Playing 2-5 dev

[jerzy_cz]

Hello.
In the beginning I would like to thank for this excellent game. Great work!
I've playing 2.5 dev for some time and have some thoughts about it:
-I like the abundance of maps
-new wound and medikit system is far more realistic, although it can be problematic without more soldiers at your disposal
-new sniper rifle is excellent! I like also gauss rifle with 4 rounds.
-bolter is now some kind of handcannon? 28 TU for aimed shot? Isn’t it a bit too much? And only 2 rounds?
-heavy laser seems to me inferior compared to plasma rifle. In every way. Less damage, same spread, high range is not really so useful, requires a lot of research
-plasma blaster seems now to be useless. Only 35 damage? It’s good for unarmored targets only.
-grenade launcher without multiply shots is not worth using. I think that handgrenades are better.
-needler gun is now more an assault than sniper rifle. Too much spread, seems a bit strange compared to ufopaedia.

[Nokim]

The only laser weapon i have researched is aerial laser cannon. And i've no regret, plasma weapons is available very soon. Yes, i have researched stun laser but never had to use it so that was just waste of time.
Plasma blaster is VERY useful... to weaken aliens and make you rich.
You are wrong about grenade launcher. With PB grenades and new wound system it's quite effective. It's just not so overpowered as before. Hand grenades is useful too but they have too short range.
Needler gun... hmm... it's some bit more useful then plasma blaster. More money. More dead civilians (it's hard to kill armored soldier with it). More damage?

[Jon_dArc]

-bolter is now some kind of handcannon? 28 TU for aimed shot? Isn’t it a bit too much? And only 2 rounds?

Some kind of cannon, more like. IIRC the fluff always had it as a high-tech successor to the Sniper Rifle; it's just that now the stats bear that out. That said, 28 TU may be a tad steep.

-heavy laser seems to me inferior compared to plasma rifle. In every way. Less damage, same spread, high range is not really so useful, requires a lot of research

Laser weapons in general got excessively nerfed. There's a plan going on to make them a later-game anti-alien-armor weapon, and I'm also working on a weapon analysis and comparison tool to help balancing.

-plasma blaster seems now to be useless. Only 35 damage? It’s good for unarmored targets only.

30±5 damage, actually. It's really all about the Ball firemode at the moment.

-grenade launcher without multiply shots is not worth using. I think that handgrenades are better.

You're ignoring the major increase in range and the increased damage which, though it doesn't look very large, pushes GL grenades at nearly point-blank range solidly into one-hit-kill territory. Three-shot mode was critical in 2.4 mostly because it would almost certainly take at least two grenades to actually kill your target.

As for hand grenades, they've got better radius, TU use, and minimum inventory investment but substantially worse range, decently worse damage, and take up more space per shot ammo-wise; I don't think they really compete.

~J

[Nokim]

It's really all about the Ball firemode at the moment.

I have never succeeded in using it (i.e. kill alien). It looks promising so tried several times. Something wrong with trajectory shown and real, very short range and bad accuracy.

[Telok]

Yeah, the plasma blaster, bolter, and laser weapons are trash now. The stun laser gets a lot of flak but it does function in it's role and has the bonus of downing civilians without turning them into casualties.

[jerzy_cz]

30±5 damage, actually. It's really all about the Ball firemode at the moment.

Well, I never saw an alien shooting plasma blaster with the ball mode...

You're ignoring the major increase in range and the increased damage which, though it doesn't look very large, pushes GL grenades at nearly point-blank range solidly into one-hit-kill territory. Three-shot mode was critical in 2.4 mostly because it would almost certainly take at least two grenades to actually kill your target.

As for hand grenades, they've got better radius, TU use, and minimum inventory investment but substantially worse range, decently worse damage, and take up more space per shot ammo-wise; I don't think they really compete.

I'll give it a try...

One more thing about balancing and ufo disassembly. I think that we should get much more alien materials from harvester. Its quite a big ship, but we heave to process more than 20 to get enough materials yo produce Stringray interceptor

[H-Hour]

Some misconceptions in this thread which may lead to you not understanding the weapon changes in 2.5. This is partly because the UFOPaedia text has not been updated to reflect some of the changes in weapons. These include:

1. Plasma Blaster is now supposed to be a shotgun-like weapon. It's close skill, close quarters, extremely high damage, very poor accuracy (Ball mode recommended).

2. Bolter (Electromagnetic Rifle) is now a sniper weapon (TU cost probably to be reduced some).

3. Needler gun is no longer a sniper rifle. It is an assault weapon.

4. The proper role of heavy weapons is a little off at the moment because we don't have a weight/encumbrance system yet. That means I've slightly nerfed them a bit but this is just a temporary balancing mechanism.

[Nokim]

Well, I never saw an alien shooting plasma blaster with the ball mode...

1. There was a bug in alien AI which prevented aliens from using other firemodes then single shot (first listed).
2. Alien have to get really close to use that mode.

As i said, i have tried that firemode several times without success. And with dead my soldier as result. Such unreliable weapon - useless. In single shot or burst mode plasma pistol is better.

[Timo]

Some misconceptions in this thread which may lead to you not understanding the weapon changes in 2.5. This is partly because the UFOPaedia text has not been updated to reflect some of the changes in weapons. These include:

1. Plasma Blaster is now supposed to be a shotgun-like weapon. It's close skill, close quarters, extremely high damage, very poor accuracy (Ball mode recommended).

Can you make damage dissipation based on range? It would make perfect sense for shotguns and plasma weapons. With shotgun flechette hit should be rather guaranteed even at rather high distances (definitely at distances usually encountered in normal ufo missions), but because flechettes spread and only few actually hit at longer distance they don't do that much damage. For plasma same principle as shotgun flechettes, dissipation with range, easy to hit target. That could also help with "aliens hit too easily" complain. They still hit, but because of distance not quite so deadly as now. Same for lasers BTW, air is actually pretty bad medium for high power laser, you hit for sure, but beam dissipates in air quite rapidly.

So very high accuracy, but less damage with distance (shotgun flechettes and plasma), very poor accuracy but high damage for shotgun slugs.

(IMO current shotgun range is too weak for saboted slugs, you should be able to easily shoot at distances used in typical ufo mission, but hitting the target would be way less guaranteed than with proper rifle shots)

Maybe not in 2.5, but for future consideration.

[H-Hour]

Timo, there's been a lot of discussion in the last six months around the weapons and I won't rehash it all here. But I will say that "perfect sense" is not the only target we have to aim for when setting the weapon stats and there are a lot of reasons why weapons do not actually follow real-world specs.

My main concern with a mechanic like reduced damage based on range is that it is not very transparent to the player. Our current setup is already very unhelpful for players who want to know precisely how much damage a weapon will do and how much damage they need to do to kill an alien. Adding another layer of damage modification would either add to the existing problem or would require us to expose more complex calculation information in the UI -- which I think carries its own problems.

On the plus side, flechette shells (and several weapon firemodes) already function in the way you describe. A single firemode can send out several shots (8 for flechette shells) and at further range fewer will hit their target. But close-range weapons are still for close-range shots and it's likely none of the flechettes will hit at long or medium range.

[Timo]

My main concern with a mechanic like reduced damage based on range is that it is not very transparent to the player. Our current setup is already very unhelpful for players who want to know precisely how much damage a weapon will do and how much damage they need to do to kill an alien.

This can be advantage rather than disadvantage for some of us, because it makes battle a bit more "fuzzy". You would just need to tell that damage does dissipate with range in weapon description. A bit mystery and randomness is good IMO, and too much info ruins that. A bit ungrateful situation to dev-team, do this or that, some part of the player base will not be satisfied.

OTOH if wounds system with different bodyparts is extended to aliens telling exact damage needed to kill doesn't apply anymore: alien gets huge damage to leg and lives, gets less to torso and dies.

Either way I'm happy, I can't stop playing even if this is still heavily WIP.

[Nokim]

Our current setup is already very unhelpful for players who want to know precisely how much damage a weapon will do and how much damage they need to do to kill an alien. Adding another layer of damage modification would either add to the existing problem or would require us to expose more complex calculation information in the UI -- which I think carries its own problems.

Right now, if do not look in scripts, it's impossible to say precisely how much damage a weapon will do and how much damage they need to do to kill an alien. So, more or less layers doesn't matter. Casual player all this will learn empirically anyway. However i would like more info in UI about items. Specially about those like aerial laser cannon. You can't find how much damage it can do, because UI now require chosen ammo or firemode for that info.

[jerzy_cz]

One more thing. I just researched particle beam rifle. It has worse spread than plasma rifle. Should't it be more accurate weapon?

[Jon_dArc]

This can be advantage rather than disadvantage for some of us, because it makes battle a bit more "fuzzy".

Ignoring the question of whether "fuzzy" is a good thing or not, in the absence of poking around the UFO files battle could already be mistaken for Bigfoot.

~J

[jerzy_cz]

Some more inconsistencies:
-heavy needler seems to inflict same damage as standard one
-plasma rounds for launcher supposed to be scaled down version of hand grenades, but are more powerful