Walrus's Tactical Ballistic Expansion, Prerelease.

[WalrusJones]

This mod aims to add a large number of weaponry to the early ballistic weapon tier(s,) and while I hope to greatly expand on later weapon tiers eventually, for now, its bullets, and all bullets baby.

Naturally, I am taking my own risks in trying to balance the game while still providing a very large arsenal of weaponry for a number of tactical tasks.

Things that you can expect to be coming in V1:

Changes to standard ballistic weapons:

Added a Submachinegun: "A small ballistic firearm with optics designed for short range combat, it spews pistol ammunition at an alarming rate. While its range is limited, it has an excellent rate of fire, and is easy to aim, resulting in extremely high damage potential. This will likely be among the first weapons we decommission, due to its poor ability to penetrate hard armor, but for now, it is likely an excellent secondary weapon for specialist units."

- Good at breaching doors

Altered the standard rifle:

Reduced damage.

Increased armor mitigation.

Slightly increased range.

Improved aim shot accuracy, reduced normal shot accuracy.

- Overall, it is more specialized in damaging targets at longer ranges then other rifles, and softening the armor of "hard targets" like those Sebellian noncombatants I hear so much about. It is better against armor then other rifles, but has lower damage potential.

Altered the shotgun:

Increased damage, and TU costs (To simulate pumping the weapon, but awarding you good damage in exchange for it.)

Increased suppression value and radius (The radius sticks as a shotgun class feature.)

Increased reaction fire rating significantly.

- It has solidified very well into a weapon that is good for advancing on hard alien positions, moving from cover to cover while taking turns suppressing the alien with intimidating shotgun blasts.

-- I have heard reports of suppression being mildly bugged, however, in most instances where I have used them in a tactically sound manner... Shotguns have done their job admirably.

Altered the precision rifle:

Lowered damage, gave it a considerable amount of armor mitigation.

Decreased suppression value.

Removed its snapshot, to bring it in line with a very good idea from the experimental build.

- Its killing power at range has improved, its mobility.... Not so much. However, your snipers have a variety of pistols, submachineguns, shotguns, and carbines that will help with their mobility, as secondary weapons (Shotguns may push the envelope of being a little too heavy.)

Machinegun:

Wasn't altered... Yet.

Notice: All art comes from the talented LaggyWolf. Thank them for me getting ready to release early, as they did a great job!

Haggle with Soviet bureaucracies Warsaw weapons pack: (35 man days research, so three and a half days if they are a major priority for you.)

(Note, still cleaning the image for the Skorpion and the SKS... Which I did modify from the original in a moment of great sillyness.)

Soviet weaponry:

Soviet weaponry is all designed to be the set of unusual, unconventional set of weaponry. They defy class roles (Or exemplify them) more heavily then standard weapons, but also offer some of the first examples of many of the weapon classes.

AK47: "Soviet rifle" "A powerful soviet assault rifle with simple optics. While its rounds have poor ballistic properties and armor penetration, they are extremely deadly to soft targets. Its sights, while good for aiming shots quickly, tend to be fairly unscientific, loosing the gun a great deal of accuracy. This compounds with the weapons inherently high shot dispersal, and recoil."

Soviet Carbine: "A soviet carbine which uses a narrower round then its parent rifle. It fixes many of the accuracy issues of its parent rifle, but still uses the soviets conventional iron sights. As a carbine, it is extremely easy to hip-fire, and quite easy to bring to shoulder. Its muzzle break allows it to boast improved automatic fire over its parent rifle, however, it has greatly reduced single shot stopping power, making it quite dangerous to use when fighting armored opponents."

- Defines what my rebalanced carbine class will do: Superior snapshots, and faster normal shots then standard rifles, they will generally be slightly better at automatic fire, but that is not their emphasis (Machineguns, and submachineguns do emphasize automatic fire, for one reason, or another.)

Skorpion: "Soviet submachinegun" "A soviet sidarm which is designed to use its brutal rate of fire to deter approaching enemy soldiers. While unlikely to be of much use against the advanced materials used in alien armor, it may be able to ward of a wounded threat. While not advised, it is certainly available."

SVD: "Soviet sniper." "One of the most powerful anti-personnel weapon we have. While cumbersome, and difficult to aim, it is a valuable addition to the Xenonaut arsenal."

Saiga-20: "Soviet shotgun" "An interesting shotgun designed to fire light 20 gage shells at a rapid rate of fire. It sounds like one of the most threatening weapons on the battlefield, however, with the advanced armor of the aliens taken into account, it is likely to be among the less lethal."

SKS: "Soviet battle rifle" "A underpowered rifle produced shortly after World War II, designed to prototype their current AK47's round, the current model has been re-purposed to fire the overpressure rounds of a scrapped light machine gun design. Its sights are abnormally generous for a soviet weapon, but require a great deal of time to use properly. While quick shots can be made with this mildly cumbersome weapon, do not expect great precision from anyone other then the most experienced of soldiers.

An unusual feature of this version of the weapon is that the barrel sports an integrated flash suppressor. While this would be useful for fighting human soldiers while remaining hidden, this is unlikely to prove to be of much use when fighting most aliens, and simply makes the weapon turn out to be far less intimidating then it should be. Despite this, it is an excellent weapon for finishing of enemies in a crossfire situation."

- Defines the battle rifle class of weapons: They sport four aim modes (Like the old snipers,) are not heavy weapons, but are a great deal weaker, and not as mobile as other non-heavy weapons. While they generally are more damaging then other weapons, they are less damaging then machineguns, sniper rifles, and shotguns, and entirely lack a burst fire mode (Some later battle rifles may avert this.)

-- This one in particular is also fairly bad at suppressing fire.

-- Snipers out range and damage them, assault rifles out rate them, and are more versatile.

Contact civilian arms manufacturers, for a real challange: (Can be completed within 5 hours of starting!)

Civilian weapons:

Ok.

So WHAT is the point?

Why would I us this.

Quite simply, these civilian weapons are designed to add more challenge to the game if you want that, but can arguably be useful, until you find better replacements.

Hunting revolver (Weapon.ballistic.callahan:) "A revolver of great weight. The monkeys down in manufacturing played with the empty versions of these for quite some time upon their arrival, fanning the hammer to wear down the gun at an alarming speed, and playing cowboys and Indians with the (mostly) empty guns double action trigger one handedly: Neither gives good accuracy, and both are inadvisable. While aiming the weapon takes a considerable amount of time to, aim your patience is in fact rewarded when you take the time to do so.

While it has high power, owing to its being designed to kill deer, its low capacity, range, and rate of fire offset this enough that this whole weapon is probably not recommended. Despite this, it is the weapon of choice of many farmers for home defense, its also used by a few dirty cops. I don't see why we need this weapon, and I don't see why you had me calling representatives of Colt at 3:00AM in the morning to get it."

Hunting rifle: "A rifle that uses a manual lever to re-chamber rounds. This process takes some time, and is compounded by aiming the rifle, so do not expect great rates of fire from our men. It shares ammunition with the hunting revolver, which means it is very lethal, but it still lacks much of the range that military rifles have to offer.

Why I bothered with the people at Ruger to get this for you is beyond me."

Hunting shotgun: "A over-under double barrel shotgun that lacks a pump, and uses powerful 12 gage shells. It could actually be useful, due to the lack of a manual action and power similar to our military shotgun. Its long barrel also improves its range and accuracy ever so slightly.

However. It holds only two shells, and I certainly wouldn't want to get caught with my pants down in front of one of those two-legged iguanas. I don't know why you would want this either."

Note, that these are not the strings descriptions, but feel free to criticize them for grammatical issues.

However, they could be, as I am about to head out and do those in a few hours.

This is simply a brief preview of what is to come from the tier 1 edition of my ballistic will entail, as well as an announcement that it will be released this week.

On lasers and above:

This mod will have a good number of research hours in it, but relies less on alien technology to progress for the early game, if you get lucky, you might skip most of this mods later versions in terms of content.

I will cover them eventually, and very soon I will make my first touches to them.

However, I feel like getting a content base at all for you guy's skepticism and input is more important:

This mod is all things go, if you can outdo me when it comes to making magazine sprites, then I will take your magazine sprites.

If you have a balance suggestion to a lasting issue, I will test the hell out of it.

However, one thing that is fairly solid in this mod is the role of the weapon classes.

I do want carbines to be mobile weapons with a unaimed semi-auto emphasis.

Battle rifles are going to be assault rifle ranged weapons with a greater emphasis on the longer ranges, instead of the closer one.

The Submachineguns are going to stay a mobile weapon with low power, and a burst fire emphasis.

Assault Rifles are still to be all around decent guns.

Shotguns will be close range dominance guns: Good reaction fire times, good supression, short range, better then average damage.

Pistols will be one handed guns with limited accuracy, but able to be mix and matched.

Snipers, machineguns, and rocket launchers will be weapons that turn you into a powerful, barely mobile turret when equipped.

Edit: I am contemplating delaying this mod slightly, as I work on fixing a bad assumption I made earlier.

Third Tier 3 kinetic weapon art to be finished, they will generally have a similar aesthetic.

While I definitely like the first two much better, I uploaded this first.

I just need to tease, Its in my nature.

Edited June 26, 2013 by WalrusJones

[Ol' Stinky]

Lookin' good!

I have to say, I really dig that revolver. I'll probably replace the default one with that.

The idea of "hard mode" guns is cool. Maybe make them do stun damage instead of actual damage? The reason I suggest that is a stunned alien is worth +3 points, as opposed to the regular +2 for a kill. Given that these guns are not meant to be very effective, they're not going to render the later stun grenades/stun rockets useless. I like being able to go for style points at the moment by knocking out aliens with flashbangs, but I imagine that will get taken out as beta goes on; I'll miss it when it's gone.

Incidently, the suppression weirdness is a bug with the aliens, where they can use burst fire even after being suppressed. That's not meant to be the case, as suppression works by draining TUs; a suppressed unit loses all of their TUs, and then half of their max TUs when their turn comes about. That means a suppressed unit should only be able to snap shot or hobble away.

[WalrusJones]

Lookin' good!

The idea of "hard mode" guns is cool. Maybe make them do stun damage instead of actual damage? The reason I suggest that is a stunned alien is worth +3 points' date=' as opposed to the regular +2 for a kill. Given that these guns are not meant to be very effective, they're not going to render the later stun grenades/stun rockets useless. I like being able to go for style points at the moment by knocking out aliens with flashbangs, but I imagine that will get taken out as beta goes on; I'll miss it when it's gone.

[/quote']

Stun loadings for them are a possibility:

Remember, I am experimenting with making a standard weapon capable of loading several ammo types, and I have basically narrowed it down to a single method that would only not work if it caused crashes.

(Sure, the gun only has one ammo type in weapons.xml, but it has other ammo types in weapons_GC.xml that are smuggled into the "Other" tab via entering them as weapons (Like the medpacks are,) in weapons.xml)

I probably will put this off until after release, but if people are really interested in the idea of this feature, I will put off it in release until I know whether or not it works.

Tuesday, and Wednesday are the two days I am most likely to release on if I do not experiment with this feature, due to me currently writing up my specter.XML for every weapon and armor, and doing strings.

After that, there will be three more chapters in ballistics (V2, V3, and V4,) each one tackling a different planned feature of them prior to the V5 release that starts making changes to energy weapons.

V2 will either tackle multiple ammo types (If possible,) or the tier 2, manufactured firearms (Consolidated, enhanced versions of the tier 1 firearms.)

V3 will obviously cover the other.

V4 is the alloys constructed firearms, and I have gotten some very cool images for them, of some guns that look very futuristic for ballistic weapons.

These weapons will push back the development of lasers slightly, and actually become almost able to keep up with the basic lasers (The current laser carbine, for example,) using T2 ammo (Manufactured, but no resources used...)

Tier 2 will also contain three oddball weapons as well, which are designed to be the butt end of the challenge run weapons: They require literally the most experienced soldiers you can possibly get to use effectively... But be laughably awesome when used with these soldiers. (Being weapons that are far beyond the human limits to use.)

I await the day that I see someone successfully beat the game using them, preferably with recorded footage.

However, that will come after many hours of testing and XML sweeping, and this is probably the second to last time I will need to post in this thread.

I will be back when I have the finished V1.0 of the mod out, and be ready to answer your questions then.

Remember "You ain't gonna probe my corn-hole you alien communist sonnavabishe."

Edited June 25, 2013 by WalrusJones

[MisterLock]

Well...I read all of that...and man I'm impressed...Just...good job all around!This is looking awesome.

On the idea of the AK...I always thought that the Ak would be more a shottie type weapon but be good in the role of a medium-close range rifle...Kinda like the Smg but a little bit more accurate.The idea is...over the regular rifle...The Ak would fire more damaging rounds and have an incredible burst fire(around 4 or 5) and medium armor mitigation.One of the counter parts to this power could be to actually make it a heavy weapon(in code).Another one would be that you need to actually manufacture it's ammo...because it's bullets are so powerfull I think there is no way that they are not modified(You know bigger casing,etc).Just an idea

[WalrusJones]

Well...I read all of that...and man I'm impressed...Just...good job all around!This is looking awesome.

On the idea of the AK...I always thought that the Ak would be more a shottie type weapon but be good in the role of a medium-close range rifle...Kinda like the Smg but a little bit more accurate.The idea is...over the regular rifle...The Ak would fire more damaging rounds and have an incredible burst fire(around 4 or 5) and medium armor mitigation.One of the counter parts to this power could be to actually make it a heavy weapon(in code).Another one would be that you need to actually manufacture it's ammo...because it's bullets are so powerfull I think there is no way that they are not modified(You know bigger casing,etc).Just an idea

Breaking my second to last post prediction on the previous thing:

As of my current balancing....

The AK is more automatic fire oriented then the M16, both its aimed shot, and its burst shot take 35 TU's instead of the standard 40, and it does considerably more damage then the M16 at close range....

However, the its shot is the second most innacurate attack in the game (It actually may be the most, currently,) and its aimed shot isn't that much of an improvement over the normal shot.... However, it does have the benefit that privates are generally able to fire a snap shot after their bursts.

However, its still very much a rifle, just one with a very powerful burst that requires shorter ranges to be used effectively, and a less accurate, but more mobile aimed shot, however, in comparison to the M16 (Or "Military rifle.") It is one of the best weapons for less experienced riflemen, (And is suspiciously effective in zerg rushes... I am not concerned, as these zerg rushes generally have a 60% casualty ratio when you are engaging multiple enemies.)

Eventually, more experienced troops will find the standard military rifle, or a specialist weapon better, I have found.

Having a weapon use manufactured ammo as a default is something I am not too into:

While I plan on adding manufactured ammunition types as a secondary set of ammunition's (Which only a handful of tier 1 weapons will be able to use,) I haven't confirmed whether or not I can do so without crashing the game.

Edited June 25, 2013 by WalrusJones

[In Armor Clad]

I make this post with some slight hesitation due to balancing issues that may arise --

Realistically, Sniper Rifles are second only to full-automatic heavy weaponry as far as suppression goes - especially in terms of military combat. The average untrained person might get scared stiff from the roar of a shotgun, but trained personnel seem to handle it better. On the other than hand, when it comes to getting shot at by a sniper, it's full-on panic mode and everyone scrambles ( or maybe that's just too many war movies ).

Their damage is incredibly high ( obviously ), their accuracy is outstanding, and they come in an extremely wide variety. For example, some of them are meant to be mobile (in terms of sniper rifle weight, at least) and fire smaller caliber rounds, while other sniper rifles are heavy, hulking behemoths that are meant to be set up at extreme ranges and not move very often.

As it stands, Realism vs Balance is precarious when it comes to Sniper Rifles in particular. Even now, in the vanilla version of the game ( both on the normal and Experimental ) I run with 3 Snipers. With mods ( namely: Little Mod ) I use 4 and they absolutely destroy everything that they have line of sight to - up until we get to the tougher enemies. It's hard to balance them - too much damage, armor penetration, range, accuracy, and suppression makes them good for everything -except- going into the downed UFO itself.

By the same token, later enemies mitigate a lot of their usefulness ( aka; the androids ), who shouldn't be suppressed -ever-, and whose armor makes them even take 4ish rounds from a standard ballistic Sniper Rifle and even more for any other kind of ballistic weaponry. Even more so, larger UFO's mean more of the combat takes place inside the UFO itself, which yet again severely limits them.

Edited June 25, 2013 by In Armor Clad

[WalrusJones]

I make this post with some slight hesitation due to balancing issues that may arise --

Realistically, Sniper Rifles are second only to full-automatic heavy weaponry as far as suppression goes - especially in terms of military combat. The average untrained person might get scared stiff from the roar of a shotgun, but trained personnel seem to handle it better. On the other than hand, when it comes to getting shot at by a sniper, it's full-on panic mode and everyone scrambles ( or maybe that's just too many war movies ).

Their damage is incredibly high ( obviously ), their accuracy is outstanding, and they come in an extremely wide variety. For example, some of them are meant to be mobile (in terms of sniper rifle weight, at least) and fire smaller caliber rounds, while other sniper rifles are heavy, hulking behemoths that are meant to be set up at extreme ranges and not move very often.

As it stands, Realism vs Balance is precarious when it comes to Sniper Rifles in particular. Even now, in the vanilla version of the game ( both on the normal and Experimental ) I run with 3 Snipers. With mods ( namely: Little Mod ) I use 4 and they absolutely destroy everything that they have line of sight to - up until we get to the tougher enemies. It's hard to balance them - too much damage, armor penetration, range, accuracy, and suppression makes them good for everything -except- going into the downed UFO itself.

By the same token, later enemies mitigate a lot of their usefulness ( aka; the androids ), who shouldn't be suppressed -ever-, and whose armor makes them even take 4ish rounds from a standard ballistic Sniper Rifle and even more for any other kind of ballistic weaponry. Even more so, larger UFO's mean more of the combat takes place inside the UFO itself, which yet again severely limits them.

I have rebalanced the standard sniper:

It rarely kills on the first shot (Low base damage,) but is a good deal more effective against later game enemies then any of the other standard ballistic weapons (High armor mitigation.)

It has lost its old snapshot as well, in line with the very good nerf it received in the experimental build.

The alternate, soviet sniper is pretty powerful, but its accuracy is nothing to sing to home about, and its TU costs are somewhat bad.

The battle rifle is something that I am a little afraid of becoming a bit too powerful due to its role as a squad marksman weapon, but I feel I have made it so that its low TU cost shots are unappealing enough that it isn't going to be too mobile, but it does its job well as a squad marksmans weapon.

Both snipers are fairly good at suppression in both the vanilla game, and my mod.... However, suppression falls off with range by the games mechanics, meaning that these attributes are rarely exercised.

[In Armor Clad]

I have rebalanced the standard sniper:

It rarely kills on the first shot (Low base damage,) but is a good deal more effective against later game enemies then any of the other standard ballistic weapons (High armor mitigation.)

It has lost its old snapshot as well, in line with the very good nerf it received in the experimental build.

The alternate, soviet sniper is pretty powerful, but its accuracy is nothing to sing to home about, and its TU costs are somewhat bad.

The battle rifle is something that I am a little afraid of becoming a bit too powerful due to its role as a squad marksman weapon, but I feel I have made it so that its low TU cost shots are unappealing enough that it isn't going to be too mobile, but it does its job well as a squad marksmans weapon.

Both snipers are fairly good at suppression in both the vanilla game, and my mod.... However, suppression falls off with range by the games mechanics, meaning that these attributes are rarely exercised.

What would make the battle rifle stand out against one extreme or the other, though? Example: Sniper Rifle soldiers are supreme at long range, while other weapons ( namely shotguns ) would be supreme at close range?

Also: Is suppression determined by distance and the weapon itself, or is it some other mechanic?

[WalrusJones]

What would make the battle rifle stand out against one extreme or the other, though? Example: Sniper Rifle soldiers are supreme at long range, while other weapons ( namely shotguns ) would be supreme at close range?

Also: Is suppression determined by distance and the weapon itself, or is it some other mechanic?

The Distance, and the shot fired by a weapon:

I can tune how much a weapon suppresses on all of its single shot attacks, and its various burst shots, per bullet.

The sniper rifles are much longer range then the battle rifles, and give more accuracy per TU with their strongest aimed shots, but lack snap shots, and are considered heavy weapons in regards to accuracy.

The battle rifles share the same range of effective ranges with assault rifles, but have worse snap and normal shots, lack burst fire, and have two levels of aimed shot (Like a sniper does, but with slightly worse accuracy economy then its sniper brothers,) but are better at a long range then an assault rifle, better at short range then a sniper rifle. They are very effective against armored units, and the first one is bad at suppressing fire (Due to having a silent round, and a flash hider.)

- They are similar to assault rifles. While assault rifles are capable at most ranges, but better at close ranges, battle rifles are the opposite, being better at the edge of their range limit, and fairly poor in close quarters combat in comparison to assault rifles.

Both are valid as a mainstay weapon, but both will fall behind specialist weapons (Shotguns, carbines, machine-guns, and sniper rifles,) in doing their respective jobs.

[Sathra]

Did you modify the aiprops.xml file?

[WalrusJones]

Did you modify the aiprops.xml file?

I have set it back to vanilla, I believe.

I do not want to leave the civilians using weapon.ballistic.callahan.

It gets really ugly, really fast that way.

I have changed the friendly AI props, however, that does not happen in AIprops, actually, but missiontypeprops.

In other news: The LAST of my strings that I needed is "finished." I am considering cutting down the redundant set of weapon stats in the strings files, as they are redundant copy over the top-box which is somehow HARDER to modify then weapons.xml and simply serve to have me spend more time in text editors... Most of these description block stats are going to be inaccurate because of me considering cutting them.

I only need to write specter files, and fix my xenopedia entries (As well as rewriting them...)

Then, I will be ready for release.

I am going to play the most gloriously inappropriate music for writing a WEAPONS mod as I possibly can, and muscle through the rest of this.

Edited June 26, 2013 by WalrusJones

[Sathra]

I was asking because in vanilla no aliens have armour.

[WalrusJones]

I was asking because in vanilla no aliens have armour.

Ohh........

Hmm.

This presents balance issues for when aliens actually obtain armor, since I have done a single set balance passes against unarmored aliens it seems...

V1 is basically a beta mod, and a lot of weapons have armor mitigation values to allow my to benchmark alien soldiers "X would reasonably be pierced by X," etc etc.

V2 seems like it will be the experiment with alternate ammo types, and alien armor as opposed to the tier 2 kinetic weapons.

Edit: Fixing the last of the Xenopedia entries.... And some crashes caused from a few file reversions.

Some sprite cleaning, and the Soldier specters.... Then I will be ready to release this V1, Albiet, balance will likely be poorer then I anticipated due to the beta nature of this mod, and me making a bad assumption (Every weapon is still best at its intended job, its just that the alien armor that most of these weapons were supposedly balanced around has yet to exist.)

As I grew further into the strings segment, I got tired.

You can see it in the cynical nature of the writing I had late into this session.

Edited June 26, 2013 by WalrusJones

[Sathra]

Yeah. To compensate for their lack of armour, they have alot of health.

That's why there's an AIprops.xml file in my mod, to give aliens armour and reduce their health as well.

[WalrusJones]

Yeah. To compensate for their lack of armour, they have alot of health.

That's why there's an AIprops.xml file in my mod, to give aliens armour and reduce their health as well.

That presents a challenge....

I have created a rebalanced version that should be better for the armorless-aliens (With the assumption that random damage is a thing.)

However, The next version will have alien kinetic armor, to begin the cycle of ballistics falling out. (I do have three tiers of weapons planned out.)

I have finished the sprite cleaning (with some help from my incredibly talented assistant,) and some time early in the morning, I will probably finish the xenonaut specters files, make a zip, and get ready for the complaints as I forget a vital element of the mods file-structure, causing a catastrophic crash that fries millions of computers.

Edited June 26, 2013 by WalrusJones

[Ol' Stinky]

Yeah, there's random damage. Have you seen the wiki for Xenonauts? It's not gospel, as some of it's outdated, but I think it's still mostly accurate.

You should also take a peek at config.xml. You'd expect it to be various graphic options such as resolution etc., but it's actually got a LOT of gameplay variables, such as the range of random damage. If you want to eliminate random damage while you do testing, you can. In fact, if you were so inclined, you could probably remove any random chance from shooting.

[WalrusJones]

Yeah' date=' there's random damage. Have you seen the wiki for Xenonauts? It's not gospel, as some of it's outdated, but I think it's still mostly accurate.

You should also take a peek at config.xml. You'd expect it to be various graphic options such as resolution etc., but it's actually got a LOT of gameplay variables, such as the range of random damage. If you want to eliminate random damage while you do testing, you can. In fact, if you were so inclined, you could probably remove any random chance from shooting.

I do want to have one of the balancing factors of my mod be that sometimes, certain spammy types of weapons will do 0 damage against their intended enemy if they haven't suffered any armor degradation... And...

Default armor degradation is at a shockingly high level, if I am reading that right.

However....

Yeah. Reading this file is extremely useful, there are a lot of changes that will need to wait a few versions, and I will be releasing when I finish the soldier specter files, and redo the xenopedia images.... Packaging all the changes that are ready for release into V1, simply so people have something to offer feedback on.

Edited June 26, 2013 by WalrusJones

[Ol' Stinky]

I think the value for armor degredation is a percentage, so the default's 10% of the weapon's damage before mitigation. A shot unaffected by range damage dropoff that has a value of 50 damage should reduce the target's armour by 5 (after damage has been dealt).

I'm going by old info I found from a Google search, so my info might be out of date, but I doubt everyone loses 10 armour per hit.

[WalrusJones]

I think the value for armor degredation is a percentage' date=' so the default's 10% of the weapon's damage before mitigation. A shot unaffected by range damage dropoff that has a value of 50 damage should reduce the target's armour by 5 (after damage has been dealt).

I'm going by old info I found from a Google search, so my info might be out of date, but I doubt everyone loses 10 armour per hit.[/quote']

That still means that the weakest weapons inflict two extra damage for every successive hit on average... (One for the literal weakest weapon.)

Which for some weapons adds up.

Edited June 26, 2013 by WalrusJones

[Ol' Stinky]

Yeah. Healing a guy up can give a false sense of security because while he might no longer have a huge hole in him, the aliens' plasma has left him completely naked. Hopefully the UI will show us how much armour a soldier has later on in beta.

[WalrusJones]

Well. I have done an extra pass of cleaning on the sprites, and they are starting to go extremely well with the UI, making the old impressive sprites of old look like they were from another game. (Of course, none of this would be possible without the incredibly impressive sprites of old being so high quality.... And there is the fact that I severely damaged the old sprites toying with them heavily before using them myself, like a fool. So basically, all this means is that I overwrote my own artistic incompetence damaging my teammates work.)

Edit: Actually, I am reverting these changes, they look good with photoshop as a backdrop.... But they really dont look nearly as good in game.

Aside from that...

I am almost ready to release.

Not much else to say.

So much for two remaining posts left, hah. Hah.

Edited June 26, 2013 by WalrusJones

[Sathra]

Though armour degradation only seems to happen if the shot actually causes damage. The vehicles in my mod can take enormous amounts of gunfire, right till a shot rolls high enough to get over their armour and they get shredded. I had a Scimitar take nearly 15 Heavy Plasma shots with only 20 damage taken by the end of it.

[WalrusJones]

Though armour degradation only seems to happen if the shot actually causes damage. The vehicles in my mod can take enormous amounts of gunfire, right till a shot rolls high enough to get over their armour and they get shredded. I had a Scimitar take nearly 15 Heavy Plasma shots with only 20 damage taken by the end of it.

That is a big part of why the standard, more accurate snipers being high armor mitigation, medium damage is going to be a significant thing in this mod: They will make hard targets softer.

More importantly, this mod will probably favor medium health enemies with enough armor to absorb 40-70% of the firepower I intend for them for the first shot.

I probably wont be going to ramp up armor as quickly as you have in the early versions of the mod, as a big part of it: The early, incremental upgrades that the tier 2 and 3 kinetic weapons and ammo's are a big part of my plan, and guard/soldier armor values will take a hike up at that point.

However, at least I know how much of a challange I have to face at this moment...

As for the rest...

I shouldn't really be posting right now, as I was so closed to finished with finishing the last few files I needed prior to zipping it up.

[Sathra]

Might be worth having a look at the various mission xml's (and maybe ufocontents folder) so players have the time to try out various weapon builds. Its very fast progression in vanilla atm.

I greatly extended the game progression in my mod for two reasons: I love the ground combat, so being able to fight more combats doesn't sound bad to me. Also lets you expand more easily. The other reason was that there were a few complaints that the switchover was too fast between the Fighter and Heavy Fighter eras.

Now you can see how my mod (which was originally just a ground combat rebalance) became the monster it is today.

[Ol' Stinky]

Though armour degradation only seems to happen if the shot actually causes damage. The vehicles in my mod can take enormous amounts of gunfire, right till a shot rolls high enough to get over their armour and they get shredded. I had a Scimitar take nearly 15 Heavy Plasma shots with only 20 damage taken by the end of it.

That sounds like it might be a bug/unintended. After all, the whole point of armour degradation is that shots dealing zero damage still have significance! Hopefully a dev spots your post.