Messages

61

XPiratez / Re: A brand new year: The year of the handle

« on: November 22, 2016, 08:22:00 pm »

My last experience with them was that they were too accurate, yes. Being able to hit far away isn't so bad. You can still feel the effect of them being balanced for when there was a hitting bug, and gals had low throwing acc because you wanted to nerf grenades.

Now that it's not the case, even if the weapons have been nerfed a bit, most thrown stuff is still pretty easy to get 80+% to hit with, compared to many rifles having just 90-100% accuracy on aimed shots, which gives you 60-70% to hit on a 70 firing acc gal. They also have more shots/turn and the damage is can quickly be better than with starting guns. Doing shots * chance to hit * damage applied, bows are way better. For example:

Combat Bow: 120% of throwing, aimRange 21, dropoff 4, 30 TUs, damage 10 + 40% Throwing + 10% Strength
Rifle: 100% of Firing, 60% TUs, damage 30

Take a 60 accuracy, 60 TUs, 40 STR gal:
Combat bow: 72% to hit (60% at 24 tiles distance), 2 shots/turn, 28 damage -> 40 damage/turn expected up to 21 tiles away.
Rifle: 60% to hit, 1 shot/turn, 30 damage -> 18 damage/turn expected

You actually need to go out to 31 tiles away, where bow accuracy drops to 32%, to get the same 18 damage/turn expected (32% * 2 * 28 = 18). With the increased visibility, that's possible, but it's not often necessary and often the rifle won't have a clear line of sight past 30 tiles either. If you are 31 tiles away, you can actually use 28 TUs with the bow gal to walk 7 tiles closer instead and get back to 60% accuracy. Then you essentially get the same outcome as a rifle (60% * 1 * 28), except that next turn you're close enough to fire twice at the same 60% accuracy, or move in to the preferred range of 21 and then fire once with the better accuracy.

So for the cost of 2 damage, you fire twice as much, which means twice as much throwing XP opportunity so you'll improve faster, and more dependable results. You also have better hit chance up to 23 tiles away which is still a decently safe distance given that you have arcing shots so you can fire while the enemy rarely can fire back and terrain doesn't matter as much unless it's indoors or a forest.

And then it keeps getting more advantageous for the bowgal as she improves her throwing accuracy (again, 2x faster than the firing one), since not only will she increase her close range advantage, she'll also extend the range to which she beats the rifle gal and she'll soon beat the damage too. I'd have to double check, but I think the outfits that boost throwing are also easier to come by and more numerous than those that boost firing, and they will boost bow damage on top of accuracy compared to rifles.

Since bows keep improving with the gal, it keeps getting harder and harder to find rifles that can compete. Maybe a battle rifle with PS ammo would be better than a bow for the 60/60/40 gal I used here. However, by the time you have that rifle, the gal won't be 60/60/40 anymore, she'll likely have good enough stats that the battle rifle doesn't measure up either, etc. Using stamina has decreased the ability to spam arrows, but with 2 shots per turn, instead of having two rifle gals you can afford to go down to 1 bow gal + 1 grog gal. Except the grog gal can probably help more than 1 bow gal per turn and you get 2-3 bows to 1 grog, where you get 4-6 shots out of 3-4 gals, which still beats the 3-4 shots out of 3-4 rifles.

Rifles do better indoors and in closer quarter with auto and snap shots and since they don't take stamina so you can run around more. But then melee/pistol/smg is better than rifles. So rifles rarely have a point until you get to sniper rifles (for gals that you stubbornly kept using guns with) or LC/HC/AC/HMGs.

62

Offtopic / Re: kneeling for cover or aiming

« on: November 22, 2016, 07:39:25 pm »

With 12 TUs, you can move 3 more tiles and hopefully get into good cover where the enemy won't see you instead of kneeling behind a rock and praying. "Defensive kneeling" is pretty useless indeed. It is a flaw in the XCom aiming mechanic that the "exposed area" doesn't really matter when trying to hit something, so hiding 50% of yourself doesn't make you much more likely to be missed.

A hit (a simple roll of 0-100% compared to your hit chance) is a hit on some exposed area and it will find it the vast majority of the time, and a miss is a complete miss that doesn't even go near. There are some edge cases where what should have been a hit misses because of terrain, but they're either bugs where you shouldn't have been allowed to fire or a very unlucky situation.

For firing, "aggressive kneeling" generally gives you ~10% to hit more. It's worth doing in some situations, like when you have soldiers in a good position from where you can reliably reach a good chunk of the map (on top of a hill, on top of a transport). But for your scouts and skirmishers, it's better to walk around more and, again, get into good cover to not get shot.

"Overkneeling" is a typical XCom mistake. It makes you feel like you're doing something to help, but you really aren't. In some rare situations, a piece of terrain is high enough to hide you when kneeling but your head will poke out if you stand. But that's rare. Certain mods (like XComFiles and XPiratez) have some weapons that really benefit from kneeling, like HMGs (where the extra chance to hit is quite a bonus and a soldier manning those weapons are not really mobile any ways).

63

Work In Progress / Re: So you say you want a Palette huh?

« on: November 22, 2016, 04:47:00 am »

I think "That's XCom baby!" is appropriate here  If you can do it hard, why do it easy?

64

XPiratez / Re: Craft Weapons DPS Spreadsheet

« on: November 21, 2016, 10:01:05 pm »

Ah! Odd.. I thought I had tried that.. works now.

Interesting to see the effect of size on damage applied through increased accuracy. Says I should still be able to take on cruisers with just a dragon with 3 railguns.

The complete analysis is definitely better than my partial one.

65

XPiratez / Re: Craft Weapons DPS Spreadsheet

« on: November 21, 2016, 09:38:15 pm »

Wanted to play around with the spreadsheet (looks like it has a lot of potential) but it fails because it can't read the ufopaedia or something? It's making use of more advanced spreadsheet features than I know, so I'm not sure what's going on...

66

OXCE Suggestions DONE / Re: [EXE] UFO and Craft Shields

« on: November 21, 2016, 09:30:02 pm »

I've got railguns, but when I designed my air force, beam lasers were better (lower damage, but if you do acc*#ofShots*damage, they come ahead of railguns due to much twice the accuracy and # of shots, plus they don't use ammo). That was before shields made them entirely useless against military targets, the only targets for my heavy crafts. So I'm stuck with an ill-equipped fleet of dragons and krakens. I'm currently considering moving to 1 dragon (with all the railguns I have) + 3 Brave Whalers to sink up to cruisers with a bunch of missiles.

As for obliterator cannons, I'd love to have some, but in all the years of my game I haven't seen a boomgun, so that part of the tree is locked away for me... I need to gather the courage to assault a merc base, I think.

67

Playthroughs / Re: [LP]Hardmode Expansion - Glory or death! (Likely much of both)

« on: November 21, 2016, 09:17:38 pm »

I would usually go dual, giving the guys Shotguns+Rifles. But since the team is not that experienced the roles need to be splitted.

Yeah, that works, with the XAE I do something similar, but shotgun + pistol. A 25 range aim shot with pistols is usually far enough and having it in the quickslot/belt makes it a faster draw than from a backpack. But you buffed rifle damage so it might be worth it. It's good to have versatility, if your soldiers are strong enough.

The Elerium Rocket (140 HE Damage) is basically a guaranteed 1 hit kill on normal Cyberdiscs and in my eyes a little more flexible then a HE, especially in the Range department. If you need to kamikaze, you already play the game wrong.
A Battlefield is a equilibrium, which you need to distort in a way a tsunami unfolds washing away your enemies, without you lifting your fingers.

Didn't know about the elerium rockets, all I've seen in the LP so far are the large ones. If they are reliable, then yeah, superior to HE for sure. As for the poetry, it sounds nice, and indeed usually if you can start gathering momentum then things keep on going better, but XCom, and it seems especially true in this mod, has a way to suddenly throw you some curveball that takes that momentum away.

I told him like a few times go for the initial base, because it is easier, but he insisted to slam his head against cyberdiscs in close quarter. Funny to watch, I am seriously doubting that at the current state he will be able to turn the game in general around. But we will see.

Well, got some further prodding and now we'll see a change in strategy. I'm very much looking forward to more!

68

The X-Com Files / Re: New Mission Conditions

« on: November 21, 2016, 09:07:53 pm »

Good idea!

Lose if certain unit get killed would be a good workaround for prisoner rescue indeed. You can't kill them or you lose and, unlike for civilians, the AI won't target them either since they're technically enemies. They'll be annoying since they are enemies and you need to stun them, but I guess it could be waved off as mind control or Stockholm syndrome.

69

OXCE Suggestions DONE / Re: [EXE] UFO and Craft Shields

« on: November 21, 2016, 09:00:23 pm »

Cool stuff! The static damage reduction shields that were added to enemies have drastically changed the air combat, in a way that crippled my air force (made mostly of ships with heavy weapons with good total applied damage because of high number of shots).

Having the possibility to deplete shields instead of them just subtracting a number from hits would help a lot with that and returning some value to weapons like the beam laser which is fairly expensive to make and turns into something useless even against mid-level military shipping.

Would love to see lasers as the shield depleter weapons (bonus against shield) and missiles as the "crap against shield" one, to favour more dynamic combat with interceptors: First you use your light weapons with beams to blow up their shields and then you enable the missiles to breach the hull and crash them. Would also make crafts with heavy weapons useful again as a mean to charge in and deplete shields before the interceptors launch their missiles.

70

The X-Com Files / New Mission Conditions

« on: November 21, 2016, 06:19:42 am »

lol I've never been called coquette before!

But since I was checking if you were interested I guess that's sort of warranted. I honestly don't think I should ask Meridian to do something for mods since I don't actively mod anymore and actually never modded missions or aliens (for UI, yes I ask, since I do still play).

But if you are interested in my ideas for crazy mission stuff, then I'm more than happy to share Just didn't want to waste more of my time, and more forum space if you weren't. (I waste way too much time of forums already! Trying to cut back... a bit.. maybe..?)

Interesting victory conditions would be:
- Victory on "Abort mission" only IF you have killed all units of a certain rank, with the rank(s) passed as a parameter. This would enable "kill the HQ(s)" type missions.

- Victory on "Abort mission" only IF you have stunned and recovered units a certain rank(s), instead of killed as above. This allows "Kidnap the VIPs" type missions.

- Lose by Turn X unless you kill all units of a certain rank(s). This is the "Kill X with a short window otherwise reinforcements arrive and kill you" typical movie plot, but can also be used for the bomb scenario: the target(s) being a 0TU bomb "unit" that's made vulnerable to only to a very specific item (a medikit type item that drains HP but takes 100% TUs, so that's totally useless against anything except the bomb unit since it doesn't move. And you can decide how many "Agent-turn" it takes to disable a bomb this way, for example by giving it 2 HP and the medikit removing 1 HP. Of course, it's missing the climactic KABOOM but I believe you should be able to pick the sound/music to play on a defeat so you could have a KABOOM sound there instead.

Thinking more about it:
If that's easier, you could ask to be able to put primed explosives in enemy units' inventory, and then when Yankes implements the "primed explosives blow up in inventory", you could also make the bomb work with the current victory conditions:

1 - Put an insane explosive in a "bomb" unit's inventory
2 - Make it possible to hack a bomb "unit" as above with a tweaked medikit item before turn X. Then the player can step on the unit's tile and unprime the crazy explosive.
3 - If you don't manage, bomb goes off in geoscape. KABOOM!! Everybody dies.
4 - If you do manage, the mission uses the current "win by turn Y" victory condition, with Y = X+1 meaning you must have managed to disable the bomb otherwise you'd be dead by now.

If you consider catching/killing all the bombers a requirement for success, you can also use the simple "kill all" victory condition, since you have to kill the bomb "unit" to be able to unprime the explosive item.

71

XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.99E.2 - 18 Nov - Dead in Space 2

« on: November 21, 2016, 05:49:04 am »

The argument for prices not changing regardless of how much the pirates produce is that they are still a MUCH smaller player compared to the guild and other main factions. Even if you have 1000 people working on making grog for money, it's still a small amount compared to the production for the whole world. And if you mint counterfeit chips, then obviously those have a fix value.

Random effects on stuff to represent world-scale event could be cool though.

72

Work In Progress / Re: So you say you want a Palette huh?

« on: November 21, 2016, 05:45:26 am »

I don't know about the last row, I think it gets replaced in UFOPaedia images compared to Battlescape? Someone else will know.

My understanding of the shading is that it's done by shifting indices for the whole image. So to make something darker, you add a number between 1 and 15 to every palette index for the whole image. If that's large enough to make it change palette row, you pick black instead. So if you have a pale grey, index 4, and want it darker, the color displayed will be index 5, or 6 for a bit darker still, etc. But if you want it really dark it will stop at 15 otherwise it'd become the next color. It's the reason every row is a smooth gradient of colors in battlescape palettes (same for the colors used for globe textures in the geoscape).

This also means that your palette cannot work with the current algorithm because shading deep reds (2nd row) will eventually give you bright pinks.

73

Playthroughs / Re: [LP]Hardmode Expansion - Glory or death! (Likely much of both)

« on: November 21, 2016, 05:27:33 am »

So i've been an idiot and been going for the wrong base. Damn.

Or a dashingly brave officer with little regard for his men? Sounds rather British to me

Also I wholeheartedly agree with:

No .. no ... not an idiot.

An entertaining LetsPlay commander who just needs to sack his intelligence officer

Hope you will continue the LP.

Especially the last part! You need to continue!

and if you do ... i hereby want to enlist as the new battlefield intelligence rookie

But unfortunately I just stepped up for this role There's plenty of other openings though! And I'm sure the next base assault will create a few more! (Might evendors be one to replace me.. )

So, Lion66Six, have at it man! Don't let them aliens get the last word!

74

OXCE Wishlists / Re: Solar's wishlist

« on: November 21, 2016, 05:21:01 am »

You could only display it for researched enemies. I think that is doable and would not be cheaty. The point is to hide the math from the player. Think Blowpipe vs Osiron Security. Another example: Self Charging Laspistol vs Mechtoid. Takes a lot of shots, but you can kill a Mechtoid with that.

Now that I'm thinking about enemy info: The mind probe should show resistances too, and not just armor. Would have to solve the display space problem first though.

The thing is, if a weapon is 0-200% or 50-150% is not always clear. If that were explicitly stated in the Bootypeadia, I would say it's not that important (something for the nerd button). But right now I still have to look in the ruleset from time to time because I'm not sure about the damage range. I would still prefer to have the damage range, because why no. It does not use that much more space and saves me a little bit of math.

Randomness is stated most of the time, or part of a broad category (melee is 50-150%, plasma stun and ranged is 0-200%) and a good half the time the lower limit would be zero, which is wasting space for nothing. I think average power is enough, like in the ufopaedia.

I also think armor and resistance should be left to the player. resistance*TotalPower - Armor*ArmorPiercing is already a lot better than resistance * (StatMod1 * Stat1 + StatMod2 * Stat2 + Base Damage) * RangePowerLoss - Armor * Armor Piercing and keeping things independent of enemies allow you to quickly gauge which weapon is on average better for a gal.

We still need ideas how to display this stuff for melee weapons though, because they don't have a target crosshair. And melee weapons is where this would be most helpful because these are the bulk of stat dependent damage items.

A very good point, maybe in the attack bar next to the "Hit" or "Stun" keyword?

[/quote]

Could you please post your executable for the folk like me who don't know how to merge and build their own executable?

I could publish my code on github.

What I have is an executable that *should* work on Xubuntu 14.04 (I compile individually on my different computers even though they share the same OS because I figured there's a small chance of it going wrong and I'd rather waste idle computer time compiling than my active time debugging) and I have no idea (nor interest in learning) how to compile for others.

My stuff isn't very different from Meridian's, except for having a few cheaty/ott things that he/Dioxine rejected (the scanner and extra inventory stats are all I can think of right now. I use to have statistical ammo conservation and manufacturing profit too, but it got pulled so now everyone has it).

75

OXCE Wishlists / Re: Solar's wishlist

« on: November 20, 2016, 11:15:42 pm »

I second posting links to repos, that way I can merge them in even if Meridian doesn't like it (like the awesome, cheesy but so much easier to use that it's worth it scanner)