Messages

1

Suggestions / Re: Flanking gameplay mechanic

« on: March 06, 2015, 11:45:18 pm »

Yeah I just read that one now and see that many arguments have already been hashed out I will say that I am more on Volutar's side of it

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Suggestions / Re: Flanking gameplay mechanic

« on: March 06, 2015, 08:01:31 pm »

I am well aware cover can be hit if it is in the way and I am not saying that being in cover should make something aim away.

The current aiming/shooting mechanic is that a part of your target is picked when calculating a shot, and a success is represented by a very narrow deviation from that. Since the deviation is very small, the likelihood of cover being hit is minimal (unless the center of the "success area" is badly picked, as described and hopefully fixed eventually by volutar in his post about aiming) and presenting a smaller area is not really meaningful since the "success area" is very small.

Increasing the deviation would mean a larger "success area", which would be more affected by cover. If a success represent "threading a needle", all you need for a success to always be a hit on target is to see a tiny bit of your target. If a success represents hitting a person, hiding half of your body behind an obstacle means a success will actually be a hit on target only 50% of the time (there is only half of the person to hit, the other half of the shots hit the obstacle). Thus cover would play a bigger role. By extension, positioning to avoid giving your target cover (= flanking) would become more relevant as well.

Ah cool I get you now, but it might be a bit tricky to implement nicely. If only half your body is visible but a "successful shot" is aiming at any part of your body it would then always be a max 50% chance to get hit which can then be silly i.e. why aim at someone's leg when you can't see it if you have 100% accuracy.

Typically you aim for what is visible and then from that the centre of it.

Tbh I still think the way it works now is better, might just need tweaking of accuracy in general so you don't get so many successful shots and deviations can still be likely to hit cover.

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Suggestions / Re: Flanking gameplay mechanic

« on: March 05, 2015, 11:32:34 pm »

I'd rather see a mod where cover reduces damage or chance to get hit (which would be relatively easy to do by making "shots on target" have more deviation than they have currently).

Cover does reduce chance to get hit. If your behind a fence and a shot hits the fence the fence takes the damage and you don't. I don't see why standing behind a fence would make the alien aim away from you.

Presenting a smaller target to hit means your less likely to get hit, it doesn't mean plasma is going to go away from you though.

XCOM2012 has a lot of different mechanics to OpenXCOM because of the way it is designed, flanking and cover and critical hits are all part of it's experience but OpenXCOM has many of the same features presented differently, flanking with reduced armour, cover with cover being hit, critical hits (and un-critical?? hits) with damage range on weapons

4

Offtopic / Re: The PSX version had cutscenes, apparently.....

« on: January 03, 2015, 12:21:20 pm »

Do you know where I can find the video that had all the PSX cutscenes in one? Its on Youtube somewhere, but it probably got deleted or made private.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htwC1_e-KeU

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Offtopic / Re: Thoughts on Apocalypse, and one thing I noticed about the factions

« on: December 08, 2014, 09:53:00 pm »

yup, artwork was all MicroProse for that.

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Troubleshooting / Re: AI effectiveness per difficulty level ?

« on: November 22, 2014, 12:27:13 pm »

I don't think the AI changes, there will just be more aliens and they will be stronger, and UFOs fire more quickly the higher the difficulty as well.

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Offtopic / Re: UFO Defense: How to research most efficient ?

« on: November 21, 2014, 12:40:32 pm »

There isn't really a most optimal strategy, it's up to you what you want. You can put them all on one project or half and half on two etc...

Technically as yrizoud is saying the rollover bug isn't in OpenXCOM then the most efficient method is as few scientists per project which means you will only lose a small amount of research potential. The research times are random and research completion updates on midnight so it's impossible to know exactly how much research is left required for a project to complete, if you have more scientists on a project then you have a greater chance of project being completed but the day being wasted for a few scientists as they over-research the goal.

That being said it's only for pure research you would want to distribute scientists amongst all projects evenly, you could use the https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Research_Technical_Details to scale number of scientists based on average research so research projects are more likely to finish at a similar time.

However for practical purposes it's best to research one topic at a time for an item that you want, that way you can get it into manufacturing quickly and therefore you can have it ready to use more quickly as well.

8

Suggestions / Re: Turn UFO landing into crashed ufo via battlescape damage

« on: November 16, 2014, 12:30:43 pm »

I understand your logic, but is there a point to actually do it? Like you say if you manage to get into a UFO and get access to the nav computers and power sources then not only are you likely to be able to mop up the rest of the aliens but you will have probably wiped out most of them on the way.

It's really a needless amount of time spent to code it so it works and make sure it doesn't break or affect anything else adversely for something that would only ever be done by a player if it provided some bonus. That being said this is OpenXCOM so if you or anyone else wants to code it then they can.

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Offtopic / Re: X-com Apocalypse

« on: September 22, 2014, 10:42:54 pm »

To see attachments yes, I think that applies even here

10

Open Feedback / Re: MINUS SICK DAYS

« on: September 17, 2014, 03:09:47 pm »

It's like one of those signs "accident free workplace since : 11 days"

11

Offtopic / Re: X-Com Pro-tips!

« on: September 17, 2014, 03:04:33 pm »

They are defenceless in that (by default) they don't pick up weapons from the floor, mutons which are no longer stunned are just walking reaction fire training. Mutons can't kill your soldiers without weapons, even if they can pickup weapons you can just unload any ammo as well, throw the weapon over a hedge, throw the muton over a hedge.

Unexploded mutons are worth money. Useless for research but great for reaction fire practice and then sell the bullet ridden corpse to your local university/organ transplant centre.

12

Offtopic / Re: X-Com Pro-tips!

« on: September 16, 2014, 12:43:44 pm »

If your pro tip #1 only works on one specific build which apparently you don't even have then why do you state it? It definitely doesn't happen on any version that I have.

Pro Tip #2 is not a case at all, I have had chyrsalids do completely random things like walk through a whole group of my men and do nothing even without me firing at it (or even knowing it was there the previous turn), reapers are even more silly but mainly because they can't even reach your soldiers.

#3 Avalanches don't outrange Battleships. Fusion Ball Launchers are longest reaching weapons in the game and they are equal to battleship range.

13

Offtopic / Re: X-Com Pro-tips!

« on: September 14, 2014, 09:00:08 pm »

I think Pro Tip #1 means that if you use craft cannons then you are less likely to destroy the UFO in mid-air which can be done by avalanche missiles. And

It's impossible for a pair of cannons to destroy any UFO completely in the air
A stingray missile or laser cannon has very small chance of killing a small scout out-right and can even kill a medium scout in the air but should be fine vs everything else, and it's pretty much impossible with un-modded weapons to destroy a terror/supply/battle ship

Pro Tip #2 sounds weird, melee terror units have always had issues and reapers even more so being 2x2 so even though it looks like they should be able to kill you very often they don't. Cyberdiscs and Sectopods will pretty much always fire at you while celatids sometimes won't depending on angles, all other terrorists have issues with moving and attacking units, usually because of pathing issues and possibly because of action cost of melee attack. At least in the original, I think OXC tries to make them a little bit more clever.

Reading the ufopaedia is much better then any of the tips though as it containst vast amounts of information.

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Troubleshooting / Re: Why did only one of these soldiers take a reaction shot?

« on: September 08, 2014, 09:38:45 pm »

Wasn't this an issue before? Or maybe still is? It's not that it's just that one soldier who took the shot it's that none of the others did, I think that was/is because the game just checks one soldier at a time and once it's a success then that soldier fires and no more reaction calculation is taken even though others should also be able to react.

I don't recall ever having more then one alien fire at me in reaction to me doing one (reactionable) action even though it looks like multiple should be able to fire at me and in some cases do if I survive the first shot and then do another movement.

Of course I could be vastly wrong and misremembering.

15

Suggestions / Re: psi "backlash" possible?

« on: September 03, 2014, 11:56:39 pm »

Yeah I thought of this as well, sounds nice if they receive damage and/or morale loss from failed Psi-attempts.

With the first though it would help slow the overpowering tactic of mindcontrol chain every alien you see as well as slow down constant alien psi attack barrages.

Although backlash from controlled subjects does sound exploitable and a bit too harsh on psi amp users if once they MC an alien after failing a few times so have already taken damage that the alien gets shot at and takes out the psi-amp user.