What to do about Overwatch?

JoINrbs
Long War 2 Crew
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Re: What to do about Overwatch?

Post by JoINrbs »

do you want overwatch to be good? one of the biggest things overwatch does is massively outperform other available actions in situations where the enemy is not yet engaged with you but going to patrol into you (or drop RNFs on top of you). that creates a bimodal distribution of engagement difficulties dependent on whether or not you got a good overwatch ambush at the start of the engagement. the better overwatch becomes, the further apart those modes get, and the less aggressively combat can be balanced without the player ending up in hopeless situations when an overwatch ambush fails or isn't prepared.
darkerevent
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Re: What to do about Overwatch?

Post by darkerevent »

JoINrbs wrote:do you want overwatch to be good? one of the biggest things overwatch does is massively outperform other available
actions in situations where the enemy is not yet engaged with you but going to patrol into you (or drop RNFs on top of you). that creates a bimodal distribution of engagement difficulties dependent on whether or not you got a good overwatch ambush at the start of the engagement. the better overwatch becomes, the further apart those modes get, and the less aggressively combat can be balanced without the player ending up in hopeless situations when an overwatch ambush fails or isn't prepared.
OW rangers (and specialists) already shine nicely on maps that revolve around defending one's starting position against waves of RNF enemies (e.g. full retal and Avenger Defense), and in those contexts they don't feel weak at all. However, both of those missions are exceedingly uncommon.

Since OW builds do work well in those contexts, it makes me think that the ideal solution to the balance concerns is just to add one or two more point-defense-oriented mission types to the game, rather than buffing Overwatch mechnically. It's not that OW is weak; it's just that its ideal use cases don't come up often enough in a game that's heavily focused on gotta-go-fast guerilla ops.

As it is, my OW characters mostly end up as frontline or midline filler for big combat squads on non-timed missions. They're the type of character who I know won't be dead weight, but they also won't be the MVP -- which for the most part I'm fine with. Even so, it makes me miss things like the old EXALT "king of the hill"-style missions from LW1, where every RNF drop was a chance to admire just how much OW fire your squad could put out.
LordYanaek
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Re: What to do about Overwatch?

Post by LordYanaek »

darkerevent wrote: OW rangers (and specialists) already shine nicely on maps that revolve around defending one's starting position against waves of RNF enemies (e.g. full retal and Avenger Defense), and in those contexts they don't feel weak at all. However, both of those missions are exceedingly uncommon.
Supply raids are another one of those missions and i suspect Recruitment raids would probably play smoother with more OW specced soldiers but i managed to avoid them past the early game so i can't really tell. Makes quite a bunch of retaliation missions where they can be very useful.
Even so, it makes me miss things like the old EXALT "king of the hill"-style missions from LW1, where every RNF drop was a chance to admire just how much OW fire your squad could put out.
I was going to mention those after reading your first paragraph but i see you did it already.
chrisb
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Re: What to do about Overwatch?

Post by chrisb »

JoINrbs wrote:do you want overwatch to be good? one of the biggest things overwatch does is massively outperform other available actions in situations where the enemy is not yet engaged with you but going to patrol into you (or drop RNFs on top of you). that creates a bimodal distribution of engagement difficulties dependent on whether or not you got a good overwatch ambush at the start of the engagement. the better overwatch becomes, the further apart those modes get, and the less aggressively combat can be balanced without the player ending up in hopeless situations when an overwatch ambush fails or isn't prepared.
This is a good point. And it's one reason why I think yellow alert needs to be tweaked a bit. You don't even have to try to exploit it, it's sort of just broken. I could imagine overwatch builds being totally bonkers here, but then I would say that's a problem with yellow alert and the AI. I try not to exploit the tactical AI for the same reason i don't want to exploit the broken strategy AI, the game isn't fun when you remove all the challenges.

Maybe if yellow alert was not so exploitable then the power of overwatch against them wouldn't be so extreme. RNFs will always have this issue, but they're not that significant to most missions. Once you are engaged overwatch loses most of it's magic.

And then we have the CF trap perk. More often than not it not only wastes an overwatch shot, but completely negates RR.
darkerevent
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Re: What to do about Overwatch?

Post by darkerevent »

LordYanaek wrote:Supply raids are another one of those missions and i suspect Recruitment raids would probably play smoother with more OW specced soldiers but i managed to avoid them past the early game so i can't really tell. Makes quite a bunch of retaliation missions where they can be very useful.
To be honest, I've never seen a Supply or Recruitment raid in the few hundred hours of play that I've done. I think my partner (who has now played about as much as me) has seen one recruitment raid. They don't come up for me because of how I approach the strategic layer -- I'm paranoid about provoking retaliations because I don't like being put into situations where I will risk losing assets for reasons I couldn't have fully predicted and controlled for, so I only run more than 4 on a particular job in regions where I feel it's going to matter (and if I run more than four, the job they're running is almost always intel, which produces a very different kind of retaliation which favors speedy offensive characters like assaults and technicals.).

When I was suggesting more mission types that would make use of extended defense against RNF drops and such, I was more so thinking of a mission type that would be a bit more common and might not depend on bringing a full-sized squad. For instance, it might be cool to see a variant on "Extract VIP from the City," for Soldier VIPs in particular, where the character you're supposed to evacuate starts out armed and equipped (unlike a typical VIP) but has to be defended from waves of RNF enemies while firebrand gets in to extract you. Just for example.
Goumindong
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Re: What to do about Overwatch?

Post by Goumindong »

Notintheface wrote: Still curious as to OP's thoughts on how he activates pods, to contextualise the different opinions on OW - whether it is partly because of playstyle that you think OW is weak.
Well obviously the best way to activate a pod is by hitting a high damage AoE ability on them while they're still clumped and you have vision from stealth of some sort. Second to that would be OW ambushing them as they patrol into you with your team in heavy cover.

But neither of those are particularly reasonable options to have occur. Nor is it valuable to balance around what 3 rapid reaction CUP OW shots can do in situations when the enemy is at such a severe disadvantage anyway. Especially since the overwatch actions which are best in that function don't have all that much of an opportunity cost(Kill Zone mainly) and these options are weaker in general than the high value stealth openers.

So, more or less, the assumption i go under when discussing "how best to pull pods" is that my team is currently engaged and will either pull a pod by getting yellow alert patrolled or by moving into the enemy.

Normally the best way to activate pod is by moving into them on your turn. Early in the turn order is ideal but its not so bad if you get them late(so long as its not last). This reduces yellow alert actions and allows you to control them before they get their shots off which minimizes wound probability and variance.

JoINrbs wrote:do you want overwatch to be good? one of the biggest things overwatch does is massively outperform other available actions in situations where the enemy is not yet engaged with you but going to patrol into you (or drop RNFs on top of you). that creates a bimodal distribution of engagement difficulties dependent on whether or not you got a good overwatch ambush at the start of the engagement. the better overwatch becomes, the further apart those modes get, and the less aggressively combat can be balanced without the player ending up in hopeless situations when an overwatch ambush fails or isn't prepared.
Not necessarily. But if overwatch perks are going to exist, i want them to be viable options and valuable contributions to a build.

I doubt that, even if a ranger is turned into a 100% to-hit, 100% crit, 3 OW/turn shooter that that would be enough to significantly impact the ability of a team to fight situations where you don't get a good ambush(minus having a team of all rangers maybe). Not that i am suggesting that rangers should be that.
JoINrbs
Long War 2 Crew
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Re: What to do about Overwatch?

Post by JoINrbs »

Goumindong wrote:I doubt that, even if a ranger is turned into a 100% to-hit, 100% crit, 3 OW/turn shooter that that would be enough to significantly impact the ability of a team to fight situations where you don't get a good ambush(minus having a team of all rangers maybe). Not that i am suggesting that rangers should be that.
the point is that if a team has that then pods have to get stronger to be relevant after they walk through three crits to enter the engagement. but if pods are stronger then anytime the overwatches don't go off xcom is in a worse position than they would be otherwise.

it's extremely difficult to balance something which is bimodal, not because of poor balancing but because the design is just poor to start with. it's why the alien leaders force the game to be imbalanced; because some GOPs you fight an extra 200hp thing and other GOPs you don't, so correct balancing leaves half the GOPs extremely difficult and the other half extremely easy. overwatch builds + the pods mechanic creates a similar scenario where pods can't be a sensible strength when you get to fight them because n% of the time they ran through a ton of damage before they got there and (1-n%) of the time they didn't. with no ability to know in advance which pods are going to meet which treatment the result is building a bunch of pods which are too hard to fight if OW doesn't go off and too easy to fight if it does.
Stroggus
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Re: What to do about Overwatch?

Post by Stroggus »

Maybe don`t allow overwatch if not in combat and not concealed? Maybe it is illogical, but maybe it will be better for the balance? Between logic/realism etc and balance you should always go for balance in games.
aedn
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Re: What to do about Overwatch?

Post by aedn »

There is not really anything that needs to happen with overwatch, its largely fine as it is. It allows players another tactical option when building classes and squads. Some individual skills like covering fire and kill zone could use some tuning.

Beyond that, overwatch game play is just as effective as it was in LW1, provided you commit to it extensively, and model your tactical game around its bonuses. In many cases due to LW2 AI being much more prone to movement when in LOS with xcom OW groups are more effective, as many advent and aliens will tend to routinely break overwatches.
Goumindong
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Re: What to do about Overwatch?

Post by Goumindong »

JoINrbs wrote:
Goumindong wrote:I doubt that, even if a ranger is turned into a 100% to-hit, 100% crit, 3 OW/turn shooter that that would be enough to significantly impact the ability of a team to fight situations where you don't get a good ambush(minus having a team of all rangers maybe). Not that i am suggesting that rangers should be that.
the point is that if a team has that then pods have to get stronger to be relevant after they walk through three crits to enter the engagement. but if pods are stronger then anytime the overwatches don't go off xcom is in a worse position than they would be otherwise.

it's extremely difficult to balance something which is bimodal, not because of poor balancing but because the design is just poor to start with. it's why the alien leaders force the game to be imbalanced; because some GOPs you fight an extra 200hp thing and other GOPs you don't, so correct balancing leaves half the GOPs extremely difficult and the other half extremely easy. overwatch builds + the pods mechanic creates a similar scenario where pods can't be a sensible strength when you get to fight them because n% of the time they ran through a ton of damage before they got there and (1-n%) of the time they didn't. with no ability to know in advance which pods are going to meet which treatment the result is building a bunch of pods which are too hard to fight if OW doesn't go off and too easy to fight if it does.
Except that the margin on a ranger, even with OW that good, is pretty minimal given a team of 5+. Its certainly not a high margin over the current OW ranger or OW specialist or suppression gunner.

Moreover, if we have accepted that the situation where we get a full OW pull is not our intended balance target (because we expect the squad to win that fight anyway, so the difference between 1 or 2 or 0 enemies left up isn't particularly large) then we're balancing against the situation where we are engaged prior to the yellow alert pull

If we're engaged prior to the yellow alert pull then going into OW necessarily gives up damage on active (and therefore potentially more dangerous) enemies. I don't see how making OW potentially valuable negates this tradeoff, or turns the yellow alert pull into more of a bimodal situation.
LordYanaek
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Re: What to do about Overwatch?

Post by LordYanaek »

Goumindong wrote: Moreover, if we have accepted that the situation where we get a full OW pull is not our intended balance target (because we expect the squad to win that fight anyway, so the difference between 1 or 2 or 0 enemies left up isn't particularly large) then we're balancing against the situation where we are engaged prior to the yellow alert pull.
The "intended balance target" is the entire game. If you exclude part of the game from balance because they don't fit your idea of a usual combat situation or whatever reason seem reasonable to you you'll just end up with something that's not balanced. Balance must be considered on a global scale and not "is this perk good in situation A and let's ignore situation B because it's not the intended use".
See Conceal for an example of a perk that's good but perfectly balanced in it's intended use (allowing your scout to help during a tough fight once per mission without loosing the ability to scout, or giving your assassin a second use of Shadowstrike in a mission) but ended up so strong an abused outside of it's intended use that it will probably become a MSgt perk if it's not removed completely!
Goumindong
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Re: What to do about Overwatch?

Post by Goumindong »

Kind of, but no. For instance, conceal shouldn't be balanced around its utility as a combat perk in the same way that serial is. Different things are strong in different situations, and in situations where they're not dominant their relative power is not particularly important.

Additionally, situations in which the player is suppose to win, or the aliens are suppose to win have more leeway than in situations which we might consider to be "tactically relevant". As an example on the other side, you pull a pod with the very last action on your turn; the pod can generate flanking shots on your entire squad. The game cannot really be balanced around this happening all that much. You've blundered and the aliens should slaughter you. That is an edge case, you're going to lose even if you tweak up or down the aliens damage. The question is not whether or not the aliens do enough for that, but whether they do enough for normal pod activations.

Similarly a full overwatch ambush on an enemy squad yellow alerting into you with no enemies currently activated is not a particularly "tactically relevant" situation. The player "should" or at least "does" currently have a massive advantage in this situation and marginal push one way or another doesn't really change that. Worrying that it might be even more of an edge case doesn't have much weight to me.
JoINrbs
Long War 2 Crew
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Re: What to do about Overwatch?

Post by JoINrbs »

Goumindong wrote:Similarly a full overwatch ambush on an enemy squad yellow alerting into you with no enemies currently activated is not a particularly "tactically relevant" situation. The player "should" or at least "does" currently have a massive advantage in this situation and marginal push one way or another doesn't really change that. Worrying that it might be even more of an edge case doesn't have much weight to me.
enemy squads walking into you when you're not engaged is absolutely tactically relevant, and the player isn't just meant to win when that happens. many of the new mechanics in this mod are created to try to combat how abusive that tactical situation can become when allowed to diverge, yellow alert and pod jobs being foremost examples.
Goumindong
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Re: What to do about Overwatch?

Post by Goumindong »

When you're not engaged and have a full overwatch trap no. It's really not.

If you don't have an overwatch trap then there isn't any difference

edit: I would further add that when you do have a full overwatch trap the additional value is marginal. And if you're considering situations where not all of your folks are on overwatch (and so its a larger relative value) the situation is not particularly bi-modal, since even the best OW spec'd soldier is no match for active targeting.
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