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V20 Experimental Balance Patch 2 Available!


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PLEASE DO NOT REPORT BUGS IF YOU ARE USING THIS BALANCE PATCH, IT WILL JUST CONFUSE US! Please keep discussion / bug reports limited to this thread!

So the changes in Experimental Balance Patch 1 have been received well in general, but some further tweaks have been implemented.

- Aliens are now about 10-15% less accurate across the board in terms of stats

- Alien accuracy modifier reduced from 1.3x to 1x

- Alien sight range reduced to 18, equal with Xenonauts

- We've put in a completely new reaction fire system for you to test (details below). They are hopefully less deadly with the reaction fire than before.

- Weapon accuracy zoom levels have been revised so snap shots are less accurate and higher levels are more TU-effective in terms of accuracy.

- Xenonauts are a bit less prone to panic than before.

- Difficulty setting variables have been tweaked so the Normal of the previous game is now Veteran. If you're an experienced X-Com player, please play on Veteran. Aliens have an additional 20% stat reduction if you play on Normal.

Download instructions:

1) Get the file here: http://www.xenonauts.com/devfiles/balancepatchV2.zip

2) Navigate to your game directory

3) Unzip the file into /assets/ and overwrite everything, then replace the executable

4) Play the game!

New Reaction Fire System:

This system is quick test code so it has some issues, for instance units will try to reaction fire at units that are out of their range with their shotguns etc. You're mostly testing the balance principles here, so try to ignore any issues with implementation for now.

The system is the same system that was in the original X-Com. There's no "reaction checks", rather each unit has an Initiative score that is their Reflex stat multiplied by the % of their TU they have remaining (so a unit with 20 / 40 TU remaining and 60 Reflexes would have an Initiative score of 30).

If two units are in each other's LOS, the one with the higher Initiative gets to act. If it's an enemy, they will fire their weapons until their Initiative drops below the Initiative of the unit that is moving, handing the turn back to the enemy.

The main advantage to this system is that units with bad reflexes still get to act, eventually - they don't have to "pass" a reflexes test or anything. It also means that units don't waste reaction fire shooting at a target that is already dead, as Initiative is resolved sequentially. Give it a go and see what you think.

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How is movement, particularly short openings, handled within this system?

Will units be able to run through a tile or two, which are covered by somebody with low enough initiative, without triggering reaction fire?

edit: i see, in EU as long as you have initiative higher than enemy, you can do whatever you want.

Edited by a333
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This sounds like a dream come true, was wondering what happens when you have two soldiers in the alien's view, will he shoot the closest or whichever one moves?

Also are weapons still used to boost reaction scores? i.e. would a pistol or even unarmed soldier fair better than one with a ballistic rifle, to avoid reaction fire as they try to get to cover?

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I saw something wrong with Seb guard AI now. They ran towards my troops, then ran away, seemingly in an endless loop. They didn't fire their guns - in fact, they didn't seem to be holding guns at all. Is anyone else getting this, or did I botch my installation?

Caes worked fine when I ran into them.

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I saw something wrong with Seb guard AI now. They ran towards my troops' date=' then ran away, seemingly in an endless loop. They didn't fire their guns - in fact, they didn't seem to be holding guns at all. Is anyone else getting this, or did I botch my installation?

Caes worked fine when I ran into them.[/quote']

I'm getting the same problem with sebs. At first I thought I was crazy but they were indeed entirely unarmed.

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less random involved - better overal gameplay. (too much randomness always evil)

giving player ability to use brain and position units in proper order for definite reaction fire on incoming forces is very good plan.

with this change we also need ability to throw grenades from corners, in other case opening UFO door always suicide (since alliens wait inside with full TU and higher reflex score.

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Very easy and very quick fix to the problem of weaponless guard Sebillians. If you open aiprops, and go to the Sebillian section, you'll notice in the Guard entry the Reflexes stat isn't properly enclosed. If you fix that, it should give you weaponised Sebbies (there's another reflexes stat that also needs fixing in the Sebbie section as well).

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Very easy and very quick fix to the problem of weaponless guard Sebillians. If you open aiprops, and go to the Sebillian section, you'll notice in the Guard entry the Reflexes stat isn't properly enclosed. If you fix that, it should give you weaponised Sebbies (there's another reflexes stat that also needs fixing in the Sebbie section as well).

What sloppy coding! :P

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Very easy and very quick fix to the problem of weaponless guard Sebillians. If you open aiprops, and go to the Sebillian section, you'll notice in the Guard entry the Reflexes stat isn't properly enclosed. If you fix that, it should give you weaponised Sebbies (there's another reflexes stat that also needs fixing in the Sebbie section as well).

Heh i corrected airprops.xml for myself an now everything work fine.Thx for this info.

Also for those who know how to edit xml

You have to enclose Reflexes under "SoldierSupport" too in order for everything to work fine beside Guardian's Reflexes prop (Sebillians)

Edited by Sentelin
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Download instructions:

1) Get the file here: http://www.xenonauts.com/devfiles/balancepatchV2.zip

2) Navigate to your game directory

3) Unzip the file into /assets/ and overwrite everything, then replace the executable

4) Play the game!

You mean Copy in the main Directory. Unzip give me a Assets and Exe. So i must copy the Exe, assets in the main Directory and overwrite all.

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This feels much better after a couple of missions. Aliens no longer hit with every shot, but it's still quite punishing. The original's reaction fire system is definitely good, I like how it gives low-TU weapons an extra benefit in that they're better for reaction fire. Yay pistols!

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Very easy and very quick fix to the problem of weaponless guard Sebillians. If you open aiprops, and go to the Sebillian section, you'll notice in the Guard entry the Reflexes stat isn't properly enclosed. If you fix that, it should give you weaponised Sebbies (there's another reflexes stat that also needs fixing in the Sebbie section as well).

Nice catch!

Random notes from playing this evening:

  • A big "thank you" for letting us stand behind a 2x1/1x2 prop and not hit our own cover!

  • The different aim modes feel better than experimental 1.

  • Civs seem to have a sight range of 16 again. I've set it to 20 for my playthrough.

  • I've lost a bunch of guys, but mostly because of silly mistakes (assuming I'd killed all the outdoor aliens, sloppy miscalculation of TUs when breaching, etc.). I think what'd help improve the AI is to try and use LoS a bit better. Right now, it values staying behind cover in Xenonaut LoS over moving out of LoS. I know the AI can tell which squares are in the enemy's LoS, but can it tell without uncovering enemy units? If it can't, maybe it'd be worth setting EnemyLoS to a positive number (it's -0.25 right now, i.e. it favours enemy LoS tiles slightly).

  • Are the assault rifles, LMGs and sniper rifles meant to have 30 range? This was the case in balance patch #1 as well, but I kept schtum because I'm a jerk that way.
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Very easy and very quick fix to the problem of weaponless guard Sebillians. If you open aiprops, and go to the Sebillian section, you'll notice in the Guard entry the Reflexes stat isn't properly enclosed. If you fix that, it should give you weaponised Sebbies (there's another reflexes stat that also needs fixing in the Sebbie section as well).

Thanks a lot for the fix!

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Last couple of things to post tonight:

1) I got an AI loop hang on a terror mission. Y'all might want to edit out reapers on a terror map since it's caused by them reaping civs, iirc. Go to Xenonauts\assets\ufocontents\ and you'll see which file to edit.

2) Cae guard supports don't seem to have weapons either, and I can't see an unenclosed value like there was for the Sebs. Is it something to do with a low EngagementRange? I've only seen them at 25 before (and when I was looking for that Str bug, I only ever increased it, not decreased it).

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The balance is fun, but it's close to unplayable because of common crashing. I have to assume it's something with the new reaction fire mechanic, always happens in the middle of a unit move, so it could be alien reaction fire that crashes while triggering.

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I've played to sep 20th with no crashes, but there are some bugs with reaction fire, like all your soldiers will take a shot even if the alien is already dead.

So far i'm liking the increased movement, and the game is a little more deadly versus v20 stable, (haven't had any experience with the previous balance mod).

Also some seb guards (scout, desert map) are behaving dumb, just running around without shooting my guy standing in plain sight, i'm assuming they have the same vision range as us?

edit: also with this reaction system, i can easily flank aliens (even caesarians) in the back of a light scout with a shootie without getting reaction fired, it's much easier now for that

edit: i was playing on normal difficulty...

Edited by smoitessier
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