My Balance Notes 18.51

[StellarRat]

So, I been playing constantly for the last two days. There are still a few bugs, however, the game is playable and a lot of fun and a big time hog (that's a good thing!) I've made a few notes about the balance and some concerns I have. Here they are:

1. Small arms and armor takes way too many man hours to manufacture. It takes nearly as long to build a suit of armor as it does to build/modify a jet?? That needs to be adjusted. The prices are OK.

2. Losing jets is way too costly strategically. If you have one bad battle you're pretty much done or at a minimum it will take months to recover. I'm not sure how to fix exactly. One way would be to lower the cost of jets. We can probably theorize the Xenonauts get them from the major powers and only have to pay for mods and maintenance. I basically have to reload if I lose more than one jet.

3. The vehicle weapons take too long to build compared to the time it takes to build the vehicle itself. The pulse laser especially isn't really much of a weapon considering the time and expense to build it.

4. Level 1 and 2 assault rifles/carbines and shotguns are useless 90% of time. I think the reason is that most of the fighting is done well beyond their effective ranges. Part of the problem could also be that the aliens generally don't stay in their ships, so there isn't much opportunity for close range combat (see AI note below.) I don't have a problem with shotgun being close ranged because they are deadly indoors, but there is little need for them right now. My suggestion to "fix" the assault rifle is to increase the number of rounds fired in burst fire and maybe increase single fire rate too (reduce TUs for single shots.) Right now, I don't see much reason for the Xenonauts to carry anything other than a ton of grenades, sniper rifles, LMGs, and rocket launchers. The laser version of these weapons are somewhat better, but still not really useful compared to the rocket launcher and scatter laser.

5. I'm not even going to mention pistols because I don't even use them they're so bad. Bascially, they are useless 100% of the time, IMO. My suggestion on pistols is to give them all burst fire capability for low TUs. Machine pistols are/were commonly used since the 1960's.

6. Grenades are WAY too good. There is little reason to use any of the medium to short range weapons because grenades are much better. My suggestion is to fix the throw over objects bug AND shorten the grenade range drastically. They shouldn't have more range than pistol.

7. I see little or no reason to build new bases. In the original game building bases was essential to keeping your funding. You really need about three bases to win. In Xenonauts building new bases and equipping them with jets and personnel is simply too expensive.

8. Base construction is still really funky because you can't turn the tiles to "fit" things where you want them (or I don't know how.) This needs to be fixed OR just make everything a square so it doesn't matter. IGNORE THIS ONE. There is a way to do this. Scroll wheel.

9. Smoke should be improved to reduce sight range and accuracy a little more. Not too much, maybe 10%.

10. Since the aliens generally have better sight range than the humans something needs to be done to even things up a little IF the aliens are going to become "invisible" once the spotter moves away or is killed (a proposed change by Chris.) My suggestion is to reveal the alien location briefly whenever they fire. This is fairly realistic and will solve some of the gamey spotting techniques you are forced to use right now. Another suggestion is some type of arrow that points toward the aliens that have been spotted so you can return fire in the correct direction even if you can't see them (also, realistic.)

11. The AI is very good, but needs a bit of work in four areas:

a. The aliens are too predictable during set up on each map. I pretty much know where to expect them if I've seen a map before. This shouldn't be a problem as there are plenty of good defensive locations on nearly every map.

b. The aliens need to defend INSIDE the ship a bit more maybe 25% of the crew should stay inside. Right now, only the landing ships and occasionally the corvette have interior defenders.

c. The aliens seem to be able to see through walls. I have had tons of fire directed at my guys inside buildings from aliens outside that seem to have "x-ray vision" (do they?)

d. The aliens never seem to go inside buildings as cover. They are nearly always in the open. Don't like that. They used to go into buildings all the time. Also, they never use/used upper floors. Maybe they don't know how to climb stairs, afraid of heights? :-)

12. The Hunter is too vulnerable for what it costs and the time required to build it. I suggest either increasing it's spotting range to make more useful or giving it more hit points/armor. Basically, it is completely hopeless if the enemy has plasma rifles. I haven't had one make through ground combat since the aliens got rifles and I've been very careful with it.

Edited May 27, 2013 by StellarRat

[Sathra]

You can use the scrollwheel to rotate buildings.

The rest I can't comment on since I play a modded game.

[StellarRat]

You can use the scrollwheel to rotate buildings.

Thanks for the info. I'll try that.

[Lightzy]

x-com(original) didn't have the problem of aircraft loss being game over since you basically couldn't really lose aircraft.

very quickly in a fight you could see if you were outgunned, because your airplane would take more damage than it would deal, and you could see how much damage each ship takes, and so you could see you would lose and then retreat.

The way xenonauts is designed, if you make one mistake in air-combat, or just get unlucky, you lose the plane.

Personally I don't see any logical way around this except redesigning air-combat so that your interceptors AUTOMATICALLY FLEE when too damaged, and so never get shot down (at worst, 2-5 days of repair back at the base)

[Gauddlike]

If you do lose an aircraft they should be replaced fairly easily, my problem is if it takes you a month to build a new one then you can't even buy in a cheap replacement just to bulk out your squadron as the hangar is taken up while you wait.

Maybe removing the requirement for a hanger to be present throughout construction could help, along with balancing construction times and costs.

For example (Corsair used, could be any aircraft):

Currently you start a build job on a Corsair which requires an empty hangar and that hangar cannot be used by anything else until the job finishes.

At that point the Corsair becomes available for use and the hangar remains full until it is sold, destroyed, or transferred.

My suggestion is that building the Corsair does not require a hangar to be free.

You start construction while still having all three of your hangars filled with combat ready fighters which you continue to use as normal.

When construction completes a single Corsair is added to the menu that is currently used to purchase a new F-17.

When a hangar becomes free because an existing aircraft has been sold, transferred, or destroyed then you just go to the hangar screen, click 'Assign Aircraft' and select from the pool of craft you already have constructed.

The selected craft is then assigned to that hangar as normal.

I would also allow that aircraft pool to be available at any base rather than restricting it to the base which constructs it.

You could then build two or three aircraft in your primary base which would remain available in a potential pool until a craft was lost or a new hangar was built anywhere around the world, at which point you could get those Corsairs in place fairly quickly.

That would allow you to get a new base up and running very quickly or to replace your losses in far less time.

That same system could be used for all aircraft and ground vehicles.

The hangars and garages are for active vehicles, but you would have a pool of constructed vehicles in storage that would be able to be transferred to active duty when required, with much less of a delay than constructing from scratch.

Losing an interceptor is still an annoyance and leaves you understrength for a day or so if you have a replacement in the pool ready to assign rather than waiting a month or having to build and pay upkeep on several hangars purely for construction.

Kind of like having weapons in base stores available but only the ones you give to your troops are actually able to be used.

[Sathra]

I just have multiple bases which is easier to do now. At the moment in my current game I have 4 bases (2 composed mostly of hangars) and something like 12 aircraft, 4 of which are Corsairs with another 2 in a week's time (yay for 90 engineers!)

Hangars build fast enough that I haven't had to decommission any yet, though with a second major manfacturing base coming online the condors might be soon.

[flashman]

My thoughts

1)Hanger build time should be reduced lightly.

2) Plane build requirement should = hanger under construction, not hanger space.

3) To make that work, hangers should take less time than an interceptor to build.

4) Costs for planes- at least initial 2, need to be reduced. If you lose a plane you lose the game. I went 3weeks unable to intercept until payday and build day because I lost 2 planes to a small ship.

5) It is very hard to get a mig fleet up before corvettes.

6) Body armour takes too long to build. 30 suits -72days. They are dead by then. It should take a maximum 2 weeks to discover body armour and you should be equipped by October. Once scouts hit your troops will be one shotted. Without body armour there is no skill element in the game, it comes down to dumb like.

7) reaction fire should only be able to kill the xeno who triggered.

8) Aliens should not be able to reaction fire on the first turn. They should set a trap, but I am losing men walking off the Chinook. Something you promised would never happen.

9) Alien's are too reliant on burst mode and can do 2 in 1 turn.

10) Alien LOS is broken.

12) Assault rifles are rubbish once Scout/corvettes arrive. 5-6 hits to kill. My entire squad targeted 1 xeno, failed to kill him and his burst gunned them all down, in 2 turns. Despite being spread out.l

13) I dont like how personnel work atm. You should be able to hire up to the maximum for a lab/workshop. Building a new living quarters is a chore kept from the original. I suggest that the game starts with 2 second one already building.

14) Personnel take too long too arrive. It is war not vacation, wheres the rapid response.

15) Basic training should be 7 days not 10 days.

16) Hiring costs need to come down slightly.

Since AI has been beefed up, the first 2 months is too hard and frustrating for your average gamer. I can see people rage quitting.

[Sathra]

Why are you trying to build 30 suits of armour at once? At most you need 8 (I build less most of the time). Base attacks are so rare, and by the time they can start I've got spare armour lying around or already equipped on my reserves.

I normally have laser just before Corvettes start arriving, and have no trouble against Scouts. I do use tons of grenades and smoke though. Suppression is very useful, and they work better in vanilla overall than in my mod (huge range in vanilla, so you can spam them from beyond reaction fire range).

That said, aliens will invariably fire a burst during their next turn and I can't find where to change the regen %. Might be hardcoded.

Yeah, the LOS bug makes it massively hard. Or annoying.

I only ever have one MiG per base. Only really need 2 around Landing Ships+, and that's just if you want fast kills.

Full agreement on more living quarter space early in the game. I don't feel it adds much, and makes losses early extremely painful.

[flashman]

Hey Sathra, it was an extreme example to show the issue. it still takes 19days to make 8 sets and adds a really really boring, armour juggling exercise to the game. I still remember exchanging every armour part in apocalypse and it was not fun. I should be able to produce a common, basic armour enmasse.

I have an elite military force, why do I have to juggle basic armour. I can agree that getting advanced stuff should be trickier, but the combat armour used to be a starting armour and its current position makes things a bit rubbish. They have seen the weapons in action, surely they should be testing designs before they down a UFO, research half a dozen other things etc.

A massive issue though is that hiring costs are so high that If by some error I wipe or get mauled, I end up with nobody to fight. The game should start with 15 troops. Troop numbers shouldn't be the issue, we have a worldwide combined arms force of about 6 million men and women in uniform to pool from.

[Cwell]

From my very limited experience, i'll agree on a few of things :

Shotgun / Pistols are close to useless, better carry Sniper Rifles (my 2 Assaults always carry a Sniper rifle now), i do use 2 Riflemen just to have Burst fire, but i'm always tempted to grab Sniper Rifles instead.

Grenades need Range limitation (Pistol / Shotgun efficiency range would be fine)

Don't have "Guards" type enemy on the 3rd mission of the game (1st month still) : our troops don't even have access to Jackal yet, they are way tougher (better weapon, better armors). Mix up the troops maybe, like 1 "Guards" to represent the Leader in a 5 enemy crew. Playing smart and well won't cut it to that point. Winning is irrelevant if you loose 50% of your forces when you play well (and not save/load every couple turns).

I did not push too much into the game to wait for that Balance patch that was mentioned by Chris, right now i'd probably dislike getting my 1st Terror mission

Without experience of it, i'd still agree on a few other points:

- building an Air Fighter should not require a Hangar space : use a "storage" system with the Workshops and allow attribution / transfer from it. Having an empty Hangar for more than a week is not ok. Stuff is built and assembled in the Workshop and it should have some stock capacity, limited in some way of course, like 1 Vehicle at a time per Workshop for basic vehicles, 1 per 2 or more depending on the new vehicle ? That would avoid the "30 days build time" for one if you are required to build-up the Workshops just to be able to start building one (not really needed if you consider the last idea of this message).

- Making 8, or 12, (Jackal) Armors should take less time than building a MIG-32, always. Same for next tiers of equipment.

1 Engineer could make one armor in 2 days, but 10 would not need 20 days to make 10 armors: 2 days for the lot, each making one individually.

On the other hand, 1 Engineer could not build a MIG alone, it would require a minimum number and the time is based on that minimum involved. Double that minimum could divide build time by 2.

I'd really like to see that approach of "X needs a minimum of Y Engineer(s) to be build" with a time based on that. It cuts out some non-sense (armors vs air-craft). Then extra help will accelerate proportionally to the minimum requirement : 2 Engineers for one armor would divide the time by 2, 1 extra Engineer for a "needs 5 to be build" item, would give a 20% bonus. High tier armors would require more than 1 Engineer too, but never close to what an aircraft would need.

Edited May 27, 2013 by Cwell

[Sathra]

I thought so, but I had to ask. Balance ideas and all. Jackal armour also becomes pretty obsolete around Corvette-era, since I've had troops with it 1-shot by Heavy Plasmas. And the last alien weapon makes a mockery of Wolf and the Powered armours are exorbitant and take a long time to manufacture.

And I am starting to see that manufacture times are too long. It takes nearly a day to make a Plasma Precision Rifle with 30 engineers for example. You can juuust equip a main combat team and still keep up with aircraft production. Spares are mostly from replacing with new tiers. You do end up with spare manufacture time sometimes, but not really the cash to do much with it.

Though the part about extra starting troops and base capacity interests me. You can edit starting personnel numbers and building capacity in gameconfig.xml, so you could try playing with that and report your findings?

[Cwell]

I forgot to add :

- no need to "double-dip" the personnel limitations with Living Quarters and Lab/Workshop. Use Living Quarters for Soldiers only (and reduce the capacity to account for loss of engineers/scientists), Labs for Researchers, Workshops for Engineers. Straight up easier

[Sathra]

An interesting idea. So a lab/workshop would have the personnel capacity for its maximum number of workers?

UFO:ET did that, but I can't say if it was good or not (due to the only 1 non-intercept base stuff). It was interesting though, since the workers came with the building.

[Cwell]

Yep, but that is a detail compared to the other thing i'd rather see (end of message a few posts above)

I'd really like to see that approach of "X needs a minimum of Y Engineer(s) to be build" with a time based on that. It cuts out some non-sense (armors vs air-craft). Then extra help will accelerate proportionally to the minimum requirement : 2 Engineers for one armor would divide the time by 2, 1 extra Engineer for a "needs 5 to be build" item, would give a 20% bonus. High tier armors would require more than 1 Engineer too, but never close to what an aircraft would need.

[Sathra]

Hmm, so it'd be like research. You'd need a certain amount for efficient building, and extra would speed up the construction (possibly with some diminishing returns system?).

There'd need to be something to tell you how much was needed/effective (new UI coming soon though). Might even speed up construction if doubling the required amount halves construction time. Items are still built in sequence so that doesn't really need to be changed, although being able to having multiple queues for a certain item would be useful with this system.

I'll put my support behind this.

[Cwell]

That would require balance obviously

An advanced aircraft could have a base of 20+ Engineers needed (thus one Workshop is not enough) and halving build time is quite hard since you'd need 40 Engineers.

I had in mind for requirements something like : Hunter Scout = 5 Engineers, MIG-32 = 10. Those are Engineers required to build one. You can queue them up and build time adds.

If you put 10 engineers for a one Hunter Scout, you divide the build time by 2 (double the number requirement).

If you put 10 engineers for 2 Hunter Scouts, you'd get 2 after normal build time as they are made at the same time by 2 separate teams (UI wise to simplify : create 2 lines for 2 separate builds, put 5 on each)

The balancing process becomes : what is the number of engineers i want the player to have at that time ? The minimum team size is somewhat correlated but should be used to differentiate simple items like Armor, Weapons, etc, and "Big Stuff" like vehicles :

- 1 Engineer is enough to build a soldier weapon, a soldier armor, 2 for vehicle mounted weapons, 3 for aircraft mounted weapons etc.,

- 5 Engineers for a Ground Vehicle,

- 10 Engineers for an Aircraft.

Then add some more from those figures for "Tier" purposes.

Example "Build Time Projects" :

- simple Items : 1 or 2 days, more for advanced Tiers if you want to keep "Engineers per item" low

- ground vehicle : 5 days

- Air-crafts : 10 days

So all Aircrafts would only take 10 days per unit, but the Team size required would go up with time (Tiers).

If you're in trouble in an advanced game, you could go "low-tech" to fast build something.

I just noticed it's inspired from Firaxis' satellite up-links stuff (needing more engineers the more satellites capacity you have)

[lemm]

I can only comment on the first month of play, since the game starts crashing too frequently thereafter. All of my opinions are based on Normal difficulty.

Pistols don't do much, but then again, every soldier should be carrying more than just a pistol. I agree that shotguns are useless 90% of the time, but they are the ideal room clearing device given their low TU cost and high damage at close range. I don't think they need to be changed.

Assault rifles aren't that bad any more in my opinion, but perhaps the AR accuracy could be increased very slightly.

I agree that grenades are OP at the moment, but I hear grenades will be addressed soon.

If I had to change any of the ballistic weapons, I would start with the machine gun by making it less accurate but giving it a higher rate of fire.. maybe two 5 round bursts per turn so long as you don't walk.

The rocket hunter could carry a couple more rockets I think. Two people can carry 14 rockets, while the hunter can carry four. Either that, or make rocket launcher rockets a lot heavier.

I think the biggest problem is your tenth point, spotting the aliens who are beyond your sight range. I like the idea of some sort of indicator that shows up at the beginning of your turn and tells you the general area from which the shot came. If you're able to spot a civilian defense unit, perhaps they could also share their sight information with you in the form of these indicators.