Do you use pistols at all?

Honestly, I find that my laser carbine troops are better than my laser rifle troops. At least the carbines can take down a rogue Andron fairly easily.

Historically, heavy weapons like machineguns and artillery have always killed a larger percentage of soldiers. I have no problem with rifles as they are now. Remember that your troops are much more mobile with rifles. Finding the enemy is just as important as shooting at them and no one can argue that the rifleman is much more mobile and versatile. The rifleman can get up close, toss grenades, employ special weapons, etc... Maybe the problem is not the rifle, but the way experience is scored.

Edited April 13, 2013 by StellarRat

In UFO ET I used pistols quite a bit because soldiers got a move bonus if they didn't have a rifle in their inventory. Heavy weapons gave a move penalty to soldiers even if the weapon was in the backpack.

That was one good method to differentiate between the weapons. All my scouts and grenadiers were given pistols so they could cover ground faster.

So far in Xenonauts I've not found a reason to give anyone a pistol with the possible exception of those carrying rocket launchers. Snipers never get close to the enemy and machine gunners tend to stay back as well. Even then, I prefer to load them out with as many rockets as I can instead of giving them a pistol which would probably never get used.

We'll see how the combat shields change the game when they're in.

@akavit - interesting. let's say someone with a heavy weapon takes 5 APs to move, a light/standard weapon 4, a pistol 3.5?

@stellar - good point. I find the utility of grenades useful. I'm going to play with two rockets, two sniper, two rifle/shotgun/grenadiers. I'm early early laser, so we'll see how that adjusts as weapons progress (e.g. would I just go carbine + grenades, maybe drop a sniper for LMG once accuracy goes up, etc).

Honestly, I find that my laser carbine troops are better than my laser rifle troops. At least the carbines can take down a rogue Andron fairly easily.

They don't seem very accurate to me (the carbines.) On the other hand, I'm usually very hesitant to get too close to the aliens. Most of my kills are from quite a distance.

A problem I have now is that I'm short on boarding party types. Having lost some vets my experienced soldiers are sniper/rockets (more kills + safer) but my newbs don't have the str to carry modern weapon/armor + a shottie. Before I could drop the shotties before boarding, have my snipers pick them up, and essentially have 4 CQB folks.

One step to take would be to make the heavy weapon penalty larger (2/3?). Rockets you mostly just need to get "close enough" and at range a skilled sniper with the penalty is often more accurate than a rifleman without.

It's a shame the next dropship doesn't come sooner (or perhaps it will) - once you hit tier 2 you're semi-forced to have a hunter to spot for your troops, and having a squad of six makes it a little heavy on the heavy weapons. 8 felt a lot more diverse.

My current team is 4 Rifles, 2 Carbine/shotgunners, a sniper and a LMG/Scatter. The heavies are at about 20 kills, 6 or so for the rest (mostly due to recovery time and switching out).

I tend to split into fireteams of all the rifles in one team, and the heavies and assaults in another. I don't use the Hunter anymore since it cuts down on my damage.

Wow, that's really lightweight. Kudos to you.

No wonder you have people dying all the time heh. Spotting with the hunter then following with snipers/rocketeers is probably more efficient, but I imagine what you're playing feels more like actual squad tactics.

Back when I ran 8 I'd usually split into four teams of a 2 rifle (with shotties in backpacks) and a sniper/rocket each. I think I enjoyed that more than what I'm doing now, though I remember losing tons of people once the tier 2 enemies came in and I stuck with 8 instead of adding in teh scout car of scoutiness.

Edited April 14, 2013 by erutan

Yeah, once cruisers start showing up it gets kinda rough. Before then its not so bad. Lots and lots of injuries though (high point was 12 injured).

Recently cut down the alien weapon accuracy so still seeing how it works out. Might bump it up, might not. Just seeing how it feels.

My little nose was out of joint at the thought of having to use a Hunter as the best available scout. But, I've went with the tried and tested

Rockets x2

Rifle x4 - Splits into 2 having LMGs at some point. 2 always have carbines as assault weapons.

Sniper x2

varies depending on the mass of injuries I get.

I think the tendency to mass HW is due to a few factors:

* Accuracy being overly influenced by weapon range / soldier ability (even with the accuracy debuff HW are often better).

* Alien weapons are OP/unbalanced so there is a tendency to want to engage as far away as possible to mitigate their accuracy.

I know I've been chiming in suggestions on how to buff light or nerf heavy, but it'd probably be best to wait until the two factors above are fixed before theorycrafting too hard let alone implementing.

@thotkins, hence me saying "semi-forced" - you don't -have- to, but it makes life a loooot easier. hunter armor seems a lot better than it should be honestly.

oh so you did. I was really just meaning generally from what I've seen form a few threads. My point being that it would be a shame to have to go down any set tactical route. The same would apply if the Hunters didn't add any tactical value. You'd change it to provide as many player options as possible within the game balance.

The RLs do seem a little accurate but that doesn't mean I have any more of them in my squad than I ever did. All of the weapons have their uses still.

As for aliens being OP, I only struggle in terror missions really. Perhaps the odd coverless expanse of a map (but that's probably me). 18.2 has allowed me pretty decent progression with not terrible numbers of fatalities.

Lost Uzma Shera to a plasma rocket launcher thingy though. Just vaporised her, man. Last Andron in the terror mission too. Gutted.

I got DESTROYED on a coverlessish desert map by squadsight my first time through in hf1, I didn't know where to go to kill the spotters and there was nowhere to go. I agree that most of the time it doesn't feel horribly OP, I can see where Chris is going with the cannons, but when you add in the vision range disparity + squadsight you can hit spikes that are just brutal.

I'm taking the easy way out by engaging at distance - both methods are viable, but imho armor + heavies is more optimal at the moment. Though it's not like there's any greater meaning out of playing "optimally" in a video game beta. I've also applied your armor mod earlier today - it feels like that is balancing things by mitigating both incoming damage and the sight issue. If I'm just clearing a small ship I'll generally bring along 2 rookies instead of the tank to get them XP...

I think in hotfix 3 I'll give it a shot with no armor, I imagine it'll be a bit more fun. Not having gear disappear will make things easier as well. ^^

I was thinking about the "rifles" are too wimpy thing last night, I believe all they need is a bump in suppression power. That ought to make them much more useful. Obviously, not has much suppression as the LMG, but more than they have now. That way several rifles guys could pin down an alien while others moved up to finish him off. That's the way it should work.

That's the way assault rifles work in real life, at least.

Suppression range will be 18 tiles still, would that be far enough for your tactic to work?

To be quite honest, I find that a team of four guys loaded down with nothing but Alenium grenades is pretty deadly when backed by a sniper and a dude with an LMG.

I'm doing most of my alien killing with sniper rifles, machine guns and rocket launchers. Rocket Launchers are the primary weapon of choice. Whenever I spot an alien I simply try to blow it away along with the surrounding cover. Currently I have two launchers plus a hunter with the rocket turret. I'll probably have to get rid of the hunter once I encounter cruisers because 4 rockets isn't enough to go far.

Yesterday I spotted some movement inside a building and chose to take out a wall with a rocket rather than entering through the door to clear the room. It turned out to be a human and the impact was close enough to leave nothing but the remains.

The collateral damage was within acceptable limits and I haven't reformed my trigger happy ways yet. At least the aliens haven't killed a single one of my soldiers yet and I've run about 5 missions.

Suppression range will be 18 tiles still, would that be far enough for your tactic to work?

Probably. Another potential reason why the heavy weapons seem better is that maps are pretty open a lot of the time, so weapons with good long range characteristics dominate.

Personally I think the MG needs a major range reduction.

I wouldn't have it as long as the precision rifle (26) even with its poor accuracy.

I'd like to second the request to buff the assault rifle's suppression, that'd be really nice.

Personally I think the MG needs a major range reduction.

I wouldn't have it as long as the precision rifle (26) even with its poor accuracy.

I think the LMG is working exactly like it should. I do like the fact that I can use real squad tactics on the aliens and the LMG is a vital part of that. I think the LMG does less damage than an assault rifle. It should be the same. The LMG range should be cut to 25 tiles. That's probably part of the problem. I'd say up the suppression from AR's, lower the LMG range to 25, and equalize the damage. Part of the problem here is that LMG is more accurate at range than an AR, but since it uses the exact same round the damage should fall off exactly the same, so we two separate variables that are tied together and shouldn't be. It should definitely NOT out range the sniper rifle. Edited April 15, 2013 by StellarRat

Sounds good. I do like the equalizing the damage suggestion, it makes sense. I second the range reduction as well, also makes sense.

If you can suppress any enemy out to 40 tiles then the damage is a secondary consideration.

I like the idea of changing over to Stellars proposed alternative accuracy formula as well.

The falloff at range is greater than the current one so once you are outside of your maximum range accuracy can take a fairly steep nosedive.

My tests had a precision rifle hitting accurately out to 150 tiles with the current formula (max aim, 100 soldier accuracy) while it would only be viable out to the high 30's with the proposed one.

That sounds good, yeah. As much as I love cross the map sniping (Shigeo from my play through of the OG was a sniper-boss with his laser rifle, nothing was safe) it's not balanced at all, and if I can do it, the aliens can do it better.