from the players side, acid is slow…even now when its insanely powerful in the hands of the AI…the player is usually better off using default tactics as they simply kill stuff quicker. it shares this trait with the DoT effects, all of whom are actually quite potent…but slow. now like I did state before, acid can definitely be useful to the player…if you don’t absolutely have to kill the target right now.
the AI’d side however it is very powerful, unlike poison, it cannot be cured by the common medpack, it will keep doing damage well after the one that used the grenade dies and it is applied in copious quantities even without the grenade bug. The AI doesn’t care about losses, and can suicide pandorans in to land DoT effects. I do notice that not many players care a lot about the armor dropping off…the interesting aspect for a player…but most care about the significant DoT damage acid can do over time to their soldiers.
how would I change this, well I wouldn’t allow the limb damage stack…but use the incendiary systems “highest damage done to a single limb” the basic arthron grenade, even if double hitting should hit no harder then 50 dmg/turn and deal a total of 130 damage total to HP. significant…but doable.
if it would only deal 10 dmg a tick…its ignorable on the players side.
try the game for a bit without using dash or the jetpack, you will notice that the AI doesn’t place the common pandorans on easy to shoot locations (past the spawn location). if you start a protracted firefight they will generally take cover. the problems start to occur when they get really close…then they tend to set up on suicidal positions or if they are really big like the scylla and chiron. The AI seems to be set in an aggressive mode,as I never see them hang back…they will almost always try to advance to within about 10 tiles if they noticed the player…(exception, chiron because of how this pandoran works)
protracted fights however don’t really work as many pandoran weapons are basically automatic hits with heavy effects. grenades, psychic attacks and melee don’t care about cover
Yokes, what @conductiv says here. Protracted engagements in PP are not really a thing by reason of many elements in the design. It’s telling that body parts HPs don’t scale with strength, so even heavy armor, high strength characters can’t withstand prolonged engagements. If you are in range of an enemy you have to choose kill, cripple, or disengage. Exchanging shots during more than 1 turn is a recipe for a body bag.
I’m not saying it can’t be changed, just that it would require a lot more changes than it seems, and it’s impossible to predict what would come out on the other side.
I haven’t experimented with acid weapons yet. At the moment I struggle to imagine a situation where using acid would be preferable to using something else. Perhaps if it could be delivered long range with an AoE?
@mcarver2000 - I don’t have anything useful to add to this thread, I just wanted to comment on the irony of someone with your avatar making a comment like “I haven’t had much luck using acid…”. Captain Trips would disagree!
I got one-shoted by an artillery acid Chiron that completely wiped out my squad in two turns. There was absolutely nothing I could have done to prevent it since it was miles away and behind cover.
I think they should go back to previous mechanic, but allow acid to deal damage faster. For me it should deal damage equal to round_up(damage applied/20,0)*10, and it’s potential should be decreased by amount of damage dealt. So maybe I will show it with tables. Below examples assume soldier has 30 armor on each body part (so in current game terms equivalent of not buffed heavy armor).
previous method:
effect applied
10
left
20
left
30
left
40
left
50
left
60
left
turn 1 dmg
10
0
10
10
10
20
10
30
10
40
10
50
turn 2 dmg
10
0
10
10
10
20
10
30
10
40
turn 3 dmg
10
0
10
10
10
20
10
30
turn 4 dmg
10
0
10
10
10
20
turn 5 dmg
10
0
10
10
turn 6 dmg
10
0
sum to body part (armor and hp)
10
20
30
40
50
60
sum to general hp (1 body part)
0
0
0
10
20
30
sum to general hp (3 body parts)
0
0
0
30
60
90
sum to general hp (6 body parts)
0
0
0
60
120
180
Above method has proper amount of damage, but is too slow and with low acid damage only works as armor striping weapon, with higher values it has good potency but we need to wait.
current method:
effect applied
10
left
20
left
30
left
40
left
50
left
60
left
turn 1 dmg
10
0
20
10
30
20
40
30
50
40
60
50
turn 2 dmg
10
0
20
10
30
20
40
30
50
40
turn 3 dmg
10
0
20
10
30
20
40
30
turn 4 dmg
10
0
20
10
30
20
turn 5 dmg
10
0
20
10
turn 6 dmg
10
0
sum to body part (armor and hp)
10
30
60
100
150
210
sum to general hp (1 body part)
0
0
30
60
100
150
sum to general hp (3 body parts)
0
0
90
180
300
450
sum to general hp (6 body parts)
0
0
180
360
600
900
Above method is hard to balance because if higher value is once applied (for example 2 acid grenades or bug) then it becomes too deadly without line of sight required by enemy, especially when at least 3 or 4 body parts are affected.
my proposed method:
effect applied
10
left
20
left
30
left
40
left
50
left
60
left
turn 1 dmg
10
0
10
10
20
10
20
20
30
20
30
30
turn 2 dmg
10
0
10
0
10
10
10
10
20
10
turn 3 dmg
10
0
10
0
10
0
turn 4 dmg
turn 5 dmg
turn 6 dmg
sum to body part (armor and hp)
10
20
30
40
50
60
sum to general hp (1 body part)
0
0
0
10
20
30
sum to general hp (3 body parts)
0
0
0
30
60
90
sum to general hp (6 body parts)
0
0
0
60
120
180
This method again deals proper amount af damage, but shortens wait time up to 50%. Even if applied effect will go above 60 it still won’t be so deadly when there is still armor. When there is no armor available then I suppose player will need to evacuate. And this method will still allow that while not punishing soldiers too much in subsequent turns.
One thing that bothers me is that, no matter what armor solider has, first tick (no matter how big) will always be absorbed. This creates assymetry where heavy armors can protect better than light armors vs weak acids, but when compared to strong acid light and heavy armors give quite similar amount of protection.
Original was OK, no need to hasten it: acid is and should only be used by enemies, given there are other ways for PP soldiers to deal with heavily armored foes–it also defeats the purpose of armor altogether.
IMO they should do away with it entirely, at least until a proper method for acid protection is introduced at proper times (ie., “acid medkit” early game, acid resitant armor late game, etc.)
That would be fine if certain faction researches didn’t give you access to Acid weapons. In the original game, it meant you were handed ‘upgraded’ equipment that was utterly useless to you.
All they really need to do is find the middle ground.
For my money, Acid should act primarily as an armour-stripper. So I’d advocate doubling its strength against armour, but halving its strength against body parts. And it should only start doing damage to body parts on the turn after it has completely stripped all armour from that area.
In addition, they should give Medkits a Neutralise function, which removes Acid altogether.
That makes Acid very different to poison, and gives it a specific function within the rationale of this game without killing a Squaddie in 2 turns. It also makes it useful to us, because it will perform an area shred function; and the Medkit option gives us a way of coping with it in the field.
When is this to be released on Steam? I hope they sort this sort of thing out beforehand, or it is going to get absolutely destroyed by steam users. It will be sink or swim.
The issue with damage over time attacks is that encounters for enemies tend to last very short in comparison to a player’s squad overall mission/campaign: enemies are supposed to die fast and players live longer. That is why all party management games introduce some sort of damage control mechanic for over-time damage (healing, cure poison, acid/fire resistance, etc.) to the player.
Now if you want to go “hardcore old-school” and let player soldiers to die, that wouldn’t be a problem if we were playing a game like XCOM UFO Defense where you can bring 14 soldiers early-game (where one soldier death only means minus 7% to manpower) and you can readily and cheaply replace your losses, versus FiraxCOM-style games where an early soldier death can mean a 25% manpower loss (and this being from a purely quantitative perspective, since now soldiers have classes and fulfill a specific role, thus introducing a qualitative factor), compounded in PP due to expensive soldier replacement.
The problem I see right now is that all secondary damage has no remediation whatsoever: acid, viral, burning, psychic, and paralyze; the only ones you can fix are poison and bleeding. For all the other types, there is no counter whatsoever and the only thing the player can do is wait them out. Which is OK as long as effects aren’t massive; case off point being acid damage.
Now I’m not saying they should give medkits a cure-all function (that would be boring), but some sort of at least mitigation needs to exist for each if you’re pushing the FiraxCOM design—made even worse in PP since replacing rookies is a resource nightmare.
By now I think it’s too late and design-intensive to start switching to an old MicroProse XCOM style. A far easier solution is to diminish the effects of over-time damage to the player, either by making values lower or introducing fix-it mechanics.
How could I not think about it in first place… Probably I was tired then. Just allow acid to burn the flesh the same turn when armor is destroyed on that specific body part.
Yes, but with acid values between 30 and 60 applied even at each body part it means that, after reducing medium armor, it will inflict between 60 to 240 damage in 3 turns. Those higher values are dangereous but you still have time to use medkit.
For heavy armor it gives between 0 to 180 damage. So even not good enough to kill trained soldier. Of course then you need to remember that your soldier doesn’t have any armor… but well he is still alive.
It is definitely more pleasant form than current (Leviathan) one in game.
If Acid did a BIG acid strip to armour, but only did 1/4 that damage to body parts - and then only after it had stripped all armour from the area - it would enable the squad to quickly lay down damage on heavily armoured enemies, whilst not killing squaddies in 2 turns.
Add to that a Medikit ability to neutralise acid, and you have the remedial effect you are talking about.
Though personally, I don’t think the devs should be thinking about facilitiating alpha-strikes at all. As I have argued long and hard in virtually every post I make, the big problem with this game is the alpha/Panda ‘evolution’ toxic feedback loop which takes all of the tactical interest out of the missions and turns them into a tedious quick-draw showdown, where the side that gets their killer-strike in first wins. So instead of facilitating alpha-strikes & upping Panda strength, they should be nerfing both.
My point is that one doesn’t have 3 turns before an acid bath kills a unit. There is no time to apply a medkit. And even if one did, the acid eats away, and they are dead next turn anyway.
Ok. I was talking how would I change acid, so it would work like described. So it would be more “pleasant” for the player. That was hypothetical, but we are here to suggest solutions to currently broken thing.
Yesterday, I want to go foreward and discover more about the game.
Enter in battle, 2 chirons, all acid worms (and arthrons acid launchers in addition).
With 6 worms per turn it’s difficult to deal with all the ennemies.
Then a soldier take a worm explosion : 300 acid !! wtf !! Only one small worm ? 300 ?
The first round the soldier remove all armor without damage, the second he die. Impossible to do something to save him.
So I release my mouse and continue to play this game when it better balanced, in this state it’s unplayable for me.
