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Topics - Eddie

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1
The X-Com Files / [MOD] Weapon overhaul, early game
« on: May 02, 2021, 02:50:17 am »
Since I already posted the spreadsheet with the stats, I might as well publish the mod in it's current state. So here goes.

-- DISCLAIMER --
This is a work in progress and not yet finished.

What this does:
Changes sprites and stats for a few weapons that are relevant at the early game. Mostly stuff you get before promotion 2.
Also adds a weapon delivery event that is unlocked when you get the military envoy. The event stops when you reach promotion 2.

The .rul file is heavily commented, I try to explain my decisions.

I did not compleately test this as I have spent too much time modding and not enough playing. Please report if you stumble across things not working.
I would also apreciate feedback on what you think of the weapon stats.

Not all sprites in this mod are made by me. The scoped hunting rifle bigob, the PPsH floorob and the pump action slugs I stole from piratez.
You may use all the sprites that I made in any way you whish and don't need to ask me for permission.

2
The X-Com Files / Real weapons overhaul discussion
« on: May 01, 2021, 05:46:51 pm »
Heya!
So I am working on a weapon overhaul of the early game weapons. Those that have real life counterparts. While changing stats is most often controversial, better sprites are always welcome. So here are my sprites:

3
Rejection reason: this is beyond/outside the scope of OXCE


I've started playing TWoTS, and the early missions have the polyph enemies. It's an immobile coral that spits acid at you. You can sneak up on them when they look in the other direction. This is a bit silly, since a polyph doesn't really have a "facing". If possible, I would like to give them 360° vision, so they can reaction fire on me even when I walk up "from behind".
I think an option like that might also be interesting to add to other types of enemies. Robotic ones that would have sensors all around or some freak alien with multiple eyes or other senses. Since the AI is not particularly good at choosing a facing (like turning it's back to the only door in the room), this would help soften the AI's shortcomings and enable harder enemies.

Code: [Select]
  - type: POLYPH_ARMOR
    fieldOfVision: 360 #default 90

For playability reasons, allowed values should probably be only multiples of 90°. So 90, 180, 270 and 360. Makes it easier to judge what an enemy can see and what not.

If this is too complicated, only having a choice between 90° and 360° would still be valuable. For 360° vision, simply not checking the facing should be doable. Let's call 360 vision "omniVision".
Code: [Select]
  - type: POLYPH_ARMOR
   omniVision: true #default false

If what I suggest is possible with scripting, I'll try to do it myself.

4
Heya,

so I wanted to create a script to give a shotgun "pump action". Meaning that after you fired a shot, you would need to pump the shotgun to chamber the next round. I want to block any fire modes with a different action that needs to be performed before the next shot can be fired. Other uses of such a script could be bolt action rifles and crossbows or bows where the arrows/bolts are not individual items but packs. Another possibility is a charge-up energy weapon.

I'm no scripting expert yet, but I think right now the functionality to create such a script is not available. Feel free to correct my if I'm wrong. I would need a "fire_weapon" hook for a start. Not sure what else I need...


5
XPiratez / Prisoner economics: enslave, sell or rob? (+gambling)
« on: December 04, 2019, 08:14:05 pm »
I was thinking about what the best proceedings with prisoners is. Enslave, sell or rob. The robbery option assumes you then use the chips for gambling.

This question obviously depends on who the prisoner is. Raiders for example have such a low sell price that slavery and/or recruitment are clearly the best options. For your average tough guy or savvy girl the question is not so straight foreward.
The last few updates also changed the economics. Glamour was introduced, gambling was made less profitable. When gambling still gave ~4x the investment back, robbing was clearly better than selling. From my quick test gambling is now less than 2x, so sell vs rob is again an open question.

So, what do you do with your prisoners and why?

My proceeding so far: Sell only when there is no other option. Enslave when the slave monthly earning x10 > chips value of robbery. Else rob + gamble.
The richer I get the more I lean towards slavery.

6
XPiratez / Condemnation bonuses and penalties
« on: November 10, 2019, 10:23:31 pm »
My thoughts on the condemnation bonuses and penalties:
I would prefere if they had less impact. I don't mind the modifiers to freshness, they are part of the fatigue system. But the changes to other stats interfere with gameplay a bit too much, in some cases in an unfun way. Best example - Pyromaniac gives -1 voodoo power per level. That pretty much takes the fun out of using a wand of firebolts (or any other fire weapon). Not worth using if you loose precious voodoo doing it.
When condemnations encourage you to diversify your weapons it's a good thing. This is the exact opposite.

The bonuses on the other hand are a bit too much in my opinion. A few points more strength aren't significant for an uber, but matter a whole lot to a Lokk'Naar. Same for health. And any change to voodoo power and skill are quite significant since voodoo strength is voodoo power * voodoo skill. I would also prefer not to have any bonuses to bravery, since that intereferes with pirate flag usage.

7
XPiratez / [Mod] AGL Riot ammo
« on: July 03, 2019, 12:48:43 pm »
This mod adds some non-leathal ammo to the assault grenade launcher: sponge grenades, CS-Gas and stun. Put it in the mod folder of your game, enable it in options menu.

Sponge grenades are taken from here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sponge_grenade. Does 30 stun damage, 50-150% spread. TFTD damage to avoid overkill, as that's supposed to be their improvement over rubber bullets.
CS-Gas has the same stats of the one we already have, except radius is bigger (3 for AGL ammo).
Stun ammo is the stun grenade we already have as AGL ammo. Same stats as the thrown grenade, 50 damage (area) with 1.5 armor effectiveness.

Version 1.1, compatible with Piratez j17.

8
I think it would help immersion (and balance) to have a more realistic shorter throwing range, as an option to be enabled by modders. Grenade launchers seem kinda redundant when you can accurately throw your grenades across the whole map anyway.

According to https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Throwing_Accuracy#Throwing_Distance, throwing distance is about:
2.5 × Strength / Weight

I would suggest a sqare root funtion:
10 x sqr(Strength) / Weight

resulting ranges for a weight 3 item:
str 70 - 27 tiles
str 60 - 25 tiles
str 50 - 23 tiles
str 40 - 21 tiles

Might still be a bit too much range...

While we are at it we could add some more throwing ruleset functionality, I think these don't exist yet:
- custom range multiplier for underwater environment
- min/max range parameter for throwing
- throwing aim range dropoff, default if enabled something like range 15, dropoff 3

9
OXCE Suggestions Rejected / [Rejected] Tile/unit illumination indicator
« on: January 25, 2019, 10:06:17 pm »
Rejection reason: after long discussions, it was decided that this is an unwanted feature (not even as optional feature!)

I humbly request an UI improvement regarding lightning. I often have difficulty knowing whether a tile is considered illuminated (use day vision to calculate visibility) or not illuminated (use night vision to calculate visibility). Some sort of overlay that can be toggeled would be nice, like the night vision indicator. An easier and additional way to display this information would be to change the color of the unit facing indicator arrow (when pressing alt). The arrow can be darkened to indicate a unit is standing in darkness.
I would actually darken half of the arrow to have an obvious distinction to the normal arrow.

10
XPiratez / Uses of the riot grenade?
« on: November 27, 2018, 04:55:33 am »
I'm wondering how the riot grenade is best used. I figuered I can moderate the damage by proximity to the explosion to avoid a kill and get a stun, but no such luck. I tested it on an academy engineer, and she is either killed or remained standing. A stun is very rare. Also, the tu damage doesn't seem to do anything, she always had full tu on her turn (nine shots out of a laspistol + two tiles move).

Do I need to pick more beefy targets like raiders and ninjas? Is the tu damage good for anything at all? Does tu damage on timed explosives even work? (explosion at end of turn, tu get refilled right after at start of turn)

11
Right now, the inventory screen only has a "scroll right" button when looking at a stack of items on the floor that is larger than one screen. I guess it would be quite easy to add a "scroll left" button to allow scrolling in both directions.

12
XPZ Strategy/Tactics / Gold codex craft discussion
« on: July 09, 2018, 02:01:56 am »
I'm currently giving the gold codex a try and am thinking about how to use the codex crafts.

- The Turtle is straight foreward. It's your main troop transport.

- The Shadowbat is a bit more tricky. The Turtle is a better troop transport. The Shadowbat is faster, but still slower than an aircar. If you really need speed, you can use a Hawk as a fast troop transport. I see a potential usefulness, but do you have the hangar to spare? In my base I will have a Turtle as the main troop transport, a Hawk or airspeeder as the fast interceptor and then I also need an aircar to shoot down civies. If a Hawk is present to fill the fast troop transport role, the extra hangar for the Shadowbat is just too much price for too little gain.
The Shadowbat can be armed with missiles, but what are the potential targets? Missiles do too much damage to shoot down civilian craft, and everything else is most likely too fast to catch. You might get lucky, but I don't expect the Shadowbat to do much aircombat. Putting thrusters or targeters in the missile slots might be their best use (once you get them).
The most useful feature I guess is the radar range (600) combined with the large fuel tank. You can use that to quickly fill gaps in your radar coverage. The Hawk can somewhat do that as well with radar range 500, but cannot fly too long (6 h).
Sooo... the Shadowbat will probably be the last of the codex ships to get. As a troop transport in your secondary base, once you have expanded enough to have one.

- The Hawk. At first you will only get one, as the flame cannon will be the only heavy weapon you have. With a flame cannon, a Hawk is very much like an airspeeder with a seagull launcher, just more sturdy. It is also a decent fast troop transport.
The main problem of the Hawk is the armament, if you want to get a second one. What are your early game options? The spike launcher will be the quickest you can get (bounty prize), but a single one doesn't have enough ammo to be useful. I guess the best option is to try and get the ramjet cannon. But that depends on luck on your interrogations (needs rogue fields). Any better ideas?
Early game, the Hawk would actually be much more useful if it had a light weapon slot. The light cannons have much more ammo and low enough damage to intercept civies. With luck you can also have a reticulan plasma charger or a sonic oscillator. I'm really missing the option to mount light weapons in heavy weapon slots (could that be a special of the Hawk?). Or a heavy weapon version of the light cannons. Like a 25mm gatling and 30mm gatling. Shouldn't the runts be able to clobber something together?

13
The X-Com Files / Agent upgrades - an alternative model
« on: May 17, 2018, 02:20:30 am »
I am also not satisfied with the vanilla stat progression. I have been thinking on better ideas for some time. Here is what I came up with, if anyone is interested. I guess this is a good spot to post it. I don't know if it would actually improve gameplay.
My main gripe was that I wanted to reduce micromanagement of soldiers (Has that soldier hit anything on this mission so far? No? then I need to find something for him to shoot or he gets no stat improvements).

The new concept requires training rooms to be available from the start. Stat improvements come only from training, not from missions. Going on a mission will double training efficiency for x amount of days after the mission (the mission experience motivates the soldier to train harder). Going above the training stat cap is possible when the mission bonus is active, but progression is then not double but standard.

Further possible additions:
- Stat loss when not training. When training and skill is above training stat cap, it will slowly go down to that cap unless the mission bonus is active. -> To keep being a supersoldier, you need to see regular active combat.
- Soldier retirement. A soldier of sufficient rank can be converted into an instructor (convert soldier to item). An upgraded training facility can be build that allows for higher training stat caps or some other bonus. To build it requires x amount of instructors as resources.

A hybrid model of this concept and vanilla (stat gains on missions) is also possible, but with greatly reduced stat gains from missions. For example, all stat gains work like moral, where each xp point gives 10% chance for a stat improvement, but the improvement is 1 point and not 10.

14
XPZ Strategy/Tactics / Damage spreadsheet
« on: April 24, 2018, 10:35:09 pm »
Someone asked me for an update of my damage spreadsheet, so here it is. I have not progressed too far into the game yet, so the sheet only contains early game stuff. Ask questions if something is unclear.

15
XPiratez / Feedback 0.99I1
« on: February 19, 2018, 09:04:54 pm »
Here is some quick feedback from me on the current version. Since the next release is not too far away, I should say what I have to say now so any improvement that come from it might already be in the next release. I've only made it to april of the first year so far, so this is just early game feedback. I play on the highest difficulty and so far have not found it annoying.

Overall, the balance is quite satisfactory. I have so far not seen any "this is best in every situation on every gal" type item.


Airbus range:
I had my base in north america, and the first misson spawned in asia and was just out of my reach. By literally one pixel, my airbus could not reach the target. To preserve my nerves, I edited the save to give it just a tiny bit more fuel.
So... is it too much to ask to give the airbus global range? Otherwise you are pretty much limited to europe as your starting base if you don't want RNG misson generation to annoy you. Other solution: extra battery as a range extender, which costs you one crew slot. Extra fuel tanks have already been discussed for craft, not sure if crew capacity can be modified though. I have already suggested a pupup to notify you that the target is out of range, so you can equip the extra battery before you start flying to an unreachable destination.
I had the same situation later with the blowfish. Just give it a little more range plz, it's slow enough. It makes craft selection quite annoying. I want to keep the airbus because of Dr. X mission later. I need the blowfish for underwater missions. And then I also need a third craft for range? I got an airspeeder, the aircar has not enough range. Now I need a fourth hangar for an aircar to equip light craft weapons.


Weapon selection:
I try to capture everything if possible, that limits my weapon selection. I do extensive testing on my weapon choices, so I'm pretty sure they are the most effective ones. Here is what I have used so far.

Melee
- Handle: Best basic melee stun weapon. Does just enough health damage to stop stun recovery for most enemies.
- Stun baton: for skilled girls slightly better than the handle. Also, some enemies have resistance to stun but less to electroshock (zombies for example). Downside is, enemies might get back up.
- cattle prod: can take down anything (even mechtoids), doesn't need skill. Use on armoured targets and/or for unskilled gals.
- fistycuffs: most dps with skilled gal. Surpasses handle dps at roughly 100 melee skill. Restricted to beefy targets like Ninjas or Werewolfs as soft targets can get killed easily by this weapon.
- Leather whip: use on ratmen and dogs. Their dodge is too high for regular melee, but they have little hp. The whip cannot be dodged.

To fight Sky Ninjas, I though about using leathal melee as I was afraid their dodge is too much. Turned out my gals are skilled enough that fisticuffs do work. When I run my spreadsheet to calculate melee damage, I'm always surprised that the leathal weapons don't really do more dps. The sabre would have been the top choice for Ninjas, but not by much. If you need close range leathal damage, the sawed off shotgun is the best option most of the time.
I needed to use the anchor once on a academy outpost zombie mission to kill the chryssalids. It was on urban map and I could shoot down from a building.

Ranged:
- mini las-charger: can damage most things, but does little damage. Useful because of infinite ammo. Best uses: Shambler hunt. I had my gals at the edge of the map, near a cave entrance. I expected to need to dive for safety, but I could just wait and reaction fire down the shamblers. The damage of the mini las-charger is low enough that the shamblers don't die but fall unconscious. I also use the mini charger to kill academy drones. It can take alot of shots before one does damage, but it is possible. You train firing that way.
- Ramshackle rifle: for long range. Can damage most medium armored enemies (the bullets have 0.85 armor modifier). Useful to kill academy drones. Also can damage chrysallids. Replaced by RFC carbine once you find any.
- domestic shotgun with rubber bullets: Standard long range stun. Great that they deal also health damage now. Just enough to prevent stun regeneration. Once you find police shotguns, you get even better range.
- Sawed off shotgun: Safety weapon to keep on the belt, to get out of tight situations. Few things survive an auto shot from close range.
- Double barrel shotgun: A bit more range than the sawed off. Massive damage. The spread makes it uneffective beyond ~15 tiles.

Generally, shotguns rule the game. Why? Because they are dependable. RNG damage calculation cannot ruin your day (or far less likely). Things you hit almost always die and cannot shoot back.
Suggestion: To diversify ranged weapons, have some ammo with 50-150% damage range. Call it hallow point ammo maybe? I would need to playtest it, but it would certainly be interesting.
Bows used to be op, but the random health damage and no LoS penalty have nerfed them good. Now they are inferior to same tier firearms, which I think is ok. They still have a niche for their arcing shot and cheap ammo. If you hit a ratman and he is bleeding, he will still die eventually.


Armour:
I found the uber clothing mostly inferor to tribal, as the increased stamina regeneration is most useful for early melee capture play. When you have unlocked shotgun rubber bullets, the pirate clothing is best for the skill bonus. Also, the pirate outfit is better than barbarian for melee. The +15 melee on pirate is better than +10 melee and +10 strength on barbarian, or equal. I suggest giving the barbarian the +15 melee and the pirate +10. The barbarian suffers from the stamina penalty, which is required for melee fighting. Maybe drop that, the acc penalty is enough I think. The armor could also be 25 all around to actually choose the outfit for the armor (shotgun protection).
The shield version of barbarian gives close to 100 front dodge on maxed gals. This can be used to tank melee enemies (werewolves for example) at your craft doors.

I like the enviroment effects. They force you to switch armor and playstyle. I had a military transport in march and since then really enjoy the heavy armours I got. It doesn't make my gals invulnerable but reduces the time on easy missons. I would suggest adding a chance of heavy armor to warehouse wars or similar missions, like they have a chance of spacesuit right now. Over time you will get a few heavy armours that will speed up easy missions.
Edit: Or have armour as a bounty hunting reward item. Not buyable, but in exchange for tokens like you can get slaves when you have bank favors.

The latest cheese: door camping
I fought two werewolf missions by camping in my craft. I had two gals with barbarian and shield that could tank the doorway, but in those two missions just a single werewolf ever opened the doors. Can the AI be made to rush your craft more by putting additional waypoints inside the craft? I'm not familiar with how that works, but I would like to be pressured more in my craft. Door camping should not be that effective.

As always, thank you Dioxine for making this mod and still doing updates! And thanks to Meridian and ohartenstein23 for the coding effort!

Edit: spelling fixed

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