AI and Game Mechanics Too Simple

[Hade]

I've played Invisible Inc now for about 15hrs and I have to say the guard AI and game mechanics itself are really quite bland. Hopefully some of the issues addressed here will be fixed in future updates before release because frankly I'm disappointed.

 

So a little background, I struggled initially with figuring out how to win consistently failing on day 2 in story mode until I unlocked new characters. Then I figured out the best character item + build order combination to make the game trivial.

 

My fundamental complaint is once you have the game figured out there is 0 challenge since the guard AI is so terrible at finding your agents that you only ever die if you move into an enemy, instead of the enemy finding you.

 

Using X-Com Impossible as an example, not only are there numerous enemies they actively hunt you down quickly and efficently, surronding you flanking you and breaking you cover etc.

 

For a game based on "stealth" to have enemies who literally run around in circle for 5 consequtive turns not knowing what to do is just ridiculous. The worst part is it takes only 8 rounds for overpowered abilities like Stealth III + Overload or Shock Trap III to recharge.

 

The "best" strategy when you're trapped is literally passively skip your turn and turtle until your cooldowns are up.

 

My suggestions for addressing these issues, which veteran players will have experienced are as follows:

 

Active Items, not weapons such have a per-round use limitation to avoid cool down cheesing. (Passively stalling and wasting time to bypass all challenges)

 

Camera / Sound alarm trips now are trivial, since it's many turns in future before any threat of guards arrives. To prevent "level zerging" which is a strategy that trivializes the game where you run through the whole level only removing / bypassing lethal threats and ignoring the alarm. 3 Guards with 0 Armor from the alarm raise is absolutely trivial, and grenades which are easily avoided is the only real threat.

 

An alternative solution is to make spawned guards scale (with armor + abilities). I honestly believe there should be a "time limit" to levels to make things actually interesting. For example, a 7th alarm spawns an unhackable killer drone with lethal AoE attack he'll spam at your location + a scanner to locate you.

 

A player should be carpet bombed and punished in this way by his Robot Overlords for stalling a 15 min level 45mins, as I have in the past waiting 10 turns for a cloak CD.

 

Guard AI should be changed in the following ways:

 

A guard which discovers an agent during "hunting" state will trigger other "hunting" agents to the same area.

 

Guards will attempt to contact downed guards and investigate said area accordingly.

 

Do you know how ridiculous it looks for what is supposed to be 4 "elite" guards hired by a mega rich corporation to stand in a circle around a room doing silly head dances in sequence? Well Invisible Inc knows and wants you to know as well.

 

Pretty much every turn which is supposed to have "tension" for the player is reduced to multiple guards "searching" a location which I clearly 100% could not be hiding in; since a colleague of his just did his silly head dance there 1 second ago and saw nothing.

 

During a single enemy turn, multiple guards should avoid scanning a room which another guard already scanned.

 

Overally, those were some damn amazing 15hrs of gaming before the game became trivial.

 

Most of my issues can be addressed with just harder level design in endless or a longer, well balanced story mode (the only challenge is getting 2x Cloak III or 1x Cloak III + Holo Overload in story mode)

 

But regardless of what happens, guards in the game really need an IQ boost.

 

It's just depressing playing door-peekaboo with supposably "elite guards".

 

 

[Seekar]

Are you playing on "Easy" or "Normal"?

[Hade]

Are you playing on "Easy" or "Normal"?

 

Ironman Normal, using Banks + Dr Xu and rushing Stealth III while picking up piercing / holociruit overload / Neural disrupter II and III on the way. If you havn't tried to already, try zerging the  map with Banks + Xu, with Xu on hacking duty.

 

Dr Xu's ability bypasses all Daemons, kills camera drones outright and disables combat / null drones for 4 turns.

[5thHorseman]

Ironman Normal, using Banks + Dr Xu and rushing Stealth III while picking up piercing / holociruit overload / Neural disrupter II and III on the way. If you havn't tried to already, try zerging the  map with Banks + Xu, with Xu on hacking duty.

Try running without Xu for more of a challenge.

[wwarnick]

Well, not all of us are turn-based strategy pros.  I myself am still on Easy mode.  The things you say make sense, though you say them a little nicer given that the game is still in early access, and I wouldn't be against them following your advice in a third difficulty that's even harder than normal.  But I'd rather Easy and Normal weren't that hard.

[Swi1ch]

I think a cleaner solution to cooldown cheesing is simple; the longer you spend on a level (turn-wise), the more the campaign map clock advances.

 

This also provides incentive and value to strategies that aim for securing the objective and escaping. Right now there is rarely any reason not to explore and exploit the whole map unless something really bad has happened, and I don't feel that's right. Maximizing profits from a mission should carry more risk than they currently do.  

[ScienceMachine]

I think a cleaner solution to cooldown cheesing is simple; the longer you spend on a level (turn-wise), the more the campaign map clock advances.

 

It wouldn't do much though, because if these missions were carried out in real time, they would be less than 30 minutes.

[HolyDeath]

I agree that enemies should try to "map" the area for intruders, meaning that they won't check same places (which is pretty stupid thing to do).

[Jessep]

This also provides incentive and value to strategies that aim for securing the objective and escaping. Right now there is rarely any reason not to explore and exploit the whole map unless something really bad has happened

 

That's a very common mechanic to reduce the RNG-ness of the levels.

 

XCOM and FTL use it as well. You are supposed to explore and grab everything you can. Let's say you would always rush to the next sector in FTL. You would have very bad odds against the last boss. Same in XCOM; If you had the option to only capture/eliminate the leader pod and leave you'd run out of materials and weapon parts quickly. Not to mention that your soldiers would be horribly underleveled at some point.

 

A drastic example is Path of Exile, a Diablo-like action RPG that features a crazy amount of RNG rolls! Still, the developers have competitive "races" and the most experienced players mostly win them. That's because the huge amount of RNG rolls begin to smoothe out after 60 to 90 minutes. A phenomenal weapon in the start area might give you a big level advantage early on but other players will find their super weapon later and begin to catch up.

 

If the best strategy was to rush every map and leave, RNG luck would become extremely important. You could find the prime mission goal in 2 turns, take down one guard, find 2 safes and leave. Barely a challenge and you might get higher rewards as if you stick around to loot all the things.

 

RNG is fun but only if it is shackled by certain game mechanics that smoothe the hard spikes.