Hi everyone, this month let's take look at shooting and how chance-to-hit is calculated.
A big part of the tactical sandbox I'm trying to build is letting you shoot physically persistent bullets anywhere you want. Not just at enemies or predetermined targets, but literally at any position on the battlefield.
Besides just being fun, this freedom makes shooting more interesting. It's no longer about just hitting a target. Things like fire superiority and suppression become just as important. For example, in this game there's no special "Suppression" action or ability. You just point and shoot, and bullets flying close to someone will apply suppression to them.
This enemy is hiding behind good cover, but you can shoot at the air above or next to them to apply suppression.
And with physical projectiles you have to be mindful of the background. If a bullet misses its target or a rocket veers off course, it will keep flying until it hits something. As the great Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino) said in the movie HEAT: "Get clean shots. Watch your background!"
The poor Martian civilian workers are always catching strays.
Chance-to-Hit
That said, this is still a turn-based strategy game. So chance-to-hit is calculated using dice. However, it's done in a way that reflects the physics of the tactical sandbox.
When aiming your gun, the game generates 100 trajectories from the barrel tip toward the target's center of mass, forming a cone. The diameter of the cone is based on various factors including the shooter's skill. So when the game shows you have a 49% chance-to-hit, that means 49 out of the 100 trajectories are intersecting the target's hitbox.
The cone as shown in debug mode. The idea is to combine dice with physics-based ballistics.
Next, when you pull the trigger, the game rolls a D100 die and picks one of the trajectories for the bullet to follow. For example, with a 49% shot, if you roll 49 or lower the game will choose a trajectory that hits the target, while rolling 50 or higher will result in a miss.
Finally, in the case of burst or auto-fire, for most guns the game also rolls "recoil dice" for every subsequent bullet in the shot. Each recoil die can produce a positive or negative value depending on the shooter's skill. This is added to the prior bullet's value and a trajectory is chosen based on the cumulative total. The idea is that the soldier is rolling dice to try and control the recoil.
The battle log shows the first 4 bullets missed, but the last 2 hit as the shooter fought the recoil to bring the spray back on target.
Realistic Weapons
What I love about this whole system (shoot anywhere + persistent bullets + dice + physics) is how guns naturally take on their real-life roles. For example, the LMG is excellent for suppression not because of some special flag or ability, but because of its high fire-rate and large magazine. And the system doesn't arbitrarily limit your tactical options. There's nothing stopping you from using other guns for suppression too -- it'll just take more shots to pin an enemy down.
Another example is the shotgun. It doesn't need recoil dice because it fires all bullets at once (buckshot). So each bullet rolls its own D100. This is a big deal because rolling many independent dice means statistically there's a higher chance that at least one bullet will hit. In other words, similar logic to real-life.
The shottie is great for taking down drones, which are small and hard to hit but take just one bullet to bring down.
Well that's it for this dev log. I look forward to your thoughts and questions in the comments!
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-Yuji
Prior dev-logs: