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V22 Experimental Build 3 Released!


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I originally set it that way because I thought suppression was *entirely* mitigated if the weapon could not inflict any damage on the target, but that's not how it works. You actually get an independent suppression "damage" calculation.

For the next build the Light Drone will do 20 damage a shot with 20 mitigation, but only 60 suppression damage instead of 100. This makes it more effective against Basic Armour, makes Jackal Armour reasonably resistant to damage but still suppressable, and Wolf / Predator armour entirely resistant to damage and fairly resistant to suppression.

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To throw my two pennies out there, I'm fairly okay with how all enemies in general react on the field of battle. The only thing that needs close study in my opinion is the whole psionics powers, but I suppose that's already in motion (seeing that the "save crashes if it contains a mind-controlled soldier" issue has been fixed).

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To throw my two pennies out there, I'm fairly okay with how all enemies in general react on the field of battle. The only thing that needs close study in my opinion is the whole psionics powers, but I suppose that's already in motion (seeing that the "save crashes if it contains a mind-controlled soldier" issue has been fixed).

Agreed, my only issues at this point are:

1. Crashes in ground missions, which seem to have increased significantly since the last patch (will try to upload a save if I get one that's reproducable, they seem to happen semi-randomly but always on the alien's turn which makes me think its either something in the alien's AI code, or one of my guys is attempting to reaction fire at them and that is what's causing the crash)

2. Psionics balance is largely unknown, since these don't come out in full force until the end-game.

Chris, since I know you're watching this thread, how hard would it be to implement some cheats into the game? All we really need is:

1. Ability to advance the hidden invasion "ticker" that controls which alien ships show up

2. Ability to give ourselves cash

3. Ability to have all of our lab/workshop jobs complete instantly

With just these three, we'd be able to skip to the late-game very quickly and get a better idea of how things are balanced there. I just feel like the 30 tile range on mind control isn't going to be enough to balance it sufficiently (although it should make base raids a little more bearable), but I can't actually get to that part of the game to test it in a timely manner.

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Did you do something about the reflex fire. I just had a base mission where they fired 8 reflex shots a single guy.

Fairly certain that's normal, assuming multiple aliens of course.

Has made me wonder though. It's not uncommon to enter a room with several full-TU aliens waiting to reaction fire. Waiting for a large number of shots to be taken in these situations can sometimes be tedious and feel disempowering. I'm wondering, then, whether limiting reaction fire to one shot *per action* wouldn't help be breaking reaction fire up a little bit.

For example, in most circumstances a soldier firing on burst mode calls two reaction shots from an alien at the moment (assuming the alien has full TUs and comparable reactions). By limiting reaction fire to one shot per action, burst fire in the same circumstance would call only one shot before the soldier can do something else (although anything else they do will certainly call a second shot afterwards). As such, there's a little more turn-passing between the player and computer, rather than bombarding the player with a large number of reaction shots in one go.

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That is not how the system works though.

Currently if an alien has higher initiative than your soldier they will fire until your soldier has a higher initiative.

That is due to the TU multiplier to the reaction stat.

There is no link between the action you perform and how many shots the alien gets.

http://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Reaction_Fire

That is basically the same system as the current Xenonaut system but with reaction modifiers for weapons added in.

If you assume all of the examples have aliens and soldiers using rifles (with the 1x modifier) then they are valid.

The reason you get shot at so much is likely because you are meeting aliens when you have a low percentage of TU left while the aliens have a high percentage of TU left.

Aliens generally have decent reactions so you should consider leading with weapons like pistols or shotguns with a high modifier and moving slowly to keep a high TU percentage.

This keeps your soldiers initiative high, reducing how many reaction shots the enemy gets.

It also means if the aliens do much in their own turn then you have a good chance of using reaction shots yourself.

As such, there's a little more turn-passing between the player and computer, rather than bombarding the player with a large number of reaction shots in one go.

Personally I would find it more frustrating if every step caused a pause for another reaction shot rather than getting them all fired at once.

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That is not how the system works though.

Currently if an alien has higher initiative than your soldier they will fire until your soldier has a higher initiative.

That is due to the TU multiplier to the reaction stat.

There is no link between the action you perform and how many shots the alien gets.

http://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Reaction_Fire

That is basically the same system as the current Xenonaut system but with reaction modifiers for weapons added in.

If you assume all of the examples have aliens and soldiers using rifles (with the 1x modifier) then they are valid.

The reason you get shot at so much is likely because you are meeting aliens when you have a low percentage of TU left while the aliens have a high percentage of TU left.

Aliens generally have decent reactions so you should consider leading with weapons like pistols or shotguns with a high modifier and moving slowly to keep a high TU percentage.

This keeps your soldiers initiative high, reducing how many reaction shots the enemy gets.

It also means if the aliens do much in their own turn then you have a good chance of using reaction shots yourself.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that anything you've written there was not the case. What I meant was that, on average, a soldier firing on burst-fire mode will depleat their initiative value enough to call two-ish reaction shots per alien - assuming the aliens are on full TUs, have comparable reactions, and have 1x modifier weapons. The 'link' between the action taken and number of reaction shots was merely a factor of how much the soldier's TUs (and thus initiative) had been reduced by the action. Apologies for lack of clarity.

Personally I would find it more frustrating if every step caused a pause for another reaction shot rather than getting them all fired at once.

Yeah, fair enough. It might be possible to mitigate this with a kind of 'cool down' between reaction shots, but then it's starting to get very complicated and not at all worth the effort.

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So Gauddlike - if my soldiers has 99 TUs he can still be reaction fired even if he moves just 1 tile because HIS reflexes are lower than Aliens reflexes and remaining TU ?

Yes. The initiative roll is (remaining TU%) * (Reflexes stat) * (weapon reaction modifier). The raw amount of TU your soldier has doesn't matter, it's the % of maximum that matters...and even then it's just a modifier.

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So this Remaining TU in the roll is the remaining TU from the last turn if I get it right?

Then this is the reason we're often getting repeat reaction shots from the same unit because this element in the calculation is not updated between reaction-shots and then the actions of the turntaker.

But it also feels that it somehow 'updates and depletes' because often, most reaction shots happen during the first few actions of the turntaker that happen in LoS of the non-turntaker, and then somehow become depleted and the target unit can usually take the remaining of its turn free from getting shot at by a unit that has already reacted to its moves before.

The problem apparently is then, that the reaction shots are not much distributed evenly in Tu-time, they are more cramped into the first part of the turn of the target.

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I'm not sure what you're talking about there? TU is spent when an action is performed, either in that unit's turn or when it performs reaction fire (lowering Initiative accordingly). TU is only refreshed at the start of that side's turn.

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So this Remaining TU in the roll is the remaining TU from the last turn if I get it right?

Then this is the reason we're often getting repeat reaction shots from the same unit because this element in the calculation is not updated between reaction-shots and then the actions of the turntaker.

But it also feels that it somehow 'updates and depletes' because often, most reaction shots happen during the first few actions of the turntaker that happen in LoS of the non-turntaker, and then somehow become depleted and the target unit can usually take the remaining of its turn free from getting shot at by a unit that has already reacted to its moves before.

The problem apparently is then, that the reaction shots are not much distributed evenly in Tu-time, they are more cramped into the first part of the turn of the target.

Reaction fire draws TUs from the shooter as normal. So, for example, if a unit has 50 TUs left at the end of its turn and takes a snap-shot via reaction fire on its opponent's turn costing 20 TUs, its current TUs are reduced to 30 (50-20) and its Initiative value reduced accordingly.

So yes, after a few reaction shots, your units will be able to move around freely as the aliens have used all their TUs against previous soldiers. (It also means you can move/shoot with one soldier a little, suffer reaction fire, then use other soldiers a little too without suffering further reaction fire.)

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I think 'remaining TU' is confusing, it should probably be thought of as 'current TU'.

When you reaction fire you use up your current TU so your initiative drops, when it drops below the initiative of the alien in view then you stop firing until the alien uses enough TU to drop below you once again.

In general you don't meet enemies straight away and firing uses up a lot of TU so as said above you tend to meet an enemy with a much higher initiative who unloads a lot of shots at you until they have too few to fire any more.

That is probably down to the high TU cost of firing.

If you could fire four or five shots without dropping below 50% TU then you would likely swap between alien and human side more often in a turn as initiative would drop in several small chunks rather than just one or two large chunks.

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If your 99TU solider has a REF of 30, it doesn't matter a damn if it's got 99 or one hundred million TUs. It still has a REF of 30. the number of TUs is only tangenitally relevant. The real stat is reflexes. That's what matters. And where's this amazing alien that can move 60TUs worth of tiles and still have TUs for a shot? That would have to give it, what, over 80TUs to accomplish that feat? The only alien type that tops out at 80 is the Praetor, and they'll make you their mind controlled beyatch long before they fire a shot at you!

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Remember the weapon would make a difference as well in that scenario.

If your soldier had low reflexes and a machine gun then he will trigger reaction fire no matter what he does, if he had a shotgun and higher reflexes then it would be much less frequent.

There was a bug a few experimental versions ago that gave aliens full TU in their own turn if I remember correctly.

If it wasn't very recent then it could have been that version.

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