Ground Combat Balance - V21 Experimental 5

[Max_Caine]

Okay, let's try again.

Let's take the situation where you have two soliders, one stacked up behind the other.

A shot misses the guy in front. It passes through the guy in front, then lands at the feet of the solider behind, as it passes through the solider it misses. Without a MISS or other visual cue appearing on top of the first guy (which you don't like), does it not look like the shot was aimed for the second guy and landed at his feet - i.e. the very thing that you complained of in the first place?

[Skitso]

Why would the bullet land at the second guy's feet? Why wouldn't the bullet fly till it hits a wall or goes out of the map? Nobody aims so low a bullet hits the floor.

My point is that bullets fly a (relatively) straight line until they hit something. They shouldn't drop to the floor like rocks when reached their target, no?

Edited February 28, 2014 by Skitso

[Max_Caine]

Skitso, why wouldn't the bullet land at the second guy's feet? Remember, this isn't RL. Unless the bullet path coding specifically tells the bullet to pass any soliders behind the target it lands at, then there's no reason why in game, the bullet wouldn't land at the second soliders feet if the tile were so picked.

[Skitso]

Yeah, but we are talking about improving the game and that's exactly the effect i want to get rid of. Think out of the box of existing systems.

All the missed bullets that doesn't scatter enough (that would land on target tile's floor) should fly through the tile and continue it's trajectory until hit something solid. So some new code is needed for the bullet to avoid all other targets after the original target tile is reached but hitting probability is not met.

This would do wonders for terrain destruction too, which is quite rare at the moment..

Edited February 28, 2014 by Skitso

[Max_Caine]

Argh! This was the point I was trying to get at in my original post. The thing to think of when the bullet passes through the target tile is when there's a solider behind the target tile and that bullet lands in the tile behind the target tile because if that happened wouldn't that look as fake as landing at he feet of a solider in the target tile to begin with.

[Skitso]

Haha, yes, yes it would! That's why there needs to be some additional coding involved in this..

[Gauddlike]

I was originally against bullets passing through soldiers on a miss, it just looks odd to have a shot go straight through someone for zero damage.

For example an alien shoots at your shield guy but misses him so the bullet goes straight through the shield and the person carrying it to kill the person standing behind him.

I would find that a lot more jarring than seeing a missed shot hit the ground but I am willing to give it a try, it will hopefully not look as bad as I fear

[KateMicucci]

1. The percentage based TU system isn't bad in my mind. Not particularly great either, but it works. Without going into any details ( I get that this is the wrong thread) I do think it is at least partially responsible for the following point.

2. Combat is way too easy for the difficulty level now. I really liked the balance in the last release before the percentage based TU system. The enemies were very deadly and a hit usually meant the death of a Xenonaut. It was however quite manageable due to the low numbers of the Aliens. Difficult but not overwhelming - I liked it. At present, the Aliens miss a lot of their shots and (not 100% sure here) probably have less shots anyway due to the TU System. In addition my unarmored guys and girls routinely survive hits from plasma rifles. All that put together means I have lost maybe one guy up until armored enemies started showing up and completely skipped Jackal armor - which is to say all of my people are unarmored so far, where before I would build Jackal for all soldiers just for that tiny bit of survivability.

Aliens miss their shots because they've had a big nerf to their accuracy with this patch, not because of the new TU system.

Jackal should be better and Wolf should probably be a little higher on the tech tree so that Jackal can't be so easily skipped. I think Chris intended to lower alien armor mitigation in order to make Jackal better but forgot. A good side effect of the new TU system is that wearing Jackal doesn't reduce the damage output of the soldiers wearing it now.

3. Pistols seem oddly accurate at long(-ish) ranges. 51% on a snapshot (73% aimed) on a crouched target outside of range (16 Tiles i think). It isn't a big deal at any rate, because of the low damage.Just feels a weird.

Pistols should probably have their range reduced. They're very good weapons. At least they were until the TU change. Now that they're limited to 4 shots they might be more balanced.

4. LMGs with their 10 shot bursts are great in theory. I toyed around with them a bit and they have a decent use in game, especially on targets in cover which your AR/Sniper guys have trouble hitting reliably (It's not that they hit better, but 10 shots obviously increase your odds and they generally one hit kill those unarmored aliens). However I still don't use them because of the stationary nature, but I think they could be quite useful with a different playstyle.

LMGs only do 25 damage per shot so they can't one-hit anything even on a crit. Ballistic LMGs feel like they are in a good place now except that they could use a 80% TU instead.

5. I didn't really find a use for the shotgun. I tried using them as breaching weapons, but they don't do anything the AR on burst couldn't. I think they might need either more damage or preferably higher suppresion and maybe less TU cost to fire. Keep in mind though that I only tried the balistic version, so they might get better later on.

Shotguns give a reflex bonus, meaning that they have a much better chance to fire before the aliens get their reaction shot than an AR soldiers. They have their niche- however, it is extremely limited and competes unfavorably with shield+pistol combos. The shotgun could stand to be a little better and cheaper fire costs might be the thing, or a boost of 10 to accuracy (because of the "spread" video gamers expect a shotgun to have)

Machineguns IRL are scary accurate, out a good 200 meters further than assault rifles. Obviously this can't be modeled in game because of balance problems... But their primary role is as a suppression platform. Do you honestly think MG crews IRL are trying to hit targets with all of their bullets? Or even 1 in 10? They would be LUCKY to hit with 1 in 2000. They are really just glorified bullet hoses designed to spit as much lead in the general direction of the enemy as possible.

In-game don't mind them being less accurate than assault rifles, and in fact they should be so because they shoot 10 bullets per turn instead of 2-3. All I'm saying is that accuracy should not be one of the machinegun's attributes, volume of fire and ammo capacity should be. If you have to nerf the former to increase the latter so be it.

The LMG is ALREADY the least accurate weapon in the game and gets kills only because of the 10 round bursts. I am never convinced by arguments of what combat like in real life. It's not real life, it's a video game. Anyway, even if we're talking "real life" LMG's are much more likely to get kills than rifles are. Like Chris said they need to be competent weapons in their own right. A "primarily suppression platform" already exists, and it only weighs 1kg and doesn't take up a heavy weapon slot- flashbangs.

[Max_Caine]

While I want to debate with StellarRat some more, I want to save the last post that I'll write before I go to bed to comment on the game.

On Androns

Wow! I've finally done a Terror Mission (after 3 TPKs) facing off against Androns, and the health boost they got really makes a difference! The Soldier-class Androns in particular are very Terminator-esque, because they just keep coming and coming and they absolutely will not stop until they've killed all of my guys! Whatever particular blend of AI instructions that make Solider-class Androns barge down the road into battle - please keep it!

EDIT: Aren't Androns supposed to be able to batter down brick walls? I remember them being able to do that in earlier builds - has that been left by the wayside?

On Secondary Races

If the main races were a hotdog, then I'd be asking for more sauce. When the secondary types (drones etc.) are introduced, there just isn't enough of them on the field to add flavour. Could we see 4 or more of a secondary race type in Terror Missions/Captial ships/Bases and could we pretty please see more psions when they appear. 1 psion definately isn't enough, as their abilities are fairly weak (I haven't seen a psion actually pull off it's ability), so a psion needs more of its buds around to help out.

On the Paralyse power

Aaron said he was goign to check out paralyse and get it working. Has that been done? I think that would be a handy power for Psions.

Edited March 1, 2014 by Max_Caine

[legit1337]

The LMG is ALREADY the least accurate weapon in the game and gets kills only because of the 10 round bursts. I am never convinced by arguments of what combat like in real life. It's not real life, it's a video game. Anyway, even if we're talking "real life" LMG's are much more likely to get kills than rifles are. Like Chris said they need to be competent weapons in their own right. A "primarily suppression platform" already exists, and it only weighs 1kg and doesn't take up a heavy weapon slot- flashbangs.

Then take the LMG out of the game. I'd rather have it not be there then reduced to a function it was not meant to be used for.

And strictly speaking, no MGs do not get more "kills" then rifles do. As someone that has been in the military and has seen combat in Afghanistan, most of our "kills" came from vehicle mounted weapons, snipers, and the poor bastards who had to go in and clear houses.

A dentist doesn't use a pistol to clean teeth, and a MG isn't a heavy assault rifle and it shouldn't be used as such.

It's killing power will be just fine with 5-10 less accuracy and 30 more bullets in the magazine. (For the high tier LMGs). Ballistic MGs are fine with their 50 round magazines, although they too could be a little less accurate, hitting 1-3 rounds per burst is a little too much. Maybe buff the damage a bit to compensate, it would help them being useless against high armor targets.

Edited March 1, 2014 by legit1337

[KateMicucci]

Then take the LMG out of the game. I'd rather have it not be there then reduced to a function it was not meant to be used for.

Let's not be ridiculous. Killing people is the purpose of machineguns. Killing a lot of people, really fast. People are suppressed by machineguns because they are afraid of being killed by them.

Ballistic MGs are fine with their 50 round magazines, although they too could be a little less accurate, hitting 1-3 rounds per burst is a little too much.

Too much because its much stronger than other heavy weapons (it isn't- try out rocket launchers) or too much because you think that machine guns shouldn't be useful for anything except suppression?

[jeon]

Explosives act silly with smaller radius and full damage in the whole radius. Instead of blowing things up, they just melt the aliens and objects in the impact radius and leave the rest of the room/aliens/humans unaffected other than suppressing them. It's just weird. And changes explosive weapons from area of effect damage to smaller radius instant kill weapons.

[legit1337]

Let's not be ridiculous. Killing people is the purpose of machineguns. Killing a lot of people, really fast. People are suppressed by machineguns because they are afraid of being killed by them.

You are missing the point.

Are MGs capable of killing a lot of people very fast? Yes definitely. But nobody is stupid enough to run into MG fire. Thus you are correct when saying they suppress because people are afraid of being killed by them, but because of that fear, they are useful for little else. Unless you open a flank with an MG team they cause very few casualties.

Again, MGs are not just heavy assault rifles. There is a reason why they are issued sparingly to combat units. They are crew serviced infantry SUPPORT weapons.

Too much because its much stronger than other heavy weapons (it isn't- try out rocket launchers) or too much because you think that machine guns shouldn't be useful for anything except suppression?

You misunderstand my meaning. I do not believe machineguns are too strong, nor am I arguing they should be useful ONLY for suppression. They should be quite capable of killing, and rightly so. But I believe their PRIMARY purpose is to provide sustained suppressive fire while your other troops maneuver, and get a few kills in the process of providing that suppressive fire. You can't do that with 20 rounds per magazine.

Hitting 1-3 rounds is a little too consistent for my tastes. I regularly miss completely with assault rifles, why should an MG burst be any different? I think the rounds on the high tier MGs need to be upped to 50 just like the ballistic MG, and all I'm saying is that I wouldn't be too chuffed if they had to lower the accuracy to balance it.

Remember, MGs are NOT just heavy assault rifles and they should not be treated as such. They should be treated almost like man-portable emplaced weapons.

Edited March 1, 2014 by legit1337

[Skitso]

Explosives act silly with smaller radius and full damage in the whole radius. Instead of blowing things up, they just melt the aliens and objects in the impact radius and leave the rest of the room/aliens/humans unaffected other than suppressing them. It's just weird. And changes explosive weapons from area of effect damage to smaller radius instant kill weapons.

Yeah, I don't like the new explosion system either.

[Max_Caine]

Regarding LMGs, Chris has to think about when you get Predator armour as well as before it becomes available. Remember that a trooper kitted out in a Pred can only tote LMGs or the Singularity Cannon, so the LMG needs killin' ability for the Pred to be valuable. How many people are going to be pleased to put all their energy and time into a suit of armour that transforms their trooper into a man-sized pillbox rather than a Sphess Marine? I would imagine some people would be okay with it, but a significantly larger number wouldn't be so happy they've invested that work into a suit of armour that can't even hurt as much as a guy in Wolf armour.

Also please bear in mind that there are already significant barriers to the accuracy of LMG-style weapons. Firsty there's that whopping big 50% penalty to-hit every time you move with the thing, and it has a recoil of 65, meaning that for every point of strength the operator is below that value, there's a cumulative 1% penalty to-hit. Those penalities only go away in a Pred, otherwise you're stuck with them. If any value were to be altered regarding accuracy, it might be the recoil value so only top-line LMG operators can handle an LMG to anything like it's full potential.

Edited March 1, 2014 by Max_Caine

[frank_walls]

I'm still finding the ability for my guys to move and shoot limited. I have a Captain with 73 TU and he just sits in the back with a scatter laser because I don't want him to die in the front. It makes it tough maneuvering inside buildings, UFO's, and bases when my guys aren't able to run into a room and shoot aliens. Well, they can shoot, but they almost always miss and then are left hanging there. I've got guys 65-70 accuracy that can't hit something 10 feet in front of them! It's unfortunate the only way I've been able to clear a base without losing 75-90% of my team is to just throw grenades everywhere. I wish I had a guy skilled enough to run into the room and spray bullets, then take cover somewhere.

I'm also getting frustrated that I can't equip most of my Privates with Jackal armor, a laser rifle, and an extra clip without getting a weight penalty.

[kabill]

I'm still finding the ability for my guys to move and shoot limited. I have a Captain with 73 TU and he just sits in the back with a scatter laser because I don't want him to die in the front. It makes it tough maneuvering inside buildings, UFO's, and bases when my guys aren't able to run into a room and shoot aliens. Well, they can shoot, but they almost always miss and then are left hanging there. I've got guys 65-70 accuracy that can't hit something 10 feet in front of them! It's unfortunate the only way I've been able to clear a base without losing 75-90% of my team is to just throw grenades everywhere. I wish I had a guy skilled enough to run into the room and spray bullets, then take cover somewhere.

I'm also getting frustrated that I can't equip most of my Privates with Jackal armor, a laser rifle, and an extra clip without getting a weight penalty.

I've been wondering whether this isn't a factor of the TU costs for weapons. Snap shot seems to be 40% for a rifle, which means you can only use just over half your move and still take a shot (while taking more than one shot a turn basically precludes movement entirely). I wonder with the % TU system whether the TU costs don't need to be revised to reflect a more mid-level soldier (60-65 TUs under the old system) since everything at the moment is balanced around pretty much the worst level of soldier (50 TUs).

On machine guns, as a thought: part of the issue with machine guns is that with a relatively low TU cost, they become quite mobile while (at close ranges) retaining a lot of accuracy. Machine guns used to be pretty good for UFO breaches as it was fairly easy to run next to an alien and get lots of point-blank high % hit shots. There's two ways this could be negated: 1) increase the heavy weapon move penalty (say to 75%?); and 2) stop machine guns from getting the close-range bonus like the sniper rifle (this makes sense: they're too big and cumbersome to use effectively in close quarters). This way, you could actually drop the machine gun down to - say - 45% TU usage (with a 5 shot burst), allowing a stationary gunner to shoot pretty much as has been set up in the present build, but allowing a mobile gunner to provide suppressive support albeit with a tiny chance of actually hitting anything.

[Gauddlike]

I suggested in another thread that snap shots could have a reduced AP cost to make them a more mobile shot type..

For the assault rifle I went for:

Single:

<Set1 ap="32" accuracy="80" />

<Set2 ap="41" accuracy="100" />

<Set3 ap="49" accuracy="120" />

Burst:

<ap="49" accuracy="60" />

So a soldier can fire 3 snap shots at low accuracy, 2 normal, or 2 aimed shots (plus a few AP left for turning before firing) without moving.

That also leaves 68% of your AP for movement if you want to reserve AP for a snap shot or for breaching which is a little more than the current settings but two snaps and movement are more viable.

Burst fire can be done twice a round if you don't need to move or you can use half your AP for movement and the other half for making holes in aliens.

Note that I haven't touched the accuracy values, I was purely looking at the AP costs this time round.

The problem I can see with changing the MGs to 50% AP cost and increasing the movement penalty is that it feels a little inconsistent.

For example over the course of three turns:

Moving then firing, moving then firing, moving then firing gets you a 75% accuracy penalty every time you fire.

Firing then moving, firing then moving, firing then moving gets you to the same location and fires the same number of shots but gives no accuracy penalties at all.

The current balance means you are unlikely to be moving far in the same turn you fire as you would likely not get from cover to cover.

It would still be possible to circumvent the penalty but you are much less likely to be using them as a mobile offensive platform so advancing would likely be done on the turns where you are not firing.

Then when you get to predator armour the rules can change.

Reduce the AP cost of firing and remove the movement penalty and you have turned the weapon into a more viable offensive option.

[kabill]

The problem I can see with changing the MGs to 50% AP cost and increasing the movement penalty is that it feels a little inconsistent.

For example over the course of three turns:

Moving then firing, moving then firing, moving then firing gets you a 75% accuracy penalty every time you fire.

Firing then moving, firing then moving, firing then moving gets you to the same location and fires the same number of shots but gives no accuracy penalties at all.

The current balance means you are unlikely to be moving far in the same turn you fire as you would likely not get from cover to cover.

It would still be possible to circumvent the penalty but you are much less likely to be using them as a mobile offensive platform so advancing would likely be done on the turns where you are not firing.

Then when you get to predator armour the rules can change.

Reduce the AP cost of firing and remove the movement penalty and you have turned the weapon into a more viable offensive option.

[/color]

I agree, but I'm not sure the LMG being a more viable offensive weapon is too much of a problem.

As for being able to shoot then move: yes, the way the penalties work doesn't quite make sense from a realism point of view. I'm willing to overlook that, however.

In terms of being able to shoot then move to exploit the movement penalty, you could do this but it's still a severe disadvantage. Ordinarily, moving before shooting on the same turn is more useful since you're often not in a suitable position to attack without moving first. Even where that isn't the case, shooting then moving allows you're opponent to re-position before you get to take advantage of your move so is much less helpful. So while you can exploit the system as you suggest, I'm unconvinced that it will give you much of an advantage in most situations and still makes the weapon worse for an aggressive assault than rifles/shotguns.

(The acid test for LMGs - for me - is UFO and base assaults. Ultimately, when you're breaching a room or UFO, you need to move first before you attack in order to get into position and ensure as many shots as possible (otherwise you'll have a load of soldiers, let alone walls and cover, blocking shots). If LMGs can do this effectively, then I think this is a problem. If they can't, then I think they're fine. My suggestion I made was to try and make LMGs poor in this role while still giving them some kind of role to play when moving.)

P.S. I think the numbers you suggest for shot TUs are much better than the current values. I'm not sure I like the close bunching of shot types in terms of accuracy/TU usage, but I assume this was changed at some point for a good reason and isn't likely to revert.

[Gauddlike]

I believe the close grouping of the values was done in as part of the balance for the old system.

That balance may not be the same with the current one.

Have a fiddle with the values yourself and see if you can come up with a new set that work well.

You are probably right about the machine gun, just something that occurred to me when I read the suggestion.

[kabill]

General question: has anyone else noticed aliens getting more reaction shots than they should do on their turn. I've had a few instances now when an alien has either been suppressed on its last turn, or else took some kind of move, but seemed to be able to take reaction shots as if it had spent no TUs last turn. Wanted to check if anyone else had noticed this before flagging it as a bug, in case I'm imagining things.

[frank_walls]

General question: has anyone else noticed aliens getting more reaction shots than they should do on their turn. I've had a few instances now when an alien has either been suppressed on its last turn, or else took some kind of move, but seemed to be able to take reaction shots as if it had spent no TUs last turn. Wanted to check if anyone else had noticed this before flagging it as a bug, in case I'm imagining things.

Yea, I saw this on a terror mission with Androns. Luckily they weren't very accurate, but they were getting 2 sometimes 3 reaction shots per guy. Which, when coupled with not being able to move and shoot makes it somewhat difficult to maneuver into position.

[Abbo]

I don't like the new relative TU firing costs at all.

If you keep them please state somewhere in the ground battle interface how much the different actions cost for that soldier without me actually having to try that out every time before i make my final move.

[kabill]

I don't like the new relative TU firing costs at all.

If you keep them please state somewhere in the ground battle interface how much the different actions cost for that soldier without me actually having to try that out every time before i make my final move.

Do you mean shot TU costs? If so, they're displayed in the bottom left corner of the GC UI.

[Max_Caine]

On the Landing ship

I gotta say, full marks Aaron! The cargo bay is full of terrain to hide behind - it actually reminds me of the long room from a small alien base. The bridge is way more lively and interesting than previously, and I like the new reactor design! (it would be super cool if there was something in the budget for the reactors to be animated) There's a bug which I'll be reporting properly - if you stand in the doorway to the landing ship, you can see the whole of the bridge. My comments re. crew in the corvette are the same in the landing ship - there's all this space and there doesn't seem to be enough enemies, so... noncoms perhaps? I mean, by the time Landing ships turn up, I'm in Wolf armour which makes noncoms pretty unthreatening, which makes noncoms extra bodies, but still...

On the Shrike (GC and GS)

I would say that beside Wolf armour, the Shrike is probably the most important technology I've unlocked so far. Having 12 guys 10 guys/1 tank makes terror missions doable without the TPKs I've been suffering (you still have to be careful and it's easy to loose a whole fireteam, but it's doable). It's also meant that my Charlie is now a training dropship. While the big boys in the Shrike go out to the "proper" mission, I send the Charlie out with a bunch of privates to the scouts and light scouts, so I can get extra cash and have a pool of experienced troops I can rotate into the Shrike to make up losses and replace any wounded. 2 dropships have really changed the way that I play the game.

On Terror Missions

Terror Missions are the only mission type I'm likely to retreat from the enemy, especially when they're Androns. When I see that big blue b-*-d come stomping towards my troops, taking everything that's thrown at him I pull troops back so they don't get grenaded or blasted by the heavy plasma. There are some bugs with doors and wall I'll report properly as well. In a Terror mission I always feel like I'm coming out of the dropship fighting. My immediate corner might be unoccupied, but pratically everywhere else is swarming with bad guys, so straight away I'm blocking the (pretty tight) lanes of fire, trying to slow down the alien advance and free up a line I can inflitrate down. Thanks to the way most buildings are made oorm glass, I have to be very careful where I place my troops as the aliens will always go for the easiest shot, and that can be at a trooper who's much further away from an immediate battle, so you don't think that he's going to get hit.

Edited March 2, 2014 by Max_Caine