OpenXcom Forum
OpenXcom => Playthroughs => Topic started by: hellrazor on February 15, 2015, 03:42:12 pm
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That's why i love Xcom!
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That's why i love Xcom!
Great screenshots. :)
025 looks like a bad map spawn? all those baddies clustered in one corner looks like that terrain may have some messed up spawn nodes.
Cheers, Ivan :D
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Can we have some background story for the last picture? Seems they all fell asleep.
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Can we have some background story for the last picture? Seems they all fell asleep.
Well the endless stream of Snakeman who got reactionshotted in the face, wghile they tried to kill the tank :D
Thats the story.
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The opening to this terror mission was one of my bigger 'oh shit' moments. But I got through it without losing everything.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XV5JGM-LE-w
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The opening to this terror mission was one of my bigger 'oh shit' moments. But I got through it without losing everything.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XV5JGM-LE-w
What is so good on this UFO extender accuracy...??
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What is so good on this UFO extender accuracy...??
It makes the game more challenging - to reliably hit at longer distances, you have to use the more tu-expensive shots. I've only just started using it, and while I like the idea, I think some of the ranges are a little too short. Auto-fire becomes almost useless. :(
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What is so good on this UFO extender accuracy...??
makes you accuracy depend on range.
aimed however is not affected by this and always behaves like the original xcom giving a flat aim rate everywhere on the map.
makes the game more fair as enemies are affected by it as well.
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makes you accuracy depend on range.
aimed however is not affected by this and always behaves like the original xcom giving a flat aim rate everywhere on the map.
makes the game more fair as enemies are affected by it as well.
Which also means you can't perform as many primary actions as you normally would -> Soldiers lvl slower...
So nogo for me.
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Missing doesn't give experience. The reduced accuracy may make battles take a few more turns, but the total experience should be exactly the same.
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Missing doesn't give experience. The reduced accuracy may make battles take a few more turns, but the total experience should be exactly the same.
Shooting at an Enemy counts as an primary action, any performed primary action will increase secondary stats, like TU, Strength, Stamina, Health. In case you hit your target when you shoot it, you will get additional experience and your Accuracy will be increased. Reactionshots have only to be triggered to get you Reaction experience.
It is also know that, performing less then 3 Primary actions for a soldier in a mission will grant no improvement.
Minimal is 3 Primary actions (Shooting at enemy, Reactionshooting an enemy). 12 primary actions will give you the maximum experience a soldier will be rewarded per missions. This could lead to significant improvements like +6 Reactions (is fired 12 reactionshots only and all points get rewarded into reactions) or +6 firing accuracy.
So the best weapon to improve your soldiers basically are generally Pistols. But they will not do signifcant damage or are to inaccurate at distance -> Laser Rifle Snap Shot / Rifle Snap Shot is the way to go.
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If during your turn you shoot and miss, it gives your soldier zero primary and secondary experience.
https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Firing_Accuracy
I also disagree with :
It is also know that, performing less then 3 Primary actions for a soldier in a mission will grant no improvement.
You get 50% chance of increasing accuracy by 1. But even if you get unlucky, it counts as secondary XP, so the physical stats increase as usual.
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If during your turn you shoot and miss, it gives your soldier zero primary and secondary experience.
https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Firing_Accuracy
https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Experience#How_Experience_Points_Are_Applied Says Otherwise....
Shooting an Enemy (if you hit or not) is a primary action and will increase secondary stats (TU's Strength, Stamina, Health).
If you hit the enemy you will also gain Firing Accuracy.
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Which also means you can't perform as many primary actions as you normally would -> Soldiers lvl slower...
So nogo for me.
1. Vanilla is something like
AIM = soldier aim - 100 + weapon aim
ex soldier with 72 acc / weapon with 95% acc / target is 7 squares away
72 - 100 + 95 = 77% aim
2. with acc extender
AIM = soldier aim - 100 + weapon aim - (2 * distance from soldier to target)
ex soldier with 72 acc / weapon with 95% acc / target is 7 squares away : 72 - 100 + 95 - (2 x 7 ) = 53%
All other weapon stats are identical. Damage same. TU same. ...
Affects everyone in the game.
The effect is you hit less the farther away the target is from you but also aliens also hit you less the farther they are from you. So is equally fair.
It makes grenades and melee more useful than lining up soldiers for shots. Makes the game more tactical.
Is a great option I always play with. You can no longer get sniped from halfway across the map during night time cause aliens see 3 times better than you. In vanilla XCOM at Superhuman aliens would never miss a hit from anywhere on the map.
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https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Experience#How_Experience_Points_Are_Applied Says Otherwise....
Shooting an Enemy (if you hit or not) is a primary action and will increase secondary stats (TU's Strength, Stamina, Health).
If you hit the enemy you will also gain Firing Accuracy.
Performing more than 11 actions won't cause any more increase. You can do a maximum of 11 things with a soldier for the purpose of stats increase. So hitting aliens 5 times and using psi 6 times you done.
Acc extender doesn't affect game that much in terms of xp. Mostly affects ability to shoot.
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Well maybe i will give it a try on me next run.
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@tollworkout: I'm pretty sure the stats are multiplicative not additive.. which would mean % to hit = firing accuracy * gun accuracy (-something for distance in accuracy extender).
Back to the general discussion, one interesting impact of the extender accuracy is that it makes it beneficial to shoot with the soldier closest to the alien for auto and snap shots. It is an incentive to get your scouts shooting instead of just walking around getting shot at. So they become better instead of stagnating and letting the super snipers get all the xp.
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Back to the general discussion, one interesting impact of the extender accuracy is that it makes it beneficial to shoot with the soldier closest to the alien for auto and snap shots. It is an incentive to get your scouts shooting instead of just walking around getting shot at. So they become better instead of stagnating and letting the super snipers get all the xp.
Which is kinda my Problem because i usually scout with tanks, and let all my Soldiers "snipe" the Alien until it is dead, i prefer snapshot for this. I also do not have designated Scouts and if there is a situation were a soldiers spots an alien when moving forward and noone else can take a shoot, he will step back out of sight, shoots the alien, depending on outcome he will be covered with smoke, or retreats behind cover.
So i mostly fire from out of the enemies visual sightrange, the UFO extender accuracy (as far as my understanding goes), would still allow this tactic but the probaility of hitting with snapshot would be highly decreased, using aimed shot would work, but the gained exp would be to low, so no go for me.
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Well, for many things, there is a finite amount of experience to be gained in a given mission. For a given set of weapons, there will only be a certain number of hits until the aliens are dead, which means there is a cap to how much firing accuracy XP you can get.
IF (and I don't think it works that way) you can get secondary XP from targeting an alien and missing, then that's an unlimited XP supply. But I would be very surprised. I am fairly certain that when shooting an alien in your turn, you need to hit it to get XP. Even though the chance to hit goes down, the total number of hits to kill the aliens remains similar, it will just take a little bit longer. So you get the same amount of XP.
Regarding reaction fire, the accuracy extender is actually a bonus XP wise. Reaction fire gives XP no matter if a shot hits or not. If a shot hits, the alien is closer to death and a dead alien is worth no XP. Accuracy extender makes snapshots less accurate past a certain distance, which will not reduce reaction XP (firing is what matters for reaction) but increase the survival chance of the alien (you're more likely to miss it). That means another soldier might react to the alien and also gain XP. Of course, however good it is for XP, missing aliens is bad for your health ;)
The only case where accuracy extender is bad for XP is IF missing on your turn when shooting gives XP and you argue that you will have to use aimed shots so you will overall miss less than using snap shots without. You could either not game the system, rise to the challenge and use snap shots within 15 tiles (where snap accuracy is the same), or keep using snap shots and miss a bit more (which would mean more XP IF you get XP from missing, which I doubt).
Overall, extender accuracy does make the game harder, but it also makes it much more interesting and makes it possible to differentiate weapons greatly. Snap shooting across the map as reliably with a pistol, machine gun and sniper rifle is ridiculous to me, accuracy extender allows me to represent that in game.
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So i mostly fire from out of the enemies visual sightrange, the UFO extender accuracy (as far as my understanding goes), would still allow this tactic but the probaility of hitting with snapshot would be highly decreased, using aimed shot would work, but the gained exp would be to low, so no go for me.
The tactic still works. From what I've seen, auto shots get a penalty of 2% per square more than seven or so (Which is really close - it reduces auto shot to point blank only, basically), snap shots get a penalty of 2% per square at a little over sight range (so just out of sight, and snap shots work fine). Aimed shots have no limit.
You use aimed shots more than snap shots at longer ranges, and as it gets more important to hit more, you get to use snap shots more.
It doesn't matter for xp, though - the primary action needed to get accuracy xp is hitting the enemy - not shooting at it. So it's the amount of hits that counts, and that only changes as you start using stronger weapons.
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I got scared today while locking at some base maps.
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The amount of active sectopods is too damn high!
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The amount of active sectopods is too damn high!
Nope its just that Terrorunitspawn is set 12 on Base Maps.
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Some more Oh shit moments.
Those Sectoids seem to wanna do a picnic in front of there UFO :>
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Who ordered Chryssalid Beef?
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Might try this terror site once more but a case of biting more than u can chew comes into mind. At least if I do have to abort the negative scored will be minimised by me landing in the 1st place rather than ignoring the mission altogether.
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How do you guys get pictures of the entire combat area? I had a landing side on a raider class ufo and the landing craft was surrounded by 5 sectopods.
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How do you guys get pictures of the entire combat area? I had a landing side on a raider class ufo and the landing craft was surrounded by 5 sectopods.
Options -> Video -> Battlescape Scale - Full display.
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I use half display. full is a little bit to crazy.
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2. with acc extender
AIM = soldier aim - 100 + weapon aim - (2 * distance from soldier to target)
ex soldier with 72 acc / weapon with 95% acc / target is 7 squares away : 72 - 100 + 95 - (2 x 7 ) = 5
Are those weapon specific or a general rule. Reason being I would like to somehow make the sniper rifle have a minimum effective range...
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Soooo many Elerium WTF!
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Nice one, I think I got the same amount on the last base I destroyed.
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Chryssalids love Civilians :D
Especially if they can zombifie them.
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Soooo many Elerium WTF!
The best part is where it was a lossless mission where the aliens lost an entire base worth of stuff while also providing you a ton of cashmoney due to the massive score it yielded.
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I hate Snakeman.... i even hate this Particular one..
Because he reactionfired at me...
Need to check Sentry Mapsize...
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I didn't even know that X-Com had a intelligence branch.
Uhhh Jeah :)
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Yes, they do - since 1992. =)
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Yes, they do - since 1992. =)
Yeah, the % is really really low though, but If you screw up royally for an entire month (i.e. have negative score) you get one of those as a freebe, to help a bit I suppose.
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While testing the new Maps i made, i encountered this:
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While testing the new Maps i made, i encountered this:
Asside from the huge number of floaters I cant pinpoint whats wrong in here. They seem to have spawned in perfect order of a ships crew.
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Well, it's hell of a trip for 8 floaters with only 6 seats in the ship, to travel from mars to earth. =)
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Well, it's hell of a trip for 8 floaters with only 6 seats in the ship, to travel from mars to earth. =)
They dont really sit do they?
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Well, it's hell of a trip for 8 floaters with only 6 seats in the ship, to travel from mars to earth. =)
Actually they are coming from behind the moon, since the alien fleet is parked there.
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Asside from the huge number of floaters I cant pinpoint whats wrong in here. They seem to have spawned in perfect order of a ships crew.
Uhhh well my brain was replacing those floaters with Mutons, Muton Elites and Ethereals....
So no nothing is wrong with them. Dispite being clustered up all in the ship, but this can happen.
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Hm.. found some Sectoids making a nice little Picnic in the desert.
Elerium-115 Rocket for the Win!
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Well, it's hell of a trip for 8 floaters with only 6 seats in the ship, to travel from mars to earth. =)
You should recount, those are 9 not 8 :P
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Your point being? :P
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Your point being? :P
That 3 of them have to stand instead of 2 :P
Maybe they take turns sitting.
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They are Floaters... do they really need seats?
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They are Floaters... do they really need seats?
Maybe they need docking stations who knows?
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They are Floaters... do they really need seats?
Let me put it that way: Imagine your starship accelerating, when you are standing in the air... *bamm* 100 Floaters on the wall, 100 Floaters from mars... *sing*
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Let me put it that way: Imagine your starship accelerating, when you are standing in the air... *bamm* 100 Floaters on the wall, 100 Floaters from mars... *sing*
Well they do have artifical gravity, so they effect you describe would not be there to see. In any case they have docking stations :D
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Those aren't seats or docking stations...
... it's where Floaters drop off their waste... aka their "floaters". :-X
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Those aren't seats or docking stations...
... it's where Floaters drop off their waste... aka their "floaters". :-X
Floating Floater floaters dumps, which will float within your Floatership, so floating inside the Floatingship will bring in abscure floating floaters?
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No, only until the next acceleration. Then it doesn't float any more. It then sticks. :P
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No, only until the next acceleration. Then it doesn't float any more. It then sticks. :P
It will still float :P since Floaters, keeep there floating floaters floating, when floating in Floatership towards Earth, which needs to be floated with floating Floaters who all do the floating thing and do floaters while floating.
Got it?
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Got it?
A new bullshit-meter? Yes, the old one unexpectedly quit the service... ;)
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A new bullshit-meter? Yes, the old one unexpectedly quit the service... ;)
Hrhr, ja das is richtig :) Immer diese Bullshitmeter ;)
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I love this scoring:
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I am not even going to bring a screenshot here, I get such a situation so often you can picture it in mind.
Turn 1. Two THROWERs full of goddamn HE packs and smoke grenades see 3 floaters and a cyberdisc. AT FIRST TURN. They drop a smoke grenade.
Turn 1.5. Cyberdisc decides he's smart enough to go right to the Skyranger, see the throwers and shoot them
Explosions. Explosions are beautiful.
And then there were none. Bullshit. Screw OpenXCom, I am out.
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That sounds like a pretty good AI move to me.. And unless you were playing ironman, you know that OpenXCom conveniently has an autosave just at the beginning of battle, which you can load and retry/abort from?
I hope you come back after the rage subsides.
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That sounds like a pretty good AI move to me.. And unless you were playing ironman, you know that OpenXCom conveniently has an autosave just at the beginning of battle, which you can load and retry/abort from?
That's not fair :<
I have zero tolerance for this bullshit when you are forced to lose a battle because of random feeling spiteful. You must lose your soldiers because of your errors, not because random fucking around. I can't accept it when 6 of my pretty accurate men miss an alien halfway across the map using aimed shot using rifle and the alien hits and kills at least 2 of them using shotgun. This is retarted for me. And it always happens as if I am one unlucky bastard.
If I so happen to put a soldier with zero TU in hope he will regain his TU and do reaction fire and he gets shot while having 0 TU - that's my error and I should move on. If that's is something like a situation described above - this is bullshit and I load my autosave.
I hope you come back after the rage subsides.
Of well, this is one never ending cycle. You suffer, you quit, you return after an hour. And you suffer again.
Well, to be honest I don't understand why I am still not used to that kind of torture. Unfair situations because of random are pretty common in roguelikes and I played not really many of them but those which I played, god, I played them remembering every single formula or feature or something else, in short I know them in deep. UFO: EU is no exception, I have read nearly every article at UFOPaedia by now.
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Oh, I have no doubt you know the game and I actually agree about the aimed shot rifle misses/shotgun hits situation. But a cyberdisc floating up to the skyranger to shoot the men who are neatly stacked and packed full of primed explosives (but didn't bring a tank to take the shots) sounds like what the game should be like.
And yes, those punishing, frustrating games are.. well.. frustrating. But I (and I think you too) like them because you have a reason to learn them, so that you can be almost in control and beat them, instead of just needing to mash yxzab faster or in the righter order.
So thanks Warboy for creating such a devilish AI and hating our soldiers.. ;)
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Well, I'm a bit baffled with you wanting to play fair, yet complaining about the AI being unfair.
Either you want a laid-back experience, or you want a war. There's no middle ground here.
There's nothing wrong with relaxing the rules, or even cheating as long as you only do it to yourself. But you must be honest with yourself about what you want to do, and how you want to play to have a good time. There's no point pretending you're hardcore when you are not.
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I for one also tend to simply reload, when things get to nasty. I even lift of from a mission, when I really don't feel like doing it this damn crappy way, it goes, the second I step outside the craft. I play that thing for fun. The moment it stops being fun, I'll either stop, or change it the way it is fun again. I'm not talking about reloading every damn time a soldier gets hit. Especially in the beginning, the soldiers are all just cannon fodder, as you really don't know, how their psi rating is. But when a grenade flies into the Skyranger in round 2 or 3, I'd most likely consider reloading, anyways.
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Oh, I have no doubt you know the game and I actually agree about the aimed shot rifle misses/shotgun hits situation. But a cyberdisc floating up to the skyranger to shoot the men who are neatly stacked and packed full of primed explosives (but didn't bring a tank to take the shots) sounds like what the game should be like.
For now it's "high risk/high reward" situation. My initial deployment tactics are vastly different when I have a tank in front of skyranger. Even if I drop a smoke grenade it won't save my tank from getting shot and, probably, dying. I can't do anything safe in that situation. Yes, I can shoot using my tank but what if I miss? Here's your reaction fire barrage. It's not as risky to have HWP dying as getting my thrower unit shot, but unlike tanks soldiers are easily expendable. I wish there were some kind of feature to be able to set actual position in the transport like in Xenonauts and this way I would significantly decrease initial visibility and get such situations less often. As for now there is only one real way to do it - always put cannon fodder in front of my transport but the thing is that it won't really solve the problem of unfairness of this situation.
Either you want a laid-back experience, or you want a war. There's no middle ground here.
Once again - I despise it when random just makes you lose. Even if I had no throwers and only common units, I'd still complain about this situation because literally there is nothing safe to do. You can't get out of visual range - for most part distance between you and enemy is less than 20 tiles. You can't move either - you'll get shot. You can't throw anything, crouch, fire (unless there is only one enemy which happens sometimes but not always) and not get reaction fired. Literally the only thing to do is to either die or drop a smoke grenade and risk getting into their sight and get shot. Fortunately it happens not really often but still it's a bullshit.
There's nothing wrong with relaxing the rules, or even cheating as long as you only do it to yourself. But you must be honest with yourself about what you want to do, and how you want to play to have a good time. There's no point pretending you're hardcore when you are not.
Well, I am complaining about random. My philosophy is that a system should break because of its errors, not random. Random should be just a factor which makes variety of different tests.
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Well, I am complaining about random. My philosophy is that a system should break because of its errors, not random. Random should be just a factor which makes variety of different tests.
But X-Com is not the kind of game to care about that. It's a simulation game, not a puzzle game. There isn't always a solution, but on the other hand sometimes you have absolute control.
These two very broad game types are just different and shouldn't be confused with one another. They are also, I think, aimed at different tastes; I myself am more of a simulationist, but I'm not really that hardcore, so I do save/load games to avoid too much misery (which doesn't mean I don't rage quit once in a while).
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Well, I am complaining about random. My philosophy is that a system should break because of its errors, not random. Random should be just a factor which makes variety of different tests.
Random forces you to have contingency plans, instead of playing on macro, DOTA style. Miffed that your soldiers stacked with primed HEs go boom? Maybe don't stack them with primed HEs. You talk about high risk and high reward? I guess you forgot what the 'risk' part means. I think the game forces you to change your attitude. Glory boys get killed, those who learn how to minimise the risk survive. Sorry for being so blunt, but when you throw a rant, you run a risk of people getting disgusted. /rant
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Well, to be honest I don't understand why I am still not used to that kind of torture. Unfair situations because of random are pretty common in roguelikes and I played not really many of them but those which I played, god, I played them remembering every single formula or feature or something else, in short I know them in deep. UFO: EU is no exception, I have read nearly every article at UFOPaedia by now.
Eh, I've been playing XCom since 1997 and I wrote a bit for the UFOPaedia and I'm still not used to that kind of torture. A few days ago I got a situation that turned into horrible due to a similar bad RNG result and I simply quit the game and decided to give it some time before getting back to playing.
This is what makes XCom so brutal, that regardless of how well you play, a very unlucky roll can bring you a world of unexpected pain. But so does life, no matter how you live it. And the same way as life, nothing but death (or the Council terminating XCom) is permanent.
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That's not fair :<
I have zero tolerance for this bullshit when you are forced to lose a battle because of random feeling spiteful. You must lose your soldiers because of your errors, not because random fucking around. I can't accept it when 6 of my pretty accurate men miss an alien halfway across the map using aimed shot using rifle and the alien hits and kills at least 2 of them using shotgun. This is retarted for me. And it always happens as if I am one unlucky bastard.
Once again - I despise it when random just makes you lose. Even if I had no throwers and only common units, I'd still complain about this situation because literally there is nothing safe to do.
Interestingly, this is precisely why I love X-Com. Yes, the randomness. The fact that there's always a possibility—small as it may be—that you can lose it all (that f@cking Sonic Pulser wiping out my entire squad!). If I know I am winning a game right from the start, why would I even bother playing? Sure, plain old fun. But X-Com offers more than just fun. And out-of-control randomness is my replay value here. That fact that I can get brutally murdered even under the most systematically thought-out, under-control situations. Makes you think twice about everything and manages to keep it fresh every time. There's nothing more rewarding.
Then again, that's just me :P
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At the same time, randomness will will repeatedly not punish you for huge mistakes, and cost you the entire campaign on a tiny mistake.
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Interestingly, this is precisely why I love X-Com. Yes, the randomness. The fact that there's always a possibility—small as it may be—that you can lose it all (that f@cking Sonic Pulser wiping out my entire squad!). If I know I am winning a game right from the start, why would I even bother playing? Sure, plain old fun. But X-Com offers more than just fun. And out-of-control randomness is my replay value here. That fact that I can get brutally murdered even under the most systematically thought-out, under-control situations. Makes you think twice about everything and manages to keep it fresh every time. There's nothing more rewarding.
Smells like DF. Interestingly enough I love such games where you just build things and destroy things. I've wasted 2 years of my life on Powder Toy, oh my god.
But X-Com is not the kind of game to care about that. It's a simulation game, not a puzzle game. There isn't always a solution, but on the other hand sometimes you have absolute control.
There. I see XCOM as a tactical wargame like, I don't know, chess. I see RNG as what brings different situations here which makes it far more dynamic than chess.
Ah, screw it, I'll stop whining now. Also just so you know - I play modded OpenXCom (hellrazor's hardcore mode). Strangely enough vanilla XCOM seems way too easy to me. After playing for a year, maybe, I noticed just how unbalanced it is at some points, specifically psionics, laser weaponry and exploiting AI stupidity.
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I see XCOM as a tactical wargame like, I don't know, chess.
So do I. This doesn't exclude the "random" factor, though. Perhaps our definitions of "randomness" differ a little? I recognize and appreciate this "randomness" as being intrinsically bound to certain predefined mathematical parameters (the code), if you will. It's not random as in: you are playing the game when suddenly the entire map blows up and all your troops die instantaneously for no other reason than just because. The fact that you can miss several consecutive shots against overwhelming odds, or that a a Cyberdisc can actually get into your Skyranger to kill everyone inside who also happened to be carrying primed HE Packs for an early 4th of July celebration ... that's amazing random! :D
If every outcome was bound to be always the same to the point of being perfectly memorizable and therefore absolutely predictable... then it just wouldn't be X-Com.
Again, just my 2 measly cents ;)
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Indeed! Lots of interesting comments on what we like (and what's frustrating/ragequit material) here. Great for modders to try to tailor to as well.
I play modded OpenXCom (hellrazor's hardcore mode). Strangely enough vanilla XCOM seems way too easy to me. After playing for a year, maybe, I noticed just how unbalanced it is at some points, specifically psionics, laser weaponry and exploiting AI stupidity.
Ah, well, that might be part of your situation as well. hellrazor has done some very interesting work, but I, for one, know his mod is totally not for me. For example: In the original, aliens have little armor. Why? Because of the way armor works, it makes the game less predictable. Take a heavy plasma hitting on a soldier wearing a flying suit. It can either do nothing ~50% of the time, or kill him outright. The odds of a "medium" outcome, wounding a soldier without killing him, are very small.
The distribution of damage on armored targets is FAR from a normal or a uniform distribution, which are the distributions we are naturally used to and understand better. Seeing 5 heavy plasma hits on our soldier do nothing is cause for joy, but now add aliens with more armor, and picture yourself as the one hitting them 5 times to no effect: Not a happy player. I believe that's why vanilla mutons have a lot of health and damage modifiers as an endgame alien. It makes them hard to kill, but every hit does something and the outcome is reliable so the player remains happy. You can see you are making progress with a mind probe, and you know that it will take a lot of heavy cannon hits to down one, but you slowly wear him down and you will get there.
Let's say a certain weapon reliably takes 10 hits to down an alien, with little variation (easy to do with no armor, health ~10 times the weapon's base damage. Works even better with TftD damage formula). You could make a different weapon where in 10% of the time, you outright kill the alien, and the rest of the time, you do nothing. On average, that's 10 hits to kill too.. But in practice, they are very different situations. One is a lot more reliable than the other. The few occasions of killing it in the first few shots (yay!) will not compensate, enjoyment-wise, for the few times where it takes 30 shots because you just aren't getting that lucky 10%.
The more armor an alien is resilient because of armor, the more it behaves like the 2nd situation. The more based on health, the more like the first. It is not surprising that cyberdiscs and sectopods, two relatively armoured aliens relative to early and late XCom, are some of the most frustrating aliens (and then people go for the most reliable way to take them out: flamethrowers and explosives, more so than the low chance, big reward of heavy/tank lasers).
Similarly, since the aliens are supposed to be mighty gene-engineered soldiers, compared to our rookies, casualties should be at least 1 to 1 in aliens to soldiers, but that's not the case. Why? Because of enjoyment. The computer will never care about being wiped out every battle, but a player will care about losing 2-5 soldiers per battle out of 14 and usually considers that a lot, even though he took out 10-15 of the mighty alien invaders. Even creating mods where you can be expected to lose your 2-4 rookie scouts every battle is rather challenging.
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Similarly, since the aliens are supposed to be mighty gene-engineered soldiers, compared to our rookies, casualties should be at least 1 to 1 in aliens to soldiers, but that's not the case. Why? Because of enjoyment. The computer will never care about being wiped out every battle, but a player will care about losing 2-5 soldiers per battle out of 14 and usually considers that a lot, even though he took out 10-15 of the mighty alien invaders. Even creating mods where you can be expected to lose your 2-4 rookie scouts every battle is rather challenging.
But that aspect is the case in almost every PC vs. human game. Take all those ego shooters, for example. If you count, how many damn opponents one kills, it's simply ridiculous. But if one would create a really realistic ego shooter (no med kits, no health replenishing, lethal shots, nonlethal shots make aiming pretty much impossible, and so on) , probably almost nobody would play that thing over a longer period of time. It's simply too frustrating.
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Oh, I fully agree. If you are doing a human vs human game, you need that 50% chance of winning otherwise the players will (rightly) cry foul and blame your balance. It is a bit more complex in rock-paper-scissors systems, but even with them, if you have "classes" that are balanced, you should have a 33% chance of seeing the one that owns you, 33% of seeing the same as you and a 50% to win that one, and a 33% to see the one you own, making for 50% chance to win any ways.
Human vs computer games generally tend to have much more skewed balances, because the computer doesn't mind getting humiliated for the human to have fun (or for the human to think he is so intelligent for beating the AI.. or just because it is easy to compensate for AI flaws by increasing numbers). I added this to go against the people who compare XCom to chess or war. XCom remains a game that is aimed at giving fun to human players. You won't win the vast majority of your games of chess by wiping out your opponent but losing only a few pieces, and you are unlikely to win (symmetric) wars with significantly less casualties than your opponent.
XCom is a very odd setting where humans are supposed to have very much the bad end of an asymmetric war (low XCom effective, crappy human soldiers and tech versus gene engineered soldiers with future-tech), but somehow everybody still expects to win engagements with low casualties. Even crazy popcorn cyberdisc squad wipes don't change the fact that over the course of a campaign, you will have gone through much fewer soldiers than the aliens. But of course, humans (players, scientists and engineers) are much more intelligent than aliens ::)
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The distribution of damage on armored targets is FAR from a normal or a uniform distribution, which are the distributions we are naturally used to and understand better.
If we talk about dice rolling then it is approaching normal distribution as dice rolls increase. The more rolls are made the more "normal" distribution is.
Let's say we have 3 dices with 6 sides which is 3d6. That means we can get from 3 to 18. There is only one way you can roll 3 or 18 which is getting respectively 1-1-1 and 6-6-6 and the chances are (1/6)^3 for both rolls. However there are three ways of getting 4 or 17: 1-1-2, 1-2-1, 2-1-1 and 6-6-5, 6-5-6, 5-6-6 and so chances are higher. The average has the most ways to get and so the chance to get the average is the highest.
Perhaps our definitions of "randomness" differ a little? I recognize and appreciate this "randomness" as being intrinsically bound to certain predefined mathematical parameters (the code), if you will.
It'd be pretty hard to describe but I'll try anyway. So I think of random in roguelike and similar games as a generator for conditions, not outcomes. Let's take an abstract example. A roguelike game generates a random level which gets a legendary weapon guarded by strong enemies. This is common. You may try to fight your way through if you feel brave enough and risk getting YASD or your may take it easy and go straight to the stairs. What you are going to do is your choice and the outcome is purely dependent on your current strength and whether you are going to win the weapon or fail miserably should mostly depend on your build and only a little luck. If you shoot at an enemy and he gets shot - he will lose some health ranging a bit. This ranging may matter when you get a last enemy with 1 HP. This is what I call good random. Take a look at XCom now. The outcome is explicitly controlled by random in a huge range. Vanilla damage formula ranges from 0% to 200% which basically means you can get a situation where you can hit an enemy hundreds of times and he won't die, albeit it is rare. But see, this is what I've been talking about. Outcome is 50% dependent on luck and 50% on your build which is a really bad ratio after all.
Actually that's the whole reason why I always play with TFTD Damage Formula. I want some damage to be done at hit.
But hey, one may ask why do I say I like that kind of random while raging over a situation made by such random. The answer is pretty simple: conditions are things that influence on outcomes. In described situation the outcome has already been clear and there is nothing I could do about that. By making such starting conditions random has pretty much determined what will happen next and that is what I don't like.
So yeah, that sucks. If some system is so complex it's output is unclear at defined inputs, but still determined within its range - this is good for me. If it outputs random mess with no pattern - it's not.
If you got shot to the head - chances are that you are going to die. If you somehow survive it - you'll probably suffer from some really bad issues. But if random decides you literally deflected the bullet with your forehead - this is just... random.
Of course random outcomes have their perks. I think anyone who played XCom long enough once had a situation where the entire squad has been killed except for one which comes and saves the day by slaughtering everything it came in contact with and I am sure many players start to treasure that very soldier as a reminder of that. This is fun but it's rare, although it's definitely worth it. Apparently this is why this guy
Interestingly, this is precisely why I love X-Com. Yes, the randomness. The fact that there's always a possibility—small as it may be—that you can lose it all (that f@cking Sonic Pulser wiping out my entire squad!). If I know I am winning a game right from the start, why would I even bother playing? Sure, plain old fun. But X-Com offers more than just fun. And out-of-control randomness is my replay value here. That fact that I can get brutally murdered even under the most systematically thought-out, under-control situations. Makes you think twice about everything and manages to keep it fresh every time. There's nothing more rewarding.
and many other love XCom. I do like that but I am more of a fan for "little-error-huge-consequences" type of situation. Even without all its randomness XCom has a pretty complex system and playing perfectly here is nearly impossible. You play as perfect as you can, but you make one small mistake which eventually grows into a large hole which destroy it. This is what I like - building something complex and watch it breaking apart. DF is one ideal example of such neverending cycle. Your perfect castle will eventually break down because it's not that perfect for all.
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If we talk about dice rolling then it is approaching normal distribution as dice rolls increase. The more rolls are made the more "normal" distribution is.
Let's say we have 3 dices with 6 sides which is 3d6. That means we can get from 3 to 18. There is only one way you can roll 3 or 18 which is getting respectively 1-1-1 and 6-6-6 and the chances are (1/6)^3 for both rolls. However there are three ways of getting 4 or 17: 1-1-2, 1-2-1, 2-1-1 and 6-6-5, 6-5-6, 5-6-6 and so chances are higher. The average has the most ways to get and so the chance to get the average is the highest.
I understand how dice rolling works. I said that we understand normal (you probably can get there with lots of dice) and uniform distributions (one dice) the best, maybe I should have said that things in between (few dice) are also easy.
That has nothing to do with how XCom works though. As you said below, initial damage is a uniform distribution, between 0 and 200% (or 50 to 150% in TftD) of the listed damage. Now substract the armor (since that's what my comment actually was about), and you get a range of actual damage that looks nothing like either uniform or normal distributions. Take a weapon with 18 power, EU damage, on a target with 10 armor and 17 health. You can get: 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,dead,dead,dead,dead,dead,dead,dead,dead,dead,dead.
So that's 10/36 = ~27.8% of zero
15/36 = ~41.7% of wounded but standing (16 + 10% stun damage means fallen unconscious)
11/36 = ~30.6% of dead
Decrease armor by the same amount as you increase health and you get back to a uniform distribution of damage and your hits will always do something. By opposition, increase the armor by the same amount as you decrease health and you get less and less wounded results (but still the same amount of dead), until you reach the extreme example of a target with some armor and 1 hp, which is always either 100% unarmed, or killed. By tweaking the armor value relative to the health, you can then set exactly how likely that target is to die to a given weapon, and you can also play around with damage modifiers, to make a target that is 100% to die to lasers but 100% to shrug off plasmas.
Of course, extremes are silly examples, but mutons are a great example of aliens designed to be tough but enjoyable. Compared to some modded aliens which gets lots of armor (or cyberdiscs, which have decent armor compared to early XCom damage and are likely the cause of more ragequits). All that to say that by playing hellrazor's mod which generally increases the armor of aliens, you are more likely to encounter situations where your weapons do nothing and frustrate you. By opposition, if one were to increase the health of aliens to make them more resilient, you would still require more shots to kill, but since the outcome is more reliable (you are more likely to wound, so you will either wear down an alien or kill it, without having the frustrating unkillable streak).
Anthropods by robin is a great example of adding a new enemy with more health as a challenge (and also awesome for the spitter, which has armor but only on some sides, so it is frustrating if you are stupid but rewarding if you flank it). Gazers are something else, more of a FU endgame enemy, but they are labelled as something like that. The armor thing is one of the reason I don't play on Superhuman, as I don't enjoy the boosted armor on some enemies.
For some reason, when designing new units, we tend to add more armor (because the aliens lack it so it is an easy thing to change, without really thinking of why they lack it) instead of more health. I had the same problem when designing my modded tanks, and added so much armor that tanks were mostly impervious, until a lucky shot would kill it or reduce it so low I had to stop using it (which is frustrating because randome). The answer, obviously, was instead to add health so it gets worn done more slowly and behaves in a more satisfying way.
TL;DR: XCom is random and that can be frustrating, but it is random in a way we can understand and, since we can now mod it, all we need to do is mod it in a way we like. More health, less random, more armor, more random.
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I am not even going to bring a screenshot here, I get such a situation so often you can picture it in mind.
Turn 1. Two THROWERs full of goddamn HE packs and smoke grenades see 3 floaters and a cyberdisc. AT FIRST TURN. They drop a smoke grenade.
Turn 1.5. Cyberdisc decides he's smart enough to go right to the Skyranger, see the throwers and shoot them
Explosions. Explosions are beautiful.
And then there were none. Bullshit. Screw OpenXCom, I am out.
Never ever use Preprimed grenades on actuall explosives. This always ends very very badly. You always can do a grenade relay if needed, to get the explosive were it is needed.
Uhh i got my ass handed by a Muton Engineer, which decided it was a nice time to spawn next to my Skyranger on this certain Battleship Mission. The Random God had decided that this lovely and nice Muton fellow was armed with a Blaster Launcher. He was just standing 2 fields out of sight of my tank on its starting position. As usual i skipped turn 1, which resulted in, lets say in a very unpleasent experience on getting a instant Squadwipe :D.
But thats X-Com Baby, thats why i love it.
Btw Arthanor, could you describe why my Mod is not for you? I mean what do you do not like etc.. i am always feedback hungry ;)
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Of course, extremes are silly examples, but mutons are a great example of aliens designed to be tough but enjoyable. Compared to some modded aliens which gets lots of armor (or cyberdiscs, which have decent armor compared to early XCom damage and are likely the cause of more ragequits). All that to say that by playing hellrazor's mod which generally increases the armor of aliens, you are more likely to encounter situations where your weapons do nothing and frustrate you. By opposition, if one were to increase the health of aliens to make them more resilient, you would still require more shots to kill, but since the outcome is more reliable (you are more likely to wound, so you will either wear down an alien or kill it, without having the frustrating unkillable streak).
Anthropods by robin is a great example of adding a new enemy with more health as a challenge (and also awesome for the spitter, which has armor but only on some sides, so it is frustrating if you are stupid but rewarding if you flank it). Gazers are something else, more of a FU endgame enemy, but they are labelled as something like that. The armor thing is one of the reason I don't play on Superhuman, as I don't enjoy the boosted armor on some enemies.
For some reason, when designing new units, we tend to add more armor (because the aliens lack it so it is an easy thing to change, without really thinking of why they lack it) instead of more health. I had the same problem when designing my modded tanks, and added so much armor that tanks were mostly impervious, until a lucky shot would kill it or reduce it so low I had to stop using it (which is frustrating because randome). The answer, obviously, was instead to add health so it gets worn done more slowly and behaves in a more satisfying way.
Well, that's probably, why the UFO2000-guys decided, that armour comes first, the damage done to it is defined by the weapons damage-value and once the armour is gone in that particular place, every hit goes right to the health, reducing it equally by damage-value of the weapon. The only thing, that's chance, is the question of if the unit is hit, or not. Everything else is rather deterministic.
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I totally missed out on the interesting discussion in this thread.
I am not getting any more notifications through my Emails, which sucks...
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Well... I do. You doublechecked, if it's still set to notify you? Yesterday, there were some server problems (503s). Maybe something got lost?
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Well... I do. You doublechecked, if it's still set to notify you? Yesterday, there were some server problems (503s). Maybe something got lost?
Na its working again now, the changed some default settings and i usually like to be spammed from the forum, with each reply to a topic i have in my notify list, Since my E-mail is only for the forum here, so :)
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But thats X-Com Baby, thats why i love it.
And as I described above I am not satisfied by that. There should be my own error which decides the fate of my squad, not just my luckiness/unluckiness. For me, XCom should be hard because of so many conditions to be taken into account and not because random fu... oddity.
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All that to say that by playing hellrazor's mod which generally increases the armor of aliens, you are more likely to encounter situations where your weapons do nothing and frustrate you. By opposition, if one were to increase the health of aliens to make them more resilient, you would still require more shots to kill, but since the outcome is more reliable (you are more likely to wound, so you will either wear down an alien or kill it, without having the frustrating unkillable streak).
I did not change the Health or Armor values of any Vanilla Aliens. I did tweak Waspites and Gazers a little bit, gave them more Health primarly and change the armor a little bit around (but no really big changes here). There are units which stats i designed myself, mainly the Armored Cyberdisc and Armored Sectopod, which do have indeed higher Armor values and other damage modifiers. But those are units which i consider to be asskicking ones, i intended them be hard to take down.
For example the Armored Cyberdisc, essentially uses the same damage Modifiers as the normal Cyberdisc, but has 70 Armor on Superhuman instead of 38, same Health. It makes this unit incredible hard to kill with anything lower then Heavy Laser (90 damage). But they do die with Heavy Plasmas very quickly (usually 1 or 2 Shots).
Armored Sectopod has his weakpoint, which is his back armor, so flanking it is the most reliable way to kill it (or Blaster bombs).
There are enemies like the Muton Elites for example which do have pretty high armor (front 70, side 60, back 50 and under 50), they also have more Health then normal Mutons and are essentially designed to be immune to Laser Weapons, but they can be killed reliably with Plasma Weapons for example.
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And as I described above I am not satisfied by that. There should be my own error which decides the fate of my squad, not just my luckiness/unluckiness. For me, XCom should be hard because of so many conditions to be taken into account and not because random fu... oddity.
Everytime on of your soldiers takes a shoot, the damage this shot actually does is modifed by a randomly selected multiplier ranging from 0 up 2 (equals 0% damage and 200% damage).
Also deviation of the shoots is added randomly. And so forth randomness is in some way a integrated part of the game.
This may lead to some very weird or painstaking scenarios but that is what this game makes so exciting, because you really never know if you will get your desired outcome. Everything can be seen as a weighted probability ingame, it depends on how you minimize those numbers unfavorable to you when possible.
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I did not change the Health or Armor values of any Vanilla Aliens. I did tweak Waspites and Gazers a little bit, gave them more Health primarly and change the armor a little bit around (but no really big changes here). There are units which stats i designed myself, mainly the Armored Cyberdisc and Armored Sectopod, which do have indeed higher Armor values and other damage modifiers. But those are units which i consider to be asskicking ones, i intended them be hard to take down.
For example the Armored Cyberdisc, essentially uses the same damage Modifiers as the normal Cyberdisc, but has 70 Armor on Superhuman instead of 38, same Health. It makes this unit incredible hard to kill with anything lower then Heavy Laser (90 damage). But they do die with Heavy Plasmas very quickly (usually 1 or 2 Shots).
Armored Sectopod has his weakpoint, which is his back armor, so flanking it is the most reliable way to kill it (or Blaster bombs).
There are enemies like the Muton Elites for example which do have pretty high armor (front 70, side 60, back 50 and under 50), they also have more Health then normal Mutons and are essentially designed to be immune to Laser Weapons, but they can be killed reliably with Plasma Weapons for example.
Oh, I'm not necessarily talking about tweaking vanilla aliens, but indeed the new armored stuff (or muton elites, and I think you have an ethereal elite of some kind?). I personally know that a mod that adds significant armor to aliens (or lots of new aliens with armor, whichever way you want to spin it. Is an armored cyberdisc a cyberdisc with more armor, or a new alien with lots of armor that just happens to look like a vanilla one?) and boosts the psi-str of aliens so the player gets even more punished for not carefully sorting hundreds of soldiers to get 100 psi-strength is not a mod for me.
I don't like facing armored aliens and the "frustrating nasty rng streak". I also don't like sorting and firing soldiers as I think the game should be balanced on the average soldier (I barely fire anyone, but some will get... riskier.. roles). I also never (ab)use xp training for my soldiers. They always shoot to kill. But we all like different things, and that's fine. I'm not even really consistent since I also like Piratez, which has some armored enemies (but some definite ways of handling them as well).
Everything can be seen as a weighted probability ingame, it depends on how you minimize those numbers unfavorable to you when possible.
That, however, I very much agree with. The whole battlescape game is a weighted risk (probability * cost of even occuring) game. You need a deployment method that is the most reliable. Not necessarily the one that produces the best outcome, but the one that produces the least bad outcomes.
- Tanks (or armored high reaction soldiers so they hopefully don't get reaction fired on or survive if it happens) at the front so you don't lose them, or useless rookies/dogs/scout drones so you do lose them but you don't care.
- No pre-primed explosives except maybe at the back so they can deploy when it's safe (or chain toss it to someone in front who needs it).
- I usually follow the tank/scouts by high damage soldiers (rocket launcher + sniper) to be more likely to take care of immediate threats. Riflemen come next, and sappers last. Melee, if you use any, goes mixed with the riflemen to either rush a nearby target or help with scouting.
- All melee soldiers need good reactions to be able to close with the enemy.
- Play the rest of the game as a "Does this have good odds of success? Am I screwed if it fails?" Then decide if it is worth trying and have a plan on what to do with failures.
Minimizing the odds of bad is the first step, then comes maximizing the odds of good without increasing the odds of bad (too much). Because of our perception of the game (ex.: losing 1 soldier to kill 1 alien is a failure, even though it's a 1 to 1 "neutral" trade), minimizing the bad is really important.
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Oh, I'm not necessarily talking about tweaking vanilla aliens, but indeed the new armored stuff (or muton elites, and I think you have an ethereal elite of some kind?). I personally know that a mod that adds significant armor to aliens (or lots of new aliens with armor, whichever way you want to spin it. Is an armored cyberdisc a cyberdisc with more armor, or a new alien with lots of armor that just happens to look like a vanilla one?) and boosts the psi-str of aliens so the player gets even more punished for not carefully sorting hundreds of soldiers to get 100 psi-strength is not a mod for me.
Well the aliens also need the ability to "evolve" a little bit, so you can consider those new Armored Units, them learning from us. And it is actually so that those units only make you struggle as long as you do not have access to plasma weapons, once you have them they are also relatively easy to kill, it forces the player to research plasma weapons or related topics in this direction. It is also one of the aspect i wanted work out a little more that, in certain game situation what you research and when you research it should have meaning. This will even be more evident with the changes i made towards the economy so money also plays a big role into that. On the same occasion it forces the player to a degree to research specific topics, or he will suffer badly. I wanted to give the when and where you research something give some meaning here.
The PSI settings, yes i use a higher PsiStrength on Aliens, to increase their Psi defenses. But Alien who do have Psi Skill and could do Psionic Attacks have been adjusted, so their Psi Attack capability behaves like in vanilla, but they do have higher Defenses. Ethereals, for example are immune to any Psi Attacks, while their capability to MC your soldiers is the same as in the Vanilla game. So you can stick with the 80+ Psi Strength Rule for your Soldiers (since they can be considered to be basically immune from Alien Psi attacks, as in Vanilla X-Com).
I don't like facing armored aliens and the "frustrating nasty rng streak" and I don't like sorting and firing soldiers as I think the game should be balanced on the average soldier (I barely fire anyone, but some will get... riskier.. roles). I also never (ab)use xp training for my soldiers. They always shoot to kill. But we all like different things, and that's fine. I'm not even really consistent since I also like Piratez, which has some armored enemies (but some definite ways of handling them as well).
Well the aliens i have which do have higher armor stats can actually be misused for training purposes, e.g. shooting at muton elites with Laser Rifles will give them some damage over time and eventually also kill them, but you gain lots and lots of shoots and experience. Working around that, i could lower the armor, keep the damage modifier and give them even more health (Muton Elite do have 140 HP, Muton Brain Guards 160), but in the end i would end up with alien with 240 health or so, ok they could be killed reliably with weapons like the LAser Rifle, but i was thinking a little bit ahead and wanted Laser to become "outdated" so to say.
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Oh, I understand why you did it and respect it. Increasing late game difficulty is challenging and you have done some things that I quite like for that. The idea to link research with missions is a great one, especially if you can make it into more of an arms race idea, where developing lasers increases the chances of seeing laser resistant enemies, and developing plasma increases the chance of seeing plasma resistant enemies (who could be less resistant to laser, bringing them back into the game after the plasma golden age).
I also prefer to work with a different implementation of Psi than just boosting resistance (since that is equivalent to increasing armor, in that it requires no skill/change in behaviour, just to be more lucky if you want to panic/MC something). I have developed my own psi-mod for that, that isn't getting tested (or published) because of XPiratez...
Well the aliens i have which do have higher armor stats can actually be misused for training purposes, e.g. shooting at muton elites with Laser Rifles will give them some damage over time and eventually also kill them, but you gain lots and lots of shoots and experience. Working around that, i could lower the armor, keep the damage modifier and give them even more health (Muton Elite do have 140 HP, Muton Brain Guards 160), but in the end i would end up with alien with 240 health or so, ok they could be killed reliably with weapons like the LAser Rifle, but i was thinking a little bit ahead and wanted Laser to become "outdated" so to say.
I don't use training intentionally, but I understand the intention. Increasing health to compensate for lower armor is not just for training though (you can always train with a starting pistol), it is mostly for the game effect of increasing reliability of outcomes and decreasing the odds of "frustrating RNG streaks". I'd rather need to hit an alien 10 times to slowly kill him than have to hit it often enough to get in the lucky 10% that kills it. 10 times is reliable and I can plan for it and I can see my progress, 10% is fun when it works on the first shot, but my frustration when it takes 50 shots is much more intense than that fun.
Finally, why would aliens who are obviously rather technologically advanced respond to developments in human weaponry by putting on some more metal plates? That's what we did in the middle ages! Aren't our tanks now working with fancy multi-layered, slanted armor to better cope with impacts, rather than just being bigger, heavier things? Planes with decoys, flares and electronic counter-measures?
In vanilla, the aliens develop/clone/produce tougher and tougher alien species (sectoid/floaters -> snakemen -> mutons) to respond to the evolution in XCom weapons. Ballistic weapons causing problems? Send in the snakemen! Laser weapons? Mutons! They didn't armor sectoids, they sent a new, tougher race. Why not something else that goes into the tech sci-fi advanced species-vibe? Super muton with more health to represent it shrugging off pain via adrenalin injectors? A refraction/dispersion field that deflects/disperses lasers (gives a laser damage modifier, making lasers obsolete in a different way than by upping armor to the point where lasers become useless)? Or a magnetic field to deflect the charged particles that form plasma and reduce its damage (again, damage multiplier).
To me, health and modifiers are better ways of increasing the challenge because the response is adapting your plan, not bringing guns with bigger numbers or hoping for the RNG not to hate you. An extreme example: Falko (I think?) even had a mod at some point where different alien ranks had different modifiers, so you had to learn the color coding of resistances and react accordingly on any given mission, which also means soldiers had to be equipped with a wide-variety of weapons (granted, that doesn't work with making tiers obsolete). There's a lot of possibilities!
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Well jeah maybe, but i made some things, to be totally honest, to annoy the shit out of the player, if he doesn't know what to do exactly. Especially with the Aliens with higher Armor in the lategame, but i am not a complete dickhead, so i made my new Racemixes in a way that whenever in the next month, their will be a new alien species showing up in full and pure form, you get some of them mixed into the alien races the month before (carrying melee Weapons and Grenades), so you can experiment or notice that they can only be killed in a specific way. So i give the player the ability to adapt himself to some degree, like changing his research from crafts or armor towards stronger weapons.
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Mixed races as a "warning" is a really cool idea too! Nice!
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Mixed races as a "warning" is a really cool idea too! Nice!
Actually the idea with mixed races i stole originally from Hobbes, god knows from were he had that idea :D
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I remember the mixed race mod, I used to use it, until I realized that everything had equal race weights to the vanilla aliens, which meant that when adding gazers/waspites/anthropods to the mix they had very low odds to shop up.
Using them specifically as a warning is what I find particularly interesting. It's like the aliens start producing/using these, send the first batches as elite elements/test cases, and then put it in mass production. You can slowly realize you're in trouble instead of always seeing sectoids and floaters until the day ethereals and sectopods decide to drop in on a city near you.
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That's one thing I particularly found nasty. I remember one vanilla game, when directly after the floaters, the mutons began kicking my butt. No snakemen inbetween. So there I was, having only rifles with me, facing 5 mutons. Not to funny... Having some kind or idea of what's to come, that'd be nice, yes.
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I remember the mixed race mod, I used to use it, until I realized that everything had equal race weights to the vanilla aliens, which meant that when adding gazers/waspites/anthropods to the mix they had very low odds to shop up.
Using them specifically as a warning is what I find particularly interesting. It's like the aliens start producing/using these, send the first batches as elite elements/test cases, and then put it in mass production. You can slowly realize you're in trouble instead of always seeing sectoids and floaters until the day ethereals and sectopods decide to drop in on a city near you.
Anyway, i just had the idea to combine in the future, Hobbes new Special Mission, like Facility Attack, Facility Defense etc.. with the Missiontriggers for additional alien missions in my Mod. At the moment i am only calling in additional vanilla missions, with a limit of 2 of these Missions per Month.
But pulling in these new Missiontypes over those Missiontriggers and give them a specific Name/Briefingtext, like "UN Counsil - urgent request" could be really cool, think about the Counsil Mission from Xcom2012.
This actually would be something similar for OpenXcom to some degree.
I personally like the Idea, and you?
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That sounds like a good idea too! I liked the council missions in XCom2012 and in general, I think XCom need more terror-like urgent "missions otherwise you get a big penalty". If not, you just casually shoot down UFOs, pick your battles, and the only things you have to worry about are retaliations (which the game gives you plenty of tools against) and infiltration (which, frustratingly, you can't do anything about).
Then it's just a matter of making them varied enough.
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That sounds like a good idea too! I liked the council missions in XCom2012 and in general, I think XCom need more terror-like urgent "missions otherwise you get a big penalty". If not, you just casually shoot down UFOs, pick your battles, and the only things you have to worry about are retaliations (which the game gives you plenty of tools against) and infiltration (which, frustratingly, you can't do anything about).
Then it's just a matter of making them varied enough.
Well depends, so far i am aware of 6 or 7 special missions in Hobbes Redux Mod. Maybe i also can design some myself.
I do have 12 possible Research Triggers for Special Mission avaible from Alien Engineers and currently 8 avaible from Alien Navigators. So there could be a maximum of 20 different "Counsil Mission" so to say. But i will probably settle for 10 in the beginning since there are enough terrains avaible, so triggering each Mission twice in one campaign wouldn't be that of a hassle i guess.
But that is only a Idea for the future.
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Reapers having a group briefing, made a lovely target for my tank!
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Reapers having a group briefing, made a lovely target for my tank!
Those floaters look strange, what mod is this?
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It's FMP v1.72 and I'm about to ask Solarius if you get the giveaway clue for most races as to what their rank is. Floaters are the most obvious I've encountered so far. But if mind the last time I played FMP which must have been around v1 Sectoids, Snakemen, Mutons, Reptoids & Chtonites had their unique clues. On a seperate unrelated point I see that v0.94 of Hardmode is released, the spitter Chrysallids will put the fear of god into players.
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It's FMP v1.72 and I'm about to ask Solarius if you get the giveaway clue for most races as to what their rank is. Floaters are the most obvious I've encountered so far. But if mind the last time I played FMP which must have been around v1 Sectoids, Snakemen, Mutons, Reptoids & Chtonites had their unique clues. On a seperate unrelated point I see that v0.94 of Hardmode is released, the spitter Chrysallids will put the fear of god into players.
Unfortunatly you will only encounter a few of them in Cydonia and they still look like normal Chryssalids, i did not had the time to rework the sprites, once this is done, they will be fielded on earth as a regular terrorunit.
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Not sure if I'm looking forward to them running riot on earth but it will be interesting, best of luck on your exams.
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i need booze for that:D
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:o
WHAT! This is first turn!
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:o
WHAT! This is first turn!
"Hello, have you heard the good news about the Brain..."
:D
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:o
WHAT! This is first turn!
Ohhh... they are so cute.
Get the flamethrowers ready men!
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In the future i will hate myself for creating my own Mod.
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A sign of playing Piratez too much: I looked at that last image and thought: "Oh man! Look at all this loot!" :D
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A sign of playing Piratez too much: I looked at that last image and thought: "Oh man! Look at all this loot!" :D
I agree. I kinda like the Piratez mechanic of just making sure you score enough points and get enough money. I really like the base attacks.
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Always these numbers!
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Just playing hardmode expansion. Nothing to see here.
(https://i.imgur.com/c1Nzx96.png)
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Some weird shenanigans going on.
I can reproduce this behaviour, but the Alien Base mission waves are vanilla.
There is some weird shit going on with the savegame need to test this with all "diary" entries deleted.
EDIT: Fixed after settings nextUFOCounter to 0 and nextwave to 3.
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Hey, you wanted a »Hard Mode« Expansion, right? When I see this, I think: A lot of training ground for my troops. OK, I admit it: That's after having a few soldiers ready to kick ass with psi...
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Am i glad i learned enough paranoia to actually always check behind me... in the future:
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Uhhh, couldn't this Terrormission wait just 1 day?
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The ultimate feeling of facepalm on the afteraction Memorial View:
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I ignore if it is a bug or just fate but once I entered a terror mission and there was a cyberdisc right in front.
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And one on top of the skyranger. Shit sandwich. -_-'
And of course, my first encounter with a chrysalid. 0_0
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Only a long hunt is a good hunt *muhahahaha* Die Bitches!
Well at least they send me enough to not complain...
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Only a long hunt is a good hunt *muhahahaha* Die Bitches!
Well at least they send me enough to not complain...
Nice!
I just did a mission like that, only I was the victim :P
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Nice!
I just did a mission like that, only I was the victim :P
Then you obviously did something very very wrong, or just had bad luck.
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Then you obviously did something very very wrong, or just had bad luck.
Both, I guess. I was impatient and underestimated the aliens, and basically just stormed a battleship. And the aliens went crazy with blaster launchers and psi.. Never underestimate a battleship on superhuman difficulty! (unless you are using psi amps or blaster launchers yourself) :P
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Well, I just took a serious blow. Maybe not that serious, but the economical damage was pretty hefty (since apparently you don't get any return on queued facilities). I had barely got my fourth base ready. The living quarters were built and 25 rookies had just arrived. Their personal defense weapons were currently in transit as the alien battleship suddenly swooped down on them. 25 unarmed rookies against sectoids with blaster launchers. Rest in pieces, base four.
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This is why I tend to queue only the essential and cheap facilities and buy/transfer the equipment the same moment I hire/transfer the new crew to its base. Still, it sucks, when they arrive on a skeleton base.
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Augh! The slaughter continues. I finally got a weapon upgrade (rail guns) and was ready for some payback. When they aliens decided to terrorize Easter Island I saw my chance. Boy oh boy was I wrong. Let me tell you, up until now it's been a pretty smooth ride. I've never bailed on a mission, but I usually lose a couple of guys every other mission since I still only wear personal armor and an alien can snapshot you in the eyes with a plasma pistol from three miles away.
But on this mission I barely get the doors of the craft open before a couple of guys are MC'd. One of them fires a rocket launcher inside the craft (killing a commander) , good times. Two others panic and run outside and vanish into the night. I send my scout tank out to see what the hell is going on. It seems to be a mix of mutons, cryssalids and sectopods. And whoever is mind controlling me from somewhere. Well, I realize I'll never win this. I manage to run outside and stab a few of my panicked/mc guys with stun rods and put them in backpacks. In the end four are KIA and three MIA. Two of wich I when I check the memorial were first to serve.
Still, it's funny how the game decides to hand me my ass when I thought it was easy coasting.
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Augh! The slaughter continues. I finally got a weapon upgrade (rail guns) and was ready for some payback. When they aliens decided to terrorize Easter Island I saw my chance. Boy oh boy was I wrong. Let me tell you, up until now it's been a pretty smooth ride. I've never bailed on a mission, but I usually lose a couple of guys every other mission since I still only wear personal armor and an alien can snapshot you in the eyes with a plasma pistol from three miles away.
But on this mission I barely get the doors of the craft open before a couple of guys are MC'd. One of them fires a rocket launcher inside the craft (killing a commander) , good times. Two others panic and run outside and vanish into the night. I send my scout tank out to see what the hell is going on. It seems to be a mix of mutons, cryssalids and sectopods. And whoever is mind controlling me from somewhere. Well, I realize I'll never win this. I manage to run outside and stab a few of my panicked/mc guys with stun rods and put them in backpacks. In the end four are KIA and three MIA. Two of wich I when I check the memorial were first to serve.
Still, it's funny how the game decides to hand me my ass when I thought it was easy coasting.
May i incline which mod you are playing? Since the combination of enemies you described is not possible in vanilla.
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May i incline which mod you are playing?
FMP.
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Tried to assault UFO by blind brute force... Only one survived.
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FMP -Lost nine troopers in a night mission. Landed UFO in Japan. Probably a medium scout or so. Not many aliens, but I got sniped out in the dark. Also lost three soldiers, one of captain rank, in a attempt to capture a Sectoid, which ended reaction snipped. I had one dog and 13 troopers so that's four survivors to what should have been a milk run.
Enviado de meu SM-G3502T usando Tapatalk
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X-Piratez - Pogrom (terror) mission. Actually feeling pretty good about this one with an experienced team of gals and some new weapons to try out. Gave as good as I got and saved a few nearby civilians from their immediate threats. It came clear I didn't have enough girlpower to win a war of attrition and too many of my soldiers were either dead or unconscious. Time to grab the wounded and regroup my scattered forces back at the transport. And that's when a cyberdisk pulls around the corner between me and safety (that's the oh shit moment).
When desperation hits, what else is there to do but have a girl in rags face down an alien flying tank with nothing but a bow and arrow?
Only one gal made it back to the transport, under heavy fire and psi attack
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So this is my first go on TFTD and I learned the very hard way that you apparently shouldn't shoot near those grey cylinder things on the ocean floor. The chain reaction of explosions that went off made blaster bombs look like a joke.
This soldier got himself 7 kills in one shot, but five were his squadmates and one was himself. :P
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Same superhuman TFTD campaign as my previous post. I just got back from a hard fought 2-part terror mission where I lost 8 soldiers and had 2 more wounded, leaving me only 5 active troops at the base. I had 12 soldiers on their way being transferred, but sadly they did not make it in time. Almost immediately after the terror mission ... BASE DEFENSE MISSION. (*NOTE: Default base setup, not a custom easier to defend version.)
I'm in early May and hadn't made it that far with research, so no armor of any kind and limited alien tech. With only 5 men, it was pretty hopeless from the start, especially after one man was killed on the first turn. They managed to take down 16 aliens, but in the end a stun bomb fired from way down a hallway knocked out my last two guys and that was that. I was happy that one had a primed grenade on his belt, so they were KIA instead of becoming POWs.
I'm pretty screwed now though. I had just spent ALL MY MONEY on a new barracuda, soldiers and a bunch of scientists for my base. My second "base" is just getting going with living quarters, radar, one hangar and general stores. All my equipment and supplies from 5 months of missions was in the main base.
So I'm down to 20 thousand bucks, 14 men with limited weapons and no training. If I don't lose this campaign then this will be quite the epic comeback.
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A sectoid flanked my team who were about to breach a UFO. So instead of moving my operatives to kill the sectoid, I left it to my grenadier, who was a short distance away. Aimed at the freak and fired, but landed right on my team... Killed one and injured another.
So being forced to turn my attention to the sectoid, a few TUs later killed it, leaving my breaching team with no TUs for reaction shots. On aliens turn, a sectoid comes out of the door we were attempting to secure... It all goes to gehenna.
I even had a sniper on the peak of a mountain standing by! Perfect shot, but I forgot about him until I cycled through them at the end of the turn..
It pays to be humble in this game. You cannot be arrogant, because it'll only make you feel like crap when your plans fail. At least for me.
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Terror Mission to Japan
First Turn - Two Cyberdiscs straight out of the Skyranger. Another one close by along with a alien sniper in the side. I knew then and there this mission would be hell. Blew one, failed to blow the other, aborted mission.
You know what? I think Japan can fend for itself just fine. Bye!
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Aliens where killing us, one by one. Trying to escape to the craft with the last live operative. Manged to escape the situation on the picture!
(https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=3352.0;attach=22393;image)
... but passed out just a few tiles away from the craft, and lost the mission :(
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What kind of terrain is this and which mod?
I wanna have it in my mod also.
Btw: When a normal facepalm is not enough:
(https://img.pr0gramm.com/2016/06/04/0310cecc740219e4.jpg)
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What kind of terrain is this and which mod?
I wanna have it in my mod also.
Its the farm terrain from Alien Takeover (https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,4163.45.html).
However I'm not completely satisfied with the terrain so I wont release it yet :P (and MapView suddenly stopped working for no reason..)
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TFTD is officially kicking my ass.
First artifact mission (these are two part missions like Cydonia). I make it through the first part losing only 2 men. On my second turn in the alien "base" I killed 6 or 7 and had some of them panicking. I'm feeling pretty good about this mission.
Then it all went to hell on the aliens' second turn. An aquatoid shoots a stun bomb into the room I have 7 soldiers and knocks them all out. To make matters worse, one had a primed grenade in hand and so that killed himself and 5 of his unconscious squadmates. Two more in another room went down to a tentaculat. The three still standing panicked or went berserk.
Two of the panicked soldiers were still on the floor above the action near the escape point so at this point I'm just thinking, "One of you stop panicking and let's get the hell out of here." And one of them did stop panicking, but not before his teammate went berserk and shot him in the back. Then on the next turn to end the mission, that guy panics, drops down the elevator, and walks right into reaction fire. MISSION OVER.
Guess it will teach me to hold primed grenades on the aliens' turn. Soldier goes down killing himself and 5 teammates and loses us the mission. Would you expect anything less from Jar Jar Binks? ::)
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I was wondering how good Spotter Sniper Tactics really are...
Answer: Damn good!
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Unless your Snipers are crappy marksman. =)
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Unless your Snipers are crappy marksman. =)
Well took a few turns to clear this out.
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Don't have anything of note in my campaign. I was playing Ironman so lost the save after beating Cydonia, in which I basically mind controlled all the aliens.
One interesting thing is that I had a scout named Harkonen (like the clan in Dune) who was a squaddie with 12 missions and 6 kills. He died in a Sectoid base a few weeks before Psi Labs were built.
I checked the memorial and saw it kept scores for all the dead bodies somehow. Harkonen had a Psi score of 100.
>:(
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THAT MOMENT when you exit the Skymarshall on a large UFO raid and are immediatly surrounded by 3 Cyberdiscs, and all that stands between my super-awesome Captain Rocketeer and Death, are ten or so smoke squares.
Enviado de meu SM-G3502T usando Tapatalk
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Could this be called a success?? ::)
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I wanted to throw a dynamite, but was three tiles short. And I had no TUs left to go these three tiles.
Decided to throw anyway, as far as I can.
The dynamite lands exactly on the enemy.
(https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/2668288717/016bf7ef1c92a60856ae355d84244072_400x400.jpeg)
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I think i just fucked myself really badly..
A lot of Nightmissions ahead against Snakeman and Chryssalids...
And i already spotted a Muton Battleship not looking forward to that...
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But my statistics aren't that bad.
Continue testplaying...
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I think i just fucked myself really badly..
A lot of Nightmissions ahead against Snakeman and Chryssalids...
And i already spotted a Muton Battleship not looking forward to that...
All battleships, or do you need the Elerium that badly? Or why didn't you just shoot them down? That way you could wait until sunrise.
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All battleships, or do you need the Elerium that badly? Or why didn't you just shoot them down? That way you could wait until sunrise.
I need the money!
And shooting down anything bigger then a Large Scout is out of the question with my current Aircrafts.
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To slow or no Plasma Beam?
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To slow or no Plasma Beam?
My scientists are currently researching Power Suits, aks me in 4 or 5 ingame months after Plasma Beams.
I am not playing vanilla here.
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There are situations in openxcom, when i sometimes get scared.
The following screenshot was made after i lost 4 guy trying to kill this cyberdisc chain....
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This Squaddie can call himself really really lucky :D
And yes X-Com was here :D
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Superior Position:
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Back to true Oh Shit stuff:
(https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=3352.0;attach=24684;image)
And these are all enemies.
EDIT: These guys lined up for some beating!
(https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=3352.0;attach=25834;image)
And it's not even the first turn...