Milestone 5 - Official Feedback / Game Balance Thread

[Xeferah]

24 minutes ago, Skitso said:

Yes, this is something I've also proposed long time ago. I think a decent solution for this would be that all teleports can function only once per turn. (Once on player turn, once on civilian turn and once on alien turn)

 

Is this really an issue though? I get that cheesy plays are not fun, so I don't really mind if it's changed, it's more that I'm surprised. I set all my soldiers next to the teleporters, finish the turn and let one soldier step on the teleport with a flashbang. He makes one step, shoots if he still has TU and then the rest of the gang follows. Risk free and I always finish it in the same turn?

Or maybe you really don't want this changed if you somehow lose more than half your team? If you're stuck up there with aliens, you will almost certainly lose the remaining members of your crew?

[Skitso]

1 hour ago, Xeferah said:

I set all my soldiers next to the teleporters, finish the turn and let one soldier step on the teleport with a flashbang. He makes one step, shoots if he still has TU and then the rest of the gang follows. Risk free and I always finish it in the same turn?

Well that's the issue. There's no tactical problem solving to raid UFO command rooms as you can cheese it just as you described there.

[Skitso]

1 hour ago, gG-Unknown said:

It means, that a room with one teleport can be breached by one soldier per turn.

Not good.

Yeah, probably not a perfect solution unless UFOs are refitted with additional teleport pads.

[pwd]

I agree with preventing teleporter 'being the mole in whack-a-mole' cheese, speaking as someone who exploited it mercilessly.

It wouldn't prevent storming control rooms without heavy losses. Organize units at the teleporter and lead with low ranks, shields and suppression grenades. It shouldn't be an easy thing to do anyway.

I guess if robots can travel through teleporters, then so could primed grenades. Not suggesting enabling this because it would just replace one form of teleporter spam with another. Perhaps robots shouldn't be able to use teleporters.

One teleporter use per unit per turn might be a simple working solution. As discussed, another option would be to limit the number of teleports per teleporter instead of per unit, though I suspect this would just draw things out rather than solve things. Or teleporters could be made unidirectional, though that would involve more significant changes. The one teleport-per-unit solution is probably the best of these options.

 

Edited January 14 by pwd

[Rakiii]

I think using a teleporter could spend more TU´s and if you nerf suppression in general you cannot cheese it as easy.

Same goes for doors and such (it has been changed in some cases already).

Btw I have been surprised openning doors in X-division for the first time... the aliens were camping behind and been shooting at me the moment I have opened the doors ...

Edited January 14 by Rakiii

[Bookshelf11]

13 hours ago, Lathanda said:

I think the fuel usage in UFO fights mechanic is broken.

1) A dogfight between an ufo and a fight lasts about 2 min. This short time duration should not be enough to empty the fuel tank.

2) If an airplane runs out of fuel during a dogfight and you decide, continue the fight. Why does this result in the destruction of the plane. Being out of fuel means the plane cannot return to the base. There is no valid reason that this has its destruction as consequence.

  2a) A tank plane could refuel it

  2b) It could just land and be picked up by a truck transport.

  2c) It could just land and be refueled.

 

I would remove fuel usage during dogfight.

Instead it would make sense to allow a fighterplane to continue persuit of an alien vessel, even if it can not return to the base because the shooting down the ufo is important.

Aircraft, especially military aircraft use a ungodly amount of fuel per second. For example, the F-16, which the Xenonauts 1 Condor was based on, can consume 3,000 litres a a hour when just flying around, during combat or using afterburners it can double or even triple its consumption. A F-16 using its afterburner constantly will only have enough fuel for less than 10 minutes. Considering our Xenonauts aircraft probably are clad in ceramic or some heavier material to reduce plasma damage and probably have different fuel or maybe oxidiser tanks because engaging UFOs at higher altitude means you need to have that to actually reach them due to lower oxygen. 

I'm not 100% onboard with the idea of losing your planes after exhausting your fuel supplies, I'd still make it where you have to retrieve it and it has consequences but not as severe, like 25% of the destruction penalty. 

13 hours ago, Lathanda said:

Auto fight does not work on Commander difficulty although dogfight is not fiinish.

Yeah the air game isn't perfect but you can still do pretty ok with it, once you learn the power of evasive rolling, sending a pair of Angels to attack UFOs in theory they shouldn't be able to take on can work out pretty well. Only problem I see with it being disabled on higher difficulties is tedium, having to manually attack every UFO would probably get boring after a while. I'd allow auto resolve after you delegate the UFO to reduce tedium since a scout or observer isn't massively fun to fight every time. 

[Bookshelf11]

Finished the game for the first time, nearly lost one guy on the final mission but actually did the final assault without losing anyone. I really enjoyed the final mission, felt rather short but I liked it, Did it on modified recruit Ironman, I didn't touch any of the difficulty settings that effect tactical gameplay or the air game but settings like op points to 15 to experiment with them and stuff like that. Those 2 failed missions were terror missions, 1st was a Wraith Andron mission and the 2nd was a Cyberdrone one, but I actually skipped some terror missions in countries that had low panic because 20 panic I can recover from, losing my squad of vets and getting little to no resources out of it to recover is harder to bounce back from. 

Gonna do a big write up later, Milestone 5 is very different from 4 though, I think mostly for the better. Op points seem to fundamentally change the balance of the game mostly entirely in your favour, being able to get 500k off the bat or reduce panic constantly is absolutely huge and in retrospect, 15 op points a day is pretty strong. Also end game fusion batteries are hilarious, all my secondary bases had 3/4 batteries and even if a UFO tried to assault it, it got nuked by a single battery most of the time, rarely did it survive to see the second and if it did, had below 10% health. 

[Bookshelf11]

After playing through 3 different Milestones and finishing the game for the first time, gonna summarise my thoughts on Milestone 5, probably the biggest change in comparison from Milestone 3 and 4 are early and late game. 

 

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Early Game:

I like the new Doomsday period, as well as the reduce importance Cleaners play. Although I like them, I honestly disliked a lot of the early cleaner missions like when you had to do cleaner missions to make the cleaner base easier, they aren't massively interesting to fight and you gain very little from them in comparison to raiding UFOs. They also go quite quick and I feel like there's been some information removed, I remember seeing more xenopedia entries for them in the past Milestones, they feel very weirdly out of place because there's very little info about them now. 

The infiltration mechanic is explained very little, for example I didn't know infiltrators increased doomsday or panic first time around and I had no idea how to reverse a country that was infiltrated, if there even is a way. I remember seeing a supporter get infiltrated later in my campaign but only once, but I was really on the ball air game wise because that's the key to winning. 

 

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Late/End Game:

I loved UOO 1 massively, I remember when orbital bombardment was announced years and years ago and wasn't a massive fan of the idea at the time but I like it a lot. Assaulting it, having my shotgunners rush into danger to grab data while dodging Wraiths and Cyberdrone attacks while my machine gunner and sniper clear a path and my ARES move to secure the vertical advantage was such a massive change from all the other missions. The second UOO 1 mission was just as fun, such a cool chance of pace to clear out a area and hold and I wish/hope we get alt terror missions that are wave defences, although I do wish it was a bit harder, I actually had my guys throw fusion grenades at the two pads and none of the aliens survived a turn before being exploded. Plus it causing 20 panic every 2 weeks was really cool because now you had a actual real timer, you were thrown back into the deep end and had to really risk it to get it down before it caused too much panic to cover. 

The final mission was great fun, same with UOO 1 in that it provided a really fresh mission type. Wasn't as hard as I thought it'd be but I rushed the gateways and had everyone with jetpacks which proved valuable, couldn't imagine it without being able to skip the lower levels. 2nd part was really fun as well, I loved how different eternal architecture looks from everyone, the little side rooms near the final room where it's the bare blue alien base tiles kind of reminds me of Disneyland, you know how Disneyland is all picturesque and warm while the maintenance and service areas behind the attractions and under the streets are relatively dingy and cold. Also wasn't as hard as I thought but I had a full compliment of fully exo plated troops and 4 ARESs. 

 

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Operational Points: 

For clarity sake I put the daily Op points onto 15 just to experiment with them so it may differ with lower daily Op points. Operational points are very VERY powerful, not overpowered but they can very easily save you time and time again. The reduce panic one especially, absolutely saved my bacon when I failed two terror missions, although I just seen on the hot patch that the panic penalty is 35 panic now so that probably changes thing but it was 20 per failed mission for me. 

The Alloy and Alenium orders are practically useless honestly, they MIGHT be useful early game but it's so important to use those points to clear infiltrators, clear panic, get funds for expanding the base or kitting up that getting 40 Alloy or 20 Alenium isn't worth it. Especially when it costs Op points to raid UFOs past your quota, raiding a observer gets you more Alloy and Alenium than using those orders and I think it's actually only 80 op points.

Supporters are honestly a bit lacklustre. Again, a lot of them simply can't compete with instant panic and instant 500k. 5% reduction in engineering/research is hardly noticeable if at all, 1 extra op point a day will only pay you back 150 days later so essentially worthless or outright harmful due to opportunity cost, 250k extra funding a month is pretty ok since not only does it pay itself off decently but you can chalk the extra Op point cost to getting the continent bonus and the -1 month panic/doomsday I actually thought was pretty good since that meant you had low panic buffer states slowly develop across the planet so you don't end up with overwhelming world wide panic and again works towards continent bonus. 

Continent bonuses are ok, as I'm writing this two of them got changed, SU and NA. North America bonus is 10+ to soldier starting stats, Europe is 3+ training rate, Latin America is -50% scientist wage, Soviet Union is -25% general upkeep, Asia is -50% engineer wage and Africa is 30% bonus to sell price. None of them really outstandingly good, none are bad either. They're nice to have, but I didn't feel a need to work towards them and if anything compared to my last failed playthrough due to panic spiral, ignoring them and focusing on yet again panic and upfront cash actually saved me multiple times. 

 

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UFOs:

I liked the battleship a lot, felt like a mobile base, especially that eternal command centre, that strangely felt more fair than any other ship. Mine had a wide central door and two side entrances, so I set up everyone and ambushed them from all sides using flash bangs after opening the doors. Weird that the apex predator of the invasion is less bloody to storm than a Harvester with that actual slaughterhouse of a command centre. Like seriously, the Cruiser command centre is actually easier and safer than the Harvester, I've lost multiple vets to those rooms. 

 

 

[Skitso]

The first two researches (MARS and Aerial warfare) give little to no actual choice to the player so they might as well be unlocked at the start of the game automatically. Currently you have time to research both before you can make use of either.

If you research MARS first, you'll unlock it just before second mission (abduction) but you wont have time to manufacture one before the mission expires. Researching aerial warfare first doesn't benefit anything as first aerial targets spawn so late that you have time to research it anyways. There isn't anything else to research before you have completed both.

Edited January 18 by Skitso

[Skitso]

I feel the grenade ranges are still too long in 5.7. Even my weakest soldiers (STR 47) can lunge demolition charge 10 tiles. I would say 6-7 tiles is enough for a weak character. Throwables are all way too good currently and nerfing their ranges is an easy way to balance it out. 

Demo charges need to be heavier and with shorter range than regular grenades.

[Skitso]

Soldier extraction mission would make more sense if it had proper extraction rules with reinforcements etc. and victory conditions included reaching the Skyhawk. Currently the money briefcases don't provide much of a gameplay as they are automatically collected when the mission is complete, whether the soldiers are alive or not.

[kyu bey]

Not sure if possible, but add something to prevent the silly phase of searching that 1 alien afk(?)ing in some corner.
Like: After xx turn, reveal all enemies location.

[gG-Unknown]

10 hours ago, Skitso said:

The first two researches (MARS and Aerial warfare) give little to no actual choice to the player so they might as well be unlocked at the start of the game automatically. Currently you have time to research both before you can make use of either.

If you research MARS first, you'll unlock it just before second mission (abduction) but you wont have time to manufacture one before the mission expires. Researching aerial warfare first doesn't benefit anything as first aerial targets spawn so late that you have time to research it anyways. There isn't anything else to research before you have completed both.

OMG NO WAY. It is oposite, n the begining there is no option to choose from. I would rather add some more research right  from start. Even placeholder, like research  the C4 packet is good. When playerr starts game and NOTHING to research, that is the problem !

[gG-Unknown]

10 hours ago, Skitso said:

I feel the grenade ranges are still too long in 5.7. Even my weakest soldiers (STR 47) can lunge demolition charge 10 tiles. I would say 6-7 tiles is enough for a weak character. Throwables are all way too good currently and nerfing their ranges is an easy way to balance it out. 

Demo charges need to be heavier and with shorter range than regular grenades.

Today two silly posts. You have made record

1. NO ! Throwables are ( sort of ) ace in the sleeve. Due to weight management, amount  of special card (grenades) is limited. The whole game is about risk management. Will you try to hit by a weapon with miss chance or do you use a precious grenade ? That is great gameplay ! Your proposals for nerfing  regular grenades  ruin the main game loop. Regular grenades range cut which was done, must be undone. I was thinking more about grenade dmg fall of, it sound realistic, but it attacks  the working risk management decision loop. So I wouldn’t do that.

2. yes, that is one thing I agree. Coincidentally, I recommend it.

---------------------------

Simple table of throwables :

---------------------------------------------

Grenade (smoke, flash)  weight 6 range 15 ( grenades need same range  as shotgun, this will nicely deine close vs range distance )

demo charge weight 8 range 12

C4 package weight 10 range 5

---------------------------------------------

It is 3 leves. Each level rise weight by 2. Each level rise explosive power by at least 5. Same as power  goes up, range goes down.

C4 package has so fun mechanic with the trigger, but it is to heavy to carry AND too smal blast AND requirement to stand on spot  doesnt help either. C4 package need boost. All three explosive throwables need to be considered as system.

Edited January 18 by gG-Unknown

[gG-Unknown]

The new big smoke is too big. Everything is covered in smoke.

Proposal  options :

1. revert the change

2. make smoke spread : smoke explosion has blast range as original, next  round smoke  spread to the bigger size. This way, at least  combat zone changes  dynamically. 

2a] also while smoke is spreading make it less thick, for every  next  turn.  Less hindrance penalty  per tile.

2b] add new gameplay feature  for  the smoke - it lowers dmg 5%  per smoke tile for laser weapons. Get  noticed, it  lowers 5% from current value, so it doesnt fall off linearly.

[gG-Unknown]

I like the new toxic cloud Alien grenades. The mechanic that soldiers get dmg per tile when walk in the cloud is very good idea. The same mechanic need to be used for smoke. As you go thru smoke, you gather stun dmg.

Edited January 20 by gG-Unknown

[Skitso]

23 minutes ago, gG-Unknown said:

I like the new toxic cloud Alien grenades. The mechanic that soldiers get dmg per tile when walk in the cloud is very good idea. The same mechanic need to be used for smoke. As you go thru smoke, you gather stun dmg.

It is like that already unless I misunderstood what you mean

[gG-Unknown]

5 minutes ago, Skitso said:

It is like that already unless I misunderstood what you mean

.. I just noticed I had a mask.

So everything is Ok

[Xeferah]

From a balance perspective:

• I think the balance for the continent bonus is imbalanced for the following:
  • North America: +10 starting XP
  • Europe: +5 training points per hour

North America: Maybe I misunderstand what +10 XP means, but if it means only 2 hours worth of training, then it's kinda pointless? If it means it is in fact 10 times x 100 training points = 1000 points. Assuming you have 5 training points per hour = 1000/5 = 200 hours worth of training, then it's totally balanced!

Europe: I am playing around day 300+ or so, and from all my research on aliens I managed to get +3.5 training points per hour. If a simple continental bonus adds +5 to that, which is 5/3.5 x 100% = 142% of my alien research combined, I think that either the training from researching aliens is way too low, or the bonus is way too high. I think it's a bit of both. Double the training bonus from researching aliens, and halve the continental bonus. 

Also, the continental bonusses are not at all intuitive to see. I only read in the patch notes "regional bonusses" and was like "What, are there regional bonusses? Where?" And only after that I was bright enough to click on the name of the continents to figure it out. Maybe I'm just dumb, but I truly did not know from the game itself.

From a balancing point of view, the UOO-1 missions are kinda pointless. I mean, I get +20 panic to a single continent every 14 days. I am truly not worried about that, at all! Sure, from a roleplaying perspective you'd want to save those millions of people, but +20 panic every 14 days to a single continent.... it will take, 2.5 months (if you are extremely unlucky) to lose a single region from 0 to 100 panic, while panic reduces each month, so let's say 3 months to lose a region.
If you assume ultimate luck and every time it hits a different region, it would take 6 x 2.5 = 15 months (again, it reduces each month), so let's say 18 months to lose all regions. Come on, that's not threatening at all! Make it +20 panic GLOBALLY!
Also, by the time this happens money is not an issue with my 10.000 cash per hour from engineers. I can easily add another 80 engineers for more cash per hour at this point, so I have no real interest in keeping panic low (from a cash point of view).

Air combat: maybe the best alien vessels still need to come, but the end-game is kinda easy so far. I have two Gemini per base. I equip a torpedo, a rocket and a fusion cannon. The ships are dead before the first alien torpedo gets close ... But the air combat still gets an overhaul, right? So this could be solved later on anyway.

So far my update from a purely balanced point of view. Maybe later more.

[Xeferah]

18 hours ago, gG-Unknown said:

I like the new toxic cloud Alien grenades. The mechanic that soldiers get dmg per tile when walk in the cloud is very good idea. The same mechanic need to be used for smoke. As you go thru smoke, you gather stun dmg.

They are good, early game. On the flip side, I never had any alien ever throw a regular grenade anymore. Luck, or a bug?

Later game, Vanguard armor is fully gas right, so the gas grenades are moot. We need something new the aliens can do that would make them dangerous again in late game. Also, I would love to be able to make my own gas grenades!

[gG-Unknown]

QoL :

1. Requested feature : in battle, click on portrait  (bottom bar) Center screen on the person. Then I can click on alien icon, move mouse pointer just a bit and click on face so your camera moves back and forth with little effort.
2. mouse aim on enemy press c (to crouch), chance to hit do not change. You have to move mouse cursor to trigger re-count aim chance.
---- Make it automatic : re-count hit-chance after crouch without mouse move.

Edited January 21 by gG-Unknown

[Skitso]

11 minutes ago, gG-Unknown said:

2. mouse aim on enemy press c (to crouch), chance to hit do not change. You have to move mouse cursor to trigger re-count aim chance.
---- Make it automatic : re-count hit-chance after crouch without mouse move.

Yes, this! I have meant to bring this up for years but never remembered. I'll even ping @Chris as this is actually very annoying small thing that really needs to get fixed!

Edited January 21 by Skitso

[gG-Unknown]

Make it more graphical :

1. In the arrmory on soldier spec sheet, use national flag icon instead of word. On the Flag mouse over, show tooltip the word.

2. The mission briefing on the loading screen  is great  for masking loading time, but whole screen is just gray and text. Not very exciting. Add on this screen picture of mission which is used  on geo scape, when mission is announced. it will ad at least some colours and graphics.

Edited January 26 by gG-Unknown

[gG-Unknown]

Pathing :

 all units with crushing property : a tile where  is something to crush has 8 TU cost to move on. This makes two nice thing a) MARS will automatically avoid crush cover, b) making crushing cost more time, makes it more valuable. (an item which is  free has no value)

Interactive environment :

1. There are light red barrels item. Barrels are scattered everywhere without some deeper purpose to improve gameplay. For more interactive environment add fallowing modification :

• Bright red barrels -  highly flammable on impact (after weak explosion half tiles in blast radius are covered with flames)
• Bright green barrels - generates poison cloud
• Bright yellow barrels - generates radioactive cloud (harmful cloud even for robots, which do not disperse)

 

2. Similar to barrels, there are flasks, which asks to have some purpose:

However, NOT every barrel / flask must be interactive. Just few o them, that is the trick. Only those highlighted by bright colour. It makes player to observe environment carefully. Best would be, make a function to randomize the interactive items  on every map, so game-play even the  same map is different because of usage environment in player tactic.

Example: there are 50 light red barrels on map, then roll 10% chance for each barrel be interactive. Then make another % roll to choose which bright colour = 70%flammable (red), 25% gas(green), 5 % radioactive(yellow).

 

3. For more interactive environment make weapon shelf/rack  active so in case of base attack - defence player can restock ammo / grenades

 

Edited January 26 by gG-Unknown

[Crowbar]

First of all apologies for maybe repeating some stuff already mentioned. I didn't read all the previous posts.  It was too much and I also wanted to play a bit more this evening.

Been playing 5.7 on veteran for a few hours now and I have several observations / suggestions:

1. The aliens accuracy is rather high, as in, they seldom miss. Even behind cover and smoke chances are apparently great for them to hit. What I miss is an option to duck behind cover effectively lowering the aliens to hit chance by like 50% in addition to the smoke and cover your hiding behind, while sacrificing your remaining TU's with a minimum of 25% of your total TU.
2. Wraiths cloaking seems to work on a toggle? If I hit an uncloaked one, it's cloaked after the hit.
3. I couldn't close big doors on my own turn to prevent being shot at at the start of the alien's turn. Is this intended?
4. I like the OP, but I would like to suggest a few things that hopefully improve gameplay:
   1. Paying 35 OP to play a UFO mission after only 2 times playing a UFO class feels too much to me. I'm one of those players who does love playing all of them, so this is very restrictive. Maybe lower the cost a bit and let us play like 4 times before paying OP.
   2. Putting OP in supporters and thus turn an support icon to green should have a single panic lowering effect. Maybe like 5% or so? Your supporter will stress the importance of the Xenonaut initiative which gives the region confidence we're equal to the task.
   3. If a UFO gets downed over a region it should have a small panic reducing effect. Maybe depending on the size of the craft a 1 to 5 percent?