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V20 Experimental Balance Patch 2 Available!


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Opening doors doesn't offer reaction fire as far as I can tell. I abuse it quite a lot to keep track of what they are doing inside the UFO before I breach. I don't know if it's worth changing either though seeing as you'll end up just getting the guy that's doing it to equip a pistol and shield to reduce reactions against him. (If I read how it works correctly?).

Also in my game it looks like the Light Drones have the wrong model, they are using the caesian model for some reason, red shirt. They have the right sounds still but I'm not sure if they are able to shoot or not, I killed them before they got a chance. When this build goes back onto experimental I'll try grab a save for you to look at if you want.

I'm just about to try my first landing ship on this play through as well when you put it back up, if I notice anything else weird happening I'll let you know!

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Steam won't overwrite the files until there's an actual update pushed by the devs, so it's safe to leave auto-update enabled.

Well, the .exe is showing a last modified of 1/8 @ 11:57am (Nearly half a day after I had last played/messed with files) and it's displaying the strategic layer UI instead of the usual main menu UI at launch, which is exactly what happened when I failed to replace the .exe when I initially installed the balance patch. My saves are also from the pre-balance patch install. The assets/maps/ directory is still showing an earlier date, so that side looks good, but I'm a bit weary about using the .exe from the balance patch without knowing what was changed in the more recent one.

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Max brought up shields earlier, I know, but I want to vent a bit. Sorry!

I'd like to see them pushed up to 90% or even 95% chance to block a shot. I'd also like to see the two angles (45 and 90 degrees) made the same in terms of block percentage. In exchange, the first shield (I can never remember whether we start off with combat or assault shields, sorry) should probably have less than 200hp. 120 perhaps? 100? So shields are more reliable, but for a lot less longer.

The shields we start off with don't need to be that strong. Really, they need to have stricter tiers. The requirements for a shield against light scout and scout missions are not the same as requirements for a shield that needs to navigate an alien base, which can appear around corvette time. Either in balance patch 2 or v20 vanilla, against light/normal scouts my shield guys won't get that much fire coming in compared to a base that has a ton of alien reaction fire opportunities - especially once doors trigger reaction fire! As for the artwork, will anyone who buys and plays the game at proper release notice or care that you reuse the combat shield artwork? It's a hunk of square metal, just have the Xenopedia say something along the lines of, "It's a shield, but now it's made out of alien supermetal" or "This time, we refined our techniques and our equipment and shields are even sturdier!"

In an ideal world, I'd like a shield failure not be "completely ignore the shield" but "split damage between shield and shieldbearer". That way you can have shields be riskier than armour without the game wiping out a shield guy at random. But that's probably reasonable to ask for at this point in time, so I'll sit here and pout instead.

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I agree, I'd like to see the shield tweaked a bit too. It feels odd that it doesn't seem to be that good at what it IMO should be for (breaching and approaching known danger zones) but it excels at other things (outdoors - it makes me cringe seeing in some youtube videos how people can get away cheaply with awful tactics just because they run around everywhere with shield guys as fast and rather safe scouts).

I don't think lowering the shield HP would work though. It appears to be a common practice to carry extra replacement shield in the backpack, so indoors the shield would work even worse, while outdoors they'd simply get replaced safely (and the shields don't seem to weight that much, 3kg is more like a riot shield rather than ballistic shield which should weight at least double of that). I think what might work would be increasing the chance of hitting a shield-equipped soldier - they are rather big after all. So with the increased chance not to get hit behind it (1 out of 5 feels way too much) they should still work reasonably well indoors, because the shield would get hit anyway, but it wouldn't be such a free card in the outdoors.

It might be also interesting to give a slight TU movement penalty to shield soldiers (they already can't vault, would they really be able to run that fast while having something as cumbersome as that equipped?). It wouldn't really matter much indoors and it could explain why it's so hard to hit somebody using a shield (the soldier is moving slower because of taking extra care to guard themselves with it).

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Hm, yeah, you're right in that lower HP means you simply bung another shield in the backpack. I confess I hold two shields in the bag as it is. I'm not sure a TU penalty will help either, all that means is that the entire squad moves slower. The extra size = extra chance to be hit - but only on the shield - is interesting though.

Maybe they shouldn't be able to be stored in the backpack at all. They're either equipped or they sit in the base stores/on the ground. (Increase their size by 1 box in each direction?) It used to be that they weighed a ton, but that sucked when the shield guy had to put on armour; it's not cool having a guy who can only shoot a pistol since he has no grenades.

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I wouldn't like it if it was impossible to put a shield in the backpack. I usually have my shield guys running with assault rifles in the outdoors and they switch to shields only when breaching. It may not be very realistic, but the obvious workaround would be to run back to the Chinook for it before breaching, which would only make things annoying, and the alternatives would be having useless shield guys in the outdoors, or giving up on shields completely, so I think reality should give a way here.

I didn't know the game when shields weighed more, but would it really be such a problem if a shield was something like 8-10kg? That could make a soldier carry armor, shield and one extra (several grenades or two-handed gun). That's with V20, with the reduced capacity suggested elsewhere an armor guy probably won't be able to carry anything but the basics one way or another.

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I see what you mean, you'd get shield guy to drop it on the first turn and pick it up later. Bleh. The trouble with shields back when they were really heavy was that with armour you could barely carry any grenades at all, meaning you had a guy who could only shoot a pistol. That's pretty boring considering that grenades are this game's equivalent of spells/psi powers/whatever name for special abilities. I can't remember what the weight of shields used to be, so it might be a case of jumping from one extreme to the other. I'll admit increasing the weight seems like the only solution. It probably wouldn't be as bad in the balance patches because you can actually hire a high STR guy if you're lucky.

Edited by Ol' Stinky
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Disclaimer: this might be me borking something on the installation of the balance patch or something, so if no-one else has the problem with the save provided, we're cool.

I'm having a problem with the AI in my game. One some of my custom, desert maps there's a compund surrounded by sand. The compound has solid concrete walls except for the one and only entrance. The civs and allies spawn inside the compound, but there's no way the AI should know that as they've all spawned outside. Besides, the civs are inside a building. However, these two Caesans are making a beeline for the civs. The trouble is that they're so desperate for civ death that they're not taking much care about my men, electing to forge on through gunfire to get inside the compound.

Or maybe they're not trying to get the civs, maybe they just really like it and want to move it. Either way, it was easy for me to form a firing squad like below and murder the two of the three casean guards who want in. What's also weird is that while they'd see me and fire at me, they'd move towards the unseen civs.

MSfXsCX.jpg

Here's the link to the save, although you'll need Stinky Map Pack 2 to play (I think the map's in the community pack as well, but I could be wrong as I'm not sure exactly which map it is).

If the Caesan guards don't show up at first, give them a turn or six. The guard who prefers to stay outside will be crouching behind cover if you go straight SW from the chinook. The other two will creep along the SW perimeter of the compound until they find delicious meat.

PS: I also had trouble shooting a non-com inside the light scout at point blank range. I had to move a space away before the shot would land: four 95% shots missed at point blank with a pistol, which seems more than a bit unlucky. Also, shieldbearers don't seem to use a grenade throwing animation, or it's speeded up to the point where I can't see it.

Edited by Ol' Stinky
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Disclaimer: th....

If the entire building is surrounded by sand, i.e. open view, the Ceasans might just be trying to get to locations which they evaluate as being more easy to protect. (Surrounded by walls, option for open sight, etc.)

However; this doesn't explain why they wouldn't attack your units on sight.

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Sorry, I should have explicitly said that aliens still attack my guys. It's the pathing that's weird, here. Even when I set EnemyLoS to something like 3, they crouch down next to the wall or still try to get in after firing. There are props around outside to take cover behind, but no LoS blocks. Here's a screenshot of what I mean:

hTZCVUl.png

It's odd because this is the only map I've seen this happen on. I tried setting Sight="0" for the Caesans and only one of them started trying to get inside, so that's something. Maybe I'm underestimating how powerful an effect Sight has on the Decision weights. On other maps when I've pushed the EnemyLoS values up a bit, it's never failed to make enemies duck out of sight after taking a shot if there's no cover around. I was expecting the Caesans to shoot at my guys and then move back around the concrete wall SW corner on the outside.

Edit: I've set Sight to negative values, but two of the Caesan guards still want to get into the compound. The third one does what you'd expect and sits behind cover, out of sight.

Edited by Ol' Stinky
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The burst on the assault rifle is so inaccurate it feels useless except at very very close range. Aliens 4 or 5 tiles away only had a 18-24% chance to hit with the assault rifle burst. Not a good use of 40 points.

Not that spending 40 points on an aimed shot is much better. Aliens aren't supposed to be as tough now, but they're still able to soak up assault rifle rounds like the bugs in Starship Troopers. How about a boost of 5 points of damage?

The machine gun also doesn't feel very useful. I dropped my machine gunner and bring along a second precision rifle instead. It isn't powerful enough to make up for being a heavy weapon, and as a suppression tool it doesn't cut it.

Aliens are overwhelmingly powerful on any mission where there are more than 15 of them. They like to rush in to hugging range with the xenonauts after 3 turns now, and unless they're all kitted out with shotguns the xenonauts just do not have the firepower to kill the aliens fast enough.

0 crashes with this build so far.

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The machine gun also doesn't feel very useful. I dropped my machine gunner and bring along a second precision rifle instead. It isn't powerful enough to make up for being a heavy weapon, and as a suppression tool it doesn't cut it.

Hilariously enough, I'm strongly considering adapting machine guns to close-range breaching. Shotguns often don't take down aliens in a single shot and thus have to deal with reaction fire one shotting them in turn, and while machine guns may not get the kill in a single burst, they at least provide substantial suppression and open up a small window in which I can safely nade the rear of the light scout.

In complete agreement re:AR's burst fire being underpowered. Ballistic weapons in general seem to do fairly low damage. I once had an unarmored sniper go down to my berserking shotgunner only after three full point blank shots. The sniper had actually gone back to heal'em, too, which pissed me off even more, heh.

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...

The machine gun also doesn't feel very useful. I dropped my machine gunner and bring along a second precision rifle instead. It isn't powerful enough to make up for being a heavy weapon, and as a suppression tool it doesn't cut it.

Aliens are overwhelmingly powerful on any mission where there are more than 15 of them. They like to rush in to hugging range with the xenonauts after 3 turns now, and unless they're all kitted out with shotguns the xenonauts just do not have the firepower to kill the aliens fast enough.

0 crashes with this build so far.

Since suppression from it is very common I personaly do find it useful... Getting them easily supressed sometimes means more than raw damage output IMHO :)

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It seems like the real problem with MGs is that I wasn't using enough of them. With a squad of nothing but MGers I cleared the first light scout easily with no deaths. Its only when trying to use a single MG as a support weapon that it appears useless. The blame for that can probably be placed on how weak the ARs are. The suppression from a single MG doesn't do much when the riflemen can't kill the alien before his next turn starts.

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Okay, we have been told to come here with talk of balance.

I find the balance that is in v21.1 to not be very enjoyable. Shields and cover are pretty useless now.

Aliens can kill you with reaction fire if you take a shot at them, and in my case, it was quite often.

Aliens shot me while 6 squares into FOW.

Aliens to accurate and mostly kill in one, no fun at all.

But for those players that like their games brutal, they will probably love it. I just hope you add a casual mode without these new balances.

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I've gotten quite far in my v21 experimental playthrough and my top soldier is a heavy I started the game with, and it's just devastating. Enough strength for armor and extra ammo and high accuracy guarantees 3/5 shots usually hitting. Other than this one soldier using the mg as a death machine, though, I find mgs only good for the suppress affect. Which can be very useful against a group of aliens.

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Still playing through the terror site I mentioned above - nightmare. Apart from the Wraith problem I have noticed long processing time for the alien turn when there are any flames on the map.

Not the easiest thing to test but I did manage to take an alien out with and without causing flames to appear. Alien turn was much shorter.

Also had my first experience of Alien Psychic powers (or at least I think the pop up said something about a soldier being subverted. My soldier shot once, and then I had to ctrl+alt+del out as the turn was still going on after 10 minutes. Previous Alien turn was around 20 seconds.

However a big please, please, please, please make Alien psychic powers only usable from line of sight and within sight range of the Alien using them (I am not sure if this is the case as I do not know which Aliens can use them - it was an officer than popped into view in the example above). The OG had this exact problem, being able to mind control something that the mind controlling soldier/Alien could not actually see directly.

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