DEV: Trimmed the payloads back on the aircraft in Experimental?

[Wyldefyre_CP]

Please, why??  These aircraft are hardly overpowered, Chris.  I come back to my experimental game today to find my Angels trimmed back from Payload 12 to Payload 10 and my just created 2nd Phantom trimmed from 15 down to 13 ... the paint's barely dry on the poor thing.

What's funny is, my initial payloads are still locked in on my Angel's and my other existing Phantom, as if they still had their 12 and 15 stats.  Which is to say, my 2 Angels are giving up any armor at all for the right to carry 1 forward Laser Lance Mount and 2 Missile Launchers, and my unnerfed Phantom's carrying the same setup, but could afford to add armor to his 4 slot.  

These were fun setups ... my Angels were certainly taking it a bit on the chin running around with no armor, but they were giving nearly as good as they got.  It just felt right, you know?  Now what will they be able to carry ... squat diddly little, it seems.  And now my freshly minted 2nd Phantom gets the joy of carrying one Laser Lance, one missile launcher and armor ... and absolutely nothing in the 4th slot.  With the Laser Lance eating an ungodly 8 payload slots there's not even room for an extra fuel tank in 4th place. 

My humble suggestion here (and naturally, it's only a suggestion) is that there is Nothing Broken about the aircraft vs alien craft process.  There could actually afford to be some latitude given to the armament situation (see my previous post about adding more hard mounts along the way) to allow for more versatility, fun, and freedom of options when equipping your craft.  Who doesn't want to imagine your flight team madly scrambling, say, to sub out standard air missiles with torpedoes for a tougher enemy ship spotted on the radars?  Or removing all missiles for some extra cannons in a straight out fighter dogfight?  Or mixing and matching among same aircraft types to separate 'bombers' and 'fighter escorts' of our own choosing?

Just currently feeling like every time I start to enjoy the aircraft setup, it gets nerfed out from under me. 

 

 

[Chris]

The Laser Lance values should also have been reduced back down to 6 weight too, but I missed that change. I'll get it patched in shortly.

Basically we experimented with weapons needing more payload as their tech level increased, but decided it was a bad idea and reverted the change - but I forgot to change back the increased interceptor payload limites. I'm happy to consider increasing that payload on the interceptors ... but the problem I'm concerned about is the Angel feeling great at that payload capacity, but then the Phantom and Gemini not really being a significant improvement because the Angel can already carry most loadouts.

[Wyldefyre_CP]

18 minutes ago, Chris said:

The Laser Lance values should also have been reduced back down to 7 weight too, but I missed that change. I'll get it patched in shortly.

Basically we experimented with weapons needing more payload as their tech level increased, but decided it was a bad idea and reverted the change - but I forgot to change back the increased interceptor payload limites. I'm happy to consider increasing that payload on the interceptors ... but the problem I'm concerned about is the Angel feeling great at that payload capacity, but then the Phantom and Gemini not really being a significant improvement because the Angel can already carry most loadouts.

My suggestion to that concern would be to adjust your hardpoints .... 3 for the Angel instead of 4 makes it a one gun and one missile carrier, with the 3rd slot open for either fuel or armor.  You could also choose to ramp up the payload req for the better armors along the way.  This would enable a person to still lightly armor their Angels early game if they so chose, but need a better aircraft for the heavier/quality armor.  Adjusting Hardpoints could also be useful as a reward down the line for more versatility with the better aircraft builds and ramp up 4, 5 or 6.  

Please also keep in mind that if down the road you do feel like maybe an aircraft build's become 'too powerful', there's another surefire way to blunt that power - not by taking away from the aircraft - but by increasing the enemy aircraft stats.  

I will argue every time that freedom to experiment and do more things wins out over restrictions to do much less things every time.  I hate feeling pigeon-holed or led by the nose to do a specific build and that build only when I play a game.

 

Appreciate all the work you're doing to best enhance the game, and thanks for the quick reply!

Edited June 4, 2024 by Wyldefyre_CP

[Chris]

Increasing the UFO stats doesn't really address that sort of balance issue though - if shotguns were overpowered, it wouldn't be a good idea to fix it by buffing the HP of all aliens. That would just make all other weapons non-viable and ensure everyone had to use shotguns all the time.

Hardpoints are a way to potentially deal with the issue, yes - although the Angel having 3 and the Phantom having 4 is already the setup, isn't it?

Anyway, give things a bit of a test once the Lances are patched and feel free to comment on the issue in the balance thread.

[Grobobobo]

20 hours ago, Wyldefyre_CP said:

My suggestion to that concern would be to adjust your hardpoints .... 3 for the Angel instead of 4 makes it a one gun and one missile carrier

For a quite a long time back in milestone 2 double cannon angel was by far the best setup with maybe an occasional torpedo thrown in for mid game. The hardpoint difference was literally irrelevant, since you only used 2. I haven't played for a while, maybe things have changed a bit, but I doubt it has changed that much.

The phantom interceptor's upgrade was mostly to ship's survivability, maneuverability, and range. Back in xeno1 you wanted to upgrade your ships mostly so you don't miss interceptions by not being able to catch up to ufo's, and xeno 2 was similar.

20 hours ago, Chris said:

Angel can already carry most loadouts

I recall feeling the opposite, where there was far too little interesting loadouts and the potenial for modularity was more or less wasted, because 3 hardpoint slots made the "small" modules too unattractive. But that's outdated, I will play milestone 4 and hopefully give more fresh and detailed feedback on this later.