You Fell Into One of The Classic Blunders!!

[MCMunroe]

Hear me out. Games too often have a tech tree where... all the advances are just incremental improvements to existing tech and items. The opponents do the same. Everything just feels the same and balanced out for the entire game with nothing really feeling different. Just bigger numbers.

Stellaris at launch (stopped playing a month later) was a big victim of this design. That and the perfect Rock/Paper/Scissors combat. 
Sword of the Stars is an example of excellence. Yes, the numbers got bigger but the tactics and feel of the weapons became very different. God, I love the mass driver hulls...

X2, suffers greatly from the incremental tech. It's boring and changes nothing in squad tactics or abilities or outcome assuming parity with the aliens. It all washes out and all your tech upgrades are meaningless. Might as well be the very first battle same as the final.

It may be too late in the development cycle for X2. Still, I would strongly suggest that the team try to innovate and have each teach level ballistic/accelerated/laser/plasma all feel and act much more differently than the +125% that the info card literally says in the game!

OG floppy disk X-COM even had more drastic differences in the gear-enabling tactics. Nuclear Football anyone?

[DaviddesJ]

One Person's "Blunder" is Another Person's "Treasure"!

Even the different weapon types interact with defender armor and stats differently.

But, yeah, this is not an "every research breakthrough changes everything" game. I like that.

Edited July 23, 2023 by DaviddesJ

[Chris]

43 minutes ago, MCMunroe said:

Hear me out. Games too often have a tech tree where... all the advances are just incremental improvements to existing tech and items. The opponents do the same. Everything just feels the same and balanced out for the entire game with nothing really feeling different. Just bigger numbers.

Stellaris at launch (stopped playing a month later) was a big victim of this design. That and the perfect Rock/Paper/Scissors combat. 
Sword of the Stars is an example of excellence. Yes, the numbers got bigger but the tactics and feel of the weapons became very different. God, I love the mass driver hulls...

X2, suffers greatly from the incremental tech. It's boring and changes nothing in squad tactics or abilities or outcome assuming parity with the aliens. It all washes out and all your tech upgrades are meaningless. Might as well be the very first battle same as the final.

It may be too late in the development cycle for X2. Still, I would strongly suggest that the team try to innovate and have each teach level ballistic/accelerated/laser/plasma all feel and act much more differently than the +125% that the info card literally says in the game!

OG floppy disk X-COM even had more drastic differences in the gear-enabling tactics. Nuclear Football anyone?

I don’t think this is true at all - it was true in the first Xenonauts and we changed it for 2.

e.g Lasers get a scaling accuracy bonus, can be upgraded to recharge ammo, have bad armour penetration but high armour destruction, are way better at destroying terrain, and are much heavier than other types of weapon. There’s not that much more we can do to make them different from previous tiers!

[Mr.Xia]

Actually there is a difference with different techs researched.

While accelerated weapons are just damage bonuses they are heavier, requiring stronger soldiers to wield them, and are just meant to be ballistics with more 'oompf'.

Laser weapons provide more accuracy for soldiers with low acc. stats. Higher acc. soldiers do not benefit from it, and thermal damage is accounted for better terrain destruction.

While I want to say that we should have more distinction with these weapon techs, I suspect balancing issues might occur.

[MCMunroe]

It still is net zero change.
Yes, the player's kit gets better by the 125% increments, but the aliens do exactly the same so...

I would suggest playing around with some ideas that don't feel balanced but feel fun. And worry about the balance later.
RC Car Bombs, Concave Reflector Shields, Tossable Lasers Trip Mines, Poison Gas
I understand the setting is more grounded than many, still lower fantasy doesn't mean less creative always.
Alien tech can center around advanced nature and be a bit narrow-minded as if they think they already solved the problem.
Human tech can be scrappy but desperate and creative of a force on the back foot.

[Skitso]

23 minutes ago, MCMunroe said:

I would suggest playing around with some ideas that don't feel balanced but feel fun.

This is what I would concentrate on. Fun is always more important than perfect balance when talking about a single player experience. Currently accelerated weapons' fun is limited to just 1-2 missions before you FEEL the lasers being the better choice with more FUN being had. It's not just about balance, but also the feel it generates.

Edited July 23, 2023 by Skitso

[Boris Eysbroek]

2 hours ago, Skitso said:

This is what I would concentrate on. Fun is always more important than perfect balance when talking about a single player experience. Currently accelerated weapons' fun is limited to just 1-2 missions before you FEEL the lasers being the better choice with more FUN being had. It's not just about balance, but also the feel it generates.

Amen.

[DaviddesJ]

7 hours ago, Skitso said:

This is what I would concentrate on. Fun is always more important than perfect balance when talking about a single player experience. Currently accelerated weapons' fun is limited to just 1-2 missions before you FEEL the lasers being the better choice with more FUN being had. It's not just about balance, but also the feel it generates.

There’s just as many threads complaining that lasers aren’t significantly better than accelerated weapons, as there are complaining that lasers are too much better than accelerated weapons.

[MCMunroe]

27 minutes ago, DaviddesJ said:

There’s just as many threads complaining that lasers aren’t significantly better than accelerated weapons, as there are complaining that lasers are too much better than accelerated weapons.

And if the weapons were significantly different in how they felt using this wouldn't be as much of a thing.
It just doesn't feel like an awesome new toy to play with when reaching a new technology tier. Feels like. Yay! I am kinda keeping up with inflation.

[SnoZ]

I support this anxiety. Game developers are forced to turn to the same type of technology tree in order to somehow maintain the player's interest. Everything is said correctly - the difference in the numbers of characteristics and nothing more. Your tactics will mean nothing sooner or later without superiority in numbers. Perhaps artificial intelligence could solve this linearity.
It turns out that the aliens have superior technology, but they obviously lose. Probably they are very humane creatures))). I seem to have forgotten that this is a game.

Edited July 23, 2023 by SnoZ

[Vitruviansquid]

Meh, disagree.

The game really feels like it opens up as you go through. New armors open up new roles for soldiers, laser weapons make ammo considerations a real thing. Stun technology becoming a thing makes it another factor.

But the biggest thing that keeps the game from feeling like it's samey, but bigger numbers is that the aliens change. Fighting sectons is nothing like fighting sectons and psyons is nothing like fighting sebilians is nothing like fighting wraiths, and so on.

[Skyfire]

18 hours ago, Chris said:

There’s not that much more we can do to make them different from previous tiers!

You might want to consider dropping the 'all techs have this set of five weapons' pattern - or at least loosening the rules about how those weapons relate to each other inside a tier.

Why does a laser-shotgun have to exist? In some ways lasers and shotguns are opposites - one of the defining features of a shotgun is the way the shot pattern spreads out, while the defining feature of a laser is specifically that it doesn't spread. Sure, you can come up with an explanation (we put the beam through a splitter), but is that actually a good idea? OK, there probably does need to be a close-combat laser weapon, but that doesn't mean it needs to be "3 pellets, 28%/40% TUs, 40/74 Acc".

I'd like to see each type of weapon put a different spin on at least one of the available weapons types - preferably in a way that isn't fully 'balanced' relative to the baseline for that weapon. Throwing out a couple of random ideas: give accelerated shotguns an extra pellet* and drop the aimed shot TU cost on precision lasers to 49% TUs. Now instead of the current debate we would have clear tactical identities: accelerated weapons are brutal in close-quarters, and lasers are unmatched at long-range fire.

 

*You'd probably need to remove the damage-per-pellet increase, as the combo of that with an extra pellet would go too far.

[Jek1138]

I really like the idea of different archetypes for different tiers. Lasers don’t get a shotgun but they do get a smg - lightweight and cheap burst fire with short range. Laser snipers get an upgrade project but mag tier has no sniper rifle. Maybe the mag machine gun has a tripod mode that takes a turn to deploy but allows you to empty the mag at 3 different targets the next turn. 

[DaviddesJ]

4 hours ago, Skyfire said:

Why does a laser-shotgun have to exist?

Agree with this.

[DaviddesJ]

7 hours ago, Vitruviansquid said:

But the biggest thing that keeps the game from feeling like it's samey, but bigger numbers is that the aliens change. Fighting sectons is nothing like fighting sectons and psyons is nothing like fighting sebilians is nothing like fighting wraiths, and so on.

Actually, fighting sectons is a lot like fighting sectons.