Charon
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Posts posted by Charon
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Hm ... 3 - 2 - 1 would make for some interesting decisions. Like on mk3 you could put the same magazin into 5 cannon shots, 2 sniper rifle shots, or 9 rifle shots ... hm. Interesting.
We´ll go with that.
Edit: Ill reverse the ammo capacity changes except for the cannon ones ofcourse, is what i meant to say.
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21 minutes ago, PALU said:
Yes, I think decreasing the ammo clip weight might be a better option as it puts further emphasis on the thing that differentiates the Sonic tech from others. I guess it depends on how you use the soldier inventory, though.
So how about the mk1 series weights 3 kg, the mk2 2.5 kg, and the mk3 2 kg ? This should further stress the prototype status of mk1 sonic weapons. Or 3 - 2 - 1 kg ?
I will revert the ammo clip capacities to teh original ones, so please adjust the Xpedia accordingly.
21 minutes ago, PALU said:Given that the things I'd mainly use cannons against are immune to overdamage due to the cannon just stripping a layer off, it wouldn't matter much. Basically, the cannon would take the place of a rocket launcher's armor piercing role in my case (but wielded by my heavy as a complement to the antimatter miniigun [my current A team heavy uses a Rail minigun for shield whittling currently]).
I think thats the perfect spot of a cannon. Being more powerful than a rocket launcher, but without the diversity of all the different rocket types.
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2 hours ago, PALU said:
While I welcome the changes to provide a more reasonable clip size, I'm not completely sure that may be the best way to address the ammo issue. A selling point of the Sonic tech is that reloading is very fast, while the problem (as I see it) is that the ammo is so heavy you can't carry a reasonable supply of it
So you are saying we should decrease the weight of ammo clips in order to increase the maximum damage potential by playing on the strong side of the sonic weapons, which is a fast reloading mechanism ?
2 hours ago, PALU said:I also note that the cannon change provides a massive increase in its potential damage
The cannon does overdamage, and so even if it is unreasonable powerful ( i dont think it is ) it holds little value when you destroy the loot you need. But yes, if you wouldnt need any loot anymore the cannon definitely can prove to be very powerful, which i think should be the intended design.
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6 hours ago, PALU said:
Since I've never accepted a base to be lost, I have no first hand experience, and so has tried to interpret what's been said here. If that interpretation is incorrect it ought to be adjusted (except for the first base assault, I've never stationed anyone inside the command center, trying to keep the troops to protect the room surrounding it [and clear out one breach at a time], and fortunately wraiths have never teleported into the center).
Its not. Keep with the approved text. All other soldiers except for the 16 who defend the base can indeed be seen as securing the emergency tunnels and craft. Technically @Ruthless Reubanis right, other soldiers dont appear in the casuality list, but i rather would call that the bug, than saying they deserted their position or something. The approved text doesnt specifiy which soldiers are protecting what, and thuse leave room for the players fantasy. As a lore writer you dont have to specifically write out every little detail, its about stimulating the fantasy of a reader. That, and that soldiers not present in the Base Assault dont get a memorial event is a bug, i would say.
5 hours ago, Mr. Mister said:I know Ikm a bit late to the base defense discussion, but are there any qualitative changes you could easily make to the tactical map itself that would aleviate some of the issues you described, like populating the map with armed security personnel (civillians technically, but you know what ai mean), or some veeeery explosive containers that would serve as ways for you to purposely destroy a room to kill or heavily injure all aliens within?
Map makers are welcome. If you know one, please point him into the right direction
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I have finalised the Base Attack numbers.
old ones:
Sebillian: 21 - 46 - 51 - 57
Caesan: 29 - 51 - 67 - 81
Androns: 23 - 39 - 35 - 38new ones:
Sebillian: 21 - 46 - 51 - 57
Caesan: 29 - 51 - 67 - 81
Androns: 23 - 30 - 34 - 38- I mostly left the numbers intact but
- decreased terror units where necessary
- switched around some units
- androns got a lot of multi stage enemies reduced
- and added the appropriate Base Operators from both other main races to androns
I looked over the Bombing Run and Construction numbers of Motherships a bit, but mostly left them as they are, except for the andron one. Above changes where implemented as well.
With this i consider the matter closed.
I have also increased the ammo count for sonic weapons as well as added burst fire modes for the sonic cannon mk2 and mk3. Can you go over the numbers @PALU and check if all affected Xpedia entries are still up to date ? weapons_gc.xml
Also can you include everything which you want to include, as i will release the new version as soon as you give me the heads up.
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9 minutes ago, PALU said:
Lower troop count that on a corresponding terror mission. I don't have any useful input regarding the exact numbers, though.
Because, like any player, tester and developer, we dont really do Base Attack missions. Which kinda speaks for itself.
Edit: @PALU As an experienced player i dont really have a problem with playing around the weaker parts of the game, but for less experienced players Base Attacks will most likely be the end of the game for them. I guess thats the pain they will have to go through, and find a solution for.
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1 minute ago, PALU said:
With no way to implement withdrawal, I'd retain a lower troop count. Sure, it will usually be a cakewalk if you shoot up the UFO badly, but you can consider that a reward for good preparations (and you don't get any UFO parts either). It can be noted that base assaults are the most dangerous when the aliens is one tech step ahead of you, at which time your base defenses may just scratch the paint of the UFO, and aircraft you send against it may be completely inadequate, and so fail to do much damage either. Your under equipped troops will then face more or less a full complement of invaders, with no chance to retreat. The game doesn't allow for a "desperate fight for survival" adrenaline surge either, as nothing like that is implemented.
What is a "lower troop count" ? Lower, equal, or higher numbers ?
Sebillian: 21 - 46 - 51 - 57
Caesan: 29 - 51 - 67 - 81
Androns: 23 - 39 - 35 - 38Also check the edits above.
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15 minutes ago, PALU said:
There are some other significant differences between base attacks and terror missions:
You have to protect the command center, while being attacked from multiple directions, and the enemies are fairly concentrated, with no civilians to distract them (although there is base destruction). If the aliens were programmed to do so, they could easily just overrun your positions. Sure, you'd kill some, but the remainder will kill multiple defender in every turn in that scenario, with the defender fire power dropping a lot faster than the alien one.
Tactics to delay enemies are sort of counter productive, as e.g. gas will just allow them to smash your facilities while being protected against your forces.
Base assaults take place in a much smaller area than terror attacks, and line of sight is mostly blocked by walls and doors. While this means aliens can't subject you to a massive number of attacks from out of sight range, you can't fight them at medium distance either, much of the time, so it's a lot of turning corners to find yourself rubbing noses with an alien. It can also be noted that the breaches are fairly crammed with hostiles as it is, so they'd struggle with sending more troops in without either further breaches or the ability to send in reinforcements through existing ones (and those reinforcements would be in trouble if base defense batteries could attack targets at the surface level...).
And, as mentioned, the total loss on a failure is devastating.
Whats your solution ?
Edit: My go-to solution would be to disable base attacks altogether. If every base attacks means that all your aircraft gets saved, and if you plan ahead your personel gets saved as well, than there would only be your items at loss. And then you can attempt to retake your base, with the possibility to pull out.
Arguably we are trying to fix a vanilla issue, but in vanilla you could have just shot down the UFO. X-Division kinda aggravates that problem, although being able to retake your base lessens it a bit again.
My personal preference is to shoot down Base Attacks, and farm their content, but it leaves out the question what people should do which are not good enough to pull off that stunt. I cant imagine that being fun for people.
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The main problem that i have with the Base Attack numbers is that they are generally lower than the terror Crashsite ones. So if i just copy and paste the Crashsite numbers over the Base Attack ones, it will mean an increased unit count.
The other point is that Base Attacks are arguebly the least fun part of the game. Paired together with the fact that IF you defend your base you normally send over your A-team, and if that gets defeated ( and you cant pull out ) makes every base attack an all in, no matter how you look at it. I rather think that retaking your base is solving the same thing in a more controlled manner, because you can always pull out of an Alien Base, if you think you cant make it.
Edit: From a development point of view, if you would allow soldiers in the command room to evacuate when you abort the mission, would make the whole thing more enjoyable since you are not risking your 100 hour campaign in a single mission.
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@PALU very well done.
Edit: "protocol
forin the event" -
@Ruthless Reuban @Borak Would you like to add anything to the Base Attack oppinions we have gathered so far ?
Btw, i appreciate both of your contribution of feedback on X-Division.
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2 hours ago, Dagar said:
while the remainder will seek shelter elsewhere. We can re-hire them later.
@PALU I especially have to agree to this one. While from a gaming perspective what "really" happens in the game is important to the player, but worrying about who gets fired or not usually comes second to worry about the safety of people, in a believable scenario.
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12 minutes ago, PALU said:
Which base is chosen for engineer/scientist transfer? The closest one, the one with the most room, or something else? Do scientists and engineers always go to the same base as the other group?
2 things happen.
1) All Aircraft try to find an empty hangar. The ones which arent transfered are destroyed, but you can lore over it by saying they take refugee on closeby airports, but the aircraft has been confiscated or so.
2) Then the game tries to find another base with the most needed room available. So if you have 20 scientists the game tries to find another base with empty scientist spots, so you will have to have the lab space and the living room space available. The game will only transfer personal from one base to another, all other personal is lost. Again you can lore over it with either slaughtered scientists in the base, or by making them take shelter in the surrounding country, but they will have to be rehired. Up to your morbid sense of story telling ;). I dont know if the game prioritisies scientists over engineers, but i suspect they always prioritise more people over less. If a base has 20 engineers and 20 scientists, and you have another base with 40 quarters and the same amount of free working space available, the whole personal will be transfered.
Also remember that overtaken bases will be repurposed into an alien base over the next 48 hours. So you can kinda make a connection to that as well ( im not sure if we mention that anywhere ) and the effects of taking back your own base.
Edit: I agree that i wouldnt want the entry to get too long, so if you can find a better place we can spread that information across.
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Very good entry.
I would like to add a "Maybe if we could decode alien transmissions in the future ... but thats in the future." or something along those lines to the last paragraph, to indicate of such possibility.
I also lost the overview if we already explained how the emergency protocoll for overtaken bases work ? That is airplanes will try to find an empty hangar on all available bases, while engineers and scientists will only be transfered to a single base, and only as much people will be transfered as there are free spots available. This would be good to put in this or another entry.
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33 minutes ago, PALU said:
Concerning "when crew is killed", that's actually intentional. "The crew" implies everyone, while just "crew" means "some of the crew". The word "crew" is used as an uncountable in the same manner as e.g. "Fish was killed by the poison spill...". If you think it's too awkward I can change it to e.g. "parts of the crew".
No, if you say you want to use it as an uncountable its fine. But than i would subject to the use of "crew is killed on a crash only". Its on the typ of my tounge, but it sounds akward. Maybe "crew is killed on impact". Kinda sounds better than "crash only".
I have a new image. What do you say ?
Edit: Updated image
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49 minutes ago, PALU said:
when crew is killed on a crash only
when the crew
Its a very good entry. I talked with @Solver and he liked it so much that we are gonna keep the bug and make it into a feature. Even though the fix is literally writing false we are going to keep it. Even if nothing else, you can pride yourself by the fact that your lore is so good that it turns bugs into features <3.
I have another suggestion for the Lore part. The Lore+ Base Attack entry. First of all it only gets triggered AFTER a base attack actually happens, and secondly any Base Attack UFO triggers the entry. What do you think ? Might this be the right place ?
<Row ss:AutoFitHeight="0" ss:Height="47.25">
<Cell ss:StyleID="s69"><Data ss:Type="String">Researches.BaseAttackMission</Data></Cell>
<Cell ss:StyleID="s69"><Data ss:Type="String">Xenonaut Base Assault Mission</Data></Cell>
<Cell ss:StyleID="s69"><Data ss:Type="String">xenopediaimages/baseattack</Data></Cell>
<Cell ss:StyleID="s69"><Data ss:Type="String">UFOs</Data></Cell>
<Cell ss:StyleID="s69"><Data ss:Type="String">AC</Data></Cell>
<Cell ss:StyleID="s69"><Data ss:Type="String">I've squeezed intel out of an old friend in the armed forces about a ground assault on a deep nuclear launch facility. A covert group of ETs were able to access the base despite most of it being half a mile underground, and beat the hell out of base security. It was only by deliberately collapsing the residential wing that the base commander saved anything. That worries me... if the ETs are doing it to the sponsors, sooner or later they’ll do it to us. The consequence of ETs successfully attacking one of our bases is the loss of all operational assets in the base and the particular area covered by the base will be undefended until we can construct a new one. Even if we drive them off ETs can cause lasting damage by wrecking hangars, destroying labs and demolishing workshops. Don’t sit about and wait for the ETs, Commander. Go and meet them in force! Without a way of intercepting and decoding alien communications, it’ll be hard to tell if a UFO is going to mount an attack on our base or if they’re intending to attack a city. Look for escorted medium-class signals and above. They aren’t going to make it obvious that they’re going for us, but sooner or later they will have to head directly to our base. The bases most likely to be attacked will be the ones they have the most operational data on – i.e. the oldest. It would probably be a good idea to station a garrison or erect defences at the bases most at risk. </Data></Cell>
</Row>Edt: @PALU you might have to repurpose the original text a bit as
- nobody can shoot down a Base Attack unknowingly ( like you could in vanilla )
- The entry says that something like that will happen, yet it clearly already happened. So i think the order of events needs to be revised a bit
- "Look for escorted medium-class signals" - its always at least Massive signals
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Here are the progression numbers for base attacks:
Sebillian: 21 - 46 - 51 - 57
Caesan: 29 - 51 - 67 - 81
Androns: 23 - 39 - 35 - 38We can again note the huge jump between Phase 1 and Phase 2. Additionally the rest is not smoothly distributed and the androns Phase 2 have more enemies than even Phase 4.
In this case i would like to to redefine the master numbers starting from Phase 2, and not touch Phase 1 too much.
Actually i dont have a clue where things stand in terms of base attacks. On one side you can have 16 soldiers, 3 vehicles and are able to reduce the enemies forces by 50% and on the other hand i dont want the make it too easy, but also not too dragging. I would like to call upon the community and especially the more experienced players on what they think about base attacks, the unit count, difficulty and lenght of base attacks in general. Please write me your oppinion about Base Attacks.
Here is an example of a Base Attack, Phase 2: https://youtu.be/KMacpylXplE
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I have finished and edited the post about the new numbers. Here is the summary.
These are the old numbers.
Sebillian: 40 - 56 - 61 - 69
Caesan: 53 - 69 - 77 - 94
Androns: 34 - 51 - 58 - 69And here we have the revised ones.
Sebillian: 40 - 48 - 58 - 68
Caesan: 53 - 64 - 75 - 86
Androns: 35 - 42 - 49 - 56The things i changed are:
- Smoothing out transition between phases
- Big decrease in terror unit count
- Substituted by their main race normal soldiers
- Decreased secondary race count ( Harridans, Wraiths )
- Increased harridans for andron crash sites
- Terror and Assault Operators for both races were added for the androns
- i made the unpopular choice of puting a few reapers inside of the actual UFO
I will now take a look at the actual Base Attack Numbers. Feedback is welcome.
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5 minutes ago, PALU said:
Lore: I'll try to find somewhere to explain away why downed assaults suffer heavier casualties than other downed craft. As dead units tend to litter the interior of downed craft, it ought to be possible to count the ones not killed by your team the next time such a mission is performed (assuming you're sufficiently interested).
Thank you.
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6 minutes ago, Dagar said:
As for what to do, maybe it is time to leave X-Division in the state it is in.
No "development" is going on anymore. What i do is to improve on my own experience in X-Division, and share it with other people.
6 minutes ago, Dagar said:Otherwise I'd love to look into what is possible with the source code
I dont have access to the source code, this is why we would need Solver. And Solver has a lot of other things to do. So ... .
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@Dagar i rather think the proper solution would be that only battery damage% actually reduces unit count. I dont like to lore over it either, but since we cant expect a fix what proper solution do you suggest ? Its definitely a bug, one of the numerous Xenonauts has/had.
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Lets get the numbers for the Terror Crashsites.
Sebillian: 40 - 56 - 61 - 69
Caesan: 53 - 69 - 77 - 94
Androns: 34 - 51 - 58 - 69A few things to note. As stated before there seems to be a massive increase in numbers between the first and second Phase. This is propably what kills off most campaigns after Phase 1. Looks like we can make improvements on that front.
Furthermore these are the 2 terrorcarrier i played:
Sebillian: https://youtu.be/1eoy0ROdHl8 20 enemies killed ? I dont know how this works together with the number 40, and i dont suspect that RNG went on a rampage ?
Caesan: https://youtu.be/HUXk9eMwCXA 87 enemies killed. That is in line because Xenomorphs are counted triple towards the final score.The feeling in both missions was more than adequate, in terms of difficulty as well as lenght.
I ... have a suspicion. ... ... ... It could be that the reason why there were only 20 sebillians on the sebillian mission is because it was on a base attack. The damage dealt to a terror UFO while embarking on a base translates into a decreased unit count. Up to 50% less troops. So from 40 > 20. So this was the reason why there were only 20 units on that mission (and why it didnt get decreased further by the "casuality on impact" ). The 87 enemies on the Ceasan one were on a confirmed terror mission. This meant the "full" count minus impact casualities.
This makes setting the proper number for terror crashsites hard, as they can equally consist of either 90% of set troops, or only 50%. It is also not communicated with the player which UFO has "less" troops, as i just found out about that bug right now.
The proper solution would be for Solver to fix this, but i dont think he will get to it in the next 6 months, so we will have to make the best experience with the bug in mind.
Since i think that 20 units encountered on a terror carrier should be the minimum possible, we will take Phase 1 numbers as the master numbers and climb up from there.
Sebillian: 40 - 48 - 58 - 68
Caesan: 53 - 64 - 75 - 86
Androns: 35 - 42 - 49 - 56@PALU Since we cannot a expect a fix from Solver anytime soon, could you communicate in the Xpedia that Damage on Terror UFOs which are on a base mission drastically reduces the numbers encountered on the Crash Site ? Something like "Due to units being already stationed in embarking cargos close to the hull damage that we do to Terror UFOs on Base Attack mission will drastically reduce enemy unit count in Ground Combat, if you choose to engage such a downed party." It should be added generally visibly AFTER you have raided a Terror UFO, so in the Datacore description would be a good place, but i dislike repeated lines. I will leave the solution up to you.
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15 minutes ago, Mr. Mister said:
But justification aside, how would you feel about that tactically, Charon?
I feel about that that the proper solution is proper maps, not an abstruse AI.
If you want to know how all X-Division maps should look like you can take a look at mulligans mission here, and the X-Division Gold standart for maps below it. You should always go for the proper solution, if you can. Apart from that the AI doesnt have a simple slider of "go to the ship". So developing a different AI would propably take longer than anybody making all the maps necessary. If we dont have somebody to make the maps, we dont have them. All we can do is to be transparent about it.
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4 minutes ago, Ruthless Reuban said:
TBH, I don't like idea Androns are "weaker". I consider current Androns are pretty well balanced. So I suggest that either there is bigger clips for certain weapons or there are less Androns.
Technically Antimatter weapons are your go to andron killers. Not only do the weapons have generally better stats, the ammo also completely ignores any kind of armour. Which also makes them great against any other alien, except shields and reapers - YES, you are supposed to get access to antimatter weapons at one point in the campaign. Whether or not you make it there is up to your skill.
1) Instead of bigger ammo clips for weapons, you have antimatter weapons and
2) decreasing the andron count is exactly what i have in mind. I plan to especially reduce multi stage enemies, so instead of 8 Terror Androns you might only see 2, but the difference of 6 androns is getting put into regular, single stage ones.
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[1.65/X.CE V0.35.0] X-Division 1.00 Beta (1.00.11c)
in Completed Game Mods
Posted
Alright, if nobody has something to add to the current version than i will release it in the next 24 hours.