Geoscape Balance Discussion V20 Experimental 7

[llunak]

OK. We're still going to release V20 E6 / 7 with those changes in place, but as mentioned previously if they make the early game frustrating then we'll find a different way to limit the power of Condors. We need to test the changes more widely than just you and Dranak before we alter them though

I can confirm that V20.7 indeed is frustrating.

It very often happens that when UFO appears, even close to my base, the pair of Condors I send out just can't manage to catch up with it. It wasn't exactly trivial even before, with UFOs running away from interceptors, but now that they have superior speed, the only somewhat successful way of intercepting UFO seems to be leading Condors manually in front of the UFO's flight path and hoping the UFO won't change course again. If any UFO keeps avoiding the interceptors, Condors won't get it, no matter what. I get decreased funding even from regions for which my starting base has good radar coverage, simply because even though I detect the UFOs, I often can't do much about them (also, it appears to me, if it lands on its own and I manage to get a Chinook there in time, it actually still seems to count as negative for funding, just because it wasn't shot down). Compared to this, V20.5 was a piece of cake (and as I said, it wasn't that easy either).

[legit1337]

UFOs downed over water should be assigned to the closest landmass. Not sure if that system actually works, though!

I don't like this at all... IMO.

[Skitso]

I think the air combat is at the moment unbearably difficult, even on the easy difficulty setting. Also, getting to engage with the ufo's is way too hard. I'm playing on the easiest mode and still feeling completely overwhelmed. I had my starting base at North America and managed to down 4 or 5 ufos in three months time before base attack and losing the game...

[Aaron]

@legit1337, what he means by that is simply the "nation rating" bonus for the shoot down is granted to the nearest country - not that the crashed UFO itself is teleported to land.

I'm pretty convinced I am going to increase the speed of human interceptors by 500, so that e.g. the Condor matches the speed of the Light Scout - this combined with the UFOs flying inefficient flight paths should make catching UFOs easy enough.

I am also taking a look at the damage/speed of UFO fighter missiles, as I think they missed getting balanced against the updated HP values of human fighters, and dodging them should not be a matter of twitch skills.

[Chris]

Yeah, the speed changes may have gone too far. Condors aren't meant to be able to catch Scouts (they're meant to be hard until you get Foxtrots), but they should be able to reliably catch Light Scouts and Corvettes.

EDIT - turns out Aaron has made the Scouts and Light Scouts the same speed. Nonetheless, my other comments about Condors stand.

[XenoLA]

I just jumped from v19 stable to 20.7 (veteran--will be going down to normal next time)

I'm not a fan of the re-arming taking place after re-fueling. Here is what I'm running into... I have a condor and foxtrot (two other condors shot down at the moment). I send both out after a scout. Both empty their full payload into the scout, but they have to retreat because scout only at ~80 damage (the retreat also requires me to use the foxtrot to lead the scout around long enough for the slow condor to get away). The squadron returns to base. Now if I want to send the foxtrot out to finish off the scout, I have to wait for it to fully refuel and then fully rearm.

Why can't the rearm happen simultaneous to the refueling, so that I can launch my foxtrot again when it has enough fuel to reach the scout?

[superbob]

Because back when aircraft were too effective, it was decided a longer recycle time between flights was needed as a balancing mechanic. Now it's still there, even though early game fighter jets were made significantly less effective.

Either way, the best way of dealing with this is to build moar aircraft.

[legit1337]

I've been playing the latest experimental build (on veteran) and I have to say it is challenging to the point of being TOO challenging. The upkeep costs are crippling, and it is really hard to get a second base up before the end of the second month (which you pretty much HAVE to do to have any hope of winning the game). In september managed to down 3 light scouts in my shitty condors and clear them out on the ground but I still lost 60k in funding for the month for the UFOs I couldn't stop, and because of the upkeep for the second base I only made 400k in profit after the first month... Which amounts to 1 foxtrot and a radar dish lol.

Because of the new 20 day command center build time you HAVE to start the new base in the first month for it to be operational any time before november.

Something needs to change imo. I'm glad you are reverting the condor nerf so they can at least be on par with light scouts, but the 20 day commander center build time needs to be reverted, or upkeep costs need to be slashed across the board.

Foxtrot cost needs to be 150,000... I agree that 100,000 was too cheap, especially in light of the buffs it got, but doubling it's base cost went too far imo.

Combine this with the no more positive score for ground missions... I've yet to see a country actually INCREASE its funding, I've only see them stay neutral or decrease funding.

Edited December 7, 2013 by legit1337

[StellarRat]

I've been playing the latest experimental build (on veteran) and I have to say it is challenging to the point of being TOO challenging. The upkeep costs are crippling, and it is really hard to get a second base up before the end of the second month (which you pretty much HAVE to do to have any hope of winning the game).

I agree with legit. The price increases are too much. I can barely maintain ONE base. I've had to fire all my scientists when there isn't much to research than re-hire them when the montly disbursement comes in. The Foxtrot is too expensive. Also, I still don't understand how a few suits of armor can take longer and cost more than a new jet. Also, since air combat is MUCH more difficult now, can we possibly get a quicker turnaround on sorties and/or faster repairs including full salvages?

[Brochacho]

Also, I still don't understand how a few suits of armor can take longer and cost more than a new jet.

That's for game balance; it's not supposed to be realistic.

In reality, an organization tasked with protecting the entire planet would have hundred of tanks, trucks, mortars, artillery, and thousands of infantry at its disposal. But since we only have ten-odd guys with assault rifles and machine guns, everything costs more to compensate for this abstracted scale. If it didn't, air combat and base-building would account for 97% of the player's spending.

[ventuswings]

I concur with the sentiment that 20 day command center build time is too much, especially since you still need to built structures for them to operational... Hope upkeep costs get changed that 2 bases are viable around 2-3 month, with three to potentially four base available late to end game.

Also repeating my opinion that Scout HP should be lowered slightly: it makes mistake on early Geoscape more manageable, prevents Alenium Explosive rush from becoming "one right choice" by expanding the number of UFO basic craft can handle, and makes thematic sense as it's not military UFO yet.

Either way, there's no margin for error right now, definitely hope you manage to find optimal maintenance value

[jeon]

As a long time X-com player and a new player to Xenonauts, I thought I would drop in my 2 cents after a couple of game months of play.

The balance as of the current build is a bit... odd to me. I don't mind not being able to intercept the early ufos without some luck, although I can see it being a problem if someone was playing on ironman setting. I would like it if the ufos would slow down from time to time and act like they are actually looking for things to give you more chances to catch up to them, but I think the speeds overall are fine. I don't really think I should be able to catch/shoot down every UFO I see, but I can see how missing out on shooting them down is a bit problematic with the way things currently are.

That brings me to the funding. I don't mind losing funding early on. That seems to be working fine. The upkeep on things seems a bit high. The current investment of time/money to build stuff feels about right, but maintaining it really hurts any capability of building effective air defenses against the aliens. I'm guessing it changes once you hit new tech, but right now I'm basically sitting around doing nothing except waiting for theoretical tech after theoretical tech to finish and training up soldiers by shooting really easy to kill aliens here and there (but I suppose ground combat is a different thread).

Now for the air combat itself. It took me a bit to figure out what was going on with my missiles. That I had to stagger them or else they miss. And make sure it is in that little window between dodges. And that if you don't have a good amount of fuel you might as well just load because win or lose your fighters will crash and burn and take half a month to be recovered. And that a foxtrot may be faster than a condor, but they are pretty much useless unless you have 3 of them because they can't hit the things that one or even two could deal enough damage to. Thankfully there is an autoresolve button, although the results of that are odd, or maybe just the strength of various UFOs is odd in my mind. Example: I sent my 2 Condors out to intercept a small scout. On the way there they get attacked by 3 alien fighters. I tried doing manual battle and they smoked me in like 0.5 seconds of contact as I would expect fighting ships specifically designed to take out other fighters. I tried it again and went for the autoresolve button and killed them lost nothing and only 1 condor used up his ammo. Then, I went up against the small scout. I already know from experience that I can't take one out with just 1 condor, so I hit autoresolve again and defeated small scout with no loss, just used ammo from second condor.

The game is pretty cool overall though, once I spend a lot more time playing the game I'm probably gonna start playing with the values in the xml files to get more ideas on things that might help.

[winterwolves]

One of the things I really liked about the earlier builds was multiple bases were doable, if you wanted to.

I like to have a few charlie teams, the newer ones just going to scouts and corvettes to gain experience, while the best team takes on terror missions and bases.

I started playing through the new build and saw the 20 day HQ time delay and thought "well, I'd better get my other two charlie bases started now" and so did.

Not much money rolled in that month, and the one foxtrot I did build took up a lot of cash. I could not even afford to build one suit of armour. I guess this was due to the 500k I did spend on new base HQs, but like I say, little bases is the style I prefer. When funding rolled around, I could not pay maintenace and wages. Oh. Oops. 250,000 monthly maintenance just for the HQ building seems a bit steep to me.

It seems like the game is starting to get on a set of rails a bit, with only one tech path (better get alenium warheads before bothering with lasers) and a single big base being the only option at the start. And focusing on air combat improving research as first priority seems like it is the only way to go.

I like options. The reason I love this game is I get to choose how to defend earth. Earth! The whole planet, right? What an awesome game this is that lets you do that! But let me choose how, please!

[lemm]

I've played up until the end of November. The air craft rebalancing is alright so far (up to the end of November). The new base construction time is okay.

Nevertheless, it's nearly impossible to make any money, and I don't see how it's possible to set up more than one base, which is a problem because I have found that getting an additional base up by November is a must. Is it even possible to please the sponsoring nations anymore? The airstrike is really no longer a valid option because each UFO must now be recovered if the player wants to have an adequate cash flow.

[llunak]

I've modified aircraft.xml in my V20.7 to raise Condor speed by 500 back to 1500 as said above, started a new game and have played the first two months so far. Air combat no longer feels frustrating. It's still not easy, but the difficulty feels about right for me (but then, I can quite easily beat UFO:EU on Superhuman even with xcomutil's modified research tree, and I think I'm rather good at picking up how to play Xenonauts, so maybe I'm not exactly the average player). I detected 23 UFOs and had 13 crash sites, meaning that 10 UFOs I detected managed to get away. Which seems like a lot, but in general it felt like I was performing quite well, not too well, but I don't think I could have done much better, given that UFOs often come in waves and I have to hunt them with slow Condors that don't carry enough ammo to shoot down more than one of the smallest UFOs and need quite some time to refuel and rearm. In short, it felt about right for Veteran difficulty.

However, it seems that the economic model in V20.7 doesn't scale right. Now that only shooting down UFOs contributes to better funding, I can't keep funding to even stay at the same level. In September I lost 30k$ in funding, in October 90k$ in funding (out of which was 50k$ for aerial bombing which was out of my reach). It looks like shooting down a small scout increases expected funding by 5k$, however by the time Condors reach it (especially if there are several UFOs to hunt down at the same time), it often manages to do enough damage to at least even that, but sometimes the net result of a UFO that I manage to shoot down is actually negative for me. With my base located in Libya, I have an almost complete radar coverage for Europe, Middle East and Northern Africa, but even in those regions I'm only slightly above breaking even (not more than 10k$ per region, if any increase at all).

That was with having 3 Condors at my disposal. Given their cost and maintenance I don't think I could really afford to run more of them. Ok, maybe I might have, but I decided to immediatelly start a second base to secure funding in more areas and that costs a lot (actually, by the start of November, the base is finally about to ready to start intercepting UFOs, given that I couldn't buy Condors for it sooner). However staying with just 1 base seemed like a bad idea, given that uncovered areas can easily cost a lot in funding there. Besides, I'm not sure if 1 or 2 more Condors in my primary base would have managed to even pay for themselves. But they would have made hunting UFOs much simpler, given Condor's fight performance (despite Xenopedia's claims about Light Scout being no match to Condor, 1vs1 is a fair fight, so sending a lone Condor anywhere may often mean it ending up grounded or at least in long repair). All in all, it looks to me that one needs to invest way too large portion of money into air combat to have any decent performance.

Now, by the start of November, I have 2 bases, 3 Condors (will get 1 more soon), 1 Foxtrot, 15 scientists, 14 soldiers, 10 engineers and my monthly upkeep is already more than my funding income. I expect the income from ground missions will mean I'll make a slight profit, but I don't know if there will be much left for further development. I have no defenses, only a handful of soldiers, and if aliens manage to attack my base, I'm probably done for, as I don't have the resources to continue with my secondary base only. So it's a question if I haven't ran into my maintenance ceiling. I haven't played yet enough of Xenonauts to compare to previous games or to guess how this will continue, but it's possible I simply won't manage to keep up this way.

[legit1337]

Seconded on the issue of shooting down UFOs doesn't provide enough happiness for the council. I shot down three light scouts over north america and still got -$10,000 from them in the first month because of the damage the UFOs did before I could intercept them.

This seems a little harsh considering that before xenonauts the funding countries had to resort to nukes to down even 1 UFO.

[Zigot]

I've always felt that it is a bit odd that there is no way to make an alien ship change its target, as it makes one of the fighters you send far less useful than than the others. I'm not sure how exactly you would go about determining the best target, but it seems like there should maybe be a way to force them to change target. While I haven't had a chance to try out the latest build, it seems like having one near useless ship in the fight would only compound the problems that other people have been talking about (early fighters being too underpowered)

[winterwolves]

Defeating light scouts, when you can catch them is pretty simple, for a pair of condors. You do it with no damage every time.

I don't have too much of a problem with having to use two aircraft for one UFO. That kind of seems right, at the start.

I guess the main issue is the interception in the first place. As stated by others here, you often want to take any chance you can get to intercept them, even if over water.

It is a bit harsh that the full squadron of two condors and a foxtrot can't take down a scout.

[llunak]

It is a bit harsh that the full squadron of two condors and a foxtrot can't take down a scout.

It would be really nice if interceptors could carry at least somewhat more reasonable weapon payload :-/ . I'm not saying they need to carry those 6/8 missiles that the real Foxhound/Falcon can carry, but just 2 makes them feel rather toothless. With Alenium missiles, I couldn't take down one Corvette (escorted by 2 fighters) with 3 Condors and 1 Foxtrot. First 2 Condors + 1 Foxtrot started the fight, Foxtrot hit the Corvette with both torpedoes and had to retreat, each of the Condors had to spend their missiles and little bit of cannon ammo on taking down the fighters, then fired the rest of cannon ammo at the Corvette, and after that they had to retreat too. I had one more Condor ready at the base, so that one caught up with the Corvette and fired everything it had at it, and the Corvette still stayed in the air with 95% critical damage. To add to the injury, it started a terror attack, and there I had to fight the full complement of 18 aliens, so none of the air-fighting even mattered.

[StellarRat]

So, I now have fairly extensive experience with air combat through Foxtrots with Alenium missiles, my opinion is that it is too hard for a "normal" setting. I think a noob would be decimated. I'm playing on "normal" just to be clear.

First problem is that the alien shots simply travel too fast for the average person to possibly use the "roll" function on the Condors unless you just pound the space bar like a monkey. I believe you could slow all the alien shots down a bunch without hurting the balance as long as their firing rate remains the same. The shots from the alien Scout seem to be particular "over speeded".

Second, all Xenonaut AC are too vulnerable to enemy fire and the alien ships are too tough now (take your choice.) What used to be fairly easy combat is now a nightmare. I'm losing fighters left and right to scouts and light scouts. If you make one slip with a Condor it will get damaged and a light scout can run it down and take it out. I believe this is the result of the speed reduction the Condor received in v7 more than anything else. A couple things that could help are, giving the Condor more cannon rounds, putting it's speed back up, or giving it faster "roll" recovery, so it can roll more often.

Thirdly, I think the Foxtrot is still not a significant enough improvement to justify its extreme price ($200K). That could be fixed if you increased it's missile load out to four hardpoints (two light and two heavy) or gave it some other capability to defend itself like an ECM system that caused a percentage of alien fire to miss. I wouldn't even mind having to develop the ECM or it could come automatically once you research "Alien Electronics". You wouldn't need to add any code except the "miss" chance. The ECM could be assumed to be always "on" or automatic, so the UI wouldn't need any changes. This could also apply to the Condor.

Another way to address the ATA balance, is to give Xenonaut jets a chance to knock out alien weapons in air combat. So, when you get hits there is chance that the alien "cannons" or whatever you call them are destroyed occasionally. This would give even lower level Xenonaut jets a chance to defeat alien ships by a little luck from time to time.

Another improvement would be to decrease the turn around time on sorties so that the player has a reasonable to chance to re-engage the larger ships with a another flight of interceptors. This would have the effect of increasing the value of all your interceptors overall. The Condor could also use a buff to four light hardpoints if you don't want to change the toughness and speed factors I mentioned above, specially considering the new threat of aerial terror sites.

Here is an excellent suggestion from FruitBasket:

I don’t think that having more condors, or giving our jets more missiles is the way we want to solve this.

The Xenopedia states, that the alien crafts are not suited well for flying in an atmosphere so, although having a much more powerful propulsion, they should be sluggish and have problem maneuvering, while terrestrial crafts should catch up or even outrun UFOs with ease. Outmaneuvering should be the standard tactic but as of now there is little difference between turning speed among most starting crafts, and pretty much all UFO’s are faster than jet planes.

IMHO alien crafts should have very powerful weapons able to shoot down jets in one or two hits, and armour able to withstand a whole barrage of terrestrial weaponry, but the Xenonauts’ pilots should be able to avoid that weaponry with relative ease and hit the UFOs in a weak spot (like the engine, or from the flank).

I like the idea of out manuevering the enemy ships. It would be a great tactic, unfortunately, as noted none of our jets can sigificantly out turn a UFO. They can pivot faster than our jets can get around behind them. You'd think a Condor (based on the F16) that can pull a 9g turn should be able to pass a UFO and then "hook" in behind it. I've seen them pull high g turns at airshows it's amazing to see something going 450 mph do a 180 in a space not much bigger then the width of a small municipal airport.

You should consider substantially reducing the turn rate of all UFO's.

To sum it up: I can still win in air combat most of the time, but it is so tedious now that it really isn't as fun as it used to be.

As far as the increased maintenance costs go...well for me they seem too high now. I can't even think about starting a second base. Tried that and went broke in three months. I'm not sure how someone was able to "spam" bases in the first place, but it's not possible to expand at all right now, IMO. With my one starting base plus a few expansions I'm not able to maintain nation funding anywhere except right by my base, but I can't afford to increase my "defense umbrella" by building more bases to fix that either, so I'm stuck between a rock and hard place. I've got diminishing nation relations, but no way to correct the situation. In fact, the whole time I've played this game I've never been able to increase nation relations much, but it's much worse now. The only way I see to keep your head above water is to shoot down EVERY single alien ship that appears and take the airstrike or recovery money (something you guys didn't want to have happen.)

My suggestion is that either you decrease the maintenance costs OR make a bases far more useful so the nations in it's "defense zone" are more impressed and give more cash. That could be through several mechanisms, increasing the radar range, improved turn around times on sorties and rebuilds/repairs (making the air defense around the base more impressive), maybe even give the base defense missiles a chance to down enemy ships from a greater distance. Of couse, part of the problem is that I'm losing more fighters now too, due to the changes in ATA, so now I usually have fighers laid up for repairs that I would have to able to use to defend the areas around the bases therefore more UFO are going unchallenged. You could also make the nations easier to keep happy in general.

Finally, there is no way I can take on an aerial terror site, period. Bombers are murderous. I simply don't have number and quality of AC to even think about it in the first two or three months. So, I'm getting dinged for that too. I've had some aerial sites are out of the range of my fighters too. But, as I mentioned above I simply can't build any bases to cover other areas of the world, so it is unlikely I'll EVER be able to deal with aerial terror effectively.

Edited December 9, 2013 by StellarRat

[superbob]

I've been expecting things to get a bit more manageable after I rolled out Corsairs, but it looks like balance tuning since v20e5 was quite thorough. 2x Corsairs + 3xFoxtrots and I'm still struggling to maintain control around only one base.

Cruisers still blow away anything I can send against them, provided I can even catch one, and heavy fighters are a serious threat at this point. I'm still at laser/alienium tech and things are looking pretty grim. I should get plasma warheads by the end of the month, but unless I somehow manage to kill something with what I've got, Xenonauts might not be around next month.

This time I'm not doing every mission, not reloading when something goes very wrong or I miss an important opportunity. Ideally I could've advanced a bit further, but I'm under the impression I'm so badly outgunned from the start that another 10h of playtime spent trying to make the best of it wouldn't have made much difference by next ingame month.

So far, IMO, alien progression should be much slower than it is now. Now that I've been effectively limited to one base for the first few months (and a new base becomes operational in exactly one month), there's less risk I'll get too far ahead too fast. But that's a why-not argument - my "why" argument for slowing down progression is that with only one base, at most 6 badly outgunned fighters, the current pace doesn't really let me taste the levels of alien progression. I once missed a wave entirely too - ended up with a few terror sites way beyond my reach and an alien base popped up on the far end of the world.

Back when I was mostly in control by the time landing ships appeared, I had plenty of opportunities to fight whatever came in an alien wave - because by then I had around 4 bases and 12 interceptors. It still seemed like aliens progressed to massive ships a little fast, but it was mostly fine.

Now however, I had maybe two fights with fighters, three corvettes, two landing ships, one heavy fighter ambush and now I'm at cruisers and landing ships with heavy fighters. By the end of next month I may very well see my first massive ship, after 2 bouts of air combat at the current level. And that's if I'm lucky, meaning I can actually catch something to shoot down and don't get instantly wiped out again, which would mean I miss another alien wave, and at best take down one scout.

I feel that you need to give players a bit more room to breathe, maybe an extra month for each of the first three levels (scouts->corvettes->corvettes+landing ships) before sending in Heavy Fighters and Cruisers.

I'll continue this playthrough until the Council shows me the door, then maybe try some different approaches before a new experimental version rolls out.

[Assoonasitis]

Air combat is stupid. I should not have to send two MiGs and two Corsairs at a Strikecruiser and have it fly away like it ain't no thang. That's the stupidest thing. I repeat: air combat is stupid.

[StellarRat]

Air combat is stupid. I should not have to send two MiGs and two Corsairs at a Strikecruiser and have it fly away like it ain't no thang. That's the stupidest thing. I repeat: air combat is stupid.

<grunt, grunt> Assoonasitis no longer crush enemy ships...<grunt>

Sorry couldn't resist. I agree with the sentiment though. We need help!

[superbob]

I just got to plasma explosives and things are looking a bit better... Finally took down a Cruiser with 3 Foxtrots. Unfortunately I couldn't salvage the tech, since my Dropship is out of commission for the week.

Charlie was shot down twice this month - once on the way to a distant enemy base I must clear this month somehow (otherwise South America will bail on me), once to a landing ship near my base, even though it had two Corsairs as escorts. Three heavy fighters laughed off the laser canons and turned my planes to scrap, then proceeded to wipe out whatever was left of my team.

Now I have to deal with two medium bases with 5 rookies on my team. Then salvage a Cruiser crash site, if I can catch another one. And in the meantime, my main base got attacked and aliens bombed the hell outta Europe, not much I could do to prevent either with both Corsairs out of commission.

This... Is kinda tough. While I play on veteran, this seems more like material for what the "insane" difficulty should be like.

[StellarRat]

@Superbob - How are your finances? Do you have more than one base up? How is the nation funding going, up/down?