Goldfish, thanks for posting. You may or may not know this, but 2.5-dev has undergone and is still undergoing the most comprehensive and balance-altering changes since I've been involved in the project (2009). That means over the last 6 months you've been playing a highly unstable version of the game (unstable from the point of view of game balance). You would be surprised how many of the things you have commented about have been significantly changed just in the very last month. Others are going to be changed before 2.5 goes out the door.
Some of the "fallback mechanisms", like the medikit exploit used to keep soldiers out of the hospital, were necessary precisely because of a long-standing problem with game balance. It's the underlying problem we need to solve so that the game mechanics do not survive from one exploit to another. I hope that 2.5 will make significant progress in this, but I'm sure numbers will need to continue to be tweaked.
*spoiler* If you don't want spoilers, don't read the text below or look at this
rough timeline for the new
campaign staging that is planned. *spoiler*
1. Jon_dArc raised the issue that laser weapons had been too heavily nerfed after the first round of weapon balancing hit early in 2.5's development cycle. On October 7, I introduced some significant (and controversial) changes to address this. In short, handheld laser weapons are no longer available at the start, but come as an early-middle game replacement for plasma weapons, which now perform poorly against armoured aliens. Their damage values have been adjusted accordingly, although they are still not as accurate as they used to be. During that stage of the game, they should be very useful.
2. I agree that there are some cumbersome elements to the base building that could be revised, and I'm not convinced that the plan for
larger bases will help matters. But I don't have any better vision for it.
3. I think we probably disagree about this. The difficulty of keeping soldiers alive on x-com's battlescape was one of its most engaging elements, I think, and for the most part ours is ridiculously easy. This is the result of a combination of things (maps and AI) that will take a long time to work out. But in general combat in 2.5 will be a lot bloodier. You will lose more soldiers in 2.5, but the overall campaign should be easier because...
4. ... two days ago I implemented some pretty heavy changes to the rate of employees you will receive each month. I've also increased the number of soldiers you start with in all but the hardest campaign (soldiers are nearly doubled in standard campaign). Each campaign now also has a scriptable parameter to effect how many soldiers are received each month, so it will be easy for you or anyone to increase the number if you find it's too low.
I agree completely that the tiny number of employees on offer created a ceiling to what could be done -- it encouraged excessively conservative battlescape tactics and forced us to keep the number of aliens you'll face pretty low. And for most employees the nation happiness factor was exponential, which means that as the nations got really unhappy -- when you really needed employees -- you could end up getting almost no employees. My sense is that most people will end up with too many employees by mid-game now, but we'll see how the new numbers work out.
Because the number of missions has gone down and the time spent in hospitals has gone up, we'll need to look at the stats increase mechanisms to ensure soldiers can realistically level up through a campaign. But that may or may not make it into 2.5.
5. A few points in here. First, one of the things still on my list of items to balance is the research and disassembly times for items. When I do this, I expect it will address a lot of the excessive dependencies you mention. I won't be getting rid of techs at this point -- even though I think you're right that splitting things into tons of different techs is kind of annoying -- but I will be making up for that by reducing research times where appropriate. You may need to plough through UFO Theory -> Specific UFO -> Disassembly to get to alien materials. But this whole process will probably not take as long. The disassembly vs. items balance is one thing long flagged as out of whack.
Second, the human armors are also on my list to check their balance with the new weapons and timeline. We've got power armor, but it is scheduled to be a pretty late-game development, so nano will have to have a longer shelf-life.
Third, research topics that yield no value. A lot of players really enjoy the lengthy lore behind the game. Personally, I find it tedious. But I suspect it will stay. It fits our niche, which tends to be more detailed, micro-managing, nerdy strategy. What I hope to do -- although it won't happen for 2.5 -- is to better integrate the storyline research with practical items. In an ideal world, a string of "useless" storyline research techs would end in an important item or ability or whatever. They would be the long-term research investment to counter the shorter-term research into weapons, etc. I suspect this won't really be possible until psionics is implemented, though. Looking at the storyline texts we have now, it's very difficult to think of ways to tie them into useable technology.
6. There has been some discussion about creating some very modest production for profit, but I doubt it will be enough to significantly change the game's balance. What is more likely is that in the course of adjusting disassembly times, recovery amounts of alien materials/antimatter, and the price of materials, I may make it viable to earn a small profit from selling disassembled UFO materials. Neither of these will significantly alter the economic model of the game. If it's not working -- if players aren't getting enough money -- then the numbers need to be tweaked. Relying on a backup method that is essentially an exploit is not, I think, the best way to deal with this issue.
