I tried to use it, but next turn enemies could shoot twice with rifle. The cost of the shot should be 12 AP, so it looks like they have not lose APs.

@rotozey

some rifles can also take 10 or 11 AP´s to fire. So if an elite enemy has 30 AP or so its still possible. Ivan (in my game) has over 30 AP´s for sure.

But agreed, i haven´t noticed a great impact on enemy AP by flashbang grenades. If they do work they don´t draw enough AP to take effect. The only grenades that work for sure are the purely destructive ones. ;)

The flashbang hits with -10 energy, not direct AP loss. Depending on the energy the enemy has, he falls into one of the categories below (OutofBreath / Exhausted) with the respective movement and aim penalties. But you really don't know how much energy the AI has beforehand...

It would be interesting to tweak this value (GameRulesSettings.json) and see if one can get a better effect. Maybe a factor of 20? you could even try to flash own mercs.

  "Movement": {
      "APForChangeStance" : 2,
      "APForTurn" : 2,
      "EnergyMovementFactor" : 0.5,
      "EnergyHitFactor" : 0.25,
      "EnergyFlashbangFactor" : 10,
      "EnergyRestoreAPFactor" : 1,
      "EnergyMeleeAttack" : 0,
      "EnergyGrenadeThrow" : 0,
      "EnergyTresholdOutOfBreath" : 25,
    "EnergyTresholdExhausted" : 10,
    "EnergyAimPenaltyOutOfBreath" : 10,
    "EnergyAimPenaltyExhausted" : 25,
    "EnergyMovementPenaltyExhausted" : 1.0,

Shanga, OK, does it mean AP count is not depend on energy? Excepting a sutiation the energy value becomes less the Exhaused/OutOfBreath threshold?

Your total AP is a result of your Constitution and it's something you're "born" with. And yes, once you consume the energy below alert levels (either by walking, being flashed or being wounded), then you lose AP.

So AP count is VERY dependant on Energy. But it's not a liniar relation, it's a threshold relation.

It's a very nice system. Maybe not perfectly tweaked, but the logic is brilliant and makes energy  management very important. Once weight will come into play this will be even more critical.

Shanga, I may be wrong, but in JA2 AP count was depending on current energy value (and it was enough complex dependency). In my point it was much better.

The "brilliant" logic makes flashbang grenades useles. Of course a player always can throw two or more grenades to same place during a turn, but it is much more complex and risky thing, because the grenade throw cost is high.

I also think that its kind of weird, that a character, who´s near to death (your own mercs or the enemy) has the same amount of AP´s as he would have when he´s totally healthy. In JA2 it wasn´t that way.

I think this needs to be increased:

      "EnergyHitFactor" : 0.25,

You should lose way more energy when you get hit. 

@shanga

agreed...should be easy to fix.

yeah...having fun with this bug...

^^

i love to be petted^^...well, it is a bug... i´ll leave that now :)...

Edit: ...and forever...i don´t want to interfer with the forum system...btw. hey shanga... i hope you were running along with that joke....i´m not a bad or stupid guy (i think?)... didn´t mean to piss you or others off...just having some fun...

No, it's wrong way.

The game uses the parameter any time merc/enemy is hit with any attack - shot, melee, explosion.

I changed the value to 1 and enemies get knocked out after two hits.

But I played with it before last update.

What do you mean with that?

I think its right if this parameter is used for attack/shot/explosion at the same time....it just has to be adjusted to a balanced value... like 0,32/0,31...would be my feel... 

From 0.25 to 1 means you increased it by a x4 factor... of course the enemy gets knocked out in 2 hits... :))) Anyway, I am glad to hear it has such a prompt effect in game. Tells me the system is effective and only needs tuning.

Go between 0.30-0.50 range first, like Glettkin said. 

PS: Nice forum bug, Glettkin, it was funny... but oh well... let's not abuse it :)

I think he is asking for a separate parameter for each type of grenade. So flashbangs will cost a lot of energy while hitting 2x with bullets will not have the effect of loosing all energy points. 

The game lacks AP carryover from turn to turn. You can leg shot and drain all APs from an enemy you want, he will regain them next turn and shred you to pieces. Maybe it's possible to tweak a bit more the energy levels, but even unconscious, many of them seem to get back on feet and kick your arse severely

We are discussing flashbang grenades, as you could see, sir hacker :)

Can you explain? In Ja2 when did you carryover APs. Normally you get new APs every round. But some grenades should effect energy bar so high, that you become unconcious so you can't use your APs? Also in some situations you got -APs that were subtracted in the new round. Did you mean that?

I tried to get a good melee build :)

I thought developers did not change JA2 game rules, but I see now I was wrong.

In JA2 melee attacks decreases enemy's energy much more than other attack types.

Grenades' parameters are in weapons.json file. I already changed the energy loss for flashbang grenades :)

There are ExplosionType parameter that points how a grenade acts.

(if i remind  the system correctly, and don't mess with 1.13 changes).

In JA2, up to 5 APs could be carried over the next turn, AND negative values of APs were carried over too. So if you had -10AP and a 18AP "regen" at a new turn, you effectively had 8AP only.

In JAF, you can sap all APs from an opponent (lightning icon), by clicking "end turn", he has a new AP attribution and can do what he wants, so it seems useless unless you sap his APs during an interrupt.

APs should be able to go negative and impact next turn. This can be done differently, e.g. through the "lightning  icon"  status, which could reduce APs during a given time (number of turns).

Throwing flashbang grenades or shooting in the legs doesn't seem to impair enemy enough right now.

It is only vague in my mind but I think that you are right as I definetly remember negative APs for my mercs too, so they couldn't do anything. I mean this is such a huge deal when fighting, I cannot believe no one mentioned it before. It is neither in the feature request list. 

If an enemy is bleeding and near his death, he should not do slapstick and attack me and then die. There should be penalties and a correct calculation of APs and a unconscious state. As this is core gameplay, it should get into the game quickly as it is mainly code and no additional animation and stuff!?

Thank you Grim for pointing it out.

I think it is possible to tweak. But I did not try still :)

The problem is zero energy cost of shooting. The cost is zero :) I.e. mercs and enemies don't consume energy when shooting or punching. The energy is spending only on movement.

So... It works following way:

1. you knock out an enemy to unconscious state

2. next turn he gets maximal available AP number

3. his energy is still very low

4. so he can't run away, because movement consumes energy and he will get unconscious and fall down after a step or two

5. enemy can shoot you because shooting does not need energy

6. he has maximal AP so he can shoot as many as possible, but he gets an accuracy penalty

In my point these rules look .... unpolished.

@Rotozey

In your chain of events I would ask myself why in point 3. (which is still the next turn) he woke up from the unconscious state. This in JA2 needed at least 2-3 turns. Enemies could also bleed out in this stage. Other than that, we all agree that the game mechanics during hard battles are not polished enough.

@all
I wanted to make a comparison video between a cool JA2 battle and a JA:F battle. But never had the time. The battles are similar but JA2 is still more polished and has more tactical and other variants (e.g. animations) just looking at the core battle system. I think people complain in steam forums about "fights are the same or getting boring" because there are a few things missing or unpolished.

Especially for me  the moment where the bullet is fired behind the weapon or the missing small features while fighting (enemy moans when hit multiple times, bursts can be different from single shots regarding body impact,  impact has trillion of variants in JA2. Where in JA:F you only have one easy animation which does not show different impact scenarios.

Therefore I still can't believe that a pistol shot has the same impact on a body from 2 tiles away than a rifle shot with NATO 7.62mm bullets. All animations (and death animations) and sound files that JA2 had were cool adapted to the weapon/impact etc. -> they were more grown up or darker than JA:F.

For the space hulk ascension I saw this video where FC created so many cool moves and impact scenarios. Why not for JA:F? It would add so much cooolness. Hey and a game that feels cool from the first moment, (presumed bears pit will deliver an intro), the game will attract more gamers from sector 1. 

Yes, I moan about this all the time, because I still hope there will be some polishing regarding sound/interaction and animation. If not I have to adapt to the new game look&feel regarding this topic. Or not? Mostly you find feedback about these stuff in threads month ago. For some reason these remarks we're not seen as important. But now you can see they count. Because visual impact is connected to the actual state of the mercs which must be calculated in the described way.

Recent negative reviews on steam:
 

A turn based strategy shooter. The game seemed great at first, but is quite repetitive after the first hour or so.

The original JA2 were made with an engine much older with far more limiting views and yet the dialogue, gameplay and characters with it are full of life and options. This is a complete opposite

I'm just dissapointed that we are now in this state of defending the game as we know it will get better. But we don't know exactly when and how. There is a ton of work for FC and the modding crews out there. Of course there a positive reviews but these people are mostly backers or believers. Hope we will get a feature list to priorize as fast as possible so wee see more progress than what is already promised (shop system update, etc).

Archo

It is just my suggestion. I always see all unconsious enemies stand up when I end my turn.

No prob. But that is just not how it was in JA2. Also you forget the tactical advantage if you are confronted with 3 enemies. You throw grenades. With the rifle you could kill 1. With grenade (hopefully) all 3 are unconsious now you have 2 turns to kill them while they are weak. Just telling you what I saw happening in underground buildings often when you play JA2. After beeing unconsious, it is unrealistic to just stand up next time. As Grim stated in another thread, there should be AP penalties.

I have played with flashbang grenade params in Weapons.json, especially with "damage" parameter. But I did not get any positive results.

Flashbang grenades look broken for right now. Maybe it is a bug, because the game ignores "damage" parameter value. I hope FC will fix it. Or if grenades work as they planned, I hope they could change formulas in combat system to do grenades more useful.

Damage from a Flashbang? They are meant to STUN you, not dmg your HP... Use fragmentation grenades if you want damage. 

You haven't read a word of what I posted? Change

  "EnergyFlashbangFactor" : 10

To whatever you want. That's the stun "damage". It's in GameRulesSettings.

Rather than having the flashbang take away all your energy, I think a more reasonable approach might be to have it impact the sight and hearing ranges, as well as applying a significant penalty to aim over the next turn or two. 

That's actually a bloody nice idea. And do-able, too. This is definitely worth mentioning to Roman.

Enemies don't fall even with EnergyFlashbangFactor = 100 :)

Ok, I did some testing on my own IMP (I dropped a FB grenade on myself).

With FB factor at 50, you lose about 1/3 of your energy and become "Stunned" (no idea what that means, maybe a dev can explain). Maybe this where where the hearing/vision penalty should kick in.

It's true, it took 2 FB grenades to make an enemy fall/drop down. With just 1, he kept shooting me.

EDIT: More tests on own IMP: Success!

EnergyFlashbangFactor = 150 = INSTANT UNCONSCIOUS STATE!

Note: there is no special animation for "fainted" or "unconscious", sadly, so the enemy will look like he's just laying prone. You will get a message saying he's unconscious though and an icon on his name.

Shanga

It was too late, so I stopped my tests at 100 :)

This morning I tried 500 and of course enemy falls with just one grenade and they stay unconsious at least for three turns - after three turns I finished the test.

150 pretty much does it, imho.

Now all we need is:

1. An explanation of what "stunned" means and if its implies loss of hearing/visual 

2. A better fainting animation 

..maybe not the best example, but you get the idea.. :))

On a side note, energy regain depends on Action Points, on a 1:1 basis with default parameters.

Well, ok, it has some logic to use your remaining APs to breathe. However, the more APs you have, the more energy you can regain per turn, strange.

Moreover, APs are calculated on... coordination, not physique. Once again, it has some logic, as the more agile guy can move faster, but when talking about characters spending all their APs to regain energy, it becomes uncanny.

That explains partially how elites can stand up from unconscious easily, with their 30+ APs.

Actually if you watch my video, you'll notice you wake up with very low energy. The problem is indeed that you do wake up with full APs and the penalties from being Exhausted aren't enough to prevent you from fighting.

But do we want the game to be so hardcore?

Many of expirienced Arulco liberators want.

It could be an option like Iron Man in JA2:UB. In my point an attack should consume energy.

Yes, energy draws should also decrease the amount of Ap´s you have in the next turn. It was that way in JA2 and it WASNT the hardcore mode. If you do it right it´s just normal, that your soldiers can´t shoot as good as before after a flashbang granade has hit/ or after your throat has been slit/ or after you got shot in the head...I felt comfortable with my mercs not beeing to do ultimate performance after e.g. getting hit in the head. 

edit: You have to be more lucky to win, if that Ap draw would occure. So to re-balance the whole thing, just make the enemies weaker (in mass or CTH), and its solved.

The 150 setting of the Flashbang looks fine to me with the two turns K.O. Is it fair? Not at all, but that's why you shouldn't go alone to war and spread out more.

I also like the EnergyHitFactor 1.0, so there is more stopping power to weapons. Before, anyone was still running too quickly around with bleeding status and all. Makes all these energy consumables more useful to bring along.

It's nice that the game already offers plenty settings to tweak for fun. Maybe more, like an Energy affecting AP setting, will come in the future.

Maybe get an energy mechanism more like JA2 is a good way, but when I read this thread I thought, is anybody agree JA2 did everything perfectely well and nothing can be improved?

If that was true there wasn't be any mods for JA2, I mean those that change it. :-)

I think there's no point to search solution through energy when direct AP effects would be much more simple to tune.

For sure energy setup could be changed so shooting use much more energy and then flashbang grenades stop look pointless in most cases. But there would be a side effect to generate much more energy usage for mercenaries and break what's a good fluidity. Have too many pause turns to manage a high energy consuming would break gameplay fluidity.

That's why looking for the solution of Flashbang in energy isn't necessarilly the best solution. It's difficult to see for JA2 fans that played it a lot. But that's why I think Flashbang should have a direct effect on AP, not on energy. AP effect could provide a clear immediate effect at next turn for Flashbang, and would let energy gameplay tuning consider the gameplay fluidity.

For this side subject of energy, I think the fluidity is important, but perhaps some tuning could work:
- Have multi dose items for energy restore, and perhaps with higher energy amount restore. Those items use too much space in mercenary inventory to really change anything.
- Shooting could use a bit more energy.
- Guard could use a little bit of energy.
- Crouch moving and prone moving could use a bit less energy.
- Energy restore per AP not used should use a max, so over it this restores nothing. It could be a percentage or an absolute value.

About the JA2 mechanism not in JAF, that is health level/injuty affects AP (through energy). I don't know, it is generating an escalation effect. Current situation is already enough interesting ie servere injury requires keep in back mercenary and play him with more caution. That JA2 mechanism would just add not use him much anymore duriong the combat, it just increases the effect of get hurt, and for me it's against gameplay fluidity.

For the complex relationship, not describe here, between energy and AP in JA2, I wonder, could be one of those elements that make I feel the JA2 combats too heavy, too slow paced, with lacking too much of fluidity. I feel JAF made a shift on that and will never be JA2, so it's better keep that JAF focus on gameplay pace and fluidity.