Chris' Amazing Balance Patch V1!

[Chris]

I did actually finish all the light scout maps this morning and was going to release the balance patch today, but I just remembered Aaron does all the file archiving etc for builds and he's not back till Monday. It'd take me a while to generate them again, and without the game has hundreds of thousands of files in it, so I'm afraid this patch is going to be coming after the weekend!

[Solver]

So can you say what the light scout maps look like now? What's the alien count, and how does the map size compare to v20?

After playing some more v20 yesterday, I'm even more convinced that the accuracy needs to go down, and that's a big balance issue. Just by preserving my initial starting squad well, I soon get uber-sharpshooter riflemen. Lieutenants already reach decent accuracy with burst fire, and are excellent shots with the 30-TU fire mode.

[Skitso]

All the other maps are going to remain the same? How much did you lower other ufo's alien numbers?

[Ol' Stinky]

I did actually finish all the light scout maps this morning and was going to release the balance patch today, but I just remembered Aaron does all the file archiving etc for builds and he's not back till Monday. It'd take me a while to generate them again, and without the game has hundreds of thousands of files in it, so I'm afraid this patch is going to be coming after the weekend!

If you don't mind me asking: what size did you settle on for light scouts? 50x50? And is it only for light scouts, or is it inline with the new standard, so lsct/sct/corv?

[jeon]

Unless of course that 20 and 30 value are percentages of total armour?

I was pretty sure that the numbers are point values and not percentages because the reaper melee attack has 500 mitigation which wouldn't be necessary with a percentage and with observed damage done with the weapon damage/mitigation and alien armor values that I have in my game at this time. But, to be 100% sure I conducted a test with Non-combatants' armor at 200 and assault rifle mitigation at 100. As I suspected, my shots repeatedly did no damage to the enemy until enough hits reduced the armor to the point where the 100 mitigation could break through.

[TrashMan]

What "normal human" can take 3-4 bullets without armor? Okay, if you're talking small caliber like 9mm, it is possible to survive 3 bullets that do not hit internal organs, but still, a controlled pair of 9mm pistol shots to center mass would at the very least put someone out of the fight and into the hospital seriously wounded.

As for bullets from proper assault rifles, forget it. Even a shot that causes a non-lethal wound would put you out of the fight.

You might want to loo kat some police reports and record holders for people being shot the most times.

It was incrredible just what someone people survived. 30+ bullets.

And since we're at it, this is a game so an exact 1:1 ratio to reality is not necessary, but a an at least somewhat credible ratio should be there.

http://www.cracked.com/article_19698_7-deadly-things-you-wont-believe-most-people-survive.html

Edited January 4, 2014 by TrashMan

[Solver]

And to be fair, those are outliers. People who survive 4 bullets, let alone 10, are the exception, not the norm. Or high on some drugs, certainly there are drugs that make people not even notice they've been shot 3 times. But that is not near the norm.

At any rate, I do not think this should impact design of the aliens much. They're supposed to be tougher, I understand. Especially ones like Sebs.

[Skitso]

Killed or not, even one gunshot wound will most of the time cause a shock which can easily take you out of action.

[Gauddlike]

Mitigation should be a straight amount of armour it ignores.

Pretty sure that was the case in early versions and don't remember seeing it changed.

[Max_Caine]

I think Aaron decided that the way to show how tough the invaders were in a "our guns are useless!" kind of way was not to have lots of armour, but instead to have lots of HP. The armour an alien wore would be reflected in the HP it had. The better the armour, the more the HP. TBH, I don't think that this, thematically, has really worked. Oh, yes, aliens are tough alright. In a zombie kind of way, where you shoot and shoot and shoot and they keep on coming! Barricade the house! Circle the wagons! It's gonna be a long night!

Thematically, I think that aliens should in general should demonstrate how awesome their super-advanced armour is over the puny hu-mans by jacking up the armour values because, unlike when Aaron first implmented balance changes, you now see the effect of a shot straight away. The feedback system with their little red numbers shows you how much damage you did, so if you saw an alien react to a shot and take 5pts of damage when you've seen the same weapon do a lot more than that, you know straight away that the armour has sucked most of that damage up.

So, let's tie this digression back into Chris' Amazing Balance Patch. Chris, we have a spiffy armour degredation system that works well and has a visible effect, but we only really see this on humans, because only humans have decent armour. We also have lots of human weapons which have great armour penetration, but those values are useless because (as jeon points out) there is very little alien armour to penetrate. By giving aliens, or at least giving some of the races decent armour and dropping their HP, you actually make aliens both more and less tough. More tough to begin with, when their armour is fresh and new. But when shots are incoming, and the value of their armour drops, they will die much more quickly to human weapons than if they had their HP level jacked.

[vaultdweller]

I'll second Max_Caine. I would prefer to see aliens make better use of armour values. It would communicate more to the player that way.

[Myrmuzduur]

Androns maybe should be all Armour with average or low hit points.

As an aside, I'm still seeing Androns take cover. I believe they shouldn't, is that correct? They can't be suppressed now though so that's good.

Sebillians should have high hit points to reflect their innate toughness with a little armour for the higher tiered guys.

Caesans should be relatively frail, even the elites. Perhaps spawn more of them to balance this..... or give them more access to their special troops: Wraiths, Psions.

I think Psionics in this game should do more. A chance every turn to have some of my guy's TUs reduced is not that big a deal really. Perhaps if being Panicked or Berserked were added to the possible Psionic effects it'd be better.

Also, the area of effect for Psionics seems to be the entire map: if it were restricted to a radius or Line of Sight then I think this would be an improvement also. Make it deadlier, but also make it easier to avoid.

This would make Praetors a lot more intimidating.

[Serker]

I think Psionics in this game should do more. A chance every turn to have some of my guy's TUs reduced is not that big a deal really. Perhaps if being Panicked or Berserked were added to the possible Psionic effects it'd be better.

Also, the area of effect for Psionics seems to be the entire map: if it were restricted to a radius or Line of Sight then I think this would be an improvement also. Make it deadlier, but also make it easier to avoid.

This would make Praetors a lot more intimidating.

And to have your perfect strategy messed up because of totally random berserk of some rocket guy? No thanks, random is only good in limited quantity. Current dread mechanics does this perfectly: random and interfering, but not game breaking.

As the side note about praetorians: I think that palm blaster don't look natural. It would be cool if they used random unresistable psionic effects as their attack instead, even for reaction shots. That would be awesome, even if require some intricate coding.

[janprusak]

Wow, after reading the first post, I'm already impressed.

[Myrmuzduur]

And to have your perfect strategy messed up because of totally random berserk of some rocket guy? No thanks, random is only good in limited quantity. Current dread mechanics does this perfectly: random and interfering, but not game breaking.

You didn't read my post properly.

I suggested the Psionic powers be improved and their effects expanded, IN ADDITION to them being limited to Line of Sight of the Alien OR a radius around the Alien.

Again, this would further encourage the use of cover as well as making Psionic attacks actually threatening in some way.

As for the berserking rocket guy, well sh*t happens. Deal with it. Might be an interesting way to balance Xenonauts using rockets to get easy wins. Enforce consequences on attempts at cheesing it.

Just a thought.

[ventuswings]

I agree. Psions are best of the psionic alien next to Praetors, but currently they are the least threatening alien after the dronnes. Regarding Psion buff, their scarcity and line of sight rule means that buffing the psion will not lead to extreme unfairness and can be countered. I think appropriate powers aee already in place, just that they prefer to use peashooter plasma pistol much more frequently instead.

[legit1337]

I agree with whoever said caesans should be noticeably weaker then other aliens in terms of durability.

In exchange give them better reflexes and accuracy. Much like the sectoids from the OG.

This would give them a "defensive" niche (better accuracy and better chance of reaction firing = better defender) which is good because the sebs are already thematically the "attacking" shock troops (better health + health regeneration + close range weapons).

They should have higher accuracy then sebs anyway due to seb's "poor eyesight" in the lore.

@chris

Someone brought up chinook speed in the geoscape thread. Any chance of seeing a speedier chinook in this patch?

Edited January 5, 2014 by legit1337

[Gauddlike]

I think Aaron decided that the way to show how tough the invaders were in a "our guns are useless!" kind of way was not to have lots of armour, but instead to have lots of HP. The armour an alien wore would be reflected in the HP it had. The better the armour, the more the HP. TBH, I don't think that this, thematically, has really worked. Oh, yes, aliens are tough alright. In a zombie kind of way, where you shoot and shoot and shoot and they keep on coming! Barricade the house! Circle the wagons! It's gonna be a long night!

Thematically, I think that aliens should in general should demonstrate how awesome their super-advanced armour is over the puny hu-mans by jacking up the armour values because, unlike when Aaron first implmented balance changes, you now see the effect of a shot straight away. The feedback system with their little red numbers shows you how much damage you did, so if you saw an alien react to a shot and take 5pts of damage when you've seen the same weapon do a lot more than that, you know straight away that the armour has sucked most of that damage up.

So, let's tie this digression back into Chris' Amazing Balance Patch. Chris, we have a spiffy armour degredation system that works well and has a visible effect, but we only really see this on humans, because only humans have decent armour. We also have lots of human weapons which have great armour penetration, but those values are useless because (as jeon points out) there is very little alien armour to penetrate. By giving aliens, or at least giving some of the races decent armour and dropping their HP, you actually make aliens both more and less tough. More tough to begin with, when their armour is fresh and new. But when shots are incoming, and the value of their armour drops, they will die much more quickly to human weapons than if they had their HP level jacked.

I agree with this but I would also add a suggestion to it.

If you are seeing damage numbers then it would be nice to also see how much damage was mitigated by armour.

No confusion over why weapons were hitting for 5 damage when they are supposed to hit for 25 as (-20) pops up, next turn (-15) shows that you are degrading their armour not just at the mercy of a tyrannical rng.

Some aliens make sense to be incredibly tough with lower armour, like the sebillians for example to make the most of their hp regen, but others like ceasans could be frail with decent armour while androns can be tough with good armour.

[Lightzy]

I like it a lot personally. I'll try it for sure

[a333]

If you are seeing damage numbers then it would be nice to also see how much damage was mitigated by armour.

That'll be really helpful. Especially armor degrading part.

[Solarius Scorch]

That'll be really helpful. Especially armor degrading part.

It would be somewhat helpful, but also clunky, unprofessional and ultimately unnecessary. Games aren't made this way for a reason; you can easily take armour into consideration even without the numbers, just by analysing what you see (actually, even without HP lost shown it would be possible). I am definitely against it with all my game designing instincts.

[Gauddlike]

I am sure your instincts are great but it is personal opinion and preference.

Your assertion that games aren't made to display resisted damage because it is unprofessional could do with some backing up as well.

You can take damage into account without the numbers but they are shown for those who want them.

You could easily work out where a projectile travelled without needing to see it but they are also shown.

Yes it could be clunky if it is badly designed but someone with good game design instincts should be able to think of a way to make something so simple not be clunky surely?

[Skitso]

More organic way would be for example playing a different hit sound effect when armor deflects damage vs. direct flesh wound.

[dakta]

More organic way would be for example playing a different hit sound effect when armor deflects damage vs. direct flesh wound.

Yeah some feedback would be great, in veteran you dont get to see the numbers so you never know if you actually hit the alien or if its the ground.

[Solarius Scorch]

I am sure your instincts are great but it is personal opinion and preference.

Your assertion that games aren't made to display resisted damage because it is unprofessional could do with some backing up as well.

You can take damage into account without the numbers but they are shown for those who want them.

You could easily work out where a projectile travelled without needing to see it but they are also shown.

Yes it could be clunky if it is badly designed but someone with good game design instincts should be able to think of a way to make something so simple not be clunky surely?

I didn't think I had to explain this in greater detail, but very well. Basically what I meant was that including this information would be far too technical and detracting from gaming experience. Showing HPs does this already, but it is a compromise between playability and abstraction of a game - it is justifiable if soldiers in many cases could be more or less able to discern how efficient their attack was (if for example there was a head shot, which is not represented in the game). Armour however would be too much. Additionally, having too many numbers showing up would be confusing and uncool.

I guess we could have the option to turn armour degradation on, but I'm not too fond of this either; after all it's significant data, so who would turn it off?