Messages

1

Work In Progress / Re: Heavy Plasma Blaster

« on: March 22, 2019, 06:49:12 pm »

This looks awesome, I was just wondering if I could add something like this to my game. If the aimed shot was just a normal direct shot without waypoints, the AI would be able to deal with that right? I.e. it can deal with different shots having different ammunition type in general?

[Spoiler]

2

Playthroughs / Re: What do I do to make the game more challenging?

« on: July 16, 2015, 12:08:40 pm »

Alternatively, there could be the need to re-negotiate contracts with experienced soldiers, each new contract being more and more expensive. This would increase the incentive to retire a soldier (but would keep the option for "calling for heroes" - drawing from the retired ranks at a very high cost).

I really like this idea (re-negotiate contracts), Jagged Alliance 2 had a similar thing where your mercenaries would level up after a while a demand a pay rise, it makes sense really. Being able to retire soldiers and have a "hall of heroes" or something would be cool too. Perhaps you could get a small boost to your score based on their experience every-time you retired someone.

As an aside on the issue of super soldiers I really like the training rooms you can get in OpenXCom Extended, but they make the game too easy after a while as every soldier can eventually become a super soldier. Still think I'd rather have them than not though, I dislike training really bad rookies through several missions but I don't like firing anyone either.

I Actually think that UFO Extender Accuracy makes the game easier. It reduces snapaim for aliens, and Snapshot is the only mode in which they fire back.
Also Autoshot become incredible useless, even in close quarter combat.

I actually have come to the conclusion UFO Extender Accuracy is the single change/mod that makes the biggest difficulty change in the game. It makes it harder for the humans, but it doesn't really affect the aliens much at all, due to how they behave:

Spoiler:

They will never shoot at a target further away than 20 tiles (the max viewing distance)*. I have seen this in the game and confirmed it by looking at the code. Since snap range is 15 by default, the accuracy reduction doesn't affect them much. They will also only use autoshot for targets less than 4 tiles away, so the autshot nerf only affects humans. IMHO the autoshot nerf is needed, otherwise autoshot is always the better choice, it's still useful at close quarters like storming ufos.

UFO Extender Accuracy makes the game harder as it forces you to play the game the way the aliens do by default. In fact, to make it truly equal, the aimRange or even the maxRange of all weapons should be set to 20 too. That probably wouldn't be much fun though.

*If you're using the real vision mod, or OpenXCom Extended and have increased the max view distance, this also affects how far the aliens will shoot.

[Spoiler]

3

Suggestions / Re: Zaibakk's Psionics Rules

« on: July 09, 2015, 03:32:01 pm »

Hi zaibakk

I don't often post here but I have opinions on Psionics and Blaster Launchers too so I thought I'd share.

1) I also think that not being able to use PSI-amps at all would be too much, also it wouldn't make much sense if you could sell them but not use them (who would buy them if they had no use?). I also agree that Psionics are too strong in the base game, I've made some changes of my own to try and balance them if you're interested:

Spoiler:

First I halved XCOM soldiers PSI strengths (range is 1-50 rather than 0-100) but reduced alien PSI strengths by only 20-40%. XCOM soldiers PSI skills are also capped at 60. This means XCOM soldiers are relatively weaker, but psionics are also weaker overall, they don't work as well over long distances and the results are more random. Secondly I increased the PSI-amp to use 60% of TUs so you can only use it once per turn.

I have now moved on to use OpenXComExtended (EXE mod). Which gives more flexibility - my PSI amp now costs 60% of TUs to mind control but only 40% to panic, it also costs quite a lot of energy to use (Mind Control more than Panic) so you can't use it several turns in a row without running out of energy.

Overall this makes psionics not so good that it feels like a cheat to use them.

2. I play the (mostly) vanilla game + my own tweaks, and I find I rarely use the Mind Probe anyway. Only in the late game to see which alien is a leader or commander really, or sometimes I'll bring one along to check how badly injured an alien is if the soldier holding it has nothing better to do. In OpenXComExtended you could set the Mind Probe (or any other item) to require psionic training, but it doesn't mean it increases your psionic skill to use it, if it did it would be cool and would be a change worth making IMO.

3. One issue is that non-psionic aliens currently use the blaster launcher against you, so should the restriction apply to them too? If so, non-psi aliens should probably be given different weapons other than one they can't use. If not it wouldn't really make sense that you get a restriction that the aliens don't get (it's important to me that everything have a background story that makes sense!).

In my own mod I've completely disabled the blaster launcher for human use, it's just too good as it is, you can still research it to go own to the other requirements though including the Hoverank/Launcher which brings me on to:

4. I don't actually think the Hoverank/Launcher needs to made any weaker (in vanilla anyway don't know how it works in FMP) for the following reasons:
It already takes up 4 spaces but only gets to fire one missile that's weaker than a blaster bomb, so soldiers with blaster bombs are already better. Plus it's very expensive to make and it's ammo is very expensive to make, so it needs to be good to justify the cost. I always like to think the Hoverank/Launcher has some clever programming that's updated with a map of the battlefield and can calculate and communicate wirelessly with the missile where to go, and that's why it doesn't need psionics even if the blaster launcher did or in my case is just unusable by soldiers.

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OpenXcom Extended (OXCE) / Re: OpenXcom Extended

« on: September 16, 2014, 03:43:12 pm »

Quick question about the visibilityAtDark setting on armors. If I have mods that add extra aliens, will I have to set this property on their armors to 20 otherwise they will have the default visibility of 9? Or will the game give them a default visibility of 20 in the dark because they are aliens?

Edit: I have another request to improve the AI in a way I think could be added to the ruleset as so not to affect unmodded OpenXcom. The AI at the moment hardly ever uses autoshot. This is even more noticeable when using mods like Xeno operations, where the aliens get the plasma assaulter which has a great autoshot which the aliens refuse to use unless the target is within 3 squares of them.

One solution would be to rewrite the AI to chose the type of shot that gives them the best chance of hitting based on distance (if using ufoextender accuracy). This could easily be calculated, but would change the AI for everyone and some might prefer the vanilla AI that hardly ever uses autoshot.

So instead, perhaps a property could be added to the item. My understanding of the code is that the AI prefers to use autoshot if the target is less than 4 squares from them, prefers to use aimed shot if the target is more than 12 squares from them, and will prefer to use snapshot otherwise. They will only use other types of shot if they don't have enough TUs to use the prefered shot. Could these values come from the ruleset instead? E.g. have an AIAutoRange and an AIAimedRange property on the item, that defaults to 4 and 12. Then this could be modified in a ruleset to allow the AI to use each weapon more effectively.

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OpenXcom Extended (OXCE) / Re: OpenXcom Extended

« on: September 13, 2014, 11:54:18 am »

I've attached my ruleset so far, I've made the stun rod and stun bomb do health damage and cause wounds, and incendiary clips and rockets do real upfront damage. Tested both in a battle and they seem to work as expected.

I got the crashing issue with the new exe too, after leaving a battle. I've moved back to the previous exe for now, which doesn't seem to have the same issue.

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OpenXcom Extended (OXCE) / Re: OpenXcom Extended

« on: September 11, 2014, 11:17:35 pm »

Yeah that was my problem, it's working now.

Do you have any example rulesets you could share? How would I go about making stun damage also do some health damage? Is it possible to add a new damage type, if so how would I do that and get a weapon to use it?

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OpenXcom Extended (OXCE) / Re: OpenXcom Extended

« on: September 11, 2014, 10:26:11 pm »

I have version 1.0, I'll downloading the latest nightly first and try again.

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OpenXcom Extended (OXCE) / Re: OpenXcom Extended

« on: September 11, 2014, 10:10:39 pm »

Not sure if it's just me, but I can't get the exe to work. It loads up ok, but crashes when I try and start a new game or battle.

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OpenXcom Extended (OXCE) / Re: OpenXcom Extended

« on: September 08, 2014, 11:00:45 pm »

Hi Yankes and Solarius

I should have explained better, my wish list was what I thought could be modifiable using the Unified Damage Types from here https://github.com/SupSuper/OpenXcom/pull/938, which I assumed was was included in this mod. Like I say I've been lurking for a while, I read the link before and thought it looked cool but I'm not able to compile the code so was hoping it would be included in the nighties or released as an exe at some point.

As for changing plasma weapons, my thinking was it could work a bit like halo, where plasma weapons are quite good at destroying armor but not really much better than human weapons other than that. It could make things more interesting, although I admit it would make the game easier if plasma weapons weren't as good. But I get bored of everything being one-shot kills, so some way to make a weapon more likely to cause severe damage but not kill outright in one shot appeals to me.

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OpenXcom Extended (OXCE) / Re: OpenXcom Extended

« on: September 08, 2014, 04:01:43 pm »

As a lurker I had to make an account to say how exciting this idea is. I've downloaded many of the mods here and made some changes of my own, the ability to have custom damage types would open up the possibility to make much more interesting weapons. I've already looked at how the ruleset would work and thought of some changes I would make by giving different weapons custom damage types:

Grenades would do less damage to terrain, they're meant to damage living things rather than walls (applies to alien grenades specifically)
The opposite could apply to high explosive.
Stun weapons should do a small amount of health damage, and possibly cause fatal wounds.
Some new weapons could do 50/50 stun and health damage, and/or cause a larger hit to morale.
(some) armour piercing weapons could be made to be actually armour piercing.
Perhaps plasma weapons could do a large amount of damage to armour and lower morale but not so much to health, there would be more chance to survive a shot but be significantly wounded and more vulnerable afterwards.

The possibilities are nearly endless, can't wait for the exe!