Max_Caine

You can't reload laser weapons. They are currently designed so they regenerate a set number of shots per turn. This varies on the weapon type. The cell in the current iteration for most laser weapons is 5, 10 for the LMG, which fires 5 shots. EDIT: This is why I am reluctant to comment on laser weapons - unlike starting ballistic weapons, their design may radically change. EDIT 2: I went back and looked at why I did what I did. 80 for accuracy sounds good on paper, but when you put those weapons in the field 3 zaps at burst is with a solider who has 80 accuracy (i.e. high end) has a 64% chance to hit, verses a 104% (uncapped) chance to hit with an aimed shot. It isn't the shots you miss with that do damage, and that bore out in my field tests. Soliders did more property damage than alien damage when firing off bursts from a laser gun, just as they did in Xcom 1994 when you could set the autofire to 99 shots.

I'm a little reluctant to comment on laser balance, seeing as like all the other tech beyond ballistic they're up in the air at the moment but there are a few things I can say. In the current iteration of lasers my first experience of laser was "they're so light!". In comparison to ballistic you can sudenly carry a lot more gear as you neither need nor can use spare energy cells and it's surprising how many weight units ammo takes up, especially the LMG. My personal thoughts on how to balance them were inspired by a comment of Chris's in the 6.2 balance thread, where autofire in Xco 1994 was considered the default. By making single shots expensive, but bursts cheap and making both reasonably accurate I lean towards using cheap autofire and as a result, a quick draining of the energy cell. With the laser rifle I actually took out snap and normal, leaving only aimed and burst reducing the cost of burst from 30 to 20 and boosting the accuracy from 45 up to 80 so in effect burst becomes the new normal. Also, I dropped the damage. If I understand correctly, the ballistic weapons have a base damage of 30 (from weapon.json). The general damage increase of 45-55 from lasers is a step up but if you want to make Sebellians resiliant to energy weapons then their resilience has either got to go up or the damage of lasers has to go down as the extra damage from laser (another 15-25) is enough to counter the resilience of Sebellians. I reduced the damage in general down by 5 to heighten the difference betwen Psyons and Sebellians more clearly. In Short: (laser rifle): Remove (Snap) and (Normal), (Burst): Accuracy: 80, TU: 20. Damage: 40 (rifle/LMG) Damage: 32 (shotgun) Damage: 50 (Sniper rifle).

This is going OT, but it's more TU efficient to drop everything in the same space and not move the soldier. If anything offensive is left, the soldier will use it (e.g. grenades even smoke). The solider wil otherwise simply run in a random direction. You can then run back to where you dumped the stuff. Back OT. Ballistic Pistols and Combat Shields I hadn't really taken much notice of ballistic pistols until I got combat shields, as I didn't really use them. When I started to use combat shelds, I found them severely lacking. A pistol may be cheap to shoot for 10 or 15TUs, but they miss most of the time so you're not really going to do much, if any damage with them. Seeng as how pistols are the only ranged weapon a combat shield armed solider can use, the combat shield trooper needs a bit more bang for his buck to compete with other weapons. So, I experimented a bit with making ballistic pistols more like mag pistols. Making snap 3 shots help a lot with missing - one can imagine the pistolier is simply snapping shots off as quickly as he can What II did with normal was to keep it one shot, but to boost the accuracy from 80 to 120. 15 TUs doesn't seem a lot, but it adds up quite quickly even for high TU soldiers. Combat shields need a bit of a bost as well. For $100,000 and 5 alloys, they don't last very long against mag or plasma fire. My main use of combat shields is for those troopers to draw overwatch fire and storm positions that would be fatal for even shottie armed troopers to get in close with. I boosted the HP of shields from the master value of 80 to 150. They still don't last that long, but they last a lot longer than they do now! In short: Pistol: (Snap) Shots Fired: 3, (Normal) Accuracy: 120. Combat shield: Hp val:150, max: 150.

I'd disgree there. A soldier hit with Mind War is still usable in the turn before it takes effect. You can take a few shots, and then dump all the gear the solider is carrying before it is mind controlled.

First alien turn after leaving the dropship seems to run forever - ran the alien turn for an hour before giving up, firing up task master and ending X2. Sebellians, on a crashed Destroyer UFO map. Possibily related to Emily_F's problem? possfail.json

"Good artists copy. Great artists steal" - attrib. Pablo Picasso

Half the time if there's an alien spawned close to the LZ, that alien isn't even looking at the dropship. If the alien isn't looking at the dropship, they won't turn until someone shoots and hits them, giving me plenty of time to get everyone out the bus and into cover. If I face Psyons AND they are looking at the dropship then first things first, smoke out, then advance under the cover of smoke because you can't target through it. If facing Sebillians they have terrible reflexes so I can get out before they realise their gun has a trigger. If I've got combat shields then I use that guy to draw fire if necessary. When facing a raid a good strategy for me is to get out all one side. On the docklands map I usually get everyone out the side with all the crates because there's plenty of cover. Getting everyone heading in one direction means I can maximise the odds against the aliens spawned in one side while aliens the other side have to catch up, and by the time the aliens on the other side have caught up, I've gunned down all the aliens one side.

ARGGGG THREAD NECROMANCY!

If gunners can only shoot what they see then that's fine, I can kite enemies back to the dropship. It's not hard because enemies are predisposed to behave aggressively - they will seek my troops out. This is especially true in raids and terror sites. If the issue is the LZ is hot, then the solution isn't to make special cases which are open to abuse beyond their intended value, but to re-jig the map so the LZ isn't hot.

It isn't the behavior of something in the real world which is degenerate. It is the supremacy of using effective, invincible rapid-fire weapons to cut down opponents that have no chance of defending themselves that is degenerate. The moment you have to start introducing special cases to prevent games devolving into giant kiting sessions something has gone wrong.

Converted Weapons: I'm not sure what direction you want to take the converted mag/converted plasma weapons. Heck, I'm not sure what direction you want to take the rest of the tech tree armoury. I'm guessing that you want to say "Now you can use the enemies weapons against them, but DRAWBACKS" because otherwise why would I want to research/make any of the human gear? At the moment, the converted weapons are slightly more expensive to use than the basic ballistic, have the same accuracy (or feel as if they have the same accuracy) and do more damage. How's this for balance: no burst and no aimed on converted weapons, but damage normalised at 55, so converted alien weapons are noticeably clumsier (and in the case of mag weapons, it really hammers home what Sebs can do with them but you can't) but they are more powerful. In short: No (Aimed), No (Burst), Damage: 55.

Do you mean 6.3? It's already out.

The interceptors in this Launch instance have slightly different launch times, even though they launch from the same base at the same target, meaning I cannot squadron them up. Odd UFO Times.json

The converted mag pistol project does not return a converted mag pistol. Here's a save just before such a project finishes. ConvertedMagPistol.json

Ah, stairs. I imagine they are quite difficult to code. Anyway, I can walk into the stairs on a building in the Arid Biome. stairsnotworking.json