Ground Combat Balance Discussion V20 Stable Candidate 1

[Aaron]

New build - not a huge number of ground combat changes, but lots of incremental improvements to the AI and the Terror Mission AI being altered, so I think it's worth a new thread.

Also grenades - are they a bit less effective now?

Answers on a post card.

[Gijs-Jan]

They're laughably ineffective now (grenades!).. :-(

[Chris]

I'm also accepting feedback on whether the build feels more responsive now we've sped up some of the animations, notifications and cameras.

[Aaron]

But GJ you thought they were Ok though when aliens had infinite of them and could throw them through walls so I'm pretty sure you just like killing our players soldiers.

[StellarRat]

But GJ you thought they were Ok though when aliens had infinite of them and could throw them through walls so I'm pretty sure you just like killing our players soldiers.

LOL! That's his job Aaron!

[jeon]

You might have gone a bit far with the accuracy buff.

2x multiplier on Xenonaut accuracy and 2.5x multiplier on Alien accuracy removes most of the point of the higher accuracy shots.

I haven't had them throw any grenades at me yet, so I am still waiting to see if they are right. I had them set at about 40% effectiveness with a mod and they were still a bit strong, I will see what they are like now that you put them at 25% damage from before (losing the 4x damage mod from incendiary damage).

I'm also of the opinion that the human rockets and the alien plasma cannon also do way too much damage (also due to the 4x incendiary damage).

Edit: I'm not sure if the aliens are more accurate or not though because there are 5 wraiths hanging out in the park running around and teleporting back and forth while I shoot them.

Edited December 13, 2013 by jeon
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[Gijs-Jan]

But GJ you thought they were Ok though when aliens had infinite of them and could throw them through walls so I'm pretty sure you just like killing our players soldiers.

These people... Make the AI more advanced they say; make it better at killing soldiers they said..

I do my job and you respond by nerfing the weaponry.. :'(

[jeon]

My soldiers are only in Jackal armor and the aliens' plasma rifles are hitting like pea shooters... only hitting me for 1-5 damage.

Also, the heavy plasma rifles are now such short range that the aliens seemed pretty silly bringing so many of them to a terror mission where it is wide open... or maybe the wraiths should have teleported behind my troops and shot them in the back of the head instead of bouncing around in the park... there were like 8 of them but all they did was teleport back and forth along the fence waiting to die. The medium drones did a good job killing people with their reaction fire, although they looked weird hanging out at the fences with the rest of the aliens. And, some small drones actually fired which was a first for me.

The burst fire animation for the laser rifle is weird now. The first projectile fires before the gun is raised and it looks like the guy is shooting another shot in the animation after the 3rd projectile.

[legit1337]

I like the accuracy buffs, combat feels much more potent and visceral now. Apart from a few new bugs, the ground game feels much better. Need more testing.

When close to target however, I'm getting displays of over 100% to hit chance. Intentional or bug?

[Redwallzyl]

aside from some bullshit 100 damage reaction shoot through a cacti field a rock i was using for cover and a shield from 1/4 across the map working fine. also burst fire is vary effective now.

Edited December 14, 2013 by Redwallzyl

[llunak]

These people... Make the AI more advanced they say; make it better at killing soldiers they said..

I do my job and you respond by nerfing the weaponry.. :'(

But that's the best outcome and it means you did your job well. Players generally just want the aliens to put up a good fight, not have soldiers instagibbed from a distance by one grenade tossed by an alien so tough that it takes barrage from half the squad or several grenades to put it down. So the better you make the AI, the better the game will be, even if it'll mean the aliens will have weaker stats (which on its own can make the game better in some ways, for example I now consider keeping TUs for reaction fire to be practically pointless, because it never stops aliens from doing whatever they are going to do, even if it's the most frail Caesan hit by the supposedly powerful sniper rifle). And mind you, I do like it if aliens score as well, having just about one casuality for each 4-5 missions in 20.7, where I had to stay at ballistics and jackal armour for the entire 3 months until the economics collapsed, yet the aliens didn't feel like shooting back at my soldiers firing at them from their covers, that felt kind of weak for veteran difficulty. So keep up the good job .

[Chris]

I must admit I'm not entirely sure those accuracy buffs were intentional. I suspect the coder might have committed the global accuracy boost code with random values in it just before we released the build, and it sneaked into the public build without us noticing.

Still, it's good to know that more accuracy is generally better - but I suspect we'd prefer a value closer to a 1.5 multiplier than the current 2 / 2.5 multipliers. We'll have a look though.

EDIT - they're just at the top of weapons_gc.xml if you want to tweak them yourselves and experiment, btw. They're intended as a quick way for us to test how different gameplay feels with all the weapons in different "bands" of accuracy.

[Aaron]

Yeah, I hadn't realised those accuracy buffs were set to something other than 1 - I've done a quick patch to reduce them down to 1.5 each (the cover variable isn't hooked up yet, but when it is it will need to be a value less than 1, otherwise it will make cover stronger!).

[legit1337]

@aaron

Thanks for the hotpatch. Can't properly test something outside of its intended design.

Did you fix the bug with C4 not damaging props? c4 is useless until it's fixed and it's really crimping my playstyle (liberal use of high explosives). I already submitted a report.

Edited December 14, 2013 by legit1337

[crashed97tsi]

Impressions from someone who just started playing in 20V7:

I can confirm the C4 not working. It does not damage property at all.

Accuracy buffs are nice but I understand if they need to be tweaked

AI seems a little stranger, a lot less aggressive if that makes sense. This may be in my head though, I do not know if anyone else has mentioned this.

Air Combat is easier which is nice. Before I just couldn't seem to figure it out.

National funding makes absolutely no sense to me. I started my game in the middle east to cover the most land, and I tried to shoot down every UFO I possibly could. I would say I got about 80% of them during the first month. The screenshot I tried to take didn't save for some reason, but basically the entire world reduced their funding with the exception of the Middle East and Europe, which stayed neutral.

I understand the US, South & Central America cutting their funding because they got absolutely no assistance, but if South America can remove $80K a month due to unsatisfactory performance, then the Middle East and Europe should add at least $40K (total) to take some of the sting off because I protected them during the same time period. I know I've said this in literally every post I made, but there has got to be some kind of relations boost for ground missions. The economics just seem to be unsustainable.

By the way, I am loving this game. It reminds me so much of the original XCOM. You guys are doing a phenomenal job.

[Chris]

C4 was moved to a gas grenade type explosion recently so you couldn't kill units with the blast from underneath or beyond thick walls. Seems it has had some unintended effects.

crashed97tsi - the relations boost for ground missions was moved to the initial shooting down of the UFO in the first place. Under the old system, the economics still wouldn't have added up, but you'd have had to grind every single crash site to find that out. So your thoughts on the economic issues may well be completely valid, but I don't think you've identified the root of the problem correctly. If the economics are unsustainable, we just need to provide more of a boost for shooting down UFOs.

Glad you like the game!

[Solver]

I still find it strange that you're not supposed to play many ground missions now. That's the core of the game, yet you're encouraged to just airstrike many of them.

[legit1337]

@chris & aaron

Agreed with solver's point.

Wasn't the original purpose of airstrikes so that you didn't have to do every... single... mission... when you got to the lategame to maintain nation rating?

As of right now, once you have the tech/autopsies for that particular race of alien, there is really no advantage to doing ground missions other than to level up your soldiers. In fact, it is often better to airstrike because the small amount of extra money you get for doing the mission is often counterbalanced by civilian deaths (negative nation rating), and xenonaut casualties (costs money).

You guys have done a good job balancing the airstrike feature so far but it still needs tweaking. I personally think there should be greater rewards for doing ground missions as opposed to airstrikes. Something like more positive nation rating (split the nation rating bonus so that you get half for the shootdown, the other half for doing the ground mission), or at least TWICE the amount of cash you would get for airstriking.

IMO I think you need to bring back positive rating to ground missions. Doing good/badly on ground missions needs to affect nation rating in some way just like in the OG... Otherwise the geoscape and ground portions of the game start to feel disjointed and separate from each other.

Edited December 15, 2013 by legit1337

[StellarRat]

I might be crazy, but alien plasma cannons and human rocket launcher (Alenium) seem OP to me now. I'm seeing damage amounts of 400+ in the impact tile and 100 - 200 in the surrounding tiles. A direct hit with either of these is an insta-gib. I've taken down groups of three and four Androns with a single rocket. Also, every weapon and body in the blast radius is totally destroyed (at least for the human rocket launcher. I think total destruction needs to be looked at. There should a chance that a body would in left at least in the surrounding tiles. IMO, with rockets the way they are now, there's not much point in using any other weapon if you don't want to take anything home. I've had missions where everyone carried a rocket launcher and I was quite successful. Could those weapons be detonating explosives people/aliens carry? That could explain the huge damage.

I like the increased accuracy. I also noticed stun gas works again. That's cool. Also, the civilians seem to be smarter about getting out of the way when aliens are around. Good. For the most part this build seems very good. I also noticed the C4 is useless now, but I'm sure that's a simply bug fix.

AI very passive all around.

Edited December 15, 2013 by StellarRat

[Skitso]

I'm seeing this strange passive alien behavior again. They wont move in and shoot me anymore but just move in cover and reserve TU's for reaction every single turn. They have lost all their great agressiveness they had in previous builds. Whats up with that?

I also witnessed two sebillians side by side inside a building hunkering down in a corner and doing nothing for 3 or 4 turns. They just sat there until I shot a rocket at them...

There must be something in the AI code that broke in that last update...

Edited December 15, 2013 by Skitso

[Ol' Stinky]

I'm seeing this strange passive alien behavior again. They wont move in and shoot me anymore but just move in cover and reserve TU's for reaction every single turn. They have lost all their great agressiveness they had in previous builds. Whats up with that?

I also witnessed two sebillians side by side inside a building hunkering down in a corner and doing nothing for 3 or 4 turns. They just sat there until I shot a rocket at them...

There must be something in the AI code that broke in that last update...

Smoke cancelling movement and the gloomy AI are the two problems that really jump out at me. I actually won a mission by having a guy sit in the UFO control room just now - I can't remember the last time I did that. The last alien must have been in a small patch of black in the corner opposite to the scout, and I couldn't reach it before I won by securing the UFO. Mr. Coward presumably sat there for the entire game, while his comrades were being picked off.

Is it just like this for guards/non-coms or is it the same for soldier+ aliens? I'm holding out hope that it's somehow a problem with alien grenade AI and when they have them in their inventory they'll spring back to life.

I also wish that rookies had some more TUs. The first few missions seem to be a bit too slow for my liking, even without smoke choke/passive AI. If that needs to be balanced out by lowering the max TU cap, I'm fine with that.

Edited December 15, 2013 by Ol' Stinky

[Gijs-Jan]

The Cowardly AI is probably just a mis tweaking of the preferences in aiprops.xml. I will take a look at it.

[cb1987]

Am I the only one who likes the crazy damage on the alien plasma cannon? It makes the weapon terrifying, a little bit like how the blaster launcher used to be in the original game, whereas before it barely did anything. I agree that the human rocket launcher should be toned down as its currently OP, but I'd like it if the plasma cannon stayed at the current strength.

Grenades are well implemented in this build from what I've seen. The stupid spam of v6 is gone, but the higher ranked aliens will still punish you for grouping your soldiers within their throwing distance. I lost 3 soldiers in a small andron base assault from alien grenades, so they certainly are effective.

I also noticed for the first time that the aliens in the xenonaut base defense mission were purposefully attacking the props in my hangars. This is great and makes the base defence feel much more interesting. Does sufficient damage destroy base modules? My hangar was fine after the mission despite extensive damage. One slight issue was that the aliens killed a significant number of their own troops by shooting at exploding props.

[Ol' Stinky]

The Cowardly AI is probably just a mis tweaking of the preferences in aiprops.xml. I will take a look at it.

Thank you!

[Skitso]

Great news G-J! Any hope for a hot fix?