I think weapon damage is one of the most controversial feature in PP. I mean soldiers’ weapon damage: it’s always fun to destroy weapon carried by our foes, but not too much fun when it happens to us. Effects of damaged weapon are permament and consequences are severe.
To make it more bearable please reconsider weapon malfunction instead of weapon loss: it won’t make soldiers useless because malfunctioned weapon could be fixed by spending whole next turn of that soldier (or another soldier staying close to him), and maybe even by spending some will points, too. Still it won’t be as punishing as now while at the same time will need much effort to bring things right. Malfunctioned weapon could be unusable right after the mission, so buying a new one would still be necessity. What I wouldn’t like to see is my soldiers disarmed permanently during the fight in the least appropriate moment.
Malfunctions could even be more frequent with some of enemies specializing in attacks causing that state.
I think that malfunction could happen when some damage is done. But if enemy will do enough damage then weapon should be beyound repair during the mission. But I think that weapons should stay in our inventory to repair them in base.
It’s very easy to break weapons as I can see - for both sides.
I had a mission against 3 snipers + 3 “heavy” with a lot of armor.
Snipers was easy to kill, but heavy had 30+ armor, so only snipers or another heavy could kill them.
Solution was easy - 2 shots from any weapon breaks enemy weapons and they become useless(I’m not sure they even could attack me after this). Then, do whatever you want with them.
As for enemy - grenade launchers very popular weapon for crab-soldiers, and if you not caution enough and recieve 2 grenades - you’ll have broken weapon. It’s too punishing.
There is “go around” - you can shoot from “canon” for example, and then switch to pistol. Pistol is easier to replace in case it’s broken. There is downside, your return fire will be with pistol not with canon, but again - it’s depends on situation.
Overall, I would agree - when weapon costs 300+ resources, losing it is very annoing. Еру worst part about this - you can’t do much to prevent this to happen, it’s random.
I had the same feeling on weapon damage and malfunctions vs destruction.
I’d like to add a bit to it.
Don’t know if or how collision calculation are used, but malfunction could even be related to the point hit on a certain weapon. some would interfere with accuracy, some with ammo reloading, some with firing malfunctions (sort of like fumbles that happen now on non-certified weapons)
I don’t mind that weapons would be destroyed when hit wit a grenade blast, it makes sense that they would be after receiving damage of that type.
I think what is a problem however, is that grenades are too accurate.
I also feel that weapons that are destroyed could after the battle, be salvaged for spare parts (in other words resources)
Re weapon malfunctions, I do think that should be a possibility also, but that should just be a thing that can happen through use. It makes sense that a weapon could jam and need to be sorted out on the battlefield, and that a solider would be able to do that, but a weapon that’s taken actual damage should be toast.
No, no, no, no, no.
No random “your weapon won’t work this turn becuase of a random malfunction roll”. Add malaria and I am getting Farcry2 flashbacks. You could add weapon’s durability system, requiring regular maintenence, but that’s just adding busywork, and I can’t see how it would make for engaging system.
The overall moral seems to be: weapons break too easily. As someone mentioned, granades 100% accuracy might be to blame. Perhaps, when explosives spread is in, it won’t be as of a problem. Still, I have seen people easily destroy weapon with a shot.
Two possible solutions come to my mind:
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keep weapons easy to damage and make damage less punishing - even to the point of making it “disabled”; something, that affected party can fix within one turn.
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keep consequences of destroying a weapon severe, but make it more difficult to do so. Perhaps, grant some scrap back, to not make rebuilding of the gun 100%. Or perhaps allow fixing weapons (wee bit like long war1), with price and time tag for each item.
Isn’t it though? It ain’t documentary either.
Tying mechanics to familiar theme is unquestionably great, but neither is it 100% required. If something works mechanically, lore can stretch reality a bit.
Grenades seem to have a really high likelihood of destroying weapons, maybe it could just be tuned down some what to make it a lower likelihood.
Or perhaps a research topic could result in something like reinforced designs or resistant coatings so that any future weapons created are significantly more resistant to explosion/shrapnel damage?
weapon destruction should be a separate difficulty setting imho, given how controversially it’s taken by the audience.
There could be even separated option to toggle off/on at any difficulty of the game. It would avoid situations where ppl don’t want to play on higher difficulties just because of weapon destruction feature.
Agree on this one
Maybe also grenade mutation should cost the aliens more and they wouldn’t be able to field more than a few per map. Currently a nest builds only one type of Arthron, maybe in the final game there will be more variety inside a same nest. Apparently it is a bug that a single grenade destroys the weapon (by reading other threads).
I’d vote for #2 . Keep the damaged weapon around and there should be a repair option back at base. Half the resource cost of a new one completed in 1/4 the time. Making it so you can keep some extras around and rotate damaged weapons out but not costing alot or taking forever to replace.
Also Grenades shouldn’t be damaging weapons as well as they are and they should not be as accurate as they are. Grenades should cost a little more to manufacture than they currently do and the enemy should be limited to say 4 GL in one battle. As grenades are not a super common item when not directly created. Waves of grenade wielding aliens seems abit much.
I had two really bad experiences that make me think it’s too easy to destroy weapons.
First one in a nest: a group of Athrons, half a dozen, in a corridor running parallel to where i was, not in sight of my team, launched a grenade volley on my squad that disabled almost all their weapons
Secon one was with 2 mortar Charons two sirens and a shitload of Athrons. Deployment was very close, after my turn one of the Charon was dead and one of the sirens close and bleeding
Their move Charon bombed and half a dozen crabs closed in and launched grenades, the siren mind controlling one of my guys, one of the two with a weapon better than a pistol, was just the cherry over the cake
Grenades are overpowered, i know and i use them often, and way too many aliens have them; when i see shields or MG i’m happy, will be an easy fight but when i see a dozen grenade launchers i know there will be a lot of pain and a long time to rearm my squad
I actually think we should have both after the weapon reaches say 30% or more damage it’s starts to malfunction and once it gets to 100% it is destroyed. The damage could cause miss fires, aiming issues, or over heat.
Agree , i pretty much have to restart the mission when some weapon get broken . That mortais alien makes things even more harder since he can basically broken all your squad guns from the other side of the map
The current BB5 implementation definitely needs more fleshing out and adjustment due to how exploitable it is, I suspect the developers already have that on the list even as they were adding in the current state because if not… oh dear for the final state of the game.
In a dream world where there was time, resources and actual human willingness to do each job fully or not at all, I’d very much love to see artificial weapons essentially become their own sub-unit within a unit. (“Organic weapons” that are very much grown limbs of a organic creature are another thing altogether)
So a unit holding any artificial weapon (Gun, Sword, Mallet, Crowbar, Toothpick, railroad spike, whatever), would essentially be holding a smaller unit that has its own components that influence its performance, for the larger/deadlier weapons even some additional components that when damaged trigger certain behavioural changes when used rather than just a negative performance modifier.
Combat should never really be a case of “Oh that bugger is tough, I’ll just blow his gun up then poke him to death with a feather”. But at the same time, making weapons stupidly tough damage sponges would be as equally bad. Because then you’re simply turning certain engagements into artificially prolonged damage grind fests, not anything that’s actually engaging, tactical and interesting. (Let us leave that for games like The Division)
On the other hand if some heavy armoured unit had a large sturdy explosive weapon that in itself couldn’t be destroyed easily but there was a more exposed and weaker part of the weapon that when damaged introduced a chance of when fired suffering from immediate shell detonation dealing damage to the weapon but more importantly shredding armour off the wearer, then you have some kind of pro/con weighing up going on when deciding how to tackle those kind of situations, not just a singular obvious go-to that removes the entire problem through easy to abuse tactics.
Edit:
As a simplified typical rule of thumb I’d say if how to exactly deal with a random engagement situation can be figured out by watching a single person on Youtube deal with a entirely separate situation. Then the mechanics in play need more fleshing out so that situational decision making matters… currently we’re very much still at the “Just see someone use explosives on Youtube, and repeat in your own game when needed” stage of things.
I dont feel the tactical difficulty so high that i need to look at youtube, as i did a lot with XCOM Long War that is a lot less forgiving, a HUGE lot
Engagement rules are fairly simple:
Try to neutralize what you cannot one shot, shooting the arm with the dangerous weapon or the weapon itself if the arm is armored heavily
Spam grenades on enemies groups, then repeat; with two heavies with Boom Blast almost every fight is very simple; you cannot recover loot anyway
Dont do low probability shots, better overwatch and shoot the enemy when he’s exposed
Once enemies start to panic dont kill wounded and paniked, follow up and wound those paniked and healthy to have a new panic wave the following round. Just care that reinforcements will not be near panic
Pretty much my point right there.
ATM there are some game mechanichs that can be easily exploited; i’m far from being a top player in those games, in any game to be honest considering that at all FPS where you cannot pause and aim i suck, but this one is an easy one.
When, not if when, grenades will be less accurate and multi dash wont be allowed, the two most blatant exploits, i’ll think another way to play.
I also hope the strategic part will become less random; my present campaign i had a very lucky start: a base in Caucasus and another quickly found in Greece at one jump distance; very handy, and in fact in March i had my second Manticore in production.
To make me pay for this Anu decided that his first diplo mission, that usually is a couple jumps from where you get it, would be in Antartica, not Siberia, Alaska or South Africa, near the South pole;
guess next NJ mission will be on the Moon