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V22 Experimental 10 Released! (including save games)


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I'm not following you

It was my understanding that you got at least an equivalent approval rating boost for completing a GC. Thereby either solution to a crash site (airstrike or GC) will net you the same 30% funding increase at the end of the month. If that's true, then the reduced airstrike value holds true

Well, no, I don't think that's true. Remember, the blurb when you do your first airstrike basically says that the government of this region is appreciative of you allowing them to pick at the crash-site after the airstrike, since you just slam missiles into it and forget about it. To me, that implies that while they're happy for you to push off the aliens from their region when you do a GC, they're even more happy to be allowed to dig in to that juicy alien tech, and so give a funding bonus for doing airstrikes.

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BUGFIXES: <3

BALANCE CHANGES: GEOSCAPE

  • UFO detected dialog is now shown again when a ufo re-enters radar range <3

  • Heavy Fighter changes (from Max) have been implemented; Heavy Fighters are now slow to turn but very powerful when fought head-on. Corsairs eat them for lunch, if controlled manually. <3

BALANCE CHANGES: GROUND COMBAT

  • Removed the invisible blocking walls outside the Light Scout <3

  • Alien weapons are reworked; alien races now have access to different weapons and the progression is more sensible. Expect a few less deaths early game and relatively more late game (Jackal has recieved quite a significant relative early-game boost as a result of the changes) <3 Jackal was useless on vet before, great change.

  • Reapers no longer spawn from zombies with full TU, plus the spawn animation is much prettier now. <3

So much to love in this build :-)

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I also do not get the airstrike change. Even though the in-game text says you can airstrike for roughly the same money as you get doing the mission, my experience is absolutely not like that. Corvettes net 50k on airstrike and most of the time bring 85-90 if completed on the ground. Cutting airstrike gain further doesn't make ground combat more economically attractive, because it already is.

As for post-release patching, I know it's a pain in the ass, but I would hope to at least see a decently-sized balance patch 2-3 months after release. The game's balance never really stays the same with new experimental builds, so inevitably after the final release some community consensus will emerge on balance issues, and fixing those with a patch gives the game a nice wrap-up. Then again, I'm one of the people who would be willing to pay extra for an expansion pack :)

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I also do not get the airstrike change. Even though the in-game text says you can airstrike for roughly the same money as you get doing the mission, my experience is absolutely not like that. Corvettes net 50k on airstrike and most of the time bring 85-90 if completed on the ground. Cutting airstrike gain further doesn't make ground combat more economically attractive, because it already is.

As for post-release patching, I know it's a pain in the ass, but I would hope to at least see a decently-sized balance patch 2-3 months after release. The game's balance never really stays the same with new experimental builds, so inevitably after the final release some community consensus will emerge on balance issues, and fixing those with a patch gives the game a nice wrap-up. Then again, I'm one of the people who would be willing to pay extra for an expansion pack :)

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We're not planning to release further patches post-release, but if we do have to then obviously we'll very much not want to break save games when doing so.

I don't know, but somehow this statement has me worried about the game's future, in a time where even console games receive multiple patches post-release.

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The changelog says that I've halved airstrike rewards and increased the amount of performance-based month-end funding instead. The change was never about increasing / decreasing grind, it's about moving the economy away from shooting down UFOs for phat lewt and towards preventing damage to the funding nations. I may have to tweak alien equipment sell values downwards too to reflect that, but I'm surprised everyone just repeated what the first poster said rather than picking up on the actual point of the change.

I also think people should be a bit more relaxed about the fact that we're ending development work on Xenonauts in a few days time. We've been working on the game for five years and we have to stop working on it at some point - the purpose of the deadline is to give a clean break where development ends (fixing game-breaking bugs aside). Otherwise you can always say "well, we'd better fix that bug too" and then "I guess this needs a bit more balancing too" and we'll be here another five years.

Whilst I'm sure people would prefer we continued to spend months polishing the game and fixing minor bugs after release instead of working on new titles, in reality what that means is that we'll run out of money and I'll end up living in a box and eating my shoes.

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  • Removed the invisible blocking walls outside the Light Scout

I had a caesan standing in this newly opened tile and couldn't shoot it without force shoot.

Also, as reported in the bugs forum, roof toggle is broken again (when entering buildings, roof doesn't auto toggle off) and ufo floors are checkered.

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Incidentally, I might have made an error when compiling the builds. The chequerboard pattern UFO floors was an error we had internally but should have now fixed. I'll have a look into it and stealth fix it if that is the case.

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I also think people should be a bit more relaxed about the fact that we're ending development work on Xenonauts in a few days time. We've been working on the game for five years and we have to stop working on it at some point - the purpose of the deadline is to give a clean break where development ends (fixing game-breaking bugs aside). Otherwise you can always say "well, we'd better fix that bug too" and then "I guess this needs a bit more balancing too" and we'll be here another five years.

I know first-hand the importance of making a final release at some point, and that it's otherwise possible to spend forever tweaking "one last thing". But I'm also a bit surprised at the plan to make a final release from a build that will be but a few days old at the time. That simply goes against decent software engineering practice - the release should be something that is known to work well.

I haven't tried 22v10 yet, but I see people have already reported bugs like strange checkers-like visibility. So you fix that for instance, and then do you really intend to call a build final without being sure it hasn't introduced anything similarly strange? Especially given that the majority of the game's reputation will depend on the quality of that build.

The game's ready. It plays great, and it's probably more ready for release than many titles that do get released. But that only makes it more important to at least let the final build be tested here by the early adopters for several days before publicizing it.

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The official lauch is still several weeks or even a month away. GH will continue to shoot down game breaking bugs after the deadline. I'm just worried about the visual and not so important issues that will be left in the game as maybe the latest roof toggle bug introduced in 22.10.

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I'm not sure air striking gives you a relations boost, does it? I could be wrong, but I'm fairly certain the only benefit you get from air striking is the cash bonus, just like there's no relations bonus for GC either.

To be honest, the change is fine so long as the value of weapons sales from GC is also reduced. From Chris's post, it sounds like it wasn't supposed to be a nerf to airstriking specifically but a nerf to loot-based economics in favour of nation-based funding. Indeed, so long as weapons sales go down too, it will be a buff to air-striking, since the absolute difference between airstrike and weapons sales will be smaller.

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The cool thing about loot money is, though, it provides the only source of income during a month. You get money on the 1st of each month, and then loot money should be enough so that you can also invest into something extra as the month progresses. I definitely agree though that the bulk of the funding should come from your international council.

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Sure, but my general pattern, which I think might match Goldhawk's intentions, is that I generally begin expensive stuff at the start of a month (new base, advanced aircraft construction), and then use the steady trickle of loot money for ongoing smaller improvements - an extra radar or hangar here, a few better weapons for my second team, extra personnel hires, etc.

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There's no reason why you can't do the same thing with the changes though, but with some added flexibility if you want to get things sooner than otherwise you'd have been able to.

That said, I'm possibly missing your point. Perhaps you're indicating that it will give the player less to do throughout the month, since the things they'd have to wait for can be shunted forwards a little bit and done all I one go? In which case, that's a fair point, although I guess alloys/alenium will still bottleneck production and require you to spread out manufacturing projects at least by the time you enter mid-game.

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I can't make any judgment until those sell costs do get adjusted. Yes, I am theoretically worried that low monetary rewards from ground missions wouldn't let players undertake any interesting Geoscape projects during the month, but that point is currently moot as the changes haven't even been made, and I think a 10-15% decrease in mission loot wouldn't have a negative effect.

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The changelog says that I've halved airstrike rewards and increased the amount of performance-based month-end funding instead. The change was never about increasing / decreasing grind, it's about moving the economy away from shooting down UFOs for phat lewt and towards preventing damage to the funding nations. I may have to tweak alien equipment sell values downwards too to reflect that, but I'm surprised everyone just repeated what the first poster said rather than picking up on the actual point of the change.

I'm all for increasing the level of funding, including correspondingly reducing the loot from crash sites. However, your initial post did not contain any information about tweaking alien equipment sale values downward, which otherwise would've meant a relative nerf to airstrikes

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I can't make any judgment until those sell costs do get adjusted. Yes, I am theoretically worried that low monetary rewards from ground missions wouldn't let players undertake any interesting Geoscape projects during the month, but that point is currently moot as the changes haven't even been made, and I think a 10-15% decrease in mission loot wouldn't have a negative effect.

In 22.9 I can get 200-250k for a Carrier GC, compared to 90k for airstriking it. I'd have to feel pretty rich to airstrike it for 45k even if loot would be reduced by 15%, it'll probably need to go down to 50% just like airstrike at least something to consider. And while I can understand the intention to make the player depend primarily on funding, I rather wonder how that's supposed to work in practice - in my game funding always about covers the expenses, and I don't think I'm being lavish (3 bases, 3 aircraft in each). With equipping one soldier costing almost as much as getting a whole new shiny fighter, I've never seen any other option than funding it by loot to be able to keep up.

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As I've said numerous times, development of the game will end this weekend except for game-breaking bugs.

Release isn't for another two weeks after that, thus if there are game-breaking bugs in the game they will no doubt get reported and fixed before the proper public release.

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In 22.9 I can get 200-250k for a Carrier GC, compared to 90k for airstriking it. I'd have to feel pretty rich to airstrike it for 45k even if loot would be reduced by 15%, it'll probably need to go down to 50% just like airstrike at least something to consider. And while I can understand the intention to make the player depend primarily on funding, I rather wonder how that's supposed to work in practice - in my game funding always about covers the expenses, and I don't think I'm being lavish (3 bases, 3 aircraft in each). With equipping one soldier costing almost as much as getting a whole new shiny fighter, I've never seen any other option than funding it by loot to be able to keep up.

Yes, but then you're basing that on the current level of funding, rather than the increased levels of national funding. 30% extra funding is an extra million $ per month at the start of the game.

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In OG, operations could be funded solely by loot and production. Keeping some of that touch of freedom would have been fine IMHO, rather than forcing a funding heavy economy. It sure can be balanced, but would lose freedom I think. Lose condition is losing 4 continents now, but if the possibility of mitigating that by grinding is lost, player could as well surrender after losing 1 probably.

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I wouldn't look up to the original game as far as economy goes. The whole for-profit manufacturing thing gave you essentially unlimited money once you set up a four-Workshop base. Nation funding only mattered for one month, and that's not even mentioning the other problems of the economy.

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