General > Discussion
Weapons and damage in 2.5 (HEAD)
Jon_dArc:
--- Quote from: Starbug on May 24, 2012, 02:17:34 pm ---Eh, what I say will only count for 2.4 stable release, as I haven't played 2.5
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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 :D
--- Quote ---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.
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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).
--- Quote ---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.
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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:
--- Quote from: Jon_dArc on May 24, 2012, 03:22:30 pm ---The rebalancing has been dramatic. How things were in 2.4 is only relevant insofar as existing player expectations will be guided by that.
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Ack, I'm probably not qualified to be talking about damage output then, but yeah, disscussion I can go for at least! :D
--- Quote from: Jon_dArc on May 24, 2012, 03:22:30 pm ---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
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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 >:(
--- Quote from: Jon_dArc on May 24, 2012, 03:22:30 pm ---(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.
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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)
--- Quote from: Jon_dArc on May 23, 2012, 05:47:23 pm ---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.
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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 :-\
--- Quote from: Jon_dArc on May 23, 2012, 05:47:23 pm --- I haven't yet developed a principled way to account for accuracy,
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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 :P
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?
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