Max_Caine

A big wedge of money would probably be very persausive.

Do shotguns really need tweaking? Cheap shots, high damage, nice mitigation - good against noncoms, guards and even soliders. The only problem is that they are very close range, which is all fine and dandy when you have the drop on an alien, but at the range a shotgun needs to be to hit successfully, if they can get a reaction shot off your squaddie is a dead man.

Because british meatballs are barely disguised balls of gristle? EDIT: How was Rezzed?

I agree with Kgersen's idea that the dropship could do more than act as a piece of scenery, but share thothkins' concern that options for the dropship could tip game balance in the wrong way. Like thothkins says, I disgree with mounted weapons of any sort on the dropship. When the AI becomes more developed, a smart player could learn how to kite aliens back to the dropship, then blast them from safety in its invulnerable walls. This smart player then makes a youtube video showing off l33t skillz, or writes something in gamefaqs which then everybody then duplicates. Perhaps one idea that has both strengths and drawbacks is for the dropship to act as a local point of command and control, relaying orders and co-ordinating the team, provided someone stays on the ship. Your best/highest ranked Xenonaut on the dropship could opt to remain within the dropship, permanently throughout the mission to act as mission co-ordinator. If you choose to do this, all the other xenonauts get an AP and Bravery bonus, based upon how awesome your local commander is. The player then has a choice - keep his best guy on the ground, or let all the other guys get a little bonus (subject to balance). Think of the apc scene in Aliens where the lt. can co-ordinate the squaddies from his control couch.

Well, it's something to think about, anyway. Did anyone notice the frag rocket has a radius of 1? Not really a frag rocket, is it? I changed it up to 3.1, same as the incendiary and I gotta say, it's not too shabby. If none of my rocket guys misses with it, the spash damage is usually wide enough to catch the alien he was shooting at. I think it's a pity supression is based on the launcher, because this is a case where the ammo (rockets) should dictate how suppressive the weapon is. (As you said back in one of the suppression threads. I forget which one).

Gauddlike, actually I'm quite thankful that the suppression mechanic isn't based on path of shot. The rocket is generally so deadly it kills the target outright, making suppression a waste of time. In open areas, if the target is the first thing it hits, it kills the target then cannonballs through a hefty portion of the rest of the map before coming to a stop.

Gus found a way around this. Sell the dropship

It is a tricky proposition, and I believe you're right. Because the laser rifles' shots don't suck half as much as the assault rifles' do, squaddies can benefit from single shots, whereas in my opinion they couldn't with the assault. The case would probably be then to reverse the roles established between shotgun and assault rifle. Have the laser carbine reflect the SMG-ish role it's cast in by emphasising the burst shot, and emphasise the importance of single shots with the laser rifle. I'm going to fiddle with the type of troops that crashed ships spawn, to try and reflect the stage in the game where laser rifles would be the weapon de jour.

I ran teams armed half with precision rifles and half with assault rifles to compare them. The precison rifle has the edge over the assault rifle when it comes to accuracy at range. It seems that the optimal burst fire range (i.e. 2-3 hits from a burst shot) with 90 accuracy works out at around 10-12 tiles, whereas I was getting hits and near misses with the precision rifle at 18 tiles away (and that was with the 25 AP "oh shit I can see him do I have enough AP" normal shot). Laser weapons are going to be a different kettle of fish. Unlike ballistics, they can do some serious damage to current-generation aliens (the laser rifle with 40HP damage and 25 mitigation per shot is a beast verses guards!) and the carbine as Quartermaster points out, can burst fire too! The sheer damage output of lasers will probably be balanced by newer and tougher aliens which will come in at that point, but we really need those newer and tougher aliens in the game to have a proper yardstick to measure the laser by.

Szabtom, it's unlikely the shield will deflect shots. Way more likely it will absorb damage, possibly by upping the armour of the trooper.

Yeah, if the zip isn't doing it for you, then you'll have to hold your nose and use the Desura client. It's the only other way.

So, QM, I took your idea and ran with it... off a cliff and onto a speedboat! Instead of buffing mitigation, I buffed accuracy insanely high, and dropped the AP costs a little. For AP costs, Snap 17, Normal 19 and Aimed 21 which is 2 less each, with Burst at 30 instead of 35. However I jacked Burst's accuracy up to a whopping 90. A burst shot from an assault rifle at medium range stood a very good chance of hitting with 2-3 shots and 2-3 shots is all she wrote for sebillian and caesian noncoms. Guards are more trouble, but burst shots from 2 troopers with snap shots as filler also worked quite well. Against Androns, assault rifles suck. Because even the basic Andron has an armour value of 30, and with a mitigation of 10, the assault rifle will only let 5HP of damage through! Quite possibly the true value of the assault rifle is as a LMG Junior. Make it lighter, handier, more accurate with the ability to fire more shots but with sucky damage.

It's the 200HP of damage it does that make it a bowling ball of death. I've tried cranking it down to 150, 140, 130, and it's still very nasty, just not as nasty.

gbusrt, a more lengthy method is to start a new game (put down a base ofc), quit out of the new game asap, then load your game from the main menu. Works for me like a charm.

This should go in the bug reporting forum buddy, here's a thread with a workaround.

One of the most common complaints is too many fightercraft. I originally thought this was due to AirSuperiority, but that isn't quite true - it's more due to Research and Scout missions being the most likely to happen, and those missions featuring fightercraft quite prominently. I've noticed that in these two missions heavy fighters and interceptors will either spawn after a certain point (Scout) or always spawn (Research). Personally I think both these mission types are better suited to scouts, but with a possible escort after the ticker rises (to reflect that the admirals of the alien fleet are going to start protecting their scouts more effectively). Otherwise a wave is likely to just have 3-4 heavy fighters with a splash of corvette or landing craft to add flavour. I therefore propose these changes. To AM_Scout: A change to Escort Chance is needed... <Row ss:AutoFitHeight="0"> <Cell><Data ss:Type="String">Escort chance</Data></Cell> <Cell ss:StyleID="s64"><Data ss:Type="Number">1000</Data></Cell> </Row> There's currently no escort for a scout mission. Setting it to 1000 reflects that at that point in time, the admirals of the alien fleet will notice all their crashed scouts and start assigning escort craft to them to protect them. <Row ss:AutoFitHeight="0"> <Cell ss:StyleID="s65"><Data ss:Type="String">m:airplane.alien.lightscout</Data></Cell> <Cell ss:StyleID="s64"><Data ss:Type="Number">0</Data></Cell> </Row> Scout missions start off with light scouts.... <Row ss:AutoFitHeight="0"> <Cell ss:StyleID="s65"><Data ss:Type="String">m:airplane.alien.scout</Data></Cell> <Cell ss:StyleID="s64"><Data ss:Type="Number">1000</Data></Cell> </Row> And progress to normal scouts quite quickly. Then we add the escorts <Row ss:AutoFitHeight="0"> <Cell ss:StyleID="s24"><Data ss:Type="String">e:airplane.alien.fighter</Data></Cell> <Cell ss:StyleID="s23"><Data ss:Type="Number">0</Data></Cell> </Row> <Row ss:AutoFitHeight="0"> <Cell ss:StyleID="s24"><Data ss:Type="String">e:airplane.alien.heavyfighter</Data></Cell> <Cell ss:StyleID="s23"><Data ss:Type="Number">1200</Data></Cell> </Row> This is cut and pasted almost directly from AM_AirSuperiority - I've just changed the ticker point for heavy fighters. It seems a natural enough progression, without being too heavy. And that's all for this one. To AM_Research: Change Escort Chance, as I'm adding an escort... <Row ss:AutoFitHeight="0"> <Cell><Data ss:Type="String">Escort chance</Data></Cell> <Cell ss:StyleID="s64"><Data ss:Type="Number">500</Data></Cell> </Row> Then with the m:airplane.alien.fighter and .heavyfighter, delete those and cut and paste the escort data from above. EDIT: I've been trying for a while to get escorts for scouts to appear, and I'm not succeeding. What am I doing wrong? EDIT 2: I forgot that the Scout missions don't start till the ticker hits 800. Fixed that.

radman, I'm going to quote the developer on this matter, as this kind of thread does pop up from time to time. This particular quote was in response to a chap called cyllan, who made a few people upset. the thread itself was on different kinds of shotgun ammo.

Chris, if you're still intending it as a feature could you see your way to sneaking in the function to convert alien clips to alienium in the next build? While it's natural in the current build to see more severely damaged UFOs than minor damaged ones, it is a pain in the bum when it comes to getting alienium for lasers and missiles - especially missiles.

I did think very carefully before I starting changing AP for the assault rifle. After having played quite a bit with the changes I made, the assault rifle is still crap. The problem is that in comparison to the other weapons, it takes a lot of shots to do anything. Because there are no health bars, you can pump shot after shot into a sebillian and think "Jesus, how many more can it take?!". In comparison, a precison rifle or a shotgun need far fewer shots to do the same job, so it feels like you're getting nowhere with the assault rifle. The only other thing I can think of doing is instead of fiddling with AP costs is to keep the same damage level for the AR, but up the mitigation and possibly make burst fire more accurate but keep that at 30-35 AP.

I thought I'd give some feedback based on suppression in v12.11. It's much harder to suppress an alien now. Early game, the non-coms usually die before I suppress them, especially with the machinegun. Guards and above are the one who usually get locked by suppression (and to be honest, soliders are the ones who really feel it. Usually guards will die in the next shot after they get suppressed). Due to the placeholder AI, they don't do anything once I suppress them, so I can't really comment on strategy or tactics, because once I lock an alien, that alien is as good as dead. The civvies are much easier to suppress, and wouldn't you know it? Much less of a pain in the ass when they are suppressed. If I can spare the AP and the bullets, I will lock civvies which are likely to get in the way. And when me and an alien are trading shots, it's really helpful when the civvies get suppressed. Because there doesn't seem to be that strong a bullet variance when a shot misses, I haven't yet seen an alien get suppressed by a shot that has gone wide. Admittedly machinegun shots do go very wide, but out of a burst of five at least two will either hit or land close by, so it doesn't look that unusual.

To quote Chris from the v12 changelog (emphasis added). Basically, balancing isn't realy in the books at the moment. Chris wants to make the game feature-complete and then focus on balance in the beta.

Well, it's a reasonable question to ask.

You're kidding me, right? No, you aren't. The v12.1 changelog. The v12 changelog. The v10.2 changelog - I think you get the idea. If you don't like the way the game plays at the moment, then change the files. All the alien mission files can be altered so you can set how quickly alien mission types start, with what kind of UFOs, and what kind of escorts. Heck, you can even change what kind of aliens will appear in UFO landed and UFO crashland missions! However, I think it will be very unlikely that any offical changes will happen before the beta (unless everyone grumbles all at once).

Scriptwolf, if you don't mind getting your hands dirty, go into the xenonauts assets directory (that's Desura/Common/xenonauts/assets) and edit AM_AirSuperiority.xml. Set "once per wave" to true, and you won't get umpty-tumpty fightercraft. You should only get one squadron per wave of enemy UFOs.

That's exactly what I'm saying, JBF. If you move the mouse over the sea, instead of switching to the total overall value and remaining fixed, it switches to the total overall value and starts dropping as you move the mouse about.