Milestone 2 (Prototype 1) - Balance Thread / Discussion

[billsarason]

not going to lie the cleaner mission is really damn together and after that you getting the abduction mission feels a bit all at once. 

[billsarason]

all in all I feel the abduction mission should be a bit letter and also that you shouldn't be dropped so close to what feels like every enemy on the map.  Also does crouch not increase aim anymore. sorry if it sounds like complaints I'm just writing down my thoughts as they come in the hopes they help. I don't normal do beta test stuff.

[billsarason]

don't know why this was but I upgraded to warden armor and the armor didn't change for one of my soldiers. to fix it I changed to the gunner class then back to shield and then reequipped the armor.

[billsarason]

side note I can't explain it but I carred a lot more about the mods when I had to put them into the inventory. with the drop down I just forget. the armor toggle is still great though.

[billsarason]

defender armpr is now warden armor. I completed the reserch and workshop stuff ages ago.  Also now all warden armor has an armor of 14.

[billsarason]

I think this happened after I finished the lighter defender armor upgrade.

[billsarason]

I also randomly have some defender armor.

[billsarason]

[billsarason]

tried to do a cleaner vip misson and the game crashed.

[billsarason]

reloaded and it worked.

[Polonio210]

On 9/6/2023 at 1:58 PM, Keinutnai said:

I personally prefer the system where you place your modules in your inventory (the initial system).

The "toggle button" for armor and other modules is an interesting idea too, but I prefer "seeing" the modules in my inventory as it feels more "real"

 

Thumbs up on abduction missions not ending straight away, and having the tubes teleporting away. (i assume i can kill the aliens even after X turns when the tubes are gone)

I do prefer funding to rely on panic level. maybe instead of becoming unrelated to panic level, panic could simply carry a bit less weight in determining the funding level.

Me too.

The new idea is great because intruduce breathers, but i dont like the ideia to remove plates and modules from the inventory.

I think is a great approuch to intruduce modules in armor and weapon as itens, like the plate in the early versions, but instead of consume inventory slot, the plate will consume the armor slot, optics sights consume weapons slots and so on.

[Raffik]

On 9/7/2023 at 11:30 AM, Raffik said:

Panic / Funding: not able to test yet, as the game crashed way too early. 

Armor upgrades - Defender protection: good, increasing the protection with alloys is logical, but it is expensive and takes a long time to develop

Armor upgrades - Defender weight reduction: good, also takes lot of time and resources at the beginning of the game, where each penny is needed (to rebuild the base, hire people etc)

 

EDIT: 

Funding: funding unaffected by the regional panic seems to break the need of plot research a bit, as for example on Soldier difficulty, the monthly funding is about 3M and the plot research gives a bonus of 240.000.. then the plot research can "wait" but should be important as well shouldn´t it..

Panic: -10 panic reduction monthly seems to be a bit too much, but on higher difficulty it could be just enough.

Armor upgrades: a bit buggy, as there are 2 armor types available, which seem to be the same, but only have a difference in weight. The armor is shown as Defender in armory, but as Warden in storage screen. You have to produce the lighter one extra, on top of the amount spend on the upgrade - if you upgrade the existing ones, why should you produce it again? Moreover, the newly produced armours did disappear after tactical mission and only the heavier were available. I understand there is a patch for this on its way, which will hopefully solve this.

Modules: in the armory, it seems that the "helmet" equipment are distributed randomly, some soldiers that never wear the rebreather f.e. suddenly have it equipped (when recovering from injury)

Cleaner captured weapons: the captured cleaner weapons cannot be sold. Not sure, if its intentional. Cleaner weapons now provide a nice bonus to the accelerated weapons, that are available in unlimited quantities after barrel accelerators project (they are lighter, which makes them an interesting loot), but should be still available to sell.

Laser recharge: comes together with laser weapons immediately after the research. It seems to be a little too early, as you can effectively have laser weapons with unlimited rounds at around day 60.

Edited September 10, 2023 by Raffik

[billsarason]

12 hours ago, Raffik said:

EDIT: 

Funding: funding unaffected by the regional panic seems to break the need of plot research a bit, as for example on Soldier difficulty, the monthly funding is about 3M and the plot research gives a bonus of 240.000.. then the plot research can "wait" but should be important as well shouldn´t it..

Panic: -10 panic reduction monthly seems to be a bit too much, but on higher difficulty it could be just enough.

Armor upgrades: a bit buggy, as there are 2 armor types available, which seem to be the same, but only have a difference in weight. The armor is shown as Defender in armory, but as Warden in storage screen. You have to produce the lighter one extra, on top of the amount spend on the upgrade - if you upgrade the existing ones, why should you produce it again? Moreover, the newly produced armours did disappear after tactical mission and only the heavier were available. I understand there is a patch for this on its way, which will hopefully solve this.

Modules: in the armory, it seems that the "helmet" equipment are distributed randomly, some soldiers that never wear the rebreather f.e. suddenly have it equipped (when recovering from injury)

Cleaner captured weapons: the captured cleaner weapons cannot be sold. Not sure, if its intentional. Cleaner weapons now provide a nice bonus to the accelerated weapons, that are available in unlimited quantities after barrel accelerators project (they are lighter, which makes them an interesting loot), but should be still available to sell.

Laser recharge: comes together with laser weapons immediately after the research. It seems to be a little too early, as you can effectively have laser weapons with unlimited rounds at around day 60.

Did you not get a glitch were the warden armor would have an armor value of 13 after the weight reduction? where you in iron man?

[Raffik]

5 hours ago, billsarason said:

Did you not get a glitch were the warden armor would have an armor value of 13 after the weight reduction? where you in iron man?

no, there were 2 defender armors with defensive value of 14, but different weights.

Edited September 11, 2023 by Raffik

[JtL]

Playtesting of the first 75 Days:

Early game is nicely centred around cleaners, although I feel like there should be even more missions/content involving them, pushing aliens back. This would also push back some research like laser weapons (lack of alenium), since they make the game just to easy. Accelerated is still too skippable/uselss/not a proper stepping stone. Wild idea: make early lasers single shot/burst before reloading. Make it so that you need to capture alien energy weapons/officers/special ufo/VIP/whatever and needing additional research+engineering to make lasers as they are now, and then do it again for the recharging ammo (currently achievable at day 60, which is bonkers).

Don’t like the disconnect of funding and panic. Panic doesn’t do anything from 1-99, there should be some sort of effect. Maybe more cleaner/alien activity in correlation with rising panic? Higher chance for landed UFO or terror mission? Does not has to be funding necessarily, but something.

Heavy armour toggle is nice. Module system is fine, though I just always use rangefinder since it has the best value, thus rendering all other modules ‘useless’ (since single pick). Maybe increase possible module count for better armour tiers. Or make additional toggle exclusive to heavy armour -> utility vest, which has more inventory space and module slots.

Tech tree changes are very welcome, although still lacking. Before the first UFO choices are to limited, then way to much all of a sudden. Give more research breakthroughs, like locking lasers behind understanding of alenium, which unlocks both energy utilization as well as weaponization. Research for counterintelligence/anti-cleaner missions, see bonus.

UFO-Invasion pacing is weird, or I got unlucky. First UFO (Scout) only at day 25, and second UFO at day 60 (Destroyer, with Wraiths and Healingbots). This is very steep increase in difficulty for unexperienced players and a lot of downtime with not much happening (at least air combat wise, got some abduction missions in the meantime). Really miss the overwhelming swarm of X1-X-Division, where weekly to bi-weekly a swarm of 5-8 UFOs would run wild all over the globe all at once. Together with a brief refuelling period, a long rearming period and especially long repair times made for a very intense battle with lots and lots of strategic decisions, which UFO and when to intersect, since the remaining ones potentially had vanished by the time rearming was done. As it stands currently I just wait for an UFO to pop up, and then I always intercept, no afterthought what so ever.

Bonus: Counter-Cleaner/Anti-Panik Mission

Research program and engineering project (radar upgrade or so) to allow collection of additional intelligence in preparation for countermeasures on cleaner activities. Is target on one region (selectable), with each operational base that has a radar (or a special building intelligence hub) allowing to select one region. Reduces the panic increase of cleaner activity by 50 % and has a low percentage (but higher if panic is high) to trigger a counter mission, some tactical battle with cleaners present (could be cleaners preparing a base or UFO landing spot (which if left untouched will see an UFO land in the future?), convoy raid, plenty of options . If successful lowers panic by 5 or 10.

[zzooman]

The fundamental question is what strategies do the mechanics make viable.

 

As you state, the Mod1 mechanics force players to prioritise coverage as early as possible (or risk panic getting out of control). As fast coverage is the only real viable strategy, selecting it isn't really a decision. 

 

The Mod2 ideas reduce the burden of coverage, which is positive. But doesn't go far enough.

 

Fundamentally, it is enjoyable for the player's decisions to be the main driver of success and those decisions are only legitimate if more than one strategy could be successful. Obviously, this is very difficult to do.

 

A concept that may be interesting to play with is the elasticity between panic and funding. You have tried two passive options. 1. Increased panic decreases funding; 2. Increased panic does not change funding.

 

There is a third active option. The player is given the power to decide the level of funding they request from each region at the end of each month and this affects the level of panic. The logic would be that if less funding is given to the Xenonauts then more is spent on local forces who help reduce panic. The player would then have a monthly choice between panic and funding. This would make choosing to have no coverage in some regions completely viable.

[JtL]

1 hour ago, zzooman said:

The fundamental question is what strategies do the mechanics make viable.

 

As you state, the Mod1 mechanics force players to prioritise coverage as early as possible (or risk panic getting out of control). As fast coverage is the only real viable strategy, selecting it isn't really a decision. 

 

The Mod2 ideas reduce the burden of coverage, which is positive. But doesn't go far enough.

 

Fundamentally, it is enjoyable for the player's decisions to be the main driver of success and those decisions are only legitimate if more than one strategy could be successful. Obviously, this is very difficult to do.

 

A concept that may be interesting to play with is the elasticity between panic and funding. You have tried two passive options. 1. Increased panic decreases funding; 2. Increased panic does not change funding.

 

There is a third active option. The player is given the power to decide the level of funding they request from each region at the end of each month and this affects the level of panic. The logic would be that if less funding is given to the Xenonauts then more is spent on local forces who help reduce panic. The player would then have a monthly choice between panic and funding. This would make choosing to have no coverage in some regions completely viable.

Fair points and good idea, I like it

[delor]

3 hours ago, zzooman said:

A concept that may be interesting to play with is the elasticity between panic and funding. You have tried two passive options. 1. Increased panic decreases funding; 2. Increased panic does not change funding.

 

There is a third active option. The player is given the power to decide the level of funding they request from each region at the end of each month and this affects the level of panic. The logic would be that if less funding is given to the Xenonauts then more is spent on local forces who help reduce panic. The player would then have a monthly choice between panic and funding. This would make choosing to have no coverage in some regions completely viable.

 

  Fourth option: Panic increases funding, either based upon the maximum panic a nation has experienced, it's current level, or a mix of the two.  Right near the end of the current panic curve, it drops just a little bit and the player is warned the program is at risk of being cancelled.  You can probably dial back mod2 panic recovery a bit in conjunction with this.

 

  This has two main advantages:

1) It's a stabilizing mechanic, an anti-death spiral.  If a player does badly at the start, they'll have more resources to be given a chance to recover.

2) On the flip side, by giving the player too few resources to defend the planet initially, you ensure things do get worse for a while which is useful for generating a compelling emotional narrative and for campaign pacing purposes.  

 

  Because of #1, the player does have more room to decide how they prioritize coverage.  Players that do successfully cover the planet initially have more panic runway before they start getting shut down.  Players that choose less coverage or that do a bad job resisting will get more resources sooner, but be closer to losing.  You give the players more agency to have different paths by not shoving them off the cliff at the end of the path, rather than adding an additional interface and thing for the player to juggle.  (which isn't to knock the idea of giving the player more control over things; this is just another, less intrusive option)

[Xeferah]

After playing a bit, I think that on the max difficulty, the cleaner starter mission was about right. Maybe it could have a few more cleaners, but overall it felt difficult, which is exactly what max difficulty should be.

Regarding the armor, I don't know. I prefer the old system. Same goes for the headpieces. I like that you have to choose between the different options, as it indeed does not make sense to wear a gas mask, an earpiece and an aim-enhancer at the same time. However, I don't like that I now have even more inventory space! That was already more then you ever need, even at end-game (day 180) you never had too little space. Carrying 12 grenades was not a problem. And now I can carry even more? What's the point of the inventory space then? Maybe you should reduce the total number of inventory slots? I mean, there is no point in choosing if you don't really have to choose. Strength is the only limiting factor, never the inventory space. Now perhaps, if there were game missions where you have to capture and carry someone home, maybe then there is a choice, but in reality you simply drop all your stuff and carry the person home.

Of course the same goes for the heavy armor choice: why give us even more inventory space?

[Raffik]

1 hour ago, Xeferah said:

After playing a bit, I think that on the max difficulty, the cleaner starter mission was about right. Maybe it could have a few more cleaners, but overall it felt difficult, which is exactly what max difficulty should be.

Regarding the armor, I don't know. I prefer the old system. Same goes for the headpieces. I like that you have to choose between the different options, as it indeed does not make sense to wear a gas mask, an earpiece and an aim-enhancer at the same time. However, I don't like that I now have even more inventory space! That was already more then you ever need, even at end-game (day 180) you never had too little space. Carrying 12 grenades was not a problem. And now I can carry even more? What's the point of the inventory space then? Maybe you should reduce the total number of inventory slots? I mean, there is no point in choosing if you don't really have to choose. Strength is the only limiting factor, never the inventory space. Now perhaps, if there were game missions where you have to capture and carry someone home, maybe then there is a choice, but in reality you simply drop all your stuff and carry the person home.

Of course the same goes for the heavy armor choice: why give us even more inventory space?

Agree. The extra cleaner mission is nicely balanced.

The armour - agree 100%.  It now also needs 2 projects to upgrade and after upgrade you have to produce the upgraded again. Guardian is upgradable as well, I do not like that too much tbh. I liked the older model better. Perhaps that will be corrected in the future, now it feels a little too elaborate.

Headgear - agree - its kinda nice, that it attaches to the head and does not need extra storage space, but then your backpack is a nuclear silo. At least some of the modules should remain to be carried in the backpack (armor plate, automed, actuator f.e.)

Laser recharge - I got the same project twice. First immediately with laser weapons, the other after researching plasma. Assuming, that one was for the laser weapons battery to actually recharge and the other one for the advanced laser weapons, but I liked it more before, where both projects were combined (recharge and advanced).

[Chris]

Thanks for all the feedback, everyone. I've now reverted prototype to the latest Experimental version while I work on the next Prototype build based on this feedback, as the bugs were taking up quite a bit of our time.

[Alienkiller]

Nice to hear Chris,

I looked in the new Milestone 2-Prototype too. The new Features / Contents and refited / reworked existing Features / Content in it [I don´t say them about the Surprise for the normal Game-Version later on] are great. That some older tested Features with big Rework / Upgrades from the Beta-Versions come back and more will come back are great too, which I could see in my Testplay and here in the Threat with the Pictures.

But the 1 important Announcement from the Milestone 2-Info about the Cleaners in the Gameplay I haven´t seen yet or I have them overseen (the Deathmatch-Mission after the Tutorial-Base-Defence-Mission).

All in all the Milestone 2-Prototype is an great Step in the correct Direction with a lot of Decision possibilitys, like it´s from beginning on (Kickstarter) planed, esp. to the End-Game. And a lot of the integrateable (Sense making) Whishes / Suggestions from us Beta-Testers as well Community come in. Hope to see more of that. Devs keep on the great Work.

[Xeferah]

After playing several (in-game) months now, I feel like it's a wrong choice to always have full funding, regardless of panic. Especially on the hardest difficulty, it's just SO MUCH money! You get around 1M a month extra. The game should give you less if panic is higher, but please show us the expected upcoming funding, as this gives us options:

- should I do this mission, even though all my troops are wounded? If I do, I lower panic, and thus I get more money.

The same goes for missions, and their rewards. As people suggested, abduction missions should have additional panic reduction rewards for saving more people. This would lower panic, and increase funding again (see, again more options!). Sames goes for terror missions: the fewer civilians I save, the less panic reduces: Even so far that if you win the mission but don't save anyone, panic is not reduced (maybe even increased?). Again, playing with the increased funding. But then the civilian AI should be improved, maybe so that your soldiers can command them to go to the chopper? Perhaps armed civilians or soldiers refuse to go and keep fighting with you.

[baldusi]

After playing a bit, I actually liked the new system for armor and options. I did used different addons for different roles.

I also thing that Cleaners need more missions. I think Cleaner network discovery should be tied to mission success. As such, small missions where first you have to capture a suspect would be nice. Those missions should have different paramenters, like instead of a chopper you arrive in a car (so only 4 operatives) or a van (so only 6 operatives). And some cleaner ops might appear to defend the suspect. Another would be to add stealth missions, where you should add a tap to a phone or a computer without being detected. Doing this research might then allow finding the locations.

Also, some form of interaction with UFO sightings or landings would be great. Like waiting for certain types of UFOs to land would have a chance of finding Cleaners along the aliens if you can intercept within the first 8/12hs.

I also really need to be able to select interceptors and dropships from different bases than the closest one. The current system is very rigid and does not allows to swap to fully armed and healed squadrons, or worse, those airborne and returning to base due to low fuel. Also, selecting missiles vs torpedoes to target different ship types is very hard if you can't select the base for attack.

I also think the number of bases should be higher. You can't really cover 100% of the world with six bases and you can't focus on high population areas with more bases (say, Europe/Africa need a single base if you want to cover the whole world.

[Komandos]

13 hours ago, baldusi said:

Also, some form of interaction with UFO sightings or landings would be great. Like waiting for certain types of UFOs to land would have a chance of finding Cleaners along the aliens if you can intercept within the first 8/12hs.

A very good idea. If the player does not appear at the UFO crash site in a day or two, then the number of opponents may be so large that it is very difficult, and even impossible, to win a tactical battle.

13 hours ago, baldusi said:

I also think the number of bases should be higher. You can't really cover 100% of the world with six bases and you can't focus on high population areas with more bases (say, Europe/Africa need a single base if you want to cover the whole world.

When there are 8-9 bases in the game, then the loss of 1-2 bases by a player (during the game) is not as painful as when there are 6 bases in the game.