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[Desert Mutt]

Wanted to bring some light on things that really annoy me in FOnline version of CTB.
Mostly this is a game mechanics, but there are also couple of issues that require client improvements as well in order to improve user experience.

General user experience during combat.
The single general issue is too many clicks required to perform combat actions (see detailed below). Not everyone of us is Korean professional StarCraft super star...
Reason behind this is FOnline interface is derived from FO1/FO2 which are turn based, and have interface suited for turn based combat, but it doesn't work well in CTB (hack for aimed shoots is a prime example for this).

Current implementation: You have to click each time on target in order to do a single attack/shoot.
Issue #1: You actually have to aim with your mouse cursor and click on enemy which is moving. For big targets it is not a problem but for tiny targets or targets with very narrow parts (like floaters) it can be very tricky - you may not able to hit it while it is moving which results in - it getting close to you.
Issue #2: Ping matters. Let's consider 2 players one with ping 250 other with ping 25. Guy with 250 has spotted the guy with 25 and now clicks to shoot him. Guy with ping 25 has ~200 msec buffer time to react and click attack and still he will shoot first. Another example is if guy with ping 25 attacks first he is basically has couple of free shoots before guy with ping 250 notices him and be able to response.
Proposed Solution: Implement FoT:BoS like character sentry mode and fire hit chance setting(I guess can be added to mercs as well). From http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_Tactics_combat:
Sentry mode.

The game allows to assign sentry mode to each of squad members to manage his/her default behavior in CTB upon encountering an enemy. There are three different sentry modes - off, defensive and aggressive.

Sentry mode off: The character will ignore any enemy activity until receives no commands from player.

Sentry mode defensive: The character will alert you when an enemy is spotted by flashing their character tab. If this character is fired on, they will return fire.

Sentry mode aggressive: This character will actively fire on the enemy.

Characters on sentry mode will not fire if their chance to hit is lesser than the preset value. The possible values are: 95% (only fire if you're almost assured of hitting), 66% (fire under good conditions), 33% (fire under possible conditions) and 1%.


In addition to that make such client/UI improvements:
#0 When character stands still it behaves according to sentry mode (stands or attacks depending on sentry mode and hit chance settings. E.g. Sentry: aggressive, Hit Chance/Aiming threshold: 1%, Aim: to the eyes - will shoot everyone on sight (except members of your group and friendly NPCs of course) aiming to the eyes even if the hit chance is 1%). When you click run it stops fire and it runs.

#1 When you click attack some target - character continues to attack it until:
 - target is dead
 - you run out of ammo
 - target is out of sight or weapon range
 - you have clicked to perform other action (attack other target, sneak, reload, move to other hex etc.).
So no need of constant aim and click for each individual single shoot.

#2 Implement such action and hotkeys for them:
- Stop moving - character stops moving (useful when you spot someone etc.).
- Reload weapon (probably there should be a client setting for automatic reloading when out of ammo).

This will make CTB user experience similar to something like Real Time Strategy games rather to what we have now: a broken version of Alien Shooter or Zombie Shooter.

Displayed hit chance and critter info.
Current implementation:
When you hover mouse cursor over the target you see:
 - Hit chance to the body (despite what you are aiming for)
 - Hit points if you have awareness

Issue #1: You don't know whom you are attacking/shooting at if there are plenty of targets near by the same hex. Once I have been shooting from laser pistol at flooter and accidentally shoot a BoS soldier who was standing fighting with flooter unarmed and standing near by it (somehow i have clicked at pixel that belongs to BoS Soldier thus attacking him). The guy went for me after he has finished the flooter...
Issue #2: Displayed hit chance is a body hit chance.
Issue #3: Impossible to look at target status while it's moving (as you have to click, wait, click to get to the binoculars icon etc.).
Proposed solution: When you hover cursor over target display the following info:
 - Traget name/id: e.g. Flooter
 - Target Status: e.g. Unhurt (or number of Hit points and active weapon if you have taken
awareness perk).
 - Hit chance on aimed part. E.g. If I aim for the eyes then when I hover mouse cursor over target I should see hit chance to the eyes.

Is is similar to what was done in FoT.


Aimed shoots.
Current implementation: You have to pick target every time you click to shoot some one or you have to use hot key.
Issue #1: Target may run away while you setting aimed shoot and picking what part of body to shoot at. (yes, I know there are hotkeys, but not every newbie who just started the game aware of them).
Issue #2: Hotkeys set aim for all slots and all weapons:
 E.g.: I pick rifle and press Alt+E to shoot rat in the eyes with 95% hit chance while it is away on distance. Rat comes closer, I switch to the knife. My melee skills are not so great , but i still able to hit rat in the body with 48% chance, but whoops! I'm aiming for the eyes with my knife - 18% hit chance! Now i have to press some hotkey again to disable aimed shoots... Then when i switch to rifle i have to press again to enable aimed shoots... switch t knife - disable... Switch enable, disable, enable, disable ... that is really annoying especially when you forget to disable it and notice it after only several misses...
Proposed solution: Implement aimed shoots in the following way (yes! again like in FoT):
- See image/story board to see how it works:
  http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/811/aimstory.jpg/
- Make hotkeys affecting only current active slot or weapon in that active slot (so if i set shoot aimed to eyes while having rifle in active slot#1 it sets rifle to aimed shoots, when i switch to the knife in slot#2 - knife has no aiming etc.).

[Crazy]

Belong to suggestions...

[kraskish]

Issue #2: Ping matters. Let's consider 2 players one with ping 250 other with ping 25. Guy with 250 has spotted the guy with 25 and now clicks to shoot him. Guy with ping 25 has ~200 msec buffer time to react and click attack and still he will shoot first. Another example is if guy with ping 25 attacks first he is basically has couple of free shoots before guy with ping 250 notices him and be able to response.

You mean turn-based-combat? TBC? or Real-time combat RT? If u get hit in TBC the guy with 250 ping has 29,75 s to react

If u mean RT, theres a problem. Your suggestion would need a ton of work and pretty useless or OP. Lets say youre in encounter, some sniper joins, hits u in the eyes, you get crazy crits and u auto attack him. How? Aiming torso? Youd die anyway. Aiming eyes?   Too OP. So u could stay with your friends in a caravan in aggresive sentry mode lol.

[RavenousRat]

Imagine an army of proxy alts camping HQ mine on "aggro shoot all on sight". Mabus' dream! Or just control many characters at once, put them on psycho-aggro-kill-all-non-my-proxy-alts and capture town alone with many many many pvp sniper powerbuilds with 10 PE and sniper rifles, someone is entering town = dead in 1 second. The only thing that will stop them is other guy with even more psychotic-robot-snipers who shoot everything in thier FoV and entering town at the same time.

[Desert Mutt]

Continuous Turn Based combat. At least that how it was called in FoT, the thing that is called RT here ( i guess i should change the title to avoid confusion). Proposed suggestions are things that worked well there.  Half of the suggestions is just a client revamp other will probably need some work.

In regards to your sniper example, i guess i should have specified that aggressive sentry mode should work only on unfriendly targets (shoot everyone but members of your travel group).
In this case sniper will have a hard time shooting you guys out as he will be ripped as soon as he joins (of course if you did proper placing of the characters on the map).

About shooting back: You have aiming threshold and weapon in your active slot, so you will fire back according to weapon and aim settings. E.g.: You hold a rifle and set aim to eye, sentry mode aggressive with aiming threshold 66%. As soon as the target in sight an weapon range has meets those conditions (you can hit it in the eyes for with at least 66% accuracy) you character will open fire - aimed shoot to the eyes.
I'll update the original post to clarify these uncertainties.

[Desert Mutt]

Imagine an army of proxy alts camping HQ mine on "aggro shoot all on sight". Mabus' dream! Or just control many characters at once, put them on psycho-aggro-kill-all-non-my-proxy-alts and capture town alone with many many many pvp sniper powerbuilds with 10 PE and sniper rifles, someone is entering town = dead in 1 second. The only thing that will stop them is other guy with even more psychotic-robot-snipers who shoot everything in thier FoV and entering town at the same time.

You can do the same with mercenaries.
How it differs from what is going on now? The only difference is that you have to have a human clicking attack button. If you stumble on army of snipers you will die anyway it doesn't matter if they shoot on sentry mode or someone clicks a button.
In regards of many characters at once i though you will get banned for using multiple clients at the same time. No?

[RavenousRat]

I'm not merc-leader, but I doubt there're 50 FoV 95% in the eyes 85% critical hit +better critical perk mercs who shoots on max distance with sniper rifle and not stupidly running for enemy and don't listen for commands like idiots +respawn +you need to pay caps each time they die to buy new one.
A player on auto-shoot mode is a stationary turret that kills everything on sight, don't move and in case of death respawns. You need only to have many IPs, and talk to your alts from time to time like Mabus did in VC. You can create a gang with members:
Desert Mutt#1
Desert Mutt#2
Desert Mutt#3
Desert Mutt#4
Desert Mutt#5
Desert Mutt#6
Desert Mutt#7
etc.
(names can vary)

And go TC with them.

Edit:
Ok, if you don't like proxy, then you and your friends (5-10 people) can just leave their characters on a mine on auto-shoot mode while going to sleep, and then loot... em... primitive tools and sledgehammers! Because if someone will enter a mine, he'll be bursted by your BG friend and get alot shots in the eyes/head from other friends and will appear dead already.

[Desert Mutt]

So, I guess, the core problem here is army of alts, and it gets worse when you have more user-friendly interface (as it makes much more easier to manage that army).
On other hand i don't see why having alts is a problem. If guy has no life and decided to level up 20 snipers to lvl21 then it's his choice. However i do understand that this can be abused by large factions as well as they can powerlevel more character more quickly.
So what is required is solution for alt characters problem and i don't want to have it solved via 'crippling game mechanics and making user interface user-unfriendly'.
Taking into account that current system works well/user friendly for Turn Based: Imagine if there were no RT combat in TC, but only Turn Based combat present. It would be possible to do the same army of alt snipers with high PE and sequence to kill everyone who enters the city, and it can be done by one guy as well (as he has to aim and shoot only with one character to start combat, then he has plenty of time to switch to other alts and continue shooting until everyone dies etc.).

[Desert Mutt]

Edit:
Ok, if you don't like proxy, then you and your friends (5-10 people) can just leave their characters on a mine on auto-shoot mode while going to sleep.

And then wake up and see their characters standing in spawn tent... as you can take your friends, sneak and go with aggressive sentry mode on them, probably send couple blue suites as cannon fodder first to waste campers action points on killing blue suites.   So now we are talking different tactics for different situations...

[avv]

One problem with autoshoot is that it gives you npc reflexes, which are inhumanely fast. You run past a window and enter someone's fov for 0,1 second yet he shoots you.
Honestly targetting isn't that big deal, with some experience you will target just fine.
But sentry mode would be a good feature, it just musn't be faster than human. Perhaps 0,5 second delay for shooting would be good. In addition only enemy faction or red tagged chars would be auto-shot.

Aimed shots aren't a big deal, we got the hotkeys and learning them isn't that hard.

[Johnnybravo]

Sentry mode should be only tactics thing not ever being added in Fonline. It's simple as that, here you control just one character so you don't have to worry about managing others, and that way automatic shooting is just too much.

[Desert Mutt]

Perhaps 0,5 second delay for shooting would be good. In addition only enemy faction or red tagged chars would be auto-shot.

Or that can be based on character sequence - guy with higher sequence shoots first. This will be one step forward in reconciling Turn Based mode with Real Time mode.

[OskaRus]

Sentry mode could never work because of friend or foe recognition. Without name colorizing it is often hard to recognize allies for human. Sentry mode would result either in shooting everyone in sight or just shooting noone.

Displayed hit chance and critter info was solved long time ago by FOCD utilies and was banned as super uber mean cheating.

When you click attack some target - character continues to attack it until : seems good and would be great improvement.

Hotkeys: many (use stimpack on self, reload,.....) was in FOCD.

[Johnnybravo]

Some of this is already being promised anyway. But you would be surprised how people whined about it :d (eg. that seeing hit chance for selected called shot would help PKs :S).
I like the selection in tactics much more than what is in 2238 right now, and it also wouldn't be that goddamn buggy.
It'd be cool to scrap current hotkeys in favor of this, but still leave hotkey for menu and selections (say for example V would popup that menu, and 1-8 would select region, so seasoned player can still switch just as fast, but it does not look like lame hack).