Ground Combat Balance Discussion Build V21 Experimental 1!

[Ol' Stinky]

While I agree that snap shots were better off when they were lower acc/AP than the other shots, I want better snap shots to stay for close combat weapons like the pistol and shotgun. The long distance guns work fine in close quarters while CQC weapons don't work for sniping, so I don't think it's over the top.

[Ashery]

...playing ironamn in a game where RNG is king is not much joy.

Yes and no.

Part of the problem with the Firaxis reboot is that you don't have room to soak up a bad RNG roll. In the original, you could lose a handful of troops every mission and still be nearly as effective as before, you'd just be covering less ground and not sending a wave of shock jocks in to capture an alien. While Xenonauts doesn't quite have the numbers of the original, it's a hell of a lot better than the reboot.

Roguelikes (DCSS is what comes to mind mainly) also follow the "yes and no" point in that skill boils down to small bumps in your chance to successfully pull off some action with "resources" like health acting as your number of attempts. That is to say, it all boils down to playing the statistics, and knowing when to run like hell.

Now, I'm not able to make a judgement on how well cover is currently balanced, but I wanted to argue against your quoted bit.

[ls35a]

I'm not a big fan of many of the balance changes. It seems the aliens can see for miles, shoot amazingly accurately (even with reaction fire, which they seem to do abundantly; even the sebbies, who are meant to be a bit slow) and slaughter my hapless troops before I've finished getting them off the chopper. The reduced APs are ok, but TBH I much preferred the previous iteration. Also, the weight thing sucks; as soon as I put Jackal armour on anyone, all they can carry is one weapon and one magazine. Lame.

Oh, one other thing - if you're behind a bit of cover, you should be able to stay behind it and shoot around it from in cover (ie not have it be 100% blocked).

Agree 100%. The 'I can hit two guys at a distance in one turn' sebbies are a real game breaker. Not a fan of this version.

[KateMicucci]

I haven't had anybody die on the chopper.

Sebelians are acting strange though. They seem to have two modes- passive and useless, and aggressive murder machines. I've completed two terror missions against Sebelians without losing any of my soldiers because they were stuck in passive behavior and at least half of them never managed to take a shot at me. Then there have been base defense and UFO recovery missions where they're in aggressive mode and completely slaughter the xenonauts even though they are outnumbered.

[Max_Caine]

That's probably something GJ should know, especially as in Terror missions over half the Sebbies should be murder monsters.

Guys, all you need to do to make aliens not so much one-hit wonders is open up weapons_gc.xml, find the following:

  <Weapon name="weapon.AlienPlasmaRifle" bulletType="normal" emptySound="Empty Click 1">   <props range="30" hands="2" recoil="0" weight="4" isHeavy="0" clipSize="9" reloadAPCost="30" reloadSound="Weapon Assault Rifle Reload" reactionModifier="1" isAlien="1" infiniteAlienAmmo="1" />   <SingleShot sound="Weapon Plasma Rifle Single" delay="1" suppressionValue="30" suppressionRadius="3">     <Set1 ap="25" accuracy="85" />     <Set2 ap="30" accuracy="100" />     <Set3 ap="35" accuracy="120" />   </SingleShot>   <BurstFire ap="40" accuracy="45" sound="Weapon Plasma Rifle Burst" shotCount="3" delay="1" burstdelay="0.2" suppressionValue="30" suppressionRadius="3" />   <GUIImage name="gui/weapons/alienrifle.png"/>   <GroundImage name="grounditemimages/alienrifle.png"/>   <Ammos>     <Ammo name="ammo.alienplasmacell" type="energy" damage="80" mitigation="0">       <Projectile spectre="projectiles/alienbullet/alienbullet" speed="1000"/>               <Impact spectre="particles/alienbulletplume/alienbulletplume"/>     </Ammo>   </Ammos> </Weapon>

And change that "85" to something like "50" or even "40", so it goes from a 1 in 2 to a 1 in 3 chance of hitting. Also change the "45" entry to a "35" or "30" and the chance of a plasma burst hitting goes from 1 in 3 to 1 in 4 (which is pretty much the same as a rifle burst, come to think of it). Reaction fire is always done on snap and burst, so mod those and you're golden.

[Korgath]

I had a look at my troops again and I agree with Skitso, 0.27 should be the modifier for strength. If that leaves undesirable elements like stacking shields etc that need dealt with then we should do that by changing those items specifically. The only other alternative I see is being able to have items consume less than 1kg each (magazines/grenades in particular).

[Ashery]

I haven't had anybody die on the chopper.

Sebelians are acting strange though. They seem to have two modes- passive and useless, and aggressive murder machines. I've completed two terror missions against Sebelians without losing any of my soldiers because they were stuck in passive behavior and at least half of them never managed to take a shot at me. Then there have been base defense and UFO recovery missions where they're in aggressive mode and completely slaughter the xenonauts even though they are outnumbered.

Glad to know I'm not the only one with AI issues. Almost all of my losses are now jackal wearing shield users getting killed in one shot (Hilariously, I had just retired a shield user after fourteen missions prior to a streak of losing my shield user nearly every map; one downside to a passive AI is the frequency of reaction fire during the initial scout). My snipers ended up shooting fish in a barrel during an Adron terror mission.

[Max_Caine]

I think the dissapation value for smoke needs jacking up, to something like 75-80%. Smoke is a little too awesome at the moment, and jacking up the dissapation chance so it's a one-hit wonder would help mitigate the awesomeness.

[Ol' Stinky]

I think the dissapation value for smoke needs jacking up, to something like 75-80%. Smoke is a little too awesome at the moment, and jacking up the dissapation chance so it's a one-hit wonder would help mitigate the awesomeness.

The trouble is that smoke dissipates at the start of the turn, meaning you can use it to get a safe look/shot at the enemy. Simply turn the scout left/right to update the LoS without triggering reaction fire. Then an out of enemy LoS Xenonaut can reapply smoke to exposed soldiers if need be.

Smoke's definitely overpowered as it is, but I don't know what the solution is. A working version of the -accuracy but no effect on LoS smoke would mean you'd have someone throwing smoke as you advance, all the time. They got around that in Firaxis XCom by making it a set number of uses per battle, but no-one wants that in Xenonauts. GJ said he had something in mind though, so I guess we'll see!

[Max_Caine]

Part the problem as I see it is the aliens are not active in doing anything about smoke. If an alien's response to smoke was "grenade out!" or "point that plasma cannon there" then smoke would definatly be less awesome.

[ventuswings]

I think the dissapation value for smoke needs jacking up, to something like 75-80%. Smoke is a little too awesome at the moment, and jacking up the dissapation chance so it's a one-hit wonder would help mitigate the awesomeness.

Agree with Stinky. No matter what the dissipation value is, as long as it disappears at start of Xenonaut turn it won't benefit - and maybe even harm - the aliens.

[Ol' Stinky]

Part the problem as I see it is the aliens are not active in doing anything about smoke. If an alien's response to smoke was "grenade out!" or "point that plasma cannon there" then smoke would definatly be less awesome.

Yeah, they should fire into the smoke anyway to ty and suppress. Aliens without grenades (non-coms, guards) could be given alien flashbangs, too. I do get the odd alien running into smoke, but I'm not convinced they're doing it to find and kill. I think their pathing happens to take them through the smoke and, oh, hey, there's a human in here, who'da thunk it. But even suppressed you'll still be at an advantage with fast-dissipating smoke because you can still pop off a snap shot, and you can reapply the smoke during your turn.

[Max_Caine]

Overloaded plasma pistols might be good to add to the mix here...

[Ol' Stinky]

Overloaded plasma pistols might be good to add to the mix here...

(;

I'd update that mod, but I want to play the balance builds as unmodded as possible. Also, I'm lazy.

[Chris]

Good feedback, people, it's appreciated. I'll look at the balance again in a couple of days.

[StellarRat]

I think the overall accuracy for the aliens and the Xenonauts might be a bit high in v21E1. To me, it seems like anyone you spot is now killable from max. sight distance except with shotguns and pistols. That's actually pretty realistic in modern combat, but I'm not sure it makes the game more fun. Harridans are picking my guys off even cover from a block away. I'm going to play with it a bit more, but is my feeling right now. It could also be the reduction in cover effectiveness too. What I'm trying to figure is why 1/2 height cover doesn't give you close to 100% protection when you're crouched. It seems to me it should. We're talking about only exposing about 1/15 - 1/5 of your body size if you're just peeking/shooting over the top. That's a huge difference.

[Ol' Stinky]

What if we apply the rules for explosions hitting people in cover to all types of damage? I'm quoting the wiki here:

For explosive damage, where there is no standard ‘to hit’ calculation, the cover save represents damage allocation rather than a % chance. If a grenade goes off in front of cover with a 48% stopping chance and the soldier is in cover behind it, dealing 100 damage, the split would be 80 damage to the cover and 20 to the soldier.

So even though some cover might only have a 25% blocking chance, it'd always be worthwhile to crouch behind it since there's a guaranteed damage reduction component. You'd still get the faster pace because shots will land a lot of the time as they do now. Obviously this is a tougher change to make, and the damage allocation would probably be different than in the case of explosions, but it might be a better solution in the end.

[Korgath]

Is there any chance hypervelocity could be brought back? You could increase bonuses in cover and encourage more strategical elements rather than a do or die mentality that way.

[jeon]

I think the strength-weight ratio is fine, but the weight limit to 0 TUs could be upped to a 3x or 4x multiplier, or maybe have a constant added in there too of +10kg or so to make the TU penalty not as sharp to make being overloaded not as bad as fast as it is now.

The weapon damage is a bit high for my taste, I'm not a fan of one shot kills so often. The shield is now almost completely worthless as is Jackal armor on veteran difficulty. (I thought Jackal armor was okay until I realized my modded armor file was still the one in the directory). I prefer to only lose men to bad tactical decisions or overwhelming enemy numbers/strength in harder missions, not because some random guard with a plasma rifle shot me across the field straight through my armor.

As for smoke grenades... I have tried playing around with them some. I removed the blockLOS portion of them and reduced the accuracy penalty to 20% per square... I'm thinking of making it 15% though. So far it works fairly well with the aliens getting reaction fire and making it dangerous to have a bunch of people in the smoke, but I think the minimum accuracy setting for aliens is too high for them to decide to shoot at me in the smoke. It would be really nice though if squares with smoke grenade smoke counted as 4 or so squares for sight range calculations, and maybe 1.5-2 squares for weapon range calculations.

[Max_Caine]

What makes plasma weapons REALLY deadly is the +50/-50% damage variance. Without a boost to damage, Jackal armour stops almost half of a plasma shot, meaning that a solider takes 45pts of damage to the face, which even a buck private can take. Once, anyway. It takes a swing of 15% upwards to kill a private straight off, and probably mortally wound a more experienced solider. I believe this was why the value of Jackal armour had been upped previously. But you can't go too far with Jackal, or you start to intrude on Wolf armour. I think the best that could be done would be to boost the energy rating from 35 to 45, so Wolf still trumps that, and probably drop the weight from 16 down to 10-12kg. Jackal armour is cheap as chips, and it's really quick to make as well, so I dunno if you could change that any further.

[StellarRat]

What makes plasma weapons REALLY deadly is the +50/-50% damage variance. Without a boost to damage, Jackal armour stops almost half of a plasma shot, meaning that a solider takes 45pts of damage to the face, which even a buck private can take. Once, anyway. It takes a swing of 15% upwards to kill a private straight off, and probably mortally wound a more experienced solider. I believe this was why the value of Jackal armour had been upped previously. But you can't go too far with Jackal, or you start to intrude on Wolf armour. I think the best that could be done would be to boost the energy rating from 35 to 45, so Wolf still trumps that, and probably drop the weight from 16 down to 10-12kg. Jackal armour is cheap as chips, and it's really quick to make as well, so I dunno if you could change that any further.

I'm going to disagree. Jackal isn't worth the time, research, or money to build it. I might think it was OK if the cost, weight, and workshop time were about 1/2 of what they are now. Considering the enemy has plasma rifles from the beginning (almost) now it's just not worth the trouble now.

[Ol' Stinky]

I think the strength-weight ratio is fine, but the weight limit to 0 TUs could be upped to a 3x or 4x multiplier, or maybe have a constant added in there too of +10kg or so to make the TU penalty not as sharp to make being overloaded not as bad as fast as it is now.

The weapon damage is a bit high for my taste, I'm not a fan of one shot kills so often. The shield is now almost completely worthless as is Jackal armor on veteran difficulty. (I thought Jackal armor was okay until I realized my modded armor file was still the one in the directory). I prefer to only lose men to bad tactical decisions or overwhelming enemy numbers/strength in harder missions, not because some random guard with a plasma rifle shot me across the field straight through my armor.

As for smoke grenades... I have tried playing around with them some. I removed the blockLOS portion of them and reduced the accuracy penalty to 20% per square... I'm thinking of making it 15% though. So far it works fairly well with the aliens getting reaction fire and making it dangerous to have a bunch of people in the smoke, but I think the minimum accuracy setting for aliens is too high for them to decide to shoot at me in the smoke. It would be really nice though if squares with smoke grenade smoke counted as 4 or so squares for sight range calculations, and maybe 1.5-2 squares for weapon range calculations.

Now that I've actually got the strength formula the right way around in my head (whoops) I'm not so annoyed with the carry change. I think it could be eased up a little like others said, but it's okay. At first I didn't like armoured guys not being able to carry much for ages, but now I just take along a couple of unarmoured mules and it's fine.

I guess I have better luck with shields than most people in the thread? Yes, the odd shot gets through, but I haven't lost many scouts to unlucky block failures. And the widening of the angle's saved me more than once. I still use shields.

I'm not sure I'd trust the accuracy reduction in gas_gc.xml. Someone (Kabill?) showed that it wasn't actually working; while the accuracy that shows up on screen changes, and the aliens believe there's an accuracy reduction, you could fire through and hit 'em just fine. They'd still fire reaction shots, which would travel through the smoke with normal accuracy, but as long as you were behind enough tiles of smoke for the fake accuracy reduction they wouldn't actively fire.

---

As for jackal, I'd rather lose one or two scouts than spend $20k+ on such a short term deal. I have wolf armour up by the end of Oct/start of Nov. Jackal's only going to see use for all of a few missions. If jackal was lighter then maybe I'd be more enthusiastic, but wolf is better in every way.

Edited January 14, 2014 by Ol' Stinky

[Max_Caine]

@StellarRat

A 50% (max) upswing of a plasma rifle boosts the damage caused to 120. Wolf armour can't absorb that kind of damage - it would one-shot a private or a corporal. Predator and Sentinel can absorb that, but only Predator could come away smiling. A trooper in Sentinel would be ready to drop with the next shot. A more modest (25%) upswing is 100 damage, which would mortally wound a trooper in Wolf armour. A slight (10%) upswing would drop the average Wolf armour wearer by a 1/3 of his health. Jackal is more at the mercy of the RNG gods than Wolf armour is, but Wolf isn't an "at last!" suit of armour. It's the next step up from Impact armour, but that's about it. At the current level of +/- random damage, you only really get halfway decent protection with Predator or Sentinel.

[StellarRat]

@StellarRat

A 50% (max) upswing of a plasma rifle boosts the damage caused to 120. Wolf armour can't absorb that kind of damage - it would one-shot a private or a corporal. Predator and Sentinel can absorb that, but only Predator could come away smiling. A trooper in Sentinel would be ready to drop with the next shot. A more modest (25%) upswing is 100 damage, which would mortally wound a trooper in Wolf armour. A slight (10%) upswing would drop the average Wolf armour wearer by a 1/3 of his health. Jackal is more at the mercy of the RNG gods than Wolf armour is, but Wolf isn't an "at last!" suit of armour. It's the next step up from Impact armour, but that's about it. At the current level of +/- random damage, you only really get halfway decent protection with Predator or Sentinel.

I agree that Wolf isn't the ultimate answer in protection, but it's FAR better than Jackal. So much better, that as I stated before I don't think Jackal is even worth bothering with. Seasoned troops usually survive a hit in Wolf and that's good enough to get them out of the way most of the time and use a medkit on them.

[Belmakor]

My first thoughts on the newest build.

1. I really like the reduced TU's on movement, combat feels more fluid and flanking becomes quicker and easier. I think they should stay at the new lower values.

2. Have the animations been speeded up? It feels to me like they have. While this is good for movement and shooting, there is still issue where the bullets don't seem to be coming from the gun. Also I think soldiers and enemies crumble too fast when they die - it doesn't give you a chance to register it and reflect.

3. I actually like the new smaller light scout maps. I don't know if it was just because I was playing a night mission but the combat was suitably deadly and tense from the moment I stepped out the Chinook. There was fire coming from outside my view (requiring flares), and the enemies were all in close proximity and mutual supporting positions. I think both light scout and scout would benefit from smaller maps but I don't advocate changing map size of Corvettes +. Normally L.scout and Scout are a chore, but with being able to complete one in 5 minutes now I think I might do them more often.

4. I disliked how I had a shield guy standing in front of my rocket soldier (behind partial cover) and an enemy plasma bolt cut straight through the shield, missed the shield bearer and hit the rocketeer killing him instantly. I think a shield should be able to take a plasma bolt to the face, especially from out of vision range - otherwise its worthless.

5. I also think cover has gone too low in most recent build. I think a guy crouching behind full cover should have about 90% protection. I want to feel the tension of having a guy crouched behind a large rock being shot at by three aliens and knowing that there is a chance each time he is going to be killed but that its not a dead certainty (as it is at present). I am ok with partial cover only providing say 25% standing, 50% crouched but the full cover should be 50% standing, 90% crouched.

6. The shotgun was now deadly at a range of about 6 squares. All three pellets hit an Alien and killed him outright. Finally, its worth taking these along for UFO breaches