Conductiv

very few devs have regular updates and actually talk realistically about what they are working on, so I really do appreciate every update given. I am wondering if the test version the beta testers are playing now is actually feature complete...I havn't heard a word about the MARS weapons platform from the testers in any feedback thread.

fair enough, but I look at it this way how big is the difference between 2 well drilled soldiers, 1 of them just had 5 more deployments...the recruit pool isn't drawing first time shooters from a nearby range, but is hiring trained often veteran soldiers. from a realistic perspective the difference between a complete newb and an expert is huge, but the difference between experts, even years of experience apart is relatively small. and from a gameplay perspective: with the stat spread going from 40-70 as a starting stat, and eventually going all the way up past 100 pionts. the difference in what a soldier can do with 70 acc is significantly less then what a veteran soldier with 150 acc can do (using the TU stat increases listed in other threads, and supplanting them in the accuracy stat) the veteran being able to sacrifice the accuracy bonus from semi automatic fire and fully focus on burst fire with almost no drop in accuracy. doubling his hit rate in semi, or almost tripling its effectiveness in burst (assuming 3 round burst) now I would call a effectiveness increase nearing 200% far from neglectable. even if you would get an optimal recruit in the desired stat (acc, 70) versus a capped veteran (assuming cap 100 rather then the 150 stats that are apparently achievable) you would still have a 40+% increase in overall firepower, again I would not call this advantage insignificant extra shots also work multiplicatively with this effectiveness increase, being able to squeeze double the shots at significantly higher accuracy will make the soldier twice as effective as it was just factoring in accuracy boosts. with flat costs and the ability for troopers to get a increase in the amount of shots they can fire on top of boosting their overall accuracy...what would happen if a midgame mission would go sideways and you lose 6 out of 8 of your best troops, and you now have to train greenhorns...if these rookies are only 15-50% as effective as your original squad, your next mission will basically have you go in at 63% of your previous power in the best case scenario (8/(6X0.5+2)), I'm going to assume that it would be relatively hard for a player to recover from something like that. (apart from the god power that the "load game" button provides) in effect this can go 2 ways, (ignoring adaptive difficulty) either the game is balanced around you having god-like troops past a certain point and when you do take a loss you are well behind the curve. or the game is set up in a way where losses are expected and your super-soldiers simply cake walk their way through. so in conclusion: it would both generate too big a performance gap from a realistic perspective, and it would cause a situation where losing troops should be rare from a gameplay perspective.

I actually prefer the % based system, mainly because it reduces the gap between novice and veteran soldiers in a significant way. at least giving me the illusion that the soldiers had basic training before they where assigned to this command. more firepower is always desired so asking about a leveling system that would allow you to squeeze more shots off in a turn of a veteran trooper isn't exactly unexpected. but do keep in mind that firepower is already increasing as the soldier gets more experience and because of that it will be harder and harder to replace the trooper if he gets wounded or killed. and being forced to keep a powerful squad alive all game OR having a team of supersoldiers by midgame means that it will move to the age old "A-team-saved-the-world" trope. in general firepower consists out of rate of fire, range, accuracy and power...with both boosting the accuracy through the "aim or accuracy" stat that the soldiers level in as they complete missions and getting more shots through the "% discount or extra TU" stat, you will drastically increase the gap between troops at different skill levels, relative to only having one of these factors being significantly affected by leveling.

I can solve that in war size is usually a bad thing, it makes things expensive (to build, operate and maintain), hard to hide and easy to hit. especially land based vehicles as bridges, railways etc can only handle so much weight before they are either damaged or outright broken. and the terrain doesn't allow for a monotonous way of movement (like ships, submarines and aircraft benefit of...but aircraft have to deal with the tyranny of gravity) tanks, self propelled guns and other armored vehicles are usually made as small as possible while still big enough to carry their ordinance or the personnel they are supposed to protect. big or many guns are still beneficial but its a balance, same with the level of armor protection versus the mobility, or amount of weapons relative to the size and weight of the vehicle. now bipedal robots with immensy good balance (so it doesn't get knocked over when it does catch a hit) might have some benefits when it comes to handling some terrain biomes, but generally...vehicles can pack the same level of heat in a more compact package.

the first threaded shield vehicle would be terrible for war...it makes for a bigger target you can't hide and it would be defeated by any terrain with obstacles that don't have a lot of space between it (doors, a couple of trees) it doesn't have the power or mass to overpower these obstacles...nor does it have protection against anything but small arms fire (and light ones at that) the shieldarm soldier would have significant vision problems, and issues taking cover...on top of that that extra arm is begging to hook onto something and getting the trooper stuck. OK for urban settings when facing billy with his dads shotgun...as the options do provide good protection if the trooper only has to worry about being assailed from 1 direction by low power firearms across flat terrain. granted...it seems the lizards from space like their variant of shotguns...

I oppose removing semi-automatic fire from rifles, the assault rifle concept was conceived as a medium between high power long range rifles who would either be too slow in close quarters, too big or to cumbersome to use in any automatic capacity, and submachineguns/machinepistols who could dominate close range but who's rounds often didn't have the power or accuracy to take on long range enemies. the design focused on 3 main things, enough ballistic accuracy to place single shots at long range, controllable automatic capacity at short range and an ammunition type that could be carried in capacity and would be useful at both range types. this moved AR's to having at least a single shot and an automatic mode. the single shot is intended to mimic marksmen rifles, hence it should be accurate...significantly more accurate then a burst. it is supposed to be the shot you use when the target is far off, you have a good firing position and you have time to aim. burst is actually a medium to prevent you from ending up with an empty mag in close range, even relatively slow firing AR's tend to have rates of fire around 600RPM (most fire significantly faster), meaning it will take 5 or less seconds to empty a magazine (on average 30 rounds) if spraying, and having to reload with enemies within spitting range is less then optimal. problem in this game with rifles so far seems to be that people love spraying guns and the "balance suggestions" I keep hearing seem to keep ramping up the burst accuracy...just making the rifles semi-automatic modes pointless. Pistols are mainly conceived out of convenience, a light self defense weapon with relatively short range. they never took a spot as the main weapon of war, but always a utility backup position like the dagger. pistols are light weight and can be manipulated in 1 hand. unlike machinepistols, they also tend to have a decent staying power in a fight as they tend not to be sprayed (read you don't have to reload instantly). they make good weapons for enforcement positions because it is often in close range and the idea is that you don't get into a shootout to begin with. as soon as they do expect actual resistance with firearms, enforcement usually opts for machinepistols, shotguns or AR subtypes. in the game...other then having a hand free and low impact on ones carry capacity, they should not give major advantages. (note that MP's are usually best operated in 2 hands, because like full auto AR's they run out of ammo fast and to my knowledge no MP has been desighned in such a way you can reload the thing with only 1 hand (hollywood magic aside)) this game has controlled ammo consumption in the automatic modes provided, and turn based greatly mitigates to oh shit effect that a weapon "click" effect gives when you realize your mag is now empty.

are psionics still working as a cross map "weather" like phenomenon? where your troops are struck at random with morale saves at a interval of per X turns until they finally kill the cause hiding somewhere deep into the base or spaceship? wouldn't this invariably lead to rather binairy counterplay? either you have good bravery and you can ignore it, or you have bad bravery and you have to basically hog every support item AND crawl your way through the map saving TU for its bonus. that is if the RNG element isn't so large that any sort of preparation would be meaningless to begin with.

if we are talking about a single battery with a constant recharge, the way I would start thinking about the weapon system would be uptime/charge time uptime is turns needed to drain the mag with the selected fire mode being used every turn. charge time is the amount of turns being used to recharge the mag. a big factor here is if the magazine recharges on the turn the weapon is firing, if this is the case any mode that has a uptime longer or equal then the chargetime can be used indefinitely, it also complicates the uptime formula's as you need to incorporate the amount of recharged shots (and turns firing those). note that you can have a large uptime can be combined with a a huge charge time (basically a large mag with a very slow recharge, after spamming burst for many turns the battery is now nearly dry and neither firemodes will be very useful as the amount of charges replenished per turn would be like 1/4th a shot. "pacing" is more important, as the weapon doesn't maraton well, but is great for short engagements) waiting for recharges is a tedium here, but you have a meaningful choice as to use the burst or single shot option. (even though turn for turn wise, burst would still be optimal at 80% and 130% accuracy factors) as scraping the bottom of the energy capacity actually means something you can also go for a fast charge time and low uptime, this generally favors the low drain shots as just using 1-2 of the high drain options mean that you can't use them anymore for the rest of the engagement, but the weapon promotes short "rests" between fights where the weapon recharges. (this seems to be the current desighn as I read solver and caine's comments) this makes the weapon well suited for long missions with many small fights. in this system however, draining the battery isn't that meaningful...as you can stall for a few turns to recharge and go back in the fight at full capacity. that is just how I see it.

from an eye of balance, wouldn't that make single shots completely pointless on any AR style weapon provided you have any spare ammo? 0.8*acc*40*3/20 would yield a significantly higher amount of damage per TU regardless of range compared to 1.2*acc*40/24. even when factoring in reloads (0.8*acc*40*3/(20+9) vs (1.2*acc*40/(20+3)..assuming a 12 shot magazine, 3 shot burst and a 36 TU point cost reload, (36/12 for aimed, and 36/4 for burst) just from this rough math, I would say it isn't really that surprising one would favor burst with these stats, it seems to be about 30% better with reloads factored in and even more so on close range once the accuracy from the single shot gets cap-blocked. I would see no reason to ever use the single shot. as a sidenote, this can be offset if carrying large volumes of ammo would actually be a problem..however, X1 didn't actually have that problem weapons apart from maybe the rocket launcher (as it was 3 KG of mass for 1 shot) and missions weren't really marathon sessions that required deep ammo reserves (with most units being able to complete a fight having no more then 2 spare mags for the primary) if lasers are going the single self charge battery route in X2, this depends on the charge rate of said battery

I prefer the former on the AR, the weapon is intended as a mix between a rifle and a SMG, so its auto function is mainly intended to work well in close quarters. if it would work as well at long range compared to its singly shot counterpart it would render the single shot mode pointless. personally I'd also greatly prefer the %TU cost approach, this allows rookies and veteran soldiers to have a roughly equal punch from their weapons if they stay stationary..with the major difference being the accuracy of the shots. while the veteran will still be able to maneuver faster in the field (flat TU cost on movement) creating a visible improvement on soldier flexibility. flat TU costs have the benefit of being easy to understand..however I think many players would simply rush to TU breakpoints where they would be able to squeeze off extra shots making newbie soldiers an even greater hurdle then they already are.

yeah it would be pretty bad if you actually had to hit the target to suppress it, as suppression should be used to stop a fortified enemy position from firing at soldiers trying to flank it. but I do have to note that even in X1 the MG wasn't all that effective at applying the status on enemies if there wasn't already a relatively high chance of outright killing the enemy, early game teams had to rely on the flashbang for reliable suppression. MGs became reliable to suppress in the mid-game just before they became the murder weapon of choice

I'm just going to assume this is going to get balanced out better, and I really hope it will go to %TU for such actions. about point blank misses does this game lack the close range shot bonus that X1 had? I am a bit biased towards AR's as they are jack of all trades master of none weapons, they should be beaten by snipers at long range and shotguns at close range, and have less supressive capability then a MG but function with good reliability on all distances without needing to carry the weight of a second (primairy) weapon like a SMG or (marksmen)rifle. they did so rather well in X1 up to the moment your squad turned into rambo-incarnations. I'm surprised grenades are so cheap...throwing a grenade in combat is a rather time consuming action compared to placing a shot, and my biggest gripe with X1 frags was their terrible blast radius. the other grenades (gas, smoke and flash) where fine in my book...both in cost to use and general effect. now with launchers I can understand they are cheaper to employ compared to throwing a grenade in X1...but still firing a grenade being cheaper then actually aiming a standard rifle is a tad odd to me from a damage potential perspective melee wise, well running around with a stun baton and a ballistic shield had its charms, but it was a high risk strategy as most enemies reserved enough TU to react, and one was unlikely to survive if the enemy was given a turn. I take it the same problems occur if you run around with a knife trying to add supplementary breathing holes to space lizards

If what Max_Caine is saying is true (I don't play the closed beta) this game definitely needs to maintain the % TU based costs for shots/throws. (I'm also slightly worried about his claim in another thread regarding AR's being relatively useless, personally I felt X1 AR's where quite good, just overshadowed by the SAW when TU's, strength and accuracy went through the roof.) %TU costs have the benefit of not making the soldiers more powerful by boosting TU, just more mobile (effectively turning TU into a speed like stat).

I currently see no real way to get past the snowball problem that comes with strategy/tactical games... Not that you can't make the game harder as to force a series of wins..resulting in any setback causing a deathspiral that inadvertently causes a game over. but generating a system that would still allow for recovery after a setback..without giving people that have no setbacks a free pass to the finish line. while also allowing this system to function in multiple difficulties without having to HP/dmg/attack bloat the adversaries. the main benefit of winning the fight is better strategical benefits (resources, money, relics, tech and soldier XP) that translate themselves into tactical benefits (better soldier stats from XP, better weapons from tech and rare resources, more support structures in the base from the money) losing on the other hand...well it has to mean something, so you don't get those befinits...you often even have to lose some strategical benifits to get back to where you where before you started the botched mission. the setbacks often make it harder to recover while you often don't have any way to effectively catch back up. one way to reduce the impact of the benefits would be to ramp up alien aggressiveness to the player faster if the player deals more (overt) damage to alien activity in a relatively short span of time, but less if the player proves less effective against alien activity, or inflicts damage slower/less obvious. it does not remove the snowball problem, but will generate a optimum activity...where going on to many (smash n' grab) missions quickly would actually ramp the enemy power well above what you would gain in benefits, where a commander that would simply do everything he can do and get the maximum out of every mission, will just recklessly paint himself into a corner. a solution for the "A-team saves the world" problem was already proposed in a fatigue/stress system (effectively though, this would just create more A-teams...but it will slow down the power ramp in every individual soldier)

X1 made good use of shields as reaction fire catchers while fighting in confined quarters, or as mobile cover providers during the exploration phase of the battle...as to not have the point man instantly plastered when a alien went around the corner...the no-shields counter to this problem would have been completing every mission at a snails pace as to have enough TU's left to react against enemies doing the "bolt around the corner and unload" tactic pistols did identical damage per shot to an assault rifle and had a range and reaction fire multiplier identical to a shotgun, this wasn't bad as most enemies died in 2-3 shots and the pistols shots where cheap enough TU-wise to fire 3 in a round. so pistols remained viable throughout the game...well.. the biggest problem X1 had loadout wise was that early game the high accuracy precision rifle allowed for reliable hitting, the pistol could compete with this in confined areas. but the late game was dominated with dudes at 80+ str 100 stam and 80+ acc so they just moved around using a LMG like it was a submachinegun. when you have a team of rambo that can use 10-shot-bursts of high damage rounds like it is nothing...a semi-automatic pistol looks rather weak (just like ANY other weapon for that matter, even the close range shotgun couldn't match the LMG in damage potential), the much heavier armor also allowed for a much larger margin of error..in the early game you would instantly die..in the lategame you can take the hit so shields started to become less important..but still useful