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Changes for 2.5

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H-Hour:
UFO: Alien Invasion has undergone extensive changes during 2.5's development cycle. This includes a comprehensive re-balancing of the campaign and battlescape, as well as some important additions to the game mechanics. This post will try to outline a few of the most important for players transitioning from 2.4 to 2.5.

To avoid spoilers and allow players to explore the changes themselves, I will speak in general terms. Please do the same in your replies or they may be edited. Separate threads can be produced if you want to discuss a particular weapon balance or something.

Campaign Pace
The schedule of UFOs, aliens, research and disassembly, as well as the tech tree itself, has been changed significantly. Over the course of the campaign, the player will face fewer UFOs. There should be no large chunks of time with nothing to do like 2.4, and you had better get moving quickly on research and development.

Air Combat
The aircraft vs. UFO balance has been adjusted quite a bit. Be careful making assumptions based on your previous experience.

Laser Weapons
Handheld laser weapons are no longer available as soon as you research CWS at the start of the game. They will come later. This may be particularly disorienting for our long-term players.

Ground Combat Difficulty
Expect to face more aliens who are more difficult to kill. In general, you will likely find your soldiers dying more. You will also receive more recruits throughout the game to allow you to suffer more casualties. Do not expect to be able to play a zero-casualties game as easily as before.

Weapons
The weapons have been comprehensively re-balanced and have undergone significant changes. In general, weapons have been adjusted to better serve specific tactical purposes. That means the trade-offs between different weapons and different firemodes within weapons are more significant now. Without getting into specifics, I'll just say that you should pay special attention to all of a weapon's attributes and think about which tactical situations it might be most effective.

Wounds and Healing
The game now includes a proper wounding and healing mechanism. Soldiers will get wounded and bleed out each turn based on how wounded they are. A medikit is able to heal wounds, which will stop bleeding, but it will only be able to give a soldier back a very small amount of health. Soldiers are expected to recover in Hospital. Medikits are for keeping them alive until the battle ends.

Weight and Encumbrance
All soldier items now include a weight and soldiers can only carry as much as their Strength ability allows them. A soldier will be "encumbered" and will lose TUs when they are carrying more than 50% of their max weight. A soldier will be "light" and gain extra TUs when they are carrying less than 20% of their max weight.

Soldiers Stay Equipped
Soldiers will now stay equipped when they are not assigned to a dropship and can be equipped through the employees menu.

More Soldiers
You can now have up to 12 soldiers on the battlescape. The starting dropship, the Firebird, still only supports 8 soldiers, but base defense missions and later dropships will support more.

New Weapons
New weapons and equipment have been introduced for soldiers and aircraft. Most of these become available late in the game.

Soldier Stats
Rookies will now improve stats more quickly, and the overall stat growth throughout the course of a campaign will be much higher. Veterans will be more valuable, but even late in the game you will be able to improve rookies quickly enough to make them useful.

Vermillion_Hawk:
I'm curious as to whether this means the 2.5 stable version is soon to be upon us.

H-Hour:
It doesn't mean that. 2.5 has some serious stability issues with multi-threading at the moment and until those are worked out we won't even think about a new release. But we benefit from people playing the in-development versions and 2.5 has an especially large number of good reasons to do so. This is a guide for them.

Wolfwalker_Prime:
I was wondering about those extra numbers at the top middle for squad members...

I did notice a bit of an empty feel (especially as I like to use battlefield salvage to pay for a lot of early building,) and the lack of laser rifles was felt keenly... I miss the accuracy.  And I noticed the enemy fields a certain weapon a lot earlier in the game this time around.

krilain:
Sounds good  :)
Hope I'll end 2.4 campain soon and jump on 2.5.

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