Sar1n
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Posts posted by Sar1n
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Pulse lasers are about dumping so much heat into target so quickly that it causes a small exlosion, repeat. The problem is, compared to ballistic weapons you get relatively shallow, but wide, damage profile. It will wreck armor more effectively, because stopping the heat buildup is more problematic than stopping the kinetic projectile, but once behind armor, the terminal effect of bullet is much better. Of course, the laser will produce pulses at much faster rate...but you need to keep those pulses on same spot.
Frankly, I feel that gameplay potential of explosives is wasted in game. I'm not talking about pure damage...they have a lot of utility too. Area denial, illumination, indirect fire, anti-armor warheads...the fact that Xenonauts operate exclusively with direct fire weapons makes the tactical combat a bit shallow I think. Of course...it will need a lot of work on aliens' side too, they need to get their own toys and countermeasures.
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By the way...Xenonauts didn't really treat explosives right. There's much fun to be had with explosives, various types of warheads and launchers. I'm not sure if people read my previous summaries and ideas, so if you're interested, I'll write up something.
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Okay. Time for my little spin-off about weapons. I'm not really an expert, but picked a lot of various bits over the years. And I like realism whenever it can be wedged into gameplay
(and a bit allergic to bad technobabble...which unfortunately happened in Xenonauts 1).Gunpowder, laser, plasma and MAG (electromagnetically propelled ballistic weapons) have different properties (let's forget for a while that we can't manufacture those in real life). This means that every type of weapon can find its niche within game. In fact...I'd totally drop the "tier" thing...every weapon should be, in some way, special and unique. For example...lasers would only have three weapons-a pistol, rifle and heavy laser, distinguished only by portability and output. Plasmas would be mostly assault weapons with "hard" range-projectiles would disappear after certain range (aliens would have more versatility in their weaponry, due to more advanced tech), and MAGs wouldn't have shotguns, pistols and SMGs-shotgun principle isn't suitable for MAG, and for low power sidearms, MAGs won't offer significant upgrade over gunpowder weapons.
Gunpowder weapons. In some aspects, the gunpowder weapons can beat even plasma weaponry. Unlike plasma bolt that will stop on first obstacle (although delivering terrific damage to it), a solid bullet can penetrate through cover and hit the soldier meter or two behind (mostly true for rifle calibers, although modern armor-piercing ammunition for pistols and SMGs has surprising penetration too). The rounds can also carry a payload-explosive ammunition for rifle calibers was in use on WWII, and modern technology (or alien based) could fit effective payload into intermediate caliber (5.56 NATO, 7.62x39...). Main reasons this isn't used in real life are international treaties concerning this.
So, ingame characteristics: medium accuracy, good cover penetration, but relatively low damage. Capable of automatic fire. It's already well developed tech, so upgrades would be quick and available early-I can imagine that one of first research projects will be booting the international treaties and adapting explosive and incendiary rounds for use in infantry weapons. Later upgrades can be using alien materials in ammunition to increase penetration and effective payload, scopes and sights using alien electronics to improve aim and handful of odd things that would make them unique even in mid-late game, like effective "Dragon's Breath" shotgun shells.
Laser weaponry: Funny thing, Chris got some of their fundamental, real life properties wrong. Lasers wouldn't be hard to aim at all-in fact, their "point'n click" nature, due to no recoil, no wind effect, ballistic drop or travel time they would make them fastest and most accurate weapons in game. But the terminal effect...there's the catch. Lasers won't deal much better damage than ballistics. The laser will mostly burn through things, and increasing output will only make it burn through things faster. There might be, depending on frequency and nature of target, additional effects, but nothing on the scale of ballistic trauma.
Ingame characteristics: lack of automatic fire, high accuracy, good armor penetration (lasers can only be slowed down by materials with high thermal capacity and conductivity, acting as heat sinks), low damage, fast operation. Possible unique spin-off to EMP weapons. As for ammo...perhaps each "round" could be battery+heat sink packed together as single unit, enough for one shot and then ejected and new one loaded.
Plasmas. A ball of super-heated gas is bound to ruin someone's day. But the ball is also slower than a bullet. While the recoil will be much less than the one generated by a ballistic weapon, the properties of projectile makes them unsuitable for long range fire.
Ingame: automatic fire possible, high terrain damage, cannot penetrate cover, quite fast operation but low accuracy. Low armor penetration.
MAGs. They share many properties with gunpowder weapons, but have their quirks. They won't carry significantly higher kinetic energy than conventional weapons-the limit here isn't construction, but how much recoil can human handle. But they're better at carrying payload-Max noted that, although it's more complicated. Even gunpowder weapon can carry payload. But due to pressure and heat during firing, casing must be thick enough so shell won't burst when firing. MAGs aren't as limited-although the round heats up due to induction and rapid acceleration into super- or hypersonic speeds stresses the round, it's still less than what conventional rifle round goes through. Also, the pressure deforms the round, and velocity is limited by celocity of gasses produced by gunpowder explosion. MAGs don't have this problem, so their speciality could be also high velocity, long range sniper weapons-MAG round will have better ballistic coeficient, and will be able to reach higher speeds than ordinary bullet.
Ingame, MAGs would be mostly heavy sniper and automatic weapons. Although assault variants would also be present, they wouldn't have any big advantage over plasma assault weapons except for cover penetration.
Well...goodnight again (early shift tomorrow, dammit...shouldn't have picked the job over summer break). Might have some ideas tomorrow.
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I think that the game should have more weapons, reflecting their real life usage. Like:
SMG (probably based on HK MP5): longer range than pistol or shotgun, slightly more damage than pistol, automatic fire. Good as primary armament of medics and scouts. Not as effective at longer ranges as assault rifle, but more portable.
LAW: A one-shot anti-tank weapon, LAW has quite mediocre blast radius but does heavy damage on direct hit. It has similar range as rocker launcher, but it's smaller and one-shot only (not reloadable).
Underbarrel grenade launcher (for assault rifles only, based on M203): In Xenonauts, rifles were bit underwhelming at late game. This could improve their vesatility a lot. The grenades used are, of course, smaller and less effective than hand grenades, but have longer range and faster operation.
About machine guns: the problem in game is that, compared to real life, machine guns lack sufficient suppressive effect, while having too high killing power, an account of accuracy. In modern infantry combat, machine gun's purpose is to pin down the enemy, allowing the riflemen to move and flank the enemy without being shot at. Translated to Xenonauts, MG should have higher suppressive effect per round, higher volume of fire, but much lower accuracy. I'd probably go with two kinds of fire mode...snapshot-like, wide burst that can be used from standing position and is useful for pinning down groups of weaker enemies, and focused fire, possible to use only crouching, used to pin down the heavily armored enemies.
I have a few ideas about the tech too, I'll write that up later...now I gotta go off.
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I'd actually go with a bit more realistic feeling, and a bit complex, system of experience.
Basically, soldiers gain XP points in battle for actions. Then, at base, the XP points are gradually converted to stat increase in training room. You could direct his training by placing focus on certain stats-basically telling the soldier to focus his training on something. XP could be also gained in other ways, but more slowly...like completing an autopsy or analysis would give all current and future soldiers some XP...
Traits would be given soldiers at random on generation. It would mostly be flavor thing, giving soldiers some personality, gaining something but also losing something. Few examples...
Jungle-taped Mags: This soldier has a habit of jungle taping his mags together. When using assault rifles or SMGs, every odd reload costs 50% less TU, but the weapon has (increased) chance of jamming.
Knife Nut: allows knife throwing. But the soldier is so attached to his knives that he suffers 50% morale penalty if he doesn't have any in his gear.
Itchy Trigger Finger: slightly decreases TU cost for shooting and increases reaction fire chances, but lowers accuracy a bit and increases chance of going berzerk.
SMD (Soldier of Mass Destruction): This guy loves big guns and big booms. Increases suppressive and demolishion effect of heavy weaponry, but accuracy is decreased when using SMGs and pistols.
And so on...perks, if also utilized, should be similar...rather than something big like in X-COM, those should be small, flavor buffs. The goal is mostly to create individuality of each soldier.
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This is also solid advice. I should point out that flying soldiers aren't available for a while, but you can still put soldiers on a roof the old fashioned way.
That makes the soldiers reachable for Reaper, although it can still work to force him to waste whole turn getting to soldier, if it has to go around.
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Speaking about resources...the economy problem I see with Xenonauts at their current state is that you don't really pay upkeep for advanced technology. It should take more than just money to keep laster rifles and advanced interceptors in fight. Those things are made from alien alloys, and it should take more than just money to service them, to repair and change damaged and worn-out parts. By midgame, when Xenonauts have proven capable of defending Earth, the critical component should become alien materials, not money.
As for strategical scale. Easiest thing would be to both increase amount of UFOs and involvement of government forces. You'd have to choose which UFOs and crash sites you'd engage yourself, and what to leave on local forces. You'd get benefits and penalties depending on what you do-Nations that more actively participate in defense would be more hesitant to fund you, and wouldn't share much from ther crash sites, but would supply you with more experienced recruits and would slowly develop their own technological progress.
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Speaking about base defense...how many vehicles can participate, and are they counted as 2 soldiers against limit? The way I see it,vehicles are much better than rookies...
Oh, and can I blow up anything important during base defense?
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I've dealt with Reapers in the night...landed UFO. My advice, advance VERY carefully, spam flares, and always keep your pointmen at half TU at the end of turn for reaction fire. I've seen Reaper run out of the dark only to eat a couple of rifle rounds and shotgun blast to the face.
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Ah, thanks. Gas rockets and grenades pulled me out of few tight spots so far when usual WMD (weapons of map destruction) couldn't be used. I was wondering if that tactic might backfire this way...
Speaking about that, I just captured that damn Sebillian officer. Tough bugger, even though he made it easy for me...he kindly opened the door of his corvette, and got seriously wounded by reaction fire. But then, he survived several rounds of continuous stun grenade+flashbang bombardment. I don't like going close, so I didn't bring shock batons. Eventually, he succumbed after taking more than dozen various grenades.
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I discovered Xenonauts a few days ago, and having a blast (literally, thanks to my rocketeers). I've advanced only a bit in game so far, just started encountering corvettes. There's a few questions on my mind though, becasue I think I need to plan quite ahead and don't wanna screw up something that'll force me to go months of ingame time back.
Let's start with air power. Planning my progress ahead, I decided to go with six bases-HQ (research, dropship, interceptors) two secondary (workshops, interceptors, dropship) and three radar/interceptor only. I might cut it to 5 if I leave Alaska, parts of Canada, US West Coast and east Russia to their own. After couple months in game, I'm not sure if this will be viable due to funding.
Interceptors. How many per base is ideal? I thought about 3 (full wing). But so far, I have two bases, and getting occassionally quite swamped by alien craft. And...is it just me, or are starting Condors just useless after you can replace them with Foxtrots? The only two UFOs I've met so far capable of dodging Avalanches are light scout and fighter, and those can still be dealt with by hitting the burners and planting those torpedoes in their face point blank. And Foxtrot has greatly superior speed and range.
Moving on to base design...I dunno if I should leave some room for buildings that I'll unlock later.
And on normal difficulty (first run, after all), how long-roughly-do I have until I start to lose nations due to unchecked alien activity? So far, there's far too much going on at Americas, and I don't have radar/interceptor coverage there (still on second month).
Tactical...so far, only one thing. Can stunned aliens spontaneously wake up, like in old UFO/X-COM?
And final (so far). Who pays for all the collateral damage during missions?
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If I might poke this a bit...I noticed that Alenium grenades take precedence over flares, gas grenades, flashbangs and smoke grenades in quick grenade slot (no idea about more advanced grenades, didn't make it that far yet). So if you have soldiers equipped with Alenium grenades, you have to switch the slot to flares before you can throw them.
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I prefer sniping the aliens out, rather than wholesale destruction using MGs. Two snipers will do decent job of thinning the aliens inside, along with couple of flashbangs, will make the aliens easy picking.
Although my favorite method of storming the scouts is "dutch oven". Open the door. Lob in gas rocket and few gas grenades. After few turns, clean up what's left.
Xenonauts 2 - Weapons and Armour Development
in Xenonauts 2 Discussion / Suggestions
Posted
It's not like we don't use scout-sniper teams to clear out aliens outside UFOs. The AI and diversification of alien armament is bigger problem for the game balance with explosives. So far, I've seen aliens really cooperate only occassionally, mostly as scout+sniper.
For example...drones could act as point defense, shooting down incoming rockets in certain area around them. Wraiths could react to them and teleport to the rocketeer, since the blast and smoke would reveal his position. And so on...plus, the game really lacks differentiating between fragmentation and blast damage. That would help a lot I think-for example, explosion of 84mm HE rocket (Carl-Gustav recoilless rifle, for example) will put perhaps a 2 meter hole into wall, but fragments from explosion will stay lethal to unarmored human over distances like 5m. So if aliens use cover properly...for example, a rocket explodes 3 tiles away from two aliens, one crouching behind a rock, second in the open. The primary blast narrowly misses both of them, but while the first is protected by cover from fragments, second one gets shredded.
Also, there's a matter of accuracy. In Xenonauts, rocket launchers are just too accurate. Handheld launchers, due to size and weight constrains, launch quite slow (100-300 m/s) and poorly stabilized rockets. At 200m, most of the unguided launchers won't reliably hit a man-sized target, no matter how good the operator is, due to deviation caused by poor stabilization and wind conditions. That's why they're not used as huge sniper rifles in real life.