X-COM2 is the reference – you start the fight and you don’t know what you’re going to get: the land, objects and enemies are all random. Since both X-COM2 and D:OS2 are the same type of game, I think they could learn from each other.
Combat randomisation of X-COM2’s scale could pose a balancing nightmare this late is the game’s development, which is why I’m suggesting it as a new game+ feature, or something the user could toggle on/off at their own risk.
In D:OS2, I reckon enemy and object (barrels etc) randomisation shouldn’t be a big deal, and would be great fun. It would be a kind of ‘chaos’ mode, where it doesn’t need to be balanced and near-impossible scenarios would be fine, because this isn’t the ‘real’ game.
For me, the best battle in the DOS:2 to date was the one with the seemingly never-ending void insects (or whatever they were called) that just kept coming. You didn’t know if they were actually going to stop appearing, or if you were doing something wrong by just killing them and not looking around for other solutions. This kind of mind-fuckery is the key to an entertaining fight, in my opinion, and was the closest thing D:OS2 came to battle enemy randomisation.
It would be great if random enemies popped up as ‘reinforcements’ like X-COM2 to rain havoc on your carefully laid plans. Random landscapes would be too much, IMO, but random placements of barrels could be great strategically and not complicated to develop – simply walling off a particular ramp or access point would be enough to add strategic depth to what’s mostly a static set of enemy and obstacle placement.
