erutan

anti-graviton?

It should definitely be higher than 20%, a lot of random props can cause a 20% reduction and there should be a significant advantage to taking the time to deploy them. They're relatively directional/limited so having a high pay off seems like a good idea.

I agree that "intervening props" vs "cover" impacts accuracy too much. Actively hiding behind a wall, rock, crate, etc seems fine as is. Given limited poses and the fact we have suppression (flank!) or explosives (ignore!) to deal with cover makes the game more interesting. What sucks is when your rifleman loses 20% here and 20% there due to a fence in the way or a flowerpot or whatever, so by the time you get to the cover the target is actively hiding behind the chance to hit is minimal. Maybe upping suppression on rifles might help, so you're not just firing for nothing, but providing support for assault/grenadiers? Snipers (aside from laser, should we say all precision rifles should have hypervelocity?) can essentially bypass minor props. I didn't know about that last bit about being a step behind cover... that does seem broken.

I made a laser gun for my hunter and was pretty disappointed with how useless it was. I think the having one vehicle per mission + limited ammo keeps them balanced enough without making their accuracy abysmal.

Just redownload the hotfix or use Sathra's fix.

Kneel/stand does. You don't have any turn TUs the second time, so it can feel a little "bonus"ish. I feel the accuracy upgrade if it exists should only work for the same or lower aim tiers. Firing a snapshot then having a more accurate full aimed doesn't make much sense and it'd just be gaming the system. A "ready" cost has been discussed elsewhere, and could be a feasible replacement for the current HW penalty.

I noticed in a terror mission I could only jump on top of one building, not another. Hedges and walls in town/farm maps don't seem to work either. I imagine when the core of the game settles down they'll enable more tiles/spectres to work with the jump.

I think 4 alenium missiles against a scout / light scout should result in overkill. I'm fine if sticking within your own tier just results in a minimal/severe damage, but a full load of the next tier up should make it go boom.

same with @stellar. I've also found that sometimes I can't select the top menu to go to research/base/etc and have to right click on a base in the geoscape to get in - from there everything is fine.

I imagine keys would be mailed out whenever they were ready to be (no ETA at the moment).

It'll also depend on how Chris feels about the builds. Getting on steam would generate some publicity, and while people expect bugs in a beta it'd be good if there's no know glaring ones that might turn people off.

If having an assault soldier use the latest carbine + heavy armor means they can't carry flashbangs then I'd say the system is a little broken. There should definitely be choices between ammo, type/number of grenades, medkit, backup weapons - they shouldn't be able to take EVERYTHING they want, but having a few grenades on your small arms people really opens up tactical options and it'd be kind of sad to see that go away just chasing mitigation. I imagine late game armors will be balanced as the beta goes along.

Range is something that baffles me - I feel like lasers should have miles more range than ballistics (basically just up to human bodies wiggling the weapon for accuracy), but what do I know. Minor shifts between range and accuracy might just end up being confusing. Weapon A has a range of 20 tiles, accuracy 75. Weapon B has a range of 19 tiles, but an accuracy of 78. Which is effectively better? @gizmo I'd like to see a nice way to scan stats of all the weapons - hovering in the equip screen is pretty inefficient. I think putting a side/bottom stats section for each tier in the xenopedia would be the simplest way to do it. It'd be cool to have something like the soldier select screen for weapons where you can just skim all the stats - that could be a xenopedia entry "current weapons" or something.

It's never worked for me at 1680x1050 fullscreen, though I still (sometimes) get tooltips in the soldier equip screen.

Oy. Yeah, forgot about those. ----- D W R A C P T Tier1 1 4 3 1 4 1 4 Tier2 2 3 1 4 3 2 1 Tier3 4 2 2 2 2 3 2 Tier4 3 1 4 3 1 4 3 Totals not counting clip size, weight, and TUs: t1 6 t2 9 t3 11 t4 14 Totals counting clip size, weight, and TUs: t1 18 (!!) t2 16 t3 17 t4 19 Totals/numbers are slightly BS because some might be almost the same and others very different, but it makes things a little easier for me to grasp. Looking at this I'm mentally kind of balancing around plasma now (makes also sense since the aliens have it too) and moving up/down from it, rather than starting at ballistics and adjusting from that.

Yup clip and weight are heavily with balance in mind, though that's also assuming that soldiers do get to carry more as they progress in the game. It might be interesting to make tier2-3 weigh less than a later one, but have it's ammo weigh more (promoting it as a backup). Dunno. I'm uncertain about range - current handheld laser pointers can go for miles and miles and they're not even strong enough to harm anyone, but maybe due to a wider beam / lower frequency these diffract a lot sooner? Why would plasma go further but be more affected by atmosphere in terms of accuracy but not range? idk I'm not a science person. Lasers are our first technology jump at least. I think for balance reasons it keeps things interesting, though having plasma in-accurate and short ranged but very powerful makes damage against our troops frustratingly spiky (cue sathra and the plasma cannon). I agree on armor penetration, I'll add that in as P. btw I'm wrapping my little chart in a font tag with courier new and using a size of 3 if someone wants to pop up their own. ----- D W R A C P Tier1 1 4 3 1 4 1 Tier2 2 3 1 4 3 2 Tier3 4 2 2 2 2 3 Tier4 3 1 4 3 1 4 Totals not counting clip size and weight: t1 6 t2 9 t3 11 t4 14 Totals counting clip size and weight: t1 14 t2 15 t3 15 t4 16 Ballistics main advantage is clip size and weight. And cost. Laser is very accurate with a little less reach, but not packing as much of a punch. Remains a good choice for rookies on a budget late game, and is a compelling upgrade earlier due to relatively inexperienced soldiers. They'd also make a good backup ranged weapon for assault types. Plasma is an all around balanced weapon with less accuracy, a bit more reach, but much higher damage than laser. Great for plasma, but you'll want experienced soldiers using them for mid-long range. I made it more accurate than ballistics just because even with atmo it is still crazy advanced and you generally outnumber aliens in the beginning. This also makes damage slightly more predictable later? MAG is an all around great weapon for mid-long range fighting, and if you have the cash can make a rookie a deadly soldier. Experienced Assault types might still want to stick with plasma.

re: 1 this seems to only happen on misses if I hit the target the cursor stays over the target. I think it should always snap back to the target.

I usually use a combo of flashbangs and stun gas grenades.

That isn't very informative, how/why are they good, for those of us that haven't played that or haven't for a long time.

I still say drop stun grenades. Have people use batons or rely on luck before they get electroshock grenades.

Ah, I misread your original chart a bit. I agree that just being able to snipe aliens seems wrong, but it seems to me that railguns would have pretty damn good range. imho there shouldn't be any need to keep Tier 1 a viable option endgame. Overall the later tiers should be more desireable, with the lower tiers having a niche place / different feel otherwise the sense of progression is lost - that does need to balanced with things just feeling too linear however. Maybe: _____ D W R A C Tier1 1 4 3 2 4 Tier2 2 3 1 4 3 Tier3 4 2 2 1 2 Tier4 3 1 4 3 1 pre tier4 rifles would generally be ideal at tier 2 and carbines/pistols at tier 3. LMG would vary on how you use it. I suppose the precision rifle stays viable in tier 1 the longest, but a very accurate sniper would be deadly with plasma and most would stick with MAG if they could.

@thotkins QFT

Not worrying about specific ranges, just doing 1 (worst) > 4 (best): _____ D W R A C Tier1 1 4 1 2 4 Tier2 2 3 2 4 3 Tier3 4 2 3 1 1 Tier4 3 1 4 3 2 I think the whole range + accuracy formula needs to be redone ala stellarrats suggestions, but that said I'd see progression like this. I think you could easily swap a few things around (plasma/laser range, mag/plasma weight and clip, etc).

My named char is a sniper so I edited the laser rifle to have hypervelocity.

Bah, post erased. Shorter version. Static carry weight seems like it'd lead to you having to gradually carry less ammo/nades as the game progresses post jackal+ballistic, which would feel lame. imo you should be able to kit out a 'naut in the latest armor+small arms + a reasonable amount of ammo/nades in their belt. If you want a HW, mule rockets or have a ton of grenades, etc then you make sacrifices. It's not like late game you're going to want anyone wearing basic armor aside from a rocketeer and possibly LMG. Not sure your perk system makes enough of a difference during the full progression of a soldier to justify coding it in.