Ground Combat Balance Discussion v19 Experimental Build 6

[Xenomorph]

Its probably just me, but reaction fire seems to be a bit overkill. It's rare not being shot at when opening a door even with smoke, using a teleport up level, with the most needed accuracy buff, it just leads to a lot of predictable repetitiveness. There's no if, it's gonna happen, it's fate, and there shall be a lot of smoke, if the soldiers find a way to carry all of that.

I witnessed the most incredible battle while assaulting a caesan landing ship, earlier today.

There were no aliens outside. I thought most of them died on the crash, and it would probably be just a couple stragglers tucked in inside..

So i got all 8 soldiers outside ready for the breach, 4 snipers lined up in front of the door at a safe distance, and 4 rifles to the side. Got one to open the door and peek in, there were 6 aliens.

So i closed the door, wait for their turn and see if there were more. They ran back and forth, in and out the side doors, total, i spotted 12 within fov, and also heard the teleports working, so there were more.

I opened the door again, peeked in and fired a few shots inside to break covers and such, and ended turn.

Then all hell broke lose.

They started pouring out of the UFO, my soldiers using reaction fire left and right, aliens firing from the inside, a mess. Eventually, it cooled down. I've never seen anything like this. 9 dead aliens outside, 1 dead soldier and the other 7 were injured, only 1 wasn't bleeding, and all i did was push the END TURN button.

There were a total of 22 aliens inside the UFO, and i was forced to save scum like i hate it on every move. Because the rest were happily waiting behind every door on the way, even creating secondary doors to flank, i was still getting shot in the face at every corner.

[Xenomorph]

Quick question, how can i tune down this ridiculous amount of reaction fire? Being unable to fart without being shot at is seriously pissing me off, specially on alien bases. I played with reflexes on aiprops, but it didn't seem to make much of a difference, is there something else?

Setting:

Assaulting the base's command center. There are 9 aliens in there.

I have 12 soldiers behind the corner, and i've tried EVERYTHING i could think of just to get one soldier past that horrendous wall of reaction fire alive before losing half squad.

Insane reaction fire+high accuracy=fail. Reaction fire ignoring smoke from grenades=fail.

Good try, but it doesn't work.

Edited August 11, 2013 by Xenomorph

[Max_Caine]

Fiddling about with aiprops while in the middle of a ground combat doesn't, as far as I know, work. From what I can tell, when GC instantiates aliens, it doesn't refer to aiprops again if you change those stats mid combat. You'd have to use something like Cheat Engine or the debug mode if you wanted to alter stuff.

I assume you're facing Caesans?

[Xenomorph]

Fiddling about with aiprops while in the middle of a ground combat doesn't, as far as I know, work. From what I can tell, when GC instantiates aliens, it doesn't refer to aiprops again if you change those stats mid combat. You'd have to use something like Cheat Engine or the debug mode if you wanted to alter stuff.

I assume you're facing Caesans?

Yep, Caesans. This was a really bad experience

I later figured it wouldn't work, as changing armor values in armours_gc didn't work either. So much for wanting to play it as is, learned my lesson.

This can actually work when they stop shooting through walls, smoke actually works properly, and interruptions are not so intrusive, who knows, maybe in V20.

[svidangel]

Been reading a few threads about the vehicle problems.

Now I know that the devs haven't really wanted to have tank drivers or anything like that, but another possibility to keep tanks "with the curve" is to make their stat values relative to your soldiers stat values, thus simulating operator experience as your squad gets better. Obviously not perfect as you could take a tank with 15 combats, ship it to a base full of rookies and it would be back to it's old self, but it's something that wouldn't be terribly hard to code.

1. Average of soldier's stats x multiplier. Not terribly abuse-able unless you are willing to try to just bring one soldier with great stats and no one else. Slightly more punishing when trying to mix up squads.

2. Average of top #(say 3 or 4) of soldier's of a given stat * a multiplier. This would leave room for seeding rookies into a veteran group without nerfing the tank.

3. Stats based on rank of highest soldier in squad. This would have a more incremental increase with set values based on the ranking soldier, but if you farmed all the kills/shots to one soldier to get him statted/ranked up, it might be slightly more abusable.

Obviously there are tons of ways this could be worked out, but I think it might be a decent direction to go in.

Armor value/HP could go up based on research unlocked.

[Aaron]

We aren't going to do "tank experience" or anything similar. The fact that vehicles don't level up is one of their specific weaknesses - you take a powerful vehicle to deal with tougher battles and/or take the hits for your troops, but you sacrifice the battle experience 2 guys in that position could have earned. Right now vehicles clearly aren't powerful enough to warrant considering this trade off, but the plan is to change that.

[Max_Caine]

When someone next considers alien base design, please have at least two different entrances to the Command Room. I'm not the only one who suffers through the meat grinder that is 8-9 frackin' aliens armed to the teeth and hopped up on adrenaline.

[xakthos]

When someone next considers alien base design, please have at least two different entrances to the Command Room. I'm not the only one who suffers through the meat grinder that is 8-9 frackin' aliens armed to the teeth and hopped up on adrenaline.

I gave up on capturing the room neatly, I just dump a LOT of rockets in there from the neighboring room from behind a smoke screen. Area of effect overkill and room is totally empty of destructible items but it works.

[smoitessier]

It should be tough to get in, it's their HQ. What i'm not thrilled about id the shape of the room, with alien being able to get behind the hypperwave decoder and destroy it by accident, i've never retrieved one yet (only done the small seb base in 19.6hf2, and not sure if the animated globe thing is the decoder). Any one ever get that btw?

[smoitessier]

Just tried the laser carbine, man was I disappointed after the shotgun buff I could see it doing a little more damage perhaps, but the 40 TU for a burst sounds off, it's way better to snap off 3 shotgun snapshots for 45 TUs instead. If the LC's burst was dropped to 25-30 that would be ok if you kept the same damage, which seems weaker than a laser riffle for some reason.

[Ishantil]

I don't think all the base "loot" is in yet.

[svidangel]

We aren't going to do "tank experience" or anything similar. The fact that vehicles don't level up is one of their specific weaknesses - you take a powerful vehicle to deal with tougher battles and/or take the hits for your troops, but you sacrifice the battle experience 2 guys in that position could have earned. Right now vehicles clearly aren't powerful enough to warrant considering this trade off, but the plan is to change that.

Yeah, they will definitely need something. Especially with the drastic reduction in the number of troops we bring per combat in the early game when they would be most useful.

[Ol' Stinky]

Just tried the laser carbine, man was I disappointed after the shotgun buff I could see it doing a little more damage perhaps, but the 40 TU for a burst sounds off, it's way better to snap off 3 shotgun snapshots for 45 TUs instead. If the LC's burst was dropped to 25-30 that would be ok if you kept the same damage, which seems weaker than a laser riffle for some reason.

Carbines seem a bit weird to me. None of them have any mitigation, they should probably get the same mit as the rifles of the same tier (18/25/32, laser/plasma/MAG).

[GizmoGomez]

Carbines seem a bit weird to me. None of them have any mitigation' date=' they should probably get the same mit as the rifles of the same tier (18/25/32, laser/plasma/MAG).[/quote']

Agreed, they should be very similar to rifles, expect with significantly lower TU costs and a significantly shorter range. They should both have relatively the same accuracy, same damage, same mitigation.

[GizmoGomez]

@Aaron:

Concerning vehicles, what do you think will make them worth it? What, if anything, do you have in mind?

[Ishantil]

So a carbine is a cut down rifle, generally for the purposes of being easier to maneuver in tight spaces.

Because of the shorter barrel, there is two effects, lower accuracy (which is relfected in the game), and lower muzzle velocity. An M-4 Carbine has a muzzle velocity of 2900 ft/sec, whereas the M-16 is about 3100 ft/sec.

So the carbine is easier to aim quickly since it's lighter and shorter.

With lasers, depending on what kind of laser it is, the length would primarily affect the beam focus. So the laser rifle should do slightly more damage than the carbine, as well as be a little more accurate.

Laser and plasma weaponry should act about same. I assume the MAG weaponry is gauss/railgun style, but I haven't gotten to it in the game.

[GizmoGomez]

Instead of lower accuracy, we should instead have the same accuracy, but simply a shorter range. This way a rifle and a carbine would perform similarly in close quarters, but the carbine can fire much more rapidly due to a significantly lower TU cost. However, after the carbine range ends and the accuracy sharply drops, the rifle has it's place. That being said, the rifle should have a fairly low TU cost to fire as well.

[Ishantil]

I agree entirely. That's the best way to model it for the game play.

[Aaron]

I have done an initial rebalance of the vehicles yesterday: they now have more TUs, better sight range and their damage resistance has been altered to be more armour heavy instead of hitpoint heavy - all vehicles now have just 100 HP but armour against most damage starts is much higher than before. This means there are certain weapons to which vehicles are outright immune (though armour degradation and damage spread is being increased in the next build, so even plasma pistol can wear them down). In addition their weapons are now more fearsome, causing pretty high damage with a bit of splash and a lot of suppression. We also implemented the vehicle headlights system, which gives them a whole new usefulness at night (they light up a 60 degree arc ahead of the vehicle out to 20 tiles).

Chris and I were talking about carbines, and the issue of them being a bit dull and something of a waste of one of our limited number of weapon types - they will only ever at best be a slight variant on assault rifles. So we have basically decided to try rebalancing all the carbines as shotguns, so they will share the same short range high damage style that the initial shotgun has now. We have also implemented code that allows us to give them multiple "pellets" per shot, this not only makes them a bit more distinct mechanically and visually interesting, but also gives them a particular weakness to armoured enemies (as armour is applied against each shot) which the previous high damage single shot model could not represent very well.

[DNK]

How I've done carbines is make them do a 5-shot burst, with 85% range, 85% damage, 85% accuracy, and about 85% weight of a rifle. They're far better in close encounters, but otherwise just aren't as good. I think I lowered TU costs a bit (~90% of rifle), save for the burst, which is higher but not a full 67% higher.

[Max_Caine]

Got a question. The "pellets" for each shot. Is the damage value of the carbine divided among the pellets, or does each pellet have the damage value of the weapon? (I.e. would 65DAM be divided among, say, 5 pellets for 13DAM a pellet, or wold each pellet be 65DAM).

[smoitessier]

Chris and I were talking about carbines, and the issue of them being a bit dull and something of a waste of one of our limited number of weapon types - they will only ever at best be a slight variant on assault rifles. So we have basically decided to try rebalancing all the carbines as shotguns, so they will share the same short range high damage style that the initial shotgun has now. We have also implemented code that allows us to give them multiple "pellets" per shot, this not only makes them a bit more distinct mechanically and visually interesting, but also gives them a particular weakness to armoured enemies (as armour is applied against each shot) which the previous high damage single shot model could not represent very well.

That sounds very good visually speaking, if you can make the laser shotgun's spread look nice, but just wondering if their armor mitigation is too low how will that work against the higher alien ranks in say alien bases? would the first shot wreak their armor leaving them exposed for following barrages?

[Aaron]

@Max_Caine: Each pellet deals the weapon damage value, so we have obviously adjusted that to compensate.

@smoitessier: If you tried to attack an elite Andron, who have the heaviest armour of any normal soldier at 32, with the basic shotgun you would be in real trouble - it does 20 damage per pellet. However it is more likely you will be attacking them with something like the newly reworked plasma shotgun (carbine), which deals 45 damage per pellet - you would still take a big hit in damage, but it would not be immune (and 25% of the damage the Andron armour absorbed would be removed from the armour value after each shot too).

[Max_Caine]

Incidently, I'm enjoying the groupthink that the aliens now employ. It's especially visible in base assault missions, when the moment you get bogged down in a firefight, most of the aliens come running to the party. If the groupthink could be more sophisticated, that'd be nicer.

EDIT: Hrm. Aaron, what's the current vision for armour then. "Don't get hit"? I mean, the text for Predator armour sells it as something on par with Tactical Dreadnought Armour, but if it's going to become shoddy quite quickly, shouldn't that text be changed to "You'll survive the first shot. Good luck!".

Edited August 13, 2013 by Max_Caine

[Ishantil]

Do soldiers a single armor facing or multiple like they did in X-COM?