Ways to Balance Grenades

[kabill]

Re: nerf vs. buff - I'm not sure I agree that these things are equivalent. Balance doesn't necessarily mean only making sure that each option is equally useful; I'd argue it also means ensuring that each thing *has* a use.

E.g. If hypervelocity is seen as being too good as dealing with cover while flanking with a shotgun/assault rifle is understood to be ineffective, you might nerf hypervelocity or buff assault rifle/shotgun. If you do the former, you might end up with a situation where there are *no* good options for dealing with cover (since sniper weapons are now equally poor as all other options), while if you do the latter each option becomes an effective solution. Balance between the weapons is achieved by either, but the options are not the same and in fact have different connotations for the game.

In other words, I'd argue that you can't just keep making everything less good, as eventually you'll be left with nothing that actually is good (and, of course, if you keep buffing everything eventually it won't matter as everything will be too effective).

[i'm not saying I agree that there has been too much nerfing; I'm just not convinced by Chris's argument that it doesn't matter whether you nerf good things or buff weak things].

[xcomnaut]

I've also seen quite a few complaints that we're nerfing weapons instead of improving other weapons - this strikes me as a strange complaint. The end result in both cases is that all human weapons end up equally useful, whether or not you get there by reducing the power of the most powerful weapon or increasing the power of the least powerful!

I agree with kabill on this. Making everything equally crappy is not the same as making everything equally cool. Thats why we "fight" here on forums I think everyone who voice their opinion, including me, we all want to help improve this cool game. Even if I post more complains than congratulations, I do this because I care about future of the game.

[StellarRat]

Most of the complaints about "nerfing" are because the OP weapons are being cut. Remember, the AR was considered not good compared to the other weapons. Now that the sniper and grenades have been nerfed a bit the AR is more useful comparatively. It should be the "standard". I think the shotgun needs a damage buff to make truly correct in close combat still. Anyway, overall, I don't think the nerfing has been a bad thing. Also, we're only talking about the gunpowder weapons here basically. Those aren't supposed to be too good or there is no reason to work on the higher level weapons. A skilled player can still get quite far in the game using only gunpowder, so I really don't have much problem with the changes Goldhawk has made so far. I'm far more concerned about the economic balance right now.

[xcomnaut]

Most of the complaints about "nerfing" are because the OP weapons are being cut. Remember, the AR was considered not good compared to the other weapons. Now that the sniper and grenades have been nerfed a bit the AR is more useful comparatively. It should be the "standard". I think the shotgun needs a damage buff to make truly correct in close combat still. Anyway, overall, I don't think the nerfing has been a bad thing. Also, we're only talking about the gunpowder weapons here basically. Those aren't supposed to be too good or there is no reason to work on the higher level weapons. A skilled player can still get quite far in the game using only gunpowder, so I really don't have much problem with the changes Goldhawk has made so far. I'm far more concerned about the economic balance right now.

No no no It is completely oposite. SniperRifle was better than AssaultRifle because it had better single shot accuracy/damage/range. Machinegun is better than AssaultRifle because it has 5 bullets instead of 3 bullets auto mode, and is +10 more accurate and maybe more damage(not sure about this). After nerf we have SniperRifle equally crappy as AssaultRifle. People use AssaultRifle not because it became cool but because there is no point to use SniperRifle anymore. At least not massively use.

[StellarRat]

No no no It is completely oposite. SniperRifle was better than AssaultRifle because it had better single shot accuracy/damage/range. Machinegun is better than AssaultRifle because it has 5 bullets instead of 3 bullets auto mode, and is +10 more accurate and maybe more damage(not sure about this). After nerf we have SniperRifle equally crappy as AssaultRifle. People use AssaultRifle not because it became cool but because there is no point to use SniperRifle anymore. At least not massively use.

Isn't that what I just said??

[xcomnaut]

Isn't that what I just said??

Oh well, maybe I didnt understand you good enough.

[Mytheos]

I must be crazy because short of a slight accuracy tweak I think AR are fine.

I think most of the criticism comes from not using them properly.

Burst fire is for suppression, 20 TU shots are for killing.

Seriously run with 4 rifles and use nothing but 20 TU shots after the Alien is suppressed. It works, and is more flexible.

[Ol' Stinky]

I guess it depends on what you mean by a slight accuracy tweak. If you're talking about the accuracy mod, then I agree, the AR now feels useful, and you can skip the rest of this post with a clear conscience!

The unmodded 19.5 rifle accuracy for snap shots is 30, right? Which means that it's a x0.3 modifier to accuracy. So a soldier with 80 accuracy gets 24% to hit against a target in the open and in range, or around 1 in 4 shots connecting. You'll need 3-4 hits to kill a caesan guard with an AR, so on average, you'll need to take 12-16 snap shots.

Right? I'm not too hot with probabilities, so let me know if I've screwed up the calc.

That's 240-320 TUs, for a soldier with 80 acc (rookies have 52-60 acc), against a target that's completely exposed. I'd say that's much too weak.

[Mytheos]

I havent used the accuracy mod yet, I took a break to beat Shadowrun Returns.

20 TU is the lowest TU shot with a rifle.

So at 60 TUs you can get 3 off per soldier, times 4 soldiers = 12 shots when you are ONLY at 60 TUs, obviously that number increases to 16 shots at 80 TUs.

But consider the thing everyone seems to miss...

More bullets = more cover destruction.

If they loose cover then your hit percentage jumps.

So if you run 4 rifles and you use all 20 TU shots it works out...again Burst Fire is for suppression, 20 TU shots are for killing.

I ran two different games to January, with 4 rifles, 1 game I used mostly burst fire, and my rifles had between 1-3 kills...snipers = 15-17 kills.

The other game I use 20 TU shots primarily ( I mean if I had 30 TUs left, I took a 30 TU shot ) but I always started with a 20 TU shot.

I had one Riflemen fighting back and forth every mission for the top kills with my sniper, and my lowest rifle had 7 kills...which is a far cry better than 1-3 kill for all 4 rifles.

[Mytheos]

But I was just meaning giving the rifle single shots a slight accuracy boost, meaning start with 5% and bump it up slowly per test build until people start saying hey rifles are actually good!

But again I think the majority of the problem is the same as the Smoke Grenade, people dont REALLY know how to use them correctly so they ignore them/under use them.

[Ol' Stinky]

If they're behind 50% cover (say), those 80 acc soldiers are going to need twice the amount of shots, and a lot of those will miss the cover as well as the alien. Now, health valuies of cover can vary a lot, but some like the concrete barriers have 150hp - that's five shots needed to destroy the cover itself!

I find spending multiple turns plinking away at an alien's cover to be really dull. Needing half of the squad to spray down the area around one (1) alien to get the kill makes me feel as though I'm commanding a bunch of muppets. My vote's for ARs to get a big ol' accuracy boost.

[Mytheos]

I do want to test the accuracy build, but I dont think majorly jacking up accuracy overall is going to be the solution.

I think we're making good progress as is...just toss the single shot rifles a small 5% boost, and work on shotguns...then change up suppression in some way or another, and do a couple small tweaks here and there, and you have it.

I think the concept should be:

Snipers = No Suppression, Great ranged accuracy, suffers accuracy and damage penalty in closer ranges ( You hit arms instead of heads in close range, and if you arent using a scope at 20 feet, they are no better than a rifle save for slightly better damage )

Rifles = Good balance of Range and Accuracy with single shots, and suppression with burst fire.

Machine guns = At longer ranges are for suppression, and medium ranges are for mowing down Aliens.

Shotgun = At longer ranges are for suppression, and at medium ranges provide good accuracy and good damage. Closer ranges = Great Accuracy and damage.

[Mytheos]

If they're behind 50% cover (say)' date=' those 80 acc soldiers are going to need twice the amount of shots, and a lot of those will miss the cover as well as the alien. Now, health valuies of cover can vary a lot, but some like the concrete barriers have 150hp - that's five shots needed to destroy the cover itself!

I find spending multiple turns plinking away at an alien's cover to be really dull. Needing half of the squad to spray down the area around one (1) alien to get the kill makes me feel as though I'm commanding a bunch of muppets. My vote's for ARs to get a big ol' accuracy boost.[/quote']

Use Smoke Grenades. If you do it right they run backwards away from you because they dont have a shot worth a damn to take.

Then you can move up and catch them out of cover.

But you have to be careful with the accuracy. If it ends up being a situation of being able to kill 1 Alien with 4 soldiers 80% of the time in 1 turn you are causing a huge slew of problems.

There IS a reason all XCOM games have the soldiers with crap accuracy, it wasnt a mistake.

Edited August 1, 2013 by Mytheos

[kabill]

There IS a reason all XCOM games have the soldiers with crap accuracy, it wasnt a mistake.

I don't want to start the discussion we've had before, because it almost certainly won't go anywhere. However, this claim about accuracy always having been low in X-Com games just isn't true.

Accuracy was considerably higher in UFO:EU than it is is Xenonauts, at least relative to the number of shots you were taking. If you don't believe me, go have a look at the weapon stats on Ufopedia: the Snap Shot for a Rifle, for example, cost 25% TUs and had 60% accuracy (and the rifle was less accurate than various upgrades). That's twice the accuracy of a rifle weapon in Xenonauts and that isn't even considering auto-fire (which was always a better choice in terms of likelihood-to-hit vs. TUs spent). Nor is it factoring in that Xenonauts has an explicit cover system and long-range penalties which further push accuracy down. The *only* grounds that I think you can claim that accuracy was low in UFO:EU is that soldier accuracy *could* start as low as 40. But then it could start as high as 70 as well (putting the average at the same as Xenonauts).

Therefore, I do not think your claim is well-founded. Accuracy in the original game was considerably higher than it is presently in Xenonauts. If you are using the OG as a model, therefore, that would be evidence for buffing accuracy in Xenonauts relative to what it is now.

[Mytheos]

I don't want to start the discussion we've had before, because it almost certainly won't go anywhere. However, this claim about accuracy always having been low in X-Com games just isn't true.

Accuracy was considerably higher in UFO:EU than it is is Xenonauts, at least relative to the number of shots you were taking. If you don't believe me, go have a look at the weapon stats on Ufopedia: the Snap Shot for a Rifle, for example, cost 25% TUs and had 60% accuracy (and the rifle was less accurate than various upgrades). That's twice the accuracy of a rifle weapon in Xenonauts and that isn't even considering auto-fire (which was always a better choice in terms of likelihood-to-hit vs. TUs spent). Nor is it factoring in that Xenonauts has an explicit cover system and long-range penalties which further push accuracy down. The *only* grounds that I think you can claim that accuracy was low in UFO:EU is that soldier accuracy *could* start as low as 40. But then it could start as high as 70 as well (putting the average at the same as Xenonauts).

Therefore, I do not think your claim is well-founded. Accuracy in the original game was considerably higher than it is presently in Xenonauts. If you are using the OG as a model, therefore, that would be evidence for buffing accuracy in Xenonauts relative to what it is now.

You could ask anyone who ever played any XCOM game, Choose one:

A) My soldiers feel like Elite Bad-Asses and have deadly accuracy

B) I feel like my Soldiers start off like rookies and cant hit the broad side of a barn half the time. When they get to be elite its not so bad but they still dont feel like marksmen by any stretch.

Not many are picking A.

Again not going by numbers, but going by "feel".

[Mytheos]

However...

IF you made Alien reaction fire higher, changed Suppression to Minor TU penalty + Huge accuracy Penalty, increased Alien damage, increased Alien Accuracy somewhat, small bump to sight and vision ranges...

Then you might have something going that would allow for a higher soldier accuracy bump.

[Ol' Stinky]

There's another one, though.

C) Even elite soldiers can't hit the broad side of a barn with the AR, as it's half as accurate or so as most guns that were used in X-Com '94 - and that's without cover or range taken into account.

5% isn't going to make much of a difference.

Edit: I do use smoke, but I think it might be a bit dodgy. 3 stacks of smoke should be giving something like a x0.3 chance to hit, but I get a lot of snap fire reaction shots hitting my men anyway.

Edited August 1, 2013 by Ol' Stinky

[Mytheos]

There's another one' date=' though.

C) Even elite soldiers can't hit the broad side of a barn with the AR, as it's half as accurate or so as most guns that were used in X-Com '94 - and that's without cover or range taken into account.

5% isn't going to make much of a difference.

Edit: I do use smoke, but I think it might be a bit dodgy. 3 stacks of smoke should be giving something like a x0.3 chance to hit, but I get a lot of snap fire reaction shots hitting my men anyway.[/quote']

I was saying start with 5% and keep going 5% per patch.

We'd be at +25% accuracy on rifles by now on the Exp Builds. And you could monitor the trend of complaints, and watch the thoughts about how good rifles are slowly change.

Hey quick question, do you know what game file has the suppression info in it? For how suppression works?

[Ol' Stinky]

Sure.

First of all, there's an important entry in config.xml, since you'll be wanting to change how many points of suppression units regenerate per turn. It should be line 70:

		<Suppression regenerationPercent="25" iconOffset="-80" iconName="tiles/SuppressionIcon.png" />

Secondly, weapons_gc.xml has the suppression values and radii for the, well, weapons. (;

Finally, unless I've forgotten something, you might want to look at aiprops.xml. It seems that bravery = number of suppression points. So a sniper rifle with suppressionValue=40 can suppress a caesan guard (bravery 40) with just one shot. That seems excessive to me, but hey.

Given the sort of system you've described, I'd try doubling or tripling bravery scores in aiprops.xml and changing the amount of suppression units regen to 100%. Good luck, and happy modding!

Edit: this is all in Xenonauts\assets.

Edited August 1, 2013 by Ol' Stinky

[Mytheos]

@Ol' Stinky

Thanks I appreciate it

[Mytheos]

@Ol' Stinky

Hmm, if it works that way...

There isnt any way to set a Low bravery penalty for if it was at a certain value you'd have an accuracy penalty?

Or something with Panic?

[kabill]

You could ask anyone who ever played any XCOM game, Choose one:

A) My soldiers feel like Elite Bad-Asses and have deadly accuracy

B) I feel like my Soldiers start off like rookies and cant hit the broad side of a barn half the time. When they get to be elite its not so bad but they still dont feel like marksmen by any stretch.

Not many are picking A.

Again not going by numbers, but going by "feel".

You're assuming that buffing the present level of accuracy in Xenonauts would involve a change from B to A. In my experience, having played around with various accuracy levels which range from vanilla through to scores slightly above Aaron's mod, that's not true at all. The move is from B to somewhere in between, which is precisely where I think it should be.

You write about 'feel', but I'm afraid for me that the 'feel' of Xenonauts at the moment is that soldiers suck, far more so than they did in the OG. So, by your own measure (since you've rejected mine, although I'm not convinced for a good reason) I disagree with you. As evidence, I've just finished a mission involving a long shootout lasting in excess of 10 turns, with a number of the combatants exchanging fire at a distance of ~7 squares. A fight like that would *never* happen in the OG; it would have been over in 2-3, tops. Such a long fight, with me emptying entire clips (I managed to count the number of turns by virtue of emptying an entire belt of LMG ammo!) doesn't feel in the spirit of the OG at all to me (if that's supposed to be a good thing; I'm not always sure it is).

It's worth mentioning as well that there's more than soldier accuracy at stake here - the aliens suck (at hitting), too. And I'd argue that, if we're writing about 'feel' and invoking the OG, that's doubly problematic since the lethality of aliens in the OG was one of the most important aspects of the game.

P.S. I'd be interested to know how you get on with nerfed suppression. It's something I'd been thinking about looking at too.

[Mytheos]

You're assuming that buffing the present level of accuracy in Xenonauts would involve a change from B to A. In my experience, having played around with various accuracy levels which range from vanilla through to scores slightly above Aaron's mod, that's not true at all. The move is from B to somewhere in between, which is precisely where I think it should be.

You write about 'feel', but I'm afraid for me that the 'feel' of Xenonauts at the moment is that soldiers suck, far more so than they did in the OG. So, by your own measure (since you've rejected mine, although I'm not convinced for a good reason) I disagree with you. As evidence, I've just finished a mission involving a long shootout lasting in excess of 10 turns, with a number of the combatants exchanging fire at a distance of ~7 squares. A fight like that would *never* happen in the OG; it would have been over in 2-3, tops. Such a long fight, with me emptying entire clips (I managed to count the number of turns by virtue of emptying an entire belt of LMG ammo!) doesn't feel in the spirit of the OG at all to me (if that's supposed to be a good thing; I'm not always sure it is).

It's worth mentioning as well that there's more than soldier accuracy at stake here - the aliens suck (at hitting), too. And I'd argue that, if we're writing about 'feel' and invoking the OG, that's doubly problematic since the lethality of aliens in the OG was one of the most important aspects of the game.

P.S. I'd be interested to know how you get on with nerfed suppression. It's something I'd been thinking about looking at too.

I dont think increasing accuracy is going to flip the switch to Ninja Assassin Soldiers.

I think general accuracy needs a slight bump overall, especially with certain weapons and ranges.

But I am saying in general chance to hit cant be 75%+ across the board or something crazy.

And until soldiers get up to 6-7 hits out of 10 people are going to complain about accuracy, and making Aliens 60-70% accurate is going to send casualties skyrocketing.

On a side note, I guess I am biased based on my play experience.

I tend to spend 1-3 rounds to kill an Alien, at max ranges /shrug

Never spent 6+ rounds trying to kill 1 Alien before.

Edited August 1, 2013 by Mytheos

[kabill]

Ah - I'd not suggest accuracy be quite that high (certainly not in most circumstances). Apologies for writing cross-purposes.

And, the example I gave - it was four aliens, not just one (sorry, I thought I'd made that even a tiny bit clear, which I hadn't). It still wouldn't have taken that long in the OG, though (whether that be because I killed all the aliens, or the aliens all killed me!).

[Mytheos]

Ah - I'd not suggest accuracy be quite that high (certainly not in most circumstances). Apologies for writing cross-purposes.

And, the example I gave - it was four aliens, not just one (sorry, I thought I'd made that even a tiny bit clear, which I hadn't). It still wouldn't have taken that long in the OG, though (whether that be because I killed all the aliens, or the aliens all killed me!).

I see.

Yeah I have encountered 3 at a time once or twice ( I havent played 19-5 much yet) and those encounters did take like 5-6 turns