RF with half burst and unlimited but only at range half perception was already in release, and no way better. It is calling to abuse in hands of player, and was only randomly dangerous in hands of enemies.
Generally it’s certainly a good thing to discuss balancing topics. One thing I keep reading over and over is that all these balance issues are easy to get to, which in fact is wrong in my opinion.
The normal player will not maximise skills in the way you describe, and he will also not easily deal with more armour etc.
In fact he will notice a reasonable difficulty. The normal player will not clear a whole map with one soldier on turn 2. When the normal player does a round of RtT, he will be crippled a few rounds until he gets his resources back.
RC will be tricky to use, because you don’t one shot everything anymore (as normal player).
To me it looks like most of the issues come partly also from combining maximised stats with some skill, in that case I say rather adjust the stat system, and leave the skills mostly as they are (i am not pretending that there might not be real loopholes).
Also, rest assured, after balancing is before balancing. People will always try to find and abuse the best combos and skills. Trying to prevent that will only result in flat and trivial systems without meaningful distinction between skills and actors. It takes the soul out of games. Since this is also not multiplayer, where I could understand these issues, I don’t see why we need to go down this path.
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My opinion too, and Dash change did exactly that, makes the game more flat with a much less deep skill, or removed relief to the game. General limits as some player would want impose, one use per skill per turn, limit AP gain, more, are going this way too, make a more flat game.
Still the game also need a bit more balances and more tuning, but the current main problem is how Legend isn’t much more difficult than Easy, and I don’t mean with OP holes abuses. At end I don’t see no nerf done, there’s a few big op holes that need a bit of tuning:
- Rapid Clearance needs a limit, other games used similar skills, either it had diminishing return, either one shot kill was totally impossible.
- Stealth 100% is absurd, it need be fixed.
- Rally perhaps need a limit, but it is already limited to 1 use per turn, the limit party wide don’t need be that high, I’m not even sure it worth any nerf once RC will have a limit.
For anything else, it’s not enough big to worth consider until Legend is made really more difficult than Easy.
My opinion too, stats could need a bit of tuning down, not STR, but speed and will. I would advise delay after difficulty management is cleaned. It’s a big problem that Legend isn’t much more difficult than Easy.
It shows a bit my incompetency, but yes despite a fairly good experience of the game, in my current play the only single soldiers doing good RC chains is Assault/Infiltrator, and my record in this play is still 5. In fact very impressive loops I saw on video was looking absurd with enemies with ridiculous armor. But I admit I didn’t try hard enough.
RF is a good limit to RC, you fail a kill, get a RF back, continue RC is a more difficult decision.
Same for Rally abuse, I can’t say I even tried, but it requires serious efforts for a real exploit, and complain on flexibility it adds is non sense.
I can agree (or agree to disagree) with everything you say, except this. I don’t see what multiplayer has to do with it. Yes, it’s alright to use cheats in a singleplayer game, but cheats require the player opting to use them.
If as a player you have to actively avoid doing something so as not to cheat, that means there is something broken.
[quote=“MikeK, post:62, topic:9178”]
To me it looks like most of the issues come partly also from combining maximised stats with some skill, in that case I say rather adjust the stat system, and leave the skills mostly as they are [/quote]
That’s my whole point. Cap the stats, leave the skills mostly as they are.
You are playing infiltrator? Fine, nothing changes, except if you are using infiltrators with the thief perk, because now stealth is capped at 85%, or if you are using damage buffs to do more than 200% damage. To be clear: you still do x2 damage for attacking from stealth, you just don’t do 250% or 300%+, which a normal player would not be doing anyway, because that only happens with meta builds.
You use dash? Also fine, keep using it just as you were - with a cap on how far a soldier can run, only builds that take it to absurd levels (with top speed, specialized gear, blood buff + frenzy) will be affected.
I would think that this is much better for the normal player than nerfing the skill itself by reducing the distance/increasing its cost.
Rally the troops? Nothing changes for the normal player, or at least I thought so, because I didn’t think regular players cast it 5 or more times per turn.
I admit that limiting APs per turn is a nerf to RC and perhaps limiting the gain to 4APs is too much of a nerf. However, I think we can all agree that RC does need a nerf and that this nerf has to take into account how it combines with other skills.
Thanks for the open minded discussion.
This is exactly the point I am trying to make. I would actually challenge your premises.
Currently in my opinion and experience in order robuste these imbalances, the player has to actively research and learn how to get to this point, it is by no means an OptOut, it is actually a very specific OptIn. And even then, if you go through all the obstacles to get to this state of empowerment, wouldn’t it be a valid
Incentive?
No there’s no cheating required, difficulty levels are supposed to target a lot of problems related to challenge, now even better and more and more used in modern games, is difficulty levels and players custom difficulty options.
But obviously target skills balance through that is very difficult, even more obvious is difficulty levels derail in this game.
That said if really some general nerfing options can work then it could be great custom difficulty options set as default for Legend difficulty, for example among all those global nerf i disagree with:
- Limit any skill to one use per turn, and no it doesn’t make pointless Rapid Aim.
- Limit max attributes to lower levels, should be a very effective global nerf and challenge option.
- Limit max number of AP used per turn and per soldier.
- Limit max damages increase to a limit.
- More.
I wouldn’t play Legend with default options, but I’m totally fine with that, I never play max difficulty with games that have more than two true difficulty levels. It would make arguing on game tactics a bit weird, but even if quite negative in forums, anyway different difficulty levels generate many contradictions on such arguing.
You are welcome, and likewise.
I think whether it is an OptIn or OptOut has to do with where the player is at in the learning curve. According to the EGS, I have played the game for 4 days. So that’s around 100 hours (I started playing on release, but I got small children so I can’t play that much, my infatuation with PP is actually getting a bit out of hand). I have a lot of experience with TBS/TBT games so that also counts.
Anyway, before I clocked in 50 hours I was much closer to Zzzz’s take on things (except Rage Burst, which on release I thought was absurdly OP).
Now when I’m building my squad of fresh level 7 recruits (thanks training facilities 
) I have to make an effort to go for builds that I will find interesting to play but will not be OP, and even then every once in a while I stumble unsuspectingly into something that’s just absurdly OP.
The ideal solution IMO would be to allow for custom difficulty, and there is a ticket for that on canny.
Yes, this I can totally agree with. Actually, we posted simultaneously the same thing:
Woo something will go wrong, universe rules just get broken, we agree on a point. Quote that I still disagree on global nerfs. 
Just quoting this snippet to keep the thread readable. Actually with this I would even agree wholeheartedly. Maybe even try it some day in case the game would become too easy.
Generally maybe i was just referring to some suggestions or arguments in this thread that were going way too far in my opinion but have nothing to do with your suggestions (or have changed by now).
Also i think balancing changes should come in small doses. All these suggestions together would be too much. That being said, this whole thing really asks for a test version. If Snapshot would be clever, they would replace the BB5 installation with a TestInstallation, allowing those who want to stay on top of all changes to test them first hand. It would also allow to detect such clusterfucks like the disappearing inventory items.
Each map tile is like 1 meter and turn is like an equivalent of 10 seconds in real-time. How many buildings you can cross in 10 seconds equipped in armor and combat gear? According to my above calculation soldier would run with speed of 60 meters/10 seconds which gives 6m/1s which is like 21.6 km/h. People without any encumbrance run no faster than 16 km/h on distances longer than 500 m. So you think that what we have in game is quite usual and nothing is outstanding here?
I think that 30 tiles should be absolute maximum for a distance to travel for a PP soldier who has maximum stats in speed and withount any excessive encumbrance (and maybe with some buff like Dash). Damn another argument who was brought by someone else - even vehicles travel slower… 
EDIT:
Hah. I didn’t even checked with reality but my balance notes state that untrained soldiers will make only around 10 meters per turn, well trainded will make 20 meters per turn and Dash will add 50% of available speed. So everything is in place. 
It was broken because it allowed for unlimited retaliation if unit could withstand enemy fire (for example assault in NJ heavy armor, or Arthron with armored body parts).
- Limiting it with AP would limit any abuses from player’s side.
- Giving it to Arthrons with Machine Gun which can spit 6*50 damage bullets is just nuts! It is instant kill if you don’t dispose that enemy in one shot even on close to medium range. Who get that idea and implemented it like that? Also it looked broken when 6 Arthrons in vicinity retaliated at your every attack. Again limiting it with AP cost and reducing amount of enemies would lead to better balance.
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Nope, it’s still the same now, unlimited RF once overwatch is used, and nothing is broken.
New version is just more often dangerous to manage, and let less ability to over exploit it for player, I admit this last point is a mix of positive and negative, old RF for player and new RF for enemies (two different skills) looks like an interesting base. If I remind well some players comment the change was to avoid some rare dangerous cases with many enemies shooting at a soldier. But that case was quite rare, most often RF was neglect-able.
What AP? It’s not during player turn. You probably mean limit number of RF, but player potential abuse was more with mass of RF soldiers.
It’s not a simulator, low value argument.
How do you come to the conclusion that a turn represents 10 seconds in real time? If this is your argument, then we have many more problems than just movement speed or distance.
So to keep it short, while it physically might contain some reasonable considerations, in the context of a turn based game such an argument doesn’t count really in my opinion.
Where do you get these numbers? A turn is like 10 secs in real time? Who said that?
So you think that an average gamer stops and cuts his wrists after doing number crunching and stops playing because it is non realistic? Gimme a break. You don’t know anything about those armors, whether they have any servos, whatever. It is a game and nobody cares about these, expect maybe you.
Time for 2 hammer attacks or 2 AR or 4 pistol attacks with aiming.
Probably even less than 10 seconds.
One more proof there’s no time realism attempt, non aimed shoot cost as much AP, move time scaling is no way matching shoot time scaling.
I think 10 seconds maybe a bit too much, actually. But then PP has no pretensions at realism.
What I don’t like about dash is what happens when all the buffs to speed stack together, not because it’s unrealistic, but because of what it does to the gameplay.
And I do think that perhaps the best way to deal with it would be to set a hard cap.