Why for example some melee weapons like the machete operate on a 0-200 scale?
Why does the hunter rifle gets a 50-200 spread while the bolt action, a weapon fillng the same role (and with a sniper variant) doesn't ?
What are the basis of weapon fire rates and why for example the Pkm and the Minimi get 1 shot snap while the M 60 gets a two shot snap? It is really neccesary for the 7,62x51 or the G11 round (best rifle !) to get power bonus ?
- Accuracy modifiers. Maybe is bc I got better in the game and I'm getting more experience agents but there are two accuracy formulas I think need to be review:Thorwn sharp weapons being guarantee hit with not that impressive stats (seriously ninja stars are probably one of the best close range weapons) and the 0,5+x^2 formula which I simply don't get. Why do you need to be brave to fire a sniper rifle outside of enemy range ?
- I will latter go iinto much detail about rambling about weapon balance, but one item I find completly outclassed is the ligth cannon. Why would you want to use it when the OICW is much better as an direct explosive weapon, and other roles will be much more effectivily be cover by other weapons? It's bigger brothers have some niches but even with flexibity ( which isn't that big of a plus due to how heavy & bulky ammo is) it seem like an always wrong choice to try to use it .
The short answer is that Solarius doesn't particularly care about weapon balance or 'realism'.
So he outsources most of the design work to Dioxine, and that means you get Piratez-style weapon stats in XCF.
Including mind bullets for the G11
and medieval weapons cracking power armour.
People, including myself, have pointed out issues on a number of occasions. The answer so far has invariably been something along the lines "If you don't like this weapon, don't use it. For me, it's fine." It took years to get rid of pistol 'sniping'.
Edit: To Solarius' credit, he sometimes does listen to minor individual complaints. But the end result is still the same, and I doubt anyone has the endurance to try going for a full rebalance. :( /edit
Because it's not a martial weapon.This would be an argument in D&D, perhaps.
Because sharp borders between weapon classes only exist in your imagination, and in a game we need to classify border cases somehow.Says the man making a sharp border between two rather similar bolt-action guns. And, BTW, there are rather sharp borders between different types of weapons IRL. E.g. you will never have an SMG cross over into a purely rifle role (600 meter potshots, for example) because a handgun cartridge has its limits. Even if you put a metre of barrel on the SMG and screw in into a vise.
What, shoulds all weapons work exactly the same? What's the point in that?No, similar weapons should work similarly. All GPMGs and LMGs have relatively similar rates of fire IRL, both mechanically and doctrinally. The difference is primarily in how long you can sustain your fire without needing to change/cool the barrel, get more ammo (or even if you are given spare barrels and ammo mules), the caliber(s) they fire, the feeding mechanism (belt, mag, what kind of mag), weight, and more.
Maybe make some actual arguments first, since I can only guess what you are getting at. What does Bravery have to do with sniper rifles?I think that's a jab at the .308 sniper rifle. That gun makes your bullets veer towards what you're shooting at depending on how much chutzpah you have. ???
What's wrong with the stars, which you can throw at people but need good stats to actually kill with them?Because IRL, getting any thrown weapon to hit and 'stick' is an exercise in frustration even under range conditions. Hitting something with a rock is far more difficult than shooting them.
Bullshit. My life would be so easy if it was true.How you complicate your life is your business. What matters is how your efforts translate into the game.
Dioxine has his own big project and doesn't have the time to balance mine. I did consult with him a few times and I borrowed some ideas from Piratez, because why reinvent the wheel?Which shows that the basic balance of a lot of weapons is not taken from Piratez... how exactly? I'm not saying everything is literally copy-pasted, but the influence and the similarities in design philosophy are obvious.
It's not because of Piratez...It's inspired by Piratez making melee viable and a central part of the game. So you also wanted to have the same, even if you didn't want to have the exact same effect. Why reinvent the wheel and all that. So that's where we are.
Now you're just twisting my words, pistol sniping has nothing to do with the line you quote (which obviously applies to complaints like "gun X is useless").I suppose I skipped a step. Sorry. Pistol sniping was brought up, and you resisted any change, going "It's fine; don't use pistols if you don't like them; find a pistol you like and stick with it; I have no issues with them; no weapon tiers in this game." Until it became abundantly clear how silly the end result was.
Although I admit that dumb shit people do to game the system tend to surprise me regularly. Sniping with pistols being one of them.It was the path of least resistance, taught to players repeatedly over early apprehension missions. No wonder they learned to rely on pistol potshots. Because it worked.
Also, making this from scratch is boring and would require a ton of engineering research which I'm not willing to do and would probably take years.Yes, exactly what I said earlier. Nobody, not Solarius, not Dioxine, not 8mono, not Eddie, not me, nobody, has the mental and physical endurance to do this. So the balance is what it is and it's up to the players to find their sweet spot in it (or fail and play other mods/games). Perhaps tweak some data that seems excessively strange if that helps.
...
Like I'll let anyone "rebalance" my mod, lol.
Lol. The Light Cannon is the most OP weapon in the first part of the game. :D Juku has already addressed it, but didn't mention my favourite buckshot ammo which is just pornographic (and I consider it broken).Seriously? HOW??? I need a tutorial!
Because it's not a martial weapon.
Because sharp borders between weapon classes only exist in your imagination, and in a game we need to classify border cases somehow.
What, shoulds all weapons work exactly the same? What's the point in that?
Maybe make some actual arguments first, since I can only guess what you are getting at. What does Bravery have to do with sniper rifles? What's wrong with the stars, which you can throw at people but need good stats to actually kill with them?
Lol. The Light Cannon is the most OP weapon in the first part of the game. :D Juku has already addressed it, but didn't mention my favourite buckshot ammo which is just pornographic (and I consider it broken).
Finally, yeah, the fact that a bullet from a .300 or maybe even a .400 caliber sniper rifle (and not an AM rifle!) has about the same damage and armour penetration as a literal hand cannon is a typical example of XCF balance. Which is all over the place.if you get hit by TANK cannon into hand you will take less damage than hit between eyes using 9mm.
In theory, the Light Cannon is a shotgun, unlike a sniper rifle.A shotgun with 50% snap accuracy. (Shotgun Shotgun has 135% snap accuracy)
Finally, yeah, the fact that a bullet from a .300 or maybe even a .400 caliber sniper rifle (and not an AM rifle!) has about the same damage and armour penetration as a literal hand cannon is a typical example of XCF balance. Which is all over the place.I think that problem is that Sniper Rifles and Cannons deals the same type of damage (KINETIC), while realistically they should deal different type of damage.
to be fair, he should. no one really knows the ins and outs of the mod like he does. that doesn't mean there doesn't deserve tweaks here and there. but ive been around game forums for 20 years and people cry foul over balance for all sorts of things. people rarely *playtest* like they should to truly discover balance issues.
Solarius disagrees a lot with other peole's balance complaints, usually with little or even outlandish justifications.
Not necessarily. The tank round will tear off your hand, or explode and make chunky salsa out of you. :P While 9mm rounds - or even .45s - have been known to leave their targets completely unfazed, whether because the people were hopped on drugs/adrenaline, or because the bullet bounced off their skull/other bones.Completely unfazed? Hit between eyes? No amount of drugs will help you if you permanently lost ability to move. Even if it do not penetrate your skull it could knock you out as it have comparable energy to heavy boxer punch.
You'd be surprised how survivable a handgun shot is, compared to even a 'varmint' round like M855 which can lop off limbs and perform other serius fuckery if you're unlucky. Modern rifle rounds are no joke.
Sniper rifles already get their 'armour penetration due to accuracy' simply from damage scaling, no need to make their actual armour penetration value near-identical as well. And, perhaps most damningly, sniper rifles do their damage regardless of shot placement, with snap shots off the cuff and so on.
Finally, this applies across all enemies. A sniper rifle will work the same against an Ooze, a Silacoid or a Zombie, none of whom has much in the way of vulnerable organs.
A lot of this is kinda beyond the scope of the game's damage model, though. One has to make do with what's available. It's just that right now, not much has been done, and thus the Light Cannon is an inferior Sniper Rifle (and an inferior shotgun, and an inferior flamethrower, and an inferior OICW).
If it was possible to separate damage bonuses by fire mode, one could make a better distinction between sniper rifles and just plain hard-hitting weapons. Eh, one can dream.
to be fair, he should. no one really knows the ins and outs of the mod like he does. that doesn't mean there doesn't deserve tweaks here and there. but ive been around game forums for 20 years and people cry foul over balance for all sorts of things. people rarely *playtest* like they should to truly discover balance issues.Sure, the issue with lack of balancing in SP games is that it reduce choice. I don't think that having knifes for instance use the full accuracy formula is good for gameplay as it just made then completly worthless as a melee backup, specially when I can bring for instance an iron pipe , be more effective with soldiers below 100 melee accuracy and allow as a bonus to capture enemies and give an extra cash. Similarly I don't think having consistency is bad bc it actually reinforce choice rather than making some weapons clearly dominant over other. For instance between the 5,56 rifles the M4 and SA 80 both bring different advantages while being very similar. Once you get the G11 all other rifles are inferior, which just makes the strategic dimension worse. Why would I want to play with all the diffent options when one rifle is better than others?
things like certain guns being less powerful than others in game when compared to real life are like... who cares for me. half the fun is figuring out what works well. hell, some card games (like hearthstone) are literally designed with this in mind. building in discovering what items, cards, weapons.. etc. are better than others as part of the fun.
my only gripe is more UI based for a proper tech tree search. empty search trees are typically a big no no for new inexperienced users. its not a horrible thing... but it definitely creates an unnecessary newbie hurdle. i mean all that ends up happening is people just go to a wiki or some other forum post to find the information, so all ur really doing is just making it more difficult by proxy.
And for once, that is one (damage dropoff) thing that's actually doable in OXCE!
As to the tech tree search, making a full 2D tech tree is pretty much impossible (at least if humans are supposed to read it). There are third-party tools to show you snippets of it, and the in-game browser does show you the prerequisites and unlocks pretty well, and allows you to hyperlink yourself to what you need with passable efficiency. I think most mod devs consider the tech tree viewer a sort of cheat anyway, and would say that a 'new inexperienced user' should keep away from it. Honestly, a 'new inexperienced user' should actually keep away from any and all megamods as well. :P
Something that allows the user to say 'hey. i feel like im falling behind in xcom vehicles... what should i be looking for' and they navigate to the xcom vehicles tech portion. as it stands now, unless i know the specific names of the vehicles i cant figure out what tech paths to take without looking at a wiki.Well, lemme try.
For example, unless i know the name of the katsuni vehicle... im not going to be able to search for that using the current system. however if there was a category breakdown like in the UFOPedia of 'xcom vehicles' and Katsuni was next in the list after humvee. I could work toward that.Not a very compelling example because... How? Ultimately, the tech browser will tell you you need (other). Which is actually a red herring since it's just there for technical reasons. So the Kitsune comes down to either being able to research it because you've got the prereq unlocked via an event, or not being able to figure out how to get it at all, at least based on the tech browser.
Well, lemme try.
Hmmm, I want some new vehicles. What got me the van (or which of the small handful gives me the van)? Logistics. Check it out. Look, Humvees! And flight training... Wonder what that leads to... Oh, helicopters! And more helicopters! And 'advanced' flight! And...
it kind of makes logical sense but also doesn't for a new player.If someone is that new, maybe they shouldn't jump straight into overcomplicated megamods? :P
Eh, if you want to have a discussion, sure, I'll play along. I'm a sucker for a good argument.
We both know nothing will change, neither the mod's balancing nor my opinion of it.
This would be an argument in D&D, perhaps.
IRL, all sword-like edged weapons are difficult to use, especially for beginners (because edge alignment is hard under duress). I could see all mainly slashing weapons (so not knives nor giant twohanders) get the 0-200 treatment, but drawing an arbitrary line between one slab of sharpened metal and another... ??? Especially when a Billhook (the gardening tool, not the polearm!) is 50-150%.
Says the man making a sharp border between two rather similar bolt-action guns. And, BTW, there are rather sharp borders between different types of weapons IRL. E.g. you will never have an SMG cross over into a purely rifle role (600 meter potshots, for example) because a handgun cartridge has its limits. Even if you put a metre of barrel on the SMG and screw in into a vise.
Sharp borders are supposed to reflect some kind of inherent advantage. In the case of sniper rifles, the biggest difference should be the optics. Which would neatly explain the difference between the HR and the BA. There are even scoped hunting rifle sprites floating around.
No, similar weapons should work similarly. All GPMGs and LMGs have relatively similar rates of fire IRL, both mechanically and doctrinally. (...)
I think that's a jab at the .308 sniper rifle. That gun makes your bullets veer towards what you're shooting at depending on how much chutzpah you have.
Because IRL, getting any thrown weapon to hit and 'stick' is an exercise in frustration even under range conditions.
Hitting something with a rock is far more difficult than shooting them.
I will guarantee that if you pick a dozen random grunts, policemen, FBI agents, etc, they will be an order of magnitude better with rifles, sniper or not, short range or long, than hitting people with throwing knives at 50 paces.
Now, you can of course make unrealistic throwing weapons for gameplay purposes. But in that case, the argument is not "what's wrong?", because there's plenty wrong. The argument is "Do you want cool throwing weapons or not?". Some people do, some do not.
And all the while, people's expectations get subverted because the in-game throwing weapons behave completely differently from how you'd expect them to, with nary an explanation. Even though you could have 'field manual' article saying these are 'rule of cool' weapons.
And even then, they're so good compared to the competition it's ridiculous. It's the 'Rookies, forget about rifles, grab all the grenades you can! That Sectoid two screens over needs killing!" all over again.
How you complicate your life is your business. What matters is how your efforts translate into the game.
As long as a handgun can outshoot an LMG at 30 tiles, a bolt action fires faster than a semi-auto PSG-1 and people shoot miniguns without power armour, I am not seeing any sort of 'balance' in the game. It's all made up on the spot, inherited from the OG or outsourced to Dioxine, with little done to reconcile the differences.
Which shows that the basic balance of a lot of weapons is not taken from Piratez... how exactly? I'm not saying everything is literally copy-pasted, but the influence and the similarities in design philosophy are obvious.
It's inspired by Piratez making melee viable and a central part of the game.
So you also wanted to have the same, even if you didn't want to have the exact same effect.
Why reinvent the wheel and all that.
Pistol sniping was brought up, and you resisted any change, going "It's fine; don't use pistols if you don't like them; find a pistol you like and stick with it; I have no issues with them; no weapon tiers in this game." Until it became abundantly clear how silly the end result was.
It was the path of least resistance, taught to players repeatedly over early apprehension missions. No wonder they learned to rely on pistol potshots. Because it worked.
Yes, exactly what I said earlier. Nobody, not Solarius, not Dioxine, not 8mono, not Eddie, not me, nobody, has the mental and physical endurance to do this.
So the balance is what it is and it's up to the players to find their sweet spot in it (or fail and play other mods/games). Perhaps tweak some data that seems excessively strange if that helps.
And I meant as a submod, if done by a different person. Like Eddie did.
In theory, the Light Cannon is a shotgun, unlike a sniper rifle. Takes about a turn and carrying extra ammo to make it into one, though. And it kinda sucks compared to other shotguns when you can't make the alien eat the barrel first. :(
Finally, yeah, the fact that a bullet from a .300 or maybe even a .400 caliber sniper rifle (and not an AM rifle!) has about the same damage and armour penetration as a literal hand cannon is a typical example of XCF balance. Which is all over the place.
That's not a coherent argument. Switchblades and Shivs(...)
I think that problem is that Sniper Rifles and Cannons deals the same type of damage (KINETIC), while realistically they should deal different type of damage.
But, when I told that Sniper Rifles are overpowered, Solarius disagreed.
IDK, sniper rifles and cannons do have a similar damage mechanic (high-energy kinetic impact). It's just, well, logically a cannon should go through a lot harder stuff than even an anti-material rifle. Armour, Silacoids, tanks, buildings...
Seriously, I just read how he said swords require less skill to use than knives because why else did people invent them? ::)People invented swords because they had also invented something called a warrior class that could waste years on personal weapon training, and the people they tended to use swords on were usually poorly armoured, not because swords are easy to use. Well, that and a sword is expensive and the warrior class needed a status symbol, too. A sword is probably the worst melee weapon to hand to a complete newbie.
Edit: I suppose the best way to put the situation is, there is no reasoning with Solarius. Either you bring up a point and he agrees with it, or he doesn't. Perhaps he'll change his mind later, perhaps not. Can't really cast too many stones here, I am not entirely innocent of this myself. :-[
Lots of people find the mod fun with the current balance, including the author, and that's ultimately what counts. We nitpickers might wish otherwise, but we could also wish for Gollop to make a proper sequel instead of taking Epic's money and making XCOM2 with free aim, a couple extra action points and OP murdercrabs. And basically ignoring any and all feedback, to the point his own appointed 'community council' people publicly lambasted him. Solarius is in good company (except for that Epic cash). :P
I hope I addressed your points in my reply to Juku. Is this satisfactory enough?
Admittedly, I don't understand parts your post, because it's too technical for my health bar right now.
I find it debatable - homo sapiens evolved specifically to throw stuff (rather than say, melee - that would be Neanderthals), and not to shoot with guns; on a short distance anyway. Also, throwing and firing are different skills which vary between people. But I've never fired a gun, so I'm not pushing anything here.This argument doesn't make sense at all. Do we see modern militaries use throwing knifes as backups or use handguns? And regardless, why bring some natural state argument when history shows the limits of thrown weapons.
Well, do they train throwing?That's exactly the problem with the current accuracy formula with thrown weapons- that with no that much training,you get a weapon that hits likes a truck and always hit. A pistol 5 titles away may miss half of his shoots from a 70 acc soldier. Throwing Knifes from 5 titles away will hit close to 100 of the time. Given thrown weapons sniper rifles accuracy formulas would be a big improvement. And to be clear , it's not a matter to make them not effective weapons, is that they are too dominat with very little training.You can currently do some crazy things with Melee weapons for example but you need a trained agent, I don't see why thrown direct hit weapons can't be similar.
Yeah, my point being that as a player I would not do that (immersion is more important than efficiency to me), so I didn't foresee others to do so and later downplayed it.
For me, from the player's perspective, the actual fun comes from tactical combat itself. From the modder's perspective, it's writing.
I think the actual issue might be lack of sufficiently tough enemies to let the LC shine. DB is usually sufficient, and the Trasher is a thing.
I still find them rather situational, and it took some serious work to make them viable in the first place. X-Com focuses on close combat, yet I wanted to have sniper rifles in it, which required a lot of tweaking.
Do you find knifes useful with untrained agents? Also that knifes are used by enemies as well. I'm not going to go about how swords ain't ceremonial, or how even ceremonial weapons are somehow ineffective, but knifes being easier to use than swords not only make sense from a gameplay sense, but also from a logical standpoint.
Swords are indeed harder to use than knives (barring having longer reach which is very important; I consider knives to be easier to use in a 1-on-1 combat where both sides have the same weapon). Also, a sword is not a martial weapon, it's a ceremonial weapon which was meant for dueling and as a status symbol, not sometrhing to be actually used in battle (at least the" longsword" type; a lot of weapons fall under a "sword" category, including falchions, sabres and other stuff I don't know English names for). But I assume people who talk about weapons know such basics. It's rather off-topic though.
Also, a sword is not a martial weapon, it's a ceremonial weaponNo, sword ARE martial weapons, even at some point a battle weapon, only advent of full plate armors make them lost this role.
I don't think it's that bad.Well, as long as we both have fun. :)
Which one do you mean?Sorry, that was just a non-weapon-specific remark about 'hard borders'. Should have been clearer, I suppose.
If yes, then TBH I should split the SMG category in two - one-handed machine pistols and two-handed, umm, I don't know how they're called in English - small carbines with pistol ammo.'Small carbines with pistol ammo' are called submachine guns in English. :)
I don't think the MP-5 and the Mac are very similar.Well, no, I don't have a particular problem with those. But machine guns are somewhat more weird. The mods lumps the Minimi and the PKM together, and makes the M60 and MG 3 separate, whereas IRL the M60, MG3 and PKM are all GPMGs firing a full rifle cartridge while the Minimi is an LMG firing an intermediate round. And '2-round auto' is a somewhat strange thing on a machine gun, anyway, though not inherently strange as a way to distinguish LMGs and GPMGs. Unfortunately, we then get the BO LMG line, which also has 2- and 3-round snap shots while being presented as 'heavy ... variant ... of rifles', i.e. an LMG.
I never felt the need to "reconcile the differences", whatever that means.That's exactly why this thing tends to come up again and again, from different people.
If you don't like it, play something else.But I like it! People criticise games they like all the time, because they want them to be 'even better'. Surely this is not the first time you've encountered this?
So are you saying that the balance is the same or different? Or that the overall philosophy is the same but particulars differ?The particulars are somewhat different, the intentions - especially within the confines of OXCE - appear very similar.
This sentence had nothing to do with melee specifically. Quoting my words out of context again.What exactly are you objecting to? That while generally borrowing a number of ideas from Piratez, you absolutely did not do this with melee weapons? Even when there are still melee weapons in the game that are about as close to an exact copy-paste as one can have between mods with different resources?
Actually a lot of people do, but they prefer to make their own mods.Making your own mod is a significant boost in the 'mental endurance' department. I meant specifically in the context of XCF.
...what is wrong with that?A hand cannon should be able to consistently kill a rock or penetrate an armoured car. A non-AM rifle should only do that rarely if at all.
Why?A lot more charge to propel the projectile. A bigger projectile. Specialised AP rounds with comparatively larger steel (or perhaps even tungster or DU, which are almost unheard of for non-AM sniper rifles) cores. Special shapes like discarding sabots that are not practical in a 7-8mm round.
Thisd is not what "cannot be reasoned with" means. What you described is how normal social interaction works...Reasoning is absolutely not normal social interaction. You start reasoning with a non-captive or non-enthusiastic audience and they bail or doze off.
It's a pretty complicatd thing; I haven't read any classical treaties on fencing...You don't need any treatises. Get cleaver and a friend to swing a dead pig at you :D and see how well you do. Or find a HEMA group if you want the closest thing to first-hand we've got today. They've already done the treatise-reading (and translating, and translating to real life) for you.
Do you mean "stuck in the body"?Penetrate. Not bounce off. Land with the business end first.
I find it debatable - homo sapiens evolved specifically to throw stuff (rather than say, melee - that would be Neanderthals), and not to shoot with guns; on a short distance anyway.The latter being the key words. You know what distances WKNL competitors throw their knives at static targets? 10 and 15 feet, or ~3 and ~5 meters, respectively. Getting a knife to reliably land in a - again, stationary - target at 10-15 meters takes years of practice. Records tend to be in the sub-25 meter range.
Well, do they train throwing?Honestly, regardless of whether they do or don't. Being a knife thrower will just push them from 'completely useless' to 'mostly useless'.
I still don't know why it's "wrong". I know plenty of games...I also know plenty of games that do this. Even my all-time favourite tactical combat sim, Jagged Alliance 2, has ridiculous long-range insta-death knives (from stealth).
...also some (minimal) real experience with throwing.So, tell me, at what distance can you stick a knife into a static target and get it to stay there, with some reliability? I also played a bit with knives when I was young and stupid, and a few meters, a tree that stands still and practicing from a set distance were the best I could manage.
Like why can't all melee weapons use the same formula? It would lead to a more consistent experience and make balancing much more straightforward.Read my lips: there is no balancing. :P
Current criteria seems to be completely arbitrary and I can't see a benefit in having some weapons being less consistent than others.Variety. IMO, the problem is not that there's a lot of variety, it's that there's no logic to the madness.
Do we see modern militaries use throwing knifes as backups or use handguns?Throwing knives, no. Handguns, yes, in specific roles (MPs, officers, pilots, sidearms).
...only advent of full plate armors make them lost this role.Any kind of armour degrades cutting efficiency a lot. Even just a padded jacket/gambeson. Swords 'lost this role' already with chain mail, never mind full-body plate. Fortunately, armour was even more expensive than swords, and chain mail was probably the hardest of all armours to make and/or wear.
I honestly don't know if you are trolling me or something of that vein when discussing with you. Don't get me wrong, I do think that your mod and the love given to it is excellent and it is peak gaming overall, but when I'm giving nonsensical arguments to (in my eyes) fair criticism , it is just vexing. Like why can't all melee weapons use the same formula? It would lead to a more consistent experience and make balancing much more straightforward. Current criteria seems to be completely arbitrary and I can't see a benefit in having some weapons being less consistent than others.
This argument doesn't make sense at all. Do we see modern militaries use throwing knifes as backups or use handguns? And regardless, why bring some natural state argument when history shows the limits of thrown weapons.
That's exactly the problem with the current accuracy formula with thrown weapons- that with no that much training,you get a weapon that hits likes a truck and always hit. A pistol 5 titles away may miss half of his shoots from a 70 acc soldier. Throwing Knifes from 5 titles away will hit close to 100 of the time. Given thrown weapons sniper rifles accuracy formulas would be a big improvement. And to be clear , it's not a matter to make them not effective weapons, is that they are too dominat with very little training.You can currently do some crazy things with Melee weapons for example but you need a trained agent, I don't see why thrown direct hit weapons can't be similar.
Maybe this is the crux of the issue that we play differently ? So the LC with BS shells seem fine but if you want to be more efficient it seems like a bad choice.
I faced some Vampire knigths in a police monster raid in the first year (without Promo III )and sniper rifles proved much more useful against then than a LC. Well the real MC where incendiary grenades to sap their morale, but even against tougher enemies there are better alternatives. Also I didn't compare it to the TRSH due to weigth, but that's indeed the most awesome shotgun 😎
I find then very dominant , not only on spawn that are far away but as well in more medium ranges encounters bc there are always some priority enemies that need to be taken, and the high damage with guaranteed hitting is a deadly combo.
Do you find knifes useful with untrained agents? Also that knifes are used by enemies as well. I'm not going to go about how swords ain't ceremonial, or how even ceremonial weapons are somehow ineffective, but knifes being easier to use than swords not only make sense from a gameplay sense, but also from a logical standpoint.
BTW thanks for the effort writing the answers, I know it takes time and effort but I appreciate it.
No, sword ARE martial weapons, even at some point a battle weapon, only advent of full plate armors make them lost this role.
Ceremonial aspect of sword now is more a side effect of its original usage that reason they exists.
Well, as long as we both have fun. :)
'Small carbines with pistol ammo' are called submachine guns in English. :)
Well, no, I don't have a particular problem with those. But machine guns are somewhat more weird. The mods lumps the Minimi and the PKM together, and makes the M60 and MG 3 separate, whereas IRL the M60, MG3 and PKM are all GPMGs firing a full rifle cartridge while the Minimi is an LMG firing an intermediate round. And '2-round auto' is a somewhat strange thing on a machine gun, anyway, though not inherently strange as a way to distinguish LMGs and GPMGs. Unfortunately, we then get the BO LMG line, which also has 2- and 3-round snap shots while being presented as 'heavy ... variant ... of rifles', i.e. an LMG.
In a word, consistency. And I've never managed to find a good role for the machine guns that isn't done better by another weapon.
That's exactly why this thing tends to come up again and again, from different people.
But I like it! People criticise games they like all the time, because they want them to be 'even better'. Surely this is not the first time you've encountered this?
What exactly are you objecting to? That while generally borrowing a number of ideas from Piratez, you absolutely did not do this with melee weapons? Even when there are still melee weapons in the game that are about as close to an exact copy-paste as one can have between mods with different resources?
A hand cannon should be able to consistently kill a rock or penetrate an armoured car. A non-AM rifle should only do that rarely if at all.
Besides, didn't you say yourself that all weapons being the same was boring? As far as impact on target goes, the LC with AP rounds is very much the same as the Sniper Rifle, except less accurate. Well, and you get another snap shot.
In general, the OG cannons are very unrealistic weapons that are kind of like grenade launchers, and kind of like sniper rifles, and don't really mesh that well with a mod that already has both of the above.
A lot more charge to propel the projectile. A bigger projectile. Specialised AP rounds with comparatively larger steel (or perhaps even tungster or DU, which are almost unheard of for non-AM sniper rifles) cores. Special shapes like discarding sabots that are not practical in a 7-8mm round.
I guess I can rephrase it as "You cannot convince Solarius of something. He either convinces himself or he doesn't." Better?
You don't need any treatises. Get cleaver and a friend to swing a dead pig at you :D and see how well you do. Or find a HEMA group if you want the closest thing to first-hand we've got today. They've already done the treatise-reading (and translating, and translating to real life) for you.
Read my lips: there is no balancing. :P
Edit2: I'm also sorry if you felt particularly targeted, especially when your health bar is low.
I'm an argumentative asshole and I like(d) it when people hit me with similar criticisms. You engage me in an internet argument at your own peril. :P
I don't, I'm desperate to understand whether my mod is shit or not!Your mod is the shit! ;D
Because atomic age weapons beat paleolithic weapons.Not in XCF they don't. :P
OK, so what would be a better formula? Asking seriously, because I don't exactly understand the problem with them.Offhand, something like 25 + 0.01*THR^2, -5 accuracy per tile from tile 3. That would give you tile 2 accuracy comparable to a regular knife/combat knife in melee and less (much less for rank beginners) at range.
...formulas or GTFO.Knives: 0.85*(50 + Melee/2). Swords: 1.25*Melee. You'll get rough parity at skill 50, which is the upper end for raw recruits; and something like a +50 accuracy advantage at skill 120, which is roughly the mid-game max without excessive commendations, Synthsuits or the like.
Why does this matter at all? And more importantly, what are the "proper" formulas?Tactical gunplay 'realism' :D, which is what the "20 Minutes into the Future" genre tends to cater to. And there are no 'proper formulas' since we have a limited engine to work with. One can try to give machine guns a more distinct role that approximates RL somewhat more, though.
What is the proposed formula?One or more of: move some sniper rifle damage to toHealth; make LC AP rounds have a better ArmorEffectiveness, something like 60% or less (the big bad sniper rifle, TSR, has 65%); make LC AP rounds degrade armour.
A hand cannon is a one-handed XVII - XVIII century weapon. Apparently you mean something else, but I don't get it.The Light Cannon. And firing one of the original handgonnes with one hand is something along the lines of shooting a shotgun one-handed. You can do it if you really want to, but why would you?
No, I meant to say that the approach I went with is much older than either Piratez or XCF.Okay, fair enough. What's the original source of the lots-of-dodging, flat TU, damage scales really high with stats melee model?
A bullet is similar to another bullet, oh what revelation.So, are you or are you not advocating for all bullets being the same, no matter their size or shape? I'm getting mixed messages here.
*Yawn*Don't ask questions if you don't know what to do with answers.
Balance only matters in competitive games, which X-Com is not, and I never cared about balance in it.So, which one is it? The above or the below?
...Solarius doesn't particularly care about weapon balance or 'realism'.
Bullshit. My life would be so easy if it was true.
I've been around HEMA groups before you were born.Doubt that unless you count SCA. Modern HEMA is younger than me, and not by a year or two.
So why are we even talking about it?Not sure. On your part, some sort of unconscious desire to please others? :P
Surely not! That's why I am spending my 4th hour today on this thread, and it's the exact opposite of what I consider fun.Then don't. No sane developer does it. I used to, but I'm not.
I meant specifically the iconic longsword, which was mostly used for dueling.The 'knightly longsword'/arming sword evolved out of the spatha, which was certainly not a dueling-exclusive weapon.
I honestly don't know if you are trolling me or something of that vein when discussing with you. Don't get me wrong, I do think that your mod and the love given to it is excellent and it is peak gaming overall, but when I'm giving nonsensical arguments to (in my eyes) fair criticism , it is just vexing. Like why can't all melee weapons use the same formula? It would lead to a more consistent experience and make balancing much more straightforward. Current criteria seems to be completely arbitrary and I can't see a benefit in having some weapons being less consistent than others.With that attitude, you are headed for "Final Destination", a flat-map with mirror match ups. Why are you even playing this mod then or any game more complex than staring at yourself in the mirror?
Yeah I kinda of agree with this statement, I do modding in other games (paradox games) and in a team we may have different preferences, same for the player's. That being said my concerns related mostly to making tactical combat better.
Well, no, I don't have a particular problem with those. But machine guns are somewhat more weird. The mods lumps the Minimi and the PKM together, and makes the M60 and MG 3 separate, whereas IRL the M60, MG3 and PKM are all GPMGs firing a full rifle cartridge while the Minimi is an LMG firing an intermediate round. And '2-round auto' is a somewhat strange thing on a machine gun, anyway, though not inherently strange as a way to distinguish LMGs and GPMGs. Unfortunately, we then get the BO LMG line, which also has 2- and 3-round snap shots while being presented as 'heavy ... variant ... of rifles', i.e. an LMG.
Solar doesn't outsource weapon design to me (although I did give him lots of advice).
I'll pass your suggestions over to Dioxine, who is pretty much responsible for real firearms balance.So, this was not quite true?
Most of XCF weapons do not exist in XPZ and if they do, it was often the other way around (lifting a particular weapon).While that's true, it looks to me that the general design philosophy is coming from you, and Solarius largely just takes the patterns and applies them to his own mod. He's professed his disinterest in firearms and balancing several times now.
Also, I had nothing to do with G-11 at all, nor its "mind bullets" (whatever their are, I only seen standard ammo), which you choose as uber-example.The 'mind bullets' is the bravery damage bonus, something only the G11 and some UAC weapons have. G-11 is the only 'normal' gun with this feature in the entire mod and was released around Dec 2017. There are a number of such weapons in Piratez, from Linux SMGs to Hand Cannons (heh). The earliest versions I know date to 0.99, a time when XCF was just starting to become a release and had no 'mind bullets' at all.
From what I know G-11 is actually a trap weapon for spreadsheet heads, but I think it's coincidence (these people have insane talent in walking into obvious traps).I know very little about the in-game performance of the G-11 since I seriously dislike the sprite and tend to banish it into the 'hidden' category. But at a glance, it certainly has a more accurate and flexible autoshot than even the Smartrifle, and does comparable damage in the hands of a high-bravery soldier (80+ bravery). Maybe even a bit better due to slightly lower ArmorEffectiveness. And it isn't ruinously expensive, either. No clue what the trap is here, unless all ballistic assault rifles are traps.
[Pulls the old "How dare you criticise this piece of charred steak if you don't cook yourself!"]Fanboys, fanboys never change. :(
If you are such a firearms expert, why not leverage said expertise and make your own "rebalance sub-mod"? Or are you scared of text files?You should do some research before getting on your high horse. I did it once. Was a lot of work to get it even playable. Not many cared to even try, and making an alternate XCF was kinda iffy anyway. A couple of general ideas made it into XCF.
If you want full blown firearms-everything simulation, I suggest you play Jagged Alliance 2 1.13 instead.Again, why do you think I haven't played (and modded) the hell out of JA2 and its mods, v1.13 or not? But it doesn't have Sectoids to shoot in the face or crop circles to investigate.
That said, don't expect anything exotic outside the gun porn in JA2 1.13 either. OXCE + mods has them beat by a million miles.JA2 has pretty much any turn-based squad-level tactical game beat hands down. It could have exactly one weapon per category instead of the insane gun porn, and that would still be true.
@Juku regarding HEMA: they've been around here since 1980s, and were actually what sparked the fandom scene in Poland. (Dioxine and I did a lecture on it topic in Finland once, lol)Er, which fandom? SF fandom? Football fans? Star Trek? :P
With that attitude, you are headed for "Final Destination", a flat-map with mirror match ups. Why are you even playing this mod then or any game more complex than staring at yourself in the mirror?Wtf is even this comment. I did initially ask as to why there was a lack of consistency and I'm still waiting an answer (maybe you who seem so illuminated by divine wisdom ) as to why having conssitency is somehow bad. The weapons would still be different between then due to damage, accuracy and TU cost while at the same time not adding unnecessary calculation in regards to weapon damage spread and average desviation.
Context: https://supersmashbros.fandom.com/wiki/Final_Destination_(Super_Smash_Bros._Brawl) (https://supersmashbros.fandom.com/wiki/Final_Destination_(Super_Smash_Bros._Brawl))
You expect Solar to sit there, go through every melee weapon in the game, by hand, and change it all to the same exact formula? Why not do it yourself and release a "melee rebalance sub-mod" for the game? All the files are unencrypted plain text. A monkey trained in human speech could do it. Why can't you?
You are obviously more than capable, if you mod other games.
I think the actual issue might be lack of sufficiently tough enemies to let the LC shine. DB is usually sufficient, and the Trasher is a thing.Does that means that you no longer think that "The Light Cannon is the most OP weapon in the first part of the game."? That is good, because now we can discuss ways for improvement. If not, then I am still waiting at least some example situations where Light Cannon performs at least decently.
What else would it do, laser???Sniper rifles should not be effective against armored vehicles. And not only vehicles. At least those that are used to pop heads. Adding another damage type (naming is not critical issue) is one of the possible solutions.
OK, seriously: you want me to make several damage types depending on the bullet? That would mean we'd also have several different types for different kinds of laser. And at least 10 types of Chem damage. And so on. (And the limit is 20 damage types, of which we are already using 16.)
I still find them rather situational, and it took some serious work to make them viable in the first place. X-Com focuses on close combat, yet I wanted to have sniper rifles in it, which required a lot of tweaking.You made them very powerful by giving to an opponent short range weapons in open space maps. OK, Sniper Rifles are not overpowered, but in that case cannons definitely are underpowered.
In a word, consistency. And I've never managed to find a good role for the machine guns that isn't done better by another weapon.Really? Even BlackOps Smartgun? I think this is the most powerful weapon before turbolasers with single downside it's small clip.
So, this was not quite true?
Er, which fandom? SF fandom? Football fans? Star Trek? :P
You sure we're talking about the same treatise-translating, cautious-practice, historical-authenticity HEMA that had a large part of its origins in SCA heavy combat and not some adjacent group like hardcore historical re-enactors or proto-bohurt?
In that case, would be interested in a reference if you've got one handy.
Does that means that you no longer think that "The Light Cannon is the most OP weapon in the first part of the game."?
That is good, because now we can discuss ways for improvement. If not, then I am still waiting at least some example situations where Light Cannon performs at least decently.
And no, the problem is not in lack of tough enemies. The problem is that if you are facing Red Dawn's Armored Car, then BlackOps Sniper Rifle or even PSG-1 would deal with it better that Light Cannon.
Another problematic pair: Heavy Turbolaser and Turbolaser Sniper Rifle. Same tech level, but Turbolaser Sniper Rifle outperforms Heavy Turbolaser in EVERY aspect: accuracy, rate of fire, price, weight and most notably DAMAGE! Come on, tell me that Heavy Turbolaser is OP now...
Sniper rifles should not be effective against armored vehicles. And not only vehicles. At least those that are used to pop heads. Adding another damage type (naming is not critical issue) is one of the possible solutions.
You made them very powerful by giving to an opponent short range weapons in open space maps. OK, Sniper Rifles are not overpowered, but in that case cannons definitely are underpowered.
Maybe AI's weapons should always cause at least some damage regardless of whatever armor the player wears (and with the right kind of tool a lot).
I think I will use this simple solution. It just needs different enemy type assemblies in every map - at least when they are all armed with non-scifi weapons (or/and teeths and claws :D), but still supposed to be able to fight against armored vehicles and walking tanks at least somehow. Anti-tank mines would give a nice assistance :P
An AI unit using wrong weapons to wrong targets is suitable if it just doesn't carry anything else, I think.
Look, I don't care whether you think the LC is good or not. I think it is.Do you actually have a situation to back this up with, except for "The LC can be all things to everyone, but is kinda mediocre at everything"? Or is that the entirety of its OP-ness?
Another minor balance concern, should gas explosives be pushed back a bit? I quite love how effective they are, but for only promo III weapons they are too effective, in both agent hands but in cultists as well. They do have a great radius, insta kill 75% of the time and those who survive are put to sleep., ignore shields and put to sleep those not killed. While I wouldn't want to change how they worked, maybe they can be tied to alien tech/hybrid so that napalm/grenades aren't immediately obsolete against standard enemies
Do you actually have a situation to back this up with, except for "The LC can be all things to everyone, but is kinda mediocre at everything"? Or is that the entirety of its OP-ness?
All this multi-page back-and-forth could be easily avoided if you were more forthcoming with your reasoning. Sometimes you do, and it's good or at least valid so people tend to drop their criticisms quickly enough.
Hmm, maybe they are too good. It's just hgard to justify making them even harder to obtain, after all they're just gas grenades. Or maybe they're too strong? Thoughts welcome.I think mechanically they are fine as they are using special damage. Maybe radius of effect could be decreased? Also in regards to obtaining then, I suppose the closest real life equivalent would be nerve agents, which would be funny how to explain to the UN that your agents are walking war crimes. I was thinking of hybrids bc they are the most related to the chem trail aspect, so they could have invented a new gas that allows X-com to use it without explainii where they are getting their chemical arsenal.
It has a lot of dakka.Not really. No auto-fire, AP damage only mildly higher than most shotgun slugs and totally outcompeted by sniper rifles, HE and incendiary worse than handheld or GL versions.
I'm not paid to write 2 hour speeches. Take it or leave it.But you can and do come up with working 1-2 sentence reasons all the time. Just not all the time, and not when you get defensive.
and pretty useless to people who want every soldier to be optimised for what they do (like Vakrug :) ). Nothing OP at all.What are you talking about? All I wanted to know is a place in the world for a Light Cannon. If it was created for a joke, that is if Light Cannon was created intentionally bad, I could have accepted that. But if not, then I would like to know how to use it properly. (Same with Heavy Turbolaser, but now I am certain it is a joke.)
Which, under normal internet argument procedure ;), means you don't have one.Bruh how do you expect to be given replies with such a patronizing attitude?
But if not, then I would like to know how to use it properly.1) Load a soldier up with various ammo types, designate some ammo mules, presto, instant universal soldier. Not efficient since the team should cover all bases as a whole, but if you want a soldier who's always ready for anything (for roleplay reasons or whatever), well, you've got one.
Bruh how do you expect to be given replies with such a patronizing attitude?I don't. It's been clear from the beginning that no answer besides 'dakka' will be forthcoming even if there is one.
Which, under normal internet argument procedure ;), means you don't have one.
-Is there a point to nigth ops armor when liquidator armor is an option, and you may get it before the nigth ops one? Seems to me like the nigth ops is an inferior tier, giving protection wise less frontal protection than a kevlar. Maube it could be up armored a little or be avatible sooner.
- Outrunner being 100% vulnerable to fire is hilarious but tragic. A car shouldn't be taken out by a single fire grenade
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I made it mostly to fight aliens, whose weapons are too strong for armours anyway, so it's better to go as light as possible.Fighting aliens at night is as inadvisable as ever in XCF, and by the time you might want to do so in earnest, you should be fielding Cyber Armors or similar to actually stand a chance. Or maybe use drones or better yet, Shadowbats, as night spotters and blast the aliens with artillery.
A car shouldn't be taken out by a single fire grenadeIn Hollywood, cars get taken out by a single handgun round all the time. :) And this Outrunner thing looks very unsafe.