Messages

16

Troubleshooting / Re: Without any equipment, weight is 6?

« on: October 08, 2013, 01:40:42 am »

I went ahead and reported this on the bug tracker. It's a constant source of consternation, especially when I have low-strength rookies who can't handle a rifle, extra clip, and grenade (17 units), leave their spare clip on the floor of the Skyranger, and have the game try to autoequip said clip to a guy who can't handle that loadout plus another clip, then everybody has a TU penalty and I feel as though everything is wrong with the world.

17

Offtopic / Re: Do you ever use pistols or autocannon? Motion sensors?

« on: September 30, 2013, 10:27:44 pm »

I feel like the Heavy Cannon does fill the 'high damage, accurate' niche, but its low ammo makes me shy away from it. It has a clip that weighs twice as much as most weapons and has half the ammo of anything else in the arsenal (excepting launcher weapons). It also seems to me that the niche isn't useful, at least on the lower difficulties - Sectoids and Floaters seem to only take two or three shots from a rifle to go down, and by the time most of the tougher enemies roll around you're probably using something better. It's not a bad weapon, but I find others easier to work with.

Even in the base game with no rules modifications I use my heavy guys the least, and then only when something needs to be saturation bombed for whatever reason. I've been playing with range-based accuracy on and I have to admit that makes my usual strategy quite inaccurate.

I can see folks finding Motion Scanners not being worth the trouble - they're only really useful for detecting ambushes right around corners or, as I said, large scouts. The enemy is, as Sharp observed, usually content to announce their relative location with a plasma shower from several times the Scanner's range.

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Offtopic / Re: Do you ever use pistols or autocannon? Motion sensors?

« on: September 30, 2013, 09:53:28 am »

Short version, my basic pattern is to make use of most of the standard weapons (sans Heavy Cannon), and then marry myself to Laser Pistols and Heavy Plasmas.

I prefer to keep as many soldiers alive as possible, so my standard doctrine with the base game has been to have three 'classes' of troop; I select troops with high Accuracy and Reactions to designate as Riflemen, troops with high Strength as Heavies, and basically everyone else is a Scout (although I may prioritize a soldier with high TUs even if he's decent in the other stats). A Skyranger carries fourteen soldiers, separated into three squads of four and an extra pair. A squad is one Scout with a pistol and motion scanner, two Riflemen with rifles, and a Heavy, usually armed with an Autocannon. Everyone has a grenade and a spare clip, sacrificing the grenade on lower difficulties and the clip on higher ones if weight is an issue. The Scout carries a Medkit and there's usually one or two more on a strong Rifleman.

The Scout runs face-first into danger, the Riflemen move up to cover with some TU left for reactions, and the Heavy provides (or destroys) cover, usually with HE shells. The Scouts aren't wholly suicidal, and I do use the motion scanner whenever it makes sense (usually to detect movement in those darned large scouts, but they're also useful on most Terror missions). I find the pistol is actually a fairly decent weapon in the early game with a high snap-shot fire rate and decent killing power versus Sectoids and to a lesser extent Floaters. Riflemen do the bulk of the killing, of course. The Heavy is usually for rearranging the landscape or saturating distant targets with explosions. I rely only on electroflares for night missions since I like to have more control than I imagine there is with Incendiaries.

The squads are usually set up such that two are roughly equal and one has the two best riflemen. Of the remaining two soldiers, one is usually another Scout that goes with the team expected to meet the most resistance or with the most ground to cover (based on where the Skyranger landed). The last is the most accurate Heavy on the payroll, armed with a Rocket Launcher. He usually accompanies the 'sniper' group, tries to find a high vantage, and lets the other schlubs do the spotting.

Once research starts rolling, Scouts and Riflemen get Laser Pistols as primary weapons. Heavies may eventually see a pistol as a sidearm, but are usually surrounded by three guys with guns to keep them safe. Riflemen get Heavy Plasmas when the time comes, and usually by then something happens and I drop the game for whatever reason.

19

Work In Progress / Re: Brainstorming for slower technological progression

« on: September 29, 2013, 07:10:02 am »

I'm not a big fan of the retrofitting thing either - except as a way to introduce a distinct tier of power (or different class of weapons entirely), though the complexity might appeal to some. I do sort of like the idea of humans having to make do with a weaker version rather than outright capturing it. That would give the aliens some slim advantage, too, which they seem to need.

That's part of why I want to stick to messing with research and keeping it somewhat simple/streamlined; then folks can slap on whatever they like in a companion ruleset.

As an aside on the psionic fluff thing, I had a similar misgiving and then figured the reasoning that the mechanism was similar to the mind probe was good enough; all races can use that, can't they? (Then again UFOPaedia says they only appear on scouts and are phased out in the late game, so maybe I'm wrong).

I like Gifty's proposal to add a separate research step for manufacturing - I think that adequately restricts plasma weapons for a baseline mod. I'd ditch having to research the clip entirely, though - that always struck me as rather arbitrary (why would you only research every part of the gun except the part that can actually kill things?). Just roll the time into the gun research (which is what I did myself).

20

Work In Progress / Re: Brainstorming for slower technological progression

« on: September 28, 2013, 11:22:20 pm »

I really like the psionic-linked guns; I was going to attribute it to some sort of genetics thing, which is about as feasible and supported in the lore. My only concern is whether Mind Probes are one of those things that dry right up as you go later in the game; I honestly can't remember. It also gives you a reason to hold on to them despite their large sale price. My other only concern ( ) is that it does mean that the end of the tech tree convenes around psionics. That may just be a personal foible though.

To answer moriarty's question, I don't think there's a way to have a gun determine the amount of damage dealt if it has a clip; It tried giving a pistol power 250 and it seems to be using the power listed for the pistol clip.

Personally one thing I'd like to see come out of this topic is a sort of baseline 'Marathon' ruleset for research. No new actual game items, just a reshuffled tech tree, possibly with new "layers", as moriarty called them which are essentially point-eaters that get some fluff in the UFOPaedia. The goal here would be to get a significant period of game time between tech 'tiers'. Hopefully this would allow for other people to make compatible mods that insert new items for rebalancing purposes into certain points of this baseline tech tree. The layers would make this fairly easy; just decide whether your new items are, say, Basic Elerium or Elerium Fusion and they branch from that topic.

I think having the game take longer is something a lot of folks can agree on while I imagine all of us have a different tack to take for new content. Hopefully this way we'd get some variety that would be fairly easy to just plug-and-play to get compatible. (or I may be overthinking the whole thing; I dunno)

21

Work In Progress / Re: Brainstorming for slower technological progression

« on: September 28, 2013, 04:13:31 am »

I've been thinking much along the same lines. I've been tinkering with my own personal Ruleset(s) ever since the wiki page showed up. I actually finished planning out what I wanted to do in terms of tech-tree rearrangement yesterday, and the OP and I seem to have some similar ideas. Here's the gist of what I've got;

Just to be clear, a major goal was to make Plasma weapons extremely special. Beyond making them harder to research, I removed the ability to manufacture them, and intend to play with the 'alien weapons are destroyed on death' option on. So basically, captured plasma only. I did add an extra tier of weapons to offset this (railguns), but they still aren't as wildly effective as plasma weapons.

As for research, the pertinent part of what I've got planned and hope to playtest sometime soon:

- Everything, except the Motion Scanner and Medi-kit, are locked behind either Alien Alloys or Elerium-115, if not both.
- Laser Weapons require Elerium-115. (This makes it about 3 times longer 'til you get Laser Weapons if I read the ruleset right; It also puts them on the road to better craft, but what can I do?)
- Any captured engineer, once researched, will unlock Plasma Theory and the UFO Power Source.
- Plasma Theory is one requirement for Plasma weapon unlocks; It's also a prerequisite for my Railguns.
- UFO Construction no longer requires UFO Navigation (furious handwaving about making do with earth radar or something)
- The Lightning project now comes before the Firestorm project, which sort of 'forces' its use.
- Firestorms DO require UFO Navigation which...
- Snakemen or Muton Engineers (and the apparently-theoretical Ethereal Engineers) unlock UFO Navigation and, along with Plasma Theory, allow you to finally be able to research those captured plasma weapons. (This is pretty much a straight-up gamist make it rare/later in the game type thing)
- Plasma Weapons follow the Laser precedent of Pistol unlocks Rifle unlocks Heavy (as Gifty suggested)

This is the gist of what would be pertinent to the base game, I think. I haven't messed with how long it takes to acquire techs as yet as I want to see how there being a more complicated tree affects the pace of the game.

I hadn't thought of making the Mind Probe be a prereq for interrogation, and it's an idea I'd love to steal. I considered getting really nasty and requiring any alien corpse research to unlock the Alien Containment facility as well, but that might be a tad much.

Another idea I toyed with (but ultimately decided against) was to require Alien Medic research for a set of more effective versions of Earth weapons, based on the idea of learning more about alien physiology.

22

Playthroughs / Re: At All Costs - A Narrative OpenXCom LP - Entry 0: Enemy Unknown

« on: September 14, 2013, 12:29:32 am »

I want to voice my support - I've always preferred narrative LPs and would definitely like to see more of this. In the interest of getting a full roster, here's a silly fella I whipped up on short notice.

Name: Eoghan McCullough
Callsign: Claymore
Nationality: Scottish
Previous Unit: British Special Forces Support Group
Personality: Cocksure, brash, and a little more paranoid than is healthy (in civilian life). Has mixed feelings on the alien war since he was effectively drafted after the Barcelona incident but still believes the bloody gits need a thrashing.
(I wasn't originally shooting for stereotypical drunken berserker, but work with him as you see fit).

If we're allowed to make requests, I also had originally imagined him as an explosives specialist so if you could outfit him along those lines I'd appreciate it.

As for the base, I see no problem with the currently proposed name, but I suggest the initial base being located in either Australia or South America due to bureaucratic/political shenanigans designed to tee off as much of the funding council as possible.

I'll also nominate Vic Viper for the name of one of our interceptors.

And another thought based on another XCOM LP, how about drone operators for any heavy-weapons platforms you use? That gives the character the 'unfair advantage' of being back at base and effectively unkillable, but whatever makes the story, right?