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I wiped the map with 4 Mars-1's--balance problem?


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See screen shot below for the results of a terror battle against Sebillions(sp?).  I did a search on vehicles and balance and found 1 comment by Kharkov (I think) from the last 6 months or so.  Also, I vaguely remember some discussion of platform capabilities and protection in the past 6 months or so, but not out of concern for imbalance.  Sorry if this is a rehash.
  
I'm using the term "platform" to describe the Mars1 mobile weappons.  
I just finished my first trial of a "Mars1 x4" strategy: two shotgun platforms and two LMGs along with the usual mix of the remaining six humans in the drop ship.  I've never finished a battle so fast.  Any time I could bring up two of the shotgun platforms next to an enemy, it was toast--even the big lizard guys never had a chance to regenerate.  The two LMG platforms were almost as effective if the distance wasn't too great.  As the results show, I lost only one of the platforms--no other KIAs.

Although I loved shooting everything in sight--at least, as a novelty--four platforms with those weapons seemed to me likely to unbalance any of the earlier terror or downed-UFO combats.  I think the reasons that the four platforms did so well include:

- The enemies in early battles are relatively weak and the full enemy AI isn't in place.

- The platforms have great mobility, allowing them to get up close and personal very frequently, and they often had enough action points left over to get back to cover, or at least further away from the enemy

- The enemy AI didn't target the platforms as priority targets (I think the platforms were fired on twice).

- The abilities of the humans and those of the platforms seem to mesh unusually well, with the platforms protecting the humans and the humans repairing the platforms or delivering the final shots to put away a shredded enemy..

Of course, inexperienced players will take a while to come up with the right number and armament of platforms, but at least something to think about.

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Yeah, I suspect I'm going to enforce a cap on the number of vehicles that can be brought onto a mission - probably one in the Chinook, and then an additional one for each level of advanced dropship. It kinda makes sense that a vehicle is more useful than an individual soldier because you have to invest research and manufacturing time into researching it, building it and keeping it upgraded, but if so we need to limit their numbers otherwise people will just want to replace all their soldiers with vehicles.

 

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OG Xcom does the same concept where each transport ship has a limit on the amount of vehicles (HWPs) it can carry.

You might want to be wary on having a max limit of MARS's during base defence missions, if there's no cap then there's nothing stopping the player tossing sixteen or more MARS's at each base and steamrolling the aliens. 

You could also take the X-Division route and make it that you get only one vehicle slot for a transport, but that slot does not decrease the amount of Human soldiers you can take. 

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I have to echo the bit about not being able to heal MARS robots with medkits...if this is the case

they need humans to bolt extra plates on them mid-fight, its imperative the robot cannot do so himself and its a separate tool from what is used to heal humans.

they should be relatively easy to take a shot at, they should not be able to adapt their profile to cover, so can't lean or crouch.

AI does need a general answer to yolo-tactics (realistically its pretty hard to close with a armed combatant that isn't disabled in some way, turn based tactical games do have the problem that high speed shotgun rushing is often a totally viable and usually quite safe strategy, especially if the unit closing is essentially a disposable robot)

They do need to mesh well with human operators, being a mechanical meatshield is totally fine. but they should lack in versitality..if a player is tempted to just replace all soldiers with MARS platforms because of "much damage" other consumables have too little or no value (C4, grenades etc. things that the mars cannot use). capping can limit the problem, but it can also hide a simple "the big gun is always best" problem 

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After our many tries, I experienced that having special slot for a non soldier unit is much better. So you can bring everything without losing anything. 

We got same ai problem at x1 too. Enemy was ignoring the vehicles. So this makes vehicles op because enemy ai act like they don't existed. So xce made some magic and we handled this ai. 

So problem is ai. If they attack to those vehicles like soldiers, you can't do those things. Before nerfing the Mars, the ai should be fixed and tests should be done after that. 

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The AI is attacking the MARS as it should be. It´s an enemy Soldier (not from the Aliens) and therfore a dangerous for the Aliens. So the Alien-AI is acting correctly.

The Problem we have is only that the MARS don´t have an Armor which safe him from enemy Fire on his Weak-Points. The MARS is an Drone-Vehicle which is rebuilt for Xeononaut use. Normaly the MARS is an Helping-Drone for Bomb-Dispursal, light and fast most invisible Scout for the normal Army. The MARS wasn´t biuld for Fighting Aliens, so it´s a provisional arrangement with Scout and Attack-Functions for the Xenonaut-Organisation.

The same functions have the starting Inteceptors, which have a short Range. Therfore we need the Foxtrott back, which get the same Weapons as the Starting Interceptors with a little more power about it´s 2 Engines, a bit more Armor and better Fuel-Tanks for longer Range interception. Both will later be outplayed from the new Interceptor which is researched from Alien-Materials (like Computers, Alenium, Materials and whatever) to get the first real Prototype-Interceptor against the Aliens.

Same with the MARS which will get an better Equivalent later on. Therfore we get better Weapons, Armors etc. for it like for the Interceptors and Soldiers.

Edited by Alienkiller
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