Ground Combat Balance Discussion v19 Experimental Build 3

[Aaron]

The new experimental build contains a few new tweaks and improvements for the Ground Combat portion of the game, so I thought I would refresh this thread for some new feedback. New additions include expanded damage numbers (they now also show stun damage and healing), reduced grenade TU costs, tweaks to some throwing ranges (flares can be thrown further, C4 shorter) and the alien heavy plasma rifle is now a short range high damage weapon instead of a burst firing suppression weapon. I imagine the changes to the Geoscape balance will probably also have had an impact on the kind of encounters in the ground combat too.

Fire away.

[Ol' Stinky]

Do you want us to discuss the new additions/tweaks specifically, or can we talk about things in general?

If it's HF3 specific:

- Let's hear it for damage/healing numbers. I love floating numbers, especially coloured floating numbers! The blue stun numbers are a little hard to make out, though.

- I like reduced TU cost for grenades, although I suspect a nerf is on the horizon (especially for stun grenades). If you decide to revert the TU cost reduction, maybe you could take an approach similar to flares/C4 throw range, and make smoke grenades easier to drop than frag/stun grenades?

- Thanks for making the trigger distance of burst reaction fire a moddable variable in config.xml.

- The new inventory popup is cool.

If it's not HF3 specific:

I think hypervelocity might be too good as a perk. The LMG range of guns sacrifice accuracy and mobility for damage and suppression. The rocket launchers have overdamage, meaning that while they're powerful, you sacrifice performance on the geoscape for performance in ground combat. Snipers get the ability to pretty much negate cover at the cost of...what, exactly?

I'm playing a modless HF3 game and am running a squad of almost entirely snipers. And why not? The ease of carrying backup weapons means that they can transition into breaching the UFO without any fuss. They can negate enemy cover, and unlike the rocket launcher, don't risk burning money to do so. A bunch of LMGs and rifles will spend their days plinking away at the crate in front of the alien, whereas snipers can ignore it for the most part.

Fighting against hypervelocity weapons isn't much fun either. Cover's suddenly useless, which is lame considering how the player's conditioned to make full use of cover before enemy snipers appear.

One issue in taking hypervelocity out is that there's a risk of losing flavour. If it simply loses hypervelocity it might seem like a different type of assault rifle. If it gains suppression then it might come off as a variety of LMG. So how about this: instead of hypervelocity, sniper rifles inflict morale damage on units that are within a (say) 2 tile radius of where the shot lands. No other weapon does this, as far as I know, and it would make snipers a bit different.

Edited July 6, 2013 by Ol' Stinky

[ThunderGr]

instead of hypervelocity' date=' sniper rifles inflict [i']morale[/i] damage on units that are within a (say) 2 tile radius of where the shot lands. No other weapon does this, as far as I know, and it would make snipers a bit different.

In my opinion, Sniper rifles are precise weapons that can do lots of damage at the right hands and have great accuracy. So, my opinion is that the Sniper Rifles should get an accuracy boost and have a chance to inflict double damage or kill the target in one hit or both, depending on the soldier handling them. That would make more sense, in terms of realism. I would rather have hypervelocity removed from the game. Destruction of cover is already there, penetration of cover by bullets is less common and depends on too many variables in order to be worth including in the game. Oh, and they have to take an accuracy hit in close distance, to make up for the accuracy boost, since you are not able to use the scope at close distances and this transforms them to a, rather cumbersome, rifle that lacks auto fire and cannot be aimed, forcing snapshots at low accuracy and rate of fire.

[Ol' Stinky]

Yeah, I agree about the CQC issue too. Shotguns give up so much to be the best at close range; a target being close isn't really a problem for a sniper. Close distance seems to be 1-10 squares, given the ranges of the pistol and shotgun, and the burst reaction fire distance. Either an accuracy or damage penalty for firing that close with a sniper would be fine by me.

[Xenomorph]

Floating numbers don't seem to be working for Androns and Drones...?

[kabill]

Only started playing yesterday, so sorry if any of this is old news.

Main comment, having not played any of the earlier builds, is that the tactical game seems to be limited by a serious lack of incentive to close with or aggressively attack the enemy. This, I think, seems to come from the very low hit chances, even at close range and especially with the weapon which is supposed to be best in close quarters (i.e. the shotgun).

It seems to be the case that I can get very high % shots with a precision rifle even against targets in cover (~70% is not uncommon). In contrast, when I close with soldier armed with a shotgun or assault rifle, I'm usually looking at ~35% at most (against uncovered targets). Obviously, this is comparing an aimed shot (with the precision rifle) to a snap shot with the rifle/shotgun, but given the TUs required to move into position, they're about equivalent.

The consequence of this is that its never worth attacking in close quarters. Not only are your soldiers less likely to actually kill anything, but they're also made more vulnerable by being close to the enemy and out of cover. It also leads to what seem to be quite silly situations. In the terror mission I did, I was fighting a Sibellian with three of my own soldiers. One was attacking it from a position where it was covered, the other two shooting from its flank, with all soldiers within ~7 squares of it. It took me at least four turns to kill it (quite possibly more). Fortunately, it didn't hit my guys either, but the situation was such that there didn't seem to be anything I could do to improve my chances (short of pulling all my guys over to kill that one alien) and there was utterly no reward for having outflanked it) and the outcome was determined by luck.

Overall, then (and to echo comments above) I wonder whether close-range combat doesn't need to be made more viable. UFO: EU was all about long-range sniping; it would be nice for this game not to be.

Other things:

- LMG seems stronger than the rifle. While the rifle can be used for single shots with a low TU cost (therefore making it more flexible), the chance to hit with these shots is low enough that it doesn't really matter (and the aliens are tough enough relative to the damage for them to shrug it off even in the event of a hit). The main use for both weapons therefore seems to be suppression, but the LMG is far better at this because it gets more shots, while the move-and-fire penalty is almost irrelevant, since you're not likely to hit with burst fire anyway. I'd like to see the TU cost for burst fire for LMG and rifle differentiated, such that rifles use less TUs to use burst fire. That way, the rifle can be used to suppress with greater mobility, while the LMG is actually better at it (at the expense of mobility).

- As above, I didn't see any damage numbers at all. Only floating numbers I saw were for healing.

- The first month's battles overall don't show a lot of variety. By the end of the first game-month, I really wanted to be doing something other raiding another small scout. None of those missions had very much of an intensity to them; I wonder whether a more intense/challenging mission in the first month wouldn't be a good plan to mix things up a little bit?

- I know AI is being worked on, but I'd like to see aliens in the UFO be a bit more active (by, say, poking their heads out of the UFO occasionally). It's very easy to at the moment to get everyone nicely lined up to attack the UFO as well as to exploit the UFO doors closing every turn, because the aliens never come out to get you.

[RawCode]

looks like xenonauts immortal on easy and normal (and new damage indication does not show on veteran and insane), looks like feature, but completely "undocumented".

[Ol' Stinky]

- I know AI is being worked on, but I'd like to see aliens in the UFO be a bit more active (by, say, poking their heads out of the UFO occasionally). It's very easy to at the moment to get everyone nicely lined up to attack the UFO as well as to exploit the UFO doors closing every turn, because the aliens never come out to get you.

This reminds me: can we have C4 not cause overdamage? Considering enemies can easily move away from the blast now that C4 can't be used as grenades, if you kill an alien with C4 you deserve to get the money reward. It's not like using a rocket launcher, where you choose to use a really powerful weapon with the risk of destroying the alien plasma guns; the only reason I'm bringing along C4 is out of curiosity, honestly. As Kabill says, you don't actually want to destroy the UFO doors. Especially if you have (drum roll please) hypervelocity weapons, as you can fire through the closed doors and hit aliens without exposing soldiers to reaction fire.

I emphatically second the comment about early missions being dull. It's not just a question of challenge, it's a question of enemy types. Is there anyone out there that's thought anything along the lines of, "Looks like this light scout has a sebillian crew, I'd better change my tactics accordingly"? Outside of powerlevellers firing bullets at a poor lizardman's feet for twenty turns, I mean.

Edit: You can turn damage numbers on for vet/superhuman if you want. Lines 73-78 of config.xml in Xenonauts\assets look like this:

    <DamageText offset="-84" offsetCrouched="-64" displayDelay="1.5" fadeDelay="2.5"               difficultyEasyOn="1" difficultyNormalOn="1" difficultyVeteranOn="0" difficultySuperhumanOn="0">       <DamageColour     red="1.0" green="0.2" blue="0.2" />       <StunDamageColour red="0.2" green="0.2" blue="0.7" />       <HealingColour    red="0.2" green="1.0" blue="0.2" />   </DamageText>

Change the zeros to ones and away you go.

Edited July 7, 2013 by Ol' Stinky

[RawCode]

xenonauts turn mortal on day 20 or immortality before day 20 was glitch\bug.

also c4 unable to blast ufo doors, looks like doors invulnerable for some reason.

[Ol' Stinky]

Some of them seem to be destroyable, though, I used some C4 and took out a set of the inner doors in a corvette earlier.

[RawCode]

inner doors on corvete can be blasted by normal sniper by 3 shots, but external doors not.

[smoitessier]

You can't throw C4 anymore, bummer, never tried it but sounded fun, why was it removed? being overpowered ?

[kabill]

As Kabill says' date=' you don't actually want to destroy the UFO doors. Especially if you have (drum roll please) hypervelocity weapons, as you can fire through the closed doors and hit aliens without exposing soldiers to reaction fire.[/quote']

Heh. That never even occurred to me. All I was doing was opening the doors, taking a few shots then running out of the way to avoid being fired on in the alien's turn.

Not sure whether this is appropriate to bring up here, but I had a go at implementing some changes to weapons, increasing accuracy on them and taking off hypervelocity from the sniper guns. This, for me, has resolved 90% of the issues I had when I first played - snipers no longer dominate and out-flanking is now not only viable but sometimes essential. The remaining 10% is that I'm not convinced alien weapons are lethal enough - the xenopedia makes a point of stating how deadly the alien's weapons are, but I don't get one-shotted nearly as often as I would have expected (especially given that most of my soldiers are still in basic armour two and a half months in). I appreciate that higher leathality might not be everyone's preference, however!

Frag Grenades - these have a very small blast radius. These would be great as a way of dealing with enemies in cover, but their small explosion radius makes me disinclined to use them (especially when throwing accuracy is so low). A little bigger might make them more useful. In any case, as they are at the moment they might be better labelled as concussion grenades than frag grenades, as this would be more appropriate for their explosion size.

Laser Carbine vs. Laser Rifle: What's the purpose of the former? It seems to be the same as the laser rifle but without an aimed shot and doing slightly less damage. It does seem to have a (marginally) better reaction modifier, but I'm not sure that makes them even (maybe they're cheaper as well? I've not found a way in game to see the resources manufacturing uses). In any case, it seems like a wasted opportunity to having them so similar. Could you possible adjust the Carbine so it uses less TUs to fire, perhaps (helping it fit it's 'assault' role which is purported by allowing some more movement)?

[RawCode]

actually proper balance decision about shotgun to nerf it's damage back and set shot cost to 10-15 (like pistol) this will make shotgun very usefull for hit and run, basically two handed pistol with 2x damage and same range.

shotguns developed for close combat, they shoud provide easy aim and max reaction, currently ballictic shotgun does ~50 damage at 20 TU, setting it to 25 at 10 will make thing a lot better

[Ol' Stinky]

kabill - yeah, removing hypervelocity straight up improves the game, although I think it makes sniper rifles lose a bit of flavour. Then again, that might simply be me getting used to sniper rifles murdering everything and having to adjust. Maybe cover is too durable against ballistic weapons, in which case I'd recommend adjusting all weapon damage and all unit health/armour values upwards (directly reducing the health of cover props would involve changing an obscene number of files).

I'd remove the hypervelocity from alien snipers, too, since being shot through the chinook isn't a barrel of laughs, and makes me feel like I'm being punished for playing properly. I find that changing the alien plasma pistol to 20 range and 30 damage makes the initial fights a little better, while still making them noticably easier than later encounters.

I disagree a bit about frags since they seem pretty accurate, unless you're comparing them to stun grenades. In which case, it's because stun grenades are simply way too good. They seem better than stun rockets, even. In CQC in the pre-stun grenade game, I use grenades if the enemy's behind cover, and I can't net a stunned alien through flashbang spam. Then again, splash damage is a lot weaker than a direct hit. It might be worth doing for the flavour alone.

RawCode - the trouble with a weaker shotgun per hit is that reaction fire's less useful. I don't know whether Walrus' mod still does it, but a shotgun that goes the opposite way - massive damage, but costs more TUs - felt more useful to me since we have pistols and grenades for hit and run.

[RawCode]

reaction fire shoud depend on AP cost, with 10 per shot it will be fair if reaction fire atleast two shots.

[Ol' Stinky]

The trouble is that you only get one go at reaction fire per soldier before the other player gets to move. Getting off a reaction shot and doing 25 damage to the attacker is a bit of a Pyrrhic victory, since that alien's going to pump three bolts of searing plasma into your head.

Although thinking about it, in v19 HF3 we could have our cake and eat it: give the shotgun a burst fire mode so that it punches a hole through anything coming around the corner. There's already a sound file for it, iirc. That way the single shots could afford to be cheap without unbalancing the damage/TU ratio for reaction fire.

[kabill]

re: Snipers: No reason why sniper rifles couldn't have a base aim upgrade to compensate for lack of hypervelocity. This still makes them dangerous (if you're outside of cover), especially as they have a high base damage and armour penetration (maybe? The xml files don't seem to indicate this). Assuming no other changes, maybe remove hypervelocity and increase accuracy to 120-130 aimed (I've played with 150% for aimed and it was useful but not overwhelming, but this was in the context of generally higher weapon accuracies)?

re: shotguns - I think high damage shotguns have more of distinct role. At the moment (in theory), you have snipers for long range, high damage, high accuracy; shotguns for short range, high damage, and high accuracy (close up); rifles which are flexible and provide reasonable suppression; and LMG for good suppression. Changing shotguns to make them weaker and quicker would make them similar to a rifle or pistol; there'd be a distinct lack of a close-range high-damage weapon. Basically, I think they're fine as is but need an accuracy buff so they can actually hit; rifles and precision rifles still have the advantage of range over them (and the rifle has burst fire) so I wouldn't say it would make them too strong compared with these.

re: frags - I've not used them much, to be honest, and I think part of my issue was because I'd expected them to have a larger radius and therefore not targeted well. But I guess my question is whether grenades need to be or should be largely precision weapons. We've plenty of those already (i.e. guns); it feels (to me) like there's a wasted opportunity for doing something different with them. This isn't to say that I don't think there's balance issues with having a larger radius (mass-explosives were a problem with UFO: EU and I presume the devs are keen to avoid that!). But having lower/gradiated splash damage is one way to deal with it; more important perhaps is the overdamage (is that right?) penalty (which is the primary reason why I've barely used explosives so far).

On the other hand, I guess this isn't actually a balance issue (in that I'm not saying they're not balanced, just that I would like the balance to be different to how it is at the moment). So, I guess, off-topic for this thread. Sorry!

[Aaron]

Thanks for the feedback guys, useful as always.

@Stinky: These threads are all for discussion of the complete state of the relevant part of the game, not just the latest changes. Comments on both are useful.

And yeah, there's a stun grenade nerf coming, so have your fun while it lasts.

As for C4, keep in mind it does have the highest suppression damage and radius of any weapon in the game, coupled with incendiary damage making it cause double damage to scenery. If their is an alien behind a stubborn pile of cover dropping C4 near him should work wonders; it's also simply good for blasting decent sized holes through walls/doors. That said, I am going to give it a bit of a buff shortly by way of increased damage radius and suppression radius.

I wouldn't like to remove hypervelocity weapons, as they are a neat feature that differentiates those weapons from others - but perhaps it could do with a minor change like halving the damage done by the bullet after it has passed through an obstacle. I also think a negative penalty for up-close shooting with sniper rifles might be good, or just preventing them receiving the current close range accuracy boost.

On the topic of UFO doors, how would people feel if we removed the "auto-close" mechanic on them? Initially we put it in for the rather silly reason that we wanted the UFO hull to be visible as much as possible, but I think the auto-close is more annoying/weird from a gameplay point of view - it looks dumb to have guys stood by the door shooting aliens and then have it close in their face each turn. If I were to do that I would also alter the doors so that while they are open the "frame" remains visible so the player can manually close them again, and I could make them properly destructible with a cool "blown-in" sprite when that happens (more use for that C4!). How would people feel about those changes?

Also, now that burst reaction fire is in, do people feel that it is happening often enough? Is the 10 tile range too long/short?

[StellarRat]

On the topic of UFO doors, how would people feel if we removed the "auto-close" mechanic on them? Initially we put it in for the rather silly reason that we wanted the UFO hull to be visible as much as possible, but I think the auto-close is more annoying/weird from a gameplay point of view - it looks dumb to have guys stood by the door shooting aliens and then have it close in their face each turn. If I were to do that I would also alter the doors so that while they are open the "frame" remains visible so the player can manually close them again, and I could make them properly destructible with a cool "blown-in" sprite when that happens (more use for that C4!). How would people feel about those changes?

Also, now that burst reaction fire is in, do people feel that it is happening often enough? Is the 10 tile range too long/short?

I haven't seen burst reaction fire even happen yet.

As far as keeping the doors open I'm not so sure that's a good idea, specially the outer doors. It seems to me that taking the UFO in a "boarding" action would be too easy if the doors remained open. Were that the case, I'd simply put all my guys outside in a "firing line" and have one guy open the door and rest would just decimate the aliens inside. With the doors automatically closing you have to at least risk the person that opens them and not always be sure if some alien is going to come out and fire from behind the door.

As a practical matter, the aliens would have to be pretty stupid to leave the doors unlocked if there is danger outside. I'd actually be most in favor of having to "blow the doors" with C4 or some other weapons THEN have them remain open because they are destroyed. In other words, the door will not open at all without some explosive "encouragement". It's always seemed a bit funny to me that the aliens don't have a "combination" or "key" to get in and out of their ships. I mean it's not a new concept, right? Anyway, that seems like the most realistic way to go about it and increases the role of C4 and other explosive weapons. It's always a good idea to give a weapon a "reason" to exist in my book. If you don't have any explosives I think the door should be vulnerable to a sufficient amount of direct fire, just like the terrain objects on the rest of map.

Edited July 8, 2013 by StellarRat

[kabill]

As far as keeping the doors open I'm not so sure that's a good idea, specially the outer doors. It seems to me that taking the UFO in a "boarding" action would be too easy if the doors remained open. Were that the case, I'd simply put all my guys outside in a "firing line" and have one guy open the door and rest would just decimate the aliens inside. With the doors automatically closing you have to at least risk the person that opens them and not always be sure if some alien is going to come out and fire from behind the door.

You can already do this. Line everyone up, open doors, fire! (LMGs work best first to suppress aliens inside). Keep enough TUs to move soldiers out of line of sight after firing. Alien turn, they can't see anything to shoot and don't have the TUs to move up and attack. Back to Xenonauts turn, doors close. So, you line all your guys up again, rinse and repeat. At least if the doors are left open, you can't merrily wander all your soldiers back into position after the initial attack.

Like the idea of using C4 to open UFOs, but I can't think of a good gameplay reason to do it (it would be cool the first few times, but would probably become tiresome after a while).

re: hypervelocity - I agree its a cool feature and it would be a shame to lose it. But I'm not sure its needed to make sniper weapons distinct; even without hypervelocity those weapons seem to me to play an important and unique role. Would happily try lower damage hypervelocity, however, although I can't decide whether this won't just involve using the same tactic as before but taking longer to do it. Alternatively, could you have it offset, rather than entirely mitigate, the cover penalty to hit (say, by half)? That way, sniper shots shouldn't be more accurate against in-cover targets than out-of-cover shots from other weapons, but you still get a to-hit bonus relative to other weapons when shooting at covered targets.

[StellarRat]

You can already do this. Line everyone up, open doors, fire! (LMGs work best first to suppress aliens inside). Keep enough TUs to move soldiers out of line of sight after firing. Alien turn, they can't see anything to shoot and don't have the TUs to move up and attack. Back to Xenonauts turn, doors close. So, you line all your guys up again, rinse and repeat. At least if the doors are left open, you can't merrily wander all your soldiers back into position after the initial attack.

Yes, you can, but at least with the doors closing someone has to go "push the button" each time. I consider the tactic you described as exploit. The aliens ought to be waiting for you when you open the door with reaction fire. I think the alien AI needs to fixed to make the door opening a lot more dangerous than it currently is AND they also need to take the initiative and open the door and fire at you too. It's only fair. Aaron?? Edited July 8, 2013 by StellarRat

[smoitessier]

I wouldn't like to remove hypervelocity weapons, as they are a neat feature that differentiates those weapons from others - but perhaps it could do with a minor change like halving the damage done by the bullet after it has passed through an obstacle. I also think a negative penalty for up-close shooting with sniper rifles might be good, or just preventing them receiving the current close range accuracy boost.

On the topic of UFO doors, how would people feel if we removed the "auto-close" mechanic on them? Initially we put it in for the rather silly reason that we wanted the UFO hull to be visible as much as possible, but I think the auto-close is more annoying/weird from a gameplay point of view - it looks dumb to have guys stood by the door shooting aliens and then have it close in their face each turn. If I were to do that I would also alter the doors so that while they are open the "frame" remains visible so the player can manually close them again, and I could make them properly destructible with a cool "blown-in" sprite when that happens (more use for that C4!). How would people feel about those changes?

Your idea about reducing sniper damage when it goes through cover is great, wonder if it would be a blanket rule, or if harder cover would reduce it more then say a lawn chair.

And your ideas about UFO doors are top!

[StellarRat]

Like the idea of using C4 to open UFOs, but I can't think of a good gameplay reason to do it (it would be cool the first few times, but would probably become tiresome after a while).

I think it's a good addition. While it might become repetitious, but there are a lot things you do in Xenonauts over and over again like getting off the dropship a certain way. However, blowing the doors, could be rewarding and fun if the aliens were sometimes standing right behind the doors and got a face full of door fragments occasionally. Then there would be some reward for doing it that way. Remember the doors could also be shot down with direct fire too, so you have options.

[Ol' Stinky]

I hope you guys don't mind me hurling all these words at you!

As for C4, keep in mind it does have the highest suppression damage and radius of any weapon in the game, coupled with incendiary damage making it cause double damage to scenery. If their is an alien behind a stubborn pile of cover dropping C4 near him should work wonders; it's also simply good for blasting decent sized holes through walls/doors. That said, I am going to give it a bit of a buff shortly by way of increased damage radius and suppression radius.

If it's intended to be used as a counter to heavy cover ("heavy cover" meaning more than one tile of cover inbetween opposing units in this case) then it's overshadowed by the alternatives.

If a player's comfortable with overdamage, they're going to bring a rocket launcher soldier to take out troublesome cover. C4 can't compete with that due to the range. Inventory's not a problem since you can have other soldiers act as rocket mules, and you don't need that many rockets fired instantaneously. A sniper/rifleman doesn't need to use much of his weight/inv. space to do his job, so he can lug a couple of spare rockets no problem. For the record, though, I'm not using overdamage weapons except to try stuff out. I prefer having to work a little harder when it comes to ground battles than having to work harder on the geoscape. The geoscape's a lot more enjoyable now that I have some slack with the planes, but it's still no picnic (that's not a complaint, that's a compliment).

If you do remove overdamage, we still have better options, though. Even with stun grenades being toned down - which is good news - regular grenades still do the job fine. And the further you progress in the game, the easier it is to dismantle cover the hard way, with laser-or-better sniper rifles. Both are safer than trying C4. You might be thinking it's fairer to compare C4 to ballistic weapons, but the TUs required to use C4 successfully means that it's tricky to use until you get better soldiers.

Suppression wise, I use an LMG, and up close or more cramped environments I use flashbangs, both of which will get the job done. (Well, flashbangs can be oddly inconsistant, but I suspect it's down to being a grenade, so C4's in the same boat.) Neither causes overdamage, and neither really have that many drawbacks. I guess LMGs are a little undervalued right now because of the AI-cheating-and-burstfiring-when-it-technically-shouldn't bug in addition to the stray shot stuff. When those problems get fixed, I doubt the LMG will be in a bad place. C4, though? I'm having a harder time seeing where I'd really use it. Especially since if I have to use it to breach the UFO doors as suggested above and I end up taking down an alien I'll go, "Hell yeah! That was great!" and then immediately go "...except that I lost that guy's alien plasma gun and now lose money because of it. Ugh."

Maybe if they changed to a type of proximity mine I'd use them when (if?) aliens become more aggressive. In X-Com OG with one of the various hacks to patch the game like UFOextender or...uh...the other one, proximity mines were actually really useful in assaulting alien bases.

I wouldn't like to remove hypervelocity weapons, as they are a neat feature that differentiates those weapons from others - but perhaps it could do with a minor change like halving the damage done by the bullet after it has passed through an obstacle. I also think a negative penalty for up-close shooting with sniper rifles might be good, or just preventing them receiving the current close range accuracy boost.

I agree with kabill about nerfing hypervelocity. I'm not sure it'll be enough to dislodge sniper rifles as the default weapon, but it's a good change simply because it means that players should take cover against enemy snipers. At the moment, you're Doing It Wrong if you use cover against a sniper instead of trying to escape LoS or take out the sniper at all costs, and I don't like having the carpet pulled out under me like that.

You could move hypervelocity to another class of weapons. I wouldn't mind it going to shotguns since getting in close is much less safe than sitting at range. If realism's a problem, give it to just the future tech shotguns i.e. laser carbines and up. Or, make it a property of some MAG weapons, just to emphasise how superior the top tier of weapons are.

Or maybe part of the problem is that assault rifles don't seem to have much of a place right now? They're not top of the class in anything.

• Ranged killing power? Snipers are better.
  
• Ranged suppression? Take an LMG.
  
• Close range killing power? Grenades and shotguns once stray shots are fixed.
  
• Close range suppression? Flashbang.
  
• Cover destruction? Pretty much anything else.
  
• Hit and run attacks? Pistol + grenades work better in close quarters. With grenades you can even cause suppression or damage without entering the enemy's LoS in CQC. You won't cause full damage, sure, but you have the option to play it safe. When it comes to ranged hit and run attacks, you're not going to hit them with an assault rifle anyway. I get better results when I move a sniper for a ranged hit and run, and they get a 50% accuracy penalty doing that!
  
• Reaction fire duty? If they hit, they're not going to do any damage worth noting. Shotguns are meant to be the close range answer, to boot. Even if rifles did win here, it's not a niche I'd care to fill: I do everything I can to avoid relying on chance, whether it's negating cover with snipers or using weapons that are likely to hit with splash damage, even if they miss. I'm not going to take a weapon along that might help.

Also, now that burst reaction fire is in, do people feel that it is happening often enough? Is the 10 tile range too long/short?

The short range thing seems odd to me, since I imagine that it benefits the LMG and rifle the most. At short range, you're meant to be using a shotgun for reaction fire, right? There's also the fact that all the burst fire weapons are horribly inaccurate because they're balanced around causing high suppression, and reaction fire doesn't affect suppression at all. So while it might look really cool, I'm not sure it's practical as it is. Then again, as I said above, maybe it's a playstyle thing because I don't like having to use reaction fire anyway.

Edited July 8, 2013 by Ol' Stinky