Topics

91

Work In Progress / Reaver's Alien Mix

« on: August 10, 2016, 03:54:05 am »

This mod adds a variety of mixed race crews to the game to spice up the late game experience. It also nerfs alien psionics by making them much less likely to psionically attack soldiers that are not seen by aliens.


Latest Version: 0.3.0
See post #2 for details and download.
edit: There are no plans for a full release as a standalone mod. This mod has been wrapped into Reaver's Faithful Megamod but if you want a standalone mod really badly you can send me a message requesting it.


There are two mixed race crews you'll find occasionally in the late game
Operations Mix: This group has a mix of floaters, snakemen, and mutons. Larger vessels will contain sectoids or ethereals as command ranks. Regular UFOs will sometimes carry this crew type in the late game.
Terror Mix: This group has a wide variety of terrorist units, with chryssalids being the most common. They will have a few sectoid leaders to manage the group. This crew type will only be seen on Alien Terror missions. If you see them operating in a normal vessel, it means that vessel was part of a terror operation.





edit: I have discovered that this part of the mod does not work. It should be fixed in the upcoming release of Reaver's Faithful Megamod but it takes so long to generate new alien bases and check them that I cannot reliably test this part of the mod in the short term.
Alien base commanders are always ethereals now. This may make bases much harder to assault in the early game. You may occasionally see Ethereal Commanders in ships, but most ship commanders will be the same race as the rest of the ship occupants. Ethereals and mutons are much more closely entwined now. Ethereals command the alien forces while mutons defend the ethereals. Ethereal bases have muton soldiers, and muton bases have Ethereal upper ranks.
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Ethereals' firing accuracy and reactions have been reduced, especially the leaders and commanders. They will cease to be an elite fighting unit and will rely more on their psionics as well as their muton companions for defense. They are still very durable but otherwise vulnerable in close quarters. The psi skill of the Ethereal soldier has been reduced, while the psi strength of the Ethereal commander has been increased. This means in a mission with lots of ethereals, you'll get fewer effective psi attacks, but the top effectiveness of psi attacks has been increased significantly. If you combine this with Reaver's Soldier Classes, you'll find even the strongest psi wizards cannot stand very well against the sheer psionic might of the ethereal commander. But if you get rid of the commander quickly, the rest will fall pretty easily.





The alien psionics nerf goes well with the addition of ethereal commanders at all of the bases. You'll need to be well prepared to assault a base, but regular craft will be much easier to take down. When you do encounter psionics, it'll help to spread your soldiers out. You won't get psionic attacks on units the aliens can't see, but they can still attack a unit they saw during your turn immediately prior to theirs. They can also see through the eyes of any unit they control. Using this information, you can learn to shield your units from psionic attacks. You can also use tanks to assault the base commanders.

This mod is meant to be used with Psionic Line of Fire turned OFF. You'll be able to continue using slightly cheaty psionics, while the aliens' psionics won't be much cheatier than yours. When Fred spots a sectoid soldier on the far end of the map, Nancy will be able to perform psionic attacks on the sectoid even though she cannot see it. Likewise, the sectoid leader hiding in the UFO can perform psionic attacks on Fred. But Nancy and the sectoid leader cannot perform psionic attacks on eath other.

Try to get rid of all psionic aliens before turn 20 or before you reduce their population down to 2. After either one of those things happens, the aliens can see your troops.



This mod is in development so let me know how you feel about it or any ideas you have regarding it. I'm open to new ideas for changes to the aliens. My goal is to remove all fake difficulty and replace it with content that's actually challenging, while presenting a game that feels much like the original game but less buggy and better developed. I don't want to add unnecessary content, but I'm happy to fill in gaps where the original game had too few possibilities or not enough meaningful choices.

92

Fan-Stuff / Founder Species - Why the Fermi Paradox is Wrong

« on: August 08, 2016, 02:00:02 am »

This is a slightly off-topic article that relates to my introspecion on the origin of the alien intelligence(s) that have visited Earth. First, I begin with explaining just how rapidly we showed up, and how the universe may yet blossom full of life but it may simply be too young to be covered with interstellar civilizations.


The Fermi Paradox states that our own galaxy has got to have millions of life-supporting planets around stars some of which are older than our sun, and some of those planets would likely produce alien civilizations which could traverse the Milky Way in millions of years even without faster-than-light travel. The paradox is that despite all the time that has passed (the universe is ~13.8 billion years old), we see no evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence.

I think 14 billion years is a bit early to start saying there's nobody out there.



Let's start with a list of the things a life-supporting planet needs to produce a civilization--and I'm going to use a modern and loose-fitting set of needs which may differ from the necessary things you've heard about:
1.) nutrients for biochemistry - the planet's surface must be rich in substances that can create biochemical molecules. This probably means hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen and fortunately these are extremely abundant. They are also low density and so are likely to be found on the surface of the planet.
2.) an atmosphere to allow liquids and gases on the surface, many of which are important for biochemical interactions. Many planets form with an atmosphere but most lose it eventually.
3.) a stable environment that allows life to evolve for a long time without the planet becoming sterilized at any point.

You may have heard that planets have to be the exact right distance from their star, the 'Goldilocks Zone' if you will. That zone is actually a rather thick band, for instance in our solar system Venus, Earth, and Mars are all within this Goldilocks Zone. Venus and Mars are inhospitable because they don't have a strong magnetic field. Earth's magnetic field is constantly reinforced by the strong tidal forces between it and its large moon. Venus and Mars don't have a large moon. Once upon a time they both had flowing water on their surface and may both have had simple life.

The Downfall of Venus: This planet is Earth's twin, it's barely smaller and has about the same internal makeup, being made of mostly iron. It probably started off with a strong magnetic field and a moderately-thick atmosphere of primarily hydrogen. But over time its mantle cooled and began to stop moving, and its magnetic field waned. Its atmosphere bled into space and some event (seems to be connected to the loss of magnetic field) triggered intense volcanism which caused the surface to continually spew out tons of carbon-dioxide gas. Today the planet has a very thick atmosphere which is constantly being bled into space but is also being constantly renewed by the intense volcanism.

The Downfall of Mars: This planet is significantly smaller but still quite large enough to support life. Its internal makeup is low on iron, being much more carbon-rich and giving the planet a much lower gravitational pull than Earth. It probably had an atmosphere of primarily hydrogen initially, and it definitely had flowing water on its surface. We can see the evidence of this all over the surface: it is covered in lake beds, river chasms, deltas, oxbow lakes, and everything in between. But the mantle and core began to cool and it lost nearly all of its magnetic field. The low density composition of Mars and its lack of heavy radioisotopes likely made its core cool even faster, causing the magnetic field to wane more rapidly. It is possible Mars also went through a phase of intense volcanism--today we see giant volcanoes on its surface much like Venus has, but the ones on Mars are long dead and the atmosphere of carbon dioxide has grown very thin. The only thing keeping it from completely escaping into space is that some of the carbon dioxide keeps freezing onto the poles, and melting again. This delays its escape, but it's only a matter of time before Mars' surface is a vacuum. Eventually Venus will follow.

Why the Earth thrives: Earth has a strong magnetic field which holds in its atmosphere. This magnetic field is constantly replenished by internal motion and shear forces in the supersolid mantle. This mantle is technically solid and we can determine this by sending sound waves through it. The sound waves are blocked by the liquid core. The mantle is so hot that the rocky iron-rich material it's made of should be liquid or gas, but it's under so much pressure that it's solid. The pressure is so great, in fact, that these solids are deformed and pushed around almost like a liquid. The mantle ebbs and flows like a giant ocean of solid rock, creating tremendous frictional forces and magnetizing the planet as a whole. What keeps it hot is a twofold effort: the giant moon's tidal forces rip and tear the crust and mantle, generating heat near the surface, while the radioisotopes within the core decay gradually and produce heat from within. The mantle can't cool because it's being heated from both sides.



So how often can we expect to find a planet like Earth, with all those heavy metals and a large moon? The answer is less about rarity and more about time. When the universe first formed, it expanded rapidly but it took a very long time before it had cooled enough for matter to form. After about 150 million years, stars of pure hydrogen began to form, and we call these Population 3 stars. There were no heavy metals in these stars initially. Elements from helium to carbon can be produced in a small/main sequence star (like our sun) and after it fuses carbon in its core, it becomes unstable and sheds its outer layers in what we call a nova, trapping everything heavier than helium in its white dwarf core.

The metal gets outside of the stars by way of supernovae. These are caused by giant stars fusing all the way up to iron, which causes them to explode violently. The lithium through iron in the core still is trapped inside and the core becomes either a neutron star or a black hole, but the ejecta is released with such tremendous force that much of it is fused into the really heavy elements, and this is where most of the elements, such as gold or uranium are produced.

Most stars were stable for a long time, but some lived short lives and exploded young. Size was a big factor here, larger stars didn't last as long, but density was another factor. The lightweight population 3 stars burnt their fuel much slower than the majority of stars today, and so there was a long time before even population 2 stars became abundant. Population 3 stars would not have had any planets, but may have had other stars orbiting them.

It's hard to say when population 2 stars started to pop up, but gradually as stars exploded and new ones formed, some stars got heavier elements inside of them. These were the population 2 stars, containing heavier elements, but they were still very metal-poor compared to the population 1 stars that are abundant today. These population 2 stars may have had a few sparse bits of debris orbiting them, and they may have captured planets later, but overall they would be barren. They played an important role, however, as they would go through their life much faster and explode, enriching the universe with more metals so that eventually population 1 stars could form.

It was about a billion years after the Big Bang that galaxies began to form, and around the same time that the very last population 3 stars formed. Any population 3 stars (extremely metal poor) alive today are almost certainly over 13 billion years old, and many of them may stick around quite a bit longer as they very slowly burn through their fuel. By the time galaxies began to form, metals and heavier elements were spread all over the universe, albeit still in small amounts. Many population 2 stars formed, and gradually seeded the universe with more metals.

Around 4-5 billion years after the Big Bang, the first population 1 stars formed, rich (relatively speaking) with metals (astronomical term for all heavier elements) and these probably had planets around them. The first population 1 stars were as yet metal poor compared to what life needs, but early star systems could have had a variety of lifeless planets orbiting them. Maybe life started on a few of these, but it probably didn't get very far as those planets probably didn't have atmospheres, and the few that did would have lost them quickly without a magnetic field. This was around 10 billion years ago.

The oldest metal-rich population 1 stars formed around 7 billion years ago, 7 billion years after the Big Bang, when the universe was half the age it is now. These stars had rich accretion disks which would have given them an abundance of planets, some of which would be very large and have very thick layers of gases, compressed into deep oceans made of mostly hydrogen and helium. These are what we call gas giants or ice giants, depending on their exact composition. Don't let the name fool you, they're mostly liquid. Names in astrophysics tend to refer more to their composition relative to other objects, than it does to their specific traits.





Now we've finally got the first stars that can bear life-supporting planets, and it only took 7 billion years. From here, it's a matter of chance whether or not life gets off to a good start. It'll need a metal-rich planet--not necessarily as rich as Earth--I simply mean not a barren chunk of lithium. It's going to need to be rich in carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen, and it wouldn't hurt to have a heavier core to push all the lighter stuff up to the surface. It also needs a large moon and a protective gas giant. The gas giant provides that stable environment I mentioned earlier, ensuring that this rich accretion disk doesn't become a shooting gallery and prevent the planet from stabilizing before it's lost its chance to start life. But gas giants are abundant around these stars, so that doesn't eliminate too many. The biggest factor of chance here is getting that moon. They're rare because planets can't form with a moon like that--it would have been unstable during accretion and they would have merged. The only way for a planet to have a large moon is for it to gain the moon after accretion.

Earth seems to have obtained its moon when the Mars-sized planet Theia plunged sidelong into the Earth, merging the two and sending a large amount of material into a low orbit around the Earth. This likely happened about 4.5 billion years ago, perhaps only a hundred million years after the Earth formed and within the first billion years after our sun and solar system began to form. The material pushed into Earth's orbit would have coalesced into the moon we see today--built out of the same stuff as our planet, but barren because it lacks the heavy core. It became tidally locked with Earth and cooled, losing its magnetic field and atmosphere. Its core is probably completely solid. But it keeps us alive today.

Another possible way to obtain a large moon in a low orbit is for one to be captured into the planet's orbit. It would initially have a highly elliptical orbit, but close encounters with other bodies in the young star system would adjust its orbit until either it becomes stable, is ejected, or crashes into something. There may be other possible ways to obtain a large moon, but the vast majority of times it'll happen are in one of these two ways.

The chance of your protected planet in the Goldilocks Zone obtaining a large moon are slim. Most planets in the accretion disk never get struck by another planet, and the ones that do aren't likely to get a moon from it. If the planet hits too directly, they may shatter each other or just merge together, which one depending on the speed of the impact. If the planet hits a glancing blow, they may both keep on going, losing very little matter yet having their orbits readjusted. And if the planet does hit at a good angle, it may send the other planet reeling off on a bad orbit that might lead to it colliding with another planet or being ejected from the star system. The same poor chances exist for those rare planets that capture a large moon, for it has to become stabilized before it either gets ejected or collides with its new parent planet. It's like playing Russian Roulette every time you flip a coin until it lands on its edge.

But somewhere out there it's bound to happen. Still, that means it probably isn't very common in the early universe. But not very common 7 billion years ago would be far more common today, given how rich our galaxies are in population 1 stars. So that brings in the question: how long does life need to produce a space-colonizing civilization? Well let's walk through the Earth's development. It's 4.5 billion years ago, chance happened, Jupiter defends us, we got a large moon, and we've definitely got the materials for life to form. Now it's once again a waiting game.





The moon cools and the planet's surface cools. The moon was much closer to the surface than it is today, and it wasn't tidally locked. It created intense tidal forces, but the Earth's surface was able to cool enough for life to form. The hydrogen atmosphere acted as a weak shielding from the sun's ionizing cosmic rays, but life needed more shielding than that. The surface was probably a bit moist, but rocky, barren. No life formed yet.

Over the next hundred million years or so, the planet was bombarded repeatedly with smaller meteors and comets, and they may have enriched it with more water. One way or another, nearly all of the water it has today was probably on the planet within the first few hundred million years after it formed. Over time the impacts began to thin out, oceans formed, and within some of the warm, shallow waters complex molecules began to form. They probably came together quickly as soon as conditions were right. The oxygen and nitrogen would have readily combined with other materials to form many simple organic compounds. Carbon could form long chain molecules, allowing for many kinds of chemistry to happen. Water was the solvent and catalyst, mixing the reagents and driving them to form new compounds. And lightning provided ionization, splitting apart overly stable compounds and enabling special compounds to form which could not form in the absence of electrical ionization.

RNA and DNA formed in these oceans and it began to replicate itself, kicking off the process of evolution by gene mutation and natural selection. This all happened in the early years of the Earth, more than 4 billion years ago, and only maybe 1-2 hundred million years after Earth stabilized and became suitable for life. All life we have found on Earth is genetically related, suggesting that while life may have started multiple times on Earth and in multiple places, only one set ever survived to today. Some say it was the extremely lucky strain that didn't die to whatever killed the rest, but I don't believe that for a moment. I'll bet it gained a strong mutation and conquered all other life on the planet, rendering it extinct. During this time, meteor impacts may have sent life off the Earth and into space, where it is conceivable it may have survived and later impacted Mars or Venus. They, too, may have had life ejected into space where it landed on Earth. Maybe all life on Earth originated on Venus or Mars. Maybe the tough strains that survived space travel became the invasive species that killed off everything else. We don't know. But today Venus and Mars are hostile and we think probably lifeless while life on Earth thrives.

Eventually the DNA and RNA gained cellular bubbles which protected them while allowing genetic material and important nutrients to pass through the porous shell. These were the first cells and most of us say it was the first life, but I say life began at DNA creation. Where you draw the line is moot, however. But after this, single-celled prokaryotic bacteria (the first and most successful domain of life) thrived and began to fill the shallow parts of the Earth's oceans. They lived around 1-100 meters beneath the surface, deep enough to be protected from the sun but shallow enough to receive its warmth, shallow enough for ocean currents to churn up precious nutrients to sustain them. These first life consumed raw nutrients to sustain themselves and were not sufficiently developed to produce energy.

93

Work In Progress / How do I make psionics require same-turn discovery?

« on: August 06, 2016, 08:18:04 am »

I know there's already a default mod that forces psionics to only be used when the user has line of sight to the target. But in default settings X-Com soldiers can only use psionics on aliens whom any of your units have seen in the same turn, however the aliens have no such restriction and can use psionics on your units when none of the aliens can see your units. I want to make it so that the aliens have to have any unit see your soldier that turn in order for them to use psionics on that soldier. The one using the psionics doesn't need to see them, but at least one of the aliens does. That's what I want.



Also I want to put in the TFTD default of ranged psionics into UFO Defense, such that psionic attacks are weakened with range.

94

Fan-Stuff / A Realistic Backstory for the Aliens

« on: August 05, 2016, 11:44:06 am »

I tend to get scientific at times, and I've had this idea in my head. I'm abandoning all of the newer ideas about the aliens, and sticking with what little bits we know about them from just the first two games. From there, I came up with some reasonable ideas to explain where the aliens came from and what they're doing here. This story is far too realistic for mainstream fiction, so prepare to see many fiction tropes thoroughly dashed.

I like to think it all could have happened.





The aliens began as the noble Aquatoids perhaps ten to twenty million years ago. Back then they were a short, slender, aquatic-benthic being with prehensile limbs that could manipulate tools, and large eyes that could see clearly in deep waters. They looked very different from the aquatoids we know today. Their intelligence and communication skills evolved to the point they began going through stages of technological progress. Now, they differed from us humans in that they started off much more slowly. Over hundreds of thousands of years, they very gradually developed an advanced society. You see, these people were naturally tenders of their environment. Their ecological tendencies were strong, and they were content to maintain most things as they were. The Aquatoids were well-situated in their environment as a highly successful apex predator, thus their evolutionary pressure was slow and they had little need to advance further. Thus, their slow progress was fueled primarily by selection of mates initially, and later by sheer boredom alone. Life was easy for them, so they focused most of their efforts on entertainment.

These creatures weren't explorers then, and they were content to live underwater. Population became problematic many times, given how uncommon it was for an aquatoid to die from any cause other than age, but they would eventually find solutions that were ecologically viable. They invented every trick in the book to stave off population growth. Thus they pretty much ignored dry land, even though there existed on their world vast continents covered in large multicellular life. It was well into their technological development that they began to see diminishing nonrenewable natural resources as a particularly important problem. For hundreds of thousands of years they had simply recycled everything, and were exceedingly conscious about resource usage. But some things just couldn't last forever, and it had been too long since they had lived without their technology. Around six to eight million years ago, it came time for them to emerge from the oceans and explore.

The continents were rich with natural resources, but they knew it would not last. The Aquatoids built domed cities on land to hold in the water, and their population began to grow, but resource costs to build and maintain these cities was high. This pressured them to seek out a more efficient way to live on land, and they began to study genetic manipulation. Their goal was to create a version of themselves that could exist on land without life support systems. This led to the discovery that they could incorporate genes from other species to achieve new and potentially useful results. Over perhaps two hundred thousand years, they developed and perfected a being, which we might call the terratoid. And thus the surface became populated by terratoids and they worked with the aquatoids to distribute resources and improve efficiency. But the study of genetics continued, and more discoveries were made. It appeared that there were more breakthroughs to be had which could further improve efficiency...

Over the next couple million years, the aliens built many servant races through genetic manipulation, and became extremely efficient, but the land resources weren't going to last forever, no matter how efficient they became. This led to the eventual discovery that it was possible to leave the planet, and that out there there were more planets. The aliens built mining posts throughout their solar system, but it was a rough start because space technology was extremely demanding on nonrenewable resources. It was worth it, they reasoned, because they had no choice. But the aliens did ravage through just about everything they dared to mine in only a few thousand years time. It was time to leave for the stars, lest they be forced to damage their beautiful planets beyond recognition.

Space travel technology was developed, but nothing like we humans imagine. The aquatoids were more than content to drift through space for many generations. They weren't trying to get anywhere, rather they were simply making a calculated move to protect and nurture their home environment. Thus over the next few million years small numbers of them drifted throughout space, gradually winding up around just about every star within several dozen parsecs. They would carefully extract useful resources from planets and develop huge vaults to store the resources for long term use. Eventually, large shipments would be sent home. Life-bearing worlds were rare gems rich with genetic material they could sample to improve their servant races.

Around three million years ago, one expedition of aquatoids happened upon Earth, and it was the first world they had come across with multicellular life since leaving home. They immediately became fascinated by its wealth of advanced multicellular life, for its land and seas were filled to the brim with all sizes of plant, animal, and fungus, many of which were very large. Earth is significantly larger than the Aquatoid's home world and has over two times the gravity, so it provided a wealth of creatures adapted to a unique planetary environment, spread over much more total surface area than they had encountered on their world. The gravity was no problem as they were benthic beings, and the water could support their frame easily. Thus they dismantled their entire expedition and made a new permanent home for themselves on Earth.

The aquatoids brought with them aquatic servants from their world, including tasoths and tentaculats. They maintained a tight leash on these creatures, however, as they wanted more than anything to preserve this lush biosphere. A servant species let loose could easily become invasive. The aliens built the giant city of T'Leth deep in the ocean on a vast plain where they could construct a large structure without disrupting the natural ecosystem. Inside the city was a microcosm of home, but outside was the natural untainted Earth. For hundreds of thousands of years the aliens very carefully exploited the important resources of the Earth in careful mining operations which prevented terrain destruction. Simultaneously, they built a large array of servant races from the creatures on Earth, and even extracted genetic material from the fossils of long-extinct creatures.

Most of the aliens' time was spent in hibernation. The most efficient resource extraction methods were very slow, and there was much waiting to be done. There was no hurry, and no sense wasting resources being lively. So they slept and dreamed, and remained in stasis most of the time.

It was perhaps twenty thousand years ago that the second expedition came to Earth. They established lines of communication with T'Leth and shared their knowledge. The second expedition had brought with them servant species from other worlds, and new technology unknown to T'Leth. This expedition was not crewed by aquatoids, but by sectoids, a variation of the terratoids built for space travel and environmental resilience. They settled down on Mars and found it much to their liking, for it had lower gravity and dimmer light. With their large eyes and weak frame, they would have found it uncomfortable to settle on Earth. But air pressure was a minor concern as they were content with pressures as low as a tenth of our air, so there were no stress issues with their domed cities.

The sectoids built a city on Mars, in what is now known as Cydonia. They mined Mars for its resources and visited Earth in short stints to take advantage of the land resources that T'Leth had been ignoring. There was a species of ape on the land which was unique among the Earth animals: these creatures would build high-tech hunting weapons out of stone, and hunt large animals to eat. The apes were hugely successful, warlike, and often squabbled with each other. They ravaged lands, hunted species to extinction, and explored in search of new lands to conquer. They were not resource conscious at all. But the sectoids merely watched these apes with interest, and did not interfere with them.

Over thousands of years the sectoids amassed a wealth of precious Elerium fuel which they stored underground on Mars. They were manufacturing this substance by bombarding Uranium with alpha and beta particles. Just like the aquatoids, the sectoids built slowly with great care to preserve the Earth's natural environment. The apes (humans) developed technological advancements rapidly compared to the much slower sectoids. And so the sectoids watched with interest, staying out of the human's sight, and occasionally taking humans for study. It was their intent to make humans into a servant race.

Human war technology grew out of hand, and the sectoids began to fear they would lose control of us. Thus they began to devise a scheme to topple our governments and convert us to anarchy, however as a backup strategy weapons were devised for defense. Through subterfuge tactics and careful application of psionic coercion, the aliens began to sway humanity to turn away and ignore them. Still, small groups of humans persisted in noticing the aliens and perceiving them as a threat. After enough alien research groups went missing, a secret intergovernment organization was built to gather data on the aliens in total secrecy and protect that data so that it could be eventually used to combat the aliens. That organization was X-Com, and it was founded some time in the late 1950s.

For the first few decades of its existence, X-Com studied the aliens and was very careful to ensure the aliens didn't know what they had found out. Slowly but surely, we began to unravel their strategies, the capabilities of their technology, and their weaknesses. We learned they navigated the Earth with levitating aerial spacecraft, and that they could sense animals psionically. We could hide research groups from them most easily by putting them underground directly beneath centers of large-brained animal activity, because the animals would provide psionic waves to mask the presence of the humans. These bases could be hidden from humans and aliens alike.

In 1999, X-Com officially became aggressive against the aliens. Advanced aircraft and weapons had been developed in secret, optimized for use against the aliens. The first attack was a huge success. An X-Com stealth fighter fired a pair of medium range ballistic missiles, each carrying a small nuclear payload, at an unsuspecting alien scout vessel from a range of 60km. The vessel did not see the attack coming and was badly damaged. It crashed into the ground and X-Com sent out a ground expedition to finish off the aliens and plunder their technology. That mission was successful and X-Com walked away with a huge prize.

X-Com assimilated alien technology rapidly in the coming weeks, but the aliens had decided that retaliatory measures were necessary. It was war. Not knowing where to find X-Com, the aliens resorted to the use of terror tactics to weaken humanity's resolve to fight them. A major city was attacked on foot, and the aliens walked the streets, shooting every human in sight. Of course X-Com showed up, but this time the aliens were ready and massive X-Com casualties were inflicted. Little actual damage was done, but the message was clear: do not attempt to fight the aliens lest there be consequences.

In the following year or so, the aliens and X-Com played a tug of war game, with the aliens using smear tactics to make X-Com look bad, and X-Com continuing to plunder more and more alien technology, gaining an ever-larger advantage over the aliens. These weapons were so much more dangerous in the hands of the warrior humans. It quickly became clear to the sectoids that they were going to be overwhelmed. A last ditch effort was made to infiltrate the top governments through direct usage of psionic control. These bold attacks quickly made it clear to every human that the aliens were our enemy, and countries began to choose sides quickly, either aligning with X-Com or surrendering to the aliens.

X-Com won the war by attacking Cydonia and killing the hive brain. The sectoids lost control of their servant races and their lines of communication were breached. The few remaining aliens on Earth were systematically hunted to extinction. But during the attack on Cydonia, a message was sent to T'Leth. Humans didn't know about T'Leth yet, and so the aquatoids would keep it that way for a time. They quickly began to wake from their sleep and build war technologies. It was preparation for a massive invasion.

In 2039, the humans had almost forgotten about the aliens. It was then that the aquatoids attacked, striking down key targets in an attempt to disrupt Earth's ability to put up a fight. Military targets were attacked, as well as logistics chains and supply warehouses. They wanted to take away our weapons. X-Com still existed, but it was running skeleton crews and was not prepared for another invasion. Governments gathered in secret and equipped X-Com quickly to enable them to fight yet another war. Unfortunately, they could not take advantage of plasma weapons technology from the last war due to Elerium shortages, and the fact that the huge stores of Elerium on Mars had not yet been found. Plasma weapons had been outlawed, and all existing weapons had been locked up in secret vaults. The technology remained in computer files but not even X-Com could use the weapons or own Elerium.

So back to war we went, but this time there were far more casualties. X-Com struggled against the aliens' sheer might, but our ability to plunder technology and wage wars proved too much for them and once again we began to gain the upper hand. It was all downhill from there. It was a close call, but we won the war and destroyed T'Leth. We discovered human/sectoid hybrids and spared them because they were around 95% human, but destroyed all other servant species. The hybrids were able to re-integrate into society for the most part but were subject to racial tensions and prejudice.



Someday perhaps we will meet the sectoids and aquatoids again. Perhaps next time, circumstances will be different.

95

Released Mods / [UFO] Red/Blue Laser Pistol and Heavy Laser

« on: August 05, 2016, 08:32:38 am »

I drew some art for the laser pistol and heavy laser, to give them the same motif as the laser rifle. The inspiration for this mod came from the AwesomeGuns.Laser mod which tweaked the laser pistol and heavy laser art a bit but mainly made the laser rifle look a lot more like the other two. If you like golden brown laser guns, then definitely check out AWESOMEGUNS.LASER. But if you're like me and think the laser rifle is pretty swank, I've got the artwork right here to carry that motif over to the other two laser guns. And if you just need more artwork for more varieties of laser, we've both got you covered!




I put several hours into these designs. While I primarily copied them from the laser rifle, I did have to draw all of the details by hand. If you like my work, feel free to add it to your own mods, just let them know who drew it, please! Also note that the laser rifle now has a scope, so it's been slightly altered from the original laser rifle.


I made sure to put in floorobs and handobs for these as well. It's all put together in an easy-to-install mod at the bottom of the post that shouldn't have any conflicts with other mods.

If you would like to view and download the images alone, check out this post:
https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,4796.msg68392.html#msg68392

96

Resources / Reaver's artwork - featuring Red/Blue Lasers!

« on: August 02, 2016, 11:10:43 am »

Here I am posting all of my art projects for my WIP total conversion mod. You can install this art into your games/mods for your own aesthetic pleasure.



I colorized the large rocket in two different fashions. In my mod, the small rocket is now the smoke rocket, and the large rocket is renamed the explosive rocket. When you research alien grenades, you can manufacture alien rockets, and when you research blaster bombs, you can manufacture fusion rockets.


On reply #7 I have posted artwork to give the laser pistol and heavy laser a red and blue motif like the original laser rifle. It is my (semi) original artwork and I spent quite a few hours on it, so I hope you like it! I also added a scope to the laser rifle. My mod will be using the red/blue lasers for the standard laser line, and will be using CanadianBeaver's art from awesomeguns-laser for the automatic laser line. This makes them look visually distinct from one another as well as adding a highly different style to either line. If art style is what matters most to you, then you can choose to use the weapons you think look the best.


On reply #8 I have posted recolorations of the stun and blaster bombs. These are for my conventional-charge variants which you can manufacture as soon as you research the alien's version of the bomb. The black one is high explosive, in the case of the blaster bomb it is a cheaper and less destructive bomb. The yellow-orange one is incendiary. The blue-grey small bomb is smoke.

97

Work In Progress / How do I add artwork?

« on: August 02, 2016, 08:26:04 am »

I'm a little confused when it comes to adding new artwork for OpenXcom mods. I know I can use .gif images and place them in the appropriate subfolders within the mod folder, but the rulesets use simple numbers to determine which images or sounds to use. How do I know which number to choose, and how does the game sort between one mod and another which may have allocated the same number for separate images?

98

Released Mods / [UFO] Reaver's Air Weapons

« on: August 01, 2016, 09:31:12 am »

This mod alters aircraft weapons and adds a few, making the choice of aircraft weapons less decided and more strategic. Every weapon is useful, and no weapon is an I-WIN button. UFO attack ranges are also increased, so you'll be getting shot at more often during interceptions.
This mod is compatible with all other Reaver's X mods.


Version 1.1
See post #2 for details and download.


Mod portal page: https://www.openxcom.com/mod/reaver-039-s-air-weapons

video showing laser beam and pulse cannon





AIRCRAFT WEAPONS

Cannon: I increased its accuracy and damage, so it has decent DPS and can deal many times more damage than stingrays or avalanches before it runs out of ammo, yet it's still weak enough per-hit to safely crash land small scouts. Still probably won't be a popular weapon but it's not as terrible, and it's more of a backup just in case weapon. Ammo is now half price as it comes in units of 25 instead of 50.

Stingray: now more accurate than avalanche, making it a reliable weapon as well as giving it significantly higher average DPS than avalanche. These only outrange medium scouts.

Avalanche: made slightly less accurate to make them more erratic. This gives more reason to use stingrays. These still outrange everything but battleships.

Pulse Cannon: laser tech weapon, short range, high accuracy, and fast firing. It can crash land small scouts but has a low chance of destroying them. It has the same range as a medium scout.

Laser Beam: laser tech weapon, long range, high accuracy, and slow firing. It can outrange the medium scout, abductor, and harvester.

Plasma Autocannon: plasma tech weapon, short range, rapid firing, high damage. It can only outrange the medium scout and abductor but it can take a terror ship out of the air fairly quickly. You must manufacture ammo for this weapon.

Plasma Beam: plasma tech weapon, long range, slow firing, high damage. I decreased its fire rate and increased its damage to make the weapon more erratic. It will sometimes destroy medium or large scouts. I also reduced its ammo capacity to 10, so it's powerful but won't always have enough ammo to destroy the largest ships. Terror ships and battleships outrange the plasma beam. You must manufacture ammo for this weapon. The plasma beam is now called "plasma beam" instead of "plasma cannon" in the research list.

Light Fusion Ball: fusion tech weapon, long range, very powerful. This missile launcher has the same range as a terror ship, carries 5 missiles, and deals 350 damage with 100% accuracy. It will generally destroy any small craft and can take out mediums easily, though it has a chance of destroying even those.

Heavy Fusion Ball: fusion tech weapon, long range, extremely powerful, expensive. This missile launcher has the same range as a battleship, outranging all other craft. It carries two missiles which deal 900 damage apiece, and cost 16 elerium to manufacture. They will easily destroy medium craft and can even destroy terror ships.




So essentially there are four tech levels of weapons at two different ranges. Long range weapons are more erratic and often weaker than short range weapons. They may deal more damage per hit, but the short range weapons tend to fire rapidly and destroy craft quickly.

Conventional weapons are weak, but you have cannons in case you're desperate to take out something big in the early game.

Laser weapons are powerful and reliable, and can stay with you to the end of the game. They cost no special materials and they don't cost anything to fire.

Plasma weapons are very powerful and are a reasonably efficient way to spend elerium on taking out alien craft.

Fusion weapons are devastating but expensive to fire, and will burn through your elerium reserves almost as quickly as they burn through alien armor. With all other weapons, you strive for maximum power, but with fusion weapons it's about restraint. The aliens can manipulate containment fields which they can use to propel plasma or fusion charges and also control powerful explosions. The original blaster launcher demonstrates this, and I demonstrate it further in this mod as well as my Ground Weapons mod. We could have shot full scale nukes at the aliens from the get go, but that would have caused tremendous damage to the Earth's biosphere.




ALIEN CRAFT CHANGES
I increased the accuracy of most alien craft, especially the supply ship. It now outranges stingrays and even the laser beam. Plasma beams will outrange it but even two of them may run out of ammo before downing a supply ship. It will be a bit harder to take supply ships out now.

I decreased medium scout HP from 200 to 180 to separate it more from the 250 HP large scout. Avalanches will occasionally destroy medium scouts.

I increased harvester HP from 500 to 600 to set it apart from the 500 HP abductor. The harvester is bigger than the abductor and carries more aliens.



FUSION DEFENSE
To go along with the huge fusion ball buff, I altered the fusion defense a lot. I wasn't able to make it cost ammo, so I changed it into Fusion Beam Defense, a brand new technology created by X-Com and adapted from alien fusion and plasma technology. It requires enormous power and must be a ground-based weapon but it is devastatingly powerful. Even one of these facilities may be enough to defend your base, or at least you won't need much more than it. It has a hit ratio of 100 and a defense value of 4000 so, if my math is right, it has a 75% chance of destroying the incoming battleship in one hit. At best, the battleship will have a third of its HP remaining. But this fusion defense is extremely expensive to build and run, and it takes a long time to research.

The missile and laser defenses have much higher hit ratios, effectively buffing them to usable levels. Plasma defense is still your bread and butter defense though it is less accurate than they are, and more expensive.

Plasma defense: I increased the defense value slightly and the maintenance cost a lot. It's not super expensive, but with a bunch of them it can add up. If you can spare the space, missile or laser defenses are the cheapest option. But if you can spare the money, fusion defenses are the most compact option. And plasma defenses are sort of in the middle, fairly efficient overall but erratic.

99

Released Mods / AP Weakness - so HE isn't the only answer

« on: July 30, 2016, 09:59:33 pm »

This mod alters the AP and HE damage profiles a bit along with adjusting some of the armor values slightly. The goal is both to remain more true to what the UFOPedia entries say regarding alien weaknesses, as well as to ensure that both AP and HE are useful in some situations and not useful in some. This is not a rock, paper, scissors mod, so your favorite weapons will still be generally effective at exterminating the alien menace--even if your favorite damage type is HE.





Definition of Armor Piercing:
Armor piercing rounds are heavy metal slugs with a pointed tip and a long powder cartridge, typically fired from a long-barreled rifle. They have high muzzle velocity and fly fairly straight and non-erratic. They excel at punching through rigid materials like tough armor, glass, rocks, bones, skulls, and concrete. They aren't so good at shredding soft tissues and may lack the stopping power of lower muzzle velocity blunt-tip rounds.

X-Com has scoured the globe for high-powered military AP rifles of varying sizes to ensure that their troops stand a chance of penetrating alien armor. Old WW2 rounds with modernized long powder cartridges are a favorite, and difficult to find in production because modern rifling allows much smaller ammunition to punch through even the sturdiest Earthbound armor.



Changes made by the mod:
* Cyberdiscs are a bit more resistant to HE, as is stated in the UFOPedia. You can still take them out pretty easily with a rocket launcher, but the autocannon probably will struggle with them. On the flip side, they are slightly weak to AP damage. Their armor is too strong for rifles to be very effective against them, but heavy cannons using AP ammo or cannon tanks can be reasonably effective. With vanilla settings, powerful explosives are still the easiest way to take these out, but with more powerful AP weapons from mods, you might find AP to be particularly effective against them.

* Chryssalids and Ethereals, which are heavily armored units, are now quite weak to AP. Rifles will do a tiny bit of damage to them but heavy cannons easily take them out.

* Snakemen have strong armor, but I'm assuming it is fleshy like the Mutons. I gave Snakemen a slight weakness to AP, and it helps rifles kill them but you're still better off with laser rifles. I also adjusted snakemen armor values a bit to smooth them out. They were a bit erratic between ranks.

* I gave Reapers a strong resistance to HE. Due to their low under armor and large size, HE is still highly effective against them. In fact they still take more damage from explosives than smaller units do.

* Sectopods have half the under armor but take only half the explosive damage. The result is that mid-size explosives are still just as ineffective against them, but now blaster bombs deal less damage to them. It'll make them a lot more scary when you find it usually takes 2-3 blaster bombs to finish one off. (Or you can use lasers)

100

Work In Progress / Change UFO crash percentage?

« on: July 26, 2016, 06:27:51 am »

Normally, a UFO will crash when it sustains 50% or more damage without being destroyed. Is there a way to increase this percentage? edit: this can be done by giving UFOs shields with OXCE



Extra question: can I add more sets to Alien Item Levels, beyond the 0, 1, and 2?

101

Released Mods / [SOLDIERS] Two Mods: Reaver's Soldier Classes https:// RPG Classes

« on: July 19, 2016, 04:37:14 pm »

The top two posts here are separate but similar mods. This post is Reaver's Soldier Classes which makes relatively small changes, and the post below is RPG Classes which makes much larger changes to soldiers.


Reaver's Soldier Classes
This is a simple mod which adds new soldier "classes" to enable you to streamline your hiring process. The class soldiers have the same maximum attributes as your basic soldiers but some of their minimum attributes are increased. They cost more and will perform better initially, but over the long term basic soldiers are just as good yet cheaper.

Once you have purchased soldiers, they lose their class designation, and you will only see their name and attributes. You can still see how many you have of each class in the monthly costs, and you can also re-name them to mark them with their class if you want to.

Mod Portal page: https://www.openxcom.com/mod/reaver-039-s-soldier-classes



The main version of this mod nerfs the psionics ability of your soldiers, because I believe that X-Com psionics are far too strong. You will still be able to take control of weaker aliens but you will probably never be mind controlling Ethereal Commanders. Maximum psi strength and psi skill have both been reduced from 100 to 60.
If you don't want the psi nerf, you can instead download the psi version of the mod, which maintains the original psi maximums of 100.





Classes
Breacher: frontline soldier
Breachers are good for putting at the front of your formation. They are the ones you would send to enter buildings or UFOs, or go around unexplored corners. These soldiers excel at close combat.
Attribute advantages
Stamina: minor
Health: moderate
Reactions: major
Melee Accuracy: moderate


Ranger: field scout
Rangers are highly mobile and thus excellent for covering ground. They can explore terrain quickly and provide strategic support for other units.
Attribute advantages
Time Units: moderate
Energy: moderate
Firing Accuracy: minor
Throwing Accuracy: minor
Strength: minor


Sniper: high-accuracy shooter
Snipers can seek out a good vantage point with some cover and a wide field of view. From there they will be able to safely pick off aliens that your other soldiers reveal.
Attribute advantages
Reactions: minor
Firing Accuracy: major


Heavy: heavy weapons specialist
Heavies are trained to use the heavy, cumbersome weapons. Those weapons are powerful yet unwieldy and dangerous. Heavy soldiers can handle such weapons much better than most soldiers can.
Note: Heavies have their base max reactions reduced, which makes them less likely to fire powerful weapons in an unsafe manner.
Attribute advantages
Health: minor
Reactions: disadvantaged
Firing Accuracy: minor
Throwing Accuracy: minor
Strength: moderate


Elite: all-round high attributes
Elite soldiers are the most expensive class, and simply have higher minimum values in all attribute ranges. They are a bit expensive for their value, but you can rest assured that no elite soldier will ever have an attribute hole.
Attribute advantages
Time Units: minor
Stamina: minor
Health: minor
Bravery: minor
Reactions: minor
Firing Accuracy: minor
Throwing Accuracy: minor
Strength: minor
Melee Accuracy: minor




Major update version 1.1:
I tweaked the medi-kit a bit and changed its UFOPedia entry, and also added a weaker first-aid kit borrowing (I've been told) Civilian's artwork. Unlike other mods with start-game medi-kits, my first-aid kit does not allow the use of pain killer or stimulant. The pain-killer and stimulant on the medi-kit have been buffed a lot-I hope. (I haven't managed to test that part.) I put some flavor text in the medi-kit UFOPedia entry explaining that it uses banned experimental serum techs, which also helps explain why you must research it. The first aid kit also heals a bit more.

The psi-amp now requires a mind probe and an ethereal corpse to build, and its UFOPedia entry reflects this. You cannot build mind probes anymore. The mind probe now costs only 40% time units to operate (like in RPG Classes mod).

Power Suit and Flying Suit were tweaked to be on the same level. Flying suit still requires UFO Navigation, but you do not have to research power suit first. Power suit/flying suit armor values swapped, now power suit is tougher. Power suit grants +10 TU and +20 strength, reflecting what is stated in its original UFOPedia entry. Flying suit grants +10 TU and +10 firing accuracy, and its UFOPedia entry is changed to reflect this.

Attribute caps have been reduced a bit. Strength only goes to 60 (reduced from 70), and firing/throwing accuracy only go to 100 (reduced from 120). Time units max at 75 instead of 80. This is partly to prevent the eventual development of overpowered soldiers, and also to balance with the armor bonuses. Now you can hire classed rookies, armor them up, and have them ready to fight at high capacity immediately. SoldierClassesPsi 1.1 does not decrease attribute caps, but still grants the armor attribute bonuses.

Items related to this update (including Ethereal Corpse) have had their sell values adjusted to reflect production costs or other things. Manufacturing flying suits is extremely profitable in terms of money earned per worker hour, but it requires a large flow of Elerium to sustain. Sell costs are furthermore based on $10,000 sell value Elerium, a change made in one of my other Reaver's X mods.

102

Work In Progress / Can base facilities cost ammo?

« on: July 19, 2016, 12:55:45 pm »

I want to make the fusion defense cost Elerium to manufacture and fire. Is this possible?

103

Fan-Stuff / Star Breachers - a fiction story

« on: July 09, 2016, 11:53:05 pm »

My name is Danielle Revenu, and I am a Star Breacher.

     My story begins a few months after the alien war got fired up. I had excellent performance ratings in the military and an X-Com recruiter had contacted me to encourage me to fight the big war to save the world. The retirement pension came early and it was big, he said. He would tell me of the things I would have after the war, but it all seemed so meaningless, if the Earth was doomed to fall to these marauding invaders.
     I was among the minority who felt the aliens were a major threat to our way of life. Nay, to our lives. They won't stop until our civilization crumbles, till every last human on the planet is either killed or hauled off on one of their ships, and it was anybody's guess as to what happened to the people they took away. We didn't know much about the aliens but we knew enough to know we were in very grave danger. But most people thought the aliens were just showing up occasionally, randomly, like small terrorist groups. Some people thought they weren't even real.
     And so it was that I chose to join X-Com, if for no other reason than to fight for the survival of my own species. I didn't want to go to war, but I had to. Right, you're probably thinking, "a soldier who doesn't want to go to war?" Yeah, well, get used to it. I'm not the fighting type. As a child, I was often invited to the boys' snowball forts. They all wanted me on their team because the team that had me would never lose. It would never win, either. None of the boys ever managed to hit me with a snowball, yet I rarely succeeded in scoring any hits, either. Perhaps I was terrible at throwing snowballs, or perhaps I just didn't like to hurl things at my friends.
     It's no different now, I never liked fighting and wars make me uneasy. I'm almost not even sure why I joined the military. As I look back to recall the chain of events that led me down this path, I can see no pattern that clearly presses on me to become a warrior. Yet here I am.
     Here I am on the flight deck, carrying a few bags of things, ready to board the secret X-Com plane and be transported to the hidden base. The military had put me on plenty of planes before, but I wasn't prepared for this. This was a monster of a stealth fighter, of a type I had never seen before. The beast was covered in dark matte paint and marked with drab tan and brown X-Com emblems. It was a two-seater and it looked like it was built for aerial reconnaissance missions. Was this the right plane? Was there some clerical error? Was this for real?
     Real or not, they stuffed my bags into cramped storage compartments and sat me down in the rear co-pilot's seat. It finally dawned on me why they had me put on this heavy awkward-fitting suit. It was a flight suit. And I was going in the air.
     They revved up the engines and taxied to the short runway. The very short runway. I was just thinking about how likely it would be for a Boeing 767 to take off from a strip this size, when I was thrown back in my seat. For a moment the plane seemed to have tipped up at a fierce angle and the Earth's gravity had suddenly increased dramatically. Then I watched the lights and markings on the air strip rush past on either side at ever-increasing speed, and in mere seconds we were in the air. It happened so quickly I almost didn't notice the all-encompassing roar of the engines firing at full power.
     This craft was like a dream, a fantasy aircraft that you read about in stories. Nothing like this could really exist. The roar of the engine was more like several explosions happening in rapid succession, smoothed out and strung together in this tremendous du-du-du-du-du-du-du sound. I couldn't see the ground anymore, and the weight of the acceleration prevented me from moving. I was pressed deep into the soft seat, and it was beginning to eat me alive. We continued to accelerate on a steep upward trajectory and I felt my ears pop several times. The air was thinning, and bright white streams were forming around the nose of the aircraft, shooting back along the fuselage. Then everything began to fade away.
     I awoke to a searing headache and a dull roar coming from all around me. As I regained awareness, I found myself still in the co-pilot's seat, and we were cruising at high altitude. It was night. My whole body felt funny, but I could move again. I turned my head to look out the side, and saw beneath us the ground was so far away I could scarcely identify anything. It was broad daylight, yet the sky was black. The wings had faint white streams rolling over them like angelic remoras chasing after a giant shark in the sky.
     I don't remember very much after that up until landing, but I have a faint memory of me screaming a lot and begging for my mommy. It was embarrassing to start my first day with such a display. I hoped I could live it down. The room around me was a medical examination room, but it was filled with strange equipment and on the wall there were depictions of the aliens' anatomy. From there it was a blur. The doc came in and gave me a basic physical, and told me I'm good to go. He said drink plenty of fluids. The headache was mostly gone now. I was taken to the bunk room and shown to my bunk. Both male and female soldiers were bunking together in one big room. Some soldiers greeted me with warmth and friendliness, and talked to me about life on this base. It all seemed like some elaborate fantasy. Here I was, in an underground X-Com facility. I'd always knew that somewhere out there something like this existed, but I guess part of me was never certain it was real. Yet here I was.
     I couldn't sleep that night. They had done so much to ensure I was comfortable, but my mind was reeling with the magnitude of the situation. I'm in an X-Com base, soon I'll be in X-Com training, and then...and I didn't want to think about what happens after training.


     The next morning I was to dress up in the X-Com armored combat uniform and show up for training. The suit was surprisingly light and comfortable. As I tried to find my way to the training unit, a female soldier stopped and greeted me. I saw her name tag said Captain Helga Steinbach, and she clearly displayed the X-Com rank insignia of captain. My military training came back to me in an instant and I snapped to attention. "Greetings, Ma'am!" I belted out. "Relax," she said warmly, "you don't have to call me captain. Ranks work differently here. You can call me Helga."
     I didn't expect that. This place had seemed much more relaxed than any military installation. It was starting to look like a bunch of campfire buddies rather than a warfighting installation. "Helga," I spoke tentatively. "You must be Danielle, the new recruit," she said with a smile on her face. "Come on, I'll show you to the training room."
     I followed her down the hall, around a corner, and into...the cafeteria. She went up to the counter and collected a few packaged food items, then sat me down at a table and proceeded to open the food and eat. I suddenly became aware of my hunger, so I ate the food. Between bites, I had to ask, "aren't we supposed to be headed for training?" Helga responded, "yeah, but I didn't want to head out on an empty stomach."
     We arrived in the training room with everyone else already present and engaged in some sort of weapons' simulation. The training officer approached us and said tersely, "you two ladies are late! I'll expect this won't happen again?" Helga spoke confidently, "This is the new rookie, Danielle. I had to make sure she got a bite to eat." "Ah, Danielle," his face brightened immediately, "pleased to be working with you!" He extended a hand. "Call me Dani," I said confidently, shaking his hand. "Dani, then." He smiled.
     Training here was rough, but everyone was kind and encouraging. I quickly made friends with most of the soldiers in the platoon. It was a small platoon. Over the next few days I trained hard, and they put me through a battery of tests to see what I was made of. When the results came in, I was told I had exceptionally good reaction time and that I was to be a breacher. I didn't know what that meant, but everyone cheered for me. It certainly seemed to win me some popularity points.
     I sat down to lunch with an experienced breacher. His name was Tom King and he was rank Sergeant in the X-Com rank system. That was the first rank above squaddie, the term they use for non-ranking soldiers who have been in combat. I was a rookie, meaning I had no rank and I hadn't been in combat. I postured the burning question, "so what does it mean to be a breacher?"
     He told me, "You see, there are four jobs of soldiers in X-Com. There's the rangers, who scout the field and relay intel to the commander. They are a support soldier." He stopped to eat a spoonful from his bowl of stew. "Go on," I pleaded. He chewed for a moment, then swallowed. "Then there's the snipers, they get into strategic positions and take out the aliens at medium range before they have a chance to react." I listened, eager for him to tell me about breachers, but I knew he was saving it for last. "Then there are the heavies. They carry heavy weapons on the field to fire upon groups of aliens, or to take out larger alien threats. they can also remove obstacles from the field." I couldn't help but chuckle at the way he so calmly said it: remove obstacles from the field.
     "And then there are breachers. They are the first to go in the alien ship." Well that wasn't very reassuring, I thought. "You see, each craft we have encountered so far has exactly one entrance door, so the aliens know which way we're coming in and they are waiting for us." Definitely not reassuring. I sunk into my chair a bit. "Couldn't we just wait for the aliens to come outside?" I inquired. "They won't come out." He said it with a confidence that suggests the aliens remain inside like a stubborn child who refuses to move. I pleaded, "couldn't we just break down the walls and come in from another direction?" "The walls are too strong. We can't break through without destroying the whole craft along with half the countryside around it." He said this matter-of-factly, as if it was a trivial detail he'd read out of a book.
     I felt sick. I felt a sense of impending doom, like they tell you about in medical journals, in their lists of symptoms people get. It's that one you think oh nobody actually gets that, but here I was, feeling like I was going to die soon. Here was a living breacher sitting before me, he'd had experience. He was first inside the craft once. And he survived. He survived once maybe, maybe two times. Eventually he would die and I would die too, and we'd be heroes but we'd be dead.
     "So what's that star on your uniform?" I asked, changing the subject. "This? Oh this means I am a star breacher. We get this star after we face off over a dozen aliens at once. Me, I burst through that door, guns blazing, and I was surrounded aliens. They were left and right, firing their plasma weapons at me. Shots whizzing past, I'm dodging side to side, killing every single one of them. One. By. One." I was staring at this man with a look of horror in my eyes. He seemed to delight in my horror, as he continued, "I was hit by one of them. Glanced off my armor. That's how I got this burn," he lifts his uniform shirt to show massive scarring all over his left side torso.
     Helga sneaks up behind him and pokes him in the scarred side, causing him to recoil and spin around. He sees her and immediately puts his shirt down. "Ow, that hurt!" he protested. Helga turns to me and says "don't let him scare you. Nobody ever faced off against a dozen aliens at once." She looks back to Tom. "Oh yeah, and Tommy actually got this scar on a different mission. He was running in the open and got hit by a stray shot." "I was rushing to save Sam," he reminded her, "I'm a hero!" "Yes you are," she agreed.
     "So is it true..?" I tentatively asked, "are breachers the first into the alien ship?" Helga nodded, "yes, but don't let that scare you. We rattle them up a bit before we go inside. No breacher has ever been killed breaching an alien craft, and once you get your star, you don't have to be first inside anymore.

104

Work In Progress / How does facility "defence value" work?

« on: July 08, 2016, 10:09:43 am »

How does the base defense facility attribute 'Defence Value' work?

Missile Defences has a Defence Value of 500, Fusion Defences has a Defence Value of 1200, and these numbers don't seem to correspond in any way with the hit points of a battleship vs. how many defense hits it takes to knock one down.

105

Offtopic / The time I edited Ion Armor in my Vanilla game

« on: January 22, 2016, 10:04:52 pm »

I noticed that Ion Armor and Magnetic Ion Armor had very high defense in the front but very low on the sides. It goes well with the brutal nature of TFTD: your aquanaut will generally be fine when shot in front but it's like playing Russian Roulette because they can be hit on the side any time. It's brutal alright, but I felt it diminishes my options and forces me to leave the lives of my soldiers more up to chance--say when I have to go round a corner and there's likely an alien waiting there. I could throw explosives around every corner but that would be a huge waste of time and resources and won't even work every time.

So I came up with a small change that does make the game easier but I felt it made the game a lot more fun. This plus the realization of a few other already existing aspects of vanilla TFTD turned it into less of a rookie grinder and more into a game of strategy on a level I never saw in UFO Defense.

The change was that I swapped Ion Armor's front and side armor value, but I left Magnetic Ion Armor unchanged. Regular Ion Armor was now super strong on the sides but super weak in the front, while Magnetic Ion Armor was similar to Aqua Plastic Armor in that both were particularly strong in front but not so great on the sides.

When playing through, I initially was careful to use dye grenades and other tactics from the old game to keep my aquanauts alive, but once I got Aqua Plastic armor, I started a new strategy: always face the aliens. When hiding around a corner, face the direction the aliens will come from. When approaching the alien craft, be wary of where aliens will likely be hiding. Don't go around corners but take wide strides and approach hiding spots from a direction that exposes the aquanaut's front, not their side. If you must expose their side, do it at range to reduce the chance the alien will hit. This was a hugely successful strategy--while aquanauts would still die pretty often when shot from the front, they often did survive. I assisted the strategy by always bringing a coelacanth to every mission. I could use it to go around shady corners and I could hide aquanauts behind the coelacanth. I lost a lot of coelacanths but I always saved extra money to buy more, and it paid off with all the experience my aquanauts got as they remained alive.

When I researched Ion Armor, the game changed. It was time to start going on the offensive. On my first Ion Armor mission I put my first few armors on my freshest aquanauts, and kept the older ones in the back with Aqua Plastic armor. This time I attacked something bigger, a large landed craft. The Ion Armor rookies hugged the coelacanth up to the door of the alien craft, then they barged in and used that sweet sweet mutual surprise to their supreme advantage, taking out several aliens and finding cover inside the craft. I had them expose their side armor to where aliens were expected to come from. The experienced aquanauts remained outside and scanned the terrain for any stragglers outside the craft, and finally approached its exits to prevent any aliens from getting away.

It worked! I lost some aquanauts but came out with plenty still alive and lots of resources! My next target was an alien colony, but I still needed some preparation to make this operation "safe". I made sure to research the Pulse Wave Torpedo Launcher and then I got started on the research for Displacers. First we were going on a trial/training mission, a little OJT if you will. I packed up my Triton with a coelacanth and lots of rookie aquanauts. I brought nobody with low bravery, but poor firing accuracy was fine, I could work with that. My thinking is that a good commander can make up for the shortcomings of their aquanauts. My team had 1 tank, 6 aquanauts with ion armor and gauss rifles, 4 aquanauts with aqua plastic armor--two of which had heavy gauss and the other two had PWT launchers. Now this was pretty early in the game to be assaulting an alien colony but I wasn't going to go downstairs yet, this was just to raid the top and go home.

I took the tank outside and had it get a bit of a view. A sonic cannon shot came out of the darkness behind the craft and dropped the coelacanth in one hit. Well that's one more aquanaut still alive and one alien who has no shots left, if you know what you're doing. See, the Sonic Cannon requires 50% time units to fire and all aliens have an even number of time units, meaning if they spend just one to turn, they cannot fire. This means once one fires a shot, you can approach from a different angle and they can't shoot you. So I get some soldiers to come around the other side of the craft and sure enough there's a tasoth standing there with his side exposed. Took a few shots to kill him but he couldn't do anything about it on this turn. I ended the turn on the offensive, can't have the aliens shooting me with PWTs so I'd better start killing off their leaders. I fire one shot in each of their upstairs "office" rooms, the places with multiple viewports where they hide the high ranks and will shoot at your soldiers as they pass by. Got like six high ranking aliens down. I end turn with aqua plastic armor inside the Triton and ion armor outside, facing outward and exposing their sides.

Enemy turn, nothing happens. You'll find you get this a lot when you play aggressively. Stifle the aliens quickly and they can't fight back. But it's not over yet.

Turn two, I have to begin the difficult and unsafe trek across about 8 battlescape spaces to the downstairs lift. First thing I do is load up a PWT launcher and blow a hole in the wall, second launcher makes sure the entrance is clear by detonating on the inside. Can't take any chances. Then I have my soldiers dash around behind the Triton and take defensive positions around the hole. It's only 6 soldiers so it's going to be tricky to cover all directions especially if we sustain any losses. The Aqua Plastic Armor guys are staying in the Triton for now. As long as that door closes every turn, they're safe from enemy pulse wave torpedoes. I had the heavy gauss aquanauts poke their heads out and take pot shots at terrorist units every chance they got. The weapon is particularly effective against Xarquid and is powerful enough to kill Hallucinoids pretty well. And if the occasional tentaculat dies as well, that's a big bonus. These soldiers were acting as support to keep the ion armor aquanauts alive.

The mission was a success. I lost a soldier but stomped a lot of aliens on the way. The battlescape went pretty quiet after a while but there was still plenty of unseen activity on alien turns. I took some time to have my units gather up alien equipment and then ran them back to the Triton for departure. We go home, knowing that we probably got lucky and the second training mission probably wasn't going to go as well.

I had to send them out on another training mission before the real mission because we needed to be sure our strategy was effective. This time I had a lot of reaction fire coming from dead ahead out the door, lost the coelacanth quickly and had a few soldiers go down. It was going to be a bit of a trip to the lift area and my early PWT shots failed to take out very many high ranks. Despite my best efforts to keep my aquanauts in safe formations, we got hit with a PWT which took out two soldiers. I quickly scooped the remaining soldiers up in the Triton and we left. Not today.

Third training mission I finally had my first displacer, bringing much stronger armor and a powerful sonic weapon to the field. This time I was able to get the displacer to distract the aliens better without succumbing to fire, and it also acted much more effectively as a scout. The lift was on the other side of the map, but we made an excellent exit and killed off several high ranks quickly. I took my ion armor team inside the nearest colony structure and had them journey through the halls to get closer to the lift. This was their domain--going around corners. As long as they stayed indoors they were pretty safe. They could also safely pop outside and back in through another door. They simply needed to avoid wandering outside. That was the job of the Displacer. It took out a few terrorist units and scouted enough others that I was able to use my support team to keep the map clear. My ion armor team got closer, and I began to bring my plastic armor team in their wake. Eventually we gained access into the final lift area, cleared it out, and were able to restock PWT ammo on the way. This was so successful I figured maybe these soldiers were ready for a bit more training. We were going down.

I took the soldiers down into the colony. It spread them out a lot, getting several of them pretty far away from the exits. I had to move them carefully to get them back to the exit areas safely but I wanted to get ready to retreat in case this area became too hostile and we needed to make a quick exit. No sooner was I heading back than I saw them: Lobstermen. We'd handled them before on a terror mission by stunning them and detonating explosives to finish them off. It was going to be more tricky in this colony but I figured I'd see how many we can take out. It didn't work well, they were too far away and were able to see us coming and shoot at us. I had to retreat, and a few aquanauts didn't make it back. We'd probably need more advanced technology to win this. But I think that was pretty good for running around in a Triton in the early months of the game.

Once I got Magnetic Ion Armor, I was able to make a much better breaching team. The soldiers in regular ion armor would run around corners initially, but would then be followed by magnetic ion armor soldiers who would stand forward of their position and protect their front. It was highly successful and I won the game with fewer total aquanaut losses than I've ever managed in the past.