Ground Combat Balance Discussion V20 Stable Candidate 1

[Max_Caine]

While I think of a better way to express myself, has anyone seen games which are patched to improve their AI? I've seen lots of patches, expansions and DLC where everything BUT the AI is improved. I guess the work involved doesn't pay off.

[Max_Caine]

Right, okay, I've got it now. I think I've cracked the rosetta stone of my incomprehensibility.

So, let's imagine that the maximum size for a corvette crew is 8. Never any more. Ever. So it's exactly the same size as the crew from a dropship - and why not? The corvette is the first true dropship-esque craft that you encounter. And let's also say that the crew never suffers casualties from being shot down. Ever. So it's always 8-on-8 in any encounter, which is far less than the encounters that we face at the moment. So, we have reduced the number of aliens that we encounter from the number we encounter right now.

Let's also say that GJ's AI is everything we could possibly want from an AI. Smart, reasoning, intelligent. It uses all 8 aliens at maximum efficency and never engages in anything like unequal terms. We could be chasing after an alien only to see its buddies come riding to the rescue. So, we have a smart, efficent AI in charge of aliens who have guns that 2-hit kill jackal armoured troopers and pan-racially have enough HP/armour to take between 3-4 ballistic hits or 2-3 laser hits before dying.

Oh.

Shit.

Even though the number of aliens have been reduced, they outgun the humans very badly. An efficent AI would twirl its moustaches, aim at one solider, gib it, aim at the next, gib it and so on and so forth. An efficent AI would show no mercy to the weak human scum, even on a level pegging. The aliens could walk into the teeth of human fire to gib a human. You'd need to significantly reduce the number of aliens below the number of humans if the AI were super awesome. Would that be a good thing? A corvette to have, say, 4 aliens because they can gun down humans to easily? I dunno. you tell me. Would you like a medium map with 4-6 aliens on it? Some might.

Or you could water the aliens down. This fixes the problem I identified earlier. Watered down aliens are easier to beat, even with a good AI. Bring them closer to the level of humans. Make then human+, rather than alien. Is that a good thing? Some might see it as a good thing to water the aliens down. It makes more problems from a lore perspective, but isn't that what technobabble is for?

Or you could have the option to get more guys when the corvettes start coming (my proposal!). This makes the inital fight a feckin' hard one, but survive that, and you get a reserve of troops the other side doesn't have. If I have 12 guys to the AI's 8, then I have a strategic reserve that I can commit when the AI has has committed everything. I have flankers that the AI can't counter. I have more guns than the AI can account for. The super-efficent AI with the up-gunned troopers has been balanced against a human opponent with more disposable assets. Then when I get to landing ships which, say, have 12 soliders per landing ship to meet my 12 soliders I have closed the technological gap with wolf armour and lasers, and I can work towards plasma with corvettes and landingships to get technological parity.

Edited December 30, 2013 by Max_Caine
grammar+spelling+punctuation

[jeon]

Could somebody please post exactly what changes need to be done to fix the AI? Without my soldiers getting blown up all the time of course.

After the post by Gijs-Jan, it appears that a quick fix for now is as simple as adding throwingRangeModifier="20.0" to the props of each alien weapon since they are checking the throwing range of the weapon.

Here is the file with the changed data:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/87916212/Alien%20Range%20Fix/weapons_gc.xml

[StellarRat]

Right, okay, I've got it now. I think I've cracked the rosetta stone of my incomprehensibility.

You'd need to significantly reduce the number of aliens below the number of humans if the AI were super awesome. Would that be a good thing? A corvette to have, say, 4 aliens because they can gun down humans to easily? I dunno. you tell me. Would you like a medium map with 4-6 aliens on it? Some might.

I guess I'd be in the smaller number of aliens camp for several reasons:

1. It makes the aliens seem powerful. If eight highly trained human soldiers are getting whacked by a 3 or 4 aliens then they are definitely superior in technology and/or physically and mentally. So, it goes with the lore.

2. The ground battles already take up a substantial amount of "real" time. With more aliens and humans the battles will take even longer.

3. From a programming/balancing perspective changing the number of aliens and UFOs on the geoscape is probably easiest way to control the difficulty at this point. Changing the tech progression and/or alien stats is more work and will probably have more "unintended" consequences than the number change. At this stage in the game development I wouldn't want that and I doubt GH would either. Of course, I can't speak for GH, so who knows. Anyway, I'd like to have a finished game by springtime.

4. The changes you want can be easily modded into the game by someone. That will also put the work of rebalancing everything back on the modder.

5. I believe the Chinook can hold a couple more soldiers already.

Finally, we don't know how good the alien AI will end up being in the long run, but I doubt it will be better than an experienced human player. Also, the humans have rocket launchers, smoke grenades, experience bonuses, and armored vehicles and those tend to equalize the battles a great deal, so I have my doubts that the humans will ever be at severe disadvantage (at normal difficulty) if the player knows what he's doing. That may render this whole debate moot. I guess we'll find out soon enough.

Edited December 31, 2013 by StellarRat

[llunak]

Are you sure the solution isn't to reduce the number of aliens instead?

But the number of aliens is not the only factor that decides a suitable minimal number of soldiers for a mission to be reasonably doable.

The more complex a map is, the more you need to split up your soldiers if you want to sweep the whole battlefield (unless you want to head directly for the UFO and guard your back the whole time). Right now, with the buggy AI making aliens passive and stupid, it's not a big deal, you can easily split up your soldiers and even send one alone (it's sometimes needed in complex maps such as industrial). But if the aliens learn to shoot and move on purpose, a lone soldier may end up being as good as dead. And even relatively open maps such as farm sometimes require splitting up into 2-4 groups, and just 2 soldiers with ballistics may have a hard time keeping away charging Sebillians for several turns until reinforcements come. And of course the more soldiers die during the mission the worse this will become.

Because with just 8 soldiers you simply don't have a backup for anything - you either need to perform nearly perfectly, take a much longer time to do the mission (since ironically less soldiers can make the mission take much longer) or you can wrap it up and go home after the first thing goes wrong.

[Gauddlike]

I am sure when aliens can hear fighting and come running it won't matter about exploring the map.

Set up a few machine guns, fire off a couple of bursts then turkey shoot anyone who comes looking

[llunak]

I am sure when aliens can hear fighting and come running it won't matter about exploring the map.

Set up a few machine guns, fire off a couple of bursts then turkey shoot anyone who comes looking

All missions being defend-the-Chinook doesn't sound like a lot of fun. It certainly wasn't when the terror mission was that way.

[Gauddlike]

I agree, hopefully the system will be designed in a way that doesn't lead to that kind of situation.

There is no point having large detailed maps if you only need to see the Chinook and the cover immediately around it.

[StellarRat]

...you need to split up your soldiers if you want to sweep the whole battlefield...

NEVER split up your team! That's something they only do in horror movies so the monsters can pick them off one by one slowly.

[StellarRat]

I agree, hopefully the system will be designed in a way that doesn't lead to that kind of situation.

There is no point having large detailed maps if you only need to see the Chinook and the cover immediately around it.

They be drawn to sounds close by I'm sure. So, what will probably happen is one of your scouts will run into them and then the fighting will escalate in that area. That actually how real battles unfold too. Should be interesting.

[legit1337]

I agree with StellarRat, less aliens seems like a better solution. Although I do think that 4-5 shots to put down an alien is sort of dumb.

In another thread I was remarking how "odd" it felt to be outnumbered even on light scout missions. These aliens are supposed to be massively technologically superior (at least at the start of the game). I want it to feel that way. The early missions IMO should be tense alien hunts, search and destroy missions against a technologically, intellectually, and sometimes even physically superior foe. The large pitched battles can wait for the later missions and larger ships.

I want to lose rookies in droves at the start of the game even if I'm careful.

I want to lose men in the lategame even if I do everything perfect.

This is how it should be.

[Gauddlike]

I am not sure how many would agree though given that one major complaint about the original games is how much people hate the bug hunt for the last alien on a map.

If the whole early game was bug hunt after bug hunt then I wonder how many players would stick around until later in the game when the larger scale battles took place?

I probably would but only if I was in the right frame of mind.

I enjoy the fighting more than the walking around.

[Max_Caine]

There are two camps on this matter. The first camp likes plenty of aliens. The other camp doesn't. And never the twain shall meet. But isn't that why the number of aliens in a particular ufo can be set on a sliding scale, with a mimum and a maximum? Mayhap some tweaking of how the .exe decides how many alins there are in a UFO is in order, so there are tense bug hunts AND pitched battles, so everyone is both simultaneously happy and unhappy at the same time! (the best result)

Also: Happy new year.

[Gauddlike]

It would be easier to add new ufos to fly the existing missions.

Say the scouting mission could be undertaken by light scout 1, light scout 2, or light scout 3 instead of only the current single light scout.

Light scout 1 has 3-6 higher ranked defensive ai aliens, light scout 2 has 8-10 aliens with mixed ai, light scout 3 has 10-14 aliens with mainly aggressive ai.

Should give a variety of missions without needing to do much work.

Those ships are purely defined in the xml files and would share art assets.

New missions might work as well.

You could add new versions of the existing missions that tend to appear at a lower ticker level and have smaller crews.

Variation is rarely a bad thing.

[Aaron]

How would people feel if different aces tended to have different numbers i.e. Caesans tended to show up in smaller numbers, but Sebillians were a bit more of a swarm (with appropriate stat change to compensate, of course)?

Edited January 6, 2014 by Aaron

[Ol' Stinky]

How would people feel if different aces tended to have different numbers i.e. Caesans tended to show up in smaller numbers, but Sebillians were a bit more of a swarm (with appropriate state change to compensate, of course)?

Sounds good to me. They could afford to feel a bit more different.

You could also try setting the Sebs who spawn in the UFO to an aggressive playstyle. The idea being that against Caes/Androns the battle's the same "secure the outside, breach the UFO" deal, while against Sebs it's "secure the outside as quickly as you can, because the guys in the UFO are on their way to join the fight outside." This would probably stop at some point (cruisers? carriers?) when UFO retrievals are more about the fight inside.

Edited January 6, 2014 by Ol' Stinky

[legit1337]

@aaron

Eh... Not really sold on the idea... It could work, but it brings up some issues. Why would the alien heirarchy send 3-6 caesans to do the same job as 7-10 sebs? It sort of breaks immersion a bit to be honest. A question about how many sebs it takes to screw in a light bulb springs to mind... I know they are supposed to be less intelligent then humans and all but they cant be THAT dumb. After all, they need to fly the ship and operate technology.

Also, balancing it will be a pain in the ass... I forsee you are going to be having to be tweaking stats up until release day. As opposed to having aliens numbers uniform which makes balancing a whole lot easier because you can compare them on a 1:1 scale.

Has anyone ever proposed the idea of mixed crews like in TFTD? Now THAT is an idea worth implementing.

Edited January 6, 2014 by legit1337

[Gauddlike]

Just because the mission is the same and the ship is the same it doesn't mean each race can perform equally well.

In most jobs if you have a talented, intelligent, or highly skilled individual (ceasan) they would be able to multitask and do the job of several bar room brawling brutes (sebillians).

Maybe ceasans have the attention span of a human while sebillians need to work in two or three shifts to cover the same time span as they get bored quickly when no enemy is in sight?

Lore would not be a reason to rule it out.

Maybe mixing up the races a bit could add some depth.

A couple of ceasan crew members with a sebillian marine detachment or some androns for protection of a full ceasan crew for example.

Different tactics mixed on the same ufo.

[TrashMan]

I'd rather not have Sebilians be some cannon fodder.

[legit1337]

@gauddlike

I still disagree. Like I said it brings up a whole bunch of issues that needs to be addressed, like balancing it (nightmare). How low will the health on the sebs have to be reduced to balance the difficulty with the less numerous caesans? You might get sebs with LESS health then caesans or other wonky stats... Think of the new players who have a caesan mission for the first time, and then go into a seb mission thinking they are going to fight the same amount of enemies...

It also pigeonholes alien force deployments... Because sebs have to be balanced to be weaker then caesans 1 on 1, you will ALWAYS have missions where there are more sebs then caesans in a given scenario, and you will NEVER see a mission where sebs are few in number.

It just seems better to balance on a 1 to 1 scale imo. A whole lot less headache and coding. You aren't missing out on much either... Sebs are more numerous then caesans? Whoop de do, that doesn't really benefit the game in any way or add to the immersion/lore/story at all except that one of the enemy types is changed to be cannon fodder in relation to the others.

EDIT: Also, from a military logistics standpoint it makes absolutely no sense to have different numbers for the same missions. I'm not saying the alien's military structure is the same as ours but they will still have to follow certain rules to be efficient. If they have to send more sebs to do the job of a smaller number of caesans that means more seats/consoles in the ships, more supplies, more weapons, instead of just a standard loadout. As someone who was a quartermaster for just a couple hundred people I can safely say I would have murdered my Captain in his sleep if he even suggested such a thing.

Edited January 6, 2014 by legit1337

[Gauddlike]

I agree that it is easier to balance and due to the fact that all ships of a type are identical inside it doesn't make a lot of sense if each race type needed a different ship.

I think the rest of the points are a personal viewpoint that I don't necessarily share.

Sebillians and ceasans for example have different ai preferences so ceasans don't have to be stronger individually because the tactics they prefer could naturally lead to them being harder to kill as they are hiding behind cover sniping from longer ranges while sebillians will be trying to get in close and be restricted by shorter view ranges.

Probably way too much to be messing around with balance wise though at this stage.

Get the armour and health right in line with the working ai and worry about maybe altering numbers later if it makes sense.

[Max_Caine]

I am convinced that the AI uses snap shots whenever possible, depending on weight of fire to compensate for lesser accuracy. If the AI is mathmatically convinced that snap shots are the way to go, then I suggest either dropping the accuracy of snap shots and raising the accuracy of normal shots, or just making alien weapons have snap/burst, because that's all they seem to use.

[Saskali]

i took some time off the game after playing v18 extensively and i tried it again recently so here are my thouhts.

Ground comabt has been impoved from my point of view in general. Alien behavior seems nice appart fom some passivity from casean in early game but i read elsewhere that it was due to a bug. i like sebs a lot. How they charge me and try to take shots at me. I had to change my gameplay to add some shields carriers to mitigate the damage.

Some points still remain that alter significantly my gameplay tough.

First i like to do all the missions possible so i do a lot of them even if it results in me loosing more soldiers. One of the downside of this is i often get the same maps and that is a big downside. Ill explain why. It s not really the fact that it is the same map that bothers me. What bothers me is that almost always aliens tend to be in the exact same location on same maps. So basically it removes a lot of the stress (and the fun) knowing were your ennemies will be when you see which map it is. It is not as strong as before (v18) but i still get some maps 4 times by mid november.

Second i dont know if it is a bug but i noticed aliens tend to have preference when it comes to cover locations. Often i will kill some alien to have another one come and take the exact same place as the one that just died the turn before. That can be abused massively. if i finds the good spot and places snipers well i can decimate a whole group that was at one location just by waiting for them to take the same exact cover as their allies. Seems like they think it is the best place on earth althought they are sitting on the corpse of 1 to 3 of their mates.

Wouldn't it be possible to make aliens take into account where their allied corpse are to mitigate this?

Considering accuracy it seems like there was a big change and it somewhat breaks the weapon diferent aims. Almost alwasy the last zoom wont chane anything to the accuracy of my shot. Especially for snipers. Most of the time a reaction shot 40 TU gives me the same accuracy as a 60TU shot if i dont move. if i move a 50TU is always the same as a 60TU.

In the current state of the game i dont really see the purpose of having 3 different aims on weapons. Why keep them if lower TUs give the same amount of accuracy as higher TUs?

On a side note the different aims works perfectly well for the shotgun.

The last point is reaction fire. On moday i lost two soldiers in a base attack to friendly fire on reaction fire shoots. two rifflemen who were behind 2 and 3 of their mates fired two times with a laser rifle in their back.... as i play in iron mode there was no going back and that is quite annoying considering they had no chance to touch the alien through my 3 soldiers.

My fault you can say as i put my soldiers in a line and i totally agree. But still if they could be more clever than this it would be nice.

On a side note for the geoscope balance. I like pretty much all he changes you made. Air batlle speed, new ufo craft speed (forcing you to go foxtrot) alien city bombings, etc... are very nice. The increase in penality for alien attacks are also very nice it really gives you an impression of panic at the begning seeing how much you are loosing nation support .

Only thing that bothers me a bit is chinnok speed i can understand (and i agre) why you wanted it to be slower but i think you overdid it a bit too much. It forces me to airstrike much too often for my taste and breaks te pace of the fight (having to wait a lot (if crash is far away) after downing an UFO to get to the ground combat fells a bit weird)

Anyways thanks again for this great game keep going on with the good work

Edited January 9, 2014 by Saskali

[StellarRat]

Man, I just played my first full ground combat with the newest hot fixes and v20. The AI is brutal now. I lost three out of my six guys! I'm used to only losing one at the most. I noticed they're shooting from long range again. Lost two men to long range PR fire. The aliens grouped up under good cover and we had a vicious close quarters battle in the forest. I also noticed that I lost sight of the aliens as soon as the "spotter" went back behind full cover. Excellent. Had the aliens had grenades I might have lost the fight. It was bad enough that they had a couple of plasma rifles. I had to use my LMGs to provide suppressive fire on the last known location of the aliens. This actually worked just like real life. Loved the whole battle in spite of my losses.

Love the new reaction fire system. My guys absolutely hosed down an alien that tried to come out of the ship. I almost felt sorry for him. It was like walking into a bullet storm.

I want to congratulate Gjis-Jan and the whole team on the "Great Leap Forward" for the alien AI!

This game has gone from real good to awesome with these last changes!

[Gijs-Jan]

Glad to hear you're having good fun :-)

There will be some more improvements soon!

Edited January 9, 2014 by Gijs-Jan