Messages

16

XPiratez / Re: Bugs & Crash Reports

« on: April 29, 2016, 02:47:09 pm »

Hum, after changing the clipSize I always loaded a geoscape save and proceeded on a mission from there, but... I'm not seeing this "bug" anymore either, so yeah. Perhaps that's what too much Bacardi Finely Distilled Rum does to you.

17

XPiratez / Re: Countering Nukes

« on: April 28, 2016, 11:36:09 pm »

You can kinda avoid the nukes by attacking at night and taking at least two Mercenary Commandos with you as close combat specialists and scouts, they have an excellent 20 tile vision range at night. Make sure the immediate landing area is clear and then set up a firing line away from any light sources, i.e not right by, under or on top of your transport. Remember to use the personal light/"sneaky mode" toggle (default key is L) as much as possible, it disables the light around your units and prevents most human enemies from seeing or reacting to them due to their generally poor night vision ranges. Then just scout ahead slowly with the mercs and unleash hell on anyone they spot with your main troops. After enough enemies have been killed, the nukes sort of turn against them due to panic: they start going berserk and unloading the nukes at their feet or at other enemy units.

This tactic obviously works best on open terrain with clear lines of fire. Guild and Church are quite easy, and probably Academy, too, although I haven't attacked any of their supply ships yet. Mercs are another matter entirely; they're difficult to kill quickly and they have the same 20 tile NV range as the mercenaries you can hire, so they're going to kill you just as dead during the night as they would during the day.

18

XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.98D1 - 22 Apr - Fixed Recovery/Capture

« on: April 28, 2016, 04:55:25 pm »

All units in any X-Com game, except for the invisible and semi-invisible units, are vertical cylinders. The diameter of a cylinder is determined by the LOFTemps used, while its height is determined in the ruleset. It's just as simple.

What wasn't/isn't clear to a layman like me is just how often it actually happens that a shot deviates so little that the lofTemps and height settings make a difference. Most misses are way off, after all, and the cases where it kinda looks like the shot should've hit but didn't, i.e. when the size of the cylinder might matter, are quite rare.

None to negligible. Below 5 tiles, it can be raised to 'very little'.
Also their invisibility hack is not to make them immortal, don't be ridiculous It's to give them a bit more chance to cut you down with a katana if you're careless. Star Gods can be exploded as well, they're medium-toughness enemies. Again their invisibility is for attack, not for defence.
Also melee works just fine on both these units, unless some glitch happens that is

But I guess this answers that.

To be honest, my biggest gripe with this lofTemps thing is that it simply feels stupid and/or unfair, or something like that at least, not that it poses a problem that is impossible to work around. Again, these are things that are easy to change if one so wishes, so I suppose what I'm mostly doing here is merely bitching and voicing my annoyance, not a demand for official fix/change/whatever. I can appreciate the intent behind these stealthy/difficult to spot/hit units, but the way it has to be done leaves a lot to be desired.

19

OXCE Suggestions DONE / Re: Help test new FOV calculation executable (playable long view distances)

« on: April 28, 2016, 04:35:03 pm »

Would it be possible to update the .exe with Meridian's latest additions? I'd appreciate it a lot, playing without the movement stutter on maxviewdistance: 30 is very enjoyable, but some of Meridian's bug fixes and new features are also pretty tempting. In any case, thank you a lot for making this.

20

XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.98D1 - 22 Apr - Fixed Recovery/Capture

« on: April 28, 2016, 04:14:44 pm »

Don't be a pussy, the cats have only 30 HP and no armor whatsoever

It's not that I had much difficulties with them on the few smuggler ships I've caught so far, it's more that them being immune to direct-hit weapons except from a few angles feels like it's there mostly to annoy the player. You can say that this makes them more difficult to fight, and while it's technically true, they still die easily to AoE weapons which should always be carried in abundance anyway. So in practice, it doesn't make much of a difference whether the cats are "invisible" or not, at least in my experience.

My balance concerns are mostly about the Star Gods. While I haven't fought them, I assume they don't go down nearly as fast to explosives, yet I don't know how much the overall threat they pose is based on the lofTemps hack. So I'm afraid that either I go mad screaming bloody murder at my monitor trying to fight them as intended, or I change their lofTemps to 1 and steamroll over them, unless I'll mess with their stats even more...

Edit: Which brings to my mind the question of just how much the different "unit" lofTemps 1 to 5 actually change the probability of being hit. As in does it really matter whether a unit has a lofTemps: 1 instead of 4, for example. I see it's used to represent larger or bulkier units and armors, but how much that actually matters is a question mark to me.

21

XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.98D1 - 22 Apr - Fixed Recovery/Capture

« on: April 28, 2016, 01:21:33 pm »

Holy shit do I hate the lofTemps: 85 setting of the Catgirls (and Star Gods I suppose, though I haven't really fought them yet). I get what it's supposed to represent, but in practice it's so aggravatingly gimmicky... Blegh. It would be easy to change, but I don't know how much that would upset the balancing of these units. I guess there's no other way to represent this whole "being hard to hit" thing?

22

OpenXcom Extended / Re: Meridian's resources and mods for X-PirateZ

« on: April 28, 2016, 12:06:07 pm »

Do you think you'll be incorporating Stian's new FOV calculation in the near future?

23

XPiratez / Re: Bugs & Crash Reports

« on: April 28, 2016, 01:06:32 am »

With clipSize: 0 capacity is correct, but now after a mission the game spawns an extra 60 rounds from thin air... 184 rounds before loading the tank into a transport, 124 rounds after that, and after returning back to base stores show 184 again with the tank still inside the transport. Pulling the tank out adds an extra 60 rounds to a total of 244.

24

XPiratez / Re: Bugs & Crash Reports

« on: April 28, 2016, 12:35:05 am »

Hum, that fix doesn't work for me. Now the tank brings only a single shot to missions...

25

XPiratez / Re: Bugs & Crash Reports

« on: April 27, 2016, 11:26:55 pm »

Hehe, I'll keep that in mind. And thanks for the fast fix.

26

XPiratez / Re: Bugs & Crash Reports

« on: April 27, 2016, 11:08:25 pm »

Here, just aborting the mission straight away is enough.

As a side note, I tried to fix this by cleaning up the Gatling Laser HWP ruleset entry a bit and matching it to the HMG Cyberdisc's, since I didn't have any ammo problems with that. Didn't work, instead the HWP gained snap and aimed fire modes apparently because I removed the tuSnap: 0 and tuAimed: 0 lines. So instead of defaulting to 0/no snap or aimed modes, it's defaulting to some other values (maybe the vanilla OpenXcom Laser HWP ruleset entry?).

27

XPiratez / Re: Bugs & Crash Reports

« on: April 27, 2016, 09:13:26 pm »

What's up with the Gatling Laser HWP? I brought it on a mission, didn't fire a single burst, and for some reason it lost 55 out of 60 rounds. When I checked the ammo on the inventory screen, it looked like it had brought back only one round from the mission, instead of 5. 

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XPZ Strategy/Tactics / Re: Rough tech tree progression guideline

« on: April 25, 2016, 11:03:39 pm »

I also really enjoy the all the lore research, and wouldn't mind if there was even more of it.

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XPiratez / Re: Suggestions on how to improve the mod

« on: April 25, 2016, 05:39:59 pm »

Personally, I'd prefer shortcuts that instantly bring up the targeting cursor. I'm pretty sure shooting is the most common activity right after moving, so the faster it is, the smoother the gameplay. The keys should also absolutely be configurable. For example, I always change camera controls to WASD because the arrow keys are much further away from the other common shortcuts.

IMHO, Jagged Alliance 2 does targeting very well: moving the cursor on an enemy brings up the targeting reticle, and you can then spend more APs to aim longer/better. So in OpenXcom, a button to cycle through the fire modes. That's probably a lot more complicated to implement, though.

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OXCE Suggestions DONE / Re: Help test new FOV calculation executable (playable long view distances)

« on: April 24, 2016, 10:45:06 pm »

I haven't noticed any fps drops or lagging animations with this .exe in the few missions I've played, and no clear bugs either. So good job so far.