Topics

16

OXCE Suggestions Archive / [Feedback] Suggestions on aircombat

« on: February 06, 2018, 12:27:09 am »

Right now, of the three attack stances only two are ever used. Agressive or cautious. There is no reason whatsoever to use normal attack. I would suggest changing the modes to max range, max damage and max accuracy (the economy setting). The max accuracy mode would be used to maximize payload efficiency in exchange for longer time under enemy fire.
Max range has low accuracy and low fire rate.
Max accuracy has low fire rate and low distance
Max damage has high fire rate at low distance with medium or low accurracy. The resulting DPS is higher than in max accuracy mode.

...or something similar

The proper implementation that requires the modders to do some work would be to extend the range and accuracy parameters of a weapon to hold three values like the firing speed. The no-work-for-modders implementation is to have fixed multipliers for the stances. For example max accuracy mode has a range multiplier of 0.7, an accuracy muliplier of 1.2, while having a firing interval multiplier of 1.5.



Furthermore, I would like the option to reduce air combat outcome variance, as this really annoys me. Is there any reason why enemy ufos have a 0-100% damage range while your interceptors do 50-100%? I would like the option to give enemy ufos 50-100% damage range as well.

What further increases variance is a high evade, mostly reached through pilot bonuses. The high evade low hp craft can then win encounters unscathed or die in two shots. In heroes of might and magic 5 there was the ethereal stat that gave a 50% miss chance. It was implemented in a very not-annoying way. If you missed two consecutive attacks, the next attack was a sure hit. To balance it, it worked the other way around too. If there were two consecutive hits, the third attack was a guaranteed miss.

Implementing this for other miss chances than 50% could look like this:
For a 10% hit chance, if 9 attacks miss, the 10th attack is a guaranteed hit. Allowed consecutive misses before a guaranteed hit is triggered is 1/percentage, rounded up, minus one. So 11% hit chance would be 1/0.11 = 9.09. Rounded up to 10, minus 1 gives 9 misses before a guaranteed hit. Obviously this mechanism needs a 2 missed shot cap at the low end. I would also be in favor of having a cap on the high end of 10 missed shots that would prevent evade abuse.

It might not be necessary to implement the other end as well that would prevent the two shot death, a guaranteed miss after a hit for a high evade craft. The player got a bonus to air combat when pilot bonuses where introduced. If my suggested changes increase the guaranteed damage of ufos, this is just fair to counterbalance the pilot bonuses.

17

OXCE Suggestions DONE / [DONE][Suggestion] Underwater throwing range and separate damage

« on: August 02, 2017, 04:49:50 pm »

Features that would enhance the realism of underwater operations.

Most important: Throwing range limit
An item parameter that defines the maximum throw distance when under water. Also, a parameter to define throw distance regardless of strength.

Use: I was thinking of how underwater grenades might realistically work. My conclusion is some form of hand held mini torpedo, kind of like a Ketchum Grenade (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketchum_Grenade) with an added small propulsion system. These would have a throw distance that is not related to the strength of the user.
And anything that is not designed to be thrown under water should have a throw range limit of two tiles.

Might be useful: Seperate damage parameters in water / out of water
Right now you can circumvent that problem by having seperate ammo types and restrict them to each enviroment. With that feature you can have multi environment ammo that changes behavior. I'm thinking of bullets that work fine out of the water but loose damage over range when under water. Can also be useful for weapons were different clips don't make sense like lasers and sonic weapons.

Maybe too much trouble: seperate under water weight
Because under water weight behaves differently. Also, weight limits on swimming armors that are independent of user strength. If I float or not has nothing to do with my strength.

18

OXCE Suggestions Archive / [Suggestion] Smart (safe) explosive ammo

« on: August 02, 2017, 04:18:33 pm »

Idea: A round that explodes at/close to the target tile only.

The distance to the target coursor is measured and the round explodes after it travelled that distance. The safe part is that it does not explode if it hits anything before it traveled that distance. For better functionality, explode-on-impact could activate 2-3 tiles before the target tile.

Use: New interesting ammo that also the AI can use without trouble.

Would be enabled on blaster bomb / DPL ammo. Mostly benefits the aliens, as they can't blow themselves up anymore. The player is (mostly) intelligent enough to savely use blaster bombs. Also, the player usually sets the waypoints so that you hit the ground at the target, guaranteeing an explosion. This way, the AI gets the same effect.

19

OXCE Support / [Solved] Not removing wounded soldiers from training

« on: March 26, 2017, 12:27:43 am »

Add soldiers to training if slot is available.

Why is this needed?
Soldier gets wounded in combat, is removed from training. When healed, automatically resumes training if slot is free.

Optional: notify me when soldiers have healed.

20

The X-Com Files / Small suggestions

« on: March 26, 2017, 12:18:14 am »

Idea: Tranquilizer rifle
That thing that is commonly used to capture wild animals alive.

Why?
You are supposed to capture the strange creatures alive. You should be given the appropriate equipment.

What does this do exactly?
Does stun damage over time, so only use this on things you can run away from.
In the OXCE script thread I saw an example script for poison bullets. That script could probably be used and edited to do stun damage over time. For damage I would suggest something like 10 + currentHP*0.1 . So high HP creatures can be stunned too, but take longer than little ones. Weapon range of about 15 seems good for a start.



I don't want to open a new thread for every little idea, so I created this one to bundle them.

21

XPiratez / Shotgun balance

« on: November 25, 2016, 01:46:22 pm »

TL;DR: Reduce double barrel buckshot pellets and increase reload time for better balance.

I recently had my first Lokk'Narr mission and was figuring out what are the most useful weapons for that. Shotguns won by a large margin and among the shotguns the double barrel won by a large margin. Here is the summary of my tests, done with a 80 accuracy gal:

- Double barrel, 20x10 buckshot
One shot has a good chance to kill a ninja, two have about 90% kill chance (if they hit). I tested distance, and at 15 tiles you still have 7-8 pellets hit the target. Lowest count was 5, highest count was 10. With 80 accuracy, you can kneel and the autoshot has about 90% accuracy at that distance. Snap is only slightly more accurate and costs the same Tu, so only reason to use snap instead of auto would be to conserve ammo.
The two-shot ammo is supposed to balance the good qualities, but it is more of an inventory constraint than a time constraint. Reload is fast enough that you can get off two auto shots per round at about the same Tu and accuracy that the heavy can do two snapshots.

- Heavy shotgun, 20x7 buckshot
The heavy is quite similar to the double barrel at long range, but the double barrel lands 1-2 more pellets on target because of the higher pellet count. At short ranges the autoshot gives the double barrel double damage. Only advantage the heavy has over the double barrel is that it can fire three times in reaction fire because of the higher ammo count. Also, inventory space can be an issue for the double barrel.
The heavy still does enough damage that it can one-shot a ninja. The damage difference per shot to the double barrel is not that high that you would immediately notice.

- Heavy shotgun, 28x3 slugs
Ninjas have 20 armor, so intuition would say slugs should be a better option. From testing I can say that they are slightly worse than buckshot. They hit well enough that most of the time all three slugs land on target up to 15 tiles distance, but you need two shots to kill a ninja. One-shot kills can happen but are rare. Still performs better than a rifle/SMG in autoshot mode (tested: Assault SMG, Autogun, Tommy, Assault Machinegun).

- Combat shotgun, 22x5 buckshot
Can one-shot kill ninjas, but less often than the heavy with buckshot. So compared to the heavy, you get a little less damage but have a faster snapshot. The autofire is noticeably less accurate, so it's situational. High accuracy gals that can make the autofire hit get a definite advantage from choosing this gun over the heavy. I would say the tradeoffs and advantages are well balanced.

- CAWS, slugs
Needs 2 hits to kill a ninja. Compared to the other shotguns worse at short range, better at long range. Also less accurate, so needs skilled gals to use effectively.

- CAWS, scattershot
Does more damage than the other shotguns but is less accurate. Where the other shotguns have a 90% accuracy snap this gun has a 60% accuracy snap. The accuracy loss balances the damage.

- javelins, on a gal with 66 throwing and 59 strength.
Needs two hits most of the time, good chance for a one hit kill. At short range (8 tiles) as accurate as the shotguns (nearly always hits), but with a huge stamina drain. Fuso knives on the same gal needed three or more hits to kill a ninja.


Conclusion:
The double barrel could use a slight nerf, because it is noticeably better than your other options while also being dirt cheap. I would suggest reducing the pellet count of the buckshot by 1 or 2 pellets and to increase the reload time. You should need more time to reload this thing than to shoot it.

22

XPiratez / RND in research time

« on: November 03, 2016, 05:37:32 pm »

Is the randomness in the research time adding any value to the game? Because so far I can't think of any. And if it adds no value, why keep it?

I would prefer research to be more like manufacturing, where it displays how many scientist days it needs until completion so you can allocate accordingly. Right now I'm looking at my save files to see how many scientist days I need (It gives me more peace of mind, because I WANT TO KNOW!!!). Displaying that outright in game could be exploited because of the RND applied to research cost. You could simply cancel and restart a project to roll the RND again and get a better result. If the RND is gone, no more exploit and no downside to displaying that value.

Changing this would probably mean lower research times because of less wasted research days, but that can be adjusted in research cost.

Your opinion?

23

XPiratez / Ideas for better aircombat?

« on: November 02, 2016, 12:02:32 am »

About air combat...
In vanilla Xcom it was "can I catch it?". In TFTD it was "can I catch it?" with the addition of "can I outrange it?" which can be simplified to "do I have sonic oscillators?". So there wasn't really much of a game in aircombat. What was good about it was that you knew what you could do, you didn't sent craft on risky missions.

We all agree that vanilla aircombat is boring. Question is, can we actually do something better? If we make the outcome of aircombat a gamble, is that actually an improvement? Maybe we can start with solving this one question at a time.

First question: What should happen when you encounter an unknown shipping? Unknown meaning you never did aircombat with this shipping. In vanilla it was simple, larger = more dangerous, and you would be cautious to engage something large. In Piratez this does not hold anymore. Small things can be dangerous (fighter), large things can be harmless (freighter). Only way to find out if something is really dangerous is to engage it and see how much it damages you. And then it's more often than not *dodge, dodge, dodge, hit -> dead*

Do we want to improve this situation? If so, I would have an idea. Interception pictures could get a danger rating in skulls on them. This would translate to your pilot counting the guns on that ship. So a cutter would have like one skull in the interception picture, while a battleship would have five skulls. Or something like that. Then, in the description of Piratez craft and craft weapons, there could be an explanation as to what kind of "skull rating" this equipment can take on. So for a battleship you would need a five skull rated gun on a five skull rated ship. You would know what you are supposed to take on and what is too much for you.

24

XPiratez / Gameplay feedback 0.99C

« on: October 30, 2016, 07:20:53 pm »

Since I don't record videos of me playing Piratez, I want to share my experiences with this post.

I recently started a new game on Jack Sparrow with 0.99B, but 0.99C came out soon so most of my gameplay has been with 0.99C. This is my first experience of Airbus Adventures, so far I've made it to June of the first year.
First of all I would like to say that I really like the way this mod is developing. The things I found not so well balanced in earlier versions have pretty much all been solved. So really good job on that Dioxine!
The best thing in Piratez for me are the custom missions like Ratmen Rodeos and faction outposts. I think Dioxine is really good at designing those. Also, much of the balancing (usefulness of items, appearance of factions) can be done with these custom missions. I would say creating more of these is the best use of Dioxine’s development time.

On to my feedback:
Biggest change so far in gameplay is that I play only night missions if possible, with the exceptions of Ratman Rodeos. I more or less play a capture only game, and for this I need to get into melee range. In the beginning you don't have smoke grenades, so melee fighting in daylight is not a good option. It's hard to get into melee range without being shot at, and then you don't have the TUs to get back into cover.
On the contrary, melee game at night is quite easy. You are already close when you spot them and you only need to retreat a bit after taking one down to be safe enough. You just have to be careful of light sources. In the beginning I mostly used Tribal outfit and handles. Later on, Tribal got replaced by Guerilla. The handles stayed in the quickdraw slot but got supplemented with cattle prods in the backpack for tougher enemies.
I’ve found the domestic shotgun with rubber bullets to be my most used weapon (Harpoon with stun clips for tougher enemies in backpack). At night you can get close enough to hit stuff and it’s safer than melee. Also training firing is more useful than training melee. I actually prefer the shotgun to the harpoon when possible, because the shotgun takes less TU to fire (detailed explanation below). Sitting in the darkness and reaction firing at enemies illuminated by electroflares is a nice and save tactic. I’ve more or less stopped using smoke grenades because I don’t need them (cover of darkness) or they are useless (Reticulans). Below is a picture of my standard loadout in June that I would use for a landed academy Cutter (large scout). This loadout is for Academy, Traders Guild or a Temple Raid. For Ratman Rodeo I used Blackmarch Pistols and Muskets in the beginning and then Doublebarrel Shotguns once I had them. Terror missions or Raiders would also need a different loadout.

I really enjoyed the Airbus Adventures. Playing with a small squad size in the beginning makes gameplay fast. Small squad size makes the items you have much more important. With 18 gals Muskets were fine, you had enough of them. With 6 gals, Muskets are not fine anymore because their damage output is not high enough, reloading takes too much time. In my opinion Piratez really shines with smaller squad sizes.
I find the jump from 8 gals (Pachyderm) to 18 gals (Bonaventura) is a bit drastic though (and also I miss my doors). Maybe this transition can be made a bit smoother in future versions, with a 12 gal ship in between. Now that I have an alternative to the Bonaventura, I realize all it’s drawbacks. It’s slow, no doors, and consumes way more Hellerium than the Pachyderm. I will get a Triton soon, let’s see if I like that better than the Bonny.
On the item side, I think balance is really good. The weaker guns you get early enough that they actually are useful at the time you find them. For example the Blackmarch Pistol: On my first Ratman Rodeo it was the most useful weapon I had. One shot doesn’t do much damage, but it fires fast and accurate and has a big clipsize.
Regarding weirder items like the iGun: At first I thought it was a gimmick, but now I realize it’s point is to diversify enemy damage types without giving the player an advantage. The iGun is dangerous in enemy hands, but useless to the player.
What I also like is the availability of mutant meat. Now getting hit is much less annoying. Your gal is still out for that mission, as she needs to get back to the craft and start munching. It’s balanced in that way that replacing the mutant meat costs enough runt time to bother you. Now you can choose if you want the gal available or the runts available.
Items that I found out of balance in past versions were the hunting bow and the flag. The Pirate Flag is now perfectly balanced, and with the longer vision range the limited range of the hunting bow is annoying enough to balance out it’s usefulness. I’ve also had the opinion that shotguns were useless and the Warrior armor protects too much. Both issues solved.
Where I find balance a bit lacking is melee weapons, but that has also to do with the enemies. For melee I use a handle and see little need for anything else. The handle does enough damage that most of the time civilians go down in one hit, so why use anything else? If I get into melee range, I might as well stun them and not kill them because the deadly weapons don’t do the job that much faster that it matters. For things like the Barbarian Sword, there are just no worthy enemies (Shamblers maybe, but only if you have no shotguns).
I would also like to point out that I really like the balance of the early outfits. Every outfit has some good points and some drawbacks, so I mixed and matched for every girls needs. That only stopped when I got Guerilla outfit, which is now on every girl. Main reason to use Guerilla is the camouflage it gives (so useful on night missions), paired with other nice things like huge reaction bonus, decent energy regen, decent piercing protection, accuracy bonus and full inventory. Only downside on Guerilla is the lack of armor, but the point of Guerilla is to avoid getting shot at, so this is manageable.

Concerning the economy and geoscape game:
I was a bit disappointed that I always had enough ammo for my guns just from looting. But this is because of my gameplay, handles don’t need ammo. I capture everything that is worth capturing, so I only use deadly force on Ratmen or on a terror mission, where trying to capture everything is too dangerous. So I would like to have more targets that I need to shoot to deplete my ammo (and to shoot stuff of course!). Reason for shooting could be flying (can’t melee them), too dangerous (Shambler) or not worth taking alive (Reticulans, Ratmen). I have tried to mod this in myself by modding in a chance of blood hounds to civilian encounters. That has changed my packing habits (need more than just handle and shotgun with rubber bullets), but they are not as dangerous as I would have hoped. No gal was actually attacked by a blood hound so far.
Because of plentiful ammo, I felt no need to invest into weapon research to produce my own. What I did get soon however was the ability to produce assault cannons and munition because I feared a bandit terror mission with armored cars. A bit later I got contacts: Krazy Hanna for the same reason. But no bandit terror mission came.
Here I see potential for a new custom mission: Weapon depot assault. An easy version, where the target is a police station guarded by Highwaymen, dogs and armored cars. A tough version (unlocked by contacts: Krazy Hanna) where the target is a Spartan camp protected by tanks. So you have some targets for your newly available heavy weapons.
My research focused on armor and economy. I count getting an aircar as economy. Researching wine as soon as you get apples is very useful. With grog production, runts plus living quarters and extractor need more than two month to pay for themselves. With wine it’s a little more than one month. So unless you can make wine, expanding runt space is not a good investment in the beginning. After researching wine, I built two additional extractors in my starting base and that proved a good investment. Below is a picture of my main base at the start of June. The second base contains two dojos, two prisons and a sickbay. The third is just for Pigeons. 4th base is for more production and has a workshop building, 5th will be my research base and will get a library soon.
The research tree seems good. I like the idea of having the workshop as an indirect key research that you need to actually produce the other things you researched. Having the tech tree viewer integrated helps to identify this and plan accordingly. Good job here!
On the detection side, Pigeons are not the one and only thing to get anymore. Now that they need pilots and chemicals, building a base with a standard radar can be cheaper, depending on region. But if you shoot anything but civilians down near that base, it might get targeted by retaliation. So a mix of Pigeons and not too many but defendable bases with standard radars is best. Again, good balance.

25

XPiratez / Terrain based critters

« on: October 04, 2016, 02:46:15 am »

I would like to add units to a battlescape based on the terrain. For example add megascoripons to a desert battlescape. The main motivation to do that is to add atmosphere and to add more variety to landed/crashed ufo missions. Especially civilan missions could be spiced up by adding some critters. I guess it is not possible with the ruleset as of now. How hard would it be to code that in? Would it be worth it?

The now possible but half satisfying way to spice up civilian missions would be to add blood dogs to the civilian faction and have them as dQty only, so there is a chance to have a few or none at all. That would add kind of a random factor to these missions and something to shoot (assuming you don't shoot civilians). Also, the blood dogs more or less fits most terrains. But the blood dogs would not attack the civilians which I feel that they should. That would make interesting missions, where you have to quickly kill the blood dogs to prevent them from killing the civilians that you want to capture alive.

26

XPiratez / More stuff to shoot

« on: September 22, 2016, 08:37:35 pm »

Tl:dr - more drones

One of the few things I don't like that much about Piratez is that it's nearly always better to stun enemies instead of killing them. Because of this, I almost exclusively use non deadly weapons, which is only a fraction of the arsenal that Piratez has to offer. That is why I like Ratmen Rodeos, because here the benefit of capturing is negligible enough that I don't mind using deadly weapons. So I thought what could be done to improve gameplay, and the answer is add some drones.

- Manhacks
Flying melee attackers. I don't think Piratez has this type of enemy yet, so it would be something new. Fits the setting and is in the spirit of the mod using stuff from other games. There is a Half Life 2d jump and run game that features manhacks. I made a screenshot that can hopefully be used to extract a model. This stylized 2d manhack is probably nicer than a screenshot of the 3d version.

- Scanner Drone
Not sure if this can be done. The idea is an unarmed flying unit with superior vision that makes your gals position known to the enemy. In night missions they could throw flares at your gals, or fly close to your gals and then turn on a light, thus blowing your cover of darkness. This is probably doable. I have no idea how daytime spotting would work with the engine though.

- Armed quadrocopters
Something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNPJMk2fgJU
Quadrocopters should be low tech enough that any faction could use them. I would also like to have quadrocopters (with possibly good nightvision) as a slightly higher tech parrot replacement. I don't like to use animals as cannon fodder and parrots can't see shit at night anyway. Tech required could be integrated devices.

If Dioxine is willing to implement any of these, I will try to make unit graphics for them.

27

XPiratez / Deactivate grenade timer

« on: September 11, 2016, 03:33:14 am »

It seems I am stupid. I have forgotton how to deactivate an armed grenade. I know I have done it before so I know it's possible. I couldn't figure it out with random clickery or Google. Someone please help?

28

XPiratez / Moral reaction for stun

« on: August 30, 2016, 08:08:51 pm »

Following Meridians advice for making new topics for new ideas:

Can we have stunned enemies/gals have an influence on moral? It just seems odd for capture heavy play to have moral drop as if you do nothing to the enemy. And the enemy keeping moral as if they are winning.

29

XPiratez / Bug report, damageAlter: ToStun damage roll

« on: August 28, 2016, 02:20:29 am »

Assuming this is a bug and not a feature:
In the current code (0.99B), the "damageAlter: ToStun" variable is not a multiplier but a damage roll. Yankes said this a while ago along with the intention to change it, so I'm not entirely sure what the current status is. Why I write this as a bug report is because when the stun baton and cattle prod (and maybe some similar other items) had their damage type changed from damage type stun (type 6) to damage type plasma (type 5) with corresponding "damageAlter: ToStun: 1.0", this effectively halved their average damage which I guess was not intended.
So the damage on on the stun baton right now should probably be
POWER*(0-200%)
while it actually is
POWER*(0-200%)*(0-100%)
The last (0-100%) because ToStun: 1.0 is actually a roll of 0 - 100% and not a multiplier.

I didn't look at the code to confirm this (sorry, I'm not a coder), I just did some damage testing and found the stun baton was way worse than expected.

To test if my observations are correct or not, you can either look at the code, use Meridians hitlog showing actual damage numbers, or try the following:
Change the stun baton from this:

Code: [Select]

damageType: 5
damageAlter:
      ToHealth: 0.0
      ToStun: 1.0
      ToArmor: 0.0
      ToWound: 0.0
      RandomWound: false

To this:

Code: [Select]

damageType: 6
damageAlter:
      RandomType: 1
      FixRadius: 0
      IgnoreDirection: false
      ArmorEffectiveness: 1.0
      ResistType: 5

If ToStun was a multiplier, these two stun baton versions should be the same (assuming I did not misunderstand item code). If ToStun is a linear distributed roll, you will get on average half the damage when using that stun baton version. As this is a statistical thing, it is a bit hard to get solid proof. Half average damage is still pretty noticable.

30

XPiratez / Bug with reaction fire?

« on: May 11, 2016, 02:10:05 am »

I may have encountered a bug with reaction fire.
According to this page
https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Reaction_fire_triggers
shooting and hitting an enemy that is turned away should make him spin around and reaction fire at you. If his tu + reaction value allows and if turning gets your soldier into his visual range. In the attached save I have not been able to trigger that behaviour.
The gal with the flag can empty all her tus shooting at the goverment elite without triggering reaction fire. If she moves in his line of sight with sufficiently low tus he fires, so this part is working.

I had another encounter a while back where this AI behaviour was definately working, but there was another bug. I shot a raider buzzard with LACC HE rounds. I found out that a direct hit would make her spin around and reaction fire, but an indirect hit (HE area damage) would not trigger rection fire. According to the ufopaedia page indirect fire should also trigger reaction shots, there should be no difference between direct and indirect. Unfortunately I have no save anymore from this encounter.

Edit: further tested the save. Shooting a goverment agent made him spin around and return fire (as it should). Hitting him in melee and walking away did not trigger reaction fire (this should trigger reaction fire according to ufopaedia article).