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1

40k / Re: [ADDON] ROSIGMA

« on: October 01, 2021, 06:53:45 pm »

Thanks for the rant. I get a few things where they are coming from but what confuses me about are two things.

1. Where is this hidden feedback group you are talking about because I get nearly zero feedback on balance in general. 

It's not a group, mate. I've seen it written several times in comment threads, things like let's play videos on youtube, mod download comments and such. Just people talking about the mod. And in one instance, what I saw written was someone saying that your mod has a reputation as having great content but being no fun to play. That's where I got that. Can't remember where I saw it, but I'm not lying. Not going to dig it up though.

But I would also suggest that if get zero feedback on balance, it means your balance is appalling. If your game balance was good, people would love to say it to you. If nobody's saying anything, they're embarrassed to say something, either because they don't want to cause a fuss, or because they don't want people thinking they can't do the game.

2. How is it that you consider the 40k base mod balance to be that much different? Unless you played IGMA that actually made Lasguns more worthwhile, you are playing with the exact same damageType, power for the weapons as well as damage modifiers for the armors as the base mod does. Only the armor values themselves are slightly different for this matter.

It is genuinely frightening to me that you ask this. It says to me that you are looking at charts and values and have almost no comprehension of the player experience.

Like, seriously, I'm about to write a sentence and I'm not even sure if you're trolling me.

Are you genuinely unaware that ROSIGMA confronts the player with vastly increased numbers of massively tougher enemies from the very start? Do you genuinely not understand that this is true? I don't know what to say. I genuinely don't.

On the normal 40k mod, almost everyone you face, straight off the bat, is an unarmoured human. No Ogryn, no Squats. And whatever 'small boost' those guardsmen have been given in ROSIGMA, it's enough to take their armour almost beyond the reach of normal lasfire.

I mean, I don't know what to tell you. I am honestly speechless.  Stop just looking at stats, code and charts. The original 40k starts out massively, MASSIVELY MASSIVELY MASSIVELY easier than this mod. It is genuinely surreal that you seem to suggest the difference is marginal, and it shows a howling gulf between your idea of your game, and the actual reality of it.

If you want to try you can give this sub mod a shot (effective 25 % damage increase for Lasguns, less accuracy dropoff per tile). Again something I got very little feedback on. That's why I am hesitant to put it into the mod itself. If you don't like the range thing, then just delete the range related rul file.

Look mate, I think this is a bad answer.

Honestly. Not just to me, but to anyone who points out the massive balance issues. "Here, use this, it'll make it easier." This is a band aid over a bolter wound.

This is indicative of a defensive development culture that won't look major balance issues in the eye.

Fixing the lasstuff is a great plan, but only one issue out of a lot. A lot of issues. And all the issues point to only one conclusion. Who in the development of this game is making it their priority to crafting a fair, fun player experience? Fair and fun do not mean easy. Ironman superhuman on the FMP with psi amp research disabled isn't easy, but it is fun and it is fair. That's not by accident. Solarius_scorch decided to craft it as an experience, to make the balance of the game central to everything.

You're adding new content, amazing new content. But who makes it their personal responsibility to craft how this game actually plays? Who? Do you? Who does?

That's the problem. And while that problem remains unfixed, a patch for the lasguns ain't gonna cut it.

It is dismissive and demeaning to tell someone to download some mod that makes the game less hard. I'm not asking for it to be made "less hard". The game you have made is not "hard", it is broken. It doesn't work as a game. It doesn't. And the lasfire thing is just one expression of that. Her'es another experssion of it: your personal lack of comprehension that the mod you yourself are making is staggeringly, massively, unplayably more difficult than the original 40k mod. That's honestly surreal. Who in the development of this mod is taking any actual time to experience, craft and hone the game balance?

Okay, maybe that's not your thing. Fine. But if it's NOBODY's thing, then what? Then it's a pointless mod and your content is wasted. No value whatsoever. Unplayable. Boring. Annoying. Stupid. And full of all these amazing pieces of brilliant content nobody will - or should - ever have the patience to discover.

I hate myself for saying this stuff. It's horrible. I'd hate to hear it. But it's the truth.

Think of it like this. It's like someone's making a film, but there's no director. There's makeup artists, actors playing their part, even a screenplay, special effects - but no director. Nobody's doing that job. Nobody's saying "where do these bits fit in to create X experience?". They're just sticking stuff in based on how cool they individually think the bits of it are.

What happens?

All the individual bits can be absolutely amazing, but if nobody's crafting an experience for the audience, it's a godawful mess.

This mod has no director. Nobody's doing that job. You clearly are not. Who is? I would suggest nobody. Someone has to do that. Someone has to ask "what do I want the player to experience?" And then you'll have a centre around which to build the thing, you won't just be bolting new sprites on the side hoping that at some point it just sort of 'works'. It won't.

I gladly invite you to our discord. Feel free to hang around and start some of the (less ranty) discussions.

As for answering your post in detail, I plan to do it at a later time.

Whenever man, no rush. Honestly I feel scared to look back at this thread after I've said all this stuff. I'm just expecting someone to block me for being a prick.

I hope, perhaps beyond hope, that my admiration for what you do is clear. The ROSIGMA mod is absolutely amazing, content-wise, and anyone who says it's not is probably a filthy communist. I know I'm saying stuff hard. I will stop if you guys want. But all my love to you and to this amazing community, you've all given me so much kick ass, creative, interesting stuff.

Someone needs to be the director. That's what it is.

2

40k / Re: [ADDON] ROSIGMA

« on: October 01, 2021, 06:17:00 pm »

Okay, thanks for your responses, I felt awful about sending that and I'd just logged back in to apologise - sorry again for being so sharp.

My passion comes from truly, truly loving this game. I love this game so much, and when it's done well it's amazing.

But.... really impressed with your responses. Leflair and Buscher, I'll answer point for point.

It's been years since I properly chopped up a quote on a forum to do this so if I get the html all over the place and it looks ridiculous, feel free to throw things at my head.

Constructive feedback is always welcome, and we do indeed not get a lot of it (just skim this thread). 

The 1.04 has only been out for a month, but the feedback I've gotten has not pointed to any big balance issues (you're the first, really), this may simply be because most regular players that do play it and give feedback are pretty experienced with how to handle the tougher foes.

This is a serious problem. If you are genuinely unaware of the balance problems in this mod, it is a serious problem. It's like flying  at speed into a brick wall. If nobody's saying anything to you, you are not getting the feedback you need to make this into a decent game. And what hurts is that the content added is so good, and it's just going to waste.

I think there's a lot of people who don't want to admit it's too hard. Honestly, if I didn't have the level of experience I have at this game, I probably wouldn't feel confident to say something. Some other people just like to boast, so they don't like admitting they can't do it. But I know I'm good. Sorry, that's an asshole thing to say, but I am. I've played this game for years, I only ever play on Ironman on the hardest difficulty, and what makes this game so amazing is that that actually can be done. The hardest difficulty is really, really hard.... but possible. It is fair. There is a way through. Always. And so it makes it tense, cool - but also hopeful, fun, possible.

This is the key to making an XCOM mod work - (god, I sound like such a patronising arse even saying this, I know, I'm sorry) but it is the key. There has to be a way to win. To consistently win - it can be hard, like walking a tightrope - but it can't be impossible.

Your experience may differ, for example are Chaos Space Marines *not* common as a early enemy (there's always a chance with things like Terror missions) and you may always spawn in the middle of a enemy squad (this goes for vanilla 40k too).

My experience DOES differ. I think they're more common than you think they are. And mate- just remember this. If even ONE shows up, that mission becomes UNWINNABLE IMMEDIATELY for normal guardsmen. And you can say - well, lasfire reduces armour. Sure. But the accuracy and damage being done by the entire squad being so appallingly bad, you might as well be throwing a rock at the moon.

That is the truth. It is the actual truth of playing the game. If you say "well, these people aren't having problems" those people are savescumming. HARD. OVER AND OVER.

But then you say Space Marines are not there from the start - um... dude. Play your own game. Sit down, fire up Imperial Guard, PRESS THE IRONMAN BUTTON and try to survive three months. You will fail. Straight up. This is not a winnable game. That means it isn't fun, and it isn't fair. And I don't care who your veterans are, or what they're doing. Survive without savescumming on this mod for a full year, let alone actually win? You might as well tell me you can jump to the moon. Straight up, that person is either lying, deluded, or doing something dramatically different from anything I have ever seen done in this game after decades of playing it. I would suggest that they are lying.

If you cannot kill Space Marines, think about what that actually means TO THE GAME EXPERIENCE. It means that any Space Marines necessitate an immediate retreat from an unwinnable mission. Avoiding Space Marines means avoiding EVERY terror mission, and EVERY enemy base until you have the weapons to take them. It also means immediately fleeing from EVERY crash landing or landed plane where they show up.

Is this an intentional choice? Did you decide that this would be your game?

If you did, why do you hate us so much? What have we done to hurt you? How can we earn your forgiveness?

If not, you have two choices. Delay space marines, or SERIOUSLY buff imperials. Not just "tweak the lasfire". Do something drastic to give your game the basic ability to function. That's it. Them's your choices. There are no others.

Oh and, if the only people giving you any feedback are people utterly expert at every single enemy, what's that feedback worth? Honestly? With only that feedback you cannot balance this mod. You can't do it. You just can't. It will never be playable.

And what are these magic strategies these 'veterans' have? What? How do you stop something that can shoot a rocket/lascannon shot through smoke from across the map, when none of your guns have the capacity to reach/hurt that thing? What's the strategy you use?

And I understand it's very easy to get defensive. God, I hear myself saying these things and I can only hope you're ten times the man I am because I'd full-on have a tantrum if I heard them. But it's not just me. I know XCOM. I know what's possible, I know what's not.

There's a few things from your notes that's already been worked into update 1.05 (coming soon). Other things are bigger longterm goals of the mod to tackle, with some solutions being work in progress.

A couple of changes in 1.05 that may adress some of your issues: 
-Enemy Squats have less armor, and are easier to hit. They're not as common either.

They are tough little fuckers, yeah. But maybe introduce in a later tier? Squats are awesome, an awesome idea, really well done. Better than the nerf is to make them an event. Some squats just dug out of the ground or something - oh no! Then they start showing up in random things.

-There is a new strong early game Heavy Stubber for Guard, and a Heavy Lasgun with overcharged power shots (there's some other lasgun changes like this to allow for punchier shots too). The Early Game Guard Counters may need a little tutorial.

Cool! Sounds great! More stuff like this!

-Enemy sentinels do indeed, like your own sentinels, have advanced optics that allow them to see through some smoke.

But the enemy never uses smoke, so this is not an actual leveller between us. It's just a massive buff for the enemy which essentially means that smoke means nothing now. One missile, squad gone, thanks for playing. That's what you've done.

Now look, I get that smoke is this bug up everyone's ass "oh it's so unbalanced, oh it's so terrible, you just spam smoke". Those people are idiots. Smoke is extremely important for protecting fragile troops from advanced weapons. This is EXACTLY the situation you are starting ALL your players in, and if you take away smoke, you're really crippling them. Maybe a later version of the sentinel, an advanced version with night vision googles or whatever - great. Amazing. LATER. Same with the fucking mounted lascannon sniper bastards. I swear because of the hate I feel. Just think of what that does to the game experience. Think. Really think. Or better still, play. Play it on ironman, see what happens.

What happens is, area denial. That's the military term. Area denial of the entire map. Every open space, every open anything. Can't cross it through smoke, they see through smoke. Can't cross it in one go, not enough time units. And if you can't get close enough to it, you can't shoot a rocket, you can't throw a grenade, you can't lasfire the thing, and if you're a position you can snipe it you're already dead because it's sniped you first.

It cripples the entire squad's ability to move anywhere without taking savage, unstoppable casualties.

That's what it means. Is this a choice you have intentionally made? Honestly... HONESTLY... did you sit down and say "this is how this game will play." Did you? I very much doubt it. And yet it is how the game plays. So what does that mean? Who is making choices about how the game plays? Who takes that role?

I understand your nerfing the main grenade - even though it was already much more expensive in this mod. But then to make mounted lascannons with infinite range able to see through smoke? That's absurd. Genuinely. It's like a choice taken in isolation from how the game actually plays. It's like - one soldier dead every turn. And you cannot hit that thing from across the map as starting guard. This is major, major problem. A major problem with the game. Really serious. Unfair, boring, stupid.

But like your own Sentinel experience, they die to a stiff breeze.

No they don't. No they don't. The fact that you think they do says to me you are not playing your own game. You are looking at code, you are looking at stats, you are not playing the game, you are not experiencing the player experience.

To take down an enemy sentinel with lasfire means closing range enough that a large number of your men can all fire autofire, and hit it. Think about that. Actually think about what that actually means in an actual game you actually play. It means closing distance with something that can fire rockets through smoke, and one hit by one of those rockets doesn't just kill 6-7 men (the bare minimum needed to take it down with lasfire), it also panicks the entire squad because of thier deaths, and it's game over.

Is this an intentional game choice? Did you decide this? I just don't think you did. I think nobody decided this. I just don't think people are playing this mod as a game.

And I know what you're going to say. Oh what about the disposable rockets!

Firstly, you get enemy sentinels a long time before you get those researched. Secondly, it is bad, bad, bad game design to introduce an enemy where there's only one possible solution in this single thing you have to research but you don't know about in a massive range of research options. Thirdly, 45% accuracy when shot, from a guardsman who already has the firing accuracy of Michael J Fox? This is not a solution. It's not. The idea that it's a solution could only be sustained by someone who simply had not played this mod - or who played it reloading every three seconds.

Speaking of Sentinels, the player version is getting a armor buff in 1.05.

Cool!

-We're gradually shifting the tougher enemies to rarer/later appearances. The big one to stretch out the appearance of things like enemy CSM is in a later update though (some things in the work that need more time).

Mate, look - I am consistently amazed and impressed at the incredible work you do. It's awesome, just awesome. I lay these challenges at your feet because this is an absolutely epic, kick ass content mod. It's awesome, so awesome, really. Take as long as you need. But I would say this is exactly the way to go. All your new enemies are epic. You just cannot throw them at the player from round 1, and expect your game to survive as a game. But they mean that what you could have is this insanely deep playing experience, where kick-ass new stuff just keeps on opening up. That's awesome. So awesome. Do that!

I'll let Buscher answer the Guard Tactics questions. As we've lost 33% of our manpower (Xom is busy soldiering IRL), it's just the two of us plus a few helpful people lending a hand from time to time.

Dude, totally love your work. If it's ready twenty years from now, I'll download it and play it through my white beard. And thank Xom for his service.

One big balancing difficulty is that if the game is easy enough for early guard, it's very easy for Space Marines or Sisters. For this we've been working on some "difficulty options" that will allow for more ingame tweaking to your liking. Things like increased income, or getting more veteran troops. It's always going to be hard to tweak the balance so that it's both satisfying for veteran-, new players and works for all factions.

Okay - I see what you're saying, but here's my counter.

Think of it like actual 40k. If you got a well put together SM army, vs a well put together IG army, would the SM simply waltz across the guard like they're not even there? No. Not at all. IG are a really serious force, really serious.

Firstly, there's about 3 times as many of them. That's no joke. Lasfire is a problem for Space Marines when 3/4 shots are being fired for every marine you have. Also tanks and mounted weapons. Tanks would be a problem in an XCOM engine, obviously, but mounted weapons? Hmm.

Again, sorry to mention it, but I fired up the game to see again last night. 13,500 spacebucks for a heavy bolter, Godwyn pattern. 300,000 for the same bolter on a small wheeled platform. Uh..... what? What are you trying to do here? Who made that decision and why?

I feel like a lot of these decisions are being taken because people on the forum are bitching about heavy bolters or smoke making things too easy. I get they are powerful - but the answer is not to take all the power away and then say "well, you're just not a veteran." Nobody's going to be a veteran if this game is so broken. How will you get veteran players if only veteran players can have any hope of winning?

It's your mod mate, but if you don't fix the game balance, HARD, then you'll be stuck with the same tiny pool of 'veterans' who keep telling you there's no problem with your game. Which means that although they may be veterans at playing ROSIGMA, they're certainly not veterans at telling you the truth.

So what would I do? Again - look to 40k for inspiration. The most obvious think I can think of is this.

Make a massive dropship. Something enormous. 26 person space, 4-6 HWP space. Basically AVENGER sized, and that's the IG basic ship. No kidding. There's all sorts of stuff in the lore that could be repurposed for this. Space Marines have tiny little dropships with tiny squads. IG send regiments.

What needs to be understood is that the IG are not shit. Soldier for soldier, sure, yeah, but as an army they are fearsome. Why? Because there's a million of them, they have all sorts of heavy support weapons and lasfire isn't shite. If I could sum it up in a sentence, that's the sentence.

"there's a million of them, they have all sorts of heavy support weapons and lasfire isn't shite."

And if you can't put that as an experience into your mod, then don't have IG in the first place.

But then again I think this speaks to a development focus on individual units/guns and individual changes at that level to fix problems. That's what's hurting the development of this mod. Someone (you) needs to step back and say - what makes IG cool? What makes them something epic?

How can an IG army demolish a SM army? Or a Sororitas army? Because they really, really can, in the normal 40k game, if put together well and played well.

Numbers. Support weapons. Lasfire that actually works. Numbers. Numbers. And more numbers.

26 guardsmen roll out of a ship with 4 heavy bolters and 2 sentinels. Turn one motherfucker. Do you speak it?

That is what needs to be reflected in this to make IG work.

And before anyone says "oh that's so unfair, it would be too easy"... no it wouldn't. You'd take terrible casualties. But you'd be able to take them. And on top of that, I just finished a tier 1 chaos base (as SM) on this mod. 63 enemies. Stealth space marines, nurglings jumping out of dead bodies, enemy snipers, enemy chimera turrets, all sorts of mad shit. 14 highly trained Space Marines only just survived. This mod is MASSIVELY harder than Superhuman difficulty on Xcom, even with Space Marines. And I know it is, beucase I know superhuman difficulty inside out.

Is that a choice? Did you decide - I will make this mod MASSIVELY harder than Superhuman difficulty? Did you? Even with marines. Did you? Again, I'd be surprised if the answer was yes.

26 guardsmen, 4 heavy bolters and 2 sentinels would STILL be a seriously difficult task against that TIER ONE BASE (!) and if you won, you'd be flying home with a lot of dead buddies. Which is exactly how it should be.

But an Avenger-sized craft as your basic ship? That's an easy, quick fix that would resolve a lot. And fix smoke. Night-vision optics has to be third tier, or second tier if you're really, REALLY feeling sadistic. First tier? Unplayable.

I really hope this is all cool. I've tried to be as blunt as possible, because I don't know if anyone else is giving it to you straight. I only challenge people I respect.

3

40k / Re: [ADDON] ROSIGMA

« on: September 30, 2021, 06:36:15 pm »

Having real problems with the IG on this. Honestly it's really annoyed me. This is going to be a rant, and I just want to say that I only rant with this level of annoyance because this mod has such amazing potential, but it's just not remotely, remotely ready.

I'm no slouch with XCOM, I've played it to death 1000 times on ironman superhuman on vanilla, different mods, and ironmanned the original 40k mod. I can ironman/superhuman the final mod pack with psi-amp disabled. I do not say this to boast. I say this because if I'm playing an XCOM based game and it's ludicrously, profoundly unfair, unfun and unwinnable, I know it's not just me.

I genuinely do not understand how you are supposed to survive as IG unless you are savescumming. The 'early game', such as it is, consists of troops who cannot hit anything - anything. The lasguns, when they do hit, do nothing. Nothing at all. Even if you somehow survive to get close enough to hit, you can drop five or six las shots into an enemy's back - their BACK- and it's nothing to them. And this is basic enemies. Not space marines, not ogryn. Just dudes. And yet all their shots hit, and every shot that hits kills one of your men.

But then there ARE space marines, and ogryn, and squats, right from the start. That's fantastic, it's amazing, brilliant, great - as RAW CONTENT. But you're dropping in this new content WAY before giving the player ANYTHING that can consistently beat it. It totally destroys the fun of the game.

Enemies that are already tough, but when killed, turn into heavily armoured, full health space marines (!) that then become invisible (!) and slaughter your men with bolter shot? So they inflict one shot kills on every one of your men, and if you somehow manage to track them down, you can fire the entire squad, every action point, every shot in a single fusillade into that one enemy, and it STILL won't die. Then it kills everyone next turn. And these enemies appear RIGHT from the start. And they're not rare. At all. Any chaos terror mission probably has three or four of the things.

What are you trying to do here? Are you drunk?

It's an amazing enemy, fantastic. Love it. Brilliant idea, brilliantly implemented. Even looks cool, old-school ALPHA armour, love the lore. Love it. But to drop this on the player over and over, right from the start, as one of the basic enemies faced when there is nothing that can consistently hurt it, is absurd.

Getting the mounted heavy bolter feels like a revolution, not because it's powerful, just because it actually allows some level of consistency in killing anything. But it's so static that you have to mount a static defence of the thing.  On every single mission. Every mission becomes the same, by necessity. Any deviation from it results in immediate death. And woe betide you if that 300 000 buck thing takes a single shot. 300 000? What's the mount made out of? Gold-plated diamond?

It is absurd. Honestly absurd. Even disembarking from a craft - how? You can't pop smoke to cover your exit because it's been so nerfed you need 4/5 smoke grenades to do it, and whoever's throwing those grenades will almost certainly die, along with 2 or three people behind them from the hail of automatic reaction shot that rains down. Even if you get smoke up, enemy sentinels can somehow (?) see right through smoke and hit you with missiles. Any missiles immediately kill everyone in the entire blast radius.

"Stay in the ship, cede the first turn! Then you wont face reaction fire!" Um okay, but all the ships have massive, wide-open doors that can be shot through.

"Punt a smoke grenade out and then they won't shoot in!" - Um, okay, but I can't shoot a smoke grenade out because my heavy bolter is in the way, I can't move it down the line to put penitents first, and I can't not take it, because nobody else has the ability to shoot/hit/hurt anything.

"It's okay, just send out penitents!" If you're disembarking with penitents, you have no heavy bolters, and if you have no heavy bolters how the hell are winning anything?

"On the Chimera you have a third tank, fill that with penitents, run them out first!" Um, okay. But that's just bad design, if the only way I can possibly disembark on ANY MISSION where it's open ground in front of me is to throw 4-6 prisoners to their immediate death in turn one, every time? Two things. Firstly, that's just grim, ugly gameplay. Secondly, it also means that you're NOT taking a big squad of IG. You're taking a tiny squad of IG, because all the space is taken up with heavy bolters and doomed penitents, so you've got like, 5 spaces left for actual guardsmen. So now not only are you useless, you're totally outnumbered in every engagement. Wahey! I've survived turn one! Now I'm dead on turn two.

"Use sentinels! They're tough!" - No they're not. They're made of tinfoil. I've never had one survive a single round while exposed. Against basic, lowest-possible-level enemies. How is it that their las-shot can rend metal armour, but your las-shot barely even tickles? Are they all packing mini-lascannons or hotshot whatever? Okay, great. Love the new content. Love it, genuinely love it. But in dumping it all on the player before there's any chance to hit back you are destroying the actual game. And the multilaser on the sentinel? Are you drunk? I've had that thing fail to kill basic guardsmen from four squares away, firing both volleys. It's as dangerous as a 1970's disco light.

"Try the Scion strategy, you get hotshot lasweapons with infinite ammo!" That sounds amazing, I'll do that! Oh wait though, it means I also get no HMVs whatsoever, no heavy bolters, nothing. And those hotshot lasweapons are STILL nothing like good enough to beat the enemies you meet right from the start. I remember one time I open a door into an enemy ship. First or second month, really early on. Chaos Space Marine there. Facing away from me. I walk RIGHT UP BEHIND HIM and unload a volley of shot into his back from the most powerful Scion gun, the hotshot volley gun. Four hits. Then he turns around, no fucks given, and kills the Scion. Great stuff.

"well, they're IG, they're expendable" - not if the entire team panics at the drop of a hat they're not. They don't seem to think each other are expendable. Lose maybe three in a turn? The whole squad just crumbles.

Oh, and Scions cost, when you factor all the expenses in the manufacturing in, almost twice as much as actual Space Marines.

Here's my question. Does anyone involved in the construction of this mod actually care about how this plays as a game?

This mod is not accurate to how Imperial Guard are in 40k. It is not. NOT ACCURATE. NOT REMOTELY.

I've played imperial guard and I've played against imperial guard. Lasguns are not totally useless. Massed lasgun fire can really do damage, even against armoured infantry. But in this mod laguns are genuinely, frighteningly USELESS. You might as well throw bad language at the opponent. Are these trained soldiers? The basic soldiers on XCOM actually can kill sectoids and floaters with the basic guns. It's not easy, but it's doable. But this? They feel like inmates from a remedial care home doing 40k cosplay.

You have enough amazing new content here to do something genuinely staggering. You can implement 40k in an XCOM engine, the whole shebang. You're clearly on your way, and the new content is cool, interesting, epic. You know what would be even better? If the starting tier of difficulty had any level of fairness to it. It doesn't. You're up against things straight off the bat that your weapons simply cannot hurt, which can slaughter half your men in a heartbeat.

If you drench the area in smoke you can kind of survive for a while, but even then the nerfing of the smoke has made it so absurdly patchy that you get shot (flawlessly, lethally, every time) by things on the other side of the map you can't even see, and still can't find even if you use all your time units to run right at them. What do you do? Honestly what?

None of this is fun.

None of this is fun.

None of this is fun.

I read about the ROSIGMA mod having amazing new content, but appalling game balance. I've seen people say that over and over. Have you never heard that? They are right. This is ridiculous.

I encountered this problem before in another mod that will remain nameless - amazing content, really cool, huge time and effort put in, but no discipline when it came to crafting the actual game-play experience. Just a splurge of new, high-level content and nothing to counter it. Nothing.

I understand the temptation. The temptation to just add cool new stuff, and then show it off. No point burying it in the end game, right? You want people to see SQUATS! OGRYN! ALPHA LEGION! Right? But your exuberance over your new content causes a lack of discipline in burying the player under unwinnable conditions.

While the development of this mod focused on adding cool new units, this will never be worth playing by anyone. It is not fun to play. Not close to fun.

Tone the beginning down. Make sure that there are things that actually can counter the enemies you're bringing in. Stop trying to show off all your fancy new stuff. Leave it till the mid tier, the end tier. Hell, make four or five new tiers and turn the whole game into a massive epic. Whatever. But swamping the player straight off the bat is absurd, and kills this mod as a player experience.

The original 40k mod had balance. That was probably the most impressive thing about it - not that it was a 40k reskin of xcom, now because it had all the cool units, but because someone had taken real care to make it work as an actual player experience.

I understand others enjoy ROSIGMA. Has anyone actually played IG without savescumming? If you can't survive without savescumming, that's bad design. This is a badly designed mod. Amazing new content, terrible game design.

Now I have to commit japanese ritual suicide to make up for the disgusting level of sickening entitlement I have just displayed in my criticism of this free mod, which has a wealth of really impressive, inspiring individual elements.

I hate myself for even saying this. And maybe it's just me, man. Maybe I'm just terrible at this particular mod. Maybe there's some tactic I don't know about that everyone knows about. I don't know.

But if there's anything in what I've said that isn't total nonsense, that means someone involved in the development of this mod needs to take personal resposibility for the game balance, and actually treat that as a part of the game equally as important as some fancy new gun or exciting new enemy.

I'm not asking it to be made easy. Just possible.

Rant over.

Sorry.

*commits japanese ritual suicide*

4

40k / Re: Cyclone Launcher... how do I fire it?

« on: September 23, 2021, 05:07:41 pm »

I think that solves the mystery of why there are no posts about it - it's ridiculously obvious. Sorry to waste your time, thanks so much for the response - and the truly exceptional mod. I haven't enjoyed a computer game this much in years. Love, love, love it.

5

40k / Cyclone Launcher... how do I fire it?

« on: September 23, 2021, 03:56:25 pm »

As the post title really. Have just got the terminator sergeant armour, the one with the lightning claws and the cyclone launcher on top. How do I fire the launcher? The empty hand doesn't give the option, and I can't see anything else to click. I have done a search on this forum, I've read the things I could find but couldn't see an answer. Sorry! I realise that it's probably incredibly obvious and I am a mook.

Also, in other news, this mod is insanely good, almost ridiculously good. It's got a whole different feel to XCOM, and as someone who was into 40k way back in the mists of yore, it's absolutely superb to see the detail and level of fidelity in every part of this mod, it's really impressive.

But yeah, that cyclone launcher - what am I not doing?

6

Released Mods / Re: [UFO]&[TFTD][Beta?]Hybrid Mod for UFO enemy unknown and TFTD.

« on: November 21, 2020, 12:52:33 am »

Okay, look, I just had an idea. I think this is fucking epic, please hear me out, please.

An easy way to think of the main issue here is this: how do you make TFTD interesting in a hybrid mod?

It's fun to look at, of course, but if you're going into TFTD with all your research, weapons and kit from UFO, you're going to flatten it. No challenge = no fun. But we don't want to wipe out all the gains from UFO either, because that's the whole point of the mod.

SO HOW'S ABOUT THIS....

Make it so you have to ACTIVELY RESEARCH all the seabase components, all flying subs, and all of the nautical equipment! Bear with me, I realise this might seem nuts, but listen. You get to the end of UFO:EU. You control the skies. You have your A-team. You have your kick-ass guns. You have everything the FMP can give you. Railguns fired by Tormentor jets smashing up battleships. The works. It's total domination.

BUT THEN.....

Suddenly you're getting attacked from the sea. If you shoot down the alien flying subs over land, they explode into pieces. No salvage, no missions. Nothing. I know that can be done in the code, Hobbes does it with the HK's in Area 51 so it doesn't unbalance the game with too much salvage so there is a way. You can't even see them in the water because for that you need SONAR, not radar or hyperwaves (not sure how tricky that would be to code but bear with me). Either way, you can't destroy and/or salvage any of them. All you have is terror missions. That's it. You can only research the enemies you get from cruise mission attacks, beach terror attacks, coastal city attacks.

But while you can't salvage any of their ships, they're attacking yours (HK mod) and building bases you can't stop them building in the ocean! OH NO!

THAT places it EXACTLY at the right starting point for TFTD's story!

So your first job is to actively research, then manufacture, a flying sub - the triton! And then the barracuda! Etc....

I know that TWoTS would help with this, there's a whole lead up to these things. But the point is that to make the switch to the sea-based war as jarring and absolute as possible. Aliens that attack your ships, bases you can't attack being built in the sea, a real pressure to research new kinds of base so you can find them with sonar. I don't know if it would be possible/easy to make it so sea-based stuff can only be manufactured at sea, only researched at sea. You wouldn't want to stretch credibility. But basically force the player to do as much at sea as you can get away with, which will force them to totally upend their comfortable plans to create a whole new kind of FIGHTING FORCE!!! AAAAAA!!!! I AM SO EXCITED!!!!

Dude, if you could handle this like a killer plot-twist, forcing a total shift in the game focus down a new tech tree? Be merciless to the player, force them to totally re-adapt to a new kind of enemy. And now I'm writing, actually, the TWoTS one would be absolutely great for this because it starts off even before the flying sub with much more basic things you have to work with first, adding to the desperation and tension. And the longer you leave it, the more bases the aliens build unopposed, the more those bases are sending up hives of alien fighters and controlling the seas...... you might even have to fly your people over land as much as possible all the time, and slowly clear the seas of alien bases to make them safe, which would add this amazing new element to the game.

Mate, you are not giving up, I fucking forbid it. This is too cool. You have to continue, there's just so much potential here. This could be the most demented, full-spectrum xcom experience that exists. DO IT!!!! DO IT DO IT DO IT!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

7

Released Mods / Re: [UFO]&[TFTD][Beta?]Hybrid Mod for UFO enemy unknown and TFTD.

« on: November 21, 2020, 12:22:12 am »

WHAT? Noooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

It sucks if it's not being developed anymore. The last update was from September this year, so surely it's not a true death. A sadness if it is.

The thing is, it's a herculean task to get this thing working. Not just because of stitching together the two games, but stitching together the gameplay. I've played the latest version. I have some thoughts. I want to put them somewhere, because

There are a couple of technical wrinkles but taken as a whole it is epic. The ability to go land or sea is cool.

Now to the nitty gritty. Nothing I say here should be taken as an attack. The vision and ambition of this project is simply insane, and I love it. I point out issues because wcho035 has asked for help on game balance. I'm not a modder, my ability to monkey around with the code is very rudimentary. But I love xcom, and I've played almost all forms of it to death, so I know the game side of it inside out.

The biggest problem with the game balance in this mod is that the vanilla research tree is simply nothing like deep enough to go with the extra size of the game. This is the big one. More than anything else.

As a corollary, there's not enough aliens because it goes on for longer and takes longer to get going. That's not bad, but it gets a bit samey killing the thousandth floater. You could say that this is okay because there's TFTD research as well as TFTD aliens, but two things- 1 they don't come along for ages, as the early game in this mod seems to go on a lot longer, and 2 even then we all know that there's a lot of reskinning going on there (and I say this as a massive TFTD fan).

The obvious answer to this is the FMP. A work about Area 51 though, there's some fun content, but the hunter killer (HK) mod in that shatters the balance of the air war and almost demands savescumming. I love the ironman superhuman game, and believe it's the gold standard for game balance - if you literally cannot complete ironman superhuman without dumb luck, it's a badly balanced mod. The beauty of the original UFO:EU and also TFTD is that you really, really can beat Ironman Superhuman without luck, just good strategy. It's hard, but very doable. That's the sign of an excellent game balance.

I made the suggestion on the Area 51 thread to create some kind of counterattack trigger condition where the HK behaviour begins after a certain point in the game though - that might work beautifully in this hybrid mod: the obvious point would be the fall of Cydonia - the massively more intense air war would be a cool new element and would test the player's advanced air force to the limit. Even on a low level it is chaos, my problem is not with the HK mod, it's starting a game with it, as it just makes it dumb luck if your skyranger gets shot out of the sky on any given mission. And don't tell me to send interceptors to 'clear a path' because they get shot down too and that's 500k you're pissing up the wall every time they do. This kills the early game and means that it's only plausible to beat with savescumming. So early HK behaviour is bad game balance, but later HK'ing, triggered to start at some point when the aliens "kick it up a notch" would be epic. As long as you have time to get your air force developed first.

The FMP has an amazing loadout of planes and air weapons,  and they all have a use and a value.

What I think would work brilliantly is to force a jump between UFO:EU tech tree (including the FMP) and the TFTD tech tree. Basically, very, very few of the UFO weapons would work underwater. A normal gun *might*, but it would depend on the gun. But normal ballistic weapons underwater might easily break or jam, especially anything automatic. Laser weapons would be far less useful as the particulate matter in seawater would absorb the light far more than air would, so halving the damage of laser weapons underwater makes sense. Plasma would simply explode, as the 'liguid' plasma would be unable to penetrate water very far, and so would disperse rapidly, dumping all its heat into the water itself, creating a massive explosion of superheated steam. I thought what would be cool, if a little evil, is not to tell anyone that, but just to have it so plasma weapons are set to explode the second they are fired.

A quick note re the railgun in the FMP - a railgun would be a very unwise thing to fire underwater, because unlike a gauss gun (coilgun) there must be direct contact between the projectile or projectile housing, and the rails. This would make them very difficult to waterproof. As a huge electric current is being passed through them underwater, this would immediately electrocute the user.

These are ways to make the FMP weapons semi-redundant at a stroke when TFTD happens. I say semi-redundant because alien base missions (the lower part at least) and land-based terror missions could still see you use your whole arsenal. Which would be cool, and would keep it relevant. But it would also force you to get those sonic weapons found and researched. The only thing that could still work from the FMP is the gauss weapons (which are different to the TFTD gauss weapons). I prefer the FMP gauss weapons, just because they're their own thing, not just reskinned laser weapons with clips. FMP gauss has no autofire, which goes quite well with the TFTD feel. You do need to choose between the two though because you can't have two weapons called 'gauss' as I would find it frightening and confusing, and start to cry. I'm very emotionally fragile about electromagnetic catapult technology.

I love, love, love the psionic solution - just make it line of sight. I still think it would be better not to allow psi amps at all, and force the player to wait for molecular control disruptor before they can get their psi freak on, but maybe that's just because I'm bored with psi. Either will work well, line of sight sorts the big game-busting problem of it, leaving it still very powerful and cool. Waiting for M. C would just leave something really, really juicy at the other end of the research tree to aim for with your heart. So I think that would work well to drive research, right into the TFTD section. The reason I say this is that you have to realise that once you've taken Cydonia, you're going to be tough as a thousand bastards, so you need something to keep the game interesting. The HK mod would be very good here. Pushing psi right to the end of the TFTD research tree (by just eliminating the psi amp research option in the code so forcing MC Disruptor as the only option to use it) would be cool too.

Having the FMP just roll straight into TFTD, with the HK mod (and alien hives) kicking off as soon as Cydonia falls, and then forcing the full development of molecular control before psi is usable (and having it line of sight even then) would make this game fucking killer. Like, straight up, fucking killer. The best thing about the FMP, Railgun Sniper Rifles notwithstanding, is that it preserves the beautiful balance of the game in a way Area 51 doesn't. FMP is very doable on ironman superhuman if you really, REALLY go for it, and have a really strong mix of tactical and strategic savvy. And a strong heart when you inevitably lose everyone to the ONE FUCKING CHRYSSALID that SOMEHOW MANAGED TO GET INSIDE YOUR LIVING QUARTERS.

Oh, and that reminds me. The maps on base assaults are too big. Every time I had to go to debug mode to discover some alien that had run away into a hole somewhere and I couldn't find after (I shit you not) 100+ turns of looking. I love what you've done with the surface, with the sea and the land, it's awesome. It's too big, it doesn't work. Or, you somehow trigger a suicide rush from unarmed aliens. Or maybe give everyone a super-weak melee attack and trigger a suicide rush on turn 50 or something. There's no challenge hunting these fuckers down, there's no fun in it, and no real way to avoid it. If you want to make it so they pick up their guns by default and then go on the attack, do that, but only as long as that 100% solves the problem. That would be a great way to do it if it would work, because I really do like the new surface level on the base defence missions, it's a great touch. But that needs something sorting it, and sorting it from inside the mod, not something you have to remember to do before you start through some different option.

The Area 51 mod has some really interesting stuff with the men in black. That's the coolest thing about it that the FMP doesn't have. I raise this because I didn't think the 'mercenary ships' worked as well as they should. They were like this seeming story element that didn't lead anywhere. There was no research to be done on them, no extra stuff (apart from tungsten core bullets, cool idea, but outclassed by plasma and lasers so not that much of a game impact). If you can fold the MiB stuff from Area 51 into the mod, that's got research trees, a little sub-story, all sorts of stuff. It's great fun. If not, then something needs to be done with these mercenaries. Also (and sorry if this upsets people) I don't think it's a good idea to have the mercs named after forum members. It just breaks the fourth wall, it doesn't really add anything to what's happening. If you can think of an actual story in which these nicknames have a plot relevance within the XCOM world, great, but otherwise just cut them.

Oh, and you need to remove the 'lend me money' option, or at least make that an optional extra, or something that only exists on easy mode. It really kills a big part of the early game, especially if you know what you're doing.

I haven't done TWoTS as much as I should have, I've dabbled, but not delved. It's on my list, probably next . That's the only reason I'm not mentioning it. But anything that adds content and challenge to the TFTD section should be applauded and added if possible. This could be magisterial.

Wish I could give you more. Seriously, don't give up. This is an awesome mod with astounding potential. It truly could fuse the two games together, and if done well would represent something just astounding in XCOM history. I'm not kidding, it would be an amazing addition. If you're feeling tired and frustrated, take some time off, but don't you dare give up. Make it happen.

Humanity is counting on you.

On your feet, soldier. Don't you know there's a war on?

8

Released Mods / Re: [UFO]&[TFTD][Beta?]Hybrid Mod for UFO enemy unknown and TFTD.

« on: November 02, 2020, 11:05:14 pm »

I just want to say that the FMP, Reaver, TWoTS fusion idea is blindingly, blindingly cool and I am genuinely psyched to play this. Get the balance right and this could be a new xcom epoch, those mods are sick, fuse them properly, balanced well in a hybrid campaign and that's just epic, epic xcom madness. I'm bouncing up and down with anticipation. Do not get coronavirus and die before you finish this.

Can I make a few points? I would say two things are critical, one is in Reaver's megamod already. His is the one that I think best balanced manufacturing by making it profitable (which keeps it as a cool game element) but made profitability dependent on alloys and elerium, so that's a great one to keep.

The other thing I would suggest is this: you got to nerf psionics, man. You just gotta. This is especially crucial in a hybrid mod because soon as psi works (in a vanilla way), it kills the game tension... so if you got it before the end of UFO:EU, the entirety of TFTD would be rendered challengeless. You could just psi crush all possible things.


My only issue with the FMP is that it has this amazing deep research tree, the last (and coolest) third of which isn't really relevant because psionics just come in and make the whole game a process of data entry.

It will kill this mod dead if you start the TFTD/TWoTS section with vanilla psi troops, or even the option to get them. My view would be to simply remove the psi-amp entirely from the original Xcom, and then make Molecular Control line-of-sight based. Making the TFTD aliens immune to psi but not M.C would be another way to deal with this, but I would honestly prefer - certainly with the original xcom FMP, to just nix the psi amp entirely. That way the player can get psi resistant troops but not use psi offensively, forcing an exploration of the sick, super-cool late-game FMP tech. Rail sniper rifles FTW.

Just my 2 cents, hope this helps, love and encouragement, you're doing something truly ambitious and epic, keep it coming. Word!

9

Fan-Stuff / Re: Haiku

« on: October 20, 2020, 10:27:29 pm »

Chryssalid in base
All my beautiful people
Goddamn fucking shit