[BETA] Rebalance aliens

[LeBashar]

Version 1.3 of my mod. This upgrade included alien armoury, alien items, solarius new ufos, some news armours, shotguns, incendiary grenade, and many graphicals changes.
I have corrected stats of personnal armor (previous was wrong)

I have also modified the high explosive : it become a real demolition pack able to make a hole in UFOs wall (only one square) and have a radius reduced, but a weight increased.

The next step is add aliens, and new aliens anti personnal armor weapons.

[LeBashar]

I have release the 1.4 version of my mod in the mod site. There is already some work to do in the late game thing, but all other work as intended.

I just don't know yet if I must change the melee damage for HWP, because they are actually immune to reaper, chrysalid and cybermite, but attract them a lot 

[Hadan]

I just don't know yet if I must change the melee damage for HWP, because they are actually immune to reaper, chrysalid and cybermite, but attract them a lot 

My 2 cents:
Reaper: they attack using their teeth -> no damage
Crysalids: they attack by poison & bite -> no damage
Cybermite: they are small, could crawl inside a tank and damage the circuits and so forth -> damage

 

[LeBashar]

why not, but because they all have the same damage type, it involve the cybermite have a far much higher damage than the other two.

Reaper could be empowered with bionic devices which gave them ability to cut steal ? chrysalids could have some kind of acid poison like aliens xenomorph, make them able to make hole in tank armor ? I tinhk we can found any reason we want for explain everything, my question is much about the gameplay. HWP make good scouts because they are more resistant than soldiers, but, if I made them vulnerable to melee aliens, we will lost our HWP very quickly 

ps : I have found bugs in my ruleset which previously block some discovers. pacthed ruelset attached

[moriarty]

your post in that other thread made me look again at the "Rebalance Aliens" mod... I like the general idea, but I don't like all parts of it. Do you think you could split it? I'm interested in the "changed resistances of aliens" part, but not the whole changed tech tree and weapons...

[LeBashar]

The current aliens stats after some ingame tests :



I have add a "tiers" column for see when theses aliens appears. I have choice to make a kind of upgraded floatter as the waspite (and cybermtie is like a fearsome reaper, smaller, faster, more resistant and death-explosive). Anthropod are like a weak muton (but spitter are very dangerous, and I have modify the stats of the naked one do make him like a berserker : more dangerous than normal). And gazer is alternative to muton because nearly as strong but vulnerable to laser, but not to mind control. holodrone shot explosives shell, with great accuracy and reaction.

@moriarty :
I have found too difficult to have many different file so maybe I will make a separate thing when the mod will be finish, but not for now. It should not be difficult to extract only aliens stats.
But I really think only change aliens without modify weaponry should not be very efficient. The balance should follow a global way throught all the game, it's the reason why I have choose to modifiy also weapon after my first try.

[LeBashar]

I have think a little about make a stand alone RPS mod. The problem I see is without change alienitemslevel and weaponry, the rock paper scissor system will be limited to the player. We can make aliens vulnerable to AP but resistant to LS and neutral with PL, etc. But the player will already have a 100% armor against all damages types, which make aliens pistol useless, rifle usefull only before powersuit and after that, all aliens should have heavy plasma. I think it's a pity. With this approach, we can only give different damage type to some terrorists, it's very limited diversity (and might don't change anything while terrorists weapons are so powerfull).

This could be make the player able to mix firearms, laser and plasma in is weaponry, is it what you want, moriarty ?

[moriarty]

This could be make the player able to mix firearms, laser and plasma in is weaponry, is it what you want, moriarty ?

Yes, precisely. While it might be interesting to have the reverse effect also, we have to take the AI into account. I don't think it is in any way capable of dealing with resistances in terms of selecting weapons and/or targets.

So, again, yes, a purely "alien armor"-based RPS system would be nice. The player can then choose if he/she wants to diversify their weaponry by adding other mods.

[wsmithjr]

I've tried to install v1.4 of your mod, and OXC won't start and gives me an error that it can't open "Resources/Aldorn/HWPLaser_SpriteSheet.PNG".

I've checked and there is no such file in the indicated folder but there is a HWPGauss_SpriteSheet.PNG file there.  I created a duplicate and renamed it to the file it was looking for just to see if it would at least run, and then it indicated another file that was missing, Toxigun.gif. 

Is there some things missing form the install or does another mod need to be installed for this to run?  I didn't see any such mod indicated as required.

Thanks.

[Harald_Gray]

I'm all for making the aliens tougher. Truth is, I've already created a tougher race and I'm also (slowly) working on armoring some other vanilla aliens. So I would like to share some of my thoughts on the subject.

First thing is, the game has to remain playable. Aliens tougher than Xcom soldiers may sound cool but a player has to win how many missions? And how often is a player willing to lose a soldier? I know, human players are smarter than the AI - but the AI can afford far greater losses and is never frustrated. Mutons are already tough. Now imagine mutons in powersuits in every mission you meet them in. So even modded aliens have to remain less armored than Xcom soldiers. So we better limit ourselves to little more than personal armor plus some mild resistances.

Second, vanilla aliens never use worn armor, period. The best explanations for this, fluff-wise, is that they consider psionic powers superior and that all the races but the Ethereals are considered expendable. Which doesn't leave a lot of room for suddenly giving them heavy armor like powersuits. Again, we better limit ourselves to little more than personal armor.

Third, too much micromanagement kills fun. Reality is that the players likely to use tough aliens are also likely to learn their weaknesses. So a rock-paper-scissors system would require them to switch soldier loadouts between missions. HWD says I'm going against Mutons? That's weapons A. This time it is Floaters? Weapons B, everyone. And when the race is unknown? Everybody carry two different main weapons and drop the wrong one on round one. The player wouldn't have to think, s/he would merely have to switch weapons. And there are not many choices that make sense anyway. The same goes for armors, should someone build a mod with several armors tailored against different damage types and alien weapons with different damage types. The player would pick the best for a given mission or, if he didn't have that luxury, simply pray his soldiers don't get hit.

Fourth, even flying suits are not that tough and many seem to ignore the lessons the game teaches us. Even a plasma rifle can take out a soldier in a powersuit, the chance to penetrate frontal armor is about 37%. Heavy plasmas are deadly. The battlefield is full of things that can kill Xcom soldiers with one shot. Taking away the ability to do the same to aliens would frustrate players, e.g. in situations involving reaction fire. And strong resistances can decrease the damage that penetrates armor to levels where even a 40-hp alien takes ten hits to kill and instakills are impossible. This could give brute strength and swarms advantage over smarts.

Lastly, the greater the changes a mod creates, the higher the probability of problems with compatibility with other mods. For example, changing weapon damages might interfere with performance of alien races from other mods.

So what solution can I offer? Well, I'm still working on it. The only thing that works for me now is giving most of the aliens relatively light armors and mild resistances which increase survivability but don't make them invulnerable; leaders can be much tougher because that gives the player a rarer but tough target s/he can focus the heavy hitters on. So I'm creating mid-to-late-game replacement aliens who wear some armor, e.g. my test snakemen wear armor 40/35/35/15 and 80% resistance to HE, plasma and melee, my mutons use armor 50/40/40/25 and 80% laser, 70% plasma, 60% melee resistances. We'll see how it goes.

[Solarius Scorch]

Harald, I just wanted to give you thumbs up for the general analysis of the issue. I agree with you 100%.
I would also like to add that armour seems to be much more expensive for the aliens than cloning new troops (makes sense with the right tech and army structure), so this is why they don't and shouldn't) use advanced body protection. I think we can get away with some exceptions though.

[Dioxine]

Just my 2 cents... Everyone is used to Mutons being resistant to HE and AP, not lasers/plasmas... why changing that, Harald? For the sake of changing? But generally I support your notion - paper/rock/scissors are fun but you should still be able to kill aliens with "wrong" weapons... by either using heavier version or taking 4-5, instead of 1, shot. And of course, unless you make aliens super-plasma-resistant (I wouldn't support this), Heavy Plasma will rule the day forever and ever (laser resistances mean, like it has been said, that laser weapons will be simply ignored in favour of plasmas - at least up to this point, with how convenient they were, they were a viable alternative).

[Harald_Gray]

Solar: thanks for the thumbs up. However, I have to admit I'm perfectly OK with giving the aliens light and medium armor. The costs are not much of an issue, they are cranking out large scouts by the dozen and at least two terror ships every month during the midgame and later so they can surely afford some armor. I see this mostly as a matter of philosophy and of mental inertia. An alien alloy chestplate here, a simple implant here or an alien alloy chainmail mesh there are simple. They do armor their ships with AA plating. Wearing some is not that different. But they use internal boosts and bioengineering, so things like powersuits should be rare and considered crazy/heretical/primitive by most aliens.

Dioxine: I'm giving them plasma resistance because I can imagine the following chain of thoughts inside an alien engineer's head: "DAmn, some of those puny humans are resistant to psionics, we'll have to use actuall weapons. Damn, we've made mutons resistant to their puny weapons and they're inventing new ones and even turning our weapons against us. Crap, we can't adapt the production lines that quickly, the mutons are designed against AP and it would take months to redesign them and then wait for new bodies to grow. But if we layer some alloys and polymers and ceramics and make some simple chestplates and helmets out of this stuff they'll take some of the heat off. Sure, the guys will still take some pounding, but they're tough, they'll survive and shoot back and finally crush our masters' enemies." Oh, and because it makes other weapons less useless in comparison. A game where everybody and their dog uses heavy plasmas is kind of less fun.
Edit: the laser resistance is there because I suspect that a (relatively) primitive armor that doesn't use things like electricity or force fields to influence the plasma will be also quite resistant to lasers. So it is a realism issue, not an attempt to marginalize laser weapons. I *love* laser rifles.
Edit2: and I sort of forgot to mention that those Mutons keep their 60% AP resistance and that the values I've mentioned are still changing as I'm playing with the ideas.

[LeBashar]

@Wsmithjr:
Sorry for that, I will check when I come back to home.

Yes, precisely. While it might be interesting to have the reverse effect also, we have to take the AI into account. I don't think it is in any way capable of dealing with resistances in terms of selecting weapons and/or targets.

You are right, and I have not think to much about this but I think my way to handle this could work : I mod aliens item level to give them new weapons, so, they should in majority be equipped with new anti-personal armour weapon when the player should manage to have them for some time. After that the player can discover powersuit which protect him against theses weapons, and aliens changes all weaponry to something else after a while etc. And all the time, cannon are able to kill everyone maybe not in one shot, but not so many more. So, the rock paper scissor is not mean the only way to win is to use the good weapon. It mean that you will win easiest with right weapons, and need to use only heavy cannon if you don't want to think (but heavy cannon should be heavy, costly, limited ammo, and your soldiers slow. This brainless way could be sufficient in alien recovery mission but should not work in long missions like alien base).

So for now I have don't make aliens unable to shot xcom soldier but nearly the opposite. In the vanilla's we have :
- beginning : aliens weapons are overkill
- personal armour : in a short time they protect little, and become obsolete when rifle and heavy plasma become the rule
- power and flyingsuit : in a short time they protect well if you discover them early, but in the end when all aliens have heavy plasma they don't protect so good.

I have make something where armour protect better, but in shorter period of time. So for example, if you manage to produce many personal armour very quickly, maybe you can have one or two very easy terror mission against aliens with plasma weapon nearly negated. But if you are too slow, armour are already useless by the time you discover it (like in vanilla's).

First thing is, the game has to remain playable. Aliens tougher than Xcom soldiers may sound cool but a player has to win how many missions? And how often is a player willing to lose a soldier? I know, human players are smarter than the AI - but the AI can afford far greater losses and is never frustrated. Mutons are already tough. Now imagine mutons in powersuits in every mission you meet them in. So even modded aliens have to remain less armored than Xcom soldiers. So we better limit ourselves to little more than personal armor plus some mild resistances.

I agree, and I never imagine to make overpowered aliens. My try is to make them have great vulnerability, if they have great resistance. I have made only one exception for mutons, as their weakness is they are psy weak, and don't appear in damage sheet. But they appear in late game, and player should have by this time soldier able to carry heavy weaponry, which kill easily even slight better armored mutons.

Second, vanilla aliens never use worn armor, period.

I think green muton skin is an armor, no ?

So I'm creating mid-to-late-game replacement aliens who wear some armor, e.g. my test snakemen wear armor 40/35/35/15 and 80% resistance to HE, plasma and melee, my mutons use armor 50/40/40/25 and 80% laser, 70% plasma, 60% melee resistances. We'll see how it goes.

It seem don't change anything for your snakemen : laser and HV plasma of late game won't have problem to easily kill them.
Your mutons however seem have no weakness and seem only a good target for heavy HE weapons.
 
I have give them the same armor, but no resistance of any kind. This make them already as resistant to AP weapon because they are nearly all negate by a 50 armor, but only little more resistant to laser or plasma rifle/cannon.
 

Third, too much micromanagement kills fun. Reality is that the players likely to use tough aliens are also likely to learn their weaknesses. So a rock-paper-scissors system would require them to switch soldier loadouts between missions. HWD says I'm going against Mutons? That's weapons A. This time it is Floaters? Weapons B, everyone. And when the race is unknown? Everybody carry two different main weapons and drop the wrong one on round one.

 
Oh no, this is not my idea at all. The player should need various weaponry in any battlefield. And if it has not make the right choice of weapon, and don't bring various with him, maybe it should be force to flee.
At the beginning there is only in terror mission where he must face two really different aliens types, but in the late game, it should face more often various crews.

[Harald_Gray]

I agree, and I never imagine to make overpowered aliens. My try is to make them have great vulnerability, if they have great resistance. I have made only one exception for mutons, as their weakness is they are psy weak, and don't appear in damage sheet. But they appear in late game, and player should have by this time soldier able to carry heavy weaponry, which kill easily even slight better armored mutons.

I never meant to imply your aliens are overpowered. But I've seen mockups of aliens in power armors so I thought it might be a good idea to explain why modders shouldn't give such armors to common aliens. Other people read this thread too.

I think green muton skin is an armor, no ?

That's why I wrote *worn* armor. Your plan is to rebalance the aliens, which is fine, but those rebalanced aliens remain the same during the whole game. The thing I was talking about is that any upgrades given to an alien race during the game should provide only a limited boost.
 

It seem don't change anything for your snakemen : laser and HV plasma of late game won't have problem to easily kill them.
Your mutons however seem have no weakness and seem only a good target for heavy HE weapons.
 
I have give them the same armor, but no resistance of any kind. This make them already as resistant to AP weapon because they are nearly all negate by a 50 armor, but only little more resistant to laser or plasma rifle/cannon.

Depends on your definition of an easy kill. Armor 40 negates one third of laser rifle hits and makes 70% of such hits survivable (for a snakeman soldier). Vanilla Snakemen die in some 45% of hits, meaning the new armor lowers their death rate by one third. Plasma resistance 0.8 gives them about 66% chance of surviving a plasma rifle hit (compared to vanilla 40%) and about 45% chance against heavy plasma (compared to vanilla 28%). Again, decent but not game-breaking improvement.

As for the Mutons, well, they are supposed to be far superior to humans. The armor would make it impossible for them to die from a single heavy plasma hit but still killable. I've killed 15+ vanilla Mutons in a single mission using mostly Alien Alloy ammo and proximity grenades, meaning average power 24 and 70 against armor 20 and 10. Heavy plasma has average power 80 against 70% resistance and the average damage is about 39, killing a Muton in about 3.2 hits.
But like I've said, I'm still playing with this and testing it and I'll probably switch the plasma resistance back to 80% (which was the value I've tried first).
   

Oh no, this is not my idea at all. The player should need various weaponry in any battlefield. And if it has not make the right choice of weapon, and don't bring various with him, maybe it should be force to flee.
At the beginning there is only in terror mission where he must face two really different aliens types, but in the late game, it should face more often various crews.

Early game offers no such problem, all early aliens die to rifles, grenades and HE heavy cannon rounds. Laser pistols (not to mention laser rifles) are weapons of mass destruction even in midgame and easy to come by in vanilla. Yes, the player should be motivated to use combined arms. Give him a reason to give some soldiers heavy weapons, give him a reason to issue proximity grenades and high exlosives to most soldiers, give him a reason to bring some stun weapons and other toys. But don't make him rearm every damn soldier for every damn mission when you can't automate this or s/he'll get angry soon.
Rock/paper/scissors doesn't force him to think. It merely forces him to spend time in the erquipment screen.