Topics

16

Suggestions / [SUGGESTION/REQUEST] Allow deployment of HWP/SWS without full ammo

« on: January 27, 2016, 02:10:30 am »

It never made any sense that you can't deploy an unloaded or half-loaded tank. Hasn't anyone ever thought about this before? I mean, I get that tanks ain't that popular among X-Com players, but have some consideration for these undervalued guys!

Besides, sometimes I just wanna use tanks for scouting or... well, tankinness (sucking in damage) in general.

PS: Also, no more "not enough ammo" messages!

17

Suggestions / [REQUEST] Customization of Base Defense Facilities in New Battle (+ Other Q's)

« on: September 21, 2015, 05:32:39 pm »

I don't know if I should be creating different topics for this, but I'm trying not to span the forums, so here it goes:

First off: Customization of Base Defense's facilities placement in New Battle mode? I believe this is an absolute must. Otherwise it's the same awful vanilla starting layout over and over again, and Base Defense missions arguably one of the best ones to play in the entire game. Customization would be a totally refreshing and welcome addition

Secondly, is there (or could there be)...

- Any way to reduce psionic skill improvement during psionic training? Getting 20-30+ per month is waaaaay too much. The game becomes a breeze from that point onward. How about making it more like Allow Psi-Strength Improvement which increases an average of less than 5 points a month for psi-strength? I would love this to be manually modifiable via rul.

- Any way to randomize alien stats for each individual race/rank? (Same as how there's a min/max range for new X-Com recruits.) Aliens with set/fixed stat values are too predictable and this would make the game much more... well, random.

- Any way to change grenade TUs for priming/throwing? And how about an un-priming feature?

- Any way to change cost of reloading/unloading weapons?

- Any way to re-prioritize craft's refuel, rearm, repair order?

- Any way to improve Aliens Pick up Weapons mod? It very rarely (if ever) seems to be of any effect.

- This has been brought up before, I'm sure. How about being able to equip soldiers in soldier screen rather than craft>items screen? This would be especially useful in cases where you have bases without a transport craft. All you have the liberty to equip is armor in those cases (until you get into Base Defense—only then can you access soldier's equip screen).I imagine one of the potential issues here would be when equipping soldiers from craft you are equipping items from the craft, whereas if equipping items from soldier screen it'd be directly from the base's storage? Otherwise, what is keeping this feature from being implemented? 

PS: Perhaps I should split this thread later after all?

18

Open Feedback / [TFTD] Bugs & Missing/Wrong Alien Deployment Loadouts in Ruleset

« on: September 21, 2015, 05:08:42 pm »

version: 1.0
build: git 2015-09-18 21:32

- Right-clicking arrow in craft equipment screen to increase item by 10 (or max it out, if applicable) does not work with SWS's except Displacer/Sonic. Right-clicking will simply increase value by 1 (same as left-clicking). For an easy test, just go into New Battle with LEVIATHAN and (with an empty crew, to be sure) try adding 4 SWS of the same type at once.

- Alien Deployments (aside from Fleet Supply Cruiser, Alien Colony & T'leth) in TFTD are a copy/paste of EU/UFO. I noticed, however, alienRank:3 (Medic) in Battleship, Terror Missions (Port, Island, Cargo & Cruise Ships) and Artefact Sites shows dQty: 0, whereas in EU/UFO the respective crafts/missions come with dQty: 1 instead. All other alien rank deployment values are an exact duplicate of each other, so shouldn't this be the same here too?

- Additionally, alienRank: 1 (Navigator) in Battleship, Terror Missions (Port, Island, Cargo & Cruise Ships) and Artefact Sites is missing itemSets (ie. no weapon loadout at all!).

- Also, Alien Colony Pt.1 & Pt.2 should have the same alien deployment values. However, alienRank: 1 (Navigator) in Pt.1 has lowQty: 1, highQty: 2, dQty: 1; but in Pt.2 it comes with lowQty: 2, highQty: 4, dQty: 1. The latter is likely an overlooked leftover from UFO/EU's alienRank: 1 (Leader) which had the same values for Alien Base Assault.

- And shouldn't Plastic Aqua Armor state Electric Shock instead of Acid? Same goes for Ion/Magnetic Ion Armor: shouldn't Smoke be Dye instead?

- Also, Vibro Blade, Thermic Lance & Heavy Thermic listed under STR_WEAPONS_AND_EQUIPMENT, when they should go under STR_ALIEN_ARTIFACTS.

19

Open Feedback / [TFTD] Craft Re-model Crew Deployment Problem

« on: September 21, 2015, 04:37:46 pm »

version: 1.0
build: git 2015-09-18 21:32

The HAMMERHEAD badly needed a remake. So I was looking around to see if anything had been done already and I came across this:



(from StrategyCore's X-Com TFTD Crafts remake-reskin mod)

The LEVIATHAN re-skin also catched my eye. So I throw together a quick mod (removing the TRITON) containing the pertaining GEODATA, MAPS & TERRAIN files. When I load up a random game, however, I notice crew deployment is messed up. And I had already updated crafts.rul to the new soldier capacity (from 12 to 16 for HAMMERHEAD, and 24 to 26 for LEVIATHAN).

I don't believe it's a pathing problem, since aquanauts can walk around every empty spot in the craft as normal (ie. those spots don't act/behave like obstructing walls or something).

I understand vanilla HAMMERHEAD's deployment is as follows:

\  X 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09
Y \ ------------------------------------
00 | __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __
01 | __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __
02 | __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __
03 | __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __
04 | __ __ __ 12 11 10 __ __ __ __
05 | __ __ __ 09 08 07 __ __ __ __
06 | __ __ __ 06 05 04 __ __ __ __
07 | __ __ __ 03 02 01 __ __ __ __
08 | __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __
09 | __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __

And what I get is this, which makes no sense (since even some of vanilla HAMMERHEAD's default spawn locations stop working):



New HAMMERHEAD's deployment should be as follows (where 'xx' are the new spawn locations):

\  X 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09
Y \ ------------------------------------
00 | __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __
01 | __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __
02 | __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __
03 | __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __
04 | __ __ xx 12 11 10 __ __ __ __
05 | __ __ xx 09 08 07 __ __ __ __
06 | __ __ xx 06 05 04 __ __ __ __
07 | __ __ xx 03 02 01 __ __ __ __
08 | __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __
09 | __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __

Yet what I get is this (where ** equals missing spawns):

\  X 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09
Y \ ------------------------------------
00 | __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __
01 | __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __
02 | __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __
03 | __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __
04 | __ __ ** 12 11 ** __ __ __ __
05 | __ __ ** 09 08 07 __ __ __ __
06 | __ __ ** ** ** 04 __ __ __ __
07 | __ __ ** 03 02 01 __ __ __ __
08 | __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __
09 | __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __

The 02 X line is completely missing and, for whatever reason, so are spots 03/06 and 04/06, as as well as 05/04.

As I said, I don't believe this is a pathing problem. Then again, I'm pretty new at this. So what am I missing or doing wrong here?

PS: LEVIATHAN's re-skin also has roughly the same problem (particularly how all troops are missing along the westernmost wall/line, plus some missing spawn spots here and there).

Edit: submitted too early before finishing post.

20

Open Feedback / AP, HE & Incendiary/Phosphorous

« on: August 10, 2015, 02:38:33 am »

What's the actual difference, damage-wise, between Armor Piercing, High Explosive and Incendiary (or Phosphorous, in TFTD)? Does a weapon with an AP power value of 60 do the same flat damage as another weapon with either an HE or I value of 60 as well? (I do understand armors have various different modifiers that come into effect, but when it comes to raw damage values, do all weapons do the same damage regardless of their ammo type?)

I am aware HE has an AOE damage, but does it hit the same way as AP at ground zero (ie. hitting the target directly in the face)?

And what about Incendiary/Phosphorous, does it work like HE but with a "lingering" fire effect afterwards or is the direct-hit damage actually less than stated?


Lastly, is there a reason why in UFO/EU Incendiary ammo seems to pack the highest punch...

Code: [Select]

Heavy Cannon (AP) 56
Heavy Cannon (HE) 52
Heavy Cannon (I) 60

Auto-Cannon (AP) 42
Auto-Cannon (HE) 44
Auto-Cannon (I) 48
...but in TDFT the highest damage value is always carried by HE, with AP and Phosphorous being typically on exactly the same level?

Code: [Select]

Gas Cannon (AP) 60
Gas Cannon (HE) 65
Gas Cannon (P) 60

Hydro-Jet Cannon (AP) 40
Hydro-Jet Cannon (HE) 50
Hydro-Jet Cannon (P) 40
Is this merely a design choice or there an underlying reason behind this change?

21

Open Feedback / Ruleset Editing Questions (& Some m'Orz Qestions)

« on: August 09, 2015, 01:33:05 am »

dependencies
List of research projects that can unlock access to this one. If the full list is researched, or if one of the projects on the list "unlocks" this one, it becomes available.

Let's say I list the following dependencies for all Sonic weapons (Pistol, Blasta Rifle & Cannon):

Code: [Select]

dependencies:
  - STR_AQUATOID
  - STR_GILLMAN
  - STR_TASOTH
  - STR_LOBSTERMAN

Does this mean each weapon will require 4 live aliens of every race? Or does fulfilling dependencies for one item apply to all others which list the same dependencies? In other words, would all Sonic weapons become unlocked after I research a live Aquatoid, Gillman, Tasoth and Lobsterman, or would I need to research these 4 alien races again for each weapon separately? (I hope that's a clear question.)

Or would the latter apply if I list the 4 alien races as requirements instead?

requires
List of research projects unilaterally required before this project can be unlocked (for example, "the martian solution" will not even be considered for unlocking until AFTER "alien origins" is completed).

Let's take The Martian Solution as an example then. How does having Alien Origins as a requirement differ from having Alien Origins as a dependency?

Apologies if it's a silly question

edit: changed topic's title

22

Suggestions / Various Suggestions

« on: August 06, 2015, 09:47:44 pm »

Hello extremely! I hope you like to *play*.
Some *campers* are not so good for *games*.
Is it time for *playing* yet?


Alright, so I have some questions & suggestions. I know some of these have already been brought up, so I apologize if any of this has already been discussed and resolved:

— UFOpedia access from:
(a) Battlescape's inventory/equip screen
(b) Base's item lists (e.g. stores, craft's equipment screen, buy/sell lists, etc)
I don't know how hard it would be to implement this (if it was easy enough, wouldn't it have been done already?), but it would be great to be able to access each item's UFOpedia file by the right click of the mouse. This would be mostly to check out a weapon's damage and TU-cost/accuracy.

— Related to the above: how about inclusion of item's weight and whether it's one- or two-handed in UFOpedia entry as well? It's a minor addition, but adds up to content and some usefulness anyway. (I didn't even know about the 20% accuracy penalty until later!)

- Tied to the above: when dragging items in inventory/equip screen, it would be nice to display cost of move to particular inventory slot, like from the ground to the hand, or between slots. Again, a minor addition and not too important, but still nice and useful.

— Also: custom equip saves (not the same as the already awesome copy n' paste function). I believe this has been already kind of developed before? Not totally sure, but basically: allow you to save maybe 5-10 slots of custom equipment. For example, prep up a typical grenadier role and save it for easy loading on another soldier/aquanaut.

— Skyranger with side-doors (right next to the cockpit). A minor improvement which could sometimes work against you, but makes for easier/faster/better troop deployment. I'm sure this has been done already in a couple different ways, but I haven't yet found an actual ruleset for it (maybe someone can point me in the right direction?).

— Decrease TU-cost of Mind Probe and Motion Scanner to make them more viable. This may not be much of a suggestion since even I myself can make a quick and easy change on a ruleset for it (and in fact there is one mod out there which changes Motion Scanner's cost value to 5 I believe).

— Change Psi-Amp's Panic and Mind Control TU cost separately (like, say.. make Panic cost 25% and Mind Control 60% or something like that). I know the TU cost itself can be easily modified (even make it percentage-based or flat-cost). As far as I know, however, I don't believe it is possible to "split" the cost into Panic and Mind Control separately, but I'd love it if it was doable. Any thoughts on this?

— Now, this one may be a little harder: make Psi-skill decrease with range. This would be similar to Ranged-Based Accuracy for weapons. I don't know if this would be possible with psionic abilities, but full-battlescape range is a little OP (for both aliens and human players) and LOS-based psionics is a little underpowered. So how about something in the middle? Say, normal accuracy over 20 tiles with a percentile decrease every 1-2 tiles further? This would still make it (somewhat) possible to Mind Control someone at a distance (without requiring LOS) but it would be harder the further the target is.

— Make all aliens psionic. That's right—not every alien rank, but every alien race. I'd love to see psionic Mutons, for example. Same thing goes for TFTD's Lobstermen. I really like Mutons and Lobstermen, but they seem to be inferior to other aliens due to their lack of psionic proficiency.

— Perhaps Psi-Lab/MC-Lab training should be limited to 30 days only for each soldier/aquanaut (if you want to put someone in the lab again, a message could pop up saying: "this soldier/aquanaut has already been trained" or something along those lines). Any further improvements should be gained by actual psionic/MC practice & experience on the field. To make up for such low (and slow-growing) psi/MC skill, lab training could perhaps yield higher values than 16-24.

— Change kneeling and standing to 3 and 6 TUs (or maybe less?), respectively. I personally like to use kneeling, but I don't see it used very much on "Let's Play" videos. Probably because it's too costly. I also haven't looked too much into the ruleset to make these changes since I'm just barely getting familiar with all of this.

— Fix reversed hands between unit inventory/equip screen and battlescape sprite's handobs. Again, minor detail. Or maybe I'm seeing things here! But it seems item/weapon held in each hand is reversed on the field (e.g Med-kit equipped to right hand will appear on the left in the battlescape).

— Show unit status on the field. I know there's been some discussion about this one but nothing too solid, as far as I'm aware. Basically, have some sort of symbol above the unit's head to display unit's condition (particularly fatal wounds—not even the number, just the fact that unit is wounded).

— Reduce sickbay time by 1/3rd? I'm not totally sure about this one yet. I like the fact that my soldiers/aquanauts can receive such serious injuries that they require some time off in the recovery room, but isn't 30+ days (although probably realistic) a little too much? Again, not sure about this one.

— Mission Log/Journal. Just like Soldier Diaries. This one would keep track of all your missions. Nothing too fancy, but it could maybe display date, type of UFO craft, number of alien & soldiers/aquanauts involved, casualties, aliens killed, etc, etc. Kind of like the basic rundown you get after clearing each mission, just perhaps a bit more detailed.

— Research Tree screen. This one's a big one, no doubt. How about implementing a Research Tree tab? This way you'd be able to see what leads to what once you unlock various topics and branches. It should be all be completely hidden at the start, of course. Since this would be pretty large to fit into a single screen alone, perhaps it could be broken down into different tabs. Some research lines are pretty stand-alone and have no connection to others, so maybe those could be separate. Needless to say, this will require a lot of thought to properly implement in a nice and organized fashion.

— Make Power & Flying Suit manufacture more costly. Not in terms of money, but in terms of alien items required. As an example, in TFTDextender, additionally to Aqua Plastics & Zrbite cost, each Ion or Magnetic-Ion Armor requires 2 Lobstermen corpses (personally, I would have added Ion-Beam Accelerators and Magnetic Navigation to the list of requirements as well! Both of which could be manufactured at your own workshop anyway, but it makes the attainment of such powerful armors more costly overall in terms of time and resources).

— While we are on the topic of manufacturing, maybe some items (especially alien ones) could require much more than just 1 or 2 Alien Alloys/Aqua Plastics & Elerium/Zrbite. It's too easy to manufacture Plasma and Sonic weapons, respectively. Same goes for many other items. UFO components should play a bigger role in manufacturing. And as noted in the above point: make some corpses more usable rather than just for making easy money.

— Fix the Laser Cannon (or TFTD's Gauss Cannon) "cash cow." This has been discussed before. I'm not saying you shouldn't make money out of your own mass-production manufacturing (it's part of the charm!), but simply decrease selling price of Laser Cannon (and other similar items) to a more reasonable figure so that it doesn't become so easy to abuse (where's the fun/challenge in that?).

— Rainy weather! Just a minor cosmetic addition. Don't know if this is possible, but it would be nice to be able to make it randomly rain (light rain, nothing heavy) from mission to mission, just to add some variation to each battle. This doesn't have to affect visibility or mobility penalties or anything (though it could, like maybe reducing visibility by 2 tiles or something minor like that), just mostly a cosmetic add-on.


And some suggestions pertaining to TFDT's balancing (which will now be possible with the incorporation of TFTD into OpenXcom):

— Improve Gauss weapons. Either/and/or:
(a) Make aliens less resistant to Gauss damage (Guass is underpowered as it is and gives little reason to research it instead of stepping right ahead into Sonic weaponry—which is what I did in my first play, since I had already acquired and researched most alien tech earlier and just kept going down that line only to later find out Gauss was pretty weak in comparison).
(b) Maybe remove clip research completely and make it immediately available alongside each newly researched Gauss weapon (e.g. once Gauss Pistol is unlocked, so is its ammo).
(c) And how about maybe increasing clip size to make Gauss more viable? Gauss tech does not even compare to Laser in UFO/EU. It's unfortunately pretty pathetic in comparison, and I would really like Gauss weapons to be more useable.
(d) Additionally, and considering acquiring Sonic weapons is so easy, perhaps live alien research requirement could be implemented here.

— Make Drills capable of perforating UFO hulls (kinda like OpenXcom's Torch mod) and destroying inanimate objects just like regular weapons.


Anyway, that was quite a mouthful! I'm sure there's more I don't even remember and haven't even thought-up yet, but I've already made things pretty lengthy as it is. I apologize if it's too much of a long and heavy read. I'll try to revise for typos and sentence structure later for an easier read.

Just take your time, and thank you for your consideration.

Edit: removed some text to shorten post's length.