Aaron
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Posts posted by Aaron
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Come on guys, we are not going to let you hide behind a rock until the aliens are out of ammo. Getting the AI to use some sort of resupply system would probably be as big of a project as getting grenades working was - is that really where you want development time spent?
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I don't remember anything like that, so it must have been ages ago. We used to have Godzilla Androns too and they didn't make it in
We are going to look at messaging this "feeling of dread" in a different way soon - one of the larger GC jobs remaining is to implement a status indicator to let you know what things are affecting a soldier; feeling of dread would just be added to this as an icon.
Here's a list of what will be on that indicator for those interested:
Is Commander
Commander Morale Bonus
Safety In Numbers Morale Bonus
Is Bleeding
Has Heavy weapon movement penalty
Crouching Accuracy Bonus
Crouching Dodge Bonus
Feeling of Dread
Overloaded Inventory
Insufficient Strength
Armour Damage State
Suppressed
Low Morale
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It is defined as turn rate in degrees per second. I gave it a bit of a try and even with the reduction it was not enough to let you really take advantage of UFOs; halved it for next version and now you can outmanoeuvre most things. Note: the Light Scout/Scout have higher turning rates than the later UFOs, so don't base assessments solely on them.
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Assoonasitis is right you guys, and you cant improve on perfection so no more balance fixes k
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I've just pushed a tiny fix to the experimental branch that should correct that.
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I should have mentioned, but yeah I am tweaking those values too - usually when I list changes off the cuff it's safe to assume it may not be a exhaustive list
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We would only put in limited ammo for aliens if we also gave them a way to resupply - this was never considered in any of our design for the AI, and would probably be a pretty awkward feature to implement.
Morale doesn't affect aliens right now - the aliens aren't really exactly the same as humans, so I don't see it as obvious it should apply: many of the alien sub-races of described as barely sapient, almost being biological robots (or actual robots, in one case). In truth, it is something I would like to play with, but we've really got bigger fish to fry right now.
@superbob: Ack dammit, our split inventory system strikes again!
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Thanks for all the feedback guys - detailed breakdowns in particular are useful because I only have so much time to play the game, and people often play it in quite different ways.
So, tweaks for next build so far look like: Increased initial national funding significantly and tweaked maintenance costs a bit (when you start the game your total maintenance costs are 1000000, and monthly funding is 2500000), tweaked the damage done to national relations by various UFO missions to take into the account the aforementioned increase and some reductions in UFO health so that the standard for intercepting a new enemy UFO is 2 of the latest tech fighters, rather than 3. I also reduced the build time for bases from 20 to 10 days, Radars from 20 to 10 and Hangars from 10 to 5, in order to make investment in a new base pay off sooner. Given that though, I am thinking about increasing the costs of base building again, given you will hopefully have more cash on hand from national funding.
@StellarRat: I actually did reduce the turning rates of UFOs in this build to try to encourage players to use their aircraft manoeuvrability to get around them; the trouble with emphasising it too much though is it makes it obvious how simplistic the AI is for enemy craft.
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Alien grenades did have too long a range initially, I have reduced it in the internal version already which makes them a bit less a fearsome.
Aliens will eventually have infinite ammo for their main weapon - we haven't had the code implemented for it yet, but I had turned the ammo count for alien weapons up to 999 in the hopes that would compensate in the meantime, guess it wasn't enough...
I think I might make a change to alien loadouts so that only 1 in 2 alien have grenades, or maybe even 1 in 3 early on.
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Hi - because the balance is still in a bit of flux I don't think anyone has put together a comprehensive guide on the game, as it would be obsolete fairly quickly. However you probably want to make sure that you are pursuing upgrades for both the air combat and the ground combat at the same time, rather than focus on one - the difficulty of both ramps up at the same time. Right now funding is a bit of an issue for the Xenonauts, which is something I am looking to soften a bit in coming balance updates.
I would actually also be interested to hear general tips from the community - we are implementing a tips system on the new loading screens, so good ones might be able to go on there.
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@Assoonasitis, are the aliens in the command room reaction firing with grenades? If so, we maybe shouldn't allow that. Have you tried using stun grenades? The aliens should flee from dangerous (i.e. gas filled) tiles now, so they might be a good way to flush them out - I'm thinking about implementing nerve gas grenades and/or incendiary grenades for the Xenonauts in future to help them out in this regard.
There probably is something wrong with the accuracy for the aliens - we are looking into it.
Also, Wraith are hilarious now they know how to move about a bit better - just had one teleport right infront of my squad and drop a nade at his feet (sadly, he did not teleport out, but he survived anyway).
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@legit1337, what he means by that is simply the "nation rating" bonus for the shoot down is granted to the nearest country - not that the crashed UFO itself is teleported to land.
I'm pretty convinced I am going to increase the speed of human interceptors by 500, so that e.g. the Condor matches the speed of the Light Scout - this combined with the UFOs flying inefficient flight paths should make catching UFOs easy enough.
I am also taking a look at the damage/speed of UFO fighter missiles, as I think they missed getting balanced against the updated HP values of human fighters, and dodging them should not be a matter of twitch skills.
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Thanks - the doors were setup incorrectly, I've fixed them for the next build.
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I can't reproduce this - when I try to double click on it it disappears before the second click even registers. Your computer doesn't seem to be particularly slow, so I'm not sure why you might be able to while I cannot.
Anyone else able to to repro?
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That looks like you are playing on an old map. Have you installed any map packs? If not, could you delete the folder Xenonauts/assets/maps/arctic and then tell Steam to verify your files (right click on Xenonauts in your Steam library, click "Properties" then "Local Files" then "Verify Integrity of Game Cache"?
Out of curiosity have you just switched over to the experimental branch, or have you been on it for a while?
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We will probably have a simple indication of how well you did in certain areas, but it will be based on very straight forward things like how many aliens you killed (vs. escaped), how many troops you lost and how many civilians lived/died.
@StellarRat, shooting down a terror/base UFO won't give you the same bonus as resolving and actual terror or base mission. Taking out a crashed UFO is significantly easier than either of those mission types because many of the occupants will be dead. There's an issue where players could then choose to let a terror attack happen, then defeat it, in order to get the funding boost - but that can realistically only happen once you have unlocked the Quantum Cryptology Center and can see UFO missions, as terror mission UFOs should now follow a similar trajectory to normal UFOs and not be so blatantly obvious.
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@Dranak, that is actually a feature where certain parts of aircraft can be disabled - however we intend to disable it, as it really serves no purpose and is hardly explained.
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@Fruitbasket The hire soldier option is on the barrack screen. Chris is redoing the dropship screen to show more information about soldiers, it just takes a little while to do.
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New build (7) is up - so you can all try it for yourselves!
Thread title updated.
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Ok, the new build is available - I have edited the thread title and we can just carry on discussion here. Aliens should be using grenades in a slightly more sane way now!
Keep in mind the grenade toting aliens don't appear until the Soldier tier (they start appearing with Corvettes).
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Firstly, if you do not know how to access the experimental branch on Steam, please read the instructions (and warnings!) in this thread. All saved games from earlier versions (including experimental versions) are incompatible, attempting to load them will cause problems.
We had to pull the previous experimental build because there were serious issues with the AI. It has taken us longer than we would have liked to fix those, but in the mean time we have made enough progress that we feel it is worth promoting this update to a full new build.
There are more refinements to alien grenade use in this build (such as the exciting: aliens don't just throw them all the time oh god). Also an important change to UFOs that should prevent lots of the weird behaviour that resulted from them not having a logical "roof". We think we have managed to crush the "cursor offset" bug that's been annoying users of certain resolutions (particularly after alt-tabbing).
I've listed the changes from build 6 below here too, in case you missed them.
New changes from build 7:
Fixes
- Aliens now have limited ammo again (including grenades)
- Grenades should no longer be able to be thrown through walls by aliens
- Also fixed being able to throw through diagonal tiles borders in certain instances
- Fixed hidden movement screen hiding important visible events
- UFOs now have "roof tiles" which should prevent grenades being thrown into/out of them
- Thanks to above, jetpack units should not be able to see down into UFOs from above
- Moved the active point of the Geoscape cursor, this should fix the problem where it is mis-aligned on certain resolutions
- More misc Geoscape UI improvements
- Fixed windows of the Middle Eastern house blocking line of sight
- Reposition a poorly placed Light Scout spawn in one of the desert maps
- Alien Base Communications Array now correctly unlocks the Quantum Cryptology Center research
- Fixed an instance where reaction fire could be triggered through walls/obstacles if they had not been revealed
- Eliminated about 100MB of redundant data
Additions
- New animated sprites for both alien grende types
- Modified explosion graphic for advanced alien grenade
- Ground Combat now uses same cursor as Geoscape
- New door cursor
Balance
- Alien base missions grant 25 country relation points for completion (Terror Missions don't yet, waiting a fix)
- Alien grenades first appear with Soldier level troops and above (you won't see them at the start of the game!)
- Alien strength increased from 50 to 100 to let them throw grenades further
- Alien grenade damage increased (likely to insta-gib an unarmoured soldier)
- National relations bonus from shooting down UFOs is now a flat rate, rather than steadily increasing (the rest of the system doesn't scale that way)
Changes from Experimental build 6:
Fixes
- Fixed game hanging on certain alien base attack missions
- A large number tweaks, fixes and improvements to the Geoscape UI and related windows
- Throwing grenades will no longer be blocked if there is an obstacle above the line of sight to a target
- Increased Xenopedia font size
- You should no longer be able to throw grenades into a building by throwing them at the upper floors
- Fixed Battle Rifle displaying Plasma Pistol Xenopedia article
- Fixed crouching bonus back to 80% (it was reset to 60% accidentally)
- Tweaks to the blocking tile layout of Scouts and Landing Ships to fix issues with jagged edges, incorrectly sorted hull etc...
- Fixed barn roof displaying incorrectly when viewed from the side
- Deleted some duplicate unused tree sprites
- Updated target point tile to be a little easier to read in the editor
- Fixed minor visual issue with garage door open state
- Fixed Chinook exit for vehicles being blocked on a particular desert map
- Fixed an instance where you could instantly lose by placing your base on a city near another city
- Fixed issue where throwable items rendered on all levels
Additions
- Added explanatory tooltips to tutorialise various screens to the player (Can be disabled at game start)
- Introduction of additional AI behaviours for aliens
-- Aliens should now throw grenades
-- A large number of tweakable values for aliens have been introduced in aiprops.xml
- New animated sprite for the Singularity Core
- Added new dropship images behind Xenonaut soldiers on the soldier equip screen
- Finally snapped and fixed the awful transit van drop shadows
- Added Xenopedia image for Alien Armour Plating
Balance
- General update to air combat balance - too many changes to list individually, but generally:
-- Ranges of starting aircraft reduced, so the Condor now has quite short legs!
-- Speeds of aircraft and UFOs adjusted to encourage progression, Condors will have trouble catching UFOs reliably
-- Damage of Xenonaut weapons adjusted: 2 heavy missiles now always do slightly more damage than the equivalent 2 light missiles + gun
-- UFO health adjusted in line with the damage changes so that earlier weapons have an increasingly tougher time against later UFOs
-- Turn rates of various craft adjusted to encourage more manoeuvring around larger UFOs in air combat
-- Radar ranges of Xenonaut aircraft adjusted so they now progress from small to larger on later long range craft
-- Maintenance costs of all aircraft set to a flat rate of $100000 per month for fighters, $50000 for dropships - no increase for later craft
-- Auto-resolve rebalanced to take into account all of the above
-- Build cost of Mig31 increased to 200000, as the above changes gave it a bit of a buff
-- Reduced Refuelling time of aircraft by about a third
-- Increased re-armament time from 30 to 60 minutes
- Also rebalanced the maintenance costs of base buildings from around 10% of the cost of the building to 25%
- Introduced a build time for new bases, and significantly increased the maintenance cost of command centre
- Updated mission scores so that ground combat missions no longer provide national relations boosts (the relations boost now comes from shooting down UFOs)
- Xenonaut grenades increased in blast radius from 2-3
- The shaded tiles for grenade blast radius now indicate tiles that receive at least 50% of the grenade damage, up from 25%
- Base defense turrets now do far more damage than previously, but have a lower chance to hit
- Stun grenades now do a small amount of stun on impact
- Stun gas now deals twice as much stun damage (also investigating a bug where this may not be getting applied properly)
- Made many alien props slightly tougher, as in many instances a stray shot could have destroyed them outright
- Alein grenades do incendiary rather than kinetic damage (making them better at destroying props)
- Difficulty setting changes: UFOs now have 75% HP on Easy, and alien invasion speed is now at 75% / 100% / 120% / 150% for the 4 levels
- Tweaked AP cost of alien grenades
- Normalised speed of various projectiles
Please post your comments on the build here. If you encounter any bugs please post them in the experimental build sub-forum of the bugs forum. I will post new threads in the beta forum shortly for in-depth discussion of the current Geoscape and Ground Combat balance, but feel free to post brief opinions here too.
EDIT: I just pushed a minor fix to prevent aliens running out of ammo in ground combat
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@Dranak, With the updated damage numbers in v6 3 Condors with basic weapons will do 1800 damage. You start with 2 Condors, they cost $100000 each and you have a spare hangar. You should probably just wait for the new build.
Doing more graduated increases in UFO speeds is possible, I mainly kept the UFOs limited to two tiers of speed so there was an obvious point where you needed to upgrade you aircraft.
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I have never tried, I doubt it will work though - we have a lot of things hard coded (not ideal but we are stuck with it).
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Adding a cap to the technology level of weapons is not a function we have available - it would require programmer time, which is very thin on the ground right now. Also given that for the entirety of development the assumption has been that weapons will never be capped, then implementing it at this late stage is indeed very likely to lead both bugs and unforeseen consequences.
@Dranak, I am open to suggestions for other ways to make Corsairs interesting, but it's not like we have a great deal of unused features we can give them. If we increase Condor speed again so they can catch up to UFOs, then it makes any speed advantage the Corsairs have an uninteresting upgrade.
As for the number of missiles it takes to destroy a UFO, sure the Scout takes 5 Avalanche Torpedoes, but as soon as you upgrade to Alenium weapons (available once you meet Scouts) that drops to 3 - I think when you first meet a UFO it should always be very hard to shoot down, as the pressure to upgrade aircraft weapons drives interesting decisions the player must make about resource allocation.
Geoscape Balance Discussion V20 Experimental 7
in Xenonauts General Discussion
Posted · Edited by Aaron
The end mission screen was basically broken by this change, but it is being completely reworked soon. You will not always get a negative rating for ground missions when that is done, you just won't get a funding bonus unless it's a mission type that grants it (landed UFOs, Terror Missions etc...).