Ground Combat Balance Discussion v19 Experimental Build 4

[Aaron]

I am refreshing this thread again because the new experimental build (4) of the game contains my first pass at adding differentiated stats between the alien species, which should hopefully make the various species a bit different to fight. Additionally there are a few balance tweaks and improvements - best of all, you should be able to play the game without it crashing all the time!

Here's a quick reminder of the changes:

Balance

- Caesan Psion troops now show up in UFOs from Corvette onwards

- Psions have been reduced in stats to make them fit in with earlier tiers of troops better, they have the "fear" and "hallucination" psionic attacks

- Caesan Leaders now have the "fear" and "mind control" powers, while officers have "fear" and "hallucination"

- Introduced race specific differences between alien types in ground combat

-- Caesans have better reaction shot chances, and earlier Psionics as above

-- Sebillians are lightly armoured, have more AP and worse reaction shot chances

-- Androns have very high bravery, and are heavily armoured (Androns will eventually be outright immune to suppression)

-- Harridans are more accurate in general, and have exceptionally good chances for reaction fire

- Due to the above changes, human rifles, precision rifles and the heavy weapons all now have some level of armour penetration power

- Gas grenades now cause less stun damage per turn, and less initial stun damage. The gas they produce is also less opaque, so reduces accuracy less than a normal smoke grenade

- Stun rockets do slightly less initial damage, and also had their gas damaged reduced along with the stun grenades above

- Stun batons had a significant stun damage buff, from 55 to 80

- Carbines and shotgun have had their TU costs for non-burst fire modes reduced by 5 to make them a little more useful in mobile work

- C4 now does slightly more damage, has a wider blast radius and a larger suppression radius

Let me know how you find it. I'm particularly interested in how badly/well the AI uses the psionic powers the Caesans will now get from an earlier tier.

[RawCode]

stun changes looks good, especially baton.

[ygfbv]

Has the bug that makes it freeze at the end of a mission been fixed? I always have to save and reload before I kill the last enemy.

It's not listed and I have to go to work soon so I can't check.

Edited July 12, 2013 by ygfbv

[Aaron]

I was unable to reproduce the crash at the end of a mission, so either it was fixed by one of the various other fixes or it's still lurking there - if you still experience it, please post (or update an existing post) in the bugs forum.

[Ol' Stinky]

I've spent today going through on 19.4 playthrough, and I'm up to corvettes so far. Impressions at this point:

• The psions coming with corvettes is a good change. I don't know whether you touched their AI at all, but now they seem to use a psychic power of some sort. I don't know whether it was Fear or Hallucination, but I definately heard the noise indicating the use of a psychic power! That's more than they bloomin' did when I messed around with putting them earlier in-game.
  
• The grenade arc is also a welcome change on the whole. I say "on the whole" because there are times when I'd like to throw them the old way; when I'm aiming at a wall with a roof, or in some indoor buildings where it won't allow use of the grenade. Both of those examples come from the arctic outpost submap, but I'm guessing it's one tile high roofed buildings in general.
  
• I like the explosion radius indicator! Maybe for non-explosive-damage weapons like LMGs or flashbangs it can have something similar to show suppression area? Maybe use transparent squares with a thick green border to make it look different to the explosive area indicator.
  
• I think the shotgun and assault rifle TU buff is a good move. I'm waiting for proper stray shots to go back in before I make a judgement; at the moment I avoid using them even in fairly close quarters because a miss is always a miss.
  
• Maybe the stun baton should take up less space in the inventory. Even after the nerf, I'm not sure whether it's better to try and use a baton or to spam stun grenades. Still, it's surely better than it was before. Also, the stun baton noise is very satisying.
  
• I don't think the heavy weapons penalty is doing its job. Halved accuracy sounds steep, but LMGs and RLs don't care about accuracy that much. With the LMG, you're going for suppression, and it's got a large suppression radius. With the RL, even when you miss, you're probably still going to achieve what you're going for through splash damage. The sniper's the one that's affected the most, but even then, you go from 80%+ shots to 40%+ shots. That's not too shabby!
  I'm only up to corvettes and already most of my soldiers can fire an LMG and move a decent distance. For the most part they're at 70-80 TUs, so they can fire the LMG once (40 TUs) then move 7-10 squares.
  I'm not sure what to suggest. I guess a TU penalty? It'd have to have a scaling component or you run into the same problem eventually. Or maybe heavy weapons should have their TU costs straight up scale along with max TUs?
  
• I'm a bit wary of androns becoming immune to suppression. I really dig the suppression mechanic, it's a great way of ensuring that attacking is stronger than defense. Being forced to round a corner and risk eating reaction fire wasn't my favourite part of alien base missions in OG X-Com; being able to throw a flashbang, or an LMG burst from around the corner is a counter to reaction fire I've not seen anyone complain about, and it's really satisfying to pull off. Especially when you're not 100% sure that stupid grey is there or not, lobbing a flashbang and hearing a surpised squawk is a real "hell yeah!" moment.
  At the same time, there's no doubt that suppression is really damn strong (well, when the burst fire cheat's sorted), so I can see why you would want androns to be able to shrug it off.
  My compromise? A new debuff, which we'll call "concussion". Concussion reduces a target's reaction score to zero, but unlike suppression, doesn't affect TUs at all. Concussion is caused by flashbangs and explosions, but not weapons like LMGs, snipers etc. If a target is both suppressed and concussed, the suppression icon appears instead of the concussion one. In the same way suppression clears at the start of the victim's turn, so does concussion.
  This way, androns still become immune to suppression, instilling fear in the minds and hearts of players everywhere. But androns camping out in a ufo can still be stormed in a satisfying manner. No-one really likes the "send in a useless rookie to take the reaction fire hit so the real soldiers can move in" tactic, right?

Edited July 13, 2013 by Ol' Stinky

[GizmoGomez]

I like that, actually. Concussion sounds like a worthy thing to add. Make flashbangs much more useful, because they'd concuss them and suppress them. Perhaps suppression takes out TUs mainly, but concussion takes out reaction change mainly? Or what would it do?

How would concussion be unique and useful, besides when dealing with androns?

[Ol' Stinky]

I guess the suppression would be lowered on stuff like flashbangs, but the chance of concussion would be really high. The idea being that concussion still allows you to move forward safely, without also crippling the enemy on their next turn. This means concussion can be much more reliable for the player, without it being overpowered like suppression might end up being. Hopefully.

Giving flashbangs something like this will also stop them going obsolete when suppression values start changing on the tier weapons. Right now, an LMG suppresses as much as a MAGStorm, but presumably that won't stay the case. Flashbangs never get upgraded, so they'll either be crazy-strong early on and balanced in the end game, or balanced at the start and then phased out.

Or it could have some other effect in addition to dampening reaction fire, like lowering accuracy for a turn as well.

[Knightpt]

Accuracy of xeno soldiers is still atrocious. Many times i have 6 soldiers, everyone fires their shots at medium range with 40TU cost for extra acuracy and some turns i can't have a single shot on the alien, some ocasions i can land a shot i even celebrate on my room like it's an amazing acomplishment that my trained soldier acualy had more acuracy than a child with a gun.

Honestly, realy, change that. It's beyond frustrating and stupid and just wants to quit the game and not play it again. I can honestly say there was a mission i shot around 60 shots and i managed to hit 2 and that wasnt even enough to kill the alien.

[GizmoGomez]

I'd love for flash bangs, smokes, and C4 to be upgraded at some point in the game. Like, for free after some other, similar, research. Just to show that we're upgrading all of our arsenal, and not just the bits-of-lead-throwing parts.

[C. jejuni]

Why are the stun baton TU costs so high? It costs more TU to swing it than my soldiers even have, and interestingly they're different for both. Or are the costs for running up to them represented in the number too?

Weapons are definitely too inaccurate. When I enter a light scout with my shotty guy and aim at the Sebillian in the back only 5 tiles away, I get 2x-3x% chance with both snap and normal shots, rifles are effective at no more than perhaps 25 meters, the sniper rifle is kind of a joke article.

I like that the UFOs are now generally occupied by aliens. Makes sense.

Edited July 13, 2013 by C. jejuni
Next time read the title.

[Ol' Stinky]

Accuracy of xeno soldiers is still atrocious. Many times i have 6 soldiers, everyone fires their shots at medium range with 40TU cost for extra acuracy and some turns i can't have a single shot on the alien, some ocasions i can land a shot i even celebrate on my room like it's an amazing acomplishment that my trained soldier acualy had more acuracy than a child with a gun.

Honestly, realy, change that. It's beyond frustrating and stupid and just wants to quit the game and not play it again. I can honestly say there was a mission i shot around 60 shots and i managed to hit 2 and that wasnt even enough to kill the alien.

Are you using assault rifles? I had the same experience as you. Try using sniper rifles as the default weapon for a soldier, with grenades and pistol for close quarters (you don't use the pistol for damaging enemies, you use it for levelling skills or the shot-path guide, although that's not as useful now the explosion area thingy's in the game).

I'd love for flash bangs, smokes, and C4 to be upgraded at some point in the game. Like, for free after some other, similar, research. Just to show that we're upgrading all of our arsenal, and not just the bits-of-lead-throwing parts.

Yeah, equipment getting upgraded gives a good sense of progress. Although C4's weird in that I almost don't want it to upgrade - once enemies can survive its blast, I reckon it'll be dead useful for clearing out androns camping in a UFO. It'll leave them weak and with no cover. Also, soldiers will be able to throw it further by then. Unfortunately I'm stuck on my first terror mission in my campaign so I can't test it out for myself. ):

Why are the stun baton TU costs so high? It costs more TU to swing it than my soldiers even have, and interestingly they're different for both. Or are the costs for running up to them represented in the number too?

Yeah, the stun baton attack itself costs 15 TUs, and the number that comes up is how many TUs it costs to walk up to the alien and give it a good proggle. I was a bit taken aback by that when I first saw it, too, so you're not alone there.

[GizmoGomez]

Concerning C4, flashbangs, and upgrading those equipment items:

I'd rather not replace C4 with a better one (just add a better one in addition to normal C4) for that very reason. C4 is sufficient (or should be, anyway) to take down a simple wall, and that's what I'd use it for.

Having a bigger boom bomb just sounds like a fun idea. I dunno, Alenium DetPack is what I suggested a while ago.

Replacing flashbangs and smokes with better (more effective) versions I'd be okay with, though.

If anything, flashbangs and smokes should be replaced; C4 is probably fine how it is, honestly.

[Ol' Stinky]

How would you upgrade smoke, though? It already seems really effective: there have been times when I've mucked up, but I've been able to salvage the situation by throwing down four or so smokes. If you spam smoke, it pretty much stops anything happening at range. I'm not trying to shut you down, I'm interested in what you have in mind. Bigger radius, or more reliable smoke, or easier to throw (i.e. greater range)?

[GizmoGomez]

More reliable smoke is what I'd go for. You said you would throw down four or so smokes; the improved grenade would make it only require one (or maybe two, if the radius is too small and you've got a very large situation to cover up. )

Bigger radius too, I'd say. Not huge, but an appreciable difference.

[RawCode]

as long as ufo walls invulnerable c4 not really usefull.

[GizmoGomez]

Says you; I use them to break through buildings to flank enemies.

But, to each his own.

I have a question, though: Say I put a block of C4 on a wall, intending to blow it up. How far back would my troops have to be to be out of the explosive radius? I'm still installing the game, almost done! (Internet sucks where I'm at currently.)

[Aaron]

@Gizmo: C4 should now display its blast radius when you plant it, which should give you an idea how far away you need to be.

@Stiny: You keep talking about waiting for the "stray shots glitch" to be fixed, what are you referring to?

[Ol' Stinky]

@Stiny: You keep talking about waiting for the "stray shots glitch" to be fixed, what are you referring to?

I thought that stray shots always landing near the feet of the target was a temporary fix you guys put in? There was that bug that made stray shots too good - I remember Chris saying that it made the LMG overpowered or words to that effect - and I thought that this was a short term solution so that burst fire weapons weren't too good, for both the player and the PC.

If this isn't the case and I've misread the situation (and the lab results show that this is a 88.43% chance of being true in any scenario) then hooooooo boy, do a lot of guns ever need an accuracy buff! I can miss a brick wall with a pistol from two squares away. Shotguns and rifles are in the same boat. LMGs do score a hit every now and again, but it's not that common, and with the amount of bullets they pump out, they're bound to succeed at some point.

On another note: does anyone else think that active abilities are the way to go when it comes to giving the aliens flavour? I'm not saying that they shouldn't have stat differences as well. Androns in 19.1 - 19.3 felt more distinctive than the other two "common" aliens (caesans and sebillians), even though stat homogenisation took place; that was down to them stomping walls and ignoring stun damage. And having seen caesans use the hallucination ability, it helps to distinguish those guys, as well. I wouldn't be against seeing the non-coms/guards/soldiers/etc. also get that ability, maybe under the condition that unlike psions, they can only use the ability once per battle.

I'm hoping the sebillians get some kind of active ability. Yes, they have regeneration. But it doesn't really seem to mean much. Brainstorming here:

- give them a new unit, the same way caesans are getting earlier psions. A beserker, a kamikaze unit, a particularly tough unit, anything to help flesh out the sebillians' character.

- an abilty that says, "these guys are bloody tough!" How about last stand: On recieving a death blow, they immediately fire off a reaction shot, and then die. Or: on recieving a death blow, instead of dying, they turn beserk and get to live until the end of their turn, at which point they finally succumb to their wounds and fall over dead.

[kabill]

On another note: does anyone else think that active abilities are the way to go when it comes to giving the aliens flavour?

Perhaps. For me, the important thing is that fighting different aliens requires different approaches/tactics. While I've not fought Androns in 19.4 yet, in principle I approve of their immunity to suppression because this changes the way you have to deal with them compared with other aliens. Psionics (though I've not seen it yet in Xenonauts) should do the same thing. Neither of these things are simply 'flavour' - they change the nature of the engagement.

Abilities aren't the only way to do this. For example, I think the new XCOM: EU game did a very good job of making aliens different by virtue of their AI. Floaters are an awesome example - their being crazy fearless berserkers gives them more character than their ability to fly or their hp/stats, while making fighting them different as well. As regards Xenonauts, then, I can see how you could make fights between Caesans and Sibellians different merely by virtue of their AI (the former fighting defensively, wearing their opponents down with psionic attacks; the latter fighting aggressively and being ultra-tough).

It might be that this is already planned (Xenopedia entries imply this), mind. But my point is simply that abilities aren't the only thing that might matter. And if they do matter, it should be because they make a significant difference to the combat). With that in mind, I think a new specialist could work, but this places all the distinguishing elements in a special unit rather than the race as a whole (for this reason, actually, I'd like to see psionics much more common among Caesians, with the caveat again that I don't know how powerful they are!). The abilities you suggest, though, I'm less convinced by since they don't (in my head, anyway) create a substantial enough difference to the combat. Personally, I don't see why you couldn't produce the same (or better) effect by simply giving them a lot of hp/armour - armour especially since it makes armour mitigation on weapons an important issue (an implicit ability of "immune to low-damage kinetic weapons" would make them fairly terrifying and definitely different, especially when coupled with an aggressive AI!).

[Ol' Stinky]

That's true, a really reckless AI for the sebillians but making them super tough to make up for the fact they'll be taking a lot of hits to the face would do the job. Although I don't know if I agree with you about the floaters in XCom '12, their ability to jump around is what I remember them for, the same way I remember the mutons for how they effectively cast a fear spell on anyone who hit them, and the greys for their mind meld ability. I haven't played that game since a few weeks after it came out, though.

[RawCode]

accuracy is severe issue in game, it can be very very frustrating, especially if alliens hit and your xenonaus not.

[kabill]

Although I don't know if I agree with you about the floaters in XCom '12' date=' their ability to jump around is what I remember them for, the same way I remember the mutons for how they effectively cast a fear spell on anyone who hit them, and the greys for their mind meld ability. I haven't played that game since a few weeks after it came out, though.[/quote']

Aye, that's fair enough - it's a mistake for me to assume that what stood out for me would stand out for anyone else. Perhaps it would have been better for me to say, in any case, that abilities should be complimented by different (distinct) AI, thus having the two act in interaction with one another.

[Ol' Stinky]

Let me be clear that the point you were making was perfectly correct, I'm just a sore loser. (;

So, I'll try another argument. I think that regeneration lends itself to being a cowardly trait, in that to make the most out of it, a good player (human or AI) would have sebillians who need to regenerate run away. That seems counter to the fierce warrior image they're going for. I'd be happy with kabill's suggestion of higher hp to go along with an appropiately reckless AI, thinking about it.

[GizmoGomez]

Or, they regenerate the damage, so they don't have to run away? Personally, if I had no regeneration I'd be more likely to run away and find a healer than if I could regenerate the damage on the spot.

[StellarRat]

Or, they regenerate the damage, so they don't have to run away? Personally, if I had no regeneration I'd be more likely to run away and find a healer than if I could regenerate the damage on the spot.

I think I'd have to see how much damage was possible. I mean, if SuperRat can regenerate a pocket knife stabbing in a few seconds, he'd probably keep fighting if all any one had were pocket knives. Now, if SuperRat sees a guy with a rocket launcher he'd be a lot more inclined to say "Oh Sh^#" and run away. No?