Geoscape Balance Discussion - V21 Experimental Balance Patch!

[Chris]

The only change to the Geoscape balance is that the invasion speed for Veteran has been changed to the former Normal speed. This change is echoing the changes for the ground combat, as Veteran is meant to be the normal difficulty setting for people who have played quite a bit of X-Com.

I will also be checking the feedback given in the previous balance thread before the next build, so you don't need to cross post.

[StellarRat]

Yea!

[Dranak]

I forgot to say this in the last thread, but I love the addition of success chance to auto resolve. It feels far more worth using now.

[Max_Caine]

Would it be possible to see more UFOs land, land earlier, generate events while landed (depending on mission) and stay landed for longer periods of time than they do right now? The reason I ask is I'd like to see options for making a gc-heavy strategy as viable as an ac-heavy strategy and landed UFOs are the easiest way of doing that. I'm not asking that every UFO land as soon as it hits the skies, I'm just asking that UFOs be more reasonable to catch on the ground and there be stronger reasons to catch landed ufos.

[vaultdweller]

That's a Geoscape balance topic that I don't think I've seen discussed yet. The last build I played, I did find myself wishing that ground assaults were mere available. I seem to remember having more opportunities to attack landed UFO's in the OG than in Xenonauts, despite the greater number of UFO's in Xenonauts overall. I had never considered how this might apply to the ongoing debate about the prevalence of air combat.

[Belmakor]

Would it be possible to see more UFOs land, land earlier, generate events while landed (depending on mission) and stay landed for longer periods of time than they do right now? The reason I ask is I'd like to see options for making a gc-heavy strategy as viable as an ac-heavy strategy and landed UFOs are the easiest way of doing that. I'm not asking that every UFO land as soon as it hits the skies, I'm just asking that UFOs be more reasonable to catch on the ground and there be stronger reasons to catch landed ufos.

Part of the problem is that you pretty much need to have your Chinook already in the air to have any chance of catching one on the ground as the Chinook travels so slow.

So yeh, either boost the Chinook speed or increase the landing time.

In terms of frequency, I have seen some waves where every ship has landed on the ground?!

[legit1337]

Agree with belmakor. Chinook needs to be faster.

[Gam]

+1

[Ol' Stinky]

Would it be possible to see more UFOs land, land earlier, generate events while landed (depending on mission) and stay landed for longer periods of time than they do right now? The reason I ask is I'd like to see options for making a gc-heavy strategy as viable as an ac-heavy strategy and landed UFOs are the easiest way of doing that. I'm not asking that every UFO land as soon as it hits the skies, I'm just asking that UFOs be more reasonable to catch on the ground and there be stronger reasons to catch landed ufos.

I think this is a good idea, especially merging the event generating alien mission ("Farmers report that 3 fat kids were literally shot into orbit by aliens", "Oh no, dead fish!", etc.) with the alien mission where they silently land somewhere, and do dark and secret things.

Maybe chinooks could have some sort of "rearming" mechanic to keep them grounded for a bit when they get back to base. The idea here is to encourage a two chinook start, as opposed to the current "interceptors or bust" strategy. If slower chinooks are meant to be doing this, it's not right now. I admit that might be down to not needing more alloys/alenium, though, so I don't have to run as many ground missions anyway. I can only speak for myself, but I'd really rather have chinooks with some sort of downtime than painfully slow ones.

I'm not sure the bonus secondary resources thing for catching a landed UFO's all that good an idea when resources are still being sorted out. If that has to go for Max's idea, so be it.

[Skitso]

Whoops, wrong thread!

Edited January 16, 2014 by Skitso

[Belmakor]

I think this is a good idea' date=' especially merging the event generating alien mission ("Farmers report that 3 fat kids were literally shot into orbit by aliens", "Oh no, dead fish!", etc.) with the alien mission where they silently land somewhere, and do dark and secret things.

Maybe chinooks could have some sort of "rearming" mechanic to keep them grounded for a bit when they get back to base. The idea here is to encourage a two chinook start, as opposed to the current "interceptors or bust" strategy. If slower chinooks are meant to be doing this, it's not right now. I admit that might be down to not needing more alloys/alenium, though, so I don't have to run as many ground missions anyway. I can only speak for myself, but I'd really rather have chinooks with some sort of downtime than painfully slow ones.

[/quote']

That's something I would like to see. It could even just be "unloading" followed by "loading".

If your worried about differentiating between later craft then you still have; capacity, range and refuel/reload rate to play with.

OR

The other thing could be that if you have a squadron over-head that the UFO stays down (if the auto-resolve odds are less than 50% say). That way you could potentially ground a scout with a couple of fast condors while the chinook follows up. By the same logic, you couldn't ground a Corvette with just a single Condor without initiating air combat.

[Dranak]

I'm really liking the idea of making it a bit easier to assault landed UFOs, and making them more valuable than crash sites (in terms of standings). It opens the door for making a ground-based strategy at least viable, as compared to the current "Spam Foxtrots or lose" situation. If we could get things adjusted so that building multiple bases/ground assault teams and assaulting all the landed UFOs was at least somewhat viable, it could open the door for it as a playstyle. Currently there's no real need to ever build more than one assault team.

[Max_Caine]

Having read a lot of threads on this, especially the no relations thread, I think there are a variety of subtle ways that GC can feed back into the grander strategy without making GC the One True Path. A landed UFO that generates events just as an airbourne UFO does is as dangerous as an airbourne UFO, but has to be handled differently. You can send planes to circle it, but all the time you're doing that airbourne UFOs aren't being shot down, and airbourne UFOs are harder to catch than a landed one. With a landed UFO, it shouldn't be a case of "I must grind out every ufo for phat l00t", but "I must sort out this landed ufo because it's causing me grief I don't need"

Edited January 16, 2014 by Max_Caine

[vaultdweller]

Max_Caine is on point here. Much sense is being made here.

[kraex]

Ok, so directed here from the "other" thread, I tend to agree with Max_Caine's suggestion. I had actually posted at one point in that thread that one of the things I think XEU got right is that landed UFOs don't take off one an interceptor is enroute. That may be an oversimple solution to the issue. Greatly increasing Chinook speed could be another. It's not really feasible to patrol around with the Chinook, since fuel is such a problem.

[vaultdweller]

I had actually posted at one point in that thread that one of the things I think XEU got right is that landed UFOs don't take off one an interceptor is enroute. That may be an oversimple solution to the issue.

Crash sites already work this way. Landing sites wouldn't be a huge stretch.

[Ashery]

Alternatively, instead of that gamey approach, you could feed the player the takeoff timer via the alien communication building (Forget what it's called as I just got access to it). That building's not accessible early on, though, and that's when this issue's greatest...

Making them stay grounded if en route also eliminates the chance of your transport being downed.

I'd argue for increasing the Chinook's speed and just making landing sites last longer.

[ventuswings]

Instead of dropship being sent out completely preventing UFO take-off, this could also be done as well:

1) Greater landing frequency

2) Faster Chinook speed

3) If the target landed UFO departs, automatically slow the Geoscape

[Max_Caine]

On a slightly different matter, I think the amount of alloys and alenium you get after shooting down interceptor/bomber class caft needs to be reduced. One of the primary draws to doing ground missions are the consumables you get from it, and even fightercraft can trivialise that.

Having (of course) modded and tried some numbers out, I'd propose something along these lines:

Fighters: 1xAlenium, 1xAlloy

Heavy Fighters: 1xAlenium, 2xAlloy

Interceptors: 2xAlenium, 3xAlloy

Bombers: 4xAlenium, 3xAlloy

Strike Cruisers: 7xAlenium, 8xAlloy

The reason I propose low numbers for Strike Cruisers and Bombers is that both types of aircraft are so very, very easy to shoot down. Seriously, Bombers are tasty snacks, and the reward is completely disproportionate to the risk involved. As for the equally low numbers for interceptor craft, a pair of escorts per main craft can very quickly add up in terms of cumulative rewards. Even 2x Alloy per craft is 4x Alloy per squadron. That's the consumables for a suit of Wolf, or a laser rifle, or 2 laser pistols. There should be some draw to doing ground missions, and while I completely agree that shooting down interceptors/bombers should result in Alenium/Alloys, the amount of Alenium/Alloys needs to drop or the reasons for doing ground missions weaken futher.

[ventuswings]

I'd actually argue that air combat does not need to give any resources granted that completion of large ship grants enough material for sizable equipments. Equipments are, after all, permanent. Especially should landing frequency change be implemented, since landed ships give much more resources.

The resource scarcity wasn't critical even before the patch. More importantly, with the amount of UFO flying around, even the smallest rewards have potential to build up to massive stockpile. If this system is going to be maintained I hope devs balance the equipment construction cost and reward from ground mission accordingly.

Edited January 19, 2014 by ventuswings
final edit

[Ol' Stinky]

I'd actually argue that air combat does not need to give any resources granted that completion of large ship grants enough material for sizable equipments. Equipments are, after all, permanent. Especially should landing frequency change be implemented, since landed ships give much more resources.

The resource scarcity wasn't critical even before the patch. More importantly, with the amount of UFO flying around, even the smallest rewards have potential to build up to massive stockpile. If this system is going to be maintained I hope devs balance the equipment construction cost and reward from ground mission accordingly.

Yeah, I'm echoing this sentiment. Let cold, hard cash be the resource you get from geoscape victories and have alloys/alenium be the domain of ground combat. If a player neglects ground combat, their troops should have a rough time of it. If a player neglects interceptors, their funding will suffer. In both cases there's still a chance of a comeback: ground combat still gives money so a player who neglects air domination can scrape up an air force, and the air commander can hit up more crash sites to get alloys/alenium.

Medical centres seem to heal up troops really quickly. Anyone who gets injured is usually back on their feet by the time combat next rolls around. If the medical centre was put down a "ground combat" branch of the tech tree, as well as research that dramatically cuts down on a theoretical chinook "rearming time", that might help tilt the balance away from all-out interceptors.

[Max_Caine]

I'm of the opinion that allowing interceptors/bombers to give very small amounts of alloys/alenium will actually drive people to doing ground missions. Allow me to explain.

Gamers, like most people, tend to work out what the path of least resistance is and flock to it en masse. Given two choices, one of which is easier the other, they will head to that choice. So given the choice been autoresolving air combat and going through ground combat to get alloys/alenium, they would naturally just autoresolve air combat. Click, click, job done. However, if the rewards from doing multiple air combats don't even match one ground mission, and the requirements for producing goods are high enough, then grinding air combat for little reward becomes as tedious as grinding ground combat and acts as a natural economic driver towards doing ground combat. What's needed is a strong disparity between doing multiple air combats and doing a single ground combat (say, 3 air combats to 1 ground combat) and the manufacturing costs to be adequately stiff that if you want to do it all from air combat, then you're going to have to grind a lotta air missions to do it.

Which brings me onto a related point. The only time I've ever seen my alloys stockpile go low is when I sell a bunch of stuff to buy something. I think that alloys should be introduced to the "big ticket" items (vehicles, aircraft), alenium should be introduced to powered armour and the amount of consumables per item should be jacked up a bit.

Edited January 19, 2014 by Max_Caine

[legit1337]

I'm of the opinion that allowing interceptors/bombers to give very small amounts of alloys/alenium will actually drive people to doing ground missions. Allow me to explain.

Gamers, like most people, tend to work out what the path of least resistance is and flock to it en masse. Given two choices, one of which is easier the other, they will head to that choice. So given the choice been autoresolving air combat and going through ground combat to get alloys/alenium, they would naturally just autoresolve air combat. Click, click, job done. However, if the rewards from doing multiple air combats don't even match one ground mission, and the requirements for producing goods are high enough, then grinding air combat for little reward becomes as tedious as grinding ground combat and acts as a natural economic driver towards doing ground combat. What's needed is a strong disparity between doing multiple air combats and doing a single ground combat (say, 3 air combats to 1 ground combat) and the manufacturing costs to be adequately stiff that if you want to do it all from air combat, then you're going to have to grind a lotta air missions to do it.

Which brings me onto a related point. The only time I've ever seen my alloys stockpile go low is when I sell a bunch of stuff to buy something. I think that alloys should be introduced to the "big ticket" items (vehicles, aircraft), alenium should be introduced to powered armour and the amount of consumables per item should be jacked up a bit.

Agreed with everything. Secondary resources don't really feel important atm. Driving up the materials cost (and maybe lowering the monetary cost to compensate) sounds like the way to go.

[Frakel]

There are some really good idéas presented in this thread!

I especially like the idea about some UFO´s

- being set to "land early" (and thus being difficult to intercept for air combat)

- stay landed for extended periods (and thus being easier to intercept with dropchip)

- and generating negative relation events while landed (thus giving incentive to engage i ground combat)

- and giving generous amounts of alenium/alloys for capturing a landed UFO (thus giving a high risk / high reward source for these)

Id much rather do a few high risk / high reward missions to aquire the needed materials, than having to grind aircombat or crash sites...

-------

Just something else to consider:

While toning down the amount of alenium/alloys you get from air combat, I would argue against removing it completely.

It is a good thing that ground combat primary driver is materials + research + xp, while air combat primary driver is funding and cash.

But it is also a good thing that materials and cash aren´t exclusively air or ground combat - it makes room for different approaches to the game - which is good.

[StellarRat]

I thought you already received three times as much Alenium from landed UFOs? IMO, the biggest problem with landed UFOs is they don't stay long enough to get to them, not that they aren't rewarding enough.