Ground Combat Balance Discussion V20 Experimental 1

[Aaron]

The new experimental build is out, and there are a few important changes in it I would really like to here your opinions on. Here are what I consider the main ones:

- Fairly major changes to accuracy and shooting system:

-- Accuracy percentage displayed on crosshair should now be unequivocally the real chance to hit the target

-- The game performs a single test on this percentage, if it comes out as a hit then the bullet will now always hit and never be intercepted by props etc...

-- If the game rolls a miss, then the bullet is completely prevented from hitting the original target

-- The missed shot then scatters at random around the original target (including hitting the ground tile the target is in, without hitting the target itself)

-- The scattered shot also has a chance to hit other units, however there is a negative penalty applied to hitting them meaning it is now less likely to hit units by accident

-- NOTE: A consequnce of this is units can perform reaction fire "through" each other, and they will sometimes hit comrades doing so. This will be fixed.

- Improved the way accuracy information is communicated to the player

-- If a prop is in the line of fire it is highlighted in red and shows the percentage penalty it will apply to the shot

-- If there are multiple props in the line of fire then only the one with the highest blocking chance (the one used in the accuracy calculation) is highlighted

-- The stopping chances of other props are shown in grey for informational puposes

-- Multi-tile objects will now only display their accuracy penalty once

-- All tiles from a multi-tile props are now correctly ignored when shooting over them while standing adjacent to them

- Jetpacks have received a major update in functionality

-- Jetpack units can now hover in the air, they do not always have to land as previously

-- Flying units cannot attack, react or perform any other combat action until they land again

-- If a flying unit is killed it is immediately destroyed along with carried items

- The combat shield now also has a chance to block shots coming in at 45 degree angles from the direction it is facing (but the chance to block is lower)

- Tweaks to morale system to make it more likely individuals will panic, rather than the entire team at once (these changes are preliminary, bigger ones to come)

Obviously the changes to the accuracy formula are going to have the biggest impact - so please go ahead, shoot some aliens, and come back with your thoughts!

[Mantaray]

can you give some more specific idea of how the combat/assault shields chance to block was affected? For instance, if i crouch with it and the dude is directly to my front, what are my chances?

[Tobbzn]

Reading the relevant files, it looks like it blocks 60% from the front and 80% from the sides, which seems odd. It could be that the 80% is actually referring to crouching behind the shield, though.

[Amaror]

Okay i don't really know if this belongs in here directly, but chris told me to move it here so here it is.

My opinion on the new carrying capacity. Spoiler: It's not good.

I am definitly not a fan of the new carrying capacity. It's just too low. I am hitting the limit easily, even without any armor. Combining that with the fact that i will only get one additional capacity for TEN strength levels and can't even go above the carrying capacity, although that may be a bug.

Just think about it. The absolute maximum of carrying capacity you can have is 30. 30!! Thats nothing. I know you don't want people running around with tons of ammo in their backpacks, but when you make all advanced weapons only have that pathetic amount of ammo, you don't really give us a choice. I mean aliens even have unlimited ammo.

[superbob]

I suppose these bits of information are scattered over the forums, but for the sake of convenience, could someone answer these for me before we get into the new weight limit discussion:

1. can the strength stat go over 100? What's the max?

2. can it go up by more than 1pt per mission? What's the max increase?

3. can items have weight less than 1kg? Was giving items more precise weight discussed before?

4. can advanced armor increase the max carry weight?

Basically I'd like a better perspective on how many missions, on average, a soldier would have to take part it to pack an extra laser battery or grenade. What is the theoretical/practical max carry weight? What could you guys compromise on?

For me, 35kg is the baseline where soldiers can wear armor and not go into battle with just minimal equipment. 32kg means no backup weapon/medkit. Any less and either I sacrifice AP or stop taking grenades/spare ammo on missions.

I don't think it would make the game much harder, I'd just have to be more careful and take more cautious shots. It will however make it less fun, as throwing grenades left and right is pretty cool, as is spraying fire whenever an alien pops its head out.

[Max_Caine]

1) 100

2) Nope/+1

3) Yup x2

4) Sort of. Powered armour boosts the strength stat.

Edited October 27, 2013 by Max_Caine

[Dranak]

Aliens (at least non-coms) seem to be back to just running away. I've ran 5 missions now an been shot at twice (not counting reaction fire). I started standing troops out in the open to see if I can get them shot at with no success until they're within 3-5 tiles from an alien.

[Max_Caine]

Having tried out a few things, Sebillian guards seem willing to mix it up, but they still faff around too much. Case in point. A Sebillian was caught out in the open. So it hid behind some crates. Fair enough. I decided to not move or shoot with any of my troops, and over the next three turns the Sebillian nervously circled around the crates like Piglet in meltdown. It could have hunkered down and shot at me or come running at me - my troops in those turns were immobile, but instead it wasted most of its AP faffing about.

[Gribbstar]

I haven't got very far into the game but playing peekaboo with ship doors seems far too effective. Just line up at the door, open it, blast the bad guys and close it again. They don't even try to retaliate

I guess this is a lot different when you actually have to explore ships?

[superbob]

Aliens seem to be a bit more timid, generally I got the impression they were easily spooked by overwhelming numbers of soldiers converging on them. 1vs1 or 1vs2 a lone alien would shoot back, but after being surrounded by more soldiers they leg it to the next piece of cover. Which usually doesn't end well, since by then they are suppressed, end their turn in the open and die to machinegun fire.

[Max_Caine]

When a shot misses the target but hits the tile the target is standing in, could we have some kind of graphical notifcation of the miss? Someone has already posted a bug report where I believe intended behaviour has been assumed to be a bug. I pointed this out a while ago, but I can't find where I said it now.

[Aaron]

I was thinking about adding a little popup "MISS" text when that happens, yeah.

[Ishantil]

Perhaps the sound of "hitting the ground" could be different as well? Or is that already happening? I haven't gotten the game to work very long yet, so I think I'll wait for the first patch.

[StellarRat]

I don't think I'd like a pop up, but a sound and maybe an effect of some kind would be fine (dust kicked up?)

Edited October 28, 2013 by StellarRat

[Max_Caine]

It would have to be a graphic that can take into account burst fire. You wouldn't want an alien to luck out and hit the tile a squaddie is on three times to have the screen fill up with more popups than an old geocities website.

[Ishantil]

The old X-COM game had the ricochet noise when didn't hit the aliens, or at least with the ballistic weaponry.

[Chilly]

how about making doors unable to close when you opened them first in the same turn ?

The abuse of the current door mechanics is becoming somewhat of a standard-tactics of mine ;-) Especially alien doors shouldn't be on my side in a fight..

because atm its like this: go into position -> open door -> pew pew -> close -> lol -> repeat... this shouldn't be possible

[StellarRat]

how about making doors unable to close when you opened them first in the same turn ?

The abuse of the current door mechanics is becoming somewhat of a standard-tactics of mine ;-) Especially alien doors shouldn't be on my side in a fight..

because atm its like this: go into position -> open door -> pew pew -> close -> lol -> repeat... this shouldn't be possible

I thought there was a TU cost for toggling doors?

[Chilly]

I thought there was a TU cost for toggling doors?

That's true. But still, its somehow silly to be able to open and close them several times a turn. If i open a door and see that there is danger i just close it again and do whatever is required to negate that danger.

Which means most times i just put all of my guys in front of a door to a room with enemys, wait a turn, open it and see whats there. If i can shoot without the danger of reaction fire i do so, otherwise i close it again and move some guys so that i can shoot without danger. Then i open again and shoot. Then close again and wait for the next turn. I also always have 1 person next to the door whoose only purpose is to open and close that door.

Although with the new stronger shields i may change that routine a bit for a little more fun

[ventuswings]

how about making doors unable to close when you opened them first in the same turn ?

The abuse of the current door mechanics is becoming somewhat of a standard-tactics of mine ;-) Especially alien doors shouldn't be on my side in a fight..

because atm its like this: go into position -> open door -> pew pew -> close -> lol -> repeat... this shouldn't be possible

Regardless of the ideas merit, this would allow one to remove need for arbitrarily high number of TU that was added to prevent this exploit - only to fail - as well.

[legit1337]

Hey guys,

I've been a fan of the X-Com games since my childhood and still play them to this day. I bought xenonauts recently because it seemed close to finished and wanted to participate in the beta testing to give my two cents on the balancing aspect of the game. I am currently playing v19 stable, I haven't gotten too far yet (1 month) but I've noticed some issues right away.

My biggest gripe so far is with accuracy (especially burst fire mode) but it seems the new experimental version made some changes in that regard, so I won't comment further until I playtest the changes.

Another issue I have is with the uselessness of grenades, on two levels:

You can't throw them far at all. IRL the purpose of a grenade is to smoke out enemies dug into cover, they either have to move out of it and risk getting shot at, or they stay and get dead/wounded in the explosion. But I can't even seem to throw the grenade from one piece of cover to another, even when they are right next to each other. Grenades should be short ranged weapons but come on... in the current version you literally have to be right on top of the alien to use it.

They also hardly do any damage at all. I've had a caesean non-com survive three point blank grenade explosions in a row (hard difficulty).

I realize that grenades only take up one inventory space, don't weigh much, and for balancing purposes must be made to have some sort of downside. But in their current state they are crap, and I've stopped taking them on missions. Do you have any current plans to improve them? Perhaps increasing the TU cost to something like 75% of base TU to compensate?

EDIT: Also for the door closing exploit (guilty as charged for using it). I think the solution of only being able to open/close a door once per turn is an elegant and realistic solution. From a realism perspective the outer airlock door of a space ship shouldn't open instantly (because it needs to be sealed completely airtight), by the time it opens, and then shuts again both sides should have time to shoot at each other. For manual doors it is simply an issue of not being able to shut them fast enough to avoid enemy return fire.

Another possibility would be to make it so that opening/closing a door provokes reaction shots, which would be realistic, but would make door breaching almost suicidal for the poor point-man. (Although it would give combat shields a needed niche.)

Edited October 29, 2013 by legit1337

[Aaron]

I'm not keen on the idea of preventing doors being opened/closed more than once a turn - I've seen lots of complaints from people who accidentally open doors by miss-clicking on them, imagine how annoying it would be if you accidentally closed a door you need to go through, and then were just screwed for that turn because you couldn't open it.

I will have a think about other options - I do like the idea of giving aliens a reaction shot attempt against door opening Xenonauts (by that I mean they would do a check to see if they can react, and do a reaction shot if they pass + have AP - I don't mean all aliens immediately hose opening doors regardless of AP).

[kabill]

Re: doors - could you set it so that if a door has been opened that turn, you can't close it (but if it's been closed, you can open it)? This solves the exploit while avoiding the problem of accidentally blocking your passage for the turn. You'd still have the problem of wanting the door shut but accidentally opening it, but that's probably less of an issue(?).

Reaction shots might work, but many (almost all?) doors can be opened from the side which will probably block LOS from possible reaction-shooters so it's possible that in a lot of situations it won't make any difference. I guess you could solve this by allowing aliens a reaction shot against any Xenonaut which is revealed by a door opening (even if it wasn't the one opening it), but I imagine that would be a nightmare to code.

[Chilly]

I'm not keen on the idea of preventing doors being opened/closed more than once a turn - I've seen lots of complaints from people who accidentally open doors by miss-clicking on them, imagine how annoying it would be if you accidentally closed a door you need to go through, and then were just screwed for that turn because you couldn't open it.

I will have a think about other options - I do like the idea of giving aliens a reaction shot attempt against door opening Xenonauts (by that I mean they would do a check to see if they can react, and do a reaction shot if they pass + have AP - I don't mean all aliens immediately hose opening doors regardless of AP).

I opened a few doors by accident too, so i understand the reluctance.

Accidental opening of doors could be easily prevented however. for example if you would need to click on a door for 2 seconds for it to open..

or maybe having to click twice on it - if clicked once the mousecurser then shows some sort of opening-graphic and after clicking a second time it opens. that grafic disappears after a second when you dont click twice to open the door and you can continue with whatever you wanted to do. The door could show that graphic instead with the same mechanic too.

Edited October 29, 2013 by Chilly

[AndreiN]

I agree that being able to open/close a sliding door only once/turn would be much better. Right now the design funnels the player by encouraging just one kind of solution for storming the UFO's, which by itself is not a very interesting process.

Maybe you could just add a small pop-up asking the player to confirm opening the door? I think that would remove most of the accidental frustration.