I’m not an expert at all and I have not received training of any kind. But wouldn’t what you describe be the case for carabines, PDWs, shotguns and pistols, but not for something large and unwieldy, like a sniper rifle?
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How about just preventing the SR from being used in base contact? That’s why snipers have pistols, right?
Yeah, try running around your house with a broom against your shoulder, see where it gets you… You also don’t have a whole a lot of time to set up a shot if someone’s running at you from the next room or something. You simply can’t see that in turn based but it’s obvious in pauseable real-time or wego in Xcom Apocalypse there is that exploding turkey on speed, the guys don’t get a lot of shots off at it.
Another big offender on turn based is the “opportunity fire”, running past an open door takes very little time but in most turn based games you can unload on the poor sap with little or no penalty.
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Speaking of zigzagging, I’m just going to leave this here…
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I generally agree with all your points except those two:
I wouldn’t touch that. We need some weapon that can spit many bullets with single attack.
lower their power, increase their spread, but don’t touch AP cost. Those are support weapons available with heavy armor. They are not supposed to replace main weapons.
IMO SR is basically the weapon of choice at the moment for nearly everything, the only thing it doesn’t do is splash damage. The ability to reliably cripple any enemy at any distance by the SR is simply unmatched. It’s also a monster killer. In one variant, the best paralyzer. Other weapons have their uses, but they are niche when compared to the SR. Reducing its usefulness with enemies nearby would make it less versatile.
I think I can agree to all of these except quickaim as you describe it here:
What this would do is grant four shots with SR at reduced accuracy with QA, which goes against your suggestion - with which I agree- to be careful with skills that grant more damage per AP. Even more so if you don’t want penalties for using SR at short range, as these changes would make it the weapon of choice for CQC.
Personally, I’m against changes to SR where higher accuracy can be achieved by spending more AP. Though much maligned, I think QA in fact is not a bad idea at all. It’s 6WP for 2 shots with increased accuracy. A SR shot is not a one kill shot, so there is net WP expenditure. You need to have a soldier with a very substantial WP pool to sustainably fire with SR for more than a couple of turns.
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Yes and that’s why there is a wide variety of machine pistols that sacrifice accuracy for the volume of fire. Then you have assault rifles that are bridging the gap between battle rifles and machine pistols.
And that’s exactly the point - it’s much faster to point and shoot a pdw or let’s say an MP40 than a Karabiner 98k. As later has a much higher moment of inertia and takes more time and force to aim. The next question is what happens after you squeeze a trigger and you miss? The answer is obvious - machine pistol can be layed on target at any point of time, like while shooting. So while you theoretically can take a precise shot with a full caliber rifle at close distance, you can make many more precise shots with machine pistol and it clearly a winner here. The fact that the game is turn-based shouldn’t create a situation where one weapon is just much better than everything else. This is not just a balancing question but all mechanics that are involved. Otherwise why have those different classes of weapons at all?
Agree with that. For the sake of the game balance there should be curve for each weapon where it drops damage in relation to the distance. The same curve can lower damage for weapons like sniper rifles at close distance. I know it doesn’t make much sense from a “physics” point of view but allows to balance weapons such that SR would take let’s say 3 shots up close to down the same target, that takes 2 shots at distance.
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Some games utilize this idea of lowering accuracy for the weapons with precision optics at short ranges but the way how aiming works in PP I don’t think it would really work. SR could be used as “shotgun” of a sort with occasional misses. IMHO it’s the issue with the base mechanics - it’s too simple. If the devs would make something like gradual aiming. Where it take some fraction of AP to start aiming and then you keep investing more and more AP into more precise shot. Then you could make it in such a way that smaller weapons take less time to lay on target and larger weapons take more + they might take extra more AP if target is too close. But - there is no such thing as target as we are just aiming in some general direction, not necessary an enemy. Perhaps using a larger amount of AP just to start aiming would be sufficient + extra levels of aim on top. This way you maybe could take 3-4 precise shots with pistols but only single shot with a sniper rifles. Together with the damage curve, pistol could outperform SR in relation of AP/Damage, but not at medium to large distance where it’s inherit low accuracy is just hindrance.
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- The best rifle in game does 150 damage for 3 AP.
- A Hel II cannon does 180 damage, huge shock and shreds armour. And it can bash for 1 AP.
- A machine gun does 480 damage for 3 AP at against unarmored target at point blank.
- Shotgun can do 400 damage to unarmored target for 2 AP.
- A crossbow can add 120 points of poison (not taking into account the pure damage values) for 3 shots using the same 3 AP. 120 points of poison sums up in 120->230->330->420 damage in the following turns
So I don’t think SR is the absolutely best weapon. Handy if you can keep your distance. But not the best damage-wise.
Well that’s maybe what is written in stats but that’s not how it works:
- A sum of damage, like in case of machine gun =/= the damage that individual bullet does. If individual bullet damage is lower than armor than sum is 0
- Because of #1 the only comparable weapon to SR in your list is cannon. But cannon has a much smaller mag, much larger weight and much lower accuracy. On top of that it goes with proficiency tree that doesn’t grant any accuracy on top while SR does. The difference in 30 hp is negligible as that is bellow typical mid game armor value and hence you will be dishing out much more damage per-bullet to make any damage at all.
- For that list to be true, your target should have no armor. To make that happen you need to shred it meaning that for any weapon beside SR and Cannon you need to employ some extra equipment/soldiers/abilities. Meaning you need to add extra cost of AP/WP for that. While the same AP/WP can be used to dish out even more damage from SR.
- Poison damage is done over time, what is worse it’s done at the end of the enemy turn. So those 120 points of damage, should be compared with two shots from SR.
A demonstration, here is the poison rifle:
0 -> 120->230->330->420
and here is 150 dmg rifle against 30 armor
120 -> 240 -> 360 -> 480
as you can see it’s still better.
This is why SR is the most versatile weapon. It’s not the best in all specific situations but it’s the best in most situations.
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What is peculiar is that if you remove abilities then you can see that weapons in PP, in terms of AP cost follow closely model from X-Com and Xenonauts (for obvious reasons of it being a remake). You can take single shot from heavy weapons or a sniper rifle. Many shots with small weapons like pistol and 2-3 shots with medium weapons. The “balance” was already there. It just completely stomped by increasing armor values, shortening of the fight distance and addition of abilities.
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I think there are several factors to this:
- The way armour works, making a weapon with 1 powerful shot a better choice than a weapon with many less powerful shots. Add 30 armour and the shotgun does 100 damage (-75%) when the Synedrion SR is still doing 90 damage (-25%).
- Disabling limbs is always better than doing dispersed damage over different body parts
- Sniper rifle is the innate weapon of THE ONLY soldier class centered around shooting “better, fasta, farther!”. The 3 abilities for more accuracy and quicker shots is a no joke!
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Exactly. This is the reason why on a 2nd play-through I’ve ditched away assault rifles asap and never used shotguns.
Like, yes, shotgun has a higher damage potential. But you need to account for all AP/WP that has to be spent to create a situation where this potential can be used. So when you take this into account then resulting damage is actually less or similar, while potential is still high.
I disagree. With a shotgun you can dash + 2 shot a 100% HP Siren with no line of sight to it. And you can only dream about that with SR. That’s why I try to keep a balanced team of classes and weapons.
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And what is the armor that Siren has?
Again, some weapons are more effective in some particular situations. But even in this situation alone - Sniper/Assault can use Dash too, on top of that he can take 2 shots with Quick Aim, doing all that in the safety at distance.
If you would “prepare” couple of Sirens with a Berserk using sniper rifle to lower their armor, and then use assault with shotgun to run at their face and kill them in a single turn - yes, this would be superior to SR. But instead of this I can just have 2 snipers with other class mixes and don’t bother with orchestrating anything, just keep your distance and keep shooting.
Personally, if I would do some sort of balancing of the weapons without changing other systems in the game (like aiming, ballistics, movement) I would do something following:
- All heavy weapons can be used more effectively when “placed”, think of it like it’s a tripod. So a cannon/mg can be used for a “snapshot” but with low accuracy for the 3 AP. If you spend 2 AP to “place” it, then all next turns you can spend 3 AP for precise shot. Moving to new position would require “placing” it again.
- Sniper rifle can take a regular shot for 3 AP, no abilities can increase that. If you “setup” sniper position (an action that costs 2 AP) then regular shot costs 2AP. Some abilities could increase precision but regardless if weapon is placed or not
- Assault rifles get ability to take more precise shot for 3AP or regular shot for 2AP
- Shotguns get ability to use regular accuracy shot for 2AP and multi-shot for 3AP (two consequent shots with less precision but single targeting)
- Dash costs both AP and WP
- Quick Aim is removed
- Burst rage as ability of weapon, not a soldier
- Armor is ablative - every damage can degrades it, the higher damage weapons don’t necessary degrade it better than lower damage weapons. Think about it as proportion between damage to armor to damage to health. A typical middle ground round used on Assault rifle can be good for shooting at any part of the body as it moderately damages armor/health. An SR round has high armor damage and relatively good health damage. So you have a choice of using it to “prepare” a target or deal damage directly. A shotgun is specialized in dealing health damage and less armor damage but absolutely outperforms everyone else in raw health damage. Similar system is used in Battle Brothers to balance different type of weapons. For example, some 2h axe can have a 100 base damage, 40% of that is guaranteed to ignore armor and it does 160% damage to armor. While a 2h sword has 70 base damage, 25% guaranteed to ignore armor and 80% armor damage, but it cost less AP and stamina to use. So its less effective in removing armor but more effective against unarmored targets as uses less resources.
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20 armour chest plate and 460 HP. Just fitting for 2 shotgun shots with Close Combat and/or Blood Lust perks/skills.
It will cost 10 WP to a Sniper. Quick Aim ain’t a free skill to use)
And it will not kill the Siren, just behead her. It is nearly the same though (minus the WP damage to enemy team).
I like the system you are suggesting here.
But I think it has complexity making it perhaps more fitting to a mod than to a base game.
Actually it sounds like you are the one who hasn’t a fired a weapon or aren’t really considering real world scenarios.
Its not that the gun becomes less accurate at shorter range, its that for larger and more unwieldy weapons, its harder to move them quickly and accurately. The closer the target is then the same movement sideways on their part, mean you have to move the weapon more to keep it on target. This is why real militaries prefer sub-machine guns or pistols for close quarter combat.
To be honest that is half the problem with this game. It tries to abstract the movement to a very high level while not abstracting the shooting. I mean seriously, in a real combat would anyone ever be standing in the middle of no-where? They might run between cover but they wouldn’t stop in the open.
So that creates the whole ‘soldiers can’t aim’ to try and balance that… which causes this whole unrealistic scenario. Made worse by the fact that soldiers right next to cover often don’t bother using it… unless it happens to be exactly the right shape.
Really if they want to do the shooting properly, they need to do the movement properly as well, so you tell the soldier how fast to move (run/walk) and they move only when you hit end-turn at the same time the enemy moves, with soldiers firing more or less depending on how fast they are moving… or actually do it real time mode (and better than xcom apoc did it 
)
Unfortunately, if they consider this game as ‘release quality’ then I have little faith that they are going to produce anything actually worth playing in the future.
I hope to be proven wrong as I’m a long time X-Com fan and have played all the X-com games since UFO: Enemy Unknown in the 90s but this game has seriously disappointed.
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Yeap. The thing is, the whole idea that we can reason about gameplay like this is imho wrong. Because in idealistic case, you either create rule sets where there are clear “the best” or “the most versatile” strategies or it goes “tons of combinations and none of them is better”. The later is sometimes considered “balanced” gameplay but does it really all that fun if at the end everything works as long as you find some “combination” of actions? Like in some fantasy RPG, a perfect set of skills for a Fire Mage, or a Paladin build and etc. This could work in a game with linear progression, or gated open world. Where difficulty is “dozed” and pre-defined by milestones. You can even have some “key” battles to make sure that player is ready for the next stage.
In case of PP, it still has too many portions of the “conflict escalation” type of world. Time proven approach for this is waves of the difficulty - you are getting owned by enemy, game is hard, you get through it → payout is new tech, better armor, better weapons, better tools and now are owning till escalation happens again. On one side PP has “fixed” armor and weapons as new toys are not better just different. At the same time, enemy does escalate in both armor/hp, weapons and armor. In this case the abilities of the soldiers is what is suppose to be a “research and development” in other games. But it doesn’t scale with the campaign, it scales with progression of soldiers. So you can’t really choose “I need a better weapons now more than new armor”.
Having said all this, I don’t think that whole thing with abilities can be easily balanced in such a way that they are neither nerfed into oblivion (and then no-one will use them) or made such that you still have all kind of interesting combinations without best “cookie cutter” sets. Maybe campaign difficulty itself should be driven by key story missions and not by “dynamic” events. Maybe you need to “research” these abilities and only then give them to soldiers. But even then they need to have some limits or “levels” like only the top level of Dash can be zero AP cost. These are not actual suggestions, just a thought. The game needs to decide first on some core principals and then go from there. Like Xenonauts has a simple principal that no-matter the rank of the soldier, it can’t output 200% damage than a rookie guy. Because if you can and you give him a weapon with 150% damage then this becomes really difficult to balance and recover from losses.