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Topics - Markus Ramikin

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Edit by Meridian: resized the picture

Edit by Markus: Thanks, Meridian, was trying to figure out how to do that.

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Released Mods / [UFO] Ramikin Rebalance
« on: March 26, 2021, 07:28:30 pm »
https://openxcom.mod.io/ramikin-rebalance/

Works with OXC and OXCE.

This mod adds (almost) no "new cool stuff". Rather, it addresses problems with vanilla content.

In the main, this is a rebalance of Geoscape combat. Instead of relying only on Avalanches, then Plasma Beams and Avengers, you'll have good incentives to use all existing Craft weapons at some stage, you'll have reasons to make Firestorms, and eventually you might settle on a mix of Firestorms and Avengers using Lasers, Plasma, and Fusion Balls for different reasons. (Lightning are still trash, of course. They will always be trash.)

You'll also notice the UFOs hit harder - some a LOT harder - but the two smallest ones are prone to getting destroyed instead of downed. This makes the right choice of weapon and craft important.

There is one new Craft (thanks, MickTheMage!), rentable after researching Alien Alloys. This helped me make all 3 starting weapons useful: Stingrays and Avalanches are good for Very Small and Small craft respectively if all you have is Interceptors, but once the tougher Alloy Craft is available Craft Cannon come into their own as a high DPS weapon good against anything up to Harvesters.

To let that happen, I felt the need to delay the availability of Laser Cannons. I chose to do so by making Laser tech depend on Alien Alloys, and then I realized it's also a good idea to tweak Lasers a little: the Heavy Laser is now more useful, especially as a sniping weapon, and since Lasers are alloy tech now, the Laser Tank is now an Alloy Tank.

This creates a more distinct Alloy tech stage, with a craft weapon, a line of small arms, and a tank that's noticeably tougher than standard Earth tanks. I find this a satisfying side effect of what was originally going to be purely a Geoscape rebalancing.

All in all I feel I accomplished everything I wanted, at least according to my tastes. The end result is pretty much the same vanilla content (except that one new Craft) but now I have good reasons to use pretty much all weapons. My endgame save has Avengers with FBL for Battleships, Firestorms with Plasma Beams for Terror and Supply ships, and Firestorms with Laser cannons for everything else. And the performance of my veteran soldiers with Heavy Lasers and Laser Tanks is so fun that I wanna try a no-plasma no-psionics playthrough.

Originally this was just me tweaking the game for myself, but perhaps someone else will enjoy this.

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Troubleshooting / How does blast damage work around the Avenger?
« on: March 23, 2021, 09:53:57 pm »
I am confused and curious.

I fired a Blaster Bomb at a 30,30,1, the corner of the building in front of the craft. This downed a soldier, but that was a guy who was pretty much in the middle of the Avenger. The hell?

After reloading I tried some other locations. If I hit the Avenger straight from above or below or the sides, nobody seems to get hurt. If I hit the ground to the right of it (away from the player), people under the front landing gear get hurt. Makes no sense.

Anyone understand this and able to explain?

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It requires LoS, not LoF. Which is different: LoF could be from the other end the map, allowing scout-sniper tactics. So the mod should be called Psionic Line of Sight.

How was it in the original Extender? I've never played it.

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OXCE Support / [Answered] Alien sale triggering even when not needed
« on: March 14, 2021, 05:07:42 pm »
A minor issue, but when you have storage limits enforced, and you can finish a mission with too many items AND too many live aliens. In OXCE the forced item sale comes first, then the live alien sale. It's possible for the player to have sold enough aliens during the item sale, but the live alien sale will come up anyway, even when no longer necessary.

This once confused me and led me to sell more aliens that I didn't need to sell, since it was a "forced sale" so I figured I had to. After retesting I now realize I could have just hit "sell", but still.

In regular OXC the Alien sale comes first, which prevents any confusion. That would be one way to solve it.

If there's a reason OXCE departed from that, another way - indeed, probably more convenient for the player - would be to delay the alien overflow check until after the item sale screen.

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How is the extent of the damage from shooting down a UFO determined? I'm curious if using a weapon that is more powerful per-shot - say, Fusion launchers instead of Plasma - increases the damage, and decreases the odds that you'll find intact Power Sources.

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Open Feedback / What explosion height do you play with? [POLL]
« on: March 11, 2021, 12:44:37 am »
I'm curious what's popular, and for what reasons.

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Open Feedback / Viable walking path straight through a wall?
« on: March 10, 2021, 01:47:59 pm »
It seems it's possible to walk through a solid wall on the Artefact Site level 2 map. Screenshot and savegame attached.

I'm curious. Does anyone remember if this was possible in the original too?

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Suggestions / Rearming/Refuelling issue
« on: March 06, 2021, 01:24:46 pm »
When your craft finishes rearming and refuelling, the refuelling stage is still marked as "rearming", at least for the first hour of it.

https://i.imgur.com/8Ewpw1O.jpg

And yes, this is a "refuelling" stage, since at the end of the hour fuel goes from 93% to 100%, and the Avenger is "ready".

What's additionally bogus is that if no refuelling needs to be done, this rearming-but-actually-refuelling phase still happens, and consumes a unit of Elerium. To see that, just disarm the craft and then put weapons on it again.

Without having looked at the code myself, the whole thing has a suspicious stench...

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Suggestions / Aliens shooting through the front of the Avenger
« on: March 05, 2021, 01:56:32 pm »
I'm pretty sure this isn't supposed to happen. Also, what joker at X-Com R&D designed the front visor to be one-way transparent in favor of the aliens instead of the troopers inside?

Savegame attached. Just end turn.

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I remember enjoying having them in some X-com clone. I think UFO:ET had those.

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Suggestions / Fences and hedges stop smoke grenades for some reason
« on: February 28, 2021, 11:54:03 pm »
Fences and hedges behave like solid walls in that they stop the smoke grenade's cloud from expanding. This makes no sense, not to mention being inconvenient.

This didn't happen in DOS - I just retested right now, just to be sure I wasn't going crazy.

(I wonder how flares are affected? I never play night missions, aside from Cydonia, and Martians obviously haven't been growing hedges there. But I do wonder.)

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Troubleshooting / Openxcom messing with Windows language settings?
« on: February 09, 2017, 10:44:50 pm »
I have 3 languages/keyboards installed in my system, for switching around with alt-shift. English is NOT one of them.

When I start openxcom - and as far as I can tell, only then, no other program does this - English gets added to the keyboards I can choose with alt-shift.

To make it even more weird, the English option does NOT get added to the "language preferences" list. If I go into those options to remove it, I need to manually add it first, and only then can I remove it. Then it disappears from the alt-shift list as well, at least until I play openxcom again.

This is obviously not what I would call desireable behaviour from a game...

Other info: my system is Windows 10. Openxcom display language can be English, or it can be something else, it doesn't stop the behaviour.

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Offtopic / Git builds history?
« on: February 13, 2015, 05:04:39 pm »
Is there a way to see it all, and if there is, is it known to the community? This page seems to only show a few latest ones, unless I'm missing something obvious. And the CHANGELOG.txt that comes with the game only goes up to the 1.0 milestone.

Reason I'm wondering is that you have things like the 02_12 fix to the dogfight timer, which says
Quote
mod authors: double your ufo break-off times and reload rates for both ufos
and craft weapons.
But it'll be gone from the page soon and those mod authors who didn't happen to look during that time won't know to do this.

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Troubleshooting / Unequal LOS - what's going on here?
« on: January 30, 2015, 11:14:15 am »
Savegame attached.

The soldier on 32,19, Niahm O'neill vs Floater on 24,31.

If the soldier moves left, to 31,20, she dies from the Floater's reaction fire. No mutual-surprise.
Other approaches, either to 32, 20, or to 31,19 then 30,20, result in mutual surprise.

What's going on here? Something wrong with smoke calculations? Assymetry in LoS shapes?

What's especially weird is that the "bad" spot, 31,20, from which she can't see the floater, is between the two "good" ones, 32,20 and 30,20.

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