Topics

1

OXCE Support / [Solved] warning about transparent color index?

« on: September 13, 2019, 06:42:32 pm »

When using this mod https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,1628.0.html I encountered a strange thing. The game gives this warning:

Code: [Select]

[13-09-2019_18-23-23] [WARN] Image Resources/Retaliator/retaliator_base.gif (from SDL) have set incorrect transparent color index 255 instead of 0

But in-game this image is displayed with correct colors. However, if I fix this image so that the game does not complain about it having incorrect colors, then it's displayed with wrong colors!

I may be wrong, but it seems like a bug to me, since the game has no problem with the file it gives a warning about, and it actually does have issues with the file with no warnings.

If it's something on my side, could someone please tell me how to get rid of this warning? (Because extra warnings catch the eye when you are trying to debug something you are working on, so it bothers me).

I'm going to attach the original gif, "fixed" gif, and the screenshot of what it looks like with the "fixed" gif.

2

Released Mods / Chryssalid tweaks [OXCE]

« on: September 01, 2019, 08:50:41 pm »

This mod has two main tweaks and several lesser ones.

Main changes:
(If someone thinks these changes nerf Chryssalids, read through the lesser changes. They are still somewhat nerfed, but lesser changes also give them upsides they didn't have).

1. Originally, Chryssalid's zombifying attack succeeds even if it inflicts no damage. Yes, it fails if they miss completely (i.e. melee accuracy check is failed), but if they hit, then the victim is zombified even when all damage is negated by armor. It makes no sense to me: how are they supposed to inject their venom and plant an egg if their ovipositor (or whatever) didn't pierce the armor? Actually, on this forum there was a suggestion even to make their zombification work only after the damage they inflicted has killed the victim, but I prefer to think that even if they made just a scratch of 1 HP, it's enough to inject the venom. Let's suppose it's potent enough to kill the victim instantly. Still, if there is no scratch => no venom is injected or egg planted => no zombification. So the first change is that the attack should reduce the victim's health by at least 1 HP for zombification to happen.

2. Originally, Chryssalids hatch instantly. If you kill a zombie in the exact same turn in which it was zombified, a Chryssalid is gonna spawn from its remains. This also makes no sense to me. Even though the UFOpaedia mentions Chryssalid's high metabolism, there is a difference between high metabolism and developing a human-size organism from a small egg (Chryssalids carry about twenty of them, according to the same entry in UFOpaedia) in a second. It would be okay in a fantasy setting ("it's magic", and that's it), but not in a sci-fi setting. If they had metabolism rate that fast, they would have to have 100% health recovery, so that if they were not killed in one turn, they would restore from 1 HP to full health by the next turn. And also they would have to be only about 20% vulnerable to all types of damage to reflect the fact that they regenerate almost more quickly than you can harm them.

Also, from the gameplay point of view, it makes the player postpone dealing with zombies: since the zombie is already created, the situation is not gonna get much worse if you leave it alone, but it will get much worse if you kill it and thus hatch a Chryssalid. I think, if the Chryssalids had a reasonable delay before being able to hatch, it would be better by putting the pressure on the player to deal with zombies as soon as possible.

Hence the second change: Chryssalid hatching has a delay of zombification turn (ZT) + 1 turn. During that delay they are spawned dead (unfortunately, making them not spawn at all is impossible). If a zombie is killed on ZT + 2, the Chryssalid is spawned severely underdeveloped, i.e. having 1/3 of its max health and 1/3 of its most important stats (TUs, stamina, reaction, strength, and melee). If the zombie is killed on ZT + 3, the Chryssalid is spawned somewhat underdeveloped, i.e. having 2/3 of its max health and 2/3 of its most important stats. Only on ZT + 4 and later they are spawned fully developed.

Lesser changes:

1. Originally, if a zombie is not killed, the Chryssalid never hatches on its own. Now they shed the husk of the zombie on the ZT + 6.

2. Originally, a Chryssalid keeps attacking its victim until the latter is considered dead, i.e. has 0 or less HP. It tries to "actually kill" the victim even if one of its attacks has already landed, despite the fact that one successful attack is all that's needed and it's not necessary to actually kill the victim. But now, as soon as the Chryssalid lands the first successful strike (deals at least 1 damage to health), it stops attacking the victim and goes on to the next.

3. Now Chryssalids (and zombies too) have no sense of self-preservation. Burning fire? Not enough TUs? Pfft! They don't care, they just charge in. Don't go thinking that makes them less of a threat: it actually makes them far more menacing than before, especially considering the previous change (even if they stop 2 tiles from you, becoming sitting ducks, it still feels more threatening).

4. Especially also considering that they now have a melee skill of 150. Basically, they will never miss, unless they are severely wounded (or underdeveloped). Your hope is the thickness of your armor (and killing them before they get to you, of course).

5. Zombies have somewhat less damaging attack but somewhat more HP than before.

6. If you have the option "Alien bleeding" enabled, zombies previously would receive fatal wounds, same as all other 1-tile units. Now zombies are immune to wounds. They are also immune to stun.

7. All "excessive" damage from the hit that kills a zombie (i.e. the amount of HP that the zombie has in the negative after the hit) is inflicted on the hatching Chryssalid that was inside of it. This damage is still decreased by the Chryssalid's armor, of course. But underdeveloped Chryssalids have significantly worse armor (only for this carryover damage. After they spawn, they have the regular Chryssalid armor). Unfortunately, they get no fatal wounds from this carryover damage, even with the "Alien bleeding" enabled.

8. Speaking of the Chryssalid armor, UFOpaedia says it's "surprisingly vulnerable to explosive ammunition". Now it actually is. (Originally, it wasn't). To compensate for it, I somewhat increased its resistance to armor piercing and melee (it wasn't resistant to them at all) and greatly, to stun.

9. Some people prefer killing civilians "just in case" when there are Chryssalids around. Sorry, but this won't do X-COM should protect the population. I doubled the value of civilians (including the Armed Civilians mod): now you get 60 points for each rescued civilian, lose 60 for each one killed by aliens, and lose 100 for each one killed by X-COM.

Have fun!

---

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Meridian for OXCE with its huge possibilities for modding and to Yankes for his scripting language and consultations on how to use it.

---

Two important warnings:

1. At the moment of creating this post you have to be using the latest nightly version of OXCE for this mod to work, otherwise the Chryssalids spawned at the start of combat are gonna spawn dead.

2. Currently, the Chryssalids that are supposed to spawn dead due to the introduced hatching delay, are gonna be spawned kinda "undead", i.e. with 0 HP, but in a "live" state. This is not that big a deal: they can't take any action and gonna die as soon as the turn in which they were spawned ends, or as soon as they are shot at (even if the shot misses), whichever comes first. Besides, this is gonna change soon, in one of the coming nightly versions of OXCE.

3

OXCE Support / [Solved] Mana pool bar not drawn with correct color

« on: August 31, 2019, 06:38:18 pm »

I always have mana bar displayed as empty, even though it's not (see the screenshot). Does anyone else have this problem?

Game version is 5.6.1 (v2019-08-03).

4

Suggestions / Instant grenades exploding on dropping them

« on: August 29, 2019, 02:44:48 pm »

Currently instant grenades explode instantly only when you throw them. If they are dropped by moving them from inventory to the ground or due to the death of the unit holding it, they explode only at the end of turn. Would it be possible to make them instant when they are dropped?

5

Help / How to override non-empty spawnUnit?

« on: August 29, 2019, 07:22:22 am »

I'm experimenting on something and temporarily need to disable Zombies from spawning Chryssalids. I tried "spawnUnit: -", "spawnUnit: null", and "spawnUnit: []", but they keep spawning Chryssalids. How do I override and disable it (short of editing the original units.rul)?

6

Released Mods / Recovery time revamped [OXCE]

« on: August 27, 2019, 04:48:31 pm »

This mod addresses in several ways the time that your wounded soldiers take to heal up.

TL;DR:
1. Recovery time depends on the total amount of health the soldier lost.
2. Percentage of the max health plays a role.
3. No random involved.
4. Shorter average recovery times.

Details:

1. In vanilla the recovery time depends on the health the soldier has in the end of the mission. This makes you pospone ending the mission if you have wounded soldiers and if it's safe for you to postpone ending it until you heal them with medi-kits, because the difference in recovery time will be great. And if the mission ends (due to reaction fire from one of your soldiers, for example) before you have the chance to heal the wounded soldier, it makes you grit your teeth. I think it's excessive micromanagement, which just adds routine, uninteresting actions. Besides, the commander with a wounded soldier would want to finish the battle more quickly, not to prolong it.

Making the recovery time dependent on the total amount of health the soldier lost during the battle takes care of that: if you heal a soldier, it's not gonna reduce the recovery time. Thus, you have no reason not to end the battle when you can. At the same time, the need to heal your soldiers during the battle is not any less: you still don't want them to have low HP, and also the HP they lose when they bleed are also added to the total amount of HP lost. So you still can't neglect your soldiers, but you are not stimulated artificially to prolong the battle until everyone is treated.

2. A soldier with max health 60 is gonna recover from losing 30 HP faster than a soldier with max health 40. The exact values in percent are: less than 20% (20% – 1 HP) lost is healed instantly. Recovery from losing between 20% and (70% – 1 HP) takes 1 day per 5 HP. Recovery from losing between 70% and (100% – 1 HP) adds 1 day per 3 HP. If you lose 100% or more (it's possible if you healed up a wounded soldier for a significant amount of HP and then he was damaged again but not killed), 2 days are added for every HP.

These intervals are additive. Say, your soldier has 50 max health, he first was damaged for 35 HP (15 HP left) and had 7 wounds. You healed all wounds and thus restored 21 HP (his health is 36 HP). Then he is damaged for 25 HP. He still has 11 HP left, so he stay alive, but the total damage taken is 35 + 25 = 60 HP, which is more than 100%. At this moment you kill the last alien and go home. Let's calculate the recovery time.

Less than 20% does not take any time to recover, so his first 9 HP (20% of 50 is 10, and 9 is the first figure less than 10) lost are not taken into account (if he lost only 9 HP, he would be ready for action immediately). Then we add 1 day for every 5 HP lost in the interval 20–70%: (35 – 10) / 5. Then we add 1 day for every 3 HP lost in the interval 70–100%: (50 – 35) / 3. Then, for each HP gone below 100% (plus 100%-th HP per se, since losing this last HP is what actually would have killed the soldier if he weren't healed) we add 2 days: ((60 – 50) + 1) * 2. This makes 5 + 5 + 22 = 32.

3. Any two soldiers with the same max health that have taken the same damage are gonna recover in the same time.

4. Vanilla recovery times always seemed absurdly high to me. This may be "realistic", but I always say that gameplay > realism. If a soldier recovery time approaches 2 months, it is simpler to fire him and hire another one. Notice that with my formula the numbers sharply go up only after taking "deadly wounds", i.e. losing more than 100% health. Until a soldier has taken deadly wounds (which, while possible, is rather unlikely: he is more likely to die), he is gonna recover much more quickly, even considering that in vanilla you can reduce the recovery time by healing him in combat, while with my approach healing, while useful during combat, has no effect on recovery time (other than by preventing loss of HP to bleeding).

7

Released Mods / Accuracy penalty when flying [OXCE]

« on: August 27, 2019, 04:37:13 pm »

This little mod introduces a 20% penalty to firing and 10% to throwing accuracy of some units when they are flying. The rationale is that they don't have a proper foothold, and these flying suits are bound to have some bobbing. Also, the recoil is gonna affect flying units to a greater extent than standing on something firm.

That was the "realism" reason for the mod. The gameplay reason was that I wanted to nerf the flying suit somewhat. It already makes your life a lot easier, putting you out of reach of Chryssalids.

This mod has two versions: "Flying accuracy penalty" per se and "Flying accuracy penalty Plus".

The first one affects only X-COM soldiers, but not any other units: massive hovertanks and cyberdisks are not gonna be affected by this, and neither are "natively" flying aliens, since they would have some adaptations in their motor coordination because flying is their natural means of locomotion. Also, this version should work with all flying armors, vanilla or added by mods (without the need for these mods' authors to provide compatibility), since it checks whether a soldier is flying at the moment, and if yes, it applies the penalty.

The second one can be made to interact with other mods to affect also enemies. The drawback is that by default it affects only vanilla flying suit. If you have a flying armor from some mod, it is not gonna be affected by this penalty, unless its author knew of this mod and included the needed tag in his armor rule (or unless you do it yourself). The upside is that mod authors can apply the penalty to enemy units as well as X-COM soldiers, since the check is made on a per armor basis. (See readme.txt).

Do not install both versions alongside each other!

One warning: with both versions the chance of success of psi attacks is handled by the engine as accuracy. So this mod also decreases the chance of success of psi attacks. At first I thought of inserting a condition that would exclude psi attacks from this decrease. But then I thought that mental attacks are gonna take a lot of concentration, and it's gonna be hard to concentrate on such things when you are dangling several meters above the ground supported by something like a jetpack. So the penalty for psi attacks stays

Many thanks to Yankes and Meridian for explanations of the script engine and correction of my mistakes!

---
Upd. Attached a new archive. It contains the "Plus" version of the mod in addition to the original.

8

OXCE Suggestions Rejected / [Rejected] Retain ammoless weapons that emptied their clip

« on: August 24, 2019, 12:12:50 pm »

Rejection reason: this is incompatible with the current OXCE architecture

Note: other things requested later in the thread have been implemented in the meantime (energy weapons, overheating, spending more than one ammo per shot, etc.)


Currently you can create a weapon that does not have "compatibleAmmo" but does have non-zero and non-infinite "clipSize". In that case this weapon disappears into thin air as soon as the clip is emptied. For example, I see such a fire extinguisher in one of the mods, it has three "ammo" and when they are spent, it disappears. Could such weapons not disappear, please, but just stay as empty weapons?

Why I'm asking for it?

First, in case of the said fire extinguisher, while it can't be used to extinguish fire anymore once the "ammo" is spent, it can still be used as a melee weapon. And it seems to be right for it to both have non-inifinite clip size, and to not have an actual compatibleAmmo.

Second, I would like to make a mod that makes laser weapons have a limited clip size, but without actual clips, so they could not be reloaded. Instead I would refill a certain amount of charges with a script "newTurnItem". That way I want to emulate that a laser can make a certain amount of shots before overheating, then it needs to cool down, then some more shots can be made. But with the current system, such a weapon disappears when the counter of ammo reaches zero, so while I can watch out for not depleting the ammo completely during my turn, but reaction shots become a disaster.

So, could you please make such weapons stay?

9

Released Mods / Woundable Reaper [OXCE]

« on: August 22, 2019, 10:50:55 am »

It is a small "flavor" mod to be used in addition to the game option "Alien bleeding". You may have noticed that the said option does not affect the Reapers (because they are regarded as "tanks", I suppose).

So this mod makes the Reaper susceptible to wounds (just as the rest of organic units and as opposed to cybernetic Sectopods and Cyberdiscs), though still more resistant to wounds than other susceptible units (since, accroding to UFOpaedia it has "two 'brains' and two 'hearts' which allow it to function even when heavily wounded"). It receives half the normal amount of wounds, rounded down.

This mod can be used by itself or with another mod of mine, "Wounds proportional to damage" (https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,7310.0.html). In the latter case, the Reapers also receive half the usual amount of wounds (which, in case of the said mod, results in 1 wound per 10 HP lost).

Again, thanks to Yankes for his great help.

10

Released Mods / Wounds proportional to damage [OXCE]

« on: August 22, 2019, 10:42:46 am »

The original formula for calculation of the amount of received wounds is rather illogical. In one hit you receive from one to three wounds, with the exact amount being absolutely independent from the amount of damage. You can receive 3 wounds if the threshold of 10 hit points is exceeded by just 1 HP, and at the same time you can't get more than 3 wounds (in one hit), even if the hit has dealt 50 damage (suppose your soldier had 60 HP, so he survived that hit). Furthermore, that 50-damage hit can leave you with 1 wound with the same probability as with 3 wounds! (And an 11-damage hit can leave you with 3 wounds with, again, the same probability).

It bugged me a lot, so I decided to make this tweak that distributes the wounds proportionately to the lost HP. If I were more meticulous, I would even made it so that the amount of wounds received grew with the lost HP exponentially (like the difference between 0 and 10 lost HP would result in 1 wound, but the difference between 30 and 40 lost HP would mean about 5 wounds), but being lazy as I am, I just went with even distribution: for every 5 HP lost you receive 1 wound, as simple as that. This, of course, is also true for all units that can be wounded (if you enabled "Alien bleeding" in advanced options of the game).

There is one difference between the aliens and the humans though: humans will die the moment they have 10 fatal wounds, even if they still have some HP left. I decided against extending this mechanic to aliens, since most of them are either mentioned in UFOpaedia for their survival abilities, like Snakemen, or are enhanced in some way, or, in case of Ethereals, are not even supposed to be able to survive without their psychic powers (which would also enable them to withstand fatal wounds, I suppose). The only species for which dying upon receiving a certain amount of fatal wounds would make sense is Sectoids, but they already have rather few HP, so I didn't want to make them even more wimpy.

The mechanic with 1 wound per 5 lost HP should work on all weapons, even those added by other mods. The mechanic with 10 fatal wounds works only as long as you use vanilla armors, so if you have some additional armors from other mods, you would have to make the adjustments yourself. (Or you can leave a comment here with the id of the armor, and I would add it to the list). I also covered the civilian armors (including the civilians from the "Armed Civilians" mod), in case you increased the amount of HP civilians have.

In case you want some weapon to be more/less likely to inflict wounds, you can give this weapon a tag SPECIAL_WOUND if it does not use any clips like laser weapons or melee weapons. If it has a clip, give this tag to the clip.
For example:

Code: [Select]

items:
  - type: STR_SOME_WEAPON_OR_CLIP
    tags:
      SPECIAL_WOUND: 1

  - type: STR_SOME_OTHER_WEAPON_OR_CLIP
    tags:
      SPECIAL_WOUND: 2
      WOUND_FACTOR: 3

The weapon/clip with "SPECIAL_WOUND: 1" would either use the vanilla formula for wound amount, or you can adjust it with "damageAlter" in this item's ruleset as explained here:
https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Ruleset_Reference_Nightly_(OpenXcom)#Power_and_Damage_types
and here:
https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Ruleset_Reference_Nightly_(OpenXcom)#Item_Damage_Types

The weapon/clip with "SPECIAL_WOUND: 2" needs to be given one more tag: WOUND_FACTOR. The value you assign to this tag means how many hitpoints will be lost by the unit damaged with that item before a wound is inflicted. For example, "WOUND_FACTOR: 3" means that the item will give one wound per three HP.

I wouldn't be able to create this mod without the great help from Yankes.

Upd. Attached version 1.1

11

Released Mods / Decreased TUs for aliens on your first turn [OXCE]

« on: August 21, 2019, 05:32:11 pm »

This is a little tweak that decreases the amount of TUs the aliens have during your first turn in Battlescape.

I have the plans of making this amount equal to the amount of TUs they normally reserve when in Patrol mode depending on their aggression stat. However, for now I had to go with one common amount for all of them, because I have no means to query the spawned unit about its aggression. So I went with 33% because: a) it is more or less average figure (they reserve 0% TUs with aggression 3+, 33% with aggression 2, 40% with aggression 1, and 50% with aggression 0 — my thanks to Meridian for providing that information); b) it corresponds to aggression 2, which is the most likely aggression level for the units you are going to encounter during the first turn.

As to the rationale for decreasing their first-turn TUs, there are two reasons: a gameplay-related one and a "realism"-related one.

Gameplay. Currently, on your first turn you either risk facing significant reaction fire, or just wait this turn out (if you don't see any enemies that can shoot you right inside your aircraft). This leads to the first turn always (with the above-mentioned limitation) being skipped. It means we might just as well give the aliens on your first turn the amount of TUs that they usually reserve. This way we get rid of: a) one routine action (clicking End of Turn); b) the element of being (un)lucky, because you can't just skip the first turn if an enemy has spawned in such a way that it can see the inside of your craft (I'm not a great fan of relying on luck).

"Realism". Of course, realism in a game is a very relative thing, and by itself it's not a reason to adjust something in the gameplay. But if there is a gameplay reason for some adjustment, then realism-related concerns can reinforce the decision. And the aliens having full TUs on your first turn do not make much sense. Did they have nothing to do until you arrived? Were they just standing there twiddling their thumbs? If a UFO has landed for its mission, they would be busy carrying out the said mission. If it has crash-landed, busy with repairing it: when your UFO is missing half a hull and a Power Source, I suppose even soldiers would have to lend a hand to engineers (not all work is gonna require qualified engineers in such a situation, there will be plenty of menial tasks). So they would have to rush out on your arrival, moving hurriedly, and barely having TUs to reserve. With the terror missions, the same: the aliens would be busy chasing civilians, civilians busy running away from aliens stupidly walking here and there, as they do So from the "realism" point of view it also makes sense that the aliens would have only their normally reserved TUs during the first turn, not the full amount.

12

Released Mods / UFOpaedia-friendly Celatid [UNIT] [OXCE]

« on: August 21, 2019, 05:28:30 pm »

The UFOpaedia states that the Celatid:

1. appears to detect human brain waves and will move towards a human target even if well hidden;

2. has the ability to clone itself at an alarming rate.

So I decided to give them both these abilities Now they can feel you outside of line of sight within 13 tiles from themselves, and every third turn (± one turn) they are gonna split out a clone. These clones are actually slightly weaker than the adult Celatid, and cannot reproduce yet, since I decided that the time they are gonna need to mature must last more than what combat spans. And since splitting itself approximately into two takes time, during the turn in which it clones itself, the Celatid has only 50% TUs.

This mod still has some quirks that I can't (or don't know how to) iron out for now, but they are minor.

1. Since the only way to spawn an enemy during combat is via a weapon, the Celatids are actually carrying around grenades that do nothing more than spawn the clones. These grenades can be picked up from the Celatid corpse. I did not assign any sprites to them, so you won't see them, but if you move your mouse pointer next to the Celatid corpse (in the Inventory screen, when standing on the tile with the corpse), you can pick them up. There is no way around this for now. Fixed.

2. If the Celatid was killed during the alien turn in the end of which it was gonna clone itself (i.e. alien turns 3, 6, 9, etc (± one turn)), then even though it's dead, its clone will still appear in the end of this turn. This is gonna be rather rare because it can only happen if it's killed during the alien turn, and only every third alien turn to boot, but it's still possible (if the Celatid is killed with reaction fire from your troops or with friendly fire from aliens). There is also no way around this for now.

Other than that it works fine.

I would like to express my gratitude to Yankes for his script language and his explanations on how to use it, and to Meridian and Solarius Scorch for explanations on rulesets.

---

Attached the version 0.9. The first of the mentioned issues is fixed.

13

OXCE Suggestions DONE / [DONE][SUGGESTION] Woundable Reapers

« on: August 19, 2019, 06:19:48 pm »

For those of us who use the option for alien bleeding, it would be nice if Reapers could be wounded. Of course, with their amount of health it would mostly be for flavor, but personally I care for flavor more than for practical consequences

Just to clarify: I'm completely fine with Sectopods and Cyberdiscs being immune to wounds, seeing as they are cybernetic units, but the Reaper, being organic, should bleed even though it is a 4-tile "tank".

I hope it's not too much work. I would implement it as a mod, with one script writing the amount of "wounds" to a tag, and another subtracting the correspondent amount of health at the beginning of a new turn, but such "wounds" would not be displayed in the Mind Probe screen.

14

OXCE Support / [Solved] How many TUs do aliens reserve?

« on: August 19, 2019, 12:53:59 pm »

I am thinking of one little mod, and I need to know what percentage of their TUs do aliens usually reserve (on the average) when they do not see you. Perhaps someone could tell it with some degree of certainty?

15

OXCE Support Y-scripts / [Chat] Scripting basics

« on: August 15, 2019, 02:04:14 pm »

I have some questions concerning the script examples form here: https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?topic=5245.0

Do I get it right, that
1. the engine checks every frame whether any scripts should be executed,
2. if more than one script shoud be executed in this frame, then "offset" defines in which order they are executed?

Concerning the script "Hit confirm by red "flash":"

1. Scripts "damageUnit" and "recolorUnitSprite" have the same offset. How does it work then? I would have thought (and would be wrong, since this script works) that I need to set the offset of recolorUnitSprite to 11.

2. According to my experiments, damageUnit is actually triggered not when the unit is damaged, but when it is hit. If the projectile or a melee hit does not miss, this script is triggered, even if the damage inflicted is 0 because of armor. When is hitUnit script triggered then? I tried changing in this example damageUnit to hitUnit, and it stopped working, i.e. the unit stopped flashing red when hit.

Also, do I get it right that newTurnUnit is triggered in the beginning of every turn, and createUnit is triggered when a new unit is created, which would in most cases mean, in the beginning of the battle?