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Ground Combat Balance Discussion V19 Stable


Aaron

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And on a different matter, Aaron did want some feedback on the new Heavy Plasma.

The burst fire is an issue. In combination with 50 mitigation, 3x3 pellets in a single round of shooting is super deadly murder nofun. Zero mitigation is super fairy harmless nofun, as well. Some happy medium between the two points is called for.

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Done some more playing with the 20 amour mitigation, certainly leaves the weapon closer in effectiveness as the rest of the alien weapons, it's now not the number 1 threat but is still damn nasty, more likely to cause 70% wounds with bleeding in 1 turn than a kill though, even still that's pretty bad considering.

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

How am I suposed to do that? Chopper is at full capacity.

I did manage to beat that mission. With TONS of luck and some cheating. I figure my scientists have nothing to do, so they might as well look into improving our balistic weapons. So I increased the rifle range and accuracy just a smidgen.

Coupled with extensive use of explosives and smokes and lots of luck, I managed to beat the mission.

Really, there should be a research option like that. You have 50 scientists in your base doing nothing.

The Random Number God hats you and doesn't give you any new alien tech to research, you might as well look into improving what weapons you have.

They did for fighters, they did it for missiles, they did it for combat armor. How about our guns? A research that slighly improves ballistics. After all, there are quite a few advanced in gun design - for anti-recoil systems, cold-barrel-shooting, sabilisied bullets, and many others.

Nothing major something like +2 damage, +2 range, +0.1 accuracy.

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The heavy plasma rifle is in a bit of an awkward position - it shows up early in the game, but continues to be used even by the final elite tiers of Sebillians and Androns as their primary weapon. If we cut its mitigation down to 20 and left its damage at 35, then a Xenonaut wearing Wolf armour (65 armour) would take very little or even no damage from it, depending on the rolls - later armours would be initially immune. Increasing the damage as well as decreasing the mitigation might work better, but even then I think we'd struggle to make the weapon useful against the late armours e.g. the Predator with 100 protection, while not being horribly OP against early game Xenonauts. Perhaps it would actually just be OK if it wasn't very good against later armours, as the sheer number of aliens in later levels might mean they could effectively grind Xenonaut armour down through the degradation caused by repeated hits. Alternatively I might look at introducing an "elite" heavy plasma" later in the game, which just bumps its stats up to match the later armours, but is otherwise identical.

Also, someone asked if I had a sort of plan for the progression in the game - surely enough I do, here it is:

XenonautsGeoscapeProgression.png

(click for full size image)

Keep in mind when looking at this that it is the roughest guide - I specifically do not want there to be a "right" way to play the game in terms of the number of bases, when certain research is accomplished etc... but all things being equal, the above shows what should match with what. Some of it may also be a bit out of date. Some of it we also have not achieved yet (the number of base attack incidents being far too high currently, for example). Alien counts are the minimum number for a UFO, there can be up to 50% more, or less than the stated number if it was shot down and they died in the crash.

Edited by Aaron
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Idk, to me it doesn't sound like you tried vehicles w/ explosives or diff squad compositions.

Been noticing this with a lot of gamers these days: they shy away from challenges. Instead of trying different approaches or self-analyzing= they cheat.

Nah, same squad. I just loaded the auto-save at battle start and tried again and again. It also haleped that I knew where every alien was after a few tries. And the extra bit of range on the rifle made quite the difference.

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Tweeked aircraft file and a weapons file here, just stick them in your game assets folder.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5t7xi098s4tn8pz/aircrafts.xml

https://www.dropbox.com/s/p4p2zbsy97yp1ux/weapons_gc.xml

Only change from stock is the transport capacities are back where they were in v17 and the AM on the heavy plasma is 20.

Disclaimer- Not saying this is the best set up, but to me just feels about the right difficulty for normal, something which wouldn't have the average player rage quitting.

If the ticker is still quicker than progress as below then i guess this would change.

If that is a progress chart then either I am well behind schedule or the aliens are ahead.

Going by that I am somewhere between 100 and 200 on the tech tree with the aliens at somewhere between 200 and 450.

Now the only way I could have got there faster was to build the second lab earlier (picked up a second around month 2.5) as I have had research projects on constantly.

Is the ticker value visible in the .sav file? Got it open in a hex editor (HxD) but can't easily see a numerical value for the ticker.

(what is visible though is exactly whats been researched, which might be handy.)

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To see the ticker value edit the file "gameconfig.xml" in the Xenonauts folder by changing the line "showAIDebug" from False to True, save, then run the game. You will see various new bits of info in the bottom right of the Geoscape (and there are cheaty tick boxes to spy on Aliens too).

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well that's a bit easier than digging through the hex, will let you know where things stack up.

Month wise the aliens are on target but my tech is half the speed of the aliens.

Is 6 months the target time for the invasion? It has taken me ~20 hours real time to get to mid jan. (where as steam tells me my 100% complete everything researched xcom eu has taken 187 hours!)

Edit-

Right ticker says 530 by feb 7th. So by rights I should be well ahead of my current development.

Research and game pace feels right, there's just so much to do I don't see how you could move faster as a player, I have been in the + on the funding every month, shooting down about 60-70% of the ufos so far and visiting about 80% of the crash sites, killed an alien base and not lost a terror mission yet.

Edited by Hairyscreech
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I think the idea of a buffed elite-tier weapon in the late game would solve the problem. Add some more spangly lights to the inventory icon (don't worry about the sprites), even add a quick research topic for it that gives you "Well, this one has been tweaked to be even more powerful. We can't copy the improvements, tell your men to not get hit"

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I've just come from a terror mission (trying out a Scimitar variant) and while my valiant few have fought and killed over 20 aliens, they get the same level of experience that I'd get from doing a light scout. I'm left somewhat dissatisfied that they've gone to all that effort and and their growth doesn't (in my view) reflect what was a very tough mission, with a non-trivial bodycount.

I know the game counts aliens killed per solider - it has to do that to award certain medals. Is there any chance during solider development, squaddies could get a random stat boost or a package of progress points or something else based upon the scalps they took/have taken to reflect growth through challenge and adversity, as well as growth by doing?

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I've just come from a terror mission (trying out a Scimitar variant) and while my valiant few have fought and killed over 20 aliens, they get the same level of experience that I'd get from doing a light scout. I'm left somewhat dissatisfied that they've gone to all that effort and and their growth doesn't (in my view) reflect what was a very tough mission, with a non-trivial bodycount.

I know the game counts aliens killed per solider - it has to do that to award certain medals. Is there any chance during solider development, squaddies could get a random stat boost or a package of progress points or something else based upon the scalps they took/have taken to reflect growth through challenge and adversity, as well as growth by doing?

I remember when GH capped the stats growth because people were advancing too quickly. At the time I think I suggested a function that would make the higher stat levels harder and harder to achieve (some type of squared experience gain function). I still think that is still a better solution than the current capped linear function. If your guys are inexperienced and complete a tough mission they should move up faster than experienced soldiers completing the same mission. But, in any event, I think a tough mission should bring more experience than an easy mission all other things being equal.
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Going by the "plan" we should be quite a bit further ahead by the time we face the heavy plasma and the nasty terror missions.

It takes me about 5 months to get up to two bases with plasma tech, wolf armor, and a few corsairs+a shrike, which is enjoyable for me. If the research was made to progress according to Aaron's schedule, then there almost isn't enough time (or a point, really) to fully equip your squad with laser+jackal. Two months per tech level seems good.

That being said, with the exception of the large base defense missions, however, I don't really feel overwhelmed. And I haven't intentionally lost my main base in order to assess how recoverable the game is. I would imagine that you wouldn't be setting yourself too far back if, in advance of an overwhelming base assault, you either sold or transported everything and everyone to your second base.

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I remember when GH capped the stats growth because people were advancing too quickly. At the time I think I suggested a function that would make the higher stat levels harder and harder to achieve (some type of squared experience gain function). I still think that is still a better solution than the current capped linear function. If your guys are inexperienced and complete a tough mission they should move up faster than experienced soldiers completing the same mission. But, in any event, I think a tough mission should bring more experience than an easy mission all other things being equal.
This makes a lot more sense.
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Think it's been mentioned a few times in this thread, but it seems like there are too many aliens packed into those light scouts. My troops are advancing incredibly fast. After a month or so I had at least 1 Major, couple Captains and the rest were LT's. (this is also due to the high number of light scouts that appear)

Edited by Cush
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It doesn't matter how many aliens are in a UFO for levelling up, you still only get 1 stat increase per mission.

Hopefully they're changing the XP system to something like XP per alien killed/stunned at the end of the mission, and what we have is a placeholder. Right now, a soldier can get +1 stat per mission, and if you want a soldier to increase:

  • TUs, that soldier has to spend 150 TUs in one battle
  • STR, that soldier has to move 20 tiles while carrying at least 80% of his maximum carry weight
  • ACC, that soldier has to fire at an enemy within 150% of weapon range (so 30 for an assault rifle)
  • REF, that soldier has to make a reaction fire test, but success isn't needed to get the point
  • BRV, that soldier has to panic in a battle.

RES is a bit different in that a soldier gets +1 every time he levels up five stats. So you'll probably get +1 RES every two battles, since it's easy to get the +TU, +STR and +ACC.

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HM...im in my third month... very few soldiers have breached the 70+ mark on any stat yet.

Frankly I think a diffeerent kind of balance is in order. Weapon costs for burst should be lower. Over time, soldiers you hire should have better stats (makes sense that the more sucesfull you are, the more trusted you would be and thus get better peoeple).

Also, starting soldiers having stats in the 50 range, with the elites have 100+ ? I feel the difference is too big.

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It could also be argued that, as the invasion continues each country is still having to throw their own soldiers into various skirmishes we don't know about (the "local forces downed a ufo" that I've actually never seen beyond week 2. Is it just a starting thing?) And thus they end up with a core of vets they refuse to give away, and the same rooks we need to deal with hiring, everyone else dying at probably an even faster rate than our guys, heh.

So no stat increases for the rooks as the game goes on : P

Mwa ha ha ha.

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I figured that was the rationale, it's just a bit strange that it's only limited to the first couple of weeks rather than continuing, if at a much reduced rate once it's served that initial purpose.

I guess my point is that the reasonably high rate of occurrence at the beginning of the game followed by the complete lack of it ever happening again is noticeable. Especially when the purpose of our organisation is based around no-one else being effective. As it currently stands, it's more apparent that local forces start off being far more effective than the xenonauts, then suddenly lose that.

If nothing else it might be worth highlighting that in the process of downing these early, basic ufos the local forces get so torn up that they cannot continue to do so.

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That, or since they're not adapting tech like the Xenonauts, they don't have the capability to keep up with the new ones.

Anything a "Conder" could take down, an F-15 would tear new strips all over. The nations of the world apparently just have trouble detecting them, or modifying their fighters to carry ten times the fighter's base weight in fuel to chase them intercontinentally.

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Maybe the fluff could be that local forces have detected a landed UFO, instead of local forces downing a UFO. It'd no longer be a crashsite, but a UFO that's landed for a long period of time before setting off into space. That'd be less jarring, since the local forces don't probably want to go near the death machine filled with monsters if they can get someone else to do it.

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