Firearms vs. heavy armor

[zee_ra]

I wonder, how could we deal with the fact that BlackOps auto-sniper rifle, when used by a soldier with really high accuracy, using default bullets could demolish in 2-3 auto bursts an enemy wearing Power Suit or Shock Armor?  Should there be a cap on the maximum damage for a given weapon, regardless of how high a damageBonus may be?

I see the following ways to fix this situation:

• Increase armorEffectiveness to for all human rifle shots.
• Increase kinetic resistance on all armors starting with Power Suit (thus, to enumerate all: Power Suit, Shock Armor, Jugernaut Armor).
• Adjust OXCE to provide a special configuration option that would limit maximum total damage.
  E.g. maxPower defined either at the level of a weapon or a clip.
• Make the shot power vary on a curve.  Probably, a pretty flat inverted parabola would work best.
  However, it would complicate the damage definition formula visible in Ufopaedia a bit, making it slightly counter-intuitive.
• Perhaps, (1) and (2) should be used together.  Thus, increase armorEffectiveness and armor resistance against kinetic.  (If this creates a slight disbalance with weaker armor types, then either (a) adjust resistance of the weaker armors against kinetic to a lower value, or (b) increase slightly damage multiplier for a munition.  However, for a genuine AP bullet, there's no need to increase the multiplier, and the increase in power should come from switching to a more armor-piercing TT variant anyway.)
• Increase the power armor resistance against kinetic by lowering the damage modifier to 0.6-0.7, and also increase the armor penetration of gauss and mass driver weapons by lowering the armor effectiveness modifier.  Keep the rest intact.

I think, option (6) would be a best approach.

Also, the tile damage for the lower caliber sniper guns seems to be excessive.  For instance, having the auto-sniper rifle remove a section of a brick barn wall is a bit excessive.  It's much more appropriate to have a larger-caliber M82 accomplish that.  So, for lower-caliber sniper guns we should probably have something like damageAlter.ToTile: 0.1.

[Chuckebaby]

I wonder, how could we deal with the fact that BlackOps auto-sniper rifle, when used by a soldier with really high accuracy, using default bullets could demolish in 2-3 auto bursts an enemy wearing Power Suit or Shock Armor?  Should there be a cap on the maximum damage for a given weapon, regardless of how high a damageBonus may be?

This is only my opinion but I like it where it is. This game can be extremely challenging for newbies. I know for me personally, I almost gave up on this mod. It was simply too difficult. the only thing that kept me playing this mod was the Black ops auto sniper rifle. I had 2 of my best soldiers (best firing accuracy) using them and it saved many campaigns/missions.

In mid game it can be essential to taking down tough enemies to score gold (open more research to get better weapons). Changing this could leave newbies in difficult positions and possibly abandoning the mod altogether. It's the one bright spot in a game which is very tilted toward the enemy.

I do love the challenge, that is one of my favorite things. but it's one of my favorite mid game weapons. But I'm only speaking for myself.

[zee_ra]

This is only my opinion but I like it where it is. This game can be extremely challenging for newbies. I know for me personally, I almost gave up on this mod. It was simply too difficult. the only thing that kept me playing this mod was the Black ops auto sniper rifle. I had 2 of my best soldiers (best firing accuracy) using them and it saved many campaigns/missions.

In mid game it can be essential to taking down tough enemies to score gold (open more research to get better weapons). Changing this could leave newbies in difficult positions and possibly abandoning the mod altogether. It's the one bright spot in a game which is very tilted toward the enemy.

I do love the challenge, that is one of my favorite things. but it's one of my favorite mid game weapons. But I'm only speaking for myself.

The issue is that with power armor that is so vulnerable to a trivial rifle like BlackOps Auto-Sniper, some important parts of the walkthrough are too easy.  This rifle becomes a universal weapon against MiB heavy troops and even shock troops.  I think this is wrong.  At least, those should be dealt with rockets and miniguns, preferably with AA ammo.  Yet, a soldier (a pair for reliability) with 150+ accuracy could demolish such heavy troops in just 1 turn.

With Auto-Mortar and Psi-Amp, the game is really easy enough.

Also, keep in mind the suggestion to increase the piercing on the Gauss  munitions, to keep armor vulnerability at the same level as it has been now.

In general, a user of power suit should not fear any low-tech threats.  The overall level of protection against higher-tech threats should remain the same.

[Stone Lake]

Yet, a soldier (a pair for reliability) with 150+ accuracy could demolish such heavy troops in just 1 turn.

A rookie with a single promo II-ish EMP grenade could one shot those. Actually, rookie can throw 3-4, per turn, so, you know. 3-4 one-shots. And that's with captured suits intact! Imagine the possibilities...

The notion that a crappy rifle is "OP" or even relatively good is completely hilarious.

I mean, I see that your point is mainly about low-tech and stuff. But 150 accuracy soldiers can solo entire missions with proper weapons, so it's kinda moot.

[zee_ra]

A rookie with a single promo II-ish EMP grenade could one shot those. Actually, rookie can throw 3-4, per turn, so, you know. 3-4 one-shots. And that's with captured suits intact! Imagine the possibilities...

The notion that a crappy rifle is "OP" or even relatively good is completely hilarious.

I mean, I see that your point is mainly about low-tech and stuff. But 150 accuracy soldiers can solo entire missions with proper weapons, so it's kinda moot.

What kind of armor would a single soldier need to solo an entire HQ or a base?  Or a battleship?

If the weapons are powerful yet compact alien designs, then the point is moot indeed.  However, if
the designs are familiar kinetic rifles, then we have a logical contradiction with reality.  That means that there is an issue with the computer model of that reality.  In practice, even a marksman rifle could not destroy a tank in real combat.  In-game, such possibility should not exist as well.  Also, it from the purely game standpoint, it is desirable to nudge some evolution in weapons into the domain of energy weapons, and other advanced designs.

The rifle in question is not an anti-materiel weapon.  It could not conceivably defeat that level of armor.

I would also like to mention that EMP grenades are very plausible and fitting weapons for destroying such armored targets.  Those types of weapons in reality would have a similar effect, possibly even on a modern tank (albeit, not WW-2 era one).  These grenades model the reality correctly and make sense in-game.

[Chuckebaby]

However, if the designs are familiar kinetic rifles, then we have a logical contradiction with reality. 

We have a government agency dealing with paranormal activity, starting out with only glocks, shotguns and police level tasers.
The reality level is at an all time low. 

I think we each have our own interpretation of how to mod, play this game. I do respect your opinion. i just don't necessarily agree with it. One can make a similar argument with Plasma weapons. Once they are acquired, the game is tilted in your favor. Black ops Auto sniper rifle is the easter egg which newbies need in order to continue their campaigns.

[Solarius Scorch]

I wonder, how could we deal with the fact that BlackOps auto-sniper rifle, when used by a soldier with really high accuracy, using default bullets could demolish in 2-3 auto bursts an enemy wearing Power Suit or Shock Armor?  Should there be a cap on the maximum damage for a given weapon, regardless of how high a damageBonus may be?

I see the following ways to fix this situation:

(...)

I think, option (6) would be a best approach.

This is a nice breakdown of the problem, and I really appreciate it, but I'm missing the most important info: what exactly is wrong with the current state? You imply that it's bad that "using default bullets could demolish in 2-3 auto bursts an enemy wearing Power Suit", but I honestly can't see why. These rifles can pierce a hole in an armoured vehicle, so why not a human armour? Even if it's made of super alloys.
I'm just unsure if the current model is wrong. (And there are Chuckebaby's and Stone Lake's arguments to consider as well.)

Also, the tile damage for the lower caliber sniper guns seems to be excessive.  For instance, having the auto-sniper rifle remove a section of a brick barn wall is a bit excessive.  It's much more appropriate to have a larger-caliber M82 accomplish that.  So, for lower-caliber sniper guns we should probably have something like damageAlter.ToTile: 0.1.

I am not enthusiastic about going through all weapons in the mod - not because I don't like the work itself, but because I'm not sure what approximation would be "best". I'll ask other modders.

[zee_ra]

This is a nice breakdown of the problem, and I really appreciate it, but I'm missing the most important info: what exactly is wrong with the current state? You imply that it's bad that "using default bullets could demolish in 2-3 auto bursts an enemy wearing Power Suit", but I honestly can't see why. These rifles can pierce a hole in an armoured vehicle, so why not a human armour? Even if it's made of super alloys.
I'm just unsure if the current model is wrong. (And there are Chuckebaby's and Stone Lake's arguments to consider as well.)

I am not enthusiastic about going through all weapons in the mod - not because I don't like the work itself, but because I'm not sure what approximation would be "best". I'll ask other modders.

The rifle in question has a base damage of 25.  It's woefully insufficient to pierce any reasonable hole in a decent armor.  The reason behind its ability to pierce vehicle armor could be explained perhaps by the fact that it may target a fuel tank, etc..  In general, a good design (a more tank-like) of a vehicle should preclude such possibility, and thus M.A.G.M.A. tank should be impervious to the Black-Ops sniper rifles, or even assault cannons.  Even a M.A.G.M.A. heavy cannon should find it challenging to make a real damage to a M.A.G.M.A. tank.

The current state of affairs is problematic, because in practice a pretty low-power weapon could destroy tank-level targets.  The shock troopers are like fallout-2 walking tanks.

One change to the definitions that I tried, which is also quite unobtrusive, is to change the damage spread to 50-150%, by using RandomType: 2.

I also experimented with changing ArmorEffectiveness of small arms, but the problem that I encountered was that commando / supersoldier type of target become pratically impervious to these smaller sniper weapons.  Since those are not full-body-enclosure type of armors, they should be vulnerable to headshots, and especially to sniper fire.  So, in general thus it makes more sense to give the better resistance to power armors than to increase any armor inefficiency for smaller weapons.

Now, the only caveat with setting higher kinetic resistance on power suits is the issue of their susceptibility to gauss weapons fire.  There are two possible approaches here.  On the on hand, Gauss weapons might have higher armor penetration, by having e.g. ArmorEffectiveness: 0.75.  On the other hand, the RandomType: 7 looks like being more than enough to defeat any power suit, especially if it's a heavy gauss or a gauss sniper rifle.  Given that power suits are made of TT, I think the best approach would be to rely on a RandomType with gauss weapons that gives them higher damage potential, and to increase the suit's kinetic resistance to the value of e.g. 0.8 or 0.85.

I also found that changing melee weapons by setting ArmorEffectiveness: 2.0 and RandomType: 2 works very well.  They do not prevent a truly skilled supersoldier from inflicting very serious damage, while prevent the situations that look very unreal (like noobs piercing through TT tactical suit with an axe).

[zee_ra]

I am not enthusiastic about going through all weapons in the mod - not because I don't like the work itself, but because I'm not sure what approximation would be "best". I'll ask other modders.

It should be possible to concoct a script that would go over the definitions and make a decision based on the numerical power value and damage type, whether to set ToTile to a lower value.  A lower-power laser may e.g. have a higher coefficient, but a lower-power kinetic weapon would have a lower one.  A function is pretty simple: if below 40, then the weapon is low-power.  If above, then mid-power, and if above 70 or so, then high-power.  The ToTile damage could thus be accordingly 0.1 for low power, 0.15 for mid-power, and 0.25 for high-power.  A slightly different set of numbers may be used, as desired by the collective modders' consensus.

[zee_ra]

The rifle in question has a base damage of 25.  It's woefully insufficient to pierce any reasonable hole in a decent armor.  The reason behind its ability to pierce vehicle armor could be explained perhaps by the fact that it may target a fuel tank, etc..  In general, a good design (a more tank-like) of a vehicle should preclude such possibility, and thus M.A.G.M.A. tank should be impervious to the Black-Ops sniper rifles, or even assault cannons.  Even a M.A.G.M.A. heavy cannon should find it challenging to make a real damage to a M.A.G.M.A. tank.

The current state of affairs is problematic, because in practice a pretty low-power weapon could destroy tank-level targets.  The shock troopers are like fallout-2 walking tanks.

Considering the issue of tanks further.  A nice gauges to look against is the RPG and recoilless rifle.  Those should pierce both armored cars and tanks.  Now, we go slightly down.  We have a heavy sniper rifle and also M82 Barrett.  Should those pierce tanks?  No.  Should they pierce armored cars?  I think, the answer should be that in general such piercing should not be too consistent with common AP bullets, but consistent with TT AP bullets.  So, we have basically the following desiderata for armored car and tank resistances:

damage power	effect against armored cars	effect against tanks
40	inconsistent piercing no frontal piercing	no piercing
70	consistent piercing	no piercing
100	consistent piercing	inconsistent piercing no frontal piercing
140	demolition	consistent piercing
160	demolition	consistent piercing
200	demolition	demolition

This table is for kinetic and HE values.  The energy weapons may have an extra edge, even at the same numerical power values as their kinetic and HE counterparts.

I think, mostly only the human weapons need adjustments, and for them the RandomType should be consistently set to 2.  With energy weapons, we should have a wider randomness interval, and setting it to 1, 6, or 7 would be appropriate.  This way, there's no need to revise the relative power levels of any weapons, and the energy weapons still have a meaningful edge.

[Sneak Dog]

Do people use heavy X weapons over sniper X weapons? For what purposes?

They've comparable damage, the heavies have bad accuracy and range for a better fire rate, but the snipers have both a far superior damage range (50%~200% vs. 0%~200%) and ignore 25% of armour.

Weirdly enough, snipers just seem better for taking down big targets. Though I've been liking the blackops assault cannon a lot, the gauss/plasma cannons seem worse and the turbolaser portable cannon is there to try and one-shot sectopods.
I did a bunch of math vs. sectopods before, assuming 100 firing accuracy:

Spoiler:

98 armour, 0~116 damage for the blackops assault cannon with tritanium ammo.
98 armour, 26~106 damage for the blackops auto-sniper with tritanium ammo.
Honestly this one ain't gonna be pretty either way.

130 armour, 0~300 damage for the heavy gauss
98 armour, 72~290 damage for the gauss sniper. Or 26 armour vs. 0~218 damage for easier calculations.
A heavy gauss shot deals damage to a sectopods 130 side armour 43% of the time and kills 25% of the time.
A gauss sniper shot with 100 firing accuracy deals damage 88% of the time and kills 44% of the time.

Turbolaser has the funny portable cannon though. Add to that that sectopods hate lasers. Lets see here.
130 armour, 0~315 damage for the turbolaser portable cannon.
98 armour, 56~225 damage for the turbolaser sniper. Or 42 armour vs. 0~169 damage for easier calculations.
The turbolaser cannon deals damage 59% of the time and kills 28% of the time.
The turbolaser sniper deals damage 75% of the time and kills 18% of the time.

While I'm at it, lets check plasma weapons. Mind the 20% damage resistance.
130 armour, 0~184 damage for the heavy plasma with a 0~100+0~100% damage roll.
98 armour, 40~160 damage for the plasma sniper. Or 58 armour vs. 0~120 damage for easier calculations.
The heavy plasma deals damage 18% of the time and kills 0% of the time.
The plasma sniper deals damage 52% of the time and kills 0% of the time.
Sectopods -,-

So if we go for mib shock troopers on 95 side armour:
71 armour, 0~116 damage for the blackops assault cannon with tritanium ammo.
71 armour, 26~106 damage for the blackops auto-sniper with tritanium ammo. Or 45 armour vs. 0~80 damage for easier calculations.

The blackops assault cannon deals damage 39% of the time and gets an average of 8.7 damage.
The blackops auto-sniper deals damage 44% of the time and gets an average of 7.7 damage.
This doesn't include armour degradation because I'm lazy. If you get 120 firing accuracy the sniper goes up to 10 average damage per shot. That'd be roughly 5 shots to kill a MiB shock trooper, which would be two auto-fires hitting 5 out of 6 shots for 90% time units.

Seems to me that the sniper ate the heavy's niche and is both a long-range high-value target eliminator as well as an anti-armour weapon. But I might've just been using heavies wrong.

[Juku121]

Seems to me that the sniper ate the heavy's niche and is both a long-range high-value target eliminator as well as an anti-armour weapon.

Same here. Sniper weapons triple-dip damage enchancements (armor effectiveness, 50-200 damage, power scaling to stats), which is the most of any weapon. Worse, they retain these improvements for snap/auto shots as well. If only it were possible to truly customise shooting modes...

Well, heavies do have a heavier (heh) weight of fire, so might be better at very short ranges.

In my really old modmod, I gave heavies more autoshots, better auto accuracy and some went from 'super-machine-guns' to 'cannons', i.e. they got a small AoE attack. Don't know if that'd be enough now.

[zee_ra]

Same here. Sniper weapons triple-dip damage enchancements (armor effectiveness, 50-200 damage, power scaling to stats), which is the most of any weapon. Worse, they retain these improvements for snap/auto shots as well. If only it were possible to truly customise shooting modes...

Well, heavies do have a heavier (heh) weight of fire, so might be better at very short ranges.

In my really old modmod, I gave heavies more autoshots, better auto accuracy and some went from 'super-machine-guns' to 'cannons', i.e. they got a small AoE attack. Don't know if that'd be enough now.

Actually, it may be possible to change damage based on fire mode.  Check out the discussion at https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,9293.0.html.  I am currently trying to implement a battery system for laser and potentially warp weapons in XCF through my submod.  If we figure out how to customize individual shots, and especially individual shot bonuses, we'll have a lot more consistency, uniformity and realism in the mod.

Alternatively, we might as well prohibit anything but an aimed shot for sniper rifles.  Only super-smart rifles and weapons would be allowed a snap shot with accuracy bonus.  Say, something like advanced rocket launcher.  Smart sniper rifle.  Then, we might have a smart sniper rifle with double snapshot, quadruple auto shot, all retaining an extra accuracy bonus, but having a distance dropoff limitation.  Also, such device would require e.g. 1 unit of optronics.

What are your thoughts about this?

[zee_ra]

Same here. Sniper weapons triple-dip damage enchancements (armor effectiveness, 50-200 damage, power scaling to stats), which is the most of any weapon. Worse, they retain these improvements for snap/auto shots as well. If only it were possible to truly customise shooting modes...

In my play-testing, changing the randomness to 50-150 and increasing armor resistance had been more than sufficient.

Actually, kinetic armor resistance of 75 on heavy suits behaves very nicely, and consistently with expectations about these suits.  In fact, that is a resistance on heavy TT tactical suit, so it's a very justifiable value for heavier suits (like Power Suit, Shock Armor, and Juggernaut Suit).  Also, for tanks as well.

[Juku121]

Actually, it may be possible to change damage based on fire mode. 

Interesting. But changing only damage is not quite what I was after. Accuracy, armor penetration, basically all the weapon/ammo variables if possible. Are there hooks for things other than (final?) damage?

Alternatively, we might as well prohibit anything but an aimed shot for sniper rifles.

What are your thoughts about this?

Honestly, not sure I like it all that much. Hmm, maybe split it into 'sniper rifles' that only do aimed shots, 'rifles' that do precise snaps, and 'assault rifles' that are less accurate but have autofire and quicker snaps for short-range engagements.

Eh, I kinda miss JA2 v.1.13's 'raise gun' mechanic.