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X-Division 0.99 Ideas Discussion


drages

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Would be cool if the newer/advanced weapons keep becoming more exotic or somehow slightly different, so its not just the same 1 shot/3 burst for each new weapon that is unlocked.

It would still have to make sense for each weapon, but atleast its not just a boring upgrade of damage.

For example:

Ballistic: basic 1 shot / 3 burst bullet rifle

Laser: more accurate, longer range, weak 1 shot/ strong 9 burst beam, ammo used very fast, but better than ballistics

Plasma: high damage boost, but less range, 2-3 projectiles per basic shot / powerful 6 shot burst, but bad accuracy

MAG: long range, high damage, projectile causes 1-2 tile small blast, high accuracy 1 shot / 4 shot shotgun burst to hit multiple targets

Radioactive: 20 shot burst of very low damage, low accuracy spray / 40 shot focused burst of small low damage projectiles

Chemical: 1 shot long range blob/ 8 shot short range spray

Basically, just use the existing range/accuracy/damage/pelletcount/burstamount/damagetype/radius in creative way to make the weapons be more unique and not boring.

New weapons would still be better than old ones, but they would work in a wierd way, changing your tactics for your soldier

Edited by Reactorcore
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They are nice ideas and I tried it at early versions. But there is a fact about balance. You need to stick to something. The weapons got already damage type, magazine capacity, range, armour Penetrating.

Playing with shot numbers per burst makes a huge impact at weapon balance. För example 3 shot burst with 50 damage can penetrate 50 resistance but a 10 shot of 30 damage can't penetrate it so even it looks like much more damage, at game it's weaker. För this reason all ppl used rifles at 0.97.

To be honest every branch got already unique stats. Just shot counts are nearly same.

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They are nice ideas and I tried it at early versions. But there is a fact about balance. You need to stick to something. The weapons got already damage type, magazine capacity, range, armour Penetrating.

Playing with shot numbers per burst makes a huge impact at weapon balance. För example 3 shot burst with 50 damage can penetrate 50 resistance but a 10 shot of 30 damage can't penetrate it so even it looks like much more damage, at game it's weaker. För this reason all ppl used rifles at 0.97.

To be honest every branch got already unique stats. Just shot counts are nearly same.

Thanks for the answer.

I see your point about resistance, althought is resistance just another health bar that a weapon needs to go through before it can penetrate the actual HP? Or is it just something that will always stay present no matter how much you shoot at it?

If you just consider resistance as an armor that can be broken, then the 10 shot weapon you mentioned would then be properly powerful.

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Resistance gets lower by a percentage. It's %25 st x division. So yes it's something more then a health bar. If a weapon got a burst with more bullets it should lose its accuracy. So it's always be better lesser shot with high damage. Like snipers.

At my x division calculations a heavy weapon got 2.5 times more DPS then a sniper at same branch. But when your heavy weapon is hardly pass armour, sniper can kill it.

Can u see how many calculation goes in to line at result?

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Lower by a percentage... I was not expecting that. : o

Can it go down to 0%?

Anyway if thats the case, then that means a sniper would ignore the armor completely, while another weapon has to break the armor. And as a result, a high damage single shot sniper is always a better choice. Makes sense.

The only thing that I can think of is that sniper would need to be more clumsy to use (need more TU to fire or be heavier or very low ammo), so that all the other weapons would be more balanced and not useless.

There could also be carbines, that give the range of sniper weapons but can be used more flexible like assault rifles, but also have basic rifle damage so that cant ignore armor. This is for soldiers who you want to have long range attack ability, but also be able to move and shoot. They just cant ignore armor as a cost for this.

Edited by Reactorcore
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Lower by a percentage... I was not expecting that. : o

Can it go down to 0%?

Anyway if thats the case, then that means a sniper would ignore the armor completely, while another weapon has to break the armor. And as a result, a high damage single shot sniper is always a better choice. Makes sense.

The only thing that I can think of is that sniper would need to be more clumsy to use (need more TU to fire or be heavier or very low ammo), so that all the other weapons would be more balanced and not useless.

There could also be carbines, that give the range of sniper weapons but can be used more flexible like assault rifles, but also have basic rifle damage so that cant ignore armor. This is for soldiers who you want to have long range attack ability, but also be able to move and shoot. They just cant ignore armor as a cost for this.

Let me explain more specific.

Lets take an enemy with 50 kinetic resistance. Your rifle shoot for 80 with 10 mitigation. At first shot:

80-(50-10)=40 would be the damage enemy took.

The remained resistance calculation is about how much damage the resistance absorbed. Even you hit with 80, resistance absorbed 50 of it. And as i said the resistance decrease rate is %25 at X-Division (at default it was %7 as i remember). So 50-(50 x %25)=50-12=38.

38 is the aliens left resistance. If you shoot it again with that weapon, it would be 38-(38 x %25)=27...

So for this reason, everything an be killed with any weapons sooner or later. You can have the best armour, but under heavy fire you can die. With these calculation, a good burst will clear the resistance easily. This is a balance issue too. Maybe i should make that %25 to %10 so all the resistance will stay longer, but you cant kill any alien, if you got wrong weapon. See, every little detail got huge impact at overall play.

I will decrease sniper rifles mitigation. X-Division already got burst semi snipers like you said. I gave more then enough accuracy bonus to all the weapons mostly snipers. So even "low chance hit fast sniper shots" became deadly so nobody used real sniping (with 3 right click) so snipers lost their clumsiness and end game enemies nearly dont miss at all.

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Let me explain more specific.

Lets take an enemy with 50 kinetic resistance. Your rifle shoot for 80 with 10 mitigation. At first shot:

80-(50-10)=40 would be the damage enemy took.

The remained resistance calculation is about how much damage the resistance absorbed. Even you hit with 80, resistance absorbed 50 of it. And as i said the resistance decrease rate is %25 at X-Division (at default it was %7 as i remember). So 50-(50 x %25)=50-12=38.

38 is the aliens left resistance. If you shoot it again with that weapon, it would be 38-(38 x %25)=27...

So for this reason, everything an be killed with any weapons sooner or later. You can have the best armour, but under heavy fire you can die. With these calculation, a good burst will clear the resistance easily. This is a balance issue too. Maybe i should make that %25 to %10 so all the resistance will stay longer, but you cant kill any alien, if you got wrong weapon. See, every little detail got huge impact at overall play.

I will decrease sniper rifles mitigation. X-Division already got burst semi snipers like you said. I gave more then enough accuracy bonus to all the weapons mostly snipers. So even "low chance hit fast sniper shots" became deadly so nobody used real sniping (with 3 right click) so snipers lost their clumsiness and end game enemies nearly dont miss at all.

Thanks, that was interesting to read.

I see what you mean now, the way it works now indeed would make it so that you can kill aliens before their armor is broken, so my idea of treating armor as another healthbar is flawed. And yeah, snipers are indeed pretty OP then too lol. Even at close range, a sniper would be much more faster at killing someone than a big machine gun.

This also explains why harridans didn't care that I wore armor and killed me anyway. :P

The way it works means that other weapons would need to fire a LOT more projectiles to break armor completely and be any useful, since no matter how powerful a bullet is, it always cuts only 25%. I don't like how that works as a system, since I was hoping the % amount would depend on how powerful the bullet is against armor, but I'm guessing its hardcoded, so you won't be able to change that. I'm sad that it means the exotic weapons I thought about are not possible. :(

Well, atleast we still have elemental resistances, which your mod is already making good use off, so its ok. The newer versions also added different armors so you can have soldiers more immune to certain alien weapons, which is also really cool. :)

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Actually, taking inspiration from how another mod does mag as an example, you can have a rapid fire exotic weapon... but it'd be very armor-piercing and do very little damage per shot compared to the less powerful weapons. E.i. Gauss is heavy damage, but low firing rate (making it great for snipers). While Mag is high rate of fire (all weapons are a chaotic burst of needles), high mitigation (hypersonic needles), but low damage per round (small little needles). Lasers could be really, really accurate (if you're pointing at the target, you will hit it if you don't move off-target), and high-ammo (batteries meant to last an entire engagement). It'd completely change some of the balance, but would make an asymmetrical weapons tree, which adds a touch of realism and interestingness to it.

EDIT: Plus, it could keep old weapons relevant, and if you add in researches to make more refined versions of old weapons... Then you'd have an incredibly varied strike team.

Edited by Woz2
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Actually, taking inspiration from how another mod does mag as an example, you can have a rapid fire exotic weapon... but it'd be very armor-piercing and do very little damage per shot compared to the less powerful weapons. E.i. Gauss is heavy damage, but low firing rate (making it great for snipers). While Mag is high rate of fire (all weapons are a chaotic burst of needles), high mitigation (hypersonic needles), but low damage per round (small little needles). Lasers could be really, really accurate (if you're pointing at the target, you will hit it if you don't move off-target), and high-ammo (batteries meant to last an entire engagement). It'd completely change some of the balance, but would make an asymmetrical weapons tree, which adds a touch of realism and interestingness to it.

EDIT: Plus, it could keep old weapons relevant, and if you add in researches to make more refined versions of old weapons... Then you'd have an incredibly varied strike team.

I can give specific abilities to weapons like you all say.. lasers dont miss, mags penetrates and more.. but when i give huge acc and 1 battery enough for battle, i need to make something lower and it would be the damage. So, would you use a weapon with so high stats but less damage?

About more refined versions of old weapons, i planned something like that, but just with updating the ammo.. normal ammo, alloy ammo, alenium ammo, caelium ammo... i wil see what i can do..

For now i am working about geosphere.. Now you will get TERROR missions in every month!!! yeee!!! and the terror ships will be always more then you can handle!!! yeee!!! Terror missions will have some special alien force crew and sometimes you will get nearly full of alien special terror crew Terror missions!!! yeee!!! Same goes to base assaults but just per 2 month!!! yeee!!!

Edited by drages
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Wait a minute, something just occured to me and it might just be a stupid idea, but...

Why not just give low-damage projectiles higher mitigation? That would solve the issue of such weapons from being useless.

Higher mitigation is sometimes good, sometimes bad. If the enemy is already vulnerable for that kind of damage (low resistance), the high mitigation would be useless. For example, there is sebilians as enemy, what would you choose to use as weapon? A laser which you know sebs dont have resistances against it, or a ballistic weapon with high mitigation but low damage? Maybe that ballistic weapon will pass sebs resistance and hit, but it will be "low damage". The laser will hit it nearly with full force.

This kind of weapons would be good if you dont know the enemy. I am trying to mix the races at battleground for using every kind of weapons.

But i am planning to make that old weapons more usefull at least to give their bullets more damage-mitigation with updates. Again a "but", the game mechanic makes this very hard due to not fully replacement, no mutli-ammo problems. Maybe Kabill can handle some of them before i start to work on this plans.

At 0.99, you will need to fight much more with more terror/base missions. This missions will have special aliens with special weapons which will bypass even your end game armours, like your "huge mitigation low damage" idea. So you would probably a second team, because even you win those missions, your soldiers wil have wounds.

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There is another issue with low-damage high-mitigation. If you have alien A, which is resistant to weapon 1, but not resistant to weapon 2, then you have a version of weapon 1 which nullifies alien A's resistance, then the better weapon to take is weapon 1(A) even if the damage output isn't as good as it is more general-purpose than weapons 1 or 2. A soldier with a weapon that can effect more alien types can handle a wider variety of situations and doesn't need to carry several weapon types at once. All the UFO: AfterX series had this problem. Ballistic weapons were the only worthwhile weapons because they could hurt everything, whereas other weapon types were too niche.

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There is another issue with low-damage high-mitigation. If you have alien A, which is resistant to weapon 1, but not resistant to weapon 2, then you have a version of weapon 1 which nullifies alien A's resistance, then the better weapon to take is weapon 1(A) even if the damage output isn't as good as it is more general-purpose than weapons 1 or 2. A soldier with a weapon that can effect more alien types can handle a wider variety of situations and doesn't need to carry several weapon types at once. All the UFO: AfterX series had this problem. Ballistic weapons were the only worthwhile weapons because they could hurt everything, whereas other weapon types were too niche.

Yes exactly this. I will try to handle this with playing with enemy health. I gave sebs and androns high health. So even you have a weapon with very good mitigation but low damage, you wont able handle high rank sebs and androns. But i dont plan to put huge mitigation weapons.

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There is another issue with low-damage high-mitigation. If you have alien A, which is resistant to weapon 1, but not resistant to weapon 2, then you have a version of weapon 1 which nullifies alien A's resistance, then the better weapon to take is weapon 1(A) even if the damage output isn't as good as it is more general-purpose than weapons 1 or 2. A soldier with a weapon that can effect more alien types can handle a wider variety of situations and doesn't need to carry several weapon types at once. All the UFO: AfterX series had this problem. Ballistic weapons were the only worthwhile weapons because they could hurt everything, whereas other weapon types were too niche.

But if thats the case, then the sniper rifles in this mod already have that problem. :confused:

I was thinking if you also gave the mitigation to the more exotic low-damage/high pellet count guns, then it would balance things out.

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But if thats the case, then the sniper rifles in this mod already have that problem. :confused:

I was thinking if you also gave the mitigation to the more exotic low-damage/high pellet count guns, then it would balance things out.

Yes you are right about snipers. But this could work as you said.. I made a calculation table at excel to count this. Thanks

I am still working ultra boring ufo crew tables..

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Yes you are right about snipers. But this could work as you said.. I made a calculation table at excel to count this. Thanks

I am still working ultra boring ufo crew tables..

An excel calculation only tells half the story, the rest comes from field tests which prove the calculations are accurate. And the sniper rifles actually seem pretty balanced--seeming to only fit certain niches and being significantly less useful when attacking an alien base.

Boring? The Reaper spam is terrifying! Only thing I hate about it is that they kill all my civilians! >.>

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An excel calculation only tells half the story, the rest comes from field tests which prove the calculations are accurate. And the sniper rifles actually seem pretty balanced--seeming to only fit certain niches and being significantly less useful when attacking an alien base.

Boring? The Reaper spam is terrifying! Only thing I hate about it is that they kill all my civilians! >.>

Calculations are important to see some numbers before ingame testing. You can see the limits. Now I can see what happens to resistance against different shots. But you are totally right that everything can be different at game itself.

I am rewriting all ufo content files and this time I am sure that only my list will be there. No more surprise enemies. I added tons of new enemy types including new guardian class with high reflex stats for command rooms.

I want to make special genetic weapon enemy bases with nearly only melee enemies but swarm öf them, same för terror missions with many civilians in it. I need help of a map maker to get a special alien base..

Snipers are good for open areas. Before nerf they were so 1 shot, ppl used it at everywhere.

Edited by drages
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@drages Well, I was thinking two batteries for an extended firefight (kinda like it already is) and 4 for a base assault (depending on the weapon). But it wouldn't be out of the gate you get their full stats. As I said earlier, with refined weaponry, you'd get more ergonomical rifles and more efficient batteries. And the lasers themselves would be fairly low damage compared to other weapons. Lasers have to pin a target and stay there in order to do their damage. Just minor tweaks to the beginning weapons, but as time goes on they find their niche. Which should be all weapons really. Prototypes are kinda crappy and vague, but enough to get by at first, but later become a unique tool.

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garrison duty looks great for develop base weapon....

Max mod is very good step to have more then one squads in the game. X-Division 0.99 will need more then 1 squad probably but having more then 1 squads with updated basic weapon will be an answer?

At the beginning, probably... but at mid and late game? When the enemy got more powerfull everything even your main squad, what can a squad with updated basic weapons/armours do against them? And X-Division is more manufacture based mod because it's try to be more X-Com..

Garrison mod is very good mod for default game and its a very good idea. I will try to get this idea and implement to my mod at some points. The sure thing is i will make things much cheaper to let you have at least two squad. X-Division was "One deadly team" mod, but i will change that.

@drages Well, I was thinking two batteries for an extended firefight (kinda like it already is) and 4 for a base assault (depending on the weapon). But it wouldn't be out of the gate you get their full stats. As I said earlier, with refined weaponry, you'd get more ergonomical rifles and more efficient batteries. And the lasers themselves would be fairly low damage compared to other weapons. Lasers have to pin a target and stay there in order to do their damage. Just minor tweaks to the beginning weapons, but as time goes on they find their niche. Which should be all weapons really. Prototypes are kinda crappy and vague, but enough to get by at first, but later become a unique tool.

I like lasers.. lasers are always my fav style of weapons at games. I dont want it be useless, when there is plasma or some ridiculous named energy weapon came up.. But plasma and laser are energy weapons. I made plasma very low range, with low shots per magazine and heavy/slow at 0.98, but its damage was very high. Laser is one of the fastest weapon you get at x-division, its like the basic weapons of energy. So i am agree with you woz, from the very beginning. I even got very lovely new laser weapon images to use for mid/end game laser versions.

-----------------------------------------------------

I am still working on UFO crew lists.. doing them from the beginning with much attention. I am finding new ideas with time too..

Some of ideas i am working on:

- Enemy Armour Researches - Catch a guard alive, search for its armour and update your weapons ammo for penetrating it.

So rather then having normal and armour penetration weapons, you will get an update per new enemy class you encounter. You got a rifle with 50 damage, good. You catched a sebillian guard, researched its armour. Bam your kinetic rifle with 50 damage will get +15 mitigation. You catched a soldier? +30.. warrior, +50.. and goes on.. the numbers are example.. so stunning normal enemies will be useful too..

- Much more powerfull ufos for terror and base attacks

You are fighting with corvettes and they are hard to fall... BAAAM! A cruiser with escorts is flying at your radar!.. your heroic foxtrods cant do anything to it.. and TERROR.. I want you feel the terror, as i feel at Terror from the Deep...

- Fewer bases for world cover

For now, if you can make it, you can finish the game with only 3 base. Radars are enough powerful for that. But the problem is catching fast ufos in time. At 0.99, UFO's will be much slower. It makes no sense when a scout is slower then a battleship, isnt it.. and human planes always faster at atmosphere. I dont remember a movie which human planes cant catch a big alien space ship.. So you should have less base but with fully operational with a squad in it rather then little airbases..

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I like lasers.. lasers are always my fav style of weapons at games. I dont want it be useless, when there is plasma or some ridiculous named energy weapon came up.. But plasma and laser are energy weapons. I made plasma very low range, with low shots per magazine and heavy/slow at 0.98, but its damage was very high. Laser is one of the fastest weapon you get at x-division, its like the basic weapons of energy. So i am agree with you woz, from the very beginning. I even got very lovely new laser weapon images to use for mid/end game laser versions.

-----------------------------------------------------

Some of ideas i am working on:

- Enemy Armour Researches - Catch a guard alive, search for its armour and update your weapons ammo for penetrating it.

So rather then having normal and armour penetration weapons, you will get an update per new enemy class you encounter. You got a rifle with 50 damage, good. You catched a sebillian guard, researched its armour. Bam your kinetic rifle with 50 damage will get +15 mitigation. You catched a soldier? +30.. warrior, +50.. and goes on.. the numbers are example.. so stunning normal enemies will be useful too..

- Much more powerfull ufos for terror and base attacks

You are fighting with corvettes and they are hard to fall... BAAAM! A cruiser with escorts is flying at your radar!.. your heroic foxtrods cant do anything to it.. and TERROR.. I want you feel the terror, as i feel at Terror from the Deep...

- Fewer bases for world cover

For now, if you can make it, you can finish the game with only 3 base. Radars are enough powerful for that. But the problem is catching fast ufos in time. At 0.99, UFO's will be much slower. It makes no sense when a scout is slower then a battleship, isnt it.. and human planes always faster at atmosphere. I dont remember a movie which human planes cant catch a big alien space ship.. So you should have less base but with fully operational with a squad in it rather then little airbases..

What about the MAG weapons, do you have any plans for them?

Sounds cool to me.

There's only four different Terror Mission maps for Battleships--by the time we get close to beating the game we'll know those maps as well as we now our own bases. Unless of course you plan to mix in the weaker UFOs with the stronger UFOs.

4 Bases if you want to keep Australia or the fringes of S. America.

Edited by Man of Doge
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@Doge, how I personally envision Mag to be is a rapid-fire, high-ammo weapon. Being different from gauss in the fact that gauss is heavier, slower, and has much less ammo. E.I. Mag machine weapons for days. Whereas gauss is for your snipers and you GEN II ROCKET LAUNCHER THAT NEEDS TO BE A THING. But I'm not the dev. I'm just a lore writer ;)

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