Quasi-Realism (Alpha) (Balance Mod for 1.0x)

[Mask]

The mod is ready for its alpha debut for version 1.0x of Xenonauts.

This is a mod by Ron Losey, which I have helped test and distribute. It attempts to simulate some level of reality within the Xenonauts setting by tweaking the variables.

Changes include weapon damage, weapon randomness, armour, vehicle armour, combat fuel consumption for aircraft, weapon and sight ranges, rebalance of weapon types (plasma, laser, ballistic) so that they each excel for certain uses (later guns still being better overall), economics, and many various other changes.

A more thorough description:

Installation:

This was made for version 19 build 7 of the experimental beta. It might work for other versions, but has not been tested.

Go to the Xenonauts Folder. Most people have it in,

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Xenonauts"

I suggest backing up your files before installing (only the .xml files in the assets folder are modified).

Extract the rar to the assets folder, and you're done.

Quasi-realism for Xenonauts

Alpha version (so please don't whine about stuff we haven't got to yet)

Currently for version 1.0x

Testing on version 1.07, community build 0.23.

Primary programming by Ron Losey (also writing this text)

Additional testing, and distribution, by "Mask". Editing of this text also by "Mask".

Help welcome.

------------------------------------------

Summary:

This is a project to create a sense of realism, or at least reasonable-seeming, to the world of Xenonauts. Certain hacks must be made for game balance, but the objective will be to reduce these in number and intensity, in order to give players a feel of actually being there ... not stuck in a bad "Starcraft" clone. The final objective is "suspension of disbelief", to use the literary term - to make things seem real enough that people want to believe it is real, or at least that it is an accurate simulation of reality.

Xenonauts seems to be a great game engine with which to work, and the plot, while obviously built off of the old X-COM games, is well written. But the actual number values used to calculate the action are, in many cases, totally out in left field. These items break suspension of disbelief, and make the game frustrating and difficult to play. Fortunately, the game was written to be easy to mod, and so these items can (for the most part, I hope) be fixed.

Methodology:

The basic point here is that reality is balanced. The real world balances military and economic issues with itself. Therefore, if something is made as realistic as possible within the game limitations, and it creates a "balance" issue, then this is because SOMETHING ELSE is out of balance. The realistic element should not be modified for balance - the other items that are unbalanced by it are the problem.

The idea here is NOT to change the universe in which the game is set. That is, I am not adding new alien types, or bending the lore in any way. The idea is to make the game data match the apparent lore. The only exceptions here are in situations where some item in the original game is absurd or not useful, in which case it must be modified in a more heavy-handed manner.

(16/8/13) Current changes:

Sight range. Limiting sight range in daylight is a terrible hack. If your troops can't see a crashed spaceship 50 paces away in broad daylight, they don't need armor - they need glasses.

Likewise, weapon ranges. Some weapons have short ranges - thrown items, shotguns, and to a lesser degree, low-velocity handgun rounds. Everything else is still pretty effective from a hundred paces away. Things like melee weapons and thrown grenades are limited in effectiveness because many other weapons have much greater range. This is, after all, why few armies rely on shotguns and pistols for a battle ... short range weapons are for short range situations.

Explosives. Explosives are messy. A hand grenade is an absurd weapon. According to USMC (that's "United States Marine Corps", for any who missed it) field manuals, the average marine can throw a normal grenade about 8 meters (in combat ... you can do better if you have time to wind up for the pitch, but if you can do that, you don't need a grenade). The M67 fragmentation grenade has a fatality radius of 5 meters and an injury radius of 15 meters... and body armor doesn't help much for that first couple of meters from the blast. (That is a 14 ounce grenade, containing 6.5 ounces of composition B ... not exactly a huge bomb.) (And that's RADIUS, not diameter ... that thing is going to kill pretty much everything in a 30-foot circle, and maim everything in a 90-foot circle. And grenade splinters leave horrible wounds - "maim" is the correct word.) To use one, you throw the sucker, yell "frag out", and duck... because if you're not under cover by the time that thing goes off, you're history. Compare that to most grenades in games, where you can drop them on your foot and survive ... and you start to see the issue. The problem with grenades, and explosives in general, is NOT the lack of killing power - the issue is that you can blow yourself up. Yourself, civilians and friendlies, valuable equipment, whatever. Also, they're not subtle weapons -grenades and other man-portable explosives tend to be heavy to carry, hard to deploy safely, and not terribly precise about what they destroy.

Vehicles and vehicle weapons. If you're going to bother to take along a vehicle, you expect it to do something that one guy on foot can't do. It should be faster, tougher, and/or pack a LOT more firepower. This somewhat makes up for the cost (both cash and logistics to transport it) and the fact that it's a big target for enemy fire. (That last point is only a game issue because of the sight and weapon range changes above.) Vehicle weapons are larger, and/or they are solidly mounted, so automatic weapons can fire a lot more without walking around so much. Note: don't use the vehicle rockets up close, or anywhere around locals ... they're based on a 30-pound warhead. More for taking out terrain, like smallish structures and walls of larger ones, than targeting individual hostiles.

Aircraft, added a few more missiles. Who would build a plane that can only carry two missiles, anyway? Not to mention, the game is unplayable otherwise - you can't build enough hangars to put enough aircraft in the sky to stop the larger UFO's, otherwise. To make it fair, alien fighters got more missiles too ... so don't think you're getting something for free there (although you might not notice, early ... once the fighters appear, you'll notice).

Economics. While it is reasonable to think governments might be making secret deals with the aliens to let them terrorize the population, one would expect them not to be so utterly obvious about it. Therefore, funding has been raised to a level that, while still unreasonable if earth was facing alien invasion, is high enough to not just scream "this organization is a token attempt ... we're really working with the aliens."

A game balance adjustment, such that conventional firearms are faster to use, lasers more accurate, plasma more damaging ... such that, while the more advanced weapons do offer some overall improvement, these improvements may not always be the best solution for every situation. This will open more tactical options, making a mixed-weapon strategy viable. It also makes sense ... those sci-fi weapons are big, clumsy-looking things, combining the aesthetics of Star Trek with the convenience and usability of an Underwood typewriter. And despite my general disdain for the mechanically unreliable M-16, it's hard to dispute that they are fast, handy weapons (if you can get them to fire... good luck with that). And that HK G5 sniper rifle ... a fine weapon, and still surely lighter and easier to use than those square bricks of laser rifles.

Specifics on that: for game purposes, note that plasma weapons WILL melt down armor, no matter how strong ... You can't take repeated hits without suffering damage. Laser weapons are highly accurate, but neither fast nor terribly damaging ... use with caution. Conventional firearms still offer good potential for situations that favor speed over accuracy or damage. Greater difference between snap and aimed fire added. Burst fire generally faster ... you can waste ammo as fast as you want. Most weapons have seen overall damage increases ... note for the record, bullets can be fatal. Alien plasma rifles, more so.

Randomization on damage has been greatly increased. This is not a hack for balance - this is reality. The difference between a bullet removing someone's ear lobe or hitting them in the eye is about an inch. If you can keep all of your rounds in a 2-inch circle under combat conditions, I would love to know where you learned to shoot. This means, also, that armor performance is highly erratic ... maybe the round hit a trauma plate, of maybe it hit bare skin. So armor improves your odds ... but it's exactly that, odds. Chances. Not "my armor plus my hit points can take (x) hits from (whatever)". Unless you're in a tank and you know the enemy is armed with beanflips, there's always a chance that things could go badly for you.

Minor changes to other factors, related to this ... times on weapon fire, accuracy, skills and armor numbers. Weapon damages, damage randomization, modifications to make certain weapons seem unique ... too many smaller changes to list, really.

Planned changes:

Once everybody is satisfied with these changes, we'll move on to balancing the aliens to make them suitably challenging ... again, in ways that seem reasonable. Say, the little humanoid sectoid-looking suckers - making them more resistant to fire than a brick wall would be unreasonable, given their apparent body mass, but they could easily be more skilled with their weapons, or use better tactics. This is a believable scenario.

Still learning exactly how the blast damage and radius numbers interact. Haven't really started on "suppression" yet ... surely explosions will generate a lot of that, but exactly how much is going to be tricky to compute. So there's a lot more tweaking to go, still.

If somebody suggests a weapon that should be present, or some other such change, I'll do what I can ... I somehow suspect a mortar or grenade launcher is needed, if for no other reason, just to add illumination for the night missions. But we're not adding a bunch of stuff just to be adding stuff ... it needs to be something that would have an impact on the tactics.

Nuclear hand grenade jokes. One of the weapon "upgrades" is "Fusion Grenade" ... so I think we should cook up plenty of "nuclear hand grenade" jokes. (At least it should negate the need to carry the much heavier blocks of C4.)

The other "issue" - needs confirmation:

There was some concern that alien AI does not tend to react to hostiles ar ranges greater than about 28 squares. They will still use reaction fire, but little else. Still trying to figure that out. Most maps do not include such long clear lines of fire anyway, and aliens flee back to the ship (not the corners of the map), so it was less of an issue in v19. However, it is a point of potential concern, and needs confirmation.

-------------------

For the record ... anybody is welcome to take these changes and run with them. I am not adding any graphics, or anything else that could be construed as "my work", outside of changing the numbers to what they probably should have been in the first place. However, if you get a combination of numbers that does seem to be an improvement, do let everybody else know.

If you want to use these numbers as part of some other mod, do cite the "Quasi-Realism" project as the source of the numbers ... not because I care about credit for it, but just to eliminate confusion when people start asking "What is the difference between mod A and mod B?" If it is clearly stated, "Mod A uses the numbers from...", then everybody is on the same page.

If you want to know if this is compatible with some other mod ... just check which files were modified. If another mod changes the same files, you will need to decide which one to use, and/or merge them by hand.

If you're just angry because you think grenades should look like kiddie firecrackers and people should only be able to see a barn from less than 30 feet away ... then this package is not for you. Go make your own mod, don't tell me about it.

Download the mod from here: https://mega.co.nz/#!iBUBGLYI!eL9vj8gxTEki_QWILPl35oeYBWoWr47o9LUF2gO6-6s

Edited July 14, 2014 by Mask

[Ishantil]

I will check this out! I would suggest a slightly more robust explanation of the various intended changes, though.

edit: the documentation on the actual mod page is quite thorough, I would include that here.

Comments:

Vehicle Missile: 30 pound warhead? Even a Hellfire missile is only 20 lbs. And that's a big missile. What missile are you basing a 30 pound warhead off of?

Aircraft: one of the things that's interesting about the aircraft in the game is actually the absurd combat range. Granted, this could easily be extended by the use of aerial refueling (something that cannot be modeled with the game). I've never quite figured out how to model it with this style of game.

Edited August 16, 2013 by Ishantil

[Mask]

I've encountered so many forums that didn't have spoiler-tags, I forgot to check if this one did.

Added the full description as you suggested. Thanks for pointing that out.

Let us know what you find with the mod.

[Mask]

To answer the comments you added:

The vehicle missiles are based off some Chinese artillery rockets from about 1960.

So far, we haven't looked at changing the Geoscape range of aircraft, just the amount of fuel consumption in combat. It is something to consider, but there might be some limits the engine presents which, for now, can't be worked around.

[EchoFourDelta]

Dude, you can chuck a grenade like... 30 meters. You're either misreading the shit out of the FM, or looking at a misprint. The average frag grenade weighs around half a kilo or so; the M67 we use weighs around 400 grams, a little less than a pound. It's a little smaller than a baseball, and a little more than twice the weight. You can chuck them a pretty good distance, and fairly accurately if you've tossed more than a couple. If you're actually looking for legit FMs on this sort of thing, I'd suggest you check out FM 23-30 "Grenades and Pyrotechnic Signals," first edition ran in in 2000. It's an update of an older one made back in the 60s, and reflects new additions to the arsenal, and in some places various improvements made to existing stocks or tactical procedures, or training considerations. That said, the M67 didn't show its face until the mid-70s, so it's featured and referenced in more contemporary editions anyway.

Effective range on most hand-tossed grenades is a bit under the effective range of pistol fire (not any direct correlation, of course, but just how things turned out).

Also, body armor is the biggest reason why grenades are even survivable at closer distances to the point of detonation. There's not a grenade in the world that's actually throwing shrapnel through SAPIs or chicken plate; the former's rated for M2 AP tungsten-cored rounds, the latter will do about the same, but armor-grade metal cut and worn to stop rounds are generally much heavier as a rule (shit-ton more durable than ceramics, though). You're not knocking through that with single-digit or low double-digit grainage at at even a couple thousand meters per second, and that's not even taking into effect the kevlar panels backlining the trauma plates, or the rapidity with which fragmentation slows down due to the extremely irregular, non-aerodynamic shapes. Unless the soldier's facing the explosion and catches a bunch of frag to the domepiece, you'll generally see a large number of leaking, non-immediately-lethal wounds even closer in around the "lethal" radius if you're looking at armored individuals. You have the obvious concerns with hits to arteries in the arms and legs, particularly closer to the torso, but you're operating on a fair number of poor assumptions here. Not saying that it's something you'd want to be around when it got excited, but fragmentation grenades are far from guaranteed to instantly kill a target than one might assume (rapid incapacitation is more common, or injuries that will result in death anywhere from five minutes to an hour or so later), especially if they're wearing suitable protective equipment around the head and torso, or as is the case with our fictional enemies here, equivalent jumpsuits or armor that covers their entire body, or kevlar-like hide.

But yeah, back on the range thing, if the FM's not enough, consider shot putting. The ones that dudes use weigh something around 16 pounds, almost 20 times the weight of a frag grenade. You see people chucking those things better than 20 meters.

Edited August 16, 2013 by EchoFourDelta

[Aufklarer]

Echofourdelta, I'm in the british army and I agree with your statements about grenades. Its entirely possible to throw up to and around 20 meters accurately with practice. Additionally the OSPREY body armour we use will stop fragmentation blast at less than one meter with the main cause of injury being to unprotected parts of the body from shrapnel and internal airspaces (within the body such as lungs) being overpressured by the blast. Add in the ballistic plates that cover the torso front and back which stop 7.62mm round penetration, you have pretty solid protection for the areas covered. Put that into the context of the armour we see in game and you can imagine that the soldiers are even more so protected from blast (given the illustrations of the new armour types).

I agree with the changes you have made, especially with regards to the randomization of a hits damage. Body armour is great aslong as it takes the hit.

Id would really like to see suppression weapons (specificaly the machine gun) be able to be used as a machine gun. One burst per game turn is pretty disappointing given the rates of fire they are used at in real life. Dropping accuracy for a decrease in the TU's cost for firing aslong as the xeno has been stationary seems a reasonable compromise.

[GizmoGomez]

Also, v19.7 just came out.

...Just saying.

[Mask]

First, Gizmo: ...Well. This on one hand is a depressing error, but it's also pretty funny. We wondered whether to wait for the new version or release now... then the new version comes out a few hours after our release.

We're working on version 19 build 7 now. Might take a bit of time. My testing thus far using the v19 build 6 pack produces an odd bug, where the aliens don't seem to be willing to shoot at my soldiers under any kind of provocation. Install at your own risk if you're using build 7, for now.

To Echo Four Delta, and Aufklarer: This one was over my head, so I had to ask Ron. He has given me the reason for his decision to stat the grenades as they are.

"The USMC combat study that produced the 8-meter grenade throw conclusion was based on a number of observations. Specifically, in the case of hand grenades, that their previous training and testing protocol was highly unrealistic. While standing on solid ground with plenty of time to wind up for the pitch, it is possible to get 20 meters or more on a throw. However, you don't need a hand grenade when standing on a golf course on a lovely day. If repeated under "grenade use conditions" - full combat gear, carrying a primary weapon, on questionable footing, and either trying to stay behind some cover or trying to get back under cover quickly - the results were quite different. If you plan on using a hand grenade in combat, you had better figure on about 8 meters, because that's likely all you're going to get. The fact that this was shorter than the grenade's rated casualty radius was more than a little disconcerting, and prompted some changes in tactics."

"Fragmentation explosives tend to be fatal regardless of most body armors, for two reasons. The first is blast concussion, which can kill or disable even if fragments do not penetrate the armor. Unless you're wearing two tons of metal (like the Xenonauts late-game power armors), you're probably vulnerable to concussion. The second is the hail of tiny fragments, which will strike in so many places that unless you are literally completely encased in solid metal, will still cut you to shreds. Modern military armors do not have the coverage necessary to prevent severe injury under these conditions. This is partly why both science fiction and actual military planners show interest in full-body power-assisted armors.

"For game purposes, the throw range on grenades was not changed - it is still possible to throw the weapon further than its blast radius. The operatives in-game do seem to be standing flat-footed and winding up like a baseball pitch. However, it is no longer possible to just drop a grenade at your own feet and expect a reasonable survival rate, unless you're wearing like 11 tons of armor."

"New version of the mod will be available as soon as I can determine exactly what has been changed, and rebuild the necessary modifications."

Edited August 17, 2013 by Mask

[Zumtom]

Made an account to comment here, I love what you've made. Managed to play for a few hours before the update rolled in, and I was really liking the changes. I've been waiting for a mod like this since I got Xenonauts, thanks for the hard work.

[Aufklarer]

To Echo Four Delta, and Aufklarer: This one was over my head, so I had to ask Ron. He has given me the reason for his decision to stat the grenades as they are.

"The USMC combat study that produced the 8-meter grenade throw conclusion was based on a number of observations. Specifically, in the case of hand grenades, that their previous training and testing protocol was highly unrealistic. While standing on solid ground with plenty of time to wind up for the pitch, it is possible to get 20 meters or more on a throw. However, you don't need a hand grenade when standing on a golf course on a lovely day. If repeated under "grenade use conditions" - full combat gear, carrying a primary weapon, on questionable footing, and either trying to stay behind some cover or trying to get back under cover quickly - the results were quite different. If you plan on using a hand grenade in combat, you had better figure on about 8 meters, because that's likely all you're going to get. The fact that this was shorter than the grenade's rated casualty radius was more than a little disconcerting, and prompted some changes in tactics."

"Fragmentation explosives tend to be fatal regardless of most body armors, for two reasons. The first is blast concussion, which can kill or disable even if fragments do not penetrate the armor. Unless you're wearing two tons of metal (like the Xenonauts late-game power armors), you're probably vulnerable to concussion. The second is the hail of tiny fragments, which will strike in so many places that unless you are literally completely encased in solid metal, will still cut you to shreds. Modern military armors do not have the coverage necessary to prevent severe injury under these conditions. This is partly why both science fiction and actual military planners show interest in full-body power-assisted armors.

"For game purposes, the throw range on grenades was not changed - it is still possible to throw the weapon further than its blast radius. The operatives in-game do seem to be standing flat-footed and winding up like a baseball pitch. However, it is no longer possible to just drop a grenade at your own feet and expect a reasonable survival rate, unless you're wearing like 11 tons of armor."

"New version of the mod will be available as soon as I can determine exactly what has been changed, and rebuild the necessary modifications."

Thanks for the reply as to your reasoning, while I take nothing from the study that you have referenced I have to disagree with the conditions under which a grenade is thrown. Granted you can't stand in open view with all the time in the world to throw a grenade perfectly, especially if under fire. Removing room clearance from the equation, grenades tend to be used in the open when the enemy is suppressed prior to a final assault to clear an enemy position. The final bound needs to be as short as possible but having performed that very task in live fire exercises in kenya, it is entirely plausible to throw accurately further distances than those stated above. However I'm glad your not just pulling numbers out of the air and that you researched it.

With regards to lethality, with either no armour or small amounts (such as those used by forces today) wounds if not lethal would almost certainly be incapacitating to the point where a solider could take no further action. However given that the armour's in game are created from alien alloys and advanced tech, would it not be feasible to say that they afford more protction from grenades? especially as the illustrations show they cover much more of the body than just the torso.

[EchoFourDelta]

Yeah, backing Aukflarer here, in my own memory from live combat, and from a variety of schools attended teaching the elements of both combined arms assault in open desert conditions and urban warfare (the primary focus of modern combat operations), grenades aren't exactly something that you chuck back and forth from inside what is typical pistol range (a matter of 5-10 meters or so - often less - in practice). You're either flinging them in the general vicinity of a position you have suppressed in the first place from a considerable distance (decidedly not just inside pistol range), or chucking them as hard as you can into a solidly-walled structure preparatory to a breach. None of these things quite reconciles with attempted direct usage at the quoted "8 meters" (unless you're considering the structure breaching, which isn't the debate, rather their use over open ground). I'm also unfamiliar with this "combat study" you mention, as it wasn't part of the content from any SOTG training unit, or their distributed materials used for doctrinal workup when training Marines from the period of 2004-2012; the last updated reference I can find is in that FM I mentioned. You might very well be getting some bum scoop.

On the subject of injuries, again, as Aukflarer mentioned in response to my original comment, no one's saying a grenade isn't lethal; it very often is... provided the target in question is unarmored. However, when you consider a target whose vital organs are effectively completely covered by fragmentation-defeating vests that provide protection to the neck area as well (as models since the Korean War have) along with a helmet, it's often not the case that immediately lethal injuries will be inflicted. This isn't indicating that a target won't receive mortal wounds, or that there won't be significant soft tissue, or tearing of vital blood vessels, but these are more often than not survivable enough (especially in the short term) that the target may take some time to be incapacitated to such a degree they're no longer a viable threat to the person who threw the grenade.

Also, on the mention of "concussion" effects of fragmentation grenades... there's not a lot; concerns about overpressure provided by the type of blast that a typical fragmentation grenade displays are a moot point, especially outdoors, with physiological damage caused by the concussive effect being outstripped by the dangers of the fragmentation outside of a mere couple meters.

The idea that we're chucking grenades around that blow frag out past 50 meters in every direction at someone eight meters away (without a legit solid, structural wall between you and the target) is preposterous. Any engagement at that range is likely to be occurring in the context of a fight in a heavily built-up area anyway, which might be what's throwing you off; this is decidedly not the context of what we see in-game. Trying to apply something with such a narrow scope as a generality in a simulation is probably one of the biggest pitfalls you can make as a designer.

Edited August 17, 2013 by EchoFourDelta

[Mask]

Zutom: Thank you for your kind words. Those, along with the same interest in such a mod, are what fuels us.

We're both glad you enjoyed the mod. Sorry that I didn't plan around this new update appropriately (distribution is my front, I suggested releasing it at this odd time). We'll try and get a version which works with build 7 up as soon as we can manage. In the same challenging sense of timing these projects seem bound to face, Ron has become sick, and won't be as quick to fix the new version for this reason (sorry to bare bad news)

Aufklarer: Mm, we're in agreement that there is room for improvement. The aspect of the baseball pitch is hard to work out what to do with (personally, I'd like the option to be able to throw baseball pitch style, but it's risky if you don't have them suppressed, with options to toss grenades from cover). The throwing range hasn't been modified, currently, because the animation gives that impression, and some other stuff (grenades deal too much damage through cover).

At this time, we don't know what formula is used to calculate explosives damage, which is making statting explosive and shrapnel lethality quite a work. Alien and Xenonaut armour isn't perfect yet, either.

Any help you can give, when build 7 comes out, by mentioning oddities you notice in the mod is, pretty much, crucial to this mod's success (we're only two people, and aren't giving this mod as much attention as it deserves).

Echo Four Delta: Some of what I've said to Aufklarer, I would like to mention. We're not fully satisfied with our numbers, yet, so you are right in stating that they are far from as good as they could be.

I talked to Ron about your post, since I felt unable to answer this. He has not been feeling well which is delaying the update, and he was not in a very good mood.

"The rated casualty radius for the current U.S. issue frag grenades is 15 meters, not 50. If you have comments about the mod changes, they are welcome, but don't try to compound a difficult subject by describing everything in bizarre absolutes. The idea was to stop the grenades from going POOF and leaving minor burns on toenails ... not to argue semantics that probably can't be accurately simulated anyway.

"I'll get the new version out as soon as I can. Meanwhile, cluttering the discussion with semantics that have little to do with the actual data used in the mod is severely pointless. And getting defensive because tactical documents and field manuals of different military services address different concerns ... that is equally irrelevant at this time.

"Some people are always annoyed. They don't mind that the troops are blind and guns only shoot 20 feet ... but if you try to create a little bit of a sense of realism, they're quick to write 4 pages about how your grenade weights were off by 50 grams or some such. They don't care about the game. They just like to cite numbers, trying to prove that their military careers haven't been a total waste, by criticizing a volunteer modder who specifically stated that the objective was a sense of realism, not some bizarre measure of technical accuracy, instead of building their own realism mod and tolerating the trolls that come out of the woodwork."

Thus, let's focus on improving the mod. Arguing details and semantics are not relevant, unless they are what we experience in play and in testing. Personal experience of combat is a good thing which can be applied to the mod, but we need to do so practically in getting the feel of combat, since many details are not possible to simulate with perfect accuracy in the current game.

[EchoFourDelta]

The grenade's expected casualty radius, that is, the radius out to which it's nearly guaranteed to cause some serious injury, is 15 meters. They throw frag out WAY farther than that. Your buddy seems to think the metal fragments hit an invisible wall and stop moving at 15 meters or so. There's nothing bizarre or absolute about that. All I'm saying is that if you're looking to make something somewhat resembling reality, you might look into getting some better advice. I'm not trolling you, and I'm not trying to be pompous; I'm simply saying that you're operating on some false assumptions if your stated idea is to get it a little closer to something resembling reality. Just delivering some helpful advice.

Edited August 17, 2013 by EchoFourDelta

[Aufklarer]

I don't think either myself, or EchoFourDelta are out to derail what is clearly a good thing for the game (realism). I love the fact you guys are changing things in my opinion at least for the better. I am only concerned that a frag grenade doesn't become overpowered. I'd like to think my real life experiences would be helpful to someone who is hoping to make a realism mod more real. Currently I do not even use grenades in game because they are certainly not as potent as they should be. I think the accuracy currently from the xenonauts (excluding the current throwing over cover / arc issue) is spot on and the range of throw should be slightly increased.

Cover is king when it comes to surviving fragmentation, and I commend your efforts to implement that into the damage solutions. I think an arbitrary (potential) lethal range has to be capped, for in game purposes to around 4-5 tiles from the point of blast. Does damage currently decrease the further from the blast the target is? One thing is for sure, grenades currently feel like party poppers and a massive waste of my time units ha.

Something I posted a while back was the ability to throw through windows and doorways without having to walk my solider into the open doorway like an idiot. It should be possible to throw a grenade into a room for example without having to expose ones self in the entrance. Probably something which is too late to be able to be implemented. Just need that and the machine gun rate of fire to be increased and i'd be a happy xenonaut.

Edited August 18, 2013 by Aufklarer

[GizmoGomez]

Sorry if that sounded kinda harsh or whatever; I just thought it woefully ironic.

Sounds like a very interesting mod, I hope it all goes well.

[Mask]

That was pretty woefully ironic, I agree.

It's in general agreement that grenades are not as good as they should be, I think I can say. What I recommend, is we all do some tests with the grenades on the Xenonauts, and report our findings here.

How to do this? The Damage and Radius stats under the Grenade are what are used for controlling the effect of the grenades, in the weapons_gc.xml file in assets. Tweak these, toss them around, and see what looks like a good blast radius.

You'll want to tweak the DamageRandomChance variable at the start of config.xml as well, from 20 (or is it 50 now?) to 95 (that's what we're using--so, unless we change that in the mod, it's probably best to use that for uniformity of data).

Make sure to back up your files before tweaking.

You should test on unarmoured Xenonauts rather than aliens. They have been used as our baseline for configuring health and weapon damage, and we have a better idea of how human react to injury than how unearthly horrors react. Since you'll be testing in the standard game (I assume), the alien health and armour will also be pretty weird (rather like DnD), and will not give you very good test results (also, your guys will just stand there, and won't shoot back at you as you try to set up a grenade throw).

I think we'll all feel better when these grenades are dealt with. I'll continue correspondence with Ron, and help him with updating and further tweaking the next release (will mention the machine gun AP cost).

UPDATE: Ron agrees about the machine gun.

"I lowered the AP cost on the MG by a bit, because I thought so too ....

Note that the weapon shown - the FN-MAG (NATO designation M240) - is a kind of light gun for its caliber. It doesn't handle recoil well, and tends to overheat and cook off rounds if you fire longer bursts. So some compromise seemed to be in order, to prevent players from being able to burn the entire 50-round belt without pause."

In the new version, we'll test this more closely, and see if the compromise could be better.

Edited August 18, 2013 by Mask

[EchoFourDelta]

"FN-MAG (NATO designation M240) - is a kind of light gun for its caliber. It doesn't handle recoil well, and tends to overheat and cook off rounds if you fire longer bursts."

This is what I'm talking about. This is patently false. The M240 series (US designation by the way, doesn't have a standardized NATO one; the "M" prefix designates a type classification given by the US Army) are among the heaviest medium machine guns in use, weighing anywhere from between 2 to 3 kilograms more than its comrades; both the M60 and MG3; the older models of the M240 series were particularly heavy weighing in at nearly 30 pounds. By comparison, some of the lighter weapons in this category can run as light as 17 pounds for HK21s, 23 for the M60, 23 for the MG3, and 21 for this French one I don't remember the name of.

The current trend toward implementation of medium/general purpose machine guns pushed down to the line platoon level is to to this lighter end, with examples such as the Mk48 and some new designs by H&K, weighing barely as much as the M249. This, of course, is reflected positively in their potential for use as support in the assault phase, but handicaps their potential for use as sustained fire platforms; lighter barrels and receivers heat up considerably more quickly.

The barrels and receiver of the M240 are particularly durable and fail-tolerant as well, especially as compared to the M60 series of weapons, a trait that has really only started to be corrected for the M60 in recent years through rebuilds and product updates specifically focusing on special operations use. The tolerances and sheer heavy-ass build of both the weapon and its component quick-change barrels allow nearly-continuous fire at the rapid rate, with an upper practical limit of about two hundred-round cans/belts per minute, in 10-15 round bursts. Even at this rate, the barrel only needs to be changed every couple minutes; the weapon operator can fire at the sustained rate for going on ten minutes before overheating becomes a practical concern. The weapon in question can dump out a good can or two at the cyclic rate before you reach the same point where you're worried about overheating, and even then it's more a question of barrel wear and damage to the bore rather than a concern of ammunition cookoff.

Hope this helps.

Perhaps it might be interesting to depict the human stuff simply as it is. The in-game reasoning behind why the aliens are superior is largely because they have superior weapons. Maybe work that angle that the developers aren't/can't. Depict the human stuff as it is, and work on making the aliens' weaponry somehow superior to that, seeing as that's why we're told they're better at this sort of thing in the first. As it's currently depicted, the only reason the aliens get any traction in ground battles is because the Xenonauts apparently only recruit from boot camp washouts and use sabotaged weaponry or something; it all feels artificial. This was understandable back in the day in 1994 when the designers of X-COM were working at the technical limitations of the day; this shouldn't be so much the case at the moment. Make the human weapons and troops feel competent to the task in their depiction, and then work on why the aliens are supposedly kicking peoples' asses left and right.

Edited August 18, 2013 by EchoFourDelta

[Aufklarer]

I think the focus should remain simplistic and making the ballistic weapons as close to real as they can get given the variables in the game. Which exact gun is depicted isn't really the concern. It's more a matter of allowing it to be used as it would in reality as each differing machine gun performs the same role; to supress.

[EchoFourDelta]

Well yeah; that's what I'm getting at. I was just saying, again, that the stated goal is to get it as realistic as possible within the constraints; they're working on some information that's getting them muddled up in attempting to do so.

[Firebeard]

UPDATE: Ron agrees about the machine gun.

"I lowered the AP cost on the MG by a bit, because I thought so too ....

Note that the weapon shown - the FN-MAG (NATO designation M240) - is a kind of light gun for its caliber. It doesn't handle recoil well, and tends to overheat and cook off rounds if you fire longer bursts. So some compromise seemed to be in order, to prevent players from being able to burn the entire 50-round belt without pause."

To be perfectly frank, Ron doesn't know what he's talking about.

In the first case, the M240 fires from the open bolt. Ammunition doesn't cook off in the gun, period. You'd literally melt the receiver(also impossible, you'd have catestrophic failure of the locking lugs, and the barrel before then) before you got the round sitting in the feed tray to heat up enough to cook off. So yeah, not only is this not going to happen, it's evidence of his ignorance. Anybody who's operated one, or fondled one, or played with /any/ LMG excepting some of the wierd russian squad automatic weapons fires from the open bolt. For thsi reason.

Even amongst the very few LMGs that /do/ fire from the closed bolt(and even lumping in the very light russian SAWs like the RPK series), you can /still/ fire a LOT of ammo before a cookoff. On the order of thousands of rounds. People have set the handguards(wood) or melted them(polymer) of those weapons on /fire/ before causing a cookoff.

Ammunition cookofffs are effectively a nonissue amongst ANY weapon, unless you're doing WWI style masses of constant LMG fire(I recall one battle in which three MGs went through a combined total of just over a million rounds, in a day). The testing that any weapon from the modern era undergoes before acceptance and issue tends to far exceed combat stresses, and this is especially the case in sustaned fire and mean-round-until-failure tests.

Two, as Echo says, the M240 is the US designation, and it is one of the /heaviest/ weapons in it's class, among modern designs anyway(WWII era and earlier designs are frequently heavier), although even some much older designs(MG 34, MG 42, BAR, DP28, DPM, RP28, BREN, pretty much everything but the Browning M1919 series) weighed less than the 240 does. Among beltfeds, it is the heaviest currently issued GPMG. Even including the wierd russian designs.

So yeah, I would disregard most of Ron's input, and I would stick to realism as much as possible.

[Mask]

Well, I'm not the modder. Ron is doing the modding. If you can submit some machine gun stats and some data as to how they perform in game, I'll show them to Ron as soon as I can.

[Nagho]

Doing a quick Ctrl+F I didn't notice anything mentioning this so I just wanted to throw out a quick suggestion for the mod based on a gripe (though I do see that the discussion right now is on weapon balance). That is that in the game the medical kit is essentially a two-person piece of equipment; there is no way currently in the game to do even limited healing to oneself. This is only a mod, of course, but since the goal here is for some degree of realism/believability I felt this was as good a place as any to put it.

What I think would be good to see is a bandage that is a smaller piece of equipment that provides no or very limited healing but removes the bleeding effect from the soldier. The main advantage would be that a bandage can be used either by the soldier on themselves, or by another soldier (with the latter perhaps requiring less time units). After all, I would assume any soldier that is able to still be moving around and firing at the enemy can wrap a bandage around their wound to offer some temporary security against death.

[GizmoGomez]

That's not a bad idea Nagho. If all it did was remove the bleeding penalty, then I'd support that. However, if it did actual healing of HP and whatnot, then I'd disagree.

[EchoFourDelta]

I think it could go even farther than that. I mean, self-aid first. Especially considering the sorts of troops we're looking at. In the base game, we have Navy SEALs and SAS combat veterans in their mid 20s that can't manage the recoil from, well, anything, can't carry more than a couple magazines or two to start without it breaking their back with exhaustion, and are completely incapable of treating themselves if they're injured.

We're not controlling special forces operatives from around the world merged into an elite task force. We're controlling out-of-shape civilians who've never even seen a gun before and who have no idea how the human body works.

I mean, you learn basic trauma care in boot camp, and this is basic knowledge and training is expanded upon as you work through MOS and secondary schools throughout a career, often to some equivalency of EMTs or Paramedics; this is for personnel who aren't medics/corpsmen. It's absurd that these guys can't treat themselves, even if it would take more time.

This is sort of what I was on about earlier; the aliens aren't winning because they're depicted as being strong, or that technologically advanced. It's because the humans and the human technology in the game are gimped to some astounding degree.

[Mask]

Ron is feeling a bit better, now. He still has a lot of code to sift through before he can even start fixing the mod around the new updates... so we're still a little ways off from build 7.

He also felt well enough to reply.

"This is why I was originally only going to give this mod to a few people, and not release it public. Any time you try anything like this, you get flak from two sides. One side understands the game engine but not the realism, and they're like "Can you make your agents do jump kicks?" The other group has some background in realism, but hasn't worked with the game engine (at least not nearly enough), and they're going on about how something is really used, and not taking into account that the game simply can't or doesn't simulate that. And neither group understands the concept of "This is Alpha, we're still working out the details."

I don't really disagree with what those guys are saying ... but there's an issue. They're talking about setting up an MG and using it like it was intended to be used. Two man crew, a loader making sure the ammo feeds and changing barrels when they get hot, firing from bipod or tripod in a prone or seated position. Problem is, that's not what we have to work with....

The game engine models the little X-COM dudes running around firing a belt-fed weapon from the hip, kind-of pointing it in a general direction rather than aiming. This, realistically, tends to result in bullets striking more ducks and geese than the intended targets, more so if you fire more than a short burst. Also, if you just lean on the trigger, you can't really change out the barrel when it gets hot ... so you can completely melt down most guns, at least enough to screw up the ammo feed in some significant way. Playing like you think you're "Rambo" is an extremely inefficient use of a squad automatic weapon.

So they're not lying. They have seen these weapons used ... specifically, they have seen them used in a reasonable way by trained military. But I just don't have the ability to modify the current game code to really show this. I can model what seems to be happening, or I can model what you might want to be happening ... and either one is going to fail to simulate the other.

If somebody wants to talk to the developers about getting prone firing positions and setting up crew-served weapons ... we might be able to do something with that. Until then .... well, I'm doing what I can with the tools I have."

"Almost all infantry light/medium machineguns are, in a word, too darn light for what they are.

Even my granddad told stories about the air-cooled Browning M1919A1 ... even it was too light. It walked like crazy, unless you went to extreme measures to nail it down to something, and it heated like crazy."

As for the Xenonauts being meant as SAS members and the like... I've talked this over with Ron before, and we're not really sure how to handle it. We could try making all Xenonauts start out at basically max level, and disable the levelling up mechanic (currently, their advancement in skills doesn't seem to match reality), as one possible alternative. We decided to leave that bee's nest for now, and work on it in a later phase of the alpha. If anyone has some ideas on what they want to see,with the Xenonaut's stats and progression, we're open to suggestion.

For the medical kits, Ron already considered that one. It's hard-coded so that you can't use a medkit on yourself, currently. The Devs will probably change this later... so I guess wait till then.

There are already plans to update the AP cost to better represent the time and difficulty of performing emergency first aid in a battlefield situation, as well.