Messages

91

XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.99E.1 - 13 Nov - Dead in Space

« on: November 17, 2016, 03:49:00 am »

So I felt like messing around and decided it was probably time to recompile OXCE+v3.3, upgrade my save and go say hello to the gals. I was going through the "upgrade between versions" topic and found back:

Update to 0.99E.1:
Upgrading on Battlescape unadvised.
> If you have started a campaign pre-0.99E, add STR_CODEX_GREEN to your items.

and then Eddie's post on what each colors/kinds of voodoo can do. I just realized it won't affect me because I had already researched them all, but still:

I understand the idea of giving the player choices that have meaning. At the same time, a Piratez game is a long commitment so being able to experience/use all that's available would be very interesting. Meridian is at 156 episodes, which is probably about 150 hours, and he's not done yet. I don't know how many hours I've put in my campaign, and honestly don't want to know, but I am not likely to go through multiple campaign.

Because of this, I feel like the different kinds of starting ships are a great idea, in that the choice affects initial gameplay but not overall what you can do as any of those ships is likely to be replaced by other crafts eventually. However, the different voodoo kinds all offer interesting new gameplay options during the end game when things are kind of stretching as you hunt for the last VIP (the point where I stopped playing this Summer). Reducing variations at that point, and requiring a player to go through the long early/mid game to experience the variety seems like a very harsh consequence for an early choice. I will likely just keep upgrading my late game save to try things, and maybe occasionally starting a new game to see how the beginning is different.

Researching everything and experiencing everything is one of the "endgame satisfactions" for many, and psi stuff being so important in XCom, and very flavorful in Piratez, it is a significant thing to (partly) lock away but, at the same time, I'm not sure it's enough to warrant replaying the whole campaign (and not choosing the disciplines that best fit your playstyle, in my case destruction and illusion). In my case, it'd be more frustration than incentive.

92

Suggestions / Re: Human Commander No limit,seventh rank,selectable promotions.

« on: November 16, 2016, 10:30:58 pm »

It would seem pretty simple to mod the game and, say, get rid of rookies (everyone starts as a squaddie, as soldiers probably should, move every rank down by one and create the general rank at the top.

Instead of:
Commander
Colonel
Captain
Sergeant
Squaddie
Rookie

You get:
General
Commander
Colonel
Captain
Sergeant
Squaddie

I'm not exactly sure what the numbers of "Colonels per Captains", "Captains per Sergeants", "Sergeants per Squaddies" actually are, but this would certainly enable more than 1 Commander and only 1 General. I'm just not sure you'd have enough to get 1 commander per base.

93

40k / Re: 40k

« on: November 16, 2016, 10:22:30 pm »

Fair enough, hopefully the clarification takes away the idea of an insultingly demanding suggestion ;P It was written quickly and without thinking, as a reaction to thinking: "What could one do with 40k and a Terra looking planet? hum... !!!!!" But thinking more about it, even that would need geoscape work since the oceans have evaporated and other crazy stuff.

94

40k / Re: 40k

« on: November 16, 2016, 09:37:33 pm »

I'm not sure what you got from my message, but it was a joke at how to keep using the geoscape while developing battlescape assets (something you've done a great job with): to refight the siege of Terra. It was neither serious nor intended as a critic of your work or demanding that you do something differently.

95

XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.99E.1 - 13 Nov - Dead in Space

« on: November 16, 2016, 09:20:59 pm »

The AI considers being under fire in its decision to move, IF I remember well. IE for a given trajectory, it might decide to do something different after being interrupted by reaction fire, even if that missed. By giving relatively slow and inaccurate snap shots (less accurate than the autoshot, which implies setting up and aiming, and slower per shot too, since the soldier is trying to readjust his aim) they are a pretty useless option for using during the player turn but still achieve something to make them feel like suppression weapons.

96

40k / Re: 40k

« on: November 16, 2016, 09:13:37 pm »

Keep Terra as is, swap ultramarines for Imperial Fists/Blood Angels/White Scars (3 soldier types, with slightly different stats and also access only to armors of their chapters, which also have slightly different stats, like better aim on IF armors, better movement on WS Bikes and BA jump packs?) and replay the siege of Terra. Man, that'd be something...!

97

Work In Progress / Re: Public Brainstorm - Watch for Sparks!

« on: November 14, 2016, 08:28:05 pm »

I think that's because of how small terrain is compared to the units. Either a skyranger is a tiny plane, or it is misrepresented. Having terrain with the proper scale could enable dense terrain to be modelled without being unplayable. TftD cruise ships upper levels with the 4x4 rooms (I think) and 3 tiles wide hallways are the minimum size really. Well, maybe 2 tiles hallways, maybe.

Making cramped terrain sounds like fun, until you realize that you have to check each and every one of these rooms for enemies and that the aliens have better reactions than you, so a fair chunk of the time, it'll be "walk into a room, get shot, walk another soldier into a room, hopefully don't get shot and shoot the alien instead" which is quite unsatisfying since you spend a lot of time carefully checking rooms and then pointlessly losing people. Or you have to use the motion scanner like crazy (or like me, "hack" the engine to get those awesome boxes displayed on the battlescape). It's a very tricky balance to strike and I feel like the original UFO and TFTD terrains still do it better, with just about the right amount of terrain to open space.

98

The X-Com Files / Re: What to do with Zombies?

« on: November 14, 2016, 05:16:21 pm »

So I'm replying to a bunch of things, because I didn't have time in the past few days.

About cure of zombiizm - it is a great idea indeed. Dont know about make them soldiers, though. Modern soldiers are more training results, than physical conditions.

Consider it a field experiment: You have someone with great physical capabilities that need high adrenalin/excitement to perform. Where do you get more of that than in the field? And over time they might become skilled like a soldier (they might well never make as good of a sniper through lower acc caps, but could make better breachers from better reactions/str/HP for example)

About return to family - definitly no. I even say NOPE. Read something about quarantine, anti-epidemical measures, so on. Burn them to cinder is more realistic idea. Better burn twice.

Well, Solarius seemed to imply he thought there could be a cure. If you can make the person their former self, then why wouldn't you return them? I'm more than happy for there to not be a cure though.

About selling live aliens - dont be so soft. There is over 7000000 scientists in world (according to unesco). Lets say that 1000000 of them are biologist. Ok, 500 000. How many of them want to look at xenobiological species? I think more than half. And do you know how many military scientists exist? They definetly not in unesco list. 

Well, it takes a LOT to go through and believe me, universities (where a good chunk of "free" researchers who could just jump onto the next interesting thing are, don't have the facilities to handle alien species and the risk they represent. Let alone during the XComFiles time where the alien invasion isn't well known. Government scientists usually have a specific mandate and they don't have the freedom to deviate from it. Sure, some governments will dedicate resources to investigating aliens if they can, which I always believed to be what happened when XCom sells aliens: You get money from one of the founding nations as a reward for providing them with a research subject. But it kinda sucks too as an explanation: if the funding nations are researching aliens, why don't they ever come up with something useful? So in the end we're left with my cousin's explanation: They're sold to fancy sushi restaurants. That's why I asked Solarius about it, I wanted to know his view.

By Lore, x-com strongly connected to secret services. These guys not bother about morale and feelings at all.
So, my opinion: if our world encountered an alien invasion, we must cut out antigrav implants from live floaters, recycle zombies for elerium-infused biomass and grow tamed chryssalids, trained to eat only their previous masters. As we, humans, do. And maybe create reaper chivalry.

There we need to find out which vision of XCom we want to portray:
- The utopian XCom where the countries work together to dashingly defend the Earth from the evil space invaders/mind enslavers?
- The dystopian XCom where alien terrors have come to get you and you need to do everything possible to save humanity?

Generally, XCom is more of an utopian game, as can be seen by the choice of colors, the fast progress of scientific understanding and generally the growth of XCom. It's not a losing battle and you go to Cydonia more to kick the aliens in the nuts than as a last ditch effort even though it is presented as such. You go from getting vaporised by plasma pistols to slaughtering aliens with heavy plasmas while walking in power suits and controlling them like puppets. Now is XComFiles different? It could be, but so far it isn't really. Agents investigate, save poor civilians in monster attacks, scientists research stuff and eventually start cracking alien tech and then it's humanity's rise in power so it can topple the martians.

I don't want Zombies that Feel.  Zombies that Think.  Zombies that elicit sympathy.

Wanton Destruction, Overt Annihilation, Cruel levels of hate and malice directed and focused upon them...  Ground to dust, without a shred of remorse....

Really, when it boils down to it - there's so few things you can basically do that to, in real life OR, in video games...

1) Zombies.
2) Nazis.

And even these days, 2) is a point that's starting to change (for the weirder, really...  But still...)

Even Aliens, well, aliens are sentient beings and all, and we're supposed to respect that concept - even if we do mow them down all the same - there's an implication there...  That is what makes the ALIEN HORROR trope work - because they are *no different to us*, and they started it... 

If we're supposed to feel sympathy for them, don't call them Zombies.  Call them Infects, or Rotters, or Drippys, or something other than Zombies.

Zombies exist in trope to be a tireless, endless horde, whose capability is only proportional to its hordesqueness...  Otherwise, they are something to be trampled under boots.

Besides,

In the immortal Words of Munchkin:

"LEVEL UP:  Kill some Nazis!  Because every game is better when you can kill some Nazis!"

It should apply to Zombies, too.

Well, I certainly agree with #2 needing to change.. As for zombies, they should fall in a similar category as orcs/orks and other fantasy monsters which are totally fine to kill because they're totally evil.

So either you can cure them and they're not really zombies, or they're really nonredeemable and there should be no problem finishing off those that were stunned and getting their fancy blood from them. I would prefer the 2nd, but Solarius has an issue with draining formerly human monsters.

...I find this hard to argue with.

That's why I put them in, dammit!

Indeed, so let's just drain them and be done with this!

EDIT:

I meant animal cages which look like this:


Torchwood

(Not really a Zombie, but pretty close.)

Fair enough, and they do keep alien affected humans in those too. It's easy to make your own vision of something in this game, which is why I was asking/challenging yours. No I know!

But yeah, really you have a choice:
1 - Zombies are redeemable and we shouldn't drain them but we should do something with them more than just keeping them around in prisons/selling them (especially selling them while rabid).
2 - Zombies are monsters and should be treated like any other ones.

In fact, I'd argue for zombies to recover really quickly from stun damage (but not being immune to it), so that it's very unusual to bring them back and they need to be really put down or they'll rise behind you and get you. Then the game is set for killing zombies being the right thing and draining them is fine. It's by far the easiest and simplest, most elegant solution, especially since it's what players have been asking for multiple times.

99

The X-Com Files / Re: The X-Com Files - 0.4.2 alpha: Going Postal

« on: November 13, 2016, 10:35:07 pm »

hum.. that's weird.. worked for me. Will look into it.. eventually/next weekend.

100

The X-Com Files / Re: What to do with Zombies?

« on: November 13, 2016, 10:34:14 pm »

In my opinion it's not really disrespectful, or at least not any more than in normal medical facilities. (A bit different due to, umm, special circumstances, but still.)

Zombies are kept in animal cages, that's pretty hard to spin as respectful treatment. I imagine them aware and raging at the bars in there, worse than normal animals which will give up, because they have the need to sustain/grow their parasite. If they were kept in normal human people cells or med bays, then yes, it might be respectful.

Yeah, but these are agents, not soldiers. Which means they suck.
Still, a police agent at least knows how to shoot straight, so I agree.

Shitty starting stats (except good Stam, STR, HP and bravery since they went through being a zombie, have crazy adrenaline but are a bit disconnected, so hard to scare and can't aim), mediocre training caps (so you can't just fix the problem in the gym, because they don't learn very well in tame conditions, they need to be fired up), great stat caps (physically they're awesome, and when you get them to work up that crazy adrenaline, they can "reconnect" and learn/do great things)? That would be an interesting motivation to bring one bad agent per mission, just because if you keep them alive, they'll become really good. Also extra motivation to keep zombies alive instead of killing them all.

Other than that, I don't see much that adds to the game and keeping the selling as now is probably fine. Just a bit unfortunate that it gives an incentive to kill the zombies instead of the other way around.

101

The X-Com Files / Re: The X-Com Files - 0.4.2 alpha: Going Postal

« on: November 13, 2016, 10:23:17 pm »

- Dogs are soldiers now (not HWPs). No special dog armours yet, because the engine is acting up (read: I have no idea what I'm doing).

I'm curious, what's not working? The avatar/rank thing?

102

The X-Com Files / What to do with Zombies?

« on: November 11, 2016, 09:13:58 pm »

Either a cure or a proper end? Keeping people in cages as zombies is rather disrespectful as well.. what do you think happens when you "sell" them?

I'd say a "cure" that gives manufacturing project to turn zombies into... actually can't you produce soldiers? That'd be a cool way to get them. You give them back control over themselves but they're now strobger/faster/something because all their blood is this crazy substance, so they can't really go back to normal and they join you instead? Otherwise the cure could just give some blood plasma and cost money (you take the crazy blood out, replace it by proper blood and return the people as "well they got into a car accident and we just realized who they are, that's why they're so messed up".

Or just a project to give them "medical aid to die" because there's no cure and keeping people like that indefinitely isn't better. Then you return a corpse that's already "prepared" to the family, which usually includes removal of fluids any ways.

In fact, I think selling of most live (and even dead) specimen is pretty weird. It'd make sense for the accumulation of so much evidence of alien presence to become a problem for xcom and you either incinerate them or build more holding cells/cold storage for corpses. Selling them for a profit is weird. Who do you sell a live chupacabra to in good conscience? Unless it's fluffed as giving it to a government lab of a funding nation for money.. but then you should also be able to give "long term care" of zombies off to them too, which I guess is what selling them is..

Anyhow.. some rambling on the topic.. Maybe it helps somehow... I think a fluff article could be good.

103

OpenXcom Extended / Re: [EXE] OpenXcom Extended

« on: November 11, 2016, 04:20:43 am »

The best documentation, if a bit difficult to parse sometimes, is the OXC readme that comes with it and Piratez. There's a description of pretty much everything, including damage to terrain that is available no through damageAlter.

104

Open Feedback / Re: Question about debt

« on: November 11, 2016, 02:32:53 am »

Fair enough, the current way is better in the "Next month income will be X, my maintenance is Y, so I better make sure to have at least Y-X money at the end of next month", so it's good for planning, it's just confusing as a diagnosis: why is balance not equal to current money + income - maintenance?!

I guess the easy fix would be to find the string that says income there, and change it to say "Next income".. then that page works as a basis to make your financial plan for the next month.

105

The X-Com Files / Re: The X-Com Files - 0.4.2 alpha: Going Postal

« on: November 11, 2016, 02:17:08 am »

Well, sorry I couldn't help, I was pretty busy today. Good to see that you have solved most problems.

For some reason I don't have "avatar instead of ranks" in the executable I tested the mod on, so I can't help with that :/ I'll try to have a look within the next few days if you don't manage to fix it. But it does seem like defining the "armorForAvatar" should do it, so I don't know...