% TU vs Static TU firing cost

I'm going to create a separate thread for this discussion as the debate is lively enough to warrant its own thread.

How the new system works:

The latest build has changed the TU cost for firing weapons to be a % of TU, rather than a static cost. The TU costs for weapons have been rebalanced so if a soldier with 50 TU has identical fire costs to what they had under the previous static system, but as a soldier's TU increases the firing costs increase accordingly.

This means a soldier is able to fire the same number of shots per turn, irrespective of their TU. Soldiers with higher TUs are able to move more tiles, shuffle their inventories, reload and crouch / uncrouch more and are slightly more resistant to reaction fire compared to other soldiers, but don't do additional damage.

TU thus now represents mobility more than an increase in damage...although the two remain connected when using weapons like shotguns as fast-moving troops can get up close and personal more easily (and so forth).

Why we changed it:

In short, units that have high TU levels are too powerful. A unit with 100 TU can fire twice the shots as a unit with 50 TUs, or can move twice as far (and mix and match the two freely). It's by far the most important stat in a soldier, with a smaller starting range than other stats for starting soldiers precisely because a 70 TU starting soldier is godly and a 30 TU soldier is awful...pretty much irrespective of their other stats.

This presents scaling problems. Even late-game weapons have to be usable by a new rookie, who can have as little as 45 TU, so max burst fire costs are set to about 40 TU and snap shots are 20-25 TU. A rookie may be able to burst fire a weapon once, but an elite soldier can potentially burst fire it twice and still have enough TU for an extra shot on top of that too (or can move 6 tiles to escape enemy LOS).

Note that this applies to aliens too. When elite aliens had 100-120 TU, people were complaining that they would fire six shots a turn each. Two or three elites with Battle Rifles could wipe out an entire Xenonaut squad in one turn.

Changing TU to represent mobility without increasing firepower makes elite soldiers more versatile, but does not increase their damage output. Personally, I think a unit's Accuracy stat should represent their damage output.

Elite Unit Stat Compound Effects:

I think Accuracy should define a unit's damage output. This increases with experience, making the damage output of units scale with their combat experience. However, at the moment the TU increase compounds it...a unit with 100 stats across the board can fire twice as many shots with twice the accuracy of one with 50 stats across the board.

This makes their damage output 400% of the 50 stat soldier, as well as having 200% the HP and 400% more effective reaction fire.

This is only relative to other soldiers in the same team, though. At the moment MAG weapons do 3.5x the damage of ballistic weapons, giving an elite soldier with a MAG rifle 1400% the damage output of a rookie with an assault rifle. That's FOURTEEN times as much damage per turn.

A basic Caesan Guard has 60 HP, so if we scaled appropriately then Caesan Elites would need 840HP to have the same relative survivability against elite Xenonauts with the appropriate tier of weapons for that stage of the game.

As it is, the aliens scale broadly in line with Xenonaut weapon damage (elites have 160HP) and an elite Xenonaut is four times more effective against aliens and half as likely to die than he was when he started the game. If you've got a decent squad, this can make the later missions a cakewalk.

The updated system reduces this effect by half. Elite Xenonauts are twice as powerful as rookies and twice as tough. In my view, that's still a sufficient modifier to their effectiveness.

Objections:

1) Levelling soldiers isn't as fun if you take away TU progression!

True, but that's because experienced soldiers are incredibly overpowered at this point. This happens in the Firaxis XCom, where elite troops are unstoppable killing machines....which is kinda fun, I must admit. But it inverts the game's difficulty curve; the hardest bit is the first month when your soldiers are still instakilled by enemy crits and don't have high-level skills to fall back on when things go a bit wrong. They also have much smaller squad sizes than we have in Xenonauts, so they need more power contained within each soldier.

Soldiers still gain increased damage with experience in this system, but it's linear rather than exponential (hopefully the numbers above explain why exponential is too strong). If this change annoys you, it's probably because you know yourself just how good the experienced soldiers previously were. But are you annoyed because you can't stomp the aliens so easily, or because you genuinely think experienced soldiers need to be that powerful to win the game?

2) It makes saving TU when moving more difficult!

This is true. TU costs for firing now vary per soldier. The reserve slider helps with this, but it's still a bit of a chore. We'll need to think of a way to mitigate this if we go ahead with the change.

3) It makes overloaded soldiers too good!

At the moment an overloaded soldier has reduced TU, but % TU means they can still fire as many shots as one who is not overloaded. This topic is still up in the air and I've not decided what to do.

However, I'm tempted to leave it as is. Overloaded soldiers can't move very quickly, so they can't reach the fighting. If you massively overload a soldier you'll just have to hope the aliens eventually come and join him in the dropship because he sure as hell won't be going to find them...and frankly there's not that much gain to overloading a soldier, as they can only use one weapon at a time. They won't even have the TU to move stuff around in their inventory if massively overloaded...

Alternative Solution:

A number of solutions have been proposed, but the main one that doesn't involve a reasonable degree of developer work and balance change (which many people apparently don't want to see this late) is to keep static TU costs, but use the existing mechanics to reduce the TU spread of units.

We can just give the aliens less TU, and we can start the Xenonauts with 50 TU+ and cap it out at say 80 TU. That gives a smaller spread to operate in and thus limits the imbalances that occur with increasing TU.

That's inherently confusing, though - why are we treating TU so differently from the other stats? And does it really address the root of the problem, which is that exponentially scaling soldiers are fundamentally pretty overpowered? If we're reducing their scaling through any means, we're still removing the progression that people were previously enjoying.

Anyway, that's a long post, but that's my reasoning laid out in full. Please chime in with your own thoughts, suggestions or contentions on the new system...

I honestly like the proposed system for pretty much the reasons you listed.

Overloading a soldier does need some drawback though.

I would suggest carrying a lot more equipment into battle should probably have an effect on their reaction speed.

They can hang around at the back loaded down with rocket launchers if they want but anyone who is going to be coming into close contact with an enemy wants to be able to move more freely.

If the aliens were still going to be balanced to the old system then I would definitely agree that the Xenonauts need the massive power increase that the old system gave them.

However as the aliens will also be using the percentage based system and will be balanced accordingly I don't see it being a problem.

I don't feel so strongly about the new system as some of us here, but would propably prefer the original static TU system as I kinda like it's organic and simplistic board game feel. I suppose the game could be balanced with existing mechanics and making TU gain slower the more you have them. That way the starting value and hard cap could be set same way as other stats as getting TU's up to 100 would not be realistic before player gets overrun.

Edited February 27, 2014 by Skitso

Stating reasons makes everything better.

Even though you aren't obliged to do so, it lays a solid base under the controversial decision.

I kind of like Skitso's point of view, with TU leveling significantly nerfed, with the max difference of 15-20% between rookie and lategame veteran. But percentage system is nice too. Game feels more dynamic from the start, and keep its challenge through the session.

I just wonder if the soldier will be able to get TU's enough to fire and reload rpg at the same turn, wouldn't it be too op?

As I have mentioned in the other threads... I started out not liking the % TU for all the reasons mentioned.

But then you explained the end game impact and I realized that was far more important.

So all in all it is a change for the better. With some further balancing it should make a much better end game and game progression.

What can be done to mitigate the perceived negatives?

1) Find some new but small ways to reward soldiers. I think some extra medals maybe could be fun.

2) Saving TUs. I don't like the reserve button... why? Because if I end my move exactly with enough TUs then I cannot turn. But if I know I need 20 TUs and my planned move leaves me with 22 then I know I can turn 90 deg. Also I might not be sure yet what I am reserving for and I want to just move the cursor around and see some options and remaining TUs. But I did hear one idea that can help and that is labeling on the move path what shots are possible. This helps with my 2nd point around making it easy to look around and see what is possible. It does not help with making sure I can still turn at the end of my move. So at the risk of overcomplicating it the text could read something like this... "snapshot+2" This would show the last square on my move path where I can take a snapshot and also indicated I would have 2 extra TUs. Now I know I can move there and turn 90 deg. If I want to turn more or crouch that I can shorten my move by a square.

3)I think overloaded soldiers are fine. Weight doesn't impede your shooting speed just your walking speed. Adopting a strategy of overloading your soldiers gains you little, and the lost mobility hurts a lot so it does not seem like a good strategy and certainly not an exploit. It's not often I feel I really NEED that extra Kg, but I often DO need that extra square of move.

A completely flat-cost TU system breaks beyond a certain point, and the evidence is in the aliens. I'm sure anyone who's got as far as soliders/warriors have seen ETs shoot, shoot and shoot some more. That's because a combination of high TUs and a TU cost of weapons low enough for even the lowest of the classes to use means the high-class aliens exploit those low costs and mutilate your soliders through weight of fire. There are ways around that, but they explose fundamental flaws in a completely flat-cost system.

The need to patch

In the build 4 thread I talked about making a new heavy rifle for elites/warriors with an upgraded TU cost specifically so they they can't fire a bazillion and one shots. By suggesting making an identical weapon which reduces the number of shots Elites/Warriors can fire, I proposed slapping a patch over a fundamental flaw rather than address the flaw itself, which is the ability to exploit low TU costs.

Hard capping is recognition that pure flat cost systems break

TUs can be hard capped, but that's a sign of a system breaking. A soley flat cost system must exist within certain constraints and can never progress above or below a certain point because it will break. There's a reduced scope for flexibility within the system - you can't have 30TU aliens unless they they have special weapons specifically for them, and you can't have 90TU+ aliens because they fire too many shots. So in recognition that a flat cost system breaks when outside of its constraints, you have to put a physical barrier in the way to prevent it from breaking! What's better? Forcibly constraining a system, or giving it room to grow?

A mixed % and flat-cost system is far more flexible than a flat cost one. You can have inhuman aliens and superhuman humans. You never have to trn a solider away because of his TU score, and a larger degree of variety in aliens can exist which don't break the game because of the need to balance TU costs against the lower end of the spectrum.

I've not played Xenonauts recently (not enough time; didn't want to burn the game out before release) so I'm not sure my opinion has very much validity, but overall I think I prefer the idea of the new system compared with the old one.

Personally, I was always a little uncomfortable with high-level soldiers and TUs in particular were to blame for this pretty much for the reasons Chris states above. I think the % system will be much better for game balance, too, since it means late-game won't need to be scaled up so much to counter high-level soldiers while the chance of losing the game because you never got enough soldier's levelled is also deminished*.

In terms of the book-keeping problem, personally this isn't an issue for me. While I would appreciate simpler math as much as the next person, I never had a problem with variable TU costs in the OG and I think the reserve TU function will be perfectly adequate for dealing with the change. So, for me, it's a perfectly reasonable cost to pay for what I believe will be a better balanced game overall.

* XCOM 2012 suffered this problem: the impact of level-ups was so large that a squad wipe late game could potentially render the game almost unwinnable.

P.S. No one seems to have written about the effect this change has on suppression. Since being suppressed automatically reduces TUs to 50%, this will automatically exclude certain shot types regardless of the TUs of the suppressed unit. Personally, I think that's a good thing (it'll probably make suppression better overall and more consistently useful throughout the game), but YMMV, I guess.

3) It makes overloaded soldiers too good!

At the moment an overloaded soldier has reduced TU, but % TU means they can still fire as many shots as one who is not overloaded. This topic is still up in the air and I've not decided what to do.

However, I'm tempted to leave it as is. Overloaded soldiers can't move very quickly, so they can't reach the fighting. If you massively overload a soldier you'll just have to hope the aliens eventually come and join him in the dropship because he sure as hell won't be going to find them...and frankly there's not that much gain to overloading a soldier, as they can only use one weapon at a time. They won't even have the TU to move stuff around in their inventory if massively overloaded...

Would it be possible for the game to remember and read a soldier's original TU value instead of the post-encumbrance one?

For example a guy normally has 50 TUs but because he's over-encumbered he's down to 40. Could the game still treat him as if he had 50 TUs for the purposes of calculating firing costs?

In any case I support the new proposed system. It's obvious why it had to be in X-Com and why it's needed now. Rookies need to be viable in the late game and balance needs to scale more tightly.

Yes, it's possible to have the game use the original TU instead of the new one. It's just a question of whether we want that to happen, or whether being overloaded should only really have an effect on your movement.

I'm currently undecided but leaning towards the second option.

Question: what happens if you had 3 TU's?

Do you get to shoot at 50% once, twice or thrice?

Also - personally I have seen this issue (levelling speed) crop up too many times, and there was one solution that makes it so that everyone will be in the same ballpark: use sqrt(xp). sqrt(49) = 7. sqrt(100) = 10. sqrt(490) = 22.1 ... sqrt(1000) = 31.6. With a tenth of the XP you are at a third of the strength, with half the xp at 72% of the strength. No matter how hard you focus your efforts on stacking XP onto units, you will always be within a certain range that can be anticipated by developers.

Objection Number 1 is in my opinion the most important one, because it's a huge dealbreaker for me.

The Tu progression was the most notable of all of them and in the current release the progression overall is just plain boring.

Most Stats now just don't make that much (notable) difference, which makes soldiers replacable and death not devastating.

And i don't think i have to tell you why that's bad.

Overall i aggree that the best solution would be to keep the old system, but reduce the difference between veterans and rookies a bit.

But a plain cap on TU is a pretty boring and not a very good solution.

I don't know who was it, but someone in the other thread made a really good solution.

Basically you reduce TU gain over time. So the higher the current TU is, the harder it is to level up and gain more TU. That way even in late game veterans wouldn't have maxed out TU, because it takes them such a long time just to get one point.

I suspect TU costs are rounded up, but I'm not sure. But if you had 3 TU then you wouldn't even be able to turn 180 degrees in a single turn, so you'd better hope an alien doesn't attack you from behind (or even at a slight angle).

Regarding diminishing returns on XP gains, that's another valid approach but it doesn't address the way TU and ACC stack damage multiplicatively. It'd be a nice way to effectively cap all the stats at 80 or so rather than having a clumsy hard limit, but I'm not sure it fixes the key issue.

What?

Since when does ACC increase the damage? Doesn't it just increase, you know, the chance to hit stuff?

Edit:

But even if it does, i don't really see the problem with it, you can just put diminishing returns on Both ACC and TU and the increase in Combat Power should be manageble.

Edited February 27, 2014 by Amaror

I just mean TU and ACC multiply to increase expected damage, rather than actual damage. Extra TU doesn't increase actual weapon damage either, it just gives you more attempts to inflict it while accuracy gives you more chance of inflicting damage with each attempt.

Let's use an example where we use diminishing returns to cap the stats at, say, 80...and they might get up to 85 if they did LOADS of missions.

It's true that this makes the soldiers much less dangerous overall than if they were allowed to go up to 100 in each stat. Instead of being 4x more powerful than a basic soldier they're about 3.25x more effective. But if you use % TU, they're 1.8x as effective. So it's still a big difference and that's potentially unbalancing.

I get what you're saying about level-ups being boring because a small stat increase doesn't make your soldier significantly more combat effective, but to be fair the original X-Com isn't about the level-ups individually making your soldiers much stronger. It's a gradual thing that happens over the course of numerous missions; it's XCOM 2012 that is about individual level-ups having a big effect. I don't think this is a good place to depart from what the original game does, as the game systems can't really cope with how good high-level units currently get. Their damage output just gets too high to deal with.

One more thing to consider - if we capped stats at 80, we'd probably need to change the variance in each stat for starting soldiers to 40-60 down from 30-70. This would make starting soldiers less interesting, as their statlines would be relatively similar instead of having clear strengths, weaknesses and differences from one another. I'd argue this would make you care even less if a soldier died, as they'd all be largely the same.

After a couple of missions, the effect would be even greater. Because the soldiers with higher stats find it harder to level those stats and easier to level the weaker ones, each mission you play brings them closer together and makes all of your soldiers even more interchangeable, with all their stats clustered at roughly the same level. Your sniper would have the virtually the same accuracy as everyone else, so it doesn't matter if he gets killed...anyone else can pick up his gun and do his job almost as well.

So I'm not really in favour of capping stats, either through a hard cap or diminishing returns.

I feel that the 'veterans are getting too powerful' is a good point of the game, it really adds satisfaction and the feeling of improvement. Also it makes you put more value on experienced soldiers so I believe this should be kept. It is just that the soldiers are getting rank and power a little too fast I think. 12-13 missions and I get a commander with 70 stats. Also, risking people in the front should be more rewarding.

The other side of the deal, alien elites being too powerful: I think this should be kept too, their warriors should be fearsome, but they too could be rarer than weaker ones in general, but when they are in battle, you know you will be facing a 5 shot per turn death machine. Regarding shooting capability, rookies and veterans human and alien alike should be really different.

TU is curently the most important stat by far as you said, but it increases rather fast too and that makes it imbalanced. Meanwhile bravery increases very slowly for instance. TU could increase slower, or all stats slower perhaps, then a stat increase really has an accomplishment feeling to it and it will mitigate the exponential effect of leveling by slowing it down.

The original xcom having the implemented %TU was a bad point I think, simply because it removed the feeling of improvement with experience: TU was still the most important stat, but had little effect and there was also the added complexity it introduces for having variable tu costs for soldiers. My mind likes to see fixed and easily remembered rules for such games rather than having to calculate remaining TUs to hide around the corner after shooting.

To put the point in context, a rookie with a MAG weapon does less damage per turn than a soldier with max TU and max ACC equipped with a ballistic weapon of the same type.

You get a larger increase in combat power by going on about thirty combat missions with an M-16 than you do harnessing the power of an intergalactic empire. It's like a veteran warrior with a club beating a Panzer tank in Civilization.

I feel that the 'veterans are getting too powerful' is a good point of the game, it really adds satisfaction and the feeling of improvement. Also it makes you put more value on experienced soldiers so I believe this should be kept. It is just that the soldiers are getting rank and power a little too fast I think. 12-13 missions and I get a commander with 70 stats. Also, risking people in the front should be more rewarding.

If it takes a long time to get a supersoldier, and superaliens are kept in the game, then the whole campaign comes down to avoiding death as much as possible. Otherwise, losing your best guys in a (say) landing ship mission will mean you're unable to deal with the superaliens zipping around a battleship.

The OG wasn't squeamish about murdering soldiers if the player made a mistake, and that's what I remember it for. Supersoldiers in Xenonauts would make that impossible. I'm happy with the idea of soldiers "only" becoming faster, more accurate, and having higher initiative scores. The joy of levelling up should come with unlocking lasers, plasmas, armours etc. and not with gameplay that encourages savescumming.

AP% shots don't really require a lot of calculation for me so far, since I can see in the bottom left how many APs each shot takes.

A number of solutions have been proposed, but the main one that doesn't involve a reasonable degree of developer work and balance change (which many people apparently don't want to see this late)

Off-topic, but I just want to say that I'm really happy you're prepared to make big changes this late on. GH has made some big gambles - I remember the hoo-hah surrounding the "recover aircraft" change - and I think the game's better for them. Please don't be too put off by people who are uncomfortable with change.

Edited February 27, 2014 by Ol' Stinky

If people feel the new system cheapens leveling up experience, could medal bonuses be made more important to make veteran soldiers stand out more? Like Purple heart: 20% less likely to panic, some other medal: -5% shooting tu cost. Or even random bonuses from medals to even further differentiate veteran units.

To put the point in context, a rookie with a MAG weapon does less damage per turn than a soldier with max TU and max ACC equipped with a ballistic weapon of the same type.

Exactly, and I think that's a plus. I believe experience / better stats should be the more determining factor over better weapons. It will get the rpg / char development feel to the game rather than a 'recruit guys - equip MAGs - load 16 of them to valkyrie' strategy, this is not a TBS game where you would produce men and push enemy, this is a squad game, soldiers need to have the 'Character' feel to them, rahter than 'Unit'.

I just mean TU and ACC multiply to increase expected damage, rather than actual damage. Extra TU doesn't increase actual weapon damage either, it just gives you more attempts to inflict it while accuracy gives you more chance of inflicting damage with each attempt.

Let's use an example where we use diminishing returns to cap the stats at, say, 80...and they might get up to 85 if they did LOADS of missions.

It's true that this makes the soldiers much less dangerous overall than if they were allowed to go up to 100 in each stat. Instead of being 4x more powerful than a basic soldier they're about 3.25x more effective. But if you use % TU, they're 1.8x as effective. So it's still a big difference and that's potentially unbalancing.

Multiplying TU x ACC isn't really a valid calculation of soldier effectiveness in most cases. It only matters if the TUs of the firing soldier are sufficient to allow another shot of the same type. In essence, I have a soldier with 80 ACC and 79 TU vs. one with 80 ACC 60 TU they are both only going to get one aimed shot per turn. Only when the TU crosses the barrier to allow another shot does your firepower jump up. Even with 90 TUs and 100 percent accuracy a soldier has only 2x the firepower of his new recruit counterpart (unless I'm doing the math wrong) carrying the same weapon and performing the same shot.

Damage x #shots x accuracy

Newbie Sniper: Damage = 40 Accuracy = 50 TU = 50 takes TU = 50 (Aimed) shot- I made these numbers up, but it doesn't matter for the example.

40 x 1 x .5 = 20 per round average damage inflicted

Super Elite Sniper: Damage = 40 Accuracy = 100 TU = 90 same shot (50 TU Aimed)

40 x 1 x 1 = 40 per round average damage

I don't believe you can reasonably say that being able to fire and move a little more equates to a huge increase in soldier effectiveness. More movement does help, but that's a really situational variable.

After a couple of missions, the effect would be even greater. Because the soldiers with higher stats find it harder to level those stats and easier to level the weaker ones, each mission you play brings them closer together and makes all of your soldiers even more interchangeable, with all their stats clustered at roughly the same level. Your sniper would have the virtually the same accuracy as everyone else, so it doesn't matter if he gets killed...anyone else can pick up his gun and do his job almost as well.

So I'm not really in favour of capping stats, either through a hard cap or diminishing returns.

It is true that a pure diminishing returns system will move soldiers closer together over time, however, if you really want them to keep to their distinct "talents" throughout the game you could simply calculate the increase from a baseline and add starting difference in after the calculation then a soldier will always have his initial "edge" over a soldier with same experience.

Example: Soldier X has starting ACC 70 TU 40, Soldier Y has starting ACC 40 TU 60. Starting Baseline ACC 50 TU 50.

Soldier X ACC = +20 TU = -10 Soldier Y ACC -10 TU = +10

Now when the soldiers move up in experience you only calculate from the baseline. So, say they both move up in accuracy using the diminishing returns formula (whatever you decide for that.) Take Baseline ACC 50 +1 . The new baseline is 51 for both soldiers then you add starting deviation AFTER the diminishing returns calculation.

Soldier X New ACC 71, Soldier Y New ACC 41.

When the these two soldiers get more experience the increase is always calculated from the baseline, so the next calcs would be done with baseline ACC 51 for both soldiers and so on. That means Soldier X will ALWAYS be 20 more accurate than Soldier Y all other things being equal.

Man that was a long post...whew... Last comment, one of the strengths of elite forces is that they are generally crossed trained to do many jobs. That's necessary for survival when you only have a small group, so all the soldiers moving closer together in skill over time isn't really unrealistic. However, the solution above does fix that if you want to keep things the way they are.

Edited February 27, 2014 by StellarRat

If people feel the new system cheapens leveling up experience, could medal bonuses be made more important to make veteran soldiers stand out more? Like Purple heart: 20% less likely to panic, some other medal: -5% shooting tu cost. Or even random bonuses from medals to even further differentiate veteran units.

Medals are generally +bravery points, right? I'll be honest, I haven't moused over one for yonks. Making them more interesting would be cool, as long as they don't lead to daft behaviour. (The one I'm thinking of is the medal gained through taking lots of damage in a mission, I can imagine ordering my soldiers to pummel the hell out of some unlucky rookie to make him stronger in the long term. As long as there's a check to see if the damage comes from an alien and not friendly fire, I'm cool with it.)

Criticisms of the TU% system seem to be entirely in the vein of "it's different and I don't like it", not actual balance problems created by the new system. Balance-wise TU% is clearly an improvement. There is a strong human bias towards resisting change. I was also put off by the change when first reading the patch notes, but reserved comment until after playing for a few hours. Most people will probably accept that TU% is for the better after giving it a chance to sink in.

Gaudlike's idea to reduce the reflex stat on overloaded soldiers is interesting, but I am worried that alien reaction fire will become even more powerful. The mechanics of the game mean that aliens already get to use reaction fire far more often than xenonauts do.

Does the reaction fire system take into account the total TU's remaining or the percentage of TU's remaining when calculating the chance to take a reaction shot?

Edited February 27, 2014 by KateMicucci

Balance-wise TU% is clearly an improvement. There is a strong human bias towards resisting change.

You're right that new system does solve the end game balance problems, however, I don't feel like the approach used is the best one for player enjoyment. I think the small role playing aspect of Xenonauts is damaged sigificantly by making the soldiers more "generic" with change. There are multiple ways to solve most problems. To me this wasn't the right choice. It's like adding speed bumps in the middle of a freeway to slow traffic down instead of just changing the signs or adding police patrols. Does it slow every down? Definitely. Does it make anyone happy? No.

I believe that the developer of the OG even mentioned this approach as a last minute balancing device. Last minute solutions tend not to be the best ones to any problem. Given more time he probably would have come up with a different solution.

Edited February 27, 2014 by StellarRat

I just had another idea, which involves sortof merging both systems.

The idea is: Yeah a 100 TU soldier shooting twice as often as a 50 TU soldier is kindof unbalanced and a problem.

However if he could shoot 1.5 times as often or maybe even just 1.25 times as often it wouldn't be so bad and would leave you with a distinct feeling of soldier improvement.

To achieve this you could set a flat max to TU. So a shot costs maybe 35% TU to shoot, but max 30TU, so a really high TU Xenonaut could still make 3 shots instead of 2, it would just take a while.

I think the small role playing aspect of Xenonauts is damaged sigificantly by making the soldiers more "generic" with change.

I'm not sure I agree that % TUs do that.

The only thing that has changed is that soldiers can no longer shoot more as they gain in experience. On the one hand, then, yes: soldiers are more generic since they all shoot the same number of shots/turn (assuming no/little movement; assuming similar/same weapon type). On the other hand, however, TUs are no longer the dominant soldier attribute: every soldier benefits from being able to shoot more, while not every soldier benefits (greatly) from being able to move more. In other words, TUs become a niche attribute like all the others, rather than the single most important indicator of a soldier's combat ability.

My argument is, then, that by 'nerfing' TUs a mixture of different high-scoring attributes becomes more important for any given soldier (role). Soldiers become more unique, because a larger number of stats make a meaningful contribution to their combat ability rather than being overshadowed by TUs.

(I also wonder whether the benefit of extra movement, as opposed to extra movement and shooting, isn't being undervalued. I never remember being disappointed with TU gain in the OG and the only attribute I valued more than TUs was firing accuracy. And psi-stats, but they don't count.)