Max_Caine
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Posts posted by Max_Caine
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So Trashman, in no particular order.
1) If you're going to have the AI run away into the UFO, then you may as well start the game at the UFO, sans artillery. What's the point in walking across an empty battlefield, People get bored when nothing is happening.
2) If I don't always have the option of having artillery because reasons, I'm going to prepare as if I never have it. If I prepare as if I never have it, then why do I need it in the first place? So that the AI can run to the UFO? Anyway, people are going to point to the aircraft that Xenonauts have, and ask why they can't use those instead of unreliable artillery.
In any case, you acknoweldge that artillery is unfair. Unfair when I have it, unfair when the enemy has it. It's an I win button when you apply it to a skirmish-level tactical game. It's why PP at least put the artillery on-map so the other side has half a chance of stopping it.
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Here's a good one, Sheepy:
Two scary tanks in Jagged alliance being taken down by a mortar from a safe distance
Multi mortar kill in Jagged Alliance - I wish I had invested in mortars when I played JA2!
There are no bad examples. PP, JA2, Phantom Doctrine, these are all reasonable examples of what on-map and off-map artillery support actually looks like. Trashman, the theory does not stand up in practice. Artillery is unfair, off-map artillery would be especially unfair.
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I'm pretty sure some of that data is hidden behind the files in the /assets/ folder. I have no idea how to unpack those files, but if you check the .manifest files you can see there are quite a few .json files bundled together. For unit recruitment stats I think the correct file is in /strategy/masters/actor/combatant/human/xenonauts/. Always bear in mind that files follow an object-oriened approach. Each child file inherits the properties of the parent. To find the weight of something, you may have to follow back up the parent-child string until you get to the data. E.g. in the strategy section, pistols have a generic weight which is established in /masters/items/weapon_secondary.json, the parent of ballistic.pistol.json. If you want to change this weight, you change the weight value in the file you want to change (ballistic.pistol.json), this will override the value they inherit from the parent file. Also remember that common values like weight are duplicated across strategy and ground combat. If you change the value in one, you must change the value in the other.
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People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
You clearly haven't played PP. The enemy AI can run and hide from my Scarab (the starting vehicle you get that's equipped with a long-range indirect-fire weapon) but it's so easy to crack a building with it. In fact, PP is another example of just how unfair artillery is, and that's artillery that's on the map instead of off it.
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You should play Phantom Doctrine then, and see what it's like to give and receive off-map support in a squad-based tactical shooter. It gets very boring, very quickly. The only saving grace is off-map support can't destroy buildings, no matter how ridiculous that would seem (e.g. you can hide in a straw hut and a fully tooled up Hind D can't wreck it).
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@ComradeThe latest update 8 days ago on the progression of the project should give you some idea how things are going. I wouldn't know that GH are going to make any announcement on an EA release any time soon. The last time Chris said something definitive on that, he had to apologise because the proposed EA date has long overshot and they're still nailing him to the wall about it on the Steam forums. In GH's case, the less said about release dates, the better. So long as there's a stream of updates, wether new builds to try or posts on the progression on the project, that works better than setting a date then overshooting it.
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Phoenix Point is a good example of Comrade's fears made flesh. The Triton enemy type can emit a substance which I will, for the sake of argument, call smoke. This smoke does not go away. Left uncontrolled, Tritons can quite easily cover large swathes of the map in smoke that is hard to see through and is hazardous to the player's units. Alien smoke would have to be quite, quite temporary.
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It looks like the research tree changed since I wrote that inital post, as I was once able to get the research prequisites after downing an Observer, but not any longer. In any case, it's possible to take down an Observer with Falcons - you need 3 of them, and you need as many alenium missiles as you can get. Then you can just charge straight at the Observer - no fancy techniques needed, the Observer doesn't have the firepower to down a Falcon so you can dive straight through it and the Falcons turn faster than the Observer can, meaning their cannons can finish the job. However, to take down a Destroyer you need Foxhounds. Foxhounds as they currently are designed do not have the weapons to take down a Destroyer - you need to use the updated Skylance heavy missile that I have posted above. The update Skyance has a range that is slightly longer than a Destroyer's. In autoresolve, a squadron of Foxhounds will win, and in realtime combat a squadron will very likely win, but you have to turn immediately after launching the payload or the Destroyer will down at least one Foxhound.
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I'd like to see more hardpoints for aircraft, or at least more potential hardpoints. Having 4 potential weapon hardpoints can give an excellent number of combinations which you csan design a larger variety of aircraft for. Also I notice there are utility aircraft items which seem to be sitting doing nothing. An afterburner or fuel pod would be extremely useful, especially in the early game. Could the utility hardpoints be brought back, or rolled into the weapon hardpoints?
I'd like more stuff to do with both engineers and alien artifacts. Namely:
- Allow engineers to be assigned to Hangars to boost the speed of rearm/refuel/repair.
- Allow alien artifacts to be broken down for parts. A "recycle artifacts" project which recycles X of a type into alien materials
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Pretty sure that streams still aren't officially allowed. Not that it's stopped certain people from making vids of every version (all yo have to do is type Xeonnauts 2 into Youtube to see what I mean.)
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In my previous post, I'm talking about the base tier heavy missile that comes free with every Foxhound. You build a Foxhound, you get the heavy missile with it. That's what that file is.
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For those people who are having issues with autoresolve, I'm pretty sure you're being held back because of Foxhounds. I'm fairly certain like in X1, Foxhounds are intended to be the foil to early capital-class ships such as Observers and Destroyers. However, the Sklylances are terrible even against larger ufos so I've made 2 adjustments to the Skylance which make the Foxhound more tenable. The adjustments need tweaking so Foxhounds aren't the primary pick every time, but following testing with a full squadron of Foxhounds verses Observers and Destroyers, I think you'll be reasonably pleased.
Replace the torpedo_tier1.json file in xenonauts2/assets/assets/xenonauts/template/strategy/item/aircraft_equipment with the torpedo_tier1.json file attached. As always, back up any file you adjust so in the event of any problems, you don't have to wipe the whole game and start again. Do not replace the file when you have birds in the air - in fact you would be best off replacing the file on a savegame in-between UFO waves. This file was tested using a full 3-plane squadron verses destroyers and observers and a 2-plane squadron against Observers so test results are limited, do not expect single Foxhounds to flex hard.
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Which version of Xenonauts are you running?
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You should be able to research the phantom interceptor - do you have that?
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Vision, vision length and vision cones were brought up more than once during the development of X1. I believe the underlying reason it's brought up is all to do with what battlefield information the player has access to. The relatively short vision range with the relatively tight vision cone restricts what the player knows at any time. This is especially acute at the start of any fight as all the player's information points are clustered together in one place, whereas the AI adversary information points are dotted around the map, so the AI has a much more complete picture than the player has.
Does having incomplete and restricted information about the battlefield add or subtract from gameplay? One might argue that the more complete a picture a player has, the better that player can formulate strategies. There are certainly plenty of games that present all the information to the player. Incomplete and restricted information then frustrates a player because they don't know what's going on. Equally, one might argue that an incomplete picture can mean the player can be surprised by the AI's actions, and the player can in turn surprise the AI - ambushes are only effective if there are gaps in information that can be exploited, and it is entirely possible in X2 to run around an enemy group and flank them.
If having incomplete information is a beneficial asset to gameplay, how much and to what degree should that information be restricted? E.G. how far and how wide should vision cones be?
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Having played PP for a while now, I can see how a Mercator map is probably going to be better for X2 than a geoscape. It's a pain in the bum to keep track of 2 manitcors and a tiamat, especially when the game comes off pause whenever you issue instructions to any of your aircraft. How the fetid skies DLC is going to work I dunno.
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Both PP and X2 sacrifice realism in the name of gameplay. The tightened vision cones in X2 mean that it's possible for enemies to ambush an inattentive player by working around those vision cones, just as it's possible for a player to pin down an enemy while a fireteam flanks them. It may not feel realistic, but as Sheepy points out it's clear and intuitive, which from a gameplay perspective is good.
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It's relatively easy to edit your save files - they're stored in a minimised JSON format, so you need a text editor that can read JSON files, and has a suitible plugin to expand/minimise JSON files. I use Notepad++. However, save files are BIG so you're probably better off editing the base stats used for generating soldiers so you can recruit as many supermen as takes your fancy. I forget off-hand which on it is - I'll take a look when I'm in front of my computer.
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Armour resistances
Consider the alien plasma rifle. It has a base damage of 55. The proposed tactical armour reduction of 20% means it would do 44 base damage. Human HP ranges from 40-60, so the base resistance of tactical armour would mean a one-shot kill or leave the solider on very low health. At 30% (warden), that would do 39 base damage. At 55% (Wolf) it would be significantly reduced to 25. That's still life threatening, but isn't a one-shot.
Because, by necessity, alien weapons start off with a damage value sufficiently high enough to kill a human while taking into account the 50% +/- random damage factor, any resistance percentage below 40% makes the armour feel as if it isn't worth it. This is less true for mag weapons than plasma, because while the mag rifle has an aggregate damage of 90, that's split up over 3 shots. A squaddie in tactical armour isn't going to survive being hit three times by a mag rifle, but is more likely to survive 1 or 2 hits. Plasma is going feel more scary and armour more worthless simply because it dumps all its damage into 1 hit.
Is that a bad thing, though? The history of human armour has mostly developed around defeating and absorbing kinetic impacts. Humans have little experience with DEW and none as it's presented in X1. So humans are at a disadvantage both in experience and technology. Perhaps this could be worked into the backstory and the lore for tactical armour, and perhaps the heavy armour module or the warden upgrade be developed in response to plasma as much as mag?
EDIT: Plasma rifle is actually 55, so numbers have been edited for real value.
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Smoke
I'm a bit conflicted about smoke. On the one hand, smoke is an invaluable resource, especially when you're starting out. Judicious application of smoke can effectively maze enemies, block off lines of attack and cover both retreats and attacks. On the other hand, smoke is spammable and very abusable because you can have lots of it. Is there some happy medium? Perhaps smoke should have three categories. Can't see through it (e.g. humans). Can see through it (e.g. Sebillians). Can see through it but applies a malus to-hit (e.g. psychic Psyons).
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There's the thing: If I spend 20% of my squdddies TU to fire an aimed shot, then that's another 20% I have to stump up if my squaddie misses. The SMG offers a 4-for-1 deal, but each shot doesn't do as much damage and won't suppress like the pistol shots can. Who do you give each secondary type to? The choices! The choices!
Friarbob, you seem keen so I took all those changes and put them into one zip for you:
All you have to do is replace the files in the game with the files in the zip. You'll need to dive fairly deep: The files you need to change are below /steamapps/common/Xenonauts2/assets/assets/xenonauts/template/. I would strongly advise that you make backups of the files you are going to replace, also don't report any bugs with changed files - bug reports should be made on vanilla unchanged files.
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If you equip a Foxhound with sidewinders, the radar cone does not work in air combat.
Save of an air fight included to demonstrate.
EDIT: The same is true for Skylances
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It's a good point, but if I do that then I pretty much close down the pistol, because the SMG then does everything you could want out of a secondary. I've been experimenting a lot with both SMG and the pistol and my personal conclsion is that the pistol can be a viable secondary but to compete with the SMG it has to be able to do things that the SMG can't do. I haven't fully locked down the pistol yet, but I do have a number of changes to it which makes it more viable.
Increase damage from 12 to 20: This is the damage the pistol did in X1, similar to the rifle. This upgrades the pistol to a magnum .50 Action-Express. The kind of weapon you take around bear country. The boost in damage is necessary because the pistol is single-shot, so every shot that hits has to count.
Decrease snap TU cost to 10%, and aimed to 20%: The hallmark of primary weapons is they don't have a TU cost below 22-25% for the lowest cost shot. Secondaries can back this up by being cheap to shoot so complimenting the more expensive primary.
Reduce ammo count to 7: If I boost the damage up and reduce cost of shots, then exactly why am I using a primary again? By halving the ammo count per magazine, you gotta be more careful about ammo conservaion, something you don't have to be with the primaries.
Reduce magazine weight to 0.5: In tandem with the reduction of shots per magazine, you need to carry more of them so reucing the weight makes the pistol a more attractive weapon.
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I'd like to take a moment to talk about the weapon I use the very least, the submachinegun.
The submachinegun could be a great secondary weapon to compliment pretty much any primary except perhaps the assault rifle. The problem as I see it is that there's nothing the submachinegun does that isn't done already by the primary set. The current statline has't changed pretty much since v1, and all it is at the moment is a cut-down version of an assault rifle. Some of it's biggest failures are it's expensive to use, easy to miss with and doesn't give enough bang for your buck. It's generally better to have a medkit and rely on your primary than get some use out of the secondary. I tried out a lot of different ways the submachine could compliment primary weapons and retain the feel of a submachinegun, and came up with the following:
Remove all options except burst, and give the burst 4 shots: Most primary weapons have a single shot mode already, with the exception of the LMG. The submachinegun shouldn't be trying to compete with primary weapons that do a job probably better than the SMG can do. A burst fire of 4 shots slots alongside al primary weapon types, but won't directly compete with the LMG that has a higher ROF.
Reduce the damage to 12: This ties directly into the first change. The original damage a submachinegun can do is 20. Improving the burst to 4 would make 20 hella OP. Reducing it to 12 wil give a maximum damage of 48. Testing you generally see damage between 20-30, depending on how many bullets hit the target.
Increase accuracy to 65: After lots of tweaking, I found that the current burst accuracy of 45 is too low, but 70 or higher made the SMG too effective compared to primary weapons. An accruacy boost of 65 made the weapon more palatable and in the hands of skilled operators, deadly.
Reduce burst cost to 20%: This is the biggie. The biggest change I made was to drastically reduce the cost of firing the weapon. This change is what makes the SMG favourable - it's now a cheap way to put a lot of lead downfield. In theory a solider standing still could empty the magazine and spray 20 shots everywhere. In practice, you're likely to get 2 bursts out in-between moving and using the primary. A soldier with an LMg as primary and SMG as secondary can use the LMG first then blast away with the SMG. The reduced damage makes the cheap shots less effective than it first seems. Verses Sebillians, it's takes a lot of fire from an SMG to put one down. I found that generally, using the primary first then folowing up with the SMG was the preferable option, but I could be proven wrong on this point.
Reduce suppression damage to 5: It was importnat to drastically reduce the amount of suppression damage a SMG did, because it ws cheap and fired lots of shots. Dropping it from 20 to 5 seems drastic, but a burst now simulates what suppression damage it did anyway.
Reduce range slightly: Primary weapons (with the exception of the shotgun) should have the lead on the SMG with regards to range. The submachinegun is supposed to compliment them after all, so I droped it from 16 to 12. This out it ahead of the shotgun, but ehind every other weapon.
Reduce reload cost slightly: This altered SMG is the weapon you are most likely going to change mags for, so it made sense to reduce the cost of reloads slightly to compensate. I dropped it from 25 to 20.
The sum total of all these changes makes the submachinegun a rapid, close-quarters assault weapon, lacking the punch of the shotgun or assault rifle but more than capable to tearing up targets with a hail of bullets. It's best paired with the LMG or the Sniper Rifle, but can go with any primary. Below is the modified version of the SMG, if anyone cares to give it try:
The air war has become unwinnable and I’ve exhausted all avenues of research
in Xenonauts-2 General Discussion
Posted
I think destroyers are the limit of Goldhawk's current designs, which is why there are so many issues post-destroyer. I'm also fairly certain that the stock configuration of each generation of Xenonauts fighter craft is intended to last X UFO types before they become sub-optional and you're encouraged to move to the next generation. However, I have in the files noticed certain utility addons - specifically a fuel pod and an afterburner. I think it would be helpful to open up utility hardpoint slots so the existing fleet can be upgraded some more.