Topics

1

The X-Com Files / Manor spawning scripts

« on: July 24, 2023, 06:21:40 am »

Starting month 20, there is 8*2 = 16 % chance per cult to spawn a Manor. The spawned manor has 80 % chance to be level 1, 15 % to be level 2 and 5 % to be level 3. AlienBaseUpgrades is defined so that after 5 months, the chance of getting bigger is 30 % and after 10 months it's 100 %.

The chances of even getting HQ Base missions and capturing a commander depend on RNG. In my current game, at month 22, I haven't had any exalt or dagon missions where I would have the chance to go for the HQ afterwards; I only got Black lotus shrine a month ago (all of these after some 9 months of waiting for them). It's really weid that I should have had 6*4 = 24 % chance at these missions per month.

Is it really fair that there is a chance (even a small one, ie. 0.8 % per cult per month) of spawning directly the greatest manor (with MIGs to guard it) even if the RNG has not even offered you a chance to take down the cult yet?

I'd suggest considering some alternatives, for example:
- greatest manors start spawning directly only after you have reseached the specific cult HQ,  but have chosen not to go for it to contain it.
- great and greater manors keep spawning, and they might upgrade a bit earlier to the greatest manor if you don't deal with it quick enough. (There is of course a slight problem of not noticing that a manor even exists somewhere on the globe, but often you get some missions that give you hints or fly by it at some point.)

I would also suggest increasing the chance for CultBase* missions slightly (for example, up from 4 % to 5, 6 or 8 % each) to make it more likely that you'll get the base mission soon after researching the cult operations. After all, if you don't like it, you can just skip it or go there and abort the mission, no harm done.

2

The X-Com Files / Month 0 mission scripts

« on: July 10, 2023, 07:14:02 am »

Reposting a link here. Month 0 (beginning of game at the end of December 1996) spawns a number of missions, which due to very small start delay and randomization crop up in January 1997. But that same month ("1") also spawns essentially a similar set of missions. Therefore you get double the number of missions in January 1997 compared to, for example, February 1997.

I can see no reason why January 1997 should have double the number of missions compared to, say, February 1997. Changing firstMonth: 0 to 1 should fix this bug. Also otherwise, IMHO it would also be nice to give a player a bit slower and easier start (for example, a bit more time to develop early research). If you get crazy RNG (as I had in the post), you could end up having 20+ missions in January 1997 which is physically impossible and you're guaranteed a bad month score.

More details based on geoscape debug log:
https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,4595.msg156282.html#msg156282

BTW: Also 'Shotgun' ufopedia description goes on two pages (not sure if this was the exact same thing as reported before, because this is maybe due to many ammo types).

3

OXCE Bugs / BUG: enemy surrender in the first part(s) of multistage mission, wrong re-equip

« on: June 25, 2023, 02:15:02 pm »

In multistage missions, if you kill or stun everyone, you get the chance to re-equip your team with all the loot you have on your craft as well as everything on the battlefield on the first (or second, in the case of T'Leth) stage. On the other hand, if you go to the designated area and abort to progress to the next stage, you only get to re-equip the team with the items you are carrying or what's on the designated area.

In playing XCF, I noticed that the first stage was ended by enemy surrender (https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,5047.msg156005.html) and I got the empty re-equip screen.

There seems to be a rather obvious bug - enemy surrender should be treated the same as all the enemies killed or stunned.

Looking at the code, in BattlescapeGenerator::nextStage() is the following check:

                                        // protocol 1: all defenders dead, recover all items.
                                        if (aliensAlive == 0 || autowin)
...

I suppose either this take into account surrendering enemies directly or they should be marked as dead for the purposes of this check. An alternate way would be "stun" surrendered enemies, so nextStage() logic would probably work as-is.

4

Open Feedback / TFTD cruise ship map bug

« on: January 14, 2023, 08:12:54 am »

I reported this in the context of TWoTS, but this problem originates from vanilla maps. Is there a way to fix the vanilla map bugs so that it's fixed both in vanilla as well as all the mods using vanilla maps, instead of in all the mods?

Another hole in the cruise ship terror mission floor plan. In the square, you get a sighting to the Deep One located one level upstairs from the red square. I recall having been killed before from the outside while in this elevator, but now I got my own sighting on this.

5

OXCE Suggestions OK / [SUGGESTION] scaling up the interception window to show more than 8 craft?

« on: October 28, 2022, 05:46:57 pm »

The interception pop-up window shows at most eight craft, for the rest you have to scroll them down. In usual campaigns you'll have more than that (I have never exceeded about 12-14, but I suppose that is possible as well). This is likely a result of 320x200 planescape, where you couldn't fit much more on the screen (maybe one could squeeze in a few more if you took all the screen). I suppose everyone currently plays with higher resolutions and scaling. I wonder if the size of the interception pop-up window could be scaled up so that it would show more craft at once? Or would that be technically unfeasible if you also have to provide compatibility for the 320x200 mode?