UFO:Alien Invasion
General => Tactics => Topic started by: jerzy_cz on August 14, 2012, 04:01:23 pm
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Some thoughts about tactical combat in 2.5 dev:
Aliens don't prefer “orkish approach” any more. They sometimes try to take cover and wait for soldiers, making ambushes. They often get reaction fire and with plasma or particle rifles its quite dangerous, especially with medikits downgraded. With plenty of new maps it makes the combat much more challenging. So what to do? Sniper rifle is my best friend, later mostly replaced with coilguns. When direct assault is required I try to shoot trough walls with bolter(later coilgun). Grenades are excellent, never got shot by reaction fire when tossing one. Plasma and later particle pistols are fast enough, but they are a bit to inaccurate.
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assault rifles were improved, i must admit i didn't use all snipers and grenades any more when i tried some 2.5 but used like 2 snipers and 2 assault.
i vaguely remember something had happened to flamethrower (a fun weapon that forces the wielder to move forward most of the time), for some reason i didn't feel like using it anymore, is it still a good weapon?
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Well, flamer still has a good firepower, but less shots. Problem is with too high TU cost. Soldier often kills an alien with one shot, but also gets hit from reaction fire. It should be avoided because of downgraded medikits and new wound system.
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assault rifles were improved, i must admit i didn't use all snipers and grenades any more when i tried some 2.5 but used like 2 snipers and 2 assault.[...]
it seems assault rifles do no damage at all to combat bloodspider (took some time to get to that point in the game) and armored ortnoks are extremely hard to take down with assault rifle.
so that makes me regret starting to use assault rifles at all, and even more so, writing that they are good in the forum.
so, the update is that assault rifles are useless, and your soldiers will be dead as soon as they run into a combat bloodspider.
i wonder what weapons are good at taking down those armored opponents, or is it just sniper-rifles-only again, just need to suffer the increased time unit costs.
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Weapon usefulness is designed to change as you meet new enemies. There is (or should be) no single load out or team setup that will last you the whole game.
Combat Bloodspiders come pretty late (if you're playing with a build from the last few months). They're pretty resistant to Plasma and Normal weapon damage. Try needlers or particle weapons if you've got them. Otherwise, try out the flamer or even lasers.
Armoured Ortnoks are beasts, but fire damage is particularly effective against them, so try that out. They're weak to lasers, but the whole weapon set is probably too weak to effectively take down an Ortnok without a lot of shots on target.
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yeah, combat bloodspiders and ortnoks appeared in november, maybe already in october.
sniper rifle can still kill combat bloodspider in 2 or 3 shots, but everything else has been pointless so far.
as far as i remember, bloodspider legs were vulnerable to explosions, but they seem to survive quite a few frag grenades.
particle beam battlescape weapons have not yet appeared.
flamer against an ortnok seems somewhat out of the question, as the ortnok is usually wielding a needler.
have not tested incendiary grenades, maybe i should.
as a side note, is it possible to reduce alien ai aggressiveness in some config file?
other than the aliens being tough, missions seem somewhat boring with the aliens being so predictable.
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as far as i remember, bloodspider legs were vulnerable to explosions, but they seem to survive quite a few frag grenades.
The Combat variety are particularly reinforced against blast damage types. Maybe too much, but the blast category is kind of a hard one to balance. The Combat Bloodspider is supposed to be a difficult alien and you're supposed to feel out-gunned when they and their Armoured Ortnok partners start to appear.
have not tested incendiary grenades, maybe i should.
We have a new incendiary damage type, but this hasn't been included with the alien resistance values, so I'd be curious to know your results. I don't know what happens when a resistance value doesn't exist for a particular damage type. I assume it's just 0, which would make the ortnok vulnerable to incendiary. But the incendiary weaponry is not very powerful at the moment. This will need to be worked on further in the future.
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In fact, the code is dealing raw damage for incendiary fields, so it completely ignores resistance AND armour protection, guess I'll have a look at it later.
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it took about 4 or 5 incendiary grenades to kill combat bloodspider, but then i noticed that even when the bloodspider survived it was dead next round, and once a few tiles from where it originally stood.
and 1 or 2 incendiary grenades were enough to kill it, but not on my turn.
and then i tried with my own soldier, and moving the soldier adjacent to fire caused damage about half the health points (didn't try moving into fire, though).
would be optimal if that was time units spent in (or near) fire causing damage, but that may be hard to do, whatever.
it is cool enough that incendiary grenades are special that way.
one candlelight with flamer was not enough to kill the bloodspider, btw.
ok, that's the results of what i tried with incendiary.
then i killed 2 armored ortnoks (from landed harvester) with two sniper rifle shots each, the snipers had competent (about 35) sniper and accuracy skills.
the same snipers did one-shot on shevaar and armored taman (from crashed fighter) in the next battle.
did damage depend on skills?
that makes old-timers even more valuable and new recruits more useless.
sniper rifle has somewhat high one shot damage, and therefore it is useful against armor.
that is, if i remember correctly that armor value is subtracted.
therefore, there doesn't seem to be any reason to use anything else but sniper rifle right from the start in order to train the skill, and assault skill experience seems a waste.
i mean, you can suffer the increased time units cost, but at least it is possible to kill something.
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I have to say that one thing that's really bothered me since maybe v2.2, is that the rocket launcher / recoiless rifle is your heaviest weapon, but is essentially ineffective against heavy aliens like the cyborg ortnok. Making a direct hit with a weapon that fires one shot every two turns with modest accuracy and only a handful of extra rounds, should at least temporarily incapacitate an opponent that isn't literally a light tank or heavy UGV.
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I have to say that one thing that's really bothered me since maybe v2.2, is that the rocket launcher / recoiless rifle is your heaviest weapon, but is essentially ineffective against heavy aliens like the cyborg ortnok. Making a direct hit with a weapon that fires one shot every two turns with modest accuracy and only a handful of extra rounds, should at least temporarily incapacitate an opponent that isn't literally a light tank or heavy UGV.
It's a little difficult to balance properly. But I hope to introduce an advanced rocket ammo for later in the game that would do better against the heavy aliens.
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I'll poke this a bit.
First, about rocket launchers. Is it possible for rocket to deal two separate hits? I mean, is it possible to make a HEAT rocket that would deal only low area damage (something like frag grenade) but would actually deal huge damage to target that was directly hit?
And I've ran into a tactical problem that I need help with. It's that #%$^$$!ed map Mansion...lots of narrow corridors with doors. So often, it happens to me that I position my troops near doors, and alien opens them...there is no space to flank him to avoid reaction fire, and some aliens already have needlers that are deadly even against nanocomposite armors. How do you deal with that?
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Auto-mission. ;)
Actually I went with auto-mission because it takes forever to load the map and I got my team wiped out by a bad spawn. (Shevaar on the balcony with a Plasma Blaster. Snipers couldn't hit over the railing, grenade launcher couldn't get close enough to arc over, cover seemed to do nada.
Some of the maps seem a little weighted against the player. Like the Street map. You'd better have at least two exceptional snipers, or you're in deep trouble. I crashed a UFO and found myself fighting two Shevaar, two Taman, and THREE Hovernets. Fortunately the Hovernets go down in one-two shots of the Sniper Rifle. The Machine Gunners I brought were useless. (Plasma Blasters not actual MG's)
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Nope. In this mission I have first opportunity to capture a needler. But that's also a biggest problem, as needler reaction fire is capable of tearing full health soldier with nanocomposite armor apart.
It got a bit better after restarting a few times and going more slowly with scanning ahead with IR goggles, but I ragequit after it went well, was hunting for last alien, and he turned out to be shevaar with needler, ambushing and killing one of my best soldiers...and after retry I got crash to geoscape :/
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The way to deal with that is ambush tactics combined with sniper rifles. Ambush the alien around corners where it's your reaction fire not his, or if you come around a corner and see one, duck back and bounce grenades in his face. Or use a cannon fodder with a rocket launcher.
I don't have any experience with needlers yet, but I really like Plasma Rifles with Full-Auto.
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Given the lethality of tactical combat in 2.5 auto-battle REALLY feels like a cheat. I still have yet to loose a solider in auto-battle and in tactical combat a lose of 1 or 2 is nearly guaranteed. I've lost over half the squad and considered it "acceptable loses"
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First, about rocket launchers. Is it possible for rocket to deal two separate hits? I mean, is it possible to make a HEAT rocket that would deal only low area damage (something like frag grenade) but would actually deal huge damage to target that was directly hit?
Not really two hits, but I think it might be possible, if you set both damage and spldmg for a fire mode it should have the effect that you describe, but note that both 'hits' will have the same damage type.
So often, it happens to me that I position my troops near doors, and alien opens them...there is no space to flank him to avoid reaction fire, and some aliens already have needlers that are deadly even against nanocomposite armors. How do you deal with that?
Flashbang!
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One issue I've noticed: Aimed fire on the assault weapons seems useless as anything other than "ammo saving" mode. As far as I can tell, the reasons are twofold:
1) The spread reduction relative to the other fire types is pretty low; you can pretty much always get more hits by firing more shots instead.
2) Aimed shots use the Sniper skill, not the Assault skill. Your soldiers are thus using the "wrong" skill, worsening the accuracy balance further.
H-Hour, could you take a look at this? Much obliged!
So often, it happens to me that I position my troops near doors, and alien opens them...there is no space to flank him to avoid reaction fire, and some aliens already have needlers that are deadly even against nanocomposite armors. How do you deal with that?
Plasma Blade. 6 TUs to insta-kill any enemy in the game - even armored Ortnoks!
Just don't spend them recklessly; each one costs 50 Alien Materials and 1500 worker-hours to replace.
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I don't have the blades yet...that's the problem. They've been researched just a while ago, but I don't have enough for deployment yet.
My current team setup: 2x plasma rifles (these are awesome in 2.5), 1x laser rifle, 1x heavy laser, 1x flamer, 1x GL with plasma grenades, 1x sniper rifle, 1x bolter. Secondary weapons are laser/plasma pistols depending on primary (lasers and sniper/bolter get plasma, rest laser), monomolecular knife in backpack, one plasma and some utility grenades for everyone. I am still experimenting with lasers and bolter, looks like bolter will have to go, the damage and accuracy increase over sniper is too low to make up for the 28 TU shots.
Oh, is there any feedback thread for weapon rebalances in 2.5?
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1) The spread reduction relative to the other fire types is pretty low; you can pretty much always get more hits by firing more shots instead.
2) Aimed shots use the Sniper skill, not the Assault skill. Your soldiers are thus using the "wrong" skill, worsening the accuracy balance further.
Both intended.
@Sarin: You've got no quick weapons to handle close-quarters confrontations. Flamer may use close skill, but it's a TU hog. Try out the plasma blaster and you may see better results in reaction fire match-ups.
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Interesting, never tried P. Blaster yet. It used to be useless, and aliens with plasma rifles were always a bigger threat to me.
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Warning: Plasma Blaster Ball Mode WILL kill the firer if you're too close. Unfortunately, if you're very far away, it won't hit anything.
Single shot mode works quite well though.
Finally ran into an alien with a Plasma Grenade.
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I did it eventually :D
Biggest threat in this map were two aliens armed with needlers. Eventually after several retries they spawned both at front door of the mansion, allowing my sniper to engage them over long range. He suffered a few glancing blows from needlers, but managed to hit both, eventually bleeding them to death. Needlers appear to be awesome assault weapons, but their effectivity drops quickly over distance, becoming something like death of thousand cuts.
Anyway...I don't have coilgun yet, and I am wondering if I should even research it. Problem is I do not know the TU cost of its aimed shot, if it is 28 like bolter, I'll skip them for now and focus on getting a new interceptors and dropships FINALLY into the air. About that, the material cost of the new aircraft is insanely disproportionate to gain of other materials. I have 5 AM storage buildings full, sold at least 20 alien propulsion units and some other stuff, and I still haven't collected enough alien materials for a single Stingray. Deploying Dragons/Starchasers is out of question since they're not that cheaper to make up for the difference in performance, I need something that can blow corrupters and harvesters out of the sky easily.
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I find assault rifle with full auto to be best with bloodspiders, actually I find myself preferring assault rifle over plasma rifle because with assault rifle enemy is still killable with full auto mode from typical range where I spot enemy, while with plasma rifle soldiers are not hitting the target in any other mode than snap shot it seems, surely if enemy is around 3-4 squares away, then plasma rifle is better, but 10 squares or more is range where I mostly need to shoot at.
Of course I must note that I play at very easy and find that level to match my skills (that are none) perfectly, enough challenge to keep troops alive but not frustrating murdering challenge like most games I find. I play to enjoy not to work :)
Also I have found out that sometimes those lizzard guys retreat and run around a building in attempt to flank me or surprise from behind, also they seem to attempt to get better shot by going to building from backdoor and then approach without being detected to closer to my troops. Maybe I just imagine things, but if it is so, then I find AI being much better than I have seen anywhere else.
Sometimes they get however bit foolish, having 8 guns pointed at one AI he still runs to open in attempt to get those civilians, or maybe he just was getting mad rage as I had bombarded him with grenades of all sorts from cover.
I guess moving and trying to maintain being covered despite enemy movements and still have several guns pointed with reflection fire on would be way to go, my attempts at that have been somewhat successful, 3 guys shooting 3 round burst with assault rifles as reflection fire has had good effect to lessen deaths among my troops.
I recently acquired lasers and things got quite bit easier with those, because of range and sheer power, now only two guys need to shoot lizard and it goes down.
However I think that with more difficult setting it will become quickly frustrating at least for me, surely it is superior enemy that one has to fight and at normal level I would think that it should be quite a struggle to fight off that enemy, playing very hard level probably should be nearly impossible with only perfect tactics leading victory. I'm too scared to even try of such.
Oh yes, plasma grenades seem to work quite nicely, but one needs to have them stop right next to enemy's feet to them to be working well.
I keep medikits at holster, along with grenades that I have also at belt, spare clip at belt, haven't really used Secondary weapons as rifles work so well even from close range. I try to get them come close instead of me going close also, that way they I get less reaction fire damage.
Flamethrower is nice inside of buildings, but outside I really can't find much use for it because of limited range, but it has great amount of power and it is really good against bloodspiders if used in reaction fire mode, candle light to blood spider and then it is easy to kill with lesser firepower.
Inside houses, I use group of three usually, keeping those corners covered and remembering that I can usually get glimpse what is around corner and come back without enemy firing at me, then throw grenades by bouncing them off from wall to make them go around the corner, evens things a bit when reaction fire ensues as I wait behind a corner for enemy to run into gunfire.
Probably I make lot of errors, so I like to play my first campaign at very easy and I must say that I enjoy a lot of it.
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I find assault rifle with full auto to be best with bloodspiders, actually I find myself preferring assault rifle over plasma rifle because with assault rifle enemy is still killable with full auto mode from typical range where I spot enemy, while with plasma rifle soldiers are not hitting the target in any other mode than snap shot it seems, surely if enemy is around 3-4 squares away, then plasma rifle is better, but 10 squares or more is range where I mostly need to shoot at.
Of course I must note that I play at very easy and find that level to match my skills (that are none) perfectly, enough challenge to keep troops alive but not frustrating murdering challenge like most games I find. I play to enjoy not to work :)
Also I have found out that sometimes those lizzard guys retreat and run around a building in attempt to flank me or surprise from behind, also they seem to attempt to get better shot by going to building from backdoor and then approach without being detected to closer to my troops. Maybe I just imagine things, but if it is so, then I find AI being much better than I have seen anywhere else.
Sometimes they get however bit foolish, having 8 guns pointed at one AI he still runs to open in attempt to get those civilians, or maybe he just was getting mad rage as I had bombarded him with grenades of all sorts from cover.
I guess moving and trying to maintain being covered despite enemy movements and still have several guns pointed with reflection fire on would be way to go, my attempts at that have been somewhat successful, 3 guys shooting 3 round burst with assault rifles as reflection fire has had good effect to lessen deaths among my troops.
I recently acquired lasers and things got quite bit easier with those, because of range and sheer power, now only two guys need to shoot lizard and it goes down.
However I think that with more difficult setting it will become quickly frustrating at least for me, surely it is superior enemy that one has to fight and at normal level I would think that it should be quite a struggle to fight off that enemy, playing very hard level probably should be nearly impossible with only perfect tactics leading victory. I'm too scared to even try of such.
Oh yes, plasma grenades seem to work quite nicely, but one needs to have them stop right next to enemy's feet to them to be working well.
I keep medikits at holster, along with grenades that I have also at belt, spare clip at belt, haven't really used Secondary weapons as rifles work so well even from close range. I try to get them come close instead of me going close also, that way they I get less reaction fire damage.
Flamethrower is nice inside of buildings, but outside I really can't find much use for it because of limited range, but it has great amount of power and it is really good against bloodspiders if used in reaction fire mode, candle light to blood spider and then it is easy to kill with lesser firepower.
Inside houses, I use group of three usually, keeping those corners covered and remembering that I can usually get glimpse what is around corner and come back without enemy firing at me, then throw grenades by bouncing them off from wall to make them go around the corner, evens things a bit when reaction fire ensues as I wait behind a corner for enemy to run into gunfire.
Probably I make lot of errors, so I like to play my first campaign at very easy and I must say that I enjoy a lot of it.
Plasma rifle is a lot dependent on soldier's skill. Picking the right squad is important, I always choose to recruit only troops with 30+ mind, 20+ speed, accuracy and one weapon skill. Filtering them every month is annoying, but it's important. In my game, december 2084, plasma rifle is main killing weapon. I have two in squad, and in the last mission they accounted for all 6 aliens from crashed fighter, 5 of them in first turn. I found full auto capable of reliably hitting alien without any cover at least once over half of small map.
I found secondary weapons to be quite useful on some troops. While guys with assault rifles won't use them much, maybe never, snipers, flamers, GL and RL troops will need them. Essentially everything with either slow action or limited range needs complementary secondary weapon.
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Plasma rifle is a lot dependent on soldier's skill. Picking the right squad is important, I always choose to recruit only troops with 30+ mind, 20+ speed, accuracy and one weapon skill. Filtering them every month is annoying, but it's important. In my game, december 2084, plasma rifle is main killing weapon. I have two in squad, and in the last mission they accounted for all 6 aliens from crashed fighter, 5 of them in first turn. I found full auto capable of reliably hitting alien without any cover at least once over half of small map.
I found secondary weapons to be quite useful on some troops. While guys with assault rifles won't use them much, maybe never, snipers, flamers, GL and RL troops will need them. Essentially everything with either slow action or limited range needs complementary secondary weapon.
I think my game is at November 2084 currently, I use mainly laser rifles now.
Not sure how those weight penalties will change things, it might be that fast small weapons become more useful now, plasma rifle was using less TU's than assault rifle if I remember correctly. Electromagnetic gun is such that I can shoot it at the moment, have to wait a bit so that hard working guys get things balanced again, but certainly this new weight penalty system will change our tactics and even it will mean lot of changes how I play, they are probably eventually going to be again one great improvement.
Before you rush to update to have that feature, I suggest looking my post from bug reports section.
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I had a full squad load out of Plasma Pistols, had a base assault, and lost all the pistols.
In any case, the Pistol is perhaps the most awesome side arm of them. Yes, the Machine Pistol only takes 3 squares and the SMG holds 50 shots, but the Pistol is just plain awesome up close. At 4 TU a shot, you can out shoot anything and not trip reaction fire.
Plasma Pistol is more awesome because of the improved damage. Pity I lost those.
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Minor opinion here: Bleeding soldiers need to stabilise after the last alien is killed.
I just lost my best sniper because someone reaction killed the last alien when I'd only gotten one of the two wounds healed.
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Minor opinion here: Bleeding soldiers need to stabilise after the last alien is killed.
I just lost my best sniper because someone reaction killed the last alien when I'd only gotten one of the two wounds healed.
One solution would be to have battlescape end only after one is ready and hits the leave button, kind of how in JA2 it had, you collected stuff and patched up guys after the battle and then left the area.
Certainly it is good to have guy to bleed death if not patched and travelling for 10 hours, also brings up point of having enough medical supplies to be able to patch guys, maybe landing craft should house medikit or two though?
I think my soldiers need a gym, started new campaign and flamer guy can't carry more than flamer, armor and one grenade, probably need to swap for another soldier as that one is bit weak for heavy weapon guy, despite of his skills.
Can't now put medikit for every dude, also for grenade launcher guys have to do without 2nd gun to be able to carry spare grenades, so quite big change to tactics is in order, to work with weight penalties imo. Not sure if gradual penalty would be something to aim at some point, adding combat knife can now half the TU's.
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Certainly it is good to have guy to bleed death if not patched and travelling for 10 hours, also brings up point of having enough medical supplies to be able to patch guys, maybe landing craft should house medikit or two though?
Remember that I'd already healed him once on that turn, and he was adjacent to two people with ready medkits. But he died after the reaction fire killed the last alien because only one of the two bleeding wounds was healed.
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Minor opinion here: Bleeding soldiers need to stabilise after the last alien is killed.
I just lost my best sniper because someone reaction killed the last alien when I'd only gotten one of the two wounds healed.
You could make a feature request (http://sourceforge.net/p/ufoai/feature-requests/) on SF, so DarkRain can take a look and maybe change it.
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I've never lost one in the transport. They auto-stabilize after battle and just don't heal til they reach Hospital from what I've seen.
Hmm, you killed an Alien by reaction fire and your guy died on the field right?
What I'm confused on is what even happened... if the alien was killed by reaction fire then you'd already ended your turn and your character was due to take more damage anyway, if the alien had still been alive your character would logically have died at the begining of the next round.
In fact that would still be what happened, the round just ended immediately because you'd won, if I follow this at all.
Basically I'm having trouble seeing a situation in which your medics weren't technically already too late. If they were and you just think the quiet bought by RF killing the last alien should have saved him, okay cool.
On the other hand if the alien dying out of turn someone prevented normal end of game bandage and he died in flight well that's completely different and a lot buggier.
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What I'm confused on is what even happened... if the alien was killed by reaction fire then you'd already ended your turn and your character was due to take more damage anyway, if the alien had still been alive your character would logically have died at the begining of the next round.
Soldiers with 40+ health don't die from one round of bleeding.
The wounded soldier had been healed once already but still had a bleeding marker on him.
During the alien's turn one of my soldiers killed the last alien with reaction fire.
The end of battle report listed no soldiers killed, but only seven soldiers surviving.
When the dropship returned to base I had seven soldiers at full health and was missing the wounded soldier (but I kept his gear).
Is that a bit more descriptive and understandable?
And yeah, I'll feature request it.
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Okay, weird. It sounds like it did somehow not bandage on game end.
See, I've done this the opposite way and saved a soldier who medics couldn't reach by ending the round so I'm pretty sure you don't need to bandage before the map ends... or you aren't suppoed to need to.
Yeah and bleeding doesn't count as a kill for the other side. This is consistent for aliens too.
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I divide my soldiers in 3 categories (as loadout and role, not as squads)
1. The beginners. They get the best armor, and are in the front rows.
2. Experienced soldiers. They have no armor at all, to benefit from increased time units, and carry laser, plasma, or enhanced assault rifles. They end their turns behind solders of type 1.
3. The best of the best of the best. They begin to wear armor again, and have a wide variety of loadouts. They travel with the group, but have special roles, like flanking, etc.