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Armoured Assault: A Vehicle Balance Mod


kabill

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- More Distinction: While the Scimitar remains a fair upgrade to the Hunter, it does not 100% replace it. While boasting more armour and HP, the Scimitar loses TUs making it less mobile. The Hyperion combines the best of both, however, possessing goof durability and movement.

So the mod becomes pointless when the Hyperion rolls around? Why?

I suggest adding a "Scout Scimitar".

When you have researched the Hyperion, the Scout Scimitar becomes researchable. That is then a direct upgrade to the Hunter while the Hyperion is the tanky type.

This way you keep the choice in the game.

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Keep choice? That's robbing Paul to pay Peter. If you wanted to keep choice you wouldn't replace the Hunter completely with the Scimitar, you'd emphasise certain aspects for each vehicle type, as I did in my old Grease Pit mod, but I don't see why the Hyperion couldn't replace both the Hunter and Scimitar as an ultimate vehicle. That's what it's supposed to be, after all.

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@Gazz: I wouldn't say "pointless". The purpose of the mod was primarily to give vehicles a bit of a buff and to add in the weapon choice. The distinction between Hunter and Scimitar was kind of an extra (mostly because the Scimitar doesn't look to me like it should be dashing around the battlefield!).

Nevertheless, I think maintaining a distinction between the Hunter and Scimitar is more important than maintaining multiple vehicle roles per se. It's very easy for the Hunter to be obsoleted very quickly, because vehicles generally aren't an especially good investment in the first few months and even if you do build one quickly, the tech for the Scimitar comes up pretty soon (you could roll one out by the beginning of November if you're lucky with UFO spawns).

Accordingly, ensuring that the Hunter can do something better than the Scimitar is something I think is important, as it makes early investment in a Hunter less of a waste and makes them not entirely obsolete. In contrast, I'm not convinced that this is necessary for the Hyperion, since it arrives much later when you've had plenty of chance to get your money's worth out of previous vehicles you've built. A straight upgrade therefore feels better to me, in that instance.

That's not to say that further diversity couldn't work. But the mod was never intended to be a massive overhaul. As I've said already, the differentiation was a little bonus and never intended to be the lynchpin of the mod.

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I am currently playing with it but I have to say my first impressions are Hunter is massively OP. I think I can use it to clear the entire map and leave my soldiers at the dropship, if terrain allows accessibility. Had just researched plasma heavy weapons when I got the mod. Several situations to illustrate:

- Sebillian behind wall in a barn. No problem - Hunter shoots at the wall. The projectiles scatter around and after the first couple of them break the wall the alien is torn to shreds by the rest. Had this three times, the third time the Hunter was two tiles away from the wall and killed itself while killing the alien.

- Opened door to a Landing Ship. Three Sebillians have taken cover inside, spread all over the place (can't suppress more than one with my HMG soldier). No problem - removed soldier who opened the door out of the way, Hunter drives in position and takes TWO swipes inside the ship. All three aliens are hit. Not suppressed. Dead.

- Final soldier of the turn opens the side door to a Cruiser ship. All the others have already been moved to the front door. The final soldier gets face to face with a Sebillian, there is enough TUs left to close the door but not to escape to safety and my entire team is exposed. Thankfully I've positioned the Hunter just below the team and it has a clear view of the alien. I move the final soldier a couple tiles away and take a swipe with the Hunter. Alien is dead. Soldier is dead. Two more soldiers are also killed, even though they shouldn't be in the line of fire even in the worst possible stray. Another soldier is hit and survives.

- Had a Harridan face my Hunter during alien turn in direct unobstructed fire path. It took a perfect shot, inflicting 1 (!) damage. And this was after the Hunter had taken quite some battering during prior moves, so it wasn't armor absorbing it.

I guess it's not what you had in mind? :)

Edited by KevinHann
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@Kevin: Mmm, no.

On the first point: how did the Hunter manage to kill itself? It sounds like you were using the heavy plasma gun, rather than the rockets. I'm not sure how it should be able to hit itself.

On the other points: I'm surprised the weapon is proving to be so powerful. I can only assume the wide scatter is due to the low hit chance or something, but I'm not sure it should be that much more than you'd be getting with a regular machine gun. Strange; I'll have a look at some point (presumably it will be the same with earlier weapons in terms of the scatter as they have the same hit chance).

As regards armour: Vehicles have different armour values for different sides (front, side and rear) and it's possible that armour degregation only applies to the side that is hit. If you'd already taken some hits on it, then, I can only assume that they were on different parts.

That said, do you know what weapon the Harridan was using? Anything above a regular plasma rifle should be doing some serious damage to it due to armour mitigation.

EDIT: To be clear, I'm not saying you're wrong at all; I'm just trying to work out the problem as I'd not experienced anything like this in my own tests.

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  • 3 weeks later...

yep im using it...but im getting into XNT ID...and i sadly found that this is incompatible with it :c...its gonna be perfect if i a can somehow make a merge patch(im trying but im lacking both skills and time xD),with the grat stuff you get with this great mod i'll be happy if this get fussion with XNT xD

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What specific weapon(s) and vehicle type(s)? I just had a quick look at the files and couldn't see what the issue might be, but it would be useful to know where exactly the issues are.

Right now I'm using the Hunter with an Alenium Rocket. I assume it will be the same for the other rockets.

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Hmm, I'm sure I've tested that and it's worked fine...

Hmm, actually, I might know what the issue is. Can you check in assets/units/vehicles and tell me if there are folders for the new weapons (aleniumrocket, plasmarocket and fusionrocket) in the different vehicle types? It's quite possible that I was unbelievably stupid and failed to include the unit sprites in the download.

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Hmm, I'm sure I've tested that and it's worked fine...

Hmm, actually, I might know what the issue is. Can you check in assets/units/vehicles and tell me if there are folders for the new weapons (aleniumrocket, plasmarocket and fusionrocket) in the different vehicle types? It's quite possible that I was unbelievably stupid and failed to include the unit sprites in the download.

Just checked, yeah they don't have sprites there.

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At first I thought this mod made vehicles too good. Then I looked at the original stats for vehicle weapons, and have to ask what the hell were they thinking when they decided on those? Even with a HUGE nerf to damage and a significant one to accuracy, vehicles still chew through aliens like popcorn. I can only imagine what a vanilla plasma tank would be doing by now.

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The hypetion never replace other vehicles, in fact economy factor limit you easy the amount of Hyperions. You can try to abuse of this vehicle but quickly notice that you have waste EXP and time in a unit that get safer your GC but never evolve in the same way as two soldiers can reach.

In other hand Scimitar anf Hunter are cheap, in comparison to hyperion (Not considering his HIGH upkeep).

;P

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I just played a little with the vehicle parameters to improve there usability, as done in kabills mod. One interesting point is required space of vehicles at each drop ship. Default it's 2 but some testing has shown that it can be set to 0 or 1 without CTD. For my next play through I will use kabill mod and additional set the boarding space variable to 0, so you can have a vehicle in each mission without loosing soldier space (its get a little bit cramped in the chinock, but it's worked). To balance this I will half the vehicle accuracy in general. So vehicles are more of scouting / protection / suppression and you need still your team for kills.

The reason behind this, is that actually no one uses vehicles especially in the early stage of the game. That#'s a pity since they offer an increased tactical possibilities and variety.

Edited by kottis
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Which parts are the new ones in strings, researches, manufactures and items? Without those, I don't seem to get the tech scaling rockets, but I don't want to use them wholesale because all 4 of those files are already altered by a new mod.

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Which parts are the new ones in strings, researches, manufactures and items? Without those, I don't seem to get the tech scaling rockets, but I don't want to use them wholesale because all 4 of those files are already altered by a new mod.

Search up something like VV.AleniumRocket. Just add that relevant portion to the required section.

I also finished up the plasma and fusion rocket sprites.

rocket_alenium.png

rocket_plasma.png

rocket_fusion.png

(Posted the alenium one for good measure)

I also have the edited vehicleweapons.xml:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/82304502/Xenonauts/vehicleweapons.xml

Plop the pictures into assets/weapons/vehicle/

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@skianDestiny: They're really good. Thanks for doing those.

@Fucille: The new items are:

VV.AleniumRocket;

VV.PlasmaRocket; and

VV.FusionRocket

There shouldn't be anything in Macnufactures.xml as they're auto-upgraded like in vanilla. So it should only affect items.xml, researches.xml and strings.xml (aside from the obvious vehicle weapons files).

The new rockets upgrade with the explosive weapons tech (so, Alenium Explosives, Plasma Explosives and whatever the Fusion one is).

@Anyone who cares about the mod at all: I'm hoping to have next weekend pretty much free, so I hopefully will be able to get a new version out then.

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