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Xenonauts Balancing Process


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Hi all

Now that Xenonauts has reached a stage of development where you can reasonably expect to be able to run through most of a game, I have started looking at how we are going to balance the various parts of the game. In this post I want to give a quick outline of how I plan to approach this, as I want you guys to be aware of what's happening in new builds and why.

Firstly, as the majority of the players time in the game is spent in the Ground Combat I am going to work on balancing that first.

To start with I am simply going to make sure equipment advancement is working smoothly, by going through the stats for all the human and alien equipment and making sure there is a gradual ramping up of effectiveness on both sides as the game advances, which is evenly distributed among the various tiers of equipment. This will deal primarily with damage values, accuracy and AP costs for weapons, and resistances for armours.

Once this is done I will spend some time - and would also like to hear from you guys - investigating whether any particular type of weapon, equipment or alien is either over or under powered (or just under utilised). This would be things like making sure the pistols remain a viable option which people are likely to use, or making sure you can't just win the game with everybody carrying buckets of grenades and no gun :)

After any tweaks from that stage are in place I will be doing a second pass on all the weapons and equipment, this time with a view to adding a bit more character to them; so different tiers of weapons could have different flavours based on their technology type, that kind of thing.

After all that is done, I will move on to the balancing the Air Combat and Geoscape to support the changes made to the Ground Combat.

Any thoughts on this approach or suggestions?

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So some guidelines that Aaron will be working within; how the game is intended to work. This will help everyone to know what our intentions are, so if things aren't working as we're expecting here then you'll be able to tell us about it!

Invasion Length: The game should take about a year from start to finish.

Missions: the average game is expected to have about 30-40 missions in it from start to finish, with lower difficulty games towards the lower end and higher difficulty towards the upper. The resources required to build things and the soldier stat increases will be balanced to that.

Soldier Rank: If we assume a soldier takes full part in a battle, they should hit max rank (Commander) after about 20-25 missions.

Soldier Stats: If we assume a soldier takes full part in a battle, a starting soldier that survives 25 missions should hit about 85 in all of their attributes. A rookie would therefore have 80 in all their attributes after the same number of missions. Realistically, soldiers should probably not go above 90 in their skills.

Ground Combat Weapons - Tier Upgrades: For initial balancing, all of the weapon tiers will be carbon copies of their predecessor that do increased damage (so a plasma rifle is just a laser rifle with increased damage). We may add a bit more differentiation when we have the overall balance sorted, but it makes sense to keep them consistent at first.

Ground Combat Weapons - Zoom Levels: We will be rebalancing weapon accuracy levels so a particular zoom level offers a set accuracy percentage (which is then modified by soldier accuracy etc). An example is below:

Zoom 1: 40 Acc, 20AP

Zoom 2: 60 Acc, 25 AP

Zoom 3: 80 Acc, 30 AP

Zoom 4: 100 Acc, 35 AP

More "accurate" weapon types have more zoom levels available. A carbine would only have zoom levels 1 and 2 available, but a sniper rifle can go up to 4.

You can see that the majority of the AP cost is in the initial shot (Zoom 1), so it always makes sense to add extra zoom levels provided you have the APs available and your weapon can do so. Unless, of course, you are in short range - as you get a flat 8% bonus to hit for each tile within 5 of your target, capping at 40% in an adjacent tile.

The AP costs will differ for different weapons, but maintain the same ratio. A pistol may have half the AP costs of a rifle to fire, but will still get the same level of accuracy at Zoom 1 as a rifle would.

Ground Combat Weapons - Intra-Tier Differences: This refers to the differences between weapons of the same tier, for example the laser rifle and the laser carbine. The main differences are as follows:

- Damage (lowest for pistols, medium for carbines / rifles, highest for sniper rifles)

- Range (accuracy and damage drops off steeply past max range)

- TU cost (what % of rifle fire costs this weapon uses, lowest for pistols and carbines and highest for sniper rifles)

- Zoom levels available (2 for pistols / carbines, 3 for rifles, 4 for sniper rifles)

- Burst Fire (sniper rifles do not have this)

- Heavy (there is an accuracy penalty for moving and firing for sniper rifles and heavy weapons)

The idea is to provide differentiations in weapon archetypes within a tier, rather than between weapon tiers.

Alien Progression: We will be adding greater stat differences between the different ranks of alien at the moment, not necessarily making them significantly more accurate than the prior ranks but definitely making them much tougher.

This means human weapons will have a more significant step up in damage than currently, which also has the knock-on effect of them inflicting more damage on the terrain at higher tiers (which is always cool). Human armour will also step up in effectiveness in greater amounts too.

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@Chris will you be forced to carry out the final mission when unlocked?

and is there still a ticker so you have to get to the final mission before annihilation?

I say this because I am known to stretch out UFO games for about 100 missions, multi bases with multiple personnel. I always max the game out

and I have made these games last several years before. I know the final few months get more hectic and crazier and battles come faster, however 25 seems like a small number when some at the start only take a few minutes.

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I'm still a bit fuzzy on how the difficulty levels are supposed to work. Is the difficulty setting going to only work on a strategic level i.e. number of alien attacks ramps up faster, etc... OR is it going affect the ground combat in some way such as more aliens on the map, they shoot better, etc...

Also, I should probably point out that without a finished Alien Ground Combat AI balancing ground combat might be difficult. We can probably take a reasonable stab at Aaron's Phase One plan, but some things like weapon and armor effectiveness might need to be changed if the AI proves too tough or wimpy.

Edited by StellarRat
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30-40 missions for a game year? That translates to less than 1 mission a game week. Seems awfully sparce for the period of time involved.

EDIT: Aaron, will you be keeping ground combat and geoscape stickies as per previous, or will they be altered to reflect your priorities?

EDIT 2: I woud consider range as important as how damaging, how AP-costly or how accurate a weapon is. I'm sure you've read in the specific balance threads about the value of LMGs, precision rifles and rocket launchers, which are down to just as much the range as those other factors.

Edited by Max_Caine
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EDIT 2: I woud consider range as important as how damaging, how AP-costly or how accurate a weapon is. I'm sure you've read in the specific balance threads about the value of LMGs, precision rifles and rocket launchers, which are down to just as much the range as those other factors.
I still think the accuracy formula I proposed would go a long way to solving many of these range issues.
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Is there going to be more randomization in progression of stats? With the way they currently work drives certain play styles if you know how the stats progress. TU's especially seem to have an inverse progression of what you would expect, as you gain them from moving so inherently a higher ranked squaddie can earn tu's quicker than a recruit if you make maximum moves every turn. How strength and accuracy improve make a squad full of lmg's pretty attractive as it gets you to or close to your weight limit without a backpack full of grenades and ammo. It just feels to rigid and makes it very easy to ensure you can maximize soldier progression by following a few rules.

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As to # of missions, I made it to the final battle in 18.3HF2, and played almost exactly 50 missions. Maybe a few more but it was less than 60, judging by mission counts on my most-experienced soldiers, who'd missed few or no missions.

50 missions felt about right for the amount of tech and alien types to fight, by the end I was reasonably familiar with all the main enemies and ships. A few more ought to be added since Dreadnaughts are essentially non-entities now and I only fought like two Praetors the entire game. So lets call it 60-65 missions in a game, unless the game gets sped up or slowed down dramatically.

On the subject of balancing stat gains, let me just add my two cents: If a soldier is aiming for ~85 in all after 25 missions, and we assume that they started with an average of 55 in each stat, they're gaining a total of 180 stat points, or over 7 per mission -- that needs to be slowed down, probably. Discussions took place elsewhere about how certain stats especially have been growing too quickly (Strength). So how about this:

In each mission, your soldiers are ranked relative to one another. The algorithm doesn't have to be perfect, just something like (damage done) + (hp healed) + (enemies killed * 25) + (enemies suppressed * 5). Once the soldiers are ranked in order, stat gains are generated: The soldier that performs best gets the most stat points (Lets say 6 here, going for a slower balance than suggested above) and the soldier that performs the worst gets the least, say 2. The other soldiers get 3, 4, or 5 based on where they fall compared to the group's mean. This would lead to soldiers having about 95 in each stat after a 60-mission game, since they'll be getting an average of 4 points/mission. Chris is calling for closer to 40 missions above, and this system would give about 82/stat after 40 missions.

Which stats are assigned is based on how heavily each skill is used in the current mission. So the current system of progress points would work for tracking that variable. If you needed a soldier to gain strength, have them bring a lot of stuff and schlep it around the battlefield, but you will be sacrificing other point gains.

I know this is pretty dramatically different than the current system, but I think it's a system that's harder to outright game and still allows commanders to groom their troops. It also encourages players to spread around responsibility rather than having two or three troops do all the work in every mission, because they'll eventually outstrip everyone else. Gotta let someone else take the spotlight and get a lot of points.

One problem with this system (and it's also a problem with the current system) is that some stats are really easy to train and others aren't. My endgame people all had at/almost 100 strength, over 100 TUs and accuracy, and 50-70 bravery and reflexes.

Finally, I'd recommend figuring out a point at which soldiers will stop getting better, and express it in terms of total stat points rather than per-category. So in my recommended system above set the final point at say 510 stat points (average 85 in each stat). When a soldier reaches 540 points, two things happen: 1.) He/she is removed from the ranking system entirely. They aren't included in any future rankings so they can't gain points or affect the rest of the team's skill gains. You can still use them at will without hurting everyone else's stat gains (this is important! I hate being encouraged to sideline my best troops!), and 2.) They get a "capstone" amount of skill points that's assigned to their LOWEST stats, bringing the total stat points to 540 (90/stat average).

Final stat distributions would probably look something like this:

Acc 95 Res 90 TUs 95 Str 90 Rflx 65 (+20 capstone) Brv 75 (+10 capstone). And of course I used nice round numbers for my example, real numbers would have a lot more 6's and 3's and the like.

But here's the cool thing: Each soldier who reaches the cap will be DIFFERENT than any other soldier who hit the cap. They'll all have 540 stat points, but maybe your snipers have 100 Accuracy but only 60 Reflexes. They'll "settle into" whatever role you have them assigned to. However, the final capstone bonus prevents you from accidentally gimping your troops by neglecting something that becomes a lot more important later.

P.S. I did everything above based on my memory that there are six stat categories. If I managed to forget one then I'll have to adjust all numbers.

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Balancing a game like this is an interesting process because it's a holistic, integral system where every single thing affects another.

It's going to take a lot of work and more so, a 'director's artistic approach'... as in, what type of feeling do you want the player to have at each stage and section of the game. Also, I think that prior to approaching balancing really, the team needs to sit and play a couple of rounds of the original x-com. and always play ironman.

The designer needs to sit and ask questions like "do we want it to be a strategic option, or a strategic necessity for the player to do X, Y, etc (for example, building another base, or choosing a certain line of research first before another), and will these choices lead to a different type of game, or just to an easier win? when should the player feel hopeless and when hopefull? how can we turn it into a real story through gameplay (for example, getting wolf armor for your team is a great turning point in how you feel.. almost the change from being hunted to becoming the hunter).. what's the story?

But on the most basic level, here's some balance changes I'd right now even before the questions:

Ground combat balancing (first):

1) hit chance against units out in the open should be reduced significantly so that it is possible to advance, both for you and the aliens. I would suggest that the max % to hit on a target in the open would be the soldiers accuracy rating. So a rookie soldier with 58 accuracy will have MAX 58% to hit a target in the open, if at optimal gun range, and after full aim.

Or even less.. 58% is a bit too high fur a fun game.

This lends itself to a much more tactical game, with engagements requiring a bit more strategy because you can now actually move around and advance without getting 1-shot.

2) hit chance against units in cover need to be raised significantly so that you do not need a team of 4 snipers all shooting at the same target with all their APs before in hopes for a kill. Cover should be important. but not THAT important

3) grenade throw ranges should be reduced to about pistol effective range

4) rocket launchers should have serious costs associated with them or you simply do not need any other weapon. they do everything for you. From putting aliens to sleep (smoke), to completely destroying and ignoring the most important part of the ground combat game (cover), hitting multiple enemies, being able to fire as artillery, at a place which isn't even revealed to you yet but which you suspect has an alien in it, and with infinite range.... it's simply the best weapon to have, and it's free.

You could: make ALL starting weapons items that require purchase (like the condor. not manufacture, but purchase), and then make rocket launchers and rockets expensive. make rockets so heavy that you can only have 3 per soldier per mission or so (but even then I'd take a whole team of rocket ppl), make the rockets blast radius 1 or even 2 tiles smaller, or make them much more inaccurate unless in the hands of a true expert.

5) make all sight ranges equal regardless of armor or anything. It does not lend itself to a fun game where you just walk around getting shot at and killed because of a design decision that gives you no defense or means of coping against it.... perhaps this will not be such an issue though when the AI units begin moving a bit and not only sit behind cover and wait for you to come with their 2-3 reaction shots per round.

and most important:

6) lower the ranges of all guns so that their max range is as far as the bullet goes. no dropoff and no nothing. max range. the way the 'green' range is now, that's how I'd keep max range. there's no point at all in damage/etc dropoff and all it's causing is annoying bugs where aliens all shoot from all across the map the moment you're sighted, because they can. And also, almost all of my kills are with soldierse waaaaay way out of danger shooting from far far away. And pretty much all my deaths too are from a blue bolt that comes from somewhere from the other side of the map.

To fix all this and make the game more fun and tactical in one go, make the end of the 'green' gun range the max range and that's it. beyond that there is not even the option of targeting a unit.

This is the most important change in my opinion.

It will also lead to much more tactical play, since it will force you to close in on the enemy and actually engage them in combat rather than having one spotter spot them, run away, and then bombard them from far away with sniper fire and rockets (which is the WIN playstyle right now both for u and the aliens)

Now for geoscape:

Invasion Length: 1 year at the current rate of time passage speed would be great. A nice long game.

Missions: 1.2 missions per week seems a bit low. how many did you have in x-com? I suppose this would work if you make the proposed changes to air combat which force you to really select your engagements (as you will now need 2 condors to down a light scout which can roll)

Soldier Stats: there is already a marked difference between rookies and veterans.. enormous gap in action points which in of itself is WIN.. but.. yeah.. the only thing I think should change is that rookies should feel more like rookies in and of themselves, and not only when compared to high level veterans.

They should have poor poor accuracy (x-com!!!) and be operating mostly on luck until they reach the level where they operate on skill.

Air-combat: should be the least important part of the game. currently it is the most important part, because it is the most risky. losing a cheap plane is a big blow, and losing an expensive plane is close to game-over.

It shouldn't be like that. Winning air combat should be easy. it should be like in x-com where the only problem is that your interceptor might get damaged and then require time for repair if you take on a hard foe.

Also, remove alien fighter squadrons from the game. Escorts I understand, but harassment squadrons that serve only to annoy and are no fun at all should be removed. It's too dangerous to accidentally lose the chinook to one of those because it just appeared out of nowhere somewhere and you're on the way back from a mission or whatever.

Those alien fighter squads simply break the game in an non-fun and completely unnecessary way. remove them, they have no point :)

Alien invasion progression: landships/large ships/enormous etc ships and other specialized ships should not be too common even in LATE GAME.

Pace it like x-com, where throughout the entire game you got light/medium ships, and later on a few large too and very rare enormous ones. But never just switch from all light to all medium to all large.

Because, what if the player lost an airplane and cannot handle large craft at the moment? out of luck because he can do no missions at all? not good.

manufacturing balance:

3 days for a foxtrot is sensible but 30 days for a corsair? and 400k credits?!? it is much more cost effective to purchase multiple hangars and multiple condors. much more flexible, much more powerful too, and a lot less frightening to lose.

Edited by Lightzy
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I wanted to respond to one specific point of your ideas, Lightzy, and offer an alternative:

"6) lower the ranges of all guns so that their max range is as far as the bullet goes. no dropoff and no nothing. max range. the way the 'green' range is now, that's how I'd keep max range. there's no point at all in damage/etc dropoff and all it's causing is annoying bugs where aliens all shoot from all across the map the moment you're sighted, because they can. And also, almost all of my kills are with soldierse waaaaay way out of danger shooting from far far away. And pretty much all my deaths too are from a blue bolt that comes from somewhere from the other side of the map."

Okay, so I can't accept removing all dropoff. That's a really silly concept that makes no sense: Even a .22LR round is effective to about 50 meters, and the military calibers we use are going to be much longer ranged. Lasers and plasma would, hypothetically, suffer degradation from the atmosphere, but that would be measured in kilometers. We sacrifice a lot of "reality" concepts for good gameplay but that would be such a huge break from how the world works that it would seriously kill the game. INSTEAD, how about nerfing squadsight? In fact, I had a really neat idea:

All soldiers (alien and human) can only fire on targets that they themselves can see OR targets that can be seen by a friendly they see. No chaining of friendlies. This would drop maximum range to somewhere around 30 tiles, if the sighting friendly is just barely within the firing soldier's LOS. It allows for sniper/spotter functionality, and is better than just removing squadsight because it doesn't create instances where only the closest soldier is able to engage.

A simpler idea (but less cool) would be to just make a hard firing range cap of say 20-30 tiles, where soldiers simply cannot take shots beyond that.

The problem with those is that munchkin-y players know they can just manually aim their shots, although it would prevent the aliens from doing it.

Another option is to make all weapons suffer a severe accuracy penalty beyond their effective range. Something like 5% per tile for non-sniper weapons, and 2% per tile for snipers. This penalty would would effect both the current accuracy but also the max accuracy (so a rifle being fired at 5 tiles past its effective range would have an accuracy cap of 70%). This is also reality-friendly in that the actual limiting reagent in firearms is not weapon accuracy but human (/alien) precision.

In fact, a major factor in how "accurate" a given gun is is the sights. A FAL is known as a highly accurate rifle, but fires 7.62x51 rounds that are very similar to say, an M1 Garand's 30.06 rounds. Why is the FAL more accurate? It's got better machining, being more modern, but it also has very thin iron sights that can be used effectively out to 400 meters.

But no matter how you look at it, making bullets magically stop after like 20 tiles is dumb. I'm sorry but that's the truth.

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Part of my mod has been screwing around with the game stats to make it feel more balanced. So the early machinegun can fire and move more easily (though you'll still usually only get 1 burst per turn) compared to the rest of the MG's. The rocket launcher is much more expensive to fire. And the all weapon tiers are different, but the higher the tier the more effective it is in the hands of a veteran (due to shot cost, accuracy, etc).

Then there's the drop in alien accuracy so they can't shoot across the map accurately and don't always hit with reaction fire (the alien weapons are incredibly bad but the aliens win by attrition), grenades are only really useful up to shotgun range, and various fixes to strings, research and making plasma missiles feel like an upgrade (I don't really like the air combat lol.)

And you're not meant to attack from the front. That's what makes cover so good, and why pulling back and going around to flank is so useful. Keep a guy checking on the alien to make sure its not looking where you are flanking, get an enfilade shot and bam 60%+ accuracy instead of >10%.

Also I modified rocket launchers so they utterly destroy the alien and its equipment to give a downside to using them alot.

Edited by Sathra
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re: 1-2: this makes cover less meaningful, which takes a LOT away from player agency. I agree with 5, and that would impact your troops being shot out of cover, if sight is equal (aside from perhaps harridan, sebs, etc) then it's your fault a soldier is exposed/flanked and you should be punished.

3: grenade range, yes, shorter

4: check http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/4754-Soldier-Carrying-Capacity-Strength?p=61711&viewfull=1#post61711. that plus more TUs plus more overdamage would go a long way without reintroducing buying ammo.

5: yes, will possible exceptions of harridan, sebillian for flavour

6: no no no. just a bigger accuracy dropoff / squadsight changes

---

Insanely inaccurate rookies doesn't feel right to me, regardless of how xcom94 dealt with it. agreed that air combat feels a little too punishing on losses w/ 200k condors, though 50k ones might be too disposable. build times haven't really been balanced afaik. small ships just annoy me, I don't want to be boarding light scouts late in the game. if we can overdamage from the air, great.

air superiority missions are something I like, as they discourage players from just having one global dropship that strays outside of fighter range, though perhaps the punishment is too great given lack of options if escorts are being repaired. there is an x% chance for soldiers to survive a crash over land right?

Edited by erutan
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Land AND sea. Its not a bad chance either, and you'll usually have about half the team survive. Sea's a bit worse, not not by too much.

Shouldn't be seeing small ships late in the game anyways. At a guess the current way its done is have the various mission types unlock new ships at different time, so you end up with a mix that gradually turns into just the new ship type, then its starts mixing again for the next.

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1) the fact that its your fault a soldier is out in the open and you should be punished is not quite right, because most of the time you have no other way to advance on the enemy other than being exposed. the question is really HOW much punished you/aliens should be. My opinion is that currently it is TOO MUCH punished and should be reduced by a lot. That is not to say that cover will not offer significant advantage.

I have no problem with that the tactical game should require tactics such as flanking (currently it does not. currently it requires only concentrated fire from far far away because you always have a chance of hitting even from across the map, or at the very least you'll destroy the cover, therefor max range should be max range). It's also very very simple to implement and has no bug potential.

And meh, if the concept is so awful, then don't call it 'the bullet stops traveling after max sight'. just call it automatic 0% chance to hit. same difference. this is purely a gameplay consideration. and in truth guns do have a max range after which the bullet stops traveling and falls to the ground, or is completely without spotting power, so I don't understand the 'conceptual problem'.

Also it cures the game of ailments such as the perpetual threat of a 'bolt from the blue', which are simply not good design and add nothing to tactical gameplay.

Regarding the mix of alien craft, this is a gameplay consideration as well. at some point you may lose an aircraft in air combat and what then? you''ll be unable to take any more missions. no, there must always be light and medium ships coming so that the player always has a chance to do a mission.

Anyway, I appreciate you guys' feedback but I'd rather if you propose your own changes rather than take the opportunity to be 'change resistant' and argue with my proposed changes. Offer your own opinion of your own on what needs to be balanced and that will eventually be for the best :)

Edited by Lightzy
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Light, I hate to sound purely argumentative here but did you not see my large, thought-out suggestion for restricting squad sight without instituting an arbitrary maximum range?

And yes, bullets do have maximum ranges beyond which they fall to the ground. That range is pretty far out though: The longest ranged confirmed kill with a 7.62x51mm round* is at one and a quarter kilometers. Of course that should never be practical in Xenonauts for so many reasons but limiting military bullets to ranges of about 50m is moronic. Far better to institute tighter restrictions on what qualifies as a "legal" target. And making a 0% CtH is also idiotic, considering that if you've got a target's general location then firing on them is still often tactically sound: You can always "get lucky," as it were, and the target is likely to be suppressed if not hit. There's a difference between SHARP accuracy penalties, which I can understand, and 0% accuracy, which is stupid.

In case you actually didn't notice my alternate suggestion -- and saying that nobody else here is making recommendations implies that you didn't, or chose to ignore it -- I recommend simply putting a cap on SQUADSIGHT, restricting SQUADSIGHT to either being a hard cap of 20-30 tiles (with accuracy debuffs for range) or only transferring from one soldier to other soldiers that see that soldier, rather than allowing gaps like we have now.

So say you split a team into 2 groups of 3 and have them sweep opposite sides of the map. (Maybe this is tactically sound, maybe it's not -- just go with it for the example.) One of the soldiers in Group A, Frank, moves forward and sights a Sebilian: He can target the Sebilian, and the other two soldiers in Group A can target the Sebilian, because they can see Frank. However none of the three soldiers in Group B can target the Sebilian because they can't see either the Sebilian or Frank. Even if they could see the other two members of Group A it doesn't count unless they could see Frank or the Sebilian.

Again, this does have the flaw of munchkin-y players who abuse the manual targeting, but it does prevent the aliens from targeting you at ridiculous ranges. And it would be possible to code an "edge" for targeting based on the soldier's legal vision range.

*The 7.62x51mm is the same round that the Xenonauts' Precision Rifle uses. This kill in particular was made with an M24, which is a gun made first in 1988 -- but that's just a militarized variant of a different rifle originally made in 1962: So this level of firepower and accuracy would be available to the Xenonauts in '79.

Edit: Heck, I just noticed that I opened my first reaction post with "offer an alternative," and then you subsequently claimed "rather if you propose your own changes." So that raises some pretty serious questions about your ability to read other people's writing. Is my style that bad? Seriously, are my posts incomprehensible to everyone? Because if you can't follow what I'm saying, please tell me.

Edited by Waladil
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Hi Aaron.

Suggestons on the path that you have proposed for balancing

The First Pass

Could I ask that you consider all aspects of arms and armour when you consider the "ramping up" of equipment. While certain stats for arms and armour have a more visible impact on the game than others, each piece of equipment is more the sum of its parts than any single or group of stats. I argue that a holistic view that considers the overall increase of gear tier by tier will produce a clear improvement.

A worked example. Take alien weapons. A common complaint is reaction fire is too good. This is a combination of weapon range, alien sight range, reaction fire modifier, alien reflexes and TU reserve cost. Sathra addressed this. Sathra's primary solution was to modify the accuracy of shots, with additional modifications for reaction fire as necessary. However even with Sathra's mod, the gradiations between each level of aiming is very small. From an AI perspective, it is best to put all AP into the most accurate shot when reserving AP, because the cost is small and the opportunity to hit is at a maximum.

But what if the costs involved in making more accurate shots were increased, and the accuracy of those more expensive shots were increased? Basically, what if snap shots were exactly that - quick and dirty shots snapped off quickly? If there was a clear difference between reserving APs for several snap shots or a single normal shot, the AI is presented with a much more potent dilemma than it is currently. Then throw into the mix the reaction fire modifier and its reflex stat. The AI must know what the chances of it getting off a reaction shot are - it would have to consider that when weighting up which actions to take, and must know how many chances it gets to make reaction shots before a squaddie could theoretically open fire. If the AI knew it would have several chances to make a reaction fire "roll" and the chances of making a reaction fire shot are poor then it might pick the higher cost/higher accuracy single reaction shot because it knows it has more chances to make the shot. If it knows that the squaddie is either in squaddie sight/range already, it might pick the cheaper/more shots snap shot to get more chances at returning fire. If the reaction fire roll was good, the the AI might prefer the cheaper/more shots snapshot even at range because it has a better chance to crack off more shots as the target approaches.

Changes to AP cost and accuracy are reflected in changes to reaction fire modifier, and consider alien sight range and alien reflexes. This interconnectedness is, I feel, the most complex, but most appropriate approach to considering a smooth transition.

A second worked example

Lightzy has brought up previously how awesome rocket launchers are, and they are. Lightzy has made several suggestions, but what Lightzy hasn't considered are factors involving the weight or size of rockets. Consider that at the moment, a rocket trooper can have a rocket in the tube, five rockets in the backpack and a single rocket in the belt. But what if the size of the rocket were increased from 1x3 to 2x4? A backpack now only fits three rockets, with one in the tube, and none for the belt, almost cutting in half the number of shots that a rocket trooper can fire. To achieve just over the same level of destruction that a rocket trooper can at the moment, you would have to have a second rocket trooper. But wait, there's more! What if each rocket was twice as heavy as it is now? Or three times as heavy? Even strong-ass rocketmen would have difficulty hefting around all that rockety goodness without either forgoing armour or having a reduced AP as a result. And then if you threw in a higher cost to fire normal shots, a reduced accuracy to fire snap shots, a reduced area effect perhaps, well, can you see where I'm going with this? Rather than bring the nerf hammer down super heavy on one stat, by considering all the factors that go into a rocket rather than how much of a boom it makes, makes for a more interesting ramping up.

Edited by Max_Caine
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Has anyone ever had to reload much other than a rocket launcher (single shot) maybe a sniper rifle, i know clip size is based semi realistic but i feel there should be more of a trade off for burst yea the ap cost is high, but there is really never a thought about ammo conservation. Even on terror missions maybe one guy needs to reload but usually a squad a rifle guys cna pretty much burst most times they need to shoot and thats 6 shots each before running out of ammo on burst and i'd say its rare for any one soldier to shoot that many times in most battles. ( i havent played farther base assults and such) more enemies on light scouts helps this but any game ive had thru the first few months squaddies rarely drop a clip.

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Orange, later weapons (in current balance) have much smaller clips and reloading is absolutely a concern! MAG weapons have tiny clips (8 for the rifle, like 3 or 4 for the sniper, I forget exact values) so ammo conservation is a big issue with those weapons.

THAT SAID, I wanted to make the following point for game balance:

I'm not sure about the laser/plasma weapons, but MAG weapons should have larger clips than basic ballistic. Since a MAG weapon fires a metal slug -- and nothing else -- the overall size of one round in the magazine would be much smaller, therefore more rounds could be fit into similarly-sized magazines. This holds true even if the MAG slugs are twice the size of the actual bullets fired by ballistics now.

TBH, I think MAG weapons ought to be straight upgrades of ballistics in every way, except for possibly slight downsides in accuracy and TU cost, considering that the Xenopedia mentions (for laser weapons, but this would hold true for all late-tier weapons) that ballistics have the advantage of "centuries of general useability improvements." So things like ease of use would be best on ballistics, accounting for TU useage, and the sights and ergonomics would be the most conducive to accuracy.

Range on the other hand, I model based on relative projectile speed. The reason most weapons would cease to be within "effective" range is because it's becoming impractical for the soldier firing to actually hit the target. The faster the projectile goes, the longer the effective range. Therefore, lasers have the longest effective range (lightspeed, baby!), followed by MAG.

So how about this for overall balance: (Note that philosophically I am designing this so that later tiers are almost always better, based off the concept that if lower-level weapons were better then players would have no reason to continue weapons research).

Ballistics: Lowest TU cost, highest accuracy. Offset by shortest range, lowest damage, and weak armor penetration.

Lasers: Average TU/accuracy, highest range. Clips similarly-sized to ballistics, very low armor penetration* and high damage. Good for long-range takedowns of basic troops.

Plasma: Extremely high damage, high armor penetration. Smallest clips, highest TU costs, average accuracy, and somewhat short range. All plasma weapons are essentially cannon versions of whatever weapon type they may be.

MAG: Ridiculously high armor penetration, largest clips, only slightly outranged by lasers. The only weaknesses are damage that's only slightly above-average and the average TU cost and accuracy. **

*This low penetration is predicated on the concept that most aliens don't have armor versus laser weapons. The aliens with anti-laser armor (drones / front-line troops) would be very difficult to kill with lasers.

**The reason that MAG weapons have really high armor penetration but low (comparatively) damage is similar to the reason that the alien sniper does: The shot is fired so fast that it punches straight through whatever it hits, but doesn't tumble and tear like traditional bullets. Mitigated by using much higher-caliber rounds.

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@light, people have been proposing alternatives. imho being caught out of cover now is bad because of how vision range affects reaction fire, and most people think it's too easy to engage at range, but there are alternatives to just keeping current ranges and having no chance to hit that have been discussed elsewhere.

@waladil, read on from this post for a page or so http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/4727-Unlimited-ammo-a-good-thing?p=60473&viewfull=1#post60473

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""Also, remove alien fighter squadrons from the game. Escorts I understand, but harassment squadrons that serve only to annoy and are no fun at all should be removed. It's too dangerous to accidentally lose the chinook to one of those because it just appeared out of nowhere somewhere and you're on the way back from a mission or whatever.

Those alien fighter squads simply break the game in an non-fun and completely unnecessary way. remove them, they have no point ""

By the love of god dont remove more features / mechanics from the game. If it doesnt work or annoys FIX it but dont ever talk of removing, we have a Fireaxis EU already we dont need another one.

Now air superiority fighter missions makes completely sense, I would say its a must if you want a proper alien invasión. Its not the games fault if it disrupts your game, you are supposed to use your brains and overcome the challenges not remove them from the game. I love having other uses for the interceptors apart of spawning ground missions. Gain air superiority and fight to keep it, this is war not a "shoot the sitting ufo".

How you can balance this ?

-Have more fighters. Make them cheaper to balance losses.

-Build more fighter bases all around to improve coverage.

-Build extra radar stations. Build them in bases to cover all the world you can.

-Rework the way Charlie escorting Works, or do it manually.

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Waldil, I did read your comment, and I did think it a good idea to consider, which is why I didn't want to respond to it or start a discussion around it, so to not give anyone argumentative a chance to argue, and so that people could go on to freely post their opinions on what needs to be changed WITHOUT anyone arguing with them. Because I think there are many other good ideas to consider.

So that everyone says what they think without immediately being showered with criticism. I think all in all, it would be good to start a new thread and have rules in it, like, nobody argues, only adds.

You would note that almost all posts since my posts have to deal with my post, rather than people having suggestions of their own, cleanly and simply, according to what's in the game currently and not according to the opinions of another

Edited by Lightzy
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I suppose there could be a thread that just generates ideas, then they are summarized and debated in another thread. A lot of threads have a nice progress due to criticism though, some ideas are rejected, others evolve, it's part of the process. In the carry capacity one I introduced an idea that was met with an overall negative reaction (combine str and tu into fitness), then aeil_wolf came up with limiting slots by armor type (which is a better idea) and I built off of that.

imho you're trying to fix legitimate issues in the wrong way. issues 1-2 should be addressed by nerfing range/heavy weapons, and balancing vision+reaction fire, rather than making standing out in the open safer and being behind cover more dangerous.

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I think a lot of people are forgetting that part of the aim is to keep the feel of the original Xcom series. Squad sight was a "feature" of the original series and does greatly affect the feel and the tactics required.

Yes there needs to be some fixes as to the weapon range and the "blue bolts from the blue" but I personally think that totally nerfing the squad sight would be the wrong way to do it as it would take things away from the Xcom mechanics.

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Absolutely. There are plenty of good games out there, but for me the reason I got interested in Xenonauts and pre-ordered is the hope to see a faithful reinterpretation of XCOM. There are similar games out there that don't capture the feel (like UFO:AI), there's Enemy Unknown by Firaxis which is a very good game but with different features, but there's nothing out there that just takes the old XCOM and plays with those mechanics plus some needed updates.

To me, it entails that core features of XCOM need to be present. Squadsight needs to be present because that's how XCOM worked. Ditto reaction fire, or fine control over loadouts, or individual soldier stats, or many other things.

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Squadsight is going to be in the game, but it'll probably be done in realtime (be affected by movement/death) rather than just expanding each turn then resetting, and shrink when a unit is suppressed, etc to make it a bit more realistic.

Should fall within 'playing with mechanics / needed updates' imho. :)

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