Chris' Amazing Balance Patch V1!

[Ol' Stinky]

I would like to reiterate that I find this armour/health display a poor idea for the final game (except maybe for balancing, but that's not what the end user normally does). Like several people mentioned, this disables your instincts and turn you into an accountant, and that's just wrong for the experience. There are games where data should be disclosed, but IMHO a tactical combat game, especially with aliens, is not.

I do however agree that introducing some combat information in sound form only isn't justified.

Now, how can this be done? The only thing I came up with are additional, distinct animation sequences when being hit, for small, medium and massive health loss. I don't think it'd be easy to do though.

I agree that there are some things that can be left to instinct. Usually this is about the enemy units' capabilities: we don't need to know how much health an alien has, since we can learn that it takes two sniper hits on average to kill one of those redshirt guys. We don't need to know the exact chance an alien has of reaction firing, since it should be a threat, and there are actions the player can take to avoid being picked off by reaction shots. (Well, mostly. Let's just say there's some guys in the Chris Mod that I'm not looking forward to meeting.)

On the other hand, when it comes to decisions we have to make in the game, it's not much fun being denied info. Imagine having to guess how that rock in front of the alien effects your target, or having no indication what was in your line of sight, or what's been explored this particular turn and what's actually grey fog of war. Or not being told that firing through smoke is an automatic miss. How about we go back to the OG and not have TUs remaining shown on the walk path?

Let me be clear that I'm not trying to set up a strawman here! I know no-one wants to go backwards when it comes to the UI improvements. I'm just making the case for more feedback, so that I can make informed choices. Let bad play come from making bad calls, and not from opaque mechanics.

Some armor indication would be nice in the event that aliens get armor. For balance with armor though there really needs to be some setting for overall % degradation of the armor of all damage types though because I'm having a hard time with the armor while I'm switching between tiers that change damage types and I'm having a hard time making explosive weapons make sense. Explosives should be able to soften up the armor of a heavily armored unit so that my regular weapons can make it through and my regular weapons should damage the armor so that the explosion will blow it up.

Having the option for numbers on/off would be nice and so would having a sound effect, although I usually don't play with the sound on.

I'm a numbers guy and I'm in the config files all the time and the suppression mechanic still confuses me half of the time. For example: I have a few guys about 6 tiles away from an alien around the corner. We can't see him but we can shoot the tile right in front of him. I can offload 2 shotgun shots and 8 pistol shots on that tile and a few assault rifle shots and the alien doesn't get suppressed. If I load and instead shoot 2 sniper shots in that tile, the alien is suppressed. Looking at the files that should be like 200 suppression in the first instance and 80 in the second. Heck, I can even go out there with the pistol guy and shoot the alien 8 times in the face and he doesn't get suppressed even though that should be 80 suppression.

Also, grenades just fly weird sometimes bouncing off of a piece of small cover 3 tiles away that would in no way ever block a grenade when you are throwing it to the other side of the room... but if you smoke the room first it seems like you never miss.

You're not alone about suppression. For example, I'm unsure whether an LMG's 40 suppression counts as "one" shot (the same way burst fire does against shields and, I think, environmental stuff like windows?). And grenades are odd, yeah.

I don't know whether there's a way to mod in those explosive rounds. Does armour degradation affect all of the armour, or just the affected category? So if I shoot an alien with a sniper rifle (kinetic type damage), does only its kinetic armour drop or all types? If it's all types, I guess you could buff aliens' incendiary or chemical armour by a large amount, and then set the explosive ammo to incendiary/chemical type damage. You'd have to alter other weapons to match, of course, but it's the only possibility I can think of. It's a long shot, though.

Edited January 6, 2014 by Ol' Stinky

[Gauddlike]

More eloquent than I was but same sentiment

[llunak]

The hidden movement phase gives no real valuable information in sound form so she misses nothing important.

Try it with the volume off and I can pretty much guarantee your decisions would not be altered.

...

I think you are mistaking visual for text based.

Incorrect (steps, door opening, firing, deaths), incorrect and incorrect.

[Chris]

The balance patch is available now and can be downloaded here: http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/8660-V20-Experimental-Balance-Patch-1-Available%21

I've sorta lost track of what this thread is talking about now, but I don't really want to show armour on the damage numbers as I think damage alone is fine. And you're lucky to even have that! In my day, we didn't have damage numbers at all...

*grumble grumble, shakes fist*

[Ol' Stinky]

Incorrect (steps, door opening, firing, deaths), incorrect and incorrect.

You've got a point. There should be an option for people with hearing difficulties that allows "subtitles" for the important info, like [Civilian death cry!] or [Alien shout of pain!].

The balance patch is available now and can be downloaded here: http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/8660-V20-Experimental-Balance-Patch-1-Available%21

I've sorta lost track of what this thread is talking about now, but I don't really want to show armour on the damage numbers as I think damage alone is fine. And you're lucky to even have that! In my day, we didn't have damage numbers at all...

*grumble grumble, shakes fist*

I guess I'll try and get back on topic. Changes you can make without the whole team, right? I can't talk about the mod just yet. Okay then.

I was sort of vague earlier about suppression, but I've gone away and thought about it, and I think what actually bothers me is that a rifle's snap shot is capable of chain suppressing a lot of aliens. That's fine at the very beginning, but it should drop off sooner than it does. A Caesan warrior regens all of 20 suppression a turn. So you get one guy who spends his turn suppressing three aliens, then everyone else can focus fire on "real" shots to kill one target. Maybe reduce a single shot for a rifle down to 10 suppression and bump up suppression regen a bit? It's not a problem for shotguns or pistols because of their short range.

I also want soldiers to be able to take cover behind 2x1 or 2x1 props and be able to shoot over freely. I don't know if it's as simple as setting IgnoreCoverRange to 2 or whether you would have to wrangle with a million lines of code, though.

Edited January 6, 2014 by Ol' Stinky

[Gauddlike]

Incorrect (steps, door opening, firing, deaths), incorrect and incorrect.

Last time I looked all of those things were visually represented when the player has line of sight.

Steps are shown by the character walking, doors open visually, firing has an animation and a projectile animation, when a unit dies it displays an animation.

When they are shown under the hidden movement screen I find knowing that a door has opened somewhere on the map useless as you almost always have no way of knowing where it is so no way of using the information tactically.

Missing out on information with so little influence is of much less importance than missing out on information that can actually be acted upon.

Definitely drifting off topic though as Chris says, it is also going nowhere.

As for damage numbers I could live without those as well, they are only shown on the lower difficulty levels anyway which most of us will probably not play on as we will be quite experienced by release.

[smoitessier]

To each his own,

My personal taste would be to remove as many numbers from the batlescape as possible, seeing stun damage never felt right, seeing hit damage was OMG COOL! but now the novelty has worn off long ago,

How about an option for that btw

[jeon]

To each his own,

My personal taste would be to remove as many numbers from the batlescape as possible, seeing stun damage never felt right, seeing hit damage was OMG COOL! but now the novelty has worn off long ago,

How about an option for that btw

If you play on Veteran or Insane you won't see damage numbers on the aliens.

[smoitessier]

If you play on Veteran or Insane you won't see damage numbers on the aliens.

Good point! thanks, i'm too used to play on normal

[Ol' Stinky]

If you still want to play on normal but really hate those numbers, browse to Xenonauts\assets\config.xml and open it in a text editor. Look for the following lines:

    <DamageText offset="-84" offsetCrouched="-64" displayDelay="1.5" fadeDelay="0.5"               difficultyEasyOn="1" difficultyNormalOn="1" difficultyVeteranOn="0" difficultySuperhumanOn="0">       <DamageColour     red="1.0" green="0.2" blue="0.2" />       <StunDamageColour red="0.3" green="0.3" blue="1.0" />       <HealingColour    red="0.2" green="1.0" blue="0.2" />   </DamageText>

All you need to do is change difficultyNormalOn="1" to difficultyNormalOn="0". Save and you're good to go.

[Khall]

I was thinking about making the burst fire on heavy plasma function more as a short range suppression tool. Increase it's current suppression by a lot (currently at 30, same as single fire), increase the range (currently at 5) and decrease overall accuracy.

Also could the TU cost for burst fire on assault rifles be lowered, 2 snap shot deal the same amount of suppression for the same cost, at a much higher accuracy.

[legit1337]

The whole accuracy/supression balance when it comes to snap/normal/aimed/burst shots needs to be looked at...

One time on the battlescape, one of my own soldiers was blocking my LOS. I actually had LESS chance to hit her and GREATER chance of hitting the alien i was aiming at with a snap shot then with a normal shot... which made no sense.

I have little idea of how the shooting mechanics work now but they should have these rules...

-Burst/automatic should offer more supression per individual shot then semi-auto fire. Under NO circumstances should a snap shot be more accurate then a normal/aimed shot. Snap shots should be weighted so that it is more TU efficient to shoot with normal/aimed shots then with multiple snap shots. Reaction fire should be taken at the most efficient shot the soldier has TU for.

-Aiming mode should not affect cover %.

Edited January 9, 2014 by legit1337

[Sapare]

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.

I have not read the rest of the topic (though the first post yes) but I just remember reading this some time back and it never stoped bugging me.

Is this really a good design decision? One of the major things that made XCOM EU(the new game) terrible was the lack of impact do to strategic decisions. I will go quote my own review of the game(it was rambly and writen late at night):

Because just about every single thing you can do has simply has far too little actual impact on the game. Cover can either lower your chance to be hit by 20%, or 40%. Which might not sound like so little but considering that the whole game is cenetered around the concept of cover and by extension of it flanking, it means that flanking is not a nessesary move, cover simply isnt reliable as it is. Compared to other such games(Warhamer/LOTR/40k) where a wall would be a wall and it would give you 100% cover, and flanking it would give you 100% more of a chance to hit.(small cover would amount to something akin to 50%)

Add to it that just about every unit in this game has 60 to 75% aim, and the fact that the 20% and 40% is a simple reduction(not a multiplcation or such, simply: 75% is your aim, -40% is cover, 35% chance to hit. And 1 hit mostlikely means dead) and you quickly find out that hiding behind a wall has very little actual power, at which point it becomes clear that the direction of engagment is rather a minor detail.

I LOVE this game(at least I loved v.19, personal events stoped me from playing recently), but I strongly advise against making the mistakes of XCOM EU, where almost nothing you did had a reliable consequence.

Cover SHOULD be useful, if you are behind a wall you should not be shoo table unless the wall is gone, bullets don't magically travel past walls. If walls are not reliable then shooting at the guy behind cover 5 times is better then moving to flank him and get 2 flanked shots.

[Chris]

At this point, it's much easier to play the balance patch than it is to theorycraft on it. The balance patch is here: http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/8688-V20-Experimental-Balance-Patch-2-Available%21

My original ideas have gone through quite a bit of discussion and been iterated twice, so they have changed a bit since the original post. As people probably don't want to read 14 pages to catch up on what's actually happened, I'm going to close the thread and we'll continue discussion in the patch threads (and likely on Friday I'll release a new Experimental build that has a further iteration of the balance).