Messages

1

The X-Com Files / Re: The X-Com Files - 2.7: Spectral Entities

« on: January 05, 2023, 10:20:23 pm »

I thought of a few myself.
I'm on my second round of playing this game and would love a way to speed up research.

- purchasing "Research redemption tokens".  Would be put to use for the Cost/spent hours in research time. Could make them fairly expensive too so it would not be abused. Example 1k per hour.
- Maybe even applying this same method towards score. Buying score points.

The major flaw I encountered was losing this game due to low score. The game is difficult enough without having to worry about this. But can't be totally excluded. That is why purchasing score points, research points and possibly even manufacturing points (to speed up manufacturing) might be worth exploring.

All 3 of these things can be accomplished editing normal saved game files. I can not see the difficulty in implementing it.

The issue is that money is quite busted at the moment, so not an ideal time to implement game defining features on top of the..

2

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

« on: January 05, 2023, 03:39:52 pm »

Is there any reason the toxin line of weapons are as weak as they are? They seem to take a significant amount of research to develop, but I've yet to find a case where they are even competitive with much earlier acquired stun weapons.

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

« on: January 03, 2023, 06:40:48 pm »

Heresy!

Don't you know that the true X-Com civilian always runs in the opposite direction from any extraction zone, all the while creating jams in doorways and trying to get in the line of fire between aliens and friendly forces?

Is that better or worse than civilians running into your Skyranger, picking up a rocket launchers they have no idea how to use and joining the fight?

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

« on: January 01, 2023, 06:05:00 pm »

I don't know if there is anything you can reasonably do about this but I find that the civilians, especially unarmed ones are far too suicidal. Like, I've seen them charge in to punch aliens and monsters. Is this intended or a bug or just something you can't do anything about?

What, you don't think priests should charge angry dogs and try to bless them?

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The X-Com Files / Re: Red Dawn Cult Manors are crazy!

« on: December 27, 2022, 09:53:18 pm »

Are you sure? I just tried, and all four reinforcement waves spawned away from the deployment tiles. The closest they got were the 'SW' and 'SE' corners.

If this is true, there's something wrong on the OXCE level. Doubly so, even, since they are not supposed to spawn closer than 10 tiles from your agents. I'm sure Meridian will want a save for that.

I had it happen with someone 5 tiles or less from the edge, saw that Meridian made a change, and then left someone on the deployment zone for every manor I played after that. So, no save at this point.

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The X-Com Files / Re: Red Dawn Cult Manors are crazy!

« on: December 27, 2022, 06:34:00 pm »

Didn't that get changed so they never come from the side you spawn from?

It did, it prevents them spawning immediately on top of you from what I can see, but move one tile forward and they can spawn behind you. Basically, you need to leave at least one agent standing in the deployment area to block it, leaving by even one tile opens it to reinforcements spawning there.

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The X-Com Files / Re: I can't take these cult manors

« on: December 27, 2022, 05:59:25 am »

Are you running into issues in the air or on the ground? For the air, you can bait the defenders out to chase am expendable or fast craft and then swoop in and attack. As for on the ground, opinions differ, I favor bringing enough firepower to achieve local supremacy and enough explosives to level much of the map.

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The X-Com Files / Re: Red Dawn Cult Manors are crazy!

« on: December 27, 2022, 04:09:21 am »

dog still has better vision then any of those you mentioned. Besides that a flare ($60 item) an item you can buy day 1 can be used to make vision range pointless. walk around landing sight with dog, kill people close to lz, throw flare stay in dark, profit. If your walking around the dark with no flashlights, flares, dogs your doing it wrong.

If you are counting on flares, that is not what I'd call an "Ironman-safe" strategy as you agents will happily yeet a flare into the back of the head of anyone in 10 yards lighting up your team and getting you instantly gun down. Sure, it you are save scumming, you can undo the sillier behaviors of thrown items, but in an ironman run, every thrown item is spinning the wheel on a squad-wipe, Dogs have better vision, but so what, they can't reaction fire, enemies are real dumb, they walk to the point they can see you and open fire, with superior night vision, that'll be from outside of your range, so no reaction fire before they drop a rocket on you, unless you have surrounded yourself in rings of flares, which is a bit of a craps shoot if you are running ironman. In my experience, the best way to survive is to kill anything that could shoot at you and force anything that could get in range to have to walk far enough to lose their ability to fire. Grenades set to 1, proximity grenades, mines if you have some decent throwers, that's the way to handle manors early on. That and regular saves, unless you like restarting because a reinforcement wave spawns 1 tile behind you and rips you apart.

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The X-Com Files / Re: Red Dawn Cult Manors are crazy!

« on: December 27, 2022, 03:01:32 am »

Most factions have 9 vision same as you besides Dagon. A rat or a dog has like 15 or so vision. one dog and a few flares and suddenly you have better vision and can see them across the map while they have to scamper 9 tiles away from you to shoot you. As long as you blow up and shoot the snipers no one will harm you. I often don't shoot guns till I take out priority targets.

On the enemy side (a sampling):
Elite soldier - Night Vision 13, you'll see around 15 of those on any higher level manor mission
Hybrid Assault - Night Vision 12
EXALT Liquidator - Night Vision 12
EXALT Enforcer - Night Vision 11
Red Dawn Coordinator - Night Vision 11
Red Ops Soldier - Night Vision 11
Red Dawn Pioneer - Night Vision 10 + camo at night

On your side (Armor that can take a hit or two at the point manor start showing up)
Tritianum Vest - Night Vision 9
Heavy Tritianum Suit - Night Vision 9
Personal Armor - Night Vision 9

Show up at night and get lit up, the AI can attack you from beyond your sight range and you'll get torn up. As for save scumming, I like finishing games, in its current state, openXcom can not be completed without either save scumming or spending an absolute eternity in maps like the manors.

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The X-Com Files / Re: The X-Com Files - 2.7: Spectral Entities

« on: December 26, 2022, 07:26:43 pm »

Thanks! It's rare, so hard to get any feedback on.

For the Hacienda, the lack of a clear path for the AI to close does play havoc with enemy movements from time to time. I've played the map maybe 5 times and after the first, it became clear that the AI didn't really know how to send troops to the parapets, aside from the few that start there, and if I didn't punch a hole in the wall for them to escape, I could lob explosives over into the courtyard and start the morale failure cascade before I'd even breached the gate. After that, most of the enemies units in the main building would congregate in the hallway leading to the front door, making them once again subject to gas and grenades. Overall, I think it is a good mission, it only runs into some trouble once you've seen it enough to exploit the AI behavior on it.

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The X-Com Files / Re: Red Dawn Cult Manors are crazy!

« on: December 25, 2022, 05:48:10 pm »

    Best tip ever
Always attack humans in the dark never at day unless you have good armor like tactical suit

In this mod, every faction has multiple units that have better night vision than your agents in armored gear and there isn't any good night vision gear that can stand up to even weak small arms fire. Showing up at night is just asking for someone to spot you on turn one and to have snipers and grenades raining on you immediately.

The best advise I have for an early manor, is saturation bombing, the faster you can cause a loyalty cascade, the better. Most manors have corner to the NE of the starting location where many of the enemy units will try to navigate at one point or another, burying that corner in explosives and gas is a good start. You'll also want to save at the end of every turn before passing since the game can spawn reinforcements one tile behind you and wipe you out instantly.

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The X-Com Files / Re: The X-Com Files - 2.7: Spectral Entities

« on: December 21, 2022, 04:06:38 am »

I'll get to it eventually, it's just that in the meantime I always have to reload whenever my dragonfly gets intercepted by one of the spawning ufos. It's a lot of trial and error and save scumming and it feels like I've missed something..

If you have anything that can outrun those interceptors, you can bait them away with that and attack the base. The interceptors always spawn from the base so it should be easy to find.

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The X-Com Files / Re: The OpenXcom Files: Tips and Tricks!

« on: December 20, 2022, 06:26:02 pm »

2. I'm at the end of 1998 and most times a forward base or even a cult HQ appears, if I try to fly to them then I get attacked by at least 2 ufo's  (white dots on the map not red)  They fly much faster than my little bird. Sometimes my LB can knock them out but not always.  When can I be looking at better interceptors, weapons against ufo's etc?

If you just want to complete the mission, you can bait the base's interceptors into chasing a speedy or disposable aircraft and sneak in with your team. Enemy interceptors can't target your craft when they are returning to base after a mission. From what I've seen, the AI can't relaunch its interceptors for a while, even if they aren't destroyed, so just getting them to pop out in a controlled manner is enough to give yourself some space.

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The X-Com Files / Re: Tritanium matrix research issue

« on: December 16, 2022, 07:00:33 pm »

Really? Currently, it's 7 interceptors once per week, which will net you ~7*4*0.1 ~= 30 Bravery, ~28*0.25 ~= 7 accuracy and ~28*0.3 ~= 8 reactions per month (per embassy, per interceptor - which might have more than one pilot). Unless you're drowning in embassies and/or trying to get the last few stat points, gyms and missions will give you as much if not more, for all active agents, not just a few pilots. Bravery is the only notable gain here.

Unless I am mistaken, training via interception can get you all the way up to you cap firing accuracy, not just the training max. So all the way up to 90 instead of training's 65. You also get the tick if you score at least one hit, even if another interceptor scores the kill, so you can have 12 or 16 pilot get a skill improvement chance off each attacker if you are willing to loiter a handful of modestly equipped Avengers nearby. I also suspect there is something off about how openXcom handles the check to see if pilots gain skills, I haven't been able to track it down in the code, but based on some of the skill gains I've seen in XPiratez, it seems like there are situations where you are able to get more chances at the improvement, maybe due to engagement / re-engagement or having multiple interceptors score a simultaneous kill, I'm not sure.

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The X-Com Files / Re: Tritanium matrix research issue

« on: December 15, 2022, 02:35:51 pm »

I suppose having the alien bases pull the same defensive intercepts as the Hybrid Embassies but with some of the meaner small UFOs might make it a little less convenient.

Those intercepts are already loads of free stats, that'd be an easy way to rapidly build up replacement troops.