Post Your Mission Takings Here

[legit1337]

I think part of the problem is that weapons are too expensive. I think laser rifles should be lowered to lets say... $20,000. The cost of outfitting a rookie with a laser rifle and jackal armor would be $50,000 a much more reasonable sum then $110,000 in the current version.

I have also stated my opinion several times that doing ground missions should net you on average 3x the amount of money you would get for airstriking. So if that system was put in place you could afford to lose 4 rookies armed with laser rifles and jackal armor to "overkill" weapons and still break even on a cruiser recovery mission. Pretty reasonable IMO.

You would still lose some money if more then half your squad gets wiped with plasma cannons though, but in all fairness if you do that badly you sorta deserved it.

@StellarRat

Grenades splash damage in general is too wimpy (not just the aliens). Unless the grenade is in the square of the target they barely do any damage at all.

Edited December 25, 2013 by legit1337

[ElMyamo]

I have also stated my opinion several times that doing ground missions should net you on average 3x the amount of money you would get for airstriking.

That's the way it is right now, though, isn't it? A light scout UFO gives me roughly $50k to $60k in income, and that usually includes 2 or 3 aliens that I blow to pieces, especially now that Stinky has improved the difficulty. The airstrike option would give me $20k, which is why I almost never use it.

I don't really have an opinion on the whole income vs expenses issue, due to the fact that I play groundcombat very very slowly, and very very carefully it is rare that I lose soldiers, so I almost never have to replace equipment.

I agree that the grenade splash damage should be increased though, it is kind of stupid that I can kill one alien with a grenade that lands at his feet while the guy next to him takes 15 damage and shrugs it off.

[legit1337]

@ElMyamo

You have been getting $60,000 for light scout missions? Really? I have been netting 30-$40,000 on my playthroughs. I only use grenades sparingly too. That is with no losses, and averaging 4-5 aliens per ship.

Edited December 25, 2013 by legit1337

[ElMyamo]

I feel like (and I say feel like because I honestly wouldn't swear to it, I don't have a great memory for numbers) the number of aliens in light scout UFOs has gone up with this build. On my current playthrough (started earlier today, V20SC5) I have done 8 ground combat missions, all light scouts, and all of them had 7 to 9 aliens aboard. So I think the number (and therefore the income) has gone up.

[legit1337]

@Elmyamo

I'll take your word for it, as I haven't played SC5 yet. But that strikes me as sort of odd considering the size of the light scout. How do the aliens fit inside? Like a clown car or something? lol

That was my issue with superhuman difficulty in the OG. Sometimes you would get more aliens in the missions then could possibly fit inside the UFOs themselves which was sort of immersion breaking to me.

[Mooton]

@Elmyamo

I'll take your word for it, as I haven't played SC5 yet. But that strikes me as sort of odd considering the size of the light scout. How do the aliens fit inside? Like a clown car or something? lol

That was my issue with superhuman difficulty in the OG. Sometimes you would get more aliens in the missions then could possibly fit inside the UFOs themselves which was sort of immersion breaking to me.

9 in a medium scout, still only a third as cramped as a skyranger. 13 in a large scout, even more room. 18 in an Abductor, which is like the same space as a large scout except with two floors. 21 in the three floored harvester. 23 in the Terror ships making them about as cramped as a large scout. 28 in the huge battleships. 21 in supply ship leaves quite a bit of space.

All in all the most cramped ships in the original are the skyranger, lightning, and avenger. So if the lack of space was immersion breaking your immersion would've been broken every single time you went into the battlescape.

[legit1337]

@Mooton

With respect, not at all. You aren't considering what the ships are actually designed for. Most alien ships were space combat vessels primarily, and were only meant to have a token infantry force aboard.

The skyranger was a military transport DESIGNED to use the maximum amount of available space to efficiently ferry troops from one location to another. There were foldable seats on the insides of the skyranger with harnesses. It makes sense that it could carry 14 men to a combat zone... being about twice as large as a medium scout and not designed to do anything else besides CARRY TROOPS.

A medium scout on the other hand is not designed to carry troops, but rather as a reconnaissance craft, and would have had to had space inside devoted to sensor/analytical equipment. There are only 5 seats inside of it, and even being generous (considering 1 alien standing at the reactor console monitoring it) where do the other three aliens go? Do they stand about milling aimlessly and getting in the way of the crew? Under ideal conditions a medium scout should only be able to carry 6 aliens.

Don't even get me started about terror ships... Terror ships were the only alien vessels actually designed to be military landers and carry ground troops. Even then, you would encounter terror units on the bridge, which makes no sense lore wise, and because the doors are too small to even let them get to the second floor.

It isn't about using every single square of space on a ship. It is what makes sense when it comes to the layout of a ship, what it was designed to do, and how many people could fit comfortably inside of one. In the skyranger nobody had to move around. They all sat in their seats until they got to a combat zone, at which point they deployed out the rear of the craft. A alien battleship is much different because they crew would have to move around monitoring systems and performing tasks, as such the hallways would have to be clear of obstructions making it much more space inefficient then a dedicated troop transport. Do you see what I am saying?

In xenonauts, can a light scout carry 7-9 troops? Yes. Would it make sense with the light scout's function within the lore and with how the ship is portrayed in the battlescape? No, not if they wanted to move around inside the vessel once they took off. Or maybe they just wanted to train for the circus?

Edited December 26, 2013 by legit1337

[Max_Caine]

There are up to 9 troops in light scouts because several full builds back there were a lot of complaints about how sparse the early maps were. To understand where these complaints come from, go into /assets/ufocontents and edit airplane.alien.lightscout.caesan and airplane.alien.lightscout.sebillian and reduce the number of aliens to what might be considered a reasonable level for a light scout. The small maps are not suitible for small crew sizes, as small crews are either too thinly spread out, or, if concentrated, the biggest part of the map goes to waste. Light scouts would need ultra-small maps if the crew size were reduced further.

[legit1337]

With the aggressive AI improvements in the recent builds I honestly fail to see how this would be a problem. I had a light scout the other day where 4/7 aliens were killed in the crash and I enjoyed hunting the remaining 3 aliens on the map. Was it action packed? No, but it was pretty tense because I was half expecting an alien to pop out of somewhere and waste one of my soldiers before I could react.

4-6 aliens seems like the butter zone for a light scout IMO. It feels about right for a map that size, and with the AI fixes coming I think 7-9 might be too much for an 8 man team of rookies to handle anyway.

But this is just my opinion.

[ElMyamo]

With the aggressive AI improvements in the recent builds I honestly fail to see how this would be a problem. I had a light scout the other day where 4/7 aliens were killed in the crash and I enjoyed hunting the remaining 3 aliens on the map. Was it action packed? No, but it was pretty tense because I was half expecting an alien to pop out of somewhere and waste one of my soldiers before I could react.

4-6 aliens seems like the butter zone for a light scout IMO. It feels about right for a map that size, and with the AI fixes coming I think 7-9 might be too much for an 8 man team of rookies to handle anyway.

But this is just my opinion.

Personally I disagree, I really like the number of aliens per mission, especially in the beginning. The only thing that bugs me a little is that the increase in numbers is relativly small, I wouldn't mind even more aliens in the bigger UFOs.

Generally I would love it if the game would allow the player to specifically chose difficulty options, like more aliens, tougher aliens, smarter aliens etc... But that's getting off topic here

[legit1337]

Remember, xenonauts are supposed to outnumber the aliens and still have a hard time (at least at first until you start getting tech improvements).

Being outnumbered on a light scout mission just feels wrong IMO, especially since the aliens are supposed to have a huge technology lead on us at first.

It may feel good right now, but once those 7-9 aliens all start shooting properly I predict light scout missions will become much harder then they were originally intended to be.

@Max_Caine

I have edited the aliens down to six for a light scout and the maps feel perfect in terms of alien density. Not sure why people wanted 7-9.

But 4 is indeed too few. Perhaps 5-7 would be a better number?

Edited December 27, 2013 by legit1337

[Ol' Stinky]

I'm one of those that pushed hard for more aliens on the map.

The aliens don't have a huge tech lead on us in gameplay terms. A light scout's non-combatants are basically tier -1 in tech. Their only weapon are pistols, so there needs to be a number of them around. Even with unbugged AI, when you mob two or three non-coms it's not really a fair fight. While you enjoyed hunting down the few remaining aliens in that mission where most died in the crash, I was bored stiff.

I usually play on normal, but moving up to veteran isn't an answer. Unlike the original game, the number of aliens doesn't increase with difficulty. They get a bit of a stat buff (+20%) but that's it.

[StellarRat]

I'm one of those that pushed hard for more aliens on the map.

I usually play on normal' date=' but moving up to veteran isn't an answer. Unlike the original game, the number of aliens doesn't increase with difficulty. They get a bit of a stat buff (+20%) but that's it.[/quote']For now. I advocated for the difficulty to be controlled by the number of aliens, not their stats. Personally, I think that's the easiest way to vary the difficulty of the game. I don't think Aaron and Chris have really even started to worry about properly implementing the difficulty levels yet. You have to have a base line difficulty set first which we can't really say we have until the balancing, AI, etc... is finished for "Normal". My personal feeling is that the levels are all off by one notch right now. I think the current "Normal" is actually "Veteran".

[legit1337]

@Ol'Stinky

That's the thing. The aliens are so far ahead of us in terms of tech that 5-7 of their noncoms armed with nothing but pistols can actually stand toe to toe with out finest soldiers and still inflict massive casualties. Teir -1 for the aliens is actually more like tier 5 for us.

I guess we will have to just wait for the AI improvements to come through before seeing. I guess all I'm saying is that I sort of want the early missions to feel like tense alien hunts. The later missions can be action packed pitched battles.

[ElMyamo]

For now. I advocated for the difficulty to be controlled by the number of aliens, not their stats. Personally, I think that's the easiest way to vary the difficulty of the game. I don't think Aaron and Chris have really even started to worry about properly implementing the difficulty levels yet. You have to have a base line difficulty set first which we can't really say we have until the balancing, AI, etc... is finished for "Normal". My personal feeling is that the levels are all off by one notch right now. I think the current "Normal" is actually "Veteran".

I can't resist the opportunity to throw my favourite idea out there again, since you brought it up:

Personally I really think there shouldn't be one difficulty level you can chose, but rather several. That way every player can create the challenge exactly the way he or she likes.

For example, you start a new game, and you get to chose from:

Alien Strength: easy, normal, veteran, hard

Alien Numbers: same

Number of UFOs: same

Funding changes: same (easy would mean that you get a lot of goodwill for every UFO shot down, and not a lot of bad karma for letting it fly around. you guys get the idea).

Maybe even make a category for smarter aliens, faster or slower progress through the techtree, more or less expensive equipment.

I know that all of this is already possible and even easy by modding the game, but I like the idea of starting a new game and being able to handpick your challenge without a lot of changes in the files.

This whole discussion right now is proving that people want different things to challenge them, so it might be worth looking at.

As for the current balance: I use Stinky's fix, and it's FUN!! So yea, the tougher the better. More aliens, tougher aliens, bring them on.

[StellarRat]

I can't resist the opportunity to throw my favourite idea out there again, since you brought it up:

Personally I really think there shouldn't be one difficulty level you can chose, but rather several. That way every player can create the challenge exactly the way he or she likes.

I like your idea, but I think Chris is thinking of the four basic levels. I suppose if there were time to add a proper interface for the other tweaks you mentioned it would be pretty cool. I certainly wouldn't be opposed to that level of control. The more the better as far as I'm concerned. At you can easily mod all the factors if you want to.

[Ol' Stinky]

@Ol'Stinky

That's the thing. The aliens are so far ahead of us in terms of tech that 5-7 of their noncoms armed with nothing but pistols can actually stand toe to toe with out finest soldiers and still inflict massive casualties. Teir -1 for the aliens is actually more like tier 5 for us.

I guess we will have to just wait for the AI improvements to come through before seeing. I guess all I'm saying is that I sort of want the early missions to feel like tense alien hunts. The later missions can be action packed pitched battles.

Only if their whole team moved as a squad, like we do. Because of the defensive scripted aliens, you'll see 4-6 aliens outside, sometimes fewer beacuse of crash-related fatalities. Those 4-6 are usually split up into two groups, which aren't likely to put up a fight.

For now. I advocated for the difficulty to be controlled by the number of aliens, not their stats. Personally, I think that's the easiest way to vary the difficulty of the game. I don't think Aaron and Chris have really even started to worry about properly implementing the difficulty levels yet. You have to have a base line difficulty set first which we can't really say we have until the balancing, AI, etc... is finished for "Normal". My personal feeling is that the levels are all off by one notch right now. I think the current "Normal" is actually "Veteran".

I'd much prefer that. The idea of more damage sponge-y aliens isn't appealing, so I stick to normal difficulty.

[legit1337]

Agreed. Harder difficulty should be more aliens, not aliens with increased stats.