Geoscape Balance - V21 Experimental 5 / 6

[smoitessier]

I miss the old APS research it was original for me, I hope we get to see it again under whichever form, I.e like the free race analysis research

[frank_walls]

I'll second the need for another look at Alenium costs. Right now it's pretty much impossible to build a Shrike or Corsairs until long after unlocking them unless you grind every crash site.

Agreed. I'm just grinding ships now to build marauders.

[TrashMan]

Well, if you want to stretch out the research time so there isn't a signficant gap between the Scout and the Corvette, be my guest. I thought that perhaps instead of stretching out research topics (which then screws with people who don't buy that second lab), a lore-centric piece of research would help fill the gap better.

Their problem.

People who don't invest into research during an alien invasion just have to pay the price of lagging behind a bit.

They might have more aircraft and $$$ for that tough.

[StellarRat]

Their problem.

People who don't invest into research during an alien invasion just have to pay the price of lagging behind a bit.

They might have more aircraft and $$$ for that tough.

I've found that you have to adjust scientists vs. engineers a lot in early game. At first you don't need many scientists because the early discoveries aren't that many in number or difficulty, but you need a lot of engineers to get your lasers and Wolf done, so you can deal with mid-level aliens. Better to save on science and get your second base up and jets in place. Later on, a ton of research topics open up when you take your first landing ship and you need a ton of scientists to keep up. By mid-game I usually have the full 30 scientists and engineers working at my big base.

[StellarRat]

I'm happy with the Geoscape in this build. It seems "right" to me. At least as far as I've gotten so far. Playing on Veteran Ironman.

[kabill]

Not sure if this belongs in the bugs section or not:

The research description for Alien Reactor research project says that "it may allow us to produce plasma weapons of our own" but it is not a prerequisite for plasma weaponry (at least, in my current game, I have researched plasma weapons without it). Could do with changing.

[Caaygun]

Yeah, it gives plasma explosives only.

[Max_Caine]

On Corsairs

The Corsair is an interesting bird. I was only able to build one prior to the changeover to Ex. 6 so I'll write about my experiences of it. The change to two cannons means the Corsair stays in combat longer than the Condor does. Typically with a Condor it's a case of "launch missiles!" and break off but you can't do that with a Corsair, you have to maintain a lock with a target while the cannons fire. The narrow fire projection cone means that if I opt to dodge I generally break the lock, so the best manoeuvre for a Corsair would be to outfly it's opponent and attack from behind, which can be done quite convincingly with capital ships. In attack runs with a Corsair and 2xCondors taking on these ships, the Corsair outdistanced Condors and ran rings around Corvettes and Landingships, emptying its guns into the unprotected rear then flying off even though the Corsair was the chosen target (because it moved faster than the Condors). When I have just Condors I generally have to lead cap ships with one craft while the other goes to work on the cap ships' unprotected behind.

However the same can't be said of fightercraft - the UFOs Corsairs are designed to combat because of the reasons stated above. If cannons are not to be touched, Corsairs need to be able to outfly enemy interceptors. I have some thoughts on that matter, mostly to do with making it faster and changing it's turn angle to somewhat ludicrous, but what I'll do is make and submit some vids so you can see the changes I propose.

I would also like to talk about the production costs for a Corsair. Lots of other people have said how difficult it is to get a Corsair, and I agree. The principle blocking factor is the amount of Alenium you need - it's hard to scrape up 30 units of Alenium without doing a lot of grinding. I did some experimentation and I suggest material costs along these lines: Alien Alloysx35, Aleniumx18, $275,000. Given that I only get 2-4 units of alenium per Corvette, I have to grind out 5-9 of them to get 1 Corsair and that's tedious but nothing as tedious as grinding out 15-ish Corvettes for the magical 30. Big Ticket items like the Corsair are a prime opportunity to make a dent in alloys stocks that otherwise will only go up, never down.

On Corsairs and Aircraft Cannons

Related to Corsairs is an issue with aircraft cannons. They're much harder to get to a higher tech level than missiles are - I had progressed onto plasma missiles long before I had got to plasma aircraft cannons. That's fine for the Marauder, it doesn't depend on cannons but the Corsair does so the Corsair is always lagging behind which makes it less of a useful interceptor upgrade. I was wondering how you could make cannons more viable for the Corsair without making them too uber for the Condor and the Maurader, and without upsetting the delicate balance of air combat minigame code. The only way I could see of doing it would be to make Corsair specific aircraft cannons - those could be added in fairly easily then make up some technobabble to explain it away such as auxiliary power feeds unique to the Corsair which can supercharge cannons or some such nonsense.

Edited March 8, 2014 by Max_Caine

[Gauddlike]

Heavy aircraft cannon slots, or replace the two cannon slots with a single 'dual cannon' slot?

Set the research pre reqs as both the proper cannon type and also the corsair so you don't get them when it wouldn't make sense to have them.

[Max_Caine]

Eh, I was thinking of trying to work within the existing framework. Making a "Corsair laser cannon" takes up to half an hour to make sure all the edits are correctly in. Making a brand new weapon with a brand new UI could take how knows how long.

[Gauddlike]

Why would the UI need to be different?

The current one allows you to select from the weapons assigned to the craft which is all that is needed.

Creating a new Corsair Laser Cannon is the same as creating a Heavy Laser Cannon, I just prefer the heavy name.

Both would suggest new artwork to me though.

Calling it a Dual Laser Cannon could easily do without new artwork as it is the same as the normal cannon, the slot just holds two of them.

Note that it doesn't need to be a slot that actually holds two weapons, it just needs to hold the new weapon called dual cannon.

If you need the craft to only hold two weapons to match existing Corsair artwork or for lore reasons then I could remove one of the slots and balance the new Dual Cannon to reflect that it is meant to be stronger than two normal cannon of the same tier.

The main difference is in the fluff text and descriptions.

I find it easier to swallow that the new aircraft would have mounting points for dual cannon or heavier cannon than some kind of supercharge ability that can force an existing weapon to work beyond what is possible for any other craft.

[Max_Caine]

Oh, if it's a question of fluff, I could care less (as evinced in my original post). It's just that there are specific slots for heavy missiles, so I thought you were proposing a new type of weapon completely. Yeah, I get it now. Tbh, whatever the cannons are called is fine with me - whatever technobabble floats the boat of the majority, just so long as the Corsair gets better cannons in relation to standard cannons for the reasons previously stated.

[Gauddlike]

Yeah I was actually supporting the idea just adding a few other suggestions on how it could be handled.

To be fair my original post really wasn't all that clear on what I meant, hence the extra info in the second.

This post however has very little point at all.

Bet you wish you hadn't wasted time reading it now.

[HammerHead]

Can anyone tell me what's the point of very limited fuel in manual dogfight mode? It makes the fights pretty uninteresting, since you have very little time to fight.

[Gauddlike]

I think it was originally to add some urgency to the fights.

Personally I think normal in combat flight fuel use could do with being relaxed a little but the afterburner amount kept high.

The settings are available in gamesettings.xml if you want to try and find a better balance for them.

[StellarRat]

OK, I'm not liking the 30 - 70 range on soldiers. It's just silly. No one is going to intentionally let someone in that only has 30 something TUs, Strength, or Accuracy. I start with some soldiers that can barely pick up their rifles, can't hit anything and can barely move? Really? That's a bit ridiculous. I have to cull herd before the first mission even and hire competent soldiers to replace them. It's just busy work, IMO. Please give us at least a default of 40 - 70 on everything. I don't mind doing the filtering on the replacements, but we should start with at least an average crew. This will be especially important for beginners.

Edited March 9, 2014 by StellarRat

[kabill]

Yeah, I'm not sure I like the very low end of soldiers stats either. I'd actually be quite happy with a reduced top range as well. Something like 35-65 or 40-60 (which maintains the current average of 50) would be preferable for me, I think. There's still plenty of variation in soldiers even in a 20-point range.

Alternatively, an average of two rolls? Such that extreme scores are a lot rarer?

[Birkow]

I think using Gaussian distribution for attributes would be better than current uniform distribution. We would still see extreme attribute values close to 30 or 70 but this would occur rarely. Stats would end up near 50 most of the time. (ofc it depends on chosen mean and standard deviation values).

[Chris]

I was under the impression the soldiers had a mean of 50 across all their stats (55 for the starting squad)? Is that not the case?

If not, then yes we do need to do a bit of work on that issue.

[Lidhuin]

Once I've picked all the good soldiers (either high Acc, high TUs, or high something else), I'm left with poor sods that can barely pick up a pistol (about 30-40 in stats). 30 to 40 in every stat and a 70 in Bravery is not all that useful.

Edit: In the image I've attached above, this is after I split my starting 10 between two bases and hired 10 new replacements (which are mostly okay).

Now if I have to replace them I am left with the following:
1st: Decent TU and Str
2nd: Decent TU, bad at everything else
3rd: Decent Accuracy
4th: Decent TU and Accuracy
5th: Not high enough TU for the Str to be useful, not high enough Str to be useful on its own.
6th: Good HP, Reflex, Bravery. Otherwise an utterly useless soldier.
7th: High enough Str to be a heavy weapons expert.
8th: Decent TU coupled with good bravery.
9th: Good TU and Str.
10th: Good TU and Accuracy.
11th: Good TU, decent otherwise.
12th: Great accuracy.

So I have some choices, but I've had better. And it's only going to get worse as I pick the best ones (in my view) and I am left with more people like nr 2, 5, and 6

Edited March 9, 2014 by Lidhuin

[Birkow]

I think there is no problem with mean (I have not checked that). In my opinion current uniform distribution of stats looks unnatural- there is to high probability to get attributes near 30 or 70. In my current game after 2 weeks all available recruits have at least one or two stats close to 30. Soldiers with such extreme values should be rare, now they are to common.

I'm speculating here, but right now for attributes you simply draw random number between 30 and 70?

Edit:

I would suggest one of algorithms described here. Stats would correspond then to observed distribution of IQ, height and other attributes that can be measured in real life.

Edited March 9, 2014 by Birkow

[Max_Caine]

I find it amusing that not that long ago (relatively speaking), other people (not on this thread) were clamouring for soliders to have stats like these (some crap, some good). Soliders were "boring", "mundane" and "samey". Now the fantasy is reality and it turns out what people actually want is troopers with good/mundane stats, not good/crap stats! Who'd'a thunk it?

[Birkow]

I find it amusing that not that long ago (relatively speaking), other people (not on this thread) were clamouring for soliders to have stats like these (some crap, some good). Soliders were "boring", "mundane" and "samey". Now the fantasy is reality and it turns out what people actually want is troopers with good/mundane stats, not good/crap stats! Who'd'a thunk it?

Whatever you do someone always will be unhappy

[StellarRat]

I find it amusing that not that long ago (relatively speaking), other people (not on this thread) were clamouring for soliders to have stats like these (some crap, some good). Soliders were "boring", "mundane" and "samey". Now the fantasy is reality and it turns out what people actually want is troopers with good/mundane stats, not good/crap stats! Who'd'a thunk it?

I never complained about that and I don't mind a spread in their capabilities, however, I think a bell curve (3 1 - 25 sided dice) is a much better system than a flat line spread. You'll still get exceptional people in both directions, but at least they won't wildly off base.

[StellarRat]

I think the Alien Alloys and Alenium being given for recoveries is too low. I'm having to run tons of recoveries (too many) just to have laser and Wolf for my guys. Building a Corsair or three is totally out of the question. It will take forever. We need 2 - 3x the amount we're getting now OR the requirements needed to build stuff to be lowered across the board.