Jump to content

[v18 Air Combat] rebalance


Recommended Posts

Read the Archive from the UFO DESIGN ANALYSES as well as the other UFOs and the SUMMARY CORRECTLY.

There is exactly explained what the Scout, Destroyer etc can do and what it can´t. The Alien-Scouts have as Maximum:

1. light Shield (atm only Alien-Ships; easy to destroy with our Standard-Weapons like Rockets and Cannons are shooting the subject of relentless criticism)

2. light HP (about similar HP´s as our own Fighters)

3. an light Energy Weapon as Defense mountet on the Hull which means a light Defense Turret (like our Back MG-Turret and 1 or 2 MG´s as front Defense in Dive-Bombers, Recocnissance Aircrafts)

4. As well as they are Constructed for Space Flight not for Atmospheric Flight (Speed Limitation, poor Acceleration and Manouverability)

The Alien-Destroyers have as Maximum:

5. medium Shild (atm only Alien-Ships; easy to destroy with our Standard-Weapons like Rockets and Cannons are shooting the subject of relentless criticism)

6. medium HP (some better HP´s then the Scout)

7. an light Energy Weapon as Defense mountet on the Hull which means a 3/4 Defense-Turret and 1 heavy long Range Weapon with a shorter angular distance as front and Side Weapons (like our Back MG-Turret and 1 or 2 MG´s as front Defense in Dive-Bombers, Recocnissance Aircrafts and Rockets like our Fighter Planes)

8. as well as for the better Protection and Ground Attack-Ababilitys greater Limitations (bigger Speed Limitation, much poorer Acceleration and Manouverability)

 

I am not Toxi only fully Nerved. The Scout and Destroyer have already so much Disadvantages and the Player get more Cheatings as a Solution. That´s the Things I and many other Others get fully Angry with reading such solutions.

 

Kamehamehayes Alien-Crew Solution with the Ship Handling sounds great. And the Evasive can implemented again if it workes for the AI. That´s the only 2 Solutions which are aggreeable for Ships that have already many Disadvantages (Scouts / Destroyers) and Advantages (Fighters / Abductors / Cruisers / Battleships and so on).

The Gun-, Rocket -and better Weapons-Range from the Aliens are fully OK like they are now. The Weapons get much harder already then the Human Equivalents can be.

Edited by Alienkiller
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 3/6/2021 at 2:33 PM, MrAlex said:

Here is my vision of the scout settings. Attacks from the back are possible, but it is not easy. Try to destroy it by attacking only from the back. It is possible, but difficult. Which makes the fight much more interesting.

 

It's just a scout. It does not have to be completely protected (360° angle of attack). But it is fair to give it maneuverability, because it is a small ship.

 

scout.json

ufo_scout_beam.json

user_Before_Scout_Attack-7.json

I adjusted the UFO Scout settings.

Who has the opportunity, comment on your impression. It seems to me that this is exactly what we all need. It does not have a 360 angle of protection, but has good maneuverability as it should be with small and light ships.

Here is the path to the files you need to replace:

Steam\steamapps\common\Xenonauts2Playtest\assets\assets\xenonauts\template\strategy\aircraft\profiles\alien\scout.json

Steam\steamapps\common\Xenonauts2Playtest\assets\assets\xenonauts\template\strategy\item\aircraft_equipment\ufo_scout_beam.json

The last file is the save just before the battle.

Edited by MrAlex
Link to comment
Share on other sites

MrAlex I will try it today evening. Then I say something about that. Because the Devs and Freelancers make the UFOs like they are descripted in the Research-Archive.

Evtl. there is something doable with the Aliens piloting it, which get an Archive-Upgrade or such. The Ceasans can do more, the Sebillians lesser, the Terminators as well as other Aliens ??????.

 

Edited by Alienkiller
Link to comment
Share on other sites

As others have said, please let's try to keep this discussion civil. We're all on the same side here.

@Alienkiller I know you are trying to help us here but it's difficult to have a discussion if you argue against almost everything anyone suggests that isn't what is currently implemented. I know that there are various limitations explained in the Xenopedia and you know from reading the forums that we as the developers have certain plans, but if people make good suggestions we can always change our plans and update the Xenopedia. The current implementation of the air combat isn't necessarily the best way to implement things so discussing ideas with the community is helpful. I can always say no if I don't like the things people are suggesting, so you don't need to get angry when people suggest things.

I appreciate your enthusiam and you do contribute useful things to the community, but you could be even more helpful if you could make your posts more focused - please just concentrate on the new ideas you're putting forwards, and let other users do the same. That way I can easily read what everyone thinks and I can make a decision more easily (at the moment you're responding to every post so the thread is twice as long as it would otherwise be).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If Chris can upgrade the existing and good written UFO-Pedia-Entrys without to much adjustments, we should implement the Idea Kamehamehayes Alien-Crew Solution with the Ship Handling.

Means the Disadvantages and Advantages from the UFOs get the same as they are now in General, but can be a little bit better with an equal crew.

There could be an special Archiv-Entry from Airfights with the Main-Races and Interrogations / Autopsys (Cesans, Sebillians, Wraiths and evtl. an other one we don´t know yet as Main Race) which piloting the UFOs.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

One thing to make air combat more interesting would be to implement more ship designs for same category. Maybe divide by race and adjust attributes. Like for example Sebillian ships would be slow but tough. This would also make additional changes to the ground combat, where each differently ship design would be breached differently. 

Another thing would be to setup rotating gun point for larger UFOs. Take for example Destroyer. It has 2 gun mounts right now. Forward static and almost 360 degree one. Make the 360 degree to a for example 30 degree cone but it will track the interceptor. So when 2 interceptors are involved the UFO will chase one and try to shot it down with the forward mounting gun, while the rotating gun will be tracking the second interceptor. That way player will have to decide which interceptor will be the "bait" and which one will attack and "tank" the damage from the cannon. Or with 3 interceptors there will be 2 baits and one will go for the kill

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@MrAlex @silencer @Kamehamehayes @Alienkiller

This thread has got a bit long and difficult to read, but I'll just post quickly to explain what I'm thinking in a bit more detail. Might have to start a new thread after the next hotfix I think.

Battlefield Variation:
Firstly, the current air combat implementation isn't final at all and I'm still brainstorming ways we can make it more interesting. Silencer, what I mean by that is that a combat featuring a specific interceptor and a specific UFO will always play out exactly the same way every time. The ground combat isn't like that at all; even if you end up on the same map (unlikely) then there's lots more randomisation that takes place within a mission that means it'd play out differently like spawn points and shots hitting / missing, etc.

Some of the ideas you've come up with MrAlex are similar to some of the ideas I have, but I'm actually looking at testing some more fundamental changes like adding clouds to the battlefield so units can use them as concealment to approach each other. But we'll see if any of that works - if not then yeah, I'll just have to add weapon variation and perhaps some level of damage variation to weapons so things aren't always exactly the same.

Interceptor Numbers / Multi-Shot UFOs:
You're not meant to be using more than one aircraft per battle at the moment, so them multi-firing isn't something that should worry you. I don't think there's anything fundamentally weird about the idea though, if we stick with multi-firing then we'll add a sweeping beam animation.

The current system of being able to send between 1-3 fighters into every battle doesn't work well, because then I have to balance the game assuming 3 fighters in every battle or the game is too easy - and that means the player has to have at least three planes in each base, and six planes if they want two squadrons. That's way too many. We're therefore considering a system where hangars become 2x2 buildings and what is currently a single aircraft becomes a squadron of three aircraft (and you build and control aircraft in these squadrons of three). This has the other advantage that you would always have three interceptors in a battle and that opens up more interesting tactics regarding positioning. However it has other problems where you need to build 3x as many aircraft weapons and equipment items, and I'm not sure how the Aircraft screen UI can work if you're equipping three aircraft at a time.

We're therefore also considering a system where standard interceptions only allow 1 aircraft and will only ever be against 1 UFO. We'll then also introduce frequent aerial terror sites where you are fighting three UFOs with your one Xenonaut interceptor and two controllable aircraft from the local forces, and hopefully there'll actually be little local forces ground units being attacked by the UFOs too. In this setup the fighters and capital ships with large blind spots tend to appear in the terror sites and the more passive UFOs like Scouts and Observers fly around the Geoscape normally. This means you'll still get a mix of 1v1 and 3v3 combat but having one interceptor at a base is a viable decision.

Anyway, we need to do some more testing internally before we make a decision on that. I'm not sure how well those ideas will work in practice but that's the reason why some of the changes have happened.

360-degree Fire Arcs:
I do understand the arguments people are making here and I agree with some of it, but I'm not fully convinced for a few reasons:

  • The combat plays out differently (in terms of damage taken) depending on the equipment of the aircraft. Some of the strategy therefore occurs on the strategy layer, where you need to make sure your aircraft have appropriate loadouts. This is something that you lose with the blind spot behind the aircraft, because the damage dealt by the aircraft matters a lot less - when the interceptor is in the UFO's blind spot, they're going to stay there. It doesn't matter if they stay there firing their weapon for 5 seconds or 30 seconds they'll take the same amount of damage (0 damage).
  • Even with 360 degree firing then using Evasive Roll appropriately could potentially reduce damage taken, etc. I therefore don't think that 360 degree fire arcs mean that you always may as well autoresolve. If clouds turn out to work OK then this will be especially true.
  • I still don't really see what's skillful about flying your plane behind a UFO and getting into its blind spot - because the interceptors already do that automatically. I think there needs to be more decision making for the player to make, ideally.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 3/6/2021 at 3:31 PM, MrAlex said:

I recently researched Accelerated Cannon. But I do not understand how it differs from the cannon?

Accelerated Cannon.jpg

Cannon.jpg

The way it differs is that the Accelerated Cannon has 4 Armour Damage instead of 3, but I'm not sure why the tooltip isn't showing that. I'll take a look.

EDIT - ah, it's a rounding error. I'll get that fixed.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

32 minutes ago, Chris said:

@MrAlex @silencer @Kamehamehayes @Alienkiller

This thread has got a bit long and difficult to read, but I'll just post quickly to explain what I'm thinking in a bit more detail. Might have to start a new thread after the next hotfix I think.

Battlefield Variation:
Firstly, the current air combat implementation isn't final at all and I'm still brainstorming ways we can make it more interesting. Silencer, what I mean by that is that a combat featuring a specific interceptor and a specific UFO will always play out exactly the same way every time. The ground combat isn't like that at all; even if you end up on the same map (unlikely) then there's lots more randomisation that takes place within a mission that means it'd play out differently like spawn points and shots hitting / missing, etc.

Some of the ideas you've come up with MrAlex are similar to some of the ideas I have, but I'm actually looking at testing some more fundamental changes like adding clouds to the battlefield so units can use them as concealment to approach each other. But we'll see if any of that works - if not then yeah, I'll just have to add weapon variation and perhaps some level of damage variation to weapons so things aren't always exactly the same.

Interceptor Numbers / Multi-Shot UFOs:
You're not meant to be using more than one aircraft per battle at the moment, so them multi-firing isn't something that should worry you. I don't think there's anything fundamentally weird about the idea though, if we stick with multi-firing then we'll add a sweeping beam animation.

The current system of being able to send between 1-3 fighters into every battle doesn't work well, because then I have to balance the game assuming 3 fighters in every battle or the game is too easy - and that means the player has to have at least three planes in each base, and six planes if they want two squadrons. That's way too many. We're therefore considering a system where hangars become 2x2 buildings and what is currently a single aircraft becomes a squadron of three aircraft (and you build and control aircraft in these squadrons of three). This has the other advantage that you would always have three interceptors in a battle and that opens up more interesting tactics regarding positioning. However it has other problems where you need to build 3x as many aircraft weapons and equipment items, and I'm not sure how the Aircraft screen UI can work if you're equipping three aircraft at a time.

We're therefore also considering a system where standard interceptions only allow 1 aircraft and will only ever be against 1 UFO. We'll then also introduce frequent aerial terror sites where you are fighting three UFOs with your one Xenonaut interceptor and two controllable aircraft from the local forces, and hopefully there'll actually be little local forces ground units being attacked by the UFOs too. In this setup the fighters and capital ships with large blind spots tend to appear in the terror sites and the more passive UFOs like Scouts and Observers fly around the Geoscape normally. This means you'll still get a mix of 1v1 and 3v3 combat but having one interceptor at a base is a viable decision.

Anyway, we need to do some more testing internally before we make a decision on that. I'm not sure how well those ideas will work in practice but that's the reason why some of the changes have happened.

360-degree Fire Arcs:
I do understand the arguments people are making here and I agree with some of it, but I'm not fully convinced for a few reasons:

  • The combat plays out differently (in terms of damage taken) depending on the equipment of the aircraft. Some of the strategy therefore occurs on the strategy layer, where you need to make sure your aircraft have appropriate loadouts. This is something that you lose with the blind spot behind the aircraft, because the damage dealt by the aircraft matters a lot less - when the interceptor is in the UFO's blind spot, they're going to stay there. It doesn't matter if they stay there firing their weapon for 5 seconds or 30 seconds they'll take the same amount of damage (0 damage).
  • Even with 360 degree firing then using Evasive Roll appropriately could potentially reduce damage taken, etc. I therefore don't think that 360 degree fire arcs mean that you always may as well autoresolve. If clouds turn out to work OK then this will be especially true.
  • I still don't really see what's skillful about flying your plane behind a UFO and getting into its blind spot - because the interceptors already do that automatically. I think there needs to be more decision making for the player to make, ideally.

We could take the best of 360 fire arcs and having a blind spot. We could make the ufo always have a blind spot but the guns can rotate around and attack the interceptor after a few seconds. This would mean that the play can't just stay in the ufo's blind spot the entire battle; instead, they have to constantly move around to take advantage of the shifting blind spot of the ufo. This would be pretty easy for the player to exploit when fighting something like a scout, but it would progressively get harder by making the blind spot more narrow and making the guns rotate faster as the ufos get more and more advanced. You could theoretically take no damage with only having weaker cannons, but the fight would take longer and longer as the game progresses, which vastly reduces the margin for error.

I do like the idea of only having one aircraft in most battles except in certain scenarios, it helps balance air combat and it makes stopping alien bombing missions much more interesting. 

Clouds seem like a good idea, I'm not sure how good they are in practice but we'll see. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 minutes ago, Kamehamehayes said:

We could take the best of 360 fire arcs and having a blind spot. We could make the ufo always have a blind spot but the guns can rotate around and attack the interceptor after a few seconds. This would mean that the play can't just stay in the ufo's blind spot the entire battle; instead, they have to constantly move around to take advantage of the shifting blind spot of the ufo. This would be pretty easy for the player to exploit when fighting something like a scout, but it would progressively get harder by making the blind spot more narrow and making the guns rotate faster as the ufos get more and more advanced. You could theoretically take no damage with only having weaker cannons, but the fight would take longer and longer as the game progresses, which vastly reduces the margin for error.

I do like the idea of only having one aircraft in most battles except in certain scenarios, it helps balance air combat and it makes stopping alien bombing missions much more interesting. 

Clouds seem like a good idea, I'm not sure how good they are in practice but we'll see. 

Yeah, rotating weapons are already in the game so that's easy enough to experiment with. Could be something that helps the problem.

The other thing I'm going to do is experiment with interceptions that are actually an interception - i.e. the UFO flies straight forward at max speed from its starting position and tries to outrun the interceptors, but they still get an attack pass on it as it goes by. I don't know how different that will end up being in practice but I suspect it might be more interesting than the UFO always flying directly towards or away from you.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

52 minutes ago, silencer said:

One thing to make air combat more interesting would be to implement more ship designs for same category. Maybe divide by race and adjust attributes. Like for example Sebillian ships would be slow but tough. This would also make additional changes to the ground combat, where each differently ship design would be breached differently. 

Another thing would be to setup rotating gun point for larger UFOs. Take for example Destroyer. It has 2 gun mounts right now. Forward static and almost 360 degree one. Make the 360 degree to a for example 30 degree cone but it will track the interceptor. So when 2 interceptors are involved the UFO will chase one and try to shot it down with the forward mounting gun, while the rotating gun will be tracking the second interceptor. That way player will have to decide which interceptor will be the "bait" and which one will attack and "tank" the damage from the cannon. Or with 3 interceptors there will be 2 baits and one will go for the kill

Yup, these are things I'm considering too. The rotating guns are already in the game on the later UFOs so it's no trouble to make more use of them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have a suggestion. I was playing X1 and just admiring the artwork. I like to go into the hangar and look at my planes. Everything is so detailed, from the Condor to the Marauder. What if you got rid of those boring RED AND GREEN radar blips in aircombat and put in fully detailed sprites? I mean you could just scale down the large artwork and slap it on the animations that already exist. Would it look too weird in motion? Maybe you could even show the land and water underneath the battle. Perhaps after battle you could show a Super Nintendo style "cutscene" of a flaming UFO hurtling towards a 2D pixel representation of what tile set you will be fighting in if you send your troops to recover the downed ship. Air battles would look flashy with more ESPLOSIONS AND LAZERZ. I know it would look good because whoever did the smoke plumes from an exploding car in X1 did an excellent job.

Far be it from me to pretend to be a developer, but this doesn't seem to be that hard to do and would make the air battles, something that I know many people skipped in X1, much more appealing and engaging. Also, I have NOT played any of X2 and have BARELY seen any footage. I'm only making suggestions based on what little I've seen. I apologize if some of these are inapplicable.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, Khosani said:

I have a suggestion. I was playing X1 and just admiring the artwork. I like to go into the hangar and look at my planes. Everything is so detailed, from the Condor to the Marauder. What if you got rid of those boring RED AND GREEN radar blips in aircombat and put in fully detailed sprites? I mean you could just scale down the large artwork and slap it on the animations that already exist. Would it look too weird in motion? Maybe you could even show the land and water underneath the battle. Perhaps after battle you could show a Super Nintendo style "cutscene" of a flaming UFO hurtling towards a 2D pixel representation of what tile set you will be fighting in if you send your troops to recover the downed ship. Air battles would look flashy with more ESPLOSIONS AND LAZERZ. I know it would look good because whoever did the smoke plumes from an exploding car in X1 did an excellent job.

Far be it from me to pretend to be a developer, but this doesn't seem to be that hard to do and would make the air battles, something that I know many people skipped in X1, much more appealing and engaging. Also, I have NOT played any of X2 and have BARELY seen any footage. I'm only making suggestions based on what little I've seen. I apologize if some of these are inapplicable.

Yeah, it's something I'm thinking about too. The complication is that animation is way more complex than standard art and in particular animation linked to action like weapons firing from one unit at another, etc. But it's obviously not impossible though, it's just more work. And the extra visual appeal might well be worth it.

It's probably something we'll explore when we've got all the air combat mechanics nailed down because I definitely don't want to be having a load of cool art made and then having to throw it in the bin.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Chris thanks for your Thoughts to us Testers. That´s an big Thing we can work with. The little dispute here were about the exsisting System as well as no more information we had.

To the Points we have already I have a following thought:

1. The Air-Combat is unsimilar to the Ground Combat. But with the Clouds Idea there could be a similarity to the Night Combats, where the Enemy can´t see you and you the enemy in an Cloud. As well as an Detection with Weapons get not so easy or such. Sounds very interessting, because such an cool implementation I haven´t seen for long (only in the old X-COM: Apocalypse with the Buildings as blind spot).

2a. That the Original-Ideas with Squadrons of 3 Planes each come back is great. If I remember me correctly we had such an System in the first Steps of the Game for Testing from seperate Airbases and the Main-Base were in Island or so. That the Hangars get bigger is a great Idea too. That could make the Hangars better too, like a Repair-Station or such.

2b. The other Idea with one Fighter and help from Standard-Military Comrades sounds great too (that we could test in the Outpost Defense-Missions in prevoius Versions) like Chris suggest.

Both give the Game much more Potential in the Airfights and Ground-Forces on military Posts or our Outposts can be hurt too. The same with Civilians in our Citys and / or other Parts which are planed. I suggest we test both Variants, evtl. a combination of both can be done.

3a. That you can build to many Fighters I have noticed too. There I agree fully with Chris. The Weapon Problem get solved like it is now. You can upgrade your exsiting Weapons (like the Canon to the Accelerated Canon, Generator-Sidwinder-Rocket-Upgrade) like it is. And the upgradeable Variants should be doable for your Founders too.

3b. If you build new ones (like Lasers, Rockets etc.) then you build one Prototype of the new Weapon and after some Tests (f. e. 2 or 3 Airfights) that new testet Weapon-Prototyps get new usable Standard-Weapon for all [your Guys first, 30 Days later the Founders]. The Upgrade from the Prototypes to the new Produceable Standardweapons get with a litte upgrade for your Fighters.

4. The Fighters (ours and Sponsors) getting to the blind Spot automatically if they fly directly to the UFO. There Chris is fully right. And the 360° Gun Turrets I and others have seen already in previous Versions, esp. on Observers, Harvesters. There only long Range Weapons were the best Alterneative. That big Changes for our Fighters / Transports come in now (like the first one we can test already), there are more cool new possibilitys availible. What that could be we have to test out first in medium Game Tests (sadly in Open Beta too :().

5. That you must get an Armor loss and / or Damage to your Fighters too are fully realistic. No battle (either Ground or Air) get a winner without Damage. Either Blood from Soldiers and repairable Vehicle-Parts in Ground Combat or repairable Parts (Weapon-Mounts, Engines, Hull etc.) from Air-Combat.

Edited by Alienkiller
Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 minutes ago, Alienkiller said:

That you must get an Armor loss and / or Damage to your Fighters too are fully realistic. No battle (either Ground or Air) get a winner without Damage.

I completely disagree.
Whether soldiers / vehicles and fighters will take damage in combat or not should depend on the player's actions. That is why I do not agree with the existing system with 360 angle of damage from long-range UFO cannons which have a high rate of fire and low damage. UFOs should attack 2 times less often, but inflict 2-3 times more damage.

As in ground combat, the player must be able to choose a favorable position for his fighter to attack.
Rapid-fire cannons must have a short range of attack, and long-range weapons must have a longer reload.

Well-thought-out tactical actions of the player should allow him to end the fight with less damage. If a player makes a significant mistake in battle, then the result should be significant damage to his fighter.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

17 hours ago, silencer said:

Make the 360 degree to a for example 30 degree cone but it will track the interceptor.

I agree. Small UFO ships must have good mobility so that the player cannot attack them from behind for a long time. (This is exactly what I did for UFO Scout in the example above)

Large and heavy ships instead of mobility should have an additional cannon that rotates, which will give the same effect.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

17 hours ago, Chris said:

It doesn't matter if they stay there firing their weapon for 5 seconds or 30 seconds they'll take the same amount of damage (0 damage).

No, it doesn't have to be that way. Using an option which accelerate the rotation speed of the UFO ship / cannon can make it impossible to hold a safe position for long time attacking.
This is exactly what I did for UFO Scout (at first he starts to turn slowly, but after a few seconds when the turning speed reaches a maximum the player is no longer able to attack while holding the current safe position. He must stop attacking and take a new position, or continue to attack but with receiving counter damage.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 hours ago, Chris said:

The current system of being able to send between 1-3 fighters into every battle doesn't work well, because then I have to balance the game assuming 3 fighters in every battle or the game is too easy - and that means the player has to have at least three planes in each base, and six planes if they want two squadrons. That's way too many.

You do not need to change all UFOs to fight against three fighters. This setting should be only for the strongest UFOs (as was previously the case with the battleship).
The player is limited in resources and construction time. The manufacture and maintenance of a large number of fighters is very expensive. The player must decide how many fighters he needs against a particular UFO. The possibility of using additional fighters can compensate for their low grade in combat with stronger UFO ships.
For example: instead of one Fury send 2-3 Angels into battle.

Moreover, I think it would be better to add to the game the ability for players to create a squadron during the interception of the UFO (as it was in the original UFO). For example: if 2 or more fighters on the tail in the target, they would enter the battle as a squadron.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yep the existing Fighting system, where the Player have only the Cheat-Chances are boring. There I agree fully with the complete Dev and Freelancer-Team which work on the Game.

Therefore I agree with Chris that we have to limit the Fighters we have on our Bases. The 2 announced Options from the Devs to make the Airfight better are very good.

Option 1: This Option are Maximum 2 Hangars for Squadrons and 1 or 2 Hangars for the Troop-Transports (belongs on how big the Transports are). In 1 Hangar you can do 2 Chinooks or 1 of the bigger ones later.

That was the originally Plan for Xenonatus 2 to have 3 Fighters in a Squardon and limited Squadrons, because the high Costs for Fighterupkeeps. Therefore I aggree with the Devs to upgrade the Hangars to 2x2 Fields (like they are in Original X-Com EU / TftD as well as UFO Extraterestials and evtl. UFO2Extraterestials). That makes the Sightings of the Base much finer as an other Effect too.

In Fighting the full Sqadron will attack and no other Xenonauts-Squadron can help. Only 1 Founder-Squadron can help in the Battle.

 

Option 2: You get limited seperate Fighters (like they are now), with the Difference that only 1 of your Fighter can fight against an UFO. But therefore he / she get Help from the Founder Country with a full Squadron which get under players Control in the Aircraft-Battle (Founder-Based like Mig-29 for Russia).

 

Option 3: An Mix of both with 2 Options:

a) the UFO have a Shield, a secondary Armor and then the Standard-HP´s to give him a Fighting Chance incl. a 360° Defense Turret and coupled with the Alien-Race flying it (evasive, Tricks etc.)

b) the UFOs get help too from her Friends. In what Form we have to think about.

 

You get Founder-Assistance too, that´s defenetly fact and a Main-Feature from the Devs which will come in. Chris announced that in an monthly Dev-Diray. That´s official and the public (Steam / Kickstarter) read it too. If I remember correctly it was for the Geoscape to give it more life.

Edited by Alienkiller
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 3/5/2021 at 2:57 PM, Chris said:

So I'm happy to discuss what we can do to make the air combat more skillful or listen to suggestions on that topic, but you need to bear those limitations in mind. For example, we could give the Scout a secondary weapon that fires a slow projectile that can be avoided with evasive roll, so a more skillful player can dodge that projectile. Or maybe the Scout could itself be able to evasive roll, so when you have multiple planes there's an element of skill in positioning the planes or stagger firing the missiles so more of them hit than normal, etc?

Good afternoon!
In my opinion, air combat can be varied as follows:
1. UFO systems and weapons before each battle must be randomly generated from a specific list of available onboard systems and weapons. Thus, the same type of UFO will have different characteristics (speed, rotation, armor, hull, shield, etc.), escort fighters (one or more), and different weapons that the player will not know about in advance.

In this case, the player will not know in advance about the characteristics of the UFO and each battle will be unpredictable and special for him. However, in the case of using only one interceptor, the player will not be able to prepare for flexible and adaptive combat with such an unpredictable opponent. It will take an entire squadron to do this.

2. I think that an interesting game point will be the introduction of the UFO missile defense system into the game. In this case, some UFOs could better resist missile weapons and motivate the player to conduct close combat, or search for dead zones of missile defense.

3. Different weather conditions - this is a great idea! Cloud cover that could hide the enemy from view. A storm front that disables shields. Strong wind, which reduces the ability to maneuver. If possible.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Alienkiller

Any restrictions are a bad idea, except for money and time. If a player has experience in air combat, he can destroy UFO 1x1, if he does not have it, he can attack UFO 2x1. This is perfectly normal for strategies. Someone will spend money and time on equipping existing fighters and someone will just build more. No additional restrictions are required.

It's like a ground battle using 16 poorly dressed soldiers instead of 8 well-dressed ones. And someone can go into battle with 5 soldiers against 20+ aliens and get a lot of fun from such a battle. In strategies, the player must have freedom of choice.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It´s hard to say, but hardcoded Restrictions are a must have in every Game for many many Reasons. Sadly that is a need for Xenonauts 2 too to play it on low Systems (like Laptops) and most medium Systems.

The first and important one is Cheating! Either the AI (like in the 1980´s to Mid / End 2000´s) or the Player.

The second and important one are Stagnate Pictures (dosen´t matter how good your System is).

There are many other Reasons too, but I´m to long time nerved and tired to discuss about this any more. Let the Devs integrate what they wanna bring in and let us test it. Then we will see and can decide. It´s to early to say what is good and what is bad.

 

The best examples are other Strategie-Games (like Starcraft-Series, Warcraft-Series, XCOM-Series, UFO ET-Series, Battletech or the 2019 come up Phoenix Point) or Multiplayer Open World Games (like WoW) which handle this Restrictions very good. Either in Ground Fights as well as in Air-Battles. The latest one is Hoi 4 which get in 3 big Patches and DLC´s restrictions on the World Map, which turned out the Stagnating Real-Time Pictures (like our Geoscape in Xenonauts 2).

If we find in the integrated for Testing Air-Fighting-Screens an Solution which makes to much Limitations needless and only light limitations nessecarry, then we have the best we can do.

@ Yust4es:  The first Point you mention is what we announced too. That is not UFO-Specific, it´s Alien-Race-Specific. The same UFO have the Standard-Restrictions with Weapons, Armor, Shields etc., but the flying Race (like Sebillians / Cesans) can do lesser or more with the UFO they are flying.

Sebillians f. e. shoot faster with the light Weapons on Scouts / upgraded Scouts / Destroyers and do more Engergy in the Shields. Therefore they can´t fly, Manouver etc. good

Cesans f. e. do the differnt way.

The Weapons you have as a player are very good from R & D, there to much oversupply kills the Game.

The Second Point you mention were integrated as an Evasive Maneuver and the Observers (if I remember me correctly) had such a system already. It was a Anti-Missle-Shield which broke down with permanently Strafing from Missles. To shoot the UFO down you had to go in Close Combat Range, but that wasn´t possible because it have a fast fireing Turett-Cannon, which destroyed your Fighters faster then they could go in Canon-Range.

The Third Point is completely new, which have to be implemented and need a medium to long time Test, which will be completely new for us all.

 

 

Edited by Alienkiller
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I just wanted to make a quick post saying that I tried out the auto resolve for all but one fight in my last game until the end of march and I was happy with it. Of course I don't know the game super well and it keeps changing but it felt good to use.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 3/10/2021 at 10:25 PM, Alienkiller said:

It´s to early to say what is good and what is bad.

Speaking of a strict balance of battles only 1x1 without the ability to attack the UFO with several fighters even if they are available, or the UFO balance for three fighters when the player has only one. There is nothing to test, and it is clear that this is wrong.

On 3/10/2021 at 10:25 PM, Alienkiller said:

Restrictions are a must have in every Game for many many Reasons.

In each game, the developers create a certain balance, and it should be. But there should be no strict restrictions on tactics, Also the player should be able to decide where to spend his money, on new units or to improve existing ones. That is why I think we need to build a flexible balance. Early UFOs must be balanced for combat against a single starting fighter. In the middle of the game - UFO for one upgraded fighter or several starting fighters. A Late UFO for a squadron of three improved fighters. Something similar we already had in the versions before the rebalance. Just then, heavy missiles were too effective. But they do not need to be removed from the game. Just adjust the damage and capacity slightly.
Ideally, they should have long range and damage, but small ammunition, and be effective only against large slow UFOs (Small UFOs should dodge them).

Edited by MrAlex
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yep the In-Game-Balance is an other Point too, but they don´t work with Restrictions. In every Strategy Game you have a Maximum of Units, Materials etc. or in the Medal of Honor-, Mafia- ect.-Series how many Weapons / Ammo etc. you have.

Both work in finished Games or such with DLC´s in a very good aggreement. But that can only be done after all important Things (which aren´t there for a medium time) are implemented. So we have to play and test with what we have now what is working and what not (are there pink Quaders on the Ground-Maps, work the refits, Bugfixes, Reworks, new implementations and such).

That´s atm our Work. Balance-Tests and Restrictions can 100 % done after all important Things get implemented, not before. That´s sad, but the Truth.

Personaly I think in Beta 21 / 22 that get slowly possible.

Edited by Alienkiller
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...