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OXCE Support / Re: [Suggestion] No Free Starter Base (Plus extra starting money)
« on: January 15, 2025, 08:05:51 am »
I guess that's a solution, but it seems very very hacky.
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Work In Progress / [WIP][OXCE] Sarge's Simple Mods
« on: January 09, 2025, 05:57:55 pm »
While starting my third big replay (I guess I'm not as experienced as some of the people here), I decided to try my hand at modding some of the things I didn't like about the game or about other mods.
While I have created an extended number of mods for other games, I haven't modded UFO before, so I thought I would try my hand at it for a challenge.
I have created a few simple mods that I think are worthwhile sharing, and hope to have more up over the next little while. For me this is mostly a practice/introduction to XCOM modding, I'm not doing anything fancy.
Simple Pilots
While exploring mod options, I found the Top Gun mod. I think adding piloting is a pretty fantastic idea overall, especially because the air-game is one of the less developed aspects of UFO's gameplay. However I found that having pilots as separate soldier classes was a bit confusing and added too much management to piloting, and I also found it a bit immersion-breaking that my pilot could die on a mission, and the remaining troops would be able to fly the skyranger back to base somehow. As a result, I created an alternative mod which is a simpler take on the same idea. The gist is that all crafts need piloting, similar to Top Gun, but there's no such thing as a "pilot" anymore. Now, any soldier can pilot any craft (you can assume they got some basic pilot training as part of their combat training), which should create a pretty seamless experience - assign the soldiers you want to the crafts you want, and it will all be taken care of automatically.
Simple Craft Item Limits
I fully expect this to be a very controversial mod. The original UFO had an 80 item limit for all crafts, which was due to a technical limitation. OXC removed that limitation, and while I believe this was generally the right thing to do, I feel like the item limits added some small amount of depth and resource management to crafts - when you're limited in what you can carry, you might have to make important choices about what you take with you and what you leave behind. At the same time, a hardcoded limit of 80 per craft is completely insane for the Avenger which can hold a whopping 24 troops, where the limit is absolutely crippling. I have decided to adopt a middle ground to try and bring back some of that item management without adding frustration and unfairly limiting the squad. The Skyranger now allows 80 items, the Lightning is limited to 60 on account of being a small and agile ship, and the Avenger can carry a whopping 160, which should be far more than anyone needs. These numbers are designed to enforce some level of item management on crafts without completely undermining the player when they have extremely large squads in the mid/late game. I am likely to adjust these numbers based on feedback. I consider the balance "about right" when you can't just take along everything you'll ever want on a mission without thinking, but still have enough space to comfortably equip your squad with what they need. You might have to leave behind a few grenades or an extra rocket, or some other "luxuries", but that feels rewarding to me, and is also quite realistic for a military craft.
These currently only work for UFO, not TFTD. I may make TFTD versions at some point, although I kind of hate that game so probably not.
While I have created an extended number of mods for other games, I haven't modded UFO before, so I thought I would try my hand at it for a challenge.
I have created a few simple mods that I think are worthwhile sharing, and hope to have more up over the next little while. For me this is mostly a practice/introduction to XCOM modding, I'm not doing anything fancy.
Simple Pilots
While exploring mod options, I found the Top Gun mod. I think adding piloting is a pretty fantastic idea overall, especially because the air-game is one of the less developed aspects of UFO's gameplay. However I found that having pilots as separate soldier classes was a bit confusing and added too much management to piloting, and I also found it a bit immersion-breaking that my pilot could die on a mission, and the remaining troops would be able to fly the skyranger back to base somehow. As a result, I created an alternative mod which is a simpler take on the same idea. The gist is that all crafts need piloting, similar to Top Gun, but there's no such thing as a "pilot" anymore. Now, any soldier can pilot any craft (you can assume they got some basic pilot training as part of their combat training), which should create a pretty seamless experience - assign the soldiers you want to the crafts you want, and it will all be taken care of automatically.
Simple Craft Item Limits
I fully expect this to be a very controversial mod. The original UFO had an 80 item limit for all crafts, which was due to a technical limitation. OXC removed that limitation, and while I believe this was generally the right thing to do, I feel like the item limits added some small amount of depth and resource management to crafts - when you're limited in what you can carry, you might have to make important choices about what you take with you and what you leave behind. At the same time, a hardcoded limit of 80 per craft is completely insane for the Avenger which can hold a whopping 24 troops, where the limit is absolutely crippling. I have decided to adopt a middle ground to try and bring back some of that item management without adding frustration and unfairly limiting the squad. The Skyranger now allows 80 items, the Lightning is limited to 60 on account of being a small and agile ship, and the Avenger can carry a whopping 160, which should be far more than anyone needs. These numbers are designed to enforce some level of item management on crafts without completely undermining the player when they have extremely large squads in the mid/late game. I am likely to adjust these numbers based on feedback. I consider the balance "about right" when you can't just take along everything you'll ever want on a mission without thinking, but still have enough space to comfortably equip your squad with what they need. You might have to leave behind a few grenades or an extra rocket, or some other "luxuries", but that feels rewarding to me, and is also quite realistic for a military craft.
These currently only work for UFO, not TFTD. I may make TFTD versions at some point, although I kind of hate that game so probably not.
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OXCE Support / [Answered] No Free Starter Base (Plus extra starting money)
« on: January 08, 2025, 01:26:08 pm »
Not sure if this belongs in the standard OpenXCom suggestions forum, it's more of a balance/gameplay tweak rather than anything modding related....
Currently, the standard advice is to always build your first base somewhere in Europe. Because your first base is free, you get the most bang for your buck this way and there's no real reason to choose anywhere else.
I propose a new setting be added, called something like "No Free Starter Base". When this is enabled, the player will start the game with an extra $1 Million, but their first base will cost the normal amount it would cost to build a base in the chosen region.
Because this doesn't make any sense as a togglable setting during gameplay, it should probably be in the new-game screen rather than the OXCE options menu. Maybe next to the Ironman button.
The purpose of this is to give players a reward (however minor) for building a starter base in other regions that maybe aren't as valuable. If you build a base in somewhere that costs $650,000 normally, then you'll have an extra $350,000 to play with, which is a nice bonus when setting up your initial base.
If not a setting, a way for mods to modify whether or not starter bases are free would be very welcome.
Currently, the standard advice is to always build your first base somewhere in Europe. Because your first base is free, you get the most bang for your buck this way and there's no real reason to choose anywhere else.
I propose a new setting be added, called something like "No Free Starter Base". When this is enabled, the player will start the game with an extra $1 Million, but their first base will cost the normal amount it would cost to build a base in the chosen region.
Because this doesn't make any sense as a togglable setting during gameplay, it should probably be in the new-game screen rather than the OXCE options menu. Maybe next to the Ironman button.
The purpose of this is to give players a reward (however minor) for building a starter base in other regions that maybe aren't as valuable. If you build a base in somewhere that costs $650,000 normally, then you'll have an extra $350,000 to play with, which is a nice bonus when setting up your initial base.
If not a setting, a way for mods to modify whether or not starter bases are free would be very welcome.
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Released Mods / Re: [OXCE][Compilation] Area 51 submods
« on: May 23, 2023, 06:55:56 am »
Was the Outside Context Problem minimod ever released? It definitely sounds like the most interesting one of the bunch
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Released Mods / Re: [WIP][OXCE][UFO] X-Com: Terror From the Unknown (TFTU)
« on: February 05, 2023, 07:43:08 am »
I really wish there was a mod that would integrate TFTD without adding a bunch of extra gameplay changes. Literally just "Play the TFTD campaign after the UFO one with minimal changes", or even better "USOs attack at random, do both campaigns at the same time"
All these extra unnecessary features are unneeded bloat and should instead be separate mods.
All these extra unnecessary features are unneeded bloat and should instead be separate mods.
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OXCE Suggestions Archive / [Suggestion] Some small tweaks to help newer players understand the game
« on: February 04, 2023, 02:08:52 pm »
Full disclosure: I am a new XCOM player. I have played a lot of the 2012 version and XCOM 2, but decided to pickup the originals to try them, and I really love them so far.
As a new player, I have had to do a lot of reading in order to understand mechanics. Many things (like 2 handed weapons) aren't even in the game manual, which is quite infuriating as it means we effectively have to go hunting for information.
I propose some changes designed around accommodating newer players and adding some QoL features for veterans, without interrupting the "feel" of the game or the vanilla difficulty/gameplay.
1. Two-handed accuracy penalty when dual wielding is never documented anywhere or communicated to the player, you just have to sort of know about it. There's also no in-game way to know which weapons are two handed AFAIK without going into the "stats for nerds" menu, which seems more like a debug menu than anything else. I propose that in the inventory screen, when equipping a weapon into a hand slot, if a two handed weapon is equipped in the other hand, the other weapon should change to have a red background and a "-20% Acc" text on top of or underneath it, to signify that by equipping this item we are giving ourselves an accuracy penalty with the two handed weapon.
2. Add a "Loadout is Free until First Move" option. Currently, when clicking OK in the inventory screen, it starts the mission, making it tedious/painful to equip soldiers because equipping/unequipping costs TU and they have to move to the correct area of the skyranger in order for the items to appear available on the ground. It also disables quickly applying inventory templates etc. It's very easy to accidentally click OK or need to go to the menu while midway through equipping troops at mission start. This is tedious. With this option enabled, moving items between slots would cost nothing, and all units in the players faction would have access to the Skyranger supplies and inventory templates until the first movement action is taken, so as long as we don't actually move anyone, it's as if we never left the initial loadout screen.
3. Middle Clicking on a characters name in the UI with the Statstrings mod enabled should pop up a window showing what each of the stats strings actually means. Seeing "/wcr" is meaningless to a new player.
4. When right clicking a weapon slot (to set it as preferred for reaction shots), the "Use [Right/Left] Hand Item" text should change for 3 seconds to say "[Left/Right] set as reaction shot priority weapon" to help explain what this actually does.
5. Multi-Level view should have an option to not show a roof if a visible unit is underneath it. This would make it actually really useful if we have units ex inside a building without covering everything up with a roof.
As a new player, I have had to do a lot of reading in order to understand mechanics. Many things (like 2 handed weapons) aren't even in the game manual, which is quite infuriating as it means we effectively have to go hunting for information.
I propose some changes designed around accommodating newer players and adding some QoL features for veterans, without interrupting the "feel" of the game or the vanilla difficulty/gameplay.
1. Two-handed accuracy penalty when dual wielding is never documented anywhere or communicated to the player, you just have to sort of know about it. There's also no in-game way to know which weapons are two handed AFAIK without going into the "stats for nerds" menu, which seems more like a debug menu than anything else. I propose that in the inventory screen, when equipping a weapon into a hand slot, if a two handed weapon is equipped in the other hand, the other weapon should change to have a red background and a "-20% Acc" text on top of or underneath it, to signify that by equipping this item we are giving ourselves an accuracy penalty with the two handed weapon.
2. Add a "Loadout is Free until First Move" option. Currently, when clicking OK in the inventory screen, it starts the mission, making it tedious/painful to equip soldiers because equipping/unequipping costs TU and they have to move to the correct area of the skyranger in order for the items to appear available on the ground. It also disables quickly applying inventory templates etc. It's very easy to accidentally click OK or need to go to the menu while midway through equipping troops at mission start. This is tedious. With this option enabled, moving items between slots would cost nothing, and all units in the players faction would have access to the Skyranger supplies and inventory templates until the first movement action is taken, so as long as we don't actually move anyone, it's as if we never left the initial loadout screen.
3. Middle Clicking on a characters name in the UI with the Statstrings mod enabled should pop up a window showing what each of the stats strings actually means. Seeing "/wcr" is meaningless to a new player.
4. When right clicking a weapon slot (to set it as preferred for reaction shots), the "Use [Right/Left] Hand Item" text should change for 3 seconds to say "[Left/Right] set as reaction shot priority weapon" to help explain what this actually does.
5. Multi-Level view should have an option to not show a roof if a visible unit is underneath it. This would make it actually really useful if we have units ex inside a building without covering everything up with a roof.
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