V21 Ex4 Balance Requests

[Max_Caine]

I did ages ago. I should go update that sucker for v21ex3 (or ex4 if that comes out this weekend) with my latest tweaks.

EDIT: AgentFrancis, I should disclose that with my tweaks have been Macross inspired, and I have striven to make a

weapon without much success... yet. Edited February 6, 2014 by Max_Caine

[legit1337]

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.

Why?

It makes no sense that an alien can suddenly take 3 shotgun blasts to the face in terms of HP just because he is a higher rank then another. Specifically when the lore states that (for example) caesans are much more fragile then humans when it comes to resisting injury.

Why can't you increase armor instead of health to represent "better gear"?

This would also go a long way to increasing the variation between alien types. Caesans, (who should have high armor and low health) should be fought by high armor mitigation weapons, while sebs (who should have high health and low armor) should be fought with weapons that have more damage output then armor mitigation.

The trick is as you say, to make sure that adding 5 armor mitigation to a weapon isn't simply the same as adding 5 damage to it.

EXAMPLE:

Lets say a sniper rifle should do (arbitrary values here, dont yell at me) 40 damage, and ignore the first 80 points of armor. While a shotgun should do 110 damage and ignore no armor.

enemies:

Caesan - 40 HP and 80 armor

Seb - 110 HP and 0 armor

If you shoot the seb with the sniper rifle he will only take 40 damage, but if you shoot him with a shotgun it will kill him. Likewise, if you shoot the caesan with the sniper rifle it will kill him, but it you hit him with the shotgun he will still be alive.

It also makes sense too from a RL perspective. A sniper rifle may have awesome penetrative capabilities, but it is still only 1 bullet. A shotgun however does damage on a more massive scale, but may have trouble punching through armor due to it's low velocity buck-shot.

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It isn't impossible to balance the mechanics around this, and it think it should at least be attempted.

Aliens just having increasing HP is so boring...

Edited February 7, 2014 by legit1337

[KateMicucci]

- 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.

I autoresolve every battle so rolling means nothing to me.

[Chris]

Why?

It makes no sense that an alien can suddenly take 3 shotgun blasts to the face in terms of HP just because he is a higher rank then another. Specifically when the lore states that (for example) caesans are much more fragile then humans when it comes to resisting injury.

Why can't you increase armor instead of health to represent "better gear"?

This would also go a long way to increasing the variation between alien types. Caesans, (who should have high armor and low health) should be fought by high armor mitigation weapons, while sebs (who should have high health and low armor) should be fought with weapons that have more damage output then armor mitigation.

The trick is as you say, to make sure that adding 5 armor mitigation to a weapon isn't simply the same as adding 5 damage to it.

EXAMPLE:

Lets say a sniper rifle should do (arbitrary values here, dont yell at me) 40 damage, and ignore the first 80 points of armor. While a shotgun should do 110 damage and ignore no armor.

enemies:

Caesan - 40 HP and 80 armor

Seb - 110 HP and 0 armor

But then what do you do for Androns? They are the ones that have high armour. Give them even more armour?

Also, bear in mind that in your example, a weapon with 80 mitigation (i.e. useful against starting caesans) would mitigate the armour of even late-game Sebillians, which means you can kill even end-game Sebillians in three shots from a starting sniper rifle.

Unless you are making armour scaling extremely high, of course - but if you do that, the damage of any lower-tier weapons rapidly falls to 0 and they become utterly worthless. Having high mitigation and low damage also makes weapons very bad at destroying cover, too.

We've already tried the armour scaling with ranks and we think it works best when limited to a single enemy race. In lore terms it makes no difference if a unit's additional HP is a result of inherent biological toughness or the fact it is wearing a helmet. You don't have to interpret the game files having 0 armour as the unit having literally no armour at all...the armour on a tank is very different to body armour.

[vaultdweller]

But then what do you do for Androns? They are the ones that have high armour. Give them even more armour?

Sure. Why not? What's wrong with having Sebillians mostly unarmoured, Caesans moderately armoured, and Androns heavily armoured?

In lore terms it makes no difference if a unit's additional HP is a result of inherent biological toughness or the fact it is wearing a helmet.

It does make a difference in terms of subjective impression, though. "Wow, it takes way more damage to kill these guys," doesn't feel the same as "Wow, my weapons barely even damage these guys," even if both cases result in needing exactly the same number of shots to kill the alien.

Edit: I don't necessarily think that scaling of enemies should be entirely about armour. I'm an RPG guy. Higher levels means more HP to me. I do think it would be nice to see armour levels get leveraged for better variety, though. Making armour mitigation relevant only for Androns seems like a missed opportunity to further emphasize that different weapons have different niches.

Edited February 7, 2014 by vaultdweller

[ventuswings]

All of this wouldn't have been of concern should there been no damage display. It might be simpler to just remove them if they consider too immersion breaking, though I am hoping modders will be able to figure out some sort of acceptable value.

[Chris]

Sure. Why not? What's wrong with having Sebillians mostly unarmoured, Caesans moderately armoured, and Androns heavily armoured?

It does make a difference in terms of subjective impression, though. "Wow, it takes way more damage to kill these guys," doesn't feel the same as "Wow, my weapons barely even damage these guys," even if both cases result in needing exactly the same number of shots to kill the alien.

Edit: I don't necessarily think that scaling of enemies should be entirely about armour. I'm an RPG guy. Higher levels means more HP to me. I do think it would be nice to see armour levels get leveraged for better variety, though. Making armour mitigation relevant only for Androns seems like a missed opportunity to further emphasize that different weapons have different niches.

Well, it makes the Androns less unique if they're just another point on a sliding scale, a bit higher up than Caesans. That's their thing, they have armour. Sebbies have regen. Caesans have psionics. Wraiths can teleport, Harridans can fly.

But the key point is that scaling armour isn't very reliable, because it means that weapons with high mitigation remain extremely potent throughout the entire game and the other weapons end up having very "spiky" damage outputs between different alien ranks. Scaling HP is a much better way to smooth the progress between weapon tiers (in my experience, at least).

EDIT - and, yes, the system was designed before the damage numbers appeared. It only looks strange because we put them in, unfortunately. A good example why letting players peek behind the curtain is not always a good idea.

[Max_Caine]

On that subject, I think as most aliens are going to not have armour anyway, you may as well set mitigation to zero for most Xeno weapon types (keep them for perhaps sniper/LMGs?), as mitigation is only going to matter for Androns/Drones, and that takes away from their unique property.

[StellarRat]

But the key point is that scaling armour isn't very reliable, because it means that weapons with high mitigation remain extremely potent throughout the entire game and the other weapons end up having very "spiky" damage outputs between different alien ranks. Scaling HP is a much better way to smooth the progress between weapon tiers (in my experience, at least).

You can reduce the damage of certain weapons while leaving the mitigation high though (the "golden BB".) So, high level critters could be hurt by low level high velocity weapons, but it would take a lot of hits to actually bring the target down. I don't know it's kind of weird relationship really. IMO, the toughest creatures should be Androns. I would expect that they would have lots of armor AND being mechanical that only hits in the CPU would stop them (ala "The Terminator"). Explosives would probably be nearly ineffective against them. Unfortunately, you have no hit location logic in the game to make that happen. They also wouldn't have any morale issues. I would expect electrical discharge weapons to be very effective against them. I would hope if they were the walking tanks I'm describing that they would be rare and maybe only one of them would present with other aliens as part of a mixed crew. I can't imagine fighting a group of them. Edited February 7, 2014 by StellarRat

[KateMicucci]

What if high-ranking aliens had armor, but only upgraded weapon tiers had armor mitigation? Upgrading my xenonaut's weapons feels like the lowest research priority right now because ballistics are good enough for a long time.

[legit1337]

@chris

I thought andron's niche was that they were not affected by morale and supression, and they do not take cover. Nothing more is needed then that. They can be made "tough" by both high armor, and HP values.

Yes, high mitigation weapons would totally render lategame seb armor useless. But (using my example) it is the difference between killing the seb in one shot or three... As StellarRat says, the golden BB.

Players would find out what is going on "behind the curtain" anyway, regardless of it you put the actual numbers or not.

Why is it that "better gear" is represented on the xenonauts by increased armor instead of increased health? But on the aliens you don't seem to care, "just pump the health up". Forgive me but that seems a bit strange.

I still think aliens need to have ammo and reload because it will feel more "real" that way. I know you already said you were not going to do it, but that is my mentality for this argument as well. It is all about making a better and more authentic battlescape engine... The lore says that caesans are more fragile then humans, that needs to be represented on the battlescape in HP levels. It would be one thing if armor wasn't in the game and you absolutely had to jack up HP to make lategame caesans tough, but it isn't. You have the tools to make it work, it just needs effort and thought to balance correctly.

AI pulling bullshit and numbers being streamlined "behind the curtain" is sometimes necessary in a game. But it should be kept to a minimum.

Making armour mitigation relevant only for Androns seems like a missed opportunity to further emphasize that different weapons have different niches.

^basically what he said

Your point about "spiky" damage of non-armor piercing weapons is valid. But so long as they are balanced correctly it shouldn't be that big of an issue.

Edited February 8, 2014 by legit1337

[legit1337]

What if high-ranking aliens had armor, but only upgraded weapon tiers had armor mitigation? Upgrading my xenonaut's weapons feels like the lowest research priority right now because ballistics are good enough for a long time.

Ballistics are good for a long time because high ranking aliens don't have armor lol.

Adding armor to aliens can make it so that ballistics need to be phased out earlier to keep up.

[TrashMan]

I think that racial variations on alien weapons are worth considering.

A Ceasan plasma rifle doesn't need to have identical stats to a Sebillian plasma rifle for example, even if they look the same on the ground sprites.

I disagree wiht this. You have different alien weapons. There's no need to make differences within a weapon family.

Why? It only makes balancing harder, but doesn't add much. The differences would have to be big to be noticable.

Also makes little sense to divide weapons like that. Why would the aliens issue plasma rifle mk2 only to sebillians?

[Gauddlike]

Because it is easier than remaking the sprites for different races to have different weapons.

Ideally I would have had Sebillians with SMG and shotgun type weapons to complement their close in and mobile style while Ceasans have assault rifles as they are a little more fragile so try to stay back a little more.

As the sprites are not available then another option is to have modified versions of the same weapon.

I don't really see it as an unprecedented move to give a slightly different model of a weapon to a set of troops with a different mode of operation either.

I am pretty sure SEAL teams were provided with an M16 version more suited to their role, folding stock variants are issued to airborne troops in some countries and so on.

I see it as the same thing.

It may make balancing harder or it may make it easier.

It divorces Sebillian balancing from Ceasan balancing for example so there are less concerns that adjusting the damage of a Sebillian upwards will make Ceasans too powerful.

Increasing the accuracy of one set of troops doesn't have the knock on effect of increasing their damage as their weapons can be modified downwards slightly without making less accurate troops weaker and so on.

As I said I think it is worth considering, it is probably too much for Chris to consider at the moment however.

[Chris]

We're almost certainly going to add a new alien weapon with sprites to the game so we can differentiate out the Heavy Rifle and the alien shotgun. I'm not looking forward to rendering it out, but we've still got the animations for the alien flamethrower we never used, so we can re-purpose that.

[legit1337]

We're almost certainly going to add a new alien weapon with sprites to the game so we can differentiate out the Heavy Rifle and the alien shotgun. I'm not looking forward to rendering it out, but we've still got the animations for the alien flamethrower we never used, so we can re-purpose that.

Cool! Looking forward to that.

Any word on if you have decided to up armor levels on aliens or are sticking with high HP?

Also, is there going to be an alien stun weapon? It would be a good choice to give to alien engineers on ships so they don't "blow up the core" if they miss a shot. Just like the small launcher in the OG.

[Max_Caine]

I take it no-one uses vehicles... or there would be more complaints that Hunters are a) very easy to hit and b) die from a single burst from a plasma rifle which make Hunters c) not worth $60,000. The last time I had a Hunter it died after dismounting from the ramp and I was "Welp! Forget that, then!".

[Skitso]

I agree. That one time I tried a Hunter, it blew up the very first turn. Not exactly that huge bang for the buck...

[Max_Caine]

There's been this problem with vehicles before. Aaron had to buff their armour quite severely to make them worthwhile. Perhaps boost vehicle armour back to Aaronite stats?

[StellarRat]

I take it no-one uses vehicles... or there would be more complaints that Hunters are a) very easy to hit and b) die from a single burst from a plasma rifle which make Hunters c) not worth $60,000. The last time I had a Hunter it died after dismounting from the ramp and I was "Welp! Forget that, then!".

I use them all the time (vehicles.) The problem is that with the "new" alien TO&E including plasma rifles nearly from the start, the Hunter has become too weak too soon. It probably needs an armor or HP tweak upwards. Generally, I find vehicles well worth the cost. The improved sighting distance is a life saver for your grunts. They are very good in open terrain and on terror missions provided you have a pulse laser or rocket launcher installed.

Also, as I proposed before, GH might consider making dead vehicles recoverable just like the jets. Even the Hunter is quite expensive after you outfit it with upgraded weapons and the higher level vehicles are expensive in general. It's rare for a well built AFV to be so totally destroyed that isn't salvageable. This should be especially true for most Xenonaut AFVs as there is not a lot of HE and gunpowder to "cook off" inside in the event of a "killing hit".

Edited February 10, 2014 by StellarRat

[Gauddlike]

We're almost certainly going to add a new alien weapon with sprites to the game so we can differentiate out the Heavy Rifle and the alien shotgun. I'm not looking forward to rendering it out, but we've still got the animations for the alien flamethrower we never used, so we can re-purpose that.

That ought to help variety nicely.

Almost mirrors the original shotgun/carbine/assault rifle roles for the Xenonaut weapons.

Good to use the leftover animations as well, they are paid for so might as well see the light of day

[KateMicucci]

Vehicles are great. They're a scout, shield guy and two heavy weapons troops in one package. The MG turret is not too impressive since burst fire can't hit anything right now, but the rocket launcher and pulse laser are awesome for finding and killing aliens in recovery missions and thinning out the herd in terror and base attacks. I've never lost one in a single hit. It usually takes four or five. The only problem is that despite the modest amount of time needed to unlock them, they're still competing for research and workshop space with things that are more important. Obviously you can get by without them just fine.

[TrashMan]

Because it is easier than remaking the sprites for different races to have different weapons.

That doesn't answer my question - why would different races have exclusivity to different variations of the same weapon?

It may make balancing harder or it may make it easier.

It divorces Sebillian balancing from Ceasan balancing for example so there are less concerns that adjusting the damage of a Sebillian upwards will make Ceasans too powerful.

Increasing the accuracy of one set of troops doesn't have the knock on effect of increasing their damage as their weapons can be modified downwards slightly without making less accurate troops weaker and so on.

I hate such fake ways of balancing. I want the aliens to play with the EXACTLY same rules as the xenonauts.

Everyone plays by the same rules - you cannot get any fairer, simpler and more natural/intuitive than that.

So Xenonauts use armor - aliens use armor.

Xenonauts use the same weapon - aliens use the same weapon.

The divorcing of balancing doesn't make it easier - it makes it harder. It gives you more stats to keep track of, not less.

[Chris]

I hate such fake ways of balancing. I want the aliens to play with the EXACTLY same rules as the xenonauts.

Everyone plays by the same rules - you cannot get any fairer, simpler and more natural/intuitive than that.

So Xenonauts use armor - aliens use armor.

Xenonauts use the same weapon - aliens use the same weapon.

The divorcing of balancing doesn't make it easier - it makes it harder. It gives you more stats to keep track of, not less.

The Xenonauts are only made up of one species, though. Most people want the alien races to behave differently and pose unique challenges, rather than become a homogenous mass that all use the same equipment and have the same abilities.

[Max_Caine]

Chris has a very good point. They drove that home in XCOM2012 by deliberately mono-equipping each species with a different weapon. Sectiods only ever had plasma pistols. Mutons only ever had plasma rifles. The most prolific weapons were the light and standard plasma rifles, and those were only shared between the floater/thin man and heavy floater/muton respectively.