Vehicles - balance and usability (V22.7 HF2)

[Gauddlike]

In this thread I would like people to say how they are finding the current vehicle balance (V22.7 HF2) and how it can be improved.

If they are not using vehicles then I would also like to see what they feel could be done to make them a more viable option.

Please don't list problems without possible solutions.

Also remember we all play differently so someone else may pose a problem you disagree with or a solution you do not like.

Feel free to discuss this but remember to post your alternative options for balance.

[legit1337]

More ammo and better accuracy for starters. I'd like to playtest that and then see where to go from there.

Vehicles should outperform 2 soldiers in speed and ammo capacity considering you are giving up vision, flanking flexibility, and armament variation that is afforded with 2 bodies. That seems like a fair tradeoff IMO. Damage output, and health should be roughly analogous IMO: as in the hunter should have the same health points as two rookies with jackal armor, and should put out about the same firepower as the same two rookies armed with LMGs or rocket launchers, depending on turret configuration of hunter.

Vehicles being made recoverable is a bit iffy to me. I'd rather see them stronger and expensive, then weaker and immortal.

Edited May 13, 2014 by legit1337

[kottis]

I am not using vehicles , especially in the early game. The reason is, I am far more flexible if I use 2 soldiers instead. Later, with an increased transport capacity, I use vehicles sometimes till they get destroyed. But it more for fun and not for efficiency.

Suggestions:

- give each transport a free vehicle space (vehicles get mandatory)

- recovery of destroyed vehicles for a certain amount of money (has to be cheaper than building a new one)

- different vehicle equipment to adress specific roles (e.g. scout, tank, glasscannon)

[silencer]

1. Expensive

2. Inaccurate

3. Not enough ammo

4. There are better research topics and workshop projects.

[Caaygun]

IMO a vehicle needs to be about as powerful as 4 soldiers with same level equipment to be viable to go for. It has some costly disadvantages namely:

1-Must divert research and production away from something, probably soldier equipment.

2-Only useful in open terrain, so of limited use in Base attack, large Ufo breach, Industrial tileset.

3-You get to level up two less soldiers per vehicle used.

4-Lost is lost, you don't get restocked for lost tanks like you do for lost soldier's equipment.

Suggestions:

1-More HP or Armor to yield about double the durability.

2-Capability to cover soldiers behind it.

3-Unlimited, or reloadable MG ammo. Or same tank can both use a few rockets and MG.

4-Bring down tech level req, to make Hunter purchasable off the bat like Condor, then Scimitar becomes available with Wolf armor (after alien alloy manufacture).

[Chris]

It's a bit late to make any major changes to vehicles besides rebalancing their stats. So that rules out giving dropships a free vehicle space, or vehicle recovery.

I also don't want to change the "direct upgrade" system we use in the tech tree. Each vehicle should be a direct improvement on the vehicle before it.

So it's more about rebalancing the vehicle weapons or the vehicle stats themselves at this point. They have to be decent enough to warrant the extra cost and research time on top of standard soldiers.

[Chris]

Actually one coding change we could possibly consider is to make vehicles have a 100% stopping chance for "miss" shots (or blocking shots). This means if the aliens shoot at it and miss, the shot is still fairly likely to hit the vehicle because of the size of the thing and the relatively small scatter distances.

This would look more realistic and would also allow you to shelter troops behind vehicles. Vehicles would need a significant health buff if that were the case, but it would still open up some new tactical considerations if it could be used as mobile cover.

[Skitso]

That sounds reasonable and would make me atleast happy.

[llunak]

I think it'd already make a noticeable difference if the vehicle took space of just one soldier, not 2. Given that each transport is explicitly limited to carry only at most one vehicle anyway, it's not like this change would make anything overpowered (or any change at all except for players being more willing to bother with vehicles).

[Alexandre Lange]

Sometimes I use vehicles as tough scouts, to attract enemy fire (tier 1 enemies barely can damage it), and as supression machines. It replaces three roles for me: scout, shield and heavy weapons, and cost only two spaces. I don't like the fact that they don't die and don't level up. I would like SO MUCH to see it as a mobile cover (when I play Xenonauts first time I tryed to do it); if you guys give it some more armor, we don't mind if it get some more shots.

[StellarRat]

I'd be happy with more ammo and a boost the MG accuracy on the Hunter. If you make them "mobile shields" then they will need much better armor/hit points.

[Gauddlike]

I like the idea of increasing armour and stopping chance to make them useful as mobile cover.

Especially with the change to the accuracy calculation so soldiers should be able to fire around it more easily.

It already provides a sight range bonus usable with squad sight so makes sense to stack a couple of squaddies behind it to advance in relative safety.

I would also like to see them have a little more ammunition so they don't become so much less useful on the longer missions.

Especially if their main protection is armour which will likely degrade over the course of the fight.

Being much less tough as well as out of offensive options feels like a waste.

[kabill]

Personally, I think making them more durable and adding increased stopping chance is probably the best idea since it allows vehicles to do something that regular soldiers can't. That, for me, creates a more interesting choice than simply trying min-max firepower and hitpoints.

That isn't to say the other buffs wouldn't be appropriate too, but making vehicles feel less like really big soldiers is a big plus for me.

[Chris]

Armour wouldn't show up on the health bar though, if we did that I might just remove the armour and give them 500HP or something. That way people at least have a vague idea of how shot up their vehicle is.

[Skybirduk]

It would have been nice if you could have two team members inside the vehicle, one driving and one as a gunner. Each would use their TU's for a different purpose then, the driver TU's would just be used for movement, with the gunner's just for firing.

If they could obtain experience for the mission, then it would encourage the use of vehicles. Perhaps they could even leave the vehicle at some point and carry out the remainder of the mission on foot with their normal complement of weapons.

[kabill]

Armour wouldn't show up on the health bar though, if we did that I might just remove the armour and give them 500HP or something. That way people at least have a vague idea of how shot up their vehicle is.

Might still be a good idea to give them some armour, even if a lot of their resistance comes from HP. It would be a good way of buffing later tier vehicles without just slapping more hp on them.

Incidentally, on a related note, IIRC three-digit stats don't display well in the main UI display during ground missions. If vehicles are going to have much over 100 HP, it might be useful to fix this so their current HP can be seen easily (if it's fixable, of course!).

[StellarRat]

Armour wouldn't show up on the health bar though, if we did that I might just remove the armour and give them 500HP or something. That way people at least have a vague idea of how shot up their vehicle is.

That's a good idea. But I hope you aren't thinking of doing that instead of giving them more ammo. You could also add a secondary, less powerful weapon, with a good supply of ammo. I think the modders have already done this. If I recall correctly in the OG, with vehicles you usually had a choice between a direct fire weapon with lots of shots or very powerful AOE weapon with only a few shots. We don't really have that except for the Hunter, so I think some middle of the road compromise is needed. Edited May 13, 2014 by StellarRat

[legit1337]

Agreed, the vehicles need more ammo and better accuracy no matter what happens to them. Although I would not mind seeing the increased to block chance and improved health too.

[StellarRat]

Agreed, the vehicles need more ammo and better accuracy no matter what happens to them. Although I would not mind seeing the increased to block chance and improved health too.

They'll have to be WAY stronger than they are now because basically everything aimed at them will hit. Even 500 HP might not be enough.

[kabill]

If I recall correctly in the OG, with vehicles you usually had a choice between a direct fire weapon with lots of shots or very powerful AOE weapon with only a few shots. We don't really have that except for the Hunter, so I think some middle of the road compromise is needed.

Kind of. Different HWP had different weapon types, but you couldn't swap them.

For what it's worth, though, this would be very easy to add to the game. I.e. at each weapon tier have an AoE and machinegun version. Or, if secondary weapons are possible, have them both mounted at the same time. Probably in mod territory, though.

[Max_Caine]

Been there, done that. The UI has been adjusted since v21 so the Primary Weapon window now overhangs on where the Secondary window would be, but the secondary weapon code is still there, it's still do-able. I've looked into doing a gatling version of every weapon and the code side is very easy - easy to add new weapons, even easier to slot them in. The art side however... well, that would be expensive unless a talented artist (artists?) among the community was willing to do it for a reduced rate. You need sprite art, garage art, UI art and (potentially) Xenopedia art.

Edited May 14, 2014 by Max_Caine

[kabill]

Been there, done that. The UI has been adjusted since v21 so the Primary Weapon window now overhangs on where the Secondary window would be, but the secondary weapon code is still there, it's still do-able. I've looked into doing a gatling version of every weapon and the code side is very easy - easy to add new weapons, even easier to slot them in. The art side however... well, that would be expensive unless a talented artist (artists?) among the community was willing to do it for a reduced rate. You need sprite art, garage art, UI art and (potentially) Xenopedia art.

Yeah, I remembered you doing something with vehicle weapons (couldn't remember exactly what, though).

If you were just going for single weapon with variants, you could get away with using existing unit sprites and garage images. You could even use the same UI image (and lore-wise explain it as being the same weapon but modified in some way), though havig a different UI image would be useful for ease of selection. This said, I'm thinking more in terms of modding than official release with an accordingly lower standards bar.

Graphics for a secondary weapon would be a hassle, though, yes.

[Max_Caine]

Ah... secondary weapon graphics. I was only ever able to access secondary weapons through a keyboard shortcut, so I don't have any idea how to get it to switch between the two. Might be worthwhile looking into my older versions of the same script to see if there are features which have since been edited.

[StellarRat]

Now that I think about it, it's probably too late to add secondary weapons to the vehicles. I think a better option would be to simply have two versions of each weapon type, one that is slow firing, powerful, and has limited ammo and another that is rapid fire and has lots of ammo, but obviously much less powerful. Both appear when the appropriate tech is researched. For example the Scimitar could be equipped with either the standard pulse laser and 15 rounds OR a scatter laser with 250 rounds of ammo (25 bursts worth.) None of the graphics would need to be changed. You simply pick the weapon you want when you're at the base on the garage screen just like you can choose a rocket or MG for the Hunter. That way you can switch out weapons depending on what type of opposition/mission you're expecting just like you do with soldiers. I'm sure this can be done with just some XML additions.

Edited May 14, 2014 by StellarRat

[Troublechuter]

Armour wouldn't show up on the health bar though, if we did that I might just remove the armour and give them 500HP or something. That way people at least have a vague idea of how shot up their vehicle is.

I'm not sure about removing the armor completely, but removing some armor and giving them a HP boost seems like a good idea. The issue I have with vehicles at the moment is that the amount of punishment they take varies wildly; sometimes they can take a dozen shots and keep rolling, sometimes they explode in two hits. Without fully understanding the game's armor mechanics, I have a feeling this is because of the fact that they have heavy armor, but not much actual health.