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Topics - MKSheppard

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1
Released Mods / [CRAFT][PACK][UFO] Rotorcraft Mod (Collection)
« on: June 30, 2023, 09:17:39 pm »
This is nothing special; it's a compilation of mods already done before by bulletdesigner and Alex_D, but put together with unified UFOPaedia images, etc; and a redrawn Huey Basebit sprite so it matches the others.

I also edited the Huey's MAP file to have six spots in locations that the player could see their men easily.

The main differences (or why would I want to buy a slow rotorcraft?) are cost, mainly.

Skyranger: 500K for 14
Osprey: 400K for 20
Chinook: 200K for 20
Huey: 100K for 6

I.e. it becomes much cheaper to have a Huey sitting in a secondary base to handle trash hauling duties in a backwater theater for 1/5 the cost of a Skyranger.

The reason I cut down the Huey's capacity from about 12 men to just six besides craft balancing is that that remember; the Huey has to carry not only the men, but all the items for them -- plus any high priority cargo -- i.e. if you capture a sectoid leader, you're going to want to bring him back to base promptly with the team, rather than wait for the recovery unit to show up and dismantle the UFO.

Possible future changes:

1.) Maybe recolor the Huey to match the Osprey/Chinook.
2.) Do some range/balancing on the rotorcraft.

2
Open Feedback / Does XCOM need to manufacture *everything*?
« on: June 16, 2023, 04:14:43 am »
I grabbed ChatGPT and asked it to do some basic math for me:

1. Calculate for me the surface area (all four walls, roof and floor) of a typical US trailer park home. It's about 252 m2.

2.) Assuming that the surfaces (all four walls, roof and floor) of the trailer park home are 2.5 cm (1 inch) thick; and the material has a density of 1700 kg/m3 (about the same density as Magnesium)... a medium scout recovery would get you 10,700 kg of alien alloys.

Given that a Medium Scout gets you 11 alien alloys; one unit of alien alloys is about 1000~ kg roughly if we are going by magnesium density.

3.) Doing some rough volume/mass calculations on various items:

0.00388793 kg per 5.56mm bullet @ 11,340 kg/m3 density of lead = 0.00000034 m3 volume
0.00971984 kg per 7.62mm bullet @ 11,340 kg/m3 density of lead = 0.00000086 m3 volume
0.0647989 kg per 14.5mm bullet @ 11,340 kg/m3 density of lead = 0.00000571 m3 volume

For body armor; the typical SAPI plate insert is about 0.001875 m3 in volume.

1 unit (about 1000 kg) of alien alloys (at 1700 kg/m3) would get me:

1.7~ million 5.56mm rounds
686,000 x 7.62mm rounds
100,000 x 14.5mm rounds
150 x Body Armor Plate Sets

So realistically; you shouldn't really have to manufacture "simple" stuff like ammunition and body armor -- even if we go to a fully enclosed suit of body armor -- the surface area of a human is about 2 square meters. At 1700 kg/m3 and 1.5 cm thickness; you're only consuming about 50~ kilograms of alien alloy for a power suit; or about 20 suits per 1 unit (1000 kg) of alien alloy.

Even if there's a lot of "losses" in manufacturing alien alloy stuff to specification; you'd still be able to get plenty of "simple" things per alien alloy.

3
Suggestions / Yearly Release Schedule?
« on: April 21, 2018, 05:14:43 pm »
Suggestion: Make a yearly "official" release (or every 1.5 years), so that the "main" XCOM executable on the front page is somewhat modern.

Not everyone who visits the page realizes that OXCOM v1.0 was quite a while ago, or knows what the nightlies are.

4
Work In Progress / Bullet Designer's V-22 as a stand-alone mod.
« on: July 29, 2017, 06:29:55 pm »
See attached for Bullet Designer's Osprey (from this thread LINK) with the ruleset reworked slightly to be workable in the stock campaign game, instead of only in the random battle generator.

You start out with an Osprey in your starting base instead of a Skyranger, and this mod also slightly modifies the Skyranger to be a very high subsonic transport (850 km/h vs 760 in the original), with much shorter range (400 fuel vs 1400 in the original).

Basically, the Osprey is about half as fast, but can go further (11,600~ km and 29.2 hours in the air versus 6,660~ km and 8.3 hours in the air) versus the Skyranger.

I originally intended for the Osprey to be a slow "loaded for bear" transport, with the full interior capacity of 20 men or 4 HWPs available, while the Skyranger would be a lightweight fast jet VTOL transport that was nearly supersonic (maybe 900~ km/h) allowing you to get places fast, but without HWPs, to all balance it out; but current bug on the map for the Osprey means HWPs can't exit the plane. Oh well.

Known Bugs Currently:
HWP's can be placed into the Osprey, but they can't exit the Osprey, due to I think a pathing error somewhere.


5
Work In Progress / Possible to have more than 2 weapons on a craft?
« on: July 25, 2017, 10:53:09 pm »
Or would I need to go to OXCE?

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Fan-Stuff / Real World What Ifs Suitable for XCOM
« on: July 29, 2016, 04:05:40 am »
Unnamed Yakolev Fanjet design.

7
Tools / Combining lots of small pixel images into one spritesheet.
« on: January 17, 2016, 07:12:48 pm »
I found a SD card that I had thought lost forever; and on it was a lot of old OpenXCOM mod stuff I was doing -- converting really old (as in Original XCOM) mods to OXCOM from PCK format; and they're in a lot of little files, e.g.

sectoid000.bmp
to
sectoid267.bmp

for an old XCOM WW2 mod that replaced the sectoid with a German soldier.

Is there a python script to crunch all these into a OXCOM compliant spritesheet?

Thanks in advance.

8
Work In Progress / TFTD "Mutation Technology"
« on: August 07, 2015, 02:31:47 am »
From the original game box circa 1995:



So how do you think that'd work?

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Offtopic / I hope you're all saving everything to your hard drives!
« on: March 26, 2015, 12:17:15 am »
...and backing them up to CD or DVD every so often.

Reason I ask is that I'm going through a heck of a time trying to recover old wargame scenarios -- several major sites which were supposedly "good" to go for years all went "boom"; and recovering the files is an ordeal.

Case in point; Yahoo Groups. Even though all the text messages are still there; I'm finding that if you want to download anything; even if you uploaded it yourself 5 minutes ago, it throws "access denied" messages.  >:(

EDIT: Yahoo groups appears to now be working for me. But I was frightfully scared for a moment.

10
Offtopic / WWII XCOM?
« on: February 26, 2015, 12:16:31 am »
Way back when in the old days; I hex edited and PCK edited through magic a M1 Thompson SMG into XCOM; and at least one guy tried to make a good attempt at WWII rifles for UFO and WWII uniforms through editing the stock overalls.

Now that we have some more control over the game; I'm struck by the fact you could try making a WWII themed XCOM using the whole Nazi Flying Saucer mythology:



Imagine sending a Raumluftlandschiff to Cydonia to blow it up; and the Panzerkleins from Silent Storm replacing power suits; while surplus french sky blue uniforms replace the overalls (in a nod to Xenonauts).

11
Just what it says on the tin. A few alternate alien base control room designs would be nice to throw some randomness into the game, because after 20~ years of XCOM, we all know what the Alien Base Control Room lower level is set up as; so when we see that familiar corridor setup; we know the end is nigh.  ::)

12
Work In Progress / Harder Research
« on: April 26, 2014, 01:42:14 am »
A simple mod to try and stretch out the game a bit more.

Pretty much everything now costs 2.5 times more to research, with some exceptions:

  • Corpses. 1.25x since it's cutting up a dead body. Zombies, Chrysallids, Ethereals and Sectoids are 4x -- can you imagine the psychic afterimage left after a Etheral dies and it's triggered when someone cuts into it?
  • Interrogations are 2x for most races, but Snakemen and Sectoids are 3x due to low psonics and the eggs within a snakeman, while Ethereals cost 5x -- can you imagine trying to interrogate a ethereal while keeping it from mind-wiping you? Just close your eyes and imagine the increased cost is due to everything having to take longer since the ethereal is pumped full of narcotics to keep it sleepy and dulled.
  • Clips -- 1.5x multiplier because the gun(s) itself are now so expensive.
  • Alien Alloys and Elerium 115 are 4x because these are key fundamental points of alien technologies so far beyond our knowledge of how the world works....


13
Work In Progress / [QUESTION] Research possibilities.
« on: April 23, 2014, 06:20:14 am »
Is it possible at the current level of development for a research project to:

1.) Unlock a new purchaseable item?

2.) Remove a purchaseable item?

e.g.

researching "Alien Alloys"

makes it possible to purchase "Alloy Ammo", and at the same time it removes "Regular" Ammo from the purchase list?

14
Suggestions / More than 2 weapons for a craft?
« on: April 22, 2014, 07:05:43 am »
Just what it says. Would be nice to have options of slot #3 and #4 open if we wanted to.

15
Suggestions / Suggestion for the new MODS screen
« on: April 22, 2014, 01:01:46 am »
May I suggest that if the MOD button is pushed down, but no mod is highlighted, it should say:

"changing mods will automatically restart OXCOM..."

but when you highlight a Mod in the list; it brings up a 2 sentence description of that mod?

Or maybe right clicking on a highlighted mod causes a pop up description window?

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