Idea how to change crits and mates

That could be the thing, actually. I've just played a game last weekend, and my Spitfire Rasail was downed by a single ARO from an HMG Q-Drone, because my dice landed with 15+ on the top. The same dice then rolled 3, 4 and 7 for ARM. Still thinking crits are okay :D

 

Xcom has a standard, simple, random number generator that polls a single number for a fixed outcome. That's why people hate it, not only doesn't it cheat like in other games (NPCs in Bioshock are hard coded to always miss their first shot, for instance) but the random number generation polls a type of dice roll that has a straight probability curve which makes them unpredictable.
There's a lot to unpack in the comparison.

(As a side note, Xcom2 actually cheats in favour of the player the more the player loses, it's like getting a +3 MOD on FtF rolls each time after one of your soldiers bite the dust.)

 

Afaik Xcom (the Firaxis one) is only semi random. It uses the entire seed (all numbers from 1-100) in a truely random Order, so no number can repeat itself until the new seed is started.
Xcom also usually has high or even 100% success chances that soften RNG as well as things that don't require rolls like Grenades, Supression, Smoke and Medkits.
Crits in XCOM are a seperate value that only applies after you hit and can vary by a lot depending on the weapon and Skills of a Soldier. In Infinity it works very different.

Infinity leaves a lot of things (healing stuff, making ARM Rolls, pushing Buttons etc) up to dice rolls and also uses true random where it is possible not to roll a 20 all game.
This leads to a lot more chances for extreme situations caused by RNG.

 

Not exactly. In fact, any sequence of computer generated random numbers is seeded, because the numbers are not really 'chosen randomly' like people roll dice. The whole sequence is calculated using some source of entropy. Usually it's the seed sequence, but there are hardware-based RNGs that use noise oscillations on the input as a source of entropy (which is kind of more random, but still not truly random). And anything calculated is obviously not random. That's why RNGs generate so called pseudo-random numbers. You can read more about that on Wikipedia, if you are interested.

XCOM is seeded too, this is to limit players' ability to cheat the game by save scumming (but there is an option to regenerate the seed called 'Save scum'). So unless someone can go back in time and check if they would roll a different number every time, the randomness in Infinity is no different (I mean that every action we take could be actually a part of some Greater Plan :D)

 

Not to delve too deeply into Xcom, but computer generated seeds tend to be more truly random than a dice - particularly the Chessex crap eveyone uses. Also, I've save scummed Xcom enough to say that re-seeding is preferable (I get pissed off when the seed forces me into a literally unsolvable situation, and when it doesn't I can instead mark down the random number seed sequence and plan my actions and none actions accordingly. Yes, I play on slightly higher difficulty than I should. )

 

Well, technically crappy dice are still more random than any PRNG algorythm-generated sequence, because the latter eventually repeats itself and crappy dice just have a random distribution biased towards certain numbers. But yeah, I would always choose a pseudo-randomly generated number that generates a normal distribution within 100000 outcomes over a die roll.

 

And this is purely subjective, as is the whole debate.

 

If distribution is the problem, you could just play with a deck of 20 cards labeled 1-20 instead of D20s and pull cards from it instead. This would give a more even distribution but would also be way more easy to game for better odds for yourself. Hell, make it a bluff game and let players choose their own cards.

The problem is any PRNG system simple enough to use in a tabletop game is that easy to game.

 

That "eventually" is usually after millions or billions of iterations, depending on the particular algorithm being used, which is well more random numbers than you're going to use in a single XCOM campaign.

 

Actually, Malifaux uses similar system. Although you don't exactly choose your cards there, but rather you have a deck which you use to pull your "dice rolls" blindly from, with cards being discarded until you run out of deck (then you reshuffle it and go through it again), but also you have a fixed "hand" with similar cards which you can use to replace draws you don't like (which isn't normally replenished during the game).

 

I love the Malifaux system, but I don't think it'd be appropriate for Infinity.

Just for the record, however, Malifaux doesn't replace cards when you cheat (in-game term), you add cards to your already revealed value. Crits also tend to be status or movement effects rather than insta-kills. Imagine if Breaker ammo didn't cause auto-fail BTS save on crit, but instead put your trooper in Isolated or if AP ammo didn't cause the same auto-cail ARM roll but instead permanently stripped the target's ARM value (and imagine if you could use a command token to add +6 to any one dice at any time during the game).

 

@Mahtamori
Yeah, I stand corrected.
For the record, I don't suggest that Infinity should use that system, I just find it curious that there's such system in use.

 

Yeah, I just added that bit about not approrpiate for Infinity as a disclaimer. Sometimes people get reactive when discussing core mechanics.

It would, however, be all sorts of "interesting" if Command Tokens could be used for the cheat mechanic instead of the current use cases, though... hmm... not sure if that'd benefit elite lists or screw them over.

 

The virtues and vices of Malifaux do not translate directly to Infinity, and shouldn't be either.

The crit system in Infinity is one of the few things about the game where your calculations go out of the window a bit. I have all the advantage, but there is a chance that I may just... lose.

I play a lot of games. A lot. Tabletop games, boardgames, etc. I am a big war nerd. I have read Napoleon's writings and I have sat up at 2am watching live-updates of shit going down in Syrian because it is fascinating (and horrible) to me. I love strategic and tactical consideration. If it wasn't for the fact that I hate being told what to do, I'd have joined the forces at 18 just to get more of that sweet, sweet tactical/strategic juice. It intrigues and grabs me like few things do. It's why I love this game so much.

And I think that the mark of true strategic and tactical excellence isn't the ability to take a bunch of variables and use them to concoct the ultimate plan, but rather the ability to adapt. The ability to, when things go to shit, keep your cool, reassess, shift the game-plan, try something else. And crits are important to Infinity for that very reason. Sometimes, you Swiss Guard Hacker catches a T2 rifle round in the face and drops, and the mark of a good tactician isn't that you know how to use a Swiss Guard Hacker, everyone knows how to do that, but how do you deal with losing them. What's the back-up plan, Jack?

And that's why I like the crit mechanic. The crit mechanic makes you a better player. When you get critted, that's when you get to really show what you can do.

 

You realise that this isn't a unique quality of a crit, right? That this has a chance of happening with a normal hit and that in most cases it is more likely to happen due to a normal hit than a crit? Literally the only cases where this is a unique feature of a crit is when either you're using a weapon with DAM equal to or lower than opposing ARM (after cover and AP ammo) or in rare circumstances where your trooper has BS 10 or BS 13 and the MODs get to -9 or -12 respectively - i.e. when crit is either the only thing you can roll or when crit is the only way to damage the target.

 

Well, technically there are more cases where crit is more likely to be productive than non-crit in terms of wounds. For example, having success range of 2 (one of them being crit), it is still more likely to wound with crit due to that other result also having to surpass save and is way more likely to be cancelled.

I'm bad at math, but I think array of cases when crit is more likely to be the cause of a wound is significantly broader that just examples you gave.

 

The array can be made easy to handle by accepting a very rough rule of thumb; if your burst is 1. So admittedly I was focusing a lot more on active turn model's perspective, though that highlights a different issue that's sort of outside the scope of the thread; what value is an ARO? (Or "Why is hiding so often more productive than shooting back?")

 

How much the game would change if ARO reduced burst to 2 instead... :O I'm not convinced it would be a great change, but would be an interesting one to try for a game or so.

 

Sooo sniper rifles firing at full burst in reactive ? How would you word this rule ? In reactive you get -1 Burst ? What happens then to linked HMG/Spitfires ?:D