a promising area to investigate.

Danger level buffs could be increased, to manage the difficulty of battles, rather instead of increasing enemies. A lot of pieces to the puzzle :)
--- End quote ---
A puzzle! ;D

Pretty much thinking alike then.

Btw. according to log it can happen to have more enemies in the battle than is number of gang members on the tile (more party members + higher danger + lowish crime, I think). Have you considered using this occupation (crime rate?) to vary their battle numbers, instead? Meaning high danger + high crime -> more buffed enemies. High danger + low crime -> fewer buffed enemies. So 4-7 would be perhaps only for tiles with very low occupation.

Theoretically (read: I am using unfounded assumptions and didn't think it through), from the campaign perspective it may as well balance itself out, because tackling low crime areas, albeit much easier to win, will still cost some resources, as well as time, and it isn't harming the gang's income much anymore (isn't also less enemies -> lower chance to get subject?).

What brings to wealth. You said that it influences % of enemies to level up. Not sure where I got the idea that it also factors in equipment, apologies if wrong. IIRC the whole gang income is sum over all its tiles' incomes. So it would be square and fair if the gang's equipment is distributed in accordance to the contribution (wealth*crime). -> high wealth tile will be better equipped and so better protected than the low one at the same crime rate. 

All in all, it's about how much variety can emerge naturally. But, yeah, it still boils to choosing the right number range.

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