KateMicucci

Are you just making up those numbers? That's not what my math shows. http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/8992-Ground-Combat-Balance-Discussion-Build-V21-Experimental-4!?p=100227&viewfull=1#post100227

I'd rather have most alien weapons lose their armor mitigation, and have armor values adjusted to compensate. What's the point of giving high armor values which are going to be negated by high armor mitigation instead of just using lower armor values in the first place? A majority of the alien weapons mitigate Jackal it down to 5 points. Pistols are the only thing it works against reasonably, and even light scouts aren't armed exclusively with pistols anymore. Even if jackal is half the weight and price it's not worth it since it isn't contributing anything to the soldier's survivability.

The only times I'm finding the aliens overwhelming in GC is terror and base missions. Trying to clear out a nest of Caesan snipers is nuts.

Skipping Jackal is a choice because Jackal does hardly anything against a plasma rifle (65 damage 20 ArMt) Assuming a soldier with 55 HP, an unarmored soldier has a 34% chance to survive a plasma rifle hit, a Jackal-armored soldier has a 57% chance, and a Wolf-armored soldier a 100% chance. A Jackal-armored soldier is only 23% more likely to survive a plasma rifle hit than a naked soldier. Wolf is only a month off and offers not only a 100% chance to survive, but a 20% chance to take no damage at all. A marginal 23% chance for my rookies to survive a single plasma rifle hit is not worth $20,000 and 9kg. For comparison, a naked soldier with 65 HP has a 49% chance to survive compared to the Jackal armored soldier's 57%. The problem may not even be that Jackal's stats are too low. Alien weapon's armor mitigation is very high. Against anything bigger than a plasma rifle (ArMt 30, 30, 50, 99, 60) the jackal armor is mitigated to such a degree that the soldier might as well be naked. Even the light drone's gun has ArMt of 80.

2nd radar, living quarters, a couple of extra hangars. Later on I will build a 2nd workshop. I build a pair of extra labs in my 2nd base. Question: is there any good reason for the storeroom to exist?

A soldier who is alive when the timer on held C4 hits 0 will have it explode in his hands However, if the soldier primes the C4 without throwing it and then is killed, it will not explode. C4 should still explode if dropped by a dead soldier.

Unreliable because the aliens often choose to sit still instead of run through the gas, and high ranked aliens can run through a bunch of it and be fine.

In any situation like that, a regular grenade would work just as well. And the regular grenade is more reliable. Stun gas is fine. Stun gas starts to get really bad against higher-ranked enemies. Also, it's 100% useless against Androns and drones.

The accuracy of the armored car's MG needs to be boosted to stay in line with regular MGs. (I increased MG accuracy to 60, as I assume it was intended. It feels like they're balanced well against other weapons like that.) Scatter laser needs more than 15 ammo. Sure the ammo is lighter, but that's only 3 shots. I don't care how much they cost. Manufacturing shields is annoying. Bumping up the weight to 6kg is already enough to keep me from giving my troops a spare. I'd actually rather have the shield upgrade replace your current shields for free than have to manufacture those too.

After doing a few test battles I think you might be right that Jackal is too weak now. The fact that soldiers who survive hits are pretty much always knocked out really hurts. I'd like to see one of the following: 1. Slight increase to armor mitigation 2. Significant reduction in weight (9kg more than pajamas is too much now that it really isn't helping much) 3. (Maybe) Make Jackal available in unlimited quantities after it is researched

Nice surprise: I just had a base defense mission while my team was out on recovery, leaving only a handful of poorly equipped rookies with particularly low stats to defend. Fortunately, most of the aliens blew themselves up by shooting at missiles before my team even got to them. Grenades and a suicide bomb took out the rest. Final score, 13 to 1.

Yeah. Alien progression is a little too fast after the first medium shows up. Suddenly there's a huge list of new research topics, and you need to pick the "right" ones in order to stay in the game. A player should be able to research most or all of the techs in the game before it ends, right?

Lasers are expensive. $20,000 and 2 alloys for a pistol, to $80,000 and 8 alloys (and 60 man days!) for a precision rifle. They aren't even much better than ballistics right now. They could cost half as much and take half as long to build and still not have as much battlefield impact per dollar as a scout car or suit of armor.

What is "useless"? To me, if Jackal allows a soldier to often survive otherwise lethal hits, it's doing its job fine. Maybe Wolf is too powerful, or comes too early. It lets soldiers practically wade into enemy fire without real fear of death.

Have the precision rifles always used the assault rifle sprite? I thought they used to have their own.

Small UI request: In the soldier loadout screen, would it be possible to make it so that a single click, rather than a double click, adds an item from the menu on the right to a soldier's inventory? Right now its click-once-and-hold-to-drag and double click to add automatically. Single click to add automatically would be better. Loading up a soldier with a bunch of grenades a little tedious.

I see a huge increase in my soldier's survivability with Jackal. Most of my troops are able to survive taking a hit or two with it. So I disagree that skipping to Wolf is a good idea, at least if you care about keeping your promoted troops alive in the early game.

I think that I am with Chris in not understanding exactly what you're saying the problem is Aliens only use burst/snap shots because it is the most efficient, and you would prefer they also use normal and aimed? Aliens are using fire modes that aren't TU efficient? And also what is the solution to the problem?

That's normal if you get too close to them. Are your guys behind cover? They don't last long in the open until you get some armor. Scout with a shield, car, or somebody ugly and keep everybody else out of alien's visual range.

Is there no intention to make burst fire actually useful? It seems like with the suppression nerf, you're trying to force it into a suppression role. But burst fire isn't good for suppression either- its too inaccurate to even land within a 3 square radius most of the time. Soldiers are getting knocked out a lot. When they're revived they have to spend a turn picking up all their stuff that spilled out on the ground. Kinda annoying. Also still no fix for the shield bug?

Vehicles are great. They're a scout, shield guy and two heavy weapons troops in one package. The MG turret is not too impressive since burst fire can't hit anything right now, but the rocket launcher and pulse laser are awesome for finding and killing aliens in recovery missions and thinning out the herd in terror and base attacks. I've never lost one in a single hit. It usually takes four or five. The only problem is that despite the modest amount of time needed to unlock them, they're still competing for research and workshop space with things that are more important. Obviously you can get by without them just fine.

What if high-ranking aliens had armor, but only upgraded weapon tiers had armor mitigation? Upgrading my xenonaut's weapons feels like the lowest research priority right now because ballistics are good enough for a long time.

I autoresolve every battle so rolling means nothing to me.

Taking items from the belt also costs the same as taking items from the backpack. Has it always been this way? For months I've been cramming items into the belt because I thought it cost less.

UFOs have enough HP bloat as it is. Two squadrons of interceptors killing 2 UFO's is the same thing as one squadron firing all its torpedos, retreating, and letting the 2nd squadron finish off the UFO are the same thing, except that the second is more annoying and gives less money. By January/February when the massive UFOs are showing up, with escorts and interceptors, and there's no way I can have enough interceptors to kill even half of them. I guess that's as intended: the invasion has begun full-scale and there's no way you can stop it except by completing the final mission. At that point I go into a death spiral losing $250,000 of funding each month and stop playing. Some thoughts on the geoscape: Problems: -The condor is only good for killing small scouts and the occasional lone fighter (both of which a foxtrot could do too). That is far too niche. It is too slow and has too short of a range to even be a good escort for foxtrots. Even if condors had the same speed and range as foxtrots they wouldn't be as good because they don't have torpedos. -The corsair and marauder only have more speed and HP. They are too expensive, cost too much alienium, and take too long to build. You also don't get them until you've lost the air war anyway because dozens of massive UFOs are showing up. Some suggested changes: -1/4 to 1/3 reduction in total UFOs -Medium UFOs should be introduced more gradually -The transition time between medium-large and large-massive UFOs should be extended by a month, to give the player more of a chance to research and build all the new tech being introduced Here's a thought. Lower UFO HP but gives missiles a miss chance independent of evasive rolls. Air combat thus becomes less predictable and a player who's fallen behind will have a better chance of being able to stay in the tech race by getting lucky against larger UFOs. The cannon becomes more useful as a few misses won't matter.