lemm
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Posts posted by lemm
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Each smoke tile they step into makes them perform an "injured" animation
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- Light Scouts have, after a bloody battle, been reduced down to slightly slower than Condors
Maybe light scouts don't ALWAYS have to go slower than condors? At least on the world map, they could alternate between slow and fast.
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I was wondering if it would be too late at this point to include a final air combat mission? Basically, this would involve piloting your dropship so that it makes contact with the dreadnought. If you do this, then the final ground mission starts. If not, then the game is lost.
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I think that the aliens should have infinite ammo. Or at the very least, recharging ammo.
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I don't think that there are any sprites that have a shield in one hand and a free secondary hand, if you're looking for something to make.
There are no sprites for the predator armor holding a rocket launcher, either.
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Plasma pistols are actually effective now. I don't see why they needed to lose effectiveness at range in the first place. They were totally ineffective.
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I've played up until the end of November. The air craft rebalancing is alright so far (up to the end of November). The new base construction time is okay.
Nevertheless, it's nearly impossible to make any money, and I don't see how it's possible to set up more than one base, which is a problem because I have found that getting an additional base up by November is a must. Is it even possible to please the sponsoring nations anymore? The airstrike is really no longer a valid option because each UFO must now be recovered if the player wants to have an adequate cash flow.
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Combat shields are extremely useful now.
If you're trying to take out biological units, use stun grenades and flash bangs. If they're androns, just hurl a chunk of C4 over the wall.
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How about balancing the condors by timing their evasive roll timeout so that it becomes increasingly difficult to dodge later ships' attacks? That way Corsairs would be the only cheap, lategame option for for sustainable air defense, while Condors would require either serious skill or save-scrubbing to use effectively later on in the game.
This could be done by increasing alien interceptor missile speed by 50% (to 18000) and by lowering the lock time to 1 second. The alien missiles will then catch condors "mid roll".
The balancing way I would like to see most is to not let the Condor equip the more advanced weaponry.
I agree that this would be the easiest way to fix the problem, and it even fits in with the lore. The early game air balance in 19V5 was great. Just assign a tech level to each air weapon and a weapons tech level max to each airship.
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I think the better solution is to restrict what late game air to air weapons the Condor can carry and/or make the late game UFOs harder for Condors to shoot down by increasing their speed or toughness, etc... I think the early to mid-game ATA balance (Foxtrots/Condors with laser cannons and Alenium missiles) is really good right now. Some of the changes you are considering are going to affect the balance even in the early game. I'd hate to think that another round of balancing will be needed for early ATA because changes were made for the late game.
That's what would make sense to me.
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Aliens that are programmed to stay on a certain level of a ship would be a good idea, although I don't know that they need to be low rank necessarily.
Then again, maybe they can stay empty and the shooting through the floor bug can be upgraded to "feature" status. It's a challenge to run that gauntlet every time.
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Personally I'm hoping for some cosmetic change to the edges of the FoW. They feel a bit too clean atm.
I think that giving players an extra tile of "greyed out" vision would alleviate that problem with minimal coding or artwork required. But a fuzzy border would be cool, too, if it isn't too much work.
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Kinda like this. Clicking on a red box will add or remove a door between the base structures. The game will not allow you to remove the last door that connects the structure to the command center.
Of course, it's probably too late to add something like this in, but the way that base map files are constructed (doors and passages are overlaid upon base structures) means that this mechanism might not be too hard to program. Or so I would guess.
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Some of the industrial maps are messed up.
It wouldn't need to be ALL of the community maps, either. I was just thinking about tripling the existing map pool, because 3 maps per tileset-ship combo isn't very much after you play the game a couple times, especially if you do ALL the missions.
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Is the alien explosive plasma launcher supposed to be threatening? I played on Veteran and most of the time it hardly made a dent in wolf Armour. It seems to be good at taking out Jackal armour, and that's about it.
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Extra Content Mod for Xenonauts
The day of release is soon approaching, I was wondering if there would be interest in an "extra content" Xenonauts mod. A lot of people have made some lovely artwork for this game, but there's no guarantee that they will all work together.
This would involve amalgamating some of the more popular mods that don't affect the game's balance, but provide additional content, into one giant package that is to be released concurrent to the final version of the game. The entire community map pack would be included, as well.
Would anyone be interested in this? If so, make suggestions on what to include.
Stuff To include
JSleezy's Real Fighter Portraits
Max Caine's Alien Mission Analysis
Max Caine's Alien Class Analysis
Waladil's Timelines Geoscape Mod
thothkins Additional Events Mod
aturgl007's Xenonaut's Icon for Windows Desktop
Pinetree's Extended Soldier's Background
- Real Weaponry Mods; (AR-10, what else?)
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Well, instead of corridors, you could let the players decide where to place the doors. The rule would be that each existing structure needs to be connected to the command post by a chain of doors. This would let players fill up the entire 6x6 grid while allowing for an alien-resistant design.
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What about this:
Keep command centers as they are, because cheap throwaway radar posts are nice, and you're giving us 8 bases anyway which implies that it should be possible to build that many before the game is over.
Defense batteries are made 2x2 instead of 1x1 (still using the 1x1 square artwork and level layouts, just add some black space for padding), they have a high cost + VERY high maintenance, and they ALWAYS hit, dealing a variable amount of damage (70% to 130%). You make option to upgrade your base defenses, because better defenses cost more in maintenance.
Instead of damaging the ship, though, the damage is spread across the attacking aliens. The class of alien ship will reduce the damage by a certain percentage, so you will need better defenses to protect from the more imposing landing craft.
Essentially, instead of rolling the dice, buying a defense battery is now buying an insurance policy. The dice rolling is done at the geoscape level, for if you decide to leave an installation unguarded, because defense batteries are now so expensive (and large) that you cannot afford to build half a dozen of them at each base and live alien-free.
Example Calculation
We want each defense battery to damage an alien by an average of 25% after all is said and done (expected damage = ED = 25%). You would expect the player to have 2 defense batteries at his main base.
Assume aliens all have 100% health in their ship, and the ship protects them by a constant percentage from each battery hit (ship shielding = SS = x%). Note that each calculation is applied PER alien, and that each battery ALWAYS hits and the damage is applied as a percentage of the aliens MAXIMUM health.
So each battery level is paired with an equivalent alien ship type, and then ED/(100-SS) = how much damage each battery should deal as a percentage of the alien's max health.
Corvettes reduce battery damage by 50% (i.e., to 50% of nominal battery damage output). They match rocket tech, so rocket defenses must have a damage value to 50% of that of an alien. (25% /50% = 50%).
Landingships reduce damage by 60% (i.e., to 40% of nominal battery damage output). They match laser tech, so laser defenses have a damage value to 62.5% of that of an alien. (25%/40% = 62.5%)
Cruisers by 70%, Carriers by 80% (average 75%, match plasma tech), 25%/(100%-25%) => 100%
and Battleships by 90%, match MAG tech (25%/100%-90%) = 250%
That leaves us with the table...
Ship Type_______Tech Match_____Shielding Score (SS) in % of alien max health
Corvette________Rockets________50
Landingship_____Laser__________60
Cruiser_________Plasma_________70
Carrier_________Plasma_________80
Battleship______MAG____________90
Base Defense____________Raw Damage (RD) in % of alien max health
Rockets_________________50
Laser___________________62.5
Plasma__________________100
Mag_____________________250
Which we can use to calculate expected damages for unpaired technologies using the formula RD * (100-SS)
First the extremes:
Rocket Defense vs Battleship
50% * (100-90)% = 5%... so each alien is damaged (tickled, rather) on average by 5% per rocket battery.
Mag Defense vs Corvette
250% * (100-50)% = 125% ... so each alien is torn to shreds
And all the other combos
Ship Type.............Defense............ED (% of alien max health)
CV....................R..................25
CV....................L..................31.25
CV....................P..................50
CV....................M..................125
LS....................R..................20
LS....................L..................25
LS....................P..................40
LS....................M..................100
CR....................R..................15
CR....................L..................43.75
CR....................P..................30
CR....................M..................75
CA....................R..................10
CA....................L..................12.5
CA....................P..................20
CA....................M..................50
BS....................R..................5
BS....................L..................6.25
BS....................P..................10
BS....................M..................25
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Thanks for reading my feedback, devs. The game has come a long way since I started testing it last October.
If you were someone less experienced would you feel the same way about the progression?Although I have almost 200 hours on Steam alone, there are really only a few "tricks" that you need to learn in order to quickly improve your performance, and it doesn't take very long to discover them (e.g., get two bases immediately, research many things at once, master air combat, use lots of C4 on terror missions and base raids). So, if I had about 10 hours play time, I'd probably be at 75% proficiency.
That said, I do believe same of the problems with the end are probably related to the fact that until the final beta it's pretty unlikely that many of us will be able to give useful feed about the end game.Yeah, I've stated that before in one of my posts, and it's probably why the beginning is so much more balanced than the end. Devs and beta-testers should post their midgame savefiles so that testers don't need to start from square one each time (although now that we have airstrikes, it's not such a big problem).
Here's a little more feedback on the late game, and some suggestions as to how it could be beefed up a bit.
Late-Game Air Combat
Carriers and Battleships aren't fearsome enough, particularly if they are unescorted. It's just like fighting a larger landingship or corvette.
It says in the Xenopedia that Carriers are supposed to launch a pair of interceptors? If it's not possible to "launch" interceptors in combat, which would be fun to see, then they should at least have an interceptor or two to defend them.
As for the battleship, I think that you could make it's main gun more menacing. Inspired by the strike cruiser, whose main gun can be tricky to deal with, could the Battleship have a "spread cannon," which covers about a 60 degree Arc with a dozen lethal projectiles? The idea is that you will die if you are caught in its firing arc. Or maybe the Battleship could shoot a missile every 5 seconds (from well beyond Xenonaut craft torpedo range) to discourage the use of Foxtrots, and thereby encourage the construction of Marauders.
Late-Game Geoscape Balance
1. Urgency The first problem is that I could prolong the game indefinitely once I get a fleet of Furies rolling (unless I have yet to encounter some sort of fail-safe that ends the game after so many months). Given eight bases, a player could probably deal with waves of 200 battleships if it actually went that far. By May or so, there should be some sort of new alien danger that presents the threat of the immediate loss of a funding bloc. (I know that there are alien bases, but those aren't too hard to disable if you know what to shoot, and they take a while to diminish your score). The original XCOM had this problem too, but it wasn't very well balanced imo.
2. Length It would be nice if MAG weapons and Hovertanks were useful for more than just the final mission. I'd like to see the extension of the post-battleship phase by a few more missions.
Right now, it goes Praetor capture (which is essentially recovering a battleship) -> Final Mission.
Maybe it could go Praetor capture -> Praetor reveals three special, large bases on geoscape (sebellian, andron, caesan, each represented by a unique icon to differentiate them from ordinary bases) which must all be secured -> Final Mission.
Maybe the Fury should be required to escort the dropship to the final mission?
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Yeah, guns should hit more but do less damage, in general.
EDIT: Actually, they should just hit more often.
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I think a sci fi channel miniseries would be more suitable for XCOM.
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I played through the game on Veteran, with minimal savescumming (reloading primarily as a result of getting shot through the floor). My opinion is that Xenonauts is, generally, well balanced and enjoyable through the early and middle stages, but, like XCOM, once it nears the end, it starts to fizzle instead of building to a thrilling conclusion. This trend was topped off (or bottomed out?) by the final mission, which was a total letdown. I ended up saving Earth on July 27th with $2 million, 2 large bases, 1 extra strike base with only condors, and a bunch of radar posts everywhere.
Here is my feedback on some aspects of the game.
Bankroll and Funding Relations
I was never really in danger of losing a funding bloc. I had less than $1 million in funds up until April or so, when I started downing carriers and battleships left and right. I did opt for airstrikes much of the time, however, so I probably could have made more money. After April, my bankroll shot up to $3 million, and I probably could have kept playing forever at that point. Terror sites were often not completable, but it wasn't the end of the world.
Ground Combat Weapons and armor technology progression
Ballistic, Laser, and Plasma showed up at just the right time. Each technology was in use for 2-3 months, which seems like the right length of time. Mag was superfluous, as I had captured all technologies by then, although it was good to have it for the final mission. Nevertheless, it seems like MAGtech would be used for far less than 25% of the missions. Armor availability coincided with corresponding alien weaponry technology upgrades.
Air Combat progression
New craft were well coordinated with the alien spacecraft progression, although I saw no need for the Fury, and I didn't build a single Foxtrot, either. The Shrike shows up at just the right time, and it was a good idea to ditch the Valkyrie and the other fighter craft, whatever it was called.
I think you're giving players too much for free. As it is, you don't NEED to build the new fighter craft, for several reasons:
1) Condors can take the latest weaponry.
2) Guns do HUGE amounts of damage to capital ships.
3) The latest weaponry is given away for free.
If you put all of this together, it means that you really only need to buy Condors (lots of them), and you can skip everything else until interceptors start showing up in pairs.
This could be fixed by limiting the weapon technology allowed for certain craft (i.e., Condors get up to alenium/laser, Foxtrots and Corsairs get plasma tech, and the Marauder gets everything), and/or by reducing the amount by which cannon fire damages large ships. Or maybe by making Condors unrecoverable
.Vehicle progression
I only built one Scimitar, which was destroyed, but it was made available at the right time. Like MAG weaponry, the Hovertank was available so late that it wasn't useful for me.
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StellarRat is right.... you can just put 6 defense batteries in your base and never have to worry about those pesky aliens.
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The aliens are a little bit more tricky to deal with in v20, simply because all-out aggression results in them congregating in one spot, so you have to take them on all at once. In v19, they tended to scatter around the map as a result of their timid nature, so you could pick them off one at a time. Of course, they always made certain to find cover in v19, which made them harder to hit.
Because the aliens only need to repel the attackers from boarding their downed ships, not slaughter them outright, I think that the aliens ought to try to pick an area between their craft and the Xenonaut dropship where they could set up a defensive perimeter. Unless the player tries to breach the perimeter, the aliens shouldn't unnecessarily expose themselves. Of course, they could still make small pushes or try to flank.
If the firefight has yet to start, the aliens could also try to position themselves behind walls so that the humans are blasted as they come around the corners. In other words, the aliens should try to lure the player in rather than seek conflict.
Ground Combat Balance Discussion V20 Experimental 7
in Xenonauts General Discussion
Posted
The human player has the advantage of having a brain, so I think it's fair that aliens should have limited ammunition. An alien rarely takes more than 10 shots at my squad before it's dead, so I don't see how this would drastically change things.
Anyway, the AI seems to be a lot better. Plasma pistols are far more accurate and the alien yeomen are finally a threat, which is nice to see. The biological aliens aren't stupidly charging out into the open as much anymore. The aliens tend to fight as a unit now, instead of just staying at their spawn locations and turtling like they used to, way back in the early days.
I think that one "problem" with the alien AI, so far, is that the aliens don't seem to realize when they are in danger. While they are good at finding cover, they often put themselves in bad spots and then just sit there while they take fire, instead of moving back.
They still need to learn how to flank better, I think. I've never had an alien sneak up behind me.