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Weapon Role Thoughts


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The only downside I can see straight off is you loose the loot the target was carrying, but if you were gonna fire a missile at a target, them's the breaks.

They also have to reload after every shot, need a soldier with high strength to carry the weapon and aim it accurately, a high TU cost, and only 4-6 shots total for the entire mission. Then there's also the times when the rockeeter totally wiffs the shot and blows himself up.

Those are a lot of drawbacks. If a rocket launcher isn't capable of killing non-elite aliens in one hit it's garbage.

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There are counters to those drawbacks. A rocket launcher has a recoil of zero and a near infinite range, so provided you have someone with armour spotting for your missile battery you don't have to wear armour, which means those 6kg of launcher and 1 kg of rocket won't rest too heavily on even a rookies' shoulders. If a rocket launcher is going to be used more than an incidental weapon, you spam that bad boy so the drawbacks of only being able to fire every 3rd turn are mitigated, and spamming it only becomes easier with every dropship upgrade. It's that area of affect that really makes a rocket launcher pointless to spam, as rockets are dangerous to man and beast. But an AP rocket that only does damage to the tile it's on is a game changer. You can use a rocketeer in close quarters without worrying about missing and blowing up something you shouldn't because an AP rocket is like Bullet Bill on steroids.

Don't believe me? Wouldn't blame you. For those interested, the stats for AP rockets were never removed. The definitions for AP rockets are in weapons, weapons_gc, strings and items. All you have to do is alter the definition in items from "Normal" to "Unlimited" to get a taste of an AP tomorrow.

Edited by Max_Caine
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They also have to reload after every shot, need a soldier with high strength to carry the weapon and aim it accurately, a high TU cost, and only 4-6 shots total for the entire mission. Then there's also the times when the rockeeter totally wiffs the shot and blows himself up.

Those are a lot of drawbacks. If a rocket launcher isn't capable of killing non-elite aliens in one hit it's garbage.

You forgot that it is also useless in close quarters unless you want to splash your squad along with the aliens.

There are counters to those drawbacks. A rocket launcher has a recoil of zero and a near infinite range, so provided you have someone with armour spotting for your missile battery you don't have to wear armour, which means those 6kg of launcher and 1 kg of rocket won't rest too heavily on even a rookies' shoulders. If a rocket launcher is going to be used more than an incidental weapon, you spam that bad boy so the drawbacks of only being able to fire every 3rd turn are mitigated, and spamming it only becomes easier with every dropship upgrade. It's that area of affect that really makes a rocket launcher pointless to spam, as rockets are dangerous to man and beast. But an AP rocket that only does damage to the tile it's on is a game changer. You can use a rocketeer in close quarters without worrying about missing and blowing up something you shouldn't because an AP rocket is like Bullet Bill on steroids.

Don't believe me? Wouldn't blame you. For those interested, the stats for AP rockets were never removed. The definitions for AP rockets are in weapons, weapons_gc, strings and items. All you have to do is alter the definition in items from "Normal" to "Unlimited" to get a taste of an AP tomorrow.

If the downsides above aren't enough for you there is also...

-Reduce accuracy and range? Unguided rockets IRL aren't very accurate past 200m.

-Up the weight on the launcher and ammo.

-Splash damage for AP rockets (just smaller than HE).

-Full round to reload.

-Raise TU cost to fire.

-No reaction fire for loaded rocket launchers (should help cut down on blue on blue incidents too).

Those are just the ones I thought of off of the top of my head. There are plenty of ways to balance rockets so that spamming them isn't viable.

Edited by legit1337
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Okay, in order.

1) With most rockets being area affect, the lower the accuracy, the more dangerous it becomes to the operators own side (not to say the least the operator). There is a very real point where lowering accuracy makes the rocket launcher non-viable except in the hands of a highly skilled operator, and at that point why bother when there's always a Hunter/Scimitar/Hyperion?

2) An unarmoured rookie with average (50) strength can carry 23kgs of weight before TU reduction. You could double the weight of the rocket launcher and triple the weight of rockets and a rookie could still carry a launcher and four extra rockets with only a minor reduction to TUs. The point where rockets start to feel heavy is around the 5kg mark, and at that point I've already bought a Hunter and am using the rockets on that.

3) Ah! I totally agree on this one!

4) It already takes (under the new regime) a full round to reload.

5) There have been complaints about the TU costs for firing an LMG, these complaints would come right back if the TU cost for the rocket launcher were too high.

6) I don't want my rocket launcher trooper to fire reaction shots. Not when they're carrying area of effect weapons. I always turn my rocketeers around, or have them use another weapon. Removing reaction fire from highly dangerous weapons like rocket launchers isn't a nerf, it's a buff.

EDIT: I re-iterate, try the AP rockets out.

Edited by Max_Caine
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Okay, in order.

1) With most rockets being area affect, the lower the accuracy, the more dangerous it becomes to the operators own side (not to say the least the operator). There is a very real point where lowering accuracy makes the rocket launcher non-viable except in the hands of a highly skilled operator, and at that point why bother when there's always a Hunter/Scimitar/Hyperion?

2) An unarmoured rookie with average (50) strength can carry 23kgs of weight before TU reduction. You could double the weight of the rocket launcher and triple the weight of rockets and a rookie could still carry a launcher and four extra rockets with only a minor reduction to TUs. The point where rockets start to feel heavy is around the 5kg mark, and at that point I've already bought a Hunter and am using the rockets on that.

3) Ah! I totally agree on this one!

4) It already takes (under the new regime) a full round to reload.

5) There have been complaints about the TU costs for firing an LMG, these complaints would come right back if the TU cost for the rocket launcher were too high.

6) I don't want my rocket launcher trooper to fire reaction shots. Not when they're carrying area of effect weapons. I always turn my rocketeers around, or have them use another weapon. Removing reaction fire from highly dangerous weapons like rocket launchers isn't a nerf, it's a buff.

EDIT: I re-iterate, try the AP rockets out.

1. That's the point. Not saying nerf accuracy too badly, just so it isn't laser accurate anymore.

2. An unarmored rookie also wouldn't last long, and would need other gear. You are intentionally using an extreme example that would never actually be viable in-game.

5. 80% sounds reasonable.

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If you give machineguns a low kill chance then it makes Predators useless, and is pretty boring in general. The limitations on reaction fire for heavy weapons is partly for your own safety - having your soldiers reaction firing with MGs and rocket launchers can be as destructive to your own team as it is to the enemy.

Currently I think MG is somewhat overpowered. It fires its 10 rounds very linearly and with high damage. High damage is fine but I think the fire arc needs to widen a little bit. Currently, I can sit my MG at the end of a corridor in a base and more often than not one shot anyone that comes into view in the other end of the room. 2-3 out of the 10 bullets connect and takes down any enemy. Regarding reaction fire, I think that has to stay, but with the capability of turning off. 20 round magazines (2 bursts), full turn to reload is fine, it is already OP. There is also currently a bug that denies reloading outside of the inventory screen.

They're fine for this so far as I can tell. I've lobbed plenty of grenades over hedges, walls and other Xenonauts (though one should only do the latter with non-lethal grenades ;) )

Man I got a sebillian scout my soldiers, fall to reaction fire, then have a grenade tossed over the hedge that came from nowhere that took one guy down, panicked the other. It sure works fine apparently.

I think stun grenades should require an extra turn to apply their full effect. And in my experience the effects from several are cumulative. If true, perhaps lessen this? This gives the AI more of a chance against stun grenade spam.

I think the issue with this would be the defenders of the command room don't move at all and thus be very susceptible to get all 3 turns of the gas. Aliens need Ai to escape the gas, that's more of a problem I think.

Regarding melee stun, it is powerful enough but with the new reaction fire beef, I only take one with me in case all grenades fail to take that officer/leader down.

I also think there's a missing niche for long-range cover denial weapon. C4 is all well and good but explodes at the end of the turn, so you can't use it to remove cover before firing with your other soldiers, and it's short range too. Giving that role to rocket launchers seems a more sensible route than making it an armour-penetrating high explosive rocket that can kill most things in one or two shots.

Currently in e21.5 cover is weak enough that precision rifle is enough to shoot aliens behind cover. It often gets %30 accuracy over very long distance with aimed behind cover. I even often take my chance at targets behind chain covers.

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Regarding MG: I don't feel the 10 bullet burst somehow, maybe it's the too short sound effect or something... But I'd prefer the old 5 bullet burst with a maybe 15 bullet belt and higher damage per bullet.

Edited by Skitso
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No, we're not putting AP rockets back in. We removed them for a reason - if they're powerful enough to damage heavily armoured targets, they can one-shot basically anything in the game irrespective of tech level and thus ruin the game progression (and if not, people complain it's unrealistic that a humanoid alien can eat an anti-tank rocket and survive).

Rocket launchers become a giant sniper rifle. We've tried it already and it doesn't work well, and I'm not going to rework the rocket launcher just to prove to the newer members of the community that something we already know doesn't work indeed does not work.

The current rockets used in the rocket launcher are high-explosive thermobaric rockets, not HEAT rounds, so they're not intended to be anti-tank weapons. They're labelled as "HE Rockets" in-game so their use is pretty clear.

I don't think the game drops off mitigation in the same way that damage can be set to drop off, so I'm not going to give them mitigation. But you can simulate the same effect with raw damage if desired, particularly if you give explosions a rapid drop-off.

A rocket launcher that can't one-shot an elite alien is not garbage....or if you think it is, then don't use it. You get an upgraded rocket at every tech level so if you can one shot basic aliens with the basic rocket, you'll be able to one-shot elite aliens with the tier 4 one. Fundamentally I object to giving people an AOE weapon that also does massive damage on a direct hit; weapons should be either one or the other. It's intended to be a support weapon, not an unguided blaster launcher.

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legit, the only thing I'll say now is that an unarmoured rookie isn't an extreme example seeing as how you start off with no armour and unless the player knows exactly which tech to unlock for Jackal, won't have armour for a while. You start with rookies, and as people en masse aren't complaining that they suffer TPKs, entire teams composed of unarmoured rookies work, as that's what everyone gets to begin with!

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Also, there's not really any need for an AP rocket in the first half of the game. It's not an anti-personnel weapon and the medium / heavy drones don't appear till late game. Not sure I want a rocket that lets you make short work of Androns either, the whole point of them is that they're tough to kill.

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Also, there's not really any need for an AP rocket in the first half of the game. It's not an anti-personnel weapon and the medium / heavy drones don't appear till late game. Not sure I want a rocket that lets you make short work of Androns either, the whole point of them is that they're tough to kill.

It was just an idea. I was not around for the AP rockets but I'll take your word that they didn't work.

What about machineguns? Doesn't an equivalent magazine size to an assault rifle sort of defeat the purpose of that weapon's role? A MG is supposed to be capable of sustained fire.

Edited by legit1337
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What about machineguns? Doesn't an equivalent magazine size to an assault rifle sort of defeat the purpose of that weapon's role? A MG is supposed to be capable of sustained fire.

Sustained fire, valid point. Perhaps add the possibility of allowing another soldier reload the MG for the operator? Or make a larger 'Belt Magazine' which is very heavy to carry, but also has a very large size (like 5-6 bursts), is it possible for the weight to drop with ammo spending by the way?

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What about machineguns? Doesn't an equivalent magazine size to an assault rifle sort of defeat the purpose of that weapon's role? A MG is supposed to be capable of sustained fire.

Yes, I am considering upping the clipsize to 30. However, remember that the idea here is to create a fun and interesting weapon rather than a realistic one. In video games, machineguns can often exhaust their ammo relatively quickly because they fire so many shots - indeed, XCOM 2012 has the MEC minigun hold two shots and the conventional one hold the same amount of ammo as the other weapons...or possibly one shot less, I forget.

Hopefully we can all agree that the most interesting feature of the machinegun is that it fires a lot of bullets each time you use it? That's even more fundamental than it having a large ammo belt, right? If so, that's the primary reason for its existence and the other features have to be balanced around allowing that without making the gun OP.

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Could the MG TU's and bullets per burst be halved with the addition of the old heavy weapon penalty? This way we could get the weapon a bit more flexible. Also, as I previously mentioned, while I can't put my finger on it, the 10 bullet burst feels wrong somehow and doesn't fit games overall feel.

Edited by Skitso
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Yes, I am considering upping the clipsize to 30. However, remember that the idea here is to create a fun and interesting weapon rather than a realistic one. In video games, machineguns can often exhaust their ammo relatively quickly because they fire so many shots.

Hopefully we can all agree that the most interesting feature of the machinegun is that it fires a lot of bullets each time you use it? That's even more fundamental than it having a large ammo belt, right? If so, that's the primary reason for its existence and the other features have to be balanced around allowing that without making the gun OP.

Yes, you are right. In real life, machineguns can also exhaust all their ammo quickly if the operator is trigger happy. Short bursts (5-7 rounds) are normally used except in extreme circumstances. If you just hold the trigger down you will go through hundreds of rounds in few seconds. In some ways you were closer to reality when you used five round bursts. However, like Legit said in a round about kind of way, is that MGs are also scary precisely because they do have a lot of ammo AND they can fire a lot of bullets. The two go hand in hand. The only change I would want right now is go back to five rounds per burst and a reducing the TU % to half of what it now. That would allow MGs to fire twice per turn, but only five rounds each time. If you wanted to shoot all ten at the same target you could, but you could also shoot at two different targets. Or give us a kind of MG "snapshot" for half the TU % and half the rounds.

In my "ideal" MG world you would have a special clip that is ONLY for MGs. It would be very heavy and allow at least 70 rounds. So, heavy, in fact, that there would be no hope of carrying both the MG and a spare clip. You would have to have someone else carry the spare ammo and it would take a full turn to reload the MG. Then the MG would have the proper drawbacks.

Whatever you do please don't nerf the MG any further. I've already seen people here calling for less powerful rounds and more dispersion. It's supposed to be dangerous just like a rocket launcher is supposed to be dangerous. Since all the heavy weapons have plenty of drawbacks I would hope that they are more dangerous than ARs once you actually get to fire them. Otherwise, I'm just going to load everyone up with AR's and forget about all the other weapons.

Edited by StellarRat
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Nah, I'm pretty happy with the 10-round burst as is. The 5-round burst was pretty similar to the AR, really. This way the weapon actually looks like it's doing something when it fires so I'm not keen to revert that particular change.

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The only change I would want right now is go back to five rounds per burst and a reducing the TU % to half of what it now. That would allow MGs to fire twice per turn, but only five rounds each time. If you wanted to shoot all ten at the same target you could, but you could also shoot at two different targets. Or give us a kind of MG "snapshot" for half the TU % and half the rounds.

I think this might also make the gun OP. 2x 5-shot bursts per turn will allow killing two separate enemies in close to medium range, wheras the 1x 10-shot burst allowed killing of 1 enemy at short to long range with the current narrow fire arc and high damage. This will make it the sure choice weapon for base assault especially.

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Nah, I'm pretty happy with the 10-round burst as is. The 5-round burst was pretty similar to the AR, really. This way the weapon actually looks like it's doing something when it fires so I'm not keen to revert that particular change.
I'm OK with that as long as no further nerfing/dispersion is done.
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Maybe MG could have two burst modes: 55%TU, 5 bullets and tighter spread / 80%TU, 10 bullets wider spread.
Hmm...I guess that might be OK. You still couldn't fire more than once though. I'd have to try that before I could say anything. Doesn't sound like Chris is in favor of anything less than 10 rounds per burst though.
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I think this might also make the gun OP. 2x 5-shot bursts per turn will allow killing two separate enemies in close to medium range, wheras the 1x 10-shot burst allowed killing of 1 enemy at short to long range with the current narrow fire arc and high damage. This will make it the sure choice weapon for base assault especially.
You can kill two seperate enemies with an AR with two snapshots no?
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I like the look of these principles Chris.

The one thing I would like to see change would be grenades exploding on impact again. Wasn't that changed way back, when you tended to hit the cover you were standing behind? I thought it was to give you a chance to move away when that particular thing happened. Now that grenade throwing seems much more reliable, I would like to see grenades return to instant effect. It would make them more useful, without having to have massive damage or big splash damage. It would also make them more like all the other grenades within the game.

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