A question

[TrashMan]

Since I'm not in the beta (regretting it now) and I want to know.

 

Is the weapon upgrade system still completely linear and uninspired? (standard guns -> lasers -> plasma, all just increased damage and no real differences) This is what I hated the most about Xenonauts, since different weapon are just re-skins. 

Or will it finally be more involved and varied? For example:

Ballistics and energy weapons have different tiers and types and upgrades, and different pros and cons - lasers might be very accurate, but have issues with armor or overheating. Or different damage depending on range and weather (as they should), laser diffusion and difraction are known phenomena. Loosing power over distance would be even more pronounced for plasma weapons

Ballistic weapons might have upgrades and various ammo types that increase their damage output and versatiltiy even later in the game.

So basically

Tier1 ballistic (normal guns) -> Tier2 (upgraded modern guns) -> Tier3 (ammo upgrades) -> Tier 4 (coilguns/railguns)

Tier 1 energy (lasers) -> Tier 2 (plasma) -> Tier3 (pulse lasers) -> Tier 4 (exotic particles? plasma improvements)

And it goes without the saying that every weapon type would NOT be a copy-paste. No plasma snipers. No laser shotguns. Differences in weapon that are mechanical and tactical, not just visual.

 

 

OH, before I forget - for mod support, do you plan to make  it possible to restrict/allow weapons based on crietera, like strength or power armor (as in, some weapons that can ONLY be used in power armor or that CANNOT be used in power armor)

[Chris]

The tech tree hasn't arrived yet (it should happen next week) so the balancing hasn't yet been done, but it's probably somewhere between what you're looking for and what the original Xenonauts had. Lasers already have small batteries but recharge shots, whereas plasma weapons have larger cells but drain power each turn. They're not pre-requisites for each other any more either; it's possible to get the equivalent of MAG weapons without having ever researched Lasers. And aliens have different resistances against different damage types.

But yeah, the accuracy / TU of a shot is the same no matter what type of rifle you're using, and all weapon families contain all types of gun. Maybe that'll change, but that sort of fine balancing isn't really my priority right now - that's an Early Access thing.

Re: the modding question, it's not currently planned but I doubt it'd be difficult to implement.

[TrashMan]

It's fine if it's not what I want, as long as I can somehow tweak it to come close. Thus the game being moddable is a pretty important thing. the less hardcoded, the better.

 

That said, I'm happy you are keeping all of this in mind. Variety is the slice of life, but if it's cosmetic or formulaic, it drains half the enjoyment out of it.

[wulf 21]

10 hours ago, Chris said:

But yeah, the accuracy / TU of a shot is the same no matter what type of rifle you're using, and all weapon families contain all types of gun. Maybe that'll change, but that sort of fine balancing isn't really my priority right now - that's an Early Access thing.

 

Hmm, this actually made me wonder... because in the closed beta the TU cost for firing laser weapons are much higher (mostly 2x) than for firing ballistics (accelerated ballistics are the same as ballistics)

for example

accelerated rifle vs. laser rifle TU cost:

snap: 14 - 28
normal 20 - 40
aimed 28 - 55
burst 30 - 60

Did somebody already put this balancing feature into the game and not tell you? Or is it actually not intended that laser weapons have such high TU cost (and therefore technically a bug)?

[Chris]

On 4/12/2019 at 10:38 PM, wulf 21 said:

Hmm, this actually made me wonder... because in the closed beta the TU cost for firing laser weapons are much higher (mostly 2x) than for firing ballistics (accelerated ballistics are the same as ballistics)

for example

accelerated rifle vs. laser rifle TU cost:

snap: 14 - 28
normal 20 - 40
aimed 28 - 55
burst 30 - 60

Did somebody already put this balancing feature into the game and not tell you? Or is it actually not intended that laser weapons have such high TU cost (and therefore technically a bug)?

It's a bug. We moved the TU cost from % based to absolute values (which meant all the TU costs had to be halved), but we just didn't update all the weapons.

[TrashMan]

I just want to add something. You probably already considered this, but in terms of flexibiltiy (in general) and modding, how is damage of a weapon tied with ammo?

 

IMHO, the best way is to have damage of a weapon defined both in the weapon itself AND in the ammo, with the ammo values (if defined) overriding the weapon values.

Which means that it makes it easy to balance and create different weapon types, while still having different ammo types.

So you can have different power cells for lasers with different capacities (but same damage.. or not), different ammos with different properties and values.

[Kompa3ot]

Уважаемые Разработчики игры, объясните мне геймерские нюансы: после сбитого, а тем более, падения НЛО и весь экипаж инопланетян жив, да и весь корабль, вам, возможно, сначала нужно погасить щиты НЛО? Дрой парадокс, в очередной раз мы сражаемся с пришельцами, но нет прогресса ни у людей, ни у пришельцев ... Изучаем все как обычно-лазерное оружие ... Может быть, инопланетяне все еще уничтожают Землю, так как мы начинаем исследовать все с нуля !? Где новое оружие пришельцев (например, маликулярное оружие, водянистый импульс в виде ленивой стрелы или мини-черная дыра (она может втянуть в себя истребитель, если он появится) ... Есть пример фильма День Независимости 2, где люди использовали инопланетные технологии .. .