OpenXcom Forum
Modding => Released Mods => XPiratez => Topic started by: Eddie on March 10, 2016, 05:11:02 pm
-
Some things need nerving.
Early game killer kombo: hunting bow and fuso knives.
The hunting bow is the early game laser rifle that trains throwing which then enables the fuso knives "I kill you" button.
Hunting bow
Main problem: still too accurate, fires too fast while beeing very compact. I equip everyone with it on the belt. If their throwing is not good enough, they can train that with the bow. The bow is light and compact enough that it can be carried just to train throwing, as the hunting bow is the best throwing trainer. With 75 tu you can get 3 shots out with a lowest possible accuracy of 45 (30 throwing * 150 bow acc) in a 15 tile distance. Fast accurate shots that arc with no ammo cost. You couldn't get a better training weapon.
And when your throwing skill reaches about 60, you do the same damage as your early rifles. Just faster, lighter, more compact, more accurate and without ammo cost. So, why use rifles at all?
The only "downside" of the hunting bow is the arcing shot, but the only situation where that really prohibits the use is for base defence.
Possible ways to balance:
- Limited clip of 12 to 20 shots. Enough that it won't bother you but will prevent spam.
- Increased tu for firing. About 40 seems good, would say even more. Bows don't fire faster than guns. If you want a fast fire bow, give it a fast snap and slow aimed fire.
- Reduce accuracy even more. Or give it a snap and aimed mode.
- Use 50/50 firing/throwing skill for accuracy and make the skill training a coinflip. The effective throwing training is what makes the bow so useful.
Fuso knives
With bow abuse, I got a lot of gals with 80+ throwing skill. That gives them 70+ damage with the fuso knives. More damage than a gauss pistol and faster and more accurate. Osiron security front armor? I don't care, you're dead. Provost? Actually need more than one gal now, but also dead. The fuso knives are my power armor busters. That is the point where it becomes ridiculous.
Possible ways to balance:
- +30% armor effectiveness, maybe reduce damage a bit.
- Reduce clip size to 4 or 3. Now you can't carry 18 on your belt + quickdraw. Powerful, but limited in quantity.
- Reduce effectiveness of throwing skill training with the bow as mentioned above
Comparing nerved knives to throwing stars: knives own unarmored targets but do about the samge damage as stars vs armored opponents. That gives stars more usefulness all around (longer range, faster) while knives obliterate unarmored things.
Side note: is it possible to put a damage cap on skill scaling weapons? Might have to ask Medidian or Yankes if they can implement it.
Light machinegun
Minor thing. I find the gun a bit lacking. To make it more competitive, increase the amount of autofire shots from 5 to 6. Increase clipsize accordingly from 50 to 54. At 12 shots per round, it is on par with the autogun. More damage, but less accurate.
-
Side note: is it possible to put a damage cap on skill scaling weapons? Might have to ask Medidian or Yankes if they can implement it.
Light machinegun
Minor thing. I find the gun a bit lacking. To make it more competitive, increase the amount of autofire shots from 5 to 6. Increase clipsize accordingly from 50 to 54. At 12 shots per round, it is on par with the autogun. More damage, but less accurate.
Quick answers to these two:
1. No but it allows writing a damage function which plateaus around some value (like dmg = x - y^2, by manipulating y you can make the damage to level off at some point)
2. Competitive with what? It deals a lot more damage than Autogun, with better accuracy at long ranges. Gyro-stabilized Autogun (which is an upgraded weapon) has better accuracy, but still less power.
About the bows and knives... first off, good to hear someone is actually using their brain when playing this :) Second, it's all good in principle but maybe OP in execution. If I nerf Hunting Bow too much, you will train using Combat Bow. Knives are completely pointless due to limited range, if they're not strong enough. I will think about this. I would also gladly hear opinions of other people on this.
-
I would also gladly hear opinions of other people on this.
My opinion (about what Eddie said) is that if all weapons are nerfed to a point where it requires 10+ shots to kill my enemies, I will just stop playing the mod and invest my time into something that doesn't waste my time and nerves (that much).
Fact 1: Weapons kill.
Fact 2: Weapons, which don't kill are not weapons.
-
Fact 3: armor was devised to negate Fact 1 :)
Just whoa, please keep this calm. No need for such bitter declarations. The point is not to nerf weapons into uselessness. The point is, do some weapons allow too unfair of an advantage.
-
When I see bows in action in long missions, shooting 2 times per round is a bit much. It's also a bit strange to see unlimited damage potential in such a low-tech weapon, while shotguns require reload very often.
5-arrow quivers (not heavy, but taking lots of backspace space) could limit the potential and make each shot important.
It would also give option for the Rambo explosive arrow, and punching glove arrow 8)
-
I personally like that some enemies require some effort to kill, especially personal/power armor and the more advanced enemies (provosts, church exalts). It creates a situation where you have to sneak around and either wear them down with crappy weapons and acid flasks or hold/avoid them until you can bring the right thing to bear. Weapons kill, but primitive weapons shouldn't kill advanced enemies, at least not as well as advanced weapons.
As it is, weapons that scale outclass those that don't. We get so many missions that gals improve much faster than tech improves. This is assuming you manage to keep the gals alive, of course. But it is doable, especially once you get decent armors, more hp on them veterans and dog scouts. It is especially easy now that early game enemies have been nerfed and that you can raid awesome defender armors in the early game. (Note on raiding armor: I would make it so that only traders and academy can carry defender, and even heavy armor, with some decent crew to protect it that wear armor similar to what they transport. Spartans should carry camo gear, tac vests and tac armors. Raiding spartans for defender armor begs the question: If they can carry it, why don't they ever wear it? or at least the lower tier tac armor).
The way to improve guns damage is to research better guns, but that takes a LONG time. Let's take second tier ballistic weapons: You need the proper drops from enemies to acquire the guns in the first place (light/heavy/auto-cannon, LACC, CAWS, which don't drop that early in the game probably due to itemlevels) and then producing the ammo is non-trivial too. Eventually you get to tier 3 ballistic (with the custom/smart weapons) but these still aren't doing as much damage as the primitive bows and knives (haven't tried javelins yet). Since I don't want to play "prehistoric cavemen raiders in the future", but "Piratez of the future", I tend to go for gunz, and lately the super slow pace of gun improvement compared to the stat-wise tempting, fluff-wise uninteresting (to me) primitive weapons, has been wearing my interest down. (Yes, it is my own decision that makes it so and that's why I didn't mention it before, but you asked for opinions).
By opposition, the way to improve with bows and knives is easy: you just have to use them and you can bypass a whole lot of the tech. Eddie's claim that his Fuso Knives are better than a gauss pistol (at short range, of course, but they are both somewhat short range weapons) shows it is a bit crazy. Sure a ninja gal can do tremendous damage with a Fuso knife to the enemy's face/weak spot, but why can't a gal do that with a pistol shot to the same place? Throwing weapons also improve your ability to use nice long range explosive throws.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: I agree that it makes sense for primitive weapons to scale with both accuracy and strength since you pull the bow further/throw the knife harder if you are stronger, while guns scale only with accuracy since your gun doesn't fire more powerfully because you're stronger (but hopefully you can carry a bigger gun, and actually you can handle the recoil better so.. better accuracy on some guns from strength? hum..!). But the current situation does not work very well with:
- Bows/Knives: Hit more with accuracy, hit more often per turn with TUs because of flat rates, more damage with both accuracy and strength while keeping the same weapon
- Guns: Hit more with accuracy, more damage only from changing weapon
Primitive weapons scale 4 times as much as guns for a given weapon! (actually, it is multiplicative, not additive, so it's even more). If gun damage also scaled with accuracy or reactions (and I know you are doing this for some), it would help.
Case in point: Bows get a whopping 50% bonus from accuracy and with a few research projects, you get an extra 40% str. Sure they start from zero, but it is easy to catch up. A longbow with 60 throwing accuracy and 55 str will do 60*0.5+55*0.4 = 52 damage, which is the same as a laser rifle with the best clip, it will also hit at pretty much the same accuracy (120% instead of 125% for the rifle), fire at a flat 40TUs (so eventually 2, maybe 3 shots) compared to 60% of TUs for the rifle (only one shot/turn ever), and it will never require ammo compared to requiring fancy ammo and lots of research. It also works really well combined with Fuso knives for short range which outdoes any pistol in damage by the time you get 80 throwing accuracy (at which point 0.75*0.025*80^2 = 120% to hit on snap shots if I read that right). Arcing shot is usually a good thing too, except for breaches (which are short range -> Fuso knives domain) and base defences (again, Fuso and melee work well here with hit and run).
All that to justify these suggestions:
1 - Buff guns a bit with some accuracy/reactions to damage, to help them keep up and represent the ability to aim at weak spots.
2 - Might be cool to play with gun damage and damage roll to make them more reliable than primitive weapons (ex.: +33% damage & damage roll 50-150% damage -> damage is now 66-200% of original damage instead of 0-200%).
I also agree with Eddie's suggestion of:
3 - Changing the primitive weapons formula so that they plateau after a certain point, to prevent them from outclassing high tech weapons (at 100 throwing + 80 str, a longbow does the same damage as a gauss rifle, can be aim fired for a similar TU cost as the rifle's snap shot but with way more accuracy. It's just missing the reaction fire)
4 - Making armor more effective against primitive weapons. An arrow or knife shouldn't have the penetration power of a bullet. Maybe it's going to hurt a naked target more (it's bigger afterall, and may have more momentum/energy from its larger mass despite its slower speed, but size is also a disadvantage when it comes to piercing armor where you need to concentrate the impact as much as possible)
-
Fact 3: armor was devised to negate Fact 1 :)
Just whoa, please keep this calm. No need for such bitter declarations. The point is not to nerf weapons into uselessness. The point is, do some weapons allow too unfair of an advantage.
Sorry, didn't want this to sound bitter, just voicing opinions. In my experience so far, I have not met a single weapon, which would give me unfair of an advantage. All weapons so far (May 2601) range between very poor and average, most of them between very poor and poor.
The armors are quite good... but that's probably because I have access to armors I should not have yet.
-
Now it's clear, thanks. Your assesment of the available weapons is fair and in line with what was intended. To advance to 'good', 'very good', and 'awesome' weapons will require a lot of climbing in the research tree (with a chance to get something very good fiarly early - especially a good chance with your research approach).
The 'OP-ness' of primitive weapons is in main part a function of relentless and boring stat training. They are also heavily disadvantaged by limited range. But I will take some steps to adress the knife, if not many - I want it to remain an effective weapon in veteran's hands. I also had an idea to add extra stun damage for all bullets, so the guns will get a small buff.
-
The 'OP-ness' of primitive weapons is in main part a function of relentless and boring stat training.
No, it is due to the fact that tech takes a long time to progress while fights are plentiful so stats improve fast, which makes weapons scaling with stats improve a lot faster than you can upgrade your tech to keep up with. Especially in the early game against the new easy not killy factions. You don't lose many soldiers so the training can add up early and give you a starting advantage when you encounter the other factions later. This is compounded by how easy it is to get good primitive weapons (longbow and Fuso knives). If you consider the kind of stats that allow primitive weapons to measure up to even laser weapons (~60 throwing, 60 str) to be dependent on "relentless and boring stat training", then I agree to disagree.
To me they only require regular use of these weapons, whereas regular use of guns will not net you the same benefits (you will get similar 60 FA and 60 str pretty quickly, but that doesn't translate in 56 damage except on sniper/reaper rifles). You don't need to do "silly tossing stuff missions" or "let's see how many handle/shotgun/hunting bow hits this panicked security guard can take before going down". You just need to go for every UFO you detect and take out everything. Trying to capture is actually the closest to training, since you can need many handle hits before a target goes down. The only stat that is hard to improve in Piratez is reactions (although I guess that's only true if you don't use the typical line up soldiers by a UFO entrance technique, which actually would be easy to use in Piratez since gals start with better reactions and enemies have worst ones).
I never purposefully train, or use crappy weapons with the intent to get more hits on a target. I will favour accuracy over damage on gals that have terrible accuracy as it is better to hit and do little damage than to miss and fail to do awesome damage. However, as long as I can get ~60% to hit on an aimed shot, I use as deadly a weapon as I can get/afford since I favour killing ASAP to remove threats and increase survival that way. Despite that, there are a lot of targets thus a lot of stat improvements and since my priority is survival, gals survive and those improvements add up, to the great benefit of weapons with good scaling. As a gun user, I love reaper rifles for that reason, but otherwise I'd be having a field day with bows.
-
I would also like to mention that changing the damage range from 0-200% to 50-150% also reduces a weapons armor busting potential, without reducing the damage. So my take on the fuso knives would be 50-150% damage range, +30% armor effectiveness and a stack size of 4, damage formula unchanged. Same and more reliable damage vs low armor enemies while reducing armor busting potential.
A well balanced low tech weapon is the crossbow. It is useful enough while also having a weakness (long range). Another example is the fistycuffs. Powerful scaling, but their weakness is their unpredictable damage which often kills a target you wanted to stun. The bows have no real weakness.
Edit: regarding autogun vs light machinegun
They have the same accuracy in auto mode at long range. Autogun has 55% with 15 range and LMG has 45% with 20 range. Drop is 2 per tile so at range 20 autogun has dropped to exactly 45% accuracy. Autogun has 12 shots (3x auto) vs 10 shots (2x auto) for LMG, so the higher damage of LMG bullets is somewhat compensated. LMG has no snap and aimed, so no reaction fire. The tradeoff for no reaction and no aimed should be more than maybe 10% more damage. Just my opinion though..
-
Some weapons are good and if they weren't we would not be using them right? The bow is not a perfect accuracy weapon and the fact that it has an arc make it safe, at the same time, using a spotter and a sniper rifle is not much different.
You want OP? Portable lascannons. 80% accuracy, 110 laser damage, two snaps a turn, this step on many other guns and rockets against most targets. It implies using a kustom armor, but still it does everything afterwards.
-
Portable lascannon needs research. Bow and knives are available from day 1 and are dirt cheap.
My take on primitive weapons would be that they are comparable in power to available gun tech, while beeing cheaper and having drawbacks. A perfect example of that is the crossbow. So you would use primitive weapons because you have no ammo for your guns or want to conserve ammo, but if you had all the ammo in the world you would use your guns. Dioxine may have a different vision though.
-
Once ninja weapons appear, there's no end of trouble... I'll up the TU cost of Snap with knives to the same as Aimed, add +30% armor effectiveness against them, and reduce stack from 6 to 5. A bit smaller nerf on stars (+2 TU to use, +15% armor eff.). This still allows to dish out a lot of damage. Hunting bow also +30% armor eff. The rest of the bows remain unchanged, I want 3 shots on Combat Bow and 2 on Longbow. I'll consider adding ammo for them, though (while reducing unloaded weight), but I don't like the idea that much...
As for Reactions, they're easy to train with Melee now.
EDIT: at the same time, I added the following buffs for guns:
- Piercing, Plasma, Acid munitions and all Concussive explosions cause thrice as much secondary Stun damage;
- All Acid weapons now cause extra armor damage (10% unless already higher); raw damage lowered accordingly
- All Acid weapons now cause extra morale damage
- All Piercing & Plasma munitions of 60+ base power now cause extra armor damage (5%)
-
I am not too sure one needs to make changes yet. Once people start using Heavy Plasma, EuroSyndicate Laser then opinions would change again. Also once they meet Star Gods and other tougher enemies - it would change again.
However you are the designer so ..
I can agree on that guns should probably look at Accuracy as stat buff. Primitive weapons - strength and accuracy buff. Perhaps add a factor to the equation.
-
Another way to improve bullet weapons is to introduce specialized ammunition. This allows to adapt your ammo to the target, getting better performance from the right ammo choice.
The standard bullet we have right now I will call full metal jacket (fmj).
New:
For soft targets, jacketed hollow point (jhp).
For hard targets, armor piercing (ap).
-- Now the tradeoff is that jhp is worse than fmj or ap vs hard targets while ap is worse than fmj or hp vs soft targets. --
(This is the important bit, that there is a tradeoff!)
To make that work ingame:
fmj (for comparison): 0-200% damage
jhp: +30% armor effectiveness, ToHealth: 1.0, 50-150% damage
ap: -50% armor effectiveness, ToHealth: -0.3, 0-200% damage
For the jhp round, the "ToHealth: 1.0" doubles the damage that gets past armor.
For the ap round, the "ToHealth: -0.3" adds health, effectively lowering the damage that gets past armor to 70%. I hope that actually works as intended ingame.
Crunching the numbers:
I use a 30 damage weapon. Soft target has 10 armor, medium target has 20 armor and hard target has 30 armor. Average (av) damage and max damage:
fmj vs 10 armor: av 20.9 max 50
fmj vs 20 armor: av 13.4 max 40
fmj vs 30 armor: av 7.6 max 30
jhp vs 10 armor: av 34 max 64
jhp vs 20 armor: av 12.3 max 38
jhp vs 30 armor: av 1.4 max 12
ap vs 10 armor: av 17.7 max 38
ap vs 20 armor: av 14.6 max 35
ap vs 30 armor: av 11.9 max 31
As you can see the math checks out. Vs medium armor all rounds perform somewhat similar while jhp offers roughly +50% damage over fmj vs soft targets while ap offers roughly +50% damage over fmj vs hard targets. Soft target is armor ~1/3 of bullet power, medium armor ~2/3 of bullet power and hard armor >= bullet power. Note that ap does not kill armored targets fast, it just does reliable low damage.
It took me about 2 hours playing with the numbers to get them to do what I want, so don't change the modifiers unless you know what you are doing. Especially the 50-150% on the jhp is crucial, otherwise it would do way too much damage (+50% more!!!).
For game usage, I would not give every gun all ammo types. SMGs and low power guns should get the jhp option while high power and snipers get ap option.
-
I don't know if Piratez can benefit from even more ammo.. There is already a LOT of them, although proper armor piercing ammo could be cool
-
I just don't understand why so many people feel the urge to constantly nerf something.
If it continues like this, we'll be fighting only with bare hands (and cattle prods), 'cos the weapons will be weaker than a human (sorry mutant) punch.
What is the point of having 100+ starting-level weapons, if I am struggling to find even a few, that are effective. And when I finally find something, it gets nerfed within 2 weeks...
Please stop nerfing our side to oblivion (and start buffing their/both sides if you don't have enough challenge).
Or much better, impose restrictions on yourself!... vanilla xcom has TONS of cheese, which you can exploit... but you don't have to give everyone a psi-amp just because it's the most effective way. Different people play differently.... and if you think the bow is OP, don't use it!
There is a reason why vanilla xcom has been nominated for the best game of all times in several top X lists... and places at least within top 10 in most others.
-
Welcome to the Hell of game balance :/
Vanilla UFO had enemies which only used three weapons, basically (blaster and stun attacks were normally rare)
It's predictably much harder to balance a game with hundreds of weapons, when you can't even control which ones will become available at which moment (the huge randomness of factions, player research choices, and random interrogation results).
Note that Piratez also swarms with new ideas and experiments.
-
The idea is not to always nerf the best weapon, but to create a situation where weapons of a given period are all of some use. For a game that takes as long as Piratez, I define: early/mid/late game, and early/mid/late sub-periods of these. So mid-early game is the middle of the early game period, early-mid game is the early part of the mid game, etc.
As it currently is, primitive weapons (something I would class early/early game since they are easy to research) outclass guns (mid-early game for good gun drops), even with advanced ammo(making them late-early game) by the time you get them, by virtue of the training the gals get and the excellent scaling these weapons offer. If fact, they can relatively easily compete even with laser weapons (early-mid game weapons, I'd say).
Dioxine seems happy with guns. Since primitive weapons outclass guns, and guns are where Dioxine wants them to be (ish, see slight buff by adding some stun damage), the proper thing to do is to bring primitive weapons (and their supra-linear improvements with stats) down (either by nerfing the scaling, or adding other nerfs -> improved armors against them) so they are comparable with guns.
Another way would be to buff guns, which is what I actually am advocating (since a long time), by adding some accuracy stat scaling to them too, but that doesn't seem to be the favoured solution.
-
For the jhp round, the "ToHealth: 1.0" doubles the damage that gets past armor.
For the ap round, the "ToHealth: -0.3" adds health, effectively lowering the damage that gets past armor to 70%. I hope that actually works as intended ingame.
1.0 is default, 100% damage.
0.0 is no damage to health.
-0.3 will HEAL enemy.
-
@Meridian: I haven't noticed you using Hunting Bows, or really using Fuso Knives other than a few times. The only time you could say a nerf really changed your tactics was with the Hammer (which has been de-nerfed a bit since then).
The fuso knives should still be deadly with Throwing*0.9 damage. That's 63 damage with 70 Throwing. Frontal carapace armor is 50, gets buffed by +30% to 65, knives still penetrate it on a better than average roll. They're less effective against Powered Armor which was the point.
So please don't be angry, it's not like I have a personal vendetta against you.
-
Just for the record: First was Hammer, second Fuso knives, third Cutlass, fourth Sniper rifle, fifth Combat bow.
I am not angry (I even agree with some changes, like sniper rifle), I am just saying nerfing is not the only way.
I humbly accept any and all changes you decide to make; and I will even gladly code support for more features for you... I wouldn't do that if I thought you were on personal vendetta, would I?
-
1.0 is default, 100% damage.
0.0 is no damage to health.
-0.3 will HEAL enemy.
Ah, I seemed to have misundestood the use of "ToHealth". I thought it was additional to normal damage. Thank you for clarification.
Corrected values:
jhp: +30% armor effectiveness, ToHealth: 2.0, 50-150% damage range
ap: -50% armor effectiveness, ToHealth: 0.7, 0-200% damage range
I tend to agree with Meridian on the useless starting weapons, which I find is a shame. So many items and no reason to use them. Your muskets can fire one aimed shot per round, and all other early rifles do that too at roughly the same damage (the Blackmarch SMG beeing the exception with 2 aimed shots). Differences you would notice in close combat where autofire and more ammo have a huge impact, but whith all the melee weapons and higher mobility compared to vanilla (more tu and sprint), you don't need a gun for close combat.
Piratez also has the problem that it is not clear which weapon is good vs which enemy. I know, because I know where to look in the game files. For example, the blowpipe is the counter to Osiron security. One shot to their back armor can down them, and you even do good damage vs their front armor. Why? Blowpipe is acid damge, ignores 40% armor and Osiron take 140% damage from acid. But who knows that?
People probably also don't know that a black powder bomb (anarchy bomb) is pretty much a handheld explosive cannonball and can also kill a Osiron security in one hit.
I don't have a lets play, so I'll briefly recount my experience when first playing Piratez.
My first mission ended up with my meleemonster (I didn't know at that time) standing right in front of a Osiron security with fistycuffs. He went down in one hit, to the front armor. I though "wow, melee rules". Next mission was raiders. That is when I discovered that enemys can have dodge and guns are useful after all. Bording gun saved the day, plus hammer and chainsaw (they can't be dodged). Then I discovered the rapid fire bows that shoot three arrows while my rifles shoot once.
I like to keep using bows because I like the concept of a weapon that uses the throwing skill. And arcing shot is just so great...
Now I modded my hunting bow to have a 40 tu aimed and 30 tu inaccurate snap, so I feel less cheesy for using it.
-
Piratez also has the problem that it is not clear which weapon is good vs which enemy. I know, because I know where to look in the game files. For example, the blowpipe is the counter to Osiron security. One shot to their back armor can down them, and you even do good damage vs their front armor. Why? Blowpipe is acid damge, ignores 40% armor and Osiron take 140% damage from acid. But who knows that?
The carapace armor with all its vulnerabilities and numbers is fully exposed when you research 'personal armor parts', d'oh. So everyone who reads Pedia knows. And with the Black Powder Bomb, does it take a huge brain to guess a 60 HE is deadly?
The main point behind the current Fuso Knives nerf wasn't knives vs. guns. It was knives vs. Melee. Guns always win since you can slowly exterminate enemies from long range, like Meridian has shown in the latest couple of Pogroms.
Also maybe Piratez start not early enough tech-wise to really appreciate the starting weapons... I might change that before 1.0 yet.
-
The blowpipe has a listed damage of 22. You wouldn't know without doing the math that it is actually a good weapon vs a 50 armor opponent. You don't associate armorpiercing with blowpipe.
Compare the situation to vanilla xcom and the cyberdisc. Many people complain about them beeing too tough. They just don't know you are supposed to use rocketlauncher to kill them. Now there are lots of guides telling the people "use rocket vs cyberdisc". There is no weapon guide for Piratez. Ok, I can write one...
-
Maybe made muskets OP like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDYtxxRU_cY
1 shot and costly reload but you can kill many enemies with one shoot (reload could have longer time than normally),
-
AH, these! :) Tried to reproduce it with Clockwork Pistol, but it's kinda not there yet. It was done like this because past some point, making a musket ball simply bigger didn't increase armor piercing power, due to low velocity. So making muliple barrels was the way to go :)
-
Hilarous action replay at 22"00 of the video ;D ;D A gun which causes a physical wound to the shooter when firing. And this cloud of smoke, a nice trick to prevent the target from shooting back (because you can't see each other).
Eddie has a point about players learning stuff the hard way. More feedback on each attack's result would be very welcome, as was suggested/started in an other thread.
-
Well if someone was so nice as to implement support for pain sounds and/or variable amounts of bloodsplatter.. :^)
-
Yeah, painsounds, and that's about it, because it's Piratez: the game, not Piratez: the dice roll displayer :P Discoveries like these blowpipes are the prize to a smart and experimenting player. I won't dumb the game down since it would hurt those who like to experiment. And if someone wants data REAL BAD, there are the rulesets.
-
Peeps - just play the game first time and learn the tricks. Then try a second playthrough and learn more tricks. This is my second playthrough and I will most likely start my third in Q4 this year.
Is it me or are people beginning to whine? This is not meant to be an easy game. You want easy - create a god mode ruleset and play!
-
That's a ridiculous statement. Nobody wants an easy game.. What is seeked by everybody here, I think, is good balance between all the game elements, so that it isn't about replaying to find more exploits, but about replaying to try different, equally viable tactics.
No need to insult anybody by insinuating that they are whiners and/or need to cheat to succeed...
-
Arthanor - I am not insulting anyone especially on creating god mode rulesets. I played through XPiratez the first time doing that to get a feel of the game.
-
The goal of good balance is to give every item a use and diversify gameplay. In vanilla, you have an interesting starting loadout of weapons. They are well balanced against each other. You even have different ammo for some weapons. There is no "best weapon" or "best ammo". You have a combat situation where one weapon is more useful than another, but in a different situation a different weapon will be most useful.
Unfortunately, this situation lasts for two missions. Then everyone gets laser rifles. A bit later everyone gets heavy plasma.
We mod because we like diversity.
-
I never really got away from a pretty basic layout where everyone has rifles. Its just that tactically I want to prevent friendly fire, collateral damage to civies/destroying loot. The most practical solution would be a single accurate powerful round to take out enemies.
With high reaction fire set for each door even if an enemy storms in by opening a door they're usually stunned by suppresive fire or taken out in the reaction shots.
I use grenades early game because the rifles aren't tough enough, but when they do get tough enough I rarely find myself using anything else. Like using the Euro las gun, or Bozar/Bossar
If I know I'm up against etherals I generally use smart rifles or just harpoons. Sometimes I just drop weapons at the end of each turn.
-
The skillbased primitive weapons would be a lot easier to balance if there was a way to cap the scaling.
For example, the fuso knives could be:
damageBonus:
throwing: 0.9
maxthrowing: 70
This would limit the throwing skill considered for damage calculations to 70 and thus cap damage at 63. Then you can have a strong scaling without having to to worry about things like the amazon armor that boost throwing skill by 20 to a maximum possible 110 (and then ridiculous knive damage of 100). Also bows could have a strength based damage, and better bows are different in that they have a higher skillcap that is used.
-
What would be the point of having the amazon armor then. This might be 'balanced' but a fun-killer IMO.
-
You could preserve the fun of the amazon armor by allowing it to modify the skillcap. maxthrowing: +20 or something like that. The same mechanism could be used as a penalty for heavy armor. maxthrowing: -20.
-
wut
-
(edit: I misunderstood. Eddie's last post means that an armor could let a character use higher stat caps on weapons which use stat multipliers.)
-
That sounds like it could get really fucking complicated really fucking fast.
It's not an issue for a turbonerd like me, but the numbers game has already gotten really heavy.
-
And an useless complication at that. What practical purpose would that possibly serve?
-
Personally I don't think metal knives should ever do more damage than the holdout pistol. Even if you were the hulk throwing a knife would be dodgy at best compared to any gun.
Throwing IMO should be for future plasma knives, and grenades.
Heavy armor limiting throwing wouldn't make sense if the strength was modified as well IMO. Personally I'd like to see a larger variety in the factions. Like base assualts looking different depending on what race holds the base. Like spartan bases having a certain open military camp gibe. For reticulan bases to be trading post/towns.
Maybe for those who have too much time have manual shipping where things are shiped using aircraft to move to a location, trade/buy then deposit upon return. With all the contacts being locations on the planet. That if attacked or destroyed by the player would disappear but also be looted.
-
1. Yeah it's NINJA SKILLS of hitting the enemy in the throat or the eye, instead of just firing in the centre of mass. Or something like that. It's a simulation, but obviously not 1:1 simulation. But ninja weapons do add something unique gameplay wise, so they'll stay.
2. The throwing penalty on the heavy armor is mostly because of grenades and bows, not knives.
3. You're welcome to find any mod which has more faction variety. It's not my ill-will but I only have a single life.
4. It has been discussed. It's a good idea but way impossible in this engine.
5. Do you really think you could simply 'take out' the Eurosyndicate? Lol. But yes, in principle it does make sense (but again, way impossible).
-
If I ever learn how to mod I'd be doing alot tweaks xD! I just never thought of it like that lol.
I was thinking less about destroying the entire syndicate (at once) but like assaulting specific bases/towns/cities. But it would be pretty suicidal xD (I'm thinking a multistage mission with like 8 maps, and high tiered troops)!
If I had enough skill and time I could imagine it like the two stage final mission. Where multiple maps could be linked during the attack.
So far I've been mind controlling drones and random things to see how they play out. Then changing the stats of a few items/things. So far its been fun xD. Awesome mod.
-
I was thinking less about destroying the entire syndicate (at once) but like assaulting specific bases/towns/cities. But it would be pretty suicidal xD (I'm thinking a multistage mission with like 8 maps, and high tiered troops)!
And battle tanks, artillery strikes, air support...
Damn, I'd actually play it just for fun if it existed. :)
-
The AI lacks proper artillery ability IMO. In the original we had the dreaded blaster spamming.
I dunno if its just a change from letting easy AI use it or if I simply haven't been giving the aliens/humans a chance.
I could imagine say one artillery unit per 6 troops that simply spams missiles or bombs randomly on the map xD on the locations before their own troops move.
If the aliens were to attack your base by ground IMO they should start a surface raid. Or during terror missions. Since there are so many terror missions and this would mean that civilians are practically guaranteed to die maybe such missions should only subtract if all of them died like how the hideout gives you that solid 500 score when you destroy it. While for each survivor the boost stays the same.
It would also give you a reason to dread terror missions instead of being like ooooh who do I capture/kill/loot this time :3!!!
I avoid the star gods like the flu invisibility, plasma barf, and mind control are not good combinations. No sir.
-
All good points. Yeah I am constrained by the engine, and blasters... while they help, they're unfair, and OP as heck when the player gets them. Trying to use other methods. The next ver. will have all day vision ranges increased to 30 - we'll see if it makes the AI more dangerous - it will be able to attack with more troops and kill civilians faster too.
-
As far as I know the AI doesn't use aimed shot if anything else is available. They are not aware of UFO extender accuracy. At range 30 they would happily fire 0% acc snapshots/autoshots all day.
Correct me if I'm wrong though.
-
The AI picks which shot depending on hard coded ranges. It might be worth looking into making those number refer to the parameters defined for UFOExtender accuracy though (Meridian!). If my reading of the source is correct, when the unit is:
within 4 tiles:
Auto shot if it has TUs for it
Aimed shot if it doesn't have TUs for Snap or Auto
Snap otherwise
more than 12 tiles away:
Aimed shot if it has TUs for it
Snap if less than 20 tiles away, didn't have TUs for Aimed but has TUs for snap
Then there's 3 range independent clauses which are probably to catch odd edge cases, where the priority is given to snap, then aimed, then auto shots.
Thanks to the edge cases, an AI unit would be able to fire a HMG if more than 4 tiles distant, since it will fail every check until the very last decision to take an autoshot since it has TUs for it. Similarly, at range > 12, it would prefer to use an aimed shot over a snap shot so use a sniper rifle properly.
Now if you have a good rifle (BlackMarch SMG?) with snapRange of 15, the AI might be better off using snap shots when within 15 tiles instead of 12, so that's a case where the hard coded range bands are not quite accurate but it's not that terrible to use a aimed shot in that case either (I use aimed shots a lot, as I value hitting once more than the chance of hitting twice). The AI does use the various shots in the cases where they would generally make sense, but would probably benefit a bit from getting the autoRange and snapRange of guns from the ruleset, if available.
-
These are minor details. What's important, the AI will be finally using the 20+ tiles away behaviour more often (aimed shot or hide).
-
Yes, it should be interesting. I was just responding to Eddie's claim that the AI only snap shots. Past 12 tiles, it should aim.
I guess the buff to vision extends to gals too? otherwise that's a big impact on reaction shots.
I wonder if it'll make initial deployment trickier, since more enemies might have LoS to the craft on T1..
and it will make melee a bit more realistic too by increasing the risk of getting shot on the way in as you can be spotted faster. Approaching outside of LoF will be even more important with the longer distance to cover (In fact, it's quite a bit more unlikely to be able to rush someone 30 tiles and still attack, compared to 20 tiles).
Should be interesting!
-
The AI picks which shot depending on hard coded ranges. It might be worth looking into making those number refer to the parameters defined for UFOExtender accuracy though (Meridian!).
I'm not touching alien AI ;)
-
Thank you for the explanation Arthanor.
-
I guess the buff to vision extends to gals too? otherwise that's a big impact on reaction shots.
Yes, it's a buff to global day vision for everyone. Well, I'll think about lowering it for things like tanks or light-hating creatures.
-
I'm not touching alien AI ;)
I'd expect it to be fairly straightforward to implement (replace an explicit number with one read from the ruleset). If I offer a patch, would you be interested?
I'm thinking things like allowing autoshots when in autoRange+1 tiles, instead of 4 tiles, would be great for the quite numerous weapons with extended autoRanges, mostly. It might affect some of the snapshots weapons, but that's less significant. Although possibly landing 2 shots instead of one, or landing one and still having TUs to go hide could be good too.
-
Yeah well it might help or it might make things worse. It's a matter of opinion, too. Should really the enemies always calculate the best possible outcome?
-
I'd expect it to be fairly straightforward to implement (replace an explicit number with one read from the ruleset). If I offer a patch, would you be interested?
Not because I couldn't, but because I don't want to know how it works.
Alien AI is one of the few last things that I know little about and I want to keep it that way... otherwise it's not Enemy Unknown anymore.
-
Yeah well it might help or it might make things worse. It's a matter of opinion, too. Should really the enemies always calculate the best possible outcome?
Well, if they are outfitted with a weapon, I'd expect they know how to use them. The current hard coded numbers are made for the default UFOExtender accuracy, more than anything. For 100% vanilla: it's better to use autoshots most of the time (so the AI certainly sacrifices efficiency for realism, something that the player rarely does or would do by enabling UFOExtender accuracy). For tweaked weapons, it depends on the weapon.
Getting more auto-shots from autocannon/autogun wielding enemies sounds like a good thing to me (but the gals would disagree!). As it is, I expect we mostly see multiple snapshots when there could be autoshots, and only see long range autoshots on weapons that only have authshot capabilities.
In a choice between the enemies always using special weapons badly and always using them well, I'd pick always using them well. Ideally, it'd be somewhere in between (based on the intelligence and aggression of a unit? More intelligence, more likely to use the best shot, more aggression, more likely to use faster shots?) but that's more work (but doable).
-
I have to say it it seems. Naturally anyone can code anything, but I'm explicitly uninterested in that kind of changes to AI. I'm for significant changes, or more like, extensions, while that kind of tinkering with gritty details usually leads nowhere. Between Warboy's AI and Arthanor's AI that does the same just with a bit different algos, I choose Warboy's because it has proven to work reasonably well in the basic range of tasks.
PS. Naturally, if it was an alternate AI that can be applied to specific units via ruleset, say, useAIType: Arthanor2.0 would be very cool! :)
-
I think what attack type AI use should be based on weapon not unit. Each weapons should have different prioritizes ("this weapon is sniper rifle" or "this is shotgun").
-
I think what attack type AI use should be based on weapon not unit. Each weapons should have different prioritizes ("this weapon is sniper rifle" or "this is shotgun").
This is sort of what I was thinking would be achieved by letting the AI know the basic range(s) of its weapons, instead of working with default values which may be rather different from the weapon properties (ex.: there are a lot of autoRange: 20 weapons in Piratez, but the AI will not use autoshots with it unless they are within 4 tiles or the weapon only has autoshots, which is a missed opportunity). If you know your weapon has snapRange: 7, you can pick aimed shots if you are further, which makes you use weapons more appropriately. No more trying to aim shot a shotgun from 20 tiles, or using snap shots with autocannons from 12.
But it seems like Dioxine wants some units to be clueless (I'm guessing an academician who's given a gun just because angry piratez showed up may not know how to properly use it) and some to have a clue (actual soldier/warrior/fighter types). But honestly, the tweaks I suggest are small and I don't think it deserves to be considered an alternate AI, which is why I was suggesting them as tweaks to the basic AI. But there could easily be a flag is isWarrior: true that determines whether to use the potentially not great defaults, or to use the weapon's proper stats (and maybe intelligence/aggression too).
-
It'd be wonderful if enemies had tactical decisions based on their tool's abilities. But for the most part they grab a gun move with half their TU's or 1/4th of their TU's in reserve. And end their turn.
Some snipers reserve enough to fire. When it comes down to it they don't usually use cover, but they can move away if they were out in the open and spotted.
It might be hard to make the AI complex though.
-
Yeah, adding routines for non-vanilla weapon types (shotgun, flamethrower, limited range weapons like throwing knives etc.) would be very nice. Vanilla doesn't have them because it doesn't need them.
But it should be more complex than giving just them mathematical edge. Because that will make them predictable, and that's definitely a no-no.