Messages

1

The X-Com Files / Re: [MOD] Recruitment Office

« on: January 09, 2024, 10:26:48 pm »

Updated for XCF 3.2

Changelog:

Added missing armor defintions, transformations and starting conditions for veteran soldiers

2

The X-Com Files / Re: Ok so ... How is superhuman to be played?

« on: November 14, 2023, 12:33:59 pm »

The mod is not balanced (if it is balanced at all) with SH in mind, much less if you don't know exactely how things work.

 If you run into a wall while playing it don't go blaming the wall. Default difficulty is set to veteran for a reason. Just accept that it's not going to work out and chose a lower one that's playable and enjoyable for you and your friend.

I really don't know where this "trend" of playing everything on the super highest difficulty comes from, let alone why people are surprised by games or mods actually being difficult if not impossible to beat if they choose set difficulty.

3

The X-Com Files / Re: The X-Com Files - 3.1: Lights in The Sky

« on: November 14, 2023, 12:29:41 pm »

Blasters Turbolasers and fire, like the majority of other things. In "open" spaces I find a turbolaser sniper rifle, a (as in multiple) soldier with decent accuracy and smoke (keeping in mind their 20% HV) is usually enough to deal with them.

4

The X-Com Files / Re: Promotion II

« on: November 10, 2023, 12:45:16 pm »

It does deceive you. It lists, say, Plasma Blade as a path to unlocking Cool Alien Gadget. Except you need an improved lab to research it, which requires promotion 3, which requires promotion 2, which requires Cool Alien Gadget. So Plasma Blade cannot unlock Cool Alien Gadget no matter how you do it and even if you get your hand on one its useless for this purpose.

As Juku pointed out, the tech tree viewer can not deceive you if you know how it actually works and you use it correctly. It literally just lists the entries as they appear in the rul files. Solarius assigned "Cool Alien Gadget" as an unlock to a lot of items, and all of these will be listed accordingly in the viewer. The only way the viewer would deceive you is if it was not listing those items as a possible unlock, because in that case it would be misrepresenting what's actually in the rul files.

[Spoiler]

5

The X-Com Files / Re: Weak UFOs

« on: November 09, 2023, 10:50:05 pm »

I think that one of my ideas how to address this. If the convoys move, you could go vaporize them if you wish to obliterate them, or research and obtain a very weak craft and/or weapons for the specific purpose of "shooting" them down. The main benefit of the former would be getting rid of the mission if you don't want to bother with it (and some bonus points)[...]

This just begs the question why X-Com can blow up a whole convoy with a single missile, but not eliminate safe-houses, bases or manors the same way.

Please keep the airgame where it belongs - in the air.

Everything else just aims to further illustrate the inherent shortcomings of existing game mechanics.

Spoiler"Juku being Juku":

Disagree. A more involved air game with mission-spawning convoys is both more 'realistic' and more interesting.

Disagree. The "more involved air game" also gave me 6-8 hover cars spawning from hybrid bases which fruitlessly try to attack interceptors, waste my time and have given me an ingrained hatred for the interception music. I'd welcome a "less involved air game" with focus on more (and more coherent) lore to be honest. There is only so much you can do to pad the utilitarian mechanics of the base game. Given how limited the options are (despite of what OXCE adds) I'd rather not it overstay its welcome more than it already has.

My headcanon is that all reports that reach the Commander's Chief Agent's desk have already been confirmed. Either the FBI already inspected the convoy, and they are now making a run for it, leaving two dead feds behind. Or it's a limited-time opportunity, and the hybrids will disperse if someone spooks them too soon. You need to hit them hard and fast, which is the entire MO of X-Com. YMMV.

The former only further illustrates why law enforcement agencies are the guys to handle this, given that they have the expertise with exactely this kind of situation, and the latter is not all reflected in-game where you can intercept and break-off from UFOs with basically no consequence. You can literally spook the hybrids to your hearts content. Not buying it Juku.

Hard to do with a moving convoy and not guaranteed to stop it in its tracks right then and there. Spikes are small and difficult to target from a moving vehicle with enough accuracy, and cars can go some distance even with broken tires.

No need to drop them from a moving vehicle, just set them up a sufficient distance ahead. Whether you are using caltrops or spike strips, you really don't want to "stop them right then and there", i.e. crash - you want them to run out. And sure, the hybrids could have run-flat tires, use tanks or anti-grav tech to enable any scenario of your chosing tbh. But that is quite beside the point. We have a clandestine convoy with normal vans, not some supered up vehicles that X-Com needs minguns or missiles to stop. A simple police roadblock should be sufficient for what is portrayed in-game, period.

It does seem to me that the simplest solution from the modder side would be to ask OXCE devs for an 'always lands when intercepted, even by faster unarmed transports' UFO flag. Maybe also a "give a 'destroy/force landing' prompt if the interceptor is armed and faster" flag. Don't know if there are technical/design problems with that.

Yeah, that is what I was proposing earlier.

But is this really needed, given that we are talking about an ordinary ground-bound convoy moving at most at highway speeds?

At the scales we are talking about here, does this really make a difference? The medium convoy has speedMax of 75. They really aren't going anywhere. Just leave them as stationary mission sites and avoid dealing with the headache-inducing questions that introducing air-to-ground combat into the mod brings up.

6

The X-Com Files / Re: Weak UFOs

« on: November 09, 2023, 02:26:46 pm »

An alternative, which I think you suggested earlier, could be to use the same process that terror missions use in UFO Defense, where the convoy spawns a mission site when it reaches a certain point. That could be treated as local authorities stopping the convoy on your/the council's instruction and your forces going to assist.

That is neither what I suggested nor does it address the underlaying issues. My suggestion concerned OXCE mechanics which would force a ground mission upon interception, something that to my knowledge does not currently exist.

7

The X-Com Files / Re: Weak UFOs

« on: November 09, 2023, 11:39:18 am »

Would a solution be some kind of weapon to force the convoy to "land" so you can do a ground mission against it? I'm thinking something like authorisation to demand an inspection of the convoy or a searchlight/loudspeaker combination that is mechanically a very weak tractor beam.
Since the convoys move so slowly you'd only need a very low power tractor beam power that would be useless against anything flying, but would be useful for this niche circumstance.

I don't think introducing another niche mechanic is the answer to this, and it further complicates something that does not need or benefit from additional complexity. It also does not solve the underlaying problem of how a single missile ends up annihilating a whole convoy.

X-Com already hands off and delegates other tasks to specialized agencies, and they cooperate with law enforcement in other cases. Why do they need to have helicopters on stand-by just for stopping and inspecting suspect van convoys when that task is perfectly suited for police/FBI/other national law enforcement agencies?

And again, why can't X-Com just drop tire spikes in front of the convoy?

8

The X-Com Files / Re: Weak UFOs

« on: November 09, 2023, 12:08:34 am »

I think the change is well intentioned, I just don't see why it should be necessary to intercept and strafe simple ground convoys, as per the aforementioned "issues". An ideal solution (in my oppinion) would be if there was an option that automatically forced a landing site if intercepted by transports. No shots, no damage, basically just an ambush/road block.

9

The X-Com Files / Re: Weak UFOs

« on: November 06, 2023, 02:15:45 pm »

I don't see anything wrong with having them remain stationary mission sites tbh, given how easy they would be to intercept even for normal law enforcement, unless hybrids are literally rolling around in tanks or are using anti-grav technology, which would defeat the whole point of clandestine convoys.

My personal headcanon for how these used to work was that X-Com acquires advanced knowledge of the convoy and the planned route and intercepts the vans along the way, with the mission site on the globe representing a convenient ambush point.

Why is X-Com so hell-bent on attracting attention that they would need to attack a simple van convoy with jets or helicopters when normal methods would be more than sufficient to get the convoy to stop without any risk of blowing it to smithereens?

10

The X-Com Files / Re: Weak UFOs

« on: November 05, 2023, 12:09:32 pm »

I agree with psavola here that "use appropriate weapons" is an inadequate solution and in my oppinion moving convoys don't add anything meaningful to the game on top of being counterintuitive.

It is a convoy, not a single vehicle. Using real-world examples, you usually disable the first vehicle in a convoy to present an obstacle and slow-down the following vehicles. You don't have to precisely target the engine block or the tires of all the vehicles in a convoy to get it to stop.

Solarius, how does the equivalent of a Sidewinder or a Phoenix (if we assume that they can somehow target ground based vehicles) obliterate a whole convoy of multiple vehicles? Even a single Hellfire missile is not going to utterly delete all vehicles of a convoy. Please stick with stationary convoy targets. Parking an assault craft with a heavy combat team in the path of a couple of vans should honestly be enough to get the hybrids to stop and defend themselves, given their lore background, them not being panic immune and being able to surrender normally. Their vans are obviously not bullet proof and they are (supposedly) carrying valuable cargo.

X-Com has access to fast transport vehicles. Just chuck a couple of these in front of the convoy, no shooting or strafing needed:

11

The X-Com Files / Re: Promotion II

« on: November 05, 2023, 11:53:11 am »

At the very least, items which can't unlock Cool Alien Gadgets (due to having a prereq that is past it in the tech tree) should not be listed as able to unlock it. I was about to post a thread asking whether the mod was actually broken and uncompleteable because I'm in Feb 1998 with 4 alien artifacts sitting in my inventory and out of reseach options.

I'm fine with "just do more missions and capture more dudes for interrogations", but at the very least the tech tree shouldn't deceive you. Here I was waiting for months to do a half dozen incredibly deadly and painful missions for alien artifacts when I could have just stunned a few more of those morons.

To be fair, at no point does the tech tree viewer "deceive" you. It tells you exactely what items unlock what research topics and what prerequesites are needed. The tech tree viewer is a crutch, not an integral part of the mod, given the massive spoilers using it entails.

12

The X-Com Files / Re: Surrendering cultists

« on: October 14, 2023, 01:57:20 pm »

I'd wager that most if not all of these are intentional and lore-related, especially with the church of dagon units.

13

The X-Com Files / Re: The X-Com Files - 3.1: Lights in The Sky

« on: September 06, 2023, 04:32:31 pm »

How to destroy Lobsters? Firearms don't help...

Fire arms on the other hand...

It's called the lobster special down at the cafeteria.

14

The X-Com Files / Re: The X-Com Files - 3.1: Lights in The Sky

« on: September 04, 2023, 02:25:33 pm »

I doubt you actually meant "no civilians are being killed.. yet". You probably meant "anymore", because usually a large number of them get killed very soon. It would indeed be very strange if this wouldn't have happened to you at all.

I wouldn't necessarily say "usually". Both the civs and the aliens tend to spread out, and normal difficulty levels there's what, three or four reptiods on a giant map with many small rooms. I have had missions where the reptiods didn't manage to kill a single of their targets and at least one where the civs killed the last remaining reptoid. I wouldn't call something like this "unusual", given the setup.

@theophilos

Yes, please upload the save in questions, let's have a look at this.

15

OXCE Support / [Solved] Missing unit reference on a corpse leading to segfault?

« on: August 29, 2023, 08:20:19 pm »

Recently somebody reported a bug with a XCF save where killing the last alien on a map lead to a crash during recovery. As it turns out, a single corpse item was missing a unit reference which then somehow proceeded to crash the game:

Item ID 141 is a corpse missing an assigned unit:

Code: [Select]

    - id: 141
      type: STR_MEGASCORPION_CORPSE
      inventoryslot: STR_GROUND
      position: [33, 4, 0]
      droppedOnAlienTurn: true
Compare the next megascorpion corpse on the list:

Code: [Select]

    - id: 143
      type: STR_MEGASCORPION_CORPSE
      unit: 1000021
      inventoryslot: STR_GROUND
      position: [38, 23, 0]
Assigning a unit (even an existing one) to 141, e.g.

Code: [Select]

    - id: 141
      type: STR_MEGASCORPION_CORPSE
      unit: 1000021
      inventoryslot: STR_GROUND
      position: [33, 4, 0]
      droppedOnAlienTurn: true
Log:

Code: [Select]

[29-08-2023_18-08-29] [FATAL] A fatal error has occurred: Segmentation fault.
[29-08-2023_18-08-30] [FATAL] 0x5da620 OpenXcom::CrossPlatform::stackTrace(void*)
[29-08-2023_18-08-30] [FATAL] 0x5db490 OpenXcom::CrossPlatform::crashDump(void*, std::__cxx11::basic_string<char, std::char_traits<char>, std::allocator<char> > const&)
[29-08-2023_18-08-30] [FATAL] 0x41c7f0 signalLogger(int)
[29-08-2023_18-08-30] [FATAL] 0xa100e0 OpenXcom::UfopaediaStartState::think()
[29-08-2023_18-08-30] [FATAL] 0x77bf653c _C_specific_handler
[29-08-2023_18-08-30] [FATAL] 0x77c0b340 _chkstk
[29-08-2023_18-08-30] [FATAL] 0x77bdf1d0 RtlInitializeResource
[29-08-2023_18-08-30] [FATAL] 0x77c0aa50 KiUserExceptionDispatcher
[29-08-2023_18-08-30] [FATAL] 0x8f13d0 OpenXcom::BattleUnit::getStatus() const
[29-08-2023_18-08-30] [FATAL] 0x555a20 OpenXcom::DebriefingState::recoverItems(std::vector<OpenXcom::BattleItem*, std::allocator<OpenXcom::BattleItem*> >*, OpenXcom::Base*)
[29-08-2023_18-08-30] [FATAL] 0x5574f0 OpenXcom::DebriefingState::prepareDebriefing()
[29-08-2023_18-08-30] [FATAL] 0x55ca90 OpenXcom::DebriefingState::init()
[29-08-2023_18-08-30] [FATAL] 0x5f2d40 OpenXcom::Game::run()
[29-08-2023_18-08-30] [FATAL] 0x41c950 SDL_main
[29-08-2023_18-08-30] [FATAL] 0xa11c10 console_main
[29-08-2023_18-08-30] [FATAL] 0xa11d30 WinMain
[29-08-2023_18-08-30] [FATAL] ??
[29-08-2023_18-08-30] [FATAL] ??
[29-08-2023_18-08-30] [FATAL] 0x77993de0 BaseThreadInitThunk
[29-08-2023_18-08-30] [FATAL] 0x77bf2930 RtlUserThreadStart
[29-08-2023_18-08-31] [FATAL] OpenXcom has crashed: Segmentation fault.
I have no idea what lead to the unit missing the reference, but is it intended behaviour to crash if a corpse item is (for whatever reason) missing a unit reference?