Ground Combat Balance Discussion v19 Experimental Build 4

[DNK]

My thoughts, not tweaked fully, but a ballpark of what I would like (including redone stats, like strength not getting ridiculous so fasto the recoil means something):

Alternatively:

Edited July 21, 2013 by DNK

[smoitessier]

Now sniper rifles and grenades do still seem to be a bit too effective. The problem with grenades is that while they are quite inaccurate, the splash damage means that really doesn't matter that much; I think shortening their throwing range might actually be the way to go here, as they would still be as satisfying to lob as they are now, but you would have to risk a little bit more exposure to use them. For sniper rifles I am not so sure - they are getting a range nerf in the next build (30 -25) which might help a bit, but I doubt it will change them that much - any suggestions from you guys for simpler ways we could make the choice between normal/sniper rifle a bit more interesting?

Pardon me for not reading thorough 5 pages since this post,

To my mind a sniper rifle is a big heavy thing with a scope integrated.

The pros would be it's got a scope, it's stable because of it's weight so it kicks ass at long range on slow moving targets, if you take your time to shoot.

The cons would be because when shooting moving targets close-by, you would have a harder time keeping a target in your scope, or you would forget the scope in such situation, so your accuracy would suffer.

Also being heavy and all, a snap shot would greatly decrease your accuracy, and reaction speed would suffer equally because of it's weigh/bulk.

Those pro/cons are pretty standard, i'm not sure they differentiate the sniper versus the infantryman, if you wanted to add some flavor I would give them a neg modifier when having to turn facings before firing in the same turn, either a flat penalty or otherwise would be enough to place the sniper in a "support role" to use strategically.

Edited July 21, 2013 by smoitessier

[DNK]

I took another crack at things, this time doing something quite important - basic comparative analysis of the various weapons. Note that I've rebalanced the weapons in my above table, and that the raw values are in spoilers.

H/T*D(amage)

This is what "balanced" looks like to me. Basically, no weapon has more than a 20% increase in damage/turn over a basic rifle, and those that have an advantage in this respect also have higher weight, reload times, and recoil to compensate. Some are disadvantaged, but have greater range, like the DMR. I dropped the rifle's range to 12, though this still needs to be tested. The idea is to make it really just a medium-range weapon, ineffective past a typical view range for a soldier, while the DMR is a bit less useful in that range but still useful beyond it for a good 60% farther range. The 7.62mm sniper is just a further extension. That said, when the full-aim TU shot is used, both are more effective than rifles at any range, but these DO take up almost all the TUs by design (86 for the sniper, so good luck with that).

The two MG variants are meant to be more suppression-fire than accurate fire, though the 7.62mm MG is a good 20% deadlier than a rifle at the same range, but this is compensated by much higher weight and recoil and reload times - unusable by a soldier that isn't a few missions experienced (and I would mod it so stats progressed much slower, meaning really not everyone could use one - the sniper could be usable by highly experienced troops, but by the time they acquired such experience, laser weapons would be available for them, for which the 20% buff of the sniper would be roughly the same as a typical laser rifle's buff - see how that works?).

This is my ideal.

Edited July 21, 2013 by DNK

[Aaron]

I think for the time being, particularly as Sergey is busy on other things so code changes will have to wait, I am just going to increase the TU cost for each level of sniper rifle shooting by 10 TUs; let's see how that goes to start with.

[StellarRat]

I think for the time being, particularly as Sergey is busy on other things so code changes will have to wait, I am just going to increase the TU cost for each level of sniper rifle shooting by 10 TUs; let's see how that goes to start with.

I believe you're going to find that it make little difference in the comparative balance. I'd be willing to bet most people are using aimed shots and so are only getting off one shot per turn anyway. At least this is true in my case. Since you can't raise the sniper shot cost above what a starting soldier could reasonably expect to have it's not going to help much. I really believe the answer is to lower the TU costs for all modes of AR fire and carbine fire. That will make them a much better choice for close and medium range combat. Edited July 22, 2013 by StellarRat

[GizmoGomez]

I agree; the sniper rifle can only fire at the highest accuracy once per turn anyway, increasing the costs by 10 TUs wouldn't do much. At least, I can't see it doing much.

Buffing the other weapons, carbines and assault rifles, would be much better.

What I'm thinking is that carbines should have a TU per shot cost somewhere in between pistols and shotguns, and shotguns and rifles should have the same TU cost (roughly). Shotguns should have more damage than a carbine on a per shot basis, but carbines compensate for this by having a larger amount of shots possible in the same time.

[StellarRat]

I agree; the sniper rifle can only fire at the highest accuracy once per turn anyway, increasing the costs by 10 TUs wouldn't do much. At least, I can't see it doing much.

Buffing the other weapons, carbines and assault rifles, would be much better.

What I'm thinking is that carbines should have a TU per shot cost somewhere in between pistols and shotguns, and shotguns and rifles should have the same TU cost (roughly). Shotguns should have more damage than a carbine on a per shot basis, but carbines compensate for this by having a larger amount of shots possible in the same time.

I agree with Gomez on the carbines. I've found the laser carbine is too inaccurate to make up for it's slightly higher firing rate vs. the other laser weapons, specially when you consider the limited ammo supply. I think the best fix is to lower the TU cost for all modes on this weapon. Edited July 22, 2013 by StellarRat

[GizmoGomez]

Also, carbines and shotguns should be fairly accurate within their effective range. Like, if you're a couple tiles away, missing shouldn't happen very often at all. I'd give them the same accuracy; the lower damage and high rate of fire vs higher damage and lower rate of fire seems to be a good trade off.

[StellarRat]

Also, carbines and shotguns should be fairly accurate within their effective range. Like, if you're a couple tiles away, missing shouldn't happen very often at all. I'd give them the same accuracy; the lower damage and high rate of fire vs higher damage and lower rate of fire seems to be a good trade off.

They should automatically be getting the close range "bonus", right? Any weapon gets the under 8 tiles bonus.

[GizmoGomez]

Yeah, that is true. I've not played much lately, so I can't say I'm speaking from experience. Only theory.

[StellarRat]

Yeah, that is true. I've not played much lately, so I can't say I'm speaking from experience. Only theory.

You can't really play much even if you want to. Too many crashes to get very far without tearing your hair out. I'm looking forward to 19 Stable! 18.3 Stable was FUN! Edited July 22, 2013 by StellarRat

[Aaron]

Chillax guys, if it doesn't work out I will try some other approaches; give it a good faith try before pre-judging.

[StellarRat]

Chillax guys, if it doesn't work out I will try some other approaches; give it a good faith try before pre-judging.

OK. Good thing is you don't have to get anywhere in the game to test it really.

[GizmoGomez]

Chillax guys, if it doesn't work out I will try some other approaches; give it a good faith try before pre-judging.

Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to pre-judge. We'll check it out.

[StellarRat]

Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to pre-judge. We'll check it out.

I did, but I'll still check it out. In case, it might not make much difference though as I only use 1 sniper in the back with my other heavy weapons. So, you aren't going to see my sniper involved in any close combat. Edited July 23, 2013 by StellarRat