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1

Playthroughs / My first real OpenXCom challenge. Superhuman Ironman vanilla.

« on: August 02, 2020, 10:19:33 pm »

Previously I've saved and loaded my game a lot. Didn't like losing soldiers I've used a lot of effort to train, and radar mechanics seemed to lose me the game due to RNG screwing me over. But now that I see that I can counter by using graphs I thought I'd test an Ironman challenge, and write about the game to boot, to try and motivate myself to sticking to it when the going gets rough.

It will not be a speed run. I will prioritize trying to win the game as safely as possible, making sure Earth is not overrun by aliens. Better not take any chances to reduce my chance of success. Feel free to comment the game if you want to.

It will be on Superhuman, Ironman, with options set to vanilla default, with the following changes that are purely cosmetic:

• 1280x800 windowed with 1/2 geoscape/battlescape scale. Shouldn't affect game play, but makes it easier to get an overview, easy to alt-tab to write about the game, and easy to scale screenshots as it's a perfect 4x4 scale of the orignal game.
• Show funds (in geoscape) UI option. Doesn't add secret info. Just a nice addition.
• Arrow, Time Units & Death Notifications in battlescape. Neither adds anything secret, but looks like a nice UI improvement.
• Maximize info screens.
• Inventory stats. To avoid going into soldier screen as often, to checkup stats. Sounds useful. Not secret info.

I will be using the following mods:

• XcomUtil: Statstrings - Again, not secret info, can check soldier screen at any time, but makes it easier to look for a fitting soldier for a task.

I was considering also using the Limit Craft Item Capacities mod to make the game closer to vanilla, but I see that the Skyranger equipment counts agains the bases general store regardless which it didn't use to in vanilla, so if I'm going to take that hit regardless, I'll leave the 80 item limit off to get something back. (It's default off anyhow)



Building first base in San Marino. It will cover UK, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Egypt and parts of Russia, and once I get a Hyperwave Decoder here it will cover all of North Africa, including Nigeria, and the whole Middle East and all the way up to the north pole. That's quite a few funding nations.

Looking through my 8 starting soldiers I have:

            TU Sta Hlt Brv Rea Acc Thr Mel Str
Dolph       52  54  30  20  43  44  75  40  40
Wesley      55  51  29  10  49  53  54  34  26
Dwayne      59  63  30  50  32  42  54  38  33
Jason       58  65  34  50  47  43  67  26  30
Jean Claude 56  58  29  50  43  62  61  32  33
Bruce       50  53  35  60  56  46  76  29  23
Sylvester   58  64  31  50  33  62  67  35  22
Arnold      57  65  30  60  60  45  77  40  22

I see firing accuracy will be an issue. With soldiers starting in the 40-70 range, this low rolls will be harsh and may end in disaster. We'll see. Bravery is a bit above average at least, which might come in handy with the losses I'll be expecting. TUs also start fairly high, 5 soldiers in the 56-59 range which will recover 14 stamina per turn. Arnold and Bruce starts with really good reactions and bravery, but sadly they need a lot of training to get their accuracy up. Anyhow. At least half this bunch is likely to sacrifice themselves for the common good in the first month alone.

To compensate for the lack of half decent radar in the beginning, we'll be analyzing reports on alien activity from around the world, and using our craft to patrol to try and discover UFOs outside of our radar coverage. We will also try to catch the UFOs on the ground, to try and steal alien tech rather than destroying it. While interceptors travel a lot quicker than the skyrangers and have good range due to their speed, the skyrangers have a massive fuel tank and can stay in the air to patrol for a long time. Thus we're planning to dump an interceptor for another skyranger. With only one interceptor, we'll not be able to shoot down any bigger UFOs but we'll try to fight these on the ground instead. We would really like to avoid night missions though. If we shoot down a UFO we can wait until daytime to attack the crash site. We will arm our interceptor with 2 stingrays to shoot down small UFOs when needed. That leaves us some chance of shooting down a very small UFO without destroying it too, and bigger UFOs we're not going to attack in the air regardless.

To begin with we'll have space for 50 crew, and we really want to prioritize scientists early on. We've got 10 engineers we don't currently need, but we'll hopefully need them before January is up so feels sad to just sack them. We're also expecting to lose soldiers, and with a second Skyranger it would also be useful to have two crews, so hiring some extra soldiers sounds good. We'll finish a new living quarter facility in 16 days, in which time we can fill our research lab regardless, so I guess a few scientists more or less those days won't make that much of a difference. We decide to hire 8 more soldiers and 14 scientists for now.

Sadly, the people that run XCom before I took over, didn't think of base defense when they built the base. To help the situation a bit, we're building two new hangars in north end of the base, to replace the ones down south. We plan to replace the general store they built with living quarters later, but we need to build new general stores before we can do that.

We decided to use up most of our money after hiring more people to start base changes:


With limited money, we decided to start of building two new research labs as these takes quite some time to complete. Keeping 150 scientists on the payroll will cost quite a bit, but we hope to find money for them as we go. The two new hangars are a cost it would be nice to avoid, but if we do get attacked, it is nice to at least avoid being surrounded in our base. We would like to only have one contact point with hangars/access lifts though, but as it is, the living quarter up there will likely be staying there, and we are likely also building a living quarter left of the access lift, so if we do get attacked, there's multiple entrance points to guard. We'll plan better for additional bases when the time comes. Building two general stores (thankfully they are cheap), we should be able to replace the one we already have and build a living quarter there in 10 days time. Then we'll likely also start building a living quarter left of the access lift, giving us 4 living quarters ready at the same time that the research lab completes. We also very much need an alien containment center, but as funds are limited, it'll have to wait until we get our hands on some additional cash. It'll be first priority when we do. And once we have some extra and the old hangars can be dismantled, we'll also want a workshop or two more.

With the current plan, we're selling 1 avalanche launcher with 10 missiles, 3 cannons and 9 cannon rounds. We've also have bad experience with the Auto-Cannon, and we're selling off that one too. In total we earn back $173.883 for those. Getting rid of that avalanche launcher with missiles also does wonders for our general store capacity.

Finally, we order some more gear for our soldiers, remembering we'll be getting 8 more. 8 rifles, 20 clips, 10 HC-HE ammo for cannon, and 4 HC-I. 1 extra rocket launcher, 4 small, 8 large and 4 incendiary rockets. 27 grenades, 35 smoke grenades, 30 proximity grenades, 8 stun rods and 40 electro flares. That costs us $93.830.

Selling gear, actually got us enough cash to build the alien containment center straight away, so we're adding that to the order too.

Naturally, our few scientists, are ordered to look into how to make Laser Weapons. Hoping for some quick progress here. That's it.. All orders given. I guess we can lay back and keep scanning activity reports, and see what happens.

2

Open Feedback / Researching sold item.. Bug or a feature?

« on: August 01, 2020, 09:00:15 pm »

Hi..

I see it still is like the original UFO game, that you can start research alien artifact, and as soon as you've created the research project, you can put zero scientists on it and sell all you have of that artifacts, but still allowing you to start researching it later..

As it still is like that, I'm assuming it is because it is not considered a bug?

I'm assuming it doesn't affect research speed or anything, guessing it's only because the game only checks whether you have item when you create project.

3

Suggestions / Optional fog of war

« on: July 29, 2020, 10:37:08 am »

It would be really nice if it was possible to enable some highlighting of the area your currently selected soldier is able to see right now. I tried to search the forum, but only found a thread in modding section for someone asking if there already were such a mod, with no reply.

- If there were an alien out on that field, would I be able to spot him?
- There's a tree 5 tiles north and 1 tile west. If there were an alien behind it, would I be able to see him or is the angle to steep?
- Is that tree trunk big enough to hide someone behind it?
- Do I see over this obstacle or is it too tall?

I guess one way to do it, was for daylight mission to make light outside your vision a bit darker, and for night time missions, make the visible area illuminated a bit more.. Or maybe a ground texture on visible tiles would be simpler and work for all light conditions. Doesn't matter if the visualization is pretty if it's only shown while you press a key or something.

Should of course be optional to use it.

4

Open Feedback / Night vision and aliens - How does it work?

« on: July 29, 2020, 10:25:45 am »

When playing the game, it feels like the aliens see better in the dark. However, UFOpedia seems to state that they should not have an advantage here, but that they can remember your position for later, so the spotter might have moved out of range, and he might not be the one shooting back, so it may appear so. Another place I thought I also read that the alien AI did not take advantage of spotter/sniper tactics.

My experience in the game seems to indicate aliens ignore night though. If they had no advantage, I would expect to be able to walk towards an alien, and as he sees me, I see him, and we're mutual surprised and he thus don't get a reaction shot.

- Do aliens see in the dark so they have the same vision as in daylight?
- If not, do aliens spot me easier if I'm close to a light source like a flare or a fire? If aliens are affected by night, how are they affected? What is a light source for the aliens? Why do they seem to spot me before I spot them?

In my turn, the map lights up around my soldiers. Does that mean I'm carrying a light source making me easily spottable by all aliens? Or is it just a practical visualization enabling the player to see the area around the soldier?

Would be very nice to have a light source with a parachute I could shoot out, which would give some illumination to a large area

5

Open Feedback / Detailed changes from original game. Known research limits for instance?

« on: July 29, 2020, 12:15:09 am »

Hi..

Just checked out the original game again after I found it on Steam, and I found this awesome project. Way to go. I really like some of the quality of life improvements, like for instance being able to see radar coverage when putting down a base, or see how many movement points I'll have left if I let the game pick where to go over to some square. I see you've been conservative in what is enabled by default and have gone for being close to the original by default which is great.

I'm used to managing the AI on superhuman, but the AI here seems to make it considerably harder, at least initially. Doesn't help that I've been forced into night missions. Seems to be higher probability of aliens being close to Skyranger and facing it (last one on purpose I read), and while aliens seem to wonder around aimlessly by themselves doing whatever they might be doing in the original game, in openxcom they seem to be more likely to have a friend close, and actively attack X-Com soldiers. I'm hoping I will like this change, just have to find how to cope with early missions first

But I know quite a bit about the original game, and there's quite a lot of resources on the original game in ufopedia for instance, so I found the wiki page on differences with the original game a bit lacking. Could it be possible to flesh this out a little?

For instance, I've noticed that I've yet to start a research progress where I get known progress from the start, which was 1/6th chance in original game. Why? Is it just hidden at the start to avoid people reloading to retry? Or have limits for known progress changed, or has random part of research time been changed, so you never get down below 67% of initial value?

It's nice that you have removed the 80 item limit, but it doesn't really sound like a bug that the Skyranger has finite storage for gear. Certainly worth mentioning on its own, and possibly also being able to still have the limit. When the content counts against base storage, you get less storage than you had in the original game. Is there any limit at all for what you can bring in the Skyranger now? Item count limit? Item weight limit? A bit strange that items in your Skyranger is removing space from the general stores, though I guess it's a practical workaround to a too restrictive 80 item limit.
 
Research rollover. It sounds like a bug that you get to use all the scientists for a new project, especially as it happens only if you choose a new project that is later in the order. But maybe you should get to reuse the extra resource capacity you didn't need? In the original game, you wasted half the scientists on average but if you chose new project on random you'd have a 50% chance of being able to use all of them a second time, so if you didn't try to take advantage of it in particular, the end effect would be that you would reclaim about the same amount that you had overflowing. I'm guessing that you don't get rollover of either required or extra research hours used in openxcom. Might be closer to the original game to let overflow research roll over, but to any new project you assign them to. Does anything overflow in openxcom? Not a big deal, but as it is debatable what is a bug and what is a feature, and there might not be one single obviously correct way of getting around it, it would be nice with some more info.

Also I didn't find a list of known issues with openxcom, but it has been dead stable for the testing I've done so far, so I'm hoping that means there's none

Anyhow.. My comments are just nitpicking.. Thanks for the great effort of this project