Max_Caine
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Posts posted by Max_Caine
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This is actually possible (well, it isn't YET, but it almost is) in the current setup. At the moment, version 12 has a v1 and v2 of every weapon family, armour families have a v1 and v2 and also have attachable modules. The v2 weapon families just have a damage boost at the moment, but.... the version 2 upgrade could be more than that and dependent on components. The armour modules,, any version upgrades for those armour modules and any version upgrades for the armour families, could, again, be dependant on components. That then always leave a basic set for anyone to have.
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5 hours ago, Chris said:
I guess I could take a leaf from the XCOM playbook and have it so that stunned aliens have a 100% chance of dropping recoverable items, whereas aliens you kill only drop it 30% of the time or something? Might make stunning aliens a bit more rewarding given it's much more dangerous than simply killing them.
I quite like that idea, actually - gives the player a way to mitigate randomness through good play, but as you'd probably only ever need a max of say 20 Beam Emitters (or whatever) there'd be minimal advantages to farming the same type of UFO over and over with stun weapons.
That sounds like a pretty good way of doing it. If that was also applied to landed as opposed to crashed UFOs, it would defintely encourage riskier play.
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20 hours ago, Chris said:
@Max_Caine hmm, what's the logic behind increasing the drop rate for items once you get beyond a certain tier? I'm happy to give it a try, but I'd have thought it'd trivialise the decision to invest alloys / alenium into a particular tech tier because you know you can always wait a bit longer and you'll get everything free. You might also just end up continually feeding the player a load of items that are useless to them, and even though you can sell them it might get a bit annoying to have Nanothread coming out of your ears a couple of months after you stopped being interested in it.
I suppose one possibility to balance it might be to allow you to (inefficiently) convert a resource into the next tier up. Or maybe (inefficiently) break it down into the source Alloys / Alenium. As you mentioned before, this functionality could be tied to something like the Alloy Forge building, I guess. It does sound like there's a danger it could be too complex though.
Quirks and flaws of equipment families notwithstanding, Xenonauts 2 follows a linear research progression path. That is to say, the further down the tech tree you advance the objectively better equipment families become. Furthermore, the game follows a linear difficulty progression path. UFOs become larger and more difficult to fight, aliens become harder to kill, and better equipped to kill squaddies equipped with current-gen technology (e.g. aliens have three generations of weapon technology in X2). The X-Division mod for X1 formally recognised this and subdivided the game into specific Phases.
As equipment families progress and alien equipment also progresses the pressure is on the player to be ahead of the technology curve. As aliens improve of the course of the game it is generally better to research and manufacture current-gen to match the threat presented by aliens at that point in the game rather than stick last-gen, which matched the threat presented by aliens at the point where last-gen was current gen. This is most prominent with the armour equipment families – it is noticeably better to have wolf armour than it is to stay with basic armour and have the heavy armour upgrade.
However, in X1 it is a valid strategy to not invest in current-gen and rely on last-gen technology (the “rush plasma strategy”). The aim of this strategy is to wait for a future generation of equipment family which is significantly better than current-gen, is achievable in a timescale that does not create undue pressure for the player and can be manufactured in large numbers reasonably quickly. While waiting, resources are either horded or spent on current-gen technology in another part of the game, e.g. forgoing Ground Combat lasers to purchase more armour, a key plank of the rush plasma strategy.
So, into this, we introduce components. Components as presented in the OP create economic scarcity for current-gen equipment families. If you don’t have the component, you have to pay a stiff penalty to replace the component required, so balancing resources between various current-gen equipment families becomes more pronounced and the desire to obtain components becomes sharp. Penalties for last-gen technology are apparently less than the penalties for current-gen technology. As a consequence there is a strong economic incentive to focus more on last-gen technology than current-gen as resources can be used more effciently. If a player comfortably feels that s/he can survive on upgraded last-gen as opposed to current-gen then we are already in the scenario identified by Chris without any further incentivisation required. Items drops don’t need to be made more common, because economically you can make up for the penalties more efficiently than current-gen.
In this proposed scenario, making last-gen drops more common encourages investment in current-gen by the expedient of flooding the market. If components for last-gen become more common this frees up resources to invest in current-gen that would otherwise have been invested in the technologically inferior but economically superior last-gen. It would, however, from a gameplay perspective be better to make the player feel pressured that they need to invest in current-gen technology over last-gen. A considerable percentage of the playerbase for X-Division enjoy the mod because of that pressure to keep up with current alien opponents.
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I'm halfway through my thesis on why increasing drop rates on old tech would be beneficial (I wish I was kidding), but what I will say about grinding is if you want to stop grinding from being the primary strategy for play, then I would suggest imposing economic penalities. You could actually use Strategic Operations or Agents for this. Fighter UFOs have in v12 a Strategic Operation where you can recover an item. Fine. Make that the norm for item drops. You don't get any item drops on a mission complete. Instead, the UFO remains on the map for X amount of time, like fighter UFOs do. You can click on the UFO and spend X amount of money for a chance to get a drop. The more money you spend, the higher the chance of a drop. Perhaps you could spend an agent for 100% chance of a drop, but then you've no longer got that agent.
Edit: The basic premise - spend X resource to get Y% chance of a item drop is infinitely mutable. E.G. you could perhaps assign scientists and/or engineers as a "salvage team" to a UFO which takes game-time to salvage a UFO. The more scientists and/or engineers you assign as a salvage team, the better the chance of a drop. Heck, you be even more radical. Instead of getting any instant rewards like you do right now, all rewards cost a reource to get. Going back to the salvage team idea, you can only get rewards from a ufo once a salvage team has finished salvaging a UFO - that would impose economic penalities on grinding that could be felt through the lifespan of the game (scientists for the drop, engineers for basic resources?).
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One thing I would like to see is earlier generation components become more available in relation to the current generation of technology. For example, if nanothread was only useful for basic armour then when wolf armour becomes available I'd like to see nanothread more accessible. The reason for upping the drop rate would be to create greater tension between filling out last generation technology and focussing on current generation technology.
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This is only tangenital to the conversation, but I'd like to suggest people look and comment on this thread about adding item components to creating gear as Chris uses armour as the main example of what item components might do for gear. Armour is one of the first things you're going to upgrade and improve in X2 and armour is more fleshed out beyond just stats and systems - don't forget each suit of armour has modules you can add to it.
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I like the idea, I can see it tying into your suggestion for resource generation buildings in the base mechanics thread. E.g. the "Alloy Forge" alluded to as an example in that thread could be a place where components could be constructed. Erm, just a suggestion, but as you're possibly implementing disassembly then could you extend that further than human manufactured items? Possibly extend it to all the alien gear you pick up and tie that into generating item components. So then the player has one of two options, either keep items for resale and cash generation or dissassemble items in the hopes of getting an item drop.
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I've seen people on various parts of the forum talk about their attachment to their squaddies. Personally, I've never really understood it. You see, I don't think there's a lot to get attached to. X2 squaddies are not like FiraXcom or UFO:AfterX squaddies. They don't have skills and superpowers which become indispensible mid to late game. The rate of stat improvement is generally pretty quick and even though stat caps are randomised the caps aren't randomised so much that you're going to have a crappy soldier if you put the squaddie through lots of battles. They're also really easy to get. By mid Feb into March game-time, I usually have a rotating roster of around 40 squaddies with whoever isn't currently injured in the Skyhawk ready to go. So... honestly? I don't feel a lot when a squaddie bites the dust. I only really feel it if it's part of a series of unfortunate events which threatens the mission, or if it's something cheap like, if I've just tried shooting at an alien one tile away and I've missed three times in a row. But that's just me. Are you attached to your squaddies? Will you be attached to your squaddies? Or are you a cold-hearted chap like myself who treats them like so many meat pawns? (Mmm... pawns...)
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I honestly don't think that adjacency bonuses are going to work very well in X2. The reason they work so well on FiraXcom is that you only have the one base - ever. Therefore you have strong competition for space between the different room. In X2 I can build a new base, name it "FACTORY" then proceed to build all the workshops I'll ever need and reap the rewards of multiple adjacency bonuses. In fact, with X2 you might want to consider adjacency maluses so that if people want to build a factory or a lab complex they can, but the overspecialization in a base carries its own dangers.
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Does the power itself need toning down, or does the number of aliens that can use it need toning down? It seems to me that if the power is squadsight, then the moment an alien sees a squaddie, that squaddie will get hammered by mind wars.
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I suspose if you could boil it down to 1-2 word archetypes, thne you could look at the archetype and see if there's a room for it. Like...
The Buffer
The Debuffer
The Minelayer/Trapper
The Exploding One
The Tsundere (get over here! wait, stay away!)
The Healer
The Alarm Bell/Radar
The Terrain Alterer
The Networker
The DOT/Drainer/Exsanginator
The Burner/Gasser
The Powers-Up-When-Hurt
The Cheapshot Ambusher
and so on and so forth.
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Mask, what I think is when someone makes a claim and there's evidence to the contrary, then that that claim can be challenged. I've challenged a specific claim of Trashman's. That's all there is to it - the arguments you make on behalf of Trashman, and, I am sorry but you have made arguments on behalf of Trashman, seeing as in your previous post your propose reasons why Trashman may not have read the thread, move the goalposts from "I never saw it" vs. "But you were on the specific forum when the thread was still up" to "You don't understand our concerns or the points we are making". Now, that's a valid point to make, but it is moving the goalposts from Trashman's original claim and my counter-claim. That's something to be addressed separately.
Now, to answer your question, Yes, if the overall system is made up of simple parts then, unless it is consists of many, many simple parts, is simple. An extra HP bar. A percent resistance. Location damage. Armour penetration. Of the four systems, I find 1 of those systems to be reasonably complex - the armour penetration system. The rest of it is raw damage * resistance * location damage = HP damage, and the HP damage from resistance and location damage is true whether it's armour HP or squaddie/alien HP, there's no special rule. Additionally, while I find armour penetration reasonably complex, that doesn't make it within the context of this armour system the be-all and end-all, as this armour penetration system has degrees of effectiveness as opposed to a penetrate-all or penetrate-nothing.
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Mask, before I continue to write, let me be perfectly clear. I am not staff. It's important to remember that, because as a consequence I'm not obliged to answer for the decisions GH makes. Now, onto my response.
Firstly, I think that Trashman is perfectly capable of answering for himself, if Trashman decides to answer, which he doesn't have to. Secondly, if Trashman says he didn't know, but goes and visits the specific board that the thread was on while the thread was up, then I reserve the right to be skeptical about the claim. Everything else is moving the goalposts beyond the specific claim which I query.
Now, concerning complication. Please read my original post again. The sole issue I had complication with is what is now the newly implemented armour penetration system. As I said, that's what had me scratching my head. The argument you propose is a conflation of the thing I had complication with, with the things I don't. So, again, regarding an extra HP bar, regarding adding resistances - why is it complicated? Not why is it bad, which is what your OP addresses - why is it complicated?
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Trashman, I must confess I have some difficulty believing that you didn't know the thread existed. You see, I can see that on April the 23rd you checked out the Xenonauts 2 features board - which had the Armour discussion thread, which was titled "New Damage/Armor system" - went to the orbital bombardment thread and gave your opinions on Orbital Bombardment. Are you saying you went to the orbital bombardment thread and didn't once check out the armour thread? If you are, fair enough, but that day when you went to the specific forum on which that thread was advertised would have been your opportunity to give your two cents.
Mask, you say that the armour systems proposed and implemented by Chris are complicated - why is that? An extra HP bar is intuitive, especially if you see that on the UI. Resistances aren't hard to work out, the only complex matter is how armour penetration works. In a recent update on the Kickstarter page, Chris is now using the terms "armour penetration" and "armour hardness", so I imagine there has been some development on that situation.
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This depends upon the tech tree, so I haven't really said that much but at the moment in X2 you can research and build electroshock rifles that is basically a ranged stun rifle.
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This isn't quite what you want Charon, buuuut, from the May update:
QuoteI personally have spent most of my non-management time working on the threads about our plans for the game and the research text for the plot research, which so far is 12 research reports / plot-related pop-ups. There's probably another 5 or 6 optional research projects that I need to write that will unlock an alternate ending (for people who like reading research text). These form the foundations of who the aliens are and their capabilities and intentions, which then feeds into all the other research text. I'm aiming to get the early game research text done in the near future so the first 10-15 researches are all properly written up - again, I think it's important that the initial content is in place even if the entire research tree isn't written.
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A quick reminder to everybody, address the arguments made, not the person behind them. I'm not going to speak for Chris - he's more than capable of speaking for himself. What I can say is that the post regarding his proposed armour system was put up Feb 26, the last reply to it was March 12, and it has only been removed at some point in May, so there were at least 2 months where it sat for anyone to have a look and comment on. If it's going to sit uncommented on for a month and a half and only garner 8 comments in the time it was up, then the interest from the community in a fundamental system really wasn't there now, was it?
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The one thing I will say is that at the time, Solver raised similar concerns and it has been quite a long time since the post was first made. I don't imagine that the fundamental concepts would have changed that much but the way that they are implemented may have changed. This is pretty much a case of wait-and-see once v13 comes out.
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Again, unfortunately I can't - Chris has wiped all the threads I guess in prep for the upcoming version. However, I can do a summary:
Locational Damage
Raher than weapons doing 50-150% of damage, a body location is randomly chosen and has a damage multiplier depending on the body part. The examples given varied from 50% to 200%. at the moment, all locational damage will do is determine the damage multiplier but Chris has suggsted that this can form the skeleton of a more complex system which could become DLC later down the line.
Armour HP
Armour provides a squaddie a seperate pool of Armour HP that absorbs damage before the unit takes damage to their own HP. Armour HP is s permanently used when it stops damage, so 20 Armour HP is only ever going to prevent 20 incoming damage.
Resistances
The current armour system, which is a percent deduction from the damage caused by the weapon will still be present, this represents natural or implied resistances, e.g. wearing a rebreather will give 100% damage resistance to gas-type weapons.
Weapon Level & Armour Level
So, this is the complicated bit. It had me scratching my head at the time. All weapons and armour is assigned a "level". When the projectile from a weapon collides with armour, the weapon "level" and the armour "level" are compared. If the weapon "level" is higher than the armour "level" the weapon projectile gains an armour penetration bonus which ignores reistance and armour HP, if the armour "level" is higher than the weapon "level", a percentage of the damage is ignored. The degree of the bonus that either the weapon or the armour gets is dependant on the difference betwen the weapon and the armour.
E.G. If starting heavy armour had an armour level of 2, and the starting alien MAG pistol had a weapon level of 1, then the armour is 1 level higher than the weapon and gains a relatively small bonus, say, 30% of damage is ignored in addition to any natural resistances. However, if an alien plasma rifle had a weapon level of 5, then the weapon is 3 levels higher than the armour, and gains a much larger bonus, say, 90% of damage penetrates the armour and ignores armour HP and resistances.
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The opportunity to productively discuss armour has unfortunately come and gone. There is a new armour system that will be going into v13-14, which Chris put up for discussion and debate at the end of Feburary. It got 8 replies. I can give you a summary of the armour system if you like.
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I would suggest talking to GoG first, this is more a thing on their end. Unless, have you already sent an email to GoG? If you did, what did they say?
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Okay, so, back at the end August of last year Goldhawk Interactive stopped using Xsolla as a service. You should have recieved an email from Xsolla with a key to access the Beta for either Steam or GoG at around that time, between August and Setptember. Did you have any communication from Xsolla at that time?
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You'd need to alter the code, and that's above my pay grade.
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Right, I see you mention Xsolla. Okay, this is important. If you got your key from the kickstarter, that would be one thing, but if you got it from Xsolla that's a completely different thing. So, which was it - did you back the kickstarter, or did you get the beta from Xsolla?
Xsolla to Steam/GOG Migration?
in Xenonauts-2 General Discussion
Posted
@mcw Back at the end August of last year Goldhawk Interactive stopped using Xsolla as a service. You should have recieved an email from Xsolla with a key to access the Beta for either Steam or GoG at around that time, between August and Setptember. Did you have any communication from Xsolla at that time?