Messages

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The X-Com Files / Re: The X-Com Files - 2.9: The Empire Strikes Back

« on: June 04, 2023, 01:59:02 pm »

Am I supposed to be getting alien retaliation missions before the invasion? It's November '98 and I just got blindsided by Floaters showing up in a forward operating base in South America. That seems like odd behavior given the only UFO I've interacted with was one that happened to land right by my European base months ago. I did apparently turn aggressive retaliation on which I guess might do it?

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

« on: May 31, 2023, 06:36:10 am »

Twice now I've had this bush under the Osprey's landing ramp which blocks the whole tile. Barely noticed the first time, but now I can't squeeze this Outrunner through there. These are downed EXALT convoys in Brazil, on the jungle terrain I think. Luckily I was able to clear it with a grenade without any collateral damage.

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The X-Com Files / Re: Speedislife's XCF-run with Brutal-AI

« on: May 20, 2023, 12:37:04 am »

That does sort of match my experience - it'll display the Overstun symbol, but it's always gone on the next turn (sometimes I get frustrated with an agent missing a prone figure one tile in front of them, so I do still use them occasionally).

As for buffing handcuffs, my two cents - as I just said the 'just shoot 'em again' strat is a bit risky - you absolutely can miss and I think agents 'aim' at a standing (or perhaps kneeling) target rather than the ground (I haven't done enough to have a good guess to the behavior). And if you have to shoot more than once, you've likely spent about as much as you would have inventory shuffling the handcuffs. If that's the deciding factor about cuffs needing a buff, it's not as fool-proof as it might seem.

That said I do still think for how low-utility they are in the base game they're way too cumbersome over just bringing another flashbang or KO grenade. To go through the whole cycle of putting away weapons to getting weapons back out takes between 53 and 76(!) TUs depending on exactly how you juggle the agent's inventory, plus if you're using, say, a taser or pistol and electric club, you've got to reserve 2 of your 3 2x1 slots for both of those.

Seems to me that dropping the base cost by 10-15 TU would work well; agents carrying one weapon spend about as much as the base cost, while agents using both hands are probably using 70-80% of their TU (assuming they're close-ish to the training cap).

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And on the subject of Brutal AI again, I've encountered Shadowbats and they both take an absurd amount of time to process and are acting strangely (closing to my agents and then just wandering around in front of them to get punched - though it seems like if they start their turn close enough they do bite). I dunno if this is typical for flying enemies, something to do with them also being melee-only, or just me playing without the forced aggression option. I've attached a couple of saves for the mission in case they might help.

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The X-Com Files / Re: Speedislife's XCF-run with Brutal-AI

« on: May 19, 2023, 02:53:50 am »

Interesting to see that's how stun recovery works - I've so seldom had my own units stunned I didn't realize it was different between AI and player.

That said, my experience after having played some more is that handcuffs are just way too TU intensive - holster (or if you're still using Kevlar and shotguns, drop) your weapon, pull out handcuffs, spend 40 TU to apply handcuffs. If the agent has very high TUs you might be able to do that all in one turn. Also for the privilege of being able to do all that, you lose out on a whole grenade's worth of inventory capacity.

That said, a much better solution... Just tase (or beanbag or whatever) the guy again. There's no hit indicator, but it absolutely will apply more stun damage (same trick with lethal ammo is also good for dealing with zombies that got stunned instead of killed). Unfortunately it doesn't work with melee weapons.

Also it's neither here nor there, but I find it amusing that handcuffs can put a unit into overstun and start killing them.

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As for Brutal AI in general, I've noticed that there's a lot of slowdown on the player turn on more populated maps (I'm early enough this pretty much means certain Strange Life Forms missions and a Citizens vs. Monsters map). In particular, the CvM map was buttery-smooth while the megascorpions rushed the desert fighters, but when it came to my turn I had hefty framedrops whenever my units would move. Most of what I've seen mentioned about slowdown was on the AI turn so I figured I'd mention it.

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The X-Com Files / Re: The X-Com Files - 2.9: The Empire Strikes Back

« on: May 17, 2023, 12:32:52 am »

Is there some trick to telling what the light level of a tile is? I actually enjoy night missions, but I'm starting to feel like I'm going nuts, parking myself in a tile that *looks* dark but then getting shot by non-sniper units from well outside their alleged range (and sometimes out of the direction an agent's looking at!). I'm sure sometimes I'm just underestimating the distance or where the enemy is, but I've also had instances where I counted tiles and was *definitely* outside the attacker's  night vision range. But also a couple of times where I realized I was standing under a streetlight that just... wasn't very apparently luminant.

Night vision seems to arbitrarily light up all tiles in a radius around you, and fiddling with the Ctrl End levels makes the contrast a bit more apparent but still unreliable.

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The X-Com Files / Re: Speedislife's XCF-run with Brutal-AI

« on: May 16, 2023, 07:41:59 pm »

I wound up deciding to do a little test-run with Brutal AI and the short-range peeking behavior seems very tedious and sometimes.. well, beyond brutal. Melee units and your average pea-shooter cultist will hunker down in one tile, necessitating a full sweep with two agents (and often going to the 'bug hunt' mode phase of the fight). I've considered flipping on Aggressive mode, at least for the early game, though I can definitely see this behavior being interesting when both sides have more than two under-geared units.

It's nice that melee units don't just kind of wander back and forth waiting to die, but unless it's an open desert it just turns into a jump-scare slaughterhouse as you crawl up two steps to maintain overwatch like you're playing XCOM2012. (It'd be nice if units had greater than 90 degree FOV, too, though that might benefit the enemies more)

edit:

And apparently stunned enemies immediately get their TUs back if they recover??? Was shocked to have an agent die right after tasing a dude and ducking back to cover, whirled around with the other guy and saw the guy with the axe back on his feet.

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The X-Com Files / Re: The X-Com Files - 2.9: The Empire Strikes Back

« on: May 15, 2023, 08:32:44 pm »

I just want to double check that I'm understanding the early-game transport craft progression and haven't missed one somewhere in the labyrinthine tech tree. (As far as I can tell, there is no CRAFT category on the wiki?) I've listed what I deem the last/hardest dependency to get for each and what I understand their strengths/weaknesses to be.

LOGISTICS gets you the Public Van, doubling capacity but costing you a lot of speed. The Van also seems to be the largest transport available for several mission types.

In Promo 1, BASIC FLIGHT TRAINING unlocks the Helichopter, which is another 50% capacity, good speed, at the cost of only covering half-ish of the globe. It also seems to be able to access a handful of mission types the Dragonfly can't.

MILITARY ENVOY gets you access to the Humvee, which is like a faster van that can technically do interceptions and has room for one more soldier. It can also go to any special mission the Heli can except the Ski Resort evidently?

In Promo 2, CONTACT: UAC gets you the Dragonfly, with 8 soldier capacity and half-globe range. Also has lights that are great for getting shot on night missions. It seems to be the largest transport available for a handful of the 'infiltrator' type missions, though it misses out on stuff like the Beaches and Ski Resort.

All four [CULT] OPERATIONS gets you access to the Osprey, with its whopping 16 soldier capacity, but has a bit less than half a globe's coverage and can't go on any special mission (assuming from the wiki entry). Also obviously can be an RNG pain to get, and requires you to progress beyond the cult-safehouse-farming part of the campaign.

The Mudranger and airborne Mudranger seem to be very expensive ways to drop double-digit numbers of soldiers by creating a forward base near a known target (or perhaps brutally overwhelming that occasional cultist apprehension that happens to spawn near your main base)

It seems like after that it's managing to get alien tech to make the Skyraider for full global coverage of double-digit soldiers and then into normal-ish game progression?

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The X-Com Files / Re: Speedislife's XCF-run with Brutal-AI

« on: May 15, 2023, 05:02:40 pm »

I'm curious if other folks have any insight into using Brutal AI with X-Com Files; I've heard the siren-song of restarting my own run using it a few times. I opted not to on my last restart because I was still pretty rusty at classic X-COM and because XCF in particular seems like a drastic enough overhaul I'd be concerned about how missions set up for regular AI would run with BAI. It is cool that Xilmi got a chance to tweak it from watching someone play though. (I'm not surprised you had to tweak the guys using peashooters and golf clubs).

As to the mod in general, a few of my own thoughts:

I actually managed to lose my first run thanks to low score, on whatever the second difficulty was called. I'm not sure exactly why; I was very trigger-happy with the Abort Mission button to preserve my agents. I assume I had enough Strange Life Forms missions and maybe a couple of the early harder types where enough civvies died, plus maybe despawn penalties from missions I couldn't reach to tip me over.

There's also the fact that the game can get pretty darn monotonous on the tactical level - if for whatever reason you decide to fall into a holding pattern (research, agent training, waiting for funding), you'll find yourself doing a zillion Cultist Apprehension or Cult Safehouse or whatever missions. This can make seeing the bad end in sight more emotionally draining than engaging.

The absolute bonkers gun porn also doesn't help me with my analysis paralysis; a lot of guns are very samey or clearly outclassed and you have to really dig into the Stats for Nerds screen to see that some can be pretty bonkers or have crippling weaknesses (particularly with regards to armor efficacy). On the other hand I do like that this means there's some randomness to what you outfit yourself with if you luck into one of the good ones. Either my second or third game I got the Winchester 1901 shotgun in a very early mission so I basically didn't have to worry about non-standard weapons while I built out my research and Logistics.

Sort-of back to what the OP was talking about: I think simultaneous the most unintuitive and interesting/fun things about XCF are the absolutely sprawling research tree and its affect on game progression. As I kind of alluded to up top, I restarted a couple of times either because I thought I had dead-ended my research or because I researched too much too fast and was getting harder missions without the firepower (or manpower) to deal with them. Once you start to get a grasp of it you can find that it's actually fairly lenient, I think, as long as you pay close attention to what 'Affects game progression'. I do feel like figuring out where your labs, armor, and transports are on the research tree is pretty critical though.

Finally, as far as veteran agents go - it's absolutely the case. Actual rookies are kind of a joke, which is why you kinda want to spend some time rotating folks out in the very early game (and grinding Reactions on those ubiquitous melee missions), and always have people warming the bench (press) getting ready to replace losses. That and having enhancements online early (like the Red Dawn one). Heavy use of dogs and AI Units (once you find them on the tech tree) also helps preserve those vets.

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The X-Com Files / Re: The X-Com Files - 2.8: The Lunar Protocol

« on: April 25, 2023, 01:48:23 am »

So I was going nuts reading that OXCE had a craft range indicator that I never could see for some reason. Searching just turned up the fact that it was there and not how to activate it or anything - just that it was 'always enabled'.

Well, for anyone else having the same problem, it's tied to the Options -> Geoscape -> Globe Details -> Radars button. This makes a lot of sense, but for whatever reason I had failed to turn that on in my fresh install of X-COM Files and it had gone unnoticed because I have yet to make it to radars anyway.

a little SEO stuffing for anyone else in my shoes: max range indicator, craft range indicator, interceptor range indicator

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The X-Com Files / Re: How to deal with enemy grenade launchers in early game?

« on: April 25, 2023, 12:15:23 am »

Thanks for the advice, folks - this does sort of highlight what I feared, that my tech progression is behind as I'm really only just getting my explosives license, so counter-grenades are in precious short supply and I'm probably a ways away from mortars too.

I figured using trees as shields would be helpful, but in this particular incident there were three grenadiers on each corner of the map that wasn't my own, so somewhat often at least one of them would have a relatively direct line of fire - but that's just the way luck does you sometimes. Anyway, lessons learned - EXALT can get pretty hardcore.

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The X-Com Files / How to deal with enemy grenade launchers in early game?

« on: April 23, 2023, 09:23:42 am »

I'm in the first December of my first serious run. The first grenade launcher I encountered was on an EXALT Enforcer in a night mission a month or so ago. I lost one of my best soldiers to a surprise incendiary grenade launched at a reasonable distance to have been spotted and wrote it off.

I then had an entire grouped-up squad wiped in a similar mission by not one, but *three* launchers all firing out of the inky blackness on another EXALT cult outpost investigation. Stunned, I savescummed because I at least wanted to understand how I was seen from across the map, in the dark, mostly behind a hill instead of losing a full helicopter of my best soldiers every time I assaulted an EXALT compound.

As near as I can tell:
- Certain enemy types act as Spotters for others. (in the case of EXALT, this seems to be all of them!)
- Hitting an enemy reveals your location, making you Spotted for a turn if you hit a Spotter.
- ... this includes your own units Reaction Fire.

After a half hour or so of fiddling and looking stuff up, I couldn't see much way to avoid being barraged with grenades. Taking snap shots at full TUs then darting away didn't help; cover was blown away or bypassed by being fired on from three angles; the only way I could see getting out of this is managing to snipe them before they sniped me or getting better technology (I just upgraded to Armored Vests and am still using Helicopters which are woefully inadequate defensively).

I'm just curious if there's some tactical insight I'm missing? Or should I just avoid EXALT investigations 'til I've got a sturdier transport or armor? I can only assume going during the day will only leave me even more at the mercy of bombardment as any unit will spot me.

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Work In Progress / Re: Manage Alien Containment UI

« on: November 02, 2013, 06:51:46 am »

I prefer the scientists background image (number 3) in conjunction with the buy/sell-screen-esque UI of the top option. (So basically seconding myk002). I almost prefer leaving 'Remove' as a euphemism, though.

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Troubleshooting / Re: Without any equipment, weight is 6?

« on: October 19, 2013, 10:59:08 pm »

I agree that vanilla shouldn't be adhered to slavishly, but downloading the game should be close enough to the original (as intended) as makes sense, sans silly bugs and early 90's technical limitations. I'm using the vanilla behavior since that's supposed to be the projects baseline, and as far as I have seen it also seems to be the more sensical behavior as moriarty said.

Apart from being genuinely curious about what's going on under the hood, the current situation is that the game requires a mod to act 'as expected' (a character in nothing but coveralls being weight = 0). If the coveralls are supposed to weigh 6 units for whatever reason, I'll accept it with grumbling and just mod it. As it stands though that extra 6 weight puts some relatively tight restrictions on what characters can carry (especially the lower-strength ones).

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Troubleshooting / Re: Without any equipment, weight is 6?

« on: October 19, 2013, 06:51:13 pm »

Sender's attitude is completely uncalled for, but he's not the only one following this issue. I, for one, would like to know what's actually going on and be proven wrong if I am. At least a couple of other folks in the thread also bothered to empirically test it so I imagine I'm not alone.

Like redrat, I fully appreciate the time and effort put into this.

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Troubleshooting / Re: Without any equipment, weight is 6?

« on: October 14, 2013, 07:29:58 pm »

I reinstalled XCOM on Steam, added a Skyranger full of grenades and the first three soldiers I could find that had a strength divisible by 3. 11 grenades with 33 strength = no TU penalty, 12 grenades = TU penalty, ditty for 9/27 and 7/21. That's what I'd expect if the base weight carried is intended to be 0, and I don't think there are any bugs related to grenades and weight.

Either way the armor thing is more than good enough and makes me positively giddy with possibilities.