Messages

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XPiratez / Re: Stuff I'd love to see in XPiratez!

« on: November 16, 2018, 03:07:31 pm »

Can I just float this idea...

If a mission like a Mansion Invasion is supposed to be a heist, it might be cool to have a data-gathering/planning stage beforehand.

Robbing/enslaving high ranking faction members and those peons involved in keeping them safe could drop a piece of loot called [Faction] Mansion Info. (e.g Church Priests and higher ranks, Matrons, Exalts and the Warmaidens that are supposed to keep them safe could drop Church Mansion Info).

Gather enough info on a faction Mansion together and manufacture a "Mansion Heist Plan". Once that is researched, a one-off mission to attack a particular mansion is flagged to happen in the next month. That way, the players get an idea of what kind of enemies they are going to face.

This can be expanded on by offering the players many ways to conduct the Mansion Invasion. Just pulling numbers out of the air here, 10 units of Mansion Info makes a "Sneak,Grab and Run" plan that limits the mission to a small infiltration-equipped team and a strict time limit. 20 units of Mansion Info and a monetary cost (bribes) and the player manufactures a "Sneak, Hold and Run" plan that allows for a larger vessel and more time. 40 units and huge bribes and the brainers have found a way to jam any outgoing signals coming from the mansion (no time limit because the "cavalry" won't arrive) and an approach route for a party fully armed and equipped for war. This way the player has the option to go for many mansion invasions with limits or one big score.

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XPiratez / Re: What do I change to make recruiting syns work?

« on: October 25, 2018, 04:31:21 am »

OK. Thanks

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XPiratez / What do I change to make recruiting syns work?

« on: October 25, 2018, 12:40:59 am »

This is the current Manufacturing option that I am seeing.

If the screenshot doesn't attach, this is what the "recipe" is calling for.

STR_SYNTH_GAL

Do I need to edit any files to fix this?

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XPiratez / Modding-wise, what do I do now?

« on: June 16, 2017, 06:38:19 am »

I think that before I make any more suggestions, I should know the engine better.

A while back, Solarius Scorch linked me a couple of sites.
https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Ruleset_Reference_Nightly_(OpenXcom)

and

https://github.com/Yankes/OpenXcom/blob/OpenXcomExtended/Extended.txt

I think that I understand some of this enough to dabble, and I believe that I have a decent little project to try to implement. It's just a trade good for sale to the black market. My only question now is;

What program should I be using to edit the files with? Is Notepad++ enough?

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XPiratez / Re: Can bases be made to move on the Geoscape screen?

« on: June 02, 2017, 05:41:13 am »

An aside on the question of fuel range on aircraft.

Does anyone know if the RTB fuel warning can be overridden, in effect, it never shows up, for a specific fighter?
And can a modder make a fighter lose all its HP after an intercept?

If the answer to both is "Yes", or maybe "Yes, but why in the name of all that is unholy would you want that to happen?!", then, if you give that fighter a very high speed, decent dodge, good accuracy and a damaging one-shot point-blank weapon, you've made a surface to air missile, and there might be a use for that.

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XPiratez / Re: Can bases be made to move on the Geoscape screen?

« on: June 02, 2017, 05:33:37 am »

It's a fun idea, but what problem would it solve for you? Would they be immune from crackdowns?  I have wanted to put a base in the ocean for better radar coverage in a few specific situations, but never thought about it moving

Mobile bases (MBs) do not fix any problems as such. If the player wants to have better detection coverage, Spy Zeppelins and Expeditions allow the player to tailor the coverage he wants, for a resource fee and a hangar slot each.

What MBs can do is provide close-in attack options. For example, have you ever discovered an enemy base outside your detection range that you really did not want to attack yet? Maybe you didn't have the right equipment (read bigger guns) or your good gals were in the infirmary. Maybe it is going to be wall-to-wall Cryssalids (or worse) in there. That base affects your score negatively until you destroy it and there is nothing you can get out of it. A MB could put a radar footprint over that enemy base and, at least, you can detect and shoot down / attack the supply ships as they come in because you not only have radar coverage, you have a hangar. nearby Once you finish with the enemy, your MB can be retasked to other areas.

Another thing a MB can do is allow the player to layer his base defences. if a crackdown is coming for one of your bases and a MB is nearby, that's another hangar for defensive fighters and another radar footprint that may allow the player to detect the attackers earlier. Heck, I don't know exactly how the AI chooses targets for crackdowns, but there might even be an option for a sacrificial MB, empty of anything valuable or crew, just sitting on the AI's flightpath to be detected and destroyed at the AI's whim. Or a trap MB, loaded with trap rooms and your best killers.

If the game develops any base buildings that have (or can have) a negative effect, it might be useful to hive off those buildings into a MB. For example, I've never seen it happen but the in-game bootypedia says that a summoning circle may spawn enemies in a base defence. The player could put a summoning circle (and any other buildings like that) on a MB and park it far away from the other valuable stuff. Extra cool points for putting your circle over a rough guess of the location of R'lyeh before you start trying to summon Cthulhu

As to being immune from crackdowns, I don't think so. There is some functionality in them not being immune, and there can be some cool scenarios in their base defence battles; circled wagons for a convoy, room-to-room fighting on a sea-going vessel (maybe even seabed stuff, submersible carriers are possible). An airborne carrier, on the other hand, might just be shot down by the enemy, if the intercept screen can be rejigged.

And dammit, they are just cool and not that far removed from real-life weirdness. If you would like some evidence,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zveno_project

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-400-class_submarine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_submarine_Surcouf

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XPiratez / Can bases be made to move on the Geoscape screen?

« on: May 31, 2017, 03:32:20 am »

irl, if you make a vehicle big enough, it can act like a base. Look at modern aircraft carriers, for example.

I am seeing the possibility of ground expeditions as comprising convoys of vehicles or a all-terrain "train", where the player builds a number of components (Med-Wagon, Air Defence, rolling Workshops, sleeper wagons) to produce an independent moving mini-base (from "Amtrak Wars" series of books).

Or large dirigibles ("Crimson Skies").

Or icebergs (HMS Habbakuk).

These "mini-bases" would have limited living quarters or storage, but could be used as "parasite" bases where a combat team can deploy from in the smaller aircraft.

But it needs the game engine to allow bases to move, or to fool the engine into allowing a vehicle to have base-like qualities.

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XPiratez / Re: Stuff learned about X-Com 2 (vanilla)

« on: May 16, 2017, 06:37:46 am »

All you need to know about Xcom2 is in the tutorial.

You failed in Xcom1 but, for some reason, the aliens think you are Napoleon and Patton rolled into one.

Bradford shows up carrying a neat rifle that you will never see again. He won't even lend it out to your teams, he's selfish.

Bradford messes up your rescue by not giving all his team grenades. 4 guards at the door, all in blast radius, tutorial tells you to shoot one with a rifle. That's why Bradford wants you back so bad, he's not good on details, like "Everyone got grenades? Cool!" Only you think like that for some reason.

But the one thing people REALLY need to know about Xcom2 is that it is better than Xcom1, and that wasn't all that hard to be.

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XPiratez / Re: I had a dumb idea for a support weapon

« on: May 16, 2017, 06:27:15 am »

You should start learning modding, and see how far you can take this idea.

I give you fair warning. I have some irons in the fire already and I haven't done anything like programming since 1986 so I may be some time getting back to you with any results

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XPiratez / Roll up! Roll up for Curvaceous Carly and her Capricious Chupacabras!

« on: May 13, 2017, 03:51:10 am »

Long story short, I recently read some sci-fi (WH40K sci-fi, don't hate me) and one of the more interesting encounters in the book was a shootout at a circus.

The circus in the book was much more like the Roman Coliseum than Ringling Bros. Gladiators fought each other, mutants were forced to fight large wild animals, large wild animals fought each other and so on, with acrobats, clowns and popcorn.

This might make an interesting mission-type for the game. Maybe the gals have to rescue some ubers/mutants, maybe they are just there to steal the takings. Whatever their reason, they would have to fight their way through gladiators, clowns, animal handlers, the animals themselves, clowns, the hunters that bring in the animals, clowns, popcorn vendors and clowns.

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XPiratez / Re: I had a dumb idea for a support weapon

« on: May 13, 2017, 03:33:46 am »

OK, I thought that if devices could be limited to a stat or rank, then implementing the different flavours of voodoo would be a straightforward question of working out a desired rarity and how powerful to make the devices.

I guess that it would be possible to simply strip voodoo powers from the regular gals and implement voodoo gals as separate entities, but that might take it too far.
Unless it could be disguised.
When the player makes out the order on the black market for, say, 20 gals, can the game randomly roll for each gal and, if lucky, replace her with a voodoo gal? If the gal looks and acts exactly like a regular gal until the power is unlocked, the behind-the-scenes-maths would remain hidden and the player would assume he was just lucky.
Devices can be made that only work on some units, right?

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XPiratez / Re: I had a dumb idea for a support weapon

« on: May 12, 2017, 03:03:28 am »

I spent a fair amount of time writing a reply, but got logged out or something and lost it all. OK, short version.

Class for psykers make no sense since all psionics (at least for your soldiers) is effected by use of specialized devices.

Yes, but the valuable things there are the specialised devices, not the soldiers. The gals can be anonymous, it is the devices that are important. The player will find (or train) plenty of gals that have the necessary stats to use those devices.

If devices can be limited to a certain rank or randomly generated stat, then the gal can become more valuable simply because the right stat needs to be used with the right device. For exampe, if the gal does not have the "Firestarter" stat, she cannot use fire-based devices. Once the number of useful psionic gals drops, the devices themselves can be made more powerful and valuable in turn.

I imagine a system where a hidden stat independent of Voodoo Strength/Skill (call it Voodoo Aptitude or Psi-Speciality) determines what devices the gal can use. For example, the scale is 0-X. 0 means no psionic devices ever, the gal just happens to have a strong or weak mind, but no psionic ability. 1 means "Firestarter". 2 means "Telekinesis". 3 means "Mind Control", 4 means "Demonblooded" and so on until we run out of ideas. There can even be a value for "Latent", they have powers, but you don't know what they are until they are unlocked.

The change to the game this would make is that, if they are made rare enough, if the player discovers an active psionic gal with poor Voodoo Strength/Skill, it would pay to train them up rather than to fire them and reroll some more recruits. If they are rare enough, the devices can be made more powerful from the start since the chances of fielding more than one or two has dropped.

The downside is that the player may be unlucky and never roll an active psionic. This could be dealt with. The first draft of this post had paragraphs dedicated to discovery, recruitment and rescue missions. I won't go into them here, just ask me if it sounds interesting.

And I ended with saying that I have a huge respect for what Dioxine and others have made. If it looks like I was being critical or trollish, I am sorry, I should have picked better words.

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XPiratez / Re: I had a dumb idea for a support weapon

« on: May 10, 2017, 05:42:50 am »

Well, I've been reading some sci-fi  recently, some of which involved psychic powers, and I noticed that you rarely find fiction about "gifted" generalists. Its always this guy reads minds, this gal can start fires etc etc, powerful at what they CAN do, weak or powerless at what their mind is not really built for.

So I started thinking about how (if it was a cool idea that people liked) to wheedle this kind of thing into the game. Since the game hides Psi-strength and Psi-energy stats from you until you have the tech researched, maybe it could hide another stat from the player which is revealed at some point. That stat determines the "Psi-Speciality" of the gal.

For example, the gal is generated with a hidden stat score that determines "can start fires with their mind". If their rank could be changed to "Firestarter" upon discovery and their equipment limited to "Firestarters only", then their equipment can be made more powerful without unbalancing the game since there might not be that many of them.

I agree with Martin, the lack of classes is great, I prefer the original Xcom over the childish, action-hero crap-fest of the recent games. Anybody can train their physiques to reach any goal they want, Strength training to improve their ability with heavy weapons and so on. But, still, I don't know, since psychic powers should be something special, maybe a little class thing going on for psychics is not too bad?

To me, they feel a little like D&D Wizards. They are not that rare and they can just tailor their "spell loadout" for the occasion. When it might be a nice idea to make them rarer, specialised but more powerful so that when you find one, it's a big thing.

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XPiratez / Re: I had a dumb idea for a support weapon

« on: May 09, 2017, 06:07:09 am »

Well, if a psychic blaster-launcher equivalent is liked, it can be fluffed around.

"Cap'n, if we cage our grenades with magic stuff, our TK gals can send them round corners. It takes some time in the insert expensive room here, but its a neat trick."

And I'm not going to be able to go to sleep unless I ask some followup questions.

Can the game assign a rank to a gal if she equals a certain stat score?

Can the game limit an item of equipment to gals who have the correct rank?

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XPiratez / Re: I had a dumb idea for a support weapon

« on: May 09, 2017, 05:10:29 am »

Got me thinking...

If > Telekinesis is added as a research-able psi-power, and
If > A TK suit was added to the game with, say, one free hand and limited carry slots, and
If > Wearing the TK suit allowed the user to "fire" what was in the free hand using the Blaster Launcher waypoint system.

That would avoid the whole arcing/straight line problem for the fall of shot, make the user a excellent grenadier and/or ammo supplier and limit the availabiity of the power so that whole squads aren't made up of gravity gunning gals because the lower limit of psi-strength necessary to use it can be set quite high or the materials for the suit can be rare.

Adding complexity (and this is me talking through my hat about game limitations I am not aware of)

Can Psi-Strength be used to limit the range of the projectile, ie, stronger Psis can control the object through more waypoints?
Can the game fire a shot, using Gal A's stats, from a square where Gal A is not standing, ie can Gal A see a grenade on the ground and "throw" it from where it lies without picking it up?