Potential Geo-political Mod

[jimbobfury]

Hey all,

Great to see input from others relating to this. Thanks too to erutan for setting up the github. Have to be honest I've never used that but I'll definitely look into it when I have a bit more time this weekend.

Xenonut; I was thinking the same thing about influencing troop recruitment via certain research options. Rather than limiting recruitment, I thought more about getting a better grade of recruit once research had been completed maybe. This could represent establishing a programme with the US government to recruit Vietnam vets, for example. Or with the Soviets, in 1979 their army were just about to be sent into Afghanistan, so I thought a research programme could represent a deal being struck where the Xenonauts get to recruit the top 1% of active troopers who had been training for the upcoming deployment. In game terms this could lead to recruits being hired at corporal level, rather than as privates, maybe?

And Quartermaster, I 100% agree regarding the RPG being a more mobile but less accurate launcher. I like your idea of setting the weight so it could be used alongside another rifle type weapon too. I'll definitely try that out.

And thothkins, thanks for those links, definitely plenty to think about in there! I really hope it's possible to mod the game in the way that I'm hoping. I was actually wondering whether Chris might consider including some research options similar to the ones we're discussing as stretch goals for the kickstarter campaign, as he seemed to find the idea interesting too.

[erutan]

I wouldn't mind help designing something that ended up in game.

I'm less certain about better recruits, there already is the "plan ahead so you can train them" option to get corporal rank. It seems like if we could load an edited http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/f...rs-Backgrounds and then after the research is complete replace it with another that has a wider range of countries (and if those troops could come equipped with soviet weapons by default that'd be great).

btw the github page also comes with a little wiki, anyone with a github account can edit it. so when it comes time to have more organized info vs. thread posts that is an option as well.

[erutan]

Our (or at least my) homework.... read this thread: http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/f...Wishlist/page5

I think it'd be fun to include a weapon balance with this mod (Jimbo and I are on similar pages at least) and I came across this: http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/f...lance-Mod-V1.0

[jimbobfury]

Well, here's what I'm currently using: (I've not listed the Pistol, Machine Gun or Rocket Launcher as I've not made any meaningful changes to those)

<Weapon name="weapon.rifle"
range="18" hands="2" recoil="0" weight="5" clipSize="30" reloadAPCost="15" reactionModifier="1.0"/>
<Set1 ap="15" accuracy="75" />
<Set2 ap="20" accuracy="85" />
<Set3 ap="27" accuracy="110" />
<BurstFire ap="25" accuracy="85" shotCount="3" />
damage="25" mitigation="12">

<Weapon name="weapon.rifleak”
range="18" hands="2" recoil="0" weight="5" clipSize="30" reloadAPCost="15" reactionModifier="1.0"/>
<Set1 ap="17" accuracy="70" />
<Set2 ap="20" accuracy="80" />
<Set3 ap="25" accuracy="95" />
</SingleShot>
<BurstFire ap="15" accuracy="70" shotCount="3" />
damage="35" mitigation="15">


<Weapon name="weapon.shotgun"
range="8" hands="2" recoil="0" weight="5" clipSize="8" reloadAPCost="15" reactionModifier="1.4"/>
<Set1 ap="16" accuracy="83" />
<Set2 ap="19" accuracy="90" />
damage="40" mitigation="20">

<Weapon name="weapon.sniper"
range="30" hands="2" recoil="0" weight="6.5" clipSize="5" reloadAPCost="15" reactionModifier="0.8">
<Set1 ap="35" accuracy="95" />
<Set2 ap="50" accuracy="130" />
damage="45" mitigation="25">


<Weapon name="weapon.rpg"
<props range="40" hands="2" recoil="65" weight="6" clipSize="1" reloadAPCost="99" reactionModifier="0.5"/>
<Set1 ap="24" accuracy="60" />
<Set2 ap="30" accuracy="75" />
damage="80" stunDamage="90" mitigation="0">


The main changes are the ammo count for the shotgun and the sniper rifle, and obviously the introduction of the AK47 and the RPG7. The tweaks to the main rifle have increased it's accuracy a little on all shot types, to give it the edge over the AK in that regard. The AK however has higher damage and armour mitigation and a lower AP cost on auto fire. So, if you like to gamble the AK has the highest damage potential, but you have to hit your target first.

The main things to notice about the RPG7 are the weight, which is half that of the rocket launcher, and the reload time, which is set to 99. Basically, I want the RPG to be a 1 shot, backup explosive weapon. It's outperformed across the board by the rocket launcher, but it can be carried in addition to wearing armour and carrying a rifle type weapon, as long as your soldier's fairly strong. It's pretty inaccurate, but it can provide explosive power in a pinch.

My next thoughts are about the difference between 'damage' and 'mitigation' and how I can use that to further define each weapon's role. This is going to depend largely on the balance of the aliens but to give an example in the current build; Sebillians are all about brute strength and being able to heal damage. So, I'm thinking of tweaking them so that they don't really have any armour to speak of, but they do have a high pool of HP.
On the other hand, the Caesans will rely more on armour for protection, but if you crack that, they're fairly fragile physically.

What this means is that I can set the shotgun to do a high amount of damage, but low armour mitigation, so it would be great for dealing with Sebillians, but not as effective against armoured targets. The AK, with it's close range burst fire can then have a higher mitigation stat, while not dealing as much physical damage, so that's your best bet for armoured enemies up close. This will hopefully provide different options even when weapons have similar roles, and will allow the player an extra level of planning.

[erutan]

That is a cool idea, it'll encourage a balanced squad. Though I wonder how that will scale when all weapons have the same damage type (laser tier, plasma tier, etc). At that point it's more about heavy/strong/accurate vs light/fast than different penetration types. Unless say laser is more mitigation and plasma more direct damage, so in some situations laser might still edge out a higher tier.

Ooooooooo. Can we / could we set damage/mitigation by ammo type instead of weapon? Though I'm not sure where we'd put AP vs. hollowpoint etc, we'd need a little dropdown where the current ammo box is next to the weapon in the char equip screen. Actually come to think of it, if I was the UFO overlord dude I'd still put armor on the Sebillians even though they have tons of HP heh

Actually for the RPG, what if we just don't have any ammo for it? Then it comes with one in the pipe but you can't reload. Kind of like those LAW antitank missiles.

I haven't checked the numbers, but I liked belmakor's idea of making the m16 a lot faster but also weaker in theory. It makes it stand out as being useful in burst and also to kind of tap off targets that were hit by a more powerful weapon.

update: started populating the little wiki they have up there. I'm going with textile markup because I know and love it, but if people want something more popular like markdown or wikipedia or whatever speak soon. if you have an account on github you should be able to edit the wiki - all changes are saved so there's no massive harm anyone can do. https://github.com/erutan/xeno-geopolitix/wiki

[BobbyDylan]

This sounds epic.

What are you going to do with the M1911? (I love that pistol). It's not a soviet weapon, but I'd love for it to be included. Maybe make it slightly higher damag, with slightly higher AP cost, and slightly lower 2nd shot acuracy.

[jimbobfury]

erutan - Yep, you seem to be thinking along very similar lines to me regarding the way you want the weapons to balance out across the game.
I know this won't be to everybody's taste but I personally dislike straight up upgrades that render other weapons obsolete. Of course you should be rewarded for sinking the research time into Plasma weapons, so all in all, they'll be superior to the previous weapons. But I think there's room for minor subtleties, where depending on your personal preference or the foes you're facing, taking a laser rather than a plasma could still be a viable option. I'm not sure if damage vs mitigation is the way to go with these though, I was thinking more towards having pros and cons between the two in areas such as alenium consumption, ammo capacity, range & weight.

So Plasma may have a lower range than lasers (as in the Xenopedia write up in mentions the plasma shot losing it's shape after a certain distance) and a lower shot capacity, but it does flat out more damage resulting in lasers being useful for sitting back and rattling off some fairly damaging shots if that's what the player prefers vs risking getting a bit closer to get a high chance to hit your target with a plasma shot that should drop all but the toughest aliens in a couple of shots. Bringing weight into the equation would also mean that if you research plasma first you'd maybe need to look at researching some strength enhancing armour to overcome the weight issue and use it to it's full potential.

You'll be pleased to hear that damage/mitigation is tied into the weapons ammunition by default, so I've got AP and Hollowpoint ammo written into my files. :) I'm just working on making a different icon for them, so they're easy to tell apart and then getting them into the loadout screen. I'm not sure how that might work though, I'm wondering if I'll be able to amend the 'rockets' section of the loadout screen to be called "ammuntion" instead, and they can go in there. But I'll have to see.

As for the RPG, I can't find a way to not make ammo available for it yet, so the unachievable reload time is the best I can do to simulate the fact that it's a one shot, disposable launcher.

Bobby - I'll have to have a think about the M1911, I don't know much about it so any info/thoughts you can give would be great. As for making the 2nd shot less accurate, is that what the recoil rating of each weapon does? I'd assumed that was related to burst fire, but if it affects your accuracy across multiple shots in the same turn then that's brilliant as that opens up more options for giving each gun a unique feel. (the M16 and the AK spring to mind...)

I know at the minute this chat is all about the weapons, sorry. It's just I sort of know what we can do with those and getting them in game would be pretty cool. I still need to get more info regarding what can and can't be done in terms of influencing the geoscape and other aspects of the game through research projects. In fact, as Chris is looking for stretch goals now that the kickstarter target's been hit, I might send him the link to this thread to see what he thinks. It could be something he'd consider including if much of the planning was already done!

Ah ha, figured out attachment sizes, so here's a very unexciting screenshot, just to show that this is ingame and working.

SovietPact-1.jpg

[Chris]

OK - can you write a list of what features you'd need and I can look at how much work it'd be to link them up to see what we can make possible?

[Zeromanicus]

Excuse me, whats this talk of nuclear strikes on terror sites? I'm confused.

[flashman]

Excuse me, whats this talk of nuclear strikes on terror sites? I'm confused.

SPOILER ALERT :P










Its a punishment for failing a terror site or not going to it in time