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Author Topic: Some feedback after finishing my campaign  (Read 6334 times)

Offline BTAxis

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Some feedback after finishing my campaign
« on: October 10, 2018, 10:21:05 pm »
I have recently finished my XCF campaign, starting on 0.9.3 and ending on 0.9.6. I played on Genius difficulty. The following is an account of my collected thoughts. Where I am critical, I will try to be as constructive as possible.

First of all though I will make it a matter of public record that I have immensely enjoyed my time with XCF. Though it is clearly not finished in places, those parts that are are very good indeed.

It's hard to point any one thing out as a high point during my playthrough, but I did generally enjoy the fight against the Syndicate. They have a range of interesting enemies to deal with and their missions are often eventful. The office building infiltration was tedious because it takes so long to go up all those stairs, but the CEO kidnap mission was super smooth because I had flying armor by then. Marched that CEO right into my Skymarshall, only to find out it transformed into a monster as I was pulling everybody back. Surprise!

Probably the low point of the campaign was the vampire castle. Yeah. It's a great map but it's very exhausting to play due to all the zombies hiding away in it. It overstays its welcome more than TFTD's cruise liner ever did.

Time for some more details.

Tone and Theme
XCF deserves its name most in the early parts of the game, of course. The area where this is most so is the dossiers, which can be considered the actual titular X-Com Files. I believe the dossiers as they stand are fine, but that's probably about it. They tie in with the lore of the cults, but they don't seem to connect much to the game otherwise (except for two). When I ask myself, "what would make XCF even better?" the answer isn't "more dossiers".

Instead, the answer is "more Staff Input". I think the various characters are excellent and deserve a lot more screen time. As it is they pop up occasionally and their voice is heard in some of the articles, but I think a lot more can be done with them. The existing Staff Input articles are a good start, they have some context and the gags are funny, but I think the various characters could also comment at important moments as the various arcs develop, for a little bit of individual perspective to go with the somewhat general Ufopedia.

In regard to the covert missions, I like the idea of them but maybe not so much the way they work out. Especially in the late game I ended up ignoring what covert missions there still were, because I simply didn't have any vehicles for the purpose anymore. Why let a Pickup sit in a hangar for months when you can put an interceptor there instead? Especially since shooting down UFOs gets you more points AND better loot than doing the covert stuff. I never did the Reptoid Assassination mission because of this, for example. In my opinion, covert missions should be a thing of the early game, when X-Com is more or less an amateurish agency working out of someone's garage. All missions in urban settings should then be covert, with only missions involving wild animals, zombies and maybe farms allowing heavier gear. Then as the Promotions come in the covert missions should gradually taper off until they are gone completely after Promotion III, which marks the full militarization of X-Com.

And now for something completely different: I miss the commendations. I can see the reasons why they are absent, but I did enjoy them very much in FMP and elsewhere so I was sad to see them gone from XCF. In an ideal world, the commendations systems would kick in and its 'pedia category added once Promotion III rolls around, at which point the "agents" would be renamed to "soldiers". Clearly that is outside the capabilities of the engine at this time, but one can dream.


Weapons
In this section I will be focusing mostly on Blasters and Mass Driver weapons, because I just don't have much to say about the rest of the arsenal. The firearms used prior to those families are generally quite well realized. Not all weapons are that useful, but that's fine because they're for use by enemies as well as X-Com, and there are so many of them that there's plenty of choice regardless. There's no particular need to strike too fine a balance. Anyway, I'll get to the weapon tiers later. First I have some opinions on mechanics.

With the introduction of the scout/sniper AI we now take a 50% penalty to firing at targets we can't see. This is mostly a good thing, but it has rather dramatically undercut the utility of the grenade launchers. These weapons are all about firing at enemies you can't see. After all, if you have line of sight, you might as well just shoot a proper gun. But when there's a hill or a wall in the way - that's when you can use your arcing weapons to effect. Or you could, in the past. With the accuracy penalty the grenade launchers are just not accurate enough anymore to be worthwhile. Especially since thrown weapons do not suffer from the same limitation (at least I think). I see no easy solution to this. Exempting grenade launchers from the penalty, or straight up boosting their accuracy would likely do more harm than good. Perhaps a hefty kneel bonus? I don't know. I'm not feeling it on this.

Sniper rifles, on the other hand, thrive under the 50% penalty. Since their accuracy rises exponentially with the soldier's firing accuracy they are quite capable of exceeding 200% base accuracy, which means an almost guaranteed hit even beyond visual range. Few weapons can match that. In fact, sniper rifles are so accurate that the penalty for shooting at close range becomes mostly irrelevant. Even at 2 tiles an aimed shot will still be well over 100%. Perhaps that's an area worth tweaking.
Apropos of the sniper rifles, I think the Stormtrooper armor needs a different name. Its current name suggests it is for breaching actions and front-line duty. It very much isn't, at least not from where I stand. The Stormtrooper armor excels at one thing: sniping. The +20 bonus to accuracy is huge, greatly expanding the Firing Accuracy range at which the soldier can fire a sniper rifle accurately without LOS, and it boosts the sniper rifle's power to boot. The armor can also fly, which makes it great for hanging up near the ceiling of the map and picking off everything that isn't in cover. So yeah, definitely a rear-line piece of kit.

Melee then. I am... troubled here. Melee isn't what it used to be. I used to use it a lot in FMP and indeed I still have my ninja Synthsuit builds in XCF, but it's not as good as before. The reason? Dodge. I don't like Dodge. It's not even that I don't like the way it is handled in XCF, I just think it is a fundamentally flawed feature. It is at once ubiquitous and unnoticeable. Everything and its dog has Dodge now, and yet it doesn't come back to the player. It lowers your chance to hit with a melee weapon, but the game doesn't tell you that it does. When attacking with a melee weapon, you'll see a percentage chance to hit, a percentage that happens to be guaranteed wrong because everything has Dodge. This means you'll hit a lot less often than you would expect based on the feedback the game gives you, and that is frustrating.
What is worse is that Dodge hurts low-accuracy melee attacks worse than high-accuracy attacks, at least if I understand the mechanic correctly (and I might not, because this mechanic is obscure in all things). A Dodge value of 30% would reduce a 50% accuracy attack to a mere 20%, while a 100% accuracy attack would still hit 7 times out of 10. So it becomes easier to train melee accuracy the better you are at it. This contrasts with the general stat gain paradigm I've observed, where gains show diminishing returns as stats go closer to the cap.
And that's not all. Dodge isn't even expressed as a value in the stats page, so you can do the math in your head and work it out. No, it's a function of Reactions, which you can't see unless you spend TUs on a Mind Probe! I get it, that's so the game's difficulty setting has an effect on it, but it's yet another thing to dislike.
So, my opinion? Get rid of Dodge. It's too obscure to be part of the player's experience and it isn't constructive to the game. The only time I would use it is for enemies you want to be immune to melee altogether, such as Swarmids, which should just have a Dodge value of 200. You can't punch bees. (Ironically, Swarmids are the only enemies I've seen that lack Dodge altogether, so they are the only enemies against which melee makes sense.)
I know you won't do this, of course, which is fair, but I would at least ask that you explain Dodge in the article about melee weapons, and mention also that attacking from behind mitigates its effect.

A quick evaluation of melee weapons overall: the Plasma melee weapons are terrible, the Tritanium stuff is pretty okay, the Wakizashi was my favorite for the best balance between speed and accuracy. I never found the Photonic Blade, but presumably it's great.

Right then, let's do Lasers! *Cracks knuckles*
The Laser/Blaster Pistol: The Laser Pistol is frankly underwhelming. It's heavy, it's slow, it has pitiful aim. It does feature better damage than contemporary traditional sidearms, but not much. I took one look at the stats and wrote it off. The Blaster version I did build and use on occasion, because the increased damage begins to make up for the drawbacks and infinite ammo always helps.
The Laser/Blaster Rifle: Pretty solid on both counts. Good damage and good accuracy at fair TU costs. A staple for my X-Com until the end of the game, especially on Hybrids (for some reason).
The Blaster Carbine: This is a surprisingly good weapon. At anything other than long-range shots it outperforms the Blaster Rifle so badly the Blaster Rifle is feeling a little insecure. Pretty much my go-to weapon for overwatch, but it also served well to pour damage into high-health targets. Looking at you, zombies.
The Heavy Laser/Blaster: A mixed bag, this. The Heavy Laser is quite solid, marking a good improvement in both firepower and accuracy over the Alien Laser Cannon, which comes in much earlier. One of the better heavy weapons of its time. Interestingly, the same can't be said for the Heavy Blaster, even though it's essentially the same weapon only better. That is because the Heavy Blaster faces stiff competition from
The Blaster Sniper Rifle: Ah, Laser Sniper Rifle, my old, somewhat mediocre love. What a difference some time apart makes, eh? Damage is much better now than it was in FMP, and though it's still the least accurate of the sniper rifles it's also the fastest on the aimed, which is valuable given that the scout/sniper AI cheats plays unfairly gets a lame advantage cheats can take shots at soldiers who have attacked an alien the previous turn. What with accuracy being over 100% even at close ranges (as mentioned above) and only goes up beyond that, this weapon is useful at any range. A 120 Firing Accuracy soldier in Stormtrooper armor boosts the damage up to 85, which is the same as the Heavy Blaster, but in a much more versatile package.
The Scatter Blaster: At first glance I thought this weapon was a disappointment compared to FMP. In FMP, this weapon excelled at training Firing Accuracy - one volley at a MiB HWP and the soldier was done for the day. Now though, 5 shots down from 20, accuracy cut in half (unless kneeled), fewer shots per TU. That said... mmmh, no, it's actually fairly decent. I've used it a bunch and it got the job done. The only thing about it I don't like is its range - it uses the default 7 tile auto-shot range, which is not great for a minigun. Though it has the highest accuracy of all the miniguns, the falloff typically makes it the least accurate of all the miniguns, except at very short range, and at that point it is handily outperformed by the Blaster Carbine anyway. So yeah, it could use a bit more range. Oh, and it should block both hands. I mean, it weighs 51. I don't care how ripped you are, you're not aiming that with one arm.
The Blaster Shotgun: Virtually unchanged from FMP, this is still the worst of the shotguns. It's neither fast nor accurate. It's the strongest per projectile, but shotguns aren't about having strong projectiles. They're about having a high damage multiplier against soft targets, and about sweeping freshly breached rooms. The Blaster Shotgun does neither of these things well.

Altogether I think Lasers vs Blasters are in a good place. Blasters require sufficiently more research and investment that the base Lasers are in use for a respectable time, at least this was so in my campaign.

Next up are Mass Driver and Gauss weapons. I think these weapons are somewhat better balanced than they were in FMP, though there is room for improvement. My criticism at FMP was that the Gauss weapons appeared pretty much simultaneously with the Mass Drivers, and eclipsed them completely. The first statement remains true. In fact, Gauss weapons appear first now. The second statement, however, no longer applies, I feel. Yes, Gauss weapons still do ridonculous amounts of damage and have the same stats as their MD counterparts or better, but unlike in FMP, they now weigh a ton! This matters a lot. Moreover, these weapons are now being used against X-Com, which further serves to de-cheese the Gauss family. I approve.
For my part, I was happy to stick to the MD weapons, but I do still feel they're a little lackluster. Not because they don't have auto-shot modes (I favor snap and aimed anyway), but because they're only marginally stronger than lasers, while being significantly slower. I have a proposed fix though. Remember how the MD weapon descriptions keep banging on about how good the weapons are at punching through armor? Well, why not make it true? A baseline level of reduced armor effectiveness for the whole MD family would do wonders, I think.
A few more general thoughts here: the Heavy MD is slower than the MD Rifle on the aimed, I'd suggest switching these two around. The Heavy and Sniper MDs probably need a substantially smaller clip, considering how the Rifle boasts about having a big clip. I mean, 27 isn't bad. But I've seen bigger. Not that I stare at rifles' clips all the time, mind you.

That's it for weapons, I think. Shoutouts go to the BlOps Smart Rifle for being the best rookie rifle and the BlOps Smartpistol for being the best sidearm.

(Continued below)

Offline BTAxis

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Re: Some feedback after finishing my campaign
« Reply #1 on: October 10, 2018, 10:21:27 pm »
(Continued from last post)

Psionics and Hybrids
Okay, Hybrids. You've already mentioned elsewhere that they're a bit of a work in progress right now, and I can't say fairer than that. I'll still write down my impressions of their current implementation though.

Essentially, I was not impressed by the Hybrids, because they're weak in two important areas: max strength and max psi strength. The former is not a major issue as such, it just means they can carry less stuff and throw said stuff less far. It's not great though. The latter however is more important, because, as it turns out, psionic strength is the only stat that matters for a new recruit. Everything else can be trained, but a bad psi strength soldier will be a bad psi strength soldier forever.

Now, with what I just wrote in mind, I will say that the instant psi strength reveal upon recruitment, once the relevant tech is unlocked, is way too strong. It makes it trivial to simply hire a few buses full of agents and sack anyone with a psi strength lower than 80, repeat as often as necessary. Considering that psi, even with the limitations added by XCF, is still immensely powerful, there is every incentive to do exactly that. I would advocate going back to the vanilla behavior of having to train a soldier for a month before finding out their psi strength, just to make it a little less inviting to cheese. I'm thinking some sort of early Psi Lab that doesn't train psi skill and only measures psi strength.

Given that I could afford that sort of extreme unnatural selection, a cap of 90 on psi strength for Hybrids made them seem so-so indeed. Their innate strengths weren't really making up for it either - a strength 20 shield is nice, but not that nice, and the improved night vision is mostly irrelevant because the top-tier armors start coming in fairly soon after you get the Hybrids, and those perform the same for humans and Hybrids alike.

Now, one idea that I've been kicking around in my head is this: give Hybrids psi sense. Not a lot, maybe to the tune of 0.04 * psi skill. Psi sense is really good, and having that on my Hybrids would make me cuddle and pamper them like you wouldn't believe. In fact, I'm not so sure that wouldn't be too good.

On the subject of psionics in XCF, I think it's much improved over vanilla or even FMP. It's still crazy powerful, but more fair than it used to be. All of the psionic equipment has its use (except for the Psiclone which is garbage). The Skulljack is a great tool for high-psi soldiers as soon as it comes in and continues to be a good training tool for beginning psions later on, while the two psi-amps each have their own use. The multi-phase psi-amp in particular is indispensable for being able to mind-control civilians. Good stuff.


The Economy
Money in X-Com campaigns inevitably becomes irrelevant sooner or later. I paid specific attention to this in XCF, and for me, this happened around the 25% mark (as measured by tech progress). That's not bad at all considering how long XCF is, but I think it could be better.
On the expenditure side, I think various things could stand to cost substantially more than they do. The only really expensive things after the immediately early game are the various labs. Other important facilities could take a price hike as well, both in terms of build cost and upkeep. I'm thinking of things like Psi Labs and Hyperwave Decoders. Advanced craft as well. The Avenger could cost 30M to build, and I would consider it fair.
As for income, a major contributor to runaway funds is always the for-profit projects in the workshop. That's why I'm so leery of any project that makes a profit at all, especially the ones that recoup the upkeep of the engineers. In theory it's a way to stay solvent even if things really go south and a lot of countries drop out, but I think sales from mission loot can cover that just fine.

Here's a list of the most profitable X-Com sweatshop projects I could find, expressed in profit per engineer per month:

Alien Laser Cannon: 34K
Gauss Sniper Rifle Clip: 36K
HWP Gauss Ammo: 53K
Tank/Mass Driver: 57K
Gauss Pistol Clip: 70K
Gauss Rifle Clip: 73K (I'm convinced my engineers smuggle cocaine in these or something.)


Miscellaneous
This is just a number of observations that don't fit anywhere else.

Aliens rarely pick up weapons after panicking. They do it sometimes, but often they just wander around unarmed once they're sane again. Possibly the attraction on their weapons is too low. I noticed that in vanilla it's 10 for everything except grenades, but XCF uses lower values.

The Aquatoid Navigator might benefit from having another title. The reason why I think so is that I ended up being rather far delayed on the T'leth arc because I sold every Navigator I found on general principle. Every alien Navigator unlocks the same techs, so I'd mentally written them off as "useless" and killed and sold every Navigator on autopilot. Turned out the Aquatoid was an exception. A different name for this alien would have made me pay attention. To wit: I made a point of capturing every special Muton I came across, even though they turned out to just be the same old boring Medics and Leaders.

I feel pilots could use a little more explaining in the Field Manual. Though a lot of the important information can be read from the pilot UI, I still think there is value in giving the player a primer as soon as Advanced Flight Training is researched. In particular, it would be good to explain which stats a pilot will train as a result of intercepting UFOs, and how.

The late-game craft are a bit of a jumble. In my campaign I was stuck with the Raven and Skymarshall for the longest time, only to then get everything after that in one go, right up to the Avenger (I actually got the Stormfist last, but that's on me for failing to research the Zrbite I had sitting around in my manufacturing base). No doubt my research order had a great role to play in that, but I'd have liked to see a little more gating for the craft.

The weapon slots afforded by OXCE feel a little awkward too. Interceptors feel pretty rigid in their configuration now, with most of their customizability lost. For instance, I had some laser cannons sitting around in my base for ages, just because I couldn't put them on my Raven. When the Lightning finally showed up I almost built one just to get some use out of those lasers! I mean, I didn't. I have some standards. But yeah.

In XCF air combat is pretty trivial most of the time. Anything past laser cannons is unnecessary, providing you can actually mount them. I'm not entirely sure why, but I think perhaps the pilot bonuses stack the odds too far in X-Com's favor. Even my Ravens were never really in danger. Also, you really have to pussyfoot around those Battleships, or you end up breaking them. I managed to crash one only once in the entire campaign. Anyway, the thing to take away from this is, harder UFOs.

Offline Barth Gimble

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Re: Some feedback after finishing my campaign
« Reply #2 on: October 11, 2018, 09:33:59 am »
The office building infiltration was tedious because it takes so long to go up all those stairs,

Oh... those endless stairs. I just got this one for the first time last weekend, and if it comes up again I'll pass on it. :)

Reading your comments is interesting, because it sounds like you have a very different style of play and interests from me. Sounds like you're really into power-gaming, min-maxing, and the full scale war aspects of the game. I like the smaller parts and focusing on the narrative rather than the unabashedly "game" parts. For example, I really enjoy smacking people with surfboards on the beach missions.

Nonetheless, I think it's a great strength of the mod that we both find it quite appealing, despite very different playstyles.

I have to say, though, I hope the author doesn't take you up on your points about dramatically ramping up the economic difficulty level. It's already a very hard game for beginners, and this might make it truly inaccessible to those outside the hard-core veteran audience. I'm only doing so-so with money in my playthrough, and this is only because I do every mission that comes up and I've been getting steady raises from the Council. I don't seem to make much selling plunder (admittedly, I hoard a lot of it, for no other reason than just because), nor do I even try to manufacture things for profit. Maybe those are flaws in my approach, but on the other hand I wouldn't really be much interested in relying on them if they were required. On this one point, then, I'd have to say the current game economy works pretty well-- for certain kinds of players, of course. Another way of saying this might be-- it's simulated management of a government bureaucracy. Budget bloat should be a natural course of events.  ;)
« Last Edit: October 11, 2018, 09:37:12 am by Barth Gimble »

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: Some feedback after finishing my campaign
« Reply #3 on: October 11, 2018, 07:15:52 pm »
Hi BTAxis,
I'll be brief, since I have a bad flu and everything is suffering now...

Firstly, congrats on completeing the campaign. It is not yes as long and hard as I want it to make, but it's already quite an achievement.
Secondly, thank you very much for your continuous support with the language files. Without you this mod would definitely be less glamorous.

Now, some thoughts regarding your review:

1. Syndicate. I will be an opportunist and blame it partially on the AI bug which will only be fixed in the next release. As for the tall building, well, it all boils down to the fact that I like storming tall buildings. Fetish maybe? :) And since you only need to do it a couple times, I think I can indulge myself.

2. the castle. I think the problem lies with the iron grates which separate various areas, otherwise the player would be able to just camp the bridge for 500 turns until all the enemies are dead. But I really don't like it myself, and I have some ideas to address it. Patience.

3. More Staff Inputs and lore in general. Yes, I definitely agree. The thing is, when you are working on a project like this, you keep thinking in terms of big supporting structures (skeleton) and such small tidbits (meat) tend to be pushed until later. This is not good, but it's my weakness. I will try to produce a bit more, since it's actually fun to do.

4. I made grenade launchers more accurate, but only in aimed mode.

5. The Stormtrooper armour might indeed need a new name. It's not only for sniping, but also reactions, observation and strealth. Something like "Cyber Ninja", but less cheesy (and less suggesting that it's about hacking).

6. Melee is supposed to be a last resort, at least for you. The scope of this mod, however broad, is still limited and does not include X-Com ninjas. Mostly because it would be hard to balance.
Still, I use melee a lot with good results. Dodge is a problem (as intended), but it prevents the melee from becoming too strong. I just like it. And sorry, but removing Dodge would be pure heresy and make no sense.

7. The lasers. Recently buffed their accuracy across the board, which requires a new evaluation. :) Interesting analysis, though.

8. Mass drivers having an AP bonus: maybe, but wouldn't it devaluate lasers?
Heavy weapons are generally slower to shoot than hand weapons. Not saying that it must always be so, but I'd like to see more arguments.

8. Hybrids: I don't think having lower strength matters, unless you capitalize on having as much equipment as possible, and in this case the Hybrids are probably not for you. The Reactions bonus more than makes up for it IMO; while not everyone relies on Reactions, those who do are often extreme about it. The Psi Strength upper limit is more substantial, but 1) the difference is small, 2 ) the minimum is much higher, and most importantly 3) I consider the entire system temporary, until we get soldier bonuses from the commendations. (Which also answers your point about the commendations: I will add them when they can add something to the game mechanics.)
You make some more points about the Hybrids, but it's a bit much to respond, as this is serious designing business. Maybe later, sorry.

9. Aliens picking up weapons are a code issue, not mod issue. I'd like them to do it more often too.

10. I can add a Pedia page on the pilots. would it be cheeky of me to ask you to provide some basic text? I am not 100% sure of what exactly should be covered, and you're good at this.

11. Late craft types are in a pretty early stage and we don't talk about them. :) But if they'd be more customizable, we wouldn't need at least half of them.

12. Air combat is being improved... gradually.

Offline BTAxis

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Re: Some feedback after finishing my campaign
« Reply #4 on: October 12, 2018, 02:57:51 pm »
I have to say, though, I hope the author doesn't take you up on your points about dramatically ramping up the economic difficulty level. It's already a very hard game for beginners, and this might make it truly inaccessible to those outside the hard-core veteran audience. I'm only doing so-so with money in my playthrough, and this is only because I do every mission that comes up and I've been getting steady raises from the Council. I don't seem to make much selling plunder (admittedly, I hoard a lot of it, for no other reason than just because), nor do I even try to manufacture things for profit. Maybe those are flaws in my approach, but on the other hand I wouldn't really be much interested in relying on them if they were required. On this one point, then, I'd have to say the current game economy works pretty well-- for certain kinds of players, of course. Another way of saying this might be-- it's simulated management of a government bureaucracy. Budget bloat should be a natural course of events.  ;)

Yeah, that's definitely a valid consideration. I would say the game encourages sweat shop manufacturing though, because it has UI explicitly intended for that. I didn't even exploit it that aggressively, having 5 workshops total in my game, but I still ended the campaign with almost a billion in the bank.

I'll be brief, since I have a bad flu and everything is suffering now...

Hope you recover soon!

Quote
3. More Staff Inputs and lore in general. Yes, I definitely agree. The thing is, when you are working on a project like this, you keep thinking in terms of big supporting structures (skeleton) and such small tidbits (meat) tend to be pushed until later. This is not good, but it's my weakness. I will try to produce a bit more, since it's actually fun to do.

I have an idea for one goofy article that you would get as a one-for-free from any of the laser construction research topics. Do you think there is room for that?

Quote
5. The Stormtrooper armour might indeed need a new name. It's not only for sniping, but also reactions, observation and strealth. Something like "Cyber Ninja", but less cheesy (and less suggesting that it's about hacking).

Reactions yeah, very true. I tend to undervalue that because I prefer to ensure the enemy won't have an opportunity to shoot at me rather than to be in a position to shoot back.
It doesn't do stealth though, at least not at this time. The Synthsuit does, but as it excels at melee that's of minor value. Plus the scout/sniper AI cheese makes camouflage kind of pointless most of the time.
As for Thermal Vision, I've sort of stopped using smoke for the most part, because typically the enemy can see through it better than X-Com, and ThV is another mechanic that is really hard to get a handle on as a player.

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6. Melee is supposed to be a last resort, at least for you. The scope of this mod, however broad, is still limited and does not include X-Com ninjas. Mostly because it would be hard to balance.

He says, and adds a katana that does upward of 400 damage. Heh.
Anyway, I think melee is pretty fun. It's also very situational, being useful only in situations where you fight in tight quarters a lot, such as UFO breaches. I never got the impression that it was unbalanced with ranged combat.

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8. Mass drivers having an AP bonus: maybe, but wouldn't it devaluate lasers?
Heavy weapons are generally slower to shoot than hand weapons. Not saying that it must always be so, but I'd like to see more arguments.

Oops, brainfart on my part there. I meant to say the heavy MD is actually *faster* than the Rifle, not slower. 80% on the Rifle, 70% on the Heavy.
I don't think AP on MDs would devalue lasers. My reasoning is that MDs offer a lot fewer shots per TU than lasers, and that's OK, but they also offer a lot less damage potential right now, which isn't. New tech should be an improvement in some way, or it would be a waste of the investment of getting it. MD weapons could be the optimal end-game weapon for taking on high-armor enemies while lasers remain a solid all-round choice.
All of that of course is only a prediction based on no actual play testing whatsoever. Keep your grain of salt within arm's reach.

Quote
10. I can add a Pedia page on the pilots. would it be cheeky of me to ask you to provide some basic text? I am not 100% sure of what exactly should be covered, and you're good at this.

I can do this sure. How about:
STR_PILOTS_UFOPEDIA: "All of our vehicles require an Agent acting as the Pilot to function. Agents piloting a vehicle will be able to partake in tactical combat normally.{NEWLINE}You may manually select which agent will pilot the vehicle from the Pilots menu in the craft equip screen. If you don't assign a Pilot, whichever Agent is lowest on the Crew list will automatically be assigned as the Pilot.{NEWLINE}In combat with UFOs, the Pilot's stats have the following effects:{NEWLINE}>FIRING ACCURACY affects the chance to hit the UFO.{NEWLINE}>REACTIONS affects the the chance to avoid incoming fire.{NEWLINE}>BRAVERY affects how quickly the craft will approach the UFO.{NEWLINE}Pilots can gain experience in these stats (and these stats only) by successfully engaging and defeating UFOs. Note that some craft require more than one Pilot. In such cases, all Pilots' stats will be averaged. All Pilots will earn stat experience from shooting down UFOs."

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: Some feedback after finishing my campaign
« Reply #5 on: October 12, 2018, 06:44:07 pm »
I have an idea for one goofy article that you would get as a one-for-free from any of the laser construction research topics. Do you think there is room for that?



Reactions yeah, very true. I tend to undervalue that because I prefer to ensure the enemy won't have an opportunity to shoot at me rather than to be in a position to shoot back.
It doesn't do stealth though, at least not at this time. The Synthsuit does, but as it excels at melee that's of minor value. Plus the scout/sniper AI cheese makes camouflage kind of pointless most of the time.
As for Thermal Vision, I've sort of stopped using smoke for the most part, because typically the enemy can see through it better than X-Com, and ThV is another mechanic that is really hard to get a handle on as a player.

Right, a correction: it grants stealth to the MiB, but not to you.
As for the other points, it all depends... Definitely smoke is no longer the obvious solution. I don't think it's useless, but it is a bit more situational.

He says, and adds a katana that does upward of 400 damage. Heh.

But it's not my fault, I am simply following the engine logic. :D

Oops, brainfart on my part there. I meant to say the heavy MD is actually *faster* than the Rifle, not slower. 80% on the Rifle, 70% on the Heavy.

Gotcha. I'll adjust it.

I don't think AP on MDs would devalue lasers. My reasoning is that MDs offer a lot fewer shots per TU than lasers, and that's OK, but they also offer a lot less damage potential right now, which isn't. New tech should be an improvement in some way, or it would be a waste of the investment of getting it. MD weapons could be the optimal end-game weapon for taking on high-armor enemies while lasers remain a solid all-round choice.
All of that of course is only a prediction based on no actual play testing whatsoever. Keep your grain of salt within arm's reach.

Makes sense, but still I'd like to hear more opinions first.

I can do this sure. How about:
STR_PILOTS_UFOPEDIA: "All of our vehicles require an Agent acting as the Pilot to function. Agents piloting a vehicle will be able to partake in tactical combat normally.{NEWLINE}You may manually select which agent will pilot the vehicle from the Pilots menu in the craft equip screen. If you don't assign a Pilot, whichever Agent is lowest on the Crew list will automatically be assigned as the Pilot.{NEWLINE}In combat with UFOs, the Pilot's stats have the following effects:{NEWLINE}>FIRING ACCURACY affects the chance to hit the UFO.{NEWLINE}>REACTIONS affects the the chance to avoid incoming fire.{NEWLINE}>BRAVERY affects how quickly the craft will approach the UFO.{NEWLINE}Pilots can gain experience in these stats (and these stats only) by successfully engaging and defeating UFOs. Note that some craft require more than one Pilot. In such cases, all Pilots' stats will be averaged. All Pilots will earn stat experience from shooting down UFOs."

Beautiful. Now all I need is a miracle a nice picture. Thanks. :)
« Last Edit: October 12, 2018, 06:45:43 pm by Solarius Scorch »

Offline tkzv

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Re: Some feedback after finishing my campaign
« Reply #6 on: October 14, 2018, 10:45:15 am »
Agents piloting a vehicle will be able to partake in tactical combat normally.
No longer true for at least 2 fighter planes that can't land. Can't think of a good way to rephrase it. "Agents piloting a vehicle (except non-VTOL airplanes) will be able to partake in tactical combat normally." looks too convoluted.

I'll be brief, since I have a bad flu and everything is suffering now...
Get well.

Beautiful. Now all I need is a miracle a nice picture. Thanks. :)
Do you want photos or anime?
How about combining a car driver with pilots of planes and helicopters? I'm currently trying to make a 5-part radial split screen, typical for mecha or racing anime. With this source materials:

Offline tkzv

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Re: Some feedback after finishing my campaign
« Reply #7 on: October 14, 2018, 10:46:18 am »
And 2 more:

Offline BTAxis

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Re: Some feedback after finishing my campaign
« Reply #8 on: October 14, 2018, 01:29:40 pm »
No longer true for at least 2 fighter planes that can't land.

Ah, the point was really to take away potential concerns that the pilot would be dedicated, i.e. sit the tac mission out in the cockpit. If the craft can't land in the first place I think it's kind of moot.

Of those pictures, helicopter_by_just_tenth-dcjli5c.png is probably my favorite.
« Last Edit: October 14, 2018, 01:34:39 pm by BTAxis »

Offline tkzv

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Re: Some feedback after finishing my campaign
« Reply #9 on: October 14, 2018, 05:22:53 pm »
Ah, the point was really to take away potential concerns that the pilot would be dedicated, i.e. sit the tac mission out in the cockpit. If the craft can't land in the first place I think it's kind of moot.
It seems to imply that every craft can land.

Of those pictures, helicopter_by_just_tenth-dcjli5c.png is probably my favorite.
I was in the process of making "pilots1.png", but if you like it, here's "pilots2.png". I don't know which palette I need, so I left them 24-bit.

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: Some feedback after finishing my campaign
« Reply #10 on: October 14, 2018, 05:45:40 pm »
For now I have this: