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Conclusions of tinkering with sight distances


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As I somehow find vanilla sight distances too short for my taste I messed around and made a mod for myself. Expecting total nonsense it actually turned out quite good so I want to share my findings in hopes it may help improve the current game.

before boring you all with long explanations I directly present you the changes and conclusions:

Sight is changed to a base of 27, wich is 150% of a rifle effective range. Different ranges of armors/aliens is maintained with sebilians getting 25, Harrigans 35 and all others 30.

What does this screw up?

- It mostly removes the explore & surprise/tensión from the game, as was expected from such a massive change, making this surely a "No Go" change for retail game.

What does it actually improves?

-It creates a very different Xenonauts. It removes the problem with reaction fire & insta-death because it takes place outside most weapons effective range making incoming fire non accurate and hit for less damage, while still being dangerous. Hunter still proves too big and get pounded easily.

So how this Hax/blasphemy can help?

-The key is to have longer sight range than weapon effective range so reaction fire and crap takes place in the less lethal área of weapons performance. You may try to increase sight 2 or 3 tiles beyond rifles 18 max range and things improve. The more you increase it the less deadly reaction fire is. This together with other balances may help the game be more enjoyable.

So how the nonsense 27 sight range fared?

- I love it really. instead of exploring and getting shot from FOW you get a clear picture of the battlefield and things turn into tactical firefight/ battle. You spot aliens from afar and try to pin them down with machine guns while rifles manouver to get inside effective range, moving from cover to cover under long range fire wich is not so lethal but still hurts like hell. Fireteams fires at long range trying to get the lucky shot while advancing wich results in higher ammo use. Its not unusual to use up 2 or 3 mags in the battle.

Instead of hunting aliens 1 by 1 you get engaged by multiple aliens shooting from different parts of the map. While this is only a pew pew gallore in early game, when you get to androns and plasma cannons and rifles things turn deadly and interesting. Aliens seem to like long range too. I get the feeling that they work better as a team globally as they charge you and retreat when taking losses. It may be the increased sight revealing them more info about you and giving them time to get to cover/ manouver, even if this part of AI is not really here yet, but I cant really assure this to be true.

In CQC maps it does play like in vanilla game with house searching, corner peaking etc. but used to long range firefights it really feels deadly when exchanging fire inside effective range, giving more flavour to combat IMHO since you get to experience both long range and close range firefights.

The most epic single firefight I remember with this mod:

-In a farm map 3 xenonauts with 1 laser rifle+1 sniper laser+ 1 scatter laser engages 2 caesians with rifles + 1 drone . Aliens were trenched behind a low wall with an open field infront. Xenonauts took cover behind some hay blocks. Range was like 22 tiles with chances to hit aliens behind cover quite null, and flanking not posible due to map layout.

After 5 turns exchanging fire the aliens got the upper hand as their burst blow some of the hay blocks. Xenonauts were hit again and again and although Wolf armor and long range damage decrease doesnt let them die in 1 shot, they struggle to use medkits to survive the next hit. Combat ends when the drone and 1 caesian finally die and the last one retreats to the ufo. Xenonauts lost the rifle guy with the other 2 having less than 25% health and all medkits depleted.The team was send back to the Charlie while the rest of the troops assaulted the ufo losing a Hunter and another soldier in the process. Note that the team was elite with stats on the 70s and the ufo was either a corvette or a landing ship, I cant remember.

Also note that I played a game with this sight mod from start to human plasma rifles and wraiths & harrigans, and as the game progressed and more firepower and upgraded aliens were trhow into battle, the more interesting and more natural the combat felt.

Now for the future of this mess im tweaking supression values so long range fire may not kill easy but at least helps suppress while rifles get into range. Same for the aliens. Also since a way bigger part of the map is used in the firefights im testing using increased blast radius for rockets so it becomes more a médium range weapon and not a choice for CQC ( no more nuking a reaper 4 tiles away of your own soldiers).

I may try to change damage of the weapons to increase lethality on extreme ranges, or try to reduce base sight to 22 to get back a bit of exploration/surprise feeling. But Im sure this will slowly become a full mod with probably bringing back the old xcom cannon that fired HE rounds, to increase the long range fun.

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This sort of mod is pretty much what I planned to do myself when the game is complete and I start my first real play-through. After playing other games such as Silent Storm, Jagged Alliance, Wages of War and UFO: ET (with mods) which either had long sight ranges or moddable sight ranges, I've known that it contributes to more intense tactical play. Uncovering the fog of war doesn't seem exciting or suspenseful to me. It's more of an exercise in tedium that takes many turns of leapfrogging until that last alien is finally flushed out.

UFO: ET in particular is quite good when using mods that extend the sight range beyond the effective range of weaponry. Running out of ammo is a real possibility if one does not make the effort to find ways to close the distance safely before engaging.

The danger of shooting up all the ammo after an extended firefight is far more exciting than the threat of being killed by reaction fire from the alien standing in the FoW on the opposite end of an empty field.

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Why is this such a no go for the actual game?

Who said that it is?

If I remember the Kickstarter feature list right then "weapon effective ranges larger than sight ranges" is not mentioned as a set-in-stone feature.

If it results in more interesting gameplay (and night missions without stupidly short sight ranges) and makes ammo an actual consideration then I don't see the problem.

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Why is this such a no go for the actual game? This seems to improve the game, at least from my point of view. How do I accomplish a similar mod on my system? Is it an xml file change or more advanced then that?

I say 25/27 plus range deviates the game too much from Xcom classic seek&hide gameplay. I prefer having a more classic Xcom ranges/mechanics AND having mods like this so you get both worlds to enjoy.

Making sight longer than weapons range is another thing. I think you cant go beyond 20 sight and keep actual gameplay so rifles should get a downgrade to something like 15/16. A more reasonable accuracy&damage formula would tie all together.

Changes are XML files only and those are :

-Aiprops (alien sight changes)

-armours_gc (xenonauts sight ranges & tank)

-weapons_gc ( some wep ranges dont make sense & some rockets tweaks)

I would be glad to upload a working versión for 18.5 or 18.3 if ppl still uses that versión, but dont have a good idead how to do it or were to upload, any suggestions are welcome.

Now talking about bringing forward the long range idea, a few points I though today:

-Accuracy should not drop so fast beyond wep range. Still make it fall a lot but extend the curve a bit more.

- Weps could do more damage so it hurts a lot at long range, and are absolute lethal when inside range.

- If AI finally allows for aliens squad play, with flanking&moving around then this will need bigger maps to make room for more movement.

-Old xcom/TFTD massive firepower deployment would be quite cool with firefights using a lot more terrain.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I've been tinkering with sigh distances, too, and I find the game to be quite awesome with extended vision!

Unfortunately, I feel like the AI doesn't quite handle the long distances well quite yet, and I'm curious if it has to do with the effective range settings of their weapons. Many times the enemy will just move a little and crouch, often right in the open. Though they save a lot of TUs to defend themselves via reaction fire (and it gets quite interesting and deadly in urban maps!!!), they almost never go on the offensive, even if they can clearly see me. Also, in my experience, reapers hardly ever pose a threat; not because they get killed as they approach me due to increased sight range, but because they never try to approach me. They just seek cover in the worst places...

However, the new suppression values in the recent hotfixes definitely compliment this kind of mod awesomely!!!

And I agree with the OP that in order for this kind of mod to be as good as it can be, there needs to be some adjustment on how accuracy drops off with distance. Ideally, I'd like for every parameter involved in damage and range calculations to be able to be edited in the config files. Also, I'd have damage and range able to be set to be completely independent of each other.

Edited by Andeerz
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I think there's some kind of 'aggression radius' that the AI uses when deciding to attack. Or it seems like there is to me. If you have a unit within a certain range of the alien they'll attack (noticeable with reapers). If you're outside of it, they tend to stay put, or wander around a little.

That or the AI is just being very random. It really hates civvies too. I've had one with 3 Xenonauts moving towards it, and it opened fire on a civvie 30 tiles away. Could have been due to my troops being in cover at the time as well.

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Its declared that one of the goals of the new AI being developed is to be very moddable/configurable using XML files. I can only wait for it to be finished/almost finished to see how far can we tinker with it, including if there is a "engagement" range that can be changed. Until then theres not much to do except wonder how cool can be long range battles with fine tuned AI for it.

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I edited my Soldier View Distance aswell, but only very slightly.

First thing i did was remove the Sight Penalty of the Armors. It would be just logical that new Armor comes with better Optics, especially Hightech Alientech-Based Futuristic Armors.

I also gave the Combat Vehicles higher Visibility Range than the Soldiers and a higher Sight Angle. Same Reason as Soldier Armors. It is a Tank with top of the Line Electronics that has much better Visibility Range as the Human Eye with Infrared, Radar, etc.

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I may suggest that sight adjusment be made so your tropos have at least 1 unit less of sight than most aliens, since their AI is not fully there and are not pros yet at manouvering and reacting, so at least 1 sight unit of advantage gives them some room to pose a challenge. Its still too easy to fall into a "scou t& overwatch" tactic that wins the day everytime.

Also another thing I noticed during play with long range fights was that aliens suffer heavily at long range because of their weaponry unless terrain helps them, specially at early game to mid game. Reason is even with uber damage weapons they heavily lack more variety. You can wipe the floor with them early to mid game even with ballistics cause you get all weapons for any need you may have and used together in coordination gives them Little chance other than get some lucky 1-2 hits kills. Truly coordination of machine guns, rockets and snipers prove too deadly for them if used properly and terrain dont screw you hard. Aliens need more forms of firepower to waste your troops if you dare face them face to face.

Im thinking 1.000 roman legionaires advancing towards a 100 men marine company with light armor support. With WE being the romans and the aliens the marines. Yep, you better have 1.000 more romans already sneaking to the flanks or the show will not last long. It may be a bit exagerated but thats the idea of what should happen to you if you try to outgun the aliens in a "fair" firefight. Superior tactics should be the key not superior pew pew, at least until you get plasma and MAG weapons, then it should be more fair ground.

Long range only makes the above mentioned be more obvious.

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