Overwatch, Attacks of Opportunity

[Daithi]

Fun... well that's one way of thinking about it!

Aka reaction fire. Also hoping to look at attacks of opportunity. Unsure if these will be possible, but will have a go at it.

[Nomad]

Overwatch/Reaction Fire is something that I have had LOTS of use for when facing superior numbers. I look forward to not wasting entire turns of AP.

Another alternative might be to allow the player to simply hold or delay their action (if Overwatch turns out to be a pain to implement).

[ushas]

Yeah, wanted to open suggestions about this too. We can do so much more with the ability to move [a part of] unit's turn down the queue!

Would make high initiative something to thrive for, whereas now it may be even a handicap. Daithi can already shuffle the order with spawning enemies, but I dunno, how hard would be for the AI to make good use of delay too.

Although you can anticipate an enemy's act with both, wait/delay and reactions are two different beasts in reality, not much an alternative really. With reactions you can actually interrupt an enemy in the middle of his action, but don't usually have much say in it. I mean calling it 'fire' implies it won't let us heal or move with saved AP.

Ideal to have both, but, yeah, I know, I know... So either would be awesome. Fingers crossed!

[Nomad]

Yeah, I'm ok with either implementation.
I expect that changing the initiative order (moving yourself down the queue) would create all sorts of problems.

I'm used to XCOM, so I'm fine with Overwatch. It's something I'm familiar with.

[Daithi]

Restoring Ushas comment:

Likewise interrupts I suppose. May as well bet. But it would requite to trick Daithi into doing both, so we can then ask what was harder...

Do you mean new XCOMs? May I ask how it works there?

Cause not sure if me babbling about the old one does any good, as there important were the visual range and facing, not here. Though analogously perhaps the initiative for attacker vs. defender comparison makes sense. Also liked notion that you can reserve more TU for better chance. For example, ending the turn with pistol on Snap with 6 AP unused, instead of only 4 AP, will give a higher reaction score.   

[Daithi]

New Xcom has similar overwatch to the old one, except it triggers regardless of CTH, and is guaranteed to trigger, regardless of facing/initiative. (You could set a minimum CTH to trigger in old one, right?)

Have made surprisingly good progress with overwatch yesterday - there's a working prototype for ranged overwatch. Some outcomes haven't been handled yet and there are some limitations. These might be possible to remove, but it's going to take considerably more time and I'm not sure it's worthwhile. The limitation is only one attack can be made per tile the enemy moves. So if you have 2 overwatchers and the enemy moves 1 tile and launches a melee attack, only 1 shot will be fired.

Going to look at melee overwatch today: if an enemy moves to an adjacent tile, and you have overwatched with a melee weapon, you can attack before they do. Then attacks of opportunity....

Now that you mention it, am sort of curious as to whether overwatch or initiative order changes would be harder to code... If overwatch goes well, will look at initiative queue - though am considering unlocking this as a leadership perk.

[Nomad]

Leadership Perk sounds like the way to go.
That way you could leave the limitation of 1 attack per tile moved and write it up as a limitation of the Perk.

Can the game calculate which attacker has the higher hit chance and use them, or is it random who shoots if a target only moves 1 tile?

[ushas]

Thanks for info. Glad to hear it goes well.

Just to recap what I'm recalling:
If the actor does something to trigger reaction and he is in the position to defend-react (eg. they are facing each other), then actor's and reactor's initiative scores are compared (~Reactions stat times fraction of TU reserved). If the actor's is higher nothing happens (or in some games even he can shoot). If the reactor's score is higher though (or there is no defense) he will fire. Not sure about CTH, thought it was just used for the shot itself.

Not particularly happy about limitations, but you can make a feature out of them:) As Nomad mentioned,  CTH (or/and initiative) of applicable overwatchers can be compared to determine the one who fires. But others haven't used their AP yet, right, thus they're sequentially reacting as trigger events go. You know, everybody discharging at the first one is a limitation on its own, never liked that rule. It's all about presentation...

Sounds that you're making overwatch as something pro-active. Does it mean ending the turn with enough AP for the current weapon+mode setup isn't sufficient for to be regarded as an overwatcher?

Now that you mention it, am sort of curious as to whether overwatch or initiative order changes would be harder to code... If overwatch goes well, will look at initiative queue - though am considering unlocking this as a leadership perk

May all coding go smoothly and errorless!                                    (I bet on initiative)

Depends if a core or addition. Introducing additional features gradually is actually good. Then a perk works well. Initially imagined a sort of wait button that moves by 1 position in the queue (how many times can wait depends on some stats perhaps), but as a leadership perk, hm... Will a leader shuffle the whole party order?   

[Daithi]

The limitation of 1 attack per tile moved is gone now. And have a basic implementation of melee overwatch working.

@ Nomad - it's a possibility, and while logical, I don't think it will have much impact on how the system works. Currently set to melee first, then ranged, in order that characters entered overwatch.The thing that's jumping out about ranged overwatch is setting a minimum CTH before shot triggers, otherwise, you'll take really low CTH shots at distant enemies, and overwatch may be used up by the time the closer ones move.

@ Ushas: That's pretty much how I'd remember it with X-com. Either way, you'll have to press a button to end turn, and it may as well be the overwatch button. Pressing overwatch button is already set up to tell you if there's a condition preventing you entering overwatch (ap, ammo, item condition). If the initiative order change is added, am starting to think that it could be available to all players at an AP cost, maybe 1, which could be removed by the leadership perk.

[Nomad]

You could just have three Overwatch presets based on distance. Near, Mid and Far.
Shotgun players would likely prefer Near, small calibre weapons would be Mid and snipers and/or high accuracy shooters could choose far. Or if it's early and enemies are still closing from distance and you just want a free shot off, then Far works then too.
This way it's just a distance check. Did the enemy move within X number of tiles from the Overwatcher?
It won't matter what the attackers skill is over distance.

I don't know if that would make a difference as far as implementation difficulty.

If you're going to make Overwatch automatic, please don't get caught up where we have to end turn twice if we don't have enough AP.
Actually... if you're going to make it automatic, then you don't need any warnings about AP. They just become attacks of opportunity. If the character has enough AP left over, then they'll take a shot at someone moving within their player-set control area (Near, Mid, Far).

Just some thoughts.

[Daithi]

Thanks for the ideas. A viable alternative to CTH, will think more about which to use.

Feeling is that overwatch should be automatic, with some control over when to trigger. Otherwise, control will continually pass to player (on every tile the enemy moves), they will decide whether to take the shot or pass. The second approach gives more control, but it's going to undermine pacing and add a lot of clicks, which is going to be frustrating.

Can you give me a bit more on this, Nomad?
If you're going to make Overwatch automatic, please don't get caught up where we have to end turn twice if we don't have enough AP.

[Nomad]

Can you give me a bit more on this, Nomad?
If you're going to make Overwatch automatic, please don't get caught up where we have to end turn twice if we don't have enough AP.

Ok, what I meant by this was in reference to:

Either way, you'll have to press a button to end turn, and it may as well be the overwatch button. Pressing overwatch button is already set up to tell you if there's a condition preventing you entering overwatch (ap, ammo, item condition).

From this I took it to mean that the End Turn button may as well set Overwatch (or BE the Overwatch button).
Then you said you've got it set up to tell you if there's a condition preventing Overwatch.
I just wanted to caution having us hitting End Turn and then the game stopping to tell us we don't have enough AP to enter Overwatch and then requiring us to acknowledge the message before continuing. Thus effectively having to hit enter twice to end the turn (once on End Turn and once on the message that we won't be using Overwatch).

[Nomad]

And if you DO do something like having the Overwatch trigger be set by range, then I was just envisioning three buttons under the End Turn button that depict (or say) Near or Close, Mid, Far. Two are greyed out and one is active. We click on our preference and whichever is selected is used when we End Turn.

They would be similar to the current setting for Kill/Wound setting, in that they are set per character and then keep the character setting until changed. That way a shotgun character can be set to Near/Close and then forgotten.

When I say "three buttons under the End Turn button" I'm thinking of three small buttons in a line under the larger/longer End Turn. Just a strip that is selected to determine or show the range of engagement.
They could even just have the number of grid spaces that they activate at. Eg: | 3 | 6 | 9 |

[Daithi]

Ah, ok, got you. Am a bit slow today (too many late nights this weekend)!

Here's some more info on OW. Let me know if anything's jumping out:

Pressing end turn does not enter overwatch by default. There's an overwatch button on the left panel (the one with reload). There a couple of reasons for this:
1) A player may not want to enter overwatch, but rather conserve AP for next turn. With AP bank and some toughness, it will be possible to carry several extra AP over
2) Will avoid the game accidentally mistaking a regular end turn with overwatch end turn, and displaying message (hey, you don't have enough AP). If you genuinely want to use overwatch, this message will be useful, rather than frustrating
3) Encourages players to think about what weapon, use mode they will overwatch with, rather than reflexively pressing end turn, and perhaps not having enough AP, ammo

On the flip side, there is the possibility of players reflexively ending the turn, instead of pressing overwatch button, but think reason 1) is enough to make separate buttons more attractive.

Currently tidying up the code for overwatch, then will add the threshold to fire, and AI overwatch. May restrict overwatch to certain enemies - seems like a good way to differentiate enemy types.

[Daithi]

And if you DO do something like having the Overwatch trigger be set by range, then I was just envisioning three buttons under the End Turn button that depict (or say) Near or Close, Mid, Far. Two are greyed out and one is active. We click on our preference and whichever is selected is used when we End Turn.

They would be similar to the current setting for Kill/Wound setting, in that they are set per character and then keep the character setting until changed. That way a shotgun character can be set to Near/Close and then forgotten.

When I say "three buttons under the End Turn button" I'm thinking of three small buttons in a line under the larger/longer End Turn. Just a strip that is selected to determine or show the range of engagement.
They could even just have the number of grid spaces that they activate at. Eg: | 3 | 6 | 9 |

Was initially thinking of a pop up, but this sounds like a better, less clicky solution.