Jump to content

Weapon balance


Recommended Posts

Am I the only one to find hte current weapon balance...well...for a lack of a better world.. "lazy/uninspired"?

You got your +1 weapon, +2 weapon, +3 weapon..that's it.

There's no character, there's no difference, just a straight up flat increase in every category. While it's simple to balance it's also, very, very bland.

You'd expect each weapon type to have it's own strength and weaknesses, and altough higher tear weapons are generally better, they really shouldn't be better at EVERYTHING.

For one, I'd expect lasers to be redicolously accurate (being lightspeed and all), but due to diffusion and difraction, their damage falls off with range.

I'd also expect to see different ammo types for your starting guns. Something to keep them usefull a tad bit longer. Incendiary ammo, armor piercing, EAT, or similar.

There is almost 0% chance I'll see this and I doubt it can even be modded in due to hardcoding/engine limitations. Makes me a sad panda.

Edited by TrashMan
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I remember this being discussed on the old forums. I think the multiple ammo types was shot down for making the ballistic tier over-complicated. You're meant to replace them with better tech, but their advantage is they are free.

Lasers are a good middle ground (and I think they actually ARE more accurate, or at least it feels like they are) but have a smaller clip size than ballistic.

Plasma does the most damage but are expensive to made (both guns and ammo as well as workshop time) and have even smaller clips. And from my time playing with them they're damned inaccurate even in the hands of veterans. I actually prefer to use lasers over plasma.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The weapons_gc.xml file makes modding weapons a snap. It's entirely possible to make laser weapons absurdly accurate, and as damage (and accuracy) already falls off with range, you can reduce the operational range of a laser so that it has a pronounced effect. It is possible to make different ammo types. The problem is the game half supports them. In particular, the UI doesn't accept more than one ammo type per gun. Ask Gauddlike what it's like to try and make different ammo types.

However, it's possible to add even more character than adjusting weapon stats. Basic weapon damage types (i.e. actual PAIN) are split into four different categories - kinetic, energy, incendiary and chemical. You could, say, make lasers energy and plasma incendiary damage types. That's not taking into account that weapons can do seconday damage as well (this is off the top of my head, I've uninstalled the game) - stun, EMP and suppression (although stun and EMP are really just two sides of the same coin). Weapons can cause smoke or fire (or both!) to appear, and types of smoke itself can do damage, cause stun damage and interfere with accuracy. All weapons can be modded to have a blast effect. Weapons can be tagged at hypervelocity, so they travel through any interceding objects between themselves and the target (e.g. through walls). I can, for example, create a chemical sprayer or a weapon that fire a psychedelic beam. I can remake Sarin gas, or make Blind grenades.

Edit: It'd be nice if there was a damage type that directly affected morale. That'd be super funny.

Edited by Max_Caine
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The base UI doesn't support multiple ammunition types unless you set them to be rockets.

The reason appears to be that there is no space for them in the UI.

If you try to make them appear then the game will crash as it can't work out where to put them.

If you do make them into rockets so they appear in the rockets part of the UI then they don't work properly with non-launcher weapons.

Basically you cannot easily have two ammunition types available side by side.

You can however have a newly researched ammunition type completely replace a previous one.

For example after researching alien alloys you may be able to research how to turn the alloys into bullets.

Then those new alloy bullets would replace the old ones and provide similar damage properties but better armour penetration as you will be fighting more heavily armoured enemies at that time.

Maybe you could then work out how to use a sprinkle of magic Alenium powder in the propellant to increase the damage a little as well and have those replace the previous ones.

*edit* Thought I would add my suggestions for changes to fire modes that may help make the weapons feel more varied.

Edited by Gauddlike
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On other matters, you wanted variety in the higher tiers of weapons. Question. How would you build variety and personality into a weapon tier without making a specific tier, or a specific weapon within a specific tier the most cost effective weapon to produce? (Someone, somewhere will plug in the numbers into an Excel chart to work out DPS and dollars/shot and make that information available) How would you get around this particular trap? The only way that I could see was to build in secondary functions that can't be held up to rigourous mathematical analysis. e.g. making lasers suppressive, or makiing plasma incendiary type rather than energy type. Tier 4 is actually an example of that - it has the secondary feature of having the hypervelocity tag, which makes it tactically advantageous, but it's difficult to mathematically calculate what that advantage is.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On other matters, you wanted variety in the higher tiers of weapons. Question. How would you build variety and personality into a weapon tier without making a specific tier, or a specific weapon within a specific tier the most cost effective weapon to produce? (Someone, somewhere will plug in the numbers into an Excel chart to work out DPS and dollars/shot and make that information available) How would you get around this particular trap? The only way that I could see was to build in secondary functions that can't be held up to rigourous mathematical analysis. e.g. making lasers suppressive, or makiing plasma incendiary type rather than energy type. Tier 4 is actually an example of that - it has the secondary feature of having the hypervelocity tag, which makes it tactically advantageous, but it's difficult to mathematically calculate what that advantage is.

Because DPS and dollars/shot make the "best" weapons only if you define the "best" on those values alone.

Note that you will always have somethings be "most bang for buck", but that doesn't mean people will only use those or that is is advisable to always use those.

Not only can interaction between some values be impossible to put into a spreadsheet, but circumstancial factors can change things dramaticly.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Trashman, I’d be more inclined to believe that the metrics I mentioned were just metrics among many if I didn’t already have considerable evidence that DPS is already considered an important metric. To whit, looking solely from threads in the Beta discussion forum, I have drawn these comments:

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

Beardage:

I am finding the heavy suppresion weapons a tad too powerful IMO, I find my gunners improve nearly every mission without fail however the poor riflemen and assault hardly have a job above spotting bait for my snipers and gunners. Everytime I strafe a hostile contact with LMG fire he ends up dying rather than being suprressed. Give it 3 to 4 missions and your gunners will be gods whereas riflemen and assaults become nothing more than meat for the grinder.

StellarRat:

I agree with your vehement disagreement. If anything the LMGs are too powerful. They have great range, good suppression, and good killing power. They are currently my GO TO weapon when I need to put down a threat with certainty. If it doesn't kill them it suppresses them. I like.

Erutan:

I'm now running (early game):

2x sniper

2x rocket

1x lmg

3x rifle

or

2x sniper

1x rocket

1x lmg

2x rifle

1x zug zug the hunter scout

pre tier 2 I was 2 rocket, 2 sniper, 1 lmg, 3 rifles (w/ shotties in their backpacks).

tier 2 I replaced two of the riflemen for a hunter - it spots better and safer than they do, and the rest provide fire support w/ the rifle(wo)man taking point when she needs to.

my current kill count

snipers - 11 ea

rocket - 8

rifle - 6

rocket - 6

rifle - 4

lmg - 3

rest are rifle subs 3-0. interesting how my lmg kills are so low, I feel like Mr. Chris England has recently become useful aside from just suppressing enemies (enough accuracy + TUs?). I'm kind of tempted to just put a bunch of flashbangs on a second rifleman though - I feel it'd be a bit more flexible and the laser rifle is pretty handy.

Shima:

Edit: My usual loadout used to be 2 shotgunners, 2 snipers/rocketeers, 1 machinegunner and 3 riflemen.

I found out that you are fighting at long range way too often in this game, so I gave one of my shotgunners a machinegun and I'm quite happy with that.

I think next new game I'll play I'll drop 2 riflemen in favour of a hunter car for scouting.

Tirlimpimpim

My pick for primary squad after some playing now is:

4 sinpers

2 lmg

2 rpg (ps there should be another letter for heavy weapons, I now use X but it would be cool to have a M)

and no, no pistols, shotgun/carbine is a great backup gun once strength has been raised to adequate levels, and at the beginning of the game primary weapons suffice.

Aklyon

Right now, I always use the rockets over the machinegun-type weapons. I get less heavy weaponry ammo, true, but the rockets just seems plain more useful for the tu cost, since if I don't move I can fire/reload in one turn, even with jackal armor on after the soldier gets some strength increases.

Also rockets can explode, which has a bunch of uses over throwing more ballistics fire in the xenos direction.

Sathra:

I have fought Androns with ballistics and due to crashes I did it about 30 times. Ended up with 0 casualties, a few wounds. You really need MG's, shotguns and precision rifles to deal with their armour.

Belmakor:

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 notice that everyone pretty much just uses heavy weapons all the time - perhaps with one or two scouts and CQB troops thrown in.

Does that suggest something to you? It suggest to me that the benefits of using heavy weapons outweigh the cons considerably.

---------

Okay, perhaps that’s a little overkill, but there’s a lot more where that came from. Of the metrics that people valued they seem to be:

Range

Accuracy

DPS

With DPS and Range seemingly the most important. I will refrain from calling weapons with high scores in these three metrics the “best” weapons, rather they are the "most attractive".

Oh, there's no point to this, other than to show that there are metrics which weapons are scored by and the most attractive weapons are those ones which score highly in those metrics. The sample, while small, I would argue is representative of the larger group. I think it might be worthwhile to carry out further research into which metrics people do score Xenonaut weapons on.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Max_Caine, thanks for this compilation on weapons preferences. It is good to have this on one place, then scattered around in different threads.

My two cents on balance issue are this.

We have very limited set of defensive mechanics - there is only cover, that you use if it is there, but cannot control other than destroy; smoke which is limited and don't reliable enough to use it most of time; and combat shield which is not implemented yet.

That and reliance on squad vision will always skew balance to weapons with high stats on those metrics you listed - range, accuracy, DPS.

If most of what you can do is "more dakka" and to do it successfully you need to stay away from enemy fire, you do not have much choice. A few men to spot aliens and everyone else to dispatch them while spotters try to stay alive. Some would prefer specialized units, some would choose more universal setup, but that is all.

Good thing that we have suppression and splash damage, it diversify things a little.

I think, more specialized tools of trade will certainly help in devising more interesting tactics, don't you agree?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'd be a bit wary about discussing too much about weapon balance with the AI in the state it is, and its weapons options being so, well, unbalanced. Update soon too, and who knows what's going to be in there. Improved AI maybe! *crosses fingers*.

I've been trying out new stuff (more shotgun troops mostly) and it is workable, though having more MG's would make it easier. If the flashbangs were working properly it'd be much easier. It'd open up two basic styles. Aggression with lots of assaults and moving forward fast and tons of suppression, and cautious which would be the current spotter/sniper tactics.

And the old favourite of 'warpath' where most of the map ends up smoking and/or on fire.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's entirely possible to make laser weapons absurdly accurate, and as damage (and accuracy) already falls off with range, you can reduce the operational range of a laser so that it has a pronounced effect.

But I take it they are both tied into the same function?

In other words, damage dropoff and accuracy dropoff are propotional and tied, and cannot be set individualy?

Because I'd really want to set them individually.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The actual accuracy of the weapon has an effect on the optimal range of the weapon.

It doesn't affect the damage falloff (or suppression range) which is tied to the range statistic alone.

You can adjust them individually to a degree but there is no adjustable falloff stat that would let you fine tune it.

As an example the falloff is currently linear.

That means the higher your accuracy the longer your range is (obviously, just reiterating) so as an example the precision rifle with its max aim level has 150% accuracy multiplier.

With a soldier who has 100 accuracy that means your precision rifle can still have 25% accuracy out at 150 tile range.

The damage at that range will probably be none existent but it would appear to be a valid shot as the player only sees the accuracy number before firing.

I think you can still balance the weapons before the AI is done.

If the enemy is firing at you from well outside of your range and never moving much then that may be a weapon balance problem but the AI could get the blame.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...