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Messages - psavola

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1
I'd ask not stop making the builds. You can install the original SDL1 library also on newer Linuxes. While erroneous bug reports now and then are unfortunate, I don't think we have seen a big flood of them at least so far to cause a major problem. Not having to resort to AppImages is still beneficial, for example because AppImages are AFAIK not created for all the snapshots (and I'm not sure if AppImages are otherwise also as handy as the native executable).

2
The X-Com Files / Re: The X-Com Files - 3.4: Daggers for Hire
« on: November 12, 2024, 06:37:29 am »
Pardon me if I am out of touch, but did anything change about smoke? The last time I played was six months ago, and I have now updated OpenX and XFiles. On my first EXALT outpost mission, I found myself constantly shot up while in smoke and unable to see the enemy. I don't remember this being at all the case before.

Nothing is listed in the Xfiles changelog either. I don't know if the engine changed, or if I just forgot how things really were.

edit: yeah I think I just forgot how brutal sniper/spotter mechanics are and how smoke is counterproductive against it

Around OXCE 7.9.20 or so smoke and darkness effects started stacking. This will not help at all with spotter/sniper. But otherwise it is much easier to hide within smoke and darkness, so that for example the BL assasins will not find you and you uncover them by dog/rat scanners. Nowadays even if the enemy unit walks one or two squares away it might not be able able to see you.

3
The X-Com Files / Re: Bugs, crashes, typos & bad taste
« on: November 11, 2024, 01:54:01 pm »
I guess they love their breakfast and grains. I have wondered about the same thing.

4
OXCE Suggestions NEW / Re: [QoL] Quick-save multiple slots
« on: November 04, 2024, 07:21:01 pm »
This essentially already exists for geoscape (except it's autosave multiple slots, not quick save slots): https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?topic=11956.msg165704#msg165704

I suppose you want this for battlescape. This was apparently at least once (in 2017) briefly discussed for OXC (not OXCE) and Meridian did not seem very enthusiastic: https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?topic=5269.msg78716#msg78716

5
No you can't because Don't Reselect flags the soldier as hidden and the Next Soldier button will no longer select it. The only way to control that soldier again is to click on them directly, which may be difficult if you don't know exactly what soldier that was and where they are on the map.

This only affects TAB and "Select next unit" buttons.

You can still find the soldier you misclicked on the battlescape. Or when opening a soldier's inventory, cycle through all the soldiers with "<" and ">" buttons next to "OK" (don't reselect does not affect this). Most likely going back with "<" once is the thing you want (unless there are soldies in between where you already had correctly clicked don't reselect). These are the options to mitigate the issue I was referring to. It's not like there are hundreds of soldiers out there. If you misclicked, it should be relatively painless to check at most about a dozen soldiers.

6
I haven't used Don't Reselect for a long time (since OG days), but..

If you clicked it by accident, couldn't you just manually cycle through ALL your soldiers to find the one you misclicked? It's not like there are usually dozens of troops to go through. After you have done so, you could finish the work you want that soldier to do. Or maybe there you could undo (with tighter meaning) "Don't Reselect" e.g. by RMB action so that if you shuffle through the soldiers again with TAB, this soldier would also come up again. This way the engine would not been to remember the history of last action.

7
The X-Com Files / Re: How to fight ghosts
« on: October 31, 2024, 05:30:06 pm »
Unless you have lasers and preferably armors that can keep off those poltergeist flings (or a tank that can shrug off anything), I often want to get started with haunted farms. Far fewer enemies. And definitely keep off many of those investigation missions until you have such gear.

8
The X-Com Files / Re: Bugs, crashes, typos & bad taste
« on: October 27, 2024, 11:12:30 am »
I think "yet" would be better than "but", but I'm not sure if "but" would be wrong either. Or if this is what OP meant.

But to be honest, I'm not even sure what the whole sentence is trying to say. Are these supposed to be as good *and* functioning (but still addictive?), and the difference is that you can get these from the markets and don't need to join the exalt gang to feed your addiction? If so, the sentence could be rephrased.

9
The X-Com Files / Re: XCOM Files Timeline
« on: October 25, 2024, 08:55:20 pm »
Terrors are quite rare, and unprovoked retaliations basically don't exist.

Not quite. There is 20 % monthly chance (starting month 22) of alien retaliation even if you have researched or done nothing; see missionScripts entry "recurringRetaliation". However, it starts with sentry/sabouteur ships, so it's not huge fleets at first.

This happens sometimes. I actually a recall someone posting some time ago (a year+) where Gazers had done a retaliation, and they were impossible to beat on the poster's low-level weapons. After that, the retaliation races was shifted down a bit in this commit: https://github.com/SolariusScorch/XComFiles/commit/51a23b86bc080b56fcad39470a9d7f9c475caaf5 and more tiers for retaliating ships was added: https://github.com/SolariusScorch/XComFiles/commit/31f1bc48b4a66027a4c92e4449163d33e81a2b6f

10
Aren't these two the same, since spotters in current logic will spot anything they see, so also spotting something they see and got shot by adds nothing?

No, they are not the same. Currently the spotter does not need to see the shooter hitting it to flag the shooter for the snipers. That is, shooting out of the dark or from the cover of smoke or outside the vision range of the target unit also gets you spotted. With this kind of option (which Meridian seemed not willing to implement) the sniper/spotter logic would be closer to vanilla AI - but not quite, if the spotter has visibility.

11
For what it's worth, I kind of like the idea of dividing the spotter/sniper AI logic into three different categories of realism (instead of just two that Meridian was willing to consider):

1) the spotter has to be able to see the shooter in order to be able to spot it and direct snipers at the unit. Somewhat equivalent to yelling, "hey I was shot by that guy over that rock, direct your fire over there!".
2) the spotter cannot spot if it's instantly killed or knocked unconscious (the suggestion above). If you only score a non-fatal hit, somewhat equivalent to yelling "hey I was shot to my side from the direction of that big rock, direct your fire over there!"
3) the current spotter/sniper logic, which has no limitations whatsoever.

Of course, seeking equivalences and realism does not actually work if the mod uses "spotter" integer greater than 1, because in that case the hits will be remembered and the location is magically known a number of turns since the hit occurred (and the unit has likely already moved away). Also even with spotter=1 the unit might have moved (usually only a little bit) after shooting. So perhaps trying to achieve or improve realism might be a moot point.

12
Released Mods / Re: [TFTD] [Expansion] TWoTS+ Release (v.2.62)
« on: October 20, 2024, 05:20:56 pm »
IIRC multi-stage missions can sometimes have surface restrictions for one part and underwater ones for the other (biolab, for example).

I don't think OXCE engine provides a possibility for different item restrictions for multi-stage missions. Looking at the changelog, multistage support was added way back in 2018, but itemcategories are not supported (see the example ruleset in https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?topic=4444.msg91852#msg91852). I'm not sure what that would even mean technically mean (would you essentially only be able to use dual-use items, because you can't bring underwater-only items to stage 1?).

I'm 99 % sure I've used surface-only stun grenades in biolab level 2 ("underwater") and was unable to bring DPLs there.

Now checking the ruleset, part 1 has starting conditions STR_SURFACE, and the second part suggests that the underwater starting conditions don't actually apply (at least to items):

   startingCondition: STR_UNDERWATER
(...)
    depth: [0, 0] #Because startingconditions dont work.

13
Released Mods / Re: [TFTD] [Expansion] TWoTS+ Release (v.2.62)
« on: October 20, 2024, 03:25:39 pm »
I suggest redoing item categories "Surface-only items", "Dual-use items" and "Underwater-only items". When equipping the craft, these categories are not useful. When going on a mission, if you use the item filter you need to check both dual-use and the environment-specific item list to figure out what you want to bring along.

At least from the point of view of equipping the craft, it would be far more useful to have categories "underwater items" and "surface items" (i.e. items that work on the surface, and items that work underwater). Dual items would belong to both categories. This way you would only need to browse list once. This is how it has been done in X-Com Files, for example (items may have even half a dozen categories for different mission types).

If there is some specific use for current division of items, the existing categories could be kept and "Both surface and dual-use items" and "Both underwater and dual-use items" categories added instead. But I suppose this would just cause more confusion.

14
Released Mods / Re: [TFTD] [Expansion] TWoTS+ Release (v.2.62)
« on: October 17, 2024, 03:55:50 pm »
It's true that Alien Barge mission is usually a newbie trap. There's roughly 80 % chance it's aquatoids or heavy aquatoids, and by the time it appears, you can't really deal with it until you have MC-shielded your aquanauts (and at the point it starts to appear you usually don't have that yet, at least in an extensive fashion). If you use the ammo in a very conservative fashion or play with lower difficulty, you may be able to handle it if you have three gauss turtles. It's a no-brainer if you get Gillmen (10 % chance). Nagas are also doable (10 % chance).

15
OXCE Suggestions Archive / Re: "full refit" option in battlescape.
« on: October 16, 2024, 07:45:53 pm »
As for accidentally starting the mission unequipped:

I have rarely accidentally hit 'ESC' or clicked 'OK' (if you use mouse in that direction of the screen, e.g. to move back and forth between soldiers; this is a newbie problem, advanced players usually use keyboard hotkeys directly), leading to completely or mostly unequipped (or auto-equipped, if that option is enabled) teams. I suppose there could be a use case for going back to the equip screen, but that would likely also break the balance somewhat. So I don't really advocate that. I have taken my medicine as a result of me being sloppy.

As for the need to re-equip the team afterwards:

In many mods and lesser degree vanilla you don't necessarily know in advance of the mission which equipment is the best for the enemy units before you know what they are. And your strategy of whether you try to capture the enemies alive or kill them might also change based on the information you get once the mission starts. (A concrete example in XCF: out of a couple of dozen identical "environmental alert missions", you will want to catch the shadowbats and rats alive, essentially all other animals you want to kill after obtaining some samples.) So you definitely would love to see a way to change the equipment quickly.

But not knowing what to expect is also one excitement of the game and you could argue that you could break the game balance if you could just go back to equip screen and do everything from scratch easily.

As it is, I usually try to equip the team with the equipment which is most likely the best or most reliable for the situation, or in some cases duplicates. For example in some XCF missions I equip the teams to wield two guns that fit different purposes, and have everyone drop the second one once I learn of what the enemies are and thus what my tactic for the mission will be.

If XCOM was written from scratch:

If XCOM was written from scratch the game certainly could have the option the OP describes, i.e. that you can redo the equipping screen easily, possibly with some restrictions (e.g. you can no longer re-equip with the stuff carried by someone else). But because OXC/OXCE is mainly concerned with keeping the feel of the original, I'd certainly understand if  this kind of engine redesign would be deemed out of scope.

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