What the..

[StellarRat]

Already did. And I must say.. I prefer the shotguns still.

That surprises me somewhat since you lose the ability to suppress from any distance. With a bunch of assault rifles you can achieve suppression from a fair distance. The poor man's LMG sort of. A lot of time was spent balancing the weapons against each other in beta.

[mvm900]

I tend to not really use suppression. Usually it's with flashbangs if anything anyway.

[Big Z]

I feel that the Rifle type weapons in the game are rather weak; I'd last played back in the V19 days and it did not seem to be the case there, and I don't know what happened in between. Hordes of shields, shotguns, a sniper or two, and precious mass LMG fire seems to be the order of the day now; the Rifle feels like a 3/10 in every category instead of a jack of all trades.

The only use I've seen for them is switching my snipers to them in the end stages of the game where massive UFO fighting becomes the order of the day and the advantages of long range combat are negated by level design.

[dpelectric]

It's always intriguing to read about all the different playstyles. In my last 3 campaigns I didn't use a single assault (or rocket man). Snipers on rooftops for long fields of fire and armor penetration, Lmgs for suppression, riflemen for midrange shots/shortrange burst fire, double-shield scouts with grenades.

[StellarRat]

Thinking about this some more, I believe the shotguns may have become far more useful after the reaction system was finished and they gained the 1.5 advantage to reflexes. That came late in development. I believe the weapon damage and accuracy balancing was done BEFORE that happened. Perhaps another round of balancing should have been done afterwards. I don't know if the shotguns would have been nerfed or the rifles bumped. My preference would have been an increase to rifle accuracy.

[mvm900]

I'd prefer a bump in other weapons because a nerf in shotguns would simply make the game more frustrating instead of just difficult. Especially if they just nerfed accuracy.

[mvm900]

So I just went back and tried it again. And I realized I was playing a mod (I have like three different xenonauts icons on my desktop and I guess I got them mixed up). And while I can't say rifles are still 100% better because of the same before reasons, I tried it again on the base game and the rifles are better performing.

[StellarRat]

So I just went back and tried it again. And I realized I was playing a mod (I have like three different xenonauts icons on my desktop and I guess I got them mixed up). And while I can't say rifles are still 100% better because of the same before reasons, I tried it again on the base game and the rifles are better performing.

Dude!

[kabill]

I tend to not really use suppression. Usually it's with flashbangs if anything anyway.

Accidentally not using the base game aside, this is part of your issue with rifles. One of their advantages is being fairly good at long range suppression using burst-fire. If you're not taking advantage of that, you're wasting one of the weapon's strengths.

Not that this is necessarily a problem: if heavy shotgun use is working for you then there's no reason to change from that just for the sake of using other weapons. But it seems to me like you might be using rifles less well than they could be used, rather than rifles being under-powered.

[ViewThePhenom]

Accidentally not using the base game aside, this is part of your issue with rifles. One of their advantages is being fairly good at long range suppression using burst-fire. If you're not taking advantage of that, you're wasting one of the weapon's strengths.

Not that this is necessarily a problem: if heavy shotgun use is working for you then there's no reason to change from that just for the sake of using other weapons. But it seems to me like you might be using rifles less well than they could be used, rather than rifles being under-powered.

+ 1

[mvm900]

The mod just made the enemies stronger, it didn't actually change the weapons. So I mean it had the base weapons, just enemies with more HP. Also.. Less well than they can be used?

[kabill]

Also.. Less well than they can be used?

I.e. Using them for suppression.

[ViewThePhenom]

The mod just made the enemies stronger, it didn't actually change the weapons. So I mean it had the base weapons, just enemies with more HP. Also.. Less well than they can be used?

Not making full use of their functionality (i.e. supression). For cost-effective damage dealing when you factor in accuracy, TU required per shot type, effectiveness at close-range, then they are not great. But the ability to move and provide suppressive fire from a distance (unlike the LMG, which doesn't allow you to move and shoot very far + the accuracy penalty if you move + shoot) is factored into the weapon's effectiveness.

[mvm900]

Sure but that just means they are only really good for suppression and moving and firing. Which would imply rifles are basically just support weapons. I hope the main weapon of most armies isn't just for support 3:

[ViewThePhenom]

They also don't suffer from damage and accuracy penalty at mid-range like shotguns do. Basically, no they are not the best for killing aliens. But they are the best for giving you the option of every other weapon in some form (excluding the rocket launcher). If your primary focus is using TU to do as much damage as possible, then rifles won't be your weapon of choice. Their strength is in their versatility.

[kabill]

Sure but that just means they are only really good for suppression and moving and firing. Which would imply rifles are basically just support weapons. I hope the main weapon of most armies isn't just for support 3:

No, the reason why the rifle is used as a main weapon in most armies is due to the fact that it is versatile and combat typically takes place at much, much longer ranges than in Xenonauts. The effective range of a shotgun is ~50 yards, while an assault rifle is more like ~200 yards. But Xenonauts doesn't represent that kind of combat. It's closer to SWAT/armed response units where shotguns are much more prevalent.

Also, why is "moving and firing" a characteristic of a 'support' weapon? (And isn't that exactly the major strength of the shotgun, too?)

[StellarRat]

No, the reason why the rifle is used as a main weapon in most armies is due to the fact that it is versatile and combat typically takes place at much, much longer ranges than in Xenonauts. The effective range of a shotgun is ~50 yards, while an assault rifle is more like ~200 yards. But Xenonauts doesn't represent that kind of combat. It's closer to SWAT/armed response units where shotguns are much more prevalent.

Also, why is "moving and firing" a characteristic of a 'support' weapon? (And isn't that exactly the major strength of the shotgun, too?)

Not to mention they are generally fatal or at least incapacitating against humans with one hit, so the damage difference isn't much of a factor like it is in Xenonauts.

[mvm900]

Yes, I was being sarcastic. I know why rifles are the main weapons. I'm in the NG, infantry. Which is why some say I'm really biased against weapons represented in game, but this does seem partially unbalanced. And you mean ~300 really. But that's not the point. I mean if you're moving and firing only to really suppress that's more of a support weapon. And the rifle represented in act like much more of a DMR/Range rifle than an assault rifle. And the only reason it'd incapacitate/kill is if you hit a certain spot. Which is the case with... really any gun of really any caliber. If I shot you in the foot you could probably stumble away no matter what caliber or gauge shell I used. (Granted it'd probably hurt the more you go, but you get the point.)

Edited July 9, 2014 by mvm900