Messages

1

Released Mods / Re: [GLOBE] Improved Nations Mod

« on: May 18, 2014, 08:35:19 am »

Starting a new game, on Veteran.
I have over 13 mln $ in my treasury.
Surely it's not the same level of funding?

I tweaked the mod before starting the game, reducing all funding by half.

2

Programming / Re: New feature discussion: inventory templates

« on: May 17, 2014, 03:51:37 pm »

So what do you guys think?  Is this a feature that you'd like to see?  How simple/complex should it be?  What do you think your common use cases would be?

Fantastic, this is what i relly would like to see! I hope you will finish and release this mod:)

3

Released Mods / Re: [COMPILATION] Final Mod Pack (FMP)

« on: May 17, 2014, 03:30:05 pm »

or their clips.

Of course, it goes without saying

4

Released Mods / Re: [COMPILATION] Final Mod Pack (FMP)

« on: May 17, 2014, 02:45:12 pm »

Fair point. However, I don't really know how to go about it yet...

Basically, there are two possibilities:
1) Alien weapons are just weapons. Interrogate any sentient alien and he'll sing what button to push to make the plasma beam appear.
2) Alien weapons have some mumbo jumbo safety triggers that prevent us from summoning said plasma beam, even when pushing the right buttons.

Problem with the first possibility: it's trivial. Even researching plasma weapons is unnecessary, just use a hot iron spike on that Floater and he'll tell you everything.
Problem with the second possibility: it's probably stupid. I've seen many proposed solutions to this, and I think they all sucked.

Since we have the consensus (I think) that we don't want plasmas to appear as our weapons too early and push everything else aside, then we must deal with option two. Since I couldn't think of anything that wouldn't be stupid, I decided to... well... ignore the problem for now. Until we think of something that would more or less keep the present setup and also justify why torturing some poor Sectoid wouldn't give you the ability to use them. Hopefully.

Plasma weapons aside, I started a campaign with these rules and I must (immodestly) say that I really like the pacing. It's April already, I'm using the same old weapons, hunting live aliens for little bits of information and loving it!

My opinion about plasma is very simple. You can use alien weapons after researching it like in vanilla, but to reproduce them and develop new plasma tech (e.g. plasma beam) you gonna go through that painful tech tree challenge. So you will be limited to those weapons and ammo that you recover until you figure out how to reproduce them.  (And if alien equipment self-distruction is enabled you should not have lots of plasma weaponry)

5

Released Mods / Re: [CRAFT] Upgraded Skyranger - Guardian

« on: May 17, 2014, 12:16:55 pm »

Even 1 weapon slot and a cannon gives enough firepower to take down any small and medium ufo, so to my mind any early fighter-transports make the game easier. But early improved terran craft (like faster skyranger) makes space for decisions and thats always good. I would better leave it unarmed.
Manufacture is too cheap. Furthermore its quite reasonable to leave some rent cost on such craft types, since they need fuel, maintenance, salary for pilots, while dont consume any elerium.

All my suggestions are based on my hardcore vision of the game, and I dont insist that anyone should play with that level of challenge, so dont judge me

6

Released Mods / Re: [GLOBE] Improved Nations Mod

« on: May 17, 2014, 12:09:58 pm »

Ok, so you confirm there are no issue anymore regarding negative numbers and co
Thanks for info

Negative numbers? No, i didnt see see anything like this in my version.

Sheppard, may i leave my version with included russian translation here?

7

Released Mods / Re: [GLOBE] Improved Nations Mod

« on: May 17, 2014, 11:24:46 am »

Just in case, be aware that your file contains some hidden "tab" inside

As they are exclusively included in "blank lines", it works well anyway

But you could meet problems in the future... (or not...  )

A question : how do you think you will deal with new total funding being about twice as big as original funding ? I mean (as someone already noticed), this could have a great impact in whole game, don't you think so ?

When i downloaded this mod i simply halved all the funding numbers, so initial funding is rougly the same as before. Yet this leads to some poor countries have funding like $1000 or $3000, im quite satisfied with the mod

8

Released Mods / Re: [COMPILATION] Final Mod Pack (FMP)

« on: May 15, 2014, 07:57:57 am »

I wonder what to do with lasers; as of now, they're actually after plasma weapons, and I think it's not exactly good. Perhaps I'll make them use some of the new sub-techs? (EDIT: nevermind, I made them require UFO Power Source for now.)

Why not leave basic lasers independent from alien tech? maybe make elerium-based power sources unlock advanced lasers, with larger clip capacity. I think lasers must stay terran weapon and be a slightly weaker alternative to plasma. They may be balanced by increacing researh time, so player must face a question what to research first.

9

Work In Progress / Re: Are race mods compatible with each other?

« on: May 14, 2014, 10:25:51 am »

Like what exactly?

Like this:

2. If multiple rulesets define the same mission raceWeights, then they'll be merged, not replaced (so if you're making a new race mod, you only need to specify their weights). Weights for new races will be added to the list, while weights for existing races will replace old ones. The only way to "remove" old races is to explicitly set them to 0. For example, this:

Now the whole "data:" section is replaced by another ruleset, while this section has 2 subdivision levels. Now if I want to replace only commander's equipment in a battleship I must copy all item sets for every alien rank. That is very bad for mod compatibility.

10

Work In Progress / Re: WIP Soldier Classes

« on: May 13, 2014, 08:41:57 pm »

What do you mean by more types of soldiers? If we're talking about stats, that's already moddable.

i mean this:

Code: [Select]

soldiers:
  - type: XCOM
    minStats:
      tu: 50
      stamina: 40
      health: 25
      bravery: 10
      reactions: 30
      firing: 40
      throwing: 50
      strength: 20
      psiStrength: 0
      psiSkill: 0
      melee: 20
    maxStats:
      tu: 60
      stamina: 70
      health: 40
      bravery: 60
      reactions: 60
      firing: 70
      throwing: 80
      strength: 40
      psiStrength: 100
      psiSkill: 16
      melee: 40
    statCaps:
      tu: 80
      stamina: 100
      health: 60
      bravery: 100
      reactions: 100
      firing: 120
      throwing: 120
      strength: 70
      psiStrength: 0
      psiSkill: 100
      melee: 120
    armor: STR_NONE_UC
    standHeight: 22
    kneelHeight: 14
Seems like developers were going to make it possible to implement several types of soldiers, for example from different countries with different initial stat ranges and caps. But as for now it is limited to only one type.

11

Work In Progress / Re: WIP Soldier Classes

« on: May 13, 2014, 06:46:31 pm »

Kevlar kit: +15HP/20armor/Resist AP20%  standard issue kevlar protection

I think you better change all resistances by 15%-25% or so instead of adding HP. That will serve the same purpose, but you will not face increaced wound recovery time, problems after removing armor from a wounded soldier in geoscape. Also armor should not (IMHO) increace time the soldier takes to bleed to death (in case of fatal wound).

All in all the mod seems to make game a lot easier, the game also has its own "class" system - the initial stats of the soldier. If someday programmers will make possible adding more types of soldiers to the game via mods that will be a great breakthrough toward class system.

Even in vanilla its quite easy to get soldiers who have more than 100% aimed shot accuracy with rocket launcher and sometimes rifle, with sniper kits almost 30% of rookies will be too accurate.

he problem with this is not being able to identify classes on battlescape

I used uniforms mod https://www.openxcom.com/mod/combat-uniform-armors to give my soldiers uniforms of different color according to their role on the battlefield, so that my snipers were always green (jungle armor variants), medics were white (arctic) and so on

12

Work In Progress / Re: MCDPatches: where to find reference?

« on: May 13, 2014, 01:57:00 pm »

Unfortunately #1, that block allows only some patching to the original MCDs.

Unfortunately #2, there is also no direct reference on what and how can be done with MCDPatches.

Advice: You can find Warboy on IRC pretty often, he can give you some advice regarding this feature. At least until the reference will be added to the wiki.

Thanks. I checked some public github stuff... there is really not much what MCD pathes can do. Mainly TU costs.

So I am leaving my request here:
- Add more possibilities for MCDPatches, most important changing the tile armor values. I dont think that will be too hard, since similar code has already been implemented for other MCD entries.

13

Work In Progress / Re: Are race mods compatible with each other?

« on: May 13, 2014, 08:26:55 am »

Note that this is the exception, not the norm, for ruleset stuff. (normally if two rulesets specify the exact same property, one will overwrite the other)

Could you please make the same for alienDeployments?

14

Work In Progress / MCDPatches: where to find reference?

« on: May 13, 2014, 08:02:16 am »

I have found "MCDPatches:" block in XCom1Ruleset. Seems like the values there are intended to change  terrain properties like pathpinding, LOF, terrainHeight. But wiki reference dosnt contain any info on MCD patches, where can i find some additional info? I wanted to change some tiles' armor values, but without replacing the MCDs.

15

Work In Progress / Re: [BETA] Alternative psionics (hardcore, introducing a new resource) new version

« on: May 12, 2014, 04:52:56 pm »

I play with tweaked armor properties, as well as bunch of other mods increacing game duration, so every armor has its niche during a game. For example, my flying suit has weaker armor, and grants less protection. Thats why I included psi-versions for every armor.

The most effective usage for psi-armor is equipping your trained veterans who ocassionally have low psi-strength.

always the teasing.. hmm..
that should do it right?
changing:
armors:
  - type: STR_FLYING_SUIT_UC
    corpseBattle:
      - STR_CORPSE_FLYINGSUIT
changing:
items:
  - type: STR_CORPSE_SUIT
    recover: true
copying: STR_CORPSE_SUIT -> STR_CORPSE_FLYINGSUIT
adding:
manufacture:
  - name: STR_FLYING_SUIT_REPAIR
...
    requiredItems:
      STR_CORPSE_FLYINGSUIT: 1
    producedItems:
      STR_FLYING_SUIT: 1

Nice idea, i think this will work. I think this deserves a separate new mod