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silencer

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From what I've seen, most Aliens will end up using 'Alien Battle Rifles' by the late game. Which is when your using Predator and Sentinel Armour.

The Battle Rifle essentially nullifys most of your Armours protection (correction, It has about 30 armour mitigation), meaning by the end game the utility of using Pred/Sent armour is for the weapon benefits (Flying/360 degree vision/walking around with a machinegun).

It is annoying that your armour is hyped up as being super awesome, but is almost completely useless against late game alien weapons.

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In fact, I did the math a while ago. If you go to the bottom of this wiki page you'll see how effective Predator armour is against alien weapons: http://xenonauts.wikia.com/wiki/Predator

Its good against early game weapons, against late game weapons its a coin toss.

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Yeah and I have returned values from before double nerf Chris gave (lower values and degradation). It roughly increases survivablity by 20%. Not much.

Praetor Gun 120 60 110 + 50-170

Your average Joe has about 60-80HP, and you must be really stupid to hire soldier with less than 50HP anyway. It means that no armour can save you from Preator, while he can laugh at Mag Rifles. And when you are playing on insane, amour could not exist, since I saw alien precision do 80 dmg.

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Your average Joe has about 60-80HP, and you must be really stupid to hire soldier with less than 50HP anyway. It means that no armour can save you from Preator, while he can laugh at Mag Rifles. And when you are playing on insane, amour could not exist, since I saw alien precision do 80 dmg.

In fairness, Praetors are the boss enemy in the game. I'm not certain giving them a good chance to 1HK your soldiers is necessarily unreasonable, especially when they still have to hit (and are affected by the most simple of devices - the smoke grenade).

Generally, the progression of alien weapons in the game produces a similar outcome to the OG in the end whereby armour is no guarantee of protection, even though it is actually helping. I suspect this feels out of sink partly because Wolf is comparably better when you get it, such that resilience goes from low to moderate and then by late game back down to low.

Re: aliens throwing grenades when suppressed - it's possible for player units to do this too, since the throwing cost for grenades is 50% TUs. You just have to drop the soldier's weapon first (or already have a hand free). However, aliens can do it a little easier since the throw cost for alien grenades is only 45% rather than 50% (and I suspect they don't suffer any costs for quick-item using)

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However, aliens can do it a little easier since the throw cost for alien grenades is only 45% rather than 50% (and I suspect they don't suffer any costs for quick-item using)

And that is the point.

Generally, the progression of alien weapons in the game produces a similar outcome to the OG in the end whereby armour is no guarantee of protection, even though it is actually helping.

In OG Flying suit gave you guaranteed protection to plasma rifle which is used in all the parts of the game. Only super critical might wound you. The Heavy Plasma had to score above average damage to wound you and high critical to kill you. In TFTD the randomness was reduced to 50-150% just like in Xenos, however Ion Armour was impenetrable from the front to Sonic Cannon. And Apocalypse is another cup of tea, where Disruptor Armour allowed you to withstand few Disentigrator Cannons shot or dimensional missiles (not counting personal shields).

In my terminology - armour is suppose to allow soldiers to survive few shots and not be waste of resources that depend majorly on luck.

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In OG Flying suit gave you guaranteed protection to plasma rifle which is used in all the parts of the game. Only super critical might wound you. The Heavy Plasma had to score above average damage to wound you and high critical to kill you.

Max damage off of a plasma rifle was 160 so a soldier in a Flying Suit was still at risk of being one-shot even if they got hit from the front (not very likely mind, but still possible regardless of their HP level since HP capped at 50). And a Heavy Plasma would 1HK anything at least 25% of the time and probably more (depending on the side the soldier's hit from and their HP; get hit from the rear and it's more like 40-50%).

It is, of course, difficult to compare that with Xenonauts since HP are much more variable. A soldier with 60HP is as likely to be 1-shot as a maxed-out soldier in a Flying Suit in the OG who is hit from the front (comparing Battle Rifle with Heavy Plasma). More HP on the Xenonaut make them more likely to survive. However, it's obviously less effective when compared with soldiers with fewer HPs and a Xenonaut solider is less durable against multiple hits since the Battle Rifle is almost guaranteed to do at least some damage while the Heavy Plasma shot is outright deflected half the time. Overall, I'd say they'd come out roughly the same (factoring in the variable amount of armour in the OG as well due to facing) but there's no maths that will support that.

In my terminology - armour is suppose to allow soldiers to survive few shots and not be waste of resources that depend majorly on luck.

Personally, I'm happy with the risk of being 1-shot. I don't like being in a situation where I know my soldiers definitely can't be killed, since it takes the tension out of the game for me. Moreover, Xenonauts for me is a game about long-term probabilities: armour might not help you in any given instance, but in the long run it's still worth while.

That said, I'd happily see the battle rifle (and the heavy plasma) get damage increases in exchange for not having armour mitigation, so that the risk of being one-shot remains while also balancing the average damage per shot down a bit. (With +20 damage and no mitigation, the battle rifle would do 0-80 damage against a soldier in Predator armour like now but have a higher chance of doing nothing, which feels better to me.)

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Max damage off of a plasma rifle was 160 so a soldier in a Flying Suit was still at risk of being one-shot even if they got hit from the front (not very likely mind, but still possible regardless of their HP level since HP capped at 50). And a Heavy Plasma would 1HK anything at least 25% of the time and probably more (depending on the side the soldier's hit from and their HP; get hit from the rear and it's more like 40-50%).

Flying suit had resistance towards plasmas - I don't know how much but I think plasmas did 80% of their normal damage. The HP of soldiers capped at 60 not 50.

Personally, I'm happy with the risk of being 1-shot. I don't like being in a situation where I know my soldiers definitely can't be killed, since it takes the tension out of the game for me.

Being 1-shot killed is not fun, anyone will tell you that. And I am not suggesting that soldiers should be immortal gods once reached certain level of plating.

Also my point is that aliens can 1-shot kill you - you can't 1-shot kill them in respective manner.

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I'm not as iffy with Aliens having better protection than Humans in the late game, since the main counter at that point is that you will have between 10-12 soldiers and maybe a Tank.

Throughout my entire Insane Ironman play though, any time a soldier wearing Pred/Sent armour was hit by a Battle Rifle, they died. The only utility therein when they are dead is that the armour protection might be enough to possible save them after the battle is over.

However I don't want my soldiers to become invincible, since that would remove any tension. However being able to at least tank a single shot or two should be a given for the most expensive, and powerful, armour in the game.

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IMO the one-shot-bam-you're-dead issue is annoying, but I can live with it happening occasionally. After all combat is pretty unpredictable, and ("realism" aside) I'd guess even more so vs. superior enemies. But one-shot kills do not only make armor questionable, but also the typical half-high cover thingies on most maps are useless then, because you can still get hit from quite large distances often. Best is not to be seen at all (in that case if you're playing it well, armor would again be rather useless)

What I hate though is regular pathetic shooting results even of high accuracy soldiers. Most often I need a bunch of soldiers to gang up on one alien since my guys miss so often, even with quite high accuracy. Yes, I realize there's quite some random elements here, and you do get some cool hits here and there. I got a 100 accuracy sniper but I think even he does not perfom too well. I certainly don't expect him to hit every time, but he seems not to hit particularly better with 100 than he was with 70 - 90 accuracy. Yes, that's purely subjective.

With rifles and carbines, I often close in to one or two squares distance from the enemy after supressing them (or when I'm mostly sure they can't RF). From that close you get realtively safe kills (funny if you still get three misses in a row sometimes), but it feels rather like I'm executing the enemy instead of fighting it out. It also feels not really more "difficult", rather more frustrating, and it tends to make missions even longer than they already are.

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I agree the that the wound and damage system is fundamentally flawed.

The enemies are using plasma weapons. Plasma is superheated gas, so any wound inflicted by a plasma bolt would be instantly cauterized. There would be no bleeding, so unless you soldier was hit in a vital area he or she would live. They may be unable to fight at all or very effectively, they might also pass out from pain. It's possible they could die from shock, but this would take a little time. As a veteran I can tell you that the body armor I used was minimalist. I had a plate on the front and back of my torso and a helmet. That armor is far from perfect but it significantly reduces the chances of an instant kill.

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Burns can/do bleed, especially large third degree ones. And we're dealing with enemy weapons that punch cleanly through tanks. In my experience, most battlefield injuries (especially the survivable ones) are some form of shrapnel, it' not infeasible that in the absence of enemy weapons that produce shrapnel there are fewer survivable injuries suffered.

You can also just rationalize it as being dropped meaning that soldier is just unable to continue fighting, and you don't get their survive/die results until post-mission.

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Flying suit had resistance towards plasmas - I don't know how much but I think plasmas did 80% of their normal damage. The HP of soldiers capped at 60 not 50.

Hmm, yes, you're right about HP. But Flying Suit, according to UFOpedia anyway, took full damage from Plasma. Perhaps you're thinking of TFTD where Ion Armour has resistance to Sonic?

Being 1-shot killed is not fun, anyone will tell you that.
Personally, I'm happy with the risk of being 1-shot. I don't like being in a situation where I know my soldiers definitely can't be killed, since it takes the tension out of the game for me.

Evidently not anyone! But since that's the crux of the issue (i.e. we have different preferences) I suspect continued discussion isn't likely to be very productive.

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