Weapons and damage in 2.5 (HEAD)

[H-Hour]

I'm still considering bumping up flechette shells damage, so that may address some of your concerns. More specific responses:

Mm. I'm not sure how often this is going to happen, though, without some serious magnification in the situational effectiveness differences between the ammo options—reloading is expensive, which puts the reloading soldier a bit less than half a turn behind the rest of the team in advancing. Additionally, the current partial magazine is sacrificed. Even in the cases where it seems like switching would be most strongly favoured (switching a grenadier to flechettes when entering a harvester), I find myself more likely to just pull a melee weapon.

To each his own, I guess. I would always prefer to take a turn to consolidate my soldiers defensively and prepare them for a breach. Melee weapons for you, flechette shells for me. (Side note: eventually we will have alien AI that does not just rush the player as fast as they can.)

Really, I think to ever be glad about missing your intended target (and thus potentially hitting a secondary target), you need a situation like the 2.4 machine gun's huge number of shots and high damage—especially in the absence of any sort of wound penalty, anything that risks leaving the original target alive is very difficult to justify, even if more total damage is dealt out.

I don't know, I run into lots of situations where I'm dealing with almost-dead aliens, either because previous shots didn't kill them or otherwise. Again, this may just be a play style preference, depending on how important it is for you to ensure a kill with one soldier.

Mm. The knife is actually not bad against Taman, especially when you consider that reloading to Flechette is 4 stabs worth of time (and actually firing is another 3 stabs). The reaction fire issue similarly runs up against the machine pistol, which does the same damage at substantially better accuracy and range and gets two more shots for the same TU (full-auto vs. snap shot). Damage type becomes worse as the game proceeds, but flechette grenades never get better either and I'd argue it quickly becomes preferable to have another soldier covering the grenadier than go through contortions to give him/her ranged reaction fire capability.

Even something as small as a machine pistol takes up more space than a reload of flechette shells. This will probably become more relevant when we have a proper weight system in place, where carrying too much weight can slow down a soldier.

You're right that there are other options that can also fill the role of the flechette shells: melee weapons, smaller secondary firearms. Each one has its benefits. Melee weapons have high damage per TU, but no range. Secondaries have high damage, but take more inventory space. Flechette grenade has reduced damage per TU, but it takes up 1 inventory slot. As long as flechette grenades have their own niche -- even if it is not the "best" in most situations -- I'm happy to keep them.

[Jon_dArc]

To each his own, I guess. I would always prefer to take a turn to consolidate my soldiers defensively and prepare them for a breach. Melee weapons for you, flechette shells for me. (Side note: eventually we will have alien AI that does not just rush the player as fast as they can.)

A non-rushing AI might help—one of the big reservations I have with consolidating is that due to alien AI it's usually either a waste (aliens stuck on upper floor) or involves giving the initiative to the aliens (aliens on lower floor, rushing out). Also, even in the Corrupter the quarters tend to be tight enough to make it difficult for more than the first few soldiers in to matter (admittedly in the Corrupter the chokepoint happens inside the UFO proper, on the second level, but aliens still typically cluster on the far side of it), encouraging just having the grenadier do kneeling laps outside to train Quickness rather than going through contortions to get him active inside. But yeah, AI could be a big limiting factor here.

Even something as small as a machine pistol takes up more space than a reload of flechette shells. This will probably become more relevant when we have a proper weight system in place, where carrying too much weight can slow down a soldier.

Sure, but with the death of the three-round burst I feel like a lot of inventory pressure has already come off of grenadiers, and they didn't feel particularly tight to begin with. I certainly don't think I've ever reloaded a GL more than once on a mission in 2.5; have you?

You're right that there are other options that can also fill the role of the flechette shells: melee weapons, smaller secondary firearms. Each one has its benefits. Melee weapons have high damage per TU, but no range. Secondaries have high damage, but take more inventory space. Flechette grenade has reduced damage per TU, but it takes up 1 inventory slot. As long as flechette grenades have their own niche -- even if it is not the "best" in most situations -- I'm happy to keep them.

Sure, I dig. My argument is just that (as it stands, without possible damage adjustment/etc.) I don't actually think that niche exists

~J

[Jon_dArc]

So in my laser weapon analysis above I focused on the Laser Pistol, both because it's the laser weapon I used most in 2.4 (laser pistol in one hand, melee weapon/grenade or later particle beam pistol in the other) and because its weakening was particularly dramatic (no more long-range accuracy, and guaranteed-1 damage in a surprising number of situations). I'm given the impression, though, that the general community favoured the Laser Rifle more, and the Heavy Laser probably also deserves an examination.

Since full-sized weapons are much less frequently moved to/from the inventory in my experience, I'm going to skip comparing the weapons based on their inventory sizes/arrangements.

A Laser Rifle gets you Crouch 0.85, Range 200, 14 effective ammo (28 at 2 ammo per shot), 14 TU reload cost, and 2x1 ammo. They deal 42±10 laser_medium at 8 TU/shot for Spread 0.8 or 12 TU/3 shots at Spread 0.9.

An Assault Rifle gets you Crouch 0.85, Range 100, 30 ammo, 12 TU reload cost, and 2x1 ammo. They deal 42±5 normal_medium at 8 TU/shot for Spread 1.2, 12 TU/3 shots for Spread 1.4, 16 TU/8 shots for Spread 1.6, or 16 TU/shot for Spread 1 using Sniper skill instead of Assault (though if advancement still works like 2.4, that means better Accuracy training potential).

A Plasma Rifle gets you Crouch 0.85, Range 70, 20 ammo, 12 TU reload cost, and 2x1 ammo. They deal 80±10 plasma_medium ammo at 8 TU/shot for Spread 1.2, 12 TU/3 shots for Spread 1.5, 16 TU/6 shots for Spread 1.8, and 16 TU/shot for Spread 1 using Sniper skill.

Now, per-round damage, range-constrained values in parentheses as above:

Taman:
Assault Rifle: 52/32/(1-7)±5
Laser Rifle: 27/22/17±10
Plasma Rifle: 75/55/35±10

Ortnok:
Assault Rifle: 22/12/(1)±5
Laser Rifle: 12/(1-17)/(1-12)±10
Plasma Rifle: 80/60/40±10

Shevaar:
Assault Rifle: 22/12/(1)±5
Laser Rifle: 42/37/32±10
Plasma Rifle: 100/80/60±10

Bloodspider:
Assault Rifle: 42±5
Laser Rifle: 22±10
Plasma Rifle: 100±10

I've run out of time at the moment to really analyze these results, so I'll post this and come back.

~J

[Jon_dArc]

Ok, well, been busier than expected but at least I can give a partial analysis now.

To some extent I'm about to do what I just assured TrashMan I wasn't doing, namely mostly ignoring the effect of accuracy. I'll revisit this analysis to make sure it holds up when that's taken into account later.

The big thing that strikes me, looking at these damage numbers, is that it's hard to justify taking a Laser Rifle over an Assault Rifle, especially any time in the period after laser weapons become available—at least on a raw damage basis, the laser rifle simply isn't competitive until Medium Alien Armor or Shevaar enter the scene, by which time the laser rifle has probably been thoroughly forgotten in storage (if the player hasn't simply sold whatever stockpiles had been acquired). Again with the shots for a kill analysis:

Taman:
Assault Rifle: 2-3/3-5/15-130
Laser Rifle: 3-8/4-11/4-18
Plasma Rifle: 2/2-3/3-6

Ortnok:
Assault Rifle: 6-12/9-22/150-190
Laser Rifle: 7-95/9^†-190/13-190
Plasma Rifle: 2-3/3-4/3-7

^†: Note that although the best-case is the same as the AR, because of range constraint damage dealt will be 1 20% of the time, pushing the probabilities substantially away from the best cases.

Shevaar:
Assault Rifle: 5-10/8-23/120-160
Laser Rifle: 3-5/3-6/3-8
Plasma Rifle: 2/2-3/2-4

Bloodspider:
Assault Rifle: 4-5
Laser Rifle: 5-13
Plasma Rifle: 2

I'll need to account for accuracy to be sure, but between the substantially larger effective magazine, the greater shot efficiency (8 rounds for 16 TU), and the often significantly smaller number of rounds that need to land on target, I feel like the AR is simply outclassing the laser rifle until they both become obsolete—and that's to say nothing of the plasma rifle.

~J

[Battlescared]

The big thing that strikes me, looking at these damage numbers, is that it's hard to justify taking a Laser Rifle over an Assault Rifle...

So take the Assault Rifle, or the electromagnetic rifle, or any of the other rifles.  I dump the laser rifle in favor of the heavy laser, plasma rifle, or the em rifle.  Either three choices are better for one reason or another.  I've also carried an assault rifle long into the campaign to help with balancing weapon ammo usage.  Assault rifles always have ammo for sale, laser rifles take a bit before the world supply chain takes over, and if I load up on lasers, I'll burn through ammo too quickly.

The one thing I would say though, and this may not be too popular, is that you should have to research the lasers in order (just earth based tech, stuff we find we should be researchable whenever).  Start with the pistol and work your way to the heavy, dumping the lesser weapons along the way.  Then at least you learn the weapons and take the ones that work for you.  For the last few releases I've found the heavy laser to be the more effective and useful in my squads.  It puts enough damage on them at range to soften them up a bit from it's accuracy, and at close range it hits pretty hard.

Now, if there is a gimp to accuracy in 2.5, then yes, that may make it far less useful.  That might negate the main reason I carry them.  I'd have to play with them to see how they work in practice.

In general, I hate these kinds of analysis because you have to take the weapons in context of game play.  Many things make a weapon a better choice over another other than just numbers and damage, such as map types and when you expect to engage the enemy.  But good analysis anyway.  A little theory can go along way.

[Jon_dArc]

So take the Assault Rifle, or the electromagnetic rifle, or any of the other rifles.

But then why have the laser rifle in the game, taking up space in the menus and possibly luring players into trying to use them?

Now, if there is a gimp to accuracy in 2.5, then yes, that may make it far less useful.

They're drastically different in 2.5. 2.4-based knowledge won't help in this discussion except as historical perspective.

In general, I hate these kinds of analysis because you have to take the weapons in context of game play.  Many things make a weapon a better choice over another other than just numbers and damage, such as map types and when you expect to engage the enemy.

I'm not understanding the objection. Certainly I agree that purely quantitative analysis uninformed by experience of gameplay is an extremely dangerous practice, due to the risk of either undervaluing weapon characteristics that are difficult to account for quantitatively (accuracy is the big one here, and range to a lesser extent) or missing indirect consequences (say, a weapon that's only particularly good against one kind of enemy, but that enemy is really dangerous), but as I've indicated above, this is informed by gameplay—I first played the game and thought to myself "hey, laser weapons kinda suck", and only then pulled out the numbers to quantify exactly how much they suck, whether I'm overlooking some situation in which they don't suck, and also be able to make a more convincing argument than "hey, laser weapons kinda suck".

But it's not clear how "map types and when you expect to engage the enemy" is something you wouldn't get from "numbers and damage"—those numbers include range and accuracy (even if at this point that only gets factored in in a broad, comparative way), TU use (answering questions like "how many shots can I get off in a turn" and "how late in the turn can I discover an alien and still be able to open fire"), and, yes, damage—like the fact that even with infinite accuracy the laser pistol is worthless against an Ortnok. What still gets overlooked in this sort of analysis?

(On the topic of accuracy, I need to confirm the magnitude of effect of soldier attributes/skills—I'd generally expect that to have a larger effect on the high damage/low accuracy weapons, but it is another unaccounted-for variable.)

~J

[Battlescared]

No offense intended, Jon_dArc, I just prefer to figure out what works for me through playing the game and not analyzing the stats behind the scenes.  To each his own.

In most games I've played, there are always weapons that don't quite cut it.  The laser rifle is one, so as to why have it in the game?  Well, if you've never played it, you'd try it, find out it didn't work like you had hoped, and move on.  Just like in real life.  So you do the research, design and build it, field it, and guess what... the troops come back with reports that the weapon didn't work exactly like the eggheads thought it would.  Back to the drawing board.  That's why I said the research needs to be in order, so you go through that progression.  I did it in order just because, and I like the heavy laser much better.

For reference, back in XCOM, I eventually found out that the laser rifle kicked the most butt and a squad of guys armed with them could cut a map down quickly, even in the later stages.  The heavy laser and laser pistol sucked, however, but I still had to go through them to find that out.  This game is different, so it doesn't bother me if the laser rifle doesn't cut it.  There are others that do, and if the assault rifle works better for a persons tactics than the laser rifle, then that's the weapon they should field.  Hot lead still has certain advantages.

[Jon_dArc]

No offense intended, Jon_dArc, I just prefer to figure out what works for me through playing the game and not analyzing the stats behind the scenes.  To each his own.

None taken. I certainly understand your point of view there, but this is a balancing exercise—my goal isn't to pick the best weapon, it's to make sure that all weapons have a reason to be picked. As such, I think it's a distinct situation from actually playing the game.

In most games I've played, there are always weapons that don't quite cut it.  The laser rifle is one, so as to why have it in the game?  Well, if you've never played it, you'd try it, find out it didn't work like you had hoped, and move on.  Just like in real life.  So you do the research, design and build it, field it, and guess what... the troops come back with reports that the weapon didn't work exactly like the eggheads thought it would.  Back to the drawing board.

The issue is that it's neither fun nor interesting. It's true, dead ends and boondoggles exist in the real world—but we also don't have soldiers and employees randomly die in training accidents, nations demand that you purchase Saracens manufactured by their factories, or any of the other obnoxious things that would realistically happen in a situation like this. As you recognize in your call for the laser weapons to form a research tree, players would quickly learn that it's bad and stop researching it (at least until they run out of stuff to research, if they're too lazy to fire all scientists until more stuff comes along).

That's why I said the research needs to be in order, so you go through that progression.

Why, though? There's no obvious reason why that progression would exist—if anything, the other way around would make more sense, as then each step would require more miniaturization. I also think that the player has too few research choices at any given moment (except briefly in about the second month or so) to begin with.

if the assault rifle works better for a persons tactics than the laser rifle, then that's the weapon they should field.  Hot lead still has certain advantages.

There are two issues to that in my mind: for one, the assault rifle is available on the market at the beginning of the game, and you even get a free supply to start out. The laser rifle requires a three-step research process, then either production or a long wait for the market to spin up. After all that, it should be a clear improvement in at least some circumstance.

The other is that it's not just that the AR "works better for a [person's] tactics", it's that it's genuinely difficult to come up with a tactic in which the laser rifle works—admittedly I'm a little less certain about this than about the laser pistol, as the damage isn't quite so miserable and I haven't yet developed a principled way to account for accuracy, but both the damage calculations and gameplay experience trying to use it have told me that loud and clear.

~J

[Starbug]

Eh, what I say will only count for 2.4 stable release, as I haven't played 2.5, but I always used the laser rifle and heavy laser as a replacement for the sniper rifle, not the assault rifle. Primarily because of the higher accuracy (until something better come along), and the fact that you could never take a 2nd aimed shot with the sniper rifle. Typically both my snipers would miss in a turn, and then my troops would be in danger.

The laser rifle was never gonna compete with the assault rifle in terms of damage output, since it doesn't have a full-auto fire mode, and takes more TUs to fire the same amount of shots. I thought the whole point of the laser weapons was low-damge, but near guaranteed hit? If the accuracy has been lowered that kinda defeats the point...

[headdie]

Its also a different damage type so the theory is that it interacts with armour differently

[Jon_dArc]

Eh, what I say will only count for 2.4 stable release, as I haven't played 2.5

The rebalancing has been dramatic. How things were in 2.4 is only relevant insofar as existing player expectations will be guided by that.

On the other hand, I'm a sucker for discussion

I always used the laser rifle and heavy laser as a replacement for the sniper rifle, not the assault rifle. Primarily because of the higher accuracy (until something better come along), and the fact that you could never take a 2nd aimed shot with the sniper rifle.

It took a while, but I could usually get a sniper to 36 TUs. Also, 30 TUs for an aimed shot plus a snap shot were easily doable, as were 33 for that plus a crouch (or a crouched orthomove). I'm too lazy to dig up what the armor and alien resistance values for 2.4 were right now, but IIRC on non-Shevaar the normal_heavy damage type was significantly better, combined with a significantly higher base damage (a snap shot did 105 damage for the same TU cost as a laser rifle's 126±15 for wave fire, but armor/resistance are tripled against the latter, and although the snap shot is more likely to miss altogether the laser rifle is more likely to suffer from reduced damage by missing at least one of the three shots).

The laser rifle was never gonna compete with the assault rifle in terms of damage output, since it doesn't have a full-auto fire mode, and takes more TUs to fire the same amount of shots.

That's only true in very close-range circumstances—the 2.4 Assault Rifle is incredibly inaccurate, meaning that the laser rifle easily competes in actual damage output at all other ranges. Additionally, IIRC normal_medium was not treated kindly in the resistances.

~J

[Starbug]

The rebalancing has been dramatic. How things were in 2.4 is only relevant insofar as existing player expectations will be guided by that.

Ack, I'm probably not qualified to be talking about damage output then, but yeah, disscussion I can go for at least! 

It took a while, but I could usually get a sniper to 36 TUs. Also, 30 TUs for an aimed shot plus a snap shot were easily doable

Egads, 34 TUs is the best I can manage at the moment! Currently just got to researching the Dragon interceptor, and its October. And thats only cos that guy was an elite recruit. Maybe I'm doing something wrong here >.<

Yeah I noticed the aimed + snap shot combo, quite nice, but was only really possible if the sniper was already crouched and in position from the previous turn, which didn't happen too often for me, the aliens tended to move out of position if they were still alive 

(sniper rifle) a snap shot did 105 damage for the same TU cost as a laser rifle's 126±15 for wave fire, but armor/resistance are tripled against the latter, and although the snap shot is more likely to miss altogether the laser rifle is more likely to suffer from reduced damage by missing at least one of the three shots.

I prefer reduced damage to no damage, but I guess that's just my personal preference. My mine gripe was that, while powerful, I couldn't rely on my snipers, they were more of an added bonus, especially since they couldn't take out an unarmoured Taman on their own (but that's changed now in 2.5 from what I understand, so my tactics would probably change accordingly)

This is a balancing exercise—my goal isn't to pick the best weapon, it's to make sure that all weapons have a reason to be picked.

The laser rifle requires a three-step research process, then either production or a long wait for the market to spin up. After all that, it should be a clear improvement in at least some circumstance.

Agreed.

*[2.4 disclaimer]* I found the laser rifle's 'niche' to be very long ranges - you can take shots that, with other weapons, you wouldn't even attempt. With an assult rifle you might look at a range of 20/30 squares and just think "Best to take cover and wait/move in closer". With a laser rifle you'd take some shots. Sure you'll miss a few. Yes, once medium armour shows up they aren't so great anymore. But if you can take out the unarmoured guys out before they are close enough to do damage, that's always valuble. (Maybe I'm just reckless with ammo though, heh)

This is what the sniper rifle is supposed to be for as well, but in 2.4 I didn't find it accurate enough, so I switched over to laser power. Then again, by my own logic I should probably have used the rocket sniper launcher, but I wanted to check out the lasers too, since the last time I played UFO:AI was before it even had laser weapons o_0

If the 2.5 changes mean the laser weapons no longer fit that use (or any other), then... well... I'm out of useful comments really 

I haven't yet developed a principled way to account for accuracy,

Could perhaps try considering the weapons at 3 distinct ranges, short medium, long? Yeah I know, then it becomes a question of 'what do people consider long range' but that my idea all the same

[H-Hour]

The difficult thing about accounting for accuracy is that it depends on three things which are not constant. First, it depends on what kind of ranges you are actually encountering aliens. This differs greatly from map to map.

Second, it depends on what kind of cover exists in the map. A lot of our maps lack "partial cover", which is to say positions from which you can see aliens but might only have a shot at a head or a part of the torso. A weapon's effective range is much longer when the aliens are walking around in the open.

Third, it depends a lot on play style. Some people prefer a very cautious approach to the battlescape, doing everything they can to prevent soldier deaths. The trade-off between range and damage may be different for those players, even if more calculating players will prefer to close with their enemy.

At the end of the day, more accuracy will always be better. But it's hard to say what the effective range of a close, assault or sniper weapon ought to be. When I was rebalancing the weapons, I used a small firing range map I built to try and visualize effective range in-game. I've attached the files to this post.

The firing_range.map should go into /base/maps/ and the map_firing_range.ufo should go into /base/ufos/. But you will need to compile the .map into a .bsp file to play it. The compiled .bsp is too large to attach. If you do download it and try it out, know that I have included hidden brushes so that any soldiers that stay in the middle can not be hit. You will need to walk them to the edge of the central chamber to fire on aliens.

[Jon_dArc]

Well, before I jump straight to the map, let's see if there's another approach. It looks like angles are in degrees…

Accuracy: 1-(((Acc/100)+(Weap/100))/2)

commonfactor: (0.5 + 1*Accuracy)*Injury

Angles: (Gauss1 * hspread * commonfactor) ?* crouch,
      (Gauss2 * vspread * commonfactor) ?* crouch)

pdf(Gauss1) = pdf(Gauss2) =  N(0,1)

Right at the moment I'm going to ignore Injury.

It looks like a nominal standing actor is 9x9x20, and a square is 11x11.

Well, I'm not going to get further on this tonight, but it looks like at least with some simplifying assumptions (most notably, firing perfectly horizontal) it should be feasible to make a straightforward formula for hit probability.

~J

[ChemBro]

Is it okay to ask here, for what the heavy weapon skill is useful? I saw in 2.5, that no weapon needs the heavy weapon skill. They are now assault, explosive or close combat weapons. Or is there something else?