Ground Combat Balance Discussion v19 Experimental

[Sathra]

Yeah, I'm trying to rebalance smoke grenades downwards in my mod so aliens will actually fire through smoke. At 30 they simply decide to never shoot, even at under 10 tiles range.

I.e. Basically, throw a smoke and breach, and as long as you stay inside the smoke you are completely safe.

As for stun batons, they work pretty well. 2 hits to stun a Sebbie non-com at full health. Its just getting into melee range with 30+ TU to smack it down that's the hard part.

[Sathra]

Another thing to add is aliens can fire too much. I've had non-coms fire 2 single shots and a burst (total 60 AP - modded weapons_gc) even though they should only have 50 AP.

Is it related?

[Nickboom]

Well I have been using aimed shot and the chance to hit is still horrible for the most part I only have like a 50% chance at maximum.

[svidangel]

It would be nice if the accuracy were higher at close range even at low skill levels, then dropped off more quickly as the range opened up to compensate and allow increased accuracy to still be very useful later on.

Smoke grenades should just be reworked to act like in previous games, block vision, not lower accuracy.

[Andeerz]

The accuracy dropoff with range definitely needs fixed... and should be as moddable as possible in the config files.

And I think I agree with the idea of smoke grenades blocking vision.

[StellarRat]

It would be nice if the accuracy were higher at close range even at low skill levels, then dropped off more quickly as the range opened up to compensate and allow increased accuracy to still be very useful later on.

Smoke grenades should just be reworked to act like in previous games, block vision, not lower accuracy.

I've tried to get Goldhawk to implement a different accuracy formula which solves this problem and others, so far Chris has said he'd think about it. I truly hope it will be put in place as current formula has flaws, IMO.

Check here for the discussion and graphs: http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/4275-Shot-Miss-Scattering?p=56673&viewfull=1#post56673

The two main changes would be that weapon accuracy falls off rapidly if trying to fire past the effective range and rises rapidly if you get closer than about half the weapons effective range. So, point blank shots are nearly impossible to miss.

With the current formula special modifers are applied for less than 8 tiles range to make them more accurate, but at long range (as far as I know) it's quite possible to hit someone 10% to 20% of the time with some of the weapons even across the entire map (assuming no cover.) Of course, the damage will be much reduced, but to me that is counterintuitive. That also means you really can't move around someone's flanks over open ground no matter how far away you are.

Edited June 19, 2013 by StellarRat

[Lightzy]

Stun grenades are uber. One is enough to down a sibelian soldier. my guys feel like super commandos.. run into ship, throw 2 stuns (perfectly accurate throw every single time), down 2 sib soldiers no fuss.

If I had to use guns to take them out it would have taken like 5 turns with great risk

[Solarius Scorch]

Stun grenades are uber. One is enough to down a sibelian soldier. my guys feel like super commandos.. run into ship, throw 2 stuns (perfectly accurate throw every single time), down 2 sib soldiers no fuss.

If I had to use guns to take them out it would have taken like 5 turns with great risk

Not sure about v19, but back in v18 I felt gas grenades were useless and didn't work at all. Flashbangs, on the other hands, were working very nicely.

[Ol' Stinky]

We'll get to the bottom of the alien-firing-while-suppressed issue, it just seems to have many layers...

I'm also interested to hear more about the ancillary equipment like stun batons, smoke grenades, C4 etc... they all need to be important enough to be useful, but not so useful you can't do without them.

I've not used stun batons yet. I'm not entirely sure how stun works in this game, so I'm not willing to send someone in and risk having them being unable to stun an enemy and get brutally murdered when I hit "end turn". Considering I can use stun ranged weapons (grenades, rockets), I'm not taking the risk. Once the floating damage numbers include stun values as well as damage ones, it'll be better, but I'm still not sure I'd use stun batons.

But even with numbers it'll still be risky. So I do, say, 40 stun damage against a caesan soldier. Unless I open up aiprops.xml, I don't know how good that is. Will another 40 stun damage do the trick? Or should I use remaining TUs to try and get my baton guy to safety? I can't make the right decision without looking up the guard's resilience. Maybe there should be an indication of how badly wounded an enemy is when you do damage, at least on easy/normal difficulties. So instead of a simple "40 stun damage" floating above the soldiers head when he gets shocked, it'd read "40 stun damage (80hp remaining)" or "40 stun damage (66% remaining)" or "40 stun damage (lightly stunned)", depending on how vague you can afford to be.

You might want to take the stun damage off of flashbangs, too. I've captured a bunch of aliens in the light scout/scout phase of my v19 HF1 game with my alien weapon variant mod by spamming flashbangs.

Is it the case that smoke reduces accuracy by 20% per smokey square? So a soldier behind 4 squares of smoke has a ~40% chance of being hit, given an otherwise perfectly accurate alien shot with no cover involved? I use it a lot, and will do even if the miss chance doesn't stack. As long as units are positioned accordingly, it's a decent trade: extra defense at the cost of offense (since popping smoke will generally cost a gunshot). If the LoS penalty gets put in and it turns out to only affect xnauts, I might use smoke a lot less, though.

I've never used C4. I can carry enough grenades to breach any walls I want at the moment, so I don't see the need.

Edited June 20, 2013 by Ol' Stinky
It's "resilience". Bad Stinky.

[Lightzy]

well then let me tell u that right now stun grenades are the most powerful weapon in the game. sibelian guard? one 100% hit chance grenade and they're down. no need for all that fus and mus with guns and shot accuracy

Edited June 20, 2013 by Lightzy

[Ol' Stinky]

It takes a few stun grenades for me, but that might be because I'm a lot less lucky with the throws than you are, and they don't hit the stupid lizards in the face. I'm guessing splash stun is half as effective or so than a direct hit stun, the same way splash damage is less effective than direct damage...? I'm 100% in agreement with you that grenades are awesome at the moment, though. Hopefully that'll be sorted when stray fire is fixed/accuracy on guns is tuned better, and we don't have to see huge nerfs to grenades. I really like having grenadiers as an option.

[Harmor]

I would love if soldiers would stop shooting into the cover they're behind as often as they do - it's quite immersion breaking among other things. Another thing is when you have two guys on the same grid, no matter how many tiles seperate them a missed shot seems to ALWAYS hit the guy in front of the shooter.

[Ol' Stinky]

I would love if soldiers would stop shooting into the cover they're behind as often as they do - it's quite immersion breaking among other things. Another thing is when you have two guys on the same grid, no matter how many tiles seperate them a missed shot seems to ALWAYS hit the guy in front of the shooter.

Yeah. There's a short range check already which improves accuracy, it'd be cool if it could ignore cover as well. It's only something like 5 tiles away from a unit, so it wouldn't be that gamebreaking. And I don't think any cover you're behind will ever be bigger, it's usually 2 or 3 tiles at most.

Another thing I'm not keen on is the difference in ease of suppression at the beginning and the end of a mission. At the start, flashbangs are only useful to stun, and then when you breach the ufo, pretty much everything will suppress an alien. We already have a system around that can simulate teams freaking out when a number of them die, and that's morale. Make suppression hinge a lot less on taking losses (or unaffected by losses) and tune morale accordingly. This would also make the xenonauts not be so suppression-resistant. The aliens really can't pin down my guys at the moment.

Suppression is a really interesting mechanic, and I'd like it to always be important in combat. It's a big factor in making ground combat so much cooler than OG X-Com for me. Morale is also a great mechanic, but it's such a game-changer that I'm fine with it being phased out as the game goes on.

[StellarRat]

I would love if soldiers would stop shooting into the cover they're behind as often as they do - it's quite immersion breaking among other things. Another thing is when you have two guys on the same grid, no matter how many tiles seperate them a missed shot seems to ALWAYS hit the guy in front of the shooter.

If the cover is directly in front of the soldier (one tile away) and only half height than his shots should never it. You should report stuff like that as a bug. If there is any more than one tile separation than there is a chance shot will hit the cover and, of course, full height cover will stop all shots. Eventually, grenades will be able to be tossed over full height cover, but I don't know when that's coming.

[Solarius Scorch]

Eventually, grenades will be able to be tossed over full height cover, but I don't know when that's coming.

Not long now, hopefully. I want to mod a mortar.

[Max_Caine]

I'm fairly certain I've written this previously, but I think it bears writing again. Having seen no psychic powers in the game at all, I took the step of altering the ufocontents xmls to introduce psychic troops right off the bat, to see what psychic powers are like. Psychic troopers virtually never use their psychic abilities - even the ones whose only job is to use psychic abilities! I'll hear the psychic power noise once in a mission (then the psychic power crashes the game, but hey!) and this was after I set all psychic power costs to 5 APs to act as a massive incentive to use psychic powers over normal weapons. They don't use utility psychic abilities like the locate enemies psychic power at all, which I would assume would be the first power used if it was available. Crashes caused by psychic powers aside, aliens that can use psychic powers need to actually use them! I would suggest droping the AP cost of all psychic powers to act as an incentive to use the powers (esp. locate enemies, which is set to 50AP!).

[Nickboom]

Btw does anyone else think capturing live aliens should give like 10k a alien?

[ThunderGr]

Btw does anyone else think capturing live aliens should give like 10k a alien?

Not me.

[Nickboom]

Not me.

I only say this because after you get the first one you dont have any reason to capture that alien type again

[Ol' Stinky]

Well, you do get more points for capturing them than killing them. I guess I could go for making it more than +3 points per capture depending on how much each point ends up being worth once the balancing's done, but it shouldn't be a huge factor in making money, just an option to get style points on a mission.

[Nickboom]

Also I met those zombifying alien things I really think they way they work is cheap they just run up *boop* INSTANT DEATH AND ZOMBIE

[dajarvi]

In the steam stable version, Foxtrots are extremely powerful against light ufo's. In the v19 experimental, they are weaker than condors, and don't have an auto-canon. I haven't been able to figure out how to give them that option either. Also, in v19, resource gathering from downed spaceships has been limited to alloys only. I'm not sure if this was intentional or not. Ground combat thus far has been better than Steam stable version.

Also, I'm not sure the benefits of construction base improvements. I'm sure that will be touched on later. Keep up the good work.

[Sathra]

Reapers tend to run if you shoot at them with reaction fire. So if I know there's reapers in the mission, I keep a few troopers with spare TU's (pistols are great for this).

[Dranak]

In the steam stable version, Foxtrots are extremely powerful against light ufo's. In the v19 experimental, they are weaker than condors, and don't have an auto-canon. I haven't been able to figure out how to give them that option either. Also, in v19, resource gathering from downed spaceships has been limited to alloys only. I'm not sure if this was intentional or not. Ground combat thus far has been better than Steam stable version.

Also, I'm not sure the benefits of construction base improvements. I'm sure that will be touched on later. Keep up the good work.

Foxtrots don't get close range weapons. They're pretty much long range (torpedo) delivery platforms. What do you mean by them being weaker than Condors?

[Black Cat]

In the steam stable version, Foxtrots are extremely powerful against light ufo's. In the v19 experimental, they are weaker than condors, and don't have an auto-canon..

Yeah I don't get this either. Condors can handle scouts and light scouts. You don't need fox's till you get to corvettes.

Then again after reading in the experimental build that Fox's have been regulated to 2 torps and 2 missles I haven't tried it. The idea of not being able to put 4 torps on a single fox makes them next to worthless in my eyes. They can't dodge so I would never try and use them against a fighter or interceptor. And anything I need to hit with torps shrug off missles.