OpenXcom Forum
Modding => Released Mods => XPiratez => Topic started by: arbee81 on May 05, 2017, 04:39:44 am
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I don't know how or why I thought of this, but it would be a launcher that fires ammo clips. Give it to a support gal, load her up with extra ammo for your team and she can fire reloads from relative safety. Pretty dumb, huh? But I thought it sounded fun and would fit into the niche of things you put in the craft but almost never use.
Now since I can't see anyone thinking this is a good enough idea to make, I thought I'd give it a shot. Fun little project to dip my toe in the modding waters. Before I get started, though, I want to ask the modding vets: does something like this seem possible to make? I can't really think of any examples of weapons that fire objects that don't do anything, you know? I know there's a forum just for mod making, but I was thinking of this specifically with Piratez in mind, so I thought I'd try asking here first.
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So mechanically speaking this is:
A: An object that improves throwing performance(accuracy, range) of everything. This sounds like a gravity gun. Which cool. Even if only executed as throwing the target object with a buff item(the "gun") in the other hand.
B: Fallout's junk cannon. Load anything as ammo, fire anything as ammo, generate clone of ammo at target.
Version A sounds much simpler to create, we already have stat modifying inventory objects, you just need a method to turn off the buff when not in a hand slot.
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This sounds like a gravity gun.
Sound more like a sling.
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And aside from the gravity pull feature(which not implementing here), you are 100% correct stoddard. Throw shit better, has been around since before fire but what version do think sounds cooler?
Unless your Joerg Sprave from the slingshot youtube channel.
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nothing wrong with ideas. I'd say it would make a great grenade launcher and extend its range. You just need to do some weird relay thing where someone primes it, tosses it at his feet and he picks it up and loads it. Or maybe a smooth 'load' feature that automatically primes the grenade.
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This idea touches one of the features I miss the most in OXC: spawning items (or units) mid-battle. You can't have a Brainsucker Launcher without it ☺
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Thanks Scorch, I had a feeling that wasn't a feature or i would have run across something similar by now.
I was thinking one option would be like a few people have mentioned, a modified throw, but then I couldn't really think of any weapons that buff stats either. I was looking for something to use as a starting point.
Is starting to sound more like an armor, with a throwing buff and the launcher permanently in the main hand. Haha, even dumber than the original idea. Maybe I'll mess around with that tonight
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If it's possible to have an item give +15 strength and -15 carrying capacity while held, you have it : It only increases how far you can throw (+5 tiles for a light item)
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If it's possible to have an item give +15 strength and -15 carrying capacity while held, you have it : It only increases how far you can throw (+5 tiles for a light item)
I think it should be possible in OXCE+, with scripts. Not 100% sure, though - the list of scriptable elements is still growing.
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I think it should be possible in OXCE+, with scripts. Not 100% sure, though - the list of scriptable elements is still growing.
Yes, it is possible with scripts, but the checks on when the item is in your hands are limited; right now you could have it give you those bonuses at the beginning of your turn, but then it'd be exploitable by dropping it. We'll have to wait for new script hooks (such as on-throw, on on-item-pickup, etc.) to do this reliably by script.
Instead, you could make an armor with one hand blocked by this special item (would mostly just be for the sprite), have it weigh an extra 15 units, and give +15 strength. It could also give a throwing accuracy bonus, but that might break the balance of some of the items that scale off throwing accuracy squared.
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I don't think it would be too game breaking to have both bonuses. The throwing squared scale weapons have other detriments as well, like hardlocked short max range and armor pen malus. I would be more worried about a javelin penetrating power armor.
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Maybe that could be offset by making it extra squishy against common damage types, or maybe giving a TU or energy debuff to make using it offensively impractical. Hmm, not so much the spud chucker I was originally thinking of, but still dumb, fun and potentially useful in very limited circumstances
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Any way to have the 'weapon' use whatever is in the other hand as ammo? I ask because right now arc is going to still be a factor, despite much of what you'd be doing with it having little to no arc before hitting your frontliner in the back of the head, so if you can make it actually fire, you can decide how it launches the item, rather than forcing it to be a throw. Maybe have two fire modes, one direct and the other arcing.
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I think something like that would require the spawn item mechanic. I can't really think of anything else that does that, so I assume it's not possible
Right now I'm thinking of abandoning the gun bit completely and make up some sci-fi device thing in the main hand that can explain the increased performance and weaknesses. Like brainer armor, but for throwing stuff
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Approaching the idea from another angle, would it be possible to make an outfit that has lowered TU costs for picking stuff off ground and moving items from backpack to hand?
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Right now I'm thinking of abandoning the gun bit completely and make up some sci-fi device thing in the main hand that can explain the increased performance and weaknesses. Like brainer armor, but for throwing stuff
Already planned (Wearing Big Mechanical Arm and Little Else), but I won't say no to a gfx design for that (big mechanical arm that fits onto paperdoll?) :)
Item and unit spawning mechanics sound like something this game really needs to be truly amongst the top XCOM style games.
As for the last question, it is impossible to change TU costs for inventory manipulation - they're global. However, an armor variable that eg. modifies costs for moving items, using items, walking by a set percentage?
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Honestly I think I'd use this to launch grenades instead so all my gals don't need decent STR or Throw to toss nades.
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Good for strategic deployment of all the throwable stuff, nades, smoke, mines. Good support weapon.
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I was thinking of just a blanket tu reduction, like how some of the large armors reduce energy and TU totals. To make it less practical to use it offensively. But if it's already in the works then I'll just look forward to that. I haven't gotten very far in my efforts. It's a lot more work than I would have thought to make this stuff
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Got me thinking...
If > Telekinesis is added as a research-able psi-power, and
If > A TK suit was added to the game with, say, one free hand and limited carry slots, and
If > Wearing the TK suit allowed the user to "fire" what was in the free hand using the Blaster Launcher waypoint system.
That would avoid the whole arcing/straight line problem for the fall of shot, make the user a excellent grenadier and/or ammo supplier and limit the availabiity of the power so that whole squads aren't made up of gravity gunning gals because the lower limit of psi-strength necessary to use it can be set quite high or the materials for the suit can be rare.
Adding complexity (and this is me talking through my hat about game limitations I am not aware of)
Can Psi-Strength be used to limit the range of the projectile, ie, stronger Psis can control the object through more waypoints?
Can the game fire a shot, using Gal A's stats, from a square where Gal A is not standing, ie can Gal A see a grenade on the ground and "throw" it from where it lies without picking it up?
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Right now, none of that item manipulation is possible. There isn't a ruleset-allowed way to turn items into projectiles and back again, except by throwing grenades, and that is only allowed with the throw action. Throwing also can only be limited in range by strength and the weight of the item being thrown. These sorts of things require writing new code for the game engine. Either you'd have to start writing this code yourself, or put a proposed feature out here on the forum and be patient for somebody to pick it up.
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Well, if a psychic blaster-launcher equivalent is liked, it can be fluffed around.
"Cap'n, if we cage our grenades with magic stuff, our TK gals can send them round corners. It takes some time in the insert expensive room here, but its a neat trick."
And I'm not going to be able to go to sleep unless I ask some followup questions.
Can the game assign a rank to a gal if she equals a certain stat score?
Can the game limit an item of equipment to gals who have the correct rank?
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And I'm not going to be able to go to sleep unless I ask some followup questions.
Can the game assign a rank to a gal if she equals a certain stat score?
Can the game limit an item of equipment to gals who have the correct rank?
So you ask for something like this:
A hand with 100 firing skill shall be known as a "sniper".
Her rank "sniper" allows to use guns that can only be used by the rank of "sniper"?
Something like this is already build into weaponry with stuff like firing*0,25 on sniper-rifles.
The rank-system is totally fine (besides your highest ranked gals are sometimes those who did the least work during the playthrough)
It's confusing and needs alot of work to redesign armors and items to work with your suggested 'class-system' like they did with the reworked X-Com and X-Com 2
The UI has to be improved to remind the player that your gal made a specific breakthrough in statscore.
"P+ Shade has become a Fighter" or stuff like that...
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Lack of classes is what made X Com unique, so please don’t add that feature.
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Your 'class' is defined by the items used.
Later everyone is kind of a 'jack of all trades'
Class System would have to offer some special trade-off a rookie doesn't have.
Good equipment can make a swabbie to a killing maschine. Try that in X-Com 20xx or X-Com 2
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Can the game assign a rank to a gal if she equals a certain stat score?
Can the game limit an item of equipment to gals who have the correct rank?
You can achieve a limited version of this with the stat strings mod and the equipment template features. Stat strings is included with the install, you just have to turn it on in options > mods from the title screen. It'll append letters after the soldier's name based on stats, or you can configure titles which is a little trickier and more limited. I think the base mod is configured for vanilla, though. I had to go in and change some values as it thought most of my gals were snipers. Also it does not take armor bonuses into account. Here's a link to the UFOpaedia article on modifying the values: https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Statstrings (https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Statstrings)
Once you have the titles or values set up you can save equipment templates with F5 and load them with F9 when equipping your hands. The way I'm using them right now is to set up a basic template for melee, firing and throwing, which I can then manually add specific weapons to, and more specialized templates for specific roles. Like my base melee consists of 2 bandages, 2 atom beers, a stun rod, and a few grenades with both hands empty. So then I just need to give them a specific weapon when starting a mission. An example of a more specific one is a sniper build that uses the best sniper rifle I have available, a laslock pistol as a sidearm (uses the same firing^2 * .01 formula as sniper rifles), and some kind of anti-armor weapon in the backpack. It doesn't limit the equipment available, but it does let you quickly and easily equip gals for specific roles, and it's easy to see which gal is good at what with the stat strings when you're equipping them
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Well, I've been reading some sci-fi recently, some of which involved psychic powers, and I noticed that you rarely find fiction about "gifted" generalists. Its always this guy reads minds, this gal can start fires etc etc, powerful at what they CAN do, weak or powerless at what their mind is not really built for.
So I started thinking about how (if it was a cool idea that people liked) to wheedle this kind of thing into the game. Since the game hides Psi-strength and Psi-energy stats from you until you have the tech researched, maybe it could hide another stat from the player which is revealed at some point. That stat determines the "Psi-Speciality" of the gal.
For example, the gal is generated with a hidden stat score that determines "can start fires with their mind". If their rank could be changed to "Firestarter" upon discovery and their equipment limited to "Firestarters only", then their equipment can be made more powerful without unbalancing the game since there might not be that many of them.
I agree with Martin, the lack of classes is great, I prefer the original Xcom over the childish, action-hero crap-fest of the recent games. Anybody can train their physiques to reach any goal they want, Strength training to improve their ability with heavy weapons and so on. But, still, I don't know, since psychic powers should be something special, maybe a little class thing going on for psychics is not too bad?
To me, they feel a little like D&D Wizards. They are not that rare and they can just tailor their "spell loadout" for the occasion. When it might be a nice idea to make them rarer, specialised but more powerful so that when you find one, it's a big thing.
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Class for psykers make no sense since all psionics (at least for your soldiers) is effected by use of specialized devices.
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I spent a fair amount of time writing a reply, but got logged out or something and lost it all. OK, short version.
Class for psykers make no sense since all psionics (at least for your soldiers) is effected by use of specialized devices.
Yes, but the valuable things there are the specialised devices, not the soldiers. The gals can be anonymous, it is the devices that are important. The player will find (or train) plenty of gals that have the necessary stats to use those devices.
If devices can be limited to a certain rank or randomly generated stat, then the gal can become more valuable simply because the right stat needs to be used with the right device. For exampe, if the gal does not have the "Firestarter" stat, she cannot use fire-based devices. Once the number of useful psionic gals drops, the devices themselves can be made more powerful and valuable in turn.
I imagine a system where a hidden stat independent of Voodoo Strength/Skill (call it Voodoo Aptitude or Psi-Speciality) determines what devices the gal can use. For example, the scale is 0-X. 0 means no psionic devices ever, the gal just happens to have a strong or weak mind, but no psionic ability. 1 means "Firestarter". 2 means "Telekinesis". 3 means "Mind Control", 4 means "Demonblooded" and so on until we run out of ideas. There can even be a value for "Latent", they have powers, but you don't know what they are until they are unlocked.
The change to the game this would make is that, if they are made rare enough, if the player discovers an active psionic gal with poor Voodoo Strength/Skill, it would pay to train them up rather than to fire them and reroll some more recruits. If they are rare enough, the devices can be made more powerful from the start since the chances of fielding more than one or two has dropped.
The downside is that the player may be unlucky and never roll an active psionic. This could be dealt with. The first draft of this post had paragraphs dedicated to discovery, recruitment and rescue missions. I won't go into them here, just ask me if it sounds interesting.
And I ended with saying that I have a huge respect for what Dioxine and others have made. If it looks like I was being critical or trollish, I am sorry, I should have picked better words.
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That is an interesting idea of making gals more individual (which is always a good thing). However I must point out that no matter the diversity, and no matter the rarity, as long as player can recruit gals by hiring them on the black market, getting the right stats will be just a matter of recruiting a larger batch.
Devices cannot be limited to a stat, but they can work better or worse depending on any stat, rank included.
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OK, I thought that if devices could be limited to a stat or rank, then implementing the different flavours of voodoo would be a straightforward question of working out a desired rarity and how powerful to make the devices.
I guess that it would be possible to simply strip voodoo powers from the regular gals and implement voodoo gals as separate entities, but that might take it too far.
Unless it could be disguised.
When the player makes out the order on the black market for, say, 20 gals, can the game randomly roll for each gal and, if lucky, replace her with a voodoo gal? If the gal looks and acts exactly like a regular gal until the power is unlocked, the behind-the-scenes-maths would remain hidden and the player would assume he was just lucky.
Devices can be made that only work on some units, right?
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You should start learning modding, and see how far you can take this idea.
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Devices can be made that only work on some units, right?
Only in a very convoluted way - armor locked to an unit type, equipped with a fixed weapon.
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I think I could add script for testing usability of weapon by unit.
This will allow to limit items to armors (minigun need power armor to shoot or some laser need armor with batteries).
As this will be script it could check state of unit like, this will allow e.g. that some weapons can't be shoot when unit is flying.
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Interesting. But it would require adding triggers other than start of turn. How viable is it?
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Right now I see it that it will check only when you try use weapon, if you have correct condition you can shot it. You will be able to equip but use will be limited.
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Sounds like this leads to situations like in vanilla TFTD with torpedo launchers and hydrojet-minigun.
Unless you read through all items and armors closely (multiple times as you unlock/loot more stuff) you will run into a situation for a perfect set-up for the weapon you wanna use BUT failed to add the correct armor and now you need a plan B for the one hand that can't use his weapon.
Sure it's logic that a gatling laser needs a 'battery-pack' to run but no need to make a perfectly fine engine more complex. This ristriction will affect the player only unless the new 'rules' are linked into the loadout of the enemies.
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Sure it's logic that a gatling laser needs a 'battery-pack' to run but no need to make a perfectly fine engine more complex. This ristriction will affect the player only unless the new 'rules' are linked into the loadout of the enemies.
I agree. But an engine option does not determine how it works in the game. For example I think weight + STR bonus on amour is good enough for restricting heavy weapons from us on non-powered armours, The battery situation Yankes described can indeed be a noob trap, but if this mechanics is prevalent throughout the mod, then the player will catch on quickly. And we could also have, for example, a whole array of psi/cyber/whatever weapons that require special suits...
To sum up, it's a promising feature and it's up to the modder to make it easily understandable.
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One simple solution I see is add small hit, like color border of hand slot change to red if unit can't use item (because of underwater, psi or new scripts).
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On the subject of border change for "invalid combination" how about extending it to include things like two-hand only but other hand is full situations and tech blocks like steller empire weapons. Make the color change universal for "you cant use this currently."
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You should start learning modding, and see how far you can take this idea.
I give you fair warning. I have some irons in the fire already and I haven't done anything like programming since 1986 so I may be some time getting back to you with any results :)