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Xenonauts Balancing Process


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Hi all

Once this is done I will spend some time - and would also like to hear from you guys - investigating whether any particular type of weapon, equipment or alien is either over or under powered (or just under utilised).

I've yet to see any alien use a smoke grenade, which is odd, because smoke grenades are one of the most important pieces of equipment in XCOM. I even made a thread about it :P

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  • 2 weeks later...

It's great to finally see a balanced build that I can actually play for a while :) Great job on that guys and overall the game is looking good!

A couple of things that came to me since trying out the steam version after some hiatus in playing xenonauts.

Ground combat:

Ballistic Pistol - pretty much useless. I'd suggest turning it into a machine pistol, e.x. Beretta 93R, which was made in the 1970s, and designed to fire 3 round bursts. Basically perfect for Xenonauts. I made a quick mode with it in, just adding a burst fire mode and it works pretty fine to me. I don't know if it still is much use, but at least it would be much more use.

Shotgun - completely useless unless you actually model buckshot spread or introduce alternative shotgun ammo later in the game taking advantage of the buckshot spread, going for the popular model of accurate close range - high accuracy degradation.

Ground vehicles - Hunter is nearly useless to start with as it is. I amped AP to 70 and it became a lot more useful, actualyl managing to move further than soldiers. Maybe the original 50 AP could work if you significantly modified AP cost to move, but a vehicle that can barely exceed (if even that) human speed is pointless, especially since it's a huge target that can explode with 3 plasma pistol shots.

Another Ground vehicle improvement would be Headlights. I.e. just amp up the visual distance of vehicle during night missions and change the graphics a bit to show the illumination. That would make a world of difference in night missions. And since you only get 1 vehicle on the ground, I don't think it'd be too powerful or anything, but would on the other hand be much more logical.

Few non-ground combat notes:

- Fighter squadrons should only appear on higher difficulties.

- Enemy UFOs should evade missiles only on higher difficulties, at least NOT in the easiest

- Foxtrot cost should be toned down some. I'd use something like 100k.

- Charlie troop / vehicle capacity amped to realistic measures. 1 vehicle and 6 soldiers is ridicilous, with the game being as difficult as it is already. Plus it's VERY unintuitive, and difficult to realize exactly how many soldiers can you fit in together with a vehicle. You should be able to fill in every slot you have. If you just restrict it to 9 soldies + 1 vehicle, it'd be better than it is now, though still annoyingly unrealistic as you should be able to utilize all 18 slots.

- Charlie operative range. Again, ridicilous and useless measure of frustration when you cannot reach the terror site because it's too far. Why not land at a nearest airport to refuel then continue? Isn't the xenonauts supposed to be a global effort? Higher tier dropships should have much more speed and if landing on airports to refuel is implemented, removed the need to refuel making for even faster operation, plus maybe have some defensive weapons so they can at least be a bit more than targets in air. It's also stupid that a dropship wouldn't be armed at all. At least some anti-missile weapons...

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I just have to mention again that there is a BIG difference between spotting something that is trying to hide for the first time vs. having someone tell you exactly where to look. That alone pretty much justifies squad sight. Remember, these guys are talking to each other all the time. When the first guy spots an alien he's going to report exactly where the other guys should look to find it.

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I think the headlights idea on the vehicles would be nice, if not giving soldiers the option of an offhand powerful flashlight. Not that I use vehicles, but it seems like the headlights could be fun.
Wouldn't that make the vehicle a sitting duck for every alien on the battlefield? Realistically, you have to increase the range a lit vehicle or soldier could be seen from to infinite.
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Wouldn't that make the vehicle a sitting duck for every alien on the battlefield? Realistically, you have to increase the range a lit vehicle or soldier could be seen from to infinite.

Heh, realistically, your soldiers should be able to see to the edges of the map in daylight. And in game it seems every soldier is walking around with a lit flare on them anyway at night.

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Heh, realistically, your soldiers should be able to see to the edges of the map in daylight. And in game it seems every soldier is walking around with a lit flare on them anyway at night.
Well, you know the FOW blackness is just edge of where you can spot/remember your soldiers have already checked, not how far they can see. It is a bit odd, but it sort of makes sense. Probably the best way to actually do it, is have two FOW effects. Light grey or transparent for stuff they can see, but not spot aliens, and completely normal view for where can spot aliens. As far as your second point, I just thought that was the limit of their night vision. Edited by StellarRat
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