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Geoscape balance mod - seeking input


Solver

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15 minutes ago, Policenaut said:

That bodes well. Here's a quick idea, slightly lower the relationship shootdown bonuses for UFOs, increase the GC mission relationship bonus and increase the chance for landing UFOs. Give dropships limited countermeasures to protect them when going for landing sites and make crashed UFO GC missions give much less resources so that going for landed UFOs is more preferable, though they will be harder to complete still making crashed landing sites relevant.

This might be something worth experimenting with.

Sry to break it to you, but this has all been done before. Tiny tweaks and changes everywhere. The 200 mods are a testament to this.

If you want to make something you could take what you need from every mod and put your own ideas ontop - balancing will be hell though, and this will be the main work. This is where most people give up, its too much work.

 

 

If you consequently follow your interests, you will land at something similar to X-Division, just to see that providing a "whole" experience is too much to handle alone. You need a visual guy, a programmer, at least 2 faithful testers, 1 UI programmer, 1 XCE guy to support you like Solver, a mapmaker, 2 writers, one for the research and one for the Xpedia, and on top of that a faithful community to support you.
If you have all that you can put your own ideas into shape. Without that you wont be able to finsih whatever you started - because it will be simply too much work to do alone. And your mods are great, but can you tell if all of those are compatible with mod X or mod Y ?
After that comes the maintenance and the support. The next XCE version could silently break one of the mods. This is why a lot of too old mods are ... too old.

Think like Blizzard - gameing is a service, not a product.

Your mods may lose all relevance in a year if not mantained. Software fades faster than anything else, and the next windows version could break everything again. And most people just get a new windows version eventually. This is as likely as the an Amen in the church.

 

Because of all of these reasons i believe its good to contribute to something bigger, as the whole community works on a single project. Nobody´s forcing you to abandon your own ones, but integrating them into something bigger simplifies it.

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An idea regarding base assaults - make them more common and implement the retake ability as well, however instead of an alien base spawning you actually fight in the base layout itself. If too hard to implement, an alternative is giving it a unique ticker value like retakable continents so you can attach one of the extra alien base entries which I could create new maps for (human base in progress of being converted). Slightly lowering the range of the dropships could be added as well. This should encourage multiple strike teams or at least better equiped garrisons to defend your secondary bases and the retake ability makes it a little bit less punishing.

@Charon

I couldn't find any mods that did exactly that though. I have collected bits and pieces here and there around the forums so I'm good and I can also create my own content. I am also able to edit graphics, do scripting, I can test myself (and if anyone else is interested just PM me), I understand the LUA scripts for the UI, Solver showed some interest, I understand the mapping system in Xenonauts and I have already written a bunch of Xenopedia entries in the style of the vanilla ones for the new content. I've been modding other games for years and the process gave me these abilities.

You are right that balancing is the toughest part but I've played a lot of video games and I feel I have a pretty good understanding of game balance. I've worked a lot on modding gamebryo engine games so I know a thing or two about mod compatability. I also do not agree that games should be a service, they should be enjoyable products first and foremost. Good service is a plus but doesn't mean anything to me if the product isn't enjoyable.

You come off as pretty negative towards me but I'm not offended just so you know. I understand that it will take a lot of time to create this but I am confident in my abilities and I have the interest in doing this.

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1 hour ago, Policenaut said:

An idea regarding base assaults - make them more common and implement the retake ability as well, however instead of an alien base spawning you actually fight in the base layout itself. If too hard to implement, an alternative is giving it a unique ticker value like retakable continents so you can attach one of the extra alien base entries which I could create new maps for (human base in progress of being converted). Slightly lowering the range of the dropships could be added as well. This should encourage multiple strike teams or at least better equiped garrisons to defend your secondary bases and the retake ability makes it a little bit less punishing.

@Charon

I couldn't find any mods that did exactly that though. I have collected bits and pieces here and there around the forums so I'm good and I can also create my own content. I am also able to edit graphics, do scripting, I can test myself (and if anyone else is interested just PM me), I understand the LUA scripts for the UI, Solver showed some interest, I understand the mapping system in Xenonauts and I have already written a bunch of Xenopedia entries in the style of the vanilla ones for the new content. I've been modding other games for years and the process gave me these abilities.

You are right that balancing is the toughest part but I've played a lot of video games and I feel I have a pretty good understanding of game balance. I've worked a lot on modding gamebryo engine games so I know a thing or two about mod compatability. I also do not agree that games should be a service, they should be enjoyable products first and foremost. Good service is a plus but doesn't mean anything to me if the product isn't enjoyable.

You come off as pretty negative towards me but I'm not offended just so you know. I understand that it will take a lot of time to create this but I am confident in my abilities and I have the interest in doing this.

Oki.

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Wow I was off for 1 day and there is a good discussion here. And mostly I was the harsh one but Charon took my place. 

X division team is all volunteers who came to help directly to our mod.  If someone is not already playing our mod, it means already he is not interested and he got his own ways and ideas. I respect this and try or get help to or from him. 

Default xenonauts feel... There is no such thing. Xenonauts is a xcom clone with a new platform with missing elements. So there could be only default xcom feel. Default xcom is a very nice game genre but not enough standards for today. For this reason openxcom created and maybe 10 time better then xenonauts modding ability. I am just tired of old graphics. For this reason X division is at xenonauts not at open xcom. 

If any of you, shackles himself with default game, you can't accomplish what you dream for. 

X division got so many key points which the default game needs so badly. Maybe you don't need 1000 weapon or research but you need to revise those points for sure. 

Everybody here and there are talking about adding or modding new things to the xenonauts side. Xce got full of mods to give something to players arsenal. The game won't change even you magically add anything to player side. The biggest problem is at enemy. Xenonauts and xcom got the same weakest point. Nobody cares the enemy. Nobody cares that the game gets ultra easy and boring after you got your plasmas even lasers. 

Because of this you talk about grinding. The fun part of the game is gc and people play this game for it. If it's get boring and feels you like grinding, this means your enemies are boring, generic and not fun to fight against and not challenging at all. 

Solver,  what did I want from you mostly? Abilities for aliens right? Melees attacking to vehicles, new spawning system, different damage types you already added... İ wanted to add new ufos.. New missions.. 

Do whatever you want,  code or mod. Without a real enemy system, it would be fun at first, boring soon. It's not because of you, it's because the enemy you fight. 

If you want to have an expansion, go for it. I will support and take what I need but without enemy overhaul, it won't be strong enough. 

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Addition to this, if you need a useful geosphere experience, you need to have at least more then 10 ufos. Fighting against same scout with same crew at the beginning and late game is the worst part. Vanilla game, if you fight against an outdated ufo, it becomes grind. Because you fight against lesser ufo and lesser aliens just for...  Money? And late game u only need to fight against carrier and battleship for sometimes to get the end game. 

Again it's about enemies. Whatever you do to xenonauts side or game code, it won't change the grinding gc mission feeling if you don't touch to enemy side. 

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I think you X-Division guys are too negative towards the vanilla experience. It's a lot of fun. I've put way too many hours into vanilla or lightly-modded vanilla, and it's great to me. A lot like the original X-Com, but with some very nice additions (like suppression), and an interface that isn't 20 years old.

You also seem to think of X-Division as something that can replace vanilla, which I don't agree with. Say, I wouldn't recommend X-Division to a first-time Xenonauts player. It's much harder, it starts slightly harder than the vanilla game and gets much harder from there - and let's be honest, the default Xenonauts game is hard enough for most players, especially those who didn't start with X-Com 20 years ago.

Basically, my question here is, what is the optimal vanilla-like experience in Xenonauts, with slight tweaks? We have X-Division for a major overhaul. My personal opinion is that the best vanilla-like experience is with Dynamic UFOs, Armoured Assault, and a few more minor tweaks I've made on top of those. It is quite possible that it's impossible to get something much better out of vanilla without changing the design fundamentally - that limitation of what vanilla can do has to exist somewhere after all.

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You can be right about it. I am an old xcom player and maybe as I saw them already, default xenonauts did not give enough things to make me satisfied. This is the only game I mod too. When I saw the potential, I could not stop myself. 

But Charon did not play even the original xcom and he wants come complicated things and more harder. But the thing is if you play xdivision at easy you can have all the experience without much challenge. So making the game hard is not the point here. Challenging yes, rich yes, longer yes.. But not hard,  if you don't want it hard. 

X division is not a replacement, but something for hard-core xcom players. 

But again I started xdivision with the same idea but I saw the limitations and what needs to be done. And it became this. 

As you are right about vanilla xenonauts experience, Charon is right about enchanting the default game without breaking the limits. 

But policenauts talk about much more then xce mods and he talked about new things like weapon and ufos. I would like to see that from a experienced modder. 

We xdivision guys (I liked it) are ready to help at anything. There is some points at modding hard to understand and create like ai and creating new aliens. So if you need help about those, I am here. I am ready to share my new incoming ai units too if you want to spice up enemy side. 

I will wait for policenauts mod for sure. There is year passed since we got another big and creative mod with new codes in it. 

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18 minutes ago, Solver said:

I think you X-Division guys are too negative towards the vanilla experience. It's a lot of fun. I've put way too many hours into vanilla or lightly-modded vanilla, and it's great to me. A lot like the original X-Com, but with some very nice additions (like suppression), and an interface that isn't 20 years old.

Ditto, Ditto, that are my words. Without the negative aspect.

19 minutes ago, Solver said:

You also seem to think of X-Division as something that can replace vanilla, which I don't agree with. Say, I wouldn't recommend X-Division to a first-time Xenonauts player. It's much harder, it starts slightly harder than the vanilla game and gets much harder from there - and let's be honest, the default Xenonauts game is hard enough for most players, especially those who didn't start with X-Com 20 years ago.

Ditto, Ditto. Heres the first tooltip that gets displayed upon the first GC:

<Tip showOnFirstGroundCombat="true"> We advise you to play the Xenonauts Community Edition ( XCE ) before playing the X-Division Mod.

This mod introduces new mechanics, new content and an extended campaign which can be confusing and overwhelming for new players.

v.099 is in BETA state for testing.

</Tip>

This has been in place since the 0.98 version.

21 minutes ago, Solver said:

Basically, my question here is, what is the optimal vanilla-like experience in Xenonauts, with slight tweaks? We have X-Division for a major overhaul. My personal opinion is that the best vanilla-like experience is with Dynamic UFOs, Armoured Assault, and a few more minor tweaks I've made on top of those. It is quite possible that it's impossible to get something much better out of vanilla without changing the design fundamentally - that limitation of what vanilla can do has to exist somewhere after all.

I believe the climax has already been reached. If you look at XCE and all teh mods it adds it can hardly get better. More maps, more fixes, more sounds, improved Xpedia entries, thats all you can basically add without altering the game too much.

But i think the vanilla experience is good at the thing it does, and you reach the point where slightly improving on things is just a matter of oppinion.

Btw why is nobody talking about XNT ? As far as i know it tries to stay incredible close to the vanilla game, features an incredible good balance, and only adds and tweaks a few additions here and there and doesnt feature an incredible amount of additional content. It has a good bleeding system, and etc ... .

I guess i im the wrong guy for it, but you heard my ideas :).

 

X-Division is just a continues work on the things which have already been build. First came XCE to unlock and enable so many modding possibilities, after that XNT tried something bigger, without XNT there would have never been a Xenophobia, and without a Xenophobia i would have never felt compelled to mod in the first place. So im saying every additon is cool, and every contribution matters.

X-Division is just the consequent evolving of the modding possibilities which were present at that time, and 2 years ago it would definitely not be possible. Maybe we would have build something similar to XNT, and without the 34.2 version X-Division would have never seen the light it does now. So EVERY contribution matters. I mean we used @Max_Caine pictures as the main menu beackground for some versions, and it just looked freaking awesome, and still does. His lore+ mod is so important because it vivdly shows how a game can be improved. All of this mods and ideas MATTER and lay the foundation for future mods because it INSPIRES the future authors.

Thats immensly important.

 

My basic outline is this:

Random guy X hears about Xenonauts and buys it to play it.

He never heard about XCE, or maybe missed it, or thinks he wants to try the vanilla experience first.

This is the point where i do believe the vanilla game shines the most, because it is very good at showing what Xenonauts is about. We all agree about the basic fundamentals of the game ( 1. air supremacy, 2. granting technology sites, and 3. get your squad on the last mission experience level ) and that they may not feel ... mature enough. But the basic feature of them is that they are easy to understand, repetetive and accessible enough. For us it may feel not challenging enough, but for people who never played X-Com styled games it is pretty challenging, and a good start.
This motivates people in the same way you start with a beginners karate course and not a profi one.

This is the reason why i believe the vanilla game is the best at what it is doing.

The main problem here is not to improve on XCE, but to advertise XCE as the main game because it doesnt really matter if you started with the vanilla game or XCE, both are great at what they are doing, but they are not different enough to play again, because:

 

After the vanilla experience the player has learned fundamental principles of the game, and may be ready for more. He hears about XCE and thinks its its own mod. He starts to play, but basically it is the same game with some improved things, there are just not enough new things to challenge the player.

 

This is the point where i see a lot of potential in an "Extended Community Edition" mod, to serve as an intermediate step to grasp the interest of the player.

Personnally i recommend Xenophobia as the middle stone, because it is hard, has an incredible amount of content and most importantly is INCREDIBLE funny. It features the seriousness the XNT team put into the mod, with the cracyness of all that unbalanced things the other mods add. I still recommend the game as the feeling between playing Duke Nukem together with Saints Row 4.

Xenophobia is so immensly important because it shows a collaborated experience what modding can all add to the game, and its main feature is to let the player experience all those cracy things. It opens the heart of the player for the fun part Xenonauts can provide.


Unfortunately Xenophobia is old, and hardly compatible anymore. So this opens up a new place for a new kind of intermediate experience.

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Continuation.

 

But all the different mods are pretty overwhelming, and players hardly get any help on choosing what to take and what not, let alone to pray that they are 1. compatible, 2. not outdated and 3. find the right modloader place.

 

The modmerging system solves a lot of problems for modders, but for the average guy it is as complicated to choose what to use and what not as ever, once they start adding more than 3 mods. And prey that they work together !
This is the reason why so many people choose Xenophobia as their first mod to play, because it looks like the biggest additions, with the least installing/compatible problems.

 

In the same way XCE comes with a lot of mods recommended to install and activate, there could be a joint "Extended Community Editiion" which lists and maintains a set of mods which tells the player EXACTLY what to do and how to do it. And also keep it compatible with everything.
This is the reason why i dont think you should get bound too much by the vanilla experience.

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5 minutes ago, Charon said:

Btw why is nobody talking about XNT ? As far as i know it tries to stay incredible close to the vanilla game, features an incredible good balance, and only adds and tweaks a few additions here and there and doesnt feature an incredible amount of additional content. It has a good bleeding system, and etc ... .

Because XNT is very outdated :) It's for old versions of X:CE, doesn't really use the modular mods system in the best way, and suffers a bit technically for that. It's definitely fairly close to vanilla though despite all the new guns.

 

8 minutes ago, Charon said:

Random guy X hears about Xenonauts and buys it to play it.

He never heard about XCE, or maybe missed it, or thinks he wants to try the vanilla experience first.

Then he asks on Reddit or the Steam forums, and you say the best mods to start with are X:CE and X-Division. Even if the X-Division loading tips not say to play vanilla X:CE first.

10 minutes ago, Charon said:

The main problem here is not to improve on XCE, but to advertise XCE as the main game

Well, that has improved. X:CE is now advertised prominently as a Steam news item in the Xenonauts section. X:CE being after all unofficial, I think it's now getting advertised to the best extent possible.

13 minutes ago, Charon said:

After the vanilla experience the player has learned fundamental principles of the game, and may be ready for more. He hears about XCE and thinks its its own mod. He starts to play, but basically it is the same game with some improved things, there are just not enough new things to challenge the player.

I try my best, among other places in the X:CE introduction thread, to explain what X:CE is, and underscore that it is not a mod.

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15 minutes ago, Solver said:

Because XNT is very outdated :) It's for old versions of X:CE, doesn't really use the modular mods system in the best way, and suffers a bit technically for that. It's definitely fairly close to vanilla though despite all the new guns.

This is EXACTLY what im talking about.

Why dont you revive the XNT as the new intermediate experience. Policenaut fixes up teh code, adds his addtions, adds whatever he wants, makes and CHECKS the list of compatible and recommended game mods, and VOÍLA you have the new intermediate experience with the least amount of work. You even get an incredible balanced and well behaving game and AI on top.

15 minutes ago, Solver said:

Then he asks on Reddit or the Steam forums, and you say the best mods to start with are X:CE and X-Division. Even if the X-Division loading tips not say to play vanilla X:CE first.

I think this may be a misunderstanding, if people ask for mods we recommend X-Divison, if they ask for a decision between vanilla and XCE we say XCE. As you said, XCE is not a mod so we cant really recommend it as such. The middle stone is missing because all mods which could do the job are outdated.

15 minutes ago, Solver said:

Well, that has improved. X:CE is now advertised prominently as a Steam news item in the Xenonauts section. X:CE being after all unofficial, I think it's now getting advertised to the best extent possible.

Well, i wouldnt be comfortable until XCE is not the default game, and the vanilla game gets its place under the "Beta" tab, if you know what i mean :). If XCE gets that place than i would call it reasonable to talk about those mini changes, which this thread should actually be about. Sry about that :p.

 

The main problem here is that Goldhawk Interactive should get the props.

So i would rather switch the whole game out and make something like:

"Xenonauts"

Goldhawk Interactive

improved by the Xenonaut Community Edition

 

then make the intermediate stepping stone as the next recommended playthrough.

Edited by Charon
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Well that's not going to happen :) The vanilla version of Xenonauts will remain the default one, not X:CE, and this is perfectly reasonable on Goldhawk's behalf. While X:CE is mostly bug-free, Goldhawk cannot and should not appear to take responsibility for whatever possible problems X:CE introduces.

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17 minutes ago, Solver said:

Well that's not going to happen :) The vanilla version of Xenonauts will remain the default one, not X:CE, and this is perfectly reasonable on Goldhawk's behalf. While X:CE is mostly bug-free, Goldhawk cannot and should not appear to take responsibility for whatever possible problems X:CE introduces.

I know i know, but you get what my point is. XCE and the vanilla game are not different enough, so an intermediate mod collaboration which shows of all of the XCE strenghts would be a good stepping stone for players who want more, but dont want to get bored to death by teh vanilla experience, if they have already outgrown it. XCE would get all the props for making this collaboration possible and most importantly, compatible.

You can make a thread where you detail what mod majorly changes things, like for instance if we would revive XNT, and give recommendations on the difficulty and player experience needed. Add some more mods and make sure that they are all compatible and accessible with only a click.

I can guarantee you every player will thank you for making an concentrated thread which tells them what to do and how to achieve this.

 

 

My suggestions are up.

EDIT: Im outta here :).

Edited by Charon
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