Ground Combat Balance Discussion V19 Stable

[Hairyscreech]

Must admit i'm only just about to get the pulse laser so you may well be right.

[StellarRat]

Must admit i'm only just about to get the pulse laser so you may well be right.

You're in for a pleasant surprise. Hope you brought your favorite BBQ sauce.

[Hairyscreech]

mmmm, crispy.

[StellarRat]

mmmm, crispy.

They say Sebillian tastes like chicken.....

[Josip Broz Tito]

Hunter doesn't need 2 hardpoints. Scimitar and Hyperion would benefit from 2 hardpoints though. By the time you get them, it's often better to have 2x infantry since they'll be throwing out more firepower and less susceptible to damage.

While the hunter with the MG does need more ammo, don't use that as justification for 2x hardpoints on hunters. Use a rocket vehicle at least on a terror mission, then rethink your position. It's also very possible to have a pulse-laser equipped vehicle by the first terror mission.

These explosive-equipped vehicles make the first push out of the chinook, and the subsequent swarming by aliens far easier to deal with. It is reasonable to kill 4-6 aliens with a rocket hunter and 6-8 with the pulse-laser equipped hunter.

You cannot look at the MG vehicle alone when making balance suggestions for them overall.

[StellarRat]

Aaron mentioned a smoke generator for vehicles that would be pretty cool too.

[Josip Broz Tito]

ooh, that'd be a good peripheral.

[Hairyscreech]

Ok bit of feed back from some play testing.

Made a couple of tweeks before going back into the terror mission from hell, I put the charlies capacity back up to 10 and took in 8 guys and a ferret. I also dropped the armor mitigation of the heavy plasma to 20.

troop load out was 6 guys in jackal 2 in basic, 3 rocket launchers, 1 precision laser and 4 laser rifles (one in a back pack for the first rocketter out of ammo) and 6 medi packs between them.

End result 3 dead 5 wounded. win with 25 dead aliens and 3 surviving civs.

The heavy palsma still did most of the damage with the harridens doing the rest. Even at 20 the heavy plasma will still do about 40hp of damage average to a guy in jackal and is still capable of spreading about 80hp worth between a group or insta-killing a guy up close. (to be clear I am talking about 10 tiles minimum here, im just not mad enough to get any closer as its still an insta kill.)

Fight was still really hard and needed tactics to win, but was a winnable situation, the extra two troops really help level the playing field with regards to carried ammo and fire power per turn, 6 guys just can't put enough lead (or laser) into the air per turn to be effective when faced with about 4 androns in range per turn.

Overall it was a very classic xcom fight lots of shooting, little effect, lots of using medi packs and a good bit of death.

[Josip Broz Tito]

They're winnable as they currently are, and should stay the same for veteran (and get harder for insane). As long as I can keep rly hard terror missions in the higher difficulties= ok w/ them being nerfed for normal

edit(and I mean winnable w/ 1-2 losses or none, did it in build just b4 this one which had practically the same ground game)

[StellarRat]

The heavy plasma shotgun is OP. Needs a nerf. Probably shouldn't mitigate armor as well, no burst, and less accuracy at longer ranges.

Edited September 5, 2013 by StellarRat

[Ishantil]

I agree that the plasma cannon shouldn't have a burst fire mode.

I'm not sure the plasma shotgun should be doing quite as much armor mitigation as it does. If I see a guy with a plasma cannon or plasma shotgun, I start to rapidly re-evaluate my position. So that's actually a very good thing.

I had an awesome time last night with a Corvette. All of the aliens were out of the UFO hiding among the structures. They surprised me a few times. It was really fun.

Edited September 5, 2013 by Ishantil

[Hairyscreech]

As above I have found dropping the armor mitigation to 20 to be pretty good, makes the thing still nasty but not such a run and hide situation. With the armour mitigation at 20 the range isn't so bad either, anything past medium range and it will just clip a guy in jackal rather than doing a serious wound, which if its supposed to be analogous to the shot gun is about right, it should still hurt at medium range+ but shouldn't be instantly lethal.

re burst fire maybe upping the burst fire tu by 10 or taking away the snap shot, only thinking of preventing it from pumping out 4 shots a turn. As this thing has essentially an area effect and even misses can hit the volume of fire it pumps out is pretty critical.

[Ishantil]

The plasma cannon should basically be the alien version of a missile launcher. It should take careful aiming and fire carefully placed shots. You don't spray and pray with a cannon.

Thus, it should only have single modes: snap, normal, aimed. And they should be fairly TU expensive.

[Elydo]

My experiences with it led me to treat it more as a grenade launcher. Less damaging than a cannon (repeated shots did nothing to my guys in wolf) but I'm assuming it added to suppression and armour mitigation, and certainly drew attention to itself, I didn't feel comfortable leaving it alone just in case it suddenly became more effective.

More in line with a support weapon than a damage-dealer like our rocket launcher. I kinda liked the contrast actually, given that we don't get grenade launchers for some (I know, balance) reason.

Edit: I'm talking about the alien cannon, rather than the heavy plasma rifle.

[StellarRat]

The plasma cannon should basically be the alien version of a missile launcher. It should take careful aiming and fire carefully placed shots. You don't spray and pray with a cannon.

Thus, it should only have single modes: snap, normal, aimed. And they should be fairly TU expensive.

Well, it doesn't do as much damage, has a much higher ROF, and it has no ammo limit. So, it's never going to be too much like a rocket launcher.

[TrashMan]

For 2 months I'm seeing nothing but scouts.

Then suddenly corvettes and fighters. But I manage. Then my base gets attacked.

Enemy opens doors, gets reaction-fired to death by my men, doors close....and they can't be opened anymore. At all. Ever.

As luck would have it there is another door, but this sucks.

Then terror mission! I got nothing but jackal armor and basic guns. Nothing else appeared.

10 FUKKEN ANDRONS AROUND THE CHOPPER. I make a heroic stand and manage to kill 4, but not 90% of my squad is heavily wounded and bleeding and the other 6 androns have me sorounded.

Ragequit.

[Ishantil]

Yeah, that's no bueno. I haven't seen Androns at all in my game. At all. Not a single one. And I'm researching Alien Electronics now and I think I'm in November.

@StellarRat: I would say that burst fire on the alien plasma cannon it is probably too good.

Edited September 5, 2013 by Ishantil

[Hairyscreech]

I was talking about the heavy plasma/plasma shotgun.

Didn't realise the cannon also had rapid fire, thankfully i haven't had the displeasure of facing that and agree a cannon shouldn't be rapid fire.

The andron terror missions are like playing on hard mode, certainly too tough to be considered normal, as an xcom vet with plenty of time on xeno I found going back to 10 in the choppa brings the odds back to a tough version of normal.

Trashman try playing that terror mission with 2 extra guys and seeing what that turns out like?

(thinking out loud going from 6 to 8 is 1.33x more troops, so dropping the weapon effectiveness to 0.75 on hard mode would be like still playing with 6 men in terms of damage done per turn.)

Edited September 5, 2013 by Hairyscreech

[Elydo]

I don't think the cannons have burst fire, but they can fire multiple times a turn.

Oddly, I found my only Andron terror mission so far much easier than my first one against Caesans. (I keep wanting to call them cesareans, a truly horrifying image...) And it was at night. I guess I got really lucky.

My ragequit mission so far is a landing craft raid against sebs. Lots of sebs, all soldiers and guards at least, all with heavy plasmas except my introduction to plasma cannons, all in cover, all around the freaking chinook. Oh and a couple of reapers too. That seem really friendly; when they aren't just casually walking into the helicopter and hanging out, they're dancing. One kept kneeling down behind a rock, getting up to walk towards the chinook, geting reaction fired by a plasma pistol guy of mine (who never hit) whereupon it'd walk back to the rock and kneeling down again. Repeat over about five turns. Meanwhile the rest of the situation gets progressively worse.

I've been getting boned. Really really boned.

Edited September 5, 2013 by Elydo

[Hairyscreech]

When I was flicking through the xenopedia file a second ago I did spot the heavy plasma as being described as "having no rapid fire", I know that's old but should maybe be the case?

Elydo: I feel its a weight of numbers thing, when your pinned down in the charlie you just can't do enough shooting per turn to survive, its not so much the total number of aliens on the field but more the 6 or so you face at once, until later in the game when things are a bit more even you kind of need to out number your opponent in each fire fight and use better tactics to win.

Its why xcom let you send in half a legion of cannon fodder in the early game, you need to shoot the aliens a LOT to down them before having plasma tech thus 2 humans v 1 alien is still dicey, 1 on 1 is bad news and if your out numbered prepare to die.

[Josip Broz Tito]

Its not to hard to get a few guys in wolf by the first terror mission. Also, use smokes more often, especially when pushing out of the chinook on terror missions.

Guys, make sure you're trying out everything you can on your end to do terror missions. Please write down what your squads are consisting of as far as what types of weapons, equipment, and armor you have and how you played the first few turns. Sometimes (many times actually) it's more a matter of needing to try a different approach.

I'm not saying learn-to-play since that's not applicable in beta, I just want people to take a few cracks at missions they're losing on to see how different approaches affect the outcome. This way, we can give the devs more accurate info.

Also, make sure to save before you send out the chinook to a terror mission so you can change equipment/add or remove vehicles.

[StellarRat]

Aaron - Since the beginners are having such a tough go on the terror missions might I suggest simply spawning the aliens further to the N and NE of the Chinook. That will make the LZ not as "hot" and give the Xenonauts time to dismount and get some cover. That will probably eliminate the need for a cut in the number of aliens. I suggested this in another thread also, but it does seem to be balance related. One could realisitically hope that the pilot and mission planners would try to land somewhere that was relatively "safe" if possible.

Edited September 5, 2013 by StellarRat

[Hairyscreech]

It would be interesting to know from the devs what kind of tech level they expect us to have at various points in the game.

Say for example by the time we see landing ships we should have xyandz tech, by the time battle ships show up we should be fielding plasma for example.

Would help to know if we are simply not progressing fast enough or if there is another balance issue.

Has this been posted anywhere else?

[Max_Caine]

Mordobb brings up a good point, alien target prioritisation is borked.

From what I can see, alien target prioritisation is based entirely on "most likely to kill this turn". Thus, they will shoot a civilian over a solider because the civilian is more likely to die than the solider is. They will shoot at a solider much further away in Jackal armour over a solider much closer in Wolf armour, because the shot if hits is more likely to kill the Jackal armoured solider than the Wolf armoured solider. And they will completely ignore my lovely modded vehicle because they cannot kill it in a single turn. Even if it is parked right next to them, daring them to have a go if they think they are hard enough.

[StellarRat]

Mordobb brings up a good point, alien target prioritisation is borked.

From what I can see, alien target prioritisation is based entirely on "most likely to kill this turn". Thus, they will shoot a civilian over a solider because the civilian is more likely to die than the solider is. They will shoot at a solider much further away in Jackal armour over a solider much closer in Wolf armour, because the shot if hits is more likely to kill the Jackal armoured solider than the Wolf armoured solider. And they will completely ignore my lovely modded vehicle because they cannot kill it in a single turn. Even if it is parked right next to them, daring them to have a go if they think they are hard enough.

I've actually written a targetting system for a game AI! The good news is that it actually has one! Seriously, that's not a joke. However, this doesn't sound like it will be hard to fix. It's probably just a matter of fine tuning some of multipliers for range and offense/defense and probably putting an exception in that says, "Ignore all targets with no offensive potential unless there is nothing else to shoot at." My guess is that currently the offensive range multiplier is set too low. It could also be that the current calculation isn't taking into account some of the recent game changes like how more powerful the vehicles are.

Fortunately, this isn't a real time game. If it were a decent targetting system alone could be enough to defeat all but expert human players if the tempo was fairly high.

Edited September 5, 2013 by StellarRat