Topics

1

Work In Progress / WIP Soldier Classes

« on: May 13, 2014, 03:39:44 pm »

Okay so my initial idea was to try and implement a class system (aka heavy/scout/medic ect)
so my immediate idea was stat buffs through armor, not enough to make a massive difference to survivability, but stats that help gear a soldier toward a certain style... heavies get extra strength to equip the weapon and ammo and still move around, that kinda thing.
so here's what i've got so far.

Assault kit: +15Reactions/+10throwAcc/+5Bravery  trained and equipped for breaching/ambush tactics
maybe +15 reactions is a *tiny* bit OTT... but the idea is more to prevent reaction fire when entering through doors or corners... good for alien ships or terror missions where there's a lot of tight spaces and close quarters and stuff. or set up ambushes of your own. the throw accuracy gives it the option of being a grenadier aswell/instead.

heavy kit: +15Strength/-25Reactions/-10TU  trained to handle heavy weapons and equipment
+15 strength is more than enough to heft around anything and a reload... its probably OTT but it's a good starting point, things can always be tweaked. The drop in reactions is probably more personal preference, but the idea is it stops the soldier taking risky reaction shots with a rocket launcher and potentially killing himself, his team mates, civilians... and anything else unfortunate enough to be in the radius. the minus TU is purely a movement balance, since low TU's dont affect shooting cus it uses a percentage.

scout kit: +20TU/+30Stam/-10Reactions  trained to move through terrain and quickly cover ground
the idea here is the extra tu's give the unit the option to either use tools like a medkit or scanner. or cover more ground, allowing you to decide if you just want a recon unit or to be a medic, the extra stam makes sure he is able to move for longer before having to take a break. And a drop in reactions hopefully offsets the pretty big TU boost.

sniper kit: +20acc/-20TU trained for long range interdiction. The trade off here is you give up a lot of TU's, making this class pretty static and preventing you from just pumping up a soldiers acc and running it off into battle.

Kevlar kit: +15HP/20armor/Resist AP20%  standard issue kevlar protection
A basic kit for if you'd rather just have extra protection. I feel the problem with early game armor is it's either OP or pointless... when compared to alloy armor I mean. so I thought adding a little extra health instead might make the difference between surviving an early plas shot long enough to use a medkit. and the AP resist is more a counter measure against friendly fire... again, it won't stop you dying, but you'll survive a shot or two (probably... hopefully...maybe...) since early game psi aliens can force your rookies and psi weaklings to run off and commit regicide... thats mainly what the AP resist is for o_o

I also had the idea of adding alloy armor variants that basically give the same stats, but with added armor.
The problem with this is not being able to identify classes on battlescape. each class would need spritework. the xcom jumpsuit has a red/blue patch on each arm. I was thinking each class could have it's own patch colour, red/blue/green/black. the same could be done for alloy armour too.
I don't really think there should be power armor versions since all that armor+flight is more than good enough on its own. Plus by that point you should have a decent amount of trained soldiers

The current ruleset's attached, thoughts? ideas? criticisms? improvements? help?? O_o
I know stats on armor isn't new, neither is the idea of classes, but as far as I know, it hasn't been implemented.

EDIT - I've just started messing with the inventory images, so far I've got the jumpsuits prepped, changes the patches on the arms from red+blue to red, blue, green, brown, yellow and blank. They show up very nicely. it's a small change but since this is new ground for me... I feel particularly pleased >.>

2

Released Mods / [INVENTORY] Quick-Draw Hip Slot

« on: December 08, 2013, 10:13:47 pm »

What is this mod?:
Adds a quick-draw holster to the soldier inventory space.
Allowing fast access from holster-to-hand [0-TUs] and hand-to-holster [2-TUs]
Ideal for medkits and sidearms.

      -- Layout A uses space from the belt (does not give extra inventory) --
-- Layout B adds the holster as extra space (in addition to everything else) --

How to Install a ruleset/mod:
- download your mod containing the ruleset (OXC Quickdraw/Quickdraw.rul in this case)
- move the relevant .rul into the OpenXComs Ruleset folder. Move any extra resources into the Resources folder.
- make sure to update your options.cnfg by adding the name of the new ruleset at the bottom/end like so:
  '  - QuickdrawA' and save changes.

Notes:
- there is a general problem with accessing the inventory screen from the equipcraft/basescape.
  It corrects itself once you get into a mission, you can also try making the craft refuel.
  It's not game breaking/doesn't cause a crash so you shouldn't need to worry.

Feel free to use/reuse/spread/change/include/pumpkin this mod any way you see fit.

3

Released Mods / [HWP] Scout Drone

« on: December 04, 2013, 11:20:07 am »

So I've now got this working flawlessly (everything working as intended) so it probably wants to go up here in the finished section o_o
Small automated drone, featuring an integral smoke launcher. Designed to scout out enemy positions and provide smoke cover for ground troops.

feel free to use/share/change/question/cheddar - and dont forget all Credit to Ryskeliini for the spritework/concept. I just put the ruleset stuff together.

Edit: Just checked to make sure this is all ship-shape and ready for 1.0
Addressed the tracked plasma tank having no clip. Increased drone smoke clip and zero'd off reactions. amended documentation
viva la revolution >.<

4

Suggestions / Inventory Access.

« on: November 30, 2013, 10:19:00 pm »

at current any unit that is A) larger than 1x1 or B) marked as a terrorist has the inventory locked out.
this is fine. But... we have two states of access. Available and Locked out.

Can we have a third - limited inventory access - that allows a unit to equip during prebattle and then locks?

I was playing around with the rulesets and found a situation where at the pre battle equip, a 2x2 HWP had access to the inventory. Inventory for this unit was locked again when the battle started. (the problem is this can't be done under normal circumstances, this was probably some kind of bug.)
But. This i thought... was interesting. So i restarted the battle and loaded this Cannon tank with a rocket launcher...
Tank w/cannon + rocket = yay!
what else can i do? add reloads? as it happens... yes. tanks *can* reload. given they have the relevant ammo somewhere in the inventory. even without inventory access, the R key still reloaded a fresh rocket into the tank. so...
Tank w/cannon + secondary weapon = tactical weapon platform??
they can also prime and throw a grenade, use a stun rod, use a medkit, mindprobe, scanner.
is this exploitable? Probably! but... since you can only access the inventory ONCE at the pre battle equip. you can't change weapons or drop/swap equipment. so I would argue that it makes it fair...
you could have a HWP with a secondary rocket launcher, or a co-ax rapid fire weapon, a smoke launcher system, a scanner, grenade launcher, onboard med station.
and thats just the vanilla stuff.

it wouldn't be hard to make a mod that gives us a blank HWP that you choose which main weapon to give it. instead of 5 different HWPS you could ...build your own HWP just by manufacturing the chassis you want and the weapon you like.

5

Suggestions / 'less clicks' suggestions

« on: November 01, 2013, 08:21:13 am »

Manufacture project queue
As it stands, we can set up several different jobs for manufacturing. But unless engineers are assigned then nothing happens... and when a job finishes it requires manual reassigning. but generally all we wanna do is assign all free engineers to the next job on the queue. When a job pops up on the geoscape as finished, it'd be nice to have a 'start next project' function, that auto assigns all free engineers to the next job in the queue.
Advanced options feature? or an extra button when the prompt on the geoscape pops? could probably be applied to research projects as well?

Simultaneous craft launch
It could save a lot of clicking if we had the ability to send multiple craft a target at once. My thoughts for this would be to change the craft select to a 'highlight craft-accept' behavior, the same way we choose and assign troops to a transporter. yeah... that would nice o_o

Range Based Accuracy as ruleset flag
Lately i was thinking of how to differentiate weapon types to create sniper rifles and shotguns/smgs, so I played around with the [maxRange] flag... but I was bit disappointed when it wouldn't let me fire because the target was a tile or two out of range. It works for grenades or a limited reach weapon like a flame thrower. But if I had a shotgun or smg... the target standing slightly out of the weapons effective range wouldn't stop me from firing... I'd just be a little less likely to hit the mark. So it would be nice if I could set the 'effective range' of a weapon before accuracy starts to drop. And possibly the % increment accuracy drops per tile?
and for sniper rifles, often they don't work well in tight quarters, so reversing the effect (closer = less accurate) would allow us to simulate that too

6

Work In Progress / items with 2 or more battleType's?

« on: October 27, 2013, 06:08:35 pm »

Is it possible to set items to function as ammo for a weapon AND have grenade behavior when used on its own?
My thinking was basically a modified Small Launcher, able to fire standard alien grenades as well as stun bombs. And also to let stun bombs be primed and thrown as grenades by hand.
My tinkering doesn't seem to yield the desired results.

i also wanted to make a new alien grenade that was both HE and INC. To go with this improved SLauncher

...while I'm at it, I also had an idea for what I call a splinter rifle, a low damage alien AP weapon... that keeps generating extra wounds per turn (aka - bleeds you out) until treated with a medkit... or until you die of major blood loss.
but I have no idea how to even begin to do that ._.

Also! while messing with rulesets, i'm not sure if this is a limitation or an oversight or intended...
but I can't make a one-shot laser weapon. internal battery capable of a single shot, gets recharged once back at base (aka no ammo)
the wiki says: https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Rulesets_(OpenXcom)#Items
compatibleAmmo: List of string IDs of the ammo items that can be loaded on this weapon. If none are specified, the weapon doesn't need ammo.
clipSize: The amount of ammo stored in each weapon clip. If -1 is specified, this weapon has infinite ammo.

so it tells me if I set the clip to 1, and don't set the ammo... that the weapon would have 1 shot and doesn't require ammo. but what happens is it tells me theres no clip loaded.
oversight? limitation? am I doing it wrong??

7

Suggestions / Autosave

« on: February 16, 2013, 09:18:14 pm »

out of curiosity, how hard/simple would it be to implement some kind of autosave?
with all kinds of things causing random crashes and closing to desktop I keep losing my saves - having to repeat missions I've *just* completed - losing progress... I know the obvious solution is to save more frequently. but come on... we've all done it, you forget every so often, then BAM! lost progress.

8

Suggestions / A bit of streamlining

« on: January 24, 2013, 02:54:57 pm »

Hey people! new on here, first post and all that >.>

So... since I discovered minecraft, I thought the idea behind shift-click inventory is such a useful feature and should be implemented everywhere more often
so battlescape equipping... would it be possible to implement a similar feature? stuff like moving items from the floor to an available hand and from an inventory slot to the floor (cutting out a bit of click and drag) could it also be possible to rightclick a weapon to unload it, and right click a clip to load it into an equipped empty weapon? cutting out a little more click/drag and streamlining the pre-battle inventory a bit further

The right clicking also opens up another train of thought, it could be made into a context sensitive button. For instance on the geoscape you could rightclick an incoming large ufo to bring up the interception menu, then right click 2-3 interceptors and a skyranger, then confirm to send them all out at once after this target. Instead of;
click intercept -> click interceptor1 -> click target -> click intercept again -> click interceptor2 -> click target again... ect
it could also be used in the basescape to order soldiers, I love the new soldier order feature, but it could be improved further if I was able to right click a soldier near the middle then right click one near the top and it swaps the two soldiers positions in the roster. It's already been implemented for min/max values in sell/buy/research/manufacture ect. It could be used in battlescape to rightclick an enemy to open the firemode menu for the main weapon of the current unit. I'm sure there's more places it can be used too!

Also, it would be handy to be able to reorder my soldiers from the soldier screen and not just from equipcraft. And if I can assign soldiers armor from here and view the craft they're on, It'd be nice to be able to assign them to a craft from here too, or even just link straight to equipcraft screen from the soldier screen.

anyway! just a few ideas of mine after playing around a bit <.<
keep on keepin on.

-Arpia