Geoscape Balance Discussion V20 Experimental 7

[Aaron]

Trashman, chill out - you are in no position to demand anyone does anything on this forum. Believe it or not we do not painstakingly go through the Xenopedia and adjust all the text every time we try some balance changes.

And yeah, to be clear - you can still lose relations points for letting civilians/friendly soldiers die in a ground combat mission.

The change to Condor speed was purposefully a bit harsh. There's a bit of a problem with them in that the intended upgrade path for them, the Corsair, uses exactly the same weapons and therefore has to rely on things like speed, hitpoints and range to differentiate it. Previously there was simply not enough difference to mean that building Corsairs was worthwhile, so I could either make the upgrade to Corsairs cheaper (which would be weird as they are already pretty cheap compared to buying guns or armour) or exaggerate the difference in capabilities (which I am trying). I think it also makes a little more sense that the very first human craft is just outclassed by UFOs in terms of speed. This is not by any means set in stone though, I really want to get more feedback once we've fixed up the ground combat and got that build back up.

@superbob, can you describe the specific tactics you are using to dominate like that? Are you acting powerful UFOs multiple times with squadrons of less advanced aircraft? I am thinking about possibly making UFOs repair a certain percentage of the damage they take in combat. Also keep in mind with Furies that their ammo will eventually be extremely limited - right now there's a bug that lets them re-arm automatically, but once that is fixed you will need to build their ammo using singularity cores from Battleships.

[cb1987]

Aaron, in order to exaggerate the difference in capabilities, could you not use hitpoints as the major differentiating factor? Perhaps if you increase the range of the close range/point defence weapons on the larger UFOs to better keep pace with the upgrades to aircraft cannons, such that interceptors with even advanced cannons (laser/plasma) have to take hits from the UFO to get in range, then the condor would drop off in utility as it would be unable to go toe to toe with larger ships.

I think it would solve the issue of being able to shoot down battleships using plasma cannon armed condors without taking a single hit, and also mean that large UFO waves would inevitably result in damaged corsairs, adding to that feeling of being overwhelmed.

[Aaron]

I have considered the approach of giving each main UFO type a long range missile that it can fire from out of range of Xenonaut weapons, which would do enough damage to destroy Condors but not Corsairs - but how do you cope with Condors being able to evade? You could make the missile fast or manoeuvrable enough to prevent evading, but that begs the question of why other alien weapons don't behave that way, and seems just as "gamey" as manipulating the speeds to me.

[MrPyro]

One suggestion I have seen is that you limit the tech level of weapons that a Condor can use; maybe cap it at Laser Gatlings and Alenium missiles. Put in a fluff reason about power-plant capability / flight stability / whatever. Then Corsairs have the advantage of being able to equip better weapons, in addition to speed / armour that they already possessed.

[cb1987]

I have considered the approach of giving each main UFO type a long range missile that it can fire from out of range of Xenonaut weapons, which would do enough damage to destroy Condors but not Corsairs - but how do you cope with Condors being able to evade? You could make the missile fast or manoeuvrable enough to prevent evading, but that begs the question of why other alien weapons don't behave that way, and seems just as "gamey" as manipulating the speeds to me.

The main issue with the condor currently seems to be that it has a higher total damage potential than the foxtrot when using the various cannons in addition to missiles, therefore making the cannon harder to use safely seems to me to be the best way to balance things.

I always considered the UFO 'long range weapons' that can be evaded to be more of a counter to foxtrots and I like that skillful use of evasive rolls allows you to get in close with the condors and corsairs, so I think an auto hit UFO missile is the wrong way to go.

I was thinking more like increasing the radius of the close range weapon 'zone' that surrounds the capital UFOs (ie landingship and above). Not so much that they could hit a foxtrot at max range, but enough to outrange a condor or corsair using a comparable tech level cannon. ie. a condor with a gatling laser could perhaps shoot at a landing ship without entering the 'zone' but it couldn't do the same to a carrier, and have the battleship 360 degree close range weapon zone outrange even the best interceptor cannon.

I know evasive rolls can still dodge some of the UFO shots in the close range zone, but generally the rate of fire is too high to avoid them all. With this mechanic, the condor can still reliably fight earlier UFOs as it does now, but will not be able to withstand the damage from later UFOs if it wants to use its cannon, allowing the corsair, with its higher hp to be able to last much longer in close proximity to late game UFOs and use its cannon to bring them down.

I think this approach would make multiple battleship waves more taxing for the player, as their corsairs/marauders would nearly always take some damage when they close to use cannons, making the battleships seem more deadly, rather than currently where you can kite a battleship around with one plane, then have another sit right outsite its close weapon range and shoot it to death with impunity.

It would also make furies more useful as they would be the only interceptors that can guarantee to take down a battleship without taking damage.

Edited December 2, 2013 by cb1987

[StK]

I have considered the approach of giving each main UFO type a long range missile that it can fire from out of range of Xenonaut weapons, which would do enough damage to destroy Condors but not Corsairs - but how do you cope with Condors being able to evade? You could make the missile fast or manoeuvrable enough to prevent evading, but that begs the question of why other alien weapons don't behave that way, and seems just as "gamey" as manipulating the speeds to me.

I still think the best way to Cap out the Condor is to make him cap out on weaponry.

f.e AutoCannon Hardpoints for early tech variants and HeavyAutocannon Hardpoints for later ones. (and the condor ofc wouldnt be able to mount the heavy ones)

The problem with making the Condor slower is that it interfers with its capability to intercept earlier Alien crafts. Considering that intercepting a UFO in the first place is pretty much the most important part of the game (otherwise you wont get any missions you can actually deal with, apart from a lucky landed one) screwing with this seems like walking a very very thin line.

The idea with the rocket.. hmm its better then the speed but I would still prefer the tech cap one.

[TrashMan]

EDIT BY AARON: TrashMan, I asked you nicely the first time. I don't like deleting posts, even one this non-constructive, so instead I have put it in spoiler tags so people can ignore it. Take this as a warning.

It's explained.

In the lore.

And it's a wonky explanation at best IMHO. Because it doesn't make sense. Nice job completly avoiding answering the question b.t.w.

I say again: BOTH craft are stated to have extended fuel tanks.

Both.

So it's not a matter of lore at all.

By.

The lead.

Developer.

It could have been written by Jesus Christ for all I care.

And I don't.

I don't have to try.

Because, (say it with me now).

It's.

In.

The.

Lore.

I

do

not

care

that

you

think

you

don't

because

I

think

you

do

And

Me >>>>> You

In fact, you're in the wrong forest.

And you're on the wrong planet.

Trashman, chill out - you are in no position to demand anyone does anything on this forum.

Was I demanding anything?

Edited December 2, 2013 by Aaron
Non-constructive post

[StK]

@Trashman

Yes you demanded an explanation of him.

And no you are not better then him.

By insulting someone you only achieve to display the attitude of an annoying 5 year old that wants some candy.

[Aaron]

It's been dealt with. No more on that please.

[Max_Caine]

Regarding long-range alien missiles, you could set the lock/shoot value of a missile so the UFO fires a battery of missiles in short progression, then reduce the amount of damage each missile does. An interceptor could dodge one, but not all of them and you've created a class of missile which is explainable - an anime "swarm" style of missile where each shot doesn't do much damage, but there are too many to dodge.

EDIT: And would it be worthwhile bringing back the armour value for aircraft? I've been trying out some experiments in that area, and it might be worthwhile distinguishing the Corsair and the Marauder through their abilty to take damage as well at HP.

EDIT 2: Somethng that Dranak has said previously, but I think it bears saying again. Putting an aircraft into the shop for repairs is almost as painful as loosing an aircraft, because of the time needed to get it back into the air. Damaging an interceptor is as valuable a strategy as it is downing it.

Edited December 2, 2013 by Max_Caine

[StK]

@Max_Cain

I like the swarm missle idea and maybe higher Tier interceptors could have something like PointDefense to deal with them?

I also think they shouldnt be able to kill the Condor by themselves.. it should make it hard for Condors and Condors an unviable solution for better UFOs in the long run, but not impossible.

I never liked "let the player hit a brick wall" solutions.

[Aaron]

I think armour just muddies the issue - I'm not convinced there's anything you could achieve in this case using armour that you could not just tweaking damage/hit points numbers. Also the armour code is apparently a bit dodgy.

[cb1987]

@Max_Cain

I like the swarm missle idea and maybe higher Tier interceptors could have something like PointDefense to deal with them?

I also think they shouldnt be able to kill the Condor by themselves.. it should make it hard for Condors and Condors an unviable solution for better UFOs in the long run, but not impossible.

I never liked "let the player hit a brick wall" solutions.

This is why I think, rather than using a long range UFO missile to balance interceptors, we should just increase the range of the short range UFO guns. This means that condors can still use missiles without taking damage, but if they want to use cannons too they'll have to take damage, which the corsair can survive more of.

It gives the player more flexibilty to decide what tactic they would like to use. Rather than, "UFOs are now using swarm missiles, condors and foxtrots are useless", we get "UFO secondary weapon ranges have increased, we could use multiple sorties of condors and foxtrots to wear them down with missiles, risking their escape into space, or we could build these new tougher corsairs and go in with cannons for a faster kill.

[Max_Caine]

Arron, re. armour let me provide an example: consider that an autocannon does 10HP of damage per shot. If (say) a corvette has 5HP of armour, then the effectiveness of a cannon is reduced by half, as each shot the cannon does is only 5HP of damage. In contrast, an avalanche only looses 5HP off 200HP of damage. From the evidence I have presented, I argue this would be a radical re-altering of how interceptor weapons damage UFOs. But if the armour code is dodgy, eh, never mind.

[superbob]

@superbob, can you describe the specific tactics you are using to dominate like that? Are you acting powerful UFOs multiple times with squadrons of less advanced aircraft? I am thinking about possibly making UFOs repair a certain percentage of the damage they take in combat. Also keep in mind with Furies that their ammo will eventually be extremely limited - right now there's a bug that lets them re-arm automatically, but once that is fixed you will need to build their ammo using singularity cores from Battleships.

Basically, all I did was expanding fast, building lots of aircraft and focusing most of my research on aircraft weapons/technology. I played almost all of the missions since landing ships appeared, so I had enough money to advance pretty fast.

First I made bases all over the place for good coverage, then a central one in Africa that could support the others with extra planes. At that point I could take down entire waves of UFOs.

I started with 2 labs, then quickly advanced to 3 for a total of 45 scientists blazing through early game research. Same with workshops - basically I had the first base full by mid-game.

I don't recall killing enemies with two squadrons often. Most of the time one would work, exceptions happened when the first squadron was shot down or was already low on fuel/ammo. Sometimes I had cannon equipped fighters take out escort UFOs and escape, leaving the main ship for lone foxtrots to take out. Since Corsairs were relatively scarce mid-game, being able to send a Foxtrot without a Condor to slow it down was beneficial.

Here's a bunch of saves of my progress: http://share.cx.com/hZPhhY

In the last save I have too many plasma weapons, I got the replication bug in the loadout screen and played with it for a bit, IIRC I was a bit frustrated by aliens blasting my soldiers through floors in all the big ships, so I figured it evens the field a bit. I already had production going by then, so after playing a mission or two I decided it's not worth reloading from before, since it didn't impact me too much. It saved me some 600k in production costs, and ended up being mostly excess weapons I didn't sell because I did not want to engage in any unlimited money cheats.

The bug - I think it happens after removing then replacing weapons on soldiers in an airborne dropship. First remove some plasma/laser weapon from soldier's hands, then right click it in the weapons tab to put it back, remove it again, then right click a different one. This typically results in the second type of weapon being copied into soldier's inventory with 0 ammo loaded, which still increases the number you have in stock once you put it back.

Edited December 2, 2013 by superbob

[StellarRat]

Having finally entered into endgame phase, I think there's still a long way to go for endgame geoscape balance. Early and mid-game I'd say it is fine. Later I gained way too much dominance...

I'm not so sure this is a bad thing. Aren't the Earthlings supposed to gain dominance at some point? I mean the whole point of the game is too develop newer, better weapons, and more experienced soldiers to finally defeat the aliens. I'd hate to think that no matter what I did as a player the aliens would always be "better". Too me it makes a lot of sense that the humans would be on par or superior to the aliens by the end of the game. I've always thought of the final mission as the aliens "last stand" like the Hitler's Bunker or something.

[superbob]

From a gameplay standpoint, my issue was not that the endgame technology was more powerful than what aliens had to offer, but that later enemy craft wasn't much more effective than Cruisers. Carriers and Battleships were defeated by Corsairs+Foxtrots with little more difficulty.

Fluff-wise, I'd rather have the premise that whatever advantage we have is only temporary, as explained at the beginning - initially aliens are not equipped to deal with atmospheric flight, while Earthlings have perfected flying within our atmosphere, which allows us to outgun them for a while. Turning their technology against them helps us keep up, but I'd like increasingly more powerful alien craft to keep appearing as the game progresses.

In old xcom, Battleships worked this way. They would damage whatever you could send against them, so once they started to appear regularly, only Avengers, in groups, were able to take that beating and not end up grounded for the reminder of the month.

Here this role might fall to Marauders - which would be the only aircraft capable of launching torpedoes at huge enemy ships and then dodging out of the way of their attacks. Then, let that work fine until, say, early 1981, after which aliens would upgrade their battleships and carriers with some kinda plasma beam of death that would just sweep through the air and kill whatever it touches. Fluff-wise, something to do with improved shielding on these ships that allows them to discharge their weapons at full power within the atmosphere. Still possible to dodge, but on average results in a lot more downtime.

This is where we'd need Fury interceptors to last a bit longer. If these things are going to eat singularity cores in each shot then there's even less reason to build them at all, unless they become the only means of safely dealing with heaviest endgame alien ships.

In other words, I'd prefer if the game laughed at my silly expansion, knocked all the obsolete craft out of the skies before I could keep up upgrading all satellite bases and then kept pushing with even heavier ships so I had to focus on countering them instead of expanding to farm the endgame ships.

[Dranak]

@ Superbob - I say go for it. There haven't been a lot of people posting feedback on the final mission.

Furies having a unique weapon system that is the only weapon in the game that requires manufactured ammo seems pretty disconnected from the rest of the game, and seems like it would be quite jarring to suddenly find out your "ultimate" aircraft/weapon functions differently from everything else in the game. Likewise alien super missiles would seem weird (unless we changed all their long range weapons to that model) compared to the rest of their weapons.

I think one of the biggest challenges balancing air combat is that the amount of damage a plane can dish out is tied to the installed weapon system, but the amount of damage it takes is almost completely tied to player skill. This greatly reduces the value of HP as a balancing factor (unless weapon damage/HP is inflated to a huge degree on later enemies to where any damage is lethal).

I think the Corsair's biggest problem is lack of identity. For better or worse, every other aircraft has something unique about it. Condors are your starter aircraft, Foxtrots are snipers, Marauders are all around badasses, Furies are BS snipers. Corsairs are just kind of there as a pure linear upgrade from Condors. I'm sure the numbers can be tweaked to make them a worthwhile upgrade, but they still wouldn't do anything different from what a Condor does. I kind of like the idea of playing up that uniqueness by letting them do something silly like equip double cannons and making them the best pure air-superiority aircraft. Or give them the ability to fit torpedoes and give Marauders an "upgraded modular weapon system" that allows them to equip any combination of two weapons. That would give all human aircraft a progression in both flight characteristics and weaponry and make them all a clear upgrade.

I would be very cautious about using any models that force planes into taking damage. Given current repair times, it's pretty easy to miss the rest of the current wave and at least one additional wave by taking moderate to heavy damage. In terms of penalty, there's a very fine gap between taking any damage and being shot down currently.

[StellarRat]

I would be very cautious about using any models that force planes into taking damage. Given current repair times, it's pretty easy to miss the rest of the current wave and at least one additional wave by taking moderate to heavy damage. In terms of penalty, there's a very fine gap between taking any damage and being shot down currently.

I agree with this. Also, there ought to be substantial reward for learning how to win the ATA mini-game using manual control, IMO. There is reward for skillful ground combat and so it should be for ATA too. If you're willing to take manual control of your interceptors and know what you're doing you should win even with somewhat inferior AC. Anything that does automatic damage to your AC no matter what you would be very frustrating to me. I'd also be unhappy if GH made it impossible to down any particular alien ship without having the highest level of tech. If you are willing to take the losses you should have a chance at any of them with skillful game play. Edited December 2, 2013 by StellarRat

[smoitessier]

fwiw I like the idea of limiting the weapons of the Condors, the idea of heavy and standard weapons mounts for canons sound pretty good to me, and I think as it is now all the interceptors and "snipers" are too similar in their respective fields because they all draw on the same weapon pools, the Corsair being the most obvious sour spot, if it had it's own heavy plasma canon mount, that would be sexy , not sure what kind of excuse we can make for the Condor not using plasma sidewinders tho...

Is there any examples why this would be a bad idea (except for the coding hazards?)

edit: Also like the ideas floating about about expanding the range of the point defences of the bigger alien ships, i.e cruisers and up, it's more elegant, but only if repair times are readjusted, one idea would be to bring armour back, and let the repairs/replacements of it be much faster, yes i know this is probably out of the scopes being so close to release and all.

Edited December 2, 2013 by smoitessier

[StK]

@smoitessier:

Oh these techno babble things are easy.

"The Condor board computer cannot deal with the new guiding system used by the plasma sidewinder" or "the plasma sidewinder is because of its shielding simply too heavy for the Condor to carry while maintaining the needed agility for aerial combat."

[legit1337]

I think limiting condors to ballistic weaponry and missiles ought to solve the problem quite nicely. If this is done, condors will be good interceptors early game but you are forced to get rid of them and to upgrade if you want to mount the more advanced weapons.

It makes sense from a lore perspective as well. A condor is only a slightly modified modern day fighter jet, where would it get the power to fire a laser/plasma cannon?

This way condors don't have to be nerfed into uselessness early game, and yet are not viable for taking down bigger ships mid/lategame due to their weak weapons.

[Aaron]

It's a shame we had to pull build 6 for the moment as I think the changes in it would have addressed some of the issues people mention. Corsairs, for example, become a bit more interesting as your first dogfighter which is actually capable of catching UFOs, and has enough fuel to chase them down. Foxtrots now deal more raw damage than Condors, with the equivalent weapons level. Superbob's strategy of massive expansion would probably have run into money trouble because of increased base and interceptor maintenance costs early on.

Hopefully we will have it back up soon.

[StK]

Corsairs, for example, become a bit more interesting as your first dogfighter which is actually capable of catching UFOs, and has enough fuel to chase them down.

I like all the other changes you made, but (if i read it correctly this is the one that nerfed the Condor speed into oblivion) but this is a strange way to deal with the problem that the Condor is a craft that can hold its own in lategame, because it hits the player hardest early in the game. Also there is no other way for the player to intercept in the beginning so the interception rate of UFOs in the early game will plummet.

[Dranak]

I disagree Aaron. The net effect of the speed changes didn't do anything to make Corsairs interesting, only necessary by virtue of not allowing us to intercept UFOs for the first 2+ months of the game. Even downing a Scout would take 5 Avalanche torpedoes, which would cost 900k up front (3 x hangar and Foxtrot) and an additional 300k in maintenance a month. Not letting players actually play the game is a recipe for nothing other than frustration.