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Why the infinite ammo thing?


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Since in the original X-Com we didn t had infinite ammo, and even more, we didn t have infinite ammo of alien kind, like the alenium missiles in xenonauts, that are infinite, I would like just to understand why this option of infinite ammo? Since managing resources was one more challenge of the older X-COM.

Not related to the question, but since the game is made to make the player lose if he isn t fast enough, why the countrys incomes are so low in the start of the game?

Good bye

Dfcrcesar

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You pretty much do have infinite ammo to in the OG; ballistics are so cheap as to be practically free, lasers don't use ammo, and so many heavy plasma clips drop that you almost never need to make them. As for missiles... They get replaced quite early by systems that don't even use ammo. Strategic ammo management in the OG is pretty minimal, and after testing it's been decided that it didn't really add anything to this game.

Starting monthly funding just got a large bump. It's pretty hard to actually lose a region unless you ignore a base.

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I concur with Dranak, stores management for ammo was rare in the OG, I'd buy rifle magazines in bulk for a while, move on to lasers, and then just not worry about ammo at all between them and picking up heavy plasma during missions.

We did actually have limited ammo for all the weapons above the ballistics for a while, but as Dranak pointed out, it didn't actually add anything, and it also made manufacturing a pain to balance.

For what it's worth, if you really want limited ammo in Xenonauts (aside from intercepter missiles), it's quite easy to mod in:

All you need to do is change the type in items.xml from Unlimited to Normal (or Uncapped), and then just add the entries into Manufactures.xml to actually make the things.

Obviously you can't buy the items as there's nothing to support that, but you can certain make them (or just pretend the manufacturing time is delivery and unboxing time).

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Infinite ammunition is one of ideas I don’t like in Xenonauts. It is true that in OG it has a no impact after first month of the game, but it was one of those minor things adding atmosphere. Xenonauts already did improve or change OG features for better gameplay. Purchasing ammunition could be done right if some of basic equipment would be still useful in later parts of game. The fact it didn’t matter much in the OG isn't really a good argument for keeping the infinite ammunition. Maybe limited ammunition could be done as optional feature?

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Well i really like the new ammo system. I think the only real difference now is that you actually can let workers just rest. In most of the xcom games you just produce ammo if you dont know what to do with the workshop (and of course at the start of the new tech- BUT productiontime increase of the actual weapons really balances this out; and its quite balanced i'd say).

It would even be possible now to remove the monthly cost of workers and just increasing the production cost now to further increase the thought:" do i really have to bother my men to produce this?" (but its not really nescessairy)

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I was against the change when it was first suggested and would still like to see it done 'properly' but I can honestly say I don't really miss having to micro manage my ammunition stores all that much.

It wasn't exactly fun realising you had forgotten to keep track of the number of alenium missiles you had used in the last few fights and add them on to a build queue so couldn't use your craft for the next fight.

It may have been different with the new balance to the economy but you rarely had enough cash to bulk build things like ammo when you were desperately trying to save up enough cash to build your next set of armour or weapon.

Infinite ammunition is one of ideas I don’t like in Xenonauts. It is true that in OG it has a no impact after first month of the game, but it was one of those minor things adding atmosphere. Xenonauts already did improve or change OG features for better gameplay. Purchasing ammunition could be done right if some of basic equipment would be still useful in later parts of game. The fact it didn’t matter much in the OG isn't really a good argument for keeping the infinite ammunition. Maybe limited ammunition could be done as optional feature?

I think you hit the nail on the head there without meaning to.

Xenonauts changed the OG feature of having to micromanage ammunition, not by making it an obsolete feature as soon as possible as in the OG but by removing that from the tasks the player had to do.

That lead to better gameplay as you said.

I am sure there will be a mod that changes it post release though, you could even work on it for yourself if it is a big issue to you.

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In real life, an air-to-air missile will cost as much as $500,000-$1,000,000.

It's not something trivial. To put it in perspective, a maxed out fighter's loadout will cost as much as a M1 (not upgraded) or T-90S tank, or as much as 3,000-9,000 assault rifles.

You wouldn't save up your missiles in actual combat, but they aren't "too cheap to meter". If your money was as tight as in Xeno, it wouldn't even constitute micromanagement.

I get it if the game is intended to be simpler, though I hope a limited stores mod is possible. Ballistics should indeed be too cheap to meter, but not higher tiers and not fighter weapons.

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I think you have missed the point though.

If the cost of any part of the air combat outweighs the costs of the ground combat items by 3000 times to use your most conservative estimate then managing your ground combat resources for a handful of men becomes practically insignificant.

The devs want the troops on the ground to be the most important thing so having them play such a lowly role goes against the objectives of the game.

If you can afford thousands of rifles from your monthly funding cheque then where are the difficult options in equipping your troops?

Just buy a few hundred of everything and forego a single missile.

The devs decided that the air combat mini game shouldn't be such a large focus that it impacted negatively on the ground combat which is the core.

You either have incredibly unrealistic costs for one or the other as they can't really be balanced together.

Look at the costs of aircraft and how unrealistically low people found those to be and how they were still too high to easily fit into the same system as a handful of rifles within Xenonauts.

I doubt the gap would close significantly at higher tiers of equipment either.

An advanced missile would still likely cost thousands of times the price of an advanced rifle so to me the choice comes down to managing my ground troops and moving the costs of air combat to some external system or managing the air combat and ignoring the insignificant ground combat costs.

I pick the ground combat.

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If the cost of any part of the air combat outweighs the costs of the ground combat items by 3000 times to use your most conservative estimate then managing your ground combat resources for a handful of men becomes practically insignificant.

Correct. That's why you shouldn't bother about the cost of bottom tier ballistics - all the guns and ammo your squad will ever use will cost less than one fighter missile.

I would kinda like the idea of managing even that cost if the game was laid out differently. Let's say you were to start out poor (rather than with 50 million already invested) and wouldn't even have fighters at first, responding to the aliens already landed, like in Xcom Bureau. That's mod territory, just that the option needs to remain there.

The devs decided that the air combat mini game shouldn't be such a large focus that it impacted negatively on the ground combat which is the core.

There are two groups of players waiting for this game.

1) Give us X-Com!

2) Give us a sim!

The second group is people who might have played Operation Flashpoint and found it not realistic enough. Aliens or no aliens, you can handle even the most preposterous scenario with believable means. This group will find a way to balance even a proper simulation.

You either have incredibly unrealistic costs for one or the other as they can't really be balanced together.

And this is where magic comes in.

Or, more precisely, Alenium.

Alenium is a non-monetary cost. However much money you have, you can't make it, and that's the resource you had to manage in X-Com or in this game. Since no one knows how much of it exactly what takes, we can safely make the expense far more comparable, like 1 unit for a clip, 3 for a missile, 9 for an AtA missile, etc.

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OR don't manage ammo for ground combat, but do manage ammo for air combat.

That's what I said, I personally prefer to manage the ground combat but either way would be workable.

@HWP You are preaching to the choir here.

As I said previously I would have preferred to manage the ammunition myself but I also don't really miss doing it in the later versions so can't disagree too strongly with Goldhawks decision to remove it.

If someone makes a mod to bring ammunition costs into Xenonauts I will likely give it a try but I don't care enough about it to do it myself.

The OP asked why the infinite ammunition system was used which I think has been answered.

Speculation on alternate methods that could be used in mods is a little off topic and should probably be in a thread in the modding forum.

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I think you hit the nail on the head there without meaning to

Xenonauts changed the OG feature of having to micromanage ammunition, not by making it an obsolete feature as soon as possible as in the OG but by removing that from the tasks the player had to do.

That lead to better gameplay as you said.

By Improvement I meant expanding it. So the feature is still there, works in a similar way but is more advanced (Barracks) or completely overhauled, so it has little resemblance to original but is superior (Air Combat). What was done in Xenonauts about basic equipment is streamlining, since it just removed the whole management part.

It makes game only less engaging. I don’t have to pay for this equipment anymore, so nothing except for weight limit stops me from filling up soldiers with any equipment I want. I can’t really see how this is a better gameplay. Like infinite flares during night mission. It just takes away tension of doing them and I really hope it’s only a temporary solution.

I am sure there will be a mod that changes it post release though, you could even work on it for yourself if it is a big issue to you.

I like to see a proper trading screen. Where I can buy and sell equipment like ammunition for guns and aircrafts. Something I doubt is possible to mod without a source code, because it would require not only GUI overhaul but and aditional coding.

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There are a lot of things I would like to see but as I am not designing this game I have to make do with those features the actual devs want it to have.

You can work around the limitations with a bit of ingenuity, modders have been doing that for years.

It may not be exactly what you want but the only way to get that would be to create your own game from scratch and even then I doubt it would be possible to do everything in exactly the desired way.

Goldhawk made a mistake using missiles at all for air combat.

If they had just made the later tier weapons beam weapons then no one would be concerned about ammunition costs because they don't need to use ammunition.

Drifting back off the topic though.

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I just registered on this forum just to express my disappointment about the infinite ammo thing.

I never looked too closer to this game development process but when I saw this I couldn't hold down my frustration.

What I loved about the x-com series was that it had a good combination of a tactical and economic simulation.

Firaxis X-com had infinite ammunition so this game had to do it!? And that game is a poor railroaded joke regarding economics and resource management.

What shall I hear next? That air combat is not as important as in the past games?

There is an infinite ammunition for aircraft too?

And I thought this game will be a sure buy on release date...

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This game doesn't have unlimited ammo because the Firaxis game does, it has it because manufactured ammo was tried earlier in development and found to basically be pointless busy work. Making ammo is never an interesting choice, it's always a binary choice where either you have enough in stock, or you need more. I invite anyone that says ammo management is a core feature of the OG to actually go play it again and see how little ammo management they actually do.

Air combat is actually a far more involved part of this game, and yes ammo is unlimited. Which was also the case in the OG.

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I remember manufacturing ammo and selling it just to keep my bases alive in X-com Terror from the Deep

I remember that I had to really manage this process and ammo was a strain on my resources. And even sometimes ran out of ammo during combat and had to improvise. I had to carefully balance inventory space: more ammo for peace of mind or other gadgets/weapons? Sometimes I was caught offguard with almost no ammo because the workshops were busy building something else. Advanced ammo in TFTD for interceptors war expensive/time consuming and missing a UFO was money down the drain which is a good thing in a game like that.

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Funding yourself by manufacturing has been deliberately kept out of Xenonauts to make the funding blocs actually matter. Balancing inventory space is still present, and largely takes the form of armor (which cuts into your overall carry capacity) versus ammo versus grenades (of which there are 5ish distinct types) versus misc gear and secondary weapons. You're limited in the ammo you carry in the battlescape, you just don't have to futz with it on the Geoscape.

Missing UFOs can still be quite punishing. They just pushed the cost from buying ammo onto making the aircraft more expensive and you need a LOT of aircraft to retake the skies, 15 is really about the minimum once you're into the mid-game if you want to retake air superiority.

Edited by Dranak
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Funding yourself by manufacturing has been deliberately kept out of Xenonauts to make the funding blocs actually matter.

Partially funding yourself in my opinion is where the economic core of the game is . That's the economic part of the game that I really enjoyed. Selling, careful management of resources and manufacturing to fund yourself late game. And of course funding nations are important and really matter in the begining and mid game. And also in late game because without the support of the few more lucky nations that remain by your side you can't resist the cost even if you manufacture and sell. Resources are limited. And If you are able to retain all the nations funding and keep everybody happy, the game its really messed up. So its a question of game balance.

Missing UFOs can still be quite punishing. They just pushed the cost from buying ammo onto making the aircraft more expensive

And that's a simplification of the gameplay thats cuts into the complexity of the economic/management part of the game.

Edited by Grotesque
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Generally I found I could effectively ignore the funding nations in the OG after I got a few manufacturing plants set up.

As long as I kept one nation on my side then the rest could sign up with the aliens as long as they kept buying my laser cannons.

Resources were unlimited because laser cannon used only cash and time which meant they were self funding as well.

If you had an unlucky start it could sometimes take a while to get set up but once you did money became of no consequence.

After ballistics I don't recall having any cause to manage ammunition either.

Aircraft didn't use ammo, lasers didn't use ammo and plasma weapons usually got more ammo from each mission than you used as long as you stuck to the same weapons the enemy was using.

Basically I am suggesting that there is far less management of ammunition than people remember there being.

It would have been nice to see the original game expanded on in every way but that is highly unlikely from a one man indie game.

Sure kickstarter helped to give funds to polish the game but the majority of it was done at that point and there is only so long it can stay in development.

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What economic complexity is there to a game where you can entirely fund yourself by manufacturing laser weapons for profit from the outset? That's what you have to do in every single game to have the best chance of winning, so there's no variation or tactics at all.

Presumably you find it a "joke" to have a game where financial reward is based on your actual performance in the game, then? Because that's what you're complaining about.

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And for the infinite ammo, I can understand why people may not like the idea and there were a lot of complaints on the forums when we first suggested it...but the vast majority of players said it was an improvement once they'd actually tried it.

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I think Chris is right.

I didn't like the idea at first, but when you actually play the game, it feels right.

It would be nice to be able to sell some of these "free" weapons to the black market. à la guerre comme à la guerre after all... ;)

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Partially funding yourself in my opinion is where the economic core of the game is . That's the economic part of the game that I really enjoyed. Selling, careful management of resources and manufacturing to fund yourself late game. And of course funding nations are important and really matter in the begining and mid game. And also in late game because without the support of the few more lucky nations that remain by your side you can't resist the cost even if you manufacture and sell. Resources are limited. And If you are able to retain all the nations funding and keep everybody happy, the game its really messed up. So its a question of game balance.

What complexity is there in setting up manufacturing plants for laser cannons/gauss cannons? It's a guaranteed ridiculous ROI on your investment of cash only. A fully set up laser cannon base prints $11M/month with your only interactions being setting it up, and then only needing to interact with it if you don't use the mod that lets you flag a manufacturing job to auto-sell. Each manufacturing base nets you TWICE the income of the entire world's funding (Which is $6M at the start of the game). That makes the funding nations pretty much irrelevant from a financial perspective, and in fact loss of ALL the funding nations is not a game over criteria.

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