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Ground Combat Balance Discussion v19 Experimental Build 6


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I have done an initial rebalance of the vehicles yesterday: they now have more TUs, better sight range and their damage resistance has been altered to be more armour heavy instead of hitpoint heavy - all vehicles now have just 100 HP but armour against most damage starts is much higher than before. This means there are certain weapons to which vehicles are outright immune (though armour degradation and damage spread is being increased in the next build, so even plasma pistol can wear them down). In addition their weapons are now more fearsome, causing pretty high damage with a bit of splash and a lot of suppression. We also implemented the vehicle headlights system, which gives them a whole new usefulness at night (they light up a 60 degree arc ahead of the vehicle out to 20 tiles).

Chris and I were talking about carbines, and the issue of them being a bit dull and something of a waste of one of our limited number of weapon types - they will only ever at best be a slight variant on assault rifles. So we have basically decided to try rebalancing all the carbines as shotguns, so they will share the same short range high damage style that the initial shotgun has now. We have also implemented code that allows us to give them multiple "pellets" per shot, this not only makes them a bit more distinct mechanically and visually interesting, but also gives them a particular weakness to armoured enemies (as armour is applied against each shot) which the previous high damage single shot model could not represent very well.

Wow Aaron! These are excellent changes IMO. I thought the same thing about the carbine. It should fire faster (pellets is the same general idea.) I'm not so sure I agree with increasing the vehicle sight range, but we'll see how that plays out. I really think you want vehicles to have limited sight so they need soldiers around to keep them out of trouble. With long sight they become fairly autonomous killing machines. We'll see.
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The only problem with that is that being attacked from two different directions degrades the same armor facing (or the only facing). Something to keep in mind if you are going to have degradation in the game.
I don't think Xenonauts differentiates between various armor plates for degradation. The whole surface degrades in toto. I doubt that any code will be added to do this at this stage of the game. I'm not really sure I care about it either (even though it adds realism.)
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Squaddie armour has one facing - every direction. Vehicle armour has front, back and side facings. There is no underneath facing. Squaddie armour will therefore degrade from every hit taken. Vehicle armour will degrade depending on the facing that takes the hit. This is more important with vehicles, as they are much larger than squaddies (3x3 tiles!) and have distinct facings.

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Squaddie armour has one facing - every direction. Vehicle armour has front, back and side facings. There is no underneath facing. Squaddie armour will therefore degrade from every hit taken. Vehicle armour will degrade depending on the facing that takes the hit. This is more important with vehicles, as they are much larger than squaddies (3x3 tiles!) and have distinct facings.
OK, thanks for the clearing up. I must got my troops and vehicle jumbled together. Honestly, the vehicles were so crappy that I haven't built/used any for couple releases, so my memory wasn't too good on the details. That might change now though!
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Armour degredation is moddable, it's in config.xml. As kabill taught me, it's set as a percentage of the damage absorbed by the armour. So, if Wolf armour were to absorb a plasma rifle shot (70pts), the armour "rating" would degrade by 5pts (as it's currently set to 10%). If a squaddie had been hit by a stray rifle bullet (30pts), the armour would degrade by 3pts (10% of 30).

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Armour degredation is moddable, it's in config.xml. As kabill taught me, it's set as a percentage of the damage absorbed by the armour. So, if Wolf armour were to absorb a plasma rifle shot (70pts), the armour "rating" would degrade by 5pts (as it's currently set to 10%). If a squaddie had been hit by a stray rifle bullet (30pts), the armour would degrade by 3pts (10% of 30).
Dear Max, 10% of 70 is 7... :-)
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S'right. And if the plasma rifle hit again (random damage notwithstanding), the armour would absorb 45pts, so depending on how the game rounds up or rounds down, that could be either 5pts or 4pts. Judging from Aarons's comments, armour looks set to drop by 25% per hit, which is a lot more significant.

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But the armour rating of Woldf armour is 50pts. And armour only degrades by the amount it absorbs, not the total damage of the weapon. (Should have added in the armouring rating of Wolf).
I get it. Although, I wonder if that's right. That basically dumps the over-damage part of the hit. I'll have to think about that one.
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People have complained about Wraiths using their teleport too much. In the games I have played verses Wraiths so far, I find they don't use them enough. The typical Wraith strategy is to teleport to a point of cover, hunker down and stay there until shot to death. When GJ comes back, I'd like to see Wraiths use their teleports in a more aggressive manner, using them to blink-flank, pop between different cover to get better shots etc. what would not like to see are Wraiths acting in a defensive manner, using teleports to GTFO as that would be super annoying (as other people can attest).

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People have complained about Wraiths using their teleport too much. In the games I have played verses Wraiths so far, I find they don't use them enough. The typical Wraith strategy is to teleport to a point of cover, hunker down and stay there until shot to death. When GJ comes back, I'd like to see Wraiths use their teleports in a more aggressive manner, using them to blink-flank, pop between different cover to get better shots etc. what would not like to see are Wraiths acting in a defensive manner, using teleports to GTFO as that would be super annoying (as other people can attest).
Hmm...might that not make Wraiths OP? There is huge potential for slaughter if they can teleport too far or too often. It's a pretty awesome "power".
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Teleportation is an awesome ability and I would like to see it utilised. Personally, I think the ability to teleport and fire a shot off would be the right balance of power and restraint, because if the Wraith can only teleport, it draws the fangs of the Wraith too much.

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