Messages

1

Work In Progress / Re: [WIP] GURPS Ultratech weapons

« on: January 27, 2014, 07:19:49 am »

Oh my goodness. You. Are. My. Hero.

I tried making my own sprites, and found that it was hard *and* time consuming. Here's what I've got. I'm using yours instead, so if anybody else wants mine, it's public domain, I guess. I'll keep working on this. Ever since the most recent update (came out today) I can keep working since bug 457 was fixed.

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Work In Progress / Re: [WIP] GURPS Ultratech weapons

« on: January 25, 2014, 06:10:08 pm »

Thanks!

I could introduce them after other laser weapons, certainly, but it would break the "real life" tech tree. The US military is already using (link) large electrolasers. (Not as stun weapons, but to detonate stored explosives in warehouses in Afghanistan.) This uses the same technology, just smaller than we currently have it. I don't think near-infrared lasers are currently used, though I could be wrong. It's not like the military always tells us what its doing. 

The benefit to switching them anyway is that I wanted the electrolasers to be weaker than their counterparts. That means, right now, the electrolasers have to be weaker than the conventional weapons (rifle, pistol, etc.) If they come after laser weapons, then I can make them more damaging, but weaker than their laser counterparts.

Finally, the recolors: I'm considering having all the "laser" weapons have the same shape, but each tier of the laser tech tree would be a different color. I was hoping "blue for electrolaser, red for normal laser," and so forth. To do that, I needed to take the lasers and "standardize" them. I swapped the colors of the heavy laser and laser pistol to match the laser rifle, then took all the red parts of all three weapons and made them blue. Do you think that'll be too confusing? (If so, I'll need to find a good sprite artist. I'm pretty good with small tweaks and recolors, but I can't just make new weapons from scratch...)

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Work In Progress / [WIP] GURPS Ultratech weapons

« on: January 25, 2014, 05:29:00 am »

I'm trying to extend the tech tree by adding a bunch of new weapons. Anybody familiar with GURPS Ultratech will recognize them. I hope to add many new guns, but I will post screenshots when I make a new match. If I get bored of the project before I finish, I'll release whatever I have.

Here are some early-game ranged stun weapons, more easily researched than lasers, and made obsolete by the small launcher. Too bad due to a current bug, they all look like they blow up when they hit somebody. Hope that gets fixed in a future release:

4

Offtopic / Re: Are aimed shots underpowered?

« on: January 24, 2014, 10:53:23 pm »

Yeah, my math puts auto shots roughly 1.5 to 2 times as good per TU. (Except for the auto cannon, which has an auto dealing exatly three times as damaging per TU than the snap shot.) This makes sense. You get higher damage yields, at a cost of more ammo. Except for laser weapons. Those, you might as well full auto all the time, because anything else is at least half as effective. I try to keep the damage/tu for auto shots twice as high as a snap shot when making weapons.

In my mod, should I just stick with convention and have aimed shots deal less damage per TU than a snap shot? Or should I try to "fix" it? I'm leaning towards the first, because I assume there's something else in the math I'm missing, but...

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Offtopic / Are aimed shots underpowered?

« on: January 24, 2014, 04:05:01 pm »

So, I was doing some math to try and figure out how to balance some of my mod's weapons against the original, and I found something kind of strange. The average damage dealt per time unit is far, far lower for aimed shots than it is for snap shots and auto shots.

I define "average damage dealt per time unit" as "accuracy * damage * number of shots / %time units." I understand that accuracy isn't really your chance of hitting, but some sort of modifier that defines the possible angle of your shot, but I figure that at some distance (particularly far away) the listed accuracy is pretty close to being your actual chances of hitting. Your *actual* chances of hitting improve the closer you get to your target. Correct?

Soldier skill is ignored, because it's just a multiplier on accuracy, and if you multiply both the snap and aimed shots by the same number, the ratio between them will stay the same.

So, with that in mind, some examples:

Code: [Select]

        Shot:   Damage: Acc:    # att   Avg.Dam/att  TUs        Av. Dam/100% TU
Rifle
Aimed 30 1.1 1 33      0.8 41.3
Snap 30 0.6 1 18      0.25 72.0
Laser Pistol
Aimed 46 0.68 1 31.28      0.55 56.9
Snap 46 0.4 1 18.4      0.2 92.0
Laser Rifle
Aimed 60 1 1 60      0.5 120.0
Snap 60 0.65 1 39      0.25 156.0
Heavy Plasma
Aimed 115 1.1 1 126.5      0.6 210.8
Snap 115 0.75 1 86.25      0.3 287.5
In every case, the snap shot outperforms the aimed shot in terms of average damage per TU spent. This holds true for every weapon in the game, not just the four examples I list above. And at closer ranges, where your actual chance of hitting is far higher than the accuracy listed on your weapon, the snap shot only gets better!

Why is this? Is the snap shot supposed to be balanced against the aimed shot because it uses fewer bullets? Then why are the ammoless weapons like the laser still lopsided? When making my mod, I'm considering balancing the snap shot against the aimed shot by buffing the aimed shot or nerfing the snap shot, but before I start making design decisions based on math, I want to make sure I fully understand why math works out the way it does.

I'm sure with all the analysis that takes place here, somebody has noticed this before. Could they explain it to me?

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Released Mods / Re: [WEAPON] [WEAPON] Sir, the arms dealer has arrived.

« on: January 24, 2014, 07:38:47 am »

Any word on the exploding taser graphics problem? I'm trying to make a non-explosive stun round for my mod as well, and if anybody has figured out how to solve this issue, I'd be really grateful to hear how!

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Suggestions / Re: Support for additional damage types in rules file.

« on: January 23, 2014, 12:32:24 am »

Cool. That's helpful to know about.

Perhaps, then, some string in the weapon themselves that can override the listed string depicting damage type? If I want to make a graviton gun, I can accept having to decide if the damage is better represented as plasma or laser, but it looks kludgy to have those listed as the damage type in the UFOpaedia. If you could override the string that represents damage type with one of your own construction, then your graviton guns can deal (for instance) plasma damage and nobody would be the wiser.

I still think rule-support for generalized damage would be helpful and important, but I understand how something could be valuable and still not high-priority, so I take no offense to a "not now, check back later" type of response.

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Suggestions / Support for additional damage types in rules file.

« on: January 22, 2014, 07:18:38 pm »

It would be nice if the rules files let you define additional damage types, much like you can currently define additional sprites or sounds.

If I understand correctly, damage types currently go from 0-9, though additional damage types are supported but currently "blank", affecting only terrain. Would it be possible to add new damage types, even if only by defining them with a string?

You could define resistance to these new damage types by extending the arrays of the respective armor and alien entries. For example, defining a custom damage type 11 would require that you add an additional two entries to the resistance arrays of armor, aliens, etc. If a damage type is missing, it is assumed to be -0%, or perhaps the average of the defined types. This means it's possible for your new damage types to conflict with the damage types added by somebody else's mod, but unless I am mistaken, this is already the case with sprites, so we don't mind, correct?

Even without the ability to assign resistances to these damage types, just being able to name new damage types would be nice, and allow for all sorts of new guns. (Sonic disruptors, graviton guns, grasers, raw psionic energy guns, etc.)

If I'm dreaming of pie in the sky, I might as well suggest new damage features for rules files, all of which would be applied to a damage type:
 - Damage needed to cause fatal wounds (default 10)
 - Maximum fatal wounds per hit (default 3)
 - Armor damage multiple (default .1, could be higher for custom "armor rending" weapons)
 - Proportion of penetrating damage dealt to health (default 1.0, would be 0.0 for stun weapons)
 - Proportion of penetrating damage dealt as stun damage (default 0.0, would be 1.0 for stun weapons)
 - Proportion of penetrating damage dealt as morale damage (default 0.0, could be useful for psionic bullets or "really scary" weapons. Psi-bombs, anyone?)
 - Proportion of penetrating damage dealt as energy damage (default 0.0, could be useful for tranquilizers or something.)
 - Maximum possible deviation from base damage (default 1.0, meaning +- 100%, would be 0.5 for High Explosive or Terror From The Deep weapons)

Any other ideas? I love how flexible your rules files are so far. This seems like it supports your goal of easy, accessible Xcom modding. Would this be likely to be included?

Thanks for your consideration.

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Suggestions / Re: Pact Recovery through base destruction.

« on: January 20, 2014, 10:30:14 pm »

Actually, I meant to ask the core question here - IS it supposed to be possible to recover countries that have signed pacts.

In prepatched version, it is possible. I have done it. I have a screenshot (and saved game) to prove it. Even the UFOpaedia wiki (https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Pact) mentions that it was previously possible. However, because later patches kept you from recovering from pacts, the mechanism by which pacts are nullified remains unexplored, because nobody cares. I had always assumed it had something to do with the destruction of the base, but perhaps it was just a memory management bug or something.

Are you *supposed* to be able to? No, I suppose. Patched versions prevented you from doing so. I'm not sure why. Perhaps it was an unintended bug, perhaps the mechanism was buggy in other ways, so they removed it as a "partially implemented feature", or perhaps it was a conscious decision made for balance purposes. Whatever it was, it is something I miss (having never played a patched version until this month.) I suppose what I'm asking here is akin to begging about skyranger windows; perhaps it was never meant to be, but I considered it a valuable feature and thought I'd at least ask. If implemented, it should be a config option. Many people seem attached to permanently losing countries.

You guys are on a feature freeze, right? Does that mean that if I download the source code, by some miracle am competent enough to understand it, and submit a patch, it will not be included until after 1.0? (I'm more of a java guy than a C++ guy, and have never worked on a codebase this large before, but if nobody but me cares, I could at least give it a shot.)

Edit: As for the rumors, I think they started because unpatched people reported it, and they were never confirmed because the people who confirm rumors are also the people responsible enough to test with a patched, up-to-date game.

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Suggestions / Re: Pact Recovery through base destruction.

« on: January 20, 2014, 07:05:06 pm »

Ah, see, this is all really cool, but I was going for ease of implementation...

Back when I was young and was playing the unpatched version, I didn't know what made countries come back after the pact, but I figured it was linked to the destruction of the base that was built. In my mind, I had justified my theory by assuming that the alien pact was partially based on psionic coercion. Destroying the base (which I assumed had some giant psi-amp or something) weakened that psionic coercion, and the leaders of the country would "come to their senses" and rejoin the project as a natural consequence of the destruction of the base.

Being able to rescue countries would make the game longer, indeed, but my proposal to apply a funding "penalty" mitigates it somewhat. Because funding changes due to good performance are based on a percentage of the current funding, if you start the funding again at half the level of the starting funding, it will take several months of good performance to even restore the country to the point it was at at the start of the game. You would have to baby the country back to full participation. It would be a helpful increase in income over *no* funding, but you will probably never get as much funding as you once did from that country. It also means you wouldn't have to store the prior level of funding anywhere, simplifying implementation.

Besides; I make most of my late game funding from laser cannon manufacture and sale anyway. I mostly want to rescue countries to feel like a good guy. They could come back at a tenth normal funding for all I care. I just want to save India from the aliens. 

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Suggestions / Pact Recovery through base destruction.

« on: January 20, 2014, 07:54:13 am »

Prior to one of the patches (1.1, I think?) it was possible to "recover" from alien pacts. I'm not sure what the mechanism was. The fact that it was removed in later patches makes me think perhaps it was a bug. But if I were to implement such an option, I would make it so destruction of the base that was built at the end of the infiltration mission "frees" the country from alien control, perhaps with some penalty (such as funding resuming at half the normal starting rate).

Would this be hard to implement? If not, perhaps it could be one of those options in the "advanced" menu? (Alongside other rules such as alien containment limits, etc.)

Thoughts?