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Messages - wsmithjr

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31
OpenXcom Extended / Re: [EXE] OpenXcom Extended
« on: July 18, 2015, 08:16:34 pm »
I apologize if this is a stupid question, but ...

I've read the posts at the beginning of the thread about Extended.  What I haven't quite figured out yet ... does Extended change the OXC game experience in and of itself, or does it only allow mods to do different things than vanilla?  So, if I install Extended and play it without any other mods, is it noticeably different from OXC?  Impressive list of changes in the first post but they seemed mostly to cater to mod authors.

Thanks for any help.

32
Work In Progress / Re: [BETA] Rebalance aliens
« on: August 31, 2014, 06:23:17 pm »
Sadly, any 1x1 unit will be zombified by a Chryssalid when killed. I have no idea how to disable that, probably it's impossible.

ZombieUnit is a parameter of a weapon which states "what unit spawns when a 1x1 unit gets killed by this weapon".

So, then, does it have to be a Chryssalid weapon?  Can you just define it like a Reaper or a built-in Stunrod?  The Bio-Drone in TFTD had a nice electric attack if you can use that.

33
Work In Progress / Re: [BETA] Rebalance aliens
« on: August 31, 2014, 03:57:44 pm »
I have think to my idea of a new lure drone, and think to something could be interesting :
- use the calcinite design of TFTD
- is a robot heavily armored (in comparision to soldier, but not to HWP)
- have only a melee stun weapon (it can use his internal power to deliver high electric choc )
question : how work the zombification by chrysalids ? it should not be possible to make a zombie with a robot.

Sounds interesting.  There's a "zombieUnit" parameter so it looks like as long as you don't define that, it'll be similar to the Stunrod.

34
Work In Progress / Re: [BETA] Rebalance aliens
« on: August 31, 2014, 08:12:20 am »
Just wondering about the HWP Laser Cannons.  What's the rationale behind requiring them to have ammunition when no other laser weapons, even the craft laser, don't require ammunition.  Whether it's true or not, I always figured the HWP cannons were just the fighter cannons mounted on a thank.  Maybe it's a balance thing but the inconsistency seems odd.  Is it possible to limit the shots of the laser cannon without requiring ammo?

35
Work In Progress / Re: [BETA] Rebalance aliens
« on: August 29, 2014, 10:35:18 pm »
This come from the MiB mod where some earth tech have recovery point if you fight against MiB.
I've thank the recovery points only apply if theses weapons are really gain in the battle and not if you bring with you ?

Apparently, that's only the case if you've researched it.  Now that you mention it, I recall this being discussed in the MiB topic.

As a corollary, looking through your ruleset, you are also missing the recovery points for a number of the plasma weapons including Heavy Plasma and Plasma Rifle, but they exist for others such as Plasma Blaster and Toxigun.  FWIW

36
Work In Progress / Re: [BETA] Rebalance aliens
« on: August 29, 2014, 09:46:54 pm »
you cant put unresearched alien weapons on a craft
after research you dont get points anymore

Thanks.  Wasn't at a point where I could check that myself so I'm glad I posted here first instead of making a bug report, or something.

37
Work In Progress / Re: [BETA] Rebalance aliens
« on: August 29, 2014, 08:41:45 pm »
Just noticed an issue with your ruleset and don't know if it's intentional or not.

I tried to replay that disastrous terror mission I talked about above.  I did better but still got wiped out.  I didn't notice earlier, but when I abandoned the mission, I got 22 points for recovered alien artifacts.  My sole surviving soldier didn't bring any alien artifacts with him.  To test, I restarted the battle and
immediately took off, and noticed I received 38 points for recovered alien artifacts. 

Is this some general OXC thing, or due to your ruleset?  Doing some checking, I notice your ruleset has "recoverypoints" lines for the various weapons, such as Machine Pistol, Sniper Rifle, etc.  So, it seems the game is counting these weapons as recovered and assigning points.  Also makes me wonder if you bring alien weapons with you to a battle and then leave with them, if you also get the points for those.  It would appear to be so as I would think it would be consistent, so it seems like a general OXC issue.  That aside, do you really want "recoverypoints" assigned to XCom weapons?

38
However I don't understand how Pistol is useless. It's the best early game long-range sniping weapon, with the ability to squeeze out far more Aimed shots than anything else. :)

Actually, I won't contest that.  Personally, however, I refuse to use Pistols as sniper rifles.  Probably why I'm not really good at this game. :)

39
Work In Progress / Re: [BETA] Rebalance aliens
« on: August 29, 2014, 03:53:20 am »
So why am I saying this? HWP have value outside of terror missions. If that HWP can take a snapshot at the sectoid with a plasma pistol when all your rookies have no more time units after trying to shoot the sectoid with no luck, would you do it or would you skip the turn and hope that the rookie survives?

Funny thing is, I always take a HWP on normal missions.  Guess with a terror mission I was thinking I needed the extra soldiers instead, less concentration of force or something.  But to me, that's the point of the HWPs.  I see videos of people using them as primary weapons and I ask myself why when they can let their soldiers get experience or at least attempt to do so.  However, I try to keep the HWP as a last ditch offense.  However, in the case with a Sectoid with a Plasma Pistol, I'd probably just park the HWP in front of the soldiers to distract the Sectoid.  'Course that has backfired on me on occassion when the Sectoid pulls out an Alien Grenade and gets both the HWP and a soldier or two.   :-[

40
Work In Progress / Re: [BETA] Rebalance aliens
« on: August 28, 2014, 03:23:36 pm »
It's sad but in fact cyberdiscs are the aliens I have modified the less. I have add them some vulnerabilities where they haven't not.

Actually, when I was looking at the stats, I did notice they were pretty much the same as vanilla.  I should have been clear that I wasn't really commenting about your mod specifically, just the situation in general.  The difference is that even if they show up in vanilla at the end of January, I've got at least a few laser pistols to deal with them.  There's no weapons like that at this point.  That's not a complaint or praise of your mod, just an observation.  I think the thing that frustrates me most, and again, this has nothing to do with your mod, is that you can't tell how effective a weapon is.  "OK, I hit that cyberdisc with 3 Heavy Cannon shots and it's still standing ... is it almost dead or is it completely shrugging them off?"  I did have a few Heat rounds and I'm sure the 2 I was able to take down were because of those.  Actually finished one off with the Sniper Rifle but had previously hit it with a rocket and several heavy cannon rounds.  So yeah, the intent was not to disparrage your mod but to vent some frustration at the situation.  The game seems to like to put me in situations like that.  The lesson is that once I realized the situation I was in, I should have left right then.

Quote
Demolition explosives are not suited against cyberdiscs (except maybe if you use some guy to attract their reaction fire before trying to send him the explosive).

I recall seeing videos of vanilla where these Heavy Explosives were used early as Cyberdisc killers, but now I realize that your changes make them unusable for that purpose.

Quote
Plasma and Acid can't helping so much because the time you get them, you probably don't face cyberdiscs anymore (for now).

Exactly.  I guess one solution is to carry several rocket launchers on the Skyranger and regroup/reequip as necessary.

Quote
I my game I have run into a sectoide terror also, with only 6 huy because all other wounded. one HWP alloy rocket, and one HWP cannon normal one (to fit the hole of wounded guy). There was 6 cyberdiscs but I have the chance they aren't near skyranger doors. Result : win without soldier lost but cannon hWP destroyed, rocket one finish with 15 HP, and all my mens badly wounded (and nearly all the map destroyed, no civilians saved ^^" two killed by my rockets... score nearly 0 )

I didn't have any HWP.  I usually take 1 but I replaced it with 4 recruits thinking that might be better in this case.  Have to rethink that.  ???

Quote
I never saw that, and it shouldn't be the result of my mod. What have you see exactly ?

Sorry, again that was not meant to be a comment on your mod just on the OXC AI.  But, once things completely fell apart, my entire remaining squad panicked and dropped their weapons.  I had tried to loan them onto the Skyranger.  Then, next round, 2 of them were mind controlled.  One of them without a weapon ran over and whacked another one.  I've never seen that before so I think it's a new OXC AI thing, which can be good or bad depending on how you look at it.  :P
 
Quote
It's normal. The game don't allow reaction fire with other mode than "snap" so I have gave sniper rifle only a snap shot with same TUs thant previous aimed one. It can be little weird but this way the sniper rifle really act like it should.
The autocannon still don't have snap mode, it should not allowed to fire in reaction (too dangerous friendly fire).

Ah!  Figured it was intentional just didn't know why.  Never knew that about.  I like that even if it looks funny.

Anyway, sorry if you thought I was criticizing.  Just that misery loves company and all. :)

I'll keep plugging away at it.  I'm always interested to see other's take on the "ideal"  version of the game.  I'll let you know if something really bugs me.  :P

41
Work In Progress / Re: [BETA] Rebalance aliens
« on: August 28, 2014, 05:56:01 am »
Sorry to be bearer of bad news, but just downloaded 1.6 from mod site and it's missing Sniper_AA_clip.gif from Resources.

Started up when I put a dummy file in it's place.

On to next experience.  Got to April and ran into my first Sectoid terror.  It wasn't exactly pleasant.  I'm sensing a theme in that once again, my Skyranger started out surrounded by 5 Cyberdiscs.  I guess I should have just ran away, but I was stubborn and thought I'd see what I could do.  Answer: not much.

I actually did take down 2 of them before running away with my 1 panicked soldier inside the Skyranger.  Looking up the ruleset, I see they are vulnerable to Plasma and Acid.  Yeah, that's no help.  Thing is, I thought I was prepared.  I had several heavy HE weapons and also alloy AP rounds for the Heavy Cannon.  I had high hopes the auto-cannon would be able to greatly contribute to their demise.  Never got a chance to fire it.  I even had a pile of High Explosives, most of which exploded on the corpses of soldiers who couldn't throw them far enough to even reach the Cyberdisc, let alone get out of the blast zone in time if they could have reached the terror unit.  Ran into 1 Sectoid the entire battle, so occupied I was with the Cyberdiscs.  I did get 2 soldiers mind controlled once everybody started panicking, though.  I learned that the AI will do melee attacks with unarmed units.  That was exciting.

Anyway, I don't see how Cyberdiscs can be successfully dealt with if you can't isolate them one at a time.  So, it looks like next time I run into them, I need to run away unless I'm packing serious plasma weapons.

Saw something weird with 1.6.  The Sniper Rifle now only has Snap Shot mode.  Seemed the same as before, just labelled differently.  I see you're putting them in your own ruleset so I don't know if this is intentional or not.  Earlier I had my first experience with Snakemen which was much more positive.  Actually defeated a Large Scout with no losses and only 1 wounded soldier.

42
Work In Progress / Re: Explosive ordnance priority
« on: August 28, 2014, 03:24:57 am »
Set armor of all grenades to 250, all primed with explode one after another without destroying themselves, problem solved (in a way) :)
Afaik the order of detonations is the same as the order of priming.

Part of me feels like this is a cheat, but then again TFTD did this, so it's not really.  What I do wish is that you could blow up explosives on the ground when his by another explosion.  Don't know how "realistic" it is, and it would suck if you're trying to recover those weapons, but I recall some pretty amazing chain explosions in Apocalypse which would be cool to duplicate.  Any way to do that in OXC?

43
My Vote for most useless piece of X-Com equipment. . .
The Electro Flare
I never use it. I never even order it.

Hmm.  I live by them and die without them.  Maybe they do weigh too much.  I'm playing a mod right now that has them at 1 pound.  Almost any lame rookie can carry around a few of those.  Not so easy with incendiary rounds.  Sure, I like to light stuff on fire too, but it never hurts to toss these things around.  And they do get recovered at the end of the battle unless they are destroyed by explosives.  Certainly not #ultimateFail for me.

Quote
Next useless item:
Auto-Cannon Incendiary ammunition
Why go small when you can go big? Just use an Incendiary Rocket (I keep one spare if I really need it on a night mission).

Wow!  How many incendiary rocket rounds can a soldier carry vs how many auto cannon rounds can he carry?  I'm the opposite.  Never use the incendiary rockets but use auto-cannon incendiary like confetti on night missions.  You can cover 3 times the area per turn with the auto-cannon.

Quote
Start of Useful, but very poor use items (as in not useless, but it sucks . . .)
Pistol and Pistol Clip

No arguments here.  I carry them on guys who have heavy weapons but I don't think I ever pull them out and I certainly don't ever *want* to.  'Course, in vanilla they have a shelf life of about half a month before they can be replaced with laser pistols which are infinitely better.

44
Work In Progress / Re: [BETA] Rebalance aliens
« on: August 26, 2014, 03:15:00 pm »
hum, don't change anything to research of aliens weapons. I'll explain the logic :
Some item give you a fake research which only unlock research patch. It is invisible to you (or it should be). For example, sniper plasma and toxigun a pre-requisite for research of powersuit. But you don't need research theses two weapons, you need only to found them in battle, and bring back to your base.

Yeah, figured something else was going on I hadn't figured out yet.  Probably should have mentioned it and then left it alone. :-\

I can't say exactly when I found the Plasma Sniper Rifle but I think it was from an Excavator.  It was before my 2nd terror mission and the only UFOs I've recovered are Small Scouts, Large Scouts and an Excavator.  Now, in March, I have 2 of them in my inventory and I didn't run across another Excavator, so I'm not sure if that came from the terror site or not.  Sorry, I don't have more saves to better track it down.

Only other mods I'm using are Luke's Extra UFOs and Hobbes Terrain.

Thanks.

45
Work In Progress / Re: [BETA] Rebalance aliens
« on: August 26, 2014, 04:28:16 am »
Some more minor issues:

Even with the 1.5b ruleset, I can still purchase HC-AP ammo at game start.  I did a little checking and figured out how to fix it for you.  In your ruleset, you removed the costBuy line for the STR_HC_AP_AMMO.  However, since it's still defined in Xcom1Ruleset.rul, it carries through.  But, if you put "costBuy: 0" in your ruleset, then it resets that value and it won't show up for sale.  I just tested it and it actually works. :)

Also, I'm in February and can research a Plasma Sniper Rifle that was recovered on the last mission.  The only research projects I've completed at this point is Alien Alloys and Medikit.  I took a shot at figuring this one out too, and was able to get it removed from the research list at my current point in the game.  However, I'm unable to test it further to make sure it is research-able when it *should* be and doesn't have any unwanted side effects.

Your ruleset is as follows:

Code: [Select]
research:
  - name: STR_PLASMA_SNIPER_RIFLE
    cost: 0
    points: 0
    needItem: true     
  - name: STR_PLASMA_SNIPER_RIFLE_PROD
    cost: 700
    points: 25   
    dependencies:
      - STR_ALIEN_ORIGINS
      - STR_ELERIUM_115
      - STR_PLASMA_SNIPER_RIFLE
    listOrder: 3950

I "reversed" the logic of the way you have it set up and treated it similarly to the Plasma Canon as follows:

Code: [Select]
research:
  - name: STR_PLASMA_SNIPER_RIFLE
    cost: 700
    points: 25   
    needItem: true
    dependencies:
      - STR_ALIEN_ORIGINS
      - STR_ELERIUM_115
      - STR_PLASMA_SNIPER_RIFLE_PROD
    listOrder: 3950
  - name: STR_PLASMA_SNIPER_RIFLE_PROD
    cost: 0
    dependencies:
      - STR_ALIEN_ORIGINS
      - STR_ELERIUM_115
    unlocks:
      - STR_PLASMA_SNIPER_RIFLE

Hmm ... looking at that I'm not sure why you would even need the _PROD definition.  Well, I'm certainly no expert so I won't presume to think this solves the problem as you intend it to be solved, but perhaps it's helpful to you in figuring that out.  It has at least removed it as research-able from my game in the meantime.  I suppose I'll see if it shows up when it is supposed to.  ???

Quote
Have you try autocannon ? if yes, do you use it ? it's the most modified weapon compared to vanilla.

I haven't been able to use it much yet.  I carry it every mission but it's hard to get deployed in a useful spot due to high TU cost and friendly-fire concerns.  Also, a few times the soldier carrying it has been taken out before it could fire.  I'm anxious to make it useful, though.  My go-to weapon seems to be the heavy cannon loaded with HE.  The guy carrying that has more kills than anybody.  I've relied on HE/grenades for most of the kills to this point.  I've soured on the sniper rifle a bit because it's no longer 1-shot kill.  Have to be much more careful how it's used for that reason.

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