Messages

1

The X-Com Files / Re: The X-Com Files - 3.3: Mysteries Ancient And New

« on: May 05, 2024, 09:52:06 pm »

For what it's worth, the Trouble in Ski Resort mission can be challenging. You're restricted to rather puny weapons. The hut has so many windows that there are few or no "safe squares" inside. However, this depends on where on the map the hut spawns. (If you get a nice corner spawn you might be a bit better off.) This is important especially if you get Red Dawn, and you'll have to deal with sniper/spotter mechanics. The upstairs and some other squares are lighted, so you're a little bit restricted if you want to stay in unlit squares.

As a result, I have usually just skipped the mission. The penalty is very small and the reward doesn't offset multiple agent deaths or losing a craft.

By the way, the mission briefing says you cannot evacuate from the mission. The hut where you spawn is apparently defined as entry squares, so aborting the mission does seem to allow you to evacuate (at least it seems so based on 'New Battle' testing). The description should probably be fixed.

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OXCE Support / Re: [Bug] Extended links (and statstrings) disappear after renaming a soldier

« on: May 04, 2024, 07:04:20 am »

The statstring is now shown while you are renaming the soldier, because they are not actually part of the name. The statstring shows up when you're done renaming the soldier. IMO this is exactly as it should be.

3

OXCE Suggestions NEW / Re: [Suggestion] add Global equip templates

« on: May 03, 2024, 09:33:14 pm »

after starting a new game you need to re-create equipment profiles
why not create global profiles for all games?

Where these would be saved? Options.cfg? Some "pseudosave" that actually applies to every game? Doubtful.

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The X-Com Files / Re: Progress stuck, help needed

« on: May 03, 2024, 06:41:45 am »

OK, so assuming you also have the Hyper-Wave Decoder researched, you should just wait for the new mission to spawn. 50% chance per month.

By the way, shouldn't that chance be increased? Given that the game is otherwise already done, having to wait multiple months could be a PITA. There's still 12.5 % chance that you'll need to wait at least more than three months, so a longer wait would not be unheard of. If you'd prefer not to make this 100 %, I'd suggest at least 75 or 80 %.

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The X-Com Files / Re: The X-Com Files - 3.3: Mysteries Ancient And New

« on: May 01, 2024, 04:20:39 pm »

I suppose the easiest way to "fix" this, if anything is needed at all, would be to replace the craft with spawn tiles - if that works for that specific kind of mission. Then you can just explain this so that some vehicle dropped them nearby to avoid detection and they just walked on the mission site. The only a little bit shady aspect with that might be how they carried the huge loot pile on the site...

If needed, a similar approach can be used with some other missions as well, if there is any need to make any mission harder (= no turn 1 or later cover provided by the craft).

6

OpenXcom Extended / Re: OXCE (OpenXcom Extended) main thread

« on: April 27, 2024, 07:39:57 pm »

I downloaded a mod that had this large hangar for 4 planes, there was also this “craftSlots” command, it should place the aviation sprites in different places on the hangar sprite, but no, you can still only see the sprite of one plane in the center of the hangar.

The mod uses features which are not available in vanilla OXCE so I think this is the wrong place to ask this question.

7

The X-Com Files / Re: Progress stuck, help needed

« on: April 27, 2024, 05:57:15 pm »

Hello, I`ve been playing xcom files for a while and got stuck. I`ve finished (or it seems finished) all factions arcs, R`lyeh arc, MiB arc and cyberweb arc. Feels only like ghosts and original aliens arcs left.

But now I have nothing to do. No saucers, no events. Very rarely I got some random events of former factions. Research tree says I`m on 85% and have no discovered topics. I`ve checked wiki and it says that I need high-tier ethereals, but I dont know where to find them. I`m using scouting plane to find bases, did find some, but now there is nothing to find. Also, wiki said that I need some underground mission about pharaoh-king, can`t get it too. What should I do?

Once you have researched MIB commander, there is 33 % monthly chance of Ethereal retaliation missions against your bases, which provides an opportunity to capture Ethereal commander if you take the right steps. Stone Lake made a detailed writeup here half a year ago on how to proceed with that. That will get you started on the end game (MIB lunar base etc.) The rest of the game should be straightforward (orbital station, more moon missions, etc.)

Completing the pharaoh arc is optional. You've likely missed some live captures. I'd suggest checking wiki/rulesets to figure out which dependencies you're missing.

8

OXCE Suggestions NEW / Re: New save mode with disabled manual save

« on: April 27, 2024, 06:27:24 am »

I play ironman so I may be biased but.. even when I did not, I never actually used more than a couple of save slots for a certain game. I don't think essentially anyone (other for game debugging purposes) would continue playing the game but reload a game you played three days ago and 8 saves earlier. So I don't really think this proposal adds anything, because by that definition everyone would be using this mode.

Also, ironman mode already allows a softer approach, which I sometimes used before moving on to "hardcore ironman". If you kill the program before the game saves itself automatically, in battlescape at the start of every X turns (by default 5), you can continue from the earlier point. The only thing you risk is savefile corruption if you do it at the wrong moment, while the game is updating the save. But as a player you already know when that happens and can avoid that. Savefire corruption has never occurred to me while playing soft or hardcore ironman. (Note that earlier OXCE tried to save the game when playing ironman when the program was closed, but that is no longer the case, precisely to avoid savefile corruption.)

9

The X-Com Files / Re: Re: Bugs, crashes, typos & bad taste

« on: April 25, 2024, 04:52:39 pm »

If I recall correctly, in my last XCF campaign, enforcers were used as heavy support. Short summary of advantages for me:

Strength to carry heavy weapons, such as the Sniper Gauss
Unable to get wounded, only loss of HP, IIRC.
No downtime if injured.
Immunity to PSI actions

You get weight reduction with power suit, power armor and juggernaut armor. All of these allow regular agents to carry heavy gauss weapons. The only late-game armor which does not is stormtrooper armor. So, by the point you get enforcer, your agents should already be able to carry gauss without problems (at least if you prioritized capturing heavy MIBs for their armors). Also, after the somewhat recent addition of advanced sick bay, agent downtime due to injury or sanity loss is less and less relevant.

So, not really sure of the actual use case for these now (in the sense how are these better than, for example, spartans or even some other transformed soldiers).

Maybe this should be pulled to a separate thread..

10

The X-Com Files / Re: Re: Bugs, crashes, typos & bad taste

« on: April 24, 2024, 10:19:51 pm »

Is the enforcer's immunity to psi effects an advantage? Even without immunity, all agents were immune to psi simply because I immediately fired agents with psi strength below 90 when hiring. The enforcer could be a worthwhile unit, but it only goes the first 4 turns of the mission. then he just stands in one place.

I don't speak of PSI attacks (psionics) but PSI damage type. PSI damage type attacks are used at least by a few ghost units and a few enemy units, like Dr. Hadriex and cultists armed with katapeltes spiritus or manus. In the hands of XCF agents, PSI damage type attacks can be tremendously useful, because they essentially bypass the armor. For example, PSI damage type is extremely useful for live capturing heavily armored MIB units and stealing their armor before you can acquire the armors otherwise.

I haven't taken a full catalogue of what enemies use PSI damage type attacks, but as said this seems essentially a useless niche, because for example all the ghosts or aether cultists are not that bad, especially at the point you get enforcer armor.

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The X-Com Files / Re: Bugs, crashes, typos & bad taste

« on: April 24, 2024, 11:37:12 am »

I suppose that in that case I must chime in. I'm not too impressed with enforcers, if you compare them to other (human) units wearing an adequate armor and with spartanism transformation. Spartans are much better at least in many respects (but I suppose there are some niches where enforcers could be useful; one minor niche is the complete resistance to PSI damage type, but at the point you get enforcers that is no longer really relevant).

Also, it can be dangerous to use at least some 1x1 AI units, because even a single laser or plasma shot could roast the unit to the cinders, i.e. also destroy the AI unit so that it cannot be restored. Thus you may need to be careful with these. I'm not sure if I've seen this with 2x2 units, though their bodies could be wiped out as well with explosions at least. I've seen a flying drone completely wiped out by an enemy laser or similar a couple of times, but not sure if this could happen with enforcers.

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The X-Com Files / Re: The X-Com Files online Wiki

« on: April 19, 2024, 08:53:19 pm »

The link above describes game engine changes that are not specific to X-Com Files. If the question concerns XCF changes to the main game mechanics, those are not really documented in any one place in a manner that would be understandable or useful to anyone. Many of them can be found in the ruleset files, for example here:

https://github.com/SolariusScorch/XComFiles/blob/master/Ruleset/vars_XCOMFILES.rul

But you'd have to look all of these up in the ruleset reference guide https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Ruleset_Reference_Nightly_(OpenXcom) to try to understand what these mean. And then there are also a lot more in the other ruleset files. For example, the sniper/spotter mechanics of many enemy units.

All in all, the amount of "changes" in XCF compared to vanilla OXCE UFO game is huge and will take quite a while to get used to. And if you don't study various threads here, it's very difficult to learn the details of all of them.

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The X-Com Files / Re: Bugs, crashes, typos & bad taste

« on: April 19, 2024, 06:17:51 am »

IMHO that is clearly intended. By the time you get Enforcer-"armors", you already have trained your AI units a lot. You wouldn't even want Enforcer-"armor" to be tied to an untrained AI unit, but prefer to be able to use in the AI unit of your choosing.

14

OXCE Support / Re: switching between oxc and oxce with seperate executables

« on: April 17, 2024, 09:45:18 pm »

I'm not sure what you mean with your main point. Obviously you launch the executables a different way, but what else.

There is a caveat with switching back and forth. If you go from OXCE to OXC and back to OXCE, I think your OXCE-related settings are going to disappear. The same thing happens if you switch between mods and each mod forces its own settings. Based on my experience, essentially each time you switch between major mods you may need to readjust your settings. It would certainly be smoother if the settings could somehow be preserved (except by launching the executable with reference to a separate settings file for each), but I think that would cause other issues when the settings provided by OXCE change over time.

15

Released Mods / Re: X-Chronicles Release, v.0.99.6

« on: April 15, 2024, 07:56:23 pm »

How for the love of god you have 19m from council? I barely scrap by selling most of the stuff since i cant keep more than 30 scientists in July of 2021 and i just got x weapons

Note that this was almost two years ago. The mod has likely changed A LOT in the meanwhile. So I'm not sure if my earlier comment is still too relevant. (I haven't played the mod since; I'd personally prefer a mod that uses completely a fantasy setting. It is difficult for me to suspend the disbelief as there are 2000's guns and weapons available but they just don't work anymore.)