V21 Ex4 Balance Requests

[legit1337]

Agreed. Aliens need a stun weapon or the revive function on a medkit is pretty worthless.

[Dranak]

The main one I'd like to see on the ground is reduced accuracy for snap shots. Right now there's never really a reason to use a higher TU shot because the accuracy gains are so small that taking multiple snap shots is always better than taking a single higher accuracy shot.

I'd also like to see the radius on frag grenades (or their splash damage) increased, accompanied by a direct hit nerf if need be. Right now they mostly kill anything they land on, but being off by a single tile almost completely negates their damage.

[Chris]

OK, thanks. I'm mulling some changes now and possibly I'll try some rebalancing tomorrow.

[StellarRat]

All explosives should be highly suppressive if the target is caught in the blast radius even if the target takes little or no damage. There is absolutely no way you can be caught in an explosion without at a minimum being totally deafened. It's like getting hit on the head with a bat.

[ventuswings]

Speaking of the suppression, does Xenonauts and alien share same suppression formula? I've barely seen Xenonaut be suppressed in contrast to the alien, shrugging through plasma burst fire and fail flash bang throws.

[Max_Caine]

they do. The suppression formula takes into account armour, which aliens don't have a lot of (if any) but Xenonauts do.

[StellarRat]

I've noticed the aliens never seem to panic or go berserk like they did in the old game. That should be added (except for Androns and Drones.) It makes things interesting.

[jeon]

I'm not sure where you guys are getting the explosions only dealing 25% damage to targets in the blast radius. Try throwing a frag grenade in the middle of your squad at the start of a mission with a group of rookies without armor and see what happens. It is pretty clear that the squares adjacent to the target are taking nearly full damage from the explosion and that even 2-3 squares away you still are getting hit for about 50% damage.

Now, if there is any cover in the way of the explosion, that is when you have the problem. The cover tends to absorb both the damage and suppression a bit too much. Changing the damage type on grenades back to incendiary does help quite a lot with that though because at least the cover will be destroyed. Bumping up the radius does help as well, especially if you give the tougher aliens incendiary armor to help counteract it somewhat.

Electroshock grenades with instant explosion would be better for sure. A little radius increase with the other grenades and 10 points in mitigation and you are set. Now, as for gas grenades, the easy way to reduce their effectiveness in the late game is to make the higher rank aliens have a bit of chemical armor (+15 for warriors/officers, +30 for elite/leader).

Also, flashbangs still don't apply suppression to anything if one of the aliens passes the reaction fire test.

Alien weapon variety would be really nice if there was a tier of rifles between plasma rifle and the battle rifle for them. I've thought about adding some kind of in between plasma rifle, but the races that really need that help (Androns and Sebs), don't have sprites for plasma rifles at most high ranks. Also, slightly lower weapon damage but higher mitigation on alien weapons would be nice to reduce the amount of instant-gib from across the map thing going on sometimes. Also, I'm still just not sure about the whole heavy plasma being a shotgun type weapon, it would make the aliens a lot more threatening if it were a machine gun.

[KateMicucci]

Also, I'm still just not sure about the whole heavy plasma being a shotgun type weapon, it would make the aliens a lot more threatening if it were a machine gun.

That makes sense to me.

I also wonder why the laser carbine is a shotgun, rather than than a burst-only SMG type.

[legit1337]

Agreed with aliens needing to be affected by morale, and that heavy plasmas need to be more analogous to a human MG then a shotgun.

Alien stats need to be rebalanced so that some races have clear advantages/disadvantages over other races. For example, caesans should have better reflexes then sebs, maybe increased sight range? Sebs should have more health + a regenerating ability that actually feels strong to fight against. Non-coms shouldn't wear armor but guards and above should have armor in increasing amounts.

[AgentFransis]

Heavy plasma as MG is a wonderful idea.

I also wonder why the laser carbine is a shotgun, rather than than a burst-only SMG type.

Hell, the plasma carbine even looks exactly like a P90. Maybe that was the intention when they did the artwork.

[Khall]

Yeah, the carbines used to be carbines, but they were changed to shotguns a while back. You could mod them back to SMG weapons and keep shotguns using the artwork of this old mod (I know this is off topic and I apologise)

The problem with changing the heavy plasma to an MG, is that we'll lose an alien shotgun weapon, which even though it is vastly overused, is unique, they don't have anything else like it . Anyway I always thought of the light drone as the alien equivalent for an MG. That's why I proposed keeping the single shot function like a shotgun, but making the burst fire much more suppressive and inaccurate (ideally with normal projectiles, not pellets, but I'm not sure that's possible), so it can also function as a MG. With heavy plasma currently being the default weapon for most of the game, it should be a lot more versatile.

Of course we could change the default weapon to the plasma rifle, but you would need to make sure it remains a threat throughout the mid-game, and most higher-level aliens don't have sprites for it.

Edited February 5, 2014 by Khall

[Chris]

Yeah, the key weapon-related problem is the lack of sprites for the aliens. A lot will only have sprites for the heavy rifle, not the plasma rifle (rendering out sprites for lots of alien ranks is a big job that I'm not keen to start again). It's also not possible to have the heavy rifle function as a shotgun in one fire mode and as a normal rifle in the other, which was my first thought. We'll work something out though.

[TrashMan]

- Corsair could use a biff. Speed and agility upgrade? If it's a fighter, it should really dance.

- less UFO's. Maybe make it harder to detect them. While I don't have a problem with the importance of air combat, it does get tedious to fight a dozen UFO's every 5 days. It is rather predictable.

- re-balance all aliens. Make them actually USE armor. If you need specific values, I have an excel balance sheet that I use for my mod. It's still a rough pass.

http://www.mediafire.com/view/ak2s4b46xgbmnco/Weapons_balance.xlsx

[Pbs]

1. Default soldiers equip is terrible: at least add 2-3 frag granades to every soldier. Without it first mission could be very difficult.

2. Make first mission (or few fisrt missions) scripted: small map, one-two weak aliens.

3. Easy settings: less accuracy for aliens, more powerful xenonauts (accuracy, health, AP)

Edited February 6, 2014 by Pbs

[Darth Draken]

My two points.

Why does it cost more to make an item than sell it?

Why cant we interact with local.forces and civs in battle map?

All i desire is a way of telling the npc civ to just get down or hide behind us. But no they run towards the alien.

[Chris]

Non-Andron aliens deliberately don't use armour, but scale with HP as their rank increases to represent their better gear. As soon as all aliens start having armour, adding 5 armour mitigation to a weapon becomes functionally identical to adding 5 damage to it.

Might give the drones armour values, too.

[StellarRat]

[quote name='TrashMan;99503

]- less UFO's. Maybe make it harder to detect them. While I don't have a problem with the importance of air combat' date=' it does get tedious to fight a dozen UFO's every 5 days. It is rather predictable.[/quote']I agree with dozen UFOs being a big tedious. If they were harder to shoot down there could be less of them per wave. I can easily see doubling the hit points of all UFOs and halving their numbers. I don't think I'd be in favor of them being harder to detect though.

[MrPyro]

My two points.

Why does it cost more to make an item than sell it?

Deliberate decision to stop people ignoring the national funding model and instead get all their money from a production line, as was a common exploit in the OG. It's been discussed a few times elsewhere on the forum.

[jeon]

Actually, mitigation and damage are always functionally different, even if every alien has some kind of armor value. For example: adding 5 points of mitigation on a weapon that already has high mitigation will only help on aliens that have more armor to be mitigated. Also, mitigation ignores armor for that shot, but has no impact on armor degradation which does play a major roll in doing damage when higher armor values are in place. Even if the 5 points of mitigation does help, 5 points of damage also has another layer of different functionality: damage rolls. 5 points of damage increases damage by 2.5.-7.5 points for any given shot. 5 points of mitigation increases damage by however many points of armor it helps you to ignore for any given shot.

For example: compare a 50 damage, 50 mitigation weapon with a 100 damage weapon vs. 100 points of armor.

The average roll for both results in 0 damage for the first shot. The high roll for the 50 damage, 50 mitigation weapon is 25 damage after armor. The high roll for the 100 damage weapon is 50 damage after armor.

The amount of armor removed can vary from 6.25 to 18.75 for the 50, 50 weapon. The amount of armor removed can vary from 12.5 to 37.5 for the 100 weapon.

So, the average roll for the second shot of the 50, 50 weapon is between 6.25 to 18.75 damage depending upon the first shot, and the average roll for the second shot of the 100 weapon is between 12.5 to 37.5 damage. The high roll can be up to 43.75 for the 50, 50 weapon and up to 87.5 for the 100 weapon.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but it does show a trend that damage is more prone to the effects of randomness and that damage is more effective than mitigation point-for-point after the first shot. (And continues to be more and more potent the more shots it takes to bring down the target).

[TrashMan]

Non-Andron aliens deliberately don't use armour, but scale with HP as their rank increases to represent their better gear. As soon as all aliens start having armour, adding 5 armour mitigation to a weapon becomes functionally identical to adding 5 damage to it.

Might give the drones armour values, too.

On the surface identical, but the battles feel quite different.

Especially since lower-migation weapons needs to chew trough the armor.

[KateMicucci]

I agree with dozen UFOs being a big tedious. If they were harder to shoot down there could be less of them per wave. I can easily see doubling the hit points of all UFOs and halving their numbers. I don't think I'd be in favor of them being harder to detect though.

UFOs have enough HP bloat as it is. Two squadrons of interceptors killing 2 UFO's is the same thing as one squadron firing all its torpedos, retreating, and letting the 2nd squadron finish off the UFO are the same thing, except that the second is more annoying and gives less money.

By January/February when the massive UFOs are showing up, with escorts and interceptors, and there's no way I can have enough interceptors to kill even half of them. I guess that's as intended: the invasion has begun full-scale and there's no way you can stop it except by completing the final mission. At that point I go into a death spiral losing $250,000 of funding each month and stop playing.

Some thoughts on the geoscape:

Problems:

-The condor is only good for killing small scouts and the occasional lone fighter (both of which a foxtrot could do too). That is far too niche. It is too slow and has too short of a range to even be a good escort for foxtrots. Even if condors had the same speed and range as foxtrots they wouldn't be as good because they don't have torpedos.

-The corsair and marauder only have more speed and HP. They are too expensive, cost too much alienium, and take too long to build. You also don't get them until you've lost the air war anyway because dozens of massive UFOs are showing up.

Some suggested changes:

-1/4 to 1/3 reduction in total UFOs

-Medium UFOs should be introduced more gradually

-The transition time between medium-large and large-massive UFOs should be extended by a month, to give the player more of a chance to research and build all the new tech being introduced

Here's a thought. Lower UFO HP but gives missiles a miss chance independent of evasive rolls. Air combat thus becomes less predictable and a player who's fallen behind will have a better chance of being able to stay in the tech race by getting lucky against larger UFOs. The cannon becomes more useful as a few misses won't matter.

[AgentFransis]

- Condors can take any number of fighters, even heavy. Even interceptors. You basically just need to roll around to the side and fire a missile. Of course you should phase them out for marauders as soon as possible (corsairs are still useless). Also it is possible to take landing ships and corvettes with them but it's tricky and you need a lot of fuel.

- The Marauder, besides being faster and a lot tougher than a Foxtrot can do rolls and so can take on dangerous battleships and fighters with ease. It is possible to have a few squadrons of marauders ready by the time battleships show up.

- It's march in my game now and I pretty much intercept everything. I did make it easier by modding refuel and rearm times to be really short (it's just less annoying this way) but still, a trio of marauders with fusion torpedoes can take down a battleship and I would get most of them anyway. I've been consistently getting ~+300k every month since maybe month 2 or 3. I write this not to brag but to say that it is possible to do well. Maybe my little mod is more impactful than I give it credit.

Edited February 6, 2014 by AgentFransis

[Max_Caine]

Having read so many comments by so many people about ac there seem to be two camps. Ac is either a) trivial or b) ****ing hard. There doesn't seem to be any in-between - you're either an ace or a scrub, so one side wants it nerfed, the other wants it buffed. Me? I want it different. I've been playing around with different configs for ac for over 2 months now, and I personally think different is the best way to go - I've given each ufo class and each interceptor it's own character. I've played around with rapid-firing missiles, I know to the degree how much you can set missile turn rate to make it challenging to dodge without making it impossible, I've experimented with multiple turrets on a UFO, I've worked out ways to make the Corsair a more interesting interceptor (shock). I think buffing or nerfing UFOs isn't the best path, because buffing or nerfing only satisfies one camp, and dissatisfies the other. Can we try for different instead?

Edited February 6, 2014 by Max_Caine

[AgentFransis]

Sounds good. You should upload a mod with your modifications, I'd like to try it.