103 replies to this topic

[Darius85]

New to this place but I needed to comment on your mod. I wanted to first say thank you for making a great game even better. There are just a few spots I feel need some attention.

The low base hp of soldiers make the beginning pretty difficult. Even if the aliens don't have +accuracy or +crit, they can still 1 shot soldiers. They still have plasma wpns, most powerful weapons in the game.

The price to hire soldiers seems a little steep, especially after you reduced the cap from 99 to 20.

Also the accuracy of weapons seems incosistent. I had a squad spread around an alien and no matter where we were it was 30% chance to hit. Until i got in his face then it went up. Not sure if that is due to the mod or the game itself. Just curious but do different weapons have different accuracy rate? I always figured a pistol would have higher aim but it seems like all weapons have the same accuracy rate.

[miraclefreak]

I am very pleased to read all your feedback about enjoying the rebalance and even more I'm very pleased that none of you is concerned about your soldiers being overbuffed but rather having difficult time later in the game. Honestly I was concerned about making the tactical part too easy you see - your soldiers have better and more useful weapons, much more items, possibly ultimate HP with heavy armor + item armors, better gains yet you seem to have troubles with aliens whose aim and critical chance was even lowered on Classic difficulty but their plasma weapons are as powerful as your plasma weapons. ) That is all. No other buffs besides higher HP, will and damage on higher difficulties. The modded game is supposed to rely more on your tactical skills rather than pure odds, luck and chances like in vanilla. @ korpraali Having hard time after invading alien base was in vanilla too. There is nothing in this mod that could possibly really change that. There are Sectoid commanders instead of Outsiders, more units, possibly harder versions of them. Same as after capturing Overseer UFO the game will switch to elite units from aliens. Thin Men are using Light Plasma rifle which has the aim boost you know so they are always pretty accurate and you should do your best to always have full cover against them or pacify them before the are allowed to shoot. There is no difference in aim on how far they shoot from. Close distance bonus to aim is given only few steps away from unit. All guns work this way in this game. Cover is what makes the real difference in hit chances not the distance. @ Darius85 Soldiers have lower base HP but they have higher armor HP so in the end you'll have the same HP in total believe me. The difference is that your soldiers are injured for recovery ONLY after their HP falls bellow armor HP so in modded game that should occur less often - but your soldier should then spent possibly more time recovering. Different weapons have different aim and also soldiers having them - that is vanilla intentional. As stated in Known issues section the pistols calculate total aim without their +10% aim bonus.. but when you open the More Info windows to see details about aim you'll see that +10% bonus is there for pistol. Not sure if that really counts as results based on chances are quite hard to confirm it.

Edited by miraclefreak, 30 November 2012 - 09:44 AM.

[Avenger0000]

This is a great mod, people! I'm pretty sure that @miraclefreak had put a lot of work and effort making it. I think is even better than Warspace. At least it have lesser issues. I want to try version 1.2 on my next IronMan Classic Game (I'm using an older version of the mod). The rocket launcher on 100% accuracy is perfect. For reasons unknown to me, with 90%, even on vanilla, when I'm too desperate to use the rocket launcher (wich I try not to, because of the loss of alien weapons fragments ) and the aliens are massed-up in the point of the explosion, it always fails ("target system #$%"!"). Thanks for fixing this!

[korpraali]

Some more feedback:

I really love how this mod deals with difficulty. I'd rather be swarmed by more aliens than lose veterans because of the AI blatantly cheating with accuracy, for instance. I also like the role of luck being reduced somewhat, so it's more about tactical skill than about rolling the dice.

I don't think the game was too hard in the beginning. If anything the early battles were a bit easier than with vanilla. My soldiers got one-shotted far less often than in vanilla thanks to the armor boost.

Weapons: While I like the non-reloading lasers and more useful explosives it might be a good idea to make the lasers a bit weaker than conventional weapons in some respect, so as to not make conventional weapons obsolete when you get lasers. I like how you made shotgun a useful alternative to assault rifles, but it'd also be nice to have assault rifles be a real alternative to lasers. Maybe it's just me, but I'd rather have different weapons (ie. different strategies) than just have one weapon replace another. Weaker against robotics for instance? (It's quite easy to deflect laser with armor, much harder to defend against kinetic energy.)

Facilities: With the changes it's now much more of a balancing act to decide what to build and when. You can't ignore some facility anymore (although Workshop feels a bit undervalued still, at least in the early game) and on the other hand you can't afford to build everything straight away. Same goes to tech, really.

Finances: I can confirm that the mod is far more balanced in this regard than vanilla. You are not as cash-strapped in the beginning as in vanilla, but rather you will need to keep managing your finances throughout the game. It's not as easy to swim in the money like Scrooge McDuck as in vanilla. The increased price of recruits is a big deal as any losses will hurt your wallet much more. My only concern is that some countries become automatically ignored as they offer less money and thus less incentive for investment. But as long as the continents as whole are balanced it should be okay. (And on the other it's quite realistic that Africa is not as important as North America or Europe.)

[korpraali]

I liked what some other mod did with the plasma weapons: They do more damage (including environmental) and have a high crit chance, but are harder to hit at range. This makes lasers more useful late in the game while giving plasmas a more specific role rather than being all-around superior.

Speaking of criticals, maybe lasers should have less crit chance than conventional weapons. The reasoning being that while lasers are more precise, they also create a more precise wound which equals to less critical chance. Bullets tend to create large cavities and tumble or fragment inside tissue, which can cause massive damage over a large area. A laser penetration on the other hand would damage only whatever is in its path, reducing the chance of hitting anything vital.

This would make conventional weapons a viable alternative to supplement laser weapons at least until plasmas.

[Rellin]

I agree with the comments about having a reason to use different weapons rather than a linear progression from worst to best. I really wish it was built into the vanilla game. I wish there were more foundry upgrades for the ballistic weapons so they could be useful until the end as they are my favorite weapons.

I asked this before, but no one answered. What options in second wave are people using with this mod? Some of them seem inappropriate to use with the balance changes built into the mod.

I am using marathon, not created equally, and hidden potential.

New economy, high stakes, the greater good, and more than human seem like ones to avoid with this mod.

[diomedestydeus]

I am having the same problem that Lantisu posted. The mod is clearly running, I have only 20 max soliders, etc etc. But I cannot place the arc-thrower in the pistol slot. Is there any word on this?

[korpraali]

Re: The Arc Thrower problem. I had the same issue when I had Steam running normally in online mode. Also the heavy armors only had one equipment slot. Restarting Steam in offline mode and then launching the game put the Arc Thrower in the pistol slot and enabled two equipment slots for the heavy armors. Other parts of the mod, like 20 pax barracks, were unaffected by this. Not sure if the online/offline transition affects weapon stats also, but I'd advise everyone to run the mod always in offline mode. Is there any way for modders to fix this so that we could run Steam normally (but without automatic updates obviously) with the mods?

Edited by korpraali, 01 December 2012 - 09:05 AM.

[miraclefreak]

Reqarding requests about making the weapons more decision-wise and alternatives to each other the idea is very nice and enjoyable but imho doesn't fit really well in this game. XCOM games were always about progression where newer technology replaced older were it facilities, explosives or the whole aircraft section. I don't see it fair and worth the trouble to spend much time and resources recovering, researching, developing and paying much for weapons that could have cons to conventional weapons which are totally free and available since the beginning.

Easy put I won't be changing that in my version but why don't you use tools already available on Nexus as well to alter your gameplay the way you see fit? It's very fast & easy and honestly I did not put as much time and effort in creating the setup as I did in creating description and so on.

@ Rellin
I just don't see how could Second Wave options be more or less good idea whether you use mod or not. Maybe you could be more specific about why you don't see it a good idea in some cases. But I still see it a matter of individual taste just the same as it is in vanilla.

[korpraali]

You did however say that you wanted more realism and fun out of the game with your mod. Laser weapons doing more criticals than bullets is not realistic, and having viable alternatives is more fun than one no-brainer upgrade.

I think it would fit your mod perfectly, given that you've successfully rebalanced so many aspects of the game as well. You also balanced Alloy SHIV to remain usable after discovering Hover SHIV - I see that as the same logic as keeping conventional weapons usable after discovering lasers, or lasers usable after discovering plasmas. It makes the weapons more unique and gives you more tactical choice (thus the point of researching them) rather than just replacing one standard issue weapon with another.