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Geoscape Balance Discussion v19 Experimental Build 6


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Hmm.

How does tiers 2-4 fit into the New Paradigm?

From a game point of view, I can see that an AOE splash weapon would be suitible for vehicles. But from a story point of view, the current xenopedia entries stress penetrative power and strength, rather than explosive effect. I can see see how it would be fairly easy to explain the MAC - it could pull a Tau (explosive submunitons). The Plasma cannon could discharge a sophisticated form of ball lightning or such technobabble, but it'd be difficult to sell it on the Pulse laser. Only way I could see is if the Pulse laser used the high/low pulses to form a plasma effect at the point of impact, so it's be what the Pulse laser does now but instead of being good at penetration, it'd be good at going boom.

Edited by Max_Caine
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It's a tank, it doesn't need to explain itself. :P

You could explain it as being the counterpart to soldier weapons, great at acting in a support role to suppress/destroy cover. I'm sure we can technobabble up something for the in game explanation. I do like the idea of making vehicles worth using again.

On a general pacing note, I had my first Corvette spawn on the last week of Oct. It was crash site 27. I think we can probably shorten the L Scout/Scout era a smidge.

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I doubled up my vehicle's HP; that alone was enough to make them useful again without them being utterly overpowered.

I'm fine with doing a little bit of babysitting the vehicles. They should be able to function as a focal point of your team's offensive efforts; that's what armor's for when you push into environments like you see in-game, but if you decide to bring them out, you should have to take care of them. They can't be a replacement for your troops, because vehicles aren't, but they shouldn't fall apart like wet toilet paper, and they should damn sure be able to move and shoot somewhat accurately. Beefing up their toughness in and of itself does wonders here; it makes them actually feel like an armored vehicle.

Also, definitely agreeing with StellarRat in that the vehicles' stats should somewhat increase over time, even if it's just accuracy. It's not like experienced vehicle crews don't get salty, too.

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For me, the best reason to actually add vehicles is if transport had special slot (lets say its hanging under the transport) just for them that can't be used by xenonauts. Taking less people on missions is, thanks to their long learning curve, bad idea.

I thought about this so many times. Not the charlie, it's too clunky, but the Shrike could definitely have a dedicated vehicle slot.

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I think there needs to be a reduction in costs. By the end of November, my base costs are basically equal with my monthly funding (800,000).

I'm now almost completely dependent on downing UFOs for cash.

Earlier Chris asked why people attacked every UFO, well, my main reason is the economy dictates it. It's the only way to stay afloat.

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I think there needs to be a reduction in costs. By the end of November, my base costs are basically equal with my monthly funding (800,000).

I'm now almost completely dependent on downing UFOs for cash.

Earlier Chris asked why people attacked every UFO, well, my main reason is the economy dictates it. It's the only way to stay afloat.

Seriously. Not attacking every single UFO leads to two outcomes: Less money from missions and lowered money from countries. Even with them putzing around over the ocean where there is 'no gain' from shooting it down, the loss of revenue dictates I must attack every UFO as fast as possible and destroy it immediately to preserve my income level. To ignore UFOs or not shoot them down is to work against yourself. With the maintenance costs if you don't ramp up and blow them out of the sky very very fast, you'll be ground down into dust as the world stops paying you which deprives you of money to shoot them down and the circling of the toilet goes on.

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I think Chris wasn't asking about why people shoot down every UFO, he was asking about why people do every UFO ground combat. Not shooting down UFOs is bad, but not doing a ground combat has no negative effects. Now, it doesn't have any positive effects either; no sales, no relations boost, etc, but leaving it be and letting it disappear doesn't lead to reduced relations.

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I think Chris wasn't asking about why people shoot down every UFO, he was asking about why people do every UFO ground combat. Not shooting down UFOs is bad, but not doing a ground combat has no negative effects. Now, it doesn't have any positive effects either; no sales, no relations boost, etc, but leaving it be and letting it disappear doesn't lead to reduced relations.

Well first that isn't all that called out specifically. Second you don't really improve relations either by ignoring them. It took months to get even a couple of funding blocks out of poor/bad relationship and despite the world paying me some 2.5M a month now 6 of them are still poor/bad. The relationship only seems to improve after big and constant hauls. That aside skipping battles is bad for business. Maintenance costs even with shooting just about everything down still pretty much equal income (that much air power costs lot of money when you brute force it instead of gaming the air battles AI) so the missions are the funding source for the stacks of plasma rifles and materials to build the end aircraft etc. Skipping missions today leads to you not having the resources tomorrow so it makes sense to push the teams to the redline taking even injured personnel on missions as often as you can.

I guess the short answer is cash and resources with the sense that if I don't have it coming in hand over fist I'll be overwhelmed totally with no hope of survival.

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What we need to do is change how much each different ufo is worth like a light scout would be worth 10 points for shooting down then another 10 for capturing. Light scouts is worth 20-25. Fighters worth 5 for shooting down, heavies are worth 10. Things like the landing ship might be worth like 50 points while doing things like shooting bombers are worth lots of points because you know, you stopped a alien bombing run.

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When HF 1 came out I replayed Nov. I wasn't going to before the HF, but the two major CTDs were fixed or could be worked around, so why not. I figured I'd post another status report to show income and research. By the time escorts were hotfixed out, it was ~20 Nov, and only a few waves were affected. Still, I'm playing pretending that I'll be dealing with escorts, to try and get a more accurate gauge of what my costs will be.

End of Nov. funding was 1.2mil. I earnt 1.6mil through missions this month. I also sold off 355 alloys, giving me 177.5k and leaving me with 200 alloys left.

Individual breakdown of missions in spoiler. Base assault 2 is so low because I was liberal with frag grenades.

Base assault 1: 115k

Crv 1: 185k

Crv 2: 223k

Base assault 2: 90k

Crv 3: 179k

Alien base 1: 264k

Crv 4: 218k

Sct 3: 118k

LSct 16: 72k

LSct 17: 72k

Crv 5: 188k

I've been playing a sloppy geoscape game, and my third base (panama) is only going up at the end of the month. My maint. fees are probably going to match my monthly income by the time it's all done.

Research wise I stuck with 10 scientists - not because it's a good idea, but out of curiosity about how well I could keep up with techs with the default crew of eggheads. In Nov. I got through:

  • Laser Technology (started end of Oct.)
  • startedHeavy Laser Weapons
  • switched to Alien Electronics
  • Electroshock Grenade
  • Alien Heavy Plasma Rifle
  • Alien Plasma Cannon
  • started Plasma Weapons

Loads more stuff started to unlock, and I had choices to make. I went for shock grenades because they deal 60 stun straight up and 150 suppression, which is enough suppression to pin down God - I replace all my non-smoke grenades with shocks when they come online. I didn't go for buzzard because while I'd have liked it, I was using one squad and by the time I got a light drone, I already had a couple of wolf armours and some jackals manufactured. Since I wasn't running into anything tougher than guards for the most part, I'm in good shape in terms of surviival. Plasma weapons could wait, as again, the only time I was fighting anything tougher than guard-level enemies was assaulting an alien base.

I had my first casualties this month: four rookies, all wearing basic armour. There were a whole bunch of times my levelled up scouts took a hit, and without armour they'd have had it. Fun fact: two of those were from friendly fire. I didn't know about the A.I. tweaks until a base assault happened and androns charged through the door. I was lazily moving soldiers around and an LMG guy ended up reaction firing. He didn't hit any aliens, just a couple of rookies who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. The other two kills were an unlucky reaction shot hitting through a load of smoke, and a crazy caesan guard who charged me and ended up getting a kill from it. R.I.P., redshirts.

Edited by Ol' Stinky
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Welcome to the Xenonauts Training Centre. I'd like to introduce you to your instructor. This is Commissar Pancakes...

Good post Ol' Stinky. Very interesting to see how the base number of scientists does.

As for friendly fire, I simply don't have anyone standing anywhere close to another soldier's shots if I can possibly help it. I've had 1 incident in this build, that ended up being a pretty light wound.

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In the game I'm playing, I decided to start a second base (North America) right at the beginning. That base has two hangers and radar, one Foxtrot and one Condor at the end of October. I need one more hange and Foxtrot to be able to take on Corvettes though.

With 10 scientists I have Wolf Armor, Stun, Alenium warheads, Foxtrots and Laser weapons at the end of October. Unfortunately, I don't have them built yet and have a terror mission that's stumped me. There are over a dozen Androns and they have slaughtered my assault team twice now. I'm trying different approaches to see if I can beat them.

I'm also having a bizarre funding issue. I got my monthly payment for November, but even though it shows a surplus of $500K (revenue - expenses) I'm broke i.e. zero dollars to work with?? I think there is a bug somewhere. I had planned to use that money to build armor and weapons, but now it's gone and I'm stuck. I have a lot of saves so tonight I'm going to try to figure what happened.

Edited by StellarRat
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I meant to say on a previous post, but if you want another view of the Missions-of-Slaughter just post up the save game. Alenium grenades should be your bestest buddies v Androns.
Well, yeah, but unfortunately, my guys can hardly survive getting off the boat. I did do a bit better with a ton of smoke. I'm thinking about trying to use the Chinook to deny two flanks to the most of the Androns until I can slaughter them on one flank first. I need to clear one flank at a time I think.
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Yes, I've had a mission like that one. The trouble was the damage taken in the first round is often enough to cost you the mission.

Like you suggest, I used a lot of stacked smoke. I think I also went out of the other side of the Chinook (it was close to the edge) and worked a few troops round there, to provide extra lines of fire.

It was missions like that that caused me to throw smoke out in the first round as a matter of course for terror missions. That, and Yeti's Let's Play that happily keeps soldiers in the Skyranger until it's safe.

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Like you suggest, I used a lot of stacked smoke. I think I also went out of the other side of the Chinook (it was close to the edge) and worked a few troops round there, to provide extra lines of fire.
That's what I'm trying next. I always forget the side doors. In this case, they maybe essential to my survival. The thought of aliens with grenades makes me shudder.
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Yes, I've had a mission like that one. The trouble was the damage taken in the first round is often enough to cost you the mission.

Like you suggest, I used a lot of stacked smoke. I think I also went out of the other side of the Chinook (it was close to the edge) and worked a few troops round there, to provide extra lines of fire.

It was missions like that that caused me to throw smoke out in the first round as a matter of course for terror missions. That, and Yeti's Let's Play that happily keeps soldiers in the Skyranger until it's safe.

I was able to beat this mission last night. The trick was using the Chinook as cover. Smoke was also useful at the very start when the aliens had me in a crossfire. My first order of business was clearing one flank so I wasn't in a crossfire. After that, I'd fire rockets then duck back around the Chinook to reload and repeat. The other guys pretty much just kept the area behind the Chinook locked down. I did use the opening through the two side doors as a narrow firing lane for my LMGs. I lost THREE LMGs gunner doing that! They did manage to kill four flying discs and several Androns that way though, so it was a reasonable trade off. The final alien count was 16 killed. 12 Androns and 4 Discs. I lost 3 guys.

Does anyone really understand how smoke works? Sometimes it seems to cut off the LOF other times it doesn't seem to do anything.

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Does anyone really understand how smoke works? Sometimes it seems to cut off the LOF other times it doesn't seem to do anything.

I *think* smoke is supposed to apply a penalty to your shot accuracy a bit like cover. Certainly, whatever xml file (gas.xml?) deals with smoke implies this. That file also indicates a vision-reducing penalty, though, and I've never seen that happen.

In terms of its variability, I have two theories:

1) It blocks the shot because the hit % was too low.

2) It blocks the shot because the soldier taking the shot is kneeling.

The only time I remember seeing LOF being entirely blocked was when I had kneeling soldiers*. When they were standing, they could shoot; only when kneeling could they not. Since the penalty for cover seems to go *up* when you kneel I assumed that this was a bug whereby the smoke penalty was being treated like cover, hence when kneeling the hit % was reduced to such a level that I wasn't allowed to take the shot.

However, it's possible that there's just some weired (buggy?) interaction between kneeling and smoke which stops you from shooting through smoke when kneeling.

*It might have happened other times, I just don't remember them.

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