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V19 Experimental Build 5 available!


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Firstly, if you do not know how to access the experimental branch on Steam, please read the instructions (and warnings!) in this thread. All saved games from earlier versions (including experimental versions) are incompatible, attempting to load them will cause problems.

The main new feature of this build is the first implementation of the air combat auto-resolve; now this is very much work in progress so expect to see bugs and imbalance in it - you shouldn't get stuck, because if worst comes to worst you can play the air combat manually. Additionally I have made some quite significant balance improvements to the kinds of UFOs that show up throughout the invasion, and the types and number of aliens appearing in ground combat missions. Finally there's been some pretty important balance changes to Xenonaut equipment - armour has been buffed in general, grenades are now shorter range and cause overdamage and close range weapons should be more effective.

Also, we may make another updated experimental build after this one as there were some cool features we couldn't quite get in, but after that we want to release a new stable version to Steam - to help us make sure it is a bug free as possible, please remind us gently of any really annoying long standing bugs in this thread.

Here is the changelog:

Fixes

- NOTE: there was a bug with hypervelocity weapons in this build, but to avoid delaying it I have just disabled the hypervelocity property on any weapons that had it (not a permanent change, it will be back when fixed)

- Fixed (fingers crossed) the "Hidden Movement screen always on bug". If this still happens, please report it.

- Fixed being able to see inside/outside of UFOs through their hulls (this does not fix aliens trying to shoot through walls, however)

- Fixed a few city and country names not displaying correctly and causing crashes

- Fixed the Wraith analysis description being displayed as the project title

- Fixed crash at the end of ground combat related to inventory problem

- Fixed Harridan support units missing sprites

- Fixed Harridan officers having no weapon

- Fixed aliens leaving invisible, un-pathable "trail" during Xenonaut base attack missions

- Fixed various UFOs spawning GC missions with no aliens

- Vehicle projectile speeds should now match infantry weapon counterparts (visual only)

- Fixed crash after aborting Xenonaut base defence mission

Additions

- Alien breaches in Xenonaut bases now have alien style tiles

- You will now lose the game if a certain number of territories fall to the aliens, based on difficulty level: Easy = 7, Normal = 6, Veteran = 5 and Insane = 4

- Air combat auto-resolve function enabled; the aircraft and weapon scores that determine win/loss are still preliminary, so bear with us while we balance them. There are also some bugs such as auto-resolving vs groups of UFOs and air superiority fights skipping the auto-resolve dialogue

- New Geoscape message box style

- Alien sniper rifles use pistol projectile to make their fire appear more distinct from the other plasma weapons

- Final Reaper and Praetor autopsy images

- Added several new props for the new species specific alien base rooms

Balance

- Extensive rebalance of Geoscape UFO forces throughout the alien invasion

-- Scouts and Landing Ship UFOs will now appear throughout the entire game to help train rookies

-- Much more variety of UFOs, there will always be at least 2 main types available

-- Reduced the rate at which non-crashsite UFOs (fighters, bombers) spawn

- Reduced the frequency of alien attacks on Xenonaut bases by about 50%

- Refuelling rate for interceptors increased from 0.12 to 0.2

- Implemented monthly maintenance costs for all aircraft at 20% of initial cost

- Implemented monthly maintenance costs for base buildings at 10% of construction cost

- Reduced cost of new Xenonaut base down to 250000

- Extensive rebalance of the composition and number of aliens spawning in every UFO and Alien base

-- Alien numbers now randomised to make missions a little more individual

-- Generally, you can expect up to 50% more aliens than previously in a UFO

-- Better use of Passive (lurking), Defensive (UFO bound) and Command (UFO command room bound) aliens

-- Larger UFOs now have proportionally more aliens on the defensive inside them

-- Alien bases should now be much more busy, though they are sometimes affected by the note below

-- Unfixed bug: it seems later UFOs/bases do not always load the correct set of aliens; please report this if you see it

- Close range accuracy bonus increased from +8 per tile to +15 to encourage closer engagements

- Grenades now cause overdamage, meaning they will destroy the equipment an alien was carrying

- The various types of Xenonauts armour all now provide an extra 10 points of damage protection (e.g. Jackal now 30 up from 20)

- Heavier armours (Jackal, Wolf and Predator) now no longer have a signt range reduction

- Alien battle rifle damage increased from 70 to 100 (but 20 armour mitigation removed)

- Base grenade throw range reduced by 3 tiles

- The extra TU required to vault low walls has been reduced to 6 from 12

- Stun grenades made slightly more effective (both initial blast and gas)

- Flashbang stun damage halved

- Reduced range of sniper rifles down to 25 (both human and alien)

- Sniper rifles now cost an extra 10 TU per tier to fire

- Reduced range of some drone weapons down to 20

- Xenonaut stats progress has been capped at a single point for each stat per mission

- Final mission has been tuned a bit in terms of layout and alien numbers; still very rough but should be more playable (remember most of the art in that mission is placeholder)

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. I will post new threads in the beta forum shortly for in-depth discussion of the current Geoscape and Ground Combat balance, but feel free to post brief opinions here too.

Edited by Aaron
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Why the reduction of sniper rifle ranges?
The majority seemed to think they were so good that there was no reason to carry an AR. Just like people playing whole games using nothing but grenades and rocket launchers. That's why the grenade range was reduced and over damage added.
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Going to give it a shot now -- even though I was the one who brought up skill gain changes, I don't feel particularly happy about just cutting down skill gain rates to max 1 (as opposed to max 2).

Oh, just looking at the .ini file, there's also some undocumented changes to skill gain rates.

TUs only take 150 to increase the max one point (down from 300/point)

Strength gain is UNCHANGED (meaning you can still gain 2 points of strength -- oversight?)

Accuracy only requires a single shot to gain the point

Reflexes/Bravery now also need one roll only to gain.

Resilience takes 5 points to improve, rather than 4. (Was this so if a soldier gained one of every other point, they'd get a full resilience as well?)

All stats now capped at 99, rather than 100 or 120 previously. This was bugged previously and certain stats went over their indicated maximums -- I'll keep an eye to see if that occurs with new caps.

I honestly hope these changes are a placeholder until a new system is put in -- as it stands it's essentially a junk system that reads "Get one point of TUs/Strength/Accuracy every mission, one point of reflexes on occasion, one point resilience every other mission or so." At that point why not scrap the system entirely and just write an algorithm to increase stats?

function statGain()

{

soldier.str++;

soldier.acc++;

soldier.aps++;

soldier.missionCount++;

if(soldier.missionCount % 3 != 0)

{

soldier.res++;

}

if(soldier.missionCount % 3 == 0)

{

soldier.ref++;

}

}

There, algorithm done. You'll have to convert it to work with your data structure, obviously. And I doubt Xenonauts is coded in bad C++,* so you'll have to convert the language, too.

I suppose you did manage to remove the powerleveling problem. Kind of like removing a bug infestation by burning the house down, though.

*I mean "My C++ code is bad" not "C++ is a bad language."

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Would it really be so bad if it was changed to a "soldiers get skill++ for being on a successful mission"?

If the concern is that it prevents soldier variation, that doesn't need to be the case. Allow skewed stats to happen: for example, a recruit with low accuracy, but higher strength and TUs than normal. This guy will never be the king of the snipers, but he'll be great for lugging a shield and being the first to go in. The stats will stay relative as he levels. Keep the current generic stat soldiers for people who don't want to specialise.

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Sniper rifles got hit HARD with the nerf-hammer. Maybe scale back the higher TU cost to only +5 rather than +10? That's only from one mission, though. With the higher TU costs and slower levelling, snipers are going to be wastes of time in the early game.

I mean, it wouldn't truly be that bad if skill was made purely a function of starting stats and missions participated in. But the way it was done in this build was a very ham-handed way of going about it that feels like GI is saying "Fine, if you guys don't like it then we'll just slap together a 'fix' and that'll be good enough." Hence my comment about hoping it's a placeholder for a better system that's still being developed: Maybe they are just going to set up a good algorithm for gaining skills as missions go by, and this was just a first pass while they get the proper code done.

However, everything that follows this line is my OPINION, and therefore it should be taken as simply one gamer/customer/philosopher's opinion. Not the word of God or nothin like that.

I don't like soldiers levelling purely based on missions participated in. It wouldn't be the worst, but it would suck a lot of the individuality away from my soldiers. There will remain variation amongst your soldiers until they start reaching those 99-point caps. But there's a noticeable difference between 50 and 60 TUs -- there's not as much of a noticeable difference between 80 and 90 TUs. And once they start hitting 99, they'll get more homogenized yet.

I'd still much more heavily support a system that caps skills (both gain rate and maximum) in general as opposed to per-skill caps. So you'd still get 3-5 skill points per mission, but they'd be arranged based on what was used most. And soldiers would hit max skill caps in general but they'd remain asymmetrical: Maybe you've got a skirmisher who ended up with 120 TUs, but only 80 strength. Or a heavy weapons guy with 130 strength (think of all the rockets he could carry!) but a relatively-abysmal 70 accuracy. Or the heavy weapons mule guy (who did nothing but carry around more rockets) with a massive 200 strength... but 50 TUs and 50 accuracy. (Seriously, all he did was lug rockets around.)

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Disclaimer: I just started testing with V19B4, so if stuff has been said before, I apologize in advance.

Version 19, Build 5 Bugs, or Errors:

1. The hidden movement thing is always on all the time for me. I tried to use a fix mentioned to turn it off, but it was not successful. Is there an official way to turn it off?

2. I cannot scroll the combat screen with the arrow keys on a new turn until I use the mouse to scroll first.

3. You cannot use anything but alpha and numbers in your aircraft names. Would be nice to be able to use a dash, so I can name my planes Condor EU-1.

4. The sound timing is often off, causing the alien scream to happen before the shot, or shock baton hits.

5. Animation timing is off. The firing animation starts first, then shots and shot sound starts

Version 19, Build 5 Observations (balance and comments):

1. I'm thinking that grenades need one more tile. Either that, or make flares 3 more.

2. How much damage does a stun grenade do over time? Because it takes like 120 damage to bring down a lizard guy, and my stun grenade did 15. So that means either he's gotta sit in that for 8 turns, or I need 8 grenades. I'm guessing I'm supposed to shoot him twice then hit him with a grenade? UPDATE: I now realize that hitting the guy directly with the grenade does lots more stun damage.

3. I haven't had much luck with the missiles in the base game. I'm guessing I'm supposed to shoot one, then have it roll, then shoot the other. Almost all my kills are with the vulcan cannons on the Condors. Right now, I'd much rather have three guns. Update: I think I've figured this out more. Still would like the option to have different things in hard points.

4. I think the heavy hardpoints on the Foxtrot should either hold two Sidewinders or an Avalanche torpedo.

5. Fighting at night is scary, which is awesome.

6. The new base maintenance cost structure seems better balanced than Build 4

7. With the changes to the sniper rifle, I find myself using it less and less. To the point that I'm considering taking them out of my squads. A good compromise might be to increase the range back a bit, but keep the very high TU cost, or maybe tone it down by 5.

8. Shotgun accuracy is too low in my opinion. I have to be practically in the tile next to the target to hit anything.

9. The M-79 40mm grenade launcher would be a nice compromise between the missile launcher and the machine gun.

10. I like the music.

11. Shock batons are awesome.

UI Suggestions:

1. Soldier Results Screen: Please include all the stats at the bottom, and show arrows for improvements. Also listing who killed what here would be great.

2. Combat: When you mouse over the units, it would be nice if you could see the role of the person (sniper, etc).

Random Thought:

I'm not sure how feasible it would be, but being able to choose what stat points go up would make the soldiers a lot more individualized. You could tune a soldier to a role a lot more effectively.

WTF:

Why is the UFO door so hard to shoot inside? It's like there's some space magic that makes me walk into it in order to shoot through the door.

Edited by Ishantil
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with new stat's gain system much more better to skip it completely and just give +1 to every stat per ground mission, this will eliminate grinding and allow to train rookies on easy GC with much more fun, get single commando and steamroll all alliens alone, rookes get levelup, player get lulz.

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Version 19, Build 5 Bugs, or Errors:

1. The hidden movement thing is always on all the time for me. I tried to use a fix mentioned to turn it off, but it was not successful. Is there an official way to turn it off?

Ditto. Tried deleting the image from the assets folder, still crops up even when movement/shooting is within my troop LOS.

Haven't played since the v18 experimental builds - figured I'd wait out until the flavour text was complete. Loving the changes so far (aside from this unintentional one, obviously. ;p).

Edit: Wait, fixed it. Found another two copies of the hidden movement png's, got rid of those, doesn't pop up now. For anyone else having the (temporary) issue, just search your Xenonauts folder for "hidden", delete all .png's that reference the hidden movement photo. In my case, there were three in total.

Edited by Mattjpwns
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Going to give it a shot now -- even though I was the one who brought up skill gain changes, I don't feel particularly happy about just cutting down skill gain rates to max 1 (as opposed to max 2).
Could just double the amount of points needed per skill and cap it at 1/mission, so that you still need to do the same amount of "stuff" as before for each progress point, just you get half as many. New system: half the work for half as many.
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Sniper rifles got hit HARD with the nerf-hammer. Maybe scale back the higher TU cost to only +5 rather than +10? That's only from one mission, though. With the higher TU costs and slower levelling, snipers are going to be wastes of time in the early game.

I mean, it wouldn't truly be that bad if skill was made purely a function of starting stats and missions participated in. But the way it was done in this build was a very ham-handed way of going about it that feels like GI is saying "Fine, if you guys don't like it then we'll just slap together a 'fix' and that'll be good enough." Hence my comment about hoping it's a placeholder for a better system that's still being developed: Maybe they are just going to set up a good algorithm for gaining skills as missions go by, and this was just a first pass while they get the proper code done.

I don't like soldiers levelling purely based on missions participated in. It wouldn't be the worst, but it would suck a lot of the individuality away from my soldiers. There will remain variation amongst your soldiers until they start reaching those 99-point caps. But there's a noticeable difference between 50 and 60 TUs -- there's not as much of a noticeable difference between 80 and 90 TUs. And once they start hitting 99, they'll get more homogenized yet.

I'd still much more heavily support a system that caps skills (both gain rate and maximum) in general as opposed to per-skill caps. So you'd still get 3-5 skill points per mission, but they'd be arranged based on what was used most. And soldiers would hit max skill caps in general but they'd remain asymmetrical: Maybe you've got a skirmisher who ended up with 120 TUs, but only 80 strength. Or a heavy weapons guy with 130 strength (think of all the rockets he could carry!) but a relatively-abysmal 70 accuracy. Or the heavy weapons mule guy (who did nothing but carry around more rockets) with a massive 200 strength... but 50 TUs and 50 accuracy. (Seriously, all he did was lug rockets around.)

I reckon it's the (temporary) loss of hypervelocity that really affects snipers. Once that's back in, they'll be alright.

As for levelling: you raise a really good point with skill caps being pretty much uniform. For a mission-XP system, I guess I'd solve this by changing caps from being set in stone at 100 or whatnot, and have the caps based on starting stats: so maybe a recruit who starts with 50 TUs will max out at 80 TUs, while a 60 TU recruit would max out at 90 TUs. This is basically what the system you propose does, but without having to work out how to split those skill points in a way the player wants. Bear in mind that some skill checks are passive, while others require being triggered! So maybe Mr. LMG gets ambushed by a few enemies including a psion, but survives the mission. Now he ends up being eligible for reaction skill points as well as bravery skill points, but you don't want him to miss out on TU or strength; he could well end up getting +accuracy, +reaction and +bravery. He takes one step closer to becoming Mr. Generic.

I disagree about the TUs. While there are thresholds, like 80 TUs, that are really noticeable (can reload and fire a rocket launcher with normal shot in one go; two reasonable sniper shots), the extra TUs give a lot of slack. Take the 80 TU RL guy example: a lot of times I'll opt for the 70 TU option with snap shot instead, so that I can be sure of getting out of enemy LoF, or maybe to turn to take the shot.

Maybe a problem is that some stats are more apparent and/or useful than others, though? I mean, like you say, the difference between 50 and 60 TUs is pretty obvious. But what about 50 and 60 reactions? I doubt I'd be able to tell without going to the stats screen. In a system where you get skills++ across the board this isn't an issue; weaker stats can exist because they don't risk edging out the more valuable ones. In a system where the computer has to choose, weaker stats are troublesome, as they make the wrong decision.

However, everything that follows this line is my OPINION, and therefore it should be taken as simply one gamer/customer/philosopher's opinion. Not the word of God or nothin like that.

I've always found that anyone who uses the line "but that's, like, just your opinion, man!" can be safely ignored. I don't know about you, but I'm not going to put "imo" in every bloomin' sentence. (;

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Ouch, balance goes worse and worse so far. I'm not "crying baby", but every new build looks more tedious against previous. 18-th build had good machine guns. You cut them down. 19-th build had goods snipers and grenades. You cut them down too. What we have now? There is no good weapon to fight aliens. All weapons is sh.t now!

All my 8-man team stands near one poor Sectoid Non-Combatant and fire him about five turns... And nothing happens! Only suppression! All the ground around him is black, but he is alive! He just standing in the middle of grassy field and does nothing. And I lose more hit points by friendly fire than by his counterattacks. Hallelujah! He is down. Now do the same with next alien and next...

Finally, we reach the UFO. Open door - fire, step aside - end turn. Repeat for 10-15 turns. My God! Are you kidding the players?

Next mission. Same map, same enemies, same stuck in one poor alien... No, this is intolerable. Alt+F4 is best weapon now!

I have bought absolutely different game. Its a pity that the project went on such a path of development. Ground combat must be more deadlier. As for aliens, as well as, for our troops. Machine gun burst with no cover - frag, close range shotgun shot - frag, two sniper shots - frag, grenade, rocket - three frags, left your soldier in the line of fire - frag. Worried that the fight will be too short? Make more aliens! Are you afraid of accidental deaths of our soldiers? Do more injuries with loss of consciousness, as in the original.

Edited by Went
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caps based of starting stats will force player to pick\disband xenonauts in order to assemble again "generic" party with TU maxed and accuracy on reasonable level, only reasonable way to deal with situation is removal of all limits and geometrical growth rules:

max stats growth

40-60 takes 5 missions (4 per mission)

60-70 takes 5 missions (2 per mission)

70-80 takes 10 (1 per mission)

90-100 takes 20 (0.5)

100-110 takes 40 (0.25)

110-120 takes 80 (0.125)

120-130 takes 160 (0.05125)

There is will be no limit, but, due to extremely large amount of ground missions required to levelup, progression will halt in range of 100 or mabe 110 for most players.

If grace of gods visits goldhawk and they will suddenly remove old system and will give XP for actually killing allien units and for just taking part in ground mission (based on xp earned by team), each player will have many midterm xenonauts or minmaxed team with few extremely powerfull units and meatshield.

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