Combat.shield

[Mytheos]

I would like it better if armor had no vision penalty as it doesnt really make sense when "You have visors made of transparent metal that offer only marginally less protection that the rest of the helmet".

Armor should just add TU penalties, to everything (Movement, shooting, reloading, throwing grenades).

So on a rookie they feel almost worthless in armor because they cant keep up with the vets and and it drags down their actions too much.

So as a rookie they go naked but as they level its better to put them in better and better armor. (You could almost tell a rank just by looking at the armor they are wearing)

Maybe the armor penalties could be based on a situation of strength requirement in that as long as you meet the req then there is only a minor penalty but if you are vastly weaker than the armor is heavy, you'd be so weighed down you'd be almost ineffectual.

[Ol' Stinky]

I'd certainly be happy if we could get rid of armour's vision reduction too. I mod it out asap, usually. I do see your point about shieldmen pushing into armour's turf, since the guys in armour are stumbling about and running into each other because their helmets have no eyeholes. The last thing I want to see is vision impairment spreading to other items, though.

I guess what bothers me more than your smell test is "so you're meant to give your front-line men, who provide line of sight to the rest of your squad, vision impairment items or else they can be one-shot?" It's counter-intuitive, and in armour's case, it detracts from the gameplay to give out expensive, breakable upgrades that weaken your men as much as strengthen them. Let's dump vision impairment on manufactured items and never speak of it again.

[Mytheos]

But as far as the shields go, I still say no vision penalty, and no real weight penalty they should be used for UFO breaches and scouting.

You are mainly gaining defense and loosing offense.

So if everyone has a shield, you have no offense and the extra defense doesnt matter much if you cant kill anything, so its a role item, and the only role that really fits is scout / UFO breaching

If "just" UFO breaching, then you are more forced into using them than wanting to...so they would be to increase survivability in the early game, but later on they would get phased out as armor becomes more useful...that would be ok but blah.

Same as the shotgun, if ALL they are good for is UFO breaches then I probably wont even bother.

I mean real shields (Not modern ones as they are primarily for riots) were used to block a few arrows, a spear and maybe block and few sword blows. They weren't all that heavy and didnt reduce mobility much and didnt reduce sight at all.

They were just meant to absorb a couple blows and then be tossed to the ground.

Of course only being able to only use a 1 handed weapon back in the day was not a big deal really...however giving up a shotgun or riffle for a pistol, is a considerable loss of offense.

So with limited offense, heavy weight, vision penalty shields = Good for what?

A shield wall to march slowly towards the enemy?

(Plasma would eat you for breakfast, and if it didnt, it wouldnt be scary or feel like you were outmatched and it would simplify the entire dynamic of combat...I dont want combat to feel like two lines marching towards each other revolutionary war style, its 1979, not 1779)

But something to give a scout initially followed by a shield and light scout armor just to allow them to absorb an extra shot or two while they scout or during breaches, I am cool with that.

Again I say shields should get chewed up quick but at least keep the user alive while they have them, but not undamaged.

[GizmoGomez]

Agreed, no vision penalty.

Did anyone read my bit about more shields?

Shields being unlocked with new armor types?

Sorry, I don't mean to bother.

[Mytheos]

Agreed, no vision penalty.

Did anyone read my bit about more shields?

Shields being unlocked with new armor types?

Sorry, I don't mean to bother.

Yeah and I think its fine but the game should feel like a constantly countering and upgrading situation.

Humans - Ballistics and Smoke

Aliens - Plasma Pistols and Armor

Humans - Lasers and Smoke

Aliens - Plasma Riffles and Armor

Humans - Lasers, Smoke, Armor

Aliens - Plasma Riffles, Armor and Robotic Units than can see through smoke.

Humans - Plasma Weapons, Better Armor

Aliens - Heavy Plasma, Better Armor, Robotic Units that see through Smoke.

Humans - Plasma Weapons, Better Armor, and New Smoke with nano particles that interfere with sensors and cause electromagnetic damage to Robots

Aliens - Heavy Plasma, Heavy Armor, Robotics, Psi Attacks, Jump/Hover Armor

Humans - Plasma Weapons, Better Armor, New Smoke, and Psi Shields, Jump Armor

Aliens - Heavy Plasma, Ultra Heavy Armor, Robotics, Psi Attacks.

Humans - Hyper Velocity Weapons, Heavy Armor, New Smoke, Psi Shields, Jump Armor

Game should end about here. Quick general example.

Shields would retain their normal roles but you would have to upgrade them like you said for them to maintain their effectiveness.

[Name]

What?! I love the vision penalty though! It makes it so you cant just kit out all of your guys in power armor. You need to be care full and make choices about who gets what and to deploy troops carefully.

[GizmoGomez]

No no, no vision penalty for combat shields. Armor still has that (though I'm kinda leaning against it being so harsh. Make armor have a strength requirement instead, or something. I dunno.)

[Name]

Maybe we are thinking about the vision penalties the wrong way. Maybe it shouldnt be how far you see but how wide your sight range is. But then we run into a few things that would bother people

GizmoGomez I still do not under stand the "Armor still has that (though I'm kinda leaning against it being so harsh. Make armor have a strength requirement instead, or something. I dunno.)"

I like the idea of a strenght stat for say the very heavy predator armor.

[GizmoGomez]

Well, like I said, I dunno.

I agree that the vision penalty for armor is there for balance reasons and such, but it's annoying and unrealistic (both of which don't matter at all when you think about it.)

I don't know how to make it more balanced, though. Someone suggested making a TU penalty on all actions made while wearing armor, and making a strength requirement to make it so that only higher leveled soldiers could use the armor effectively, but that is a completely different thing. Soldier levels vs how far they all (leveled and not) can see.

So, I don't know what else I would put there in place of a vision impairment. I'm just saying that I'm open to other things, because the current one doesn't make sense from a real world perspective.

[Solarius Scorch]

What?! I love the vision penalty though! It makes it so you cant just kit out all of your guys in power armor. You need to be care full and make choices about who gets what and to deploy troops carefully.

Well, back in the EU1994 you did just that and everything was fine.

As for the vision limit, I find battles harder with armours than without them. That's why I only used Buzzards (because no sight limit), period. Then I modded the sight limits the hell out of everything.

Well, if we really want using various armours at the same time make sense, we could make a scout armour (Buzzard) with greater vision range and a battle armour (Predator) with more or less normal range. Okay, it can be slightly lowered, but not if it's a Wolf with a giant windscreen!

[Ol' Stinky]

What?! I love the vision penalty though! It makes it so you cant just kit out all of your guys in power armor. You need to be care full and make choices about who gets what and to deploy troops carefully.

If you kit everyone out in top-tier armour, you're going to have to make sacrifices on the geoscape. That's the balancing factor: you can spend your entire budget on giving every single soldier the best armour and weapons money can buy, but if you do, you'll have to run your operations out of an old shed and use crop dusters to shoot down UFOs. That's not going to change if vision impairment goes. You're still going to give armour to good soldiers who are in the front lines, and you still feel nervous about doing so in case they bite the dust. It's rough saying goodbye to a supersoldier because you got cocky and moved him further than you should have done; it's rougher when they take $60,000 worth of armour along with them.

[Name]

Solarius. I think I see your problem then. Do you kite out entire squads in the same armor? I think that is most peoples problems.

[Solarius Scorch]

Solarius. I think I see your problem then. Do you kite out entire squads in the same armor? I think that is most peoples problems.

Well, I see what you mean. However, I do not believe in overspecialisation. I believe that every soldier, well except the rocket jockey and the shield bearer, should be reasonably versatile. Elaborate plans where every unit has a strictly designated role and intricate cooperation is required look good on paper, but they tend to blow up in my face. Plus, they're boring and tedious as hell, but that's beside the point.

As for the shield itself, I don't really think it needs vision impairment (though it'd be defensible). While indeed it gives good protection, any attack from the side is still lethal, so using the shield for scouting is far more dangerous than one could think at first.

[Name]

I is there even a way to overspecialize in xenonauts?

[Dranak]

What?! I love the vision penalty though! It makes it so you cant just kit out all of your guys in power armor. You need to be care full and make choices about who gets what and to deploy troops carefully.

There's already tradeoffs with getting power armor. It's expensive, so that's money you aren't investing into other areas of your operation. You're also giving up the mobility you can gain from Buzzard armor. Personally I hate the entire idea of vision range reduction from armor, because it just doesn't make sense. Heavy armor wouldn't stop my ability to see straight ahead, but it would slow me down a bit which I would love to see represented by a TU penalty to movement (moving takes an extra 20-50% TUs in heavy armor).

[svidangel]

There's already tradeoffs with getting power armor. It's expensive, so that's money you aren't investing into other areas of your operation. You're also giving up the mobility you can gain from Buzzard armor. Personally I hate the entire idea of vision range reduction from armor, because it just doesn't make sense. Heavy armor wouldn't stop my ability to see straight ahead, but it would slow me down a bit which I would love to see represented by a TU penalty to movement (moving takes an extra 20-50% TUs in heavy armor).

Oooh, +1 for swapping the vision penalty with movement. Sucks having my own xenonauts getting herded by AI powerlevellers.

[Solarius Scorch]

Oooh, +1 for swapping the vision penalty with movement. Sucks having my own xenonauts getting herded by AI powerlevellers.

Sadly, as Xenonauts has a fixed AP number for every manoeuvre, this would also prevent Predators from, for example, firing their machine guns twice when normally these soldiers would be able to. Kinda defeats the point of a power armour, no?

Of course this wouldn't matter if Xenonauts were like X-Com and had this system where the cost of each shot was a a percentage of the soldier's total AP. Which honestly makes a lot more sense, I think.

[Dranak]

Sadly, as Xenonauts has a fixed AP number for every manoeuvre, this would also prevent Predators from, for example, firing their machine guns twice when normally these soldiers would be able to. Kinda defeats the point of a power armour, no?

Of course this wouldn't matter if Xenonauts were like X-Com and had this system where the cost of each shot was a a percentage of the soldier's total AP. Which honestly makes a lot more sense, I think.

I'd say that the point of power armor is to have great survivability. And why would changing the cost for movement affect the cost of firing a weapon?

[Name]

There would be less tus to fire the weapon. I really like the vision deduction it forces you to diversify your loadouts more than I feel movement penalties would.

[Solarius Scorch]

Hmm, unless the TU would stay the same, but each step would take more TUs. That'd make some sense.

[Ol' Stinky]

I is there even a way to overspecialize in xenonauts?

Not so much with the current weights for guns, but that's probably not intended, right? I can bring along a squad consisting mostly of snipers with close range options in their bags and do fairly well...as long as I can survive the current geoscape. I wouldn't be surprised if they mess with strength/carrying capacity/weapon weights at some point so that a sniper has a harder time filling every single role.

Edited June 30, 2013 by Ol' Stinky

[thothkins]

Here's the wiki for ballistic shield

"Early ballistic shields consisted of shaped sheet metal with a thin eye slot hole for vision. These were very heavy, which limited their usage in certain tactical situations."

and a nice pic (with lights on!)

That's what I see in Xenonauts. Something that's quite cumbersome and with vision limited to that thin slot when in use. It offers frontal protection, meaning that any shots from anywhere else will negate it, meaning it's mainly of use in breaches or entering enclosed spaces where there's only a single line of fire.

There are other shield on the market of varying sizes, but that first generic one I saw pretty much matches up with the one I see in Xenonauts. I just can't imagine anyone being an effective scout with it. I'm assuming that your scout should have a reasonable pace to cover the map, and plenty of Tus to get out of any trouble.

[smoitessier]

Yeah agreed, I think shields should have a vision penalty on top of armor's vision penalties, they should stack

Right now I've played a little with v19.2, about 8 light scout missions and didn't even bother to save once, and didn't loose anybody because I use shields now that they aren't borked. This could have something to do (and I suspect it does) with the abysmal hit chances in open cover, i.e. alien can't shoot jack now with plasma pistols at least.

Also think the starting shield HP's should be halved and you get a minor boosted version around the time jackal, then each later tier armor is developed.

[Ol' Stinky]

Plasma pistols have a range of 10 tiles and a damage value of 50, which isn't going to worry anyone as long as you keep distance. The only way you're losing men in a lightscout mission at the moment is if you're playing a mod that buffs the alien plasma pistol/cripples your guys, you get careless out of a desire to speed up the slaughter and do something stupid, or you don't know how to play. Let's not make changes to the Xenonauts' armoury because of tutorial levels.

[ThunderGr]

Yeah agreed, I think shields should have a vision penalty on top of armor's vision penalties, they should stack

Stacking the penalties does not make sense. Picking the largest penalty on each type does. For example, if there is angle penalty for armor 10% and an angle penalty for a shield 15%, in what way can it be explained to have a total angle penalty of 25%? Your armor does not further prevent your angle view, since the shield is blocking 15% of your angle vision. Without the shield, you could see 5% more with the shield you should get the 15% penalty, not the stacked 25%.