Wishlist for balance.

[Sunspot]

This is a wishlist of things which I believe could help verisimilitude and balance.

- Healing should cost a lot more TU's.

ie: removing bleeding with 5 TU's, just seems significantly disproportionate to firing a weapon in 20 TU's.

- Removing items from your backpack should cost significantly more TU's

ie: The current cost is significantly disproportionate to all other actions, and leads to abusive 'weapon switching'.

- Rotating a soldier should cost 1 TU per 90 degrees, instead of 1 TU for 45 degrees.

ie: Rotating 45 and/or 90 degrees would cost the same, 1 TU.

- There should be more differentiation amongst the various aliens on the battle field.

ie: Sebillian's could have a poison bite or a smoke gas attack to help them screen their movements.

- Smoke seems quite OP. Aliens should still do something when faced with smoke.

ie: Maybe have aliens shoot randomly in the smoke or throw grenades instead of do nothing?

Alternatively, some aliens could be immune to smoke, like Androns or drones.

- Vehicles / tanks could have a equipment compartment to help the team carry additional gear.

ie: A box witch could hold a rocket launcher or heavy machine gun for soldier use.

- There should be more civilians in Terror missions.

I know this would affect loading time, but it would add significant atmosphere to city scape.

Game is a solid fun so far, hope it keeps getting better!

[Gauddlike]

- Rotating a soldier should cost 1 TU per 90 degrees, instead of 1 TU for 45 degrees.

ie: Rotating 45 and/or 90 degrees would cost the same, 1 TU.

Just curious why you feel this is the case?

I don't know if it would be possible in any case as the game works on 45 degree angles.

Even if you reduced the AP cost to 0.5 for every 45 degrees as you cannot have 0.5 of an AP it would likely round up so you would still pay 2 AP to turn 90 degrees.

[Chris]

Having a race of aliens that is immune to smoke is a really interesting idea, actually - it's not been suggested before and it would make a big difference.

It would dovetail quite nicely with making the Sebillians a bit more interesting, as we could allow them to see through smoke (they see infra-red or something) and just give them smoke grenades...suddenly they'd be a very different proposition to fight than Caesans.

Androns are already pretty different imo; they've got a nice niche already. The problem is differentiating between the other two "main" races.

[Jean-Luc]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared_sensing_in_snakes

Realistically, heavy smoke would probably debilitate the senses of any organic creature but whatever.

Edited March 3, 2014 by Jean-Luc

[Chris]

Not lizards from space, though. They work differently because I said so.

[Max_Caine]

Sigged.

[Max_Caine]

Just as a thought, could Harridans be given a chemical armour rating? They are wearing vaccum-ready suits with inbuilt life-suport systems. While it probably isn't NBC sealed, I'd imagine between the self-sustaining life-support and the physically sealed armour, they wouldn't be affected by stun gas or other chem weapons half as much.

[Sunspot]

Just curious why you feel this is the case?

I don't know if it would be possible in any case as the game works on 45 degree angles.

Even if you reduced the AP cost to 0.5 for every 45 degrees as you cannot have 0.5 of an AP it would likely round up so you would still pay 2 AP to turn 90 degrees.

Your probably right about it not being feasible.

But what if turning 45 degrees was reduced to 0.4 TU's? That way 45 degrees would round down to 0TU's and 90 degrees costing 0.8TU's would round up to 1TU.

Personally I feel as though turning your head to observe fogged out terrain is something that would technically be part of a soldiers standard movement. I understand that in this case, the soldier is rotating his entire body; but 45 degree movement, through the eyes of a dynamic action seems like something that should be almost instantaneous.

Simply, I feel as though a significant amount of TU's are being used by soldiers who simply want a quick arch view of the environment. to ensure nothing has creep-ed up on their blind side.

Also, I might be Compulsive about making my soldiers rotate at the beginning of their turns.

[Sunspot]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared_sensing_in_snakes

Realistically, heavy smoke would probably debilitate the senses of any organic creature but whatever.

Maybe creatures that require significantly less oxygen would be more likely to manage their senses within heavy smoke?

And if their vision is simply blocked by the heavy smoke, maybe the Sebillians have, as per the wiki article:

"The ability to sense infrared thermal radiation ... allows these animals to "see"[1] radiant heat at wavelengths between 5 and 30 μm to a degree of accuracy such that a blind rattlesnake can target vulnerable body parts of the prey at which it strikes. "

Or Chris said so, also works.

[OzoneGrif]

About seeing through smoke, this is something done in UFO Ennemy unknown :

Drones allows the aliens to see and fire through smoke without penality, and increase their sight (firing from far inside the fog of war).

Destroying drones is often a priority because they do cancel most of the ways to cover your soldiers.

About healing, I always though it should consume both the healer and healed's TUs, because when you heal somebody, you ask him to not move. Or if healing self, it should costs twice the TUs.

Edited March 3, 2014 by OzoneGrif

[Sunspot]

I like both those ideas!

But I suspect the second one would be harder to implement.

But at the very least stopping someones critical and bleeding wound should be way more then 5 TU's.

Even the equivalent of shoving a tampon into someones bleeding hole, should be around 10-15TU's. And I highly doubt, that is simply what entails the healing process.

[Caaygun]

Healing should take most of the turn for the healer and healed. Self application should be possible but limited in power if we want to be realistic. But it is not really unbalanced currently because wounds also reduce maxHP. Regarding that, I think permanent HP loss from wounds would be interesting. In RL you never really recover totally after being severely wounded.

[Asmodean]

Seeing through smoke could be a fun alien type. Could be overpowerd too if not careful.

How could the vision part technically work? Well heavy smoke blocks or at least scatters all wavelengths of light unless you start getting up into x rays... VERY light haze and smoke can be penetrated with short wave IR. But heavy smoke would not be penetrated with body heat... a forest fire maybe. But there are some other plausible methods... Options:

SWIR as mentioned above might be ok for battlefield smoke.

Sonar or echo location like a bat or dolphin would be minimally impacted by smoke.

Telepathy... Everyone knows telepathy is not impaired by smoke. But this is easily mitigated by giving your soldiers tin foil hats with TV antennas sticking out of them.

X-Ray... with the ability to see thru trees and walls too this could be fun... if not overpowered. Maybe seeing thru things is so distracting that the particular alien gets a small accuracy penalty in general.

[Max_Caine]

Don't forget scent like this. But it doesn't have to be any one sensing organ. Like any good genengineered predator species, I'd imagine the senses of Sebillians might be described something like...

While Sebillians posses poor eyesight, they make up for this with a sensory package that is the envy of the top predators of our planet. Like snakes Sebillians can combine both taste and smell, rapidly flicking out the tip of their flexible tounge and depressing it on an organ which can rapidly and accurately analyse the scent. Their actual nasal slits are cruder, but what they loose in precision they make up for in volume, being able to process large quantities of chemical data. As if this wasn't enough, investigation of pits near their eyes suggest that they are perfectly capable of sensing infrared (specfically, body heat, even more specifically, human body heat), and their manes while decorative, are connected to the auditory cortex in a manner that we don't yet properly understand, but it somehow enhances their sense of hearing both in pitch and direction. This means it will be very hard for your soliders to hide from Sebillians. Don't bother using smoke grenades - they will be able to sense their prey though it, and your troops will only make it harder on themselves.

Edited March 5, 2014 by Max_Caine

[Darth Draken]

For me i find alien elite soldiers have a lot of time units.

Had one alien. Walk up to a xeno over 15 squares. Unload two rapid fire shots of 3 bursts each then throw a grenade at another soldier.

When it costs a xeno 30-35 points to throw a grenade. 1 third of a total time units. And 40+ tu for rapid multi shot fire.