Ground Combat Balance Discussion v19 Experimental Build 7

[StellarRat]

I'm mostly liking the new farm maps, aside from the bugs that seem to be preventing grenade use on some of the new submaps.

Make sure to send a BR with screenies.

[lemm]

I like the idea of increasing the pellet count more' date=' even if that means a bit of a damage reduction. It certainly [i']looks[/i] very cool to have a whole load of 'em firing out per blast.

Additionally, given the increased damage randomness, more pellets will result in a more uniform amount of damage from point blank blasts.

[StellarRat]

Additionally, given the increased damage randomness, more pellets will result in a more uniform amount of damage from point blank blasts.

True.

[Josip Broz Tito]

Posted this in a different thread, but it makes more sense here: 2 random ideas that popped into my head. If someone already came up w/ them= it's your idea lol

Vehicle Idea: Might be nice to have the option of removing the turret from a vehicle to increase its armor.

Random Smoke Idea: Have light+ heavy droids, and androns be able to see through it since they have multispectrum vision.

Might open up the option for an advanced smoke grenade they CAN"T see through

[Ol' Stinky]

I think the buff to numbers of aliens on light scouts was overkill. I'd like to see that change reverted, and light scouts get phased out faster.

I'm mostly liking the new farm maps, aside from the bugs that seem to be preventing grenade use on some of the new submaps.

Even if they reduce the number of light scouts, they'll still probably be the only UFO in the first month. That's ~9 missions or so. I'd much, much rather have 19.7 light scouts than go back to maps with all of two non-coms in.

[Dranak]

Even if they reduce the number of light scouts' date=' they'll still probably be the only UFO in the first month. That's ~9 missions or so. I'd much, much rather have 19.7 light scouts than go back to maps with all of two non-coms in.[/quote']

I've seen/killed Scouts on Sep 16th, so there's no need for Sep to be only (although I agree it should be mostly) light scouts, with Oct changing over to Scouts/a few Fighters/Light Scouts mixed in. I'm fine with higher number of aliens in light scouts on higher difficulty, but I think up to nine is overkill for normal difficulty.

[Ol' Stinky]

Bear in mind that there are some bugs that make light scouts tougher than intended. For example, aliens cheating with their TUs. I wouldn't want to see light scouts become sparsely populated again because of issues that are going to be fixed.

[Chris]

Bear in mind that 9 is the upper limit, and even if you wind up with 9 in a single Light Scout, they don't land - which means up to half of them will have been killed on impact. Statistically you'd be unlucky to get more than 4 on any mission.

[Dranak]

It could well be selection bias, but of the 20 or so light scouts I have assaulted so far I've only had fewer than four survivors a handful of times. Would it be possible to set a minimum number of survivors on a light scout to four? That would ensure having a reasonable number of enemies on a map, without making new players be occasionally overwhelmed right out the gate (and also further differentiate scouts from light scouts).

[GizmoGomez]

Sorry; are we saying that for crashed light scouts we should be getting around 4 enemies?

I've been getting consistently 6-8, with up to two or three dead in the UFO.

[ventuswings]

Is anyone having problems dealing with alien heavy plasma? I've seen a guy in Wolf armour take three shotgun shots point-blank and not take any damage.

[StellarRat]

Is anyone having problems dealing with alien heavy plasma? I've seen a guy in Wolf armour take three shotgun shots point-blank and not take any damage.

The shotgun type weapons are supposed to be very poor armor penetrators. Although, I haven't encountered any aliens with them yet, it wouldn't surprise me if they had a tough time hurting someone in Wolf. It seems like it should do something at point blank though.

[kabill]

Is anyone having problems dealing with alien heavy plasma? I've seen a guy in Wolf armour take three shotgun shots point-blank and not take any damage.

The few times I've encountered them, they've done nothing more than scratch my soldiers. Indeed, facing plasma rifles is more intimidating.

I think they might come a little late - by the time I encountered them I had half my squad in Jackal and half in Wolf (and probably could have had more Wolf if I were less stingy) and against such armour they don't do a lot. Facing them earlier, when you've got at best Jackal, would probably give them some more mileage. Not sure whether that would screw with the tech tree, though.

EDIT: In fairness, they were shooting from ~10 squares away, so I wasn't taking a full blast. But I can't see them being any more lethal at close range than a plasma rifle burst, and plasma rifles will kill you at a distance as well.

[Aaron]

The heavy plasma rifle issue was an oversight on my part - I didn't give them any mitigation, which meant they quickly become ineffective against later Xenonaut armours. They will have more mitigation in the next patch.

[Ol' Stinky]

I think the AI might still be cheating with LoS in some circumstances, but it seems like it might be intended? Sometimes an alien might be behind a door - not necessarily a UFO door, he might have spawned inside a building in the map - and will charge out when a xenonaut gets close enough. This has happened when there's no real way the alien "player" could have known I had units in firing range. At first I thought it might be a bug with UFOs, but it happened in a warehouse on an industrial map, too.

However, I actually like this behaviour, even though it isn't technically fair. It's made me jump the few times it's happened, and although I did lose a soldier the first time (when a sebillian lept out of the UFO front door and gave me a faceful of plasma), I really shouldn't have been lazily meandering over to the UFO anyway. So if this is a bug, I don't know whether I actually want it fixed. Except for the one time there was smoke in the way, and that didn't seem to stop the door-hogger from aiming at someone in deep fog.

[kabill]

Except for the one time there was smoke in the way' date=' and that didn't seem to stop the door-hogger from aiming at someone in deep fog.[/quote']

Yeah, I think I've had similar issues before where LOS should have been obstructed by smoke but the aliens took shots at me anyway. It's only happened to me on night missions, though, so it was difficult to tell if the smoke actually covered the squares I thought it was covering. But if you've had a similar issue, maybe is something not quite working right.

[StellarRat]

Yeah, I think I've had similar issues before where LOS should have been obstructed by smoke but the aliens took shots at me anyway. It's only happened to me on night missions, though, so it was difficult to tell if the smoke actually covered the squares I thought it was covering. But if you've had a similar issue, maybe is something not quite working right.

Is smoke supposed 100% block LOS now? To me it looked like it was variable. Variable from turn to turn makes a great deal of sense, while 100% blocking is unrealistic.

[kabill]

I took "Smoke from smoke grenades now blocks line of sight (still also reduces accuracy of shots through it)" to imply 100%, but that's not necessarily true.

I'd have said, based on my experience, that 1 tile of smoke is enough to obscure all LOS beyond it and that is consistently the case (except when I've been shot through it, obviously!). If there's variation, I'd assume that's because of smoke dispersing and therefore opening up vision? I'm quite possibly completely wrong, though.

[StellarRat]

I took "Smoke from smoke grenades now blocks line of sight (still also reduces accuracy of shots through it)" to imply 100%, but that's not necessarily true.

I'd have said, based on my experience, that 1 tile of smoke is enough to obscure all LOS beyond it and that is consistently the case (except when I've been shot through it, obviously!). If there's variation, I'd assume that's because of smoke dispersing and therefore opening up vision? I'm quite possibly completely wrong, though.

Although, I haven't had a chance to use smoke too much in the new build, I do distinctly remember that for some of my guys it completely blocked LOS while the "lighter" looking smoke tiles allow me to both see and fire through them. Maybe Aaron/Chris could jump in here and clarify how it's supposed to work.

[Ol' Stinky]

The LoS block's only for smoke from the smoke grenade - maybe ordinary smoke from other sources (rockets, grenades, gas tanks, etc.) are confusing matters? Also, it only updates LoS when you hit "end turn", so everyone can see through the smoke that's just been placed until then.

I don't really use explosives if I can help it, so it's not been an issue for me. But I can imagine that for someone who likes to go rocket heavy, having non-LoS smoke and LoS smoke around at the same time might be really annoying.

[StellarRat]

The LoS block's only for smoke from the smoke grenade - maybe ordinary smoke from other sources (rockets' date=' grenades, gas tanks, etc.) are confusing matters? Also, it only updates LoS when you hit "end turn", so everyone can see through the smoke that's just been placed until then.

I don't really use explosives if I can help it, so it's not been an issue for me. But I can imagine that for someone who likes to go rocket heavy, having non-LoS smoke and LoS smoke around at the same time might be really annoying.[/quote']Smoke should be smoke no matter what the source. If you're trying to look through the smoke/dust kicked up by an explosion it's just as hard as trying to look through a smoke screen. It just doesn't last as long. Do think as the smoke from a smoke grenade dies down you can see through it though. At least, that's what I remember.

[Ol' Stinky]

Most stuff that produces smoke in the game creates "GrenadeFragSmoke" while the smoke grenade makes "SmokeGrenadeGas". It's only SmokeGrenadeGas that blocks LoS right now, if gas_gc.xml's anything to go by.

Yeah, it makes sense that both types should block LoS. It's not like you're going to use an alenium rocket as an impromptu smoke grenade, because the smoke kicked up is unpredictable, covers a tiny area and dissipates quicker. I don't mind if stun gas doesn't block LoS since a) it deals stun damage, it doesn't need any bonuses on top of that and b) it's pink/purple, so there's no chance of confusing it for GrenadeFragSmoke/SmokeGrenadeGas.

[Ishantil]

I want smoke missiles.

[Josip Broz Tito]

I think that if smoke grenades stay the way they are now, that aliens should try to estimate your position to burst fire at. Higher rank aliens would be far better at estimating than non-coms for example.

If the aliens could throw smokes, you could bet for sure that I'd be firing into it to either kill or supress them. I want the aliens to do the same. This behavior should require that alien to have already seen the soldier or been fired at by that soldier(which would allow the alien to estimate direction.

OH, and when aliens can throw grenades, I'd like for them to use those in smoke estimation as well : )

Separate topic: Stun rockets and Stun grenades. I like how the stun rockets throw out a consistent area of gas, thank you for that change. The new grenades work fine on non-coms, and seem to cause other ranks to shift position to get out.

[StellarRat]

I want smoke missiles.

I want that and the incendiary rocket back. Why did Goldhawk take that round away? I never saw an explanation.