Ground Combat Balance Discussion v19 Experimental Build 6

[Aaron]

This build really only has one major balance change, but it's a pretty big one so warrants a new thread:

The accuracy of the vast majority of the ground combat weapons in the game has been boosted by a significant amount - this combined with the increased close range accuracy bonus in the last round of changes means that combat will be much deadlier.

Here is an example of the increase for the standard ballistic rifle, before the change:

Single shots

AP="20" accuracy="30"

AP="30" accuracy="60"

AP="40" accuracy="80"

BurstFire

AP="40" accuracy="20"

And then after:

Single shots

AP="20" accuracy="40"

AP="30" accuracy="90"

AP="40" accuracy="120"

BurstFire

AP="40" accuracy="30"

Also, alien bases now have a new layout style which is much more interesting (and much easier for us to produce) than previously - please give them a try (only small bases appear right now due to a bug, but it should still give you an idea).

Finally I spent quite a bit of time redoing the UFO doors so they now function correctly - they leave a frame when open and so can be manually opened and closed; they are now destructible, C4 is probably best for this; and they no longer auto-close. Additionally I cleaned up some incorrectly set UFO floor tiles, and after that I have been unable to reproduce the "low accuracy inside UFOs" bug, but if anyone sees it please let me know how you did it.

[lemm]

I was wondering if you (or anyone else who is reading) could upload some savefiles with these experimental builds? Maybe one save game after each new weapon tier is unlocked? I get the feeling that much of the feedback on the forums is biased towards the first couple of months of play, and I think you might get better feedback on the late game if people didn't have to spend an entire day playing after each experimental build release.

[henri5]

Two bugs so far: 1) Cannot heal wounded soldiers. Tried healing with 2 different soldiers; 2) Game crashed during first air combat, when small target dodged first missile from Condor 2, and game crashed (CTD) when I shot second missile ( Condor 1 missile hit had not destroyed target).

Also very first mission (responding to landed alien ship) had 6 aliens that were tougher than the usual early aliens (could not kill with one shot or one grenade). This could be a bit tough for a newbie first mission, especially since 3 aliens were visible from Charlie (which is how my soldier got wounded).

Update: Checked the cache, 15 files were repaired, and so far the above problems have not appeared again. So apparently there was something about going from the stable version (with Sathra's mod) back to the V6 beta...

Edited August 3, 2013 by henri5
update

[lemm]

I get the feeling that aliens are spotting me through walls.

[Lorebot]

I'm not sure I like that you changed the AP cost for a Normal shot with the Pistols to 20.

They didn't get any buffs and they didn't really need a nerf so why the change in cost from 15 to 20?

[GizmoGomez]

If anything, pistols should be a very rapid-fire style weapon. I mean, it's a 9mm round; they wouldn't do much damage, and they have low recoil, so you can fire lots of them in a short space of time. Decent accuracy, very low TU cost, low damage.

[smoitessier]

LOve the shotgun buff, was a great feeling to walk in a light scout and pop two caesarians with 1 shot each, felt real and satisfying

[kabill]

Playing through the first month, I think personally I'm happy with the balance between the starting weapons now. I've been running with a mix and it feels like all my soldiers have something to contribute and are useful.

re: C4 - I had a go at using this to attack a Small Scout. Explodes the doors quite nicely, but at present there's no tactical advantage to this since it requires I have my soldiers further away from the door when the aliens are engaged and doesn't seem to cause suppression (not sure why this is - it might have been because the aliens were outside the suppression range. Will experiment).

With this in mind, are there still plans to add reaction fire when opening UFO doors (if that was even ever made a plan)? Also - I'm going to do a proper test with this but I'm increasing certain that reaction fire against shots isn't triggering from when you shoot from outside a UFO (room in a UFO?). I thought this might have been due to line of sight, but I'm nearly certain that I had instances today when I should have got shot at.

EDIT: Have just confirmed that there's a bug with reaction fire triggering when breaching a UFO. Shall post details on the bugs forum.

Edited August 3, 2013 by kabill

[Mytheos]

Playing through the first month, I think personally I'm happy with the balance between the starting weapons now. I've been running with a mix and it feels like all my soldiers have something to contribute and are useful.

re: C4 - I had a go at using this to attack a Small Scout. Explodes the doors quite nicely, but at present there's no tactical advantage to this since it requires I have my soldiers further away from the door when the aliens are engaged and doesn't seem to cause suppression (not sure why this is - it might have been because the aliens were outside the suppression range. Will experiment).

With this in mind, are there still plans to add reaction fire when opening UFO doors (if that was even ever made a plan)? Also - I'm going to do a proper test with this but I'm increasing certain that reaction fire against shots isn't triggering from when you shoot from outside a UFO (room in a UFO?). I thought this might have been due to line of sight, but I'm nearly certain that I had instances today when I should have got shot at.

EDIT: Have just confirmed that there's a bug with reaction fire triggering when breaching a UFO. Shall post details on the bugs forum.

Suppression on C4 = 200 and has a range of 8

[GizmoGomez]

Why is C4 used in this way?

Isn't it supposed to be a breaching charge?

If not, and C4 is indeed supposed to be simply a portable HE rocket in a box, can we get a separate breaching charge as well?

Something just powerful enough to blow down walls, with a short radius, that won't necessitate being a mile away when it goes off like the current C4.

Like kabill said, there's no tactical advantage to using C4. I mean, a rocket launcher can do the same thing; blow stuff up. However, a low-radius high-damage charge would allow us to actually use them for breaching and not just for blowing everything up in a twenty meter radius (what kind of soldier would carry that anyway?)

Edited August 3, 2013 by GizmoGomez

[kabill]

Have now played up to mid-November.

The first terror mission crushed me, giving me my first failed ground mission since I started playing. This was awesome. It was interesting to see the AI handling larger groups of aliens - it seems to be fairly good at keeping groups of aliens together (there was a hefty pack of 7-8 aliens all moving around the map together) and the higher accuracy of this version definitely saw some advantage going to the aliens now (compared with the early game where you're fighting mostly pistols). Also, although I lost I don't think this is a balance issue so much as less than solid play; I'm also contemplating getting armour earlier than I have been previously.

Followed this with a downed Corvette - again the alien numbers and high accuracy made this an intense fight. I managed to pull through with only a single casualty, up until the game crashed. But it was a tough fight and if the AI had been more competent, I'd have been nursing many more bodies (as it was, a number of aliens had a tendency just to stand up and kneel down again).

With this said, I think I'll reiterate what I said previously - the balance for me is feeling pretty solid at this point. Weapons are all useful in their respective roles and missions (beyond the initial Light Scout glut) are challenging. I've a few more specific points, though:

Precision Rifles: What's going on with these? The version notes indicate that they have hypervelocity, but then also say that hypervelocity doesn't ignore cover any more. When playing, the UI seems to give me hit percentages which are ignoring the cover, but the number of misses I get seems to imply that the documentation is correct and cover is making a difference (and certainly I've seen plenty of Precision Rifle shots bounce of cover, which I never saw while hypervelocity was active previously). I've also seen some very low damage (~7-8) hits from a Precision Rifle - is this supposed to be the case?

Early game missions: I got through the first two months of the game never seeing a UFO other than a Light Scout. I can't stress how tedious those missions got. Some of this is going to be 'fatigue' from having had many starts to the game in the last few weeks, but it got to the point that I almost wanted to stop playing. I'm glad I didn't, because once I got to some non-Light Scout missions, the game transformed tremendously. But there's a massive contrast been challenging and interesting battles when you get some of the bigger UFOs/Terror missions and the simplicity and ease of the Light Scout ones. I'm not convinced that this is a good thing.

I noted in the release notes that Scout ships are supposed to occur earlier. I guess I got a little unlucky not encountering one/managing to engage one before November (actually, I'm still not sure I've seen one). If this can be made to happen even earlier and more reliably (first month?) I think that would be good to throw in some more challenging and interesting missions. Even the Light Scout missions could be changed for the better, though, by mixing up the crews so there's a variety of weapons, and maybe not having so many spawn and camp in the UFO (some of the maps could be really interesting, but often you'll encounter only a single alien outside the UFO, making the map basically pointless and making the mission easier as the Light Scout is simple to assault).

UFO Door/Reaction Fire Bug: I was playing using a workaround for the UFO door/reaction fire bug. This made assaulting Light Scouts more interesting and less easy. I hope this can be fixed (easily).

EDIT: I just remembered something which is probably a feature but I wanted to check in case it needs reporting as a bug. I had a building collapse. I was shooting a LMG at a hard-to-hit alien for several turns and suddenly I'm left with this:

Is that supposed to happen?

Edited August 3, 2013 by kabill

[henri5]

Kabill, with light scouts, I usually have no aliens inside the ship at all! So I guess there is some randomness there.

[kabill]

Yes, you're right. Those do seem to be in the minority though (I played what, ten-ish Light Scout missions today at least and all had at least one and often three aliens in the UFO). I'm wondering whether there's some bias for this depending on the map (related to spawn points?). It's a shame, in any case, because I very much prefer the ones where more aliens are on the outside.

[GizmoGomez]

Yeah, buildings can collapse if you destroy the walls enough. Pretty fricking sweet, eh?

[Max_Caine]

Like kabill, today, about 10 minutes ago, I experienced my first collapsed building. (This was after actually trying for three versions to collapse a building!). After my surprise oh how I laughed when the alien inside died as the roof landed on its pointy head. However, it would be nice to have some kind of animation or something to show the building collapsing. As it was, the building went from "has a roof" to "hit by a tornado" in 0.5 seconds.

[kabill]

Collapsing buildings - awesome and terrifying. No wonder the aliens rarely hide out in houses!

[Skitso]

I hope they can make collapsing buildings a bit more visually appealing though...

[Ol' Stinky]

Precision Rifles: What's going on with these? The version notes indicate that they have hypervelocity, but then also say that hypervelocity doesn't ignore cover any more. When playing, the UI seems to give me hit percentages which are ignoring the cover, but the number of misses I get seems to imply that the documentation is correct and cover is making a difference (and certainly I've seen plenty of Precision Rifle shots bounce of cover, which I never saw while hypervelocity was active previously). I've also seen some very low damage (~7-8) hits from a Precision Rifle - is this supposed to be the case?

They're odd with smoke, too.

They also seem unable to fire over water...? Despite all the bugs, though, they seem pretty effective. I'm really digging the weapon balance for ballistics; I've even used a shotgun a couple of times!

So with that in mind, I think Mytheos has a good point when he says that a lot of weapons have too much suppression. Now that ARs (single shot) and snipers are obviously for killin', do they need to have such high suppression values? It seems to me that suppression is equal to the TU cost of snap shot (or burst, if no snap shot), rather than based on enemies' suppression points. Suppression based equipment like LMGs and flashbangs suffer a bit since they make trade-offs to get their higher suppression: the LMG's unreliable when it comes to dealing damage and flashbangs only deal a small amount of stun.

Suppression radius is very important, so I'm not saying that snipers/single shot ARs etc. should do neglible amounts of suppression, but radius alone might not be enough. Thot regularly says that he doesn't really bother with flashbangs, for example.

I've typed out the word "suppression" a lot in this post. Suppression.

And yeah, lightscouts are a slog, even with the quicker pace. I've been really unlucky in my game, in that the aliens are constantly probing fishermen in parts of the world where I can't reach, and even so I've still had to plough through more than ten lightscout maps.

[kabill]

Re: suppression - I was of this opinion, but having had some tough fights with 4+ aliens engaged at the same time, it's not feeling as overpowered as it did on previous missions. I'd be happy to see it knocked down a bit (for single shots, anyway), but not massively.

Also, reaction fire is now a thing again for the aliens. Turning corners is horrible; It's like playing UFO: EU. So. Many. Corpses. (This is all a good thing!).

[Mytheos]

@kabill

I finished with my first pass on the mod I am tinkering with.

All Alien bravery increased (Bravery = Suppression points), accuracy increased (Less than 19-6, more than 19-5)

Ballistics = Standard (Increased accuracy from 19-5, less than 19-6)

Lasers = More accurate than ballistics

Plasma = Equal Accuracy to Ballistics, Higher Suppression

Mag = Accuracy of Lasers, Suppression of Plasma

(Currently in vanilla all weapons are mostly the same except for suppression, lasers have a little less)

General Rule of thumb = 1 bullet = 10 Suppression. (No more Snipers with 40 Suppression per shot being able to Suppress Aliens with 1 Bullet)

Suppression Radius of Ballistics and Laser = 1 (Except on Shotguns and Burst fire, Vanilla is every single shot has a radius of 3 on all weapons)

Plasma Radius = 2

Suppression regeneration per turn increased from 25% to 50% (After being Suppressed once, takes a little more than a Soldier sneezing to re-suppress)

Close range accuracy bonus increased from 15 to 18. ( So +3 accuracy per tile starting at 5 tiles for a +3 to +15% accuracy in close range)

Shotgun range increased from 10 to 12

Grenade Throw Range increased +1 Tile

Suppression on all Grenades reduced, some significantly. (Flashbangs cant suppress EVERY Alien in the game now in 1 toss, and frag grenades wont 1 toss suppress everything you see while you have them)

Stun rockets increased initial stun damage and smoke, Stun grenades initial stun reduced.

So suppression is reduced, weapons are different other than JUST damage, and accuracy is solid but not so overboard that there is little difference between a soldier with 50 accuracy and 80.

Weekend is GF time so I wont be able to test much until Monday. If it works out I'll toss up the files on dropbox Monday

*I would like to at some point try to mod Carbines into having a role. (2 Burst modes, 3 bullet and 5 bullet with high suppression/lower accuracy vs a riffle. Would like to test them as a closer ranged bullet sprayers instead of a weird weapon with less range than a riffle and essentially the same stats and function trading a little less damage for less TUs)

Edited August 4, 2013 by Mytheos

[kabill]

Cool. Don't want to comment here too extensively to avoid derailing the thread, but if you post the files I'll probably check them out some time. A lot of those changes sound similar to plans I've put together for a mod.

[Max_Caine]

When I first suggested implementing armour degredation and Chris said yes, I was the squealiest fanboy like, evar. However, I have come to the view that armour degrades a little too quickly. As far as I can tell, armour degrades by 10pts every time a unit with armour is hit. This is too great a drop because it doesn't take very long to invalidate alien armour (as there's so little of it except on Androns), it's generally the second shot that punches through weakened Xenonaut armour to kill the Xenonaut (Jackal, for example drops to 20pts of armour after the first hit which is just enough to cover the random damage), and because vehicles are so easy to hit, it makes a mockery of any armour rating you care to put on it. Having fiddled about with armour degredation values, I'd suggest cutting it from 10pts to 6pts. I have found that with a 6pt drop, armour on armoured units (such as Androns) is still signficant but can be weakened without excessive effort.

[kabill]

Hmm - I'm fairly certain armour degradation works as a percentage drop. Certainly some testing I did before implied this.

Having just done some more testing, this is definitely the case. Armour is reduced by 10% of the damage *deflected* from an attack. So, for example:

- If armour has a value of 20 and you're hit for 60 damage (ignoring damage randomisation here), you'll take 40 damage and your armour is reduced by 2pts (since the armour deflected 20 damage, 10% of which is 2).

- If armour has a value of 100 and you're hit for 60 damage (again ignoring randomisation), you'll take nothing as your armour is reduced by 6pts (since the armour deflected 60 damage, 10% of which is 6).

[Tests were done pretty much using those examples. Although I used different weapons with the smaller armour value].

[StellarRat]

Hmm - I'm fairly certain armour degradation works as a percentage drop. Certainly some testing I did before implied this.

Having just done some more testing, this is definitely the case. Armour is reduced by 10% of the damage *deflected* from an attack. So, for example:

- If armour has a value of 20 and you're hit for 60 damage (ignoring damage randomisation here), you'll take 40 damage and your armour is reduced by 2pts (since the armour deflected 20 damage, 10% of which is 2).

- If armour has a value of 100 and you're hit for 60 damage (again ignoring randomisation), you'll take nothing as your armour is reduced by 6pts (since the armour deflected 60 damage, 10% of which is 6).

[Tests were done pretty much using those examples. Although I used different weapons with the smaller armour value].

I think you're right. I seem to remember Chris saying it was a percentage.

[Max_Caine]

I stand corrected. In which case, ignore what I said!