Chris' Amazing Balance Patch V1!

[Chris]

So over the holidays I've been spending a bit of time thinking about how we can improve the gameplay experience of Xenonauts without new coded features - i.e. just by improving the balance of the existing systems. This is currently only for the ground combat, and I'll think about the strategy element of it later.

I'm currently working on a balance patch that I think will make the game more enjoyable to play. Some of the changes are quite radical and I thought I'd discuss them here to get suggestions and opinions (the balance patch is likely to be tested on the Experimental branch). Aaron's done a good job of balancing the game thus far, but I want to try a few ideas and see how they play. If it goes well, I'll chat to Aaron about merging our balance ideas.

My objective is to make the game a bit faster-paced, and make death more sudden for both the Xenonauts and the aliens. Here's my ideas:

1) TU move cost reduced from 4 to 3, other move costs lowered proportionally - self explanatory, but a huge change as units can move 33% further each turn. I just find the standard movement range frustratingly small at the moment.

2) Cover effectiveness reduced by 50% (so it provides 20-25% protection) - I find it very difficult to root out enemies that are behind cover, and it's easy to minimise casualties by using cover effectively. I find these updated numbers make cover a noticeable advantage, but not the be all and end all of combat.

3) Greater range of soldier stats - with the exception of APs which range from 45-55, soldier stats will now range from 30-70. This will stop soldiers being so generic, and now they have very different capabilities from each other right from the start.

4) Weapon accuracy increased, but zoom level spread reduced - weapons are more accurate, but zooming in gives less benefit than before. This will make combat more deadly, as shot are now more likely to hit, but it's harder to compensate for troops with bad accuracy just by spending extra TU.

5) Aliens are less numerous and less tough - Aaron's made the missions harder by making the aliens really quite tough, and putting a lot of them in there. Light Scout missions can have 8 or 9 aliens in them in some circumstances. I want to reduce the numbers of aliens, and make them go down faster overall.

6) Aliens are significantly more dangerous - this can be done through a combination of stats (both aliens and their weapons) and the AI, but the aliens need to be much better at killing your men. I want them to lurk inside buildings more, and also to run up to your men and attack them from closer range more often. There's an AI bug GJ is currently working on that is making the aliens overly passive at the moment, hopefully that'll be fixed soon.

Any thoughts / suggestions?

EDIT - I'm mostly looking for thoughts for other ground combat things I should also consider changing. As this is just an experimental balance patch I fully intend to test all the things I've listed above and we'll see how they work.

EDIT 2- This was released on 6th January here: http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/8660-V20-Experimental-Balance-Patch-1-Available%21

[Akrakorn]

Yeah, I like the idea of everything being a glass cannon instead of a bullet sponge. I'm not so sure about reducing the cover's effectiveness by 50%, though... it might be a little too much.

[Skitso]

Edit: more thoughtful answer later...

Edited January 1, 2014 by Skitso

[Myrmuzduur]

Cover being effective is good because it encourages the player to use flanking tactics. I don't agree with that change.

The others I don't really mind. Variety of soldier stats is desperately needed.

Also in v20 I think you reduced the amount of Alenium dropped by ufos in ground combat. I think you should put it back at previous levels because at the moment I feel like I have to grind Alenium from crash sites and it just isn't fun.

Maybe if the airstrike option also gave say 33% Alenium + Alien Alloys in addition to money that you'd get from doing the ground mission properly it would be better.

As it is I'm really struggling to manufacture Corsairs/Marauders/Scimitars. I have plenty of money, 1.5 mill, but very little Alenium.

Grinding in ground combat becomes very boring very fast.

[Tobbzn]

1) Interesting! Conceptually, I very much like it, as it speeds up combat and might see me pick up some shotguns on future playthroughs.

I'd like to point out that this means the standard pathfinder wastes a larger proportion of TUs by repeatedly turning, so manually projecting your movement onto the eight "cheap" axes becomes even more important.

Also, does this mean what I think it means?

... Reapers?

2) I quite like the weight behind the cover system, as it makes suppression fire very useful. It makes me feel like I need multiple soldiers to fight one alien, as my suppressing heavy is unlikely to finish the job on his own. Quite the contrast to XCOM EU's super-soldiers, where it's the other way around.

I dread the flower pots on the terror missions yielding negligible cover, and fully expect to be slaughtered on the first turn.

A question, though: Will this also reduce the cover benefit of standing behind a crouching shieldbearer? How about wielding a shield?

3) Conceptually yay, but I'm a little queasy about 30 for the lower bound. It means that a soldier starting out at 30 accuracy is virtually incapable of ever becoming useful even if he is brought on every mission. Then again, combined with 2) and 4), perhaps a new 30 will be roughly the same as the old 50, so it won't be that terrible. We'll see.

Isurmountable starting variance diminishes soldier progression somewhat, but it's probably worth it.

4) Sounds like a good change, though I'm curious to see how it'll actually feel with pistols and shotguns.

5) If this is a blanket change, I preemptively disagree. The long downtime between finding aliens in the early game was compensated somewhat by increased alien numbers, and I think the movement TU change alone will do enough to speed up combat.

6) Yay for aggressive AI, preemptive nay for adding any more armor penetration to alien weapons. The new varying health pools combined with the increased accuracy from 2) and 4), as well as a "pouncing" AI with 1) sounds fair enough.

Overall:

I know it's the intent to make the game feel "cut-throat", but I'm a little concerned that defensive play won't be viable. I can imagine that leaving an alien alive for a turn means a guaranteed soldier loss despite armor, shields and cover.

If you want to discourage the super-defensive playstyle, I'd suggest increasing Shield weight rather than devaluing investments in armor. If only the strongest soldiers can wear armor and wield shields at once, it becomes an attractive stat for new recruits if you're going for a defensive playstyle.

[Ol' Stinky]

I'd like to see #1-4. I'm not so sure about #5 + #6, though. It's not that I'm not against making the aliens a bit softer. I just think that it'd be better to see how squishier/scarier the aliens become, with just the changes from #1-4, before altering their stats.

Do you have a quicker way of altering cover %s than by going through the spectres for all the props? Going through all those files one by one doesn't sound like a good time.

[Zigot]

While I like some of these changes, I feel like attempts to increase difficulty by removing viable play styles (ie defensive play) should be an option, not something forced across the board. Especially since these are the sort of changes that would be a slight difficulty increase for veteran players but likely a painfully sharp increase for people who are new to this type of game.

[Max_Caine]

Regarding #6. Chris, from what I understand that you'd like "more dangerous" to be a feature of the aliens more than the arms they use, however I can see lots of ways "more dangerous" can be introduced into ground combat by integrating existing (and working) feature sets into the arms the aliens use that at the same time do not up-gun the aliens. For example, the bleed function is an effective Damage over Time feature. A weapon that auto-bleeds, or causes a set number of bleeding wounds is more dangerous, but not immediately (or at leasr, not usually imedaitely). Or... well.. it's possible for aliens to damage morale and AP. These are currently the province of psychic powers, but arms which damaged morale or AP are more dangerous without being immediately harmful.

[jeon]

1) I've tried that out before and it feels a bit odd being able to rush in and unload full auto in the aliens' faces when soldiers get to superhuman status at 90+ TUs.

2) As long as you do this with a multiplier somewhere, I'm all for it. Some of the 75% cover objects could use being changed to either 50% or 100%, the way cover works in this game makes 75% really annoying, but the rest of the things are fine. Personally I'd like it if cover didn't block shots when it is in the middle of a field between the 2 units and not really blocking LOS, but I suppose we are too far in for a change of that complexity. The other problem is when a grenade only flies 1-2 tiles and bounces off of some low cover even though my target is 10 tiles away... it's kinda awkward... although they seem to fly perfectly once I smoke the room and can't see where I'm throwing.

3) As long as it is in .xml somewhere, go for it. I'm not sure how well it will turn out, and I suggest that stat caps be changed to somehow be related to the base stats so that the soldiers stay unique or else the random stats just means grind more missions to get them all to 99. Personally, I cap my stats at 80 because I think the soldiers get too OP past that and crouching doesn't give any more accuracy boost past 84 anyways because it won't go past 100 soldier accuracy stat. (A soldier with 84 or 99 accuracy both have the same accuracy when crouching.)

4) Weapon accuracy is pretty high already. I think with reducing TU movement cost and cover you could just walk around and blast away with experienced soldiers with snap shot/auto shot and mow everything down without a problem. Currently I have my max accuracy set at 200% and it has been working well for me. It makes not moving the sniper a good idea most of the time and it makes the 60 TU shot worth it for him because I can plunk an alien who is hiding behind cover. It gives my riflemen a chance to take an aimed shot and hit someone behind cover or spray and pray and suppress. The higher skill soldiers are better than the low ones by virtue of being able to hit targets behind cover.

5) Aliens will die fast enough with the other proposed changes. I think the number of aliens is fine, they are usually spread out enough that any given encounter isn't too crazy.

6) With the AI bug fixed and the alien accuracy bug fixed, the aliens are quite dangerous. Although if they use the same accuracy formula as the Xenonauts they may have a problem with crouching because it will reduce their 100+ accuracy levels down to only 100 and then with the cover penalties they will have an even harder time hitting the Xenonauts.

[StellarRat]

1) TU move cost reduced from 4 to 3, other move costs lowered proportionally - self explanatory, but a huge change as units can move 33% further each turn. I just find the standard movement range frustratingly small at the moment.

2) Cover effectiveness reduced by 50% (so it provides 20-25% protection) - I find it very difficult to root out enemies that are behind cover, and it's easy to minimise casualties by using cover effectively. I find these updated numbers make cover a noticeable advantage, but not the be all and end all of combat.

3) Greater range of soldier stats - with the exception of APs which range from 45-55, soldier stats will now range from 30-70. This will stop soldiers being so generic, and now they have very different capabilities from each other right from the start.

4) Weapon accuracy increased, but zoom level spread reduced - weapons are more accurate, but zooming in gives less benefit than before. This will make combat more deadly, as shot are now more likely to hit, but it's harder to compensate for troops with bad accuracy just by spending extra TU.

5) Aliens are less numerous and less tough - Aaron's made the missions harder by making the aliens really quite tough, and putting a lot of them in there. Light Scout missions can have 8 or 9 aliens in them in some circumstances. I want to reduce the numbers of aliens, and make them go down faster overall.

6) Aliens are significantly more dangerous - this can be done through a combination of stats (both aliens and their weapons) and the AI, but the aliens need to be much better at killing your men. I want them to lurk inside buildings more, and also to run up to your men and attack them from closer range more often. There's an AI bug GJ is currently working on that is making the aliens overly passive at the moment, hopefully that'll be fixed soon.

#1 - I'll have to try it. You may need to improve the chance of reaction fire as a counter.

#2 - Don't like, it discourages flanking and using cover when ever possible i.e. proper tactics.

#3 - This is interesting. I'll have to try it before I know.

#4 - Increasing the accuracy beyond what it was already increased previously seems a bit much. Everyone was quite accurate before. You don't want it to be impossible to move on the battlefield or everything will bog down into "trench warfare." Too much accuracy will do that.

#5 - Don't like because the aliens are supposed to much better than the humans 1 for 1.

#6 - I do agree that aliens lurking in buildings is a good idea. I've been advocating for that for a long time. As far as more aliens being more dangerous shooting, weapons, stats, etc...see #4, same response. Also, this seems to contradict number #5 to a certain extent.

Honestly, I kind of hoped we could just have had the AI patch and the old balance to test first along with whatever bug fixes were done. If we can't seperate the fixed AI from the "new balance" it's going to be hard to compare everything properly. I really was thinking the ground combat balance was OK had the aliens AI been working properly. If you change multiple balancing variables on us, it's going to be quite difficult to re-assess everything all at once. Taken together, these changes will probably slow down the completion of the final balance for the game, IMO.

Edited December 31, 2013 by StellarRat

[Skitso]

1. Maybe, but more experienced soldiers might cover too long distance later in game. Also shooting might need higher tu cost to prevent units from running huge distances and shooting from the adjacent square.

2. God no! Kills one major strategic element from the game. Cover needs to stay. Suppression and flanking must be important!

3. Absolutely!

4. Aren't we already having too much accuracy when assault rifles make snipers all but redundant?

5. Then you need to make levels smaller. Even with current alien numbers they often feel too empy.

6. This is where you should invest your resources! More cunning, surprising and intelligent ai.

in general I don't feel tbe gc even needs that much balance changes other than ai and maybe a bit more lethal weapons. (Not accuracy but damage)

[legit1337]

@StellarRat

As per your #5.

Aliens need to be more dangerous then humans I agree. But it should be because of their weaponry, not because of how physically "tough" they are. Its sort of dumb to have the lore tell me that caesans are much more phycially frail then humans, and then see one take half an assault rifle magazine to the face and keep on trucking. Sebs feel about right though.

@Chris

1. I disagree with this change, the current movement/shooting balance feels right. This makes "offensive" tactics a little too powerful imo.

2. I strongly disagree with this change. Cover should be massively important in a firefight, it is what makes flanking and grenades useful. It also makes "offensive" tactics more powerful then they currently are.

3. Yes please.

4. Oh god no! Weapons are already too accurate now. I think they need to be toned down a little if anything. See Skitso's #4.

5-6. YESYESYESYES! Thank you! Maybe my guys will be able to take down an alien with reaction fire now that they aren't bullet sponges.

[StellarRat]

@StellarRat

As per your #5.

Aliens need to be more dangerous then humans I agree. But it should be because of their weaponry, not because of how physically "tough" they are. Its sort of dumb to have the lore tell me that caesans are much more phycially frail then humans, and then see one take half an assault rifle magazine to the face and keep on trucking. Sebs feel about right though.

Yes, but they're supposed to wearing some kind of miracle fabric that absorbs bullet like a Level III vest. So, they may be frail, but bullets bounce off their suits. Maybe the HP needs to drop, but the armor needs to go up.

[Chris]

In retrospect, I should have just posted these changes up after they'd been uploaded to the Experimental branch so people could test them properly, rather than theorycrafting.

Even with the reduction of cover effectiveness by 50%, crouching behind a standard cover wall still gives you a cumulative 45% reduction to the accuracy of incoming shots. The change would hardly make cover meaningless, it just means a unit crouching behind a waist-high wall doesn't become invulnerable.

I posted this up to get suggestions for other things for me to think about changing, really - what I've posted above is almost certainly going to be in the experimental balance patch and I'll only be collecting opinions on it once people have actually experienced the effects of the changes first-hand. If there are other systems you think could be majorly revamped to improve the gameplay, please feel free to throw them out here.

[vaultdweller]

I posted this up to get suggestions for other things for me to think about changing, really - what I've posted above is almost certainly going to be in the experimental balance patch and I'll only be collecting opinions on it once people have actually experienced the effects of the changes first-hand.

That said, I'll still comment that I like the sound of 5.5 out of 6 of these. The one-half I don't look forward to is the reduction in alien numbers. I like having more targets.

I haven't played since the major accuracy changes in v20, so I have no real opinion on those.

[llunak]

Like others, I'm also not exactly thrilled about the reduced cover and improved accurancy, as I fear it might lead to changing the ground combat from tactical game to shooting game, where everybody will just run towards the enemy and hope to get more lucky than the other side. And as StellarRat said, it'd be good to first get just a build with the AI fixed, as that may prove to make the combat deadly enough already.

But I have a different proposal for cover and accurancy: If I understand it correctly, right now snap makes a shot less accurate, aim makes shot more accurate, and only after that factors like cover and crouching are applied. Which already makes aim rather pointless, and if accurancy would be made any better, even normal would often barely make up for its TU cost.

So how about changing it so that snap/aim not only reduce/improve accurancy somewhat, but also improve/reduce effectiveness of cover? It should make sense even thematically, a wild shot is very unlikely to hit anybody taking a cover, and if there's already a reasonable chance to hit somebody crouched or in cover with a normal shot, taking the extra time to aim should still make a difference. Not way too big difference though, cover still should be useful.

One more thing that might make sense to change is shields and grenade overdamage. As far as I understand it, overdamage was introduced because people ended up with soldiers with shields and a load of grenades, running up on the battlefield close to any alien under the shield's cover and bombing the alien up. How about making it more likely to hit a shield? It's a relatively big target after all. That could make shields to be used primarily only during breaches and not all the time, and it'd hopefully also reduce the need for overdamage (which I find really annoying, given how weak the grenades actually are, but it always wrecks all equipment if the grenade manages a kill).

Oh, BTW, grenades. How about there being e.g. a 5% chance that even a guard gets a grenade? Right now it's pretty safe to play it's-not-a-soldier-I-can-go-close-without-worries. This game should make people feel tense and uncertainty is a pretty good way to ensure that. As it is said, emotions don't always have to be good, but they should be intense .

[TrashMan]

Honestly, I'd presonally go about it another way.

I'm worried about a too big varriance in soldier stats - especially since elite soldiers really shouldn't be starting withcrap stats.

Instead of boosting accuracy globably forall weapons, it would be better to balance each weapon class.

Early balistic would be defined by high rates of fire, low TU cost. Not very accurate, but they can put out high volumes of fire and can eat ammo quickly.

Lasers would be the kings of accuracy.

Plasmas are monsters damage-wise, but innacurate and short-ranged

[Skitso]

So how about changing it so that snap/aim not only reduce/improve accurancy somewhat, but also improve/reduce effectiveness of cover?

Now that sounds (at least in theory) a REALLY good idea! I like it!

[Jaran]

I'll take theorycrafting even a bit further since I haven't tried any version of Xenonauts yet (don't want to spoil it). Only been following forums actively and watching some let's plays. But I'll comment on few points anyway:

2) On first impression I'm against this, however your 45% evasion example doesn't sound too bad. Shooting from behind cover and flanking enemy's cover is important part of any strategy game though. Destructible environment is big part of any UFO game. Combining these two, maybe you could solve this cover issue by lowering the durability of cover instead? If you're planning to increase accuracy then it would mean more bullets are bound to hit cover objects, eventually destroying them anyway. This forces soldiers to move and makes the game dynamic while still keeping the strategy part. And adds some destruction to the map.

3) This sounds amazing! I was actually hoping for this many months ago. Definitely gives the soldiers more personality. Maybe you could experiment with some kind of gaussian distribution of stats to emphasis great stats even more, instead of making stats 100% random? Or perhaps that would be boring.

5) One of the many pitfalls that I've seen modern turn-based games fall into are too large maps. Perhaps this is because games are no longer held back by old hardware and thus game developers feel they can make everything just bigger in hope of it becoming better. Anyway, this causes problems for slower paced turn-based games. So if you are considering putting less enemies on the map then I'd be very mindful of this map size issue and how it affects your game pacing. But maybe you're already addressing this issue with the first item on your list, reducing movement cost.

6) I'm all for aliens inside buildings! Gives me an excuse to shoot the walls into swiss cheese.

[Alturys]

Hi,

As these change will go in next experimental build, i will not comment them before some testing.

However, Chris, i think you are playing a very dangerous game by changing so much the game balance, with the two BIG bugs currently in game, regarding ground combat: The -50% to alien accuracy bug and the "ThrowingRangeLimit" bug (ie the bug responsible for AI passivity).

Correcting these two errors will have a massive impact on the ground combat, probably more than all the v20 changes.

I really think you should try to make a pure bug fix patch to see how the game is without all these bug, even just during two or three days. I think you are trying to balance a bugged game, wich is not a good way to procede because when bugs will be corrected, all your balance will be destroyed again.

My two cent's...

[Chris]

My version of the game already has those fixes in it, so it's hardly a problem for me. It's more than likely you'll have the fixed V20 on the Stable branch and my patch on the Experimental branch.

[Amiga4ever]

How to enter your experimental build Chris? I have XenoExperiment added but your changes isn't there

[Ol' Stinky]

Are you happy with players being able to easily chain-suppress? If you're not, it might be an idea to play around with suppression resist regeneration\bravery values\etc. This might already be solved in Chris' Amazing Balance Patch V1! due to lowered movement costs, I suppose.

[Chris]

Amiga - it's not been uploaded yet, I'm still putting it together and balancing it. I'll post something in the Announcement forums when I actually upload it.

I've sat down and played a bunch of the OG, and I've had a few more thoughts:

1) In Xenonauts, aliens all spawn facing north-east. This means there is no chance of getting any reaction fire on turn 1 unless you are approaching the aliens from that direction, and generally the dropships spawn along the bottom edges of the map and so this is a rare occurrence (whereas in the OG you're under fire from the moment you disembark). I'm surprised nobody's picked up on this before, actually, Aaron and myself included. We need to add some logic so the aliens spawn facing the dropship.

2) The shots in the OG travel INCREDIBLY slowly, whereas ours travel very quickly. I'm also going to drop the projectile speed in the game to about 35% of what it currently is to see if it helps build suspense. However, after having played a couple of missions with it on, I'm not sure it's one we'll be retaining after the first balance patch.

3) The LOS in the original game is much more constricted than in our maps. I might try reproducing one of their farm maps in our game and see how it plays.

Stinky - how do you mean, chain-suppress? Just using large amounts of firepower on a target, and making it really easy to kill them the next turn? It's meant to be useful but not OP - if it's a big thing, perhaps suppression could be limited to certain weapons like the machinegun, or at least only to burst fire? Now's the best time to consider these sort of things.

[Jaran]

3) The LOS in the original game is much more constricted than in our maps. I might try reproducing one of their farm maps in our game and see how it plays.

Good catch. Music, sounds and limited LOS were the things that made the spooky mood of OG for me. No aliens seen but shots fired from the darkness...