Messages

76

Offtopic / Re: Got a few questions about UFO Defense.

« on: September 01, 2017, 06:06:11 pm »

Well, better avoid them altogether. On terror missions you might not have much of a choice, as well when you really want to attack a landed UFO (e. g. for its E115). But for the most part it is simple just to wait until daytime. One hint here: You will not get any penalty for not attacking crashed UFOs. Especially in lategame you will find, that there are plenty of UFOs laying around and you can pick your targets more to your liking.

77

Offtopic / Re: Got a few questions about UFO Defense.

« on: September 01, 2017, 12:14:23 am »

In combination: Of course your items of any fallen soldier may disappear, too, when the area with your soldiers corpse is affected by an explosion. Most likely scenario with that result: One of your guys holds an active grenade and is killed. He drops the active grenade, which in turn destroys all the gear he carried with him, too.

Or one annoying thing, that does happen, when you are not careful enough (or tend to play a certain style in some situations): You don't have any soldiers left at your skyranger (or other starting positions...). So you feel free to blast any alien that stand's there (or maybe it happens by reaction fire of a HWP). The explosion obliterates the items you left there, too. Meaning you will have to buy or produce them again. Nice job... :-/

78

Open Feedback / Re: shutdown in spite of excellent monthly rating

« on: August 31, 2017, 04:57:15 pm »

While we are on the subject: Is it necessary to have the negative balance twice in a row, or does this also hit, if you had a negative balance once before at any given time and now again?

79

Offtopic / Re: Got a few questions about UFO Defense.

« on: August 31, 2017, 12:02:23 am »

In addition:
2. Don't forget, that you get points for everything you did research successfully. It's not a big sum for corpses, but still: it contributes to the monthly points you collect.
4. They do serve an important role, but when you play the game further than just the first three months, you will find out what that means. ;-) There are researchable things that are purely story telling but others (incl. some aliens) are extremely valuable.
5. I like Avalanches best in early game. ;-) Hint: There are technical specifications about every UFO type there is in the game. You can find out about that information from reliable ingame(!) sources. Of course you can always look at the ufopaedia website. There's pretty much everything about the game, including the finer points of the battlescape and other game mechanics. But I think, it takes the kick out of the game for a first-time player. Just do your research, play around with the things you gather over ingame time. You will find, that the game offers plenty of variety on how to play it and what you want to concentrate on. Once you have played it through, you will probably find a much more efficient approach. But as I already said: I think it'd take the fun out of the game, if you already knew about all the important twists and tricks from the beginning.
6. Thumb rule: whenever you have money left, expand your bases. That means building new ones as well as building new facilities on existing bases. It takes time to get them useful, as every base facility needs time for building it. So the sooner you start, the better. That's more a question of available money... As ohartenstein23 says: radar coverage is very important. You might end up with a lot of movement just outside the one radar and miss a lot of UFOs with valuable items. Just don't place them to near to each other. Take the large radar as a base for comparison and try to cover all the land masses. That should do the trick in general. Just one thought about the layout of new bases: The layout has tactical aspects, too... Think about the possible ways one might enter the base and accordingly, how to defend it easier. (Am I already telling too much here? I don't know.)

80

Suggestions / Re: Really Open-Xcom

« on: August 21, 2017, 10:53:43 am »

the game is 5 or 6$ on GOG or STEAM and a properly installed original copy can be easily accessed for that content if the several successful nightly installs I have done thus far is any indication.  I even venture to say that because of OpenXcom this may have increased the sales of the original game just to get the assets to play OpenXCom.

That's probably the reason, why they haven't kicked your butts, yet and even find it a nice idea. =) If there's one reason to buy the original game, it's OpenXcom.

81

Work In Progress / Re: Aliens all eventually exit their ship

« on: August 21, 2017, 10:51:12 am »

So in essence, it's kind of statistical physics that they »poor out« of the ship over time, until the point where it's round 20. Thanks for the insight.

82

Suggestions / Really Open-Xcom

« on: August 20, 2017, 10:36:28 pm »

With all those graphics mods, sound mods, new units and new maps floating around, I believe there would not be a lot missing to make OpenXcom not rely on non-free contents. So to speak, make it really open as in open source. Maybe a user interface (especially the geoscape and the soldier inventory and such things)) would need a free reimplementation. But I think it'd be doable. I remember the achievement of UFO2000 creators, to have at least a basic version of the game playable, that doesn't require any non free graphics or other resources. Just install it, and you are good to go. So the game was really free. And if you like, you could also copy the original contents to the designated folders, and you had even more maps and units at your disposal. I am wondering: Would it be possible, with not to much effort, to create a really open Xcom version? Or did someone already give it a shot?

83

Open Feedback / Re: Rebalanced?

« on: August 16, 2017, 10:57:15 pm »

And of course the grey suckers take their little »toys« with them, when they go on a »hike« through a city. That you got four of them isn't that unlikely, although it's a bit heavy for the first mission. Just start over a new game and see what happens. Usually the terror mission is in the last third of January. And it's not necessarily a Sectoid mission. Can also be a Floater mission. On the other hand, one can see this as an opportunity: If you succeed in taking the Sectoid leader as prisoner (and have the containment facility ready), you might end up with psi abilities already in May or June.

84

Work In Progress / Re: Aliens all eventually exit their ship

« on: August 14, 2017, 10:57:28 am »

One thing I'm still not sure about: Are the aliens somewhat trying to spread their units? They traverse from one designated point to another. That I know. But are they choosing their target points randomly, or is there some sort of directive, to distribute themselves somehow? I often encounter them trying to reach certain points outside, which seem to be standard spawning points. But as they are taken out one by one, trying to reach them, it's kind of a slow stream until only a few are left. Especially the last three take their time, until round 20 has been reached.

85

Offtopic / Re: How many aliens per crash site?

« on: August 08, 2017, 11:18:35 pm »

I knew, I had seen it somewhere. Thanks.

86

Offtopic / How many aliens per crash site?

« on: August 08, 2017, 11:13:31 pm »

I wonder, how many aliens are usually deployed at a mission. I thought, at some point, I saw a list or aliens per UFO sorted by game difficulty, somewhere. I just had a look in the Ufopaedia, but without success. Is there some comprehensive list about that topic, somewhere?

87

Work In Progress / Re: Modding soldier experience, specifically firing accuracy

« on: August 02, 2017, 09:29:46 am »

One must also keep in mind, that this may still depend a lot on random numbers but on the other hand, it still follows an exponential curve regarding how fast the soldier gets better or how fast it gets unlikely to not hit. (As the better your soldiers get, the faster they get even more well.) Especially when using modded weapons like the sniper rifle (160% acc. on aimed) you can speed up the process even more to the point where even your bad soldiers have acc 100+ within 10-20 missions with that weapon. Some are already on 100%+ right from the start (160 acc. & 63 is enough) .So in principle, the game is rather well balanced on that one. In fact, if you look at the stats of you opponents, you begin to realize, that you are already well above their skills right from the beginning (with many soldiers that is, not all). The only real advantage in the beginning are their armours and better aiming weapons. To compensate a bit for this, there's the sniper rifle mod. =)

88

Suggestions / Re: WWII

« on: July 28, 2017, 08:26:37 pm »

It has been done for every other game out there, why not Xcom.

I don't remember having seen a minesweeper or settlers mod, covering that topic. ;-)

german people and nazis are two seperate groups. just putting that out there.

I concur. In fact, there are a lot of Germans (probably most of them) who wouldn't have a problem with any of this, as they aren't exactly fond of what their ancestors did, either. On the other hand, there are plenty of other war-like topic in the human history. Choose a scenario...

89

Work In Progress / Re: How do I make Chryssalids not always succeed?

« on: July 15, 2017, 01:02:14 pm »

My impression as well. I know this attack over attack behavior. But at the end, if the armor was thick enough, nothing happens. So AFAIK, it's not guaranteed for Chryssalids to succeed.

90

Builds & Ports / Re: AppImage - Universal package for Linux

« on: May 15, 2017, 04:28:51 pm »

CMIIR, but aren't mods laying in userspace, anyways? Or does the AppImage concept ignore user space settings and files altogether?