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Research path, final mission and balance


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So, I've recently finished the game on easy. 'Finished.'

I'm going to start with the few game-breaking bugs I encountered, and my fixes for them:

Due to the slightly convoluted research path I haven't been able to research the final mission tech. I got the leader (alive) and everything, but I haven't researched 'alien leader interrogation' before I got it, so I basically killed that tree. I've researched all other things and was in march 1980 - mag weapons, all armors, all craft (except for the fury - is that even in yet?), anyway, everything. I've killed about 8 alien bases and so on and so forth. Seeing how I couldn't progress I began playing with game files. After going through the research XML I tried modifying my save through HEX (to no avail)... so, after searching the forums a bit I found out that I can call a function with a script - UnlockFinalMission();.

I added the line to the assets\scripts\enterbasename.lua and made the cancel button call it. If anyone is stuck, open the file up in notepad (or notepad++, it's much better :P), and edit the following part (added line is colored red):

Button     {       name = "cancel",       x = 120,       y = 60,      command =         function()			[color=#FF0000]UnlockFinalMission();[/color]	        PopModal( "enterbasenamedlg" );         end,

To activate the final mission, click 'build base' on the global overview and then cancel it when it asks you for the name (in case this wasn't obvious).

So I embarked on the final mission, killed everything (the large drone killed the praetor leader for me, when it was shooting at my troopers on the other side of the room, also the wal north of the final room's door is invisible - I got shot through it), ran from the reaper masses and finished it with only 2 deaths (due to not knowing where the reapers spawn). I also killed the reactors. What bugs me is that I got no victory text/game over screen afterwards. Is it not in yet or did my meddling with files disable the proper sequence of events? Winning simply takes me back to the global screen, and I can redo the mission, too. Whatever, not that important.

The game was fun. I played on easy, and ended up tweaking some numbers in the gamefiles, due to the difficulty being too harsh (no, it's all doable, but I wouldn't manage finishing the game in under 30h with default difficulty). There were a few bugs, like terror missions not working and landing ship desert and middle east missions causing a CTD - I managed to fix the terror missions, the CTD was caused by too few spawn points for the aliens, so I fixed that by adding about 16 in the editor, in a nice square in front of my spawn (could have placed them around, and only 4 were taken by the aliens in missions), which presented my soldiers with a turkey shoot in the beginning of every terror mission (there were still aliens spawning in the usual spots, just a few spawned in the square I added). I also had to remove all civvies and friendly AI in the terror missions, as they caused the never ending hidden movement bug, again, fiddling with the game files.

I didn't manage to fix the alien.landingship bug, dunno what is causing it, it ain't spawns or placement of terrain - speaking of which, there's some rocks placed in the UFO spawn square in those maps, I tried moving/removing them but it didn't help.

I've also noticed that a desert house in battleship_desert map doesn't have stairs going to the second floor - weird home these people live in.

Balance:

Easy is way too hard. I don't mind hard being hard, as I love a challenge, but with easy I want a fast 'run' through the game - not having to save every turn, not having to be really careful in air combat and so on and so forth. Tbh, looking at the difficulty settings, easy is the same as insane, except the aliens have less HP. There's a thread discussing that and I'm sure it'll be sorted out there.

Alien 'rocket launcher' - I forgot the name, but if I understand correctly (I do read the xenopedia, if available), the weapon is supposed to be devastating. My predator-clad soldiers received multiple direct hits with it and it only scratched off like 10 HP, while 2 shots of heavy plasma do more than 20 HP on the same soldier. I think you should either change the description to - suicidal pea-shooter (the miss rates are so high the aliens tend to eventually blow themselves to bits shooting at a wall in alien base assaults - and yes they try to shoot me through walls due to buggy vision). In any case, if I understand this correctly, this should be a weapon on par with ye olde blaster launcher in Ufo1-Ufo defense, without the 9-point aim mode. It's pathetic compared to that WMD.

Grenades - Aliens don't have/throw grenades. I hope this will be added eventually.

Grenade explosion range is 3x3 tiles. No, no, no. Should be 5x5 for regular nades, with a 1x1 increase with every tech level (8x8 for fusion). A fusion grenade should level a building, and all forms of cover 2 tiles away from the landing point, not the paltry damage it does now. Yes, it does destroy some cover, and yes, it does quite some damage, but it just seems pathetic for end game tech.

Also, compared to explosive grenades, stun gas is a lot more powerful and a lot more useful. There's really little point in throwing regulars if you have stun grenades, since the gas envelops a larger area, and enemies caught within it might pass out in the next round.

Stunned units - do they ever wake up? I never tried waiting for them to do so, but no units ever woke up in a mission. Will we be able to wake our soldiers up with the medkit/by waiting, will the aliens ever wake up? Especially the sebillians, reapers and all aliens fused to an armor (it pumps them with alien adrenaline or something comment added to xenopedia)?

Drones - they used to be really scary in other ufo games - lots of armor, took a lot of fire to take one down, killed the whole team, exploded in your face; now they die to a few shots of laser/ballistic fire, have weak attacks, etc. The heavy drone seems the only worthy enemy, but it's still easier to take one of them down than a sebillian elite or similar enemy. Also, have I mentioned that they do not explode as described in the xenopedia (yet)?

Explosives- why no plasma/fusion bombs, like the block of C4, just with more firepower and a larger radius? On that note, mines would be a nice addition (especially in front of the larger UFOs the aliens seem to like running out of so much).

Manufacture and selling - manufacture of items and selling them was a major line of income in the other ufo games. In that lore, X-com became a huge manufacturer of weaponry and tech and later became Marsec. I'm not arguing you should clone that storyline, but, honestly, you're making advanced tech with extremely advanced materials and the world is like: Yeah, I'll give ya 1000$ for it. Are we trading with Rick Harrison or something? Due to engineers having an upkeep and items costing so much to manufacture, I think we should at least be able to sell them for a good profit, as you can still balance the game so that we don't build sweatshop bases where engineers keep working on an assembly line building laser cannons (+1 if you know where that is from). I'm sure the numbers are going to be tweaked eventually, just adding input here. Speaking of items, I stopped getting alien ammunition after the aliens switched to heavy plasma and other lategame stuff. The ammo should at least be sold in the score screen (though I prefer doing all the selling manually, but whatever).

In any case, the only time when I actually sell something is when I upgrade to the better version of it, like selling the laser aircraft cannon when I get plasma. I just feel that the engineers should be busy all the time instead of waiting on the next big project and then taking ages to build that. I think the amount of time that it takes to build things is ok in terms of manufacture days in the game files, but we should have 30 or more engineers and scientists per factory/lab building - of course more should be able to fit into the living quarters. The low numbers and lack of economy reminds me of X-COM:EU too much (that game was... bad, to keep it civil).

Research - I love the fact that there is a lot of research available, but we should have some indication what the research will provide - I thought single fire weaponry was the research path for aircraft weapons, and got a crappy vehicle weapon instead. All in all, I think the rapid fire and single fire branches should be unified into 'advanced laser/plasma/MAG weapons' giving you the soldier heavy gun, aircraft cannon and vehicle cannon at the same time. Branching it out seems like purely filler research that doesn't really add to the game much.

Alien officer interrogation should, once researched, enable you to instantly interrogate every captured officer and elite for alien base info - 10% chance on revealing every alien base. That is, if there are 10 bases on the planet, one is usually revealed. Either that, or the officer giving you info on which continent a base is located. Captured leaders should reveal at least one base, if there is one on the planet. Capturing aliens is really pointless after you capture the first specimen of the kind.

Radar research - there should be some kind of range increase/chance increase with these buildings. Having multiple arrays in one base should make for higher detection % (with diminishing returns - 1=100%, 2=170%, 3=230% etc. of base detection). I'm also missing a hyperwave decoder, but it's not really necessary.

Air combat - too hard/too much impact for the minigame it is. Air combat should be an additional bonus minigame, not a make or brake it mechanism. Losing a plane is way too expensive, and without proper control you can lose quite a few. Missiles should fly faster - most alien craft are able to outrun the missiles in the later stages. I'm not saying that the first tech should be super fast, but missile speed and range should scale with their damage level (fusion missiles should cover half of the air combat map and go 3x as fast as their lowest tech version). Battleships seem unbeatable and dreadnaughts are in the files, but not in the game (yet?). I think you should have mag cannons and fusion torpedoes to bring down a battleship, but I wasn't able to bring one down without attacking it at least twice and getting most hits with fusion torps (2x foxtrot 1x marauder in each squad). It just seems overpowered. I'm not saying we should be able to bring one down with two f-17, but since I can absolutely massacre the land forces, I should also be able to swat the biggest UFOs like flies, once I get the appropriate tech. Speaking of which, there is no 'epic omgwtfbbq' weapon, like a singularity missile - we do get similar tech, and firing an exploding mini black hole at the bigger UFOs would certainly feel great.

Armor - no floating armor to make the reapers obsolete :*(, reapers 1-hit-zombie everyone, regardless of armor (well, I haven't tried it with predator, but they should have to bring the HP down to 0 before zombification occurs. That is, 3 or 4 hits with predator, 2 or 3 hits with sentinel and instazombie for anything less. Otherwise I find the armor tech and balance quite fine. I'd add another armor between wolf and predator, acting as support to predator - predator is kinda endgame tech while wolf is early midgame tech, I feel like there's a huge gap there. Predator soldiers are invulnerable while wolves are easy to kill, I think there should be another armor developed with predator tech, that has less stopping power than predator, and same or better mobility as wolf. Tbh armors have a huge unexplored area, which is vision. I agree with early armors limiting your vision, but predator and sentinel should allow the user to view further than without an armor (cameras), and eliminate or extend nighttime vision hindrance. It even says in the xenopedia that the sentinel armor can see the whole EM spectrum, so the soldiers in it should see a lot further - 24 tiles or something extreme. Armors should also add accuracy - a basic HUD can have a reticule showing where the current weapon is pointing, so it makes sense the soldiers would be able to fire more accurately with one. Also more strength equals less recoil, which equals accurate burst fire. While burst seems the best option to use anyway, at least at short to mid ranges, there should be a difference in accuracy depending on the armor of the soldier. A predator should be able to burst with 40% acc compared to a 10% acc without an armor.

Soldier weapons - I love the fact that there are three researchable weapon varieties. I am slightly disappointed though. While offering more damage, the better the tech, the less accurate the weapons seem to get a.k.a the accuracy always seems more or less the same, although my soldiers have almost 2x the rating. Imho it should be slightly different. Ballistic weapons are, and should be utter crap. Low accuracy, low damage. Laser weapons should have only 20% or so of a damage boost, while being extremely accurate, to the point rookies can shoot at aliens in cover with them. Plasma should have less accuracy but a lot more damage - say 200% ballistic, same acc as ballistic, and MAG should be terribly accurate AND have a lot of damage - laser rifle accuracy, 300% ballistic damage (yes, overpowered, but I'm exaggerating and it's endgame tech). As for weapon variants - imho the sniper should have max accuracy at the end of it's 1st max range, that is 28 tiles atm (I'd change it to 34, tbh, after all it is a sniper, not a shotgun), then a falloff to 50% at the end of the second range (yellow range). It's usually better to fire a rifle twice than firing a sniper once as it stands now. The sniper seems to have lower accuracy than a rifle at long ranges.

The shotgun should have a 'spray' animation, not a single bullet.

Psionics - though it seems psionics are far from fully implemented, I've noticed that some seem to be included. Mind control will eventually be part of the game according to the files. I've noticed the 'feeling of dread' in missions where the praetor is present. My two cents: they should only be able to panic you if one of their forces can see you. Either that or if you take into account they can see you everywhere in their base, remove fog of war from xenonaut base maps, since you can have cameras around the base and stuff - you should be able to see where the aliens are at all times. I seem to remember that psionics will not be available to humans, is that true? It does make sense, but it's kind of lame, not being able to play with the aliens like they (will) play with your soldiers. I'm getting the feeling this is due to having less work, not having to implement alien stats and inventory.

TL;DR Damn that's a lot of post... I'm sure only three people have read it. Ever.

All in all, I think this is the first game after the three x-coms released in the ninties that deserves to be called a spiritual successor, and actually improves on the concept, adds great features and has the potential to be a legendary game, just like the old ones. There are some pretty annoying bugs left, but it's a beta, barely out of its alpha diapers, so I expect it to be a brilliant bug free game when it's released. I've enjoyed playing it a lot, and I can only imagine what improvements future updates will add. Great game and best 20 Eur I've spent for a game ever :D

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Well, I just kinda miss the old progression, where you went from being killed a lot and using suicide soldiers equipped with a bunch of grenades to take out the enemy to flying around with tank suits blasting and mind controlling every alien you saw, killing the largest alien ships in two shots and generally wreaking havoc. Basically by the time you got advanced armor, the tables have turned and the humans have turned from being the hunted to being the hunters. In this game, you're constantly one step behind the aliens in air battles and somewhat superior in ground battles in the end. It's mostly the explosives that are lacking tbh.

Another thing we probably won't see is breaching alien hulls in different spots and entering the ufo through the new holes, rather than the usually guarded door chokepoints.

Aww well, two more readers to go xD

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Oh yes, the diagonal invisible walls, loved those... though the best way to deal with a ufo once you knew its layout was to make a hole in the roof and send a blaster gift into the command center. Or MC their launcher guy and make him kill himself and his friends.

Simpler times :D

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Now without spoilers.

What bugs me is that I got no victory text/game over screen afterwards. Is it not in yet or did my meddling with files disable the proper sequence of events? Winning simply takes me back to the global screen, and I can redo the mission, too. Whatever, not that important.

The game was fun. I played on easy, and ended up tweaking some numbers in the gamefiles, due to the difficulty being too harsh (no, it's all doable, but I wouldn't manage finishing the game in under 30h with default difficulty). There were a few bugs, like terror missions not working and landing ship desert and middle east missions causing a CTD - I managed to fix the terror missions, the CTD was caused by too few spawn points for the aliens, so I fixed that by adding about 16 in the editor, in a nice square in front of my spawn (could have placed them around, and only 4 were taken by the aliens in missions), which presented my soldiers with a turkey shoot in the beginning of every terror mission (there were still aliens spawning in the usual spots, just a few spawned in the square I added). I also had to remove all civvies and friendly AI in the terror missions, as they caused the never ending hidden movement bug, again, fiddling with the game files.

I didn't manage to fix the alien.landingship bug, dunno what is causing it, it ain't spawns or placement of terrain - speaking of which, there's some rocks placed in the UFO spawn square in those maps, I tried moving/removing them but it didn't help.

I've also noticed that a desert house in battleship_desert map doesn't have stairs going to the second floor - weird home these people live in.

Balance:

Easy is way too hard. I don't mind hard being hard, as I love a challenge, but with easy I want a fast 'run' through the game - not having to save every turn, not having to be really careful in air combat and so on and so forth. Tbh, looking at the difficulty settings, easy is the same as insane, except the aliens have less HP. There's a thread discussing that and I'm sure it'll be sorted out there.

Alien 'rocket launcher' - I forgot the name, but if I understand correctly (I do read the xenopedia, if available), the weapon is supposed to be devastating. My predator-clad soldiers received multiple direct hits with it and it only scratched off like 10 HP, while 2 shots of heavy plasma do more than 20 HP on the same soldier. I think you should either change the description to - suicidal pea-shooter (the miss rates are so high the aliens tend to eventually blow themselves to bits shooting at a wall in alien base assaults - and yes they try to shoot me through walls due to buggy vision). In any case, if I understand this correctly, this should be a weapon on par with ye olde blaster launcher in Ufo1-Ufo defense, without the 9-point aim mode. It's pathetic compared to that WMD.

Grenades - Aliens don't have/throw grenades. I hope this will be added eventually.

Grenade explosion range is 3x3 tiles. No, no, no. Should be 5x5 for regular nades, with a 1x1 increase with every tech level (8x8 for fusion). A fusion grenade should level a building, and all forms of cover 2 tiles away from the landing point, not the paltry damage it does now. Yes, it does destroy some cover, and yes, it does quite some damage, but it just seems pathetic for end game tech.

Also, compared to explosive grenades, stun gas is a lot more powerful and a lot more useful. There's really little point in throwing regulars if you have stun grenades, since the gas envelops a larger area, and enemies caught within it might pass out in the next round.

Stunned units - do they ever wake up? I never tried waiting for them to do so, but no units ever woke up in a mission. Will we be able to wake our soldiers up with the medkit/by waiting, will the aliens ever wake up? Especially the sebillians, reapers and all aliens fused to an armor (it pumps them with alien adrenaline or something comment added to xenopedia)?

Drones - they used to be really scary in other ufo games - lots of armor, took a lot of fire to take one down, killed the whole team, exploded in your face; now they die to a few shots of laser/ballistic fire, have weak attacks, etc. The heavy drone seems the only worthy enemy, but it's still easier to take one of them down than a sebillian elite or similar enemy. Also, have I mentioned that they do not explode as described in the xenopedia (yet)?

Explosives- why no plasma/fusion bombs, like the block of C4, just with more firepower and a larger radius? On that note, mines would be a nice addition (especially in front of the larger UFOs the aliens seem to like running out of so much).

Manufacture and selling - manufacture of items and selling them was a major line of income in the other ufo games. In that lore, X-com became a huge manufacturer of weaponry and tech and later became Marsec. I'm not arguing you should clone that storyline, but, honestly, you're making advanced tech with extremely advanced materials and the world is like: Yeah, I'll give ya 1000$ for it. Are we trading with Rick Harrison or something? Due to engineers having an upkeep and items costing so much to manufacture, I think we should at least be able to sell them for a good profit, as you can still balance the game so that we don't build sweatshop bases where engineers keep working on an assembly line building laser cannons (+1 if you know where that is from). I'm sure the numbers are going to be tweaked eventually, just adding input here. Speaking of items, I stopped getting alien ammunition after the aliens switched to heavy plasma and other lategame stuff. The ammo should at least be sold in the score screen (though I prefer doing all the selling manually, but whatever).

In any case, the only time when I actually sell something is when I upgrade to the better version of it, like selling the laser aircraft cannon when I get plasma. I just feel that the engineers should be busy all the time instead of waiting on the next big project and then taking ages to build that. I think the amount of time that it takes to build things is ok in terms of manufacture days in the game files, but we should have 30 or more engineers and scientists per factory/lab building - of course more should be able to fit into the living quarters. The low numbers and lack of economy reminds me of X-COM:EU too much (that game was... bad, to keep it civil).

Research - I love the fact that there is a lot of research available, but we should have some indication what the research will provide - I thought single fire weaponry was the research path for aircraft weapons, and got a crappy vehicle weapon instead. All in all, I think the rapid fire and single fire branches should be unified into 'advanced laser/plasma/MAG weapons' giving you the soldier heavy gun, aircraft cannon and vehicle cannon at the same time. Branching it out seems like purely filler research that doesn't really add to the game much.

Alien officer interrogation should, once researched, enable you to instantly interrogate every captured officer and elite for alien base info - 10% chance on revealing every alien base. That is, if there are 10 bases on the planet, one is usually revealed. Either that, or the officer giving you info on which continent a base is located. Captured leaders should reveal at least one base, if there is one on the planet. Capturing aliens is really pointless after you capture the first specimen of the kind.

Radar research - there should be some kind of range increase/chance increase with these buildings. Having multiple arrays in one base should make for higher detection % (with diminishing returns - 1=100%, 2=170%, 3=230% etc. of base detection). I'm also missing a hyperwave decoder, but it's not really necessary.

Air combat - too hard/too much impact for the minigame it is. Air combat should be an additional bonus minigame, not a make or brake it mechanism. Losing a plane is way too expensive, and without proper control you can lose quite a few. Missiles should fly faster - most alien craft are able to outrun the missiles in the later stages. I'm not saying that the first tech should be super fast, but missile speed and range should scale with their damage level (fusion missiles should cover half of the air combat map and go 3x as fast as their lowest tech version). Battleships seem unbeatable and dreadnaughts are in the files, but not in the game (yet?). I think you should have mag cannons and fusion torpedoes to bring down a battleship, but I wasn't able to bring one down without attacking it at least twice and getting most hits with fusion torps (2x foxtrot 1x marauder in each squad). It just seems overpowered. I'm not saying we should be able to bring one down with two f-17, but since I can absolutely massacre the land forces, I should also be able to swat the biggest UFOs like flies, once I get the appropriate tech. Speaking of which, there is no 'epic omgwtfbbq' weapon, like a singularity missile - we do get similar tech, and firing an exploding mini black hole at the bigger UFOs would certainly feel great.

Armor - no floating armor to make the reapers obsolete :*(, reapers 1-hit-zombie everyone, regardless of armor (well, I haven't tried it with predator, but they should have to bring the HP down to 0 before zombification occurs. That is, 3 or 4 hits with predator, 2 or 3 hits with sentinel and instazombie for anything less. Otherwise I find the armor tech and balance quite fine. I'd add another armor between wolf and predator, acting as support to predator - predator is kinda endgame tech while wolf is early midgame tech, I feel like there's a huge gap there. Predator soldiers are invulnerable while wolves are easy to kill, I think there should be another armor developed with predator tech, that has less stopping power than predator, and same or better mobility as wolf. Tbh armors have a huge unexplored area, which is vision. I agree with early armors limiting your vision, but predator and sentinel should allow the user to view further than without an armor (cameras), and eliminate or extend nighttime vision hindrance. It even says in the xenopedia that the sentinel armor can see the whole EM spectrum, so the soldiers in it should see a lot further - 24 tiles or something extreme. Armors should also add accuracy - a basic HUD can have a reticule showing where the current weapon is pointing, so it makes sense the soldiers would be able to fire more accurately with one. Also more strength equals less recoil, which equals accurate burst fire. While burst seems the best option to use anyway, at least at short to mid ranges, there should be a difference in accuracy depending on the armor of the soldier. A predator should be able to burst with 40% acc compared to a 10% acc without an armor.

Soldier weapons - I love the fact that there are three researchable weapon varieties. I am slightly disappointed though. While offering more damage, the better the tech, the less accurate the weapons seem to get a.k.a the accuracy always seems more or less the same, although my soldiers have almost 2x the rating. Imho it should be slightly different. Ballistic weapons are, and should be utter crap. Low accuracy, low damage. Laser weapons should have only 20% or so of a damage boost, while being extremely accurate, to the point rookies can shoot at aliens in cover with them. Plasma should have less accuracy but a lot more damage - say 200% ballistic, same acc as ballistic, and MAG should be terribly accurate AND have a lot of damage - laser rifle accuracy, 300% ballistic damage (yes, overpowered, but I'm exaggerating and it's endgame tech). As for weapon variants - imho the sniper should have max accuracy at the end of it's 1st max range, that is 28 tiles atm (I'd change it to 34, tbh, after all it is a sniper, not a shotgun), then a falloff to 50% at the end of the second range (yellow range). It's usually better to fire a rifle twice than firing a sniper once as it stands now. The sniper seems to have lower accuracy than a rifle at long ranges.

The shotgun should have a 'spray' animation, not a single bullet.

Psionics - though it seems psionics are far from fully implemented, I've noticed that some seem to be included. Mind control will eventually be part of the game according to the files. I've noticed the 'feeling of dread' in missions where the praetor is present. My two cents: they should only be able to panic you if one of their forces can see you. Either that or if you take into account they can see you everywhere in their base, remove fog of war from xenonaut base maps, since you can have cameras around the base and stuff - you should be able to see where the aliens are at all times. I seem to remember that psionics will not be available to humans, is that true? It does make sense, but it's kind of lame, not being able to play with the aliens like they (will) play with your soldiers. I'm getting the feeling this is due to having less work, not having to implement alien stats and inventory.

TL;DR Damn that's a lot of post... I'm sure only three people have read it. Ever.

All in all, I think this is the first game after the three x-coms released in the ninties that deserves to be called a spiritual successor, and actually improves on the concept, adds great features and has the potential to be a legendary game, just like the old ones. There are some pretty annoying bugs left, but it's a beta, barely out of its alpha diapers, so I expect it to be a brilliant bug free game when it's released. I've enjoyed playing it a lot, and I can only imagine what improvements future updates will add. Great game and best 20 Eur I've spent for a game ever :D

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Now without spoilers.

nah, not interested now... Kidding. I'm kidding! Now, put the plasma caster down... you know it hurts your hip....

later...

Sgt thothkins: Nurse, since I'm going to be immobilised for a while now, do you have a wall of text you could read to me?

Nurse Gauddlike: Why yes, I have just the post. But I'm not sure you'll appreciate the irony.

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Difficulty: Balancing still ongoing, but easy should be what it says on the tin, with minor difficulties in getting your way through the game.

Alien one shot death: seems to have been reduced considerably. Hate them so much, but should be much deadlier than described, although that is predator armour. They are death on a stick to people below that presumably, which is where I've usually encountered them.

Alien Grenades: I'm sure I've seen some graphics for them. Don;t know if they'll be in or not though. Can''t argue with the devastation a top range grenade should do. Although, it should be balanced against what the aliens have. Would you like the building your squad is in to get taken out by the best alien grenade?

Stunned units - do they ever wake up? - No. Allowing you to take off all the guards and paranoia that you may have had. I made exactly the same point about the sebilians somewhere else :) especially considering their back story.

Drones - Possibly balancing again, and the weapons they are facing. I sued to have some issues taking them down, but htey have got easier. Not the challenge the Cyberdisc was. Which is why I remember the Cyberdisc and in a year, possibly won't recall the drone.

Explosives/Mines- Having heavier equipment really messes with the balance, as per explosives above. So no blaster launchers. If Xenonauts had that kind of fire power, the aliens should have it, have it first and use it aggressively as you just shot down their ship.

Manufacture and selling - The Devs wanted to ensure that the Xenonaut funding was very dependant on keeping the people they were supposed to protect happy. If nearly all funding can be derived from sales to other companies/ black market/ governments then it takes away the tension of possibly losing a nation. The small sale values also balances why you get everything either cheap or free. You could just have the game add a multiplier to make it more realistic, but that's tweaking really.

I agree on having the engineers busy. It has got better in recent builds to be fair to the devs. I'm not a huge fan of the manufacturing here, as I feel it's a little emptier now than it should be.

Research - Yeah, I fell for the old single fire research topic too.:) Xenopaedia entries have been discussed eslewhere recently, so we'll see if it's clearer what the outputs are from that.

Interesting thought on the alien leader providing base information. Adds an alternative to tripping across it or relying on local Men In Black (actually Mrs Biggins from down the road. But she likes her spy novels so we humour her.)

Radar research - Now I'm going to have to look for what the radar actually does. I seem to recacall it may have changes, and that I liked the EU1994 version better. As for advancements, keep watching the skies. No really, you'll have to as you've no advanced radar :)

Air combat - I think that the issue of cost and replacement of aircraft is a bit of a red herring on this one. If the planes were cheaper/ free then it would take a lot of the pain out of the interceptions. After my initial reaction of "gee, this looks involved for what used to be a few buttons", I've learned how to use it and have really appreciated it's inclusion. There may be an auto-resolve coming for it, but I think a tutorial would really make a big difference, as there are tactics.

Armor - I'm a big fan of each armour having it's own niche. So, Wolf provides more vision than predator, say, but less protection. Buzzard provides you with flight, but with less protection. It would have been easier to work had the weapon tiers also provided niches than straight power upgrades. As for Reapers, it's also good that Xenonauts are always vulnerable to something. With the plasma caster above, I'd hate to have armour that effectively makes the Xenonauts invulnerable. In balance, I'd expect the aliens to roll out in similar armour and for the reapers to have tin openers to get inside the Predator armour.

Soldier weapons - the accuracy thing is part of the niche thing I mentioned above. I don;t think it works too well, as players are expecting a simple power upgrade. That they get, but with a cost that makes everyone stare at the sniper in disbelief. Ballistics has a long manufacturing and research life, whereas the others are new technology. So there should be compromises in clip size, accuracy and power - or effectiveness against certain weapons (much like Eu1994) had. As long as it's clear enough in the text, so that people don;t just assume that their new toy will work better in all circumstances.

Psionics - I've had mind control. Well li'l thothkins had mind control and it works as intended. As for panic, I thought it would still happen if the soldier failed a morale check sort of thing. The aliens don;t have to see him for him to run away screaming "I can't take it any more."

No human psionics. Here's what I'd have liked. The decision was an early one and down to the balance that keeps out blaster launchers.

I'm sure only three people have read it. Ever.

I read it twice to help.

I'd have to agree about it being the best £20/euros spent. I've played a lot more than most games due to the access given through the builds.

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Tbh with good vision the new chryssalids are easy to beat. Burst ftw.

Yes, I would like to see more terrain destruction in general, although I expect a predator to only take minor damage from an alien grenade, which is a plasma explosive (yours are better, cos they're fusion). I want praetor guns to be on par with mag weapons. And other alien plasma weapons to be on par with your plasma stuff. I haven't checked if the armors have different armor stats depending on where you take the hit - frontal 100 back 30, for example (this was included in 1994 EU), but I think it's a single value for resistance.

I've read the xenopedia file and alien grenades are described there, so eventually they'll throw them, apparently. I loved grenades and especially alien grenades in 1994EU, since they caused mass destruction.

Stunned units should wake up, aliens because they can regen a torn limb or are pumped full of stims, and humans due to regaining consciousness and you medikiting them. Nuff' said.

Drones should be stronger and they should explode as described, but that seems to be WIP, again, so no issues there.

I was talking about explosive bombs, not missiles - a.k.a fusion block (or whatever). You set it up and drop it, then run. Big bada boom.

It might as well let me reprocess the guns back into money, because even the mats I used for some weapons are worth more than the weaps themselves. Imho build times should stay the same, but build cost should go down 2-5x - that would allow you to produce more stuff, but still not sell it to profit from it. Maybe make the manufacture make just enough cash to cover itself in a month? Right now it's a huge money drain.

Yes - considering my idea, once you catch the first base, you get to find every last base on the planet, if you capture the leader in each one you kill off.

Radar has 10-0.5% chance of UFO detection (gradient from base to full line edge) by default (I tweaked that :P), and detects ufos every minute. Planes seem to have a bigger chance, but I haven't looked into it yet. I have noticed that they detect an alien base almost instantly. The xenopedia article for a hyperwave decoder copy is included, but it's not in the game in V18. Shame tbh, even LIDAR didn't make it... better ways to detect ufos would make sense with such huge tech boosts.

Air combat plays too big of a role in the game, that's all. It's fun, sure, it's doable - I've downed cruisers with foxtrots, sure. But towards the end it gets ridiculous. Battleships are practically invincible. It's too much. I agree the battleship should be able to take out your f-17s and foxtrots, but three marauders should put a huge dent in it. I suppose the fury is the BS killer, so we have to wait till that's implemented.

Tbh I liked the linear progression from worst to best, where the drawback was the best armor costing a lot more mats and time to make than the cheap noobie one. It seems more logical to continually develop new stuff that is in all aspects better than old stuff - kinda like the transition from feet to horses to carriages to cars in human history I suppose. A car takes a lot longer to make and set up and maintain, however, it's much better in all aspects. But I suppose it's a matter of taste.

Same thing goes for weapons. Each version is more expensive, and needs more time to research, not to mention building it. If it doesn't perform a lot better than the old one, say the only reason you get plasma is to get the carbine, disregarding snipers and rifles (and pistols, which I never EVER make), it's sort-of pointless to research it at all if you could be focusing on something else. We're not researching different variants of the same tech, we're getting better and better tech through a lot of work.

I kind-of miss psionics since no game since the original 3 had implemented it properly tbh, but I can live without them. I could always mod them in with a little research, I suppose.

Yay, it's been read 3x!

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Sure mine. If I'm to understand the posts, especially mine.

And don't forget the accent. Tonight, it shall be... in the voice of Bjork, since I just posted about the Icelandic incident.

Honestly, criticised for taking an interest. Another blow to Pinata horse thothkins. Mutter, gripe, mutter

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