Geoscape Balance Discussion v19 Experimental Build 7

[Aaron]

There is only one major change for the Geoscape in this build, but it is pretty big - the time needed to perform all research has been doubled. "But why?" I hear you cry - I want to see how far we can push the timings on the research before people start having to make critical decisions about which tech they want to research first - up until now it seemed like you cruise through the game with a relatively minor science staff, and still have them idle fairly often.

So pencils out, noses in books.

[DNK]

I modded that into my own game long ago. It's vital to making research actually a part of the game, so kudos.

[alcari]

I'm liking it so far, i've just hit lasers though. I like having research being actually important, and not something you can cram into one base and have it work out.

[Max_Caine]

Don't know about any one else, but I'm liking the extended research times. Top tip: check in every so often with research. You'll find that as you get closer to the research being completed it reflects that on the research screen and you can re-assign scientists. I.e. if you start off a project with "average" as time wears on and the project gets closer to being finished it will switch to "good" and finally "excellent", and you can re-assign scientists to maximise their use.

[kabill]

Yeah, research times are better. Have never had idle scientists up to mid-November and I've just completed and stocked a new Lab.

This said, I did get a Scout just at the end of month 1, which gave me extra stuff to research a month sooner than I would otherwise have had it. And getting Alenium Explosives is a massive help early on. With that it mind, I'm wondering whether times couldn't be pushed up a little more still?

[maackey]

Don't know about any one else, but I'm liking the extended research times. Top tip: check in every so often with research. You'll find that as you get closer to the research being completed it reflects that on the research screen and you can re-assign scientists. I.e. if you start off a project with "average" as time wears on and the project gets closer to being finished it will switch to "good" and finally "excellent", and you can re-assign scientists to maximise their use.

How exactly does research work? Does progress advance at set intervals (poor/average/good/excellent) or is it directly (and linearly) related with the number of scientists? I've always thought it was the latter.

If taking off scientists from excellent progress items is really more efficient, how much more beneficial is it?

[Max_Caine]

From what I remember of another thread on this subject, all research projects take X period of time to complete, and each scientist contributes to how quickly the project is completed. The more scientists, the quicker it is completed, but each scientist after the first provides a dimishing return on the amount of useful work they contribute towards the project. The progress status ("bad/average/etc") is a deliberately vague indicator of how well the research is progressing, and therefore how soon the research will be completed. What I have deduced is that the research screen calculates the level of progress based upon the current period of time remaining, rather than the total time the project takes to complete. Therefore, as the time ticks down until project end, you can begin to reassign staff as the research screen will calculate for you the optimal number of scientists needed for a project at the time you click on the research screen.

This is something of an exploit, as it allows me to manage my scientists in the most efficent manner and gives me a good indicator of how soon it will be before a project is completed.

[Chris]

Yeah, science projects have a fixed number of man hours till completion and each scientist beyond the first works with a cumulative -1% efficiency penalty.

[EchoFourDelta]

The extended research times are feeling really cool; adds a much greater sense of urgency and triage to everything you're doing, and it gives you a massive "Phew" when you get one done like this.

[Xenomorph]

Most recent bug fixes/changes in the game, lately, were a huge leap, it's really starting to feel solid

There's a thing that i think needs some serious work, tho - reaction fire. As it is right now, along with high accuracy, i don't think it works. Anyone that already assaulted a command center on a Caesan base knows what i'm talking about- with up to 10 aliens cramped up in that space, anything that is not smoke/suppression grenade spamming just doesn't work. Just how many times will someone go through 10 round of reaction fire for every step a soldier takes? That causing every single cover prop on the player side to be destroyed within 2 turns? Having to smoke every single passage before opening the door quickly becomes tedious as well. Because smoking after opening the door will attract reaction fire long enough to go downstairs get more cofee.

Maybe reaction fire could be changed to have a range cap similar to grenades, instead of visual, so it's not SO annoying?

EDIT:

My 2c on timed grenades: stuns being timed may cause "gambling" situations. If we have 2 aliens and 2 soldiers and we want them alive (for score ), we can chose to toss 2 stuns on each, taking the risk on none being stunned and/or suppressed, while normally we would focus on one and then move on to the other. This is a good thing for frags, tho. But having the option to set it to go off immediately or in the end of the turn would be sweet. With experience, we can tell with reasonable accuracy if it's going to connect, and this sort of gets in the way.

Doors:

Having increased TU cost for operating doors doesn't make much sense. The reason is that, if we want to open a door, we can use a soldier on the side that will not fire. Having one busy for that is not a big loss, i've been doing that since the first time i played Xenos. I mean, you can always keep it as it is and change UFO/base doorways to |___| instead of just _____, and enforce that, but right now it's easy to tackle in most situations.

There could also be a distinction between normal doors and heavy doors, with normal doors having the regular TU cost to operate.

Edited August 18, 2013 by Xenomorph

[GizmoGomez]

One question:

Are people finding it worth it at all to research alien analysis researches before anything else? Or are you leaving them 'till last?

If the analysis researches aren't giving a good enough bonus and are thus only suited to keeping your otherwise unoccupied scientists from drinking too much on their days off, then perhaps they'd need to be looked at. After all, since researching is supposed to involve choices, it's not really a choice if an entire category of researches are more or less useless compared to other topics.

[kabill]

One question:

Are people finding it worth it at all to research alien analysis researches before anything else? Or are you leaving them 'till last?

If the analysis researches aren't giving a good enough bonus and are thus only suited to keeping your otherwise unoccupied scientists from drinking too much on their days off, then perhaps they'd need to be looked at. After all, since researching is supposed to involve choices, it's not really a choice if an entire category of researches are more or less useless compared to other topics.

Yeah, I've had this on my present game. With plenty of other stuff to do, even running two full labs, I've been largely ignoring captures. I've finally (in mid-December) got round to capturing a Caesean but it's going to sit there until I've researched a lot of other things as the bonus just isn't worth it compared with better armour/weapons/aircraft (or such is my thinking, anyway).

I always liked the idea of alien interrogation being more important in terms of the tech tree (a bit like they did with TFTD, but without the horrible game-breaking bugs!). Although, given that the build times on some items are quite high, getting things like manufacturing bonuses from interrogations might be quite interesting too (essentially allowing you to invest research time to get manufacturing time).

[Ol' Stinky]

They're lower priority because I know they're not prerequisites for anything urgent. I don't think that's a problem with the techs, though. A 10% damage bonus, for free, with all weapons, against all of that particular alien type? I'd take that for a dollar. If they do need buffs, I'd rather see them grant bonuses similar to the sebillian vivisection giving advanced medpacks. You can live without advanced medkits, but they're very nice to have!

...That's assuming that damage bonus is in effect. I've never checked it.

I'm not sure having some techs being worse than others is neccessarily a bad thing. Imagine player A chooses to go with (numbers made up for sake of argument) a 15 scientist team while player B goes with 30. Player A can only get the essential techs, and loses out on some neat toys and a passive damage boost; the upside is that he has more money to spend elsewhere. Player B might more easily be able to pick up neat stuff like advanced medkits and shock grenades, but finds himself on a tighter budget because of the increased spending on R&D. So it's a playstyle choice, the same way one player might favour early expansion while another might prefer to gear up his troops.

Edited August 18, 2013 by Ol' Stinky

[Xenomorph]

I personally think it would be better to fit in a few more researches for buffs, instead of delaying everything. There's a lot of obvious stuff i can think of, like leadership buffs (rookies improve 2x faster when on a mission with a full rank soldier, VERY useful in mid game), minor weapon buffs (clip size, improved accuracy for heavy weapons), improved armor durability, just to mention a few.

I know this has been mentioned over and over and over again, but its a formula that works.

That could bring in some more sense of progression, and would be a push to make decisions, right now, there's not much to decide, it's all too obvious with practice. Would anyone skip Alenium research for anything else?

As for how it is right now, i got 2 labs running, and scientists had some breaks for beer, double research time is easily offset by another lab. Diminishing returns don't really make much of a difference and feel artificial ( It clearly should be a player's option to have more labs and progress quicker or not). Overstaffing could easily shave 2-3 days on a project.

And then there's the vehicles tree. I still can't find good use for them on early game, while soldiers need to improve so badly, and tend to ignore that tree for when there's nothing else. That's a lot of extra time.

Now, IF tanks had their own slot on the transport, then it would be worth it investing in that tree. Tanks could be useful to destroy props

Edited August 19, 2013 by Xenomorph

[StellarRat]

I have 15 scientists employed, it's the end of October and they have had one week of down time in the game so far.

[Dranak]

The research change didn't really change my play any, aside from building a second lab and eventually staffing it. I just researched all the things I needed (Foxtrots, Hunters, Alenium explosives, then straight to Wolf Armor followed by lasers). I'm still winding up able to build what I want by the time I have money for it, I just was a lot tighter on money in the early game (which is still being felt a bit 3 months in). A new player could be punished pretty hard for not knowing the tech tree though.

It still feels like way too many light scouts to me. I'm at mid/late Nov, and they are still by far the most prevalent UFO I encounter. I'd like to see them be common for about half as long. It seems weird that the smallest/easiest UFO that should be your beginner encounter lasts far longer than any other class of UFOs. At this rate I'll be surprised if my first Corvette comes before mission #30.

[StellarRat]

It still feels like way too many light scouts to me. I'm at mid/late Nov, and they are still by far the most prevalent UFO I encounter. I'd like to see them be common for about half as long. It seems weird that the smallest/easiest UFO that should be your beginner encounter lasts far longer than any other class of UFOs. At this rate I'll be surprised if my first Corvette comes before mission #30.

In the previous versions people complained about the large ships coming on too soon. I had a Corvette toward the end of October. I agree there are a lot of Lt. Scouts, but you don't have to recover all of them. You can just shoot them down and call it good.

[Dranak]

In the previous versions people complained about the large ships coming on too soon. I had a Corvette toward the end of October. I agree there are a lot of Lt. Scouts, but you don't have to recover all of them. You can just shoot them down and call it good.

I know I don't have to, but if part of the game is so boring that you begin playing sub-optimally (skipping crash sites) out of boredom/frustration, that looks like a problem to me.

[kabill]

In my 19.7 game, I've actually had a very good mix of UFOs all the way through. It seems like there's quite a lot of randomness, then, in the kinds of UFO you encounter, if it's possible to have one game where you mostly encounter Light Scouts and another where they're mixed in well with others. Not sure that's a good thing, especially when larger UFOs are vital to your capacity to reach new tech levels.

Or, could it be a factor of how well you're doing (since the ticker gets knocked on by aliens completing certain missions, by doing very well early on you stall the introduction of new UFOs. The numbers in gameconfig.xml never looked large enough to make very much of a difference, though)?

[Dranak]

Is that working again? I know for a while it had been disabled in favor of a fixed progression.

[kabill]

Some of the missions do make a difference (according to the numbers in gameconfig.xml, anyway. If I've read them right!). But the values are quite small (like, 5 points/mission for those few missions which matter, which is the equivalent of 5 game minutes I think). I've not really got a feel for how they might add up, which is why I suggested it as a possibility. But there's a good chance the effect is so small as to be negligeable.

[Dranak]

If that is actually in play, the fact I run around a 95% kill rate on detected UFOs (with a second base/radar built on Day 1) might be exacerbating the issue.

[kabill]

I was completely wrong about this. I was reading the wrong values. Ticker speed is entirely static.

[Max_Caine]

Having given some thought to the aircraft mini-game, I believe that if Condors and Corsairs are to compete with the Foxtrot, and alien fightercraft to actually be more than a rearm/refuel speedbump, the playing field needs to be levelled. I strongly urge Aaron to consider to make the range of alien missiles, light missiles and torpedoes the same. The primary advantage the Foxtrot has over everything is that it outranges anything. That should not be true for everything it faces.

[Josip Broz Tito]

hmm, good idea. It'd be a brutal puzzle.