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Topics - Arthanor

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1
The X-Com Files / New Mission Conditions
« on: November 21, 2016, 06:19:42 am »
lol I've never been called coquette before!

But since I was checking if you were interested I guess that's sort of warranted. I honestly don't think I should ask Meridian to do something for mods since I don't actively mod anymore and actually never modded missions or aliens (for UI, yes I ask, since I do still play).

But if you are interested in my ideas for crazy mission stuff, then I'm more than happy to share :D Just didn't want to waste more of my time, and more forum space if you weren't. (I waste way too much time of forums already! Trying to cut back... a bit.. maybe..?)

Interesting victory conditions would be:
- Victory on "Abort mission" only IF you have killed all units of a certain rank, with the rank(s) passed as a parameter. This would enable "kill the HQ(s)" type missions.

- Victory on "Abort mission" only IF you have stunned and recovered units a certain rank(s), instead of killed as above. This allows "Kidnap the VIPs" type missions.

- Lose by Turn X unless you kill all units of a certain rank(s). This is the "Kill X with a short window otherwise reinforcements arrive and kill you" typical movie plot, but can also be used for the bomb scenario: the target(s) being a 0TU bomb "unit" that's made vulnerable to only to a very specific item (a medikit type item that drains HP but takes 100% TUs, so that's totally useless against anything except the bomb unit since it doesn't move. And you can decide how many "Agent-turn" it takes to disable a bomb this way, for example by giving it 2 HP and the medikit removing 1 HP. Of course, it's missing the climactic KABOOM but I believe you should be able to pick the sound/music to play on a defeat so you could have a KABOOM sound there instead.

Thinking more about it:
If that's easier, you could ask to be able to put primed explosives in enemy units' inventory, and then when Yankes implements the "primed explosives blow up in inventory", you could also make the bomb work with the current victory conditions:

1 - Put an insane explosive in a "bomb" unit's inventory
2 - Make it possible to hack a bomb "unit" as above with a tweaked medikit item before turn X. Then the player can step on the unit's tile and unprime the crazy explosive.
3 - If you don't manage, bomb goes off in geoscape. KABOOM!! :D Everybody dies.
4 - If you do manage, the mission uses the current "win by turn Y" victory condition, with Y = X+1 meaning you must have managed to disable the bomb otherwise you'd be dead by now.

If you consider catching/killing all the bombers a requirement for success, you can also use the simple "kill all" victory condition, since you have to kill the bomb "unit" to be able to unprime the explosive item.

2
The X-Com Files / What to do with Zombies?
« on: November 11, 2016, 09:13:58 pm »
Either a cure or a proper end? Keeping people in cages as zombies is rather disrespectful as well.. what do you think happens when you "sell" them?

I'd say a "cure" that gives manufacturing project to turn zombies into... actually can't you produce soldiers? That'd be a cool way to get them. You give them back control over themselves but they're now strobger/faster/something because all their blood is this crazy substance, so they can't really go back to normal and they join you instead? Otherwise the cure could just give some blood plasma and cost money (you take the crazy blood out, replace it by proper blood and return the people as "well they got into a car accident and we just realized who they are, that's why they're so messed up".

Or just a project to give them "medical aid to die" because there's no cure and keeping people like that indefinitely isn't better. Then you return a corpse that's already "prepared" to the family, which usually includes removal of fluids any ways.

In fact, I think selling of most live (and even dead) specimen is pretty weird. It'd make sense for the accumulation of so much evidence of alien presence to become a problem for xcom and you either incinerate them or build more holding cells/cold storage for corpses. Selling them for a profit is weird. Who do you sell a live chupacabra to in good conscience? Unless it's fluffed as giving it to a government lab of a funding nation for money.. but then you should also be able to give "long term care" of zombies off to them too, which I guess is what selling them is..

Anyhow.. some rambling on the topic.. Maybe it helps somehow... I think a fluff article could be good.

3
XPiratez / Another tweaked power armor sprite
« on: August 31, 2016, 12:02:40 am »
A while ago, I recolored the sprite for the power armor from the bright orange to something that Ivan later tweaked into the Kustom Power Armor we now have. I developed the advanced power armor and it has been bugging me how the gals were wearing piggish pink instead of the rich, regal purple in the inventory pics. So I did a quick recolor or it using Falko's tool, which I thought others might enjoy.

4
Programming / OpenXCom memory issue
« on: June 06, 2016, 08:04:05 pm »
Since I am using a large mod (XPiratez) I have noticed the impact of its size on my computer's tiny memory (1GB). It works alright when I first load the game, but if I go in the options and change which mods I enable, when the game restarts, it behaves as if keeping all the previously loaded mods and reloading all the enabled ones. With XPiratez, this means loading it twice, swamping my laptop's memory and forcing a bunch of stop into swap, slowing the computer to a crawl. To circumvent the issue, I am directly editing options.cfg to enable mods I want before starting the game, so I don't have to load twice.

Would it be possible to purge all mods from memory before reloading?

5
XPiratez / Special missions for XPiratez
« on: May 05, 2016, 06:30:11 pm »
Dioxine mentioned we should discuss his ideas for additions in separate threads, so here is one: Special missions!

The recent addition of Mansions and the Space mission discussion got me thinking:

1 - Two stage missions to capture a craft at the space-port then strike at the space-station? Sounds awesome to me! but can you define enviros per stage? As in you're ok in any armor to get the space port, but need a space suit to the 2nd stage. Or since most crafts are likely space capable (they are very similar to the vanilla UFOs afterall, just have a bit less fuel), maybe a one stage mission with the proper crafts. Having space worthy armors that can move in 3D only while in space would be pretty cool too!

2 - XPiratez shipping mission, with the TftD ships. The rich and decadent elites of earth mingle on fancy cruise ships, enjoying a slow and scenic tour of the planet. See the shimmering arctic skies and rare winter sea ice (no more ice in the summer by 2600 :P), sail through the rainbow of the (oil) Slick Gulf (of Mexico), etc. As Piratez, you strike at a cruise ship, with the top level containing quality VIPs, serving crews (GO Janitors and Hostesses) and the few discreet security personnel (Mercs? Marsec?). On the lower decks, the riches and pets of the passengers await you (glittering and hungering, respectively), along with a hardened work crew (raider slaves with hammer/pipes/power tools) and the engineers in charge of maintaining the ship.

Assets for a ship mission should already be available. What else would you like to see? Dioxine had some quite awesome sounding things already in his post. To reiterate:

   - Ratling hideouts

   - Monster hunts

   - Cult of Apocalypse temples

   - Mini-Pogroms

   - Academy Prison Infiltrations

   - Underwater! Go skinny dipping (or power-armor walking) in the continental shelf, explore old wrecks, ruins and caves, uncover treasures and fight aquatic enemies. Most of your weapons don't work, including grenades! Movement rates significantly reduced, as are sight ranges, but most outfits allow 3-d movement!

    - Arena Fights. Small missions for a few Pirates in an enclosed space, with strict rules on weapons and armor. Face various gladiators, and either die in shame or win prizes and admiration!

    - Space Missions. Take your Deliverator (or other suitable ship) for a spin to some orbital station. Face horrors of space, brave vacuum and lack of gravity, get hi-tech loot!

    - Deep Cave Forays. Who knows what lurks in the shadows Deep Below? Your enemies are heat, fire and darkness. Heat is bad for Stamina, nuff said. But you can meet and kill new, exotic races or experience awful horrors.

    - Into the Demon World! Step through portals to confront insanely powerful demonic cratures.

    - Dreamscape. The most esoteric of your journeys, where all you can take is your mind and body. However, special researcheable outfits will transform into armor when taken there. Also they will spawn some weapons for you to use (others will need to be found on site; all very unusual weapons, naturally). You only suffer Stun damage in the Dreamscape, but you need to win or find exit to return! The catch? VooDoo. The better the outfit, the quicker it will render you unconscious... unless your VooDoo is strong enough to counteract that negative effect!

6
XPiratez / Alternate deployment for the Bonny
« on: April 18, 2016, 08:04:11 am »
Since the introduction of the parrot, the current deployment scheme for the bonny feels awkward. Since the first spawn is next to the trapdoor, the bird has to fly down first, wasting TUs instead of just flying away. That, and the awkwardness of the split (first 6 units spawn by the trapdoor, then main door, then up), made me consider a different way to spawn.

The idea of this new deployment is to follow more closely the typical XCom deployment with the linear progression from "expendable scout" to valuable soldiers to snipers. So it goes like:

- 4 scouts by the rear or trap door
- 12 supports, in rough order of proximity to the exit, alternating between rear and trop doors
- 2 snipers for the roof

The exact layout ensures that:
1 - You parrot can just fly out from the rear door. Or your tank will start by the rear door, ready to deploy.
2 - If a soldier gets injured/taken out and you forget to replace them, the following deployment will be disturbed as little as possible.
2.1 - Your scouts will always be first by the doors, with the first two "expendable" scouts starting at the rear door (where they are most visible/exposed and ready to jump out to take the 1st turn reaction fire), then support, then snipers.
2.2 - If one or two soldier are missing, the snipers start by the stairs so they can get to the roof asap (instead of deploying by the trap door as in the current deployment).
2.3 - If you want 4 snipers, the last 4 soldiers are the ones closest to the roof (the first two from the end start on the 2nd level, the next two start by the stairs)

I've attached a numbered screenshot to illustrate. The main drawback is that the pile of gear is now at the back door, where it is more vulnerable. But that's how it is in every XCom craft so I didn't think it's much of an issue, compared to the other improvements.

The change is a simple reordering of positions as in the following ruleset:
Code: [Select]
crafts:
  - type: STR_VENTURA
    deployment:
      - [12, 4, 1, 2]
      - [12, 5, 1, 2]
      - [7, 4, 1, 6]
      - [7, 5, 1, 6]
      - [11, 4, 1, 2]
      - [11, 5, 1, 2]
      - [8, 4, 1, 6]
      - [8, 5, 1, 6]
      - [12, 3, 1, 3]
      - [12, 6, 1, 1]
      - [8, 3, 1, 6]
      - [8, 6, 1, 6]
      - [5, 3, 1, 4]
      - [5, 6, 1, 0]
      - [10, 4, 1, 2]
      - [10, 5, 1, 2]
      - [8, 4, 2, 2]
      - [8, 5, 2, 2]

But for some reason if I make that a mod, it won't overwrite the original deployment.. So Either I am doing something wrong or you have to delete the craft and then redefine it. For now I found it easier to just go in Piratez.rul, find STR_VENTURA in the crafts and change the deployment directly in there.

I hope it proves useful for someone else!

7
XPiratez / [Items][Suggestions] Moar Stuff!
« on: March 04, 2016, 04:46:04 pm »
I was reading other posts and remembered with two things that have previously been discussed and could be interesting in Piratez:

1 - Smoke bomb! I know we're piratez, but can't we steal from ninjas? :D Same thing as a black powder bomb, but for smoke instead of damage. Handy for scouts and disembarking to pop some smoke right when you need it. Obviously should be less smoke than a smoke grenade. It could take cooking by the book + chemistry to make.

2 - Handheld loudspeaker: I think that with OXCE it might be possible to make a psi-amp like item which doesn't require psi-training and has a fixed psi-strength. Make it very short range, quite weak, and now the gals can spend a significant amount of TUs (I would put it fixed cost, the same amount of TUs as a civilian has) to mind control a civilian (assuming they have crap psi-strength, and why wouldn't they?). The TU cost represents the gal shouting at the civilian for the whole time it is moving. I'm seeing it as an unlocked bought item after contacting the mutant alliance.

8
XPiratez / Arthanor's hammer fix
« on: December 03, 2015, 07:03:57 pm »
Hello fellow Piratez!

I'm sure you all know the hammer well, and either love it because it is so reliable, or dislike it because it "breaks" melee weapons by being so reliable. I know Dioxine has planned to nerf it in the next release, but I'm not sure what he intends. In the meantime, I decided that I'd take a stab (or a..? smash?) at it.

Basically, I am using the functionality of OXCE to define a melee attack with different attributes for a ranged weapon. The hammer (and pickaxe), keep their snap shot, except that now it only deals damage to tiles and items. It causes no health/stun/armor/wounds on hitting units. So it is only useful for smashing through terrain. So that makes it useless for actual melee fighting, obviously.

To go along with for that, the hammer and pickaxe now gain a melee attack, which means you can now hit in diagonals! :D And it uses melee skill properly to calculate the chance to hit, and it trains melee skill on hits now instead of firing accuracy.

The only downsides are:
1 - You will miss a lot more: That's the point, since 100% reliable snapshots were too much. For the hammer, the calculation is now, as was in the mod for the accuracy that never really mattered:

0.6 * (melee/2 + 50)

so at 100 melee, you have 60% chance to hit, at 50% melee, 45% to hit, at 0 melee, you have 30%. That's a quite significant nerf hit wise, and it would probably make sense to increase the base accuracy (accuracyMelee in the mod), to something like 75.

2 - You can't use it to clear elevators anymore :(

3 - You can't use it to finish off unconscious aliens :'(

Obviously, these are downsides of all melee weapons, and it exchange we get a melee weapon that behaves like one, but can also destroy walls.

Let me know what you think.

Also, since I finally looked into the OXCE modding stuff (and what marvellous customization options there are.. well done Yankes!), this opens up the possibility of an upgrade for the hammer: The thunder hammer :D

9
Watching Meridian play Piratez, I got thinking: The ufopaedia is great for vanilla, but once you pack it full of articles like Dioxine did, it becomes a bit cumbersome. I thought about two things that might make it nicer:

1 - Fix the "research completed" popup so that it always displays what was completed. Currently, if you research a, say, sectoid medic twice, the second time the name of the research topic is not displayed, so you have to guess what just completed from what extra ufopaedia article you got.

2 - Allow all the ufopaedia articles that have been unlocked by the latest article to be displayed, not just one + one for getOneFree.

3 - Color red the names of articles in the ufopaedia which have never been accessed. If #2 is implemented, this becomes sort of redundant, but as things are currently, you can unlock multiple articles and it might take a while before you realize since they don't show up.

10
XPiratez / WARNING: Missing new mission for upgrades to v0.96
« on: November 21, 2015, 10:40:00 pm »
X-Piratez v0.96 introduces a new mission to the mod:
Spoiler:
STR_LOC_RET_BASE, a Reticulan base mission.
This will be missing from your game unless you start a new campaign.

The way OpenXCom generates missions is a bit odd. When you launch a campaign, it generates all the possible missions for the whole game. When you save your game, instead of saving missions that have already happened so they don't happen again, OpenXCom saves possible future missions in the save file.

This means that, when upgrading to a new version of a mod with new missions added, you will never see them. This is because they are not listed in your save file from the old version (because they didn't exist when you generated your new game). When reading in the save file with the new version, since the new missions are not listed, the game thinks that they have already happened!

This is an unfortunate design choice that makes changing missions a bad thing for upgrades. If instead missions that already happened where saved, you would never have this problem. Luckily, there is a fix: You can go in your save and add the new missions, so that they can be generated from the next month onwards normally.

In order to do this:
1 - open your game save (any text editor will do)
2 - search for "alienStrategy". This is the section of the game save that keeps all the possible missions.
3 - go down to "possibleMissions"
4 - under each region, you need to add the missing missions. Note: Dioxine also changed the odds of seeing another mission, so you can fix that as well! Below is a list of all the changes: Remove the lines in red, add the lines in green. If one of the lines in red is missing, that means you already saw the mission, so don't add the following green line.

Missions to add:
Spoiler:
alienStrategy:
  possibleMissions:
    - region: STR_NORTH_AMERICA
      missions:
        Nothing changed
    - region: STR_ARCTIC:
      missions:
        STR_MISSION_LOC_RET_BASE: 25
    - region: STR_ANTARCTICA
      missions:
        STR_MISSION_LOC_RET_BASE: 25
    - region: STR_SOUTH_AMERICA
      missions:
        STR_MISSION_LOC_RET_BASE: 60
    - region: STR_EUROPE
      missions:
        STR_MISSION_LOC_RET_BASE: 60
    - region: STR_NORTH_AFRICA
      missions:
        STR_MISSION_LOC_RET_BASE: 60
    - region: STR_SOUTHERN_AFRICA
      missions:
       STR_MISSION_LOC_RET_BASE: 60
       STR_MISSION_RETICULAN_TRADING: 100
       STR_MISSION_RETICULAN_TRADING: 110
    - region: STR_CENTRAL_ASIA
      missions:
        STR_MISSION_LOC_RET_BASE: 60
        STR_MISSION_RETICULAN_TRADING: 60
        STR_MISSION_RETICULAN_TRADING: 70
    - region: STR_SOUTH_EAST_ASIA
      missions:
        STR_MISSION_LOC_RET_BASE: 60
        STR_MISSION_RETICULAN_TRADING: 60
        STR_MISSION_RETICULAN_TRADING: 70
    - region: STR_SIBERIA
      missions:
        STR_MISSION_RETICULAN_TRADING: 50
        STR_MISSION_RETICULAN_TRADING: 70
    - region: STR_AUSTRALASIA
      missions:
        STR_MISSION_LOC_RET_BASE: 60
        STR_MISSION_RETICULAN_TRADING: 50
        STR_MISSION_RETICULAN_TRADING: 70
    - region: STR_PACIFIC
      missions:
        STR_MISSION_LOC_RET_BASE: 60

Although this may sound like something bad happened, it didn't ;) Something great happened: Dioxine added even more awesome stuff for us to play with! :D

Enjoy!

11
XPiratez / Map stuff
« on: November 16, 2015, 08:54:38 pm »
So after playing a (game) year of Piratez, I've come to some pretty solid feelings about maps:

1 - F*cking caves!!! Why are there so many? I agree that they are a cool little addition, but much like in real life, finding one should be a "ooh! There's a cave there!" rather than, "yup, that's the 3rd cave of the map, like every other map". It's like you can't step outside without stumbling on a cave network. Checking them is very often a waste of time, but you gotta do it for the 20% time when some enemy waits in to ambush you. Checking a cave once in a while is cool spelunking, 2-3 times a map is tedious. Isn't there a way in mapscripts to restrict the occurrence of certain map blocks? I'm thinking [0 0 1] or maybe [0 0 0 0 1 1 2].

2 - I really like how Piratez maps are smaller than usual, but somehow the supply ship's is really big. Is that another way to discourage supply ship farming? (If so, that's totally fine, if not, then it makes those maps really annoying to scout for the lone baby nuke rpg-dude). In fact, making the maps smaller might be a different deterrent, as you will get a good number of very well armed foes in a tight area, so it should be a very intense battle where they defend the ship, instead of this weird search.

12
Suggestions / Select reaction action
« on: November 15, 2015, 04:40:47 am »
When I first started playing OpenXCom, I learned that reaction fire occurred with the weapon with the fastest snap shot, if a soldier had a weapon in each hand. But somewhere in the development of TftD, I think this was changed to the weapon always being the one in the "active hand", which is the last selected hand (and the visible weapon, in case a soldier is using two two-handed weapons).

I am playing through Piratez now, and I have a lot of gals with pistols and swords. This "active weapon" thing is being tricky, where a gal with shoot a pistol at an enemy stepping out of a door in front of her instead of stabbing it, and I am not sure how it works if the active weapon is a sword and an enemy walks more than a tile away. Does the soldier use the pistol despite it not being the active weapon? Does he wait until hopefully the enemy steps within the melee zone?

Overall, I think I would prefer a "use melee if possible, otherwise lowest TU cost snapshot" approach, which is sort of a hybrid between the old and new schemes. An option to decide how reaction is handled (between the two existing schemes, and maybe a "active hand if possible, other hand otherwise" scheme) would be neat.

13
XPiratez / Manufacturing for profit..?
« on: November 10, 2015, 04:23:40 am »
Hi guys! I'm looking for some advice and was thinking of maybe getting some info down for the wiki as well.. I have a base with no still, but some runts there mainly to keep it supplied with ammo and new weapons/armors. But when there's nothing needed, I want them to make some extra money on the side. What do you use then?

So far the gals have had an interest in launching a swimsuit line. It has no required material so that keeps logistics easy, and it does make a profit. I've also been looking at craft weapons (but I can't make many..) as they seem to be quite worth it. Anything else I'm missing?

I'm thinking, maybe we come up with a "Top 5 for X facility", something like:

No special facility:
1 - Swimsuit
2 - Gym suit
3 - Stun bombs (requires chemicals)
4 - Stick bomb (requires chemicals)

Still:
1 - Chateau de la Mort
2 - Rhum
3 - X-Grog
4 - ?
5 - ?

14
XPiratez / [Mod]Piratez - Statstrings
« on: November 06, 2015, 05:08:38 pm »
A while ago, we had a discussion about the gals stats and what is good enough to stand out. I use a fairly extensive statstring system, to try to avoid ending up with too many letters added to my soldiers. The mod first tries to sorts gals in one of 5 categories, based on TU, Firing, Melee and Reactions (in that order). These are all-rounder qualifiers.

A - Awesome gal (85/70/90/65)
a - almost the best (80/62/80/60)
B - Better than most (75/58/70/55)
b - balanced soldier (70/55/65/50)
D - detritus: good at nothing (-70/-52/-60/-45)

Then letters are assigned for outstanding stats as well, with a quirk that a B "grade" or better gal doesn't get lowercase letters, and an A "grade" gal only gets the capital letters for extra awesome stats.

F/f: Fighty for good melee accuracy (AF: 100, F: 90, f: 70)
M/m: Markswoman for good firing (AM: 85, M: 75, m: 58)
Q/q: Quick gal for high TU and Stam (AQ: 95/85, Q: 85/75, 66/66)
R/r: Reactive gal for high reactions (AR: 75, R: 65, r: 60)

There is a marker for weaklings, "w" for less than 30 str. There's no marker for strong, since 30+ is strong enough.

For voodoo, you get V/v/+/-/x/X for 55/50/40/30/20/-20 voodoo strength, once you have done the proper research.

Let me know if you find it useful and if you think something should be tweaked. I'm already thinking of increasing some of the A special stats, as I have some gals that are accumulating too many. Otherwise, it seems to work pretty well.

15
XPiratez / [Enemies]New targets suggestions!
« on: November 04, 2015, 09:26:56 pm »
Obviously, Dioxine is pretty imaginative, but maybe there are other things we can think up that could fit in Piratez?

Today, as I was storming a church craft, I rushed to a position where I knew there was an enemy thanks to my trusty Aye-phone, and, seeing it for the first time, thought "Good! It's just a neophyte!" and then..

Wouldn't it be a great gesture of devotion for some of the church's neophyte and zealot to host on of the Stargods' progeny? They already use chryssalids in combat, but maybe, rarely, you could find a neophyte that has one inside. Oh the look on the face of the gal who finds out..!

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