OpenXcom Forum
Modding => Released Mods => XPiratez => Topic started by: AncientSion on April 06, 2016, 11:26:19 am
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I stumbled upon dis mod via RPS, obviously.
Started a new game, first mission ever to show up was a Mutant Pogrom. I did head into the fray and lost my entire squad immediatly.
So i started a second game and read a bit of the forums. This time i did what was suggested: Build a barrack, get more runts, manufacture x-grog for resale.
Also, i skipped any Progroms (3 so far) and instead took out some smallish vessels.
This TC has some real good things in it, however, im kinda overwhelmed by the amount of researchable items, manufacture items and equipment.
I think its fair to offer more variety than the original game, however, even very early in the game you have like 10 different guns and 20 different melee weapons with 6 different types of armour, which is, i think way, way too much clutter. Not only from a gameplay-POV, but also from a GUI-POV. Its always a mess to equip guys and keep enough stocking to be able to auto-resupply after a mission.
Also, its kinda unclear in which direction to proceed. While my initial transporter can take on very small ships, it cant apparently take on medium-sized ones and a player might ask himself if he should just skip Mediums (like you skip Progroms) or if you should research tech to get better fighters. So to say, are you supposed to skip Progroms ? Are you supposed to skip Mediums ? Or are you not ?
Also, do you research melee weapons ? our abilities ? rifles ?
I think there should perhaps be some research topics that will yield some kind of roadmap on how to approach the early game, filled up with some lore (like the existing topics that tie lore and gameplay explanations).
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Hello AncientSion,
I will write something in my guide about the things you mentioned, like which missions to take and where to head with research.
The amount of items is a tricky question. There is definately some clutter going on with the amount of items, where some kind of "spring cleaning" would be welcome. Then again, the selection of items gives the game charm as you can equip for style and not for efficiancy.
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I can definitly see how the variety in items, even early game, gives a lot of charme to be mod. Im not critizing that per se. But the amount of clutter adds up so badly, not only does it give the player an overwhelming amount of choices, but it also over-populated several lists., overwhelming the GUI. For example the Black Market, the Fence etc they all suffer from the huge selection of items. And im only a couple weeks into the game ! As does the manufacting. Also, managing your troops is a mess due to the fact that you have to scroll over several screens if you have your transporter filled up with all the goodies.
Perhaps by cutting down on the items and filtering it true filler items, the whole experience might be a tad more enjoyable.
Please dont take it the wrong way, there are lots of really cool things in the mod. But i think it could be improved further, resulting overall in a even better experience.
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If you didn't notice, the manufacturing list has a filter. You can choose to display only ammo for example. The black market and fence also have these filters. Only the equipment screen doesn't have filters.
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Cutting down on the number of items? Never. Better filters are a good idea, though.
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You may not want to hear it Dioxine, but the starting loadout is really daunting : A lot of new players won't get past the equip screen, because it takes so much time to check what the items do.
It would be much more newbie-friendly to have some of the first research projects (like Spring Cleaning) unlock the majority of starting game inventory - it would change nothing for 99.5% of the campaign, only the first days would have a simpler inventory, as a "quick start".
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Call it a rite to un-learn powergaming a bit and just take what you think you might like and have fun with it :) There will be a much more gradual introduction in the Origins, but right now, most of the starting weapons don't qualify as anything better than starting weapons. Cutting off at this point will nothing but annoy players who are starting for a second or fifth time, either forcing them to do extra research or simply denying them their favorite weapons on the first missions.
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One of the projects I want to start on the forum, here, is a PirateZ squad analyzer.
This would take your soldier's data, and match it up with at least the starting weapons, so that you can see which weapons they would perform best with, ie. cutlass vs. rapier vs. billhook, etc.
I have a start with melee weapons, and a squad data extractor from the save files. I'll start a new thread later today.
Overall, I think this project could be very helpful to new players, as I completely understand that overwhelmed feeling.
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I actually prefer the sheer amount of volume. While a new UI would be useful, I would prefer to see additions in other areas.
Such as in weapons, or maps, (the sewers IMO don't make sense since things are underground if deep enough the pipes would be in the roof, also I get lag on some of those bigger maps when defending, Sewers are just all around slow and annoying.)
If its possible to have an after game caimpaign that'd be cool as well. Like restarting but using the world data for TFTD to act like you crashed to a new world. And now plunder its oceans after downing ships for booty.
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ivandogovich, that squad analyzer sounds like a good idea.
Another idea: some sort of training room. A battlescape you can enter from your base that has target dummys you can hit to try out weapons. There would need to be a feedback for how much damage you do. You could call it holodeck to justify that no ammo is used up. Like the lab, it was already there in the starting base.
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It's called a quick battle and it's available from the main menu.
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Call it a rite to un-learn powergaming a bit and just take what you think you might like and have fun with it :)
14 years ago I started a TFTD cruiser ship with underwater-only weapons, never again.
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Show me a situation like this in Piratez. If the enemy is too powerful, they also usually carry powerful weapons that can be picked up and used straight away.
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It's called a quick battle and it's available from the main menu.
I know that. But there you have ALL the items and tech available right away, and still no accurate feedback on how much damage you do. Also, you have to find the enemy first and then you need to not get yourself killed.
What I mean is a quick way to test a weapon that you have with a girl that you have. A practice dummy you can hit that will tell you how much damage you do. A way to find out melee weapon damage without using an excel spredsheet or other calculator.
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I agree a testing arena could be useful, but honestly this is well beyond the scope of a mod, even such a complex one.
Then again, would it really be useful enough to code it into the game which already has Quick Battle? I don't think so, since QB already allows you to both test the weapon and its stats (thanks to Meridian's Bootypedia access from battlescape feature). (I assume you can do it from QB, I never tried.) I don't think adding another tool for the same thing would be good.
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For that matter, use Debug Mode in New Battle. Then you could just check how much damage X enemy took from Y weapon, etc.
You *can* edit the saved squad for the New Battle and put your own squad in. I've done it before. A nice write up on it for the Bootypedia would be nice if someone wants to tackle that.
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A specific mission type could be permanently available and impossible to "win" (you need to retreat and abort), and have no-score harmless opponents. But this may be clunky and abusable for experience.
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If someone really wants, I can write a mod that adds a special testing parameters to the QB, namely a faction that only consists of Ratmen and a deployment type (namely a ship) with no weapons for . But I really don't think it's necessary for tests.
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I did some more thinking on the target dummies. You wouldn't need a battlescape to get the relevant info. You could add a button to the soldier equip screen that says "weapon testing". When clicking it, you get a prompt to choose a target dummy (armor, resitances, maybe actual enemy if researched). Then a calculation runs using the equipped weapon and returns the stats like average damage, min/max damage etc.
For weapons with non linear accuracy scaling like the sniper rifle it would also be helpful to know the actual accuracy before the battlescape.
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I'm not against external tools; anyone can write an excel spritesheet if they have nothing better to do. But I won't add such a thing to my mod, at least not in such an overt way; maybe a number indicator of the base damage (after buffs) in the weapon window in Battlescape. At least for melee weapons and guns.
More would allow to circumvent actual battle experience and create a false feeling that weapon stats are the most important thing, as well as it could mislead (most formulas deal several damage types). The thing you propose would be critical for a small game, but here you will have dozens or hundreds of missions to rack up the experience and test things out. Player does need feedback, but for that, I have proposed pain sounds and short damage logs - so far no one stepped up to the challenge of coding that.
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I'm not against external tools; anyone can write an excel spritesheet if they have nothing better to do. But I won't add such a thing to my mod, at least not in such an overt way; maybe a number indicator of the base damage (after buffs) in the weapon window in Battlescape. At least for melee weapons and guns.
Jadestar asked for this on the stream too. I could do it for vanilla, but OXCE just has too many damage components, it would be quite useless/overwhelming I think.
More would allow to circumvent actual battle experience and create a false feeling that weapon stats are the most important thing, as well as it could mislead (most formulas deal several damage types). The thing you propose would be critical for a small game, but here you will have dozens or hundreds of missions to rack up the experience and test things out. Player does need feedback, but for that, I have proposed pain sounds and short damage logs - so far no one stepped up to the challenge of coding that.
I have an experimental version of this (in hit log, not published yet). It sort of works for weapons, which hurt only one enemy at a time... but anything explosive/AOE would be too confusing again. All components of the log are just too disconnected in time and space. I am working on improving this, but I don't think I can cover all cases.
Btw. I am torn between these two:
... based on percentage of the targets health.
- light = 0 - 10 %
- medium = 10 - 30%
- heavy = 30 - 60%
- critical = 60% +
etc
Actually Bloax had the best idea so far:
<+Bloaxor> ![2/3]: If you hit something and the message ends with !, that means you did 7-17 damage. !!: 18-35. !!!: 36-71. !!!!: 72-143. !!!!!: 144-287. !!!!!!: 288+; and so on. Yikes!
(damage after armor)
Currently I have:
- no (health) damage = no exclamation mark
- 1 to 8 damage = !
- 9 to 32 damage = !!
- 33+ damage = !!!
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Yeah, I like the !! exclamation points. Very clean and intuitive.
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I'm also new to the mod. I think the overwhelm factor is intentional/desirable, though. XPiratez is an "everything up to 11" style of mod: more weapons, more research, more enemies, etc. etc. If you're not feeling overwhelmed, the mod's not doing its job! After all, nothing's stopping you from fencing everything you get at the beginning and buying up a low-stress loadout of your choice. Muskets, cutlasses, and black powder bombs, perhaps?
Training dummies that calculate your DPS would go counter to the spirit of the mod, too. The RPS article emphasized the "ignorant pirates" angle. How does a pirate figure out if a weapon's effective? Hit somebody with it! Are they still standing? Hit them again! If they're still standing after that, maybe your weapon sucks and you should try something else. In that sense, you have a training room, and it's called "New Game". I don't know about everyone else, but whenever I play an X-Com game, I have at least two or three false starts before I play through to conclusion...
The only place I have gripes with the above is where weapon effectiveness runs way counter to common sense, such that you're unlikely to even try a given combination without forum/wiki reference. But those are pretty rare, and seem to follow the general rule of "primitive weapons are cinematically effective, Ewok style."
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Now that's someone who understands :) The 'unintuitive' cases are being curbed anyway.
@Meridian: I'm still for the solution Bloax proposed, although if you're torn on exact numbers, just make it moddable (just like scores are now: score threshold, custom string). Also while hit log is nice and dandy, most people won't use it since it's undocumented. What about printing the text in the tooltip area, just over the GUI?
Also, if you make the new proposed 'fatal wounds' on-screen indicator (flashing boxes), please make it switchable. IMO for many players, me included, it'd be just one Fatal Wound indicator too many, I don't like being prompted to heal damned injuries like I'm some sort of an underling. On-screen prompt obscures vision and you will be annoyed by it, and you will heal the wounds just to get rid of it. I don't want the players to be treated like this. But I support the idea, some players might simply need that extra reminder. Also be sure not to crash the game if there are >10 fatally wounded people ;)
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OK, I made some improvements and will release today so that you can do some testing if you want.
I decided for percentual damage at the end with 3 levels only:
miss = " "
hit 0% = "0 "
hit <20% = "hit! " (edit: changed to "hit ")
hit >20% = "hit!! " (edit: changed to "hit! ")
The number of levels, actual numbers, text and percent or flat will be configurable later via ruleset, this is just for testing and initial feedback.
Below screenshot shows:
- miss
- bad hit
- miss
- good hit
- miss
- hit, no damage
- miss
- miss
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If we have only "hit!" and "hit!!" then better would be "hit" and "hit!".
Another is something different than "0" maybe "glance" or "block"?
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If we have only "hit!" and "hit!!" then better would be "hit" and "hit!".
Another is something different than "0" maybe "glance" or "block"?
It's just quite hard to read (at least for me) if the words are longer. It's either big letters and not enough space, or very small letters in that message box. And it also disappear after short time, so I want to be able to read it instantly.
I am very happy with the "0 " (I had it as "hit " before).
But you're right about the other two, I can save one exclamation mark from both messages (i.e. <20% "hit ", >20% "hit! ").
Anyway, as I said, it will be configurable once I test it and do it properly... so far, this is the ugliest piece of code I've ever written.
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Another proposal for formatting: Misses as 0, hits as X with no arrows in between. So four shots with one hit would look like 0 0 X 0
Exclamationmarks can be put after the X to indicate more damage 0 0 X! 0
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I didn't wanted to create new topic for feedback and questions since this one is here.
1. Are slaves only used for creating negative space? if no what else they can be used for?
my feedback will be to allow them to reduce the maintenance cost for the base including everything, also discounts when manufacturing and faster researches marginally(it will affect only longer researches more as if 100 normal slaves give 1% to reduces research time etc it could be anything).
discount on manufactures due to using free slaves to do simple tasks for runts and helping them out free of cost, or get supervised by runts to works for them etc.
faster research speeds where brainers uses slaves as test subjects, moving heavy machinery for them etc. for free of cost.
2. Let slaves be used to gives boosts to training and health care of the hands we have. Like they cook food, entertain and meatbags to exercise so that our troops grow stronger than normal doing training.
3. When technologies are researched shouldn't default armors or easier to manufacture armors be improved little by little by the knowledge gained. Just to give them more use overtime or if enough technology have been research then some easier to produce armor become infinite to use but still require materials to manufacture and sell them to get profits if they can fetch.
4. Any playing advice for me, i want to capture live aliens with no casualties for me. Extremely wounded gals is fine by me, can get more but training rookies from scratch and losing when about to be trained to max is saddening. losing even on easiest difficulty due to no knowledge how to play the game much. Doing Save scumming for third try to learn game XD is it still cheating? but i will most likely forget what i learned, but not all.
5. Can anyone tell me what to research to have better armors to captures enemies alive, so i can use their stuff for myself? First eight i researched are not good at all to even compare to pirate clothing. Any guide? anything to learn how to play this? i tried using cattle prod but enemy seems to not get stunned every time even i hear shock sound that it hit!
6. Read newbie guide in forum not much to go on as it doesn't tell you most things which i figured out my self playing a week.
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1/2. Slaves are only negative space. All your other suggestions while interesting are not possible with the current game engine.
3 etc. There are no magic bullets to get free captives.
Warrior armor will keep you alive vs. most bullets and shotguns (early enemy weapons). Better weapons take time and a lot of tech.
Bows, and Black Powder bombs are great solutions for a lot of problems.
Cattle prods do work and are vital, but often need repeated use to complete a stun. I like handles too for smaller size and faster.
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1:some techs have certain slave types as prereqs.
2: not gona touch that idea
3: some armor types have progressively better versions that require older ones as parts
4: I have as yet have found only one method that is reasonable and that is gangbanging with stunmsticks or rifle butt hits on high Str gals. A high number of foes need multiple hits. Some few types are impossible with stun weapons alone. Strike from behind if at all possible to target weaker rear armor.
5: the majority of the early "armor" is just specialization and not direct dmg mitigation. There are percent reductions to account for but little additional armor early on.
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so shovels vs cattle prods vs handles vs pipes vs maces which is better than others to have higher accuracy to hit and stun but yet still kill the target if not stunned?
Maces are mostly killing no prisoners, same goes for pipes for me. I will go for all shovels, next try to check it out.
I am getting confused with the description writings on weapons compared to vanilla version of xcom writings. When weapons say 30%+ armor does it work that much better or worse for armors? And e.g. when shovels says 100%stun damage but above says cutting damage what does that mean?
Confused to this game learning XD. Help out newbie for piratez been playing xcom since dos but this is different game to begin with.
using 0.98b version on windows from more than week old link did new uploads brings something new?
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1:some techs have certain slave types as prereqs.
2: not gona touch that idea
3: some armor types have progressively better versions that require older ones as parts
4: I have as yet have found only one method that is reasonable and that is gangbanging with stunmsticks or rifle butt hits on high Str gals. A high number of foes need multiple hits. Some few types are impossible with stun weapons alone. Strike from behind if at all possible to target weaker rear armor.
5: the majority of the early "armor" is just specialization and not direct dmg mitigation. There are percent reductions to account for but little additional armor early on.
2.5: what about healing quicker through slaves helping the process after getting wounded, acting 24hour nurse?
The reason for such suggestions is with what slaves can be used for even lore might allow it. :) some suggestions might be game breaking some might be not.
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A + percent means armor is more effective. a - percent is armor is less effective. For very early captures handles are the most effective tool at your disposal. Stun-sticks are the best for quite some time until gals near 100 str where rifle butt strikes become more efficient because fewer TU spent switching items. A thing to note with stun sticks is that they are a 2-handed weapon and suffer a penalty when wielded 1 handed. Later on stun batons are a 2 size 1 hand weapon that is roughly 2/3 the potential of a stun stick. They swing very fast but lower dps and per swing damage makes armor issue worse. But pretty useful for blitzing unarmored foes.
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2.5: what about healing quicker through slaves helping the process after getting wounded, acting 24hour nurse?
Not possible with the current game mechanics.
Shovels are killers. Stick with handles, ballbats, and stunrods.
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Well, slaves are also used to produce some unique items. :)
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Another proposal for formatting: Misses as 0, hits as X with no arrows in between. So four shots with one hit would look like 0 0 X 0
Exclamationmarks can be put after the X to indicate more damage 0 0 X! 0
That would be nice... but I didn't find a way how to catch a "miss" event... I can only produce something when firing and when hitting at the moment.
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That would be nice... but I didn't find a way how to catch a "miss" event... I can only produce something when firing and when hitting at the moment.
Have you tried looking at
projectileFlyBState.cpp -> _projectileImpact
In combination with the enum:
MapData.h -> VoxelType
?
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A + percent means armor is more effective. a - percent is armor is less effective. For very early captures handles are the most effective tool at your disposal. Stun-sticks are the best for quite some time until gals near 100 str where rifle butt strikes become more efficient because fewer TU spent switching items. A thing to note with stun sticks is that they are a 2-handed weapon and suffer a penalty when wielded 1 handed. Later on stun batons are a 2 size 1 hand weapon that is roughly 2/3 the potential of a stun stick. They swing very fast but lower dps and per swing damage makes armor issue worse. But pretty useful for blitzing unarmored foes.
Damn, I thought 2-handed weapons can't be used when another item is being held on another hand like hammer and thought stun rods have something missing to not have full accuracy even with 100 melee got lucky hand with 70 it improved quickly.
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Damn, I thought 2-handed weapons can't be used when another item is being held on another hand like hammer and thought stun rods have something missing to not have full accuracy even with 100 melee got lucky hand with 70 it improved quickly.
*Some* two handed weapons can't be used with both hands full. The Number "2" will be red in the corner to indicate this.
Others will have a penalty if used with the other hand full. A green "2" indicates this.