V18 Musings

[Sathra]

So while at work I was thinking about Xenonauts and V18, and rather than scatter them around the boards in 3-4 different threads I'll collect them all here for perusal.

WARNING: May be rambling.

The cross map shooting is problematic. I can understand the reasoning behind it, and its a good change, but depending on how the AI actually calculates hit chances maybe have it decide not to shoot if hit chance is under 5%? Would cut down on the AI using autofire so damn much too, and when it does, it would be much more unpleasant. Would stop the whole "plasma volleys across the map" bastardry, since attrition does not work in the players favour.

Progression/escalation. Might look towards spreading it out more? I have no idea if there is actually any difference between the difficulties atm, so this would be for Normal diff, with the higher difficulties increasing wave frequency OR size by say, 20%?

So easy would be 20% slower/smaller, Vet at 20% faster/higher and Super at 40% of Nomal. Or maybe mixing them up so the waves come slower in easy, faster in Vet, and faster AND larger in Super. Risk reward plays a part here since having more ships in the higher difficulties would make the game somewhat easier if you can keep up without losses due to all the resources and income from the crash sites.

Tangent over, so the first 2 weeks would be Light Scouts, next 2 weeks or month of Scouts with Fighters appearing near the end, then a month or 2 (or 3!) of Corvettes with Heavy Fighters escorting them near the end as well as running their own missions. Why so long with Corvettes? Expansion. This phase would be the meat of the early game where you get the income and resources for getting new bases up and equipping them, not to mention the new interceptors to deal with the Heavy Fighters. Its a kind of 'breather episode' before the spike on Landing Ships. Could have multiple breather zones to let the player get comfortable with the next tier. Dunno, suggestion. Heavy plasma and terror missions would start showing up around the middle of the Corvette era.

Problem with this is the tech speed. I was keeping up techwise with only 15 scientists (couldn't build much of it, but cest la vie). Might be a touch fast, especially if the escalation was slowed down. Would need testing, but maybe 50% increase?

Resources. Might look at increasing the alloys per ship, since they aren't worth much for sale, so even if it was doubled its not much overall for the early ships. Maybe just 50% increase. Suit of Wolf per Scout? I think that's right, if you include the cash from the alien weapons. And with the extra alloys would let players sell some if they're doing well, as well as outfit a second team, or third if doing well enough. I think the actual income per ship is good, but maybe increase the price point of Alenium to 3 to 5k? Make a bigger point of selling or using. You get a constant trickle of Alenium every mission after the tech is researched. So its a kind of secondary income stream that might bite you in the ass come mid- and end-game.. Not to mention if you really balls up you can dump your alenium (keep typing elerium) stocks for a last gasp.

Having more cover on the maps would be nice. But group them up, say like 3 rocks in a little flattened triangle. You could advance from cover site to cover site, but it risks grenade attacks. With lone cover around as well.

Dead cows as cover in farm fields? Along with wheelbarrows, packing bins, etc. Would be pretty macabre to have cover for a terror map including a pile of death civvies or a wrecked tank turret. Snowmobiles in tundra, with an inherent risk of explosion. And dead bears I guess. Depends how indiscriminate the aliens are with their killing.

Tundra seems about right, but there's a lack of rocks amongst the trees. Good cover overall, but your firing lines could be blocked, and trying to dig an alien out of there would be fun. Fighting among a scattered field of boulders would be good too, if it covers a whole map section. Give assault troops a good, if risky, workout. One of the town maps is a nice example with all the packing crates and stacks of barrels. Aliens don't go in there though. Its the one with the field of cover items to the left of the chinook with the ship to the northwest in a walled enclosure. Burned-out wreck of a car in a street would be nice to see as well. Orchards were great in the first X-com. Lost alot of troopers in there. I nuke them now.

What is marked as cover is pretty erratic atm though. Some bushes are cover, some aren't. Cars are cover, but only from inside or something.

Had a little splurge of ideas for alien squad behaviour in the V18 balance thread. Caesans use scouts ahead of a squad with rifles (making use of their good eyesight and ranged preference), Sebillians advance as a squad with no scouts, and try to get close (if they had reduced sight range compared to Caesans it would fit, as well as making use of their toughness). Androns move in tiny groups or alone (toughness and heavy weapons). Various terror units support the main troops in their preference (scouts/muscle/support respectively).

Got the idea for Caesans from fighting Caesans from a Cruiser. They basically did exactly what I mentioned and it was nasty as heck, especially since most were armed with HP. Frontal assault was a bad idea.

If you've made it this far, add your own ideas and opinions on my ideas.

Mandibular Fossa!

[crusherven]

I haven't gotten far enough to really have much opinion on research speed. So far I've made do with only 10 scientists, though I plan to recruit a few more since techs are getting harder to attain. Having 15 soldiers just seems more important... once my living quarters finish I guess I'll have some more flexibility.

One issue I have with the current cover is that pine trees are obnoxious. Ever try targeting an alien standing directly behind one? Your cursor has a tendency to target the tree instead.

[crusherven]

I'll amend my earlier statement to say it's not just pine trees that are annoying. Various sorts of cover, including the glass panels to the sides of the entrance of the scout, can make targeting really annoying.

Bushes should be consistent--not cover, just LOS blockers. So you can shoot through them but not see through them very well (if that's even possible).

[Sathra]

Yeah, the game has trouble with vision blocking non-wall objects. Use manual targetting(click on the weapon) and patience.

[Sathra]

So no comments about my extra large wall of text and its contents?

:sadface:

[Max_Caine]

Unfortunately, some of your points are un-discussable. Your first point is a bug. Cross-map shooting shouldn't work because there are things in the way. The game isn'thandling them properly yet. Your second point can only be discussed when levels of difficulty have been implemented. All levels of difficulty are the same at the moment.

[Sathra]

Well that's the first 2 paragraphs lol. Also good to know about the difficulty levels.

[thothkins]

So no comments about my extra large wall of text and its contents?

:sadface:

Aw, there there. I have a skills and training thread that I spent hours formatting and got precisely zero replies, so I feel your pain.

I haven't posted mainly as I see lots of these splitting off into the different Beta threads that popped up this week.

Cross Town traffic/Shooting

With the shoot through objects bug, this seems worse that it will be in the end. I'd also be loath to remove mad shots after a particular distance. Just think of how many "last-man-shot-from-miles-away-saving-his-comrades" X-Com stories you'd be depriving Xenonuats of. Last gasp, desperate measures should definitely be part of the game. To be fair, it should be on both sides too. Teach you to get complacent later in the mission:)

Progression

as noted, no difficulty variation as yet. v18 seems to be a lot slower at the beginning than earlier builds for me, but I've not yet had the chance to nose at the mission/ craft breakdowns in the assets folder yet to play around with it. Once the deluge of fighters went away, it wasn't to bad on the last build. Other bugs,that diverted funds/workshop time made it tougher than it needed to be later on.

R&D

Yeah, the research can run dry. But with two forced missions early on the player at least gets a start. Better than some early builds, but still not enough hard choices for me.

Workshop time is nerfed as weapons and armour vanish, so can;t really comment on that one.

Resources

Seems to be not bad on a couple of run-throughs of the early game. The slow start makes it tough in September, but October/November missions seem to give just enough cash to get a few things done. So (apart from the insanity of technology changing materials going for buttons ) some slight tweaking in necessary. As you say, probably towards Alenium (nearly went with Alerium there) as you'd be more likely to stockpile that anyway.

So its a kind of secondary income stream that might bite you in the ass come mid- and end-game.

I think secondary income streams are a bit shunned in Xenonauts Not to mention, it should be made explicitly clear from your chief scientist that selling your Alenium will utterly mess you up in late game.

Map Cover

Specifically agree on the groupings of cover. I had a couple of arctic maps a few build ago that had clumps. Very, very good map to play in. But there's a balance. Some of zzz1010s maps, such as the railroad one, had very good levels of naturally placed cover. Some of the other maps look a bit forced, corralling you into certain approaches. The huge spaces in some of the maps - particularly Industrial Terror and Farm Landing Ship get me regularly slaughtered. Just having to learn to actually use the grenades.

A middle eastern Landing Sip map lost me two squads, before CTDs. Mainly this was due to a large open space at the bottom of the map allowing for alien barrages. On the third map a butte and a couple of other bits of cover appeared in that area, changing it form a kill zone to a tense approach that made for a much better game.

Lots of is-it-cover-or-isn't-it issues here too. Annoyed to get troops picked off behind perfectly solid looking walls.

Squad Behaviour

Think I posted on that over in the beta balance thread.