Buckshot beta ready

[Vivisector 9999]

That's correct. Chris stated somewhere that he intended for weak weapons to be useless for suppressing heavily-armored targets.

[StellarRat]

Shouldn't buckshot be worthless as suppression against heavily armoured targets?

Well, I suppose that all depends on whether or not the target knows its invulnerable and whether or not being hit by rounds should cause suppression just from pain and minor wounds. Either way I have no control over that. It's not something you can mod directly. I'm assuming that somehow the chance to suppress calculation takes armor into account. I haven't seen my shotgun suppress anything yet, while the M-16 and M-60 have suppressed those big lizard things (Sybeians?). Obviously, if you know a weapon definitely can't hurt you than you won't worry about it, however, I'd still duck if someone was shooting at me even if I knew the only place it could hurt me was by putting my eyes out.

[Max_Caine]

Here's the model for suppression that Xenonauts uses. As far as I can tell, there's been no change to it since it was first put up for critique.

[StellarRat]

Here's the model for suppression that Xenonauts uses. As far as I can tell, there's been no change to it since it was first put up for critique.

Thanks. It appears that the shotgun doesn't have much of a chance to suppress because of target armor. That's good. I do like the suppression the M-60 gives. MAWAHAHAHA! Saved my bacon in a terror mission last night.

Talking about suppression in general, the aliens seem awful brave to me. I've fired 12 shots at them and zip...only the M-60 seems to suppress with any regularity. Maybe the values are too low for most weapons? Can the Xenonauts be suppressed?

BTW, Max, I agree with your assessment that the shotgun was too quick. I've changed the required action points to match the assault rifle (17, 20). When I post my final revision those are the values I'm going with. I did a lot of testing with it yesterday and I think it's working pretty much like I had hoped. It's great for close range work specially clearing houses and ships, but it pretty much sucked in open combat. I lost a lot of guys in a terror mission with a big open map because I couldn't put them down at range. The M-60 and rocket launcher dominated in that mission. As it should be...

[Max_Caine]

Xenonauts can be suppressed, and yes, the aliens are very brave. Following feedback on suppression the bravery of aliens was increased, as it was felt it was too easy to suppress aliens. I haven't had the opportunity to try the new values yet, but I'll give them a shot tonight.

[Gauddlike]

OK, but if you consider the footpounds of energy and high velocity effects of a rifle compared to a pistol there really is no contest at any range. Most rifles have x2 the velocity of an average pistol. At those velocities the rifle bullet does a lot of hydrostatic damage to the internals of a fleshy creature. Of course, a rifle can penetrate more armor AND it also has a bigger chance of going deep enough to hit a vital organ in a really big critter. On a big creature a pistol might not go in deep to hurt it even if it is non-armored. Even a .44 mag would be a pretty wimpy rifle round. I'd always pick a rifle if I could only carry one weapon. The shotgun would be my second choice and pistol would be last next to a sword. My guess is if you looked at the fatality rate of rifle shots vs. pistol it's probably twice as deadly. A lot of people survive being shot with pistols, rifles not so much. I'd probably give a pistol about a 10 if I was in charge.

And would a pistol be useful with those values?
I don't think it would be much use for anything given its short range and poor armour penetration.
Within the 10 tile range it would do 5 damage on a hit to the lowest ranked Ceasan.
That would drop off sharply as soon as the enemy was outside of the 10 tiles.

The pistol would be physically unable to hurt any other rank of Ceasan.
All Sebillian ranks would be completely immune to pistol rounds.
Why bother even picking up a weapon that can only hurt one enemy in the entire game?

Assuming that damage scales up to the other tiers the laser pistol would have around 15 damage and 10 mitigation.
That would allow it to hurt the lowest rank Sebillian (10 points per hit) but nothing higher.
Ceasans would be a little easier to kill with lasers.
The lowest would take 15 damage, second and third rank rank would take 5 damage, anything higher would take none.

Assuming average damage hits across the board.
Some would be a little higher, some a little lower.

[StellarRat]

And would a pistol be useful with those values?

No it wouldn't be. I think my argument is more towards making the rifles more powerful. By the way, where can I look up the toughness and attributes of the different types of aliens? It would help me argue more intelligently about the balance issues, LOL.

[thothkins]

try the aiprops file in assets.

[Gauddlike]

I wouldn't adjust them up too far personally.
Once they start to come close to the laser weapons that you have to pay to build and use then you start to reduce their appeal.
Increasing their damage to compensate makes the aliens much weaker.
Then you have to boost the aliens to keep the game challenging and you fin the pistol is now useless against the newly buffed aliens

Small tweaks to both damage and armour mitigation might be nice though.

[StellarRat]

I wouldn't adjust them up too far personally.
Once they start to come close to the laser weapons that you have to pay to build and use then you start to reduce their appeal.
Increasing their damage to compensate makes the aliens much weaker.
Then you have to boost the aliens to keep the game challenging and you fin the pistol is now useless against the newly buffed aliens

Small tweaks to both damage and armour mitigation might be nice though.

I'll take a look at the alien toughness...then I'll be back.