Weapon progression

[TrashMan]

The one thing I like about UFO:AI and some other games is htat weapon progresion is not compeltley linear.

What I mean by that is that you have:

- rifle1, pistol1, shotgun1

then you research rifle2, pistol2, shotgun2

then you research rifle3, pistol3, shotgun3

etc, etc..

And each one is superior to the former in EVERY way. Range, damage, accuracy, Rof, whatever.

This makes it completely a no-brainer to replace weapons as other weapons have no value anymore. Besides, it's very...unimaginative.

I'd rather that older weapons don't become compeltely useless.

For example, in UFO: AI, the leaser rifle is less advanced than a plasma rifle. It doesn't do nearly as much damage and it's magaize runs out faster. But it has excellent range and accuracy, better than plasma.

Furthermore, not all aliens are equally vulnerable or resistant to all types of damage. Some are more vulnerable to kinectic, others are highly resistant to it.

All of this means that a family/type of weapons never becomes completely obsolete. You can pack plasma, but you might run into an alein that's highly resistant to it. You can still bring it down, but a kinetic weapons would bring it down faster.

[Buzzles]

Right, so er, what's your suggestion here?

And you do know Chris is fully aware of it and is actively avoiding the "heavy plasma" issue that Enemy Unknown has, so designed it so each tier does different things, not necessarily better than the previous one?

Edited October 18, 2012 by Buzzles

[Henry Jekyll]

and he sould also be avoiding the "sniper" issue. it has a reason that in the original ufo games was no sniper available. this is simply too easy, you have 6 snipers and every mission is a "walk in the park".

a possible solution is maybe to get the sniper only available for soldiers who have a accuracy >90. not every soldier gets a sniper training in real life, only the best/most talented (hope this was correct english).

my opinion.

[Max_Caine]

Trashman, you're not the first person to ask this, nor will you be the last. The modding forum is full of people who want to muddy the waters, and why not? I see two issues with what you propose.

Stats can be mathematically treated

I get what you're saying. You want earlier weapons to have some value that later weapons do not. The problem with doing this by stat adjustment is that in-game weapons can and will be subject to rigourous mathematical treatment to work out exactly which set of all the subsets available is the best subset to have, then reccomendations to take the best set for the job will be circulated like this guy did here. I.e. Heavy Plasma syndrome. The only way around that is to provide advantages and rulesets that are difficult or impossible to treat mathematically E.g. ballistic weapons are free, lasers cause the most suppression, plasma sets things on fire and all tier 4 weapons have the hypervelocity tag,

The game works on a progressive research unlock system

Exactly what is the point of researching later weapons if they aren't better than earlier ones? I mean, why should I bother putting my scientists to work on a gun which doesn't provide a significant edge over existing weaponry? I could use them to be rsearching better armour, or better aircraft, or better anything but guns. Take the AfterX series, especially aftershock and afterlight. Once I had advanced ballistics I didn't give a crap about later more "advanced" weaponry. Modded correctly, the bang bang did everything that the pew pew could and then some.

EDIT: I just thought of a third point

The AfterX series did this and it didn't work

I was wondering why I kept thinking Aftershock all throughout my post. It's because they implemented a system where aliens had a large variety of resistances to different weapon types. The idea was that you packed the specific weapon type for the specific alien you were going to face. And what happened? People moved to the most general of weapon types (which happened to be ballistics, but it could have been anything) which were most effective under most situations. Players will always move to a) weapons they really like and b) weapons that are the most effective under the widest range of situations. Because in a mission, you can never really be sure of what you are facing, so you pack the things you know that work.

However, with systems being introduced like armour degredation, earlier weapons will not be completely useless, as with enough time and enough bullets, even tier 1 will be able to take down the big boys.

Edited October 18, 2012 by Max_Caine

[Gorlom]

Max isn't Xenonauts supposed to have different damage types? ballistic, incinerary, laser and whatnot.

If you make alien armour have different resistances to different damage types you could have weapons that aren't obsolete by new weapons but still generally worse than the weapons you haven't unlocked yet.

Alternatively you could make 2-3 parallel tech tress for the weapons that have different strengths and weaknesses against particular aliens defenses.

Edit: Hmmm. for some reason I thought this thread was in the modding section of the forum.

[Gauddlike]

The downside to the resistance based system is that you have to keep a good amount of each weapon type on hand and swap them round depending on what you will be facing in a mission.

Then if the enemies you face are different (for example they have a terror unit or mixed crew UFOs) you have to swap round again or risk being poorly equipped.

At least if you know that plasma is generally better than laser you can focus on getting enough cash together to build your weaponry up for your squads.

With armour degradation your laser or ballistic equipped troops will still be able to do damage and weaken the enemy.

Their effectiveness will be lower but they will be useful.

[TrashMan]

Stats can be mathematically treated

I get what you're saying. You want earlier weapons to have some value that later weapons do not. The problem with doing this by stat adjustment is that in-game weapons can and will be subject to rigourous mathematical treatment to work out exactly which set of all the subsets available is the best subset to have, then reccomendations to take the best set for the job will be circulated like this guy did here. I.e. Heavy Plasma syndrome. The only way around that is to provide advantages and rulesets that are difficult or impossible to treat mathematically E.g. ballistic weapons are free, lasers cause the most suppression, plasma sets things on fire and all tier 4 weapons have the hypervelocity tag,

There is a difference between having a weapon come out as best overall and having other weapons be compeletely useless in comparison. In that JA2 list, there's pletny of weapons whre the statistical difference is so small that it really doesn't have a noticable impact.

Also, with different damage types or special properties, you can give different weapons different feels.

The game works on a progressive research unlock system

Exactly what is the point of researching later weapons if they aren't better than earlier ones? I mean, why should I bother putting my scientists to work on a gun which doesn't provide a significant edge over existing weaponry? I could use them to be rsearching better armour, or better aircraft, or better anything but guns. Take the AfterX series, especially aftershock and afterlight. Once I had advanced ballistics I didn't give a crap about later more "advanced" weaponry. Modded correctly, the bang bang did everything that the pew pew could and then some.

Advanced. Usefull. Better (but not necessarily in every way).

Sure, if you research advanced ballistic weapons, the older one should be obsolete, because they are the same weapons, only improved.

but when talking about weapons that work on compeltely different principles...like lasers, plasma and kinetics. I see their application and strengths/weakneses as different enough that they have their use.

Alternatively, you cna have tiers of weapon types. So laser 1, laser 2, plasma 1, plasma 2 etc...

Players will always move to a) weapons they really like and b) weapons that are the most effective under the widest range of situations. Because in a mission, you can never really be sure of what you are facing, so you pack the things you know that work.

So what's wrong with picking weapons you like?

[TrashMan]

The downside to the resistance based system is that you have to keep a good amount of each weapon type on hand and swap them round depending on what you will be facing in a mission.

Then if the enemies you face are different (for example they have a terror unit or mixed crew UFOs) you have to swap round again or risk being poorly equipped.

If you ever played PnP D&D, that is nothing knew.

Always be ready and always carry a secondary (with a different damage type)

It's funny when a party packing only blunt weapons gets attacked by zombies.

[HWP]

Well, realistically, laser weapons should have major advantages in both accuracy and range over most anything else. It's best to play to these strengths.

Really for more options one could bring in advanced ballistics. Forget the handwavium discussion on alien alloys; let's just assume them to be like 2012 experimental level alloys, but reliable. Imagine what these one could do with these in a firearm. Actually, no need to imagine, I have a reasonably accurate idea of what could be done. In fact it's good enough that you'd only want lasers for their excellent accuracy, zero recoil and zero noise - which are by themselves big advantages.

Not sure if a new class of weapons can indeed be modded in.

[Gorlom]

Not sure if a new class of weapons can indeed be modded in.

You can add weapons. You can add research topics and Xenopedia entries. You can add manufacturing projects.

[Buzzles]

Well, realistically, laser weapons should have major advantages in both accuracy and range over most anything else. It's best to play to these strengths.

Really for more options one could bring in advanced ballistics..

HWP, you *really* need to start diving into the assets before you post

As for lasers, I'm not sure if it's in Xenonauts, but the big downside to them is normally inability to fire through smoke and fire, which actually makes their use a bit more tactical if like me, you love chucking smoke grenades at aliens.

[Chris]

The idea is that each tier of weapon (ballistics / lasers etc) is better than the one before it, to provide research tree progression. The choice is within each tier, so there's different variants of pistol / rifle / carbine / sniper weapon for each tier and some are better against different alien types. It's still structured but it's not quite the "give everyone the Heavy Plasma" of the original.

[meowmers]

there should definitely be a solid progression, with regression limited mostly to taste and small advantages (lasers not needing ammo). Your guys start off at a pronounced disadvantage, so there is not really a need to "roshambo" for balance.

it is already implemented that you cant just pick up and use alien weapons, so maybe Lasers and Plasma could be incredibly expensive to produce so they end up being support and elite weapons with the bulk of your force using cheaper equipment.

[Gauddlike]

You can pick up and use alien weapons if you want to.

You can't reload them, they have poor accuracy in human hands, and are automatically sold at the end of the mission but you can use them for the duration of the fight.

There is also not much of a disadvantage to begin with.

You are fighting ship crews of the lowest enemy rank.

Barely armoured, poor stats and the weakest alien weaponry.

You soon start meeting tougher races, higher ranked and better armed enemies.

I would personally find it a little dull if the starting ballistic tier was to be used all the way through the game with the occasional laser or plasma weapon added to the squad.

I quite like the tier upgrade system for that.

Once you research lasers you start to equip your squad as and when you can afford to build them.

Sooner or later your troops will be using laser weaponry as their default gear.

At that point you may be able to start the process again with plasma weapons and again for tier 4.

[HWP]

HWP, you *really* need to start diving into the assets before you post

There don't seem to be any in 16.1. Or am I missing something?

[zzz1010]

There discuss about weapons?

I have some "too late" strange ideas. . Add somewere in mags or ballistic(it was better to render this then ak) gas cannon analog, something like rg-6, with various granades, less destructive then roketlauncher(but use same ballistic model(or, but it's mayby too complex, with "less chance to hit prop on way to target" emulating low arc traectory)) but lighter amunition, without moving penalty, faster and multiround

And remove plasma sniper they will be high damage but less precise, instead of this maybe add to plasma tier "plasma AOE weapon". May switch it to something like "x-ray laser" "less damage then regular laser sniper but didn't stop on any hit and damage all on the way"

zzz1010, most of your suggestions can be modded

generaly I'm trying my suggestion to be relativly easy to be done. Well, maybe mod, why not. (but this way we didn't have special animated sprites for granade launcher)

I just don't sure like if(I'm not sure they are) that all tiers is complitly same but more powerful and different colored, and i didn't talk about just damage type. Something like "lasers didn't have automatic fire(ie burst spread, only longevity of burst what is count as just damage amount) and close combat weapons but have same damage on any distance, plasma is less range( with distance damage drop faster) but more powerfull" I'm not very creative but about some unique for tier weapons and perks

There also one suggestion what is much less possible but I would like to see - make laser to be ray, at the end proggramers can draw lines (they can, I know), but not sure they can do this without acsess to sources and there will be plenty issues with occlusion, but anyway - always like when lasers are rays

Edited October 21, 2012 by zzz1010

[Max_Caine]

zzz1010, most of your suggestions can be modded in with the exception of a grenade launcher. The closest you could get is a modified rocket launcher, but it would be direct, rather than indirect.

[TrashMan]

I don't see any technolgoy branch as "inferior"

Merely different or more/less refined

Remeber, Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest sunovab*** in space!

Imagine you start with the M-16

With alien materials you can contruct guns that can resist far greater forces. Add some recoil conpensating systems and you get new rifles with the punch of a high-caliber sniper rifle as your next kinetic tier.

Then you go into railgun/coilgun territory.

[zzz1010]

They already have something

MAG

, not sure what is it but

looks like upgraded ballistic

.

Edited October 21, 2012 by zzz1010
Oh, ok

[Buzzles]

they have something

mag

, not sure what is it but looks like upgraded ballistic.

Spoiler tags! Use Spoiler tags fior anything not actually available in the alpha!

[HWP]

Yeah, seen that - might be, but I was thinking on more of the level of a whole tier, i.e. downgrade your free guns severely and force you to research lasers or advanced ballistics to get competitive.

[TrashMan]

Balacing is not yet done. I have a feeling the aliens will get beefed up considerably.

[HWP]

It's not so much balance as that your starting weapons are, simply put, hand-me-down boot camp junk.

M16 was mediocre even in its heyday, today everyone who has a choice buys German and Swiss rifles, and US itself tried to replace it, but set unrealistic expectations. Your precision rifle doesn't strike me like any real SR, but it's pistol-grip, the province of low-level support DMR, certain to fire GI 7.62x51. Finally, pump-action shotty... really scraping the bottom of the barrel now.

You don't even need alien technology to improve on that.

It's 1979, so you can't have Arctic Warfare in Lapua, but even a Remington 700 in .338 Win would've been a big step up. For your AR, anything in 7.62 will add some much-needed hitting power, or you could upgrade to one of Korobov's more exotic guns, if we are to remember you're international. And Atchisson or another prototype auto shotty should be usable with a few finishing touches just around that time.

[TornadoADV]

It's not so much balance as that your starting weapons are, simply put, hand-me-down boot camp junk.

M16 was mediocre even in its heyday, today everyone who has a choice buys German and Swiss rifles, and US itself tried to replace it, but set unrealistic expectations.

This entertains me, considering the M-16 basic frame design has so many variants and caliber changes as to be rendered nonsensical in it's scope. The M-16 is a superb mid-range assault rifle that suffered the typical teething issues of the late 50s and early 60s when the Military Big Wigs thought technology was going to solve all their ills.

[StellarRat]

Chris has made at least one change that will make level 1 weapons at least somewhat useful against higher level critters, armor degradation. Even the toughest alien should be killable with level 1 weapons if you can get enough firepower on it. In old XCom some of the heavy weapons were useful throughout the game. The rocket launcher comes to mind. I don't see why that will change in Xenonauts. You also have to remember that higher level weapons are expensive, while the level 1 stuff is free, so that is another advantage they have.