The glock has aimrange 30
And while I was thinking about that, I also thought: Why would a pistol fire faster aimed shots than a rifle? Or an SMG? SMG is probably the right comparison.
My suggestion would be to have aimed shot speed of pistols in the same range as SMG's, which is 2 shots per round.
(Oh, and great mod Solarius, I'm having lots of fun playing it!)
I have a vague picture in my head that is under development how I would balance all the guns. Let's see if I can satisfy my critical self ;-). Once it's finished and I have playtested it enough, I will post the results. Then you can decide if you want to try it or not and decide if you like it or not.By the way we have Juku121's still unused thread for various ideas to test.
In the meantime, don't mind my ranting about gun balance Solarius. You can focus on creating content.
By the way we have Juku121's still unused thread for various ideas to test.
...I would conclude that pistols are a bit too powerful.
I was experimenting with giving pistols accuracy dropoff 3, but somehow it is not working. Crossbow has dropoff 3, which is working fine. Using the same line for a pistol changes nothing. Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?
Most pistols have aimRange 20, good ones 25... Really, saying they are more accurate than machine guns is just making a fool of oneself, and not even worth discussing.
I think maybe raising the power of the pistol up to 28 might be reasonable, to reflect the power its supposed to have, and make it more of an upgrade to pretty much all pistols (as blackops is supposed to be) since I feel like the smg is more worth having as a side weapon almost entirely
Pistol vs Rifle, example 1
QBU-88: snapshot - 63% acc, 30% tu, 29 dmg, snaprange 20
.45 Colt: aimed shot - 80% acc, 32% tu, 30 dmg, aimrange 20
The point of the QBU-88 is the fast and accurate snapshot capability. But on closer look, the aimed shot of the .45 colt does something very similar, but a lot more accurate. Shouldn't it be the other way around?
Pistol vs Rifle, example 2
Famas: snapshot - 60% acc, 20% tu, 26 dmg, snaprange 15
Snubnose pistol: snapshot - 60% acc, 20% tu, 26 dmg, snaprange 15
The Famas has the exact same snapshot as the Snubnose. Does that make sense?
Solarius, what do you consider "standard" guns that you use to balance the others against? What is your standard pistol, your standard assault rifle, standard sniper rifle?
The range question can be approached in several ways. For example, assault rifles could have a higher snap range than pistols. Sniper rifles already have snaprange 20 (good idea that). Then there is the option to give pistols (and maybe smg) a higher dropoff. A third option is to use damage dropoff (works like accuracy dropoff). The nice thing of damage dropoff is that it is not modified by the user. The accuracy dropoff is a bit tricky as a balance tool, because the higher the accuracy of the shooter, the less of a penalty it is. This is best observed in shotguns, where good shooters can use them at quite long ranges.
Some example: AK vs AKu
The AKu is the short variant, better suited for close quarter combat. Right now the AKu has a higher snap range than the AK. I would do it the other way around. Give the AKu a shorter snap range, that fires slightly faster and slightly more accurate (it's already like that). The AK has the longer snap range (say, 20), that is long enough that at greater distance it is equal or better than the AKu snap. That would also solve the problem that the AKu can do two aimed shots, while the AK can only do one. The two aimed shots of the AKu make it the better ranged weapon in my opinion (unless you want to shoot across the whole map).
Remember it's not a wargame, it's a skirmish game, which gives the pistols their role. If it was a wargame, pistols would indeed be sort of useless (due to bigger maps, more troops, bigger vision ranges etc.), but it is not.
"Weapons aren't tiered, they are different on many levels."
"Of course it's better, because it's a higher tier weapon."
Also, it is better suited for the kind of combat X-Com does. Remember it's not a wargame, it's a skirmish game, which gives the pistols their role. If it was a wargame, pistols would indeed be sort of useless (due to bigger maps, more troops, bigger vision ranges etc.), but it is not.
- Agent: "What's with these assault rifles you got us? Is that a joke? I'll stick to my pistol." Feels kinda weird...
I would rather have it like: "Well folks, we've managed to get these british SMGs they used in WWII. They ain't state of the art, but they still pack more punch than your pistols."
- Pistols are civilian weapons. Full auto weapons are restricted to police and military. There is a reason for that.
- XCOM is special forces. Special forces use mostly carbine versions of the standard assault rifle. Or SMGs to avoid overpenetration. I would like to give my agents what feels natural.
- XCOM gets tanks eventually. And RPGs and machine guns. Are you sure this ain't a war game? I mean, the events of UFO: Enemy Unknown are called the first alien war...
- Gameguide: Starting pistols. Mix in shotguns when needed. Then get magnum and nitro express. Forget the other guns, they take up more space and are less effective. Wasted research, like vanilla heavy laser.
What makes the xFiles idea fun for me is the equipment scavenging of an underfunded organization. If your starting equipment is so good that 90% of what you can find/research in the early game is the equivalent of the vanilla heavy laser... I would call that wasted potential.
Hi Solarius, so are there any tiers or no? Because in the same post you write there are no tiers and 2 lines below there are...
I'm not an expert on firearms, no part of my professional training focused on those, but in RL pistols are crap.
Seriously, if you want to hit something above 20m meters, you need to be good at shooting. Anything around 50m is a roulette.
Moving target makes it way harder since you need to make sure you are moving your arm along with the target and not just your wrist.
Shoulder weapons at 50m are easy, even with minimal training you can hit the target size of a body.
Pistols have 2 advantages - they are small and easy to hide (and comfortable to carry) and you can shoot them with one hand. That is it. They are not faster to shoot and accuracy is just a fraction of what you get with a shoulder weapon. And body armour? Pistols are useless even more with those.
There is a reason you never see SWAT/FBI FRT with pistols in their hands. They always have short AR, SMG or shotguns. When you know you might be actually shooting, you never rely on pistol. Pistols are crappy at shooting, they are good at carrying around and hiding. Even standard FBI agents have a qualification in shoulder weapon. Every single patrol car in US has a shoulder weapon in the trunk or on the dashboard (shotgun or M4).
As for XCOM operations - well, only about <5% of my deployments went without shooting - seriously, only those troubled farmers are the ones you do not shoot. Maybe there are missions, where you need to be covert (like mansions in Piratez) and the pistols would make great sense in there. For CQB SMG's are as good as pistols, but easier to aim and have more power (higher velocity due to longer barrel).
If you just want to make pistols cool and worth of using it's ok with me, but it has nothing to do with RL.
PS: Happy birthday Solarius :)
And indeed it does in game, with the exception of single shots and fire control, which is something that pistols do indeed have an advantage in real life.
I would rather have it like: "Well folks, we've managed to get these british SMGs they used in WWII. They ain't state of the art, but they still pack more punch than your pistols."
- XCOM gets tanks eventually. And RPGs and machine guns. Are you sure this ain't a war game? I mean, the events of UFO: Enemy Unknown are called the first alien war...All sorts of organizations get access to these weapons, yes, including agents. Generally the stereotype of their stylized suits and small pistols is only relevant for inconspicuous operations, when you start to have an identified, credible threat, you are not going to solely be using small arms anymore.
One more suggestion for pistol balance.
We talked about dropoff 3 for pistols, but you didn't like that because what about SMGs?
Answer: any one handed weapon gets dropoff 3, two handed gets dropoff 2. The SMGs you want to exclude from dropoff 3, make them two handed. The small shotgun is also two handed.
Also: kneel bonus.
Piratez has reduced kneel bonus for pistols (10% vs regular 15%). Why not have that as well? (for any one handed weapon)
Most of my gripe with pistol balance comes from the strong starting pistols (glock, beretta, colt). Make just them slightly less accurate, slightly slower to fire, and already you have more appreciation for the guns you unlock with research.
I agree with most of these points, except the not using pistols by security agencies - the exception being the US in the latest years, when the arming up skyrocketed so much that any police station must have a tank, and therefore a special agent needs at least a tactical nuke. But it's not a real tactical issue, since any normal, practical agents from around the world still use pistols most of the time.
Wrong, your European is showing. :)
Wrong, your European is showing. :)
then your UFOPedia just automatically fills out as you stumble across more weapons, if that's possible.
Generic gun stats should be available to the public, I don't see why these agents can't immediately identify the gun and collect info on its specs.
then your UFOPedia just automatically fills out as you stumble across more weapons, if that's possible.
No, that's completely impossible, and I don't think it's even doable without serious code rewriting. That's why it works as it does.I was doing some modding and I toyed with a solution that I am liking so far: you can hide multiple items away from the UFOPedia, purchase, sell, and manufacture lists by wrapping them together into one research project. But if it's a thing you shouldn't have to "research", you can disguise it by calling it "operative work" and give it a small cost, basically indicating that the work performed by the scientists on the job is more logistical than inventive. As an example, in my upcoming mod there is a research project called 'Soldier Screening', and there is a UFOPedia entry (in my new section titled Research Project Information) which you can read before researching it, that indicates what you get from it and why the job must be done to get this access. In terms of gameplay, the player can opt to leave it in the research list to prevent purchase list bloat in the number of types of soldiers they can hire, and the UFOPedia entry is non-intrusive but serves to help the player commander decide if it is worth allocating scientists to unlock.
A little bit of gun-nut stuff here:Bullet striking power is a factor of bullet mass, powder mass, and barrel length (in addition to trajectory factors which do not vary by much between guns). You should know this, gun nut.
why is 9x19 guns are so underpowered? because if they all use 9x19, they should have the same damage value,
Its not snap shot, its aimed shot : aimed shot is pitiful in all but the hands of the elite.Are you using it with UFOExtender Accuracy? I noticed that most of the weapons had a very small difference in accuracy between snap and aimed shots. The purpose of this is to make snap shots pretty accurate at close range, while aimed shots primarily shine at long range. If you don't use UFOExtender Accuracy, then the aimed shots are pretty underpowered.
Rifles are the workhorse of militaries everywhere, but at the start your guys barely qualify as police. They're allowed handguns and cheap weak shotguns because Murica! (X-files is set in the US of A and we seem to be going for that vibe)
But police don't generally have access to rifles or bigger guns. Ideally they should have Kevlar and smoke bombs or flashbangs at the start, but nobody thinks they're actually necessary or useful, and everything useful is delayed.
Maybe this isn't the place to suggest this, but what about early missions where you have to find some item or evidence and get it back to the point of extraction before a certain turn passes, everything not on a green tile is lost, enemy reinforcements are inbound and you don't have the manpower or the mandate to do more. Thought of that due to the police procedural sentence. Alternately, if we ever get the ability to have reinforcements actually show up, a secure the location and defend against enemies coming at turn 15 or whatever could be fun. Still not the place for suggesting it, but whatever.
I just want to say that i love the balance and variety of weapons in this mod. It's great.
Been lurking around this thread and thought it is a correct place to question the balance of pistols and rifles.
Whereas rifles are considered much more accurate than pistols, there is a number of pistols that have a snap accuracy better than a rifle.
Just to make an example: Magnum-AK
Snap acc: 70% vs 55% equal 15 tiles range
What would you say if someone will suggest stats-increase for the common rifles or nerfing accuracy for the pistols?
Frankly this stinks of data manipulation, though I have no idea what you could gain from this besides the paperthin illusion that you outsmarted the game design. :)
Read my answer again: you compared a shitty rifle with a high-end pistol.
Also read the rest.
If you ever decide to re-balance all the weapones again, it would be nice to consider that assault rifles and things like the hunting rifle would do damage comparable to things like the magnum, because even though it's a smaller bullet, the muzzle velocity is much greater.
I know you have to balance it against the higher capacity and range of rifles, but I think even with comparable damage things like the magnum would still fill the role of close quarters and side arm pretty well, because of the faster firing speed.
Again, I know you just rebalanced everything already, so I'm not asking you to do it again just to satisfy my realism craze, but if/when you do eventually do it again, it would be nice for that to be considered.
I'm also basing this off of 1.4, not the github, so I don't know what you've already done there. just wanted to get this thought out of my brain before I go to bed. my apologies if you've already considered it.
Guess that's about what I should have expected. Should have assumed you'd already had gun nuts try to school you after 4 years of doing this :)
My main thing was the part about how it's frustrating for Assault rifles to not do anything against mid-late 97 cultists, but I'll check the hub before commenting again about that.
However (and this could just be my own confirmation bias), in the latest version, I haven't used shields nearly as much because it feels like even if you directly face the enemy, you get hit on your side armor quite often.No, you do. Whichever side is facing the incoming fire is most likely to get hit, but shots can hit other available sides as well and it's pretty common that they do. They cannot hit the far side of your soldier. If you face a corner instead of a side to incoming fire, then instead of three sides they can hit, they will (pretty much) only be able to hit two sides.
Does frontal armor imply leg and torso armor? What does "under" armor mean? Is it the armor of the legs themselves or the armor under the feet?Under armour is for explosions... i think.
I've never been into mechanics. From the point of view of game mechanics, are our soldiers two dice?