Topics

1

Suggestions / Let a UFO's next waypoint be relative to its last rather than absolute

« on: October 31, 2022, 06:59:36 pm »

Suggestion: Add a new optional variable to RegionRule.areas.zone: bool relative. So areas zones can now be defined as [minLon, minLat, maxLon, maxLat, relative], for example [-10, -10, 10, 10, true]. This will make the waypoint +- 10 lon/lat of the UFO's previous waypoint. If relative is not defined, it defaults to false.

Programming considerations: make relative exist in the data. Pass the new "relative" variable to RuleRegion.getRandomRegion. Pass the previous waypoint to getRandomRegion(), which should be the hard part. Add the old waypoint to the return value of getRandomRegion, making sure it doesn't exceed bounds (debatable whether longitude 10-20 = 0 or 10 with latitude flipped, but we could go with 0 for simplicity and the only negative effect would be the feature acting strange around the poles). Ignore relative waypoints when a UFO gets its first waypoint, throw an error when they are all relative. Side note, I have never figured out how to compile OXCE on Windows, mainly due to installing dependencies and not knowing what to do (where the "exe" is) after the instructions are complete.

Why I think this would be nice: Vanilla's zones don't allow you much control over the length of a UFO flight segment, probably the most important variable since XCOM fighters can plot a course in front of the ufo if the length is long, and because it determines the duration of the flight. You can control the average length by repeatedly selecting the same large zone (the length will be about the radius of the zone), e.g. [20, 20, 80, 80], but then it can become obvious that the UFO is not going to leave that square. In general vanilla trajectories need to be very complicated to accomplish the same tasks, while with these trajectories you could use something as simple as [60, 300, -30, 30] for the first waypoint and [-10, 10, -10, 10, true] for every waypoint after that.

2

Suggestions / Sprinting slows on enemy spotted instead of stopping

« on: May 11, 2020, 08:22:55 pm »

When you sprint (ctrl+move, alternate movement methods) your soldier doesn't stop when they spot an enemy. If you're playing on high speed this turns it into a realtime game of "can I interrupt movement fast enough". It's a well-intentioned feature as stopping on every single enemy can get incredibly tedious. But slightly gamebreaking if you're sprinting around with few spotted enemies to avoid fire.

Instead I propose that if you spot an enemy while sprinting, the game will set movement speed for the next step to be extremely slow. This gives players the option to pause in a timely manner when they see an enemy, while still automatically continuing if they do not interrupt movement by right-clicking.

3

Help / Scripts to make melee more interesting

« on: April 07, 2020, 07:04:30 am »

"Problem": Player units can bypass CQB by retreating 1 space then firing. All units retreat too easily from CQB. In general melee is more dynamic in chit/mini wargames due to its ability to suppress and disrupt. Melees are glass cannons, which is fine but limiting. (Melee is already awesome with energy+stun+bleed)

Solution 1: Stepping away from adjacent ____ enemies is not allowed.
____ could be CQB-capable, or TUs>50%, or nothing, etc it's not important.
Possible using scripts? All it seems to require is SelectMoveSoundUnit, getting original position, getting position of all enemies, and move prevention.
Problem: AI might try and fail to retreat infinitely.

Solution 2: AoE CQB
Possible using scripts? Probably not.

Solution 3: Melee causes debuffs which discourage retreating, such as TU drain.
Possible using scripts? Only if there's a way to make a miss cause debuffs, or melee is high-accuracy low-damage.
Problem: AI might still try to retreat with their tiny TUs.

Solution 4: Melee gives armor/resistances instead of CQB
Possible using scripts? Yes, as XCOMfiles shows you can have items give armor if they are in cerrtain slots.
Problem: Obviously players will swap to melee at end of turn. Oh yeah, and it's unrealistic.
Possible solution to problem: Make melee weapons big. Have armor adjustment only apply if they had the melee weapon equipped the entire turn using scripts.

Solution 5: 1 free melee attack per turn to buff hit-and-run.
Possible using scripts? Well it requires a melee attack trigger so maybe not.
Problem: AI might not use it.

Solution 6: No-scripts. Flashbangs, stealth, smoke, higher HP in general.
Problem: Limiting, generally doesn't hold in the lategame.

4

Suggestions / removed

« on: April 05, 2020, 12:36:29 am »

*something about weighting applyAccuracy so it's supposed to hit cover >10% of the time*

5

OXCE Suggestions Rejected / [Rejected] "NuCom" cover mechanics

« on: February 02, 2020, 02:26:45 am »

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


Hello, I have made a fork of the most recent OXCE release which should implement cover.

https://github.com/InfuriatedBrute/OpenXcom

All the code  is "done", but it is completely untested and uncompiled. But there's no harm in announcing early...? Not sure if this is the right forum either.

It works as follows:

• If no mods manually enable its features, it will not do anything.
• If a unit shoots and hits another unit, and the attacker's weapon has ignoreCover = false, and the defender has takesCover = true, then the projectile has a %chance equal to the (unused) LightCover value on the MCD of the corresponding wall adjacent to the defender to hit that wall instead. Even though it otherwise would hit the defender.
• The AI accounts for this by considering enemies against which it has cover less of a threat when deciding where to flee to, and by preferring flanking shots.
• UFOextender also accounts for this by adjusting the shown accuracy value.

Known problems are as follows:

• When cover works, it will look like the unit was hit because the projectile is adjusted at the moment it is hit. I often find it difficult to see whether a unit was hit anyways, so maybe there should be a way to display text saying whether it was hit or not?
• UFOextender accuracy always considers the cover value, even if the target cannot take cover. Arguably this is good.
• The AI will prefer cover, but that remains true even if you could easily flank it. The logic for changing this would be pretty complicated and it might be hard to tune how close should be considered a distance at  which the player could "easily flank" the AI. Also I simply forgot to do this.
• It's difficult to enable. You have to set almost every unit to takeCover and almost every weapon to not ignoreCover. Then you have to adjust all wall MCDs to their appropriate cover values.
• It does not consider elevation (z-values). Arguably good.

6

Suggestions / Should the AI consider enemy range and partial cover?

« on: January 31, 2020, 12:54:25 am »

There are some very smart things about the AI like not giving away ally positions. But after digging through AIModule.cpp I can safely conclude that the AI only looks at whether it can spot enemies/allies. It doesn't consider

• That a melee enemy can't even reach it this turn
• That it could enter a "hulldown" or "light cover" position.
• That a panicked enemy isn't a threat.

I propose that when an AI unit tries to take cover, instead of an enemy counting as 0 or 1 spotters, it should be able to count as a fraction of a spotter if one of the following is true:

• The enemy will need to spend TUs to get within maximum attack range or pull out a weapon. It should count as (max((dist+enemyTU)/enemyMaxRange, enemyQuickdrawTUs/enemyTUs, 0.25)) spotters.
• The AI unit's body is partially obscured ("hulldown" "light cover")from the enemy. Trace rays from the enemy to a random part of the AI, if some of these rays hit a wall, it's partially obscured and so should count as maybe 0.6 spotters, or spotters proportionate to how many rays didn't hit a wall but that's higher performance costs.
• The enemy is panicked. It should count as 0 spotters.

The AI also might want to consider prioritizing shots on targets that are not partially obscured. This will be especially important if cover is buffed by giving it an accuracy reduction even if its model is not physically touched, which is what I've been trying to do today. Adding light cover is pretty pointless if the AI doesn't use it. This could be a fun addition to the game which makes the AI not just stand there and get slaughtered by shotgunners. Or it could simply be too much work or too non-vanilla, let me know.

7

The X-Com Files / Some suggestions

« on: August 13, 2019, 12:57:26 am »

1) Add turnLimit 12 and chronoTrigger 2 to strange lifeform missions. After turn 12, all remaining monsters flee. Reducing the mission frequency was a nice touch, but this would make the missions strategically interesting instead of a spamfest where only mid-long range assault rifles (or pistol equivalent if low-tech) are  used.

2) Under difficulty settings, increase difficultyCoefficient or defeatScore, so that it is possible to lose in the early game on higher difficulty levels, rather than just giving up because you will suffer from having less veterans later. Maybe reduce number of enemies and increase number of monster terror missions, so that instead of being a grind, hard difficulties are actually hard to survive in. Buff score technologies so players can sacrifice their research to hold on, plus it would be nice for non-promotion-related researches to be more useful.

3) Give less (or equal?) score for arriving at a mission and aborting it than not arriving at all. From a gameplay perspective, missions where you arrive only to abort when it gets intense are not fun, and aborting is super  OP. Thematically this could be seen as a failure of the project.

4) I would prefer less minor missions to shorten the game a bit. If you could implement a setting for that, that would be nice. Right now, it's a bit too easy to get a full squad of 100%-TU agents with 100% of available research covered, yet you still have to do every safehouse and such if you want to play well for EXP reasons.

5) Buff reactions/bravery melee (and slight melee in general), light armor, throwing (especially knives which seem much worse than stars), rats, dog armor, flashbangs (enemies outnumber you), civilians, lone madmen, dagon in general (so easy), bolt-actions, explosives, drone armor, reactions training, heal gel, cannons (except for explosive automatic and buckshot non-automatic), hazmat, skulljack, maybe kneel accuracy. Nerf shields, FAL and similar mid-long-range automatics, enemy dodge (makes swords much better for them than you), stims (increase cost, probably too spammable, basically just ammo for the flame glove instead of waiting for recovery for example), agent bravery (non-psi panic seems too rare).

6) Unit pages on UFOpaedia could be better. I don't really care about armor, I care about resistances, dodge, stats. Dunno why there are so many pages for civilians. But I could be wrong.

7) How about adding transformations? There are four cults, why can't I resurrect people or turn them into 10-bravery 90-psi tentacle monsters, lol. Plus I think being able to bring back a veteran soldier at a high price if you recover the corpse is pretty neat.

8

Suggestions / Mission accomplished shouldn't force back to base

« on: July 06, 2019, 05:49:35 pm »

Would add some depth to have one dropship do multiple missions before returning to base. Of course this would be a mod feature because vanilla shouldn't be changed. Just a little thing. It would still set on a course for home as a reasonable default, but you would be able to redirect it.

9

The X-Com Files / Does TU damage affect the next round?

« on: May 26, 2019, 12:34:48 am »

In XCOM-Files there are flashbangs and pepper spray which deal TU damage. Does this damage just prevent reactions, or does it also slow the enemy next turn?

10

Offtopic / Base defense tips?

« on: May 24, 2019, 06:32:28 am »

Playing FMP on Superhuman. Generally pretty manageable, unless there's an early base defense (which there often is).

I understand you're supposed to build your base so that you don't get flanked. But even then, the enemy often has more armor than any of my ballistics can penetrate, as well as AoE damage that can oneshot everyone in a huge radius. What should I do?

• Stock up on way more soldiers, tanks, and heavy explosives than are needed for other purposes?
• Build a secondary living quarters base, evacuate at first large UFO sighting, and simply accept the inevitable loss of sighted bases?
• Avoid downing UFOs within range of the main base?

I don't think I can do all of that without going into deadly levels of debt. I need to pick 1-2. In any case I'm very surprised how much more common this lose condition seems to be than the other ones (score loss, debt, unrecoverable soldier/equipment loss).

11

Suggestions / Mortars and custom psi

« on: May 16, 2019, 03:29:46 pm »

Don't take me too seriously cuz I haven't modded anything yet. But it seems like it would be nice to have and (maybe) easy to program this feature:

• Arcing attribute set to 0 = current "false" behavior
• Arcing 1 = current "true" behavior
• Arcing 2 = uses a high arc, as with a mortar. If your opponent (and you) don't have a roof above them, you can shoot them.Only really balanced with/as a victory/defeat timer, or with limited ammo.
  
• Arcing 3 = doesn't use a projectile, as with psi attacks. Simply targets the target directly if it hits, and doesn't target anything if it misses. Does not require LoF

Also it would make sense if you could use the attributes of the target (if any) to determine accuracy, as with psi attacks. So there might be a Decay spell which is easy to  resist for strong soldiers.

12

Open Feedback / New here, some questions

« on: May 06, 2019, 07:20:38 am »

1) In Xenonauts and to a lesser degree FiraxisCOM you ignore the terrain that's directly adjacent to you. This lets you take cover behind a barrel without it negatively impacting your aim. Does original XCOM have this feature, or can it be modded in? It might seem minor but it's extremely important to the feel and cover-based combat of those games (though not necessarily this one).

2) Similarly I hear that the tiles are physically modeled in map files? How exactly does that affect gameplay?

3) In Xenonauts and Apocalypse there are gasses that deal damage (and other stuff) instead of just obstructing vision. Does this exist in OpenXCOM?

4) I'm not a huge fan of the CQB / melee dodge mechanic enabled in a lot of mods. You can just take a single step back and it doesn't count, which you should very often do because 2-space accuracy is very high and they have no dodge chance. But the AI won't, which is extremely awkward. It feels like it could do better, maybe apply in a slightly larger range. Would love to have someone CMV.

5)  What is a "master" mod? What kind of files would you need to basically have a 1-hour campaign with a single level? That seems like it would be a useful starting point for me making a mod. The ruleset reference is very helpful, but I basically don't understand how to delete everything and start from scratch like most mods seem to do.

6) Are there any wizard modes or similarly helpful debug tools/mods?

7) Free reaction fire seems like a fun idea. Basically wearing light armor would give you 30% TUs refund on end of your turn. This way you can offhand a pistol to protect yourself. Is it possible, and would it be fun?

8 ) Got any mod reviews? What are the shortest mods? I like short games.