dmz

Playing on 18 Stable, I've had a fair share of soldiers being one-shot with the second alien weapon encountered in the game (I believe it's the alien plasma rifle?), despite them being in cover, having full 70+ health and wearing an untouched Jackal armour - and that always after having hit the alien repeatedly doing, I would guess, very low damage. If that happens once - crap, bad luck. But I've had it happen quite a few times, and that's when it stops being funny. Having an armour shouldn't feel almost useless (I've seen far more armored guys being one-shot than armored guys surviving a single shot) but that's more or less how it felt for me. As such, even if I haven't tried v19.7 yet (I'll wait for the stable version, since I prefer to go for slow but long lasting games and would hate to stop because of a bug or of a new build), I'm extremely wary of the increased random percentages for damage. If armours felt almost useless before, I can only think they'd feel even worse now. Because of this, I'd like to ask: if a weapon does 50 damage (with 25-75 being the damage range after randomization), are the chances of getting a 25, a 50 and a 75 equal? If so, I believe there is a problem. What I'd like to see is 50 having the highest chance, with every "step" in either direction lowering the chance so that highest/lowest damage are the rarest numbers to pop up. Shit will still happen - either an alien one-shotting a soldier or a soldier just grazing an alien - but the experience will be much more consistent. Unless of course that's already how it's being done, in which case, ignore this post.

Obligatory disclaimer: I only tried the v18-Stable so far (I'm impatiently waiting for the v19-Stable) and (being often shot from way out of range) I've never really stuck with any of my games long enough to use vehicles more than once or twice. However, a bunch of ideas could be: - vehicles capable of carrying more than a single man (I'm thinking most of them) could have weapons that require little TU usage, simulating a driver and a soldier dedicated to the weapons turret. Ideally moving and firing would have two different TU pools, but I don't know if that's feasible. This would however have to be finely tuned to avoid having vehicles raining hell everywhere when they don't move by firing too much. A malus to accuracy when the vehicle moves would also be fitting, I guess. - a scout vehicle could have a larger sight range and a good enough pool of TUs, but weak armor; other vehicles could instead have worse maneuverability and/or less TUs but better firepower and/or armor. - non-hovering vehicles would need more space (thus requiring more TUs) to turn on themselves, making them harder to use when not in open fields. Depending on how good maneuverability hover vehicles should have, turning could be equally difficult or easier for them (at most up to 1 point per direction like soldiers). - vehicles in general could provide cover to units behind them (I guess that's already in though, isn't it?), with their armor/life on the line instead. - Smoke screens could be an additional weapon vehicles have with limited usage (similar to smoke grenades for soldiers). - The "ram attack" mentioned by Ol' Stinky would be great, also coupled by the ability of (some) vehicles of going over (some) covers by destroying them. Small amounts of damage to the vehicle could also be added since it hits something directly. - When damaged, vehicles should in my opinion require money and time to be repaired, using the workshop. Should I save money and risk my soldiers (risking to lose trained ones, with the upside of them only requiring time to be healed if wounded) or go for a vehicle (thus having slightly less risk to lose trained soldiers, but risking to lose money for repairs or to build new ones, plus the man-hours it would mean on the workshop)? With just these changes, I think vehicles would be useful enough to be used but not enough to be used in every occasion. I'm thinking they could be useful in farms, deserts, arctic or in general on open maps, to explore and provide cover, but they should be hard to use in city, industry or otherwise "cluttered" maps, so that the player will have to decide if to bring them judging by where the UFO crashed/landed.