Chris

Let's not continue this debate please. Nobody has a personal vendetta against you or anything like that. You're also not paraphrasing my argument correctly. I never said accuracy on MGs were fine, I just said I'm not willing to change it just so we can increase the clip size back up to 50 and you could be more content with the authenticity of the weapon. You're additionally being overgenerous in paraphrasing your own argument. Your first two posts in this thread (I didn't read any further because you started talking about rockets after that) just mention that large belts break the immersion for you, yet you're now claiming you made a nuanced gameplay argument about heavy weapons penalties and accuracy. If you'd made the first post you claimed you did in the above post, the accuracy changes may well have been made earlier because they're actually supported by gameplay reasoning rather than your subjective opinions on what constitutes an acceptable level of "realism".

There are genuine LOS issues with corners of buildings that we'll be looking into. Also, you can shoot over any cover in the adjacent square to the shooter with no penalty, which represents leaning around the cover you are in. The other stuff I don't really see a problem with. If a crate has a 50% chance of stopping a shot, it reduces your chance of hitting the enemy by 50%. The logic is that there's only 50% as much of the enemy visible....but as people have said, it's a 2D game. All the game knows is that there is an intervening object with 50% chance of stopping a shot, not that it's a box shaped object on the ground or a tall thin object etc, so the calculation can be odd sometimes. The friendly fire system is a bit janky in places, but I'm not sure what you're complaining at is an issue. You're basically saying that if you put a soldier directly behind another soldier and then order him to fire through his comrade, you shouldn't get any friendly fire? If that's the case, you should be spending your TU to move your guys a tile to the left or right so they have a clean shot. That's how it works in real life - you don't get those friendly fire incidents mostly because trained soldiers generally don't try to shoot through one another.

I imagine it's to stop people linking directly to .exe files, which can contain viruses etc.

Unfortunately, that team's last project, Space Hulk, was not as well critically received as it could have been. I've met them and they seem like very nice guys so I rather hope Space Hulk was a one-off blip...but it may be worth reading the reviews of that before pre-ordering their new game or anything.

I put together a quick post here: http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/9292-Debugging-Xenonauts-Tips-and-Tricks?p=103077#post103077

Something that some of you modders may find useful - you can use the same debug output we use to test the accuracy / morale / suppression etc calculcations are working correctly to test your own creations. Viewing Debug Output: 1) Download the debug viewer here: http://www.xenonauts.com/devfiles/xeno_debugger.exe 2) Run the Xenonauts_gc_editor.exe version of the game, which can be found in the same directory as Xenonauts.exe is. 3) The debugger will output real-time debug information from Xenonauts as you play (you may need to filter out the debug output from other programs running on your PC at the same time). The debugger outputs a LOT of information, so it takes some getting used to....but it lets you understand exactly what is going on in a lot of combat situations. In-Game Editor / Commands: You can also press U in Xenonauts_gc_editor.exe. If you are in the ground combat and playing in windowed mode, this will pop-up an in-game browser that lets you view the TU / HP of all the units and move them around the battlefield for testing purposes. Ctrl + Q also reveals the entire map, while Q hides it. V automatically wins the mission.

Skitso - I'm not sure what you want us to do here. The debug output suggests all the calculations are being performed fine, it's just sometimes people roll a string of very high or very low numbers. You have just as much access to the debug numbers as we do, so you're free to look at the calculation and see if you can spot an issue with it or if the game is incorrectly classing a hit as a miss. We don't see anything going wrong, so the only other possible explanation for a bug would be that the RNG isn't working properly....which is pretty much impossible to prove one way or another (and afaik the game uses the default C++ RNG, which I assume is pretty reputable).

If they're not going to read the research reports, I'm not sure there's much hope for them. They probably wouldn't read the tips telling them to read the research reports either.

We're not planning to do this. Adding a large variety of different weapons with a small difference between them makes it really confusing for beginners ("What's the difference between the M-16 and the AK-47? Does it matter which I choose? WTF?"), whereas a few different archetypes are quick and easy to understand. This is an X-Com game rather than a Jagged Alliance style game, so the weapon selection and customisation stuff is deliberately more limited. Though as you've said, extra starting guns will get modded in very quickly. There's artwork for them already for people to use in the game directory. I just don't think it adds enough to the gameplay to make up for the needless complexity it adds, so it won't be in the vanilla game. However, I do expect it to be one of the more popular mods...I just think more people would rather play without it than with it.

Your arguments were based pretty much entirely round the MG's needing to be changed for realism purposes, though, whereas other people have made arguments that the MG's need to be changed for gameplay balance purposes, so the purpose of the changes are different. I'm much more likely to make large changes to a weapon to correct perceived balance issues than perceived realism issues.

Yes, TU costs should be rounded up rather than rounded down. It's a bug if it is not working accordingly.

I've added the balance threads now. Assuming this build doesn't introduce any extra crashes, I'll promote it to the Stable branch either on Friday or Monday, then send it away to ported. As such, the balance threads have been set up as if this build is V21 Stable. It's highly unlikely I'll make any further balance changes prior to V21 Stable even if bugfixes need to be made.

This is the post where you should discuss your thoughts on the ground combat balance of the game in V21 Stable. As this is a Stable build, I'm not going to post the changelog - please just post your comments in general, rather than those on the changes since the last Experimental version.

This is the post where you should discuss your thoughts on the Geoscape (strategic) balance of the game in V21 Stable. As this is a Stable build, I'm not going to post the changelog - please just post your comments in general, rather than those on the changes since the last Experimental version.

NOTE THIS IS A STABLE CANDIDATE, IT IS STILL ONLY ON THE EXPERIMENTAL BRANCH FOR NOW! Firstly, if you do not know how to access the experimental branch on Steam, please read the instructions (and warnings!) in this thread. This update is a series of fixes for V21 Stable Candidate released last week. It should *hopefully* not break save games from V21 Stable Candidate, but it will not allow the player to load save games from any earlier versions of the game. There's also been a few balance tweaks. Fixes: - Reapers no longer cause AI hangs - Topbar buttons now no longer stop working after some ground combat missions - Units can no longer path inside solid objects when opening a door - Fixed "UFO escaped to space" message after completing a landed UFO mission - Weapons can no longer be duplicated with right-click after battle - Dropships can now be assigned troops after being transferred to a secondary base - 1x1 buildings can no longer be rotated when placed, causing them to appear invisible - Medals that replace other medals (eg: LongServiceMedal) are now shown on mission Debrief screen when awarded - Fixed a number of missing Research description text strings: Stun Weapons, Alien Communications Array - Fixed Xenopediea research pop-ups not appearing for some projects: Alenium Warheads, Alien Officer Interrogation, Alien Leader Interrogation, Praetor Interrogation - Slight alignment tweak to structure construction list to make more room for Quantum Cryptology building when it appears - Basic armour machinegun crouch and uncrouch animation "jumping" fixed - Fixed some mis-set cover walls in alien bases that were preventing units from entering the entire tile - Swedish surname "Bergamn" corrected to "Bergman" Additions: - Updated final victory and loss artwork - Added Xenopedia image for Quantum Cryptology Center - GJ has done some AI changes that should make the aliens more aggressive, and work better as a team when four or more wandering aliens are in the same map. - Hidden movement screen times optimised a bit. - All weapons are now reloaded after a GC - Wraiths can no longer perform any actions after a teleport Balance: - Sebillians no longer receive an accuracy penalty from smoke - Machinegun and derivatives reduced from 40 to 30 accuracy, but recoil also reduced from 75 to 70. - Alien psionic strength reduced from 600 across the board (used for testing) to 100-200 depending on strength. - Alien weapon accuracy modifier increased to 1.25x to match 1.25x human weapon modifier. - Aliens now have 50% accuracy on Easy, 75% on Normal, 100% on Veteran and 125% on Insane. - AI can now employ grenades against soldiers using shields, even if they are not "grouped". Please post your comments on the build here. If you encounter any bugs please post them in the experimental build sub-forum of the bugs forum. If you want in-depth discussion of game balance, please use the following threads: Geoscape: http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/9286-Geoscape-Balance-V21-Stable-%28Hotfix%29 Ground Combat: http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/9287-Ground-Combat-Balance-V21-Stable-%28Hotfix%29

Thanks for posting this, these sorts of tests are very useful. I'll read it properly later, but I think GJ has put in some changes to the AI that might affect the TU reservation behaviours in the next build. For the all miss bursts, I'm not entirely convinced there's anything wrong still. I suggest you play with the debugger on in the background and check the random rolls when you get a string of misses - burst fire is quite low accuracy now and sometimes you just roll a lot of misses. We rolled 7 misses in a row in the office last week on a 30% hit chance shot, but the calculation seemed to be working fine, we were just unlucky.

Yeah, we're planning to close it in the next two months when we redo the Goldhawk site.

Yeah, you can't get the Linux version via Steam yet. You need to use either the Humble Store or Desura. Do you have access to either of those? If not, then drop me an email and I'll sort you a code for one of them.

To reply to the OP - it's an interesting idea, but I don't want to change the balance again. As you say, it is also harder to communicate to the player than either %TU or flat TU too.

But not because of the number of bullets they can fire, surely?

Yeah, I don't know if it will break saves. I will try and release the hotfix today so back up your game files into a new directory if you're worried about losing saves. EDIT - actually, hotfix will be out tomorrow.

/ufocontents/ is where the scripts are set. aiprops.xml is the AI values for the different races.

I don't know if the hotfix will mess with your saves, tbh. We're making quite a lot of bugfixes in the code so the only way we'll be able to find out is when we release it. I'm hoping not though. One way to get the desired effect is to open up aiprops.xml in /assets/ and set Caesan Leaders to have psionic power of 150, and Praetor Commanders to have 200. That'll make them a bit less OP than with 600 psionic strength.

Thanks, I've fixed both of these. However, those lit up pads are teleporters - you can get into that room by using the linked teleporters elsewhere in the base.

Gauddlike - don't do that. We're probably going to can the wiki when we redo the Goldhawk site before release.