A few things I noticed comparing my initial missions to the original x com

[Mathalor]

1. In the original x com, my soldier would stop what he was doing when he first saw a particular alien, instead of continuing to walk out into the open and draw avoidable reaction fire. I do not want to play this game moving my soldiers one square at a time just to avoid this! -I'm told this was a bug and the game does this already.

2. In the original, the rocket launcher could level most earth-made small buildings, or at least open wide passages into the walls and/or destroy any cover, but the blast radius on the Xenonauts version seems much smaller, and usually only destroys one tile in the center, if it even does that. I'm not sure why I should continue to bring the thing along.

3. In the original, the equipment that was brought to a mission was the same even if one of my soldiers was killed or wounded. I only needed to make sure that another soldier was equipped, and later in the game, armored. In Xenonauts, I have to remember what that soldier was equipped with, go to the soldiers screen, make sure the replacement has the same equipment, equip the replacement to the Chinook, go to the load out screen, and finally look at where the new guy is sitting in the helicopter. It's a lot of work if I lose a guy. There's certainly some improvement in that there's a load out screen at all, and in that there's a point to equipping your guys with more than one type of weapon, but I think this process needs to be streamlined in some way. I posted in another thread that it would be nice to see and modify a soldier's equipment from the Chinook load out screen, but I'm sure there are other ways.

4. Should I be worried about base layout in case of alien reprisal?

5. I like the idea of the iron man mode, but it should be implemented differently. Instead of greying out the save feature, allow me to overwrite the previous save. Sometimes I really needed to put the game down, and coming back to it and losing the last 2 ground missions I did was very frustrating. It also kind of defeats the purpose if I can just quit and load an auto-save from before the mission started. So, change the "quit" option to, "save and quit."

6. I'm hesitant to bring this up, since the end game content hasn't been implemented, but without being able to screen for 90%+ psi-defense soldiers, and depending on a psi defense that gets cut the moment one of your guys gets mind controlled and starts killing his teammates (morale), I think there ought to be more stun weaponry in the game, or at least the late game. Something light weight (So I can give it to most of my troops as a sidearm) and with a short range. Either that or my personal armor out to be able to take a few of my own shots, even on the harder difficulties. Or both.

I like the game. I hope you can iron out everything before your expected release date.

Edited September 13, 2012 by Mathalor

[Max_Caine]

Regarding #2, the blast radius can be altered invidiually for each rocket in the weapons_gc.xml file. Try altering the highlighted part of this line for each rocket type:

<Impact spectre="particles/explosion/explosion" radius="3" sound="Weapon Rocketlauncher Explosion" fireChance="0" smokeChance="0" gasType="RocketFragSmoke" />

Regarding #3 look at this thread concerning auto soldier loadouts. Chris comments on that.

Regarding #4 look at this thread on base design. Chris comments on that.

Edited September 10, 2012 by Max_Caine

[Mathalor]

Thanks for the links. Interesting info.

[Chris]

1) Does the game not do this? I'm pretty sure it does (I just tested it). If it doesn't do this in some situations, you should raise a bug report about it.

2) Balancing issue. We'll look into this in beta.

3) It's not that easy to fix this, really. You can see the weapon on the Chinook screen, and perhaps we can upgrade it so the portraits show the armour equipped too. But then you can't see their faces.

4) At the moment, yes. Hopefully in the future, base layout won't help you too much.

5) It should autosave on quit, and only on quit. That's basically the purpose of the mode. Something to get fixed up in beta anyway.

6) True, the mind-control chain reaction is something I'd not considered. Maybe a balance issue to address in beta, but we'll see how it pans out.

[StellarRat]

6. I'm hesitant to bring this up, since the end game content hasn't been implemented, but without being able to screen for 90%+ psi-defense soldiers, and depending on a psi defense that gets cut the moment one of your guys gets mind controlled and starts killing his teammates (morale), I think there ought to be more stun weaponry in the game, or at least the late game. Something light weight (So I can give it to most of my troops as a sidearm) and with a short range.

Like a Taser?

[Gazz]

Like a knockout injection you can trigger remotely for your soldier.

Unlike mind control (which wears off eventually) this knocks out the soldier for the rest of the mission.

If the rocket launcher guy in the middle of your team gets MC, this might be preferable to the alternative. =)

But of course, you can only research this (item?) after x soldiers get MC!

[Mathalor]

Yes, like a taser. Maybe 20 or 30 foot range, they should never be more effective against aliens than normal gear. More effective at stunning than a stun rod, though. They have to be light weight, though, so your soldiers can afford to carry them as back up weapons. If they're too heavy, you can only have a couple of specialists carry them, and they do no good if the guy carrying it is mc'd, out of range, or otherwise incapable of assisting right away.

Edit: Thank you for the response, Chris (and everyone else too). I didn't notice it earlier. I'll file a bug report on #1.

Edited September 13, 2012 by Mathalor

[Mathalor]

double posted, delete post isn't working.

Edited September 13, 2012 by Mathalor

[Gauddlike]

I don't like the idea of a ranged stun weapon that is better than a stun rod and light/small enough for everyone to carry.

Where is the balance in that suggestion?

It sounds like a very lazy way to try and balance psi defences.

Surely there are better ways to balance mind control than adding an item to let you knock out your own troops after they are mind controlled?

Different armour sets may have different psi resistance.

Maybe mind control works on max bravery rather than current morale.

Perhaps mind control is less effective the more friendlies are close by.

Part of the damage done to a mind controlled target is dealt to the controller as stun damage (psychic feedback).

If they try to take too many of your men and you are forced to kill them the enemy will eventually overtax his mind and black out.

Similar to the previous suggestion the mind controlling enemy could take morale damage related to how much damage his controlled target takes (psychic shock).

Instead of blacking out he would instead make himself prone to panicking but eventually be able to rejoin the fight.

Morale could be used instead of AP for use of psychic abilities.

The users morale compared to the targets morale (or bravery) determines how likely the attempt is to succeed and is slightly reduced each time an attempt is made.

Any or all of those make better balances than cheap stun weapons for me.

[Buzzles]

The other option is to use the manufacturing process, make an item that possibly requires some more rare parts (ie, Enemy Unknown's psi-amp things) and is used up upon a sucessful defence against a Psi-attack, that you have to have in your soldiers inventory.

The idea being it offers a little bit of defence, but is a finite (on the battlescape) resource that's only useful for a limited time.

I don't like this idea though, it's a cop out and really doesn't fit well with the Xenonauts theme as it's very Sci-Fi.

[StellarRat]

I don't like the idea of a ranged stun weapon that is better than a stun rod and light/small enough for everyone to carry.

Why not just add a sedative to the medipack? You'd have to get right next to the guy and give him a shot. Also limit it to only working on humans. That seems reasonable. It wouldn't be added to the medipack until after you've researched psionics or at least encountered them somehow.

[Mathalor]

Having played missions on the original x com where my guys kept getting mind controlled, I gotta say melee range won't cut it if there are many mind controlling aliens in the late game, like the Ethereals. Even when my whole team was equipped with stun rods and travelled in packs to stun anyone that got MCed, my soldiers would die alarmingly fast. Mind controlled soldiers get reaction shots on anyone walking up to them, if they have TU.

I depended on the screened psi defense later in the game, or power armor + laser pistols because it took forever for them to die that way. Or I chain mind controlled the aliens, especially when fighting the Ethereals. But even a sectoid mission got ugly fast if I couldn't reach their leader and take him out quickly. When assaulting their supply ships it wasn't unusual to lose 2/3rds of my soldiers.

Like Chris said, they might have to tweak it in beta, but if it's anything like the original, you're going to need more than just the morale defense. Especially after you lose your first or second soldier. I doubt that stun rods or melee range med kits will make such missions possible to finish. Especially on the harder difficulty settings.

Also, if you are depending on morale, which requires high ranking soldiers, what happens when the mind control spamming aliens kill off most of your commanders? Not only is that particular mission screwed, but you won't be able to do any missions against them until you've trained new high level troops, which could take months.

Edited September 14, 2012 by Mathalor

[Gauddlike]

Mind control is only one of the psi abilities available.

I would prefer to see it balanced properly, same as any other powerful weapon.

Adding ranged stun weapons to primarily use on your own troops because of failure to balance a game feature is incredibly poor design.

There are an awful lot of worst case assumptions in these posts that can easily be addressed by balancing the ability.

I posted a few balance suggestion for consideration earlier.

Any of them would make your 'we are all doomed' situations far easier to deal with.

Mind control as a line of sight ability or with a specific range is another that springs to mind easily.

X-com was very badly balanced in regards to psi abilities.

The answer to that is to balance the abilities better in Xenonauts.

Leaving the abilities unbalanced but adding a badly thought out counter is not a good plan.

[donald007duck]

agreed, just keep in mind if one of your troops does get mind controlled myself i would prefer a weapon designed to incapasitate rather than kill my soldiers who have been controlled. (like a riot shotgun*shooting beanbags*) somthing to damage them but more than likely to knock them out (for the battle) rather than having to kill them outright.

missles with knockout gas, tazer bullets, nurotoxin bullets, concussion grenades, gas grenades-just to name a few and of course anyone downed this way would automatically take at least 80-95% health damage and need to heal before they could fight again.

and these weapons would be human use only(little to no effect on aliens)<---unless researchable

[Gauddlike]

Stun rockets, stun grenades, stun batons, flashbangs, and suppression from normal weapon fire could all affect the mind controlled person (all in the game or planned for inclusion soon).

I would be tempted to either make them immune to suppression completely or give them a really high resistance to it though.

Why should Ceasan1257 care if the meat puppet gets a bit damaged after all.

I would be in favour of adding a ranged single target stun weapon to the game as well.

I would give it reduced effectiveness compared to the stun baton though.

Some kind of tranquilliser gun rather than a taser.

Mainly because a taser has a hard cap to how far the electrodes will reach whereas a tranq gun can use the existing range calculations.

Maybe even a tranq pistol for emergencies and a tranq rifle with sight for sneaky sniper types.

[Mathalor]

Mind control is only one of the psi abilities available.

I would prefer to see it balanced properly, same as any other powerful weapon.

Adding ranged stun weapons to primarily use on your own troops because of failure to balance a game feature is incredibly poor design.

There are an awful lot of worst case assumptions in these posts that can easily be addressed by balancing the ability.

I posted a few balance suggestion for consideration earlier.

Any of them would make your 'we are all doomed' situations far easier to deal with.

Mind control as a line of sight ability or with a specific range is another that springs to mind easily.

X-com was very badly balanced in regards to psi abilities.

The answer to that is to balance the abilities better in Xenonauts.

Leaving the abilities unbalanced but adding a badly thought out counter is not a good plan.

Yeah, that's fair. You have a good point about balancing the psi combat in a much better way. I hope they do that.

And I don't think I can comment on suppression fire. I never figured out how to make that work. I saw buttons for one bullet or 3, but those always just killed the alien outright. I think I missed something.

@Donald007duck:

I think having weapons that specifically have no effect on aliens would also be bad design. If you're going to bring them, make them useful generally, even if they're less immediately effective than lethal weapons. Optional stunning ammo might be nice.

Edited September 14, 2012 by Mathalor

[Gauddlike]

Nothing wrong with bringing up something you see as a problem.

Much better than keeping quiet about it and finding out it is still a problem after release

[peirceg]

a psi-training facility to train up your psi-defence or whatever?

Diminishing returns on the number of times a soldier can be controlled?

psi-defence temporarily for that mission goes up after each successful mind attack?

have your own psi capable people be able to defend against psi attacks at their fellow squadmates?

[Gauddlike]

Currently psi defence is planned to be your morale.

A separate psi defence stat would be required to make the training idea work.

I think Chris wanted to avoid that because of the annoyance factor it represented in the original game.

You could have troops who were fantastic and had been with you from the start who suddenly became useless when you found they had a psi defence of 2.

The second and third options could be pretty much the same, could work well to prevent the annoying effect that you used to get in x-com where once someone was mind controlled it was better to just drop their weapons when you had a chance and leave them to wander.

Lastly there are no psi capable humans in Xenonauts so that wouldn't be able to be used.

Equipment may be able to do something about it though.

For example vehicle crews are apparently immune to psi effects because of the bodywork around them.

Maybe some of the armour sets could have a similar resistance effect.

[Mathalor]

I think if the aliens required line of sight to their target, that would cut down much of the abusive nature. Also, their new puppet shouldn't be awarded a full TU bar just for being mind controlled.

That mechanic where the aliens instantly know which soldier has the highest chance of being mind controlled from any given distance and the aliens all targeted that soldier unless a few of the mind control spammers were close or spread out enough to change the numbers around in which case they targeted the weakest soldier with respect to them.. That should definitely be cut.

Finally, since Xenonauts uses morale as a psi defense, the psi attack that targets morale and has a double chance of success would be especially cheap. Maybe replace it with something that temporarily cuts strength. Or maybe just cut it altogether.

@gauddlike: I tried to find the post you mentioned, but your posting history is >2000 posts long.

Edited September 15, 2012 by Mathalor

[Gorzahg]

Why is everyone so wimpy about mind control?

[Mathalor]

Cause it was overpowered and cheap in the first game and we're losing the biggest counter to it.

[Gorzahg]

Cause it was overpowered and cheap in the first game and we're losing the biggest counter to it.

The only psionic aliens that were over powered were the Etherals and that's only because all of them could to do it without line of sight. More balancing will go into mind control in Xenonauts so I'm not concerned.

[Belmakor]

Different armour sets may have different psi resistance.

Maybe mind control works on max bravery rather than current morale.

Perhaps mind control is less effective the more friendlies are close by.

Part of the damage done to a mind controlled target is dealt to the controller as stun damage (psychic feedback).

If they try to take too many of your men and you are forced to kill them the enemy will eventually overtax his mind and black out.

Similar to the previous suggestion the mind controlling enemy could take morale damage related to how much damage his controlled target takes (psychic shock).

Instead of blacking out he would instead make himself prone to panicking but eventually be able to rejoin the fight.

Morale could be used instead of AP for use of psychic abilities.

The users morale compared to the targets morale (or bravery) determines how likely the attempt is to succeed and is slightly reduced each time an attempt is made.

I agree a nice way of doing it would be to allow soldiers to make "psionic" checks against their bravery stat plus a modifier which includes something like up to 20% of the bravery of each xenonaut within a few spaces (say 4). That way you benefit from pairing up cowardly rookies with battle hardened vets.

So lets say the enemy has a (90-minus modified bravery stat of target) chance of controlling an opponent. The spare ten percent plus the failure percentage is the chance the attempting psionic agent receives a kickback (damaging morale as opposed to hp otherwise healing would be an easy solution). I would make the morale kickback higher according to the percentage chance of failure for the alien to avoid them just spamming mind control on your top quality troops.

A rookie with bravery 40 has a 50% chance of being mind controlled. However in close proximity to a veteran with morale 60, his modified bravery becomes 40 + (0.2*60) = 52. His odds of being mind controlled are now 38% which is quite favourable.

Sure you could counter psi by grouping all your soldiers together in a huddle making them almost impervious (perhaps the alien should always have a 1% chance) to mind control but that is the only advantage. The disadvantage is that this is not the best way to clear a map of aliens (poor views, poor firing arcs) and you are open for alien area damage weapons taking out large swathes of your squad!

And yes, repeated psionics against a soldier should cause their morale to degrade to the point that subsequent attempts become easier (with recovery over time as current). I think a notification that your soldier passed a psionic check would be useful for you. You then have a turn to try and get some close support in to this guy to give him the morale support to stay good!

All in all quite a nice balance between risk reward.

[GoodGuyEddy]

The only psionic aliens that were over powered were the Etherals and that's only because all of them could to do it without line of sight. More balancing will go into mind control in Xenonauts so I'm not concerned.

Why did you give kitteh the eyepatch!?