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Terror from the deep never had a serious game stopping bug.

Um, quite the opposite. TFTD was the game with the game-breaking research bug and some serious research path fuckery if you missed some important capture/artifact.

not true, they are even depended on the angles, much less different locations, getting the same number doesnt happen in my play,

But it is. See the attached save. The three soldiers in Aquatoid Central have vision of different Aquatoids, but the common ones share the same order and if you manage to get them to look at roughly the same enemies, share numbers, too. Even as it is, all of them have the same 'number 1' Aquatoid, the one in the east corner.

And even if the numbers don't match exactly, for common-ish enemies they're not off by more than one or two, so you can still quickly cycle to the right target.

i didnt count the tiles, but just feeling i built from my past experience, ...like "this much distance, i think i am safe, it wont get to me or it will stop in front of me". but with openxcom, they come out of the offscreen or the edge of screen.

That feeling of "they can't come at me from off-screen, right?" was false in the original, too.

i couldnt measure it well at 1st, but save and load the game eventually did.

I don't know what you were measuring, but the rule files say this:

Code: [Select]

  - type: STR_TENTACULAT_TERRORIST
    stats:
      tu: 99

I haven't played the original in a long time, but Ufopedia says they have 99 - 146 time units, depending on difficulty. Which seems to fit. I don't think there are any changes to swimming/flying TU costs, these would be very noticeable.

So your observation is more of an anecdote than data, so far.

i havent found readme.txt as to what was changed in universal patch.

I think this and this are the best you can find without digging into it yourself.

dye grenades are totally different in openxcom.

Yes, and they were pretty much broken in the original. OXC(E) fixes a number of bugs like that, in addition to everything else. If you for some reason want the exact original experience, warts and all, play the original. OXC is the improved version, and went quite some distance to maintaining everything that wasn't a bug as close to the original as humanly possible.

so i am still a bit skeptical what was changed in openxcom. so far nothing much or it was maybe just my imagination.

There are so many misconceptions and false memories about the original kicking around it's not even funny any more. Yes, OXC changes some things. No, it deliberately tries to stay as close to the original as possible, while offering a variety of fixes, user options, mods and modding tools. If you search for it, I think there are posts (by SupSuper, I think) that tell you which settings will give you the most 'vanilla' OXC experience.

Myself, I don't play OXC due to nostalgia or because I want some sort of 'pure' experience with some QoL. I play it because it's a classic and proven game formula, with no true successor in sight. And for the modding potential, both existing mods and what I can do on top of those myself. YMMV.

Quote from: Pendra37 on June 02, 2024, 06:11:52 pm

tab tab tab.... for next unit, next unit....., which is still kind of maybe ok.
but i hope to bookmark a unit with a bound hotkey to find my scout quickly

You can also reverse cycle for faster soldier selection. Myself, I use mouse thumb buttons, it's way more convenient than tabbing and reverse tabbing.

Open Feedback / Re: openxcom was too difficult to play. is there a way to use the original rules?

« on: June 03, 2024, 08:33:54 pm »

If you only move all your soldiers up, maybe twice, every single one of them, I can see that. But why are you doing that? Virtually no craft has soldier positions where you can just move them two levels above.

And you're saying that you use the Manta, which is not a transport craft in the original. Are you playing with a mod?

PGUP can be replaced with a movement of the mouse wheel. At least I find it far more convenient.

About bookmarking enemies, the OG usually doesn't have so many enemies on the screen that you run out of 'enemy spotted' numbers. So if just your scout sees the enemy, in most cases the rest have that enemy on the same number.

The 'center on last spotted enemy' idea is not bad, though.

Soldier cycling is done in the same order that they appear on the craft, AFAIK. Can be a bit jumpy once you've spread everyone out.

Tentaculats should be unchanged if you aren't playing with a mod. Vanilla AI does all kinds of strange things, so one or two of them rushing you a bit better is not out of the ordinary. And Chryssalids/Tentaculats always had TU: yes and could come at you from off-screen, so I'm not sure what you're basing the 30% on.

There are two places to post your hotkey suggestions: the Suggestions subforum, and the OXCE suggestions NEW sub-subforum. The latter is the more active of the two and more likely to at least consider your requests.

OXCE Suggestions NEW / Re: [Suggestion] Sniper/Scoped rifle inverse accuracy

« on: June 03, 2024, 10:07:19 am »

Eh, it's debatable whether most enemies are actually stationary. They do move during their turn, it's just the turn-based abstraction that makes them look like they're standing still and getting shot at.

Automatic sniper rifles are a bit silly, yes. But AS Val exists, and so do scoped machine guns. Hathcock's record was with an M2, for that matter.

'Sniper' and 'designated marksman' are more of a doctrinal thing. You can certainly have your DM use 0.25-MoA bolt actions and have snipers creep closer and use one of the plethora of modern sub-MoA semi-auto rifles with rapid follow-ups.

Anyway, in terms of this proposal, there's really not much of a difference between a 'sniper rifle' and a 'DMR'. Both have scopes, both are long-range precision weapons used mainly against 'soft' targets.

Incidentally, that's where the actual draw of the semi-auto is. Not range or whatever, you were almost always going to use a full-power round anyway (and semis are worse for those than bolt actions). Rather, it's the rapid follow-ups and multi-target shots that are the draw, compared to bolt actions. Well, I suppose nowadays it might be shooting at drones, too.

Precision semi-autos are far from rare, even in military contexts. The US Army moved from the M24 to the M110 and then an HK417 variant, for crying out loud.

40+ distance itself is not the issue, its interaction with sight range is the thing to consider. If you have open desert or arctic terrain, you can shoot from one end of a 40x40 or even bigger map to the other. I see that you're a fellow sniper enjoyer.

The numerical data are interesting. While not quite what you envisioned, it's not too badly off.

I too would like more fire mode customisation, but I'm not holding my breath. Getting typed hangars would be a major move forward and more useful to many people. And there's all the other stuff on the devs' todo lists.

OXCE Suggestions NEW / Re: [Suggestion] Sniper/Scoped rifle inverse accuracy

« on: June 02, 2024, 10:51:07 pm »

Sure, but a) that's what players like and b) unless you take away accuracy scaling via stats and thus remove sniper specialisation from soldiers, you're still going to end up with either good snaps, or useless snaps.

Your example is more of the latter. Snipers already tend to carry backup weapons that are better for close-range combat than their main gun. Thus this kind of snap shot doesn't really do much, although I'll grant you that it does look sorta realistic. There are sniper guns that lack a snap shot altogether, which is not too different from this.

I'm also not sure where you're pulling these numbers from. Range 20 snap shot should be 0.7*90 = 63 - 5*3 = 48. And no matter the calculation method, how can you have 66 at range 10 and 64 at range 15, when the dropoff is 3 and neither threshold (snapRange or AimMinDistance) is crossed?

Your sniper gun is also one with double snaps, which is one way these things can grow out of hand. And start enroaching on assault/semi-auto rifle territory.

Also, since your mod is likely not going to have vision ranges in excess of 40 or so - unless you want non-tiny maps to slow to a crawl. So the higher-range hit chances are going to be different, unless you either don't use the no-LoS penalty, or remove it from sniper weapons due to 'scoped'.

Also, what about auto-shots? Yes, there are automatic sniper rifles around, both IRL and in mods.

All in all, sure, the idea doesn't look too bad. But its 'realism' is somewhat debatable, and the end result can be approximated relatively well with current tools. But, again, it's not me you need to convince here.

And excessive feature-dipping by sniper rifles is one of my pet peeves, so it's not as if I like these super-snipers. But they did begin with good intentions.

OXCE Suggestions NEW / Re: [Suggestion] Craft size and Hangar capacity

« on: June 02, 2024, 09:51:16 pm »

I hardly think being unable to park cars in sub pens is 'excessive realism'. If you're so unconcerned about 'realism', just make your hangars 1x1 and with 'crafts: 10 000 000', boom, your original space problem is solved.

Goes for Pendra's universal paved-over sub-pens/crane harbours, too.

As to the rest, I'm trying to be not too confrontational these days, and I don't think the arguments here are conducive to that. So I'll just skip further conversation. Meridian will likely do as he said, anyway.

For the record, OXC has fixed the containment bug, and nowadays containment space is quite limited. 10 aliens total, not even different types, is the vanilla limit. Ethereal already told you about hangar capacity.

At least two people have already implemented hangar changes, one with sizes and one with types. The latter is available in BOXCE. Neither is nowhere near as simple as you two try to portray it, and Meridian has more potential problems to solve than either of the two, due to OXCE being the modding standard these days.

OXCE Suggestions NEW / Re: [Suggestion] Craft size and Hangar capacity

« on: June 02, 2024, 07:09:09 pm »

Except, I can still park a single car into that massive hangar.

A hangar is not just a space to fit vehicles, it's the in-game representation of the logistics network required to maintain that craft and its interception/transport missions. It very much makes sense that you cannot park your global car rental agreement in the sub pen.

Quote from: Pendra37 on June 02, 2024, 06:11:52 pm

General stores vs Containment are the example how Type AND Size work together.

Except they don't. No matter if the alien is a tiny brainsucker or a giant sloth creature, they all take the exact same amount of containment 'space'. This is an example of type and size working in parallel, not together.

Quote from: Pendra37 on June 02, 2024, 06:11:52 pm

Everything in game have Type AND Size. Even manufacture. Except crafts. They have neithet Type nor Size. They are single crafts. Adding type is one part of the concept adding size is the other.

But nothing actually uses type and size together. Scientists are a number, there are no special scientist types. Or engineer types. Or item storage types. Or alien containments with sizes that can house multiple types of captives. Etc.

OXCE Suggestions NEW / Re: [Suggestion] Craft size and Hangar capacity

« on: June 02, 2024, 01:45:45 pm »

Size can have two "types". Above water with a +sign and below water with a - sign.

And when the modder wants spacecraft and tunnelling craft that are different from either (real example, these already exist), what then? Complex numbers and then quaternions? $:-\$

Then you will be back to square one because only 1 craft can be in s hangar regardless of craft size.

No, why? Hangar size is going to be independent of hangar/craft types, as I understand it.

[stores]

Why is it an issue to have the same logic applied to crafts?

Because we want to differentiate between crafts, but do not care about what exactly is getting stored. If we didn't, this whole feature would be close to pointless, since we already have stores-like hangars. AFAIK, people who want hangars based on whether the crafts are fighter jets, submarines, cars or space shuttles considerably outnumber those who want to build 7 garages and then store their fighter jets inside.

What you're proposing is having both stores-like and type-based hangars at the same time.

You have a transport 7s, interceptor 5s, 2xAPC 3s, 2xVan 2s, 3xCar 1s. And you have 2xHangars 8c, 3xParking lots 4c.

As I understand it, even the types version is kind of a pain in the ass to implement, both due to performance and all sorts of corner cases. Look at WarStalkeR's attempt at craft sizes.

When we have type-based hangars and Meridian has a better idea of how things shake out, then we can have a proper discussion of whether to try craft sizes, too.

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

« on: June 02, 2024, 01:15:17 am »

How so? Kyberos aren't exactly low-level augments.

OXCE Suggestions NEW / Re: [Suggestion] Craft size and Hangar capacity

« on: June 01, 2024, 02:55:09 pm »

What exactly is this inconvenience? You'd still be able to put multiple craft in one hangar, so in theory one hangar could fit an armada of 100 fighter jets, while no hovercars are allowed - if you so desired.

OXCE Suggestions NEW / Re: [Suggestion] Sniper/Scoped rifle inverse accuracy

« on: June 01, 2024, 02:50:35 pm »

I mean weapon/ammo data commonly used to make sniper weapons distinct. Like

Code: [Select]

accuracyMultiplier:
  firing: [0.0, 0.01]            # quadratic in FA

noLOSAccuracyPenalty: 75         # if, say, 50 is the default

damageBonus:
  firing: 0.2                    # base damage + 20% FA

damageAlter:0
      RandomType: 7              # 50-200%
      ArmorEffectiveness: 0.8    # Armour only applies 80% of nominal value

This is all in addition to regular projectile mechanics.

Not all snap shots are fired at point-blank range, and a scope obscuring your vision can be somewhat detrimental then, depending on how the whole thing is put together.

My main opposition to this is due to sniper rifles already firing mostly snap shots because of better action economy for all but the rarest of situations, due to all the bonuses scaling with FA^2, which can easily get you to over 200% accuracy over a 'normal' soldier.

If you can avoid that in your mod, sure, doesn't sound so bad. But you'd probably want a hip/snap/aimed distinction now, too. And thus we enter the rabbit hole.

Open Feedback / Re: openxcom was too difficult to play. is there a way to use the original rules?

« on: June 01, 2024, 02:36:35 pm »

Indeed. But the question is, how does the game data shake out. I just tried dropping dye grenades on downed Aquatoids, and it didn't seem to do much anything, they kept recovering 1 stun per turn. I tried that with XCF Sectoids, and those did get somewhat random stun damage from lying in smoke.

So OG armour vs stun values might just not work out. Or my testing was too small-scope (a few turns, no more).

Many easier enemies in XCF also have a major stun vulnerability, so stun kicks in much harder there, regardless of whether the targt is still up or not.

Hence my hesitation.

Open Feedback / Re: openxcom was too difficult to play. is there a way to use the original rules?

« on: June 01, 2024, 01:56:27 pm »

in DOS original, they maybe rise 0.1 % or less, unless you stand on them
in openxcom, they may rise 70%, i didnt have many tentaculats in the missions yet, but i think they rise up too, so was this part modded?

Not that I know of. It may be that you remember wrong, I definitely recall camping downed Sectoids and Chryssalids thirty years ago. Or perhaps you're using different weapons now.

Standing on the body has never made any difference, short of blocking that spot and making them stand up on another tile.

You should be able to shoot them on the ground if there are no nearby walls, or just blast the area with a stun bomb or similar. Some mods allow you to keep fallen foes down via smoke grenades, not sure this extends to the original.

i am not sure of this one in the control menu, if "alien bleeding" was said to YES, then would this stop the rising behaviors?

Maybe a few of them, but not in general. They'd need to bleed to death faster than they recover from stun for that to work, and for that to happen, you'd need to either wound them so badly they might as well be dead anyway, or use a wound-centric weapon (which aren't in vanilla). Or stun them so hard the issues is moot anyway.

are the number of alien colonies limited by any chance in the geoscape in openxcom? i used to have around 30 colonies all over the globe in the original DOS version before MC labs, now in OpenXCOM, all i have is maybe 6 visible alien colonies...

I'd suggest it's a matter of random mission generation. There's a lot of randomness in what you can get, so one playthrough does not necessarily resemble another. You might lose all your major sponsors to infiltration, but see just a few bases. Or there may be a million bases, but very little abduction or infiltration. Vanilla does tend to converge towards having a spread of all mission types, but nothing is ever guaranteed with RNG.

And you may, of course, be missing the other 24+ colonies that are there, chilling under your radar.

the xcom unit's movement in the control menu was set to max, but still, time wasting for moving 10 units per turn are repetitively slow and bad in my head

They always moved about as fast as they do now, just the game itself was accelerated if your CPU could handle it.

The best tip I have is to make the trajectory appear off-screen, even if the destination isn't. Then movement is near-instantanaous. You can also Shift-click to make your soldiers cease stopping when they see an alien, if you already know where the alien is and don't care about that individual soldier's vision of them.