Messages

16

Released Mods / Re: End Game Flares for UFO and TFTD

« on: October 07, 2017, 08:32:19 pm »

Thanks!

Much appreciated.

I'll play around with these the upcoming weekend. The UFO:EU version of the flare, that is.

--- posts merged ---

Hello, Starving Poet.

Your elerium_flares.rul was missing this little tid-bit of code in the ufopaedia-section:

Code: [Select]

    requires:
      - STR_ELERIUM_FLARE

Imagine my surprise when I started a test-game and found that I had info about Elerium-flares in my UFOPaedia. Now fixed in my files, but maybe you should fix it in the download as well?

And I hope you don't mind too much that I tweaked your numbers a bit. I found it rather silly that the salesprice for an Elerium-flare was way lower than the open market sales/purchase-price of regulare Electro-flares. And I reduced the Alloy-requirement from two to one. It is costly enough to spend a regular flare (300) a bit of Elerium-115 (5 000) and an Alloy (6 500) for a total of $11 800 for one flare. A salesprice of $500 doesn't make it profitable, but is more reasonable when comparing it to the regular flare's purchase/sales prices of $300/$150.

And I removed your melee-tweaks rul-file.

Now I'm off to YouTube. Need to check up on if you've managed to kill me off in your X-Com Files wednesday nighttime (in Europe) stream. Can I complain if it is a silly death?

17

Work In Progress / Re: Need a pair of fresh eyes: Specialists show up with PSI stats revealed

« on: October 07, 2017, 07:51:34 pm »

When a soldier is created, the psi skill is set to minStats.psiSkill.
If you have this higher than zero, soldier will start with this skill level already... and thus show as psionic.
Change to zero if you want to prevent it.

Thank you, Meridian!

I had no idea that this is a thing. I'm happy you stick around to help people like me.

If only I had asked this a few weeks ago...

18

Work In Progress / Need a pair of fresh eyes: Specialists show up with PSI stats revealed

« on: October 07, 2017, 04:52:22 pm »

Hello, forumgoers.

Using latest nightly.
For completeness' sake I should mention I use a few mods (FMP 1.9.7. - FMP High Quality Sounds - Extra Explosions - Alternative Smoke, plus a few of my own), but none of those are anywhere near meddling with soldiers or soldier-types.

I've been looking at this file (see attachment) for hours now. I can't seem to figure out this:

A - Regular soldiers does not come with PSI stats revealed.
B - Specialists do come with PSI stats revealed.

It doesn't matter if I have to research the class, or if it is available from game's start. If I start with a regular soldier and an assault-class soldier; the regular soldier has not psi-stats revealed while the assault-class has psi-stat revealed.

I can spot no difference other than that they are two separate soldier-types.

I've tried commenting out research-requirements. I've tried having research topics with zero costs and non-zero costs. I've tried having soldier-class techs both with and without a zero-cost prereq-tech.

Please tell me where to look in my files to find my problem. I'm not asking anyone to do it for me. But I really need some help in finding out where I need to dig. I know I must have made a silly mistake somwhere. I just don't know where that is...

Current tech-tree is:
STR_SOLDIER_CLASSES (4th research-topic at the start of the game)
STR_SOLDIER_CLASS_[insert class] > has previous topic as dependency (not requirement).

I'm taking a break until tomorrow. My head is empty of ideas now. I hope that some of you may have an idea as to where I have to look in order to fix my problem.

I've been eager to start a new experimental game, but with specialist soldiers coming with psi-stats already revealed, that is not happening. No fun, you know.

Have a nice weekend, everyone!
 

19

Released Mods / Re: [COMPILATION] Final Mod Pack (FMP)

« on: April 17, 2017, 01:56:43 pm »

Hello.

COMMENDATIONS-FIX in latest nightly

This file (se attachment) should work with FMP 1.9.6c and the latest nightly.

PS!
File-attachment removed. Use Final Mod Pack 1.9.7.


Sincerely
Kjotleik

20

Released Mods / Re: [Addon to FMP 1.9.4a] Kjotleik's Addons to FMP

« on: February 20, 2017, 07:26:57 pm »

Can you add details explaining what changes your mod makes?

The K's FMP Addon-mod is explained in the spoiler.
The DamageReliabilityMod changes damage done from 0-200% to 80-120% of UFOPaedia weapon-power values.
The ExplosionRangeMod changes the range of explosions to Power x 1.2 x 0.1. For the standard Grenade that means: 50 x 1.2 x 0.1 = 6. For the High Explosive it means 110 x 1.2 x 0.1 = 13. Don't know if this is too much, though. I just want to try it out in a game.

The Harder Interrogation Mod is the problem. The easy part is to make it necessary with a brain-implant in order to get anything useful from researching aliens. I just remove the getOneFrees from them. Then I move the getOneFrees over to a new implanted alien (done in the workshops by engineers). Now I'm looking for a way to move those getOneFrees over to unlocks. The reason is that I want them to come in a pre-defined order, not random. I have succeeded in this (kind of), but not without some small issues. I'm currently working on that bit. It takes a while, I'm afraid. A lot of aliens in FMP, you know. 

By the way: FMP is up to 1.9.6c by now. Before the end of February I'll either have solved my issue, made a compromise or removed the HIM from my experimental playthrough.

I hope this answers your question. If not, feel free to specify what you want to know more about.   

21

Work In Progress / Re: AI Aggression and Intelligence ranges?

« on: February 11, 2017, 03:36:09 am »

What kind of work? It's just a few extra files... Does it cause any problems other than adding a few lines to each type?

Yes. But I go through them and make some changes:

Code: [Select]

Random Name
becomes
Random Name (H)
for Heavies
Random Name (A)
for Assaults
etc.

So I duplicate each name-file as many times as I have classes. And go through them manually. Since I cannot code, it would take me longer to learn how to make a script than to just [CTRL]+[V] the " (H)" parts at the end of names...

I don't know about you, but I would never remember the classes if I didn't have those visible in the names.
And now I've decided to add two more as well. Grenadiers and Ninjas (melee). I'm just looking for an experimental game where I can have some fun, you know. Roleplaying a bit, bragging about the lucky-shot sniper, crying for the did-reaction-fire-but-missed-causing-death-to-self Assault, etc.   


PS!
It is not something I would ever consider "problems."   
I like doing stuff like this, since it is so easy. Just ruleset-files with easily understandable syntaxes. No coding-knowledge necessary, really.
But, alas, it does take some time. Time that I enjoy, by the way. But time nonetheless.

22

Work In Progress / Re: AI Aggression and Intelligence ranges?

« on: February 09, 2017, 07:54:58 pm »

Well, but if you don't see the alien before turning, it'll shoot you, since you have a huge penalty to your initiative check.

Yes, I've experienced getting shot rounding corners many times in the past. But at least that is equal for both sides.
I don't really know how much of a penalty it is on player/alien rounding the corner, though. You probably know that better than me.

Somebody, please teach the AI how to round corners! No?

I'll say goodbye for today now. I'll have to take a look at FMP 1.9.6c files. You gave me a little bit more work with my "Soldier Specialists" mod by introducing more name-files, you know.   

But that's OK. I'm happy for more nations among my soldiers. I just hope I can get it done this week, or next, so that I can start playing again...   

23

Work In Progress / Re: AI Aggression and Intelligence ranges?

« on: February 09, 2017, 07:35:37 pm »

...without it I would go back to how it worked in the OG: go back one tile so that I could make a diagonal step in order to come out looking at the enemy... It was silly beyond measure, strafing is much better.

So the point is (if I understand you correctly) that it is the Mutual Surprise rule that is the problem. Even if you and the alien see each other at the same time, the alien should be able to reaction-fire IF it has the initiative (more TUs remaining x Reaction stats than the player.) And if the player has the initiative, he should be able to turn 90 degrees and fire at the alien after rounding a corner, before getting hit with reaction-fire.

In my head, it should work the same way for both sides no matter what rules are actually in place. It is not equal when strafing now, due to the AI not knowing how to do it.

24

Suggestions / Re: Choosing promotions?

« on: February 09, 2017, 07:22:26 pm »

For example, there is a feature to pay higher salaries to high-ranking officers... which you could abuse by demoting everyone before the end of the month.
Not that anyone sane would do that... but I got sick of complaints and succumbed to pressure.

This had to be controversial. I understand why it was removed.

But was it only the financial gains from demotion that was the reason for removing the option?

If so: How hard would it be to let demotion cost.... let's say 2x Salary of rank (before demotion)?
You would lose money doing it, and the game would fill up the free ranks again at the first possible opportunity.
Consistently demoting would then cost twice as much as just letting them be.

Not that I would demand such a game-mechanic, but it would perhaps be fun to play around with it for a game (or two).
Demoting soldiers causing friendly-fire casualties, or missing important shots that leads to aliens reaction-fire killing team-mate(s). Hm.   

25

Work In Progress / Re: AI Aggression and Intelligence ranges?

« on: February 09, 2017, 06:51:58 pm »

And what should really be done, is not allow xcom to strafe (...or trigger reaction fire anyway).
IMO running is fine and can be balanced... strafing is pure cheating of the engine (and not realistic anyway).

Yes, I would welcome a change to not allow strafing. I know I don't have the discipline to avoid using it when it is so....so...available.   
At the same time I feel that running is natural for soldiers in war. It is one of those things that I missed in the original game in the 90s.
The stamina-system is in itself the perfect tool to balance running.

26

Work In Progress / Re: AI Aggression and Intelligence ranges?

« on: February 09, 2017, 06:25:57 pm »

Well, if you just hide around a corner, they need to spend TUs to come closer to you and won't be able to shoot at all (or will get reaction fired at because of low TUs); and be sitting ducks or dead.
This feature (as every other feature) can also be used to your advantage

...so, when will the Alternate Movement-methods be programmed into the AI? Teach them to take advantage of the Mutual Surprise rule for avoiding reaction-fire, and shoot you instead, when rounding corners would make them a bit...hm... harder to deal with, right?   

...or does this rule not apply when they know where you are? I'm not sure...

27

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

« on: February 09, 2017, 06:06:42 pm »

...Yet after multiple campaigns roughly 2 years of play since i discovered openxcom not a single base defense mission- and I am playing on the highest difficulty. 
Could be just dumb luck, hopefully not a bug with openxcom.

My experience is the opposite: Shoot down UFOs in January, get Base Defence in February.
I don't remember getting one in January, so I don't know if that is even possible. But first week of February? Sure. Been there, done that, lost game... who can defend against Sectoids with mind-control in February?       

Oh, I forgot about Meridian. He can defend against Sectoids with mind-control on January 1st...

28

Playthroughs / Re: Superhuman Final Mod Pack 1.9.6c LP. (plus some other things)

« on: February 09, 2017, 05:52:30 pm »

Hello.

Another playthrough of OXC with FMP, I see.   

When you are in need of reinforcements, you can always recruit me as soldier. Always willing to defend the earth from those hot-air grey-skinned invaders...

Name: Kjotleik
Role: Whatever the commander sees fit. But I do like explosives in this game...

I have watched the two videos you've made available. While the best would be audio commentary (of course), having at least a text-based commentary is a lot better than no commentary on the videos. So, keep that up.

I'm looking forward to see how you progress in this game.

As for the rules... well, it is a game. You should play it with the rules that you feel gives you the best experience. If I give you my opinion on what I think is best... that's just my opinion. And since we probably like different things, you should always consider what you like the most before what I like the most. Your game, your enjoyment!

That said, I like using instant grenades in this game. Because of...BOOM. Since I'm a rather peaceful person in real-life, I tend to like taking it to the other extreme in games. Ruthlessly so...

29

Hardmode Expansion / Re: Youtube Videos

« on: January 06, 2017, 02:06:38 am »

I disabled comment on Youtube, please feel free to comment here in this thread.

He-he. Yes, Google+ is not exactly working properly when it comes to the G+/YT-integration.
I've seen comments (on YouTube when clicking that bell-symbol in the upper right corner) that doesn't even show up when trying to click on it to go to the video it is supposed to be a comment for...

I've been frustrated more than once about this issue. But I guess I just ignore it for now.

I'll have some fun looking through a couple of your really old videos, once I get the time. Right now (and perhaps a month or two) I will be busy with other stuff (real-life gets in the way).

I hope you have fun working on your mod in 2017!

Sincerely
Kjotleik

30

Released Mods / Re: [COMPILATION] Final Mod Pack (FMP)

« on: December 27, 2016, 06:11:59 pm »

Version 1.9.5 is online!

Oohhh. I know what I'm going to do next weekend... (still busy with some christmas-stuff I'm afraid).

Thanks for uploading through MediaFire. It's a much better alternative than the mod-portal (unfortunately).


Sincerely
Kjotleik