Geoscape Balance - V21 Experimental 5 / 6

[Chris]

The Geoscape balancing hasn't been too dramatic this build really, but here's the place to discuss it:

• UFOs now have minimum 8 hour landing times
  
• Cannon range reduced to that of Sidewinder missiles
  
• Invasion slowed down slightly on Veteran
  
• Valkyrie / Shrike turn up earlier in the tech tree
  
• UFO numbers reduced slightly
  

EDIT - for Experimental 6, there's been virtually no changes at all, so please continue discussion in this thread!

[Calmingstorm]

I noticed that when building the bomber foxtrot took the $200,000 then started deducting additional $200,00 (in the gradual expenses)

[KateMicucci]

Valkyrie / Shrike turn up earlier in the tech tree

When? I just got Alien Electronics, and I can research the Corsair but not the new dropship.

[a333]

Just a question. Does the aircraft that run out of fuel in a middle of a fight supposed to drop it's speed to the turtle levels?

Two of my planes were escaping, while scout was chasing first, second lost its fuel in the opposite corner of the map.

I've to wait and watch for a minute for the scout to turn, fly through entire screen and catch the second plane.

[Chris]

Calmingstorm - that sounds like a bug, but it doesn't appear to work that way in the dev version. Can you confirm it?

KateMicucci - you need the Directional Thruster Array, but should now be in the Corvette rather than the Landing Ship.

a333 - they are meant to drop their speed, but it is a bit ridiculous. Suggest it to us again during the polishing phase and we'll look at fixing it.

[KateMicucci]

The corvette didn't unlock directional thrusters.

[Aaron]

Good spot, the Directional Thrusters were indeed not being unlocked - I just issued a little hotfix on the experimental branch that will fix that.

[dropbear]

I already commented on the ground combat balance and would like to give my impressions on the strategy layer. I can't really put my finger on what exactly has changed, but I have to say it isn't really challenging at present (playing on veteran). As I understand it you guys wanted the player to really struggle against overwhelming and superior alien forces, right? Well, I feel firmly in control of the airspace at this point with one base holding 2 Foxtrot & 3 Condors. So far, none of the spotted ufos escaped my fighters. I guess the first month summary below speaks for itself. I don't think I'm supposed to actually get a funding increase with just one base and starting tech.

However in all fairness I've played the early game portion quite a lot, meaning my process is pretty streamlined and I have a reasonable idea on how to tackle ufos.

I'm not really sure what to suggest to make it more challenging. The Interceptor nerf a couple of versions back did increase the difficulty a lot, but made it barely playable so that's probably not a good idea. I think for starters it might help to give the light scouts and scouts a bit more hp. At least that way, I would run out of ammo before taking down the 3rd ufo without rearming.

First month funding report (base is positioned in greece, 1 radardish, Not sure why north America didn't change. Probably just got lucky there):

[StellarRat]

I already commented on the ground combat balance and would like to give my impressions on the strategy layer. I can't really put my finger on what exactly has changed, but I have to say it isn't really challenging at present (playing on veteran). As I understand it you guys wanted the player to really struggle against overwhelming and superior alien forces, right? Well, I feel firmly in control of the airspace at this point with one base holding 2 Foxtrot & 3 Condors. So far, none of the spotted ufos escaped my fighters. I guess the first month summary below speaks for itself. I don't think I'm supposed to actually get a funding increase with just one base and starting tech.

However in all fairness I've played the early game portion quite a lot, meaning my process is pretty streamlined and I have a reasonable idea on how to tackle ufos.

I'm not really sure what to suggest to make it more challenging. The Interceptor nerf a couple of versions back did increase the difficulty a lot, but made it barely playable so that's probably not a good idea. I think for starters it might help to give the light scouts and scouts a bit more hp. At least that way, I would run out of ammo before taking down the 3rd ufo without rearming.

First month funding report (base is positioned in greece, 1 radardish, Not sure why north America didn't change. Probably just got lucky there):

[ATTACH=CONFIG]2971[/ATTACH]

It gets much harder around Dec - Jan when the big ships show up.

[dropbear]

Yeah I realize that, but my point is that, contrary to what I understand the intentions of the devs/designers to be, it really doesn't instill any sort of fear or technical superiority in the beginning of the game. Which is where you really are supposed to have nothing to stop the aliens with, but bravery and desperation. But it's possible that I misunderstood how the game is supposed to play out.

[StellarRat]

Yeah I realize that, but my point is that, contrary to what I understand the intentions of the devs/designers to be, it really doesn't instill any sort of fear or technical superiority in the beginning of the game. Which is where you really are supposed to have nothing to stop the aliens with, but bravery and desperation. But it's possible that I misunderstood how the game is supposed to play out.

I think they give you a couple months to get established before you start getting hammered. No one would survive a Dec - Jan situation if it was like that from day one. Somewhere, I think, your chief scientist tells you, "Yes, we're outclassed, but the good news is that it will take the aliens a while to get their larger ships ready to attack."

[dropbear]

Alright then, that makes sense. My idea of what the devs want the early game to be mostly came from the statement about "not being supposed to catch all the ufos you see" in another thread. Which is why I suggested giving more durability to the scouts, so that bringing down one would eat up enough ammo to force the fighters to rearm inbetween intercepts, thus allowing the other scouts to possibly escape.

[Baggaman]

Played to end of December on normal difficulty.

Some observations:

Alenium seems to be in very short supply.

With almost 50 UFO's shot down I have only accumulated 55 Alenium total. Though I must admit I used the Airstrike option on about half of the crash sites. I built the Shrike as soon as it became available (20 Alenium), and in the name of Bete testing I also built the Scimitar (12 Alenium), which leaves me with 23 Alenium in stock - which is not enough to build even a single Corsair. I am currently losing the air supremacy game badly. I suggest upping the Alenium drop rate somewhat :-)

Research

I built an extra laboratory early in the game, and thus have had 30 scientists since month 2 or so. For several periods I found myself without anything to study. I guess I might have been unlucky with spawns etc, but still: I have never ever been ahead of the research game in an X-com type game. By December everything was back to normal though – with many juicy research tasks to prioritize. So maybe some tuning required?

Starting base location is still critical for success.

I built my first base in the Middle East, thus covering Europe, ME, Most of Africa and some of Asia with my interceptors. However.. of cource most of the Alien activity first month was in Central and South America. Result: Almost 200k $ down on funding the first month and South America eventually leaving the funding group altogether. That’s 200K $ less every month in funding, which seems like a very harsh penalty just for being unlucky in Month 1. Some suggestions on how to balance this better:

• Give the player a grace period at the beginning of the game where ignored UFO’s only give slightly reduced funding.

• Make the small UFO’s have less impact on funding, and later game biger wreak more havoc (and funding loss if ignored).

• Make the first few months of UFO activity be primarily happening in the continents where Xenonauts are present (Kinda silly I know, but playing a game is about having fun and its not much fun when all the action is happing without the player having any chance to influence it)

[Gauddlike]

I imagine it is difficult to tune the research due to the player having freedom to decide how many scientists to have.

If I had been playing the same game but only recruited 20 scientists for example then I might have been behind on research where you were in front, another player who had picked up 40 scientists may still be in front even when your research had returned to normal.

[kabill]

• Make the first few months of UFO activity be primarily happening in the continents where Xenonauts are present (Kinda silly I know, but playing a game is about having fun and its not much fun when all the action is happing without the player having any chance to influence it)

I get the feeling this might be quite important to set up somehow.

I started a game a few days ago with a base in North America. It took me until mid-October (i.e. a month and a half) to get a ground mission. Before then, I had detected only two UFOs and both of them had only been on the edges of detection range such that they escaped before I could catch them.

I don't know whether I was unlucky or whether North America is just a terrible start place. Either way, I think it's a problem if the player can be set back so much due to bad luck or not choosing one of two optimal start places (North Africa/Middle East and China seem to cover the most land mass). In contrast, my current game gave me an easy UFO to shoot down just a week into the game. Hence, I'd basically finished all of the first tier research by mid-October, the same point at which I got my very first GC in the previous game.

Other than this, though, the Geoscape balance on this build feels really good. On Veteran, I've played to mid-January so far and everything feels like it's been at a good pace. Things a starting to pick up: terror missions have started and I've just sacked my first alien base. Air combat is quite manageable and I'm shooting most UFOs down that I detect (though this is getting more difficult). I've got two established bases and am constructing a third. Money is fairly steady. I don't have as many resources as I would like, but I think this is a feature rather than a flaw (I've been stockpiling alien alloys ready for Plasma weapons). Even a disastrous mission (Reapers are terrifying!) where I lost basically all my veterans hasn't been crippling (which is excellent, IMO). So yes, I think the balance here is pretty solid.

[TrashMan]

Regarding the alien activity problem - it might be a good idea to not only have that grace period, but also have the relations drop be influenced by the number of bases you own.

The less bases you own, the smaller the relations penalty (since I assume the nations would take into account the fact that you only have one base on the other side of the Earth, or that you have 4, but not a single one their area.)

OR

Simply take into account the distance to your nearest base.

[Caaygun]

Alenium seems to be in very short supply.

With almost 50 UFO's shot down I have only accumulated 55 Alenium total. Though I must admit I used the Airstrike option on about half of the crash sites. I built the Shrike as soon as it became available (20 Alenium), and in the name of Bete testing I also built the Scimitar (12 Alenium), which leaves me with 23 Alenium in stock - which is not enough to build even a single Corsair. I am currently losing the air supremacy game badly. I suggest upping the Alenium drop rate somewhat :-)

Agree, to be able to build some corsairs before heavy fighters appear, I have to hunt down and take all alenium dropping ufos, could be intended, but since corsair is still not that much more powerful than the condor, it seems unbalanced somewhat.

I built an extra laboratory early in the game, and thus have had 30 scientists since month 2 or so. For several periods I found myself without anything to study. I guess I might have been unlucky with spawns etc, but still: I have never ever been ahead of the research game in an X-com type game. By December everything was back to normal though – with many juicy research tasks to prioritize. So maybe some tuning required?

I find that 20 scientists are enough until late cruisers, carriers.

Starting base location is still critical for success.

I built my first base in the Middle East, thus covering Europe, ME, Most of Africa and some of Asia with my interceptors. However.. of cource most of the Alien activity first month was in Central and South America. Result: Almost 200k $ down on funding the first month and South America eventually leaving the funding group altogether. That’s 200K $ less every month in funding, which seems like a very harsh penalty just for being unlucky in Month 1. Some suggestions on how to balance this better:

• Give the player a grace period at the beginning of the game where ignored UFO’s only give slightly reduced funding.

• Make the small UFO’s have less impact on funding, and later game biger wreak more havoc (and funding loss if ignored).

• Make the first few months of UFO activity be primarily happening in the continents where Xenonauts are present (Kinda silly I know, but playing a game is about having fun and its not much fun when all the action is happing without the player having any chance to influence it)

What's more critical is to not miss a terror mission which causes almost sure nation loss, and with the introduction of aerial bombing, I found that 3 bases by end of month 2 is critical to cover all of the world cities under foxtrot range, or you might get unlucky enough to have an aerial terror spawn in a remote place. I can even tell you the places in order: Middle east, mexico, philippines. Some dynamism in this could be useful, like having a lot of cities in the database but only spawning some of them for each game session? Capitals could always be there but small cities could randomly spawn. Or terror sites could prioritize capitals or casualties could be population based, you know its strange to get aliens bombing Yakutsk and kill 30000 people, the same thing happens with Paris too.

[kabill]

What's more critical is to not miss a terror mission which causes almost sure nation loss,

I don't entirely agree with this. In the game I'm playing at the moment, I've had four terror events (one bombing and three ground attacks) and missed two of them (the aerial terror attack as it was out of range and one of the terror missions because it struck just when I was in the middle of replacing my drop-ship [should have just built the extra hanger instead!]). But the results haven't been catastrophic - there was a funding hit both times but oth funding groups are still fairly healthy.

This said, I was fairly lucky in the placement of those two missed attacks: they both targetted funding groups that I had good coverage over so the damage will have been offset by otherwise good performance. So I agree that it's probably necessary to get several bases up quickly if you want to minimise the risk of losing countries, but it's not an absolute necessity.

[Chris]

Baggaman, if you've played X-Com games before you really should be playing on Veteran. Normal's balanced for people who haven't done so, so it's probably a bit easy for you.

Regarding the randomisation of UFO spawns, I'm reluctant to do anything beyond the two crash sites early game that help you get started in the research tree. It's a free-form game and things like that happen. The more you constrict the AI spawns, the more linear you make the game and there's only so far I want to go with that.

[kabill]

Regarding the randomisation of UFO spawns, I'm reluctant to do anything beyond the two crash sites early game that help you get started in the research tree.

You don't get those on Veteran or Insane, though. Which means how early you can start your research is at the whim of the RNG (see my post, above!). Or, at least, you basically have to put your base in one of two/three positions or risk being back-footed from the start (which isn't a massive issue, but makes the game less interestin to repeat).

As a thought: could the 'free' crashes be reintroduced on the harder difficulties but delayed compared with easier difficulties. E.g. on Easy/Normal the game gives you the first crash within a week or so of starting, while on harder difficulties it spawns the crash towards the end of the month. That way, you're still possibly being delayed on starting research on harder difficulties, but the game still catches you if you've had so much bad luck as to get nothing early on.

[Dranak]

I'll second the need for another look at Alenium costs. Right now it's pretty much impossible to build a Shrike or Corsairs until long after unlocking them unless you grind every crash site.

[Skitso]

Regarding the randomisation of UFO spawns, I'm reluctant to do anything beyond the two crash sites early game that help you get started in the research tree. It's a free-form game and things like that happen. The more you constrict the AI spawns, the more linear you make the game and there's only so far I want to go with that.

I've found out when building your first base in NA, there's probably just enough ufo's spawned there, but they mostly fly over water and getting a crash site is almost impossible. Could there be a system where ufo's prefer to fly over land to prevent this? I could see first time players building their initial base to NA to get really confused when there's no ufo's at all or if you do detect one, there's no way to shoot it down over land to get a crash site. The game can be on hold for literally months and that's not cool, no matter how open ended you want the game be.

Also, could the random crash sites be spawned somewhere near the initial base and not completely on the other side of the globe?

Edited March 3, 2014 by Skitso

[Max_Caine]

A long while ago (as far back as v18.5) the Alien Power Source entry was ditched in favour of going straight to Alenium as it was considered an unecessary piece of filler. I've noticed, alongside other people that the research topics up to the Scout can be fairly quickly researched provided that you build a second lab and staff it (a reasonable expectation given the money you have to start with and the room that's available in the starting base). This leaves a gap. I was wondering whether it might be worthwhile bringing the Alien Power Source back to help fill the gap between Scouts and Corvettes.

[Dranak]

With plasma rifles being on Light Scouts, do we really need early game filler?

[Max_Caine]

Well, if you want to stretch out the research time so there isn't a signficant gap between the Scout and the Corvette, be my guest. I thought that perhaps instead of stretching out research topics (which then screws with people who don't buy that second lab), a lore-centric piece of research would help fill the gap better.