Messages

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The X-Com Files / Re: The X-Com Files - 3.4: Daggers for Hire

« on: August 15, 2024, 05:15:18 pm »

HUMVEE description includes: "It can be equipped with a variety of heavy infantry weapons to be used for vehicle combat only." -- This is already pretty clear, but you could make it really explicit with, for example, "It can be equipped with a variety of heavy infantry weapons such as machine guns or rocket launchers to be used for vehicle combat only."

My confusion may come partly from the fact that this is the first X-COM game I played where vehicle and soldier weapons are not completely separate and mutually-exclusive categories.

I don't understand the problem at all. By clicking on the weapon slot you can easily check what goes there. Why would anything else be needed? Maybe if you have the Little Bird, but not a single heavy weapon, but how likely is that?

You could order the craft on a secondary base that has no weapons at all (or only few of them) and you have to transfer/acquire them. Then this method will not work.

This is not unheard of, because at least in my games the primary base hangars are always full and when getting new crafts I either have to get them somewhere else or move out an existing craft. And at least LITTLE BIRD I have usually obtained directly to a secondary base that is close to the cult manor I want to trigger and crush its interception craft.

My stores were cramped and I sent all the stuff I didn't use at the to a new base that was at that time just for storage.

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The X-Com Files / Re: The X-Com Files - 3.4: Daggers for Hire

« on: August 12, 2024, 08:45:55 pm »

One thing I think is not adequately explained is, what constitutes Pintle-Mounted guns. I did discover that RPG launcher with Anti-Tank ammo counts, but I did not have the Ammo, as all my launchers were captured with either standard ammo, or none.
So I request that when Angry Bird is unlocked, a list of human tech weapon and ammo combinations that can be loaded onto it is unlocked as well.

In general - seconded. I actually use the online wiki and still don't know exactly either. Had to get it by trial and error. All heavy infantry weapons genrally count I THINK, from Minimi to Miniguns. But "Cannon" vehicle weapons do not. It's kinda confusing for a newbie when infantry weapons fit on your vehicles, while vehicle weapons do not :/

But it should be triggered by either Angry Bird or HUMVEE, I got HUMVEE first and spent quite some time trying and failing to understand that is that weapon slot for as I didn't have anything that fit. Dropped it and only after unlocking Angry Bird I noticed, that "pintle-mounted" hardpoints are for heavy machineguns and the like.

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The X-Com Files / Re: The X-Com Files - 3.4: Daggers for Hire

« on: August 10, 2024, 02:42:38 pm »

That's why you never modify someone else's mod directly.

I would then have to learn how to make a submod and I'm a total amateur in IT stuff. I just learned once that some games have files you can open and then find numbers/letters responsible for stuff and then change them... and can never resist to fine-tune stuff stuff to my liking when I can

In all seriousness, I read somewhere that the mod is generally finished with exception of some ghost stuff that may or may not be completed one day. I didn't expect a new version to land so quickly.

Thanks for the info anyway, guess I'm off to check the newly modified files to write down the ones I changed.


EDIT:
After updating I can still use my old savegames, right?

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The X-Com Files / Re: The X-Com Files - 3.4: Daggers for Hire

« on: August 10, 2024, 02:01:38 pm »

Why wouldn't you want to do that? Have you modified the rulesets yourself?

Actually I did. I modified the starting year, removed the demigod mode, modified some map sizes and some missions to give more random number of enemies. And I am not totally sure that was all I did. 

EDIT: And I'm not actually sure how exactly I did some of those things. Replicating all the changes may be troublesome. and time consuming.

If, for example, there was some "patch" version of the update I could just check if it overrides any files with more recent modification date.

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The X-Com Files / Re: The X-Com Files - 3.4: Daggers for Hire

« on: August 10, 2024, 11:19:09 am »

Probably a stupid question, but...
Is there a safe way to update this thing without just replacing all the files?

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The X-Com Files / Re: Help with editing enemy numbers

« on: June 26, 2024, 11:28:08 pm »

It'll depend on the map and the mod, this should never happen if the map has a larger number of viable spawn nodes than it's max unit count. The most likely scenario is in a base defense since the player could (knowingly) have a lower number of facilities that include nodes for aliens to spawn at, and once it uses them all up, any remaining units will be discarded.

Guess only the author would know how much does it impact this mod. Guess I'll up the difficulty to veteran to even things out and tweak the highQty so that apprehensions spawn 1-3 enemies even on veteran. Should be okeish balance for my needs.

Thank you very much for all the info!

Hmm, doesn't that essentially invalidate all uses of dQty in the deployments? Nothing is random anymore...

Worse, the ruleset reference makes no mention of it, so I suspect there may be quite a few modders who are unaware.

To an extend it seems so. At least in the few mission types I saw. But isn't there some reinforcement feature in the game in later missions or something? I'm completely new to X-COM modding, but I read somewhere about random reinforcements and the like.

Still, kinda weird to have random variable that is blocked to never be random. Browsing the deployments file I saw a few entries where the most of the enemies were in dQty, so without it some missions should very visibly spawn different numbers of enemies each time. Largest dQty I saw was like 8 and it were those modded human enemies.

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The X-Com Files / Re: Help with editing enemy numbers

« on: June 26, 2024, 09:11:06 pm »

Hey, it worked! Thanks!

When this value is set to true, besides forcing all units to spawn even if out of spawn nodes...

Does this lack of spawn nodes happen often? I understand that by turning it off I'm already lowering the baseline difficulty of the mod by making the game spawn less enemies than intended on average in most missions (unless I ramp up lowQty in every spawn by half of current dQty). I wouldn't want to break the mod by making like half of enemies not spawn in an epic endgame alien fortress siege or something.

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The X-Com Files / Help with editing enemy numbers

« on: June 26, 2024, 06:54:58 pm »

Hello.
Firstly, I would like to thank the author(s) for this wonderful mod. I love how it expands the low-tier stuff and simulates humble beginnings, something mods rarely do.

Secondly
I'm currently trying to fine-tune enemy numbers in certain missions to my liking. Or maybe rather learn how to do it.

In particular, I want to start with changing the number of enemies in "apprehension" missions to be 1-3 on Experienced difficulty.
Minimum is already 1, so I opened the "alienDeployments_XCOMFILES" file, found the missions with "apprehension" type (4 of them) and in every one changed the "dQty" value from 0 to 2. Changed nothing else.

As far as I understand, this should change the number of enemies to 1-3 (1 minimum for "lowQty" + between 0 and 2 for "dQty".
Problem is, now the game always spawns 3 of them. Tried about 20 times and its always 3.

What am I doing wrong?