OpenXcom Forum
Modding => Released Mods => XPiratez => Topic started by: Eddie on February 19, 2018, 09:04:54 pm
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Here is some quick feedback from me on the current version. Since the next release is not too far away, I should say what I have to say now so any improvement that come from it might already be in the next release. I've only made it to april of the first year so far, so this is just early game feedback. I play on the highest difficulty and so far have not found it annoying.
Overall, the balance is quite satisfactory. I have so far not seen any "this is best in every situation on every gal" type item.
Airbus range:
I had my base in north america, and the first misson spawned in asia and was just out of my reach. By literally one pixel, my airbus could not reach the target. To preserve my nerves, I edited the save to give it just a tiny bit more fuel.
So... is it too much to ask to give the airbus global range? Otherwise you are pretty much limited to europe as your starting base if you don't want RNG misson generation to annoy you. Other solution: extra battery as a range extender, which costs you one crew slot. Extra fuel tanks have already been discussed for craft, not sure if crew capacity can be modified though. I have already suggested a pupup to notify you that the target is out of range, so you can equip the extra battery before you start flying to an unreachable destination.
I had the same situation later with the blowfish. Just give it a little more range plz, it's slow enough. It makes craft selection quite annoying. I want to keep the airbus because of Dr. X mission later. I need the blowfish for underwater missions. And then I also need a third craft for range? I got an airspeeder, the aircar has not enough range. Now I need a fourth hangar for an aircar to equip light craft weapons.
Weapon selection:
I try to capture everything if possible, that limits my weapon selection. I do extensive testing on my weapon choices, so I'm pretty sure they are the most effective ones. Here is what I have used so far.
Melee
- Handle: Best basic melee stun weapon. Does just enough health damage to stop stun recovery for most enemies.
- Stun baton: for skilled girls slightly better than the handle. Also, some enemies have resistance to stun but less to electroshock (zombies for example). Downside is, enemies might get back up.
- cattle prod: can take down anything (even mechtoids), doesn't need skill. Use on armoured targets and/or for unskilled gals.
- fistycuffs: most dps with skilled gal. Surpasses handle dps at roughly 100 melee skill. Restricted to beefy targets like Ninjas or Werewolfs as soft targets can get killed easily by this weapon.
- Leather whip: use on ratmen and dogs. Their dodge is too high for regular melee, but they have little hp. The whip cannot be dodged.
To fight Sky Ninjas, I though about using leathal melee as I was afraid their dodge is too much. Turned out my gals are skilled enough that fisticuffs do work. When I run my spreadsheet to calculate melee damage, I'm always surprised that the leathal weapons don't really do more dps. The sabre would have been the top choice for Ninjas, but not by much. If you need close range leathal damage, the sawed off shotgun is the best option most of the time.
I needed to use the anchor once on a academy outpost zombie mission to kill the chryssalids. It was on urban map and I could shoot down from a building.
Ranged:
- mini las-charger: can damage most things, but does little damage. Useful because of infinite ammo. Best uses: Shambler hunt. I had my gals at the edge of the map, near a cave entrance. I expected to need to dive for safety, but I could just wait and reaction fire down the shamblers. The damage of the mini las-charger is low enough that the shamblers don't die but fall unconscious. I also use the mini charger to kill academy drones. It can take alot of shots before one does damage, but it is possible. You train firing that way.
- Ramshackle rifle: for long range. Can damage most medium armored enemies (the bullets have 0.85 armor modifier). Useful to kill academy drones. Also can damage chrysallids. Replaced by RFC carbine once you find any.
- domestic shotgun with rubber bullets: Standard long range stun. Great that they deal also health damage now. Just enough to prevent stun regeneration. Once you find police shotguns, you get even better range.
- Sawed off shotgun: Safety weapon to keep on the belt, to get out of tight situations. Few things survive an auto shot from close range.
- Double barrel shotgun: A bit more range than the sawed off. Massive damage. The spread makes it uneffective beyond ~15 tiles.
Generally, shotguns rule the game. Why? Because they are dependable. RNG damage calculation cannot ruin your day (or far less likely). Things you hit almost always die and cannot shoot back.
Suggestion: To diversify ranged weapons, have some ammo with 50-150% damage range. Call it hallow point ammo maybe? I would need to playtest it, but it would certainly be interesting.
Bows used to be op, but the random health damage and no LoS penalty have nerfed them good. Now they are inferior to same tier firearms, which I think is ok. They still have a niche for their arcing shot and cheap ammo. If you hit a ratman and he is bleeding, he will still die eventually.
Armour:
I found the uber clothing mostly inferor to tribal, as the increased stamina regeneration is most useful for early melee capture play. When you have unlocked shotgun rubber bullets, the pirate clothing is best for the skill bonus. Also, the pirate outfit is better than barbarian for melee. The +15 melee on pirate is better than +10 melee and +10 strength on barbarian, or equal. I suggest giving the barbarian the +15 melee and the pirate +10. The barbarian suffers from the stamina penalty, which is required for melee fighting. Maybe drop that, the acc penalty is enough I think. The armor could also be 25 all around to actually choose the outfit for the armor (shotgun protection).
The shield version of barbarian gives close to 100 front dodge on maxed gals. This can be used to tank melee enemies (werewolves for example) at your craft doors.
I like the enviroment effects. They force you to switch armor and playstyle. I had a military transport in march and since then really enjoy the heavy armours I got. It doesn't make my gals invulnerable but reduces the time on easy missons. I would suggest adding a chance of heavy armor to warehouse wars or similar missions, like they have a chance of spacesuit right now. Over time you will get a few heavy armours that will speed up easy missions.
Edit: Or have armour as a bounty hunting reward item. Not buyable, but in exchange for tokens like you can get slaves when you have bank favors.
The latest cheese: door camping
I fought two werewolf missions by camping in my craft. I had two gals with barbarian and shield that could tank the doorway, but in those two missions just a single werewolf ever opened the doors. Can the AI be made to rush your craft more by putting additional waypoints inside the craft? I'm not familiar with how that works, but I would like to be pressured more in my craft. Door camping should not be that effective.
As always, thank you Dioxine for making this mod and still doing updates! And thanks to Meridian and ohartenstein23 for the coding effort!
Edit: spelling fixed
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Airbus range:
I think it is OK as it is. The thing is, it force you to move to another craft faster. Maybe the bateries Idea are not so bad, but in the end, you can do the doctor X mission with another crafts (Aircar per example, but I´m not pretty sure). That is the Idea. You should no be able to reach everything on the start of the game.
Armor: Just to say that I love environment conditions too. It is hard at the start of the game, but you learn faster to control the conditions (Bring protective gear, correct amours, canteen and beers, etc).
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That is the Idea. You should no be able to reach everything on the start of the game.
There is the problem. By having your starting base in europe your airbus will be able to reach almost everywhere, negating the range problem. Contrary to other base locations. It may be intentional game design, but it can also be considered a noob trap for players that don't know this. This leads to the unneccesary frustration of "I should have put my base somewhere else". I would be fine with it if there was not one location that is clearly superior to everywhere else.
The original game was intentionally designed to have the first ufo appear near your base, no matter where you placed it. I liked that.
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By the time you've realized that starting anywhere other than Europe was a bad idea, you should only be a couple or so months into the game so there's really no major setback to just starting all over again and putting your first base on Europe.
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There is the problem. By having your starting base in europe your airbus will be able to reach almost everywhere, negating the range problem. Contrary to other base locations. It may be intentional game design, but it can also be considered a noob trap for players that don't know this. This leads to the unneccesary frustration of "I should have put my base somewhere else". I would be fine with it if there was not one location that is clearly superior to everywhere else.
The original game was intentionally designed to have the first ufo appear near your base, no matter where you placed it. I liked that.
In the mod, the first month ufos appears in the zone too. But the missions I think no. Like in the original game, ufos appear on the zone, first terror anywhere.
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Your first base anywhere but not in europe has it's drawbacks indeed.
But even in vanilla no sane person would drop the starting base on hawaii or onto north-/ southpole.
PirateZ is also not relying onto UFO's in the early game and instead most missions are triggered in the nearby cities or in close range to them.
So if you drop a base on an island with only 1-2 cities around or in scanner range, whelp there goes your early game.
X-Prison mission can only be done with either AIRBUS or AIRVAN.
The AIRCAR is not allowed if I remember correctly. Having only 4 hands with nothing but shivs really stretches your chances of success.
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Airbus range:
I think it is OK as it is. The thing is, it force you to move to another craft faster. Maybe the bateries Idea are not so bad, but in the end, you can do the doctor X mission with another crafts (Aircar per example, but I´m not pretty sure). That is the Idea. You should no be able to reach everything on the start of the game.
Armor: Just to say that I love environment conditions too. It is hard at the start of the game, but you learn faster to control the conditions (Bring protective gear, correct amours, canteen and beers, etc).
First times I played the mod/game me to was really frustrated, but definitely agree with ajnunezr; it is a craft meant for Landing ground assaults in the very early game; on the other hand for the "terrain" mission/assault you may Always use an expedition, just build another hangar and one of these :)
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Expeditions are extremely slow and the only possible use for these are best suited to send on a mission towards an enemy hideout.
Sometimes those pop up faster than you can manage to fully suit your army with decent guns and talented personell so you've to bring NUMBERS into play and use your best melee weaponry and flame throwers.
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The problem of airbus range wasn't such a nuisance in previous versions because you could get the Pachyderm quite fast. Now it's locked behind a bounty reward.
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The airvan is the more reliable version of the same craft-design, just -1 soldier slot and no HWP slot.
The long way to your first hellerium-fueled craft can be bridged by using the codex-ships and you will use those for sure.
Every codex got at least one craft with a decent crew-strength (more than 6 hands *kappa*) and a battery-fueled 'fighter' like the scarab, Shadowbat, red scorpion or green snake.
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I've found that wherever you set up your base, something is going to be out of range. I do like the idea of the spare battery, though I'd prefer it take a slot like the shadowtech or weapons do instead of taking a seat. I imagine it wouldn't be available for the first month though, due to lack of access to markets. I think it should be activated at the low on fuel, turning back popup and possibly burn out after use.
I do really like the idea of being informed of something being out of range, but I can't see the gals in the early game knowing that, and when they would, it would be largely irrelevant. It could be an early research to possibly add distance from the ship and estimated flight time, I know Xenonauts has that, but it was built with it and I don't know if we can kludge that information into this system.
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Global strike range was something for the early versions of this mod (with starting craft boniventura) and just like vanilla worked.
Having a limited range barely reduces your progress since you can decide to not do missions. Yes score drops but you can net score points by doing research or do those missions you actually did 'really good' (everything captured, no hands lost, only a limited number of civilians killed during pogroms etc.).
Pogroms are all optional as long as they're titled as 'FREELANCE'.
No -500 for ignoring those but you shouldn't visit them in the first place and abort or it DOES COUNT.
With a second base in america (or in europe if you start in america) you have somewhat global strike range even with battery crafts.
Hunter-Killer sounds like alot of resources in the early game but those are your actual first 'real' fighter-class and better than most of the codex-fighters. SCARAB kicks ass if you can 'catch' your prey and have somewhat decent armament in store and ammo in stock.
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Range indicator sounds as a good Idea.
And, why not to reduce the range of every craft non - helerium based ? So you are obliged to expand early, use more the expedition/zepellin, or rush some tech, or the batteries/fuel tank addition as a more appealing idea, maybe in some slot as mentioned before. And maybe add some more missions in your starting region for the firsts months (3? 6?) to help a little. And make hellerium a little more costly to extract and buy, and a little more scarce in the beginning, so the beginning hellerium vehicles are a little more dificult to use?. And maybe the passenger ships you attack could be divided on low tier and high tier, the low tier giving you small battery engines, the high giving you the normal small ship engines, and better captives? ;D
Now you have a limitation/difficulty added, 4 solutions, and possible a new dimension to the early/mid game. The "show range on map" idea sound better now.
But I don´t know if the game engine could manage the battery thing.
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I honestly don't think we need more early game encounters.
We have a garanteed spawning of academy goons searching for the hideout 100% in scanner range.
We have the bounty missions and plenty of other opportunities to get money.
If the early game becomes too generous, it steamrolls into a massive downgrade in difficulty overall.
The more money you get unchallenged, the faster you can 'affort' to hire brainers, runts and expand across the globe.
It currently feels 'just right' maybe except for corner cases of missions out of range (temple of sirius decides to spawn in the far edges of south america and africa *cough cough*)
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No, more encounters no, encounters in range for the first two or three months IF the range of all crafts is reduce.
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The discussion is:
The game design favors a europe starting base and puts any other location on a disadvantage for a long time.
Do you think this is good or bad?
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I think some location will always be best. And Eurasia + Africa is the biggest land mass, so no wonder it's attractive to put a base somewhere in the middle of it.
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Stuff still happens across the globe but eurasia seems to have alot of cities and high spawn rates for most missions.
A base in europe, where the eurosyndicate is located, you can do their mission almost instantly once it pops up. Since you have your main base in this area as well, it's less likely that the score penalty causes you to lose protection money.
The majority of eurasia is basic green area with only a few mountains here and there. You don't have to fight against cold and heat early on like you would have to do 90% of the time in africa or 100% on any of the poles.
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It is funny how each individual approaches the game.
I am suprised that there is no entry in the first post about Spear.
As for my play, I tend to rush early for any armor (Scale, Barbarian).
I am somehow addicted to Jellyfish, and hell I really love this craft.
Fistcuffs? Really that good? Never ever bothered to try them out. There is way too much tools of detruction in this game :P
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Spears are neat. The early -20% armor while scaling onto str x0.2 and throw x0.4 mixed with the reaction disrupt almost everyone to hit stuff and with decent damage results.
Even armored cars go boom if you poke them hard enough into the butt. Just watch out for the explosion.
Scale armor kinda needs extra investment to aquire the chitin plates using the 'cave hunt' workshop topic.
It's fine for the rare earth element you can get but takes a while and you simply lose the production power you could use better for x-grog production.
Scale armor might need a secondary shield-version but for an early investment it's less cumbersome in comparision to the warrior armor.
Barbarian armor might be too good of an armor if the -15 stamina changes to -5 or something. Yes it's your first 'melee' outfit and the new savage-version has a niche place but not my favourite and 25 or 30 armor for front only sounds promissing but a foe shooting you in the front can still hit your weak side-armor.
I went jellyfish too. I checked out the hand with the best damage-roll for the arcane ray and let her pilot all missions while I kept 6 hands in guerilla armor around the elevators to do potshots with boarding guns, Assault Rifles or Light Sniper Rifles.
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Regarding spears: If you can melee a foe you might as well use stun weapons to get a live capture and ransom money. Why use a spear when a handle is just as effective? Depends on gal and enemy of course.
Regarding Barbarian outfit: Why would no stamina penalty on Barbarian be overpowered? Barbarian also has the accuracy penalty. Compare Barbarian to Pirate outfit. Pirate outfit gives +15 melee, +5 acc and has no stamina penalty. The +5 HP on Pirate actually increases your stamina regen slightly. And Pirate has the better inventory. What has barbarian compared to that? Just +10 melee and +10 strength. For melee damage output +15 melee is just as effective as +10 melee and +10 str. Melee stat also scales damage and better hit ratio increases your damage output. The only true benefit Barbarian has over Pirate is 25 front armor. This you buy with stamina penalty, accuracy penalty and inventory penalty, which is then not worth it.
Right now, only the shield variant of Barbarian is interesting as you can get a high enough front dodge that most melee enemies can't hit you at all.
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Well, I like fistcuffs, when I´m short of space for handles, my strong gals should have at least a fistcuffs. They help me when I´m not in "kill´em all" mode, and have an opportunity to capture someone.
I have never use spears. But after reading this, I will try.
For pre - school armors, I´ve never used barbarian armor, any variant of this. Neither scale. I really don´t know how to use them. Or guerrilla neither. Normally, if I want melee fast gals, bikini or swing suit. even nude in the beginning. Snipers use night operations (On night visions obviously). Hover suit for hunting and for position a fire grenade thrower/spotter. Tac vest for fast gals on exploration duty (with sawed off, of course, and a saber or/and an axe). And chainmail for the tanks, for very trained hands, and for missions where de danger is null with this armor. Sometimes this work, sometimes does not.
And daggers, I like daggers a lot. Every one of then.
But returning to the feedback... I have none right now ;D
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Personally I suggest Fuso Knives or Javelins for throwing, since you get more than one and a good thrower can exceed 100 damage with 'em
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My early game weapon triumvirate:
Flintlock Rifle - it's basically a sniper rifle made from scrap. The only drawback is 2 ammo per reload and runt-hours manufacturing it. It should't be as accurate, come on, it doesn't even have a scope.
Blunderbuss - the best shotgun. 4 ammo, can full auto, has chem ammo(basic is not bad either). The only drawback is weight.
Hunting bow with flame arrows - a very strong weapon IMO. Maybe not so good on the highest diffuculty because of increased armor(i play on 3rd). Low energy, can reaction fire, can set enemies on fire.
The camping strategy is very strong, i agree. Using shadowbat and these three weapons you can easily beat a nazi\spartan\raider pogrom. I had a bunch of various rifles and machine guns from these, but they feel inferior to these basic weapons.
Come to think of it, i feel like the game doesn't represent an advantage of having an auto weapon.(unless it's a shotgun) Even in the second year my best gals are armed with dragoon rifles, a bolt-action rifle(if i'm correct) that has a good aimed shot, buyable ammo, and scales up to 60 damage. It's not a problem of the mod, rather of a game engine. I also play a global mod for xenonauts(x-div) and in that game rifles and MGs while being inferior at actually dealing damage(compared to sniper rifles and shotguns at their effective range) they have their own niche, that is suppression. Idk if it's possible to realise it on this engine. Maybe if 2x2 enemies were the norm(but not the dangerous ones) and if every faction had some on their ships\missions then there would be a reason to prefer auto guns.
On melee weapons: i agree. However running a full melee gal is too risky imo until you get the chainmail. Amazon with a sword\blowgun is an insane killing machine, but it's a glass cannon. You make a mistake - you lose a gal. I feel like the big two-haders need something to differentiate them and reward you. It's a big weight\inventory investment that you can't just plop on a belt like a handle; that needs support items like booze. Also barbaric ax, barbaric sword and a regular ax could use more differentiation. Due to their scaling, 99% of the time they are 1 hit - 1 kill weapons. Barbaric ax is probably the worst one, it's basically an ax with a bit more damage for the double energy cost. Other oneshot weapons like hammer and anchor have their utility to differentiate them.
Barbarian armor is garbage, you can't afford such penalties so early on when your gals are untrained. Agree that pirate is better.
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Balancing the weapons that have skill scaling is hard. My idea would be to introduce a new damage cap parameter for the skill bonus damage. Then you can have a significant difference between skill 40 and skill 60 whithout skill 120 making the item op.
Balancing melee could then look like this: 1 handed sword is capped at +20 bonus damage, 2 handed sword is capped at +60 bonus damage.
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Melee is supposed to be rewarding and reliable with it's 50-150% damage roulette for 99% of the weaponry.
Firefights have to make trade-offs or we have to go back to vanilla xcom where we had heavy plasma rilfes on everyone and send rookies in power-armor into the battlefield to get shit done.
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I think melee it is not too unbalanced. It is risky, but reliable. I do think that you should have certain reward for reaching those 120 in skill. Maybe yes, normal axe vs barbaric axe vs barbaric axe needs a re thinking, but I don't think it is too bad.
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Melee is supposed to be rewarding and reliable with it's 50-150% damage roulette for 99% of the weaponry.
Firefights have to make trade-offs or we have to go back to vanilla xcom where we had heavy plasma rilfes on everyone and send rookies in power-armor into the battlefield to get shit done.
Melee is rewarding enough, the problem is, if all the good early game weapons are also happen to be non-lethal, then the balance is screwed.
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At one point the handle can't handle all your problems. The fistycuffs are more lethal than most victims can take.
Spiked maces are slow and unprecise, axes are good since most enemies have poor cutting-resistance.
You still have to get close to your enemies to do serious melee-damage to them. Early on your 20 armor is barely enough to survive most fights and shrug-off low-roll damage if they hit you in the first place. Early melee-tools have to bridge the tech until you can use advanced guns and even your advanced guns will be outshined by the glory of melee-warfare.
Ranged vs Melee is absolutely correct right now and don't want nerfs to a non-existing issue. Try bash a Marsec Bodyguard with your handle, that won't work.
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I agree totally. Sometimes I end using a combination of melee and tons of explosives. Explosives to reduce health and seed panic (Firebombs, dynamite, grenades) and take care of lesser enemies en mass, and then finish the other guys with melee, and when I assault ships.
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I typically divide my gals by fencers and ranged, Fencers are specifically for melee and are about half my gals, while my ranged gals get a mix of other designations, breacher, Heavy, Assault (Shotgun/Heavy SMGs), snipers, and the rare (for me) Grenadiers, for when i want to blow up the world.
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For me, as of now melee is a solid choice for face-to-face situations, like assaulting downed ships. Was like that pretty much since CQC patch added a defensive mechanism give your melee gals a chance to survive in case reaction swing was not enough.
That said, for melee to see any use during action in more open terrain an ample suply of smoke and fire throwables is pretty much a must and assault cannon support with pyrotechnic and explosive ammo to flush out flankers and clear the path is well advised.
While mildly bothersome in most situations melee is a must to asure capture of VIPs without reliance on bleed lottery or save scumming.
I usually bring 2 melee gals for missions, and if conditions are unfavorable they end up sitting in craft untill it's time for direct assault.
EDIT: typos
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My current set-up for the 'serious' business missions (Thunderhorse 24slots):
1x HWP 76mm cannon (or 2x Tamed Werewolf)
1x HWP Light Tank "Blaster Launcher" (or HWP / Mortar)
2x Rocketeer - Adv. Launcher /w Plasma) Laser-Shotgun in backpack. Harbinger Armor
7x Assaults - Plasma Blunderbuss or Battle-Lasers, Heavy Batons/Schock'a fists for melee - Brute Armor
2x Airforce - Forceblade + M-Cougars or Portable Lascannons. Handles and Plasma Daggers. - Blitz Armor
1x Witch - MC control
1x Toolbox - Arena Fireball launcher + Mining Laser. Backpack with babynuke launcher and Barrel Bomb. - Loader Suit
1x Minigunner - Vulcan Minigun or Fatty. M-cougar sidearm. Laser-Shotgun in backpack + Plasma sword. - Brute Armor
1x Tornado Rocket Mortar. A trust-worthy Slave in a Loader Suit.
1x Sniper - Gal with 37mm Sniper Rifle. Assassin Suit.