Topic: [Beta] Ranged hit chances / damage are just insane

there is a range defense penalty as well, i dont remember if in previous version the night debuff included this or not, but the hit chance is what always draws me crazy, imagine, your two handed veteran companion with 81 melee skill misses a 98% hit, but you recall that in the earlier turn, your newly recruited lvl 1 labor with 43 melee skill hit the target twice while his hit chance was only 43%.
hope i didnt over exaggerate too much, but what i want to say is karma is a beeach!

Sarissofoi, hey, man! I just passed by, but I really have advise. Turn off Beta build and play old stable version till this one gets balanced and polished. No offence, but that what the beta is supposed to be, trying different approaches to find balance. And what you talk about misarable state, are you kidding? Everything goes fine, just wait.

I approve of the shifts to make initiative, morale/resolve and hit-points more important, and I never wanted to have to create one-dimensional characters with a few exaggerated hyper-abilities and several glaring/unrealistic weaknesses that were negated by scale armour and other one-dimensional characters, but I have to say that I also have experienced mostly negative emotions from the new build thus far. On older builds, it seemed that Expert/Deadly mode forced you to spend too much time enduring tedious/puritanical resource management and taking recourse to “ignoble” tactics (avoiding uncertain fights, retreating, aborting contracts, intervening at the eleventh hour in caravan battles to scavenge loot etc.), whereas Easy/Normal/Beginner mode allowed you to more readily get to an unassailable economic position but with less pervasive and less numerous enemies to fight (so that battles became boringly easy and you had to artificially increase the difficulty by using less armour and keeping extra guys in reserve etc.). For the game to be enjoyable, you WANT there to be hordes of deadly enemies to fight, and you want your strategic and tactical decisions to have a bearing on the outcome against them, but you don’t want to be forced into fighting them when you can’t afford to buy/repair equipment and/or to heal injuries. You want to be able to take your time to build up for each challenge, tweaking your tactics as you go. You want room for experimentation and exploration. You want to focus on the aspects of the game that you find most enjoyable, instead of being persistently forced to forsake them (or to endure more tedious aspects) for economic reasons. You want to be able (or to reliably become able) to afford at least some decent/high-level resources, but you want this luxury to be necessary to build for the grand challenges ahead. You want the grand challenges to be exactly that, but you don’t want set-backs along the way to leave you in a ruinous position from which you can’t gradually rebuild and have another go. The game is very immersive and it’s immensely frustrating and irritating when hours/days/weeks of preparation are ruined by one or two random accidents/mistakes when you were tired or in a rush etc. And sometimes, at random, whatever the difficulty level and through no fault of your own, you just happen to get swarmed by deadly enemies chasing you from all directions early on in the game, and there’s no quick/reliable way to escape from the predicament. On the new beta release, these drawbacks seem to be more pervasive on all difficulty levels.

Wargasm wrote:

I approve of the shifts to make initiative, morale/resolve and hit-points more important, and I never wanted to have to create one-dimensional characters with a few exaggerated hyper-abilities and several glaring/unrealistic weaknesses that were negated by scale armour and other one-dimensional characters, but I have to say that I also have experienced mostly negative emotions from the new build thus far. On older builds, it seemed that Expert/Deadly mode forced you to spend too much time enduring tedious/puritanical resource management and taking recourse to “ignoble” tactics (avoiding uncertain fights, retreating, aborting contracts, intervening at the eleventh hour in caravan battles to scavenge loot etc.), whereas Easy/Normal/Beginner mode allowed you to more readily get to an unassailable economic position but with less pervasive and less numerous enemies to fight (so that battles became boringly easy and you had to artificially increase the difficulty by using less armour and keeping extra guys in reserve etc.). For the game to be enjoyable, you WANT there to be hordes of deadly enemies to fight, and you want your strategic and tactical decisions to have a bearing on the outcome against them, but you don’t want to be forced into fighting them when you can’t afford to buy/repair equipment and/or to heal injuries. You want to be able to take your time to build up for each challenge, tweaking your tactics as you go. You want room for experimentation and exploration. You want to focus on the aspects of the game that you find most enjoyable, instead of being persistently forced to forsake them (or to endure more tedious aspects) for economic reasons. You want to be able (or to reliably become able) to afford at least some decent/high-level resources, but you want this luxury to be necessary to build for the grand challenges ahead. You want the grand challenges to be exactly that, but you don’t want set-backs along the way to leave you in a ruinous position from which you can’t gradually rebuild and have another go. The game is very immersive and it’s immensely frustrating and irritating when hours/days/weeks of preparation are ruined by one or two random accidents/mistakes when you were tired or in a rush etc. And sometimes, at random, whatever the difficulty level and through no fault of your own, you just happen to get swarmed by deadly enemies chasing you from all directions early on in the game, and there’s no quick/reliable way to escape from the predicament. On the new beta release, these drawbacks seem to be more pervasive on all difficulty levels.

That is valid point.
Harder difficulties not only makes fights more challenging(more enemies, higher tiers) which is welcome but also bring company progress to a snail speed. Fights are harder which is fine but rewards not.
Player face bigger challenges and get less(compared to lower difficulties) reward ratio. Not even mention that even these less can buy less because of higher prices. And his expenditures are higher because harder fights against more numerous and harder enemies so his cost grows(repair items, medical bills) when rewards not.
Losing merc is easy – leveling them hard and long, can not afford better backgrounds and better equipment which mean fight harder and cost(injuries, dead mercs) more.
You need perfect run and even if you are good, mass ranged can and will first turn kill some unlucky dudes.
Injuries force you to bench mercs or risk them getting killed and you really can’t afford reserves(because upkeep and food costs), waiting is also not a option.

I currently replay some older build and its actually enjoyable. Simpler game but with charm and its actually FUN. Damn.

<stop and think about potential solutions>

Better contract rewards. FAIR PAY. Some contracts could pay half/or whole company upkeep(or at last for a front-liners).
More loot items. When conquering locations enemies I want RICHES.
Maybe nerf armor penetrations/effectiveness against armor? A little? Or buff starting armors(give them more armor at bigger fatigue cost and worse fatigue/armor ratio?)
Reduce visibility penalty for helmets? At last some. This would help archers and really some of penalties don’t have much sense.
Make early levels have bigger stats grown and double perks when late levels lower stat grow and no perk(so end perk build are reached faster but there still place for improvement)? Or make leveling faster?
Some utility perks(like rotation or footwork) could be move lower(as they increase control over company and give more options but not offer straight offensive or defensive buffs).

BTW VETERAN HALL and Prestige(over 11) levels are a joke. Sad joke.
Cost of exp boost scale with level and it small and short lived(ergo it would make more sense to give these boost to the Temples) and where is my perk respec or reroll attributes or straight level buying? There could be possibility to buy some stat increasing traits or maybe even special active skills that would enhance gameplay and what we get is some boost that is hardly used.
Sad.

Shadow wrote:

Perhaps the recently increased effect of obstacles (50% -> 75%) on ranged combat should help with this to some extent.

From my experience this is actually one of the main problems. From my testing, and I deliberately tested this, if the ‘obstacle hit’ is triggered, and the obstacle happens to be one of your brothers, he is automatically hit no matter what his ranged defense. This makes my strategy of having a front line of kite shield guys with pikemen behind them completely ineffective, as whenever an enemy ranged unit shoots at me it’s basically a guaranteed hit. If the obstacle hit triggers, one of my kite shield guys takes damage. If it doesn’t, chances are the low ranged defense of the pikemen means he gets hit. Against regular bows this isn’t a huge deal. It is pretty dangerous early game (but I don’t use pikes early game), but after that it’s just negligible armor damage. The real problem I experience is with crossbows, particularly heavy crossbows and the goblin crossbows. Those basically ignore armor and are guaranteed to hit one of my brothers on turn 1, so if the enemy has 2-3 crossbowmen I’m practically guaranteed to lose a guy unless the AI fails to press the ‘shoot crossbow’ button, which is common enough that my party hasn’t been wiped yet.