V18.3 Geoscape Balance Discussion

[Belmakor]

Having the Light Scout dodge is a minimum. It might be worth looking at making it possible for dodge countdown to be specified in the Aircraft.xml so that you can specify lower cooldowns for more nimble craft and offer up some variation.

Alternatively give both it and the scout a way of shooting down missiles in a 30 degree to their front. That way the player either need to flank with a second aircraft or take a much bigger risk of being shot down by a critical hit. I made a mod in the mod section you can try out to see if it is a change for the positive.

[Belmakor]

Having the Light Scout dodge is a minimum. It might be worth looking at making it possible for dodge countdown to be specified in the Aircraft.xml so that you can specify lower cooldowns for more nimble craft and offer up some variation.

Alternatively give both it and the scout a way of shooting down missiles in a 30 degree to their front. That way the player either need to flank with a second aircraft or take a much bigger risk of being shot down by a critical hit. I made a mod in the mod section you can try out to see if it is a change for the positive.

[crusherven]

Agreed. Getting even the second base up and running takes pretty much all money even on medium difficulty. I have played now for a longer time with saving cheat loosing no tanks, soldiers or planes and winning all encounters but still couldn't build up my bases properly and lost the USA. UFO-s are now far too big, and my planes are outmatches (I have researched the second plane type at this point). I feel the economic system is not set up yet (nations give too small funding and we manage everything from mission rewards) and am not sure what needs to be done to progress research though the UFO-s suggest I should be further down the tree.

To boil it down:

- We probably need more funding from the nations or decreased costs overall

- More regions to defend but definitely more easy way to get a base up and running

- Need more overview on the research (a lot of descriptions are missing) - maybe a research tree to show progress

- Clear objectives how to progress research e.g.: capture and interrogate alien commander

The money/UFO missions rate should be thus tilted towards money, or make the invasion much much slower to advance else we are doing a lot of successful missions and are still outgunned and unable to get to distant locations from initial base, but the missions should not get too much importance, positioning of bases and air combat should account for around 50% of total income, so if we play well and do not need to order soldiers/planes/guns/tanks we can chose to either build a new base each month, OR level up our planes, and equipment at least in the first few months.

The month end boost by funding can then be balanced out by upkeep costs if we have around 3 bases from which point on new bases would become quite difficult to build due to money issues.

I'd like to see it balanced so if you play near perfectly you have a reasonable amount of cash to play with, either for an extra base or an expanded main base. Currently even if you take no casualties you're still pretty strapped for funds, and any major losses (like an interceptor) are crippling. Especially on lower difficulties, the player should be able to replace a lost aircraft.

[Chris]

Yes, we need to slow down the game a bit. At present all difficulty settings are the same though.

The alien craft being able to shoot down frontal missiles is an interesting idea (strikes me as a better idea for Fighters though). But tbh the major innovation on that front will be the auto-resolve front.

[Sathra]

Hmm, did notice that the Light Scout and Scout phase does seem longer than before. Get a comfortable amount of alloys now before Corvettes appear (Enough to equip a team with mostly Wolf and all with Laser)

[Jean-Luc]

As I've mentioned before the early UFOs could be made more challenging if missiles caused overkill a lot more forcing the player to use missiles only to damage the scout UFOs and then finish them off with the auto cannon in order to generate a profitable crash site.

It would make Condors a bit more useful as well. I get the feeling from watching LPs that pure Foxtrot is a valid strategy and dog fighters have no place. What's more sidewinders appear completely unneeded as well. You can shoot down nimble craft with avalanches just fine if you stagger them which you need to do with sidewinders anyway.

Just bring the 'Trots down to minimum speed, fire off the torpedos, turn, full speed/afterburner -> retreat.

[Sathra]

I find Condors very useful, especially against fighters. There's a chance for alien missiles to insta-kill an aircraft, which makes using just Foxtrots risky.

[Max_Caine]

Guys, do you remember why the overkill rating was upped? Because Chris was drowned in "can't cause UFOs to crash" posts. I guarantee you that if the overkill rating is lowered, the complaints will start up again.

[erutan]

I think 4 alenium missiles against a scout / light scout should result in overkill. I'm fine if sticking within your own tier just results in a minimal/severe damage, but a full load of the next tier up should make it go boom.

[irongamer]

I'll admit I don't really care for this mini game currently. The small ship encounters could pretty much be auto resolve. The turn rate and/or firing arc of medium+ ships and larger fighters versus the first two interceptors have reduced my air combat to a wing of Torpedo boats. This reduces combat to "FIRE EVERYTHING!", followed up by "turn tail and run". It sounds like the speed of the invasion may be partially why air combat is this way currently. I am primarily using Foxtrots with a Condor to draw missile fire. I haven't tired the Corsair or better yet.

Edited April 30, 2013 by irongamer

[irongamer]

Perhaps the most annoying thing is when your fighters "escape" you get into a endless loop of re-engagement with the enemy right after escaping. Most recently the enemies didn't have any more missiles to fire and my ammo was also expended. This resulted in endless engagements to the point where I finally just closed down the program.

[thothkins]

I know that's come up before and I'm sure it was going to get looked at. It's frustrating when it happens.

[zolobolo]

I can't say that I am annoyed with the air combat - although I am only playing the game since a few weeks. Takes quite a bit of time to get bored by the concept (you just don't see this kind of combat in other games). Auto resolve would be a useful feature for most but I am looking more forward to the enemy scouts dodging missiles and perhaps more maneuverability for fighters both for the enemy and for the player. I would imagine a bit of randomization would do better for the game than auto resolve. That being said I very much enjoy this part. It is already bug free, weapons take damage, and practically anything can happen if I engage a cruiser with fighter escort with a Condor a MIG and a corsair.

Didn't get to the large bogies yet, hope they have several weapon platform all over with different shooting angles

[thothkins]

I really like the air combat in the Xenonauts. It really stands out, it's fun and doesn't hog too much of your game time. The little issue is a tiny thing by comparison.

If there's to be an autoresolve, it has to be something that will potentially punish you more than trying it for yourself. If it's oto easy, why do it any other way?

[Max_Caine]

Regardless of what needs to be done on an individual UFO level, the evade function is a) too slow and b) doesn't move far enough. It's easy for a player to compensate, but any UFO which can evade does so at exactly the wrong time, and so never evades a missile. Either the evade function needs beefing up, or the point at which UFO initate the evade function needs adjusting. Remember when fighters could actually dodge missiles, and you had to keep a missile back? I miss those days.

[StellarRat]

I hope you receive points for shooting down UFOs even if they crash on land (or the ocean.) It can become difficult to keep up with all the recovery operations after the game gets going, so if some points could be awarding just for downing UFOs even if you don't run a recovery mission that would be a good thing. It also gives players a path and reason to develop a good air defense network (AD.) In the old XCom you had three basic strategies, you could go big on AD and hold them off while working on tech at a medium to slow pace, you could go super high tech right at start and race them to alien world dominion/final mission, or you choose a path down the middle. Also, some players don't want to go to EVERY crash site. It can get tedious later in the game. Why would I want to send my best to troops out to possibly get killed to recover a light scout when there are cruisers and bases to eliminate? Better to just blow them to bits and let the locals deal with the remains.

[Sathra]

The way the game is done means that the smaller UFO's stop showing up. Seems like there's a kind of crossover during the change, so you can get Light Scouts near the beginning of the Corvette phase, but they stop after a week or 2.

Though I think you're supposed to get points for shootdowns, even over water. Someone asked and Chris mentioned that it was something he had to check.

[thothkins]

You would have hoped that the game would take into account all of your activities and offset them against all of the alien activities to reach the score for each funding bloc over a game month.

EU1994 had it as simple as that and it worked pretty well.

[crusherven]

Yeah, I think the simplest thing to do would be to assign a certain number of points per shootdown, be it over land or water. In fact they probably do; I think the issue is that it's not clear whether events over water (which aren't in a particular funding zone) are getting credited.

I guess you could always count events over water as "global" and divide their effect over all nations.

[Max_Caine]

Thanks mostly to corvettes, I was able to afford a second (interception) base in November, with 3 Condors and a Foxtrot. By December I had lost the funding bloc which the base was built on, mostly because it had been attacked quite harshly in the previous months which was something I couldn't do anything about. Could either events in blocs not covered by radar be less harsh re. relations, or could building a base in a bloc improve (once) relations by a catergory or two?

[thothkins]

Is the scoring available in any of the files. Beyond the mission scoring I mean, which I'm sure I tripped across. Alien activities etc.

[zolobolo]

Thanks mostly to corvettes, I was able to afford a second (interception) base in November, with 3 Condors and a Foxtrot. By December I had lost the funding bloc which the base was built on, mostly because it had been attacked quite harshly in the previous months which was something I couldn't do anything about. Could either events in blocs not covered by radar be less harsh re. relations, or could building a base in a bloc improve (once) relations by a catergory or two?

Agreed, I have literally lost two funding regions where I had freshly set up bases - because of the declining funding I have prioritized these, but the base themselves did not seem to do any good relation vise, and even though I have begun to shoot down UFO-s they walked out on me leaving my new bases in read area. It may be ok, if these regions get punished the same level around the globe, but would make sense to have the new base boost relations and funding enough to keep the wavering regions in line for at least next month-end. The player could react to such countries better by placing the next bases there.

Wouldn't make the boosting effect too powerful (constant) though to have a risk in base placement and also give negative bonuses to bases operating in enemy territory - they could be attacked for example even if not discovered or in larger number

[Lightzy]

1) The pace of the game is a bit too quick in my opinion. It's not really like x-com that I can recall.. 3 months in and you've gone to crazy ships. Even towards the end of x-com you'd still be getting normal ships, and the real large ones would be rare.

losing funding would also be a slower process and one which is reversible if you take care

2) Even the tiniest mistake in air combat can cost you a plane or more, especially after a couple of game months, where you start getting alien fighters. and aircraft are FREAKIN EXPENSIVE. Air combat against more dangerous enemies still shouldn't be game over if you lose one single engagement.

The whole balance of the game leans on air combat. In ground combat you have lots of options, lots of luck involved, you can lose soldiers and still win, with the gains offsetting the losses. it's ok to lose missions even. no loss is too expensive.

So in my game i noticed that and went straight for hangars full of planes and replacement planes.. You can still win ground combat even with starting weapons, but if ur a tad behind on air combat tech and strength then it's game over

[thothkins]

I've also went with lots of planes in the past. However, I've found that the ammunition research as well as becoming more aware of the air combat tactics, has made me ramp down on that again.

[crusherven]

2) Even the tiniest mistake in air combat can cost you a plane or more, especially after a couple of game months, where you start getting alien fighters. and aircraft are FREAKIN EXPENSIVE. Air combat against more dangerous enemies still shouldn't be game over if you lose one single engagement.

The whole balance of the game leans on air combat. In ground combat you have lots of options, lots of luck involved, you can lose soldiers and still win, with the gains offsetting the losses. it's ok to lose missions even. no loss is too expensive.

So in my game i noticed that and went straight for hangars full of planes and replacement planes.. You can still win ground combat even with starting weapons, but if ur a tad behind on air combat tech and strength then it's game over

I agree. Sometimes air combat is a little too easy--if you know what you're doing. If you're still learning, or if you make a mistake, you can easily be crippled for the remainder of the month. For example, sending a single Condor against a medium scout is suicide. Sometimes it's really easy to lose an interceptor when engaging multiple fighters, as well--if you have the wrong aircraft evade, for example.