Messages

1

Troubleshooting / Re: Accuracy problem?

« on: June 06, 2016, 03:00:42 am »

I'm not sure what would be a good solution - I need to think of this a bit more. Clearly it's not a trivial problem to solve as the other linked thread shows.

I very much like the target indicator and I wouldn't want it to go away but I also don't want it to show misleading information. Maybe instead of showing an accuracy percentage, it could show a drop in accuracy as distance from the soldier grows. So if the soldier has a base accuracy (with the current weapon) at 70%, the target indicator would show at first -0%, then - as the distance grows - the penalty grows as well: -5%, -10%, etc.

This way the UI never displays an up-to-date accuracy on the target crosshair so it's harder to assume that you have an actual 60% hit chance on an enemy when in reality it'll be closer to 5% at shot time. The player only sees the accuracy penalty going up with distance and the initial 70% base accuracy (that's shown when one pick the fire mode of the weapon). At this point, the real accuracy is only in the player's mind - you know you start with an optimal-case 70% and it gets lower with distance. The end number is the same but I believe mentally it's very different to see 60% vs -10%.

Maybe a trivial check for obstacles along the line of sight could be made to warn the player of additional loss of accuracy (without actually calculating this additional loss). I don't know if this is feasible, though.

2

Troubleshooting / Re: Accuracy problem?

« on: June 05, 2016, 06:57:45 am »

Thank you fot the responses. I understand the problem (and the explanation) but I think the behavior of the game - especially with UFO Extender Accuracy - is very confusing.

Having the accuracy update per tile (as the target moves with the mouse) definitely gives the impression that at a certain tile, the accuracy is what's displayed. The shown accuracy, however, is nothing but an upper bound (this would be fine if the value wouldn't update with mouse movement).

It may be worth considering some alternatives to this - the suggestion in the linked thread to use the visible part of the target could be a good start.

As is, I would still consider this a bug - regardless if the explanation makes sense for the observed behavior. The UI shows (and actively updates) a value that eventually has very little to do with the outcome.

3

Troubleshooting / Accuracy problem?

« on: May 28, 2016, 10:38:46 pm »

I'm not sure if this counts as a bug or not but I think I may have found something funny regarding shooting accuracy. I had this feeling for a while now - ever since I downloaded OpenXcom a few months back) that the actual accuracy of my soldiers is much lower than shown. Until now I only had a few cases of fully reproducible setups, though - it's very hard to tell if a soldier misses because of chance or because of a bug that lowers the accuracy (well, hard without a debugger, anyway).

I'm using the openxcom_git_master_2016_05_11_1842.zip nightly build on Windows 8.1 64-bit with 32 GB RAM. There are 2 mods: UFO Redux 0.8 and my personal mod that tweaks UFO and UFO Redux. I have the "UFO Extender Accuracy" and "Save scumming" options enabled.

In the attached save game, the currently selected soldier (Fredrik Eklund) spotted a Sectopod about `5 tiles away. The Sectopod is in shadow but I tried lighting it up and the outcome hasn't changed.

The soldier has a 116% hit chance with the laser rifle (40 TUs) but every single time the shot misses - the soldier (for my tests) invariably fires into the wall just to the right of the Sectopod. I tried this 50+ times (reloading each time), exactly with the same results each time. The angle of fire is always away from the line of sight to the Sectopod by a few degrees upwards.

With a 116% hit chance, I'd expect that I would've hit the Sectopod almost every single time I tried. I realize that my manual reloading & retrying the shot is not terribly scientific but having tried 50+ times, I think there's something wrong.

Am I misunderstanding the meaning of the 116% hit chance? Or is this a line-of-sight bug? (It's arguable whether the soldier should even be able to see the Sectopod.) Or, is this an accuracy bug where one accuracy is displayed but a different value is used for shots?

Note: I removed / replaced some resources in the attached file to keep the file size down - the game should be loadable anyway but if it fails, just get the release of UFO Redux 0.8.

4

Open Feedback / Re: Research live aliens in UFO/EU

« on: May 14, 2016, 08:08:54 pm »

Thank you all for the responses - I appreciate the detail and the help. It's entirely possible that my expectations came from old memories of the vanilla game (my freshest memory of vanilla UFO is ~2 years old). Based on what you said, it makes sense that research doesn't show up.

I'd recommend updating the UI to show this (either using a generic message) or specifically marking aliens that won't generate more research. (If you point me in the right direction, I may even do this myself but real life commitments may make this a slow change.)

5

Open Feedback / Re: Research live aliens in UFO/EU

« on: May 14, 2016, 05:52:59 am »

IIRC, the limit was 10 live aliens of each race on the original

Wasn't it 10 total? I remember having aliens die after battles when returning to a base with a full Alien Containment facility in the original game. I always thought the limit was a hard 10.

Just had a look at the file (I don't have 0.8j currently installed it crashes on 0.9) - can you research the Sectoid Navigator on your first base?

Yes, I can. I cannot, however, research the Sectoid Leader and I thought that would be researchable. ivandogovich mentioned being able to research squad leaders more than once.

Your modifications can also be the source of the issue

Are you saying this just in general or did you see something specific in there? My changes are only adding a few items and teaking a fuw rules changed by UFO Redux (which is a topic I meant to contact you about later on when I played through the game with Redux once - I didn't get around to this yet, obviously).

6

Open Feedback / Re: Research live aliens in UFO/EU

« on: May 14, 2016, 03:08:46 am »

Generally there are three types of aliens that give you multiple research options: Engineers, Navigators/Squad Leaders, and Medics.  These all have "get one free" techs that they reveal. 

Other captives will often not show up on the research list after an initial interrogation has they no longer have anything to say.  This is consistent with the original 1994 dos game.

I didn't realize this is how it worked in the original game - I don't recall being able to check Alien Containment in the original UFO in the first place so I may have assumed that all live aliens could've been researched. As you explain it, it even makes sense but the game doesn't show anything on the UI to this effect. (In Alien Containment it'd be useful to somehow mark aliens that won't be researchable again so that their space can be freed up.) By the way, Alien Containment allows storing more than 10 live aliens - I don't know if this is on purpose or not.

Can you post a saved game?

I added LiveAlienResearch.7z. This has my game options, a saved game and my custom changes to the rules of UFO:EU and UFO Redux. UFO Redux itself is not included because the file size would've been too big even compressed but you probably have access to version 0.8j.

7

Open Feedback / Re: Research live aliens in UFO/EU

« on: May 13, 2016, 04:19:55 am »

Thank you for your response. That could possibly be the case - the ones I have in Alien Containment have all been researched before (I *think* - not sure) but it's still pretty confusing. It may be a good idea to somehow mention this in the research dialog.

8

Open Feedback / Research live aliens in UFO/EU

« on: May 12, 2016, 06:13:54 am »

I'm playing OpenXCom / UFO/EU with UFO Redux installed and I'm using the latest nightly build (openxcom_git_master_2016_05_11_1842.zip). The past ~16 nightly builds already had this issue - I don't know about before because I only discovered OpenXCom recently when GOG put UFO on sale.

I have several bases with Alien Containment and each has multiple live aliens. When I bring up the research screen, I don't get any of the live aliens as research options. I don't know if this is a bug in OpenXCom or if it's caused by UFO Redux - is this a known issue? If necessary, I can provide a saved game that shows the problem.

If I remember right, in the original (DOS) UFO, all live aliens could be researched, as many times as they were captured.