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Ground Combat Balance - V22 Experimental Build 1


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Seeing as there are quite a few balances change in this new experimental it's probably worth posting a new thread to discuss them in particular.

Here are the changes:

- Made Harridans and Praetors immune to Chemical damage due to their sealed suits

- Made Caesan and Wraith officers / leaders resistant to Chemical damage due to their helmets

- Sebillians can now see through smoke

- Sebillians now regenerate 50% of their max HP every turn. Kill them quickly!

- Singularity Cannon weight and reload cost reduced somewhat (still cannot be fired without Predator armour)

- Demoted the two Caesan psionics on the final mission from Leader to Officer to reduce Mind Control spam

- Slowed down soldier rank progression by 30%

- Set stats to max out at 99 rather than 101

- Weapon suppression radius reduced by 1 for most weapons, human and alien

- Reaper attack TU cost increased from 25% to 35%

- Reduced number of mind control Caesans on battleships from max 6 to max 3, replaced numbers with some Officers

- Updated Light Drone blaster to have suppression radius 2 rather than 4

- Dread now has a 0.5x psionic strength modifier, so it should not affect entire teams every turn

- Hunter MG now fires 10 shots instead of 5

Particularly interested in how people find the Sebillian's new health regeneration level! Have fun with that.

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- Sebillians now regenerate 50% of their max HP every turn. Kill them quickly!

Particularly interested in how people find the Sebillian's new health regeneration level! Have fun with that.

um

maybe if it ate up all their TU or something...

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Did you change anything regarding soldiers deaths? i'm losing a soldier a damn mission never had this kind of attrition before. They all got jackal armor thanks to my army of scientists but i'm still losing soldiers to silly things like stray shots out of the blue or a seb deciding hes going to survive a point blank burst after hes been shot by a laser pistol twice.

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Didn't it? I could have sworn it went down in one of the-

Oh, I know what happened. I modded it at some point, then a new version came out, and I saw the value was lower and assumed it was a vanilla change. But what actually happened was that, since the armour.xml file was never updated, it was never replaced.

Oops.

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I had an extended play tonight with one of my Xenonaut newbie friends. We played all tje way to the first alien base. He (and I too) felt the crash sites had too few aliens and got a bit boring. The "tutorial phase" with light scouts and scout last too long and the difficulty spikes really hard when the first base mission comes. GC difficulty should ramp up a bit steeper. Add maybe 1 or 2 aliens to outside areas.

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Hos did that work out for you? I've never altered armour weight m'self.

Well enough, I think. I just changed it to 10kg (like Buzzard) so it was worth keeping for lower strength soldiers even when you get Wolf armour. I never really prioritise Buzzard armour, so maybe I was getting more out of the change that other people would, but it was nice to have a mixture of light and heavy armours early on for different soldier roles.

In fairness, though, it took me until I put a suit of Wolf armour on my soldiers to notice that the weight was the same, so I obviously didn't notice the extra weight on Jackal during play. Still, I'd previously been pretty much skipping Jackal and waiting for Wolf armour and had I realised it was heavier than I thought then I probably wouldn't have bothered again.

I had an extended play tonight with one of my Xenonaut newbie friends. We played all tje way to the first alien base. He (and I too) felt the crash sites had too few aliens and got a bit boring. The "tutorial phase" with light scouts and scout last too long and the difficulty spikes really hard when the first base mission comes. GC difficulty should ramp up a bit steeper. Add maybe 1 or 2 aliens to outside areas.

I was thinking the same thing before while playing through the first few months.

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Sorry for double-post, but some thoughts on some GC stuff. First, some stuff on AI:

I'm really enjoying the AI since v21 Stable. I don't think I'd appreciated how much better it is until now. Overall the aliens are mobile and aggressive which is great. They seem to stick together well and work with some coherence at least on a strategic level (had a fun moment before when an Andron burst through a wall and then two more lumbered through the hole after it!). The UFO ambushes are also very good - I've especially enjoyed the use of teleporters to stay out of sight before attacking.

All this said, there is still some small measure of passivity. For example, I had several aliens not take actions in the command room of an alien base. I'd covered my soldiers with smoke, which might have been having an effect, but then some of the aliens actually moved towards me to attack, while others just sat there. In another instance, when fighting a Terror Mission I had a number of Sibellians bunching up just on the edge of my slight range but not really doing a lot. Some were moving around and shooting, but a few also didn't really do anything productive. Worse, I guess, towards the end of the mission when I'd worn them down, they seemed like the froze a bit. I might have been because I was able to keep suppressing them and attacking from a number of directions, but in the final few turns they basically didn't do anything. (I have a save of this, if it's useful to examine?)

And then some stuff on alien placement/AI (not sure which):

Just completed a small Andron base. The first room I enter gets attacked on two sides by aliens (probably around 5-6, maybe a couple more) which is great. Then, as I make my way through the base, I find the rest is entirely empty except for the control room:

2014-03-29_00006.jpg

Apparently, half of the aliens were waiting for me there, having abandoned the rest of the base. Not sure if this is an AI issue or a spawn issue, but either way it would be nice for there to be more of an ongoing fight throughout the base.

2014-03-29_00006.jpg

2014-03-29_00006.thumb.jpg.fe43d5d0c6bad

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This really isn't a balance comment, but I've had too many crashes in GC with this build to consider it "playable". I can't really tell you where they are happening either. Some are happening when explosions are triggered including flashbangs. Others I have no idea what's causing them. Haven't had any in the geoscape though.

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This really isn't a balance comment, but I've had too many crashes in GC with this build to consider it "playable". I can't really tell you where they are happening either. Some are happening when explosions are triggered including flashbangs. Others I have no idea what's causing them. Haven't had any in the geoscape though.

I've not found it unplayable - it seems to go in waves of being fairly bad, or fine. Which I guess points towards some kind of consistency even if its not apparent? The main issue I'm suffering at the moment is a CTD after mission completion. But reloading before the end of the mission and doing it again seems to sort the issue.

On the subject of bases again (should this be here, or in the other thread?): I've just had exactly the same mission again (presumably the not-same-map-twice features doesn't work with bases?) and had the inverse of the problem I mentioned in the last post. This time, almost all of the aliens dog-piled me around the first room, leaving only three aliens in the command room and no aliens in the rest of the base. Am thinking this is most likely an AI rather than spawn issue, then: it certainly felt like the aliens were moving to reinforce that first room.

Also, the aliens were much more passive on that mission than others I've encountered. In the pile-up room, the aliens waited for me to come and attack them and didn't even take shots into the room I was in when they could do. Again, in the command room, I was able to pick off the base commander at a distance over several turns without drawing any fire simply by shooting into the next room. No exploiting of doors or anything: they seemed frozen.

EDIT: Some more thoughts on AI in this build.

So, on the plus side, aliens are blobbing together and rocking up en masse for a big scrap. I love this; its the kind of big-scale combat which I think I've been missing from the game previously. On the negative side, though, all the (none-defensive) aliens on the map are doing this, all together, at the same time. I don't have a problem with the difficulty; the scale of the fights is good. INstead, it's a matter of pacing, because once you have your big scrap, there's nothing left 'til you get to the UFO.

So on the one hand, I really like the change, but on the other it leaves a dull portion in the middle of each mission where nothing much is happening. I think - ideally - what I'd like to see is what's happening at the moment, but with a few extra aliens added which work more like the old passive aliens did, camping in spots around the map rather than converging in force. That way, you can't be certain that once you've taken out the main battle-group that there aren't a few left hiding around the map; it would also make manoeuvring around the main group more dangerous since there would be a risk of aliens camping and looking to take out stragglers.

In other words, I think maybe things have swung a little too much towards aggression. There's some nice fights coming out at the moment, but it all happens in one go and - often - near the beginning of the mission. A few extra aliens added to existing missions who don't clump together I think would make all the difference.

Edited by kabill
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.So, on the plus side, aliens are blobbing together and rocking up en masse for a big scrap. I love this; its the kind of big-scale combat which I think I've been missing from the game previously. On the negative side, though, all the (none-defensive) aliens on the map are doing this, all together, at the same time. I don't have a problem with the difficulty; the scale of the fights is good. INstead, it's a matter of pacing, because once you have your big scrap, there's nothing left 'til you get to the UFO.

So on the one hand, I really like the change, but on the other it leaves a dull portion in the middle of each mission where nothing much is happening. I think - ideally - what I'd like to see is what's happening at the moment, but with a few extra aliens added which work more like the old passive aliens did, camping in spots around the map rather than converging in force. That way, you can't be certain that once you've taken out the main battle-group that there aren't a few left hiding around the map; it would also make manoeuvring around the main group more dangerous since there would be a risk of aliens camping and looking to take out stragglers.

In other words, I think maybe things have swung a little too much towards aggression. There's some nice fights coming out at the moment, but it all happens in one go and - often - near the beginning of the mission. A few extra aliens added to existing missions who don't clump together I think would make all the difference.

Yes, yes, this exactly. I'm having the same experience; basically one big battle outside, which is friggin awesome, don't change a thing about that, but then it's a graveyard til I get to the ship. A few "non-clumping" aliens WOULD make all the difference and keep some suspense to sweeping a map

And ditto to the frozen aliens in the base control room. They just sit there, I bomb them with grenades, kill them every time

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Having read a lot of threads either complaining about the passivity of aliens or their over-agressiveness, I believe I have cracked this particular Rosetta Stone. What I think people want is Streets of Rage. A tough fight when you start the mission. Then GO! GO! GO! Move to the end of the screen! Then another tough fight a few minutes later. Battle over! GO! GO! GO! Move to the end of the screen! Then another tough fight a few minutes later after that! You know, this is what EU2012 did, guys. Battles were deliberately paced so you fought a little knot of enemies, then uncovered another little knot a few minutes later. There was always something to fight throughout the mission and each little knot was so measured that it would be a challenge for the squad. Is that really what you guys want? To untangle knot after knot after knot? Because it sure looks like it from here.

EDIT: The reason the missions are a graveyard is because the players are making it one. In response to "the aliens aren't aggressive enough", GJ has responded by upping their co-ordination and responsiveness. But by doing this, it means the aliens on the map are all pulled together to battle the human scum, meaning there are no more to fight. This is why I think people want Streets of Rage, because the desire seems to be there for a measured stream of battles, punctated by changes in environment.

Edited by Max_Caine
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Double post because I've been thinking about this. I think what's needed is the ability for the aliens to make fighting retreats and request reinforcements. This requires some serious radical thinking, so hear me out here. When I say retreat, I don't mean like it was in the Bad Old Days, when all the aliens ever did was pull back. I think that there needs to be some kind of a threshold where the aliens from X group loose Y casualties and are allowed to pull back, join with more aliens to form Z group, then go back on the attack.

Coupled with this, I think (and this is quite a radical thought), there needs to be the ability to pull reinforcements from the UFO, turning it into a spawn generator. This could be achieved by the ability for defensive-set aliens to transition from defensive to aggressive, because as soon as an alien turns aggressive it then goes off to hunt human scum. If aliens could go from defensive to aggressive, then you can do cunning things like set up waves of aliens, with the proper number of defensive aliens transitioning to aggressive at the appropriate point. So, for example, when the door of the Command Room is kicked in, all remaining defensive aliens on the map could immediately transition to aggressive, and the standard AI would then take over. Of course, a UFO could just simply be a proper spawn generator, spawning X number of aggressive aliens when there's a call for reinforcements.

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Having read a lot of threads either complaining about the passivity of aliens or their over-agressiveness, I believe I have cracked this particular Rosetta Stone. What I think people want is Streets of Rage. A tough fight when you start the mission. Then GO! GO! GO! Move to the end of the screen! Then another tough fight a few minutes later. Battle over! GO! GO! GO! Move to the end of the screen! Then another tough fight a few minutes later after that! You know, this is what EU2012 did, guys. Battles were deliberately paced so you fought a little knot of enemies, then uncovered another little knot a few minutes later. There was always something to fight throughout the mission and each little knot was so measured that it would be a challenge for the squad. Is that really what you guys want? To untangle knot after knot after knot? Because it sure looks like it from here.

It's possible that you're referring to other people (if so, then sorry), but that's not at all what I'd been suggesting or commenting about above. Indeed, I'd argue that the model you deride is a good fit for the game as it stands at the moment. With very little variation, I've been getting a big fight outside the UFO (then, Go! Go! Go!); a second fight inside the UFO (Go! Go! Go!); and (if Landing Ship+) a final fight in the command room. Similar in bases: big ambush at the beginning, then nothing until the next screen (command room).

To be clear, then: it's precisely the 'Go! Go! Go!' bit which I want to see gone. It's dull to have to mindlessly click your soldiers from the drop-site to the UFO door because you know you've encountered all the aliens already. The issue isn't just about there not being any fighting; more importantly, there's no *threat*. If there was the potential for being attacked, I'd have to move cautiously, care about positioning and cover and all the rest. But as it is, I can simply dash my soldiers about, without a care for positioning because I know there's nothing left to attack me. Indeed, I *want* to dash them around like this, to get to the UFO (and the rest of the mission) as fast as possible.

So my point was not to suggest spreading aliens out into little manageable clumps. It's precisely the opposite: ensuring that there's always a threat - or potential threat - throughout the whole mission (or as close as possible; you have to kill all the aliens outside the UFO at some point!). I think this can be achieved by having some aliens that fight more cautiously/statically and don't throw themselves at you.

Double post because I've been thinking about this. I think what's needed is the ability for the aliens to make fighting retreats and request reinforcements. This requires some serious radical thinking, so hear me out here. When I say retreat, I don't mean like it was in the Bad Old Days, when all the aliens ever did was pull back. I think that there needs to be some kind of a threshold where the aliens from X group loose Y casualties and are allowed to pull back, join with more aliens to form Z group, then go back on the attack.

Coupled with this, I think (and this is quite a radical thought), there needs to be the ability to pull reinforcements from the UFO, turning it into a spawn generator. This could be achieved by the ability for defensive-set aliens to transition from defensive to aggressive, because as soon as an alien turns aggressive it then goes off to hunt human scum. If aliens could go from defensive to aggressive, then you can do cunning things like set up waves of aliens, with the proper number of defensive aliens transitioning to aggressive at the appropriate point. So, for example, when the door of the Command Room is kicked in, all remaining defensive aliens on the map could immediately transition to aggressive, and the standard AI would then take over. Of course, a UFO could just simply be a proper spawn generator, spawning X number of aggressive aliens when there's a call for reinforcements.

This would be my ideal. But given time before release, I wonder whether it's possible (hence my suggestion above about just having a few extra more passive aliens dotted around).

Edited by kabill
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kabill, I'm not singling out any particular person, but the impression I get is that the aliens are simultaneously too passive and too aggressive and that the desired state is to have all the battles paced, with (say) half dozen baddies thrown at the player then move along a bit and change the scenery (from "farmhouse" to "open field", rather than "farm" to "UFO"), then another half dozen baddies thrown at the player, etc. etc., just like in Streets of Rage when you battle some baddies and after everyone is dead, the big red GO! GO! GO! points at you to move to the next battle, which is pretty much what EU2012 did. You always knew where the next battle was going to be, it was always against a small, dangerous but manageable knot of baddies, and there was always something else to fight. I mean, I read threads where one guy is complaining that the UFOs need baddies in all the levels, then I read another thread where a guy is asking why the baddies on the top level aren't helping the baddies on the lower levels!

Edited by Max_Caine
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The AI is awesome now IMO. I even have had them try to sneak up behind me! You have to check the flanks now. I think the AI is good enough for release now and FAR better than the OG. My only complaint is game instability. I'm having a crash every other GC. So I get frustrated and quit.

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It's dull to have to mindlessly click your soldiers from the drop-site to the UFO door because you know you've encountered all the aliens already. The issue isn't just about there not being any fighting; more importantly, there's no *threat*. If there was the potential for being attacked, I'd have to move cautiously, care about positioning and cover and all the rest. But as it is, I can simply dash my soldiers about, without a care for positioning because I know there's nothing left to attack me.

So my point was not to suggest spreading aliens out into little manageable clumps. It's precisely the opposite: ensuring that there's always a threat - or potential threat - throughout the whole mission (or as close as possible; you have to kill all the aliens outside the UFO at some point!). I think this can be achieved by having some aliens that fight more cautiously/statically and don't throw themselves at you.

Lol this exactly again. It's like Kabill is taking the thoughts right out of my head, and then stating them more succinctly than I could.

Max, just because we want more of a continual menace in the outside part of a mission doesn't mean we're 14-year-olds looking for Streets of Rage. If there are 10 aliens outside a ship, and all of them jump you in the first 2 turns, then the rest of the map (until the ship) IS a graveyard. Let 2 of them come at you in a probing attack, then 5-6 rush you and try to overwhelm you, then have a couple camping individually to try to pick off one of your team as you cautiously make your way through the buildings.

I just finished a mission where I think Skitso made the map; there were two large multi-level farmhouses full of corners and hallways and nooks and crannies. Looked like somebody had spent a considerable amount of time designing and making them. I strolled right past them and never even bothered to look inside because I KNEW all the aliens were already dead in a big initial battle. Too bad somebody spent all that time planning those farmhouses, as there's no reason for me to visit, much less fear, them.

I'm looking for sustained suspense, where you're always afraid to peek around the next corner. The new AI with big firefights is fantastic, but not if they come at the price of the rest of the map being abandoned. Give us some "campers" too :)

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If there are 10 aliens outside a ship, and all of them jump you in the first 2 turns, then the rest of the map (until the ship) IS a graveyard.
But the AI is acting intelligently. What you are asking for goes against solid principles of military strategy. Attacking piecemeal goes against the principle of mass and is in essence giving your opponents local superiority at a minimum. To get what you want AND keep the AI acting intelligently is the same as asking for MORE aliens. By my estimate a valid strategy for your request would require that the aliens probably have at least 2x - 3x as many troops as you do (counting a garrison in the ship.) Otherwise, it would be stupid for the aliens to do what you suggest. The only other way it could work is if the aliens had the equivalent of snipers and some form of camouflage or other concealment ala Predator. Edited by StellarRat
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StellarRat, another way is to make aliens cluster 0,5-1 turn away from ufo and on a map you spot actually a couple of scouts/marksmen. Their positions are highly variable (i. multipe spawnpoints).

A similar idea is that the enemy groups of 3-5 aliens are actually starting closer to your dropship (1,5-2 turns of movement) but instead they move toward UFO, killing civilans if any on their way and all alien troopers who got to the UFO make their stand there.

If you wipe one group others learn that that direction is dangerous and relocate accordingly. If the fight is near UFO, UFO guards run out, except non-combatants.

Btw, i consider 1 turn is 100 TUs..

Edited by Beltorn
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But the AI is acting intelligently. What you are asking for goes against solid principles of military strategy. Attacking piecemeal goes against the principle of mass and is in essence giving your opponents local superiority at a minimum

Very true and I absolutely agree. If I was the alien commander and saw heavily-armed humans coming, I would hit them as hard as I could with everything I had. No doubt about it. But in the context of this game, though, that has the unfortunate side effect of leaving the rest of the outside map empty, and essentially purposeless. Do we accept that as the price of intelligent AI (if so, so be it) or can something be done to sustain some kind of suspense when sweeping the rest of the map...?

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