Grenades

[Geronimo]

I've played this game a lot. I hate grenades. I hate the aliens use of them. I hate it when I use them. They are too powerful on small maps (particularly alien grenades, which are ridiculous).

I hate blaster bombs for similar reasons.

It's a classic, but there are a lot of aspects that don't wear well over time.

[Juku121]

Preach it, brother!

I don't mind grenades as a close-mid-range weapon. I hate it when they obsolete an entire arsenal of weapons. And there's no time limit on their hateability, OXCE has features that make the grenade abuse worse.

Blasters are okay by me, though, even if it sucks to be on the receiving end. They're supposed to be an alien superweapon that changes how the tactical game is played, even if the potential isn't quite realised in vanilla. And there are limits to their use: ammo, select ranks carry it, you can recognise an alien with a Blaster Launcher and go "Oh shit!" One with a bunch of grenades in their pocket, not so much.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Agree with all the above. In fact, I am trying to reason with grenades in my mod here https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,8661.0.html.

Let me carefully analyze grenade abusing to see what can be done about it.

#1
They are super precise. Even if slightly missed they often fall next to the target anyway. Therefore, their accuracy means kind of nothing. Shooting with 10% accuracy is almost guaranteed waste shot. Whereas, 10% throwing accuracy is about 90% hits.

#2
They are obviously area damage weapon together with rockets/blasters. Meaning that they got their target even if they fall next to it. And they also affect multiple targets at once multiplying their effectiveness to insane level. Of course, this forces player to spread, which is somewhat good tactical element.

#3
Quadruple damage to large units when they fall exactly underneath. Don't know what to make of it. Is it how it is supposed to be? Larger body is more affected by shock wave? Ether way, this seems to be quite excessive in the game with quite fine tunes balance. Killing otherwise invulnerable Triscene with a single rocket is kind of unbalanced.

#4
Throw range depends on strength proportionally. I get it is easy to program but aliens with their extreme strength (as well as well trained soldiers) can throw alien grenates over the whole map! At the same time, new weakling recruits cannot even throw it far enough not to hurt themselves. Not necessarily bad things in general but the range of throwing ranges seems to be quite excessive. Would be probably make more sense if it grows a little slowly in respect to the strength.

#5
A lot of units/armors have an absolutely ridiculously low under armor against most powerful damage type. What was the problem to increase it proportionally to weapon power? Why under armor should be necessarily lower than front one, for example? Realism? People have under armor in real life? Ugh.

#6
Vanilla designer could not raise their hand to raise under armor to adequate values. Not sure what stopped them but well. Instead, they introduced a quite low HE damage modifier to multiple units/armors. That is the most awful decision I can imagine. Show player the low under armor value but do not show them the fact that this unit/armor is actually reduce HE damage multiple time.
Lobsterman with its 90 health and 10 under armor should immediately fall from a single 120 power Sonic Pulser. However, it actually requires four of them due to its HE damage modifier 0.3. Who would knew???
The damage modifiers are not shown anywhere in the game nor even mentioned as hints in alien description. Another Ugh.


What can be done about it? Not much in term of ruleset modding only. I lower Sonic Pulser power in my mod to make it not that devastating. I also standardized all damage modifier and tried to make most of them 1.0 everywhere possible. Instead I adjusted under armor on units to actually protect from the blast. Not much can be done about quadrupling large unit damage besides of raising their under armor even more.

Throw range progression cannot be changed with ruleset. The only thing doable is to increase grenade weight reducing its range overall. This would shorter throwing range for weaklings too but that may be acceptable.

And for accuracy, I guess, nothing can be done at all without major engine revamping.

What do you thing, folks? Other ideas?

[psavola]

You can define throwRange and underwaterThrowRange, i.e. cap the throwing range regardless of strength. Try for example 20 tiles and then grenades would be quite different. And use 'extendedUnderwaterThrowFactor' if you specifically want to make throwing underwater more cumbersome than in land missions.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Is there same factor for above water? I.e. can the behavior be changed generally everywhere?


No factor but both above and under ranges can be limited.

[psavola]

Is there same factor for above water? I.e. can the behavior be changed generally everywhere?

No. Making one would be technically trivial (check out Battlescape/ProjectileFlyBState.cpp and look for EXTENDED_UNDERWATER_THROW_FACTOR).

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Limited throw range in my mod. I guess this should be enough to reduce over the map throws.

[Juku121]

What can be done about it? Not much in term of ruleset modding only.

Quite a bit, in fact.

Psavola already mentioned throwing range. My own solution to that was to reduce soldier strength values to under 25-30 or so (and aliens, too) and add back the missing carrying capacity through negative armour weight. Plus throwing range limits as well. Especially for the big explosives.

Accuracy can be changed via 'accuracyThrow' or 'throwMultiplier'.

Quadruple damage is unfortunately what it is, but big units can have 4 times the HP and a lot of armour as well.

I disagree about resistances and under armour. Under armour being a specific vulnerability for most units is both tactically interesting and 'realistic'. Normally, people (and animals, and perhaps also aliens) armour up whatever tends to take the most hits while housing vulnerabilities. Feet/underbelly are commonly a weak point on critters, humans and machines alike.

Resistances are also interesting to play against, and since Ufopedia entries on armour can pull that data automatically from the ruleset, the obfuscation issue should be a thing of the past now.

People have under armor in real life?

Yes. Armoured boots, soft soles and underbellies, less armour for vehicle floors.

What do you thing, folks? Other ideas?

You have missed one of my personal bugbears - the 'grenade relay' tactic.

What I personally use to get more visceral satisfaction out of grenades while removing this 'tactic' is to use a combination of instant grenades and 'isExplodingInHands'. You prime a grenade, you better use it! It's not as OP as people claim once you remove excessive throwing range, since explosive launchers exist (in bigger mods, they exist in great variety and numbers, compared to the original) and are also 'instant'.



You can also play around with how much damage gets reduced away from ground zero. HE vs shrapnel vs acid vs mini-nukes etc should all behave differently.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I disagree about resistances and under armour. Under armour being a specific vulnerability for most units is both tactically interesting and 'realistic'. Normally, people (and animals, and perhaps also aliens) armour up whatever tends to take the most hits while housing vulnerabilities. Feet/underbelly are commonly a weak point on critters, humans and machines alike.

Agree with everything except the above. I either don't understand yours or you didn't understand my point. I never said units should be invulnerable against HE or more protected.

[Juku121]

I don't think I misunderstood, since you clearly stated what you did:

I also standardized all damage modifier and tried to make most of them 1.0 everywhere possible. Instead I adjusted under armor on units to actually protect from the blast.

I disagree that it makes for a better or more tactical game, since now all units are similarly vulnerable (or invulnerable) to all damage types. What would be the point of developing weapons with new damage types if they all perform the same and you just need to look at the 'power' stat vs accuracy/TU spent?

And nobody is specifically vulnerable to a direct hit from a grenade or rocket launcher any more. Weak under armour meant that misses hit for much less than a hit on the nose, since these apply the armour value from whichever direction the blast is coming from.



It's fine, people disagree here all the time.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I don't think I misunderstood, since you clearly stated what you did:

I also standardized all damage modifier and tried to make most of them 1.0 everywhere possible. Instead I adjusted under armor on units to actually protect from the blast.

I disagree that it makes for a better or more tactical game, since now all units are similarly vulnerable (or invulnerable) to all damage types. What would be the point of developing weapons with new damage types if they all perform the same and you just need to look at the 'power' stat vs accuracy/TU spent?

And nobody is specifically vulnerable to a direct hit from a grenade or rocket launcher any more. Weak under armour meant that misses hit for much less than a hit on the nose, since these apply the armour value from whichever direction the blast is coming from.

Looks like you did. Let me try to explain myself. Not to lecture you but just to make sure we are talking about same thing.

My main point is NOT whether units should be more or less vulnerable to certain damage type. It is that the damage dealt is defined by two parameters: damage modifier and armor. They are very much equivalent in protecting unit. One can easily tweak them still maintaining about same resulting damage. Of course, it is not 100% like that, don't pin this on me. Damage modifier is applied by damage type and armor is applied by direction so, yes, they form some unique combinations. However, for HE damage modifier and under armor it is pretty much true. HE is the primary source of area damage (+ occasional stun bombs) and under armor is only hit by area damage - meaning by HE primarily. So it is pretty easy to tilt their ratio one way or another without affecting resulting susceptibility to HE attack and without affecting other attack types.

My main point is that damage modifiers knowledge is equally important as armor. It is not just tiny-winy correction. They range insanely enormous 0.2 - 2.0 interval. Yet, this part of equation is NOT presented to the user in any form or shape. That, essentially, makes armor information completely useless. Player should establish level of damage by trial rather than rely on given armor information. The simplest example is how many sonic pulsers are needed to kill Lobsterman? According to its revealed parameters: one. Not even close to real number: four.

I am also NOT advocating to remove all resistances/vulnerabilities. In fact, if you checked my mode, I introduced few more.

Here is what I am for:
1. Recalibrate damage modifiers vs. armor in favor of the armor whenever possible giving better visibility to player.
2. Reduce number of modifiers different from 1.0 for each unit. Just one-two-three is usually plenty and support tactical variety. Besides, there are not that much actually applicable attack types to select from.
3. Give a hint in ufopaedia description about each modifier that differs from 1.0 so the player has at least some idea how to battle enemy.


Here is simple example.
Vanilla lobsterman requires 4 sonic pulsers to kill. Same in my mod.
However, vanilla one has under armor 10 (against 120 sonic pulser power). It is a mystery for player why it can endure so many.
Whereas, in my mod it has 30 (against 80 sonic pulser power). It is much less mystery now. Especially if a hint about lobsterman being somewhat resistant to HE is added to ufopaedia.

[psavola]

I'm not sure if this was information was provided in vanilla (or OXC), but at least a couple of OXCE mods show the resistances if you look at the 'armor' in ufopedia (usually requiring you to research autopsy). So it's not hidden (at least anymore) within the game. An example of XCF:

ufopaedia:
  - id: STR_DEEP_ONE_ARMOR
    type_id: 5
    section: STR_ALIEN_LIFE_FORMS
    requires:
      - STR_DEEP_ONE_ARMOR
    listOrder: 163481

[Juku121]

Looks like you did. Let me try to explain myself. Not to lecture you but just to make sure we are talking about same thing.

We are talking about the same thing. You removed tactical choice in favour of more accessible UI information. A change that could be effected without doing so, in fact.

Behold the XCF version of Lobsterman. The text is mine, written two minutes ago to demonstrate what you could do to hint at strengths and vulnerabilities.

HE is the primary source of area damage (+ occasional stun bombs) and under armor is only hit by area damage - meaning by HE primarily. So it is pretty easy to tilt their ratio one way or another without affecting resulting susceptibility to HE attack and without affecting other attack types.

Not really, because many explosions do not hit the targets directly. And never all targets directly. So unless you also made armour values uniform all around, there'd be a difference even then.

Never mind that armour is still subtractive, and the moment you have explosives of different strength, one is hit much harder by armour than the other. The damage modifier doesn't care and treats all damage equally.

My main point is that damage modifiers knowledge is equally important as armor.

No disagreement here. Use the available tools to convey that information to the player instead of removing it. Researched armour information can even be accessed mid-battle via a couple of mouse clicks, without separately opening up the Ufopedia.

Reduce number of modifiers different from 1.0 for each unit. Just one-two-three is usually plenty and support tactical variety. Besides, there are not that much actually applicable attack types to select from.

If you stick closely to vanilla TFTD, yes. I think even TWoTS has much more variety, never mind the really big mods.



I mean, it's your mod, do as you wish. But unless you're after a very steamlined damage model, you could handle UI issues with UI tools, and not by changing gameplay.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Where did you get that neat combat analysis? Is it OXF only or is it available in OXCE too?

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Juku121, I tend to agree with you in general. Damage modifiers are useful part of the game that should be displayed to the player.

Looks like get off the track when we started discussing what to do with grenades.
😀

I feel like reducing their power and range is the simplest way to put them back into their niche.