I nominate Obifett for convincing the village to kill the mafia before running away.
Running away would've been a victory for us.
I also blew a hole in the side of the building, stormed in, and found the homing device. And this was all with one HP, after being blown up by a grenade and dodging the vote like 3 days in a row.
Yeah, trust (or whoever is on the scanners). As long it's not Obi 'lets retreat so my character is in the next game' isn't it. Because seriously, distracting the village for multiple days?
Narration will have to wait a couple weeks. Why? Well, more on that later.
My thoughts:
1. The Map
This is a modified, lowish-res version of a map I bought on DriveThruRPG. I cleared out some of the tiles to make more walkable area, and cropped some of the furniture to make it more obvious what was walkable, and what wasn't. I don't know if I did enough. Ebum pointed out I should have added a car to the upper-left quadrant, which is a solid point, the northwest was absolutely too boring.
There were also too many clarification questions about what was walkable and what wasn't, which doors were open and which weren't, etc. When I say "too many", I don't mean that you guys shouldn't have been asking. I mean that you shouldn't have needed to ask. I fell down on the job, there. I should have put more time into cropping terrain, modifying paths, and coming up with an intuitive legend to apply for information like "is this door open". In the future, I'm going to design the maps myself, OR put more time into modifying the ones I find, OR if anyone is so inclined, they can produce (a) map(s) for XCOM's usage.
2. Line of Sight
Hooooooly shit. I need to make a series of explicit illustrations for this fucking mechanic, or possibly come up with a Fog of War effect that's easy to shape and apply quickly in GIMP. There was a lot of confusion on this one, and that's on me.
3. Comms Jamming
A few things went wrong here.
-The mafia each got sorted into different squads, and so were very rarely near each other. This wasn't by design, though. When I RNG'd everything at the start of the game, the squad assignments and loyalty assignments were completely independent of one another. It just happened that no two mafia shared a squad, which based on some quick and dirty mental math, was actually an edge case in terms of probability. I had failed to consider the impact such a scenario might have on the Comms mechanic.
-The mafia failed to make plans on Day 0, while Comms were open. This really hindered them -- so much, in fact, that I gave them a one-time indulgence to break radio silence and quickly divvy up responsibility for the seven sectoids they shared.
-Trust struck motherfucking gold catching that conversation about the grenade. Admittedly, that's the sort of thing the recon devices were intended to do. But it also just so happened that everyone moved in such a way that Iron Weasel was the only one who could possibly have been responsible for the explosion, which fucked the sympathizers up in a big way.
Ultimately, I think Comms Jamming could be a good once-in-a-while mechanic. But it should not have been present for this first outing.
4. Tactical Choices
The village really fucked itself by overdoing it with the overwatch orders. We constantly had people overwatching in positions where they were never, in a million years, going to sight an alien in motion. In the end, because the village was spread out to the edge of the map, they couldn't really concentrate the firepower they needed to overcome the sectoid's superior weaponry and once-per-day instakill.
Meanwhile, the mafia was doing much the same thing with the sectoids. There was a lot of overwatching going on in the kitchen, even when there were good shots to be taken.
If you go back and listen to the audio logs, you can tell how rarely anyone actually opened fire over the course of the game, versus how many calls of "Overwatch, aye aye" there are. I think this is a result of the actual computer game, where constant overwatch is often the best strategy.
I had actually somewhat foreseen this possibility, but I thought the "be a badass" win condition would be sufficient to deter it. It was not. I should have made a more explicit XP incentive for kills, etc.
5. Whither Treachery?
There was zero friendly fire, with the exception of the time the mafia Mind Fray'd Egos and he panic-fired at Turanos. This surprised me, because the golden rule in Phalla has always been to trust kime backstab. Were people just being cautious, or...? I don't know. I didn't say anything mid-game, because I didn't want to influence the players' thinking on this issue.
6. Random Balance Changes
Grenades should be thrown 5 tiles instead of 4. Sectoids should have 70 Aim, not 75. There (maybe) should have been more grenades.
Also, players should have been allowed to move in one fluid ten-tile dash, rather than being required to make two five-tile jaunts. This quirk led to a lot of invalid orders. In fairness, it was intended to help carry out orders to as great an extent as possible, in that a player wouldn't get tossed back 10 tiles because their destination was already occupied, but would only get sent back to the end of their first move. In reality, it did more harm than good. I think in the future, I'd include "Dash" as a first-action option, so the player could run all 10 tiles, but still have the option to Move-Move if they wanted to skirt around (or even intentionally draw) Overwatch fire.
7. "First Come, First Serve"
I like it. But I realize some didn't. I guess I'd just like to see more discussion on this, what might be a better way to handle it, etc.
Next post: Future Plans
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ObiFettUse the ForceAs You WishRegistered Userregular
There was zero friendly fire, with the exception of the time the mafia Mind Fray'd Egos and he panic-fired at Turanos. This surprised me, because the golden rule in Phalla has always been to trust kime backstab. Were people just being cautious, or...? I don't know. I didn't say anything mid-game, because I didn't want to influence the players' thinking on this issue.
you have not been paying attention to Blarney games and the current meta ;-)
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Iron WeaselDillon!You son of a bitch!Registered Userregular
That is to say that Trust picked up the only mafia conversation that happened all game.
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The AnonymousUh, uh, uhhhhhh...Uh, uh.Registered Userregular
Ultimately, I think Comms Jamming could be a good once-in-a-while mechanic. But it should not have been present for this first outing.
I think it worked well against the villagers, forcing chains of PMs, which could have let the mafia play telephone with orders and cause havok. But the core idea of phalla is the informed minority, which means the mafia were basically 5 aligned SKers like that.
7. "First Come, First Serve"
Were you using macros to automate the orders? Because honestly, the huuuge penalty for invalid orders is my single biggest issue with the tactical side of the game. This only exacerbated it, since you needed everyone to actually respond to avoid standing around twiddling your thumbs. It also made overwatch and hunker down pretty worthless, unless you were going to not even try to coordinate.
vertroueI am FemaleTotes Not a SithRegistered Userregular
O.o
Blood and Fire
From the Desk of Darth Vertroue Diplomat to the USA.
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Sir FabulousMalevolent Squid GodRegistered Userregular
Hello everyone:
I don't have a whole lot to say. Gandalf was the mastermind here and he came up with the entire system, which was awesome despite its flaws.
I played the role of monitoring votes and PMs, including garbling the PMs targeted by the comms scanners. Just helping out so Gandalf didn't go completely insane.
It's worth mentioning that Gandalf put two scanners in the game, and the reason was so that both holders of the scanner would believe that the conversation was coming from their area.
On the night Trust targeted IW and TA, Shalmelo targeted a sectoid, and so we hoped that maybe that would cause some confusion.
Alas.
Also shalmelo, what were you hoping to discover by targeting the bathroom with the scanner on night 1?
Obi and Sir Fab already know this, but here's the plan: Operation Devil's Moon was the start of a (hopefully!) long-term XCOM-themed CYOA. I'm hammering out some mechanics and numbers for it as we speak. Generally speaking, it will be structured with one thread for the base-building/Geoscape elements of the game, and intermittent battle threads for the individual missions. You'll be able to register one soldier at a time at first, then (depending on how things play out) may become entitled to multiple slots, so that you can build up different characters.
I'm aiming for a fusion of the new and old games. Cover will still be a mechanic, like the new one, but certain Geoscape mechanics may be more old-school -- and maybe you'll see some, uh, old friends. :-D
As I said, the numbers and exact mechanics are still being hammered out. Even after that's done and the game has started, it will constantly be "in beta", so balance patching of the systems will be a thing.
Most importantly, I'm gonna ditch the Phalla elements of hidden traitors and voting. At least, for a while. There may eventually be occasional Phalla-like missions. First, though, the battle system needs tinkering apart from such complicating factors. And I think orders-processing will be a somewhat more relaxed affair without the expectations placed upon it by the Phalla mindset, which will allow me to run a mission without feeling like I have to devote everything to it -- after all, if the battle thread isn't taking up a precious Phalla slot, then it's not such a problem if the mission runs long, or if we have a 48-hour day becomes I'm busy one night.
Instead of having traitors, the alien forces each mission will be controlled by a volunteer called The Adversary, who will receive XP in compensation (and more XP depending on their performance, to incentivize ruthless alien behavior). This volunteer need not be the same person each mission -- in fact, it's almost certain they won't be. The Adversary will be allowed to construct their forces for the mission based on a point-build system, similar to the multiplayer in Enemy Unknown. Larger UFOs and Terror Missions will have a higher point allotment, while crashes and smaller UFOs will be more reserved.
As a start, everyone who participated in this game will receive 10 XP.
Those who survived will receive an additional 10 XP -- and, at the risk of favoritism, I'm going to give the sympathizers each a bonus 10 XP as though they had survived, in exchange for my mechanics kinda fucking them over on this outing.
Village players (alive or dead) get an additional 10 XP for completing their primary victory condition.
And finally, the player who completed the tertiary victory condition will receive 10 XP. When I started this post, it seemed like a race between Obi and Trust?
There was zero friendly fire, with the exception of the time the mafia Mind Fray'd Egos and he panic-fired at Turanos.
Oh thank God, for a few days I thought I had given myself away by somehow accidently firing on him the one night I selected overwatch instead of hunker down.
Ultimately, I think Comms Jamming could be a good once-in-a-while mechanic. But it should not have been present for this first outing.
I think it worked well against the villagers, forcing chains of PMs, which could have let the mafia play telephone with orders and cause havok. But the core idea of phalla is the informed minority, which means the mafia were basically 5 aligned SKers like that.
7. "First Come, First Serve"
Were you using macros to automate the orders? Because honestly, the huuuge penalty for invalid orders is my single biggest issue with the tactical side of the game. This only exacerbated it, since you needed everyone to actually respond to avoid standing around twiddling your thumbs. It also made overwatch and hunker down pretty worthless, unless you were going to not even try to coordinate.
Wasn't using macros, but I didn't want to put myself in the position of interpreting orders, because I was afraid I'd get too subjective. That's why, for those of you who sent in orders like "Fire --> Nearest sectoid", I PM'd and asked you to give the name of the sectoid you were targeting. Otherwise, by the time we got to your turn, that sectoid might have moved away and another one moved closer, then I'd have to interpret your order on the fly, which didn't seem fair to either side.
The other options for order-of-actions are:
1. A fixed order, like "Aliens --> players in order of sign-up", which is less interesting and variable than what we did.
2. A randomized order each turn, rolling initiative basically. Could work, but puts less agency in the hands of the players.
I really want to keep the first come, first serve mechanic. But the invalid orders problem is a big one. I considered changing it to, "if your orders are invalid, I'll PM you and you can submit new ones". The problem is, sometimes it doesn't become clear that an order will be invalid until processing is underway -- someone moves into your spot mid-round, for example.
I absolutely agree with Spoit, this was a huge thing, and a bad thing. I don't know quite how to fix it yet, though.
Alignment isn't in the OP - was it friendly fire, or mafia targeting?
That was me. If TA had lived, we'd have gotten Mikey and Obi too!
Now here are some ramblings:
First off: thanks to Gandalf for running this game, which was pretty ambitious and had a lot of good things going for it. In particular, the audiologs were a lovely touch and I think the scanner was a cool idea. It seemed super-powerful in this game, but I wonder if that might not simply be the effect of good luck. Also, even if my convo hadn't been intercepted I think I still would have been voted out on Day 2 because All Signs Pointed to Weasely Treachery, even without the incriminating voice log.
I find Mill's comments interesting because I was also thinking that this game actually suffered for being a Phalla. I think there's a solid PvP-PbP game here, and I think some of the problems arose from trying to shoehorn it into the Phalla framework. (edit - I see that Gandalf has already commented on this)
Specifically, the enormous limitations placed on the mafia's communications all but ensured that we were doomed from the start. There were some convoluted rules for how we could communicate with one another - any mafia within 3 squares of a Sectoid could use telepathy to communicate in total secrecy with any other mafia who were also within 3 squares of a Sectoid. Unfortunately, the traitors could trigger Alien Overwatch and vice-versa, which made getting close both dangerous and counter-productive. Since we couldn't talk to each other, we couldn't work together to leave openings in the Sectoid defenses that we could exploit to get close. Of course, if we'd been able to talk to each other, we wouldn't have had to do that in the first place :P
It also felt weird all game to have an 'alien' device that was more harmful to us than to X-Com. By Day 4 or so, Gandalf even nonchalantly pointed out that the Sectoids could destroy the Jammer themselves(!!!).
We had 7 Sectoids to split among 4 mafia, and since no one wanted to do that bit of fuzzy math, we had to ask Gandalf for an extension on Day 1 so that we could actually play the game. I unilaterally distributed the Sectoids, and aside from posting group kill targets that was all we had to say to one another (except of course for my infamous conversation with TA!)*. The cross-map communication you guys worried about never happened. As a result, any group of two or more X-Com soldiers who chose to PM one another were de facto more organized and coordinated than the entire mafia. Maybe it's just sour grapes talking, but that doesn't feel right to me.
As for us not taking shots, I think a lot of that was due to the issues that Gandalf has already identified regarding LoS. We ended up asking Gandalf to identify valid Group Kill targets when he sent us map updates just so we wouldn't waste them. Buddha and Megafrost also noted that X-Com was being a bit timid and were hoping to pick people off as they filtered in a few at a time. X-Com probably could have eliminated the invaders if they'd attacked with more determination and in greater numbers.
Regarding Treachery: I'm not surprised that people weren't randomly murdering each other; in almost every case where that has happened it has been much more damaging to the village than to the mafia.
I actually like the First Come, First Serve thing, but I agree with Spoit that there needs to be some other result for erroneous orders beyond "you do nothing". Buddha made small errors counting squares two nights in a row which resulted in a Sectoid not moving, for example. Something as simple as moving someone as far as they could legally go and then stopping would be better. Someone already in your intended destination? You stop right next to them. That left you out in the open?
That's X-Com, baby.
*Ok, that's not entirely true: I violated everything sacred about Phalla and made a dead-guy post in the mafia PM thread to encourage Megafrost not to surrender and to fight on to the end.
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Yeah, at the bare minumum, fizzled orders should default to something like hunker down or overwatch, not doing nothing. Having your orders not go in is more then enough punishment without adding more on top of it. (And the even if you didn't want to let the mafia communicate other stuff normally, they should have been able to at least coordinate the sectoids). And if you're handling it manually anyway, ideally you'd allow 'fuzzy' orders, like IW mentioned, stopping in the previous square (from where you were coming from) if the target is occupied, or allowing orders like 'shoot the nearest (or at least any) enemy
I think I've said most of what I thought to Gandalf already, so I won't add to them. I do think there's something to the idea that some of these games being interesting enough on their own to NOT be Phallas. This is one, jdark's recent game was certainly one, though not up my alley. I'd still love to play MrT's Survivor simulation just as the game of Survivor (assuming he re-worked the formulas so it wasn't broken). I'm making my Amazing Race idea to be not a Phalla. So I'd gladly play in this once it's recalibrated as just the tactical game, though I'd like the comms jammer idea to be gone.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
I think I've said most of what I thought to Gandalf already, so I won't add to them. I do think there's something to the idea that some of these games being interesting enough on their own to NOT be Phallas. This is one, jdark's recent game was certainly one, though not up my alley. I'd still love to play MrT's Survivor simulation just as the game of Survivor (assuming he re-worked the formulas so it wasn't broken). I'm making my Amazing Race idea to be not a Phalla. So I'd gladly play in this once it's recalibrated as just the tactical game, though I'd like the comms jammer idea to be gone.
Regarding the Comms Jammer, I'm thinking it could be an option for The Adversary when they're constructing their forces from the point-build system, but at a fairly high cost to discourage their overuse. And even then, only in certain scenarios like Terror Missions and possibly Abductions -- it obviously wouldn't make sense for a crash-landed UFO to be packing one of those things "just in case".
The issue where it negatively impacted the mafia would be solved by the Adversary not needing to PM himself, similar to how the sectoids suddenly got a lot stronger this time when Megafrost was the sole remaining sympathizer.
Yeah, at the bare minumum, fizzled orders should default to something like hunker down or overwatch, not doing nothing. Having your orders not go in is more then enough punishment without adding more on top of it. (And the even if you didn't want to let the mafia communicate other stuff normally, they should have been able to at least coordinate the sectoids). And if you're handling it manually anyway, ideally you'd allow 'fuzzy' orders, like IW mentioned, stopping in the previous square (from where you were coming from) if the target is occupied, or allowing orders like 'shoot the nearest (or at least any) enemy
"Fuzzy" orders could be the way to do it, provided everyone understands that when there's a decision to be made (like, "which of the two equally long paths did you take to get here?"), the criteria for that decision = "haha, well let's make things interesting here."
so still wondering, what happened at the end? did the aliens get wiped out by the remaining players or was it just the last alien sympathizer being voted out?
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AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
edited October 2013
I am a comm jamming fan; I think messing with PM protocol is not a bad idea at all in a general sense as you guys have gotten really hidebound and formulaic about how these proceed. For one example, mafia proboards are pretty much the devil; they encourage inactivity by the mafia and relying on one guy to run things. Complicating communication is a good way to force people down different approaches and shake matters up.
That said, I was actually really enjoying watching this one have problems as the two phallas I've tried to run were headed into similarly-tricky territory and Mill provided great advice about the first that I applied to them, which let me dodge some similar pitfalls. Schadenfreude is a little unseemly, I guess, but guilty.
I don't think first-come orders are actually a bad thing, but I'd consider dividing people into classes with a fcfs hierarchy rather than putting all two dozen people on it. If we'd had assaults and whatnot to divvy up priorities among, then there would have slightly less dire urgency. In a way, the system encouraged the cautious approach we all took. I hate caution, but it felt so hard-coded in this one I didn't fight it that hard.
Spoit's point about default-to options is a good one. I know I personally felt cheated when I wanted to move 8 squares total, tried to go 6 in the first move, and got nothing.
I love the audio logs and the comm scanners to death and will probably try to adapt / steal the latter for the next Denizen Phalla, which is already in the concept phase!
The other big issue is that you chose a serious breach-and-clear setup and didn't give us a lot of tools that were much help for that. More grenades would definitely have helped. So would some sort of guard-from-fire mechanic.
Makmende Eastwood looks forward to stopping more lasers in the future, either way. Kenya represent!
Not a fan of first come, first serve. I think it can work as a limited mechanic, that happens once in awhile and only if the opening for getting orders in moves around to not screw over specific areas. As for this game, I don't think it worked because people on around when narration usually came up had an advantage over people who could not be on around that time.
A slight variation to the first come, first serve mechanic would be to have it on day one of a game to establish turn order. Then each day, the order shifts so that the person who went last goes first, first person goes second and so on and so forth until everyone has gone. This opens up the option for people to coordinate in thread, while not screwing over people in certain time zones. Only issue is the setup involving the adversary, since it's pretty much scout's honor on them not to read the thread. Granted this might cease to be an issue if the aliens always go last (it's probably fair to say schedules and people being inactive, will make village coordination less than optimal).
I feel like I'd have had more fun with this if I played the tactics game a bit more. I got myself into position, shot a dude and... just kind of chilled for the rest of the game. Part of that was probably comms jamming; I'm no good with strategy alone and for the last part of the game there was no one in range to tell me what to do.
Still, that's purely my fault and in no way a problem with the game. I still had a lot of fun, and I'm excited to see where it goes. Thanks for running it, Gandalf!
undergroundmonorail on
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I've got mixed feelings on the jammers. I think this forced us to be a bit more conservative with our actions. First, that means you have to wait to get orders in. Second, you end up worry about the mafia finding a way to sabotage your attempts. Third, we knew grenades were in play, so I and probably others were deathly afraid of regrouping and making a very tempting grenade target (perhaps, the mafia shouldn't have had access to grenades and the village made aware of this fact).
On the other hand, I do have to applaud efforts to force the mafia off the mafia proboard and actually posting in game. I know it's most effective for the mafia to be borderline inactive when they can get away with it. I think that this is overall terrible for the state of community because then there is little discussion and you get those bandwagons with lots of single word vote posts that many despise. Also this makes things rather boring, I or anyone else that tries to contribute to sniffing the mafia out based on hunches can only post our ideas and hunches so much and it's really frustrating when one isn't happy with their best guess and only a small percent of the village offer alternative ideas, support or criticisms of what's be said thus far.
Unfortunately, I think the jammers boned the mafia pretty badly.
Also not a good idea to count on the village to murder each other randomly with semi-vig powers as part of balance. Generally, this doesn't seem to work well in the village favor. Usually, it works out better for us to either run with coordinated hit squads that hit hard enough to kill one or two players (giving us some information without a painful body count or a spike where half the village suddenly explodes) or if we have enough vig kills going around, to just do other things. Short version, we've learned that dragging out the game is more favorable to the village.
Also note that the jammers killed the option of village hit squads as well. Limiting our options further, making trying to get orders in quickly for overwatch or moving when we're damn sure we can't get screwed or get bad placement preferable.
First off, thanks to Gandalf for running the game. I had fun, even if it felt a lot of the time like the phalla portion and the tactical portion weren't really operating hand in hand.
I actually like the first come first serve orders, if only because it pushed for something other than waiting until the last possible second to try and figure out what other people were doing. Probably was bad for the jammers to effect the sympathizers as well as the village, though. Just keeping the mafia from forming a proboard and therefore leaving them vulnerable to the scanners would have been enough.
As Sir Fab indicated, I also had a recon device. Mine wound up being useless for most of the game, though ( @Trust - you and I targeted the same people at least twice, which had me really confused)
Oh, and to answer your question, @Sir Fabulous - it was the first day, I didn't know yet that the mafia were going to be XCOM traitors, and I figured that the restroom was a good tactical spot for aliens to be hiding. So there. :P
Anyway, I look forward to running another edition of this in the future. Mercury Venkman is always down to fight some alien scum, even if he can't hit the broad side of a barn.
I only just noticed that the jamming device has coordinates on the map. Was there going to be a way that it could be disabled if a player got to it or something?
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I really enjoyed this, although I felt a little hampered by the time difference in the 'first come first served' orders.
Actually having a role that allowed me to make choices about how to provide direct sources of information to the village really gave me a kick to be more pro-active, although I struggled over how to bring the info out without getting whacked, since I've never had a role like this before.
Looking forward to Rk. Dack Janiels appearing in the next one...
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I also blew a hole in the side of the building, stormed in, and found the homing device. And this was all with one HP, after being blown up by a grenade and dodging the vote like 3 days in a row.
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And running through a door to find the scanner, right through a lot of heat. Not bad. Hell. I second, if only in the way of apology.
Why I fear the ocean.
Yeah, the badass race is basically Obi or Guy Running Scanner (Trust?).
Narration will have to wait a couple weeks. Why? Well, more on that later.
My thoughts:
1. The Map
This is a modified, lowish-res version of a map I bought on DriveThruRPG. I cleared out some of the tiles to make more walkable area, and cropped some of the furniture to make it more obvious what was walkable, and what wasn't. I don't know if I did enough. Ebum pointed out I should have added a car to the upper-left quadrant, which is a solid point, the northwest was absolutely too boring.
There were also too many clarification questions about what was walkable and what wasn't, which doors were open and which weren't, etc. When I say "too many", I don't mean that you guys shouldn't have been asking. I mean that you shouldn't have needed to ask. I fell down on the job, there. I should have put more time into cropping terrain, modifying paths, and coming up with an intuitive legend to apply for information like "is this door open". In the future, I'm going to design the maps myself, OR put more time into modifying the ones I find, OR if anyone is so inclined, they can produce (a) map(s) for XCOM's usage.
2. Line of Sight
Hooooooly shit. I need to make a series of explicit illustrations for this fucking mechanic, or possibly come up with a Fog of War effect that's easy to shape and apply quickly in GIMP. There was a lot of confusion on this one, and that's on me.
3. Comms Jamming
A few things went wrong here.
-The mafia each got sorted into different squads, and so were very rarely near each other. This wasn't by design, though. When I RNG'd everything at the start of the game, the squad assignments and loyalty assignments were completely independent of one another. It just happened that no two mafia shared a squad, which based on some quick and dirty mental math, was actually an edge case in terms of probability. I had failed to consider the impact such a scenario might have on the Comms mechanic.
-The mafia failed to make plans on Day 0, while Comms were open. This really hindered them -- so much, in fact, that I gave them a one-time indulgence to break radio silence and quickly divvy up responsibility for the seven sectoids they shared.
-Trust struck motherfucking gold catching that conversation about the grenade. Admittedly, that's the sort of thing the recon devices were intended to do. But it also just so happened that everyone moved in such a way that Iron Weasel was the only one who could possibly have been responsible for the explosion, which fucked the sympathizers up in a big way.
Ultimately, I think Comms Jamming could be a good once-in-a-while mechanic. But it should not have been present for this first outing.
4. Tactical Choices
The village really fucked itself by overdoing it with the overwatch orders. We constantly had people overwatching in positions where they were never, in a million years, going to sight an alien in motion. In the end, because the village was spread out to the edge of the map, they couldn't really concentrate the firepower they needed to overcome the sectoid's superior weaponry and once-per-day instakill.
Meanwhile, the mafia was doing much the same thing with the sectoids. There was a lot of overwatching going on in the kitchen, even when there were good shots to be taken.
If you go back and listen to the audio logs, you can tell how rarely anyone actually opened fire over the course of the game, versus how many calls of "Overwatch, aye aye" there are. I think this is a result of the actual computer game, where constant overwatch is often the best strategy.
I had actually somewhat foreseen this possibility, but I thought the "be a badass" win condition would be sufficient to deter it. It was not. I should have made a more explicit XP incentive for kills, etc.
5. Whither Treachery?
There was zero friendly fire, with the exception of the time the mafia Mind Fray'd Egos and he panic-fired at Turanos. This surprised me, because the golden rule in Phalla has always been to trust kime backstab. Were people just being cautious, or...? I don't know. I didn't say anything mid-game, because I didn't want to influence the players' thinking on this issue.
6. Random Balance Changes
Grenades should be thrown 5 tiles instead of 4. Sectoids should have 70 Aim, not 75. There (maybe) should have been more grenades.
Also, players should have been allowed to move in one fluid ten-tile dash, rather than being required to make two five-tile jaunts. This quirk led to a lot of invalid orders. In fairness, it was intended to help carry out orders to as great an extent as possible, in that a player wouldn't get tossed back 10 tiles because their destination was already occupied, but would only get sent back to the end of their first move. In reality, it did more harm than good. I think in the future, I'd include "Dash" as a first-action option, so the player could run all 10 tiles, but still have the option to Move-Move if they wanted to skirt around (or even intentionally draw) Overwatch fire.
7. "First Come, First Serve"
I like it. But I realize some didn't. I guess I'd just like to see more discussion on this, what might be a better way to handle it, etc.
Next post: Future Plans
you have not been paying attention to Blarney games and the current meta ;-)
The Division, Warframe (XB1)
GT: Tanith 6227
Were you using macros to automate the orders? Because honestly, the huuuge penalty for invalid orders is my single biggest issue with the tactical side of the game. This only exacerbated it, since you needed everyone to actually respond to avoid standing around twiddling your thumbs. It also made overwatch and hunker down pretty worthless, unless you were going to not even try to coordinate.
From the Desk of Darth Vertroue Diplomat to the USA.
I don't have a whole lot to say. Gandalf was the mastermind here and he came up with the entire system, which was awesome despite its flaws.
I played the role of monitoring votes and PMs, including garbling the PMs targeted by the comms scanners. Just helping out so Gandalf didn't go completely insane.
It's worth mentioning that Gandalf put two scanners in the game, and the reason was so that both holders of the scanner would believe that the conversation was coming from their area.
On the night Trust targeted IW and TA, Shalmelo targeted a sectoid, and so we hoped that maybe that would cause some confusion.
Alas.
Also shalmelo, what were you hoping to discover by targeting the bathroom with the scanner on night 1?
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Obi and Sir Fab already know this, but here's the plan: Operation Devil's Moon was the start of a (hopefully!) long-term XCOM-themed CYOA. I'm hammering out some mechanics and numbers for it as we speak. Generally speaking, it will be structured with one thread for the base-building/Geoscape elements of the game, and intermittent battle threads for the individual missions. You'll be able to register one soldier at a time at first, then (depending on how things play out) may become entitled to multiple slots, so that you can build up different characters.
I'm aiming for a fusion of the new and old games. Cover will still be a mechanic, like the new one, but certain Geoscape mechanics may be more old-school -- and maybe you'll see some, uh, old friends. :-D
As I said, the numbers and exact mechanics are still being hammered out. Even after that's done and the game has started, it will constantly be "in beta", so balance patching of the systems will be a thing.
Most importantly, I'm gonna ditch the Phalla elements of hidden traitors and voting. At least, for a while. There may eventually be occasional Phalla-like missions. First, though, the battle system needs tinkering apart from such complicating factors. And I think orders-processing will be a somewhat more relaxed affair without the expectations placed upon it by the Phalla mindset, which will allow me to run a mission without feeling like I have to devote everything to it -- after all, if the battle thread isn't taking up a precious Phalla slot, then it's not such a problem if the mission runs long, or if we have a 48-hour day becomes I'm busy one night.
Instead of having traitors, the alien forces each mission will be controlled by a volunteer called The Adversary, who will receive XP in compensation (and more XP depending on their performance, to incentivize ruthless alien behavior). This volunteer need not be the same person each mission -- in fact, it's almost certain they won't be. The Adversary will be allowed to construct their forces for the mission based on a point-build system, similar to the multiplayer in Enemy Unknown. Larger UFOs and Terror Missions will have a higher point allotment, while crashes and smaller UFOs will be more reserved.
As a start, everyone who participated in this game will receive 10 XP.
Those who survived will receive an additional 10 XP -- and, at the risk of favoritism, I'm going to give the sympathizers each a bonus 10 XP as though they had survived, in exchange for my mechanics kinda fucking them over on this outing.
Village players (alive or dead) get an additional 10 XP for completing their primary victory condition.
@Spoit gets 5 XP for killing Felix.
And finally, the player who completed the tertiary victory condition will receive 10 XP. When I started this post, it seemed like a race between Obi and Trust?
But seriously, I'd suggest talking to @mrblarney about automation, if you didn't already have it read the orders directly off the google form
Oh thank God, for a few days I thought I had given myself away by somehow accidently firing on him the one night I selected overwatch instead of hunker down.
Wasn't using macros, but I didn't want to put myself in the position of interpreting orders, because I was afraid I'd get too subjective. That's why, for those of you who sent in orders like "Fire --> Nearest sectoid", I PM'd and asked you to give the name of the sectoid you were targeting. Otherwise, by the time we got to your turn, that sectoid might have moved away and another one moved closer, then I'd have to interpret your order on the fly, which didn't seem fair to either side.
The other options for order-of-actions are:
1. A fixed order, like "Aliens --> players in order of sign-up", which is less interesting and variable than what we did.
2. A randomized order each turn, rolling initiative basically. Could work, but puts less agency in the hands of the players.
I really want to keep the first come, first serve mechanic. But the invalid orders problem is a big one. I considered changing it to, "if your orders are invalid, I'll PM you and you can submit new ones". The problem is, sometimes it doesn't become clear that an order will be invalid until processing is underway -- someone moves into your spot mid-round, for example.
I absolutely agree with Spoit, this was a huge thing, and a bad thing. I don't know quite how to fix it yet, though.
Yuuup. Felix. You killed him through the window, I think? Or did somebody else do that?
It's been a couple turns, I can't remember.
Now here are some ramblings:
First off: thanks to Gandalf for running this game, which was pretty ambitious and had a lot of good things going for it. In particular, the audiologs were a lovely touch and I think the scanner was a cool idea. It seemed super-powerful in this game, but I wonder if that might not simply be the effect of good luck. Also, even if my convo hadn't been intercepted I think I still would have been voted out on Day 2 because All Signs Pointed to Weasely Treachery, even without the incriminating voice log.
I find Mill's comments interesting because I was also thinking that this game actually suffered for being a Phalla. I think there's a solid PvP-PbP game here, and I think some of the problems arose from trying to shoehorn it into the Phalla framework. (edit - I see that Gandalf has already commented on this)
Specifically, the enormous limitations placed on the mafia's communications all but ensured that we were doomed from the start. There were some convoluted rules for how we could communicate with one another - any mafia within 3 squares of a Sectoid could use telepathy to communicate in total secrecy with any other mafia who were also within 3 squares of a Sectoid. Unfortunately, the traitors could trigger Alien Overwatch and vice-versa, which made getting close both dangerous and counter-productive. Since we couldn't talk to each other, we couldn't work together to leave openings in the Sectoid defenses that we could exploit to get close. Of course, if we'd been able to talk to each other, we wouldn't have had to do that in the first place :P
It also felt weird all game to have an 'alien' device that was more harmful to us than to X-Com. By Day 4 or so, Gandalf even nonchalantly pointed out that the Sectoids could destroy the Jammer themselves(!!!).
We had 7 Sectoids to split among 4 mafia, and since no one wanted to do that bit of fuzzy math, we had to ask Gandalf for an extension on Day 1 so that we could actually play the game. I unilaterally distributed the Sectoids, and aside from posting group kill targets that was all we had to say to one another (except of course for my infamous conversation with TA!)*. The cross-map communication you guys worried about never happened. As a result, any group of two or more X-Com soldiers who chose to PM one another were de facto more organized and coordinated than the entire mafia. Maybe it's just sour grapes talking, but that doesn't feel right to me.
As for us not taking shots, I think a lot of that was due to the issues that Gandalf has already identified regarding LoS. We ended up asking Gandalf to identify valid Group Kill targets when he sent us map updates just so we wouldn't waste them. Buddha and Megafrost also noted that X-Com was being a bit timid and were hoping to pick people off as they filtered in a few at a time. X-Com probably could have eliminated the invaders if they'd attacked with more determination and in greater numbers.
Regarding Treachery: I'm not surprised that people weren't randomly murdering each other; in almost every case where that has happened it has been much more damaging to the village than to the mafia.
I actually like the First Come, First Serve thing, but I agree with Spoit that there needs to be some other result for erroneous orders beyond "you do nothing". Buddha made small errors counting squares two nights in a row which resulted in a Sectoid not moving, for example. Something as simple as moving someone as far as they could legally go and then stopping would be better. Someone already in your intended destination? You stop right next to them. That left you out in the open?
That's X-Com, baby.
*Ok, that's not entirely true: I violated everything sacred about Phalla and made a dead-guy post in the mafia PM thread to encourage Megafrost not to surrender and to fight on to the end.
The Division, Warframe (XB1)
GT: Tanith 6227
time based mechanics as a rule are bad
Regarding the Comms Jammer, I'm thinking it could be an option for The Adversary when they're constructing their forces from the point-build system, but at a fairly high cost to discourage their overuse. And even then, only in certain scenarios like Terror Missions and possibly Abductions -- it obviously wouldn't make sense for a crash-landed UFO to be packing one of those things "just in case".
The issue where it negatively impacted the mafia would be solved by the Adversary not needing to PM himself, similar to how the sectoids suddenly got a lot stronger this time when Megafrost was the sole remaining sympathizer.
"Fuzzy" orders could be the way to do it, provided everyone understands that when there's a decision to be made (like, "which of the two equally long paths did you take to get here?"), the criteria for that decision = "haha, well let's make things interesting here."
That said, I was actually really enjoying watching this one have problems as the two phallas I've tried to run were headed into similarly-tricky territory and Mill provided great advice about the first that I applied to them, which let me dodge some similar pitfalls. Schadenfreude is a little unseemly, I guess, but guilty.
I don't think first-come orders are actually a bad thing, but I'd consider dividing people into classes with a fcfs hierarchy rather than putting all two dozen people on it. If we'd had assaults and whatnot to divvy up priorities among, then there would have slightly less dire urgency. In a way, the system encouraged the cautious approach we all took. I hate caution, but it felt so hard-coded in this one I didn't fight it that hard.
Spoit's point about default-to options is a good one. I know I personally felt cheated when I wanted to move 8 squares total, tried to go 6 in the first move, and got nothing.
I love the audio logs and the comm scanners to death and will probably try to adapt / steal the latter for the next Denizen Phalla, which is already in the concept phase!
The other big issue is that you chose a serious breach-and-clear setup and didn't give us a lot of tools that were much help for that. More grenades would definitely have helped. So would some sort of guard-from-fire mechanic.
Makmende Eastwood looks forward to stopping more lasers in the future, either way. Kenya represent!
A slight variation to the first come, first serve mechanic would be to have it on day one of a game to establish turn order. Then each day, the order shifts so that the person who went last goes first, first person goes second and so on and so forth until everyone has gone. This opens up the option for people to coordinate in thread, while not screwing over people in certain time zones. Only issue is the setup involving the adversary, since it's pretty much scout's honor on them not to read the thread. Granted this might cease to be an issue if the aliens always go last (it's probably fair to say schedules and people being inactive, will make village coordination less than optimal).
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Still, that's purely my fault and in no way a problem with the game. I still had a lot of fun, and I'm excited to see where it goes. Thanks for running it, Gandalf!
Friend Safari: Fighting - Machoke, Pancham, Riolu | In game name: Jessica
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I've got mixed feelings on the jammers. I think this forced us to be a bit more conservative with our actions. First, that means you have to wait to get orders in. Second, you end up worry about the mafia finding a way to sabotage your attempts. Third, we knew grenades were in play, so I and probably others were deathly afraid of regrouping and making a very tempting grenade target (perhaps, the mafia shouldn't have had access to grenades and the village made aware of this fact).
On the other hand, I do have to applaud efforts to force the mafia off the mafia proboard and actually posting in game. I know it's most effective for the mafia to be borderline inactive when they can get away with it. I think that this is overall terrible for the state of community because then there is little discussion and you get those bandwagons with lots of single word vote posts that many despise. Also this makes things rather boring, I or anyone else that tries to contribute to sniffing the mafia out based on hunches can only post our ideas and hunches so much and it's really frustrating when one isn't happy with their best guess and only a small percent of the village offer alternative ideas, support or criticisms of what's be said thus far.
Unfortunately, I think the jammers boned the mafia pretty badly.
Also not a good idea to count on the village to murder each other randomly with semi-vig powers as part of balance. Generally, this doesn't seem to work well in the village favor. Usually, it works out better for us to either run with coordinated hit squads that hit hard enough to kill one or two players (giving us some information without a painful body count or a spike where half the village suddenly explodes) or if we have enough vig kills going around, to just do other things. Short version, we've learned that dragging out the game is more favorable to the village.
Also note that the jammers killed the option of village hit squads as well. Limiting our options further, making trying to get orders in quickly for overwatch or moving when we're damn sure we can't get screwed or get bad placement preferable.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
I actually like the first come first serve orders, if only because it pushed for something other than waiting until the last possible second to try and figure out what other people were doing. Probably was bad for the jammers to effect the sympathizers as well as the village, though. Just keeping the mafia from forming a proboard and therefore leaving them vulnerable to the scanners would have been enough.
As Sir Fab indicated, I also had a recon device. Mine wound up being useless for most of the game, though ( @Trust - you and I targeted the same people at least twice, which had me really confused)
Oh, and to answer your question, @Sir Fabulous - it was the first day, I didn't know yet that the mafia were going to be XCOM traitors, and I figured that the restroom was a good tactical spot for aliens to be hiding. So there. :P
Anyway, I look forward to running another edition of this in the future. Mercury Venkman is always down to fight some alien scum, even if he can't hit the broad side of a barn.
Friend Safari: Fighting - Machoke, Pancham, Riolu | In game name: Jessica
Official Weather Gym Leader of the G+T Pokémon League. @me to try for the Climate Badge!
Actually having a role that allowed me to make choices about how to provide direct sources of information to the village really gave me a kick to be more pro-active, although I struggled over how to bring the info out without getting whacked, since I've never had a role like this before.
Looking forward to Rk. Dack Janiels appearing in the next one...