Geoscape Balance Discussion v19 Experimental Build 7

[Xenomorph]

No, bad idea. Keep playing for real and you'll come to the same conclusion. And i mean till the end, not just the first couple months.

[GizmoGomez]

The main point of dogfighters seems to be the fact they have guns. At least, I remember Chris saying something along those lines.

So, we simply need to make the guns more relevant. I mean, apparently they're supposed to use the guns as their main tools of destruction, and simply have the two missiles as an extra bonus; not the other way around. So, we just need to figure out how to make the guns the best, most viable way to take out alien fighters.

[thothkins]

@ Xenomorph.

Could you be more specific (in spoiler tags if it's a big spoiler) for those of us who don't get more than 4 or 5 months into the game between builds? Sounds interesting.

[StellarRat]

The main point of dogfighters seems to be the fact they have guns. At least, I remember Chris saying something along those lines.

So, we simply need to make the guns more relevant. I mean, apparently they're supposed to use the guns as their main tools of destruction, and simply have the two missiles as an extra bonus; not the other way around. So, we just need to figure out how to make the guns the best, most viable way to take out alien fighters.

That being said from a game perspective, no sane pilot is going to go to guns if he has a missile available within the launch parameters. In jet combat guns are VERY difficult to use against a decent pilot. That's been the case since the Vietnam War which is way before the Xenonauts era. The Sidewinder AIM-9L was available and is a far better choice than guns. It could track targets from any angle and is very good in a dogfight situation.

[Chris]

The combat isn't intended to be a realistic model of actual air combat. Actual air combat is three dimensional so realism has to be dispensed with almost immediately.

The cannons are indeed meant to be the primary armament of the dogfighter aircraft, not the weapon of last resort.

[Dranak]

The combat isn't intended to be a realistic model of actual air combat. Actual air combat is three dimensional so realism has to be dispensed with almost immediately.

The cannons are indeed meant to be the primary armament of the dogfighter aircraft, not the weapon of last resort.

The problem is that those aircraft have no means of safely/reliably getting into cannon range. Cannons are the least effective/most risky of the three aircraft weapon systems (torps, sidewinders, cannons).

They have to go head on with alien fighters, which makes them very likely to take damage/be shot down. If we're talking cannons versus main craft... a full ammo load (starter cannon) put into a Corvette does less damage (after armor) than a single Alenium torpedo, for much higher risk/effort.

[GizmoGomez]

Agreed; realism definitely takes second chair in this issue.

For my sake mostly, I'm writing up a concise list of goals:

So:

Main problem:

Foxtrots are overpowered, because they carry two straight upgrades to the Condor's missiles and because the Condor's main weapon, the cannon, is more or less useless by comparison. It is too difficult for a dogfighter to engage a UFO with the cannon compared to the ease of firing off two (or six) torpedoes.

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

Subproblems/Goals:

(in order of importance)

1) We need to buff the Condor (and other dogfighters) to be able to engage and dispatch enemy fighters with relative ease, actually making them a viable option.

2) We also should figure out a way to make Foxtrots undesirable when facing escorts and fighters.

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

A simple solution to the second problem would be to make torpedoes unable to lock on to smaller craft; thus you would be forced to use a Condor to engage them. I dunno, explain it like the fighters have a really small radar cross section or something that defeats the self guiding radar of the avalanche but not the UFO radiation-seeking sidewinders.

This wouldn't fix the entire problem, however, as it would only be hitting the foxtrots with the nerf bat instead of buffing the condors like we need. At the moment, even if there weren't foxtrots, condors can't engage UFOs with their cannons without taking extreme risk and/or elaborate and wasteful maneuvers/strategies/exploits (kiting, for example).

[dmz]

Maybe making smaller vessels more likely to avoid missiles, thus asking for a "close and personal" dogfight using the cannon, and raising the armor on larger vessels to encourage missiles, so that both kind of weapons have separate uses? If the dodging ability is tied to the missiles' speed, smaller/faster missiles could still hit them with relative ease (so Condors won't be nerfed by this) while larger, more damaging ones would be slower and not useful against fighters.

If it hasn't been touched from v18Stable, close combat could probably also use another look, since as it is closing in means either LOTS of repair at best or losing the aircraft at the worst.

Missile reload times should also be factored in, requiring a couple of hours maybe, so that missiles wouldn't be easily replaced anymore preventing the engage-fire-retreat-reload-engage-fire routine.

I have no idea about the amount of reworking this would require, but I think it could help in differentiating between the two types of aircrafts and combat: Condors would be required against fighters and Foxtrots would instead be necessary to deal with the larger ships.

[kabill]

A simple solution to the second problem would be to make torpedoes unable to lock on to smaller craft; thus you would be forced to use a Condor to engage them. I dunno, explain it like the fighters have a really small radar cross section or something that defeats the self guiding radar of the avalanche but not the UFO radiation-seeking sidewinders.

This wouldn't fix the entire problem, however, as it would only be hitting the foxtrots with the nerf bat instead of buffing the condors like we need. At the moment, even if there weren't foxtrots, condors can't engage UFOs with their cannons without taking extreme risk and/or elaborate and wasteful maneuvers/strategies/exploits (kiting, for example).

The only way to make the cannon a viable weapon is to make aircraft more agile. They move and turn too slowly relative to both enemy attacks and turn speed to ever be able to attack from a safe angle unless you outnumber the enemy craft (when you can kite). Even when I tried buffing the turn rate and speed of aircraft, they couldn't out-manoevre unbuffed UFOs let alone the ones I buffed to make the changes equal.

The only way I can think of to make the cannon a viable weapon in a straight fight is to make more use of the evade ability. This is literally the only thing in the game, short of simply having better range, that can stop your aircraft from getting hit. As it is at the moment, the cooldown on it is too long for it to be even slightly effective - all UFOs have a rate of fire which is faster than the cooldown so you will never evade more than one attack before taking a hit. This is also a key reason why alien fighters are so easily dispatched by torpedoes, because they can only evade a single attack before another one can reach them.

So *if* the desire is to make the cannon (and perhaps, by extention, close-range air combat) more viable, I'm not sure there is another solution to making the evade ability better. (Yes, broken record and all that).

[GizmoGomez]

No, increasing missile reload times would only require you to purchase more foxtrots; Condors would still be ineffective. Besides, who wants to spend a couple hours doing what one can easily do in 15 minutes?

Maybe making Torpedoes slower and targetable (thus destroyable) by UFO fighters and escorts would fix the problem; this way, you couldn't score any hits on the fighters because they'd simply shoot the torpedo out of the sky. Would this mean that you would have to deal with the escorts first every time now? If torpedoes are targetable, then would they protect whatever they're escorting and shoot down any torps directed at it?

So, not adding an anti-missile system like some of the larger craft have; I mean allowing escort craft to target the torpedos and shoot them with their own missiles or cannons. This way they'd actually be escorting and protecting their charge.

[GizmoGomez]

And I agree; the evade needs to be buffed. However, even if the evade is buffed, you still can simply have two foxtrots set up right to hit it with torpedoes. We need to make torpedoes less useful, but only against fighters.

Like I said, two goals:

Make condors good dogfighters, and make torpedoes not good against fighters. Whether that second goal comes from buffing the fighters or by nerfing the torpedo is up to whatever works best. Personally, I'd rather just buff fighters and condors. Making torpedoes targetable by dogfighting UFOs seems like it could fix the second problem quite nicely.

[kabill]

Maybe making Torpedoes slower and targetable (thus destroyable) by UFO fighters and escorts would fix the problem; this way, you couldn't score any hits on the fighters because they'd simply shoot the torpedo out of the sky. Would this mean that you would have to deal with the escorts first every time now? If torpedoes are targetable, then would they protect whatever they're escorting and shoot down any torps directed at it?

So, not adding an anti-missile system like some of the larger craft have; I mean allowing escort craft to target the torpedos and shoot them with their own missiles or cannons. This way they'd actually be escorting and protecting their charge.

There's an interesting consequence (and possible exploit) from this - if the ability to shoot incoming torpedoes is limited to the attack arc of the target, then there's advantage to be found in attacking these UFOs from a non-head-on direction.

This could be a good thing, since it adds something you can/do need to do in air combat.

On the other hand, you might just be able to modify the existing strategy - as the UFOs advance, don't target the one coming head on but the one to the left or right (targetting another one your planes). So it would depend on how wide the UFOs weapon arc is - it might need to be quite wide to avoid the same trick which is used at the moment.

EDIT: If you nerf speed and turning on torpedoes too, you can't hit an evading target with a second shot, because either you will shoot too soon (and it won't track to the new position of the UFO as it dodges the first attack) or you will shoot when the target is/has evaded and it will be too slow to hit before the cooldown on evade is over. But their ability to hit larger UFOs is unchanged, since speed and turning don't matter against non-evading targets. Admittedly, you could still score hits with torpedoes if you use them at close range, but since Foxtrots can't evade, that's very dangerous as you will be near/in enemy weapons range.

Edited August 22, 2013 by kabill

[GizmoGomez]

I agree; that helps when you have only one foxtrot. What about if you've got three? You fire one shot to make the thing evade, and have other ones fire their torps?

Thinking it over, there doesn't seem to be an issue with this situation. Hmm. Someone previously dismissed that same idea because it wouldn't work for some reason, but I can't remember/figure out what that reason was. Perhaps the reason didn't actually have reason to it.

[kabill]

I agree; that helps when you have only one foxtrot. What about if you've got three? You fire one shot to make the thing evade, and have other ones fire their torps?

Shooting from different aircraft only matters if you have a cooldown on firing (e.g. can't fire for two seconds after firing the first torpedo) since it effectively allows you to bypass the firing cooldown. So, it doesn't make any difference if you shoot from different aircraft when it's the weapon speed/evade cooldown which has been changed.

If the aircraft were different distances from the target, you could shoot from the one further away to force the dodge and then from the closer one to secure the kill. But you still have the problem of Foxtrots being at short range.

[GizmoGomez]

Yeah, that is true. Like I suspected, I couldn't figure out what the issue was because there wasn't one.

Okay, so, we have a few plans:

Sharply decreasing the speed and turning ability of torpedoes.

Increasing the capabilities of the evasive roll by greatly reducing the cooldown, and increasing the distance evaded.

These should solve goal number 2, that is, make torpedoes less effective against fighters.

It will also partially help goal 1, by buffing the Xeno-fighter's evasion capabilities. However, more is probably needed.

Perhaps for Condors and other Xeno-fighters the fuel penalty should be reduced to make evading less hindering, as it's frankly necessary to play the game? The UFOs don't have a fuel to spend, as far as I know, so to balance out the UFOs dodging torpedoes left and right we'd need to be able to dodge enemy fire a lot as well. (Sneaking a bit of realism in: Aircraft would be able to evade and roll better/more than space craft, at least when flying in air, wouldn't you think?)

I still like the idea of making torpedoes targetable.

This can have a few consequences:

1) Head on torpedoes can be shot down, making torpedo jousting incredibly unattractive even if you manage to keep the enemy from rolling, and even if you get moderately up close, making it frankly suicide to try and take out fighters with foxtrots equipped with torpedoes.

2) If torpedoes were made to automatically be priority targets they'd be shot down occasionally when firing them at escorted ships by the escorts, meaning that you'd have to shoot down the escorts with Xeno-fighters for the torpedoes to be most effective against the capital ship.

3) If they are priority targets, if a fighter is being kited and another foxtrot targets the fighter and fires torpedoes, the fighter will automatically target the torpedoes and turn out of the way to come at them head on, either a) dodging them completely, or b) coming about fast enough to shoot them down. This is even if the fighter doesn't simply do an evasive roll, which I don't know if they do those for weapons fired from a non-targeted enemy from the back.

[StellarRat]

Like I said, if the Condor is supposed to be a gun "dogfighter" it needs to be able to get on the targets six o'clock without "heroic" measures needing to be taken by the player. If it took a long time to achieve this outcome I would get frustrated with the air game which I actualy enjoy right now. My suggestion is just to give the smaller ships a better chance to dodge torpedoes. Change the "roll" button to "evade" and make it continuously active for both alien and human "dogfighters". The ships will then fly a "snake" pattern at the cost of forward speed which allows them to dodge torpedoes, a % of missiles in the case of alien ships and a high percentage of alien fire in the case of human fighters. The amount dodged by human ships should related to how large the alien shot is, the bigger the burst the easier it is to dodge. So, a Condor would be able to close with a corvette without getting one shotted, but it would be damageable by alien fighters. And, of course, a Condor having closed on a corvette probably has little chance of doing more than damaging it, but at least could survive the encounter and disengage.

Along with this change, human "dogfighters" should always have a substantial turn rate advantage over all alien ships so the human player has a decent chance of getting on the aliens "six" and shooting at it without getting blasted.

[Queamin]

The problem is almost what ever you do, once you mastered it, it becomes a lot easier almost trivial and all you doing is making it hard for new comers and putting new players off.

We been down this road before and ended up with aircraft that cannot die and resolve button and we still got some of the same problems certain aircraft that are almost useless.

Last thing the game needs is a drawn out air combat where a lot of people press a resolve button if that happens then it is a failure and all you done is wasted time and money on something people press a button on.

[GizmoGomez]

Huh, I don't actually remember you saying that. Must've forgotten.

That sounds like a cool idea, actually. It'd change a lot about the gameplay; make it more "automated" in a sense, in that you'd only have to turn it on and off, instead of manually dodging everything. I like the sound of that.

So, you can turn on and off this evade ability. Would it require increased fuel usage? If it did, I'd say it'd be a very small amount of fuel, since you'd want to have it on for basically most situations. Maybe 1.5x the normal usage rate. It may not even need it, though, since because it's taking you longer to get to your target you'd be burning more fuel anyway. If it were me, I wouldn't give it an increased fuel usage. Give it a top speed cap, maybe.

Also, if you have the evade on could you still use the afterburners? That'd suck up a ton of fuel. That'd be 6x the normal fuel burn rate if the evade ability had 1.5x fuel consumption, or the normal 4x without a fuel penalty for the evade ability. Because you'd be advancing at the cost of speed, perhaps using the afterburners would remove that speed penalty but increase the likelihood of getting hit by something? Alternatively, we can simply not allow one while the other is in effect. That'd be the simplest, and probably the best, option.

[GizmoGomez]

The problem is almost what ever you do, once you mastered it, it becomes a lot easier almost trivial and all you doing is making it hard for new comers and putting new players off.

We been down this road before and ended up with aircraft that cannot die and resolve button and we still got some of the same problems certain aircraft that are almost useless.

Last thing the game needs is a drawn out air combat where a lot of people press a resolve button if that happens then it is a failure and all you done is wasted time and money on something people press a button on.

It becoming trivial once mastered isn't necessarily a problem; it's supposed to be a minigame, not a major portion of the game. What we need is to make it balanced so that it's not difficult to master it, or at least to understand how to win.

SellarRat's idea sounds really quite good; this way all a new player would have to do is press a button, in essence, and they'd be able to take out fighters with condors.

Plus, don't forget, there's going to be a manual of some sort that'll hopefully explain how to actually get started.

Also, aircraft being recoverable and the auto-resolve weren't in response to foxtrots being OP. They were in response to the entire minigame being too major a part of the economy.

[Dranak]

We're spending a lot of time talking about how to make "dogfighters" work. Can someone explain to me why we need to have a divide between dogfighters and non-dogfighters? What gameplay purpose does it serve? Does such a division add to the fun of the game?

From a realism perspective, it doesn't make much sense to me to build the most advanced fighters in the world that can't defend themselves reasonably well. From my Amateur Game Balancer Chair (patent pending) it seems like if you have two parallel sets of weapons/aircraft, one will generally end up superior to the other (unless extreme hard counters are implemented) and that's what players will use. So I ask, what does the divide between different classes of human fighters add to the game?

[GizmoGomez]

I don't see why one would end up superior than the other.

One is designed to take out escorted UFOs, the other is designed to take out the escorts. Both have well-defined territories; they just aren't sticking to them properly. The dogfighters are meant to use their guns, which they cannot do at the moment without great risk. This leaves a hole in the "taking out escorts" territory that the foxtrot is filling due to torpedoes being overpowered and not actually being slow, unmaneuverable, and easy to dodge like the xenopedia entry states.

[Queamin]

Yes but the way it is going you adding layers and layers to it to fix it and then it starts to effect the other parts of the game even more.

Look how much time and money is spent on hangers and aircraft I would say too much for something that is meant to be a small part of the game.

Also, aircraft being recoverable and the auto-resolve weren't in response to foxtrots being OP. They were in response to the entire minigame being too major a part of the economy.

Yes I know but we still going around in circles some of the same problems we had before the planes were recoverable and a auto resolve button are still here.

I, myself don't want to end up spending 10 mins on air combat learning a lot of controls like a flight sim just to get to one of the main part of the game which is ground combat.

[Dranak]

@-Gizmo, since I fail at quoting today:

Right, you're talking about an extreme hard counter situation that I alluded to, where Condors are the only tool that can do one thing, and Foxtrots can only do another thing. If torpedoes can reasonably (even if sub-optimally) kill alien escorts or missiles/cannons can reasonably (if sub-optimally) kill capital ships, one of the other will (probably) be superior overall and the other will be unused (like how Condors/Corsairs are now).

What I've never seen answered is this: What purpose does such a divide serve? The obvious gameplay effects would be to force you to build significantly more aircraft (need a full squadron of Foxtrots, AND 2-3 dogfighters as opposed to 3 Foxtrots per base), which seems to go against part of the rationale behind the immortal plane change, which was to make air combat a less important part of the economy.

[StellarRat]

#1 That sounds like a cool idea, actually. It'd change a lot about the gameplay; make it more "automated" in a sense, in that you'd only have to turn it on and off, instead of manually dodging everything. I like the sound of that.

#2 So, you can turn on and off this evade ability. Would it require increased fuel usage?

#3 Also, if you have the evade on could you still use the afterburners?

1. Yes, that was the idea. This manual dodging is silly and it feels gamey, IMO. The main reason being that the pilot would have enough sense to dodge an incoming round if he was able to. You shouldn't need to control that. It also is an FPS type of action and this game isn't an FPS. Additionally, if the plane is flying a snake pattern is easy to see when you have the "evade" turned on and off. As the "air commander" you probably only going to tell the pilots what approach to fly, how fast, and give them a general plan. Telling to "evade" in essense "approach with maximum care" seems much more "realistic" to me.

2. No, but since it would slow your forward progress it's obviously going to burn more fuel to get the same distance.

3. I don't see why not. Again, with both AB and "evade" on you're obviously going to burn a lot of fuel closing with the enemy.

The overarching concept in my head is to give the dogfighters a good chance of surviving a head-on encounter by using "evade". After you've gotten in real close with the DF planes (because you can survive using "evade") you use your turn rate advantage to get behind the aliens and as Chris says, "make short work of the fighters". I suppose you could also dump your ammo into a larger ship, but that probably wouldn't do much to anything larger than a Scout. I also wouldn't be opposed to reducing the range of the missiles to make them more like "dogfight" type weapons if "evade" was added. This is kind of version of the OG's "cautious, normal, aggressive" strategies. But that wasn't how I came up with it.

[StellarRat]

What I've never seen answered is this: What purpose does such a divide serve?

In my mind, when you provide different weapons in a game there ought to distinct differences in how they operate and what they're good for. If the player doesn't need to think about what weapon to choose for a given situation what was the point in providing a choice? The classic example is the evolution of the shotgun in this game. It went from being basically a shorter range rifle to something completely different, but more useful in certain situations. Edited August 22, 2013 by StellarRat