[WEAPON] [ARMOR] - Chemical Thrower + Toxi-Suit

[kikimoristan]

Just ask yourself a question, what alien should be killable in a single shot, and how likely it'll be. Assuming a Muton with 30 armor 70 health 100% acid res (not sure if right numbers), a 100 damage weapon would kill him 50/50 in a single shot, as you can roll anywhere between 1-200 (0-200?) on damage. If he has 160% acid "res" he'd die if you rolled 100/1.6 = 62.5 on damage so 68.75% of one-hit-kill. With you 148 power weapon, the probability is nearing 80%. Do the calcs for Sectopods and Cyberdiscs and you will know, exactly, how good the weapon is (considering its obvious drawbacks - you need to approach really close).

yeah the idea was a weapon that forces you to play close..and going close you gonna get busted down by reaction fire. so is like you can 1 shot anything pretty much but you can't cause you need to go close without dying. change ammo lay some smoke. maybe change ammo again some fire for visibility. ultimately you decide you gonna try to stun him cause acid is too random aim. is intentionally done that way. rad is a bait ammo. you wanna use it for smoke /stun like 90% of the time. is the most safe play.  but if you can take a rad/toxic shot anything insta death.

edit: tbh this weapon is very conceptual. i wanted to make something as close as possible to a flamethrower/spray type weapon but make worrk  with the limitations of xcom and i wanted it to be useful weapon and new and different that adds new mechanics the game. the only drawback was area damage that affects the shooter which i fixed with the toxi-suit.

[ivandogovich]

Just ask yourself a question, what alien should be killable in a single shot, and how likely it'll be. Assuming a Muton with 30 armor 70 health 100% acid res (not sure if right numbers), a 100 damage weapon would kill him 50/50 in a single shot, as you can roll anywhere between 1-200 (0-200?) on damage. If he has 160% acid "res" he'd die if you rolled 100/1.6 = 62.5 on damage so 68.75% of one-hit-kill. With you 148 power weapon, the probability is nearing 80%. Do the calcs for Sectopods and Cyberdiscs and you will know, exactly, how good the weapon is (considering its obvious drawbacks - you need to approach really close). And killing in a single shot is obviously important, although Snap rules all here - you only need to cover a few tiles more to get the same accurracy as with Aimed - with 70 acc, this weapon is 100% accurate from 4 tiles away with Aimed, and you only need to get 3 steps closer to get a sure hit. Then again, when UFO breaching, it's the first shot that counts - and this weapon is obviously at least as good as Heavy Plasma in that department. I don't know, it's pretty balanced imo, if powerful. Needs testing. But I'd go with figure around 100, yeah, and see how's going from there.
But is UFO breaching with all guns blazing the right way to do it?

@Dioxine.   What a great, simple, and perceptive discussion on weapon balance!  I think that this is a key to most mods!  And one that often suffers due to enthusiasm to make the "ultimate weapon" or the "coolest thing around" (especially in new modders).

I think a thread about modding weapon balance would be a great sticky resource for new modders.

At some point a "Modders Handbook" might be nice too, pointing folks to yaml checkers, falko's tools, pckview, mapview,  info on sprites and pallettes, ruleset references, etc.

Cheers, Ivan

[DoxaLogos (JG)]

At some point a "Modders Handbook" might be nice too, pointing folks to yaml checkers, falko's tools, pckview, mapview,  info on sprites and pallettes, ruleset references, etc.

Cheers, Ivan

Yes, this would be so great.  It's quite painful looking through tons of threads and the wiki to get good info on modding.

[Mono]

testing your mod...

Phosphor is, IMO, of limited use: less range and less radius than regular smoke. Not so good for cover, but you have 4 shoot with very low time usage, so maybe is OK.
Nitrogen is good. It will be a valid alternative to stun rod on early game. It will become useless when small launcher is discovered but this how it's supposed to work. Like it.
Napalm is gold! 10 shots, limited weight. Better than any other fire weapons. But being a fire weapons is of limited use, just as intended.
Chem Waste: OP? Not much. This is why:
Limited range, no radius. Being the chem thrower a support weapon, you will carry a secondary weapon. But chem thrower is a 3x2 item. Waste ammos is a 2x2 item. You really have to carefully choose your equipment. Very wise choice tollworkout, hat off for you.
You have balanced the weapon not with stats alone, but using encumbrance too!
Maybe reducing ammo from 12 to 6-4 will resolve the OP problem (just a suggestion).
Toxy-suite: a very light armor, limited use. OK for an early armor, but why the alloy requirement? If I research alloy, the Personal Armor is a much better choice. So, please, remove alloy as requirement or make the toxy available to buy from the beginning.
I will throw you an idea: what about giving the toxy-suite a huge under-armor (only the under!) of 80-120? This will make the toxy a bomb squad-tipe armor, useful for stepping over mines. This way you can make the toxi-suite a bit more useful even when Personal Armor is available (personal opinion, do what you like).
Research: When I start a game I, like most players, want laser rifles (or heavy plasmas) as fast as I can, and I tend to skip non vital equipments. The research requirement for chem weapons are not so high but are lengthy... What if chem weapons will unlock something useful really quick: chem thrower + phosphor + napalm or chem thrower + phosphor + nitrogen or chem thrower + both, just with only one research (maybe make them costly to produce).
This way players will be less tempted to skip the research of chemical branch. Later in the game the chem weapons will lose effectiveness (exception for chem waste). You must have them very quickly or you will end not using them (with veteran soldiers and Flying Suite, fire, and smoke are less important).

This was my review. Trying to be useful, sorry for being over critic. 
Your mod is a worthy addition to the battle against the alien menace 
Keep on with it, and thank for sharing.

[Solarius Scorch]

Tollworkout, please let me use this armour in the Final Mod Pack.

Actually, let's make a deal: in exchange, I made an improvement on the backpack. (See attachment.)

[kikimoristan]

that's valid. i like the idea of under armor. and shorter research time is also valid. laser is useful and chem thrower is more of a support weapon. perhaps ill add 5 shots to smoke.

ive made these changes for the next version

Radioactive Mix - acid 122 damage (before was 142)  same clip size (12)
why? most enemies are weak against acid anyway except for mechanical units . takes about 1-3 hits of acid to kill most units. since aiming is hard and size of ammo is big then having more shots is essential to get more tries so left clip size unchanged.

White Phosphor - 5 clip size (before was 4)
why? because radius is small so you will need to hit a few times anyway.

Toxi-Suit - increased under armor to 36 (previously 9) 
im gonna try this out see if it works better. power armor is 30 underneath.

[ivandogovich]

I'm guessing that under armor of 36 wont make that much difference.  You are trying to give it protection from alien grenades, power 90.  So unless you are two tiles away from a blast, (not likely?) you won't probably survive much?  Idk...  it just feels like it should be higher if you are actually trying to make it a good trade off with powersuit for under armor.  Maybe 50-70.  Just a guess.

[kikimoristan]

Tollworkout, please let me use this armour in the Final Mod Pack.

Actually, let's make a deal: in exchange, I made an improvement on the backpack. (See attachment.)

you obvs missed my little notice  https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,3450.0.html .  if you don't feel like clicking says of course/you can do anything you want with it

also a suggestion  my original sprite work matches the inventory image better with square visor.  i already had the backpack square visor version edited further down just copy them over the no backpack ones. is no biggie . is just i like the little details. i gonnna bug me in the game haha.  i intentionally made it match. but is up to you

[Solarius Scorch]

Thanks!

I think I'll experiment with the visor later. But I'd rather keep the backpack.

[kikimoristan]

I'm guessing that under armor of 36 wont make that much difference.  You are trying to give it protection from alien grenades, power 90.  So unless you are two tiles away from a blast, (not likely?) you won't probably survive much?  Idk...  it just feels like it should be higher if you are actually trying to make it a good trade off with powersuit for under armor.  Maybe 50-70.  Just a guess.

but also has HE 60% so that + armor 36 hmm... power 90 becomes power 54 and 36 armor underneath...with that much armor you can survive it if you luck out of sub 100% damage. 0 - 200% you got 50/50 chance of surviving.  to make it always suvive it i need to make it 56 instead.

[ivandogovich]

50/50 survival is pretty good then.

[kikimoristan]

Thanks!

I think I'll experiment with the visor later. But I'd rather keep the backpack.

if you change your mind here's one that matches with inventory sprite, corpse sprite and floorob
also i fixed 2 bugs you had moved a backpack a bit too much to the side vs the body in right facing and back facing positions.

[kikimoristan]

50/50 survival is pretty good then.

right? is my math ok?
alien grenade @ vanilla 0 - 200% damage rule
min 90 * 0  = 0
max 90 * 2.0 = 180

with 60% he damage reduction
0 - 108

after 36 armor
0 - 72

100  / 180 * 72 = 40% chance of dying

meanwhile personal armor has 83% chance of dying

[Mono]

My idea was of an unit that can survive regular grenades or remove proximity mine just stepping over with very low chances of being hurt (can be useful to step over a mine inside an UFO, with alien near you and low TU   ).
I wasn't thinking of alien grenades, aliens don't carry much grenades on early game (mostly a third tier weapons on alienDeployment), and toxi-armor is an early game armor. When I get Power Armor of Flying Armor I will switch to them anyway. The idea was to prolong the usefulness of Toxi-Armor. I may decide to carry all Toxi instead of the more powerful Personal Armor if the mission involve a sectoid leader.
Usually, with a sectoid leader, I un-equip all my grenades and drop all weapons at end of turn, but with some sort of bomb squad armor, I can decide play the mission with grenades on, trading grenade usefulness for a less plasma-resistant Armor.

[Arthanor]

I'm guessing that under armor of 36 wont make that much difference.  You are trying to give it protection from alien grenades, power 90.  So unless you are two tiles away from a blast, (not likely?) you won't probably survive much?  Idk...  it just feels like it should be higher if you are actually trying to make it a good trade off with powersuit for under armor.  Maybe 50-70.  Just a guess.

Under armor is only used against explosives if you are at ground zero or 1 tile next to GZ (so in a 9 tiles square centered where the explosion happens). Otherwise you take damage on the side (front/rear/side) that faces the explosion. So this armor will be rather weird. You're probably better off stepping on a grenade than having it explode away from you(?!).