Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.


Messages - Countdown

Pages: 1 [2] 3 4 ... 17
16
Playthroughs / Re: Serve your country - Serve your planet - new XCF LP
« on: September 15, 2017, 11:13:06 am »
Sure, sign me up. I'm not sure what a "goverment-y" name sounds like, but if I was going to have a CIA code name/call sign, I'd probably go with "Countdown" anyway so I'll stick with that. Feel free to use "Agent Countdown" if that is preferable.

17
Offtopic / Re: Got a few questions about UFO Defense.
« on: September 14, 2017, 04:40:50 pm »
1.0 is outdated at this point considering the amount of fixes and modding features that were added to the nightlies since 1.0 was released
+1

Dybdal, there has literally been years of bug fixes (plus some extra features and tons of mods) since 1.0. Definitely ditch 1.0 immediately and go to the Nightlies.

As someone who's recently come into contact with OpenXcom, i can say from my point of view that when deciding what to download (v1.0 or the newest nightly) i chose to go for v1.0 as information on the stability or the added features between the two isnt easy to come by.
1.0 is beyond outdated. I keep telling them they need to make a version 1.1 because people will keep falling into that trap otherwise.
+1000000

I just said this myself in SuperSuper's suggestions thread. As a new user, based on what is written on the main page, 1.0 seems like the most logical choice, but it actually doesn't make sense to play 1.0 when it's so out of date and has basically zero mod support.

This discussion has surfaced several times. Devs have their reasons  8)

I'd be curious to know even one of the reasons ... at least a reason why they don't change the main page language to reflect reality (the reality being that the Nightlies are the superior choice for almost everyone). I mean, it doesn't affect me at all at this point so I'm not going to stress about it, but there have been dozens of users on these forums (and I'd imagine many more unreported) who have been "falling into that trap" as Reaver put it.

18
Offtopic / Re: Got a few questions about UFO Defense.
« on: September 10, 2017, 08:51:23 am »
Okay, I think I'm understanding what you're saying. I have never played XCOM 2012, so wasn't 100% sure about squadsight. The thing is, in UFO Defense, "vision" or "sight" doesn't necessarily work realistically. The aliens have memory (the technical term is "intelligence" and different races and ranks have a different memory length) where if they spot your soldier, they know your soldier's location (aka "see" you) for the next X turns (where X is dependent on the race/rank of the alien).

So if an alien spots you, and then you go hide behind a wall or go through another door, in UFO Defense, the alien still "sees" you (or remembers your location) even though they don't have LOS on you because you go behind that wall or through that door. In that sense, UFO does use figurative "squadsight" for psionics because only one alien needs to know your location for any alien to launch a psionic attack.

But you are right, no, in UFO there doesn't actually need to be an alien who currently literally sees you to use Psi. They just need to have seen you and still remember where you went.

Hopefully that made sense. :P

19
Offtopic / Re: Got a few questions about UFO Defense.
« on: September 10, 2017, 12:27:20 am »
Well, thats something to think about.. allthough i dont feel as though psionics is something that adds complexity to the game at all.
The optimal way of dealing with it, is making the needed sacrifices in the midgame by going grenade less against sectoids and dropping your weapon at the end of each turn. (you dont get to have any reaction shots but that is something you can deal with quite easily) the only thing it did to me, was making me sort of annoyed at having to do inventory management each turn (hence my midgame fatigue)
Yeah there are definitely ways around alien psi. Even better than dropping weapons is having a couple of "Psi Rods". Those are soldiers that have very low psi strength and you equip them with a stun rod or something and let the aliens go wild with them. Both methods still put the player at a slight disadvantage since you are down a man that will likely die (with the psi rod) or you can't reaction shot and waste TUs rearming if you do the drop weapons method.

Alien psi at least adds another element to consider and definitely gives the aliens a leg up in the early game.

i dont know, i would have liked to see psionics adhere to squadsight for the aliens and pure LoS for Xcom, that i think would be the perfect way to handle it.

Right, that's exactly what I was saying. The aliens have squadsight with Psionics by default, so the only thing you need to do is make the Psi Amp LOS and then you have the situation you just described.

edit: i do have one regret though, and that was not testing out heavy lasers vs sectopods. i really want to see if they are a viable way of dealing with them late game.

For the record, you can test any Battlescape game mechanic in the "New Battle" option from the start menu. There, you can equip your squad with whatever items you like while going up against whatever alien race you want, on the map you want, at the difficulty you want. You can even set the darkness level so it's a very helpful option for testing.

20
Offtopic / Re: Got a few questions about UFO Defense.
« on: September 09, 2017, 12:57:46 pm »
I think psionic LoS makes the early and mid game far easier, as it only brings major disadvantages to the AI.

You can make just the PsiAmp LOS so the aliens can still use MC as normal, but you can only use MC with LOS. Mod that and make the psi amp very heavy (ie cumbersome), very expensive/difficult to manufacture, and you might be on your way to decent balancing.

From the UFOPaedia:
LOSRequired   Does this item require line of sight? (only applies to mind probes and psi-amps)   false

And im done =) what a great game all around. (Cydonia was a let down though, pyramid spawn litterly right next to my avenger and there were very few enemies inside the base it self to contend with)

A few close calls along the way and abit of fatigue set in around the midgame when dealing with Psionics (but boy does it turn the game into a stomp fest when you enter late game and your the one mindcontrolling everything on the map)

Played it though on Veteran and next time i'll def be doing it on Superhuman with Psionic LoS on, to not make the late game as trivial as it turned out to be.
Yes, once you get MC the game turns into a joke. I was also let down a bit by my first Cydonia run because it was just too easy at that point. I suggest playing on SuperHuman and severely limiting mind control use and blaster launchers (through mods or self restrictions) to make it a bit more of a challenge.

7Saturn is right that if you just make all mind control LOS, the game will get too easy because the aliens will be severely limited. Better to just make the Psi Amp LOS through a mod.

21
Suggestions / Re: Suggestions for the website and community resources
« on: September 08, 2017, 10:13:40 pm »
Wow, there is a lot here. I applaud you for the efforts to improve what is already a great game and community. I'm sure you will get a lot of great ideas from the smart/hard working people on this forum.

Website

Nobody views the site. Or if they do, they don't read it. Or if they do read it, they don't understand it. Etc.

For example, new people keep missing that we have a FAQ, or a wiki, or a bug tracker, etc. I don't really know how to fix this without changing the theme or cluttering up the menu. Or maybe it's hopeless. :P
I'd like to give your whole post some more thought and provide some more worthy feedback, but off the top of my head, the https://openxcom.org/ website seems like a good place to start.

First, combating the issues you mention certainly isn't hopeless. If you want more people to explore the website and read what is there, it would need to be organized a little different and possibly even get a facelift. The most important information for a new user is in the "About" section, but that's one menu item out of many and the FAQ section is buried a few scrolls deep within that section. You start in the "News" section and none of that info means anything to a first time visitor.

Also, like half the links in the sidebar menu take you to other websites which have a whole bunch more info and links and it's just total information overload and a new visitor could be easily overwhelmed. Some people who aren't totally motivated (or lazy) may just leave rather than read and click around to find the important info. If you click "Mods" for example, you go to a website that has absolutely no explanation or description where not even everything works (as you describe, you're sending people to a "dumpster fire".)

So I think the main OXC website could be completely redesigned/organized. This would be work, but I'm sure people here (myself included) would be willing to help.

However, if you're hesitant on doing too much with the main OXC site, the biggest thing I think you can do is steer people to the Nightlies instead of 1.0. Really, there is no reason anybody should be playing 1.0 at this point. The Nightlies fixes so many issues from that version and has so many more features. Plus, the  majority of mods (certainly no actively updated mods) even work with 1.0. But currently, if you're a first time visitor, based on the descriptions on the main page, you would think that 1.0 is the best place to start and the Nightlies looks a little uncertain. I mean, even the term "Nightlies" isn't 100% clear to those not familiar with open source projects.

My thought would be to either:

1) Take the most recent 100% stable version of the Nightlies and call it 2.0 and just replace 1.0 all-together.

2) Change the setup/language to strongly encourage new users to use the Nightlies and discourage 1.0.

I think that's a good starting point which is an easy change. Then redesigning the site could be a longer term project.

22
Offtopic / Re: Got a few questions about UFO Defense.
« on: September 07, 2017, 08:23:37 pm »
Heh: one tip on the proximity grenade:  Toss it on tile away from the door

D|_|X

Where D is the door, _ is empty tile, and X is proximity grenade. 
The reason is that an enemy approaching behind the door will trigger it if its right at the door, but the door will be closed when it goes off, and the enemy takes no damage.  When you deploy it as suggested, they get blasted when they step out of the craft.
Really? I never knew this. Was this "issue" fixed in TFTD? I have recently successfully used proximity grenades right in front of the alien door ... but maybe that was because it was a double door?

D|X
D|A

Where D is the door, X is the proximity grenade, and A is the dead alien after it stepped out.

In case anyone was curious about this, I looked back at the save to try and figure out why my proximity grenade right in front of the door was successful. Turns out the Aquatoid was already up against the door so his first step was on the prox grenade. So I just got lucky ... really lucky since the grenade took out both aliens that were standing there. ;D

But this does make me wonder how many kills I've missed out on in the past (and how many soldiers needlessly died) because I didn't know about this door issue. Thanks for the tip Ivan. It's crazy I've played so many hours on this game and still didn't know an important mechanic like this.

23
Offtopic / Re: Got a few questions about UFO Defense.
« on: September 01, 2017, 08:43:51 am »
Heh: one tip on the proximity grenade:  Toss it on tile away from the door

D|_|X

Where D is the door, _ is empty tile, and X is proximity grenade. 
The reason is that an enemy approaching behind the door will trigger it if its right at the door, but the door will be closed when it goes off, and the enemy takes no damage.  When you deploy it as suggested, they get blasted when they step out of the craft.

Really? I never knew this. Was this "issue" fixed in TFTD? I have recently successfully used proximity grenades right in front of the alien door ... but maybe that was because it was a double door?

D|X
D|A

Where D is the door, X is the proximity grenade, and A is the dead alien after it stepped out.

Of course you can always look at the ufopaedia website. There's pretty much everything about the game, including the finer points of the battlescape and other game mechanics. But I think, it takes the kick out of the game for a first-time player. Just do your research, play around with the things you gather over ingame time. You will find, that the game offers plenty of variety on how to play it and what you want to concentrate on. Once you have played it through, you will probably find a much more efficient approach. But as I already said: I think it'd take the fun out of the game, if you already knew about all the important twists and tricks from the beginning.

I agree with this. My first campaign was probably the most fun because I just didn't know everything and it was exciting/scary when you encountered new aliens and challenges. I still remember the first time I shot a Cyberdisc standing right next to me, not realizing I was going to blow myself up. It was pretty funny.

2.) Do thrown explosives stack? lets say i throw two HEs/Grenades primed with 0 on the same tile or adjacent to each other, will both explosions go off when the round ends? or will the first one destroy the second one before it gets to do any damage?

As Hobbes said, they don't stack, but in my opinion, they should stack. In Terror from the Deep, this issue was fixed by giving grenades enough armor to withstand their own explosions so you could stack them. I think you should be able to because a) it's more realistic (2 grenades make a bigger explosion than 1) and b) some enemies take more than one explosive to take down, so if you can't use more than 1 at a time that's pretty unfair.

The way I get around this is with a mod that gives the grenades in UFO more armor (like they do in TFTD). It's a very simple mod and doesn't affect anything else about the gameplay (other than grenades will survive explosions where other items will not). If you are interested I can post the mod here for you.

Or one annoying thing, that does happen, when you are not careful enough (or tend to play a certain style in some situations): You don't have any soldiers left at your skyranger (or other starting positions...). So you feel free to blast any alien that stand's there (or maybe it happens by reaction fire of a HWP). The explosion obliterates the items you left there, too. Meaning you will have to buy or produce them again. Nice job... :-/

Yeah, I made this mistake my first campaign. Killed a Cyberdisc near the Skyranger and lost EVERYTHING because I used to bring EVERYTHING I owned on every mission. After that I started only bringing what I would need for that mission. More time consuming, but mitigates the losses if I get blown up or even lose the whole mission.

24
Open Feedback / Re: shutdown in spite of excellent monthly rating
« on: September 01, 2017, 08:16:06 am »
I'm not sure how it was in xcom1994... if someone has time to test, I would like to know too :)
Third-ed. I'd also be curious to know, but don't have time to run through a test campaign in DOS Box at the moment.

The UFOPaedia and other online strategy guides for the original don't specify "consecutive months" over a million in debt, while they do specify "consecutive" months with a bad score. However, the wording doesn't make it 100% clear and also 1) the UFOPaedia could be wrong or vague 2) the end of month calculations in the original game were apparently buggy anyway.

25
Suggestions / Re: Disable the fog of war scanning exploit
« on: August 23, 2017, 07:36:07 am »
Interesting, I never knew this exploit existed. So it shows just inanimate objects or will it actually show the outline of an alien? Definitely sounds like an exploit worth preventing.

26
Open Feedback / Re: What determines the order grenades detonate?
« on: August 16, 2017, 07:21:08 pm »
Here's where the end of turn grenade handling starts in the code.  It looks like it goes through map tiles in their ID number order...

Hey ohartenstein23, thanks for looking into the relevant code for me (I don't know C++ myself, but I really should learn).

I guess I was on the right track when I said, "I think they may go off based on position on the map." I noticed in testing that often the grenade furthest away would go off first, and in light of the code you pointed out, I assume because it was a lower map tile number towards the map's edge. That probably means I really don't have any control over the order they go off like I was intending. Good to know for future missions.

27
Open Feedback / Re: Grenade Detonation Order - UFO vs TFTD
« on: August 16, 2017, 06:25:56 am »
The order shouldn't be different between UFO and TFTD

I really could swear that in UFO they exploded in the order you threw them, but when I just went and tested this wasn't the case. So unless it has changed at some point, apparently I was wrong about this.


likely the order is the id number attached to the item when it is spawned on the battlescape
Nope, I thought this might be the case too, but it's not. If it was, when testing and reloading a save, the same soldier's grenade would always be the first to go off, but I'm finding that it changes who's goes off first, but it isn't related to which soldier threw it or who threw it first or last.

So what is it then? I really can't figure this out. What determines the order they go off?

28
Open Feedback / What determines the order grenades detonate?
« on: August 15, 2017, 08:44:22 am »
I can't figure out how the order of grenade detonation works in TFTD when you throw multiple grenades in a single turn. In UFO it seems straightforward. The grenades go off in the order you throw them. This makes logical sense since grenades would have identical timers so the one you threw first would detonate first, the second would go off second and so on.


But in TFTD it seems inconsistent and random. I'm sure that it's not and that there is some pattern I can't detect, but they definitely don't go off based on the order you throw them. Anyone know how it works and if this is intentional or a bug?


It sounds trivial, but actually can be a little frustrating at times when you're trying to get a certain soldier a kill and then throw another grenade as backup, but the second soldier ends up getting the kill since his grenade goes off first. Or in the instance that just happened, had the grenades gone off in proper order, my man would have lived, but unfortunately they went off in reverse order and the last grenade I threw blew his cover so the earlier one which was closest to him killed him. :P


EDIT: I think they may go off based on position on the map rather than the order they are thrown, but I'm not 100% positive. And I don't know if this is how it should be or if it is an error.

EDIT 2: Apparently it doesn't go off in the order you throw them in UFO although I could swear it did.

29
Work In Progress / Re: Aliens all eventually exit their ship
« on: August 14, 2017, 08:54:19 am »
No sure why he is DECREASING the turn from 20 to lesser values unless he WANTS them to vacate their ships,  I'm interested about hearing his thoughts on the matter.

In general, decreasing the turn when all the aliens become aware of your troops' locations makes the game harder. If you're up against aliens with Psi, then you have a barrage of psi attacks. Even if they don't have Psi, the aliens will all converge on your position and you'll be fighting off a swarm of them instead of one by one as you sneak around the map. Decreasing the cheatTurn forces you to be more aggressive with your tactics because if you're not and there are still a lot of aliens remaining when they become aware, you're going to have a rough time.

Try changing the cheatTurn to 1 on a map with a large number of aliens and see how far you get. ;)

30
Work In Progress / Re: Aliens all eventually exit their ship
« on: August 13, 2017, 01:43:20 pm »
Is it possible to make the 20 turn effect a variable, moddable option in OpenXCom Extended+  (if not the vanilla game)?
Yes, you can edit it in the rulesets in OXC or OXC Extended. From the UFO Paedia:

cheatTurn - When the aliens became aware of all your units (on vanilla it was after turn 20)

Pages: 1 [2] 3 4 ... 17