Alien lethality possibly too high?

[Jet Jaguar]

Does anyone else feel that the alien lethality in the early game feels too high? It feels like recruiting soldiers based on HP and loading them with the best armor you can afford is pointless because they still get one shot no matter what. I wouldn't have a problem if it was unarmored soldiers being killed, but it feels extremely frustrating and punishing when one of your soldiers just bites the dust because an alien just one taps your soldier through their armor. What's the point in buying armor if it doesn't save their life or reduce casualties? I think that a soldier that gets downed in one hit through their armor should just fall unconscious for the duration of the mission. They can also make the soldier have an extremely long recovery period while they're at base and not die outright, that way their armor still protects them but you are still a man down during the mission. What do you guys think?

[Alienkiller]

That’s realistic what happens to your soldiers. I have no Problems with them.

Use cover, kneeling your Soldiers, use the MARS-Vehicle, light and heavy Armor and different Weapons. Then all Parts of the Game can be done very easy.

You will have casualties with wounds or deaths. That’s fully normal, doesn’t matter you play old or new X-COM, Fan-Projects, Xenonauts 1, Xenonauts 2 in all Versions, Phoenix Point or such.

It’s not the Game, it’s the Player on the Control which decides life or death.

 

 

 

Edited July 8, 2021 by Alienkiller

[DREADNAUGHT]

I think Chris and team should implement that xcom thingy when soldiers had 2-3 turns before dying of critical wounds. As is soldier lethality is too high even with "good" armor.

[Jet Jaguar]

10 hours ago, DREADNAUGHT said:

I think Chris and team should implement that xcom thingy when soldiers had 2-3 turns before dying of critical wounds. As is soldier lethality is too high even with "good" armor.

I agree, I just don't think soldiers being one shot through their armor with no way to save their lives is fun or interactive, It's just frustrating. I would understand if you're using under tiered armor. But what's the point of rushing combat armor if your soldiers just get one tapped by alien magnetic pistols?

On 7/8/2021 at 3:57 AM, Alienkiller said:

It’s not the Game, it’s the Player on the Control which decides life or death.

This would be true if there is absolutely no RNG involved with the game's mechanics, but damage has a spread, everyone has variable hit chance, you don't have perfect knowledge about which aliens you're fighting, where they are, etc etc. I'm not saying this game shouldn't have RNG, I am saying this game shouldn't punish you for investing in armor that has a fairly high chance of failure. To have a soldier die in one hit with no counter play is just not fun or engaging. Even if you move all of your soldiers one tile at a time through the fog of war, if there's an alien over watching a corner that you're walking through, that soldier has a HIGH likelihood of dying irrespective of his armor, or his health values, hell even combat shields have an 80% chance of being worthless. I wouldn't mind if the soldier was one tapped but survives at the end of the mission. Similar to the bleed out method in XCOM as mentioned above, maybe we can heal them to stop the bleeding but that soldier is now incapacitated for the duration of the mission.

[mclang]

If you build medical bay, there is some 30% (?) percent change that dead soldier survives.

[Jet Jaguar]

10 hours ago, mclang said:

If you build medical bay, there is some 30% (?) percent change that dead soldier survives.

True, but that still doesn't address the outstanding issue of your soldiers potentially being insta-gibbed with no counter play. That's the crux of the problem.

[DREADNAUGHT]

Huh? I thought the medbay was there to cut down on soldier healing times?

 

As is, you dont need either medbay or armor. Those are resources best spent elsewhere. Pointless to have a soldier survive 10-15 battles and get better only to be instakilled the moment an alien shoots at him

 

 

the 30% does explain a funny bug i found in which i accidentaly sent the chopper with one soldier, after touch down when turn ended he died bc yeah. I was amazed to see that he survived and somehow returned to base too in the after battle screen oO

[Kamehamehayes]

Perhaps the solution to this problem is just to buff armor from warden to endgame. The tactical suit and combat armor can stay because they are as they are basic, modern technology, which does not protect very well against bullets going the speed of sound and concentrated bolts of plasma. Buffing all of the armors that contain alien technology will give the player a sense of progression to show how far they have come since the beginning of the war and allow them to have a better chance against the aliens. 

The 30% chance of reviving a soldier when you build a medbay is nice; however, it is too rng dependent to be reliable in any feasible run. Perhaps its upgrade can increase the chance of it happening to 50%, giving the player a reason to build that expensive facility when it is not worth it to build compared to advanced labs and advanced workshops. 

[Jet Jaguar]

12 hours ago, Kamehamehayes said:

Perhaps the solution to this problem is just to buff armor from warden to endgame. The tactical suit and combat armor can stay because they are as they are basic, modern technology, which does not protect very well against bullets going the speed of sound and concentrated bolts of plasma. Buffing all of the armors that contain alien technology will give the player a sense of progression to show how far they have come since the beginning of the war and allow them to have a better chance against the aliens. 

I agree that the lower tier armor should still be vulnerable to being one shot, I just don't think it should lead to instant death, there's been so many times where a soldier with 65 HP and Combat Armor just dies on the first mission to a random reaction shot that activated the moment he was spotted by the alien, It's just frustrating.

12 hours ago, Kamehamehayes said:

The 30% chance of reviving a soldier when you build a medbay is nice; however, it is too rng dependent to be reliable in any feasible run. Perhaps its upgrade can increase the chance of it happening to 50%, giving the player a reason to build that expensive facility when it is not worth it to build compared to advanced labs and advanced workshops. 

I think the medbay could use some improvements, definitely. Perhaps lowering the construction period by a week or so can make it more impactful in the early game.

[Ninja]

If they change it I would prefer that to be done on difficulty settings. The game should be as realistic for players who want to experience the realism of facing a high probability of dying, because they were shot with a plasma rifle from a highly advanced alien lifeform prior to developing the technological capability to mitigate such weapons destructive prowess against the frailty of human flesh. The early game danger creates the intense atmosphere that creates the immersion that most of us appreciate about the experience. 

Edited July 28, 2021 by Ninja

[DREADNAUGHT]

You are missing the point, lethality is to high even with latest armor. Meaning one shot one kill, thats the issue.

Edited July 29, 2021 by DREADNAUGHT

[odizzido]

Personally I like making choices that matter. If armour does nothing then it's not a choice which makes it pointless beyond being a beginners trap. That's no fun for anyone.

I am not saying if armour is good or not, I've not played the game in a while so I don't know. I am just pro-choice.

[Komandos]

If the penetrating power of the weapon is such that it depends on the distance to the target, then a soldier without armor (if hit in the head or body) will always die at any distance. While a soldier in armor has a chance to survive at a certain distance. And the better the armor, the closer the soldier can safely get to the aliens.

[Alienkiller]

Exactly Komandos, very good explained. We can test this in the existing Version atm.

[Chris]

I have actually toned down the lethality slightly in the past few builds (i.e. since the original post was made); alien weapons do slightly less damage now but more importantly the damage modifier for a shot runs from 50% - 150% now, whereas before it ran from 50% to 200%. That means there's less chance of the aliens scoring a massive critical hit with their weapon that will kill most soldiers in the early / mid game irrespective of their armour and HP.

It's a difficult balancing act though. I also don't want the player to know that a soldier will always be safe to take at least one hit if they're wearing good armour, because then some of the tension disappears. So it's just finding the right balance between exposing your troops to fire always being a risk on one hand while not making HP and armour pretty much irrelevant on the other.

[Kamehamehayes]

55 minutes ago, Chris said:

I have actually toned down the lethality slightly in the past few builds (i.e. since the original post was made); alien weapons do slightly less damage now but more importantly the damage modifier for a shot runs from 50% - 150% now, whereas before it ran from 50% to 200%. That means there's less chance of the aliens scoring a massive critical hit with their weapon that will kill most soldiers in the early / mid game irrespective of their armour and HP.

It's a difficult balancing act though. I also don't want the player to know that a soldier will always be safe to take at least one hit if they're wearing good armour, because then some of the tension disappears. So it's just finding the right balance between exposing your troops to fire always being a risk on one hand while not making HP and armour pretty much irrelevant on the other.

After testing armor hp for a little while, what do you think is the superior model, armor damage reduction or armor hp?

I honestly see a lot of merit in both models. The armor damage reduction model has been tested in many games and I generally like it a lot because it is intuitive and easy to understand. However, the damage reduction model can make weaker weapons have extremely little effect on Xenonauts or highly armored aliens (like how ballistic pistols have almost no effect on androns or how high-level armor can make the initial alien weapons ineffective against your soldiers in Xen 1). The armor hp model still allows for early game weapons to be threatening against armored soldiers and aliens, which can help someone behind on tech catch up easier, while having a similar effect to damage reduction in most cases. However, the player is blind to their current armor hp, so it is easy for a soldier to die in a long mission even if they have full hp because their armor hp was destroyed and the system is less intuitive in general than the previous system.  

I think the best solution to the problem would be to add an armor hp bar to the tactical ui; it would allow the player to know when their armor has a chance of breaking and it solves the previous issue of a soldier dying because the player did not know what the armor hp of their soldier was. 

[Komandos]

3 minutes ago, Kamehamehayes said:

However, the player is blind to their current armor hp, so it is easy for a soldier to die in a long mission even if they have full hp because their armor hp was destroyed and the system is less intuitive in general than the previous system. 

If a shot hits directly in the face, a soldier, even in good armor, can die from a pistol bullet.

In such games, it makes sense to think not about the safety of individual soldiers, but about the safety of the entire tactical unit. The sniper can sit far behind the stormtroopers. He probably won't need an armored suit at all. And it will be the most advanced soldier in the game.

A stormtrooper soldier is often attacked by aliens. And you won't be able to avoid it. And you will lose stormtrooper soldiers all the time. 

To have an advanced stormtrooper soldier at the end of the game - you will need:

- Or great luck.

- Or impenetrable armor suits.

- Or weak aliens.

- Or a "training center" that constantly improves recruits.

[Jet Jaguar]

1 hour ago, Chris said:

I have actually toned down the lethality slightly in the past few builds (i.e. since the original post was made); alien weapons do slightly less damage now but more importantly the damage modifier for a shot runs from 50% - 150% now, whereas before it ran from 50% to 200%. That means there's less chance of the aliens scoring a massive critical hit with their weapon that will kill most soldiers in the early / mid game irrespective of their armour and HP.

It's a difficult balancing act though. I also don't want the player to know that a soldier will always be safe to take at least one hit if they're wearing good armour, because then some of the tension disappears. So it's just finding the right balance between exposing your troops to fire always being a risk on one hand while not making HP and armour pretty much irrelevant on the other.

Thank you for taking the time to address my concerns and I understand how difficult it is to balance. I believe the changes you've made are a clear improvement. I am aware that soldiers are meant to be an expendable resource and that armor is not supposed to guarantee one's survival. The aliens should always be seen as a threat no matter at which point in the game you're facing them. Risks should always play a part in every battle you command. I agree with that sentiment entirely. I do believe that their could be a possible middle ground? We could increase the likelihood of soldiers bleeding out and lower the amount of turns they have to be stabilized from three turns to two. We could also make it that if armor is fully destroyed in combat that you then need to build more armor. As of right now you really only need 10 copies of armor, because as long as your soldiers do not die, you can switch them out with your squad as you see fit. However if we were to make it that for armor that's HP reaches zero is destroyed then the player now has a choice of whether to spend more time and money on building more armor for their soldiers. This punishes the player for taking bad risk assessment and putting the soldiers in positions where they are at risk of being fired upon. The best defense is to never get shot after all. In exchange we can slightly increase the HP value of armor to compensate. That way armor is slightly more effective but now a lot more influential over your economy. If your soldiers are surviving the fire fights more often but you're now always spending more money and more time on constructing armor, the player now may be faced with slower engineering time, since they're constantly creating new armor and has another choice. Do they spend more money and time on armor or do they risk sending their soldiers out with no armor or weaker armor? This becomes even more influential when we take into account idle engineers now make you passive income. Forcing the player to choose, what do you think?

 

[Komandos]

19 minutes ago, Jet Jaguar said:

The best defense is to never get shot after all. 

This also applies to the desirable behavior (AI) of aliens.

Why should I train and select the best soldiers (take care of them in battle) if any hired recruit can easily cope with the aliens? For example, thanks to the armor.

Edited November 4, 2021 by Komandos

[Komandos]

27 minutes ago, Jet Jaguar said:

If your soldiers are surviving the fire fights more often but you're now always spending more money and more time on constructing armor, the player now may be faced with slower engineering time, since they're constantly creating new armor and has another choice.

If the player's soldiers survive too well in the first armor, then what's the point of creating a second one? (Better armor than the previous one.)

[Jet Jaguar]

38 minutes ago, Komandos said:

This also applies to the desirable behavior (AI) of aliens.

Why should I train and select the best soldiers (take care of them in battle) if any hired recruit can easily cope with the aliens? For example, thanks to the armor.

Well first of which, stress is currently disabled in Xenonauts 2. When stress is reimplemented you'll have to switch soldiers out. Second of which as the game progresses aliens will start using more lethal weaponry as well no? Also constantly hiring new recruits uses up a lot of money and valuable living space. That's a lot of money and construction as well as base space being used and power. As well as psionics becoming a bigger concern. Having more veteran troops with higher stats is going to better your odds, even moreso with medals being implemented rewarding you for keeping your troops alive. 

20 minutes ago, Komandos said:

If the player's soldiers survive too well in the first armor, then what's the point of creating a second one? (Better armor than the previous one.)

I apologize I'm having difficulty understanding this question. I'll try my best to answer. Currently, armor in Xenonauts 2 has an HP value. My suggestion is that when the armor reaches zero HP the armor is destroyed and when you return back to base you may construct more armor. If the question you are posing is what is the point of creating more advanced armor if your troops are staying alive in their current armor? That is a good question, but I think it shouldn't be too much of a problem. If you're armor is constantly being destroyed then you're constantly repairing it. More advanced armor will be more difficult to destroy is the concept. A larger initial investment to protect your soldiers from dying and from having to constantly recreate new armor. While if you're using previous generation armor your soldiers will be at a greater risk of dying and you'll have to constantly construct more armor. Using up more money over time and valuable engineering time. Also this kind of circles back to alien lethality increasing as the game progresses and you start encountering more advanced weaponry. You'll lose a lot of soldiers if you're sending out rookies in defender armor, when you're encountering psionic enemies and plasma weapons.

[Kamehamehayes]

1 hour ago, Komandos said:

If a shot hits directly in the face, a soldier, even in good armor, can die from a pistol bullet.

In such games, it makes sense to think not about the safety of individual soldiers, but about the safety of the entire tactical unit. The sniper can sit far behind the stormtroopers. He probably won't need an armored suit at all. And it will be the most advanced soldier in the game.

A stormtrooper soldier is often attacked by aliens. And you won't be able to avoid it. And you will lose stormtrooper soldiers all the time. 

To have an advanced stormtrooper soldier at the end of the game - you will need:

- Or great luck.

- Or impenetrable armor suits.

- Or weak aliens.

- Or a "training center" that constantly improves recruits.

Sure, the safety of the tactical unit I'm question is more important than the safety if the soldiers, and a soldier shot in the head can die at anytime. However, it is easy for key soldiers to die because you don't know the armor hp of your soldier at the time. If armor hp should remain in the game, then the current hp value of the armor should be shown to improve quality of life and player decision making. 

[Komandos]

28 minutes ago, Jet Jaguar said:

If the question you are posing is what is the point of creating more advanced armor if your troops are staying alive in their current armor?

Yes.

30 minutes ago, Jet Jaguar said:

If you're armor is constantly being destroyed then you're constantly repairing it. More advanced armor will be more difficult to destroy is the concept. A larger initial investment to protect your soldiers from dying and from having to constantly recreate new armor. While if you're using previous generation armor your soldiers will be at a greater risk of dying and you'll have to constantly construct more armor. Using up more money over time and valuable engineering time. Also this kind of circles back to alien lethality increasing as the game progresses and you start encountering more advanced weaponry. You'll lose a lot of soldiers if you're sending out rookies in defender armor, when you're encountering psionic enemies and plasma weapons.

The game does not take into account the consumption of ammunition for small arms. And I think that the game will not take into account the consumption of armor plates in the armor of a soldier. (Armor repair).

[Komandos]

36 minutes ago, Kamehamehayes said:

, it is easy for key soldiers to die because you don't know the armor hp of your soldier at the time

If the key soldiers (sniper, grenade launcher) are on the third line of defense (offensive), then the chances of losing them are small. In the first line there are soldiers with a shield, whose task is only to open targets. They don't even need to shoot: he looked out, showed the enemy to other soldiers, hid. You don't have to be good soldiers to do that. In the second line there are machine gunners and stormtroopers. They need armor more than others.

The status (health) indicator of the armored suit is really necessary

Edited November 4, 2021 by Komandos

[Chris]

4 hours ago, Kamehamehayes said:

After testing armor hp for a little while, what do you think is the superior model, armor damage reduction or armor hp?

I honestly see a lot of merit in both models. The armor damage reduction model has been tested in many games and I generally like it a lot because it is intuitive and easy to understand. However, the damage reduction model can make weaker weapons have extremely little effect on Xenonauts or highly armored aliens (like how ballistic pistols have almost no effect on androns or how high-level armor can make the initial alien weapons ineffective against your soldiers in Xen 1). The armor hp model still allows for early game weapons to be threatening against armored soldiers and aliens, which can help someone behind on tech catch up easier, while having a similar effect to damage reduction in most cases. However, the player is blind to their current armor hp, so it is easy for a soldier to die in a long mission even if they have full hp because their armor hp was destroyed and the system is less intuitive in general than the previous system.  

I think the best solution to the problem would be to add an armor hp bar to the tactical ui; it would allow the player to know when their armor has a chance of breaking and it solves the previous issue of a soldier dying because the player did not know what the armor hp of their soldier was. 

The "what's the best armour system" is a really hard one and there's no clearly right answer, as I've discovered to my cost. I suspect the final system will use flat reduction but weapons would have an "armour destruction %" value where a percentage of the damage absorbed by the armour is destroyed, which means that certain weapons are much more effective than others at destroying armour.

I think we definitely do need to display the current armour HP level, yeah. It's displayed if you open up the soldier inventory screen in GC but we need to find a way to work it into the main UI. As you say, it is important information for the player.

4 hours ago, Jet Jaguar said:

Thank you for taking the time to address my concerns and I understand how difficult it is to balance. I believe the changes you've made are a clear improvement. I am aware that soldiers are meant to be an expendable resource and that armor is not supposed to guarantee one's survival. The aliens should always be seen as a threat no matter at which point in the game you're facing them. Risks should always play a part in every battle you command. I agree with that sentiment entirely. I do believe that their could be a possible middle ground? We could increase the likelihood of soldiers bleeding out and lower the amount of turns they have to be stabilized from three turns to two. We could also make it that if armor is fully destroyed in combat that you then need to build more armor. As of right now you really only need 10 copies of armor, because as long as your soldiers do not die, you can switch them out with your squad as you see fit. However if we were to make it that for armor that's HP reaches zero is destroyed then the player now has a choice of whether to spend more time and money on building more armor for their soldiers. This punishes the player for taking bad risk assessment and putting the soldiers in positions where they are at risk of being fired upon. The best defense is to never get shot after all. In exchange we can slightly increase the HP value of armor to compensate. That way armor is slightly more effective but now a lot more influential over your economy. If your soldiers are surviving the fire fights more often but you're now always spending more money and more time on constructing armor, the player now may be faced with slower engineering time, since they're constantly creating new armor and has another choice. Do they spend more money and time on armor or do they risk sending their soldiers out with no armor or weaker armor? This becomes even more influential when we take into account idle engineers now make you passive income. Forcing the player to choose, what do you think?

 

No problem. You're aware that a few builds ago we made armour destructible, right? If the soldier wearing the armour is reduced to 0HP in battle then their armour is lost.

If so then what you're proposing is an interesting idea, yeah. You're adding an outcome where the soldier can survive but their armour is destroyed, moving the tension away from losing soldiers to having to pay potentially a lot of money to replace their equipment (assuming their armour saves their life). I hadn't considered that idea before and I don't know if I'll end up using it, but I'll think about it.