v26 Balance Feedback (Different enough from v25 to warrant a newer thread imo)

[Kamehamehayes]

I am thoroughly enjoying playing through v26, but I have noticed a lot of balance issues as I was playing. A few of these issues (like the ones present in the cleaner base and some of the air combat as aircraft weapons are much cheaper) are different enough from v25 to warrant a new v26 balance discussion over the other thread. 

(This feedback is up to after I completed the Cleaner Base Assault on month 3 on Veteran difficulty) 

Ground Combat: 

I feel that the strength and tu stats blow all of the other soldier base stats out of the water for the most part because of the sheer utility both of those stats add to a soldier. This does make soldier customization and their utility in ground combat really fun, but both strength and tus outclass every other base stat so much that I find myself picking soldiers with high stats in both of those options far more than any other stat. It can be a bit of a balance breaker at times, even if it can make the game really fun and opens up neat strategies.

Grenades in general feel really strong at present. With only having weights of 5 and a tu cost of 25 for the crazy amount of utility they bring, these grenades are easily spammed and can single-handedly secure a combat victory with little casualties. There needs to be some small nerf to them to balance them. I would assume that increasing the tu cost of grenades or forcing grenades to use a % of tus instead of a set number will cause them to become less spammable. (This also applies to the grenade-wielding enemies as well). 

I don’t really feel like snipers are very effective in the current game meta. It feels like the machinegun is superior to it in every way. Machineguns have similar issues to sniper rifles in that they require other teammates to blow up cover to make best use of their aim buff while not moving. However, machineguns with their 10-round burst have a lot more potential damage (which can hit other things in the vicinity) and can suppress surrounding aliens, making it better with dealing with multiple aliens and in most situations in general. Machineguns also have a decent short-range option with their 3-round burst, similar to that of rifles, that can make them effective short range weapons as well. Machineguns have so much better reward relative to sniper rifles that I often just switch my snipers to heavies so they can use their massive accuracy stat to effectively use machineguns instead. 

It is quite annoying to capture a mentarch (and other aliens that only show up once per mission) and not get the autopsy report that details all of its abilities and strengths. It makes sense to not get the autopsy on a captured alien, but it feels weird to know less about an alien by capturing it than if you killed it already. 

I don’t know if it is intended or not, but enemies can also reaction fire off of someone using a medkit. This feels very wrong as there are no loud noises/big movements/twitchiness while using a medkit, so there is not that much an alien has to react to in that sense imo. I feel like this one is more debatable and prone to change, but I find it odd. 

Cleaner Intelligence Hq: 

This mission was played in month 2 with steel plating and warden armor.

I’ve noticed that a lot of people consider the cleaner intelligence mission quite difficult, but I feel the opposite about it. I did the cleaner intelligence mission in the middle of month 2 with access to MARS, more experienced soldiers, and warden armor and managed to juggernaut it pretty easily (with all 25 drives and little casualties). I feel like the cleaner intelligence mission should also get slightly harder over time just like the cleaner base assault does. However, knowing that many people do struggle with this mission, I don’t know if there is a decent compromise here or the mission will just have to remain somewhat easy for players that do it later than others. 

Start of mission save: user_cleaner_inetelligence_hub_mission_-4.json

Cleaner base: 

This mission was played in month 3 with lasers, alloy plating, and warden armor. 

The sentries here feel extremely weird. They seem very stationary and only seem to fire on reaction shots. Players will assume that these guys work the same way your sentries do, but then they will be punished for believing that. Their reflex stat is way too high and they are able to reaction fire on any action imaginable, and they seem to suppress my soldiers more often than not. One can’t even use a flashbang to stop them from firing as they are mechanical. They feel really powerful, the player does not have great ways of taking them out, and the way they function feels really counter-intuitive compared to how your sentries seem to work. 

The issues with grenades also apply here to the enemies. It is incredibly frustrating to suppress and smoke a cleaner officer and then still have a soldier die because the officer can still throw a grenade over cover. The grenade nerf I mentioned earlier will help to make these grenades much more manageable and less frustrating. 

Start of mission save: auto_strategy_before_combat-42.json

Air Combat: 

I noticed that Ablative plating in engineering seems completely useless and redundant. Planes are already built with Ablative plating and you can only build 1 ablative plating at a time, which is very different from how things like alloy plating works currently. 

I don’t feel like the differences between cannons and missiles in air combat are significant enough. It looks like they do the exact same job, so having both of them in the game feels redundant right now. 

In air combat, the jump from fighting scouts, destroyers, and fighters to fighting observers is a huge jump. Fighting the others were pretty easy but the observer has incredible tracking and durability and heavily damages my angels in every encounter while the others don’t do anywhere near as much. I think that Observers should be toned down a smidge. (I had alloy plating, ballistic cannons, and regular missiles/torpedoes a the time).

Observer Interception save: auto_strategy_before_intercept-39.json

General Geoscape: 

Certain Base structures like radar arrays are really expensive. I don't really feel like even considering building extra radar arrays in the earlygame because I have a bunch of other things to spend money on (base structures, mars/sentries, a second base, alloy plating, accelerated/laser weapons, more angels, aircraft weaponry, and potentially the dragonfly and phantom depending on how early I want to rush those). It feels very much like a midgame/lategame option that feels extremely weird to have the option to have at the beginning. 

The game almost guarantees that 1/2 funding regions will have way more panic than every other region in the world as it is very unlikely to have more than 2 working bases by month 3. I would have lost North America in the third month if I was on the highest difficulty. I think the game needs some way of better counteracting some of this panic temporarily to allow time to build another base a month or two later. It would also be kind of nice if there was a one-time way to reacquire contact with a region already under alien control through a very special mission type, but that's just me and I know that can't be implemented for some time. 

 

Edited February 23, 2023 by Kamehamehayes

[Alienkiller]

@Kamehamehayes:

It´s very good that you give an Report to the V.26-Version. Haven´t played it yet fully (the Demo of course) to test the new integrated Features out. I made such an similar Report for an older Version (V.24 I think), but there I played to Day 280 and longer.

OK now to your Points:

1. Ground Combat:

- the Sniper is very precisse and an important Soldier. He / She can´t shoot as fast as the others, but the precisse Shoot and highest hit per Shoot makes the Sniper esential as Specialists like the Grenadiers (same Stats) / Shield-Soldiers (Close-Combat which is lighter attackable like the fast shooting Soldiers). It´s one of the first Soldiers (besides the Shield-Soldier) which gets the upgraded Accelerated Pistol and later Laser-Pistols first. There you have very less of them, which is the Disadvantage. You can´t rotate them as easy as the fast shooting Soldiers, which is the big Disadvantage.

- the fast shooting Soliders (Rifle, LMG, Shotgunners) are very important too, that´s correct. They are the biggest Soldier-Parts of your Team, so you can circle them lighter then the Specialists. Yeah, they have fast shoots and special Abilitys with the Weapons (like Shocking with the half Time-Units for the next Round if you make salvos), but they are short and middle Range, which make them easy targets. That means they have to be equiped with more protection (Protection-Plates, Cevlar-Protection with first Warden-Protection-Upgrade and later the first full Protection-Armor), which means lesser Equipment or Ammunition.

- Grenades you can´t use very often if you move your Soldiers. Otherwise you can use them twice if you stand still like with the LMG-Soldier and get an better Accuracy (LMG-Soldier / Sniper / Grenadier). In that Case you have the Option, which is good.

- The TUs / Strengh is very important. If you don´t have the first, you can´t move, if you don´t have the Second your Soldiers are unprotected / unarmed. Yeah, the other Stats are important too (Shooting, Throwing etc.), but they aren´t worth if the both Main-Stats (TU / Strengh) aren´t enough. I testet that out several times an the Result was always the same: You lost either through no Protection or to less Equipment.

Where I give you right are the following 2 Points in the Ground-Combat:

- the Autopsy shouldn´t be an automatic Research; I like it too to research manually like in XCOM-Series, Phoenix Point and UFO-ET-Series; if that´s not possible, the Chief of Sicentist have to ask first per Autopsy

- Yep that with the Medkit and the Reaction-Shot is strange. That shouldn´t be.

The good thing is there, that this Part is still in WIP with new Upgrades, Bugfixes and / or Rework-Changes per Main-Version.

 

2. Cleaner Hub Mission:

- you have played it in the first 3 Monthes after you had the Information. There it´s easy to manage. But if you make it later (4th Month+) it will be harder and harder. That´s already implemented in V.25.

- you will get some light or bleeding Wounds, that can not be avoided.

- the Trick here is to make that Mission in that more easy Timeline.

 

3. Cleaner HQ Mission:

- the Point is that your Soldiers don´t panic. Use Cover and the MARS as Protection as well as attack only if you are Ready with your Soldiers. The only Problem are the automated Defensive Cannons, but if you use your Soldiers wisly (Sniper, Grenadier, LMG, Shields, Riflemens) and the MARS wisly, and make it Step by Step (means Room for Room incl. the Main-Floor) then you don´t come in the Misery. 

- you will get some light or bleeding Wounds, that can not be avoided.

- we all had to learn that this is the first Mission which is very hard and adjust our Strategy / Tactic to it. If not you will loose.

 

4.  Air Combat:

- you can´t say that with the significant differences between Guns and Rockets / Torpedos all-inclusive. There are hughe Differences.

- Torpedos: they are slow, easy to outmanouver from fast UFOs, have maximum 2 Torpedos and get fired as salvo; therefore they have the longest range and Damage-Potential

- Missles / Rockets: they can be outmanouverd from fast UFOs, have maximum 4 Rockets, are not so effective against bigger UFOs and get fired as salvo; therefore they are fast and have an good Damage-Potential against light and medium UFOs

- Cannons: they are the low-damage Weapons against UFOs, Close-Range-Weapons which make the Fighters vulnerable and the Ammo is limited; therefore they are fast firing Weapons and have the best hit Potential to shoot down the UFOs and break the Armour before Rockets get fired.

- the Ablative Plating is the first Armor you get to have an light protection for your Fighters. The first 2 fighters have it already, but it´s buildable for more fighters (f. e. 4th Hangar in the Main-Base); in the Tests with the new Beginn R & Ds you had to research the Ablatie Plating first, which means the first 2 Interceptors were completely unprotected.

- where I give you right is the Jump in the Air-combats like you announced. There everybody from us have Problems.

But the good thing is, that the Air-Combat incl. the Parts behind it are still in WIP. That isn´t final yet and we will see more Upgrades, Bugfixes or an Rework there too.

 

4. General Geoscape:

- there we are on the same Wave. I and an Comrade have annouced that several times too and give many proposals to make it better.

- X-COM Apocylypse-Stile: there you will have some places to choose from and they are much smaller then the Main-Base for 3 Fighters, upgradeable Radar, upgradeable Defenses, Storage, Sleeping-Rooms, and either Researches or Workshops.

- UFO ET-Stile: like the prevoius one, but with big limitations in Buildup (3 Hangars, upgradeable Radar, upgradeable Defenses, Storage, Sleeping Rooms and an big Hangar for UFO-Storage incl. R & D-Development)

- Phoenix-Point Stile: Your Organisation had already outposts and you have to find them with reactivation (small Bases like announced X-COM Apocalypse stile).

- Outopsts like the annouced UFO ET-Stile, which are moveable, if they are in to much Danger to places which an UFO can be storaged and R & D.

Edited February 23, 2023 by Alienkiller

[MARSHalMELLOW]

Could each base get floors? complexity with adjacency bonuses with lifts for aircraft and storage, Aircraft deployment speed balanced with protection from bombardments. building under existing floors may start requiring alien materials and tech to excavate faster.

• Cheap surface Hangars, vulnerable to attack, faster access to a runway.
• The current aircraft carrier lift systems can be built, with limited planes that can be stored.
• Adding pilots as a human resource, just like soldiers, scientists and engineers.
• More effective training grounds on the surface, that could make training soldiers vulnerable, with an alarm system upgrade. (Starship troopers Style)
• AAA guns, could act as early Defensive weapons, Missile and torpedo tech they are upgraded like the aircraft. An upgrade allows you to bunker them.
• Base Defence variant of air-to-air combat. Choosing when to fire missiles and ships to target. with unique ICBM for specifically big targets.
• Retractable AAA guns, adjacent to aircraft elevators ambushing aliens that breach the hangar.
• Playstyles, Open surface Base = Aggressive (cheaper maintenance, build costs reduced and responsive to radar detected ships).
• Bunker base, with little surface footprint, reduced alien detection, More evasive playstyle. improving chances in late game against bigger ships.

[Lord Blade]

Quote

It is quite annoying to capture a mentarch (and other aliens that only show up once per mission) and not get the autopsy report that details all of its abilities and strengths. It makes sense to not get the autopsy on a captured alien, but it feels weird to know less about an alien by capturing it than if you killed it already. 

Wait... you don't get autopsies on captured aliens? Aren't you killing them after interrogation? Or do they just sit as prisoners forever?

Can't you just choose to kill anything you captured?

Seems like the autopsy option should always be available.

[Kamehamehayes]

Just now, Lord Blade said:

Wait... you don't get autopsies on captured aliens? Aren't you killing them after interrogation? Or do they just sit as prisoners forever?

Can't you just choose to kill anything you captured?

Seems like the autopsy option should always be available.

After you interrogate them, they just stay as prisoners until you sell them off for money. Although you never get the autopsy briefing that you normally get that describes alien stats and abilities. It would be nice if once you return to the base, you are given the option to kill off your captured alien so you can get an immediate autopsy. 

[Lord Blade]

Yeah, I don't get why you don't have the option to just kill off prisoners for autopsy purposes.

I can understand them being left alive after interrogation. But you should always have the option of killing a captive alien for research.

I really hope that gets changed.

[Alienkiller]

You get enough enemy dead Bodys in Ground Missions for Research. That´s not the Problem. There you can switch from automatic Research to manual Research, that´s no Problem and get tested out in an earlyer Beta-Version too.

You wont get an Option to kill the Enemys after interrogation for several Reasons. The Game should be sellable in the World to generate Money for more Upgrades, Bugfixes etc. and an evtl. Successor. The Translations which it will get is an important Reason too.

@MARSHalMELLOW: Nice Ideas for and 3rd Project (evtl. Successor or an DLC). The Development-Time for the Early-Access Release is not long anymore and the important missing Features will come in with the remaining Programming-Time (Geoscpae- / Base- / Soldier- / Aircraft-Management) incl. all the Gapfillers for R & D etc.

We (Devs and Main-Betatesters) already made an big Refit after the first Beta-Test-Versions which took with everything about 1 Year / 1,5 Years of Development Time about Features which didn´t worked correctly, broke the Game in differnt Parts etcpp.

[Chris]

Fair enough. To be honest I didn't really do very much balancing work between V25 and V26 but it's always interesting to get a snapshot of the balance.

For the autopsies, yeah, we can make them unlock off captured aliens too, that's easy enough. It doesn't quite make sense but I think it's the best solution as it doesn't penalise the player for capturing enemies rather than killing them. I'll update that in the upcoming hotfix.

Your points about the grenades are interesting. They've always been a bit of a problematic weapon in both Xenonauts and nu-XCOM but you're probably right having a fixed TU cost for them is a bit overpowered, particularly as troops get more TU through experience. I'll probably set the throw cost to 51% TU and up their weight to 6 each and see if that makes much of a difference.

It's nice to hear you find machineguns useful and snipers bad. I think plenty of other people would say the reverse is true (I certainly find snipers fairly handy myself given they can reliably hit an enemy from miles away) so I think I'll leave that as is for now. Once people are complaining equally about all the weapons being under / over powered then I think the balance is in a good place. The same kinda goes for the stats; I generally consider Accuracy and TU the most important stats so I think it's probably more important to try and get more value from Reflexes and Bravery than nerf anything else.

As for the Cleaner missions - I'm revisiting those at the moment. Ironically enough, though, the dynamic difficulty is on the Cleaner Intel mission rather than the Cleaner Base. I suspect the Intel mission is going to be hard to balance though, as some people seem to really struggle with it while experienced players don't have too much trouble. It's something we'll keep an eye on.

Yeah, I agree we need some way to lower Panic in a targeted manner. That's something I'm working on at the moment.

[Chris]

21 hours ago, MARSHalMELLOW said:

Could each base get floors? complexity with adjacency bonuses with lifts for aircraft and storage, Aircraft deployment speed balanced with protection from bombardments. building under existing floors may start requiring alien materials and tech to excavate faster.

• Cheap surface Hangars, vulnerable to attack, faster access to a runway.
• The current aircraft carrier lift systems can be built, with limited planes that can be stored.
• Adding pilots as a human resource, just like soldiers, scientists and engineers.
• More effective training grounds on the surface, that could make training soldiers vulnerable, with an alarm system upgrade. (Starship troopers Style)
• AAA guns, could act as early Defensive weapons, Missile and torpedo tech they are upgraded like the aircraft. An upgrade allows you to bunker them.
• Base Defence variant of air-to-air combat. Choosing when to fire missiles and ships to target. with unique ICBM for specifically big targets.
• Retractable AAA guns, adjacent to aircraft elevators ambushing aliens that breach the hangar.
• Playstyles, Open surface Base = Aggressive (cheaper maintenance, build costs reduced and responsive to radar detected ships).
• Bunker base, with little surface footprint, reduced alien detection, More evasive playstyle. improving chances in late game against bigger ships.

Not in the basic version of Xenonauts 2, as that's quite a major revision to a part of the game that's working pretty well already. We might consider making the base system larger and more complex in a post-release expansion pack or DLC though!

[Lord Blade]

On 2/24/2023 at 10:32 AM, Chris said:

For the autopsies, yeah, we can make them unlock off captured aliens too, that's easy enough. It doesn't quite make sense but I think it's the best solution as it doesn't penalise the player for capturing enemies rather than killing them. I'll update that in the upcoming hotfix.

I mean, makes sense to me. As after you've finished the interrogation, you'd be likely to kill off the alien as they would serve no further use. And keeping them alive would be a security risk (though I don't think you guys have any mechanic for aliens breaking loose in the base... though that would be interesting, and a reason not to stockpile too many prisoners).

Yes, "murdering" the aliens is kind of evil... but they started it.

[Chris]

1 hour ago, Lord Blade said:

I mean, makes sense to me. As after you've finished the interrogation, you'd be likely to kill off the alien as they would serve no further use. And keeping them alive would be a security risk (though I don't think you guys have any mechanic for aliens breaking loose in the base... though that would be interesting, and a reason not to stockpile too many prisoners).

Yes, "murdering" the aliens is kind of evil... but they started it.

The thing that doesn't make sense is the fact you get the autopsy report immediately, before the prisoner has been interrogated

[Lord Blade]

17 hours ago, Chris said:

The thing that doesn't make sense is the fact you get the autopsy report immediately, before the prisoner has been interrogated

Oh no, I wasn't saying getting the autopsy immediately, before interrogation. I mean after you've interrogated them, you'd them have them for autopsy.

And possibly let you execute alien prisoners. So say you captured three of the same type and rank of alien. You execute one, and can start the interrogation and autopsy at the same time.

But it was simply the issue with you doing an interrogation, but then still needing another mission to go out and actually kill one of them to be able to do the autopsy.

[Twigg]

Some of these may relate to v25, but I skipped that version so I apologize if any of this is old hat.

• Is there a way to repair the MARS now? I know the medkit to repair a robot was silly but I now can't find any items to repair it which limits it's usefulness.
• The new alien base commander center with the teleportation changes are incredible. I knew I hated the old version but I didn't realize how much I hated it until I played this one.
  • This is probably wrong but I feel like aliens can teleport around in the base as I often get attacked from behind even though I very meticulously push forward and clear areas out to prevent just that.
• Air upgrade costs finally feel reasonable, I've only used the machine gun line of weapons and that has been totally viable.
• What exactly is 'advanced gauss blaster' and how do I unlock it? (see attached screenshot)
  • My guess is that it is meant to be 'advanced gauss cannon' and it is a bug but I am not sure
• electroshock grenades make all other forms of stun weaponry pointless. I personally think this is more of a reflection of how poor the rest of the stun roster is but that could just be me. 
• Why is the observer bounty so much higher than any other ship? I am shooting down harvesters and I think they are giving me 125k whereas observers give me 200k.
• The economy is not great atm. The price drops for some things are massive and don't see to recover. This is aggravated by the fact that I am often forced to fight lots of ground battles to get the required alien alloys so I have this huge amount of alien corpses, guns, and grenades that barely sell for anything. 
• Why does the gauss battery require the laser battery upgrade? Why does the plasma battery require the laser battery upgrade as well? I feel like the player should be allowed to skip some of these if they think the rest of weaker batteries is worth the resource savings
• The tier upgrades for both weapons and fighter ships are very linear and dull. I built my first Gemini and if you were to tell me they were two Angles glued together I'd believe you. Sure they are better but not in any interesting way. I still use Angels 220 days in because as long as something isn't shooting at them they are basically as good as the most advanced fighters I have if they have the same weapon. 
• Is the expectation for the player to use each weapon tier? There are a lot of them now and going through each one doesn't feel like it is worth the cost for the performance gains.
• The binary state of damage is this game makes combat less interesting. My soldiers (and the aliens) perform just as well on 1 hitpoint as they do on 100 so my only real concern is if my soldier got 1 shot or not.
• Large ufos become a massive grind after a while between the high number of aliens, the killbox nature of the ship, and the fact it is all the same map. I honestly wish I had more alien bases to do because those feel a lot more fun.
• I haven't gotten an abduction mission in a long time. Those quick missions would be such a great palette cleanser from the hour plus harvester grinds, I don't know if I am getting unlucky or they stop showing up at a point.
• I'd love a scout vehicle. Something that can fly and is very hard to hit but has limited offensive capabilities. The MARS is nice but I don't need vehicles to kill aliens, I have tons of soldiers who do that pretty well all on their own.

 

A lot of this sounds like complaining but I am genuinely enjoying the game, keep up the great work.

 

 

[Alienkiller]

Twigg, yeah some Points you mention need some more ballance, others not.

1. MARS Repair: Nope you won´t have the Ability for that. It will repaired after you get back to base. To protect it much better then the Scout-Version is to give it more Steel / Alloy-Plating.

2. The Teleportation is easy, It´s only Up and down like an Elevator. Some of the Aliens are faster and you don´t see them during their turn (either they are Cloaked or to fast for the Soldiers sights).

3. The Air-Upgrade costs are not final yet. There will come some more ballances before the Early Access will start.

4. The Advanced Gauss-Blaster is an Upgrade to the Gauss-Cannon. Should be fixed, but don´t seem so when I look at your Pictures. You need the Gauss Cannon for it like the Cannon for the Accelerated Cannon.

5. Hadn´t the Electroshock Grenades yet. But the advanded Stun Weapons are for the later Game an must have, that´s for sure.

6. That´s interessting. Should be adjustet too.

7. Yeah, the Economy isn´t good, there we all agree. We will see what get done in there before the Early Access will start.

8. The Laser-Weapons are your first Main-Upgrade. You will understand why, if you try to destroy an attaking UFO with only Underdog Rocket-Defenses. After that it´s free to you if you mix the Other Defensive-Upgrades with Plasma- or / and Gauss-Defenses.

9. / 10. The Fighter-Upgrades / Weapon-Upgrades / Armour-Upgrades are not linear. You can take them or not (like the accelerated Weapons / Alenium Weapons) or play with the older Versions / Armours. Short said you get different results in the Techtree with several Gameplays. It´s not linear like in the Predecessor.

11. You will ever be the underdog with your Soldiers. Dosen´t matter what you do. All experianced Testers from beginning on can agree with me.

12. Yeah, the Map with big UFOs are not Changed atm. But it will, there is an Report of that too from Emily about that Theme.

13. More of that special Missions will come in. But that need some Time and more of that I think we will have to the Start of Early Access.

14. You need the MARS Vehicle and it get Upgrades with better Armour, Weapons and hover power unit Step by Step. Later on you can refit the MARS to the much better ARES. The Soldiers get more expensive when they grow up in Ranks. As well as Soldiers can´t so easy replaced then the MARS / ARES.

Edited February 27, 2023 by Alienkiller

[Kamehamehayes]

I do have some more things to add to the discussion after play the game for a little longer

Ground combat 

Issues 1 and 2 are directly connected to one another

1. I feel like the "plasma weapons" research project is far too strong at the moment. It allows the player to build guardian armor (and advanced lasers if they researched lasers already) immediately after researching the project. It directly upgrades soldiers much more potently than some other projects of similar length (like heavy lasers for instance). I feel like the "advanced" lasers" project should be locked behind another project as well to balance to balance it out a little bit (perhaps behind alien electronics so that the player can distinctly see that they have the option to upgrade their lasers or to research new gauss weaponry. 

2. I feel that the choice between accelerated weapons and laser weapons is actually extremely balanced in the beginning. Each of them has distinct strengths and weaknesses that allows for a team of soldiers to justify using both kinds of weapons at the same time, which I find pretty awesome. However, I feel that the "advanced lasers" project allows the player to directly upgrade lasers too early and they end up being objectively better than accelerated weapons for the most part due to mostly losing the limited ammo issues and can deal more damage than accelerated weapons on top of their other benefits. I still think that "advanced lasers" should be locked behind some later project as well just like in the previous point. 

3. I feel like the variety of ground combats take a direct hit after the cleaner base is completed. There are mostly just crash sites with sometimes terror missions, alien bases, and abductions sprinkled in. There is not enough mission variety imo. I'm not too worried about this as I know some other story missions are in development and new mission types are going to sprinkled in. On a similarly related note, I never actually encountered a landed ufo in my 170 days I had played up to this point; they probably need to be made more common to mix up some of the crash site missions. 

4. I don't know if I just got really unlucky or not, but I had never encountered enough sebellians to complete the medkit upgrade project. I had one sebellian mission near the start of the game on a destroyer, but I had never encountered another one since in my 170 day playthrough. I also seemed to encounter sectons and psyons much more often than any other alien species. I think there should be some sort of system that makes it more likely for ufos to spawn with alien you don't fight as often so the player can experience the aliens in more equal amounts. 

Geoscape

1. There seems to be an issue with the amount of money received for collecting the bounty on a ufo instead of doing the missions. I remember scouts being like $100,000 and destroyers being $125,000 or so, but then observer ufos were worth $200,000, and then abductors and cruisers fell off a cliff being worth $100,000 again I think. It feels really weird and I assume a very jagged progression like this was not intended. 

2. The engineering projects seems to very alloy heavy for the most part and do not use alienium very often. This isn't necessarily and issue or anything, but I never every found myself in an alienium drought at any point during my playthrough. 

3. The base batteries used to defend bases from ufos seem to have a weird progression as well. It starts with lasers that require no alien materials and only costs $200,000. but then you can gauss batteries and it costs 150 alloys. I think this is an absurd price to pay for upgraded batteries and should be reduced and also require some amount of alienium (and the laser batteries should cost some alloys and alienium as well). 

4. I don't know if I just missed it or if it is really removed from the game, but I did not see a means to melt down alien weapons into alloys and alienium like you could in previous builds. It would be pretty boring imo if you could only sell the alien weapons that you require and not do anything else with them. I also did not see any way of making alienium in engineering neither. Which is weird because you can make alien alloys, so why not alienium?

Air combat

-I encountered this really annoying issue where I intercepted a craft with two escorts and then targeted the main craft with my torpedo interceptor. The interceptor ended up wasting its missiles on one of the escorts because it got in range even though I was not even targeting the escort. I don't remember if this happened in x1 or not, but I feel this issue is really annoying whenever one is facing escorts. Interceptors should only attack targeting ufos imo (unless they currently are not targeting any ufo).

Edit: 

I've generally thought that the machinegun was quite strong and sniper rifles generally weak over my few playthroughs. I've starting experimenting with both more and I found some interesting things about both that I want to go over. I want some weird stuff that I encountered with both when it comes to the laser weapon versions of them. One thing I do know for certain is that the ammo restoring properties of advanced lasers should be better defined, likely with a xenopedia entry and new tooltips. I know that might take awhile, so I'm willing to bet something like this would not be implemented until v28. 

Snipers: 

-I've noticed that the base laser sniper rifle is almost completely worthless on most snipers. Snipers have a high accuracy stat and probably have an accuracy boosting accessory to bolster it even more, so they will almost always reach or surpass that 65 accuracy threshold where the "easy aiming" ability works, making one of the main selling points of laser at base completely useless. Perhaps this can be adjusted for laser sniper rifles so that the "easy aiming" ability works for up to 75 accuracy, so snipers can still benefit. 

-This is very different with advanced laser with regenerating ammo. If it works like I think it does and restores 1 ammo per turn, that means that a sniper will have infinite ammo because they literally cannot shoot more than once per turn. This is slightly busted imo (if it works the way that I think it works) and probably needs to be adjusted somewhat for snipers (like making them restore 1 ammo every 2 or 3 turns). 

Machineguns

-Machinegunners often struggle with having strong accuracy and strength at once to make the best use out of the machinegun, so the laser machinegun is great for patching some of their inherent accuracy issues and making them more useful in general (destroying lots of cover and walls with it is a nice bonus as well). 

-If the ammo restoring properties of advanced lasers is how I think it is for machineguns as well, then it would be not very useful whatsoever for machineguns. You would have to wait three turns to shoot once with a machinegun in x3 burst, much less x10. I feel it should definitely be adjusted to restore 3-5 ammo instead imo. 

Edited February 28, 2023 by Kamehamehayes

[Kamehamehayes]

9 hours ago, Twigg said:

 

• The economy is not great atm. The price drops for some things are massive and don't see to recover. This is aggravated by the fact that I am often forced to fight lots of ground battles to get the required alien alloys so I have this huge amount of alien corpses, guns, and grenades that barely sell for anything.

I did not personally have that many issues with the economy so far in my playthrough. I generally sell stuff when I need them for an important engineering/base building project and leave them alone when I don't need them. And when I do sell things in bulk to the point that their price is reduced a bunch, I get new items as the invasion progresses that I can then sell for full price. Perhaps you got a lot further than me and this becomes a much greater issue  (I got to day 170ish I think). 

[Alienkiller]

@Kamehamehayes:

Your Points are interessting too, and in some I give you right. But therefore 1 big Problem to be solved, which we Main-Beta-Testers already discuss with the Devs (the 1 Year = 360 Days) time Limit until the final Mission have to be started.

In UFO 2 ET / UFO 1 ET Refit you have 2,5 Years (about 900 Days) until the big Overrun beginns. An similar Timeline you had in UFO 1 ET Standard- / Gold as well as old X-Com "Interceptor / Apocalypse" and if I have that correctly in Mind for the outdated UFO After-Row with 2 Years (720 Days) until the big Overrun beginns.

The 1 Year Time Limit (360 Days; up to 320 normal and then with orbital Bombardements) makes it impossible to fullfill that whishes yet. You have to minimum make it 2x (720 Days) or better 2,5x (900 Days) / 3x (1.200 Days). The 3x get used in Battletech for the other Challange-Part (not Storymission).

1. "Plasma Weapon"-Research: The Problem is the short time you have atm., which means you need that Armour as fast as Plasma-Weapons come up very fast

2. "Laser Weapons" are more accurate, are lighter and have a little bit more power then the accelerated Weapons. There I give you right and it´s very needed. They have the same Problem with the Accelearted Weapons / Standard Weapons with the limited Ammo.

2. "Advanced Laser Weapons" are very fast researchable. But you have the same Problem with the short time you have atm. like in Point 1.

3. "Ground Combat" is with the cool Side-Storyline an big Upgrade. There I give you right, that this is done with the enemy Base-Rush to fast and it´s going back to the Standard-Ground-Combats to fast. There you answerd the Ground Combat Question yourself correctly, that there come more Upgrades for that before Early Access will start.

4. "Sebillians" will come more often in Ground Missions and UFOs at the Beginning. Either you have shoot down to many UFOs over water or you let do the Missions from National Military to fill up your treasure Chest. I do the 2nd only with lesser UFOs later on (Scouts and Destroyers) to grab the more important UFOs (Observers, Harvesters, Cruisers and similar) with more Ressources. But only if there are no important Special Missions (like Terror, Abductions etc.) need to be done. If that is the Case, I let do the National Military the Crash-Site-Missions to fill up the Treasure Chest.

Short said: we Main-Beta-Testers get in the first 100 to 120 Days many Sebillians to fullfill the Standard-Medikit Upgrade-Research.

5. "Air-Combat": Yeah, that we have found out too. That´s why I upgrade my Torpedo-Fighter with 2 Torpedos and 1 Gun. With the Gun he fights the Escort, then he attack the Main-Target. While the other 2 Interceptors fight the Escorsts and then the Main-Target too.

But the Air-Combat and the Fighter-Equipment / Upgrade-Screen isn´t final too, so we will get some more Features here too earlyer or later.

6. "Laser Sniper / Laser LMG": I use both about the many advantages they have. The Snipers have the best Damage from all Weapons, the Laser LMG makes a lot of Shocking and fast firing Death / Destructions. The Difference to the Standard-Weapons / Accelerated Weapons are the "Easy Aiming" for all normal Soldiers (Rifle, Pistol, LMGs, Shotgunners) which bring them a lot. The Sniper mostly won´t get that Advantage about it´s high Value of Shooting-Skill or so. But all other Laser-Advantages he / she get too with the Rangefinder-Equipment.

6. "Advanced Lasers": That I hadn´t had used yet, so I can´t say anything about it. Either I was on the very short Time-Limit alraedy and couldn´t use them or had tested out other Equipments up to the very short Time Limit we have atm.

7. "Economy": Yeah I do the same atm. if I test the Game. That´s not final too and get adjusted too to have the best "Econony" for the Base-Game in the finished final Game.

Edited February 28, 2023 by Alienkiller

[Chris]

@Twigg @Kamehamehayes thanks both, that's useful stuff. To reply quickly to some of the points:

Twigg:

• Yeah, this is broadly in line with my understanding of the game state. The air combat is pretty bad right now and needs work to be made interesting, and the game gets boring and repetitive after day ~150 or so. We will address both of these things in time but we're spread too thin right now and we're likely to concentrate on polishing the first 150 days for Early Access.
• Your thoughts on the vehicles are interesting. Maybe we'll add a lighter scout unit during Early Access but right now the MARS is designed primarily for killing (or terrain destruction). No, it can't be repaired on the battlefield, as it's already borderline OP in my opinion. However it does instantly heal to full health after the mission.
• Many of the issues you've mentioned are bugs, like the crash site bounty and the Gauss Blaster etc. They should be fixed in V27.
• There is a possible case that allows aliens to teleport around the base, although I'm not sure if it's actually happening, which is just that one or more of the teleporters is set up incorrectly and therefore transporting units to the wrong place. But this would affect Xenonaut units in the same way if they tried to use it and I've not seen that reported.

Kamehamehayes:

• I'll get the tooltips set up to display ammo regen properly for V27. I thought they were already doing it. It's a few hours of work but nothing outrageous. The laser weapons already regen substantially more rounds than other types of weapons, and in general the assumption is that you have effectively unlimited ammo with them.
• I've removed the Alloy cost on the advanced base turret upgrades now.
• You should still be able to build Alenium once you've researched it. No, you can't dismantle the weapons etc any more. It just seemed a bit fiddly to include given you pretty much always wanted to be doing it. It's a tough balance because if you have the player recover a resource rather than the weapon itself (e.g. weapon fragments, or alloys / alenium) then people get confused as to why they've not recovered a weapon. But the UI doesn't handle it very elegantly if you have to break them down on the strategy layer.
  • I could just make those weapons usable by players at reduced Accuracy compared to the aliens, I guess. But I'm not sure putting even more weapons in the game really helps anything. Suppose it would be cool in the ground combat battles to be able to pick them up if you need though.
• The question about the Alien Plasma Weapons is an interesting one. I think you're right that having both Guardian Battle Armour and Improved Lasers unlocked immediately is probably overkill. One of those two projects should also require Alien Electronics to unlock, and possibly Guardian Armour should be a research project in its own right rather than something that autocompletes.
  • I think I might make Guardian Armour something you need to research, and maybe also make the starting Combat Armour an early research project and then move Warden Armour up another tier. Then there's not too much of a gap between getting the Warden and the Guardian. Although the amount of armour suits in the game is kinda ridiculous at this point as almost every UFO unlocks a new suit of armour.
    • That said, the danger here is adding another 3 research projects to the tech tree (as the Warden and Guardian currently auto-unlock) when the early game is already very crowded.
  • If so I'll leave Improved Lasers where it is. Lasers are meant to be superior to Accelerated weapons overall, certainly when upgraded, as they're intended to be quite a bit more expensive. Thing is that Gauss Weapons unlock off Alien Electronics too so in theory the question is perhaps more Accelerated >> Gauss or Lasers >> Improved Lasers >> Fusion Weapons? Although I'm not sure if that works in practice.
• In general I think I'm fine with certain weapon tiers having a particular type of weapon that's a bit OP and another that's a bit weak. If the Laser sniper rifle is weak but the LMG is great, that probably actually ends up being a bit more interesting than them all being a straightforward upgrade imo.

 

[Kamehamehayes]

51 minutes ago, Chris said:

 

• The question about the Alien Plasma Weapons is an interesting one. I think you're right that having both Guardian Battle Armour and Improved Lasers unlocked immediately is probably overkill. One of those two projects should also require Alien Electronics to unlock, and possibly Guardian Armour should be a research project in its own right rather than something that autocompletes.
  • I think I might make Guardian Armour something you need to research, and maybe also make the starting Combat Armour an early research project and then move Warden Armour up another tier. Then there's not too much of a gap between getting the Warden and the Guardian. Although the amount of armour suits in the game is kinda ridiculous at this point as almost every UFO unlocks a new suit of armour.
    • That said, the danger here is adding another 3 research projects to the tech tree (as the Warden and Guardian currently auto-unlock) when the early game is already very crowded.
  • If so I'll leave Improved Lasers where it is. Lasers are meant to be superior to Accelerated weapons overall, certainly when upgraded, as they're intended to be quite a bit more expensive. Thing is that Gauss Weapons unlock off Alien Electronics too so in theory the question is perhaps more Accelerated >> Gauss or Lasers >> Improved Lasers >> Fusion Weapons? Although I'm not sure if that works in practice.
• In general I think I'm fine with certain weapon tiers having a particular type of weapon that's a bit OP and another that's a bit weak. If the Laser sniper rifle is weak but the LMG is great, that probably actually ends up being a bit more interesting than them all being a straightforward upgrade imo.

 

That’s interesting. If you’re okay with certain weapons not benefiting as much from each tier, then I guess that’s fine. I never had a problem with it, but noticed it and thought I’d point it out. 
I think the weapon balancing is fine for the most part. I would probably have to play more to find more issues with them, but I’ll highlight what I think the progression feels like to me. 

• It seems to me that the progression of weapons more closely follows Ballistics < Accelerated </= Lasers < Advanced Lasers </= Gauss < Fusion (probably, have not tested them) 
• Accelerated weapons and lasers are about equal right now imo (with laser being slightly stronger). Accelerated weapons have some armor piercing properties and have much better ammo while lasers have better shredding, easy aiming, and terrain destruction, with damage being very similar for the most part. On some more accurate soldiers (like higher ranked ones or snipers in general), the easy aiming ability is not very effective while much more ammo is probably more appealing than the rest of what lasers offer. High armor is not as common in the earlygame as it will be later, so the armor shredding is not extremely effective imo (except on specific missions like the cleaner base) While on less accurate soldiers, lasers patch some accuracy issues with no penalty to weight, making them preferable. I could easily see any player running both kinds of weapons on their squad. 
• Gauss weapons and advanced lasers are also close, but with gauss weapons having an advantage overall imo. The contrasts are mostly the same as accelerated weapons vs lasers, but with gauss weapons having a big advantage in damage while advanced lasers have effectively infinite ammo. This is later in the game, so easy aiming is not as effective as it used to be, but the armor shredding is more appealing now with much more aliens coming in with armor than before. I do not really know the specific damage thresholds that gauss weapons can reach that advanced laser cannot, but is feels like gauss weapons can better eliminate aliens than advanced lasers can in general (with them being around the same when dealing with particularly tanky aliens).
• I’d have to think about what to do with armor projects. Having a bunch of projects would clutter up the research screen I bet. I would assume a cleaner (ha) solution exists somewhere. 

[Chris]

2 hours ago, Kamehamehayes said:

That’s interesting. If you’re okay with certain weapons not benefiting as much from each tier, then I guess that’s fine. I never had a problem with it, but noticed it and thought I’d point it out. 
I think the weapon balancing is fine for the most part. I would probably have to play more to find more issues with them, but I’ll highlight what I think the progression feels like to me. 

• It seems to me that the progression of weapons more closely follows Ballistics < Accelerated </= Lasers < Advanced Lasers </= Gauss < Fusion (probably, have not tested them) 
• Accelerated weapons and lasers are about equal right now imo (with laser being slightly stronger). Accelerated weapons have some armor piercing properties and have much better ammo while lasers have better shredding, easy aiming, and terrain destruction, with damage being very similar for the most part. On some more accurate soldiers (like higher ranked ones or snipers in general), the easy aiming ability is not very effective while much more ammo is probably more appealing than the rest of what lasers offer. High armor is not as common in the earlygame as it will be later, so the armor shredding is not extremely effective imo (except on specific missions like the cleaner base) While on less accurate soldiers, lasers patch some accuracy issues with no penalty to weight, making them preferable. I could easily see any player running both kinds of weapons on their squad. 
• Gauss weapons and advanced lasers are also close, but with gauss weapons having an advantage overall imo. The contrasts are mostly the same as accelerated weapons vs lasers, but with gauss weapons having a big advantage in damage while advanced lasers have effectively infinite ammo. This is later in the game, so easy aiming is not as effective as it used to be, but the armor shredding is more appealing now with much more aliens coming in with armor than before. I do not really know the specific damage thresholds that gauss weapons can reach that advanced laser cannot, but is feels like gauss weapons can better eliminate aliens than advanced lasers can in general (with them being around the same when dealing with particularly tanky aliens).
• I’d have to think about what to do with armor projects. Having a bunch of projects would clutter up the research screen I bet. I would assume a cleaner (ha) solution exists somewhere. 

You're not necessarily meant to commit fully to all the weapon tiers. Accelerated weapons, Lasers and Gauss weapons can all be unlocked within the first three months of the game and you're not really meant to have enough resources to build a full set of all of them. Awkwardly, though, a lot of people don't see it that way and will grind for resources to make sure that they can.

I suppose an improved setup might be to have a couple of upgrades for Lasers / Gauss / Fusion weapons, which get unlocked at roughly the same time as the next tier of weapons gets unlocked. Then the player is presented with a more obvious choice of committing to the next tier of weapons or powering up the ones they already have (with the latter being more powerful initially). Hopefully people wouldn't really feel the need to grind resources for a weapon tier that they're not really using.

[Alienkiller]

I suggest you can make an Upgrade from the Accelerated / Alien-Gauss-Weapons to the normal Gauss-Weapons for Your Soldiers. You have so many Alien-Gauss-Weapons / Ammo in Storage and it´s not worth to sell them.

The same for the Alien-Plasma-Weapons / Fusion-Weapons and Ammo.