JoINrbs wrote:On Rookies/Squaddies being effectively free, if you're finding that you're able to translate an effectively free resource into more valuable things maybe the simplest solution is just to make that resource not free anymore? It doesn't really make any sense for XCOM to be adding Rookies at a point in the campaign where only SGTs+ are viable on combat missions anyway, so why not stop providing the player with Rookies at some point and start only providing Squaddies or better but having them be more expensive? And then a couple of months later the player can only get CPLs or better and they're twice as expensive as the Squaddies were, and so on.
This only makes sense given that the other sources of new soldiers already scale with the game. The black market and rescue soldier VIP scale up but the rebel jailbreak and the recruit from Haven don't. And like you said, getting rookies when you need nothing less than SGT is just fodder for lib 3 suicide missions.
JoINrbs wrote:I've actually suggested that infiltration speed have a general sweet spot at 4-5 soldiers before with very similar numbers to the ones RantingRodent suggested, I think it's a great idea and makes a lot more sense mechanically, narratively, and balance-wise. One problem is that we care largely about soldier hours spent to beat a mission (because our barracks is under pressure and can only output soldier hours). Currently the soldier hours required to beat a mission increase drastically as squad size increases, but it'd make a lot more sense in terms of keeping comparable pressure on the barracks for them to increase far less drastically.
I think the creation of a couple of new mission types would really help. Cap them at 5 like the network tower and cater them to 5 man teams. It looks like the upcoming Smash n Grab fits this niche. The one thing I really like is that it's not impossible to do with as little as 1, but the rewards scale with the more people you bring. I feel with some missions at the moment the risk of taking more people isn't really worth the reward. I think if the missions enabled you to do it with fewer people, but the reward would scale up with the size of your force would provide some incentive to bring as many people as you can afford. This also makes the player have to make judgement calls to balance out the 'infil fatigue' that they put on their squads. Maybe the mission has 9 days, but you need to do it with less because you can't afford the soldier-hours.
Some of the existing missions could be tweaked as well to push for larger squads. Imagine you get a jailbreak for 3 rebels. You get to the cell, hack the door open, and find 1 of them is badly wounded and the other 2 are unconscious. The only way to get them all out would be to heal the ones that are wounded and carry the ones that are unconscious. A specialist could be even more handy here with the ability to use Revival after stabilizing. Also there could be a pod of 2 sentries guarding the door that you could sneak up on and ambush, but doing so would yellow alert from sound, pushing for the use of suppressors as more than just infil time reduction. And again, if you only take a shinobi/specialist with you, then either you won't have the firepower to alpha strike the 2 guards, or you won't have the manpower to carry/heal/revive everyone out. Taking a 4-5 man squad now would scale the reward as you could get more of them out. It would also make it a much more engaging mission that you would actually have to plan things out a bit.
I think destroy relay already pushes for at least a 4 man if your going for a semi-stealth 1 turn alpha strike on the relay. I find these really fun to setup, and if you come up short on damage, you typically activate so much you have to evac. My last one of these I did just enough damage on my last shot from the shinobi, if he had min-rolled I would have had to evac with 1 dmg left on it after activating 2 pods dropping down to the evac. These missions get more trivial as you tech up though. Imagine if the relay was something like (20+2*FL), possibly giving it (FL/5 armor). In end-game you'd have a relay with 60HP and 4 armor to take down. For something you can't crit, that's alot of damage to have to deal! It would certainly keep the mission relevant for 5 and even 6 man squads to have to deal with.
Hack missions seem like they are fine. It's risky to go in solo/duo. It's a big dash to get into position in time and have to find a place to hide for the evac. Maybe over-infil shouldn't lower the evac timer so much? I often bring a fire team on these if I can afford it, and sometimes have to abort the mission because I simply can't get there in time. What if the mission timer scaled with the size of the squad. This might be an idea in general. I feel like one of the big risks of bringing a bigger squad, especially with Fixed Evac missions, is that deciding to fight could leave you short of the evac, which is basically a squad wipe. Maybe having 4/5/6 guys would give you 1/2/3 extra turns?
The one thing I don't like about what OP suggested was making smaller squads cost more infiltration time. This just feels wrong and not intuitive. I think addressing this from the point of view of rewards is a more engaging and less confusing way to go about it.
Tweaking the GTS upgrades might also be beneficial here. It seems like most players consider them an afterthought for when they are rich with supply in the mid/late game. This makes them feel broken, especially compared to how they were treated in LW1. You wanted them as fast as you possibly could because it had such a big impact. These perks are currently quite lackluster. Maybe the 1st one is ok, but the 2nd one is hardly helpful at all. It would be nice if these perks were aligned such that they felt like you were getting an extra soldier.
Here's how I would adjust them, might even try it out to see how it works out.
Upgrade 1. Reduce infiltration time of 2-5 soldier squads by 3/5/10/20. 100 Supply, requires a 1st Lt.
Upgrade 2. Reduce infiltration time of 6-8 soldier squads by 25/25/30. 200 Supply, requires Major.
Upgrade 3. Reduce infiltration time of 9-10 soldier squads by 50/70. 400 Supply, requires Colonel
Upgrade 4. Reduce infiltration time of 11-12 soldier squads by 70/90. 800 Supply , requires Field Commander.
With all upgrades this would change the values as such.
Code: Select all
Size | Base | Upgrade |
1 | 0.6 | 0.6 |
2 | 0.65 | 0.62 |
3 | 0.7 | 0.65 |
4 | 0.8 | 0.7 |
5 | 1.0 | 0.8 |
6 | 1.25 | 1.0 |
7 | 1.5 | 1.25 |
8 | 1.8 | 1.5 |
9 | 2.8 | 2.3 |
10 | 4.0 | 3.3 |
11 | 5.2 | 4.5 |
12 | 6.4 | 5.5 |
The effect of the first two upgrades would basically be like getting an extra soldier on each mission. The last two upgrades are not as substantial. But imagine that you actually had to fight the storyline missions with 10-man squads. Epic battles would ensue! Having these perks, along with your Officer infil reductions and other sources would be what get them down to reasonable levels.
JoINrbs wrote: I also think there could be some tweaks to the way detection works. If I'm right
I also think there's tons of room to improve stealth missions to make them more enjoyable and to make sure that players are being provided constantly-changing challenges. For example:
Different missions having different ideal squad sizes and/or different infiltration base times (already in play for troop columns and some of the larger missions, but could be leveraged a lot more to make GOPs different each time).
Stealth-oriented perks for all classes available by LCPL. "Ghillie Suits" for Rangers that give phantom, -20% detection, and infiltration speed, take away 1-action shot from Snapshot and make it give +3 mobility, -20% detection and infiltration speed, etc.
It would be nice if more of the classes had some way of being competitive with stealth without having to go SMG all the time. This basically makes them useless in a firefight. It would also put some more variety into certain classes. I feel like many of the offense classes have 1 best build, and deviations from that don't provide enough value anywhere else in the campaign. All of my Rangers are clones, straight down the left side, nothing else is even remotely appealing. Ranger/Sniper/Assault really SHOULD have more stealth capabilities, although I could see certain classes like Gunner/Technical/Grenadier not having them. That's ok though, not every class should be as capable in all areas of the game! They would still all be not as good as Shinobi, but it would at least be less binary.
I'm also a big supporter of having more options in the AWC along these lines. It's really nice to pickup things like Covert/Phantom/Ghostwalker on the odd soldier. It helps them be a lot more viable in small squads and less of a liability. Maybe the offense side of the AWC could have perks that reduce infil times, or add a turn to the mission timer? Would be some nice flavor and would differentiate your small-squad capable soldiers from the more 'go loud and bang it out' bigger squad members. I guess there is Tradecraft, but I don't remember ever getting it on anyone.
JoINrbs wrote:Necessary nerfs for Specialist and Shinobi. Mobile hack requires two actions? Infil modifier on Specialist way up. Shinobi gets Covert at Squaddie but can't pick up Phantom until SGT, etc.
100% agree. It always seemed odd that you can't haywire without ending your turn, but you can hack an objective on a blue move? This would also make it worth taking an Assault for a Run n Gun hack if the Specialist can't get a good LOS.
Also I do think Shinobi perks are out of order. You get most of your power almost straight away, which makes Shinobi a bit disposable. Conceal is nice for certain missions, but I feel like those missions shouldn't be so easily cheesable with Conceal anyway. A good example is the blacksite. There's a whole mechanic built-in that lets you reduce infil time by 90% if you liberate it, but thats a ton of work when you can basically skip it with Oscar Mike/Command/Ghostwalker/Conceal/Grapple Hook. These missions should be the most epic missions of a campaign, and they're completely bypassable right now... Imagine if grabbing the Vial stunned the soldier grabbing it for a turn! You'd need the fire support just to keep them safe until they could get to the choppa.
JoINrbs wrote:Different missions give infiltration bonuses for bringing the right class of soldier, for bringing a soldier from the region, for bringing a soldier who was captured and rescued from that region previously, etc., basically mini-quests to complete to improve infiltration time to generate unique squad compositions in all situations.
Nothing wrong with some more flavor/content to the game.
JoINrbs wrote:Get rid of civilians busting stealth. Just let them be yellow-alert screamers after you've broken stealth, that's fine.
I'm all for nerfing civilians, it's really stupid that they can bust concealment. They are not aliens, them seeing you should not mean anything. I am however still in favor of them being faceless because I love watching xwynns trigger them every other mission lol.
JoINrbs wrote:Merciful ADVENT so that soldiers bleeding out on failed missions are captured and able to be rescued later in the campaign. Maybe even a surrender button which makes all your soldiers get captured and ends the mission.
I would add to this that running out of time on a forced evac mission should cause this automatically. And once it does, a mission immediately spawns in that region with a high detection chance. Maybe there is some chance that soldiers are killed/bleeding out/unconcious/wounded when the mission spawns do to 'interrogation'. This would mix well with the jailbreak idea above.
JoINrbs wrote:I can go on like this forever, but I get almost no feedback from other people about it and I find that bizarre. There are lots of people who want to argue that stealth is broken or boring and want to give fairly simple ways to nerf it, but a greater design goal, and one which makes this game extremely replayable and uniquely compelling, is that all squad sizes should have a reasonable place and be supported by compelling gameplay. I wish there was more feedback on how to make stealth more compelling and less feedback on how to nerf it or edit your .inis so you don't have to do it.
Hopefully we can spur some more discussion. Sometimes all you have to do is get the ball rolling and people will get inspired. It's very easy to simply turn to the nerf bat as a solution. While sometimes the nerf bat is the right solution, mostly it just removes content from the game and makes it overall less enjoyable. I totally agree that there is a ton of room here to introduce new and more compelling content. It would also alleviate some of the balance issues. I like how Smash n Grab takes some of the pressure off farming Supply Raids and Troop Columns for resources. It would be nice if there were other options for getting corpses as well.