Ishantil

I can sort of see the point of your argument, even though I don't really agree. I'm not exactly sure what you mean by your analogy. The expansion of gas causes the projectile to travel down the barrel. The amount of energy imparted from the expanding gases is a direct factor of range (how much energy is imparted into the projectile). Air friction is actually the limiting factor beyond a certain speed. Railguns and high speed aircraft have a problem with this. In the case of energy weapons, the amount of energy imparted into the beam is a direct factor. Blooming or the dissipation of energy into the surrounding atmosphere, is a major issue to overcome in laser applications.

There's a lot of things I wish we could do.

Well, one of the things about Xenonauts (or X-COM) is that you are free to play how you want. I use a mixed arms unit. 2xAssault (Shotgun, explosives, stun baton) 1xSniper (Sniper Rifle) 1xRocket (Rocket launcher, 5x Alenium Rocket) 1xHeavy (machinegun) 4xRifleman (rifle, grenades) However, I have never once fired a pistol. Mainly because the aren't worth having. Now, I think they're worth having. Especially for a rocket guy who is out of ammunition in an Alien base.

So my intent is to align them better with the rest of the weapons. Thus an increase of range (4 tiles) and an in crease of shots per magazine (from 6 to 15). The original pistol has 15 shots. So this would be an advantage that energy weapons bring to the table. The way I see it is that they would be more useful (longer range) and that having a pistol and two clips would be a perfectly reasonable sidearm for say, a heavy weapons guy. Thoughts?

I like the idea of elite versions of some of the weapons. I think that the elite versions could simply be very high performance versions of their existing weapons. Various special forces teams and the like have access to considerably better hardware than what the average infantryman has.

I'm glad you liked it and I welcome your feedback. I'm not sure why the TU's keep coming up. I was looking primarily on whether the energy battery numbers made any sense. The answer to that question is "sometimes". The amount of time to bring a weapon up to target and aim properly varies quite a bit depending on what weapon you have, the distance, and the size and movement of the target. A pistol should be pretty easy to move around, but inaccurate at range. The general feeling is that reacquiring a target with a pistol is relatively easy, thus, low in TUs. Nevertheless, this has very little to do with the balance of the weapons themselves, which was the focus. Why do you feel that the TUs for the pistol (which I do not know offhand) throws the balance?

I was thinking of using it to safely burn through UFO doors, that sort of thing. But a shaped explosive charge would probably work better.

Yes, this has been a hot topic for some time.

Indeed, I was attempting to unify the output of the weaponry based on the fact that they all use the same energy supply, rather than alter the game balance. All for the sake of what I consider to be a more realistic approach. The balance tweaks in here mostly even out. And there purpose was to stay inline with the overall output of the weaponry. Mainly, the damage output from shotguns went up 11% and the damage output from multi-shot weapons when down about 10%. I will likely include these changes in a mod that I'll build when I have enough free time. I'm hoping to collaborate with some others, but there seems to be several different intents with the various mods.

Which minigun did you add, out of curiosity?

Well, it makes sense, since I haven't had problems until now (with Sebillians and Reapers coming in a Landing Ship)

Gotcha. Thanks for the explanation.

I loved that thing in X-COM Apocalypse. Good work, sir!

The inventory size (as well as the picture) is governed in the weapons.xml file, and the actual reload effects are covered in weapons_gc.xml, if memory serves.

Hmmm...so the Reaper AI is what's causing it, you think?

> 15 minutes from the time it touches down

I'm getting them consistently on my current Landing Ship/Sebillians mission. After the second one, I quit playing again.

I was analyzing the battery output, not how long it takes to use the object in question. As far as I know, the weaponry TU costs are the same for all of each kind of weapon. I haven't really taken a hard look at those (as they did not factor into what I was interested in). Range absolutely should be factored into this equation. How far you can deliver the energy to the target directly factors in to how much output a laser needs to be able to produce versus the amount of thermal blooming and other atmospheric interference. As for the magazine sizes, they are handled inside weapons.gc, as far as I know, you can specify these values. I haven't taken a hard look at it though. I'm sort of planning on a mod based on this information. But I'm not sure if it should be Yet Another Weapons Balance Mod.

Please see here for details on my analysis.

I took a hard look at the numbers here in the game, and I decided to do some analysis on them. I decided to use the total energy output of a energy weapon battery like this: Battery Power = Range * Damage * Projectiles * ShotsPerMag Legend: Range=distance energy is delivered Damage=intensity of energy delivered Projectiles=number of times energy is delivered Shots/Mag=number of times the battery can be used. Mitigation=amount of armor the shots ignored (for reference only) Battery Power=the total amount of energy delivered by the magazine (use the imaginary unit of your choice) Efficiency=percentage of the weapon's battery power measured against the precision weapon's battery power Here are the original numbers with my formula added: [TABLE] [TR] [TD]Weapon[/TD] [TD]Range[/TD] [TD]Damage[/TD] [TD]Projectiles[/TD] [TD]Shots/Mag[/TD] [TD]Mitigation[/TD] [TD]Battery Power[/TD] [TD]Efficiency[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Laser pistol[/TD] [TD]16[/TD] [TD]30[/TD] [TD]1[/TD] [TD]6[/TD] [TD]0[/TD] [TD]2880[/TD] [TD]20.00%[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Laser carbine[/TD] [TD]24[/TD] [TD]30[/TD] [TD]3[/TD] [TD]6[/TD] [TD]0[/TD] [TD]12960[/TD] [TD]90.00%[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Laser rifle[/TD] [TD]32[/TD] [TD]45[/TD] [TD]1[/TD] [TD]9[/TD] [TD]15[/TD] [TD]12960[/TD] [TD]90.00%[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Precision laser [/TD] [TD]48[/TD] [TD]75[/TD] [TD]1[/TD] [TD]4[/TD] [TD]30[/TD] [TD]14400[/TD] [TD]100.00%[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Scatter laser[/TD] [TD]32[/TD] [TD]53[/TD] [TD]5[/TD] [TD]3[/TD] [TD]15[/TD] [TD]25440[/TD] [TD]176.67%[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD][/TD] [TD][/TD] [TD][/TD] [TD][/TD] [TD][/TD] [TD][/TD] [TD][/TD] [TD][/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Plasma pistol[/TD] [TD]16[/TD] [TD]45[/TD] [TD]1[/TD] [TD]6[/TD] [TD]0[/TD] [TD]4320[/TD] [TD]19.91%[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Plasma carbine[/TD] [TD]24[/TD] [TD]45[/TD] [TD]3[/TD] [TD]6[/TD] [TD]0[/TD] [TD]19440[/TD] [TD]89.60%[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Plasma rifle[/TD] [TD]32[/TD] [TD]70[/TD] [TD]1[/TD] [TD]9[/TD] [TD]23[/TD] [TD]20160[/TD] [TD]92.92%[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Plasma precision[/TD] [TD]48[/TD] [TD]113[/TD] [TD]1[/TD] [TD]4[/TD] [TD]45[/TD] [TD]21696[/TD] [TD]100.00%[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Plasma caster[/TD] [TD]32[/TD] [TD]80[/TD] [TD]5[/TD] [TD]3[/TD] [TD]23[/TD] [TD]38400[/TD] [TD]176.99%[/TD] [/TR] [/TABLE] From the analysis, you can see that the pistol weapons are woefully under powered based on the fact that they use the same energy supply that the rifle does. Additionally, the multi-shot weapons deliver almost twice as much energy as they should. I would adjust the numbers like this: [TABLE] [TR] [TD]Weapon [/TD] [TD]Range[/TD] [TD]Damage[/TD] [TD]Projectiles[/TD] [TD]Shots/Mag[/TD] [TD]Mitigation[/TD] [TD]Battery Power[/TD] [TD]Efficiency[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Laser pistol[/TD] [TD]20[/TD] [TD]30[/TD] [TD]1[/TD] [TD]15[/TD] [TD]0[/TD] [TD]9000[/TD] [TD]62.50%[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Laser carbine[/TD] [TD]24[/TD] [TD]20[/TD] [TD]5[/TD] [TD]6[/TD] [TD]0[/TD] [TD]14400[/TD] [TD]100.00%[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Laser rifle[/TD] [TD]32[/TD] [TD]45[/TD] [TD]1[/TD] [TD]10[/TD] [TD]15[/TD] [TD]14400[/TD] [TD]100.00%[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Precision laser [/TD] [TD]48[/TD] [TD]75[/TD] [TD]1[/TD] [TD]4[/TD] [TD]30[/TD] [TD]14400[/TD] [TD]100.00%[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Scatter laser[/TD] [TD]30[/TD] [TD]48[/TD] [TD]5[/TD] [TD]4[/TD] [TD]15[/TD] [TD]28800[/TD] [TD]200.00%[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD][/TD] [TD][/TD] [TD][/TD] [TD][/TD] [TD][/TD] [TD][/TD] [TD][/TD] [TD][/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Plasma pistol[/TD] [TD]20[/TD] [TD]45[/TD] [TD]1[/TD] [TD]15[/TD] [TD]0[/TD] [TD]13500[/TD] [TD]62.22%[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Plasma carbine[/TD] [TD]24[/TD] [TD]30[/TD] [TD]5[/TD] [TD]6[/TD] [TD]0[/TD] [TD]21600[/TD] [TD]99.56%[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Plasma rifle[/TD] [TD]32[/TD] [TD]68[/TD] [TD]1[/TD] [TD]10[/TD] [TD]23[/TD] [TD]21760[/TD] [TD]100.29%[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Precision plasma [/TD] [TD]48[/TD] [TD]113[/TD] [TD]1[/TD] [TD]4[/TD] [TD]45[/TD] [TD]21696[/TD] [TD]100.00%[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Plasma caster[/TD] [TD]30[/TD] [TD]73[/TD] [TD]5[/TD] [TD]4[/TD] [TD]23[/TD] [TD]43800[/TD] [TD]201.88%[/TD] [/TR] [/TABLE] Pistols: In order to make the pistols even remotely explainable, I had to triple the amount of energy they deliver. This meant increasing the range to 20 tiles and increasing the number of shots per magazine to 15. The pistols are now roughly 38% inefficient. This can be explained by their small size (as noted in the alien plasma pistol entry). Carbines: The carbines have been adjusted to 5 shots per blast, but the damage has been reduced to compensate. As you can see, these numbers work out rather nicely. The carbines total damage output has increased 11%. Rifles: The laser rifle fit perfectly in place after adjusting the number of shots per magazine to 10. In the case of the plasma rifle, I adjusted the shots per magazine to 10 and reduced the damage by two points. Precision: These weapons are the baseline for each era, and thus remain the same as the original. Heavy: The two "machine gun" weapons need double-strength magazines to make any sense. I adjusted the range down slightly to 30 tiles. The damage has been reduced roughly 10% but the number of shots per magazine has increased to 4. Thus, each double-strength magazine delivers 20 shots for four 5 round bursts). Notes: 1. The overall trend is that the human plasma weapons deliver about 50% more energy to the target. 2. This means either that the energy delivery system of the plasma weapons is either more efficient, the batteries are better, or some combination. 3. Assuming half of the efficiency comes from better batteries, when plasma weapons come out you should see laser batteries become roughly 25% more efficient. 4. The double strength magazines would mean a battery that takes up 2x1 in the inventory.

Yes, tritium is regarded as one of the most expensive substances on Earth.

Thermite, baby.

Well, you just don't want to have the whole "sell laser cannons to break the game economy" thing. That's all. Alenium is the most valuable substance in the solar system. Tritium is worth about $30,000/gram.

First of all, I'm not sure exactly how you could explain that. Slapping fresh batteries into the scatter laser should recharge it completely, not partially. I suppose you could make the argument that it has a hyper-capacitor in it to start with and a battery. But...no. It would be better to actually balance the battery size against the number of shots. I'll have to look at the numbers again. I've thought of a way to actually figure out the "power level" and balance it appropriately.

You guys have already met quota on the fire jokes!