V21 Experimental 1 Available!

[Max_Caine]

It's not that Jackal armour is more heavy, it's that the amount of weight soliders can carry has been significantly reduced. If you want to know why that happened, I refer you to this thread.

[Ashery]

Jackal armor is really heavy now. My marksman with 62 strength takes TU penalties carrying any more than his rifle, a single grenade and spare magazine. Is it intentional that jackal armored soldiers should take TU penalties for bringing any more than the bare minimum gear?

My understanding of the balance is that Jackal armor serves as the early game heavy armor. That is, you won't be using it save on soldiers that you'll be putting in the line of fire (Shield, assault, certain rifle builds, etc).

[KateMicucci]

9kg difference between jackal armor and pajamas = 9 grenades. The difference is too high. Even a very weak unarmored soldier can run around with a rifle, magazine, two grenades, C4, a medkit, AND a shield without taking penalties. Even a strong soldier takes penalties in armor with a rifle, a reload and a pair of grenades. If jackal armor weighed 4-5kg less than it does now that would be much better.

My machinegunner in a mission I'm playing now with nothing but the MG, jackal armor and a single reload doesn't even have enough TU to reload. Are my heavy weapons soldiers *really* meant to go naked until they get power armor?

Edited January 12, 2014 by KateMicucci

[Falesh]

1) Shields still let through shots. In the three missions I played, I lost two guys to shots which got through the shields.

The shields are there for the shot that you cannot control. When you see an alien, or multiple aliens, you can control the situation with smoke (and I don't mean abusing it like ccrunner1756 points out but things like using smoke to allow a soldier to get close enough for a flashbang), flashbangs, retreating and scenery rearrangement with c4. Because of that I think that an 80% block chance is amazing, it is effectively a second life for your troops. If you are getting shot a lot then your shields will melt and you will get the 20% shots through, but I think that is a good thing as the shields could be seriously overpowered otherwise.

Having said all that my strategy works by using lots of men, I don't take a vehicle. I can't say if the balance is good when you take a vehicle. And I also can't say for sure if the game should be balanced for having multiple turn firefights with the aliens, as it stands doing that would be deadly.

[Ol' Stinky]

The shields are there for the shot that you cannot control. When you see an alien, or multiple aliens, you can control the situation with smoke (and I don't mean abusing it like ccrunner1756 points out but things like using smoke to allow a soldier to get close enough for a flashbang), flashbangs, retreating and scenery rearrangement with c4. Because of that I think that an 80% block chance is amazing, it is effectively a second life for your troops. If you are getting shot a lot then your shields will melt and you will get the 20% shots through, but I think that is a good thing as the shields could be seriously overpowered otherwise.

Having said all that my strategy works by using lots of men, I don't take a vehicle. I can't say if the balance is good when you take a vehicle. And I also can't say for sure if the game should be balanced for having multiple turn firefights with the aliens, as it stands doing that would be deadly.

Vehicles can see for miles - 20 tiles to the soldiers' 18. The downsides are that you give up two soldiers to get one on board, they have costs for construction ($6k for a hunter, iirc) and need a garage on top of that, need research to get going, limited ammo that can't be replenished by a soldier acting as a mule, no utility in terms of grenades/medkits/c4 etc., and that they're not suitable for all map types. I think going pure soldiers is the best approach right now, but that +2 vision is so powerful that it's still viable if you keep the tank at the back.

[smoitessier]

except for the new reaction fire system. That was prototype code and will take some time to implement it in-game properly.

The system is great but easily abusable at least early on when you can storm a light scout with shotguns and run all the way to the back of the ship and shoot them at point blanks from the sides. maybe it doesn't matter because later on in the game the ships will be bigger (thinking landing ships big), and it won't be so easy plus with more adversaries.

Other wise I was thinking perhaps if it's not a huge amount of work, to apply a bias to the AI's and Xeno's reaction based on how long an enemy stays in LoS while moving. If the enemy is heading straight for them their calculations could give them a slight bonus. Something like each successive turns they pretend that you use extra TUs (idk +1-2 TUs?).They would loose said bonus as soon as they lost LoS.

Maybe it's too complicated, maybe just letting the AI think you use 4 instead of 3 TU's would fix that?

Or maybe it's just as simple as applying a bigger penalty to weapons?

Edited January 12, 2014 by smoitessier

[Chris]

Guys, there are balance threads for the balance discussions.

[Redwallzyl]

so in what patch were the new faces added? the one with orange hair and glasses is hilarious.

[silencer]

Like the changes for the aiming, now I see a difference between normal and aimed shot.

Also did you changed something to flashbangs or suppression? Just threw a flashbang under caesan non combatant but it didn't suppress him.

[Ol' Stinky]

Like the changes for the aiming, now I see a difference between normal and aimed shot.

Also did you changed something to flashbangs or suppression? Just threw a flashbang under caesan non combatant but it didn't suppress him.

Did you throw it into a UFO from the outside?

[KateMicucci]

Did you throw it into a UFO from the outside?

Does this cause suppression to fail?

[Max_Caine]

It are a bug. Flashbangs don't work properly if you lob one from the outside inside a UFO. That's been a bug since... since when has that been a bug, Stinky? Ages, anyway.

[silencer]

Yep. You can say I wanted to do "Breach, Bang and Clear" tactic. What I get was "Breach, Bang, Dead" one.

[Ol' Stinky]

It are a bug. Flashbangs don't work properly if you lob one from the outside inside a UFO. That's been a bug since... since when has that been a bug, Stinky? Ages, anyway.

I first remember seeing it back when UFOs were tinkered with, which was...some point in v19 experimentals? I think. I can't remember whether it was to fix firing into the UFO being buggily inaccurate or to fix the bug where aliens would never reaction fire if the Xenonauts were standing outside. Maybe both.

Anyway, the best way to get around it is, as always, to use a smoke grenade. The first flashbang will fail (and seems to always trigger reaction fire), but the second one should do the trick. As long as you have one tile of smoke between you and the aliens, you won't get any reaction fire back. Just remember that throwing a smoke grenade can trigger reaction fire, and the reaction fire happens before the smoke deploys! The one who throws the smoke grenade needs to stay out of sight of aliens.

[silencer]

Thanks Stinky. I must say, that is very strange code for Flashbang to have anything in relation to firing weapons.

[Ol' Stinky]

Thanks Stinky. I must say, that is very strange code for Flashbang to have anything in relation to firing weapons.

I've always suspected that it's a bug to do with the fix for aliens never reaction firing at anyone standing outside, but I can't prove it.

Edited January 13, 2014 by Ol' Stinky

[Falesh]

That's strange, I have always breached UFO's by throwing flashbangs in from the outside and I haven't noticed them acting differently. How often does the bug manifest?

[Max_Caine]

It manifests most commonly with Caesan noncoms (that's when I tend to see it). The flashbang is supposed to do more than enough suppression "damage" verses a noncoms bravery that it suppresses it even if you throw the grenade next to it, but the first flashbang doesn't seem to.

[Skitso]

There seems to be whole strange turns when nobody doesn't hit anything. Often, when this kind of turn occurs, most, or even all units on both aliens and xenonauts teams miss multiple shots, even from adjacent spaces. Mostly it happens near/inside ufo, but I've noticed it also in other indoor spaces. Last time I had two caesans in a shed and I rushed 3 shotgun guys, one shield guy with pistol and one AR guy in close combat. They all shot multiple high precentage shots and all missed. "Luckily" both caesans missed their sure kill shots too and next turn I killed both without a problem... Could it be when shooting from one submap to other?

Edited January 13, 2014 by Skitso

[Ol' Stinky]

That's strange, I have always breached UFO's by throwing flashbangs in from the outside and I haven't noticed them acting differently. How often does the bug manifest?

On average I'd say one in five? Maybe? It's hard to tell because if it comes up, I use smoke from that point on.

Here's a v21exp1 save where it happens consistently. Move Wiktoria up to the UFO. open the door, and throw the flashbang. If the two non-coms inside get suppressed, reload. If you don't want to do all that, it's cool, here's what it looks like:

[video=youtube;IuYCbhU1THM]

[silencer]

I found something else with the flashbangs. When I've opened the ufo and threw a flash nothing happened (except aliens reaction). But after opening the gate, throwing smoke, THEN throwing flash it works 100%. So I think it's not that first flash doesn't work. Something else has to be in the way. But this is not the topic to talk about it.

Also, how do you enable how much damage you've done? I had a clear install when V20 H2 hit the road and I don't see any damage over aliens.

Edited January 13, 2014 by silencer

[Ol' Stinky]

I found something else with the flashbangs. When I've opened the ufo and threw a flash nothing happened (except aliens reaction). But after opening the gate, throwing smoke, THEN throwing flash it works 100%. So I think it's not that first flash doesn't work. Something else has to be in the way. But this is not the topic to talk about it.

Also, how do you enable how much damage you've done? I had a clear install when V20 H2 hit the road and I don't see any damage over aliens.

You can either extract this into your Xenonauts dir, or you can browse to .../Xenonauts/assets/config.xml and open it up in a text editor. Go to line 80 and you can toggle it on/off for difficulties. You can also change how long numbers are on screen and stuff.

[silencer]

Ah, so it was a difficulty thingy... cheers. Been playing only on Veteran

[Falesh]

On average I'd say one in five? Maybe? It's hard to tell because if it comes up' date=' I use smoke from that point on.

[u']Here's[/u] a v21exp1 save where it happens consistently. Move Wiktoria up to the UFO. open the door, and throw the flashbang. If the two non-coms inside get suppressed, reload. If you don't want to do all that, it's cool, here's what it looks like:

[video=youtube;IuYCbhU1THM]

Ah, I had assumed that flashbangs had a small percentage chance to fail to suppress something. I actually quite like the failure chance as it forces me not to get blasé.

[llunak]

I think "kill or die" is what they're going for. The feeling I got from Chris' posts about making the balance patches was that back and forth was boring.

I hope not. The feeling I got from Chris' posts was that the idea was to make GC more tense, but I would consider getting it way too close to the OG a mistake, as actual firefights in the OG are in fact boring.

As soon as heavy plasma makes insta-kills the normal case in the OG, fights are almost always the same. If the aliens first get to shoot, they give it a go, and it's either insta-kill for a soldier, or the soldier is unscathed. After that, it's XCOM's turn to shoot, and there either the alien dies the very turn, or all soldiers in LOS of the alien need to be hidden, so that the alien doesn't get a chance to shoot again. Repeat if necessary, but fights rarely take longer than a single turn. Fights themselves are only tense at the beginning, when ballistics don't have to power to insta-kill aliens, so it needs more effort and skill to get the kill. What makes GC tense in the OG is actually the searching for the aliens, shooting them is just a chore.

The same way, kill or die will be boring here as well. Fights will be too fast to actually do anything besides just shooting, as there will be no time for flanking or anything similar. And the way too high chance to get killed will mean people won't try anything, and will probably resort to cheesy tactics like smoke overuse. I actually quite like firefights in V20, not that it couldn't get better still, but the reason why they used to be boring wasn't because back and forth would be boring, but because there was only forth and not much back.