Elydo

Well, Terminator suits were designed for maintenance work within fusion reactors.

The game takes place in 1979, the MGL I referenced was designed in 1980. Not that much of a stretch. The Foxhound design we steal to develop the Foxtrot didn't come into service until 1981. Now yes, it was on the books before that but we're still dealing with similar time periods. I don't see much difference between a backpack full of hand grenades, rockets or grenade rounds. We already have two of those without much concern. Actually, do explosives sympathetically detonate or cook off in Xenonauts, anyone? I know they didn't in Apocalypse, and I 'think' they did in the OG.

Or in the game; stun gas, flashbangs, electroshock, alenium explosive, plasma. All hand varients, only at a range more than three feet away and two or three rounds a turn.

You can put almost anything you like into some models. And a 40mm grenade round is about the same size as a hand grenade is anyway. One inventory square in-game certainly. Plus a rotary model is semi-automatic. The Milkor MGL was designed in 1980. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riot_gun

See, I always assumed the thermal effects upon a target of a plasma bolt would be secondary, as the point of impact would either be penetrated with a profile similar to a kinetic round or have enough energy dumped into its matrix to vapourise. The heat damage would radiate out from the impact as the energy levels within the target dropped below the level required to free atoms from the material. Thus my thought that if you could deal with the initial impact of such a bolt, probably with ablatives, then aerogels would render the heat transference moot as well. Edit: Much like with a bullet the actual penetrator is the primary issue but even if you stop that you need to deal with the shock wave propagating and causing damage deeper into the target.

Not aerogels as actual armour material, but rather insulation. It wouldn't help to just put a layer behind an iron plate as heat would melt through the plate and destroy its integrity, then you ARE using frozen smoke as armour, heh.

Yeah, the alien alloys are used as heat shields on the ufos at incredibly thin widths. Personally I'm wondering about the potential uses of aerogels in fictional armour tech.

My point isn't so much that 'casters aren't good, they really are. But they're not good 'enough' at being murdermachines, and they're not good at anything else. The point of the ballistic LMG is crowd control, it is the best weapon for suppressing aliens and can do it in an area at range, regardless of how nicely it can also chew them up if it happens to actually hit. Higher rank aliens become much harder to suppress and the higher machine guns become ineffective at inflicting it, making them only useful for doing damage, and I don't think they're balanced properly for either role, obviously for suppression they currently don't, and for damage they certainly inflict it but have the lowest ammunition count of any weapon (leaving the rocket launcher aside as subject to entirely different considerations and comparing the guns with each other), no fire mode other than five round burst regardless of target and outside of very close range are inefficient due to almost never hitting with every shot and thus never inflicting their full damage profile. Plus they don't synergise with any other weapon. I'd love a grenade launcher in this game, but it would be so unbalanced. Can you imagine a squad armed with M32s on the field? Heh heh heh heh heh

Nice degree! Where are you based? I'm an aerospace engineer (graduate but can't find work so not sure if I can call myself an 'actual' engineer) Who is aiming to become a sci-fi author (lots of free time...) so realism is an issue for me as well, but the process of learning how to storycraft has tempered it a bit, heh. The requirement for a plasma 'bolt' would be maintaining a closed magnetic bottle away from the generators in the weapon, or so I would think. I have no idea how that could be accomplished. Having some way of making the plasma generate its own containment would work, but that's physics beyond my current ken, heh. Engineer, remember. I've always thought it might be more practical to just extend an electromagnetic field out from the gun and use that to channel plasma in a continuous beam onto the target. Finding a Minovsky particle would also do the trick, heh. Gundam beam sabers worked by putting plasma into an I-field lattice of Minovsky particles which would then rupture whenever the lattice came in contact with anything other than another lattice, venting the plasma onto the object. The beam guns weren't actually plasma weapons. I'm sure there are actual real world particles that actually form macrolattices like that, though without the useful properties of Minovsky particles, but I can't find the evidence online anymore. Grrr...

I have sudden visions of you naming your child Dicynaoacetylene Delta : P Though as a middle name that might actually be quite cool...

I like your touch, but yeah, you're dealing with much harder sci-fi than the game is. There are plans for a mod to make the xenopedia as realistic as possible as but won't do anything about the game fundamentals. Though there are also mods to replace pretty much anything. I expect I'll see you in quite a few of the threads I frequent, heh.

[video=youtube;kGo1-EVrsx8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGo1-EVrsx8

I've already said that that things such as changing the accuracy, ap to fire or damage aren't the best choice, but that doing so would change the weapon from what it is now to something with a different focus. As currently I don't think the 'caster has a focus, it was a way of solving THAT problem. It was a thought exercise. I'd argue that they're already the king of close range, but regardless of how good they are at dealing damage, that's still not what they're primarily supposed to do. And if we want to make them have that focus, then they're still not properly balanced for it. Give them a single shot ability, then you end up with the same situation as the original game where every soldier had a heavy plasma because there was no point taking anything else. Which seems to be your approach already. My preferred solution would be lowering to ap needed to reload it, possibly also with a small increase to the cell ammo. Give it 20 shots rather than 15 for example, four rounds of firing rather than 3. But I haven't done the maths to determine if that would be overpowered, that's the point of this thread. And regarding ufo assaults, terror missions and base defence, each weapon has it's place in the combat that occurs. There is a reason and benefit to deciding to take any of the available selection. There is supposed to be a primary weapon choice for each situation, otherwise why bother with the weapon? It's not just for flavourful variety. If you decide to tool up an entire squad with a single loadout you should suffer unnecessary difficulty because of your choice when you run into situations the weapon is not suited for, with the possible exception of rifles as that's their point. In that case you'd just not be as suited for any situation as you would be with the more specialised option. Currently plasmacasters are better than most other weapons in a general sense, until they run out of ammo and become useless for a turn, not specialised in any way to give them a distinct role on the battlefield and thus feel most like a go-to option that actually isn't quite good enough. If you want them to be the superweapon of the tier, then yeah, they need to be more broken because they're not good enough to replace every other weapon yet. If you want to tool out the entire squad with only LMGs and not suffer for overspecialisation then LMGs need to be even more overwhelming in every aspect, with the possible exception of long range accuracy, but they should manage that through sheer rounds downrange anyway. Otherwise they need to be given an identity so you want some in your squad to do what they do BEST, but other weapons alongside them to take advantage of their strengths and cover their lacks. Currently they are not fit for purpose because we don't even know what that purpose should be. Personally I still think it should be to cause suppression, with the high potential damage a secondary benefit. Maybe really up their weight. Make it impose an ap penalty that would make it even less possible to fire twice in a turn. The Predator armour is supposed to mitigate that anyway, so then they'd become the best choice for your walking tanks, with the downside provided by the armour rather than the gun. Or increase the penalty for moving and firing to make it much less of an assault option. Until Pred armour, again.

Dawn of War meme. TrashMan gets it, heh.

Slightly higher quality than the last one I guess. I wonder if this one went after guinea pigs too?

HERESY! In the grim darkness of lunchtime there is only WAR!!! I could also make a joke about your lunch coming in METAL BAWKSES!

Against single targets I'd agree with you. But for single targets every weapon has an appropriate approach. At the plasma tier you are about as deadly as the aliens, and it comes down to spotting and approach. The experiences I'm recalling when thinking about how I'd want the MGs to be different are typically room breaching in alien bases. That large central room where you can get 20+ aliens already in cover and really pissed you're keeping them from watching hijacked HBO. For that situation, shotguns will get you killed, pistols will get you killed unless the soldier also has a shield, and if he has a shield you want that other hand to be holding grenades, not a pistol. Sniper rifles can pick off targets off opportunity, those that break cover, rifles can take pot shots but will likely only prolong getting you killed. The two weapons you really want for that damn room, the only two that are actually worth having, are rocket launchers to clear cover and murder aliens, or for a less costly approach on the end mission screen, some method of controlling that battlefield so that all the other weapons become viable. That's where LMGs are supposed to come in. As it stands though, taking a couple of plasmacasters into that environment will slowly slowly eliminate cover and aliens, all the while the rest of the squad is trying to avoid getting murdered. The changes I listed were all based from that scenario: More damage would destroy the plethora of cover and the much decreased instance of shots hitting an enemy would count for more, Lower firing cost would allow for more shots per turn, to thin out the number of enemies or suppress a wider area, Higher ammo count, lower reload cost etc same as above, Higher accuracy, makes all the cover worth less. Though I did say that's all just altering the dynamics of weapon to try and give it a different identity. God forbid you end up like I did once with ten Androns charging me out of one of two exits I had covered. Three shots meant the 'caster on that flank could take down two enemies before he had to reload, given the shot taken on the turn before they charged. Even had he survived that turn (two shots a turn) he would have been screwed the next one. Admittedly suppression doesn't matter in that case but I get similar difficulties with Sebelians never getting suppressed and obliterating me from range with those damn heavy plasmas. Currently there is no way to control the battlefield at higher tiers, and if we're just going to accept that loss of a tactical option and no longer look for suppression then the plasmacaster is not good enough at being its own weapon. Edit: It comes to mind that on my first Terror mission I ended up in a similar situation; around ten enemies all grouped together and behind cover. Still had ballistics at that point aside from precision lasers, and I'd neglected to take a lawnchair but the MG Hunter did a brilliant job of suppressing the whole group until it ran out of ammo and became useless. At which point I got slaughtered. But it's still an example of temporarily successful crowd control.

@Josep: I was talking about the primary aspect of the weapon, not it's complete functionality. I get most of my kills from my machine gunners as well, heh, but that's almost an unintended side effect. LMGs are not supposed to be 'better' rifles, if they're a better performance choice than rifles then some rebalancing needs to be done. Personally I think at least the ballistic machine gun is fine, I usually skip the scatter laser so I can't really say much about it but plasmacasters for certain aren't quite spot on yet. They 'either' have: too few shots per cell, too high reloading cost, too high firing cost, too low accuracy (for hitting behind cover) or too low damage (for the purposes of chewing cover). And regardless lack the ability to suppress much beyond the carriers libido (who needs sex when you have GUN). The latter three I don't consider to be where the problem lies or in need of alteration, rather changing them in some fashion would give the 'caster a different role on the battlefield. I may be misguided, but I generally consider each weapon to have a tactical function: Pistols are versatile (one handed and low ap firing), Shotguns/Carbines are close range and responsive (bonus to reaction shots), Rifles are multi-role generalists, Precision rifles are target elimination (reach out and touch someone), LMGs are battlefield control, and RAWKET LAWNCHAIRS are battlefield... rearrangement. Obviously there's a lot of overlap and the fundamental purpose of each and every weapon is to kill the aliens, but how they go about facilitating that purpose should be different or else why have the different weapon? Plasmacasters indeed retain the increased ability to kill a target, especially at close range, due to the sheer number of shots they put out. But they can no longer do much else. They've become generalist weapons of a slightly different sort to rifles, effectively a heavy rifle that lacks single shot capability (and man have I wished they had that sometimes).

But for the later machine guns, all you're doing is slapping in a clip.

One of the concerns with the LMG class is what its primary function is. Early on, the LMG itself is not really a kill weapon, it's a suppression weapon. You have a high capacity ammunition box because you're going to be loosing a lot of shots downrange to suppress the aliens while other weapons move into optimal position and make the kills. This takes a number of turns, but the high ammo count allows for sustained fire. But later version seem to become kill weapons, as the aliens become increasingly harder to suppress and the ammo count goes right down. A plasmacaster can be fired three times before it needs reloaded, which then takes the same amount of ap as firing. This means, unless you have soldiers with enough ap to fire twice in a turn (which takes a long time to achieve) You can fire for effect over three turns, then you have to spend one reloading. I have rarely seen a higher tier (soldier up, certainly warrior) alien suppressed from one burst of a plasmacaster. Occasionally sustained fire over subsequent turns can manage it, but then the lost turn undoes most of the lingering effect. They are not a good suppression weapon. But they aren't quite right for a kill weapon either, the accuracy is too low to hit aliens behind cover and the damage is too low to shred the cover they're behind. One or other would work. But I'd offer that later models along the LMG line have an identity problem. Suppression weapons should be good at suppressing and maintaining that suppression. Best modus opperandi; getting into position and sustaining fire to facilitate maneuver of other combat elements. Kill weapons should be good at killing; putting rounds on target and doing damage when they do. A middle ground between those two functions is somewhat useless, as it doesn't accomplish either. Having all the weapons opperate from the same cell is a difficult hurdle, but at the least dramatically lowering the reload ap cost would help. Reloading an LMG is slightly more involved than a quick mag change, so it makes sense to have a high ap cost there, but it's balanced by not having to reload all that often. If something like the plasmacaster was developed to use a quick-change cell system like the other weapons of its tier, it wouldn't need a representative ap cost reflecting an involved reloading requirement.

They should have parked the APC further from the LZ and at an oblique angle from the dropships incoming vector.

Right, fuck it. I'm going to get some sleep. I shall return to this tomorrow. Though regarding a flamethrower on Mars, one third gravity is still gravity. A pressurised fluid jet would work just as well there as on Earth (though with a different arc) and your choice of chemicals already deals with the lack of oxygen. The resulting fire wouldn't burn long though, think lighter fluid or alcohol flames going out as soon as the fuel burns off, and I'd imagine that the thinner atmosphere would diminish any convection effects. I wonder what the evaporative concerns would be... Oh, and before anyone states the obvious, yes, a flamethrower would be a piss-poor weapons for exoatmospheric combat. In fact, barring aggressive space-moss or the like, I can't think of a appropriate situation one would fit. The closest scenarios I can postulate wherein other weapons wouldn't work are still all solved rather handily by sustained solar exposure. Potentially with focusing aids.

Oh that was my first thought. But trying to weaponise a rocket engine for personal combat would be highly impractical. Even given the Kzinti Lesson. So, moving on to the unique properties combusting materials have in microgravity and thus how a traditional flamethrower would behave, of both realistic and stylised types, was the next step. And from there, an actual functional method of propelling incendiary materials for combat purposes in both microgravity and vacuum.

Huh. Wait... Oh dammit, I'm going to spending hours trying to figure out exactly how a flamethrower would work in space. THEN I'm going to be trying to design a better one. I already had plans!

Can I just say, I love it when Deltas head breaks. : ) I like the idea of allowing vehicles to gain back shots for their weapon, but that could be abused if not balanced carefully. Especially currently, where you can get all the possible stat improvements for your soldiers then don't need to worry about kill allocation. The idea of less... impactful researches is worth thinking about further in general I'd say, though I'd be very leery of assuming there was space in the game design for even moderate additions at this point. The team want to be feature complete for v20 remember. Still, no reason we shouldn't brainstorm and see what else we can come up with. Some topics to decrease the cost of manufacturing, or facility construction? Or to decrease the time taken for facility construction? Enhanced smoke grenades or flashbangs? (FBs that WORK for example! Or smoke that lasts longer)