kabill

I don't want to start the discussion we've had before, because it almost certainly won't go anywhere. However, this claim about accuracy always having been low in X-Com games just isn't true. Accuracy was considerably higher in UFO:EU than it is is Xenonauts, at least relative to the number of shots you were taking. If you don't believe me, go have a look at the weapon stats on Ufopedia: the Snap Shot for a Rifle, for example, cost 25% TUs and had 60% accuracy (and the rifle was less accurate than various upgrades). That's twice the accuracy of a rifle weapon in Xenonauts and that isn't even considering auto-fire (which was always a better choice in terms of likelihood-to-hit vs. TUs spent). Nor is it factoring in that Xenonauts has an explicit cover system and long-range penalties which further push accuracy down. The *only* grounds that I think you can claim that accuracy was low in UFO:EU is that soldier accuracy *could* start as low as 40. But then it could start as high as 70 as well (putting the average at the same as Xenonauts). Therefore, I do not think your claim is well-founded. Accuracy in the original game was considerably higher than it is presently in Xenonauts. If you are using the OG as a model, therefore, that would be evidence for buffing accuracy in Xenonauts relative to what it is now.

Went back to look at this - the guns were out of range so I presume shouldn't have been causing suppression then anyway. I was also able to get a FB to work. I tried loading the start of the mission and doing it again. Mostly, it was fine, but there was one turn when two FBs failed to suppress an alien. It was directly behind cover from the FB at the time, though. Subsequently, when the aliens came out of cover, suppression was working fine again. I'm going to keep an eye out for this in the future; maybe I'll find something a bit more solid than apparently I have at the moment.

Thanks, yeah - I'd forgotten about the version difference. The incident I had involved cover, too (and I think there's been previous instances of it, looking back in retrospect). But the FB definately did not land in the prop when I tried it before posting this. EDIT: Actually, I might need to go back and check whether the weapons I was attacking with were within range. They might not have been (and I didn't realise it mattered until now).

Heh, you're right - that's higher than I've ever felt it be. I'd still argue that it being higher (most of a turn's TUs) would be better (to make it more of a penalty and perhaps even to encourage the use of a side-arm as a quicker alternative when you really need to shoot), but I'll agree it's presently not as negligible as I'd suggested.

Caveat - this might not be a bug if my understanding of the suppression mechanics is wrong. I was just playing a ground mission and shot a large number of rounds at a Caesan (at least two LMG burst attacks and one AR burst attack) followed by a flash bomb for good measure. Some of the shots I made actually hit the target and the flash bomb landed adjacent to the alien. None of this caused any suppression. By my understanding of the suppression mechanics, the alien would have had to have had a huge (~200) bravery score or a very high armour score for this to have happened (neither of which are the case, hence my assumption that this is a bug). I have a save game with the alien in question on the map if this would be useful to look at. [if this helps, I've seen someone else comment in the Modding forum that they've thrown a few flash bombs on a Sibellian before now and not suppressed it either, which again I'm not sure should be possible assuming it works as I understand things. EDIT: The thread I mentioned: http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/6630-Greande-Issues]

I'd consider it a feature that you have to reload them more often and don't have a problem with that at all. Honestly, I'd like to see reload costs go up - they seem little more than a minor inconvenience at the moment and not very inpactful on the game.

Re: nerf vs. buff - I'm not sure I agree that these things are equivalent. Balance doesn't necessarily mean only making sure that each option is equally useful; I'd argue it also means ensuring that each thing *has* a use. E.g. If hypervelocity is seen as being too good as dealing with cover while flanking with a shotgun/assault rifle is understood to be ineffective, you might nerf hypervelocity or buff assault rifle/shotgun. If you do the former, you might end up with a situation where there are *no* good options for dealing with cover (since sniper weapons are now equally poor as all other options), while if you do the latter each option becomes an effective solution. Balance between the weapons is achieved by either, but the options are not the same and in fact have different connotations for the game. In other words, I'd argue that you can't just keep making everything less good, as eventually you'll be left with nothing that actually is good (and, of course, if you keep buffing everything eventually it won't matter as everything will be too effective). [i'm not saying I agree that there has been too much nerfing; I'm just not convinced by Chris's argument that it doesn't matter whether you nerf good things or buff weak things].

Not sure a change from 25% to 30% would make any real difference (even on an unit with 100 bravery that's only an extra 5/turn). 50% would seem like a better number to me, if you wanted to do this.

aiprops.xml has all of that, I think.

Writing from my experience with v19.x: Don't know about weapons_gc.xml, but when I've done testing with the armour files and config.xml loading up a game mid-combat did *not* read the modded files and I had to start a new GC. I would assume it to be the same with weapons_gc.xml too. My understanding is that suppression uses only the unit's Bravery stat as a base. But I derive this only from these forums. However, what experience I have of the game suggests this is the mechanic being used, though. What you've described therefore seems odd. Armour is quantitative, not categorical, so an armour value of 5 should reduce the suppression value of the attack by 5 (according to the mechanics described on the forum). So, no reason why two FBs shouldn't have suppressed the target (one should have been enough). Sounds like a bug, based on my (no necessarily correct!) understanding of the rules.

Yes, that's right. I might try a quick battle with that map to be sure, though. I actually can't recognise the base maps because I never played the game without the community map pack (which is awesome, by the way). And I figured the base maps wouldn't have bits like that.

Probably a bit late into this discussion, but I fully endorse this (not so sure on #1, but definitely #2 and #3). In any case, even if this wasn't changed for vanilla, you could still mod it in assuming no radical changes to the extant system. If you reduced soldier's STR values to, say, half, it would be fairly difficult to equip a soldier without running into TU penalties. Having more STR therefore reduces the penalty. Reducing stat gain can also be very easily done in gameconfig.xml. So, it's perfectly possible to make a mod for this as things stand at the moment.

I was just looking in the gameconfig.xml file and noticed that the maximum advancement points for STR is 40 while you need 20 to increase the stat by 1 (implying that you can gain 2 STR per mission). I assume this is unintentional? For, clarity's sake, the bit I'm refering to is: <strengthProgress pointsToProgress="20" maxPointsInSingleBattle="40".../>

Noticed a small problem with one of the community maps (possibly from the Review Pack posted above, as I've not seen the map before and only recently installed it) - there's a rock in front of the door into the crashed UFO, partially obstructing access. I guess this might be a feature, but I assumed not. Screenshot: EDIT: Otherwise a fairly good map.

Not specific to the most recent version (not played enough yet), but something that's bothered me for a while (and inspired by discussions about grenades) - TUs spent on swapping items between belt/backpack and hand seem very low. It takes ~10 TUs to stow a weapon in a backpack and draw a handgun from a belt, which is half the TUs needed to take a snap shot with a rifle or shotgun. I'd make two contentions for increasing the TU costs for this. Firstly, I think it would be more realistic (certainly my backpack-packing skills are not so lightning fast!). More importantly, though, I'd argue that it would add something to GC by making item-in-hand choices a little more meaningful. Given that it's so easy to swap items in and out of hand, it makes relatively little difference at the moment what you have in hand already. A soldier armed with a LMG or sniper rifle is hardly troubled by drawing their pistol to take a shot on the move; a medic is hardly troubled getting their medikit out to heal a badly wounded soldier; etc. IMO, I'd like these things to all be more important then they are at the moment. This would also expand the use of pistols a bit more by making carrying grenades/medikits in hand a little more valuable (I've never used the Commando unit class since it's never troubled me to use grenades from the belt when I've needed to, so I've never seen the advantage of having a grenade already in hand).

@Stinky, re: Grenades - Yeah, you're right (or, I'll take your word for it - I've not played very much 19.5 at all yet). I think I'd have preferred an increased TU cost to a range nerf, though.

Quick note on suppression - assuming the game works like Chris described the mechanic when it was being proposed in the Community Involvement forum, suppression is (partially) gradiated in the sense that all units have a suppression value which, as they get shot at over a turn, reduces until it hits 0 at which point the unit becomes suppressed. Therefore, it already works kind of like how you would like it to work, only 'suppression damage' doesn't make any difference until you reach the required threshold (essentially, the suppression value of a unit at the moment is the equivalent to the amount of shots which would be required to reduce a unit's TUs to half by suppression). Changing the system to the one you suggest wouldn't actually make suppression any less effective therefore (and might make it more so, since you'd get some benefit even before you reach the threshold). It also means, however, that it's fairly easy to change the effectiveness of suppression to require more shots to cause it (by reducing suppression values). If suppression is too good, it's arguably only because suppression damage is apparently quite high relative to units' suppression values. Also, re: grenades - I think Overdamage will help balance them (I've never used them very much before because I thought that had always been the case!). But, I do feel like they're too easy to use too (i.e. TU costs are relatively small - basically the same time to take a normal shot with a weapon). I think the issue for me is the low TU cost to swap items from the backpack/belt however - this feels like it should take a lot of a turn, not a small fraction of it.

Was playing around with C4 to see if it was any use in assaulting a grounded UFO. The intention was to use C4 to destroy the UFO doors and (ideally) suppress the aliens inside. I tried 3 lots of C4, doing them one at a time. This was not enough to destroy the doors. I'm not sure whether this is a feature (i.e. the doors were tough enough to take those attacks), a bug, or because exploding UFO doors is simply not a feature. I wanted to report this anyway, just in case it is a bug. More importantly, however, on the third C4 exploding, the mission ended with the aliens inside the UFO having been killed by the blasts. This means that the aliens were being damaged by the explosion even though the damage wasn't enough to destroy (and therefore penetrate) the doors. I assume this is a bug? [Note: It's possible that the final explosion did in fact destroy the doors and the blast carried through to kill the aliens inside - the battle ended immediately so I couldn't see whether this was the case. I can play around with this if you think it might be a bug with a view to confirming it].

Most annoying for me is probably the LoS bugs. Mainly thinking of the issue with aliens seeing/shooting at you when they can't actually see you, but I'd include other LoS issues others have mentioned above here as well. Also, I'm not sure whether this is a bug (rather than an unimplemented feature) but being unable to shoot through (unbroken) windows is also something I find annoying.

I've never really used grenades much (mostly because I assumed they damaged equipment like rockets!) and didn't use any when I was playing with the above, so I can't really compare. The only time I can think that they would have been particularly useful was when attacking into Small Scouts, but as I indicated this was partially because of the fact that I can't use Precision Rifles at all because of the bug.

Played 6-7 missions earlier (most of Month 1). It probably wasn't the best test, since I was deliberately trying to break the game with Precision Rifles, but thoughts so far: - Precision Rifles are very good, though not quite as good as I expected. I tried outfitting the entire squad with them and was getting along well (too well?). My hypothesis was that they would destroy everything, since the high % to hit and hypervelocity should be handing out 90+% shots pretty much all the time. This was pretty much true - on open maps they dominated. They did cause problems when I encountered full LOS blockers and the UFO (although the latter due to the bug which stops those rifles shooting over the UFO door threshold). Overall, the Precision Rifle does what it does now exceptionally well, but it does suffer in situations where there's no LOS. - Close combat now feels quite brutal and lost a number of soldiers in a close range engagement with an alien that got the drop on me (I'll not count on aliens not opening doors again!). Shooting at point-blank range with burst fire now feels reliably powerful with ~50% to hit with each shot. Overall, I like these changes because it feels like it raises the stakes in close combat. But I can see how this might advantage the player more since they'll be better equipped to take advantage of it. When I have time I'll go back and try a more balanced approach but overall I think I prefer the higher accuracy, at least in terms of its effects on close-range fighting. Thinking about it, I think this is where the low accuracy mattered most to me previously - not only is it frustrating to move in close around cover to be presented with a mediocre shot, but shoot-outs at 3-5 squares where there's misses everywhere look a little odd (to me). I'm thus wondering now what the game would be like with the old accuracies but the higher close-range bonus (which, actually, would have the added benefit of not making the Precision Rifle any better).

Totally missed 'our' in your previous post. Oddly, the situation you described is how it felt to play the game today (more extreme high % shots missing than expected, more extreme low % shots hitting). But I was probably looking for it.

Awesome. Easiest fix ever, apparently (it already having been done!).

Sorry, seed saving is exactly what I meant to say. Was having a brain-fail moment, apparently. The testing is interesting. Did the solution you mention actually get implemented? I have found myself surprised by the number of low-% shots hitting, but always figured that was just luck/bias on my part.