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Topics - Nilex

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1
Suggestions / My QoL suggestions for OXC/E (vanilla compatible)
« on: July 03, 2021, 08:21:03 pm »
Stuff that came to mind during over 8 months spent with X-PirateZ. All suggestions should be compatible with vanilla games mechanic although main purpose is to reduce workload in huge complex mods.

1) Bindable keys for UfoPedia scrolling, with repeat function. Currently erroneously binded to "Scroll Geoscape" direction and key must be pressed repeatedly to scroll. I'd like to see separate binds (for comfort) and keeping the key pressed would list through ~5-10 entries/sec, after half a sec of initial delay (similarly to writing in Notepad). Clicking with mouse is uber tiresome in huge mod pedias. This ain't no Cookie Clicker. Could be tried to mouse wheel by default with down direction as next entry.

2) [Attachment] Sell screen: Shift+LMB to sell an item would mark for sell every item from the top of list (or to nearest above already marked for selling, to current item) by single quantity increase. Shift+RMB would mark sell all items in entire column between marked and clicked item. Useful in normal gameplay when selling tightly grouped unwanted items but shines when bulk selling unwanted recruits. I'm talking hundreds, all which must be otherwise sold individually, bought for sole purpose to trigger otherwise restricted promotion algorithm.

3) Production screen: CTRL+MMB on item in the list would bring up pedia, same as it does in sell screen. Currently CTRL is unused and behaves same as MMB is clicked, a missed opportunity. While at it, lets have MMB bring up pedia instead and CTRL+MMB bring up tech tree viewer for natural and quicker functionality. Hell, CTRL+MMB isn't even documented properly if at all.

4) Uniform MMB behavior of bringing up pedia entry of clicked item, if researched, wherever applicable. Inside Tech Tree Viewer (TTV), Production, Sell, Transfer, Equip screens, "What to Wear?" armors (in mods), etc. Literally wherever technically doable. And then same with CTRL+MMB to bring up TTV.

5) Interception screens: RMB on minimize one screen would minimize all of them, as it does with approach icons. Restoring a save in such condition would remember if screen were minimized instead of bringing them up on reload.

6) Battlescape minimap: always show map borders? I found out about ALT function whole 3 months into XPZ. FU guys... :)

7) Battlescape Hit-Log simplification: H brings regular, CTRL+H advanced one. In case of conflict with player's custom binds reserve a function key or something. Anything to lessen current finger gymnastics. Could even go away with regular and leave only advanced one. Because reaction fire replaces your shoot damage and then you need to press 3 keys to get that info back.

8) Battlescape save remembers exact screen position instead centering on selected unit. Ideally weapon targeting status too (save scumming par-excellence). Let us live the dream.

9) Meridian's avatar is from "The Whole Nine Yards" movie in case you are wondering. Thought it was "The Jackal"... Btw, someone show him this wall-of-text when he returns from his vacation. Best it catches him at his peak mood.

10) Transfer screen: distribute item across existing bases equally, via some keyboard modifier. Ideally a pop up would let us select which bases exactly but beggars can't be choosers. Very useful for universally needed items in equal quantities: fuel, components, weapons, ammo, etc. After that we could fine tune amounts ourselves but the main work would be effortlessly done.

11) Transfer screen: transfer selected item to current base from all other bases. Possibly in combo with 2) so all selected items are transferred to current base with one action. Useful in more common scenario of having a dedicated production base, where you'd want to scrounge all needed but otherwise scattered materials to. Saves lots of time scrolling through every single base storage for components all the time.

12) Vault screen: mark item (*) to be constantly stockpiled up to a set amount, from purchase if available. Not manufacture as that would entail a whole new complex suggestion. If quantity above set mark nothing would happen. Mark should remain visible in all relevant screens (buy/sell/transfer/manufacture/etc). Say with a prefix/affix * or different colored text or something that makes it stand out in several hundreds long item list. Buying script would run instantly at first and then as often as technically possible (once a day or so). Tally would include items in transfer.

13) Popup message if the player places a new base inside radar coverage range, existing or future maximal. Warding him off potentially regrettable, costly, or simply overlooked mistakes. Also giving subtle reminder that spreading them apart for even global detection is the correct way forward. Message may even be triggered if end result would be significant radar overlap (player could even decide how much via options, in percentage).

14) Option to display only farthest outline radar range circle parts, committing drawing circles inside existing radars. To help de-clutter GEO. When placing a new base ranges would temporary revert to display everything as usual. Could be added as an additional toggle in existing "Toggle Radar Ranges" bind.

15) Battlescape: right-click on End Turn icon applies fastest enemy Fire/AI Movement speeds for that turn. Useful for quicker grinding in low risk missions. Maybe squeeze in Shift+RMB to completely skip showing aliens when player is assured of benign outcome.

16) Battlescape: key combo (ALT+LMB) to force targeting ground square. Atm it's impossible to execute unconscious enemies in squares with a wall next to them using common ranged weapons (from ground level), even if said walls are destroyed, even if only a corner is touched by a wall or a door. Projectile behaves as if you are shooting an invisible standing enemy in such case.

For edge cases where you aren't sure if permanent change is appropriate you could put a toggle option for individual player preferences.

* * *

Huge respect to all those who made OXC/E what it is today, with special thanks to AI coders, and those who uphold stability (didn't get a single crash)!

2
Wrote this 4 months ago thinking I was about win but the finish line just kept moving out of reach. New goals emerged as I discovered benefits of gameplay mechanic I neglected in the past. 5 new updates game received during my 8 months long playthrough snowballed more new plans. Intended to be a brief overview accompanied by chronicles screen but grew too large too fast so please excuse lack of flow. Posting this because I couldn't find a decent review anywhere except for that 5yr old rockpapershotgun article which doesn't go into details or critique.

LIKES
Initial scope followed by immeasurable awe when research progress finally hits 1%. It's like 100 Sid Meier Civs fused into one single game. The feeling prevailed all the way up to 33% making my top 10 list.
33% to 66% is time of familiarization with all game mechanics and steady but welcome increase in complexity. Confidence grows as does planning and (micro)management.
66% onward repetition starts creeping in paired with poor UI support to handle the workload, gradually steering closer to working than playing. Unfinished WIP story arcs are encountered coupled with lesser quality of late game progress (Higher Studies+, less new goodies, just tech unlocks). Satisfaction relies on few new remaining but thinly spread missions to stir the settled waters and fulfillment of personal player goals. <- Only two updates later I'm convinced this is greatly improved already (except UI).
What remains awe worthy until the end are researched topics and is how well logically interconnected every item/tech dependency is. Even with my extraordinary nitpick levels I found only one improvement in 3k topics. As new updates came research tree kept getting subtle logical improvements which was mind boggling.

The writing I absolutely loved throughout. Whole Boccaccio's Decameron hides in XPZ deepths with ludicrous amounts of quality lore, imaginative item descriptions, and extensive gameplay mechanics explanations written in lore-style. I especially liked attention to details like Gas-Balls working only with a Pistol because they'd fall apart when used in Rifles due to increased pressure. Newer example is using 10th different armor value influence to describe effectiveness of Universal Refreshner. Innumerous more similar examples in between the two. Faction backgrounds and all that stuff are damn impressive. Whole thing does actually resemble faithful continuation of UFO/XCOM. In OG online ufopedia there's an official lore describing events that happened in between officially released games. Why for example they couldn't use Elerium-115 in TFTD, all logically explained. Easy to see how something like that would occur in our real world, giving credibility to official lore. Same quality is found in XPZ. Lots of small Sci-Fi details in there you only find in professional author's books. Loved that.

What I loved just as same is restraint of keeping some rare but excellent maps restricted to unique 1-off events, never to be seen again (Winter Palace, Siberia Base, Terminal, etc). Great looking maps of amazing quality only to be experienced once. Made them that much more memorable although I presume was a bitch to accept as designer. I guess in school essays you actually typed out densely typed text as opposed to rest of us who spread that shit, hehe.

Storage & money handling in the long run is one of the more ingenious ideas I've seen. Who ever thought of slaves mechanics in particular has my respect. Such a practical, believable, steady and simple form of reducing space/finance worries I cannot believe it exists. Funnily enough I long delayed researching slaves even though I knew the benefits because I thought they would take up living space. Glad it isn't the case!

Sound FX are the best. Reminds me of the '90s when devs were naturally gifted in creating sounds that just worked even if they weren't realistic per-say. Skullstrider walking sounds is super enjoyable enjoyable. Of the whole package I'd change only that blue outlined Cutlass (wtf is that sound lol), and recent interception music addition which belongs in some Monkey Island mini-game instead.
Music is great just the same, fantastic picks. Normally it must be near perfect for me to enjoy it. Joyful, rhythmic and all that. In sound department XPZ nails it (props for Find the Suspicious Brainer jump scare).

Extra effort put into color coding various in-game menus with own unique scheme really added flavor and atmosphere. Colossal improvement over those year old LPs on YouTube using vanilla colors. A fine example of low effort / high reward scenario. Felt like a polished game just by that subtle visual tweak.

AI. Dunno if XPZ messed further with it than OCX(E) but it's perfect. Kudos to AI coders. Near end of my last TFTD playthrough a sad realization emerged that I'll never get to experience true vanilla AI. Ever. OG games are full of broken path nodes, deployment slots errors, enemy weapon utilization, etc... so F'd even the community couldn't fix it all. Vanilla AI was the sole reason for sticking to Extenders but after the realization and later observing how faithfully AI behaves in familiar situations I became a devoted OpenXcom pilgrim.
AI truly makes a difference in long haul mission types. Without it XPZ would be bogged down, exhausting, and suicidally tedious experience. I wonder if it actually is with "Sneaky AI" enabled, only tested for 1 turn and immediately turned it off in fear of invoking last-alien-hiding-in-closet somewhere. Ability to run greatly improves combat as well.

NEUTRAL
Pirate theme was off-putting for years before I actually bothered to watch gameplay videos (thanks Starving Poet). Realized there's little of actual Pirate themes going on (wooden ships, swords and shields, boring shit) past initial philosophy of looting and plunder. It's all about wasteland to high-tech Fallout. Which is damn great.

Nudity is tasteful so I wasn't phased or distracted by it at all. Dunno why author left selected sprite fap-material marked with pixels but what the hell, we all done crazy things when young. Some of the art looks like placeholder material and needs to become uniform but is sufficiently serviceable. Hopefully that stuff gets a face lift in time.

Mutually exclusive Codexes. As a completionist it's not a favorite but I understand. What I'd do it make it easy for player to remove locks to allow for all Codex if he wants to (possibly other minor locks too). Maybe community releases a sub-mod in due time.

Abundance of items (to say it lightly) worried me of becoming a total cluttered mess, both on management and usefulness side. To me less is more. But it became apparent it's used to accommodate all different factions and mission types. Took about a month till I was being able to differentiate between the loot automatically without loosing time inspecting stats of every single thing. CTRL+MMB helped although I was made aware much too late. Took another two stressful months to finally determine which items can be safely sold once and for all.

As far building materials/components go, availability and mission rewards yield is pretty well balanced considering the scope. I'd make Force Circuitry buyable, maybe even Stasis Pods (defo increase availability in some way, solely because Cryo Prison). Increase yields of Shadow Orbs and make a relatively common late-game mission that always rewards them, especially with increased future focus on them in raw material role (better Box reward odds would do too). Something similar with Medallion of Entropy and Golden Apple because rolling for Smuggler > Arcane > Mystery Box > rewards is tiring even with perfected save-scumming method I devised.

NEUTRAL/DISLIKE

The single soul-crushing research topic for me was "Advanced Weapons Rumors". It came relatively early and burst my bubble of mysteries laying ahead. Bullets, Laser, Gauss, Plasma - that's it buddy. Felt awkward compared to existing mysterious writing style. What I'd change there is move "As far as we know" from begging to the end of article so it finishes with "...and those are only which we know about" (or something). It's gotta end in mystery at the very least.
In my early post I described first enemy Hideout assault in which I said I received a taste of end-game weapons the enemies used. One dude responded I ain't seen nothing yet but looking back I actually did. Eagerly expected to see more advanced stuff but what I got was bit underwhelming: basically only Plasma Schorcher redeemed itself and only against Hovertank & Sectopod. Magitech and other exotics feel too circumstantial to be of wide general use. Exception is Chort's Iron Wind which suits this gameplay style amazingly well.

Mid-game armors are kinda crappy unless TU/weight tradeoff is accepted. After Metal I only ever used Synthmuscle, Junkmaster (curiosity mostly) & Juggernaut (burning towns only), Brute shortly, then Annihilator. Problem is most other don't absorb damage well enough enemies at that time deal. As if created with sole intention to replace death with 24/7 hospital time. I later saw someone mention Assault Marine flies and has red shields which I completely overlooked so my view may be skewed somewhat. Problem is nothing tanks damage well until Annihilator. UFO has good mid armor but its problem was instant obsoletion, easily avoided in XPZ with sensible stat tweaks. The annoying thing was checking enemy armors and constantly thinking: why can't I just strip parts off and make-shift something similar? That's what Pirates do!

Vessel restrictions to certain missions was annoying as hell. Spent ludicrous amounts of time reading what the future brings so I could plan accordingly and minimize future mistakes. Constantly made me tense thinking if I made the correct call in designating a hideout/hangar for specific mission range. In the end I found equilibrium but the cost was broken immersion and dispersed mystery from all that reading in advance. Could be improved by having an updating in-game list as new vessels are researched to see which is allowed where. Getting blue-balled as I eagerly send the wrong but fully prepped ship for the first time sucks. Restrictions themselves are not the problem, lack of timely information is.

DISLIKES
Helpful #numbers topics should be revealed more uniformly, akin to "Myths: The Black Souvereign, Part 1-4" (maybe group few similarly related parts together before unlocking next batch), roughly following player's expected encounter with the mechanic (or couple months behind at most to retain some mystery and even healthy dose of frustration). For example I revealed you can turn off ship weapons well into 2nd year. Would be pissed had I not known about it prior. For uber essential stuff I'd attach a simple PDF in game folder, along with ALL keyboard binds including undocumented ones (CTRL+MMB; CTRL+ALT+H; ALT in minimap; CTRL+END; RMB on approach icon; RMB Vessel hangar reordering). It would make things much more newbie friendly without requiring any UFO/XCOM knowledge.

Prison Space shortage. Talked about it few times. Huge gripe that never goes away. I modded in 20 spaces per Prison for myself and it was perfect. Avd. & Luxury Barracks received similar treatment soon thereafter hihi. I assume it was set ages ago and not touched since but game became more complex for old prison to cope. 20 is perfect, increase building price if you must but do it.

Smooth out sudden difficulty spikes if possible. Early Bandit Pogrom are BRUTAL and can happen very early (delay Armored Cars bit later). In my game 1st SG Pogrom (Feb 2602) occurred 1 year before encountering 1st SG ship. WTF!? I wouldn't describe it as needed difficulty variety but design flaw. In case of insisting on current I'd let the player know in advance in some meaningful capacity so he could prepare by focusing research and equipping appropriately instead learning from unavoidable failures.

Accuracy predictor is the biggest lying POS madafaka ever. Accuracy varies from 100% accurate (clear LOS + no obstacles + before accuracy drop-off), down to 1% of stated accuracy (behind obstacle but shootable + no LOS but within accuracy drop-off). Turning 20% into 0.2% in worst case. It's not uncommon for the projectile to bug out and fly through the target 9/10 times depending on positioning (God forbid target is on a slope), further diving the above 0.2%. Been there OH YES I have...
I've read the explanation why this happens as well. My answer is remove the F'ing RNG firing cones then, or confine them to visible/shootable hitbox parts only. Vanilla did not have accuracy problem no matter how many obstacles there were between. The only place where OXC/E made a step backwards.

XPZ excels in making players adopt to multi role situations and yet the ships are cramped AF! Lets us build a proper Avenger/Leviathan for Christ's sake. Fast, armed, durable, and F'ing spacious. Factions fly whole cities worth of crew and we have to scrounge with a deadly dozen on average. No bueno. Early-mid should remain as-is but there no reason to keep it cramped for entirety of the game. This is further worsened by issue immediately bellow.

Player ships have the most illogical soldier ordering system compared to base listing order. I can't believe an actual human sorted this out. Every damn ship is affected except those 1-piloted ones where it's impossible to fuck up. Truth to be told haven't tried them all but of 80% I have, Devastator takes the cake as biggest offender. Read Discord explanation for this some time ago (occupying windows first) and I have to say it's crap for two reasons: you don't win by camping; Freshness was devised to prevent camping. Nuff said. Occupy spots by distance to exit door/ramp like in vanilla... Let the dumb player figure out which spot is by the window. In case player decides to bring 3 soldiers or less then the mission is easy enough no to warrant sniping. Fortuna is the only vessel with logical ordering, only because it has no F'ing windows.

Roll range of weapon damage becomes increasingly frustrating with time. Examples: Custom Lasgun [48] vs Acd. Drone - 6x consecutive hits resulted in no damage (happened twice). Heavy Laser vs ~10 armor Human - no damage (happens 33% of time). Eerie similar to enemy berserking with one-handed weapons, hitting your soldier every time across the map even though there are over 1000 viable targets (incl. random empty squares). Makes me believe faulty code is at play. I'd set all player weapons to never roll bellow 50% (100% for snipers) while leaving enemies as is. Should fucken level the playing field.
Seen Meridian go crazy over two consecutive no damage rolls in far more benign case in his LP. I swear on my mother he'd become a full blown serial killer in my shoes. No exaggeration. And people wonder why I save-scumm, lol.

Freshness cost of Gray Codex items and caveat use of available FRS restoration items. Before I said nr1 design flaw devs make is adjusting balance according to vocal top one-percenters who know how to exploit for all imaginable advantages. Result is always ruined gameplay for regular players. No better example than F2P crap where player retention is God. Can't remember what it was all about when I mentioned it but anyway it's not a biggie in XPZ if player knows what he's doing.
What is though is another design flaw: introducing a hail-mary item, long sought by the community as a burden lessening tool, only to finally come with its own set of caveats that greatly limit use. As if balanced just against itself, ignoring the whole picture why it was needed. There's no shortage of such items in XPZ, fixes one thing but instantly breaks another or that very same thing. Previously mentioned Universal Freshnerer is good example.
Gray desperately needs its on unique Freshness problem resolver. An item, a facility, or both. I only ever used FRS based items to train VS, and rarely out of curiosity. Nothing more. Heavy Plasma handles same situations 10x better and with 0 recovery days.

And finally (you know what I'm taking about)... the 99%/101% armor resistances. Yuck. I'd rather see the whole damn list with color coded green/red values for resistances/vulnerabilities. Allow a key modifier to show whole list while pressed if wall-of-text seems ludicrous. Leave straight 100s default colors. Shit kept messing with my head until the end.

* * *

That's about it. Other negatives stem from UI inability to handle the scope as progression expands available gameplay options, despite OXC/E devs' best efforts. A week in I was already becoming worried if my mouse button would break down from so much repetitive clicking. Thankfully Logitech makes great 5€ mice.

Hope no one takes dislikes close to heart, just my view after all, and I do get little salty thinking about them. If I could change only one thing it would be RNG projectile cones to behave as accuracy predictor shows. In the end Dio has my deepest bow of respect as he puts himself up there among indie elites. Borrowed asset usage makes no difference, it's how you use it. And is as close to perfect as we could expect. Not to mention lots of custom tweaks under the hood to make it all uniquely fit in.

3
XPiratez / [SUB-MOD] Nuclear-Powered AP Lasers
« on: June 26, 2021, 07:15:49 pm »
Little parting gift after 8 months spent with XPZ. Smol but packs a punch. Fits nicely in end-game as bit of a fixer upper while being lore-friendly. Don't wanna spoil more than I already have in the title so feel invited to explore it for yourself.

Installation: Unpack into \XPirateZ\User\mods folder, run XPZ and activate the sub-mod. Easy peasy.

I can foresee sub-mod breaking given enough time solely because listOrder IDs of new stuff I added start eventually getting used by XPZ itself. There are gaps in numbers thoughtfully put in to account for future retrofitting but those are not envisioned to get filled by random 3rd party sub-mods. All IDs were carefully chosen except one where I had little choice (12881). Should buy some smooth years hopefully. Could have put it all at the end of a long list and be done with it but I would never break order aesthetic like that. Maybe there's a better way to avoid future listOrder conflict but I haven't found one yet.

Feel free to rip assets and use however you desire.

Mild spoiler
Spoiler:
Note that to access this content in your own playthrough you will need to have practically all technologies researched. As the key to final vanilla tech gate this sub-mod depends on can be found only on downed end-game Marsec ship patrols (Viper or Gunship), it is entirely possible and even more likely to win the game on Cydonia before ever finding the key. As such sub-mod is oriented toward those rare purist completionists among us. New research content (8 topics) accounts for roughly 2%.

Backstory and more spoilers
Spoiler:
Sub-Mod started coming into fruition right after an exhausting Space Freighter mission, where vanilla Battle Laser sparkled too many times on naked skins of some very fortunate Traders. Just as so many times before. Tipping the RNG into the realm of sanity became an obsession despite overwhelming lack of experience and motivation. Sparkles proved highly persuasive though so after two grueling days of ups and downs on steep learning curve I finally got it to load without errors and operational. All that remained were the finishing touches.

All was good until after just one night worth of sleep... I had a hellish vision of someone asking me to apply AP ability to other 6 NP lasers, after months have passed, when I naturally forgot all about this. Having been there before (hate that) but also thinking it would be a good idea I went on and expanded AP to all 7 NP lasers. When it rains it pours, right? It should give them some more utility next to Plasma Pistol and the likes.
Gave a short consideration to matching defense facility but it proved completely redundant at that stage of the game. Besides, tech's two main benefits (infinite ammo, AP) are nullified in such form. So never gonna happen.

To delay obsoletion of clipped AP lasers, which become available for research practically at the same time, I put handful of intermediate prerequisite techs (each weapon has its own research). Not that's gonna matter much I figure. Progression balance wise my options are limited and to remain somewhat lore-friendly, overall cost of manufacture is also marginal. But to hell with all that. It's the end-game, balance is secondary, and domination is your hard earned right!

Image spoiler
Spoiler:
Are you really sure? Don't be a fool.
Spoiler:
Final warning.
Spoiler:
There are only dick pics here...
Spoiler:
Just play the game you gaylord.

4
Help / [SOLVED] XPZ sub-mod, !add to commendations' killCriteria?
« on: June 15, 2021, 12:07:13 am »
Was hoping to simply add a line similar to box bellow but it doesn't work. Same without !add. Seems commendations are sensitive in general so OXCE freezes if it does not like what it sees, in instances XPZ calculates them (end of battle/month).
Code: [Select]
commendations:
  - type: STR_MEDAL_whatever
    killCriteria: !add
      -
         - [1, ["STR_abovetopsecret", "FACTION_HOSTILE", "STATUS_DEAD"]]

So far I've learned "!add" tag only works in select few places with more being added on case-by-case basis (to prevent breaking sensitive orderly lists), or due to popular demand. Now I'm a nobody in the local modding scene but assuming !add is indeed not supported here (and my formatting checks out) would it be too much to ask that it gets added? Just killCriteria specifically.

My reasoning is copy-pasting whole sections from master (with my stuff added in) would work but greatly inflate the rule file, and more importantly become obsolete the instant Dio shuffles stuff around (pretty common), or at best become a nightmare to maintain. Btw, the stuff I intend to add spans across many different killCriteria otherwise I wouldn't bother asking.

UPDATE
Well it suddenly works and exactly as I wanted too, with the !add tag exclusively. What went wrong before? Hell if I know, must have been a minor case of miss-formatting or something. I simply copy-pasted the same thing from master again and truncated the unwanted stuff like before... and voila. Don't you just love that shit? Anyway, please ignore the request.

5
XPiratez / Tiny help with tiny XPZ sub-mod
« on: March 12, 2021, 07:36:28 pm »
Excuse me if I missed the right place to ask, feel free to move where appropriate.

Been trying to isolate Landing Alert from fixed user options and change it to "true" via my own sub-mod rather than changing core "Piratez_Globals.rul", in order to avoid editing the string every time XPZ gets updated. Sub-mod file content looks like this:
Code: [Select]
fixedUserOptions:
  oxceUfoLandingAlert: true
The problem is that engine uncharacteristically assumes I've deleted every other fixed entry and un-grays it from in-game advanced menu, free for user to change or even see what was fixed. Defo not what I want to do.

If I just dump the whole fixedUserOptions section while changing only Alert:true then it works as expected but two more undesired problems arise. If down the line Dio changes what is fixed option my sub-mod will override it, and if a completely new fixed option is created it will appear un-grayed as it wasn't part of the section when I created the sub-mod. I wouldn't notice any of that unless specifically comparing the core against my own section. I won't remember to look in couple of weeks let alone years when I come back to complete fully finished XPZ. Just want for everything to wait my arrival neatly organized so I don't have to worry about anything and re-learn all this stuff.

What's puzzling is for every other change I made it was sufficient to put section string followed by string I wished to change. Omitted strings were unaffected and taken from core. This is the only exception and I'm not sure what to do. How to keep the file minimalistic and future-proof, while having Alert:true grayed out along with other set fixed settings? Am I making sense?

6
XPiratez / Brigador: Up-Armored Deluxe free on GOG (for 69 more hours)
« on: December 22, 2020, 06:24:23 pm »
It's just an ordinary giveaway like many before it but this one put a long lasting ear-to-ear smile on my face.
I was checking what the hell I activated and then I heard THIS. Pretty much all I've been hearing for the last 2 months :D

Although I never do this, thought it's worth an exception here. And the game looks nice so...
https://www.gog.com/game/brigador_deluxe_edition (just follow short giveaway instructions)

PS
Solo Nobre & Rise are both perfect picks! Would never guess both surprisingly come from the same source.

7
So I got these QoL ideas while playing X-Piratez but they may fit into vanilla so here goes.

Soldier's walking/running speed is adjustable in vanilla options. Thought it would be cool to be able to use slower speed but skip to destination with a press of a button, or to an event (reaction fire or enemy spotted or whatever), whichever comes first. It leaves us with pretty looking walking but with ability to skip. Feature would function similarly to shooting: have it set slow but resolve with RMB. With better overview on how the projectile behaves and path it takes by using slower speed. TU usage nuances are easier to stretch to our liking with slower speed but sometimes not required so we'd have the mighty skip.
Fastest setting on the other hand has unacceptable drawback of high difficulty to react to unwanted action (or change of mind), inability to fine tune destination orientation without using turning (saves TU), and just worse overview of pathing and enemy reactions to it.

The other one concerns those up/down arrows all over the place (buying/selling/manufacture/transfer). The one QoL we have is RMB for MAX but nothing in between. How about adding user-configurable key binds: 10/50/100/custom? Especially useful in frequent but temporary interrogations that occur in XPz, always resulting in click-fests.

8
XPiratez / Gotta go (VERY) fast
« on: October 25, 2020, 02:18:37 am »
Ever wondered how Pogrom posse gets to the scene?... Could defo use that engine.

9
Open Feedback / Couple of newbie questions about basic OXC functionality
« on: October 16, 2020, 04:28:38 pm »
1) Any way to make Geoscape clock silky smooth?
Currently it jumps in selected increments but at selected speed. Increasing the speed smooths is somewhat but time passes by (too) quickly. Can it be made so time passes by smoothly and speed is regulated with increments, as in vanilla? It's nauseating watching earth shadow moving in rigid jumps and even more so with ships/subs.

2) Bases (and its sub-screens) and Graphs screen are not blown up to full vertical resolution
For some reason "Maximize info screens" does not affect the above. They are displayed only in multiples of original 200p size. I'm using non standard 1366x768 resolution and those screens display centered, 400p in height. I'm having troubles understanding this after I couldn't find a solution playing with options. It just feels like a weird design decision or even weirder technical limitation. Can all screens be blown up properly somehow, like the inventory screen?

UPDATE
After digging around I found #2 is influenced by "Geoscape scale" setting. Whichever ones make it appear in 200p vertical resolution will also blow up said screens correctly. Seems they are hard-coded to Geoscape display or otherwise too difficult to separate for their own scale setting. Bummer. My compromise is 1/3 scale (both).

10
Suggestions / Lost information in OX upon loading original TFTD saves
« on: September 18, 2020, 07:00:29 pm »
Hi all, new (old) guy here. Spotted these two not so small bugs:
  • Live aliens researched via Aquatoid Medics disappear (Gillman in this example but could be widely common)
  • Completed Artefact Sites sequence resets to one when new one is triggered (should be 6th in provided example)
Savegame showcasing both is attached. To verify 2nd forward time until 1:00 AM next day until Atrifact Site shows up (reload if you have to). In the original TFTD everything is normal. Save is made on CE version using TFTDextender with conservative settings.

Apologies is this isn't the right place to report this kind of stuff.

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