Messages

76

Work In Progress / Re: How to trigger a base defense mission?

« on: February 08, 2017, 10:26:29 am »

Thirsk, just to share my experience, I too rarely have base defense missions even with though I play with aggressive retaliation on. I don't know why this is because others say they have them often, but I get maybe one in an entire campaign.

Just to test, if I just let time run without shooting down any of the UFOs I detect, I'll get a base defense mission fairly quickly. But if I play the game through properly and shoot down every UFO I detect, then I almost never get base defense missions. I agree with you that they're fun and a change of pace from the regular crash site missions, so I wish I got them more often.

Asking a follow-up question, is it "moddable" to change the chance (as a % I assume) of the aliens detecting your base when flying by? I assume this is hard-coded because I haven't seen it in the rulesets, but asking in case.

77

Fan-Stuff / Re: XCOM Crossovers that'd never work

« on: February 01, 2017, 12:43:49 pm »

X-COM/Signs.

"Research Finished: The Dihidrogen Monoxide Solution."

"Commander, experiments indicate the aliens die if exposed to water.  It works like acid on them.

... We have manages to procure the most powerful and effective squirt guns, super soakers, water cannons and firecars.

Haha, great reference. I actually liked the movie Signs for entertainment, but yeah the whole logic with aliens not using their tech and then being killed by water was kinda dumb.

[Spoiler]

78

Suggestions / Re: [Suggestion] Vanilla - Extra Hard

« on: February 01, 2017, 12:39:12 pm »

Very interesting. Started with the mod by multiplying all alien counts by 3, e.g.

Code: [Select]

  - type: STR_ABDUCTOR
    data:
      - alienRank: 5
        lowQty: 9
        highQty: 15
This makes for a target rich environment and feels more of a battle than a special operations mission. I'd recommend classical accuracy in order to get things done with long range autoshots. I'll have to study alien morale; too much panic early on even if they have a decent army left.

I did something like this once. Just for fun I made a mission with a huge map and 100 Chryssalids, but I did eventually run into the issue of them panicking when you killed too many consecutively. I'd just raise their bravery really high. If you want to make it harder anyway, do your best to prevent any panic by the aliens.

Spoiler:

(If I make a mod and use other mods as part of the experience, can I just steal it (with credits) or should I refer to it (use X)?)

The game as I am currently testing:

3x the number of aliens in all kinds of ships, therefore
- really hard battles,
- "target rich environment" with lots of shooting (leave vanilla accuracy on), less SWAT team, more army vs. army
- underused equipment like grenades become more important, less worry about blowing up loot since you get plenty
- lots of loot, so Geoscape play is fun and easy -> all bases, equipment, research affordable early on
- tactics are now "worth it" more since everyone on the map (including e.g. flanking units) are always spotting or shooting something
- no boring missions

no PSI, no blasters, therefore
- hardcore conventional battles
- no tragic decimation of your top crew when the Ethereals show up
- no PSI'ing the aliens, thats BS
- No carpet blastering the map

just a few mods, like
- grenades 3 stories high
- possibly things like extra ufos
- I did "starting defensive improved base" (nah because "not vanilla" or yea because "hassle-free geoscape"?)
- I did "pre-save primed grenades" (not Vanilla, and something that streamlines things, but makes it a little easier, so mabye nah)
- maybe heavy laser, but THAT'S ABOUT IT -> I'd recommend doing either the final mod pack/hardmode expansion/other mod OR this plain vanilla one!

So as an experienced player you find the game as you know it; you breeze through the purchase, research and manufacturing screens, you know how aliens react and you know your odds shooting laser pistol across the map and the vision mechanics with smoke and light. Things that felt unbalanced are now all right - you need every advantage you can get. Battlescape/money management was boring and half-broken anyway if you can manufacture+sell lasers and live of selling mind probes

If you want to enjoy the trip to Cydonia more, try the other mods that add content in Geoscape (research, diffculty). This one is about the battles. Just take one by one as a challenge in itself.

In Vanilla the few alien survivers in a small scout were often vastly inferior to a strong human team. The only thing they could do was kill one of the better soldiers which didn't change the battle but kind of annoyed the player and maybe set him back long-term in Battlescape. Annoying. Now every alien ship can win.

In Vanilla even tougher battles didn't really *need* all 14-26 soldiers; you want to train them all but there wasn't enough to shoot at, there was the risk to get shot at if you didn't move everyone right, and many just stood around or just "trained" time units or energy. Boring. In this mod you want to deploy them all, everyone is useful.

With the point system it was often beneficial to, say, land on a terror site and leave immediately to reduce negative score. Let's forget score - let's play to win a ground battle. You get the idea by now

Oh and I would allow restarting any battle from the beginning if you don't like whats happening.
- no more worrying about losing your super star!
- you get another chance, that's how training works. Try the same thing again and see if you can do better
- in the beginning ths mode needs some adjusting and you really need to develop your "best practices", smoke things up, look half-diagonal through windows or around corners to be safer from alien reaction, flank, ... so don't sweat it.
- don't worry about difficulty: it's difficult enough and there are enough aliens around to never give you an easy mission. It seems like the mission layout/landscape is fixed for each alien ufo now

I like it, this is XCOM for me now! Would anyone want to play that? :-) Let me know what you think! Suggestions (practically or philosophically) welcome

I feel like some of these changes are actually making the game easier rather than harder. For example, rather than take away PSI and blaster launchers all together, why not make PSI and blaster launchers unusable for XCOM, but let the aliens keep them? Just a suggestion.

79

Open Feedback / Re: New comer, a summary of changes available ?

« on: January 10, 2017, 04:50:35 pm »

A lot of the differences/bug fixes/features are laid out in the Wiki: https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Differences_to_X-COM_(OpenXcom)

Are you using 1.0 or the Nightlies? Definitely use the Nightlies. There are a ton of updates/fixes from 1.0.

As far as the difficulty goes, it hasn't be changed from the original game, but you might be aware, there was a bug in the original game which made it so no matter what difficulty you chose, it switched to Beginner after the first mission. So if you were playing with this bug in the past you'll notice the game is a lot harder because it's actually staying on the correct difficulty setting.

And on the alien AI, one of the devs just posted about this in another thread so I'll paste his quote:

i have access to decompiled and annotated source code from the original game and TFTD (both from the windows collector's edition) and i can assure you with confidence that the AI in openxcom is as close to the original's as i can get it. i personally spent over six months making sure every single function was fully understood and replicated as accurately as possible. The most noticeable changes were related to pathfinding, more specifically the AI no longer tries to move to inaccessible locations, and can plot routes to given destinations more intelligently. the former of these results in less aliens standing completely still in the open for the entire game while they try to pathfind somewhere they can't reach, and the latter results in less aliens getting stuck in closets because they want to move west but the door is to the east. i guess i would put the differences you are noticing down to this, but i would make the argument that "this is probably what the original AI would have done, if not for those issues" ...

... i know it's already been stated, but i can assure you that the alien stats are identical to the original game's, as was pointed out, if your original game didn't have these stats on those aliens at that difficulty level, then it was undoubtedly affected by the difficulty reset bug.

80

Hardmode Expansion / Re: Hardmode Expansion - Bugreports

« on: December 04, 2016, 11:23:59 am »

And then I saw its a bug because there is no reason for craft just to fall. In reality it would not fall, it would go to another base.

Constantine, I can understand your frustrating with this game mechanic, but it might help to look at the logic another way. Don't think of it as the skyranger "falling" from the sky. If the aliens catch you by surprise with their base attack (and if you didn't detect it beforehand, then they did), then no one is able to send a message to warn the skyranger about the attack. So after you lose the base defense mission, the skyranger remains unaware and returns, right into an alien trap and that is why everyone is lost.

On the other hand, if you do detect the incoming alien base attack, then you can send a warning message to the skyranger before the aliens jam your communication: "Hey guys, not safe, go to another base until we give you the all clear." Then use the "airborne transfer" to divert them. Even if you don't have a free hanger, just sell another craft to make room.


So that is my thought behind this game mechanic which is true to vanilla and why I think it should stay that way. HOWEVER, what bothers me is that if you lose the base defense mission, the soldiers in transit are deleted from the save file, rather than added to the memorial wall. This is obviously not game breaking and doesn't affect game play at all, but from a story perspective, I wish they were added to the RIP list rather than deleted. I started a thread on this in the suggestions section, but I guess others aren't too bothered by it.

81

Open Feedback / Differences between cyberdisc and bio-drone multi-kills

« on: December 02, 2016, 04:58:36 am »

In UFO I really enjoy when you kill a Cyberdisc which explodes and kills other aliens nearby ... sometimes even other Cyberdiscs causing a chain reaction. It's a lot of fun and a great way for a soldier to get multiple kills with one shot as the game credits the soldier who killed the cyberdisc with the explosion kills as well.

Bio-Drones in TFTD don't credit the soldier with the kill though. If you check the save file they actually give the kill to the dying Bio-Drone rather than the soldier who killed the Bio-Drone. Anyone know if there is a reason for the difference or maybe it was an oversight?


Something else I observed with Bio-Drones (but might be true for Cyberdiscs as well): If you shoot a Bio-drone and it is knocked unconscious rather than killed, it still explodes. But then if a grenade goes off nearby, it will explode again! Is this strange or expected behavior? I was shocked that my grenade blast was so big until I figured out I was actually killing the unconscious Bio-Drone. Seems strange it can explode twice.

82

Playthroughs / Re: Is my TFTD campaign a lost cause?

« on: December 01, 2016, 10:02:37 am »

Thanks for the info, going to keep trudging on and see what happens. Although I'm not very optimistic as I just finished October with -1400 points!

I was surprised the score was getting so negative. In September I had a passable score despite having a squad wipe on an Artifact mission, a squad wipe on a regular crashed sub mission, and one small sub crash victory. But I guess I detected and shot down a fair number of alien subs even if I didn't do the ground missions because they were Lobstermen.

Then October I (shockingly) beat my terror mission and one other small sub crash, but that was it. I hardly detected any alien subs and the ones I did got away before I could shoot them down. So I assume I lost a ton of points just because the aliens were successful with their missions since I wasn't shooting anything down.

Plus they have at least 5 colonies on the planet now so that's not helping my score either.

83

Work In Progress / Re: Scientists and Egineers

« on: December 01, 2016, 09:50:14 am »

This is an interesting idea. Having a much smaller number of scientists and engineers, but making them cost much more and be "real people" that you can name and use on missions/base defense would be a cool feature. It's more realistic too in the sense that you'd have maybe a 3-10 scientists researching that alien corpse ... not 150. Seriously, how do 150 scientists research a corpse?

It sounds like it could get very complex with the physics/biology/etc specifics, but a "simple" way to do it would be 3 classes with 2 extra stats added, "Engineering" and "Science." Soldiers would have 0 for both of those, Scientists would have a number 1-whatever for "Science" and likewise for Engineers.

Anyway, probably not something that would happen, but a cool idea nonetheless.

Thinking of... an idea: civilian units(engineers and scientists) in base defense mission. Not all 200 of them, of course, but 3-5. But how to make killing them count as decrease of amount of personell...

This seems like the most realistic implementation of this, just using the allied civilians mechanic. But rather than have 1 civilian be worth 10+ scientists/engineers, you could have them count as one and cap the total number at 10 or something. Those would be the ones that didn't evacuate in time or something.

84

Open Feedback / Re: Haven't played in a while ... what's new? Will old saves/mods crash?

« on: December 01, 2016, 09:25:53 am »

Thanks, played a few missions and so far so good, no problems. Haven't tested all my mods, but they were mostly my own and not huge mega-mods so only small changes here and there.

85

Offtopic / Re: cool soldier names

« on: November 28, 2016, 08:54:46 am »

I use a custom list of names with a combination of my favorite movie/TV characters, famous people from history, pro athletes and friends/family. I prefer this to random names that sound cool, but have no connection to real world or "real" fictional people.

It can create some funny in-game situations that add an extra element of entertainment. Like having "Han Solo" get mind controlled and shoot "Luke Skywalker" in the back. Stuff like that makes it feel like XCOM is trolling me even more and I get a laugh (or cry) out of it.

86

Offtopic / Re: kneeling for cover or aiming

« on: November 28, 2016, 08:36:08 am »

Thinking back on all the TUs I've wasted kneeling behind worthless cover makes me sad. Oh the lives that could have been saved!

87

Suggestions / Re: Human Commander No limit,seventh rank,selectable promotions.

« on: November 28, 2016, 08:23:26 am »

I certainly wouldn't want a hand in promotions. It's partially because I don't want yet another thing to worry about, but the main reason is that I enjoy watching who gets promoted and who doesn't... Deciding this would kill a lot of excitement for me.

This is my feeling as well, I really enjoying not picking the promotions and seeing which soldier will happen to end up as the leaders for a new campaign.

But I can see why others would prefer to choose their own promotions and no harm if it were to eventually become a mod or "option."

Designing a new promotion mechanics would be fascinating though.

I wish lower ranked soldiers could get promoted over a higher ranked soldier if the lower ranked soldier is better (stats, kills, etc). Sometimes it's lame if for example there is an opening for a Colonel and you only have one Captain, then that soldier is promoted by default even if there is a Sergeant that is better. Often that early game soldier gets the Commander job in the end just because they were the first to get promoted (and live) out of a small batch.

88

Playthroughs / Is my TFTD campaign a lost cause?

« on: November 28, 2016, 08:03:17 am »

So I started this TFTD campaign (Superhuman difficulty, no save scumming) a while back and would like to finish it rather than start over, but I'm wondering at this point my current campaign is a lost cause. Basically I'm stuck.

This was my first go at TFTD and I didn't want to spoil it by knowing the research tree, so I didn't know what to prioritize. Later on I peeked at the tree and realized I'm screwed. I lost my first base earlier in the game which had my Deep One corpses (you need those to progress in research). My second (and now only) base has never had a terror mission with Deep Ones. I'm in October now and I actually never see Gillmen anymore. It's all Lobstermen (F them to hell!!!) and Tasoths, sometimes Aquatoids.

Without armor I'm getting my ass kicked almost every mission, haven't beat an Artifact mission, haven't taken down an alien base and have been losing the last few terror missions too. The fact that I haven't lost the game yet shows how hard it is to lose. I had over negative 1000 for August, but managed to just survive September with -104 (without those 400 bonus points at the end of the month it was Game Over).

So will I ever see Deep Ones again somewhere so I can do the research to get aqua plastics, armor and all that other stuff I need to actually beat the game? They will only show up on a Gillman terror mission, right?


I beat XCOM on Superhuman pretty comfortably, but TFTD has been a huge struggle since the start (my death toll is at 187 and climbing). I miss having effective auto fire weapons. 

89

Open Feedback / Haven't played in a while ... what's new? Will old saves/mods crash?

« on: November 28, 2016, 07:52:05 am »

Hey all! Haven't really been playing OXC since early August, combination of getting frustrated with TFTD and busy on other things. Wondering if there's been any big updates/fixes/changes recently? I've skimmed the Git Hub page, and some of the changes look interesting, but the descriptions aren't all specific and the code is mostly gibberish to me. I see talk on line of fire and "goomba stomping" at the top, but anyway for a layman to find out what the actual game mechanic change is for these updates? I know what "goomba stomping" means, but not what the change was. Likewise with LOF.

Just curious what I've missed in OXC world. I see there is an installer for the Nightly now. That's cool, although I'll probably stick with my zip files for now.

My main question though is this: Might I experience problems using a campaign saved back in August with the Latest Nightly now? Any easy way to check that my mods haven't become incompatible with a change? I'm just thinking of when the ruleset way points thing changed for blaster launchers a while back and if I had been MIA during that time, I'd have no idea why all of a sudden mods weren't working. Are those types of updates/changes all listed somewhere as a heads up to people using mods?

Thanks!

90

XPiratez / Re: Bugs & Crash Reports

« on: August 04, 2016, 11:29:14 pm »

Stumbled over here from the Soldier Diaries thread. Haven't played Piratez so don't know the ins and outs, but I'll mention that there was a bug in vanilla a while back that would cause a crash if you knocked someone unconscious using a melee attack with a gun with no ammo. It happened to me when using an unloaded gun and the gun melee mod on. Here is the thread I started on it and it was fixed in the master: https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,4602.msg64306.html#msg64306

Could be related, or maybe not at all.