Messages

1

XPiratez / Re: Question-please assist

« on: August 20, 2024, 02:21:23 am »

Technically you can easily edit your save file to change difficulty... But there may be complications.

If you're an absolutely dedicated mad lad, you can also edit the mod to enable everything to work on the lowest difficulty. Good luck!

2

XPiratez / Re: Brutal AI

« on: August 20, 2024, 02:16:05 am »

Be prepared for missions with unsurrenderable melee specialists to go on for a long time- dogs most notably, they will, if they don't feel they can attack, find places to hide and ambush from and make the mission go on forever.  I highly recommend playing on lower difficulties with brutal AI as the encounters in piratez are not balanced around brutal AI, and play BAI on its lowest settings unless you really want to be forced into extremely cautious play.

I don't know if Brutal AI fully supports mods with their own scout-sniper schemes. They're designed for certain units to be unable to report your position to other enemies, but Brutal AI treats all enemies and allies as a unified unit, unless the individual has the Leeroy flag - and even then other units can use his intel.

Considering how ball-busting Brutal AI is even playing vanilla UFO, enjoying conversions that are more difficult or more finely tuned towards certain enemy behaviours will be nightmarish, unless and until there's support for force-disabling certain enemy/ally types from being Brutal at all. Think a dumb turret or monster on a leash versus an enemy soldier. Of course, if such enemies do exist, the Brutal enemies should be able to observe their actions and make inferences as to what they're seeing/attacking.

3

OXCE Support / Re: Best mods for OXCE 2023?

« on: March 19, 2023, 11:59:16 am »

My favourite mod is actually a fork by Xilmi that makes the AI really good. I recommend playing a game you're familiar with (like vanilla UFO or TFTD) unless you like pain and suffering. I would also enable Custom Initial Base and disable Aggressive Retaliation if you plan on playing Superhuman. I beat it with Aggressive Retaliation before, but it was on an earlier version.

4

Brutal AI / Re: [SOURCEMOD] Brutal-AI 3.1.0

« on: February 04, 2023, 10:12:49 pm »

It's an in-joke of sorts. Central Officer Bradford is the face of (parts of) the UI for the nuCom games.

After watching another two XCF streamers putz around using largely braindead tactics, occasionally savescumming and winning pretty handily, I'd really like some brutal AI for a change. Alas, them shaders make me dread to try again.

savescumming

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaXj3Z_tao8

Bradford also leads XCOM while the Commander (you) is in captivity between the canonical Base Defence loss and the beginning of XCOM 2. He notes that he's not as good at it as the Commander. Hence the "autobattle is Bradford" joke. It's certainly better than a lot of players, but it still does some dumb things. One more thing (aside from more crashing with AI XCOM - why do I always find ways to break your stuff!? I'm playing Vanilla+ while other people are playing ROSIGMA and XCF! This time I have an autosave along with the dump at least.) that I noticed is that psionic units aren't that good at saving their TUs for potential mind control opportunities. Half of my men are fidgeting in the Avenger when "their turn" rolls around, meanwhile my tanks and mind-controlled enemies still have lots of TUs to scout with. This is likely responsible for the relative lack of PSI attacks that your AI makes compared to vanilla (when it's not cheating at least)

If the Chryssalid demo mission mod is responsible for breaking things I'll laugh.

Off-topic, some might disagree, but I think the new XCOMs are good fun. More "tactical RPG with strategy elements" than "strategic wargame with RPG elements" but it's got the spirit and doesn't seek to replace the classics. They're not abominations like Enforcer at any rate. The X-Com Files guys agree with me clearly, given how they have EXALT and named NPCs in your employ.

5

Brutal AI / Re: [SOURCEMOD] Brutal-AI 3.1.0

« on: January 27, 2023, 10:56:05 pm »

You've been working hard since I finished my first Brutal AI playthrough. It's nice to see the non-cheating AI be even more brutal. I also like seeing the friendly AI get in on the action of not being retarded gibbons. That said, I did see another game crash - but this time it was actually caught with the crash handler. Either you've properly hooked your code into it (good man if true!) or Bradford (it's now canon that using your XCOM AI puts Bradford in charge. No, you shut up. I don't care that he's from another continuity.) managed to trigger a crash in OXC (or Extended) all by himself!

I was playing with the setting that forced XCOM to be aggressive off (I wanted to see what the AI would do without being forced to do other stuff) so I'll comment on how good Bradford is after I try with that setting on, but for now, here's the crash dump. No save file, sorry. I keep autosaves off because I like Ironman, and am just fine with manual saving if I ever want to come back to a Battle Mode skirmish for some reason.

6

More Forks / Re: [Documentation] [Feedback] Map Editor

« on: January 27, 2023, 01:48:35 pm »

Thank you for providing all the relevant language strings in the manual. It really helps my Frankenstein's Monster of an installation.

For the curious, I manually inject all of the relevant strings (in EXEs of course, I'm not insane) into the en-GB.yml files so that I can run vanilla, 2P, Brutal Ai, and now this all in the same folder with separate config files pointed to by the -config command.

7

OXCE Support Y-scripts / Re: [Suggestion] Add Healing Factor for Units

« on: January 27, 2023, 12:56:27 pm »

Even outside of scripts, the regular ruleset lets you define unit types as not needing time to heal (and not taking fatal wounds or losing morale from losing HP) - because tanks worked that way in the original games. A useful shorthand if you want to create hero characters reminiscient of a fantasy RPG who only need a good night's sleep to heal what would take the rest of us weeks in hospital.

8

OXCE Support / Re: HK soft lock

« on: January 27, 2023, 12:47:51 pm »

This seems more like a "lol the game softlocks if I try to run it without any ufos or battlescape missions" kind of thing.

Kind of like how I can't win a deathmatch in Halo if I start one by myself. (even that's not technically true if I set the rules to gain points via suicide or add a time limit!) This problem is avoided, as was mentioned, by allowing your hunter-killers to... you know... kill stuff.

9

OXCE Suggestions DONE / Re: Alt Inventory mgmt improvement

« on: January 27, 2023, 12:41:48 pm »

OK, it will be done for the next version.

Btw. in the meantime, as a workaround, you can also open the Craft Equipment GUI, which will try to add missing items. It's also some extra clicks, but less than removing and adding all soldiers.

Yeah, that little nuance tripped me up in my last playthrough too. I ended up killing the game process in the Battlescape equip screen (because Ironman) once I realised that Bradford left my meticulous equipment layout on the bloody floor next to the buffet table rather than putting it on the Skyranger. Your proposal sounds like a good backend way of fixing things. (Aside from the soldier size thing, but that's such an edge case and doesn't efffect UFO or TFTD at all - and honestly seems like a more reasonable thing to ask modders to warn against in their UFOpedias)

10

OpenXcom Extended (OXCE) / Re: OXCE (OpenXcom Extended) main thread

« on: January 27, 2023, 12:20:16 pm »

When some soldiers are fatally wounded, there is a prompt "do you really want to end mission now?". I think similar prompt should be shown when there are primed grenades (with prime time 0) on the map. Oh, come on, it is not autoshots that are broken...

I agree with your idea on grenades, but disagree with autoshots not being broken. Automatically ending the mission when all the aliens are defeated is supposed to be a quality of life improvement, not a cheat. The original game only ended missions on the switch between XCOM/alien/civilian turns to save on processing power - modern machines can chew a check like that up with every action easily. Stopping autoshots from blowing up loot or potentially wasting another ammo item is a bit of a cheat. (Especially considering how overpowered autoshots already are in vanilla UFO...)

The grenades exploding on you however turns that QoL feature into a cheat for the enemy - especially in the Brutal AI mod where the AI often has them pre-primed if you allow it to do so. If I stun that last Sectoid Leader and he has a grenade ready to go off, I should be warned that this is the case and given a chance to pick it up off of him - or bemoan my overextension with the stun rod/inability to reach him in time. OXCE already does this if there are opportunities to heal wounded soldiers to reduce infirmary times, so why not with something like this that's actually potentially far more impactful?

11

Brutal AI / Re: [SOURCEMOD] Brutal-AI 2.1.2

« on: January 05, 2023, 03:32:17 pm »

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I found another crashing bug in UFO: the Brutal AI breaks entirely on the enemy turn if you mind control any enemies. (Checking civilians is likely also a good idea if they can use Brutal AI, because I believe they use the same AI packages, but allied with X-Com rather than opposing?) - having X-Com guys get mind controlled works just fine, however. They still act as if smoke grenades are deadly projectiles, but that's not a crashing bug, just vanilla stupidity. This bug existed in the version I reported the first crash on, and also on the latest build.

Unfortunately, in testing this I was shot at by a Muton hiding in a building that I had no idea was there when I turned off the Brutal AI. F for the purity of my Ironman run I suppose. I'm raiding a landed Alien Infiltration Battleship if that makes a difference.

As a side note, allowing the aliens to mind control their own guys to cure your mind control (like what you can do) would be a fun idea...

12

Brutal AI / Re: [SOURCEMOD] Brutal-AI 2.1.1

« on: December 31, 2022, 11:02:42 pm »

Just settled into a Superhuman Ironman run of this with the fairest settings possible (No AI wallhacks, no cheatTurn, but full squad tactics and memory) and I ran into a big problem. The Enhanced Dogfighting just crashes the game. No fatal errors from any mods (I have no mods that would alter dogfighting, even official OXC second wave options), no log files at all in fact.

Turning Enhanced Dogfighting off lets me shoot down UFOs with my Avalanches just fine, but turning it on gives me one frame of standoff before getting kicked back to my Lara Croft wallpapers. Here, I posted my log. It cuts off suddenly with no clue on what made it crash. (You can see how my resolution gets set twice - that's me turning enhanced dogfighting off, fighting a UFO, then turning it on and going for another attack - BAM, crash)

Code: [Select]

[31-12-2022_20-48-53] [INFO] OpenXcom Version: Extended 7.8.4 + Brutal AI 2.1.1 (v2022-12-27)
[31-12-2022_20-48-53] [INFO] Platform: Windows 32 bit
[31-12-2022_20-48-53] [INFO] Data folder is:
[31-12-2022_20-48-53] [INFO] Data search is:
[31-12-2022_20-48-53] [INFO] - C:/Users/N7Kopper/Documents/OpenXcom/
[31-12-2022_20-48-53] [INFO] - D:/Program Files/OpenXCom/
[31-12-2022_20-48-53] [INFO] User folder is: D:/Program Files/OpenXCom/user/
[31-12-2022_20-48-53] [INFO] Config folder is: D:/Program Files/OpenXCom/brutalaiconfig/
[31-12-2022_20-48-53] [INFO] Options loaded successfully.
[31-12-2022_20-48-53] [INFO] SDL initialized successfully.
[31-12-2022_20-48-54] [INFO] SDL_mixer initialized successfully.
[31-12-2022_20-48-54] [INFO] Attempted locale:
[31-12-2022_20-48-54] [INFO] Detected locale:
[31-12-2022_20-48-54] [INFO] Attempting to set display to 1920x1081x32...
[31-12-2022_20-48-59] [INFO] Display set to 1920x1081x32.
[31-12-2022_20-48-59] [INFO] Loading data...
[31-12-2022_20-48-59] [WARN] C:\Users\ailst\OneDrive\Dokumente\OpenXcomGit\OpenXcom\src\Engine\OpenGL.cpp:159: glGetError() complaint: GL_INVALID_OPERATION
[31-12-2022_20-48-59] [WARN] C:\Users\ailst\OneDrive\Dokumente\OpenXcomGit\OpenXcom\src\Engine\OpenGL.cpp:173: glGetError() complaint: GL_INVALID_OPERATION
[31-12-2022_20-48-59] [INFO] Scanning standard mods in ''...
[31-12-2022_20-48-59] [WARN] C:\Users\ailst\OneDrive\Dokumente\OpenXcomGit\OpenXcom\src\Engine\OpenGL.cpp:181: glGetError() complaint: GL_INVALID_OPERATION
[31-12-2022_20-48-59] [WARN] C:\Users\ailst\OneDrive\Dokumente\OpenXcomGit\OpenXcom\src\Engine\OpenGL.cpp:191: glGetError() complaint: GL_INVALID_OPERATION
[31-12-2022_20-48-59] [WARN] C:\Users\ailst\OneDrive\Dokumente\OpenXcomGit\OpenXcom\src\Engine\OpenGL.cpp:195: glGetError() complaint: GL_INVALID_OPERATION
[31-12-2022_20-48-59] [WARN] C:\Users\ailst\OneDrive\Dokumente\OpenXcomGit\OpenXcom\src\Engine\OpenGL.cpp:237: glGetError() complaint: GL_INVALID_OPERATION
[31-12-2022_20-48-59] [WARN] C:\Users\ailst\OneDrive\Dokumente\OpenXcomGit\OpenXcom\src\Engine\OpenGL.cpp:242: glGetError() complaint: GL_INVALID_OPERATION
[31-12-2022_20-48-59] [INFO] Scanning user mods in 'D:/Program Files/OpenXCom/user/'...
[31-12-2022_20-49-06] [WARN] Error in version number in mod 'XCF-CyrNames': unexpected symbol
[31-12-2022_20-49-08] [WARN] Error in version number in mod '40k_ROSIGMA_edits': unexpected symbol
[31-12-2022_20-49-11] [INFO] Active mods:
[31-12-2022_20-49-11] [INFO] - xcom1 v1.0
[31-12-2022_20-49-11] [INFO] - Alien Melee v1.0
[31-12-2022_20-49-11] [INFO] - alieninventory v1.0
[31-12-2022_20-49-11] [INFO] - Aliens_Pick_Up_Weapons v1.0
[31-12-2022_20-49-11] [INFO] - Better_Ingame_UI v1.0
[31-12-2022_20-49-11] [INFO] - BasicArmourPediaUFO v1.0
[31-12-2022_20-49-11] [INFO] - diversity v1.3
[31-12-2022_20-49-11] [INFO] - improvedhandobjs v1.2
[31-12-2022_20-49-11] [INFO] - Kneel_Indicator_Cursor v1.0
[31-12-2022_20-49-11] [INFO] - Limit_Craft_Item_Capacities v1.0
[31-12-2022_20-49-11] [INFO] - missilesounds v1.0
[31-12-2022_20-49-11] [INFO] - moar-zero v1.0
[31-12-2022_20-49-11] [INFO] - power-suit-helm-off v1.1
[31-12-2022_20-49-11] [INFO] - PS1 UFO Videos v1.1
[31-12-2022_20-49-11] [INFO] - PS1 Music v1.1
[31-12-2022_20-49-11] [INFO] - PS1 SFX v1.0
[31-12-2022_20-49-11] [INFO] - sanicskyranger v1.3b
[31-12-2022_20-49-11] [INFO] - selfheal v1.1
[31-12-2022_20-49-11] [INFO] - TFTD_Damage v1.0
[31-12-2022_20-49-11] [INFO] - UFOextender_Gun_Melee v1.0
[31-12-2022_20-49-11] [INFO] - X-Com Demo Mission v1.0
[31-12-2022_20-49-11] [INFO] - xcom2012death v1.1
[31-12-2022_20-49-11] [INFO] - commendations v3.2
[31-12-2022_20-49-11] [INFO] - nocheat v1.0
[31-12-2022_20-49-11] [INFO] - Alien Reproduction v1.0
[31-12-2022_20-49-11] [INFO] - Text Revision v0.8
[31-12-2022_20-49-11] [INFO] - extra_explosions v1.0
[31-12-2022_20-49-11] [INFO] - Mission Codenames v1.0
[31-12-2022_20-49-11] [INFO] - daynightUI v1.0
[31-12-2022_20-49-13] [INFO] Loading begins...
[31-12-2022_20-49-13] [INFO] Pre-loading rulesets...
[31-12-2022_20-49-13] [INFO] Loading vanilla resources...
[31-12-2022_20-49-15] [INFO] Loading rulesets...
[31-12-2022_20-49-17] [INFO] Loading rulesets done.
[31-12-2022_20-49-17] [INFO] Loading fonts... Font.dat
[31-12-2022_20-49-19] [INFO] Lazy loading: 1
[31-12-2022_20-49-20] [INFO] Loading custom palettes from ruleset...
[31-12-2022_20-49-20] [INFO] Making palette backups...
[31-12-2022_20-49-20] [INFO] After load.
[31-12-2022_20-49-20] [INFO] Loading ended.
[31-12-2022_20-49-20] [INFO] Data loaded successfully.
[31-12-2022_20-49-20] [INFO] Loading language...
[31-12-2022_20-49-20] [INFO] Language loaded successfully.
[31-12-2022_20-49-20] [INFO] OpenXcom started successfully!
[31-12-2022_20-49-20] [WARN] C:\Users\ailst\OneDrive\Dokumente\OpenXcomGit\OpenXcom\src\Engine\OpenGL.cpp:388: glGetError() complaint: GL_INVALID_OPERATION
[31-12-2022_20-49-21] [INFO] Playing flx, 320x200, 3330 frames
[31-12-2022_20-49-23] [INFO] SDL_mixer initialized successfully.
[31-12-2022_20-49-24] [INFO] Update check status: 7; newVersion: v7.8;
[31-12-2022_20-49-45] [INFO] Attempting to set display to 1920x1081x32...
[31-12-2022_20-49-45] [INFO] Display set to 1920x1081x32.
[31-12-2022_20-50-01] [INFO] Attempting to set display to 1920x1081x32...
[31-12-2022_20-50-01] [INFO] Display set to 1920x1081x32.
Of course, I want an actual reason to build things such as Firestorms, so this is kind of a problem. An AI update like this is wonderful and just what I was looking for as a difficulty bump, so it's the least I can do to report problems, both for you and the community.
-----------------------
EDIT: I believe I've found the issue! The Enhanced Dogfighting AI really doesn't like when you have an empty weapon slot on your craft. I had removed the Stingrays and Cannons from my Interceptors (as I do) and was trying to shoot down a UFO with just a single Avalanche launcher, as it was the first spawn and my other three launchers hadn't arrived yet. It might be more complicated with other mods that have a greater or smaller number of weapon slots, but that's the breaking behaviour in vanilla UFO.

13

OXCE Support / Re: [Suggestion] Dead pilots in the Memorial?

« on: July 14, 2022, 03:17:28 pm »

No.

When in doubt, ask a question!

I am not wasting my time on something nobody may ever use (...and needs maintenance, documentation and potentially just creates confusion).

"Doubt" in this context means the modders disagree.
But yeah, it did come off as a bit presumptuous. Sorry about that.

14

OXCE Suggestions DONE / Re: [DONE] base preview

« on: July 14, 2022, 03:08:40 pm »

The fact that you only get one soldier rather than your full complement tells me that nobody does After-Action Reports any more, and that makes me sad. (Yes, I did just find this today. What of it?)

15

OXCE Suggestions OK / Re: [Suggestion] Unit Teleport

« on: July 14, 2022, 03:02:28 pm »

proxy is another thing to consider for teleport, should unit trigger it or not? what about reaction shots?

Triggering reactions seems entirely sensible to me. Bad guy in your face? Light him up! Proximity mines should, if you ask me, be based on the mine. Proxy mines flavoured to trigger based on movement could reasonably fail to go off based on teleportation, whereas ones that detect your mere presence would explode regardless.