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[V19.7] Of Research and Aliens


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Caution: Wall of Text Ahead!

So I've been thinking about the whole "research now takes twice as long" thing. I'm trying to examine this from an honest point of view here, so if you have comments, I encourage them.

I played my first game of 19.7 with the intent of seeing what would happen if I doubled the amount of scientists I had online in order to try to keep up with the pace of the game in 19.6. I wanted to examine how it affected the overall game play and how hard it got. Or if it was even possible for me to do.

So here are the research costs as I see them:

Fully staffing your first lab costs:

5x$10,000==================$50,000

Building a Fully Staffed Research Lab:

42% of Living Quarters:========$21,420

Build the Lab:===============$200,000

Hire Scientists, 15x$10,000=====$150,000

==================================

$371,420

Monthly Research Lab Costs (per lab):

Lab maintenance: ===========$20,000

15xScientists: 15x$10,000=====$150,000

42% of living quarters: =========$2,142

==================================

$172,142

So assuming you want to get to two full labs going by month two, you would spend $421,420.

Each subsequent month, you pay $172,142x2=$344,284

So assuming you maintain a roughly even funding level (about $1,000,00), research accounts for ~34% of your overall funding in maintenance alone. That's pretty steep.

How I think this affects the game: Assuming that none of the pacing has been changed, you would have to spend considerably more than 100% more cash to research the same amount.

This means a couple of things:

1. What order you research things in becomes much more important. For new players, this can possibly mean starting the game over. Knowing what research paths lead to what greatly affects your research strategy. Not knowing that can be rough. This isn't necessarily bad, it just needs to be recognized. Since a lot of fans of this Xenonauts played the X-COM series, I'm not sure how much of an issue this really is.

2. Lots less money for everything else. This basically delays the deployment of all manufacturing. A lot of the gear is extremely expensive. So it gets to the battlefield slower. That means that the missions are harder. Killing Androns with ballistic weapons isn't fun.

3. The cost of research must be balanced against other needs. This means it's a meaningful choice where you put your money. And a lot of time thinking about how the shiny new toys the soldiers want affects your bottom line. Makes you feel like you are prosecuting a war. That's a good thing.

4. It makes the game harder. Again, this isn't necessarily bad! Considering the the above factors, all things being equal, you will be less prepared with fewer assets to deal with each era of escalation the Aliens bring to the game.

5. New players won't see this coming the first time through. X-COM was legendary for it's brutal economy until you learned you could sell laser cannons for a profit (;)).

How it's affecting my game:

1. Building the second base became a lot more important for me. I felt needed to get it online more quickly. This delayed my deployment of certain other assets, such as my first Foxtrot (I didn't have the cash to build it, even though I had the hanger space). Once I got to Jackal Armor, I had just enough to manufacture one set. :)

2. The atmosphere seems more desperate. I'm enjoying this aspect, actually. You end up sending a lot of guys into the breach with no armor and starting weapons. My first Scout attack was straight vanilla.

3. You definitely get the sense of having to juggle the finances around and never having enough resources.

4. Having that much research online is great until you run out of research. Then it's like setting wheelbarrows of cash on fire.

Conclusions:

1. I like what the increased research costs bring to the game. The tension amps up, and it makes it feel a lot more like you have a big problem and not enough money to solve it.

2. The battles are more desperate, because you don't have the latest gear, and collecting UFO parts is a considerable amount of your funding.

3. Increased costs will encourage grinding UFOs for cash. I'm not sure I like this aspect.

4. As the game eras progress, the challenge of keeping pace with the escalation level is going get out of hand quickly unless you are very, very good at balancing finances.

Recommendations:

1. Create a base research cost for everything. Add a modifier into a drop down difficulty setting that you can change. Perhaps have a Easy, Normal, Veteran, Superhuman levels being 50%, 100%, 150%, and 200%. Multiple difficulty levels allow the player to customize the game to suit his/her tastes and abilities. The player may not want to deal with quite as difficult of an economy but may like very challenging tactical combat. Keep them separate and everyone wins.

2. I think the current Geoscape difficulty is suitable for Veteran or above level of game play. A Normal game shouldn't be this hard.

Edited by Ishantil
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I agree w/ Ishantil on his recommendations. We've had the beta to get ready for this: new players will need a helping hand.

I went a different route than you did: went w/ one base so far. 30 scientists, Hunter, full set of jackal, 6 foxtrots. I think I'm halfway thru 2nd month. Stopped hemorrhaging soldiers once jackal was available. Will soon have lasers researched and a second base up.

Dunno how my game will go from here. This is good though. The game's forcing choices now and it does have an impending doomy feel.

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I too like the increased research time.

I've a question though: with the increased research time, what you research and in what order is very important.

We would ideally want the researches to be of roughly equal importance (gains/time to complete), so we wouldn't have a "set path" that's the best to research every time. Having a "best way to play" kind of ruins the point of having options, because you'd be an idiot to try it any other way but the "best way".

So, this being said, I don't think that the <alien name> analysis researches are ever going to be done unless there's nothing else left to do. I'm afraid that unless that 10% damage boost is worth waiting on better weapons, armor, aircraft, etc, they're simply not going to be done.

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Good analysis. I'd really like a lot of the 'difficulty' elements to be customisable rather than having them tied to discrete difficulty levels like they are at the moment (although having default categories as well would help for people who don't want to mess around with each individual option).

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(...)

So, this being said, I don't think that the <alien name> analysis researches are ever going to be done unless there's nothing else left to do. I'm afraid that unless that 10% damage boost is worth waiting on better weapons, armor, aircraft, etc, they're simply not going to be done.

TL;DR Laser research is much better than the extra damage research

I wholeheartedly agree on this point. Researching this tech needs to cause you to kill aliens faster. I tried to calculate the actual use of researching either the 10% damage bonus or the laser weapons. I was mostly interested in the amount of hits needed to kill an alien. For these purposes I calculated the difference between for Caesans and Sebillians only, because those are the aliens you will mostly find in the beginning of the game:

CTH.JPG

I used average hp found in the wiki for both the Caesans and Sebillians (ie. 45 and 60 respectively). Please note also that I did -not- account for the higher armour penetration of the laser rifle, so in fact the above numbers are skewed even a bit more in favour of the laser rifle.

So, in short the +10% damage research give you ZERO chance extra to one-shot a Caesan or Sebillian, around 10% extra to 2-shot and 6% extra to 3-shot. This opposed to the laser rifle which gives a whopping 21% more to 1-shot a caesan (in fact, it gives you -a- chance to one-shot an average caesan) and none vs sebillians, around 30% more to 2-shot and about 15% to 3-shot, not to mention a guarantee to kill an average caesan.

Fun fact is that the increasing of the randomness of damage actually caused the extra damage research to become -less- effective vs the laser weapon in this case, as you can see in the kill potential:

CTH2.JPG

As far as I can tell the laser research is at least 3x as effective as the extra damage. Considering you can actually 1-shot some aliens with the laser tech and the added TU gain -and- massive extra survivability chance I say the + damage research should become easier to do and/or more effective. Especially considering you need to research multiple topics to get the bonus damage instead of the flat out extra damage potential with the laser research in 1 go.

[EDIT] Ignore the extra attachment to the message. This was added on accident [/EDIT]

CTH.JPG

CTH.JPG

CTH.JPG

CTH2.JPG

CTH.JPG.af83c8a3f79a7b215de02f418b89544c

CTH.JPG.7e604fe0ab153a121402c687374c9cc8

CTH2.JPG.02e29d3edbfae08585033bd194b6c2d

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Voeter - hmm, interesting. Yes, it's quite possible we'll buff the autopsy research either just to make it have a shorter research time or to increase the damage bonus to 20% or so. You should note that laser weapons cost money and have to be issued to each soldier individually, though, whereas the autopsy bonus is global.

In regards to the general discussion, the way the tech tree works is generally that there is a "gateway" tech for each tier - usually a power source of some kind. Once you've researched that, the choice then comes from whether you'd like the new armour or new weapons or new interceptors etc first. The "choice" can't really come that much from the research tree because it's used in-game to control the player's progression.

Research times will probably be shorter in the easier difficulty settings.

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I would be careful about tuning the game to the skills of the top beta testers, because if the game is too difficult for newbies it will cause a massive flood of protests on release and kill sales. Having easier difficulty levels for newbies is the way to go. Having a single difficult-to-find pathway to success is no fun for me - there should be more than one way.

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My thoughts exactly. Each "path", that is, armor, weapon, or interceptor (to use what Chris said) should have roughly equal importance. Thus, researching one before another in general won't ruin your game. Sure, if you're getting bombarded by UFOs all the time, the interceptor probably should be done first. If you're losing troops left and right, armor would be best. If you can't kill anything without intense effort, then weapons. However, the decision to research one tech before another should be dependent on the playthrough.

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No, autopsies are automatic, but you can capture live aliens and vivisect them. <alienName> Analysis. This leads to a 10% increase in damage towards that particular species, but as someone already pointed out in the geoscape balance thread, that damage boost is practically useless.

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