4.20 experimental feedback

[Ziran]

The aliens are utterly ludicrously accurate with their weapons now in tactical battles of 4.20.  Particularly starting in month 3. They also reaction fire with absurd frequency. It is making the tactical battles almost unplayable. The damage has also appeared to have increase across the board for all aliens and soldiers (by at least 50%). The patch notes implied alien weapons were nerfed. I think you got the polarity wrong with your changes as they were massively buffed. I liked the balance of tactical battles better before these changes.

It is very common now for sniper to shoot an alien way across the screen (20+ tiles) only for the wounded alien to return fire and insta kill sniper as reaction fire (no such thing as alien sniper rifle that I have seen yet in loot just cleaner SMG and magnetic rifles)

The destroyer UFOs (month 3) appear to be nerfed somewhat. A single angel interceptor with basic equipment now usually downs one with 5-10% HP left.

I have not reached month 3 before 4.20 but starting then we also get UFOs flying in pairs which a single angel cannot handle.

The grenade launcher is not completely useless now and I have successfully taken it for outside battles. Its capability of indirect fire is actually almost necessary now since shooting full HP alien results in death by reaction fire.

In my 4.20 game I have taken increased enemy soldier population and 125% funding (from base soldier difficulty). I am starting to regret this decision as every battle is a bloodbath now with swarms of aliens that shoot nuclear bullets with 0.001MOA accuracy. I had some battles where I lost 6 out of 9 soldiers (particularly timed ones where I have to rush and take risks)

The only outright bug (small UI one) I noticed is that in save game screen if there are enough saves to fill up the screen you cannot scroll down all the way to the bottom. The name of the last save is always cut of by half. Notice attached screen shot. I highlighted the problem save in yellow.

 

[Chris]

6 minutes ago, Ziran said:

The aliens are utterly ludicrously accurate with their weapons now in tactical battles of 4.20.  Particularly starting in month 3. They also reaction fire with absurd frequency. It is making the tactical battles almost unplayable. The damage has also appeared to have increase across the board for all aliens and soldiers (by at least 50%). The patch notes implied alien weapons were nerfed. I think you got the polarity wrong with your changes as they were massively buffed. I liked the balance of tactical battles better before these changes.

It is very common now for sniper to shoot an alien way across the screen (20+ tiles) only for the wounded alien to return fire and insta kill sniper as reaction fire (no such thing as alien sniper rifle that I have seen yet in loot just cleaner SMG and magnetic rifles)

The destroyer UFOs (month 3) appear to be nerfed somewhat. A single angel interceptor with basic equipment now usually downs one with 5-10% HP left.

I have not reached month 3 before 4.20 but starting then we also get UFOs flying in pairs which a single angel cannot handle.

The grenade launcher is not completely useless now and I have successfully taken it for outside battles. Its capability of indirect fire is actually almost necessary now since shooting full HP alien results in death by reaction fire.

In my 4.20 game I have taken increased enemy soldier population and 125% funding (from base soldier difficulty). I am starting to regret this decision as every battle is a bloodbath now with swarms of aliens that shoot nuclear bullets with 0.001MOA accuracy. I had some battles where I lost 6 out of 9 soldiers (particularly timed ones where I have to rush and take risks)

The only outright bug (small UI one) I noticed is that in save game screen if there are enough saves to fill up the screen you cannot scroll down all the way to the bottom. The name of the last save is always cut of by half. Notice attached screen shot. I highlighted the problem save in yellow.

 

What version of the game are you comparing the accuracy to? Milestone 4.16/4.18?

Do you have a save from one of the battles where the aliens are making crazy accuracy shots?

[Ziran]

Comparing to 4.16 stable (my last 3 month campaign).  I started this new game under 4.18 stable then patched to 4.19 exp but did not play. Then I patched to 4.20 exp and played that.

The worst mission (in terms of crazy accuracy) was the kill/capture cleaner VIP (set mission not random).  I do not have saves from that anymore though.

In general the cleaner agents and possibly soldiers were most affected. I think sebilians too. I looked at my death list and the CLEANER LEADER and CLEANER DATA RAID were the bloodiest (4 soldiers did not survive each mission). These missions are normally not too hard its just this accuracy/reaction fire as well as changing "Enemy Quantity: Increased" from default in soldier difficulty.

If I run into blatant example of this I will keep the save and upload to forum.

 

[Ziran]

Well my next mission was abduction vs the "wraith" (ghostly blue soldiers, my first encounter with them). It was basically mission impossible. I abandoned this game and will wait for future patch to try again. The wraith did not have super reaction fire but they were sniper like accurate and deadly (they were carrying rifles when I looked at one dead body). Combined with dispersed nature of abduction points, tight time limit it was not a mission one could win.

[Chris]

15 hours ago, Ziran said:

Well my next mission was abduction vs the "wraith" (ghostly blue soldiers, my first encounter with them). It was basically mission impossible. I abandoned this game and will wait for future patch to try again. The wraith did not have super reaction fire but they were sniper like accurate and deadly (they were carrying rifles when I looked at one dead body). Combined with dispersed nature of abduction points, tight time limit it was not a mission one could win.

Again, without a save there's not much I can do here. Either some weirdness has happened because I changed the difficulty-level accuracy modifiers and it's caused a bug in existing campaigns, or you're finding the game much harder because you've increased the number of aliens in the game (or you've just had a lot of bad luck). But I can't tell without loading a save from your campaign. The damage numbers for the alien weapons are unchanged, and their accuracy has been reduced overall.