Geoscape Balance Discussion V20 Experimental 4

[Aaron]

FYI guys build 3 is out, but no balance changes for the Geoscape, so I'll just leave this thread intact and update the title.

[StellarRat]

Thoughts on the current Geoscape...well the new interface is awesome in-spite of the bugs. I pretty much like all the changes. My only complaint so far (consistently) is that infantry weapons and armor take an inordinate amount of time and money to build. I've got fifteen engineers working away but it's taken almost half a month to get out 4 Wolfs and 4 laser rifles??? In the OG you could re-equip your entire team in a week or two tops.

[vaultdweller]

My only complaint so far (consistently) is that infantry weapons and armor take an inordinate amount of time and money to build. I've got fifteen engineers working away but it's taken almost half a month to get out 4 Wolfs and 4 laser rifles??? In the OG you could re-equip your entire team in a week or two tops.

I noticed that as well, but couldn't remember how long anything took to build in the original for comparison.

I never touched vehicles for this reason. I struggled to churn out aircraft without falling behind on equipping my troops, so committing any manufacturing capacity to a third area was out of the question.

Edited November 11, 2013 by vaultdweller

[ventuswings]

Armor is really strong compared to OG though, and to my understanding is not lost even if the armor-wearer is killed.

[Max_Caine]

S'right. Once armour is built you generally don't have to build it again, unlike EU where if you lost a guy you would have to build everything again.

[StellarRat]

Armor is really strong compared to OG though, and to my understanding is not lost even if the armor-wearer is killed.

That's true. But you upgrade often enough that I feel the lower level armors and weapons should be cheaper and faster to make. I think lasers and Jackel and Wolf should be much faster to produce even if they cost a lot.

BTW, are we supposed to be getting Gatling Lasers for the Condors for free now? I didn't have to build them or pay for them. It wasn't like that before.

Edited November 11, 2013 by StellarRat

[Dranak]

BTW, are we supposed to be getting Gatling Lasers for the Condors for free now? I didn't have to build them or pay for them. It wasn't like that before.

That was an announced change in V20.

[Max_Caine]

Having thought long and hard about it, I don't think the percentage full colourbars in the base construction screen are necessary. I understand their purpose - to give a visual impression of how full X building type is. But I believe that information could as easily be visually presented by colouring the numbers involved with a clear red-amber-green scaling. Green when the percentage full is say, up to 50%, amber 51-80%, red for 81%+.

Were the percentage bars removed, this would free up room in the base construction screen for larger text and to be honest, the text is more important than the bars because while the bars provide at-a-glance information, they have no context without the accompanying text, but the text doesn't really need the bars to provide information.

EDIT: And I'm sorry to say, but the phrase "Defence Strength" doesn't actually mean anything. If I put in a missile battery, I have a "Defence Strength" of 10. 10 what? 10 bananas? What does that mean? A possibly more meaningful value would be the amount of potential damage that the combined batteries of a base would do. "Defence Battery Damage: 260 HP" means a lot more.

EDIT 2: a333 was kind enough to make some mockups of how it might look, and even produced three different variants. And so!

EDIT 3: a33 also pointed out to me that mentioning HP in the base defence section breaks immersion more than a little bit. But something to make the term "defence strength" more meaningful would be very welcome.

Edited November 12, 2013 by Max_Caine

[StellarRat]

Love the airstrike option too! I use it all the time.

[Aaron]

How do you find the monetary reward for that? Too little, too much? The reward values I assigned the various crash sites were based on really rough calculations, so it would be good to know if they needed tweaking.

[vaultdweller]

I think that Chris said the goal was for the monetary reward was meant to be about 50% of what you'd get for doing the mission, did he not? If so, they're on the low side. I started using airstrikes on scouts once the rewards for them become trivial, but otherwise, I still felt the need to handle everything larger personally, whether I wanted the combat or not. Sending your strike team gets you about 3x the cash on most ship sizes (if not more), it gets you alenium, and it improves your soldiers. I think (but I'm not sure) that it also improves your national relations to increase future funding? The opportunity cost for skipping a crash site feels quite high. Other than scouts, airstrikes were reserved for cases where I couldn't respond, rather than cases where I didn't want to respond.

[StellarRat]

How do you find the monetary reward for that? Too little, too much? The reward values I assigned the various crash sites were based on really rough calculations, so it would be good to know if they needed tweaking.

They might be a bit on the low side. I tend to recover about 2.5 x what an airstrike is giving me. It should probably be somewhat variable since the state of the UFO after a crash landing, subsquent bombing and firefight could vary wildly, IMO.

[Aaron]

As the newly released experimental build 4 was mainly bug fixes, please just continue discussions here. I'll update the title.

[Gromitek]

I think that airstrike should give at least 80% of the crashsite value done by own soldiers. By crashsite value I mean instant cash + monthly income increase. Now is about 1/3 rd.

[superbob]

Yeah I think it's too low. Basically I feel I have to keep doing boring/buggy landingship/cruiser missions if I want to stay on top of things, with larger craft the money gained is indeed around 1/3 of what I can get for a mission with many aliens, provided I don't get crazy with rocket launchers.

[Dranak]

How many ground combat missions per wave are we expected to perform? If it is only 1-2, with a couple additional airstrikes then maybe it might be worth looking at moving more of the funding increase from assaulting the UFO do shooting it down. The downside would be that making the air combat a tad more important, although I'm not sure that would actually change how the game is played much as it's already optimal to shoot all the UFOs.

[StellarRat]

How many ground combat missions per wave are we expected to perform?

I don't know the direct answer to this, but I seem to recall Chris saying the goal was to complete the game with an average of 40 ground missions total. I'd say based on my play style it's going to take WAY more than that for me to win. Of course, I could just suck at the game too!

[Dranak]

40ish sounds like the answer from previous discussions. So assuming the goal is for us to finish in around 8 months (because I can only recall them saying it should be under a year and it makes the math easy) that'd be 5 missions per month, which is incredibly low and would maybe be possible if you had a strict 1 mission per wave rule. Realistically that would pretty much require skipping waves pretty often to do. Obviously stretching the expected completion time out closer to a year would make it even more unlikely to happen. Setting that aside for a moment, that's not enough ground missions to make an appreciable change in funding levels.

[StellarRat]

40ish sounds like the answer from previous discussions. So assuming the goal is for us to finish in around 8 months (because I can only recall them saying it should be under a year and it makes the math easy) that'd be 5 missions per month, which is incredibly low and would maybe be possible if you had a strict 1 mission per wave rule. Realistically that would pretty much require skipping waves pretty often to do. Obviously stretching the expected completion time out closer to a year would make it even more unlikely to happen. Setting that aside for a moment, that's not enough ground missions to make an appreciable change in funding levels.

I actually don't see how I can possibly win doing only 1 mission per wave. I still rely on income from the recoveries to fund some of my stuff. I'm doing at least 4 - 8 recoveries per month plus alien base cleanups and terror cleanups. I think GH needs to increase the nation relation $$ for all ground missions/airstrikes, shoot downs AND increase relations for research breakthroughs too. My opinion is that the politicians would continue to increase funding for the Xenonauts if they thought progress was being made on a way to finally defeat the aliens as well as actually slowing them down with combat. Kind of like a new Manhattan Project. In fact, you could make a reasonable argument that research progress would outweigh just about any other factor in determining whether the Xenonauts were winning. Edited November 19, 2013 by StellarRat

[Chris]

Yes, the intention was originally that completing a ground combat mission would give no permanent increase in funding and instead it would all be gained from initially shooting down the UFO. The player could then choose to Airstrike or send their troops in without their choice having any effect on long-term funding. I'll discuss it with Aaron tomorrow and see what his take on the matter is.

[Dranak]

I actually don't see how I can possibly win doing only 1 mission per wave. I still rely on income from the recoveries to fund some of my stuff. I'm doing at least 4 - 8 recoveries per month plus alien base cleanups and terror cleanups. I think GH needs to increase the nation relation $$ for all ground missions/airstrikes, shoot downs AND increase relations for research breakthroughs too. My opinion is that the politicians would continue to increase funding for the Xenonauts if they thought progress was being made on a way to finally defeat the aliens as well as actually slowing them down with combat. Kind of like a new Manhattan Project. In fact, you could make a reasonable argument that research progress would outweigh just about any other factor in determining whether the Xenonauts were winning.

Oh I'm not at all arguing that it would be optimal (probably doable, but definitely not optimal), just trying to figure out how the numbers we've gotten from GH in the past would look if we actually tried to play like that. Always good to test the dev's planned models versus what actually happens in play.

If the increase in funding is removed from ground missions, it will reduce the gulf between airstrikes and mission running but it will also pretty much remove our ability to increase our monthly funding unless the value from intercepting UFOs is greatly increased. Currently the only effective way to get that increased is grind ground combat missions.

[StellarRat]

If the increase in funding is removed from ground missions, it will reduce the gulf between airstrikes and mission running but it will also pretty much remove our ability to increase our monthly funding unless the value from intercepting UFOs is greatly increased. Currently the only effective way to get that increased is grind ground combat missions.

I think we're both on the same track. Don't you think though, that the nations would be far more interested in how the Xenonauts are doing on research to terminate the aliens completely though? Just holding them off isn't really an optimal solution. That's why I think it should all come back to research. Edited November 19, 2013 by StellarRat

[Dranak]

I think we're both on the same track. Don't you think though, that the nations would be far more interested in how the Xenonauts are doing on research to terminate the aliens completely though? Just holding them off isn't really an optimal solution. That's why I think it should all come back to research.

I think they would be interested in our research, yes. I'm not sure if making that a major contributor to our funding would be better for gameplay or not. I would support a small bonus for each research project completed, but I'm not sure if the gain from that would justify the time it would take to code it.

[Max_Caine]

I believe the consequence of granting a medium-to-large bonus for each research topic is that the earlier, easier research topics would grant highly visible and easily attainable bonuses that in turn would depress the value of soliders or engineers, as both those types cost money but scientists earn money. I think it would especially depress the value of engineers, as lasers and wolf armour are really the first worthwhile projects they can embark on, and to get to either you need to research 5-6 topics.

EDIT: That being said, a bonus to relationship per topic would encourage players to research topics they would otherwise normally ignore, to get as many relationship bonuses as possible in as short a period of time as possible.

[Mermel]

Another important thing are advances in soldier stats.

For that alone I don't want to skip a single mission. I just don't have any options to compensate for that.