Ground Combat Balance - V21 Stable (Hotfix)

This is the post where you should discuss your thoughts on the ground combat balance of the game in V21 Stable. As this is a Stable build, I'm not going to post the changelog - please just post your comments in general, rather than those on the changes since the last Experimental version.

I'll just repeat this here. The TU % calculations need to be changed so they always round up. With 24 TU, a xenonaut with a pistol can fire four snap shots (each snap shot costing 6 TU). The consequence is that overloading a Xenonaut allows for additional shots.

I'm mentioning it here, because I'm pretty sure it's not so much a bug as an unintentional side effect of increasing TU costs to 28%.

Edit: Just saw your reply in the other thread, so I'll go report it as a bug.

Edited March 20, 2014 by Lidhuin

While "basic psychic power usage" has been enabled, is there a way to ensure that psychic powers are used only from the psychic's line-of-sight and not squad sight? Otherwise you have problems like dmholt is having where the psychic is using their power every turn without the squad being able to do anything about it.

With regards to medals, what are the criteria for gaining the various medals?

Specifically, is there any additional requirement to the active participation in 10 missions medal?

Drone Suppression is WAY TOO HIGH! My troops land on a terror mission. One light drone opens up on them before they are even two tiles from the Chinook. Suppresses all eight of them for the next three rounds just by firing in their general direction once per round. My troops cannot fire back at all due the reduction in TU and can barely move. They are all slaughtered before turn 4. Rage quit.

Drone Suppression is WAY TOO HIGH! My troops land on a terror mission. One light drone opens up on them before they are even two tiles from the Chinook. Suppresses all eight of them for the next three rounds just by firing in their general direction once per round. My troops cannot fire back at all due the reduction in TU and can barely move. They are all slaughtered before turn 4. Rage quit.

I'm going to be contrary and say I actually like the high suppression value from some alien attacks. Suppression's long been a feature which advantages the player much more than the AI, so it's nice (if sometimes devastating) to have to deal with it now, too.

I'm going to be contrary and say I actually like the high suppression value from some alien attacks. Suppression's long been a feature which advantages the player much more than the AI, so it's nice (if sometimes devastating) to have to deal with it now, too.

Yes, but even the human weapons aren't 100% successful within the suppression radius.

Yes, but even the human weapons aren't 100% successful within the suppression radius.

Suppression is a static value, though, so reducing the suppression value of the drone attack wouldn't have any effect unless reduced to a low value that never suppressed a soldier in one attack. I guess if you reduced it to 50-60, then it would suppress roughly half of all soldiers in one burst (since roughly half your soldiers will have a Bravery score above this value), but this wouldn't be that much higher than a regular alien weapon burst-firing. (And it would possibly mean that Wolf armour would completely negate the suppression damage, since armour is subtracted from suppression damage caused. Not sure if armour mitigation counts against this, though, so it might all be fine.)

Suppression is a static value, though, so reducing the suppression value of the drone attack wouldn't have any effect unless reduced to a low value that never suppressed a soldier in one attack. I guess if you reduced it to 50-60, then it would suppress roughly half of all soldiers in one burst (since roughly half your soldiers will have a Bravery score above this value), but this wouldn't be that much higher than a regular alien weapon burst-firing. (And it would possibly mean that Wolf armour would completely negate the suppression damage, since armour is subtracted from suppression damage caused. Not sure if armour mitigation counts against this, though, so it might all be fine.)

My guys were wearing Wolf! One light drone pinned the whole team for four successive rounds.

In which case, I'd assume armour mitigation counts against the suppression resistance armour provides, since light drones have a high armour mitigation. With that in mind, it might be good to reduce the suppression value a little such that armoured soldiers have a chance of not being instantly suppressed (depending on Bravery)?

While I believe that supression for drones is about right, I feel that the suppression radius is way too high. At a five tile radius, that makes a very big circle for a drone to suppress practically everything in it's fire path. I think that three tiles is a lot better.

Drone Suppression is WAY TOO HIGH! My troops land on a terror mission. One light drone opens up on them before they are even two tiles from the Chinook. Suppresses all eight of them for the next three rounds just by firing in their general direction once per round. My troops cannot fire back at all due the reduction in TU and can barely move. They are all slaughtered before turn 4. Rage quit.

I strive to provide hours of enjoyment*.

*) suffering

But on a more realistic note, the aim should be fun. So I might tweak its behavior then.

I'm kind of on the fence about the suppression rate of drones. I like the challenge they now offer, but I what I don't like is that I don't seem to have anything that's as effective at suppression.

I strive to provide hours of enjoyment*.

*) suffering

But on a more realistic note, the aim should be fun. So I might tweak its behavior then.

It's not AI it's the suppression rating and radius in the weapons stats. Everyone also needs to bear in mind that smoke, cover, etc...have no effect on suppression so there is no defense other than spreading your troops WAY out.

To be fair, their lethality is just as bad.

Could the alien mind control take effect on the turn after it hits? It's super lame when you can't even run away from a hypnotized soldier.

Ok, so the suppression effect on soldiers behind walls should be fixed. I had a guy behind a big cement wall, and a drone shot at my guys on the other side and he was suppressed. He wasn't even close to the corner. If you're in a building or behind one of those walls it shouldn't suppress you. Not sure if that can be fixed though!

Drone Suppression is WAY TOO HIGH! My troops land on a terror mission. One light drone opens up on them before they are even two tiles from the Chinook. Suppresses all eight of them for the next three rounds just by firing in their general direction once per round. My troops cannot fire back at all due the reduction in TU and can barely move. They are all slaughtered before turn 4. Rage quit.

Huh. I can't say I've had all of my soldiers perma suppressed in any situation. While I have noticed that the drones can suppress my soldiers relatively quickly, I haven't had an entire squad. Eight nor twelve, be perma-suppressed.

I have to ask, how do you set up your troops inside the Chinook? Do you have them piled in the rear as the "default" or do you set some farther towards the pilot so they can utilize the side exits?

Could the alien mind control take effect on the turn after it hits? It's super lame when you can't even run away from a hypnotized soldier.

I have to second this. During a "test" save I have (not on stream, so no video proof), I was clearing a cruiser. There were ZERO aliens outside of the alien craft, and the psychic alien kept spamming abilities. It wound up having one of my snipers shoot and kill the other sniper (who was in cover from the first sniper). They were both at full TUs watching the "middle" door as the rest of my squad (five and five) were sweeping the side wings.

Edited March 24, 2014 by Ziggarius

Like Totalbiscuit, FOV is very important to me. Especially when both I and the AI can game it to our advantage (and so "bullshit shots" was born). So as Chris said to bring up FOV again in the polishing phase, I am!

Could FOV please please pretty please be reset at the end of the player and AI turns rather than at the start of the next turn for the respective side. This stops silly things like the AI bumbling about and ending up out of line of sight of my troops, then being able to reaction shot my guys because thanks to semi-persistent FOV, the shooter can still see targets, or me opening the door to a scout, shutting it again and knowing exactly where the aliens have moved to before breaching.

I mean, it would be super cool if FOV was real-time but that ain't gonna happen now, so a reset at the end of the turn is the best I can ask for.

Maybe light and heavy drones could have their suppression radius reduced instead of suppression value. Currently it's 4/3/5 for light/medium/heavy. How about 3/3/4 instead?

I have to second this. During a "test" save I have (not on stream, so no video proof), I was clearing a cruiser. There were ZERO aliens outside of the alien craft, and the psychic alien kept spamming abilities. It wound up having one of my snipers shoot and kill the other sniper (who was in cover from the first sniper). They were both at full TUs watching the "middle" door as the rest of my squad (five and five) were sweeping the side wings.

This really shouldn't be happening, the only way the AI can use psionics on you is if you are visible by some alien, or if you don't move at all.

It seems we may be having issues where the player / aliens can see through gaps in the UFO hulls at the moment. That might be causing some of the spam.

I'm going to nerf Light Drone suppression from radius 4 to radius 2. The idea is that they are effective at suppression even against heavily-armoured troops (hence the high suppression and mitigation), but if they're suppressing entire teams then that's not quite right. They should be suppressing one or two targets a turn really.

Psionics may need some balancing, yeah. They're a new addition really so they probably do need a few iterations to get quite right.

I do still plan to test the real-time FOV, because most of the work for it has already been done as night mode uses it.

I'm going to nerf Light Drone suppression from radius 4 to radius 2. The idea is that they are effective at suppression even against heavily-armoured troops (hence the high suppression and mitigation), but if they're suppressing entire teams then that's not quite right. They should be suppressing one or two targets a turn really.

Chris, might I suggest you reduce the radius for all drones, not just the light drone? Per Ol' Stinky it's 4/3/5 for light/medium/heavy. How about 2/2/3 instead? The main problem I see is that there maps where the cover is just spread out enough that your soldiers tend to clump behind it closely grouped or in my case, I was was just trying to exit the transport. If a drone happens to catch them during one of these times, it's very possible that you will never be able to get enough of your troops unsurpressed long enough to destroy the drone and eventually they'll all be killed from dozens of minor wounds. Also, drones take full advantage of squad sight, so you may never even know where the drone that is suppressing your troops is located making it nearly impossible to do anything at all about it. I might not even have a problem with the current radius if the drone weapons weren't so deadly. Single hits aren't so bad, but the incredible rate of fire makes up for that. Edited March 24, 2014 by StellarRat

Only Light Drones have machineguns, though. The Medium and Heavy drones are more like cyberdiscs.