DNK

What he said ^. Having 12 "colonels" or "commanders" or "xenomasters" is ridiculous when you only have 18 soldiers. The morale boost is great, but it should come with costs and have limits. Limits like your entire squad can't be the highest rank. Currently, the sole purpose of the rank system is the morale boost. That's fine - being next to an experienced soldier should carry a morale benefit. Hell, being next to an inexperienced soldier should carry a penalty. I think it's wise to divide this system into two tiers: non-officers and officers. Non-officers (PVT-PFC-CPL-LCP) are all unlimited in number and just simulate a soldier's gaining of experience and the boost this gives to his comrades beside him. It works as the system does currently. Above that are the "officer" ranks (SGT, LT, CPT, MAJ, xenomaster, whatever). These give much higher boosts to simulate not only higher experience but also their being in leadership roles and having built up additional confidence in their men through those roles in-combat and out-of-combat. These are also limited in number as a ratio of total soldiers in all bases (for the fun of personnel management, though it can be 'streamlined' so it's just on a per-base basis). This gives a pyramidal structure to the top half of the hierarchy, with a fluid base of "grunts". Such ideas are too elegant to be implemented perhaps, but it is the most realistic (in terms of simulated benefits) and satisfies both sides (ratio ranks and current system).

I took another crack at things, this time doing something quite important - basic comparative analysis of the various weapons. Note that I've rebalanced the weapons in my above table, and that the raw values are in spoilers. H/T*D(amage) This is what "balanced" looks like to me. Basically, no weapon has more than a 20% increase in damage/turn over a basic rifle, and those that have an advantage in this respect also have higher weight, reload times, and recoil to compensate. Some are disadvantaged, but have greater range, like the DMR. I dropped the rifle's range to 12, though this still needs to be tested. The idea is to make it really just a medium-range weapon, ineffective past a typical view range for a soldier, while the DMR is a bit less useful in that range but still useful beyond it for a good 60% farther range. The 7.62mm sniper is just a further extension. That said, when the full-aim TU shot is used, both are more effective than rifles at any range, but these DO take up almost all the TUs by design (86 for the sniper, so good luck with that). The two MG variants are meant to be more suppression-fire than accurate fire, though the 7.62mm MG is a good 20% deadlier than a rifle at the same range, but this is compensated by much higher weight and recoil and reload times - unusable by a soldier that isn't a few missions experienced (and I would mod it so stats progressed much slower, meaning really not everyone could use one - the sniper could be usable by highly experienced troops, but by the time they acquired such experience, laser weapons would be available for them, for which the 20% buff of the sniper would be roughly the same as a typical laser rifle's buff - see how that works?). This is my ideal.

My thoughts, not tweaked fully, but a ballpark of what I would like (including redone stats, like strength not getting ridiculous so fasto the recoil means something): Alternatively:

Yeah, suppression sounds good in theory, but it gives any decent player a huge OP advantage I think. It needs to be reworked. I would suggest: incremental suppression (just reduce TUs for every suppression event by a bit) Immediate reaction fire is not affected by suppression from whatever triggered the suppression (you can fully react to a flashbang as its being thrown, even if it is displayed as occurring after the nade pops) its reduced a bit overall

And as StellarRat said, that was a huge problem. Additionally, CiV is still way more complex than Xenonauts by a large margin, especially with the newest expansion. They've been gradually reintroducing complexity into the game after the original launch. Says something.It appears I'm defending a position no one's attacking anyway, so reading failure on my part. I beg to differ that the AI is as good as XCOM's, whatever variant (I've played most variants I think). Yes, the XCOM AI did some equally stupid things, like standing in the open, but they at least moved when under fire, used grenades, used melee effectively, used rockets, used hover, and generally posed a much larger challenge (again, I think lowered accuracy was important as well as a lack of suppression since you'd actually have to face return fire regularly, which you don't in Xeno). I've never really seen the Xeno AI do anything other than move a few tiles from their start position, then move back, crouch, uncrouch, crouch again, and occasionally enter a building. Maybe this has changed a lot since V18 stable.

Just so long as "keeping the AI dumb" isn't included in "balancing for less difficulty", I'm fine. I have no issues with giving the AI, well, actual AI, while at the same time reducing accuracy/strength (or SLIDERS for the latter). But, you can't call yourself a serious TBS game when you (A) don't have PvP, and (B) have dumb-as-hell AI that walk in circles under fire or literally sit in the open and wait to be killed in every single encounter. Much higher TUs for each shot type Not nearly as higher accuracy compared to TU increases All-around accuracy nerf Recoil Strength limits much lower and progression slower The problem is you're trying to balance a totally imbalanced system, where accuracy dominates instead of mobility. Of course, having terrible AI (the first imbalance versus the player) makes this a necessity since the aliens never DO anything. But if they were capable of (A) taking cover, (B) flanking, (D) using smoke, or (D) regrouping to pose more of a numbers challenge, well then you could do something other than make it an accuracy game in the open. If you make it hard to NOT kill something in 1 turn due to high accuracy at most ranges (and I believe this was the case in XCOM, I can remember needing multiple turns regularly to actually kill targets), you make it so that positioning and tactics become more important. Getting in close so short ranges make accuracy less important and initiative and skill moreso, that's the point of making it interesting and challenging. At least in urban settings, accuracy should be really, really less important than (A) killing power and (B) TU management, and this requires making it just less accurate. You can't help that in wide-open farm maps snipers will dominate, but if you limit strength and make TU management (and recoil for these big sniper rifles) a real issue for players, in conjunction with reduced accuracy, you make it a moving tactics game instead of a shooting fish in a barrel sniping simulator. Of course, just reducing their killing power would help a bit too. Regarding recoil, it's pointless currently (and I think in the configs just ignored as 0), and of course, because strength is totally imbalanced (along with most other stat progressions). You can't have soldiers that end up twice as strong as recruits AND have to constantly use recruits throughout the game AND have recoil progress with typical strength values to be a meaningful part of gameplay (or weight management either). And hence just 1 less way to balance snipers or MGs. You really need to reconsider this "progress into triple digits" approach to stats. An extra 25-30%, okay, but 75-125% extra? How can you hope to balance a game with that where you still need to be able to use fresh troops throughout? How can you create these tradeoffs or limitations for weapons when everyone can quickly level up past them? You're stuck, yes, and this is a big reason why (the other being weak AI that makes focusing on tactics unbalancing in favor of the player by a LOT). Yeah, like, having a game where you lose tons of troops and planes throughout and can easily lose a long campaign at any time and face an ever-increasingly impossible force would never, ever, ever become popular, famous, or sell well. That's why we're remaking CoD here Losing 14 geared out and highly progressed soldiers + landing craft within the first 3 turns was a NORMAL occurrence in XCOM (sure, save scum happened a lot there, if only to hit "abort" ASAP). That's the game the devs are supposedly trying to remake. That's the game that so many fans love and want to see remade. Honestly, this talk of demographics and "what people want" ignores the fact that a much better game exists (for what you're describing and the people you're talking about), with much better graphics and "streamlining" that is a remake of XCOM with XCOM in the title because the rights were bought by a much larger studio with much higher marketing spending. Why would the devs want to pander to a crowd that already has its game? And there's another being released that's an FPS too. So, going down that road opens you up to "why should I pay $25 for a 'weak' 2D version of a AAA 3D game I already have?"... So, your answer? I have none. You want to know why so much of the forum seems like hardcore players? Because those are the bloody people that want this game to succeed, because casual players have got their game already. This is the crowd that's funding a small studio to do something they've wanted for decades: a proper XCOM remake, with all its complexity and difficulty. And it managed to be a success, even though new players "wouldn't know everything going on under the hood." That you can't sell games with that is ludicrous. The Civilization series is more proof than you'll ever need of that - strategy games are made for people who want lots going on under the hood. If they didn't, that's what all the FPS and RTS games are for! Not having to think much and clicking fast.

My suggestions: Make shot TUs much less, with equally less accuracy. Basically, more shots/turn but the same hits/turn probability. This way even short-TU soldiers can be somewhat effective. This also increases the need for ammo/reloads (and you can adjust reload TU usage to be a bit higher). Make all increases to weight carried reduce TUs, with strength simply reducing the impact each kg has on this reduction. Reduce weight progression gains (along with other stat gains imo) to something more reasonable than +100% total after 20-30 missions, so that it just gives experienced soldiers less TU reduction from weight and better handling of recoil. IF I can mod this, I'll do it for sure. Currently, however, you can only fully do #1 through mods. I hope we get better modding tools down the line if more things aren't going to be open directly via the .xml files.

Dude, it was a flight simulator. I'm not suggesting we get all the same options as a flight simulator ? It's just a good example of a game with checkboxes and sliders that gives the player a lot of choice in how their game plays out.

It'd be nice if I didn't need 12 hangars in a base to defend the airspace fully during a wave, yet the wave mechanic wasn't erased. That's all.

Balancing this basically requires a total redo of the combat system's tradeoffs, including how they handle weight. Weight should be a major issue (included with recoil), but currently strength stats get so overblown so easily that you never really worry about it after September 1st. If you made weight go up far slower (with a much lower cap) AND made it so that you start losing TUs to weight at kg #1 instead of kg "half of strength", both added recoil/weight/TU requirements to sniper rifles would make them far less OP and less able to be mass equipped.

"More intelligence" implies they have intelligence to begin with. They don't. There is no getting around it: the AI is totally incomplete currently. It is placeholder AI. XCOM had much better AI than this. I expect the remake to at least have a similar level of complexity and challenge to its AI, if not a good improvement over it.What you want is a shooting gallery, where you find an alien, and then take pot shots at it for a couple turns until it dies. There is no challenge in that, it's stupid gameplay, and bores me to death. There's no way I could recommend this game to anyone if this stays the same, and frankly I would consider my $20 totally wasted if it did. The original game's battles were unforgiving. Entire squads got wiped out, and this is one of the things many, many commenters over the years have praised it for.You landed your ship and there was a good possibility half your men died, hell there was a good possibility you failed the mission, maybe one wounded guy got out alive. This happened early and often in that game. It made the game a classic. Had XCOM been "find aliens, shoot fish in barrel, repeat", no one would've given it a second thought and it never would've spawned multiple remakes over decades.

There already is a cap. It's "invisible". Currently, there's little point in having it be so high since I can totally fill in the inventories of my CLN and CMD troops and have like 15kg to spare. Really, after 10-15 missions soldiers are basically "maxed out" anyway, in terms of how much they need to be able to carry realistically. So, you had 1 unlucky die roll and now you want that to make a case for something? Those are called "odds", and weird things happen with "odds", like 1 in a 1000 sorts of good/bad luck. It will happen even if you increase accuracy.

You don't need to balance the game twice. You just balance it once and then allow players to unbalance it to taste (either way). Generally, sliders in games adjust a variety of values to make them harder. So, for air combat, reducing HP for friendly jets, reducing missile distance, speed, whatever, finding a few variables you can +/- 10% per slider tick. Same for ground combat: you don't need a whole new AI program, just make them a bit tougher with each progression, a bit more accurate, their weapons get a slight buff, whatever. It's actually really simple. You set up a "perfectly" balanced game for "normal" and default checkboxes, and give the player the ability to move sliders around however they want if that's not easy/hard enough for them.

Here's shots from a game with good options settings and multiple sliders: For the second, you could easily switch the sliders to "invasion progression rate", "air combat difficulty", "economic difficulty", "ground combat difficulty".

Put me down for someone who's confused by devs saying: 1. Air combat is too hard and important 2. Air combat needs to be harder and more involved We get magic interceptors to nerf air combat, then we get told we need more interceptors to manage a more buffed air combat...

The second two were more suggestions to devs

Problem was the files were extracted into assets\tiles, which created a folder assets\tiles\tiles, so they reverted or whatever. Cut/paste fixed it.

I looked through all your files. I didn't see anything that limited the maximum points a soldier could ever increase in, just per-mission maximums. What file would it be in?

@Chris and Max_Caine Three Qs:Can this be negative Can the distance for when it kicks in moddable? Can we have this value be moddable for every weapon in weapons_gc.xml? (so, a short-range weapon can be very accurate at these short ranges, while a large, sniper weapon would be clumsy at shorter ranges)

This is what difficulty settings are for. You give the player the default for each difficulty level, but allow players the freedom to choose what they want for their experience if those defaults aren't appealing.A casual player on "normal difficulty" gets recoverable interceptors and normal plane prices. A player who wants that extra challenge gets something similar to V18: destroyed aircraft and "expensive planes". Two check boxes, ok, everyone's happy. Those who aren't can mod a few values in the configs to alter the balance in their favor. There's also a strong case to be made for making 2 difficulty settings: one for ground combat and one for air/strategy. Other classic strategy games have done this and it has worked very well. Does it take extra time? Not that much, I would think. You first balance the game properly, find out what you want each difficulty level to change for both aspects, then make those different aspects independent of each other and make separate "sliders" for each. Add checkboxes for special options, like indestructible interceptors, and that's it. Choices, that's the most important thing for pleasing everyone. Without them, you end up leaving a lot of people grumpy.

Why would they do that? Really, can't we find better mechanics to make things more difficult than just adding unrealistic, gamey nonsense to a supposedly serious strategy game? Both of these are great ideas. Adding an AI turn-choice path that's set purely for 'defense/reactions' (like ambush/cover an area), AND making reactions a bit more reliable would help a lot, not just in UFO breaching, but in breaching any building or rounding any corner. I would like stronger reactions, a la this:[chance reaction fire] = [% TUs remaining] x [gun reaction modifier] x [soldier reactions / 65] x [(weapon range/2) / (range + 1)] x [30% if turned 1 angle, 15% if turned 2 angles from target] Automatically causing burst fire if enough TUs, but if not then just a series of lowest-TU snap shots until TUs are empty.

Wait, we can control access points to the base? I thought the aliens just spawned randomly in every room but the control room...

I would say wait, probably. It's not close to release yet, and the game is lacking a lot in balance, tilesets (maps, map flavors and props), and reliability (bugs and such are constantly present). Additionally, they're in the process of "streamlining" things, so who knows if it will be to your taste upon release anyway? Certainly, I've been less than happy with some revelations since purchase (interceptors being one, but a lack of multiple level terrain being another huge one). It seems more a late alpha than a beta, especially since you can't actually finish the game yet, and alpha play is not for everyone. Basically, if you want to be an active participant in the development discussions, "beta test" and report, or just support the team with needed cash, buy now; if not, it's just an extra $5 to wait for a final release (or free to just wait for a decent beta release in a couple months or so). I doubt it will take a year to finish it at this stage, but I'm not sure at all. I would guess we get a near-final release around 4-6 months out, but that's coming right out my out hole.

Ultimately, just keeping the stats lower would be super. That would be my #1 priority. I mean, really, how much better are experienced cream of the crop soldiers going to get fighting a short campaign? Are the Xenonauts hiring fresh recruits that double their abilities in a few months?

You reduced the max level or just the max per mission?