Author Topic: Final mod pack balance fix  (Read 6897 times)

Offline Areor

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Final mod pack balance fix
« on: July 30, 2018, 11:17:01 am »
I`ve played Final mod pack and found it amazing! So i`ve fixed some balance mistakes and compiled it in mod.

List of changes:
Spoiler:
- Increased repair speed of combat crafts, repair now take at most 140 hours
- Increased speed of Sentinel to 3200 - previuos speed of 2200 for elerium-powered non-transport craft was strange
- Modified sell cost of any craft to 80% of total manufacturing cost
- Decreased ammo capacity of gauss and rail craft cannons to 90 and 60
- Gauss and rail cannons ammo, bots HWP and craft, now produced by 10 shots
- Dog strength increased from 2 to 5 - still not enough to throw items far enough, but enough to carry explosives or weapon
- Firing accuracy of high-tech HWP`s, both X-COM and alien, increased up to 70
- Decreased score loss by loosing scout tank to 8 from insane 50
- Modified many manufacture costs, now almost any item production is somewhat profittable with exception of elerium-powered items
- Craft rail cannon now require elerium to produce
- Any alloy ammo now require only 1 alien alloy
- Any hovertank now require 4 grav modules to produce and corresponding tech. Elerium cost decreased
- HWP plasma and laser weapon now hawe same stats on every platform, autoshots available only for ground versions
- Repair of stormtrooper armor does`nt require electronics (MIB damaged armor have undamaged electronics, XCOM variant too)
- Plasma sword now benefits from strength (previously was almost identical to knife, but with 2-handed drawback)
- Gauss and rail pistols clip capacity increased to 18 and 12
- Dog and scout tank store size decreased to 3 (from 6)
- Elerium mace stats increased to better overal value than stun rod
- Shotguns and Magnum nerfed - pistol shot with damage, greater than sniper rifle is nonsence
- X-COM pistols gained autoshot-mode with accuracy 30%
- Pistols and shotguns now have limited range
- Autoshot aimed range increased for every basically automatic weapon
- Autocannon stats increased a bit to be not worse than heavy cannon

To install just unzip to folder OpenXcom/standard/ folder and activate it after Final Mod Pack mod. Enjoy

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: Final mod pack balance fix
« Reply #1 on: July 30, 2018, 07:56:15 pm »
Wow, thanks! Quite a few good ideas here!

- Increased repair speed of combat crafts, repair now take at most 140 hours

I don't think it matters much, but if you feel it was too long, I don't have anything against it. Still, the FMP avoids changing vanilla unless really necessary, so I'm leacing it as it is.

- Increased speed of Sentinel to 3200 - previuos speed of 2200 for elerium-powered non-transport craft was strange

Well, it looks like a flying brick... Even with Elerium drive, it shouldn't be too fast. Still, 3200 is still somewhat reasonable, I guess.

- Modified sell cost of any craft to 80% of total manufacturing cost

OK, not a big deal.

- Decreased ammo capacity of gauss and rail craft cannons to 90 and 60

Why would it take less ammo than the basic cannon? It's not like these bullets take more space or anything. Was it related to power systems somehow?

- Gauss and rail cannons ammo, bots HWP and craft, now produced by 10 shots

All right.

- Dog strength increased from 2 to 5 - still not enough to throw items far enough, but enough to carry explosives or weapon

And this is why I gave it 2. :P
Dogs don't do these things well... Many have tried.

- Firing accuracy of high-tech HWP`s, both X-COM and alien, increased up to 70

I guess it's all right, considering how people don't use these much..

- Decreased score loss by loosing scout tank to 8 from insane 50

Ouch, so true. I'll fix it in the FMP straight away.

- Modified many manufacture costs, now almost any item production is somewhat profittable with exception of elerium-powered items

I think it's more or less meaningless, since only the item with the most profit counts... But sure, why not.

- Craft rail cannon now require elerium to produce

I prefer to keep these branches separated, but it's no heresy.

- Any alloy ammo now require only 1 alien alloy

Eh? Are you running out of alloys, or was it for some other reason?

- Any hovertank now require 4 grav modules to produce and corresponding tech. Elerium cost decreased

UFO construction should cover this alone, since the principle is a bit different; both use gravity physics, but the gravity waves are generated in differnt ways (for UFOs and HWPs, the entire hull acts as the emitter, while grav modules are self-sufficient devices). But if you prefer it this way...

- HWP plasma and laser weapon now hawe same stats on every platform, autoshots available only for ground versions

There was a reason for hovertanks to have slightly poorer accuracy. I think equalizing it diminishes the depth a little.

- Repair of stormtrooper armor does`nt require electronics (MIB damaged armor have undamaged electronics, XCOM variant too)

Good point, I'll do the same.

- Plasma sword now benefits from strength (previously was almost identical to knife, but with 2-handed drawback)

But it's always been like this...

- Gauss and rail pistols clip capacity increased to 18 and 12

Arbitrary. But I'm not going to make a fuss out of it. :)

- Dog and scout tank store size decreased to 3 (from 6)

Hey, vanilla settings.

- Elerium mace stats increased to better overal value than stun rod

Congrats, now it's way OP. :P
Over my dead body! :P

- Shotguns and Magnum nerfed - pistol shot with damage, greater than sniper rifle is nonsence

Base damage values are fine; the problem is with the OXC engine, which simply doesn't allow for a real, useful sniper rifle. OXCE+ is much better at it, and I am much more satisfied with how I did it for X-Com Files (it's basically FMP 2.0 after all).

- X-COM pistols gained autoshot-mode with accuracy 30%

Umm, so why do we need the SMG now?

- Pistols and shotguns now have limited range

It's not a bad idea, but in vanilla OXC sight range is so short and the shotgun behaviour is so poor that I never cared to fix it. (Again, OXCE+ gives you way more tools for this stuff.)

- Autoshot aimed range increased for every basically automatic weapon

So... Auto or aimed? Looking at the values, I can't see any definite trend.

- Autocannon stats increased a bit to be not worse than heavy cannon

It's an AUTO cannon. If it's not worse in basic stats, why even use the Heavy Cannon at all?


While I pointed out some things I disagree with, I really like what you've done. Thanks for the work!

Offline Areor

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Re: Final mod pack balance fix
« Reply #2 on: July 30, 2018, 11:23:02 pm »
Thanks for reply, i`ve made this mod for personal use, but after few days of almost permanent tuning decided to upload it here.

Why would it take less ammo than the basic cannon? It's not like these bullets take more space or anything. Was it related to power systems somehow?
This came from decreased ammo capacity of hand-held weapon - greater speed means more energy and mass of bullet required to not burn in atmosphere too fast. And gauss is practically almost unlimited ammo and elerium free tech while railguns require elerium and couple of spare clips.

And this is why I gave it 2. :P
Dogs don't do these things well... Many have tried.
it`s some sort of check for humanity, i think.

I prefer to keep these branches separated, but it's no heresy.
Gauss personal weaponry doesn`t require elerium to produce, railguns does. With single exception of aircraft cannon, by the way most profittable item in all FMP. I think elerium is required to achieve greater speed and energy efficiency.

Eh? Are you running out of alloys, or was it for some other reason?
No, alloys are plenty, almost never produced them, but 4 alloys is enough to full body armor!

There was a reason for hovertanks to have slightly poorer accuracy.
Okay, I see. Better fire positions for flying units grant better chances already.

But it's always been like this...
Hmm, I see skillApplied, twoHanded and flatRate flags only set true in items_FMP ruleset.  strengthApplied is not set, so it`s false. Am I wrong in understanding this flag?

Hey, vanilla settings.
Dogs and scout tanks in vanilla? They use only single space in craft instead of four, why their storage space is the same as 4-square tanks? They definitely not so big.

Congrats, now it's way OP. :P
It`s damage per turn on unarmored targets is almost identical to stun rod (216 vs 195) while it`s greatly more random. It`s high-tech weapom, how can it be less accurate than stun rod?. I understand that against armored enemy elerium mace is more effective (99 vs 69 on lower-rank ethereals) already and it`s weight is not that much of concern with power suit.

So... Auto or aimed? Looking at the values, I can't see any definite trend.
autoRange, not aimed. Limit for effective range of autofire mode. Cannons, specialized on auto-fire, can`t be as inaccurate on mid-distances as light weaponry.

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: Final mod pack balance fix
« Reply #3 on: July 31, 2018, 08:15:51 pm »
Hmm, I see skillApplied, twoHanded and flatRate flags only set true in items_FMP ruleset.  strengthApplied is not set, so it`s false. Am I wrong in understanding this flag?

No, you are correct. But in my local files I clearly see the strengthApplied flag on the sword... Weird.

Dogs and scout tanks in vanilla? They use only single space in craft instead of four, why their storage space is the same as 4-square tanks? They definitely not so big.

Ah, sorry, I misunderstood. But still, I can imagine they're taking quite a it of space. Especially dogs, you can't stuff them in a box, right?

It`s damage per turn on unarmored targets is almost identical to stun rod (216 vs 195) while it`s greatly more random. It`s high-tech weapom, how can it be less accurate than stun rod?. I understand that against armored enemy elerium mace is more effective (99 vs 69 on lower-rank ethereals) already and it`s weight is not that much of concern with power suit.

Still, the power is much higher, which helps against armour. Against unarmoured foes, sure, the rod is usually more practical.

autoRange, not aimed. Limit for effective range of autofire mode. Cannons, specialized on auto-fire, can`t be as inaccurate on mid-distances as light weaponry.

OK, I see. Still, I don't think it's significant enough to uproot vanilla... I generally don't do this in FMP.

Offline Tekamthi

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Re: Final mod pack balance fix
« Reply #4 on: August 01, 2018, 08:22:00 pm »
I didn't have any of the same balance concerns as OP necessarily, though I like the idea of a separate thread for these fixes.  The main FMP thread is so long now, its hard to find where others have posted these or other FMP-focused mod mods. 

Anyway, if OP doesn't mind a bit of a hijack towards broader FMP balance discussion, I'll add my thoughts here instead of main thread.

In the other thread, I discussed how my game brought all lasers/gauss/rail/nuclear laser all at once, making many of these kinda pointless in my playthrough.  As a bandaid to this, I went through my save file and deleted all these techs and sold any items i had made, and adjusted the research tree a little here... tbh I don't know if what I've cobbled together will work exactly as intended (part of my motivation for posting here, hopign i can get some eyes on it), but I'm aiming to have every weapon group unlocked only by an engineer, and only after a previous group has been completed, forcing a progression of Gauss -> Laser -> Advanced Laser/Rail.  So to get laser unlock, for example, you'd need to finish all gauss THEN research an engi... same for other groups.  Again, I'm a little unsure if I've implemented this correctly, would appreciate any feedback from more experienced modders.

Also, I was tempted early in FMP to leave the item and craft limits off, to test out all the new toys the mod adds.  The result eventually was a pile of 100s of bombs and guns going with me on every mission, and a new tactic of making throw-chains from the skyranger to the enemy's front door, to quickly move the limitless supply of explosives into kill range... Or re-equipping the entire squad mid-mission to best counter w/e we're facing... not things i remember doing in the old game lol. I've recently turned these item limits on, and this brought back a lot of subtle but important constraints from vanilla that I had forgotten about.  This itself has been a nice difficulty bump, especially where i guess wrong what i'll be facing on a mission.  Anyway, attached a file that sets limits per craft in FMP, using the vanilla 80 items per skyranger ratio, and adjusting proportionally based on cargo size of each in FMP.  In hindsight, I wish I had played with this from the start.

edit: zipped wrong version of researchstages -- had something with adv lasers backwards in other -- fixed
« Last Edit: August 01, 2018, 08:38:24 pm by Tekamthi »

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: Final mod pack balance fix
« Reply #5 on: August 01, 2018, 08:30:17 pm »
I don't really like the items limit, where taking 20 rocket launchers is the same as 20 clips.
If there was a weight based system, I'd probably use it, because I agree there's a bit of a problem.

Offline Tekamthi

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Re: Final mod pack balance fix
« Reply #6 on: August 01, 2018, 08:41:23 pm »
I don't really like the items limit, where taking 20 rocket launchers is the same as 20 clips.
If there was a weight based system, I'd probably use it, because I agree there's a bit of a problem.

Agreed, weight limit would be great -- though the item limit still imparts a constraint that I missed from old xcom play.  In turn, this adds important-if-subtle value to HWPs (ie lots of firepower for 1 item).  I'm also thinking of adjusting some of the smaller researchable ships to have higher item proportions as a small bonus, though as-is i have all set to roughly the 80/skyranger ratio
« Last Edit: August 02, 2018, 01:34:52 am by Tekamthi »