OpenXcom Forum
Modding => Released Mods => XPiratez => Topic started by: Zharkov on February 14, 2019, 02:15:06 pm
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I am aware that it has been mentioned before but it is still my opinion that Hideout Defense would be more interesting and more balanced if opponents:
• would not storm your Hideout with weapons untypical for their faction
• would actually storm your hideout instead of squatting in the hangers
Personally I think Hideout Defense is the most tedious mission you are often in a position that you cannot skip. Even if you have the upper hand it takes forever to clear out the hangers and god forbid some of them make it to the tunnels...
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I do agree. More than once I just rebuilt the base, rather than playing through adother tedious Crackdown.
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There are some "tactics" to deal with Hideout defences and I personally enjoy every attack. Unlike some RNG city maps, or Ship from TFTD where it's a chore to sweep and not lose your gals, becouse enemy can be "patroling" every room and stay there forever.
My most successfull tactic is to just place barracs/burrows next to Hangar/Hangars and elevator while keeping empty space between anything else.
I don't think it's that unusuall.
Keep few dogs to send them into tunnels, then place gals in the hallways leading to hangar. Those will snipe anything coming out. Keep few Shotgun/melee gals around the corridors. Send "harass" parties by maintenance tunnels above.
Something changed during the last update? Academy sends Ambulance with proper weapons, dark ones comes with UAC weaponry and ratmen/bandits go with various crap guns.
Even if there are some untypical guns, it can be explained by the fact that they took the initiative, they geared up for this assault a bit, since it's not their normal job.
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My biggest gripe with hideout defense missions is also that the enemies don't really disperse into the actual hideout that much. The worst you'll have to handle is them getting into the 2nd level corridors and the sewers. They dont really disperse into the corridors all that much, or at least not as much as they disperse into the airways and the sewers, where its way more annoying to find them.
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Hideout defenses can be tedious if you have built your hideouts for defense. Building your base in that way indirectly affects the AI behavior. Most AI units dont travel very far unless they spot an enemy. But hideouts break up lines of sight very effectively. So clumping all the hangers and elevator off from the rest of the base denies the los for the AI to act normally. It's the the TFTD ship closets problem but at a grand scale.
Late game where i know i can win a more open battle, i add more facilities to speed up the rate of contact and speed up the whole process. But without those choke points early base defenses are very risky.
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Something changed during the last update? Academy sends Ambulance with proper weapons, dark ones comes with UAC weaponry and ratmen/bandits go with various crap guns.
I think he refers to raiders\spartans who normally are restricted to medium makeshift warships with mid tier weaponry but suddenly here's a destroyer\cruiser with full plasma crew.
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I am aware that it has been mentioned before but it is still my opinion that Hideout Defense would be more interesting and more balanced if opponents:
• would not storm your Hideout with weapons untypical for their faction
• would actually storm your hideout instead of squatting in the hangers
Personally I think Hideout Defense is the most tedious mission you are often in a position that you cannot skip. Even if you have the upper hand it takes forever to clear out the hangers and god forbid some of them make it to the tunnels...
Agree on the firts poin; for the rest enemy acess i think it's just fine ss it is now.
I think he refers to raiders\spartans who normally are restricted to medium makeshift warships with mid tier weaponry but suddenly here's a destroyer\cruiser with full plasma crew.
On jack sparrow i got crackdowns from academy, ratmen, osiron with plasma weapons (!!!), once from the Star Gods themselves :o and very very frequently from the dark ones, though my research/activity has nothing to do with them🤔
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Dark Ones just wanna have fun!
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Ratmen and Dark Ones tend to be pretty common.... But maybe is RNG (I know is RNG, what I wanted to say is that in my plays, maybe I have that kind of luck), I do not know the actual weights.
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Rats and dark ones merely start much earlier then full faction retaliations. The dark ones for instance can happen as early as the 8th month. Full factions on the other hand are 24 months in(aside from JS). So the weaker attacks have about half to a third more time to happen in the average campaign, though the per month weights are similar.
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I am aware that it has been mentioned before but it is still my opinion that Hideout Defense would be more interesting and more balanced if opponents:
• would not storm your Hideout with weapons untypical for their faction
Really, considering the number of varied hideout defences nowadays, I find this statement insulting. Unless you haven't played in years, it used to be much less polished back then. (I don't rule out rare bugs). Solid examples? Or is this just an ungrounded whine?
• would actually storm your hideout instead of squatting in the hangers
Personally I think Hideout Defense is the most tedious mission you are often in a position that you cannot skip. Even if you have the upper hand it takes forever to clear out the hangers and god forbid some of them make it to the tunnels...
Again it seems like you havent played in a while, OXC lately changed their behaviour to actively seek and destroy base key tiles. As for tediousness, there are multitude of ways of finding and dealing with last 2-3 enemies nowadays. Unless ofc you're chokepointing the hangars; but in such a case, the tediousness is your own fault.
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Yes, of course I have choke points in most bases.
Very recently I had some Humanists visiting with Plasma Weapons. They were running in little circles in the hangers, but their tanks at least were raiding the rest of the hideout. Boring.
Then, there came some Dark Ones. Their behavior was actually exemplary. They were equiped faction specific and ran totally amok. After a few turns they were everywhere despite choke points. Very entertaining.
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So why do you think Humanists can never get any Plasma? Also try chokepointing less, if you don't like enemies camping the hangars. Your post makes me even consider adding an extra ladder down from the hangar, so chokepointing will make them more likely to go into sewers.
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Since it takes a long time for plasma-toting minor factions to do crackdowns, one could assume that they were figuring out how to unlock gauss and plasma weaponry just like you are.
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How abotu the majpor factions occasionally misplace some high end equipment in place where the minor factions can find it in return for a minor favour?
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And as is explained in raider subcontracting the factions are not above using deniable assets to get stuff done. Also for them there is probably not much of a difference between actual raiders , spartans and other assorted riffraff.
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Kinda unrelated, but to me raider/spartan/humanist crackdowns are pretty damn rare, while ratmen, nurses, dark ones and mercs are somewhat common. I dont think I've ever had a legit "mid game" crackdown, its always either trash or straight up mercs or dark ones with plasma and hell barons knocking on my doors. I dont think I've ever got a crackdown from the church, either.
I also retract my previous statement regarding the behavior of crackdown enemies. In the current version ratmen did disperse into my hideout, though I didn't really use a chokepoint in that base. It was two barracks connected to a hangar which then connects to the access lift. The enemies got into the hangar and then went for the corridors. One even climbed through the vents and got one of my gals from behind ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
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I lost a badly defended base to the church myself.
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I really hate church.... and there is a reason for that. Crysalids.
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Again it seems like you havent played in a while, OXC lately changed their behaviour to actively seek and destroy base key tiles.
It is deserved to have variety in that type of mission as it is a major part of the game, if not the largest one.
Had like 20 crackdowns in the latest version, most from the major fractions.
They do not tend to destroy keytiles. They pretty much move to the loctions and stay there facing the same direction all the time.
What could be suggested:
- suicide squads loaded with HE, that move to the keytiles and activate BOOM (robots or fanatics for different fractions)
- was mentioned and accused false: but still no single blaster launch made by enemy in the whole compaign.
- earlygame: the fractions are curious who are piratez and send the medium-equipped shturm-squads with native weaponry;
- midgame: as it is right now;
- lategame: the crackdown's major function is to undermine or squelch the Player's progress, making him lose funds, and not the constant supply of the plasma weapon parts.
With that, it is seen purposeful to start alter the strategy from gals-killing to base destroy and replace weak weapons with mostly HE ones (plasma scorcher, hellerium rockets launcher, blaster launcher, HWP with HE etc.), multiple HWP, mostly heavily armored units.
- There should be some strategy that AI can implement to prevent the corner-abuse, i.e.: if the player's unit spotted (reaction fire made once) in the previous turn, HE launch to the reachable place 2-3 tiles away from the spotted unit is made.
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I think Xenonauts did something like that (in beta?) and players hated it with a passion.
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Xenonauts was such a strange experience. At first it felt like xcom but better and with more stuff, but ended up feeling like with better graphics and more frustation as the game advanced.
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Yeah, I never finished it. It felt somehow half-done and clunky.
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Xenonauts kinda suffered from its early access phase. The devs catered perhaps a little to much, to too many, highly vocal community members. To many cooks spoil the soup sorta thing.
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I've mentioned this before, Xenonauts' late game was such a slog. Imagine if, in UFO Defense, the only UFOs to appear after a year or two were nothing but battleships. What makes perfect sense storywise doesn't translate well into balanced gameplay.
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Well there's a global mod that makes it more fun, but it probably takes as long to beat as piratez, if not longer.
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I once siugested that by the very late game enemies do not bother breaching into hideout, they just drop in a massive bunker buster (highest damaeg OXCE can handle, larges explosion radius OXCE can handle) that automatically goes off in the first turn, so you have to shoot down the ship that carriers it as there’s not really a hideous defense.
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I once siugested that by the very late game enemies do not bother breaching into hideout, they just drop in a massive bunker buster (highest damaeg OXCE can handle, larges explosion radius OXCE can handle) that automatically goes off in the first turn, so you have to shoot down the ship that carriers it as there’s not really a hideous defense.
My opinion on this is pretty much this:
What makes perfect sense storywise doesn't translate well into balanced gameplay.
You'd turn one of the more significant aspects of gameplay into a binary deal that way. You either intercept the ship or you lose the base.
I like to think that the reason the major factions don't want to completely ruin your main base is because they've been searching for it themselves. Think about it, a base full of very important pre-war tech that was developed without any of the limitations currently imposed on human tech by the star gods has got to be valuable to several different parties.
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You can get raided by Star Gods early and if that happens, it is a game over too.
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I like to think that the reason the major factions don't want to completely ruin your main base is because they've been searching for it themselves.
This makes a lot of sense. Thank you for the suggestion. But it seems that majors don't have any problems with high tech, both in weaponry and in armor. The minors are indeed may look for the tech.
Also: search for hideout and basic reconnaissance assaults seem to be natural withing first 1-2 events for the each fraction, whereas some different strategy should be involved right after.
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They have the tech, but they don't understand it. With the help of the gals records, a couple captured brainers and their lab equipment they just might. And the Star Gods themselves might want to find out where it went wrong that some people could become a major threat to warships and who might have helped them. Which could lead to them taking a closer look at Academy research, something the Academy sure wouldn't like, because who know if they would manage to shift all the blame to Dr.X.
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They have the tech, but they don't understand it.
I suppose they do know how most of the stuff works, they need to maintain it themselves. Also, Technocracy is doing some prety groundbreaking research even by Star God standards (while they most likely inherited most od their dimensional stuff from Cyberweb and zombie stuff from M.A.G.N.A., the technomancer is likely of their own design) and Humanists seem to be behind Kruger and Magneto-plasma rifle, so it is not like nobody is doing research either. Perhaps after the UAC debacle, Star Gods decided that humans should stay the hell away form R&D.
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They have the tech, but they don't understand it. With the help of the gals records, a couple captured brainers and their lab equipment they just might. And the Star Gods themselves might want to find out where it went wrong that some people could become a major threat to warships and who might have helped them. Which could lead to them taking a closer look at Academy research, something the Academy sure wouldn't like, because who know if they would manage to shift all the blame to Dr.X.
Well perhaps not the doctor she's relatively minor scale, while improving the uber strain of mutants was part of her work it dosen't seem like she got very far on her own. Doctor X may have provided the opportunity, but the real nefarious actors from the stargod point of view are more likely to be the shadowmasters and the well wisher. The shadowmasters being the ones supplying the cloaking tech and various other toys to opponents of the stargods.
The well wisher is however the real prize to be had for the SGs. This person seems to be the one to orchestrate the whole thing, they knew about doctor Xs research which was quasi secret even from the academy leadership. They knew about old earth secret bases. They aided the initial brainers in there escape, with presumably a one of a kind vessel. And there is some evidence they are the one to send the ships of love, implying impressive material resources, and tech unknown to the SG.
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Ok. That's obvious from the story. The motives for the assaults and not nuking the Hideout are somewhat clear.
What is not understood:
- why would spartans, raiders, humanists etc. assault the Hideout with Plasma weapons, including the high-tier ones?
- could there be some sort of intermediate (native weapons) and very difficult scenarios as well (armored units only)? Why would Guild representatives (and other non-fighters) break into the hideout with the squad?
- it'll be nice if some units were able/forced to destroy the keytiles, as only the Extractors were destroyed a couple of times, not intended, with a reaction fire of Plasma Scorchers in many-many crackdowns.
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Raider subcontracting explains plasma wielding raiders. And I doubt the factions make much of a difference between raiders and the other raffle.
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Engine limitations. When you trigger a retaliation by shooting down a ship, the searching ships and assault party use the same faction and thus the same crew composition and for this reason you end up with hostersses and altar boys being send to the slaughterhouse. Or at least that is what I think is the reason.
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Engine limitations. When you trigger a retaliation by shooting down a ship, the searching ships and assault party use the same faction and thus the same crew composition and for this reason you end up with hostersses and altar boys being send to the slaughterhouse. Or at least that is what I think is the reason.
Yes, you are right, but this can be overridden by ruleset. That's why Nurses have different weapons in base assault.
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Engine limitations... []
Retailation crew composition is defined by the modder via putting node ranks for the units spawned.
Binding to the player's progres may be done via research of certain tech, doing some sort of mission (e.g. base assault), shooting down the certain vessel and some other actions (hopefully).