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V21 Experimental 4 Available!


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Firstly, if you do not know how to access the experimental branch on Steam, please read the instructions (and warnings!) in this thread. All saved games from earlier versions (including experimental versions) are incompatible, attempting to load them will cause problems.

We have quite a few changes for you again in this build, as Chris has been busy with balance changes and the programmers have all been busily hammering away at many of the more minor bugs that have existed for some time. I continue to work on maps, which means the Soviet tile set (which is now a more general "cold town" set occurring over much of the northern hemisphere) is finished, and most of the new and improved alien base maps are also done (feedback appreciated!). Here's the changes:

Fixes:

- Units will now not continue reaction fire against already dead targets

- Fixed an instance where two units pathing into the same tile would become stuck

- You will no longer recover equipment from soldiers who are left behind in an aborted mission

- If you put an alien corpse in a units backpack, it will now still correctly be recovered at mission end

- Fixed Ironman mode causing a delay when starting a mission and between turns, showing un-initialised UI elements

- Added a missing animation for Harridan sniper Soldiers

- Also fixed an AI spawn trap in the desert toilet block

- Predator armoured soldiers can no longer throw grenades

- Soldiers will no longer be resurrected if they earned a resilence point at mission end

- Fixed SoldierEquipView showing "no soldiers present" when removing assignment of last soldier of dropship

- Fixed SoldierEquipView sometimes hanging for a few seconds while scrolling soldiers

Additions:

- New Alien base maps

-- These are much more polished than the previous ones they replace

-- Much better use of alien specific rooms, vents, teleporters etc...

-- There are currently 2 variants for each base size, but there will be 3 shortly

- The "Soviet" tile set for terror missions is now a generic "cold town" set, and occurs over a wider area of the globe

- Added additional "cold town" terror mission maps

- Layout of the final mission has been reworked, though is still heavily a work in progress

- Added animations for Praetor commander

- Sebillians now display health regeneration numbers

Balance:

- Only 25% of aliens are now killed in a UFO crash, or 40% if the power cores explode

- Buffed plasma cannons significantly, but they no longer appear until Warrior rank ("support" troops get Heavy Rifles at Soldier level)

- Increased accuracy on Alien Battle Rifle so it is the same as the normal rifle

- All alien weapons now also do stun damage equal to their normal damage

- Added Alien Assault Plasma weapon (shotgun) to the game, creating a new class of "assault" Androns and Sebillians to use it

- Extended range of the Heavy Plasma Rifle, changed stats so it is a powerful single-shot weapon with no blast radius

- Removed grenades from Sebillian support troops

- Electroshock grenades now explode on contact rather than at end of turn

- Backpack and Belt item movement cost now 4 APs

- Easy mode aliens now 10% weaker

- AI troops now have more APs, so should be more aggressive

- Cover modifier increased from 0.75 to 0.9

- Andron armour increased slightly

- Light drone now much better at suppression and has more mitigation, but less base damage

- Aerial terror sites somewhat less common

- Significantly reduced resource gain from shooting down UFOs that do not generate crash sites

- Alien weapons rebalanced to be more of a threat to end-game armour

- Single shot weapons have smaller suppression radius than before - 2 for rifles and carbines, 1 for pistols and sniper rifles. Burst fire remains at 3.

- Switching items between hands is now free in terms of AP

Please post your comments on the build here, or use the balance threads below:

Geoscape: http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/8993-Geoscape-Balance-Discussion-Build-V21-Experimental-4%21?p=99739#post99739

Ground Combat: http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/8992-Ground-Combat-Balance-Discussion-Build-V21-Experimental-4%21?p=99738#post99738

If you encounter any bugs please post them in the experimental build sub-forum of the bugs forum.

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So I've done a bit of work on ground combat balance with this build (I've got some Geoscape changes in mind but they're not in yet).

The biggest change is the addition of a new alien weapon - the Assault Plasma. This is an alien shotgun, very similar to what the Heavy Plasma used to be. The Heavy Plasma has become a more powerful but less accurate version of the normal Plasma Rifle which is also unable to burst fire - allowing Sebillians and Androns to fight more effectively once the Heavy Plasma becomes their default weapon.

For now, the Assault Plasma looks identical to the Heavy Plasma and has no effect on the research tree. Unique sprites will arrive in due time.

This has caused a wider rebalance to the alien weapons. The Heavy Plasma is now the weapon for choice for alien "support" Soldiers, with the Plasma Cannon not appearing until alien "support" Warriors hit the field. This has allowed us to buff the Plasma Cannon so it is a more credible threat to late-game Xenonaut personal armour.

The Assault Plasma is pretty powerful, but remains short-ranged. It is exclusively used by Androns and Sebillians but is a relatively specialist weapon encountered mostly on Xenonaut Base or Alien Base missions, and occasionally in terror sites. If it's successful I may also add it to some of the aliens defending downed UFOs, but you'll have to give some feedback on it first.

I've made a number of other changes, but the reduction in the number of aliens killed by the crash should make missions more challenging without making "landed" missions impossible to complete. Also, alien weapons now cause suppression, so see if that changes anything.

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Sounds like the aliens have been buffed a lot, looking forward to trying this out I hope they rip my balls off.

One thing I've just recalled wanting to ask about is if you could implement a non-hardcore mode for Insane difficulty just while the games in beta as it's a bit annoying to try and test that difficulty with hardcore when getting crashes (as is bound to happen in experimentals) and then realising the game hadn't autosaved for 20 minutes.

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Was there a fix for wrong xml input on Shield angle/block chance?

Also, was there no accuracy modifications (for example, regarding efficiency of snap)?

Curious about this as well. Had a soldier die on me yesterday during a live stream, was even named after one of the viewers, from a 3 round burst that bypassed the shield completely. Soldier was facing the enemy directly when the burst happened and the shield was 80/80 before the shots were fired.

EDIT: Side question, anyone know where I can fix that manually if it hasn't been fixed in this version?

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@ ziggarius

They should, but in the config.xml it still says:
<Shield angle="180" angle2="90" stoppingChance="100" stoppingChance2="60" />

Which has the stopping chance and stopping chance 2 accidentally swapped.

The other thing is that the angles are counted degrees from forward such that angle 2 corresponds to the front 180 degree arc and angle 1 covers the whole 360 degree arc, but angle 2 has priority over angle 1, so stopping chance of 60% is applied to front and 100% to the back.

<Shield angle="90" angle2="45" stoppingChance="60" stoppingChance2="100" />

The above should give intended blocking of 100% in the front 90 degree forward arc and 60% in the remaining portion of the 180 degree forward arc.

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There seems to be something fishy with the shield even after correcting the values. My shield guy got flanked by a sebillian that burst fired directly to his back. Shield broke and not a single hit point gone. Super dissappointing that when I finally get flanked for the first time by AI, I don't even get to pay for my mistake! :(

EDIT: uh oh... just noticed I need to change the angles too. :D

Edited by Skitso
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You're right, I missed that fix. There's actually two problems - the values are reversed, and the angles are radii rather than diameters. So the 180 degree value actually offered 360 degree protection.

I've committed the fix and it'll be in the next version.

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To answer the other questions - Moonie, I don't really know. Aaron's finishing the last of the core maps today and is going to start looking at UFO interiors, Giovanni has nearly finished the new soldier progression screen, the artist has started work on the final loss / victory screens and the final mission is taking shape. We're close to the game being ready to release, at which point it just becomes an issue of where we draw the line with further polishing. As always, it's impossible to know when that will be done.

Mutton - I'll have a look into it. I might change it so it's not compulsory, period.

Regarding the accuracy / snap shots / burst fire stuff, see my post here for more details: http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/8992-Ground-Combat-Balance-Discussion-Build-V21-Experimental-4%21?p=99803&viewfull=1#post99803

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Adding stun damage when getting hit is a great addition!

I don't mind the visible blue stun damage numbers normally when using flashbangs or stun rods, but in this context I'm not sure I like it that much and I don't think they are even needed as it's kinda self explanatory when you are shot. (and the amounts are equal aren't they?)

I don't think we need visible stun damage numbers when there's also real damage or I hope we'll at least get an option to turn both on/off seperately as I kinda like the damage numbers.

Edited by Skitso
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We're close to the game being ready to release, at which point it just becomes an issue of where we draw the line with further polishing. As always, it's impossible to know when that will be done.
When you talk about "polishing" does that include bug fixes? I'm assuming there is going to be a period of intense de-bugging right? There quite a few of them right now that need to be fixed, IMO.
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AI troops now have more APs, so should be more aggressive

Doesn't seem like this is working.If it's possible AI is actually now passive more than ever.Why did i write this you may wonder....Well for the past 6 ground combat missions (fresh start,so i am talking about scout missions),I didn't encounter AI in open field battle but they rather banker themselves inside UFO and wait for you to open the door ... they don't even anymore counter-attack while i am re-positioning my troops for assault attack ...(although it seems that Stinky's mod does make them very aggressive if not relentless but everything is better than current situation).

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Doesn't seem like this is working.If it's possible AI is actually now passive more than ever.Why did i write this you may wonder....Well for the past 6 ground combat missions (fresh start,so i am talking about scout missions),I didn't encounter AI in open field battle but they rather banker themselves inside UFO and wait for you to open the door ... they don't even anymore counter-attack while i am re-positioning my troops for assault attack ...(although it seems that Stinky's mod does make them very aggressive if not relentless but everything is better than current situation).

Isn't AI troops related to the armed civilians? I have seen couple of posts that assume those to be aliens, but all changes related to the alien are actually stated as alien...

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