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Build V18 Ground Combat Balance Discussion


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The xenopedia article states that the predator armour gives its user incredible strength and therefore negates the accuracy penalty for moving. Although it also states that you can't throw grenades while wearing it and you can. So I'm not sure if the accuracy thing is implemented or not. But it seems to me that my machinegunners are pretty accurate after moving.

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I am running with an 8 man team

1 sniper

1 mg

1 rocket

5 rifles

and having played around 9 missions now I am losing men at a rate of about 1 xeno casualty for every 2-2.5 aliens.

Given that its mid October I have so far lost (I think) about 6 soldiers. Would that be about right for early game? (seems like a reasonable number and it certainly feels like i'm getting my ass kicked).

I notice many others are running with 2 sniper, 2mg or 2 rockets and less rifles. This seems like a no brainer to me as the rifles are pretty much pea shooters - but I am old fashioned and dont like the idea of heavy weapons units. I feel like there needs to be some incentive for me to keep my rifles. Perhaps you could make it so that only rifles/shotguns are able to be shoot around corners?

Then I would have an incentive to trade firepower for my mens safety. At the moment they have to step out of cover, get 2 shots (usually only 1 hits) and it almost always takes at-least 4 shots to kill a Sebillian which means I need to have 4 men shooting at a single target and risk being reaction fired to death.

Yes I know rifles already can move and shoot, but thats not much of an advantage given typical map layouts that force you to move from cover to cover anyway and if you don't use some sort of 'cover and advance' tactic you will die.

Edited by Belmakor
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Okay, so I've actually used a tier-2 dropship. You can't get it because it requires a researchable item that isn't yet available, so you have to fiddle the the researches.xml file. So far, used it only on an alien base, but...

Oh my god.

Oh my god you guys what is this I don't even.

You wouldn't think that have four more soliders would make that much of a difference, but it does. It really does. In the alien base, I was able to split my party into two squads of six and they were able to cover the entire of the base. My first six-man squad composed entirly of privates (henceforth known as the forlorn hope) who stormed the control room first, got diced in the ensuring reaction firestorm but they tied up the bad guys long enough that my crack troops could follow in after them and fill the air with grenades. Grenades! I have a specialised grenadier now! I couldn't do that before! His name is Anton Sokolov, he like baseball, and by god does he throw a mean alienium grenade! 12 guys is awesome. 16 will be the bees knees.

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Okay, so I've actually used a tier-2 dropship. You can't get it because it requires a researchable item that isn't yet available, so you have to fiddle the the researches.xml file. So far, used it only on an alien base, but...

Oh my god.

Oh my god you guys what is this I don't even.

You wouldn't think that have four more soliders would make that much of a difference, but it does. It really does. In the alien base, I was able to split my party into two squads of six and they were able to cover the entire of the base. My first six-man squad composed entirly of privates (henceforth known as the forlorn hope) who stormed the control room first, got diced in the ensuring reaction firestorm but they tied up the bad guys long enough that my crack troops could follow in after them and fill the air with grenades. Grenades! I have a specialised grenadier now! I couldn't do that before! His name is Anton Sokolov, he like baseball, and by god does he throw a mean alienium grenade! 12 guys is awesome. 16 will be the bees knees.

So is it too easy now? Balance, balance, balance... :)
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I wouldn't say it was too easy. But what the extra bodies did to was make things possible that were not possible before. Make no mistake. My six privates were dead, dead, dead by the time the reaction fire stopped. But with a Charlie that would have been my whole squad murderated (as Shima can attest).

EDIT: And do you know how expensive it is to kit out a 12-man team? I had to settle for Jackal armour for the privates in the end. 50 grand per + 10 alloys isn't cheap!

Edited by Max_Caine
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Jackal armour for cannon fodder? What a waste. It limits their vision and they need to spot for true heroes behind them ;) But seriously, jackal armour won't help at all against what you encounter in an alien base.

I still think that all aliens shouldn't camp inside the command room. About half of them, sure. And protecting the leader. That makes sense. But the rest should be scattered around, possibly defending the reactors too.

And grenades are not bad if you can throw 2-3 per soldier per turn (my veterans have all 100+ TU's). But firing a volley of rockets inside that cramped up command room, that's what I call fun!

Edited by Shima
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Okay, so I've actually used a tier-2 dropship. You can't get it because it requires a researchable item that isn't yet available, so you have to fiddle the the researches.xml file. So far, used it only on an alien base, but...

Oh my god.

Oh my god you guys what is this I don't even.

You wouldn't think that have four more soliders would make that much of a difference, but it does. It really does. In the alien base, I was able to split my party into two squads of six and they were able to cover the entire of the base. My first six-man squad composed entirly of privates (henceforth known as the forlorn hope) who stormed the control room first, got diced in the ensuring reaction firestorm but they tied up the bad guys long enough that my crack troops could follow in after them and fill the air with grenades. Grenades! I have a specialised grenadier now! I couldn't do that before! His name is Anton Sokolov, he like baseball, and by god does he throw a mean alienium grenade! 12 guys is awesome. 16 will be the bees knees.

Cat's pyjamas because that's adorable. Puss in PJs.

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Shima, I've found out why all the aliens are in the command room. I loaded up the alien command room into the submap editor and it has ALL THE SPAWNS EVAR. Obviously the game populates the command room first, then randomly sprinkles the other aliens around the map according to the spawn points. Only it never does that, because there are enough spawn points in the command room to full populate it without ever touching the other parts of the base. I've never used the submap editor before now, but I'll have a go at trying to cut down the spawn points in the command room, see if a balance can be struck.

EDIT: Yeahhhh... didn't work.

Edited by Max_Caine
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Shima, the armour rating verses energy weapons for predator armour is 40.

The armour rating verses energy weapons for wolf armour is, oh, 40!

Oddly enough, the kinetic armour rating goes sky-high for predator armour... to 70, which is more than enough avoid friendly fire from even MAG weapons. I'm thinking that the armour rating for predator armour should be around 65-70 verses energy weapons. That'd give squaddies in it half a chance verses plasma cannons.

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Please increase the effectiveness of stun gas grenades. I believe the best way to do this is to make the gas faster acting. From what I can tell (after about 15 missions) smoke is actually a better choice since they cover a larger area with 100% consistency. Either that or reduce the stun ability of smoke grenades. Currently, I don't see much reason to carry stun gas grenades because smoke is better.

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Yeah, increase the effectiveness of stun grenades, please. A consistent gas coverage would be really nice, as well as increasing the effectiveness of the gas itself. They really are pretty useless at the moment, though I continue to use them for some reason.
I don't know if both consistent coverage AND more effectiveness is the best idea. I have a feeling that doing both would make them too powerful. All you'd have to do is toss a couple into a ship and that would be it. I prefer to have random coverage, but much faster knockout. Edited by StellarRat
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That seems to be the best, then. Yeah, makes sense. I'm just annoyed when the grenade blows right under them and it doesn't take them down, even when they'd been hit by stun gas before. How does stun damage work, anyway? Like remaining HP, or some separate stun HP system? Because a guy with 3 HP left should be stunned much more easily then someone with full HP imo.

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That seems to be the best, then. Yeah, makes sense. I'm just annoyed when the grenade blows right under them and it doesn't take them down, even when they'd been hit by stun gas before. How does stun damage work, anyway? Like remaining HP, or some separate stun HP system? Because a guy with 3 HP left should be stunned much more easily then someone with full HP imo.
I'm not a 100% sure how explosions are modeled in the game, but it seems to my that a direct hit i.e. lands in the square with the target from ANY grenade should be a lot more powerful than one that lands even one tile away. Maybe that mechanic is already in there. If that's the case the stun gas might just need to be a bit more powerful. I think you're right about a "pre-softened" target being easier.
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As far as I can tell, stun damage works like it did in X-Com. If total stun damage > current HP then stunned. That's why the rockets you start with are so good at stunning. The 75HPs worth of normal damage is dealt first, then 90HPs worth of stun damage is applied. (It doesn't really matter which way around it is applied, tbh). A stun grenade deals damage in two ways. It does 40HP of stun damage at point-of-impact (which is reduced for each tile or half-tile outside of the point-of-impact). The stun gas smoke it leaves behind does 40HP of stun damage when something walks into the stun smoke, but this is only applied the first time somethig walks into the cloud. That's why smoke grenades are so good at stunning. You suffer 30HPs of stun damage each time you walk into or out of the smoke.

Therefore

I propose:

1) Smoke grenade smoke to do a minimal amount of stun damage. Say, 5HPs of stun damage (or you're going to have people keeling over when you want to use the smoke as cover).

2) Stun grenades to do more damage at point-of-impact (say 60HPs). As the damage done is lessened as the blast is widened, perhaps it should also have a larger radius (to create a larger zone where stun damage is high)

3) Stun smoke to be more reliable. At the moment, stun smoke appears 50% of the time in a tile within blast radius. In comparison, smoke grenade smoke appears 100% of the time.

3a) Or, make stun smoke more potent - perhaps 60HPs of stun damage the same way as the grenade explosion.

4) I'm pretty sure that the damage formula for guns is applied to grenades as well. Therefore a grenade thrown outside of it's "range" will start dropping damage at point-of-impact. Now, that discussion is for another thread, but in the meanwhile, boost the "range" of the stun grenade to perhaps 50% more, so from 10 tiles to 15 tiles. This won't affect stun smoke (which is worked out as per gas/smoke rules, i.e. when a unit runs into it, damage is applied).

Edited by Max_Caine
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As far as I can tell, stun damage works like it did in X-Com. If total stun damage > current HP then stunned. That's why the rockets you start with are so good at stunning. The 75HPs worth of normal damage is dealt first, then 90HPs worth of stun damage is applied. (It doesn't really matter which way around it is applied, tbh). A stun grenade deals damage in two ways. It does 40HP of stun damage at point-of-impact (which is reduced for each tile or half-tile outside of the point-of-impact). The stun gas smoke it leaves behind does 40HP of stun damage when something walks into the stun smoke, but this is only applied the first time somethig walks into the cloud. That's why smoke grenades are so good at stunning. You suffer 30HPs of stun damage each time you walk into or out of the smoke.

Therefore

I propose:

1) Smoke grenade smoke to do a minimal amount of stun damage. Say, 5HPs of stun damage (or you're going to have people keeling over when you want to use the smoke as cover).

2) Stun grenades to do more damage at point-of-impact (say 60HPs). As the damage done is lessened as the blast is widened, perhaps it should also have a larger radius (to create a larger zone where stun damage is high)

3) Stun smoke to be more reliable. At the moment, stun smoke appears 50% of the time in a tile within blast radius. In comparison, smoke grenade smoke appears 100% of the time.

3a) Or, make stun smoke more potent - perhaps 60HPs of stun damage the same way as the grenade explosion.

4) I'm pretty sure that the damage formula for guns is applied to grenades as well. Therefore a grenade thrown outside of it's "range" will start dropping damage at point-of-impact. Now, that discussion is for another thread, but in the meanwhile, boost the "range" of the stun grenade to perhaps 50% more, so from 10 tiles to 15 tiles. This won't affect stun smoke (which is worked out as per gas/smoke rules, i.e. when a unit runs into it, damage is applied).

#4 Is just dumb. I think I filed a bug report on it already.
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It seems like the stun damage (after the first round) is only applied if the alien moves. That's part of my problem with it. Since the cloud dissipates randomly, you might stun them if they walk through the cloud but you probably won't if they stand still or just avoid the smoke.

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It seems like the stun damage (after the first round) is only applied if the alien moves. That's part of my problem with it. Since the cloud dissipates randomly, you might stun them if they walk through the cloud but you probably won't if they stand still or just avoid the smoke.
Did you post a bug report? Also, I've noticed that observation seems to only happen after TUs are expended. That is wrong too. For example, if I toss a flare anything I see in the area won't reveal until I expend some TUs.
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Smoke inhalation isn't a good thing, but I agree it needs to be way dialed down.

update: WTF plasma cannons. >< Got to my first terror mission with no casualties (many wounded however, lucky breaks I suppose). 3 commanders get vaped. T_T

Edited by erutan
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Smoke inhalation isn't a good thing, but I agree it needs to be way dialed down.

update: WTF plasma cannons. >< Got to my first terror mission with no casualties (many wounded however, lucky breaks I suppose). 3 commanders get vaped. T_T

I have messed with the accuracies of the alien weapons, dialling them down to about half of what they were. It seems to be significantly less easy for the aliens to hit me from ridiculous distances, while still giving them a fair chance up close.

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Yeah, Chris did mention somewhere that the current alien weapon stats were a bit...extreme. Due to the laziness of the old AI.

Plasma Cannons have an accuracy rating of 80%. I'm not sure what the alien stats are, but I think they're pretty high. Heck, the pistols had an accuracy of 50 or 55 I think.

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