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Assaults to Xenonaut Bases ruin the game


Skitso

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I kinda hate the current system where aliens simply destroy the Xenonaut base if there's no troops defending it. Playing ironman it just feels too harsh as it's pretty much game over. I'm not using multiple landing teams as the game balance just doesn't support it that well and keeping units in secondary bases just to fend off possible alien attacks is not feasible strategy funding wise (plus those good for nothing rookies are no match for any base assaults anyways.)

So, what I'm proposing here for the CE coding team is as follows:

What if the aliens just wreck and garrison the base so you would need to take it back and repair the facilities (for a reasonable cost of course). This wouldn't need that much work, but just a new mission type to attack and retake the alien manned Xenonaut base.

Edited by Skitso
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Think I'm torn on this. On the one hand, it makes more sense to me that the aliens would simply wreck the base rather than hold on to it with a chance that it might be recaptured. On the other hand, I'm not entirely unsympathetic to the problem - in my last game I'd literally just gotten a new base up and running with a radar and a couple of hangers and it was attacked and destroyed without me really being able to do anything.

One thing that might make it work conceptually is that when the aliens occupy a base they convert it to an alien base. I.e. When a base is captured by aliens they occupy it and the player can counter-attack if they want to recapture the base. However, after a length of time (say, a month) the base is converted to a proper alien base and can no longer be recaptured (but can be assaulted as normal). Hence, you have a grace period after which the base is lost to retake it but if you leave it too long you lose the opportunity.

All this said, I'm not sure it would be within my competence to implement something like that. But I think it would be my preferred system.

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Not sure that it would be possible to extract the current attack probability in a useful manner. IIRC, it's based on the relative time each base has been in game, e.g. if one base has been in game for 60 days and another for 40 days then there's a 60% chance of going for the first and a 40% chance of going for the second. There's not really any way you can mod that without changing the actual calculation as well.

If this issue is primarily about new bases being attacked, perhaps the best solution would simply be to block base attacks against bases which have been in existence less than X amount of time (e.g. 1 month) so that you always have the chance to defend them with soldiers/turrets before they can be attacked. That would at least stop instances where there's literally nothing you could have done to prevent losing the base.

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Hmm, I'm not sure if a safety time like that would remove the real issue though, as the attack would just come later and building a number of base defense turrets to be counter it just feels like a non-mechanic gameplay wise. There's no strategy or risk/reward whatsoever and if the turrets fail to connect, your game is over anyway, or you just reload and try again until the turrets do manage to save your base.

The possibility to retake a base would make losing one more survivable and thus make the game better and more organic (one could continue playing after such a catastrophic failure). Also base defense turrets would become something more than just a method to decrease the need of reloading when secondary bases are assaulted. They could now make the garrisoned alien forces weaker, thus making the retake more manageable.

Edited by Skitso
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The base assaults are harsh. Sometimes they may spawn right on top of your base and when all soldiers/fighters are out on missions you can lose a base instantly.

However lorewise, I think changing it would make no sense. The aliens assault the base and would likely blow it up with plasma explosives than reconfigure it. They build bases seperately remember? ;)

I think they should fix the game economy more so that having garrisons is not as expensive. At the moment, at least on Veteran, there is not much diversity in builds. Perhaps an increase in fundng or a decrease in maintenance fees would help this issue out.

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I was also thinking about altering of the base building concept a little bit, which might account for some of discussed problems...

my understanding is currently there is no need in more than 4 bases, you can go even with just 3 of them. The idea is to change some costs/radar ranges to make it necessary to have like double of that quantity, maybe 8-10 bases. Most of them will have just the detection function. But I still can't pass through this basic idea, so not sure if it will work well

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We can't change the default system and we don't have any idea for a better one. Maybe the buildings can edited and a new base type can be added. But adding another base type just like only for air control would be hard at coding.

I am waiting kabill to change default base layout design to begin a fufull overhaul building mod. Kabill finished it already so I am just waiting ce 0.33

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We were considering implementing a system where you could reclaim lost bases (minus any personnel stationed there) if you recaptured it within 24 hours. In the end we decided it would be too much work, but it was more a question of resources than any kind of design objection to the idea :)

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

I was thinking about the problem and in come in a common direction with a thought of mine: you have too few bases. Building a base, with hangar, planes, radars, batteries, garrison, etc, is very expensive, so you only mantain 2 early-mid and 3 or 4 mid-late game.

Why not make cheaper bases that can be expendable by making some structures cheaper? I mean, a base with only, like, 2-3 hangars, 1-2 radar, 1-2 batteries and losing it may not be much of a economic hit. Meanwhile, "core" bases with workshops, laboratories, people inside it, etc, should be much more expensive and losing one a big hit.

Plus if the idea of two kinds of base go foward, maybe the "inexpensive" should be 4x4 instead of 6x6 and may only have some restrict building choices (like hangar, radar and batteries only).

I also like the idea of being able to recapture a lost base. For immersion, I could see this "time" you have before the base is lost forever in two ways: the aliens planting the bombs and detonating it taking some time to do it, since I believe the bases are underground so kinda hard to totally destroy and, more important, the aliens are actually studing your base to see what you was doing there, so they dont just capture it and immediately explode it.

Max_Caine also gave an idea that I like very much: stuff (buildings) became more cheaper with research. So maybe in the first couple of months having more than 2 bases is cost prohibitive, but after some search and development, the price for a new base or structures start to fall.

I think we have three points here. Each one has it advantages, are different to apply with different solutions and, more important, all the three can work well together:

1- Bases can be recaptured and repaired for a fee.

2- Two kinds of bases, one cheaper, one expensive.

Suggestion: the cheaper one could be 4x4 and structeres limited to hangar, detection and auto defense. This base may not be recaptured.

3- New base, hangar, detection and autodefensive are much more cheaper while workshop, laboratories, living quarters, etc, much more expensive. This can be done by what we already can easily mod in game, right?

Suggestion: I dont know the exact formula that will give a good balance. But maybe 50% more cheaper for hangar, detection and batteries and 50% more expensive for the rest? Maybe both the cost and the maintenance?

Edited by Victor_Tadeu
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Why not just rebalance the cost and capacity so you have more teams of soldiers and personnel? :confused:

IMO, it's not just a matter of cost and capacity. (That's resolved easily enough with a mod that gives you tons of money.) My main reason for keeping all my troops at one base is to avoid the micromanagement of constantly shipping people and equipment around so that every base will have enough skilled troops with up-to-date gear to be meaningful. If you don't fiddle with that micro, then you just have a bunch of rookies in coveralls with ballistics in each base, which is barely even a speedbump when the androns and reapers come knocking.

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IMO, it's not just a matter of cost and capacity. (That's resolved easily enough with a mod that gives you tons of money.) My main reason for keeping all my troops at one base is to avoid the micromanagement of constantly shipping people and equipment around so that every base will have enough skilled troops with up-to-date gear to be meaningful. If you don't fiddle with that micro, then you just have a bunch of rookies in coveralls with ballistics in each base, which is barely even a speedbump when the androns and reapers come knocking.

Just use the quick class template to skip the micromanagement.

For the aliens, just use shotguns, shields, grenades and cover.

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You can't use the quick class template to ship manufactured arms and armour to other bases, which is the point nDervish is making. Troopers with basic arms and no armour are at a terrible disadvantage in a base defence. "Clever tactics" can help, but they only help up to a point. When I was making my Garrison Duty mod this was one of the first things that struck me, after I repeatedly had an interceptor base assaulted for testing purposes.

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You can't use the quick class template to ship manufactured arms and armour to other bases, which is the point nDervish is making. Troopers with basic arms and no armour are at a terrible disadvantage in a base defence. "Clever tactics" can help, but they only help up to a point. When I was making my Garrison Duty mod this was one of the first things that struck me, after I repeatedly had an interceptor base assaulted for testing purposes.

But shipping manufactured items isn't even that troublesome. The interface for transferring items is really handy and quick.

The major issue is that the cost of building new bases, hiring soldiers and manufacturing said advanced equipment is much too high. Losing a single base, even if its a tiny radar outpost, is too heavy.

You also don't get pre-equipped soldiers once the base command is finished building, which means you both need to wait additional time to build barracks and wait more to actually have the soldier arrive before its defensible. Then of course if you also want to upgrage the defenders with better armor and guns, thats even more waiting before the base is sufficiently defence-able. And that, only assuming you actually have enough expensive alloys to build said upgrades, which from my experience I only had enough to maintain a single team properly.

I also disagree that the disadvantage is significant enough and that clever tactics cant always save you. I had people in overalls breaching cruiser UFOs with ballistics and plenty of grenades and rockets well deep in to the late game, because alloy/elerium resources only were enough to invest into a single upgrade of guns and armor for one team, meaning lasers and plasma, along with wolf armor was completely skipped by me in favor of being just being more economic to get the mag/sentinel stuff instead.

Considering that shields, grenades and rockets are free, including their upgraded counterparts, you will always have more than enough firepower to survive ANY situation. Meanwhile just staying behind a cover is more than enough to protect your soldiers from not dying.

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Mmm, I didn't make myself clear. I was not commenting on the interface. I was commenting on the work involved in creating and shipping goods to other bases, and commenting on how garrison troops without those goods are at a terrible disadvantage.

First thing I did was make everything cheaper. Absolutely everything cheaper. Everything from solider wages to the cost of arms and armour (in dollar and materials). What happens was the course of the game changed, permanently and in one direction. There was no reason not to have bases mushroom around the geoscape. By month three, the entire geoscape was firmly within my iron grip and that's where it stayed. I didn't need to invest in garrisons - what I needed to invest in was interceptors. Interceptors were a much better use of my resources as interceptors makes money, garrison soldiers don't and it's easier to shoot down a ufo than it is to defend a base. The direction of the game had changed from a "hard" strat (if you want new bases you're going to have to commit everything to it) to a "soft" strat (bases for everyone!). Playing around with the costs of buildings showed there is a tipping point between strategies and you go down one or the other - there is no middle ground.

The solution to preventing one-track gaming was gating cheaper buildings behind research. "Enhanced Construction Techniques" isn't available immediately and requires considerable effort to get. If you want want to put yourself on the other track, you must put other promising areas of research on hold. The end result is there is no path of least resistance to follow. You can go for hard expansion right out the gate, or focus on one base and wait for ECT.

Making arms and equiment cheaper for garrison soliders was also, I found, a losing proposition. This is because as I have previously mentioned garrison soliders cost money and don't make any. The cost for a maximum garrison at vanilla costs is $160,000 per month. I reduced this to $3000 to start with to reduce costs to a more manageable $48,000, but the knock-on effect of that is soldiers bcome very disposable. There was no reason not to stuff every base, and the idea of an operational reserve was laughable. The reduced costs of soliders doesn't help with arming and equipping them. Even when I cut the costs of lasers and wolf armour by half arming and armouring a squad of 16 costs around half a million dollars, which is much better than vanilla but isn't petty change. The only way you get an equitable ROI is to transform the garrison into a strike team, taking on missions as well. so that's another $100,000 for the basic dropship with $50,000 in rent, and the need to cycle troops in and out. You don't break-even until you get to landing ships (provided of course, you squeeze every bit of loot you can out of a crashed ufo).

The solution to that was upgrades for existing weaponry and free armour. I made it possible to upgrade ballistic weapons twice (more accurate, lighter and more shots), upgrade lasers once (cheaper, more accurate, lighter) and upgrade jackal to a free, more protective version. None of this kit was better than the stuff you have to make, otherwise there wouldn't be any point to making them, but free weapons and free armour was the only equitable solution I could find after a lot of experiments.

If you feel I'm talking out of my fundament, I can give you the first version of the mod and you can see what the consequence of just making everything cheaper is.

Now then, attacking a UFO and being attacked in a base are non-comparable situations. A Xenonaut base map is unique in that every room is connected to every other ajoining room. Cover in one direction does not mean you have cover in another and even a simple layout can mean you are attacked from several directions at once as aliens do not come from a pre-defined location. Shields are not the be-all and end-all, as it doesn't take much for a plasma rifle to annihlate them and rockets are a bad idea in a cramped environment where if they miss, there's a lot more props for them to hit and detonate prematurely.

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Now then, attacking a UFO and being attacked in a base are non-comparable situations. A Xenonaut base map is unique in that every room is connected to every other ajoining room. Cover in one direction does not mean you have cover in another and even a simple layout can mean you are attacked from several directions at once as aliens do not come from a pre-defined location. Shields are not the be-all and end-all, as it doesn't take much for a plasma rifle to annihlate them and rockets are a bad idea in a cramped environment where if they miss, there's a lot more props for them to hit and detonate prematurely.

That still leaves free grenade spam and holing down in the command room, which only has one entry point, valid strategies.

I don't think there is much chance of escaping the grenade-wins-everything thing, unless maybe if they would need to be manufactured and not gotten for free, with their upgrades included. And rockets too.

You are true about the soft and hard strats for base costs. I guess it depends on what kind of gameplay you want to achieve with it.

With hard strats, you'd get a more tighter gameplay with fewer, more expensive, but more capable assets. UFO rely more on breaking your bases and wiping your squad to win than causing terror.

Meanwhile with soft strats, you have bases with less capable radar, loss-condition far more reliant on UFO terrorizing than killing your stuff and breaking you bases, but you get an abundance of soldiers and cheaper building/hiring/manufacturing costs.

Its like a choice between playing as a private merc organization vs a global international effort coalition.

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Max_Caine, your text gave me an insight... Wouldn't it be possible to make alien base assaults to have some kind of early phase before the combat itself start with enough time for you to send a dropship?

I mean, lets suppose an alien begin an assault in one of your minor bases. You failed to shotdown the alien dropship and the ship already got there. Instead of the battle starting right away, the player gets a popup saying "Aliens are preparing to assault base X!" or "Alien laid siege on base X!" or "Aliens are landing troops around base X!" or anything like that. After that, the base assault is inevitable, but a mission-like icon appears over the base and the player have, like, 24 hours or such before the assault kicks off where he can move a dropship there so a proper squad can participate on the defense. When the dropship arrives, the assault starts immediately, if not, the player will defend the base only with what it have.

What do you think?

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Max_Caine, your text gave me an insight... Wouldn't it be possible to make alien base assaults to have some kind of early phase before the combat itself start with enough time for you to send a dropship?

I mean, lets suppose an alien begin an assault in one of your minor bases. You failed to shotdown the alien dropship and the ship already got there. Instead of the battle starting right away, the player gets a popup saying "Aliens are preparing to assault base X!" or "Alien laid siege on base X!" or "Aliens are landing troops around base X!" or anything like that. After that, the base assault is inevitable, but a mission-like icon appears over the base and the player have, like, 24 hours or such before the assault kicks off where he can move a dropship there so a proper squad can participate on the defense. When the dropship arrives, the assault starts immediately, if not, the player will defend the base only with what it have.

What do you think?

This is a perfect solution.. just perfect..

It looks not so complex from here. CE coders need to turn this like a terror site with a time limit. But maybe its impossible too..

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Max_Caine, your text gave me an insight... Wouldn't it be possible to make alien base assaults to have some kind of early phase before the combat itself start with enough time for you to send a dropship?

I mean, lets suppose an alien begin an assault in one of your minor bases. You failed to shotdown the alien dropship and the ship already got there. Instead of the battle starting right away, the player gets a popup saying "Aliens are preparing to assault base X!" or "Alien laid siege on base X!" or "Aliens are landing troops around base X!" or anything like that. After that, the base assault is inevitable, but a mission-like icon appears over the base and the player have, like, 24 hours or such before the assault kicks off where he can move a dropship there so a proper squad can participate on the defense. When the dropship arrives, the assault starts immediately, if not, the player will defend the base only with what it have.

What do you think?

I like that, it makes it work like a terror mission, except instead of a city being nuked, your undefended base is at stake. :)

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