Build V18 Ground Combat Balance Discussion

[Gauddlike]

Hmm not thought to see if there is a difference between a day or night mission underground in the alien base.

I would suggest unloading your smoke grenades through the doorway if you can and waiting them out.

Or just get shot a lot and fall over.

[Shima]

I managed to get a couple of rockets in there and some heavy laser fire. Now they're just running around, getting burned and stunned repeatedly. I like that!

Also most of their reaction fire from back rows went right into aliens in the front, killing a few in the process. I like that even more!

Edit: and now the save got corrupted and won't load. Ah well.

Edited April 8, 2013 by Shima

[StellarRat]

Speaking of boosting...I don't know why but my post on demo charges vs. other explosive weapons was deleted (accidently I hope.) Anyway, IMO the demo charges are way under powered right now. I still can't do much with them. They were very powerful in the original game. In Xenonauts you're better off with a rocket launcher or grenades right now as far as breaching walls, etc... My feeling is that a demo charge should at a minimum open up a one tile hole in any normal concrete wall. Personally, I'd like to see it open enough tiles to drive a vehicle through. It would also be very cool if you could pile up demo charges in one tile and have the explosion become larger. I also believe that the weight of demo charges is a bit low as I can carry an entire backpack full of them without too much problem. However, if they remain weak as they are it's probably OK.

[Shima]

I finally managed to finish the alien base mission from an earlier save. Loot was nice, except you get no alien alloys or alenium, which you should get aplenty, I think.

[Gauddlike]

C4 currently has the same damage as the frag grenade (80) but slightly larger radius (2.5 instead of 2).

It also shares the grenade weight of 1 which could probably be safely increased, a pistol weighs 1.5 while an AR weighs in at 5.

Both frag and C4 have 50 accuracy, 10 range.

I am not really sure what role Chris had in mind for C4 but I see it more like a focused demolition charge than an area damaging weapon.

Try upping the damage on the C4 to be higher than the grenade but make the radius smaller?

It would depend a lot on how accurate you can be when throwing the C4, maybe reduce its accuracy and range as well to make it more effective when carefully placed than thrown a long way?

Say 120 damage, 1.5 radius, 2.5 weight, 0 mitigation, 10 range, 25 accuracy as a starting point and then balance from there?

Just for comparison:

The Frag is 80 damage, 2 radius, 1 weight, 0 mitigation, 10 range, 50 accuracy.

The fairly devastating alien plasma cannon has 120 damage, 2 radius, 30 mitigation, 35 range, 80-96 accuracy.

Maybe a few test runs and post up some results in a C4/grenades balance thread to replace your missing one?

[StellarRat]

C4 currently has the same damage as the frag grenade (80) but slightly larger radius (2.5 instead of 2).

It also shares the grenade weight of 1 which could probably be safely increased, a pistol weighs 1.5 while an AR weighs in at 5.

Both frag and C4 have 50 accuracy, 10 range.

I am not really sure what role Chris had in mind for C4 but I see it more like a focused demolition charge than an area damaging weapon.

Try upping the damage on the C4 to be higher than the grenade but make the radius smaller?

It would depend a lot on how accurate you can be when throwing the C4, maybe reduce its accuracy and range as well to make it more effective when carefully placed than thrown a long way?

Say 120 damage, 1.5 radius, 2.5 weight, 0 mitigation, 10 range, 25 accuracy as a starting point and then balance from there?

Just for comparison:

The Frag is 80 damage, 2 radius, 1 weight, 0 mitigation, 10 range, 50 accuracy.

The fairly devastating alien plasma cannon has 120 damage, 2 radius, 30 mitigation, 35 range, 80-96 accuracy.

Maybe a few test runs and post up some results in a C4/grenades balance thread to replace your missing one?

I would make make it very inaccurate (after all it's meant to be placed not thrown). I'm not sure how the damage actually works in the game, but a grenade does nearly all it's damage from fragments, while a demo is blast damage. So, the grenade would have a larger damage radius against living objects, but a demo charge should do a lot more damage against terrain. I think you might be on the right track with a small radius, but powerful blast for the demo charge. Is 120 enough to destroy any normal terrain object? I would hope that any wall, etc... would be removed in the detonation tile.

[Gauddlike]

It depends on how the game calculates damage and carries it over between the different object states.

Most walls have 50-60 hp per state.

If damage is carried over that would mean damage on the tile of the charge would likely destroy most walls outright.

60 damage would take the wall from default to damaged, the next 60 from damaged to destroyed.

There is a 20% variance on damage though so it might not always be the case.

To guarantee destruction of the walls on the charge tile the damage should probably be around 145.

I don't believe walls are classed as having any armour so the lack of mitigation should only affect actors, not scenery.

Walls on either side of the charge tile would likely survive in the damaged state due to the drop off over the radius of the explosion.

I am unsure how the game calculates this drop off though so can't really guess at how much damage they would take.

If damage doesn't carry over between the states then no weapon will be able to totally destroy a wall with a single shot but I am pretty sure I remember that actually happening.

Clearly I wasn't paying enough attention though

[GizmoGomez]

Well, I changed the damage from 80 to 200, keeping everything else the same, and when I tossed it at a concrete wall from on square away (and then proceeded to run away) it landed in grass up against the wall, and exploded, destroying the wall I was aiming for, the one on either side, and making a 3x3 cluster of dirt crater tiles. So, imo, 200 is a tad too much. I mean, it would make room for an entire vehicle to drive through. That should require more than one block. Maybe one on the left and one on the right tiles of the three wide space you want to blow in the wall.

Also, you can pile them up to make a larger hole. Just put one in each hand, and toss them to adjacent tiles. It's not exactly a pile of them, but it does work. Actually, you can probably use more than one on a tile, but I've not tried that yet.

(ha, it's funny how long it took me to find the .xml for the C4. Now that I've looked around in that folder more, I'll be messing with it and other things much more often now.)

I've a question, would making the range really short (like 5 tiles or so) and giving it a high accuracy work better at simulating placing it then leaving the range 10 and making the accuracy lower?

Edited April 8, 2013 by GizmoGomez

[Gauddlike]

The accuracy begins to fall off when you go past the maximum range.

It would depend on the actual changes.

If you got it wrong you may end up making no difference to the weapon at all because the higher accuracy could balance out the lower range when firing at a mid range target.

Would have to experiment with a few different values to see how it went.

[Omots]

I can put Alenium rockets in backpack, but in combat the soldier fires a regular rocket then shows out of ammo in quick-load window. There are Alenium rockets in backpack. Dragging one from the backpack onto the weapons window doesn't load a rocket.

A bug, or have I missed something I'm supposed to do to enable these rockets? All available research is complete. Not good to be on a terror mission and learn the rocket launcher is a one-shot!

[Shima]

You must be doing something wrong. Manually loading alenium rocket by dragging it over to the rocket launcher in the backpack screen works for me. Even the quick reload button changes to the right type of rocket afterwards. But I have to repeat the process in each mission because the launcher gets loaded with a standard rocket when I get back to base.

[Gauddlike]

Quick check that you have enough AP remaining to reload the launcher as well.

[Sathra]

Yep, tested it with Plasma rockets.

As for actual balance I find the grenades pretty good. They can often kill if they hit directly on the alien (even sebs) but otherwise I'm not even sure it wounds. There's something odd going on with blast radius since the common "throw grenade into wall in front of myself" they rarely take damage if wearing Jackal or better. Hurt animation plays (and sound) but at most its 5-10 points of damage.

[Gauddlike]

Assuming the damage drops off to zero at the maximum radius then standing one tile away could reduce the damage to around 50%, which is 40 +/- 20% for the global damage variance.

Then take into account Jackal armours 25 resist against kinetic damage and the 0 mitigation of frag grenades you are looking at 7 to 23 damage against your troops.

If you are in cover then the explosive damage is split between soldier and cover object as well (before taking into account armour mitigation), further reducing the damage you would take.

[StellarRat]

Well, I changed the damage from 80 to 200, keeping everything else the same, and when I tossed it at a concrete wall from on square away (and then proceeded to run away) it landed in grass up against the wall, and exploded, destroying the wall I was aiming for, the one on either side, and making a 3x3 cluster of dirt crater tiles. So, imo, 200 is a tad too much. I mean, it would make room for an entire vehicle to drive through. That should require more than one block. Maybe one on the left and one on the right tiles of the three wide space you want to blow in the wall.

Also, you can pile them up to make a larger hole. Just put one in each hand, and toss them to adjacent tiles. It's not exactly a pile of them, but it does work. Actually, you can probably use more than one on a tile, but I've not tried that yet.

I've a question, would making the range really short (like 5 tiles or so) and giving it a high accuracy work better at simulating placing it then leaving the range 10 and making the accuracy lower?

Yeah, 200 is probably too much, try 120 or 150 if you get a chance. I think you're on the right track with the accuracy changes, let us know what that does. It should be accurate, but very short ranged.

[GizmoGomez]

I tried it with standard stats, excepting 145 damage, 1.5 radius, and a range of 5 tiles but an accuracy of either 75 or 80, I can't remember which, and it worked well, I think. I didn't really try any crazy stuff with it, because I was more focused on it working for what I used it for, which is standing against a wall, tossing it to the adjacent wall, and getting back a few tiles in preparation of storming a building, or something. For that it worked well. It didn't crack the walls next to the one I targeted, and that's something I'd like it to be able to do. So, like,

[.][.][/][X][/][.][.]

if the [X] is the targeted wall and it's destroyed, and the [/] are the halfway destroyed walls on either side, where all other walls [.] remain undamaged. That way, you can place two charges against a wall with an empty tile in the middle to create a 3 wide opening, since the two [/]s on the middle tile would stack to become a [X] (please correct me if I'm wrong).

[.][.][/][X][X][X][/][.][.]

[Amiga4ever]

I cannot select alien only walls

[Assoonasitis]

I cannot select alien only walls

[ATTACH=CONFIG]2023[/ATTACH]

If you hold Ctrl to target and then hover your cursor right over the alien's head, you should be able to target it. Good luck if it's crouched, though.

[StellarRat]

I tried it with standard stats, excepting 145 damage, 1.5 radius, and a range of 5 tiles but an accuracy of either 75 or 80, I can't remember which, and it worked well, I think. I didn't really try any crazy stuff with it, because I was more focused on it working for what I used it for, which is standing against a wall, tossing it to the adjacent wall, and getting back a few tiles in preparation of storming a building, or something. For that it worked well. It didn't crack the walls next to the one I targeted, and that's something I'd like it to be able to do. So, like,

[.][.][/][X][/][.][.]

if the [X] is the targeted wall and it's destroyed, and the [/] are the halfway destroyed walls on either side, where all other walls [.] remain undamaged. That way, you can place two charges against a wall with an empty tile in the middle to create a 3 wide opening, since the two [/]s on the middle tile would stack to become a [X] (please correct me if I'm wrong).

[.][.][/][X][X][X][/][.][.]

Sounds right then. 145 it is. Hopefully, Chris will make the change.

[Max_Caine]

Don't forget that buildings can collapse! Or at least, they should be able to, I think Chris had that code implemented.. Which makes C4 ideal, because you can set multiple charges and get the hell outta Dodge before they blow. Has anyone tried to collapse a multi-storey building yet?

[crusherven]

No. Aliens are almost never inside them.

[GizmoGomez]

That does sound like fun, though. Next time I find a building like that, I'll try it. I know I have more than enough C4; I've filled everyone's packs with it to increase Str.

[Shima]

If you can't aim at the alien, try aiming behind him. The shots still kill them when they stand in the way

Anyway, I got my hands on Predator armour and it's pretty dissapointing. The research report told me damned fairy tales about it. Indestructible, best armor in the universe, like a tank, blah blah blah. It can't even withstand 1 shot from a plasma cannon! And alien heavy plasma rifles kill my guy in 2 shots. That's definitely not what I expected. It's just not worth it to upgrade to predator from wolf (for one or 2 guys in squad, since it's limited to heavy weapons only). Instead I'd go directly to the sentinel for everybody and use it's extended view range. You are hoping that the enemy won't hit you anyways, so why give up your sight range and provide them with free shots? I hoped to use the predator as a sponge for enemy reaction fire, mainly in close quarters (ufos, bases...), so my lighter troops could sweep in and kill the defenseless aliens. But since it can't take even a few hits...

I know predator can't be made too strong, because players could just equip whole team with them and laugh at the aliens (on the other hand, mind controlled soldier in predator armour could be stuff of nightmares, hehe). So I propose to make it expensive and powerful. So you can afford just a few, but they do what they are intended for.

Other than that, androns spend most of their time cowered behind a console or any piece of terrain they can find (contrary to their xenopedia record) and electroshock grenades don't do any perceivable damage to them (contrary to their xenopedia record).

Edit: Man teleporting wraiths are pain in the ***! I've spent about half an our hunting 3 of them down in otherwise cleared out alien base. It's worse than good old "find the last hidden alien" from X-Com E:U. You can sweep all rooms and not find them because they teleport in a room you just left before you get to the last unchecked room! They are really hard to track down and the teleporting sound was starting to drive me nuts. Will it be changed? Mind control, reaper infection and teleporting all use the same one.

Edited April 11, 2013 by Shima

[Belmakor]

Sebillians have got the lore about them being poor sighted so yes they should have their vision reduced. However, they should still have some sort of situational awareness a little further than they can accurately see/shoot so that the AI can make effective use of flanking and closing the gap. If you reduce it too far they wont do very much I fear.

As an counter to the nerf that is caused by reduced vision. Why not also increase their reaction fire chance (their vision could me movement based for example).

This would mean you want to be fighting them at range. Whereas just now they are deadly at range and in close combat.

[Gauddlike]

I am a little confused about the Predator armour to be honest.

It is heavy and can only carry heavy weapons but in general (because of the accuracy penalty for moving heavy weapons as well as their extended range) those guys are at the back and not getting shot at so the heavy armour is not required.

Unless I have missed something and the heavy suit negates the accuracy penalty for moving and firing with heavy weapons, that might make the difference.