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 - karadoc

Pages: 1 ... 12 13 [14] 15 16
196
XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.98F - 13 May - Airbus Adventures
« on: May 29, 2016, 02:46:30 am »
Which missions don't work; and what prevents you from manufacturing vessels? (ie. Does the game say "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid you can't do that"? Does it give a reason? Do the vessels just not appear on the list? Does it crash? Something else?)

197
XPiratez / Re: Trader's guild naughty secret....
« on: May 29, 2016, 02:44:12 am »
Maybe they have a lingerie fetish, or maybe they just have more money than they know what to do with and so they buy the most expensive underwear they can find.

198
Speaking of night-ops; if I turn my lights on and then turn them off again without moving anyone or spending any time-units, will the enemy see me?

199
XPiratez / Re: Grenades & Explosives - advice appreciated
« on: May 25, 2016, 10:09:56 am »
I don't like the idea of a 'dud chance'. If grenades were to be nerfed, I'd prefer pretty much any other kind of nerf. Here are some possibilities which come to mind.
 * Make them rarer and more expensive.
 * Reduce the damage.
 * Increase the weight.
 * Change how throwing accuracy works, so that it is harder to make them land in the right place (especially for long distance).

I don't have a strong opinion about whether or not they are too powerful, but I just don't like the idea of a dud chance.


I don't pre-prime damaging grenades, because I don't want my soldier to kill them-self on their own grenade if they become unconscious - and I don't want the grenade to blow up all my equipment if the soldier dies. So I only pre-prime some smoke grenades and knock-out grenades. For damaging grenades, I tend to use a grenade relay. (Prime with one soldier, then throw with a different soldier.)

200
XPiratez / Re: Effective uses of Ghost armour?
« on: May 24, 2016, 05:00:01 am »
yeah diagonals are the usual way you get seen in ghost armor. Mind that these are not always the diagonal squares, your facing and range of observer matters as well. What is actually "visible" is some fraction of your characters side or arms when observed from acute angles.

It like how you can take side armor damage when shot from the front because the projectile actually strikes a part of the model deemed side armor. The invisibility functions be rendering portions of the model as having no collision which the game checks for both rendering visibility and hits from projectiles.

Interesting. So it's a bit complicated, and it's not really clear to me what the best ways to avoid being seen are - but at least I now know that there are ways to have some control over it. I'll try to work it out. For a start, to avoid having the character's sides seen from acute angles I might try turning side-on to my enemies. From what you've said that might help avoid being seen... but on the other hand, I don't really know which angles are important; so it might turn out to be the opposite affect of what I want. In any case, I'll try some stuff (and probably have a bunch of ghost soldier die before I work anything out.)

201
XPiratez / Re: Effective uses of Ghost armour?
« on: May 24, 2016, 01:27:38 am »
You can only be seen on the diagonal with Ghost armor.
I did not know this, and this makes all the difference for me.

From my point of view, it just seemed pseudo-random whether or not I could be seen. I haven't worked out when I can or cannot see cat girls either. I just try different angles until I see them. So with the ghost armour, without being able to predict whether or not I'll be seen, I never felt safe unless I was behind a wall or something. It felt like basically a less effective version of an ordinary melee soldier.

But if I know that the diagonals are how I'm seen, then I can use that to my advantage. I can know when I'll be safe and when I won't. And so I think I'll be able to get a lot more use out of it. Thanks.

202
XPiratez / Effective uses of Ghost armour?
« on: May 23, 2016, 02:13:57 pm »
I kind of like the idea of having stealth assassins sneaking around an slaying enemies while unseen; which is what ghost armour can do. But I haven't had much success so far.

The problem as I see it is roughly this: a soldier needs to be pretty well trained to use the armour effectively. (The need high psi skills, and high melee for the dagger.) So ghost soldiers are not simply throw-away cannon fodder. They need to be looked after. However, the protection of ghost armour is very low and the invisibility effect is unpredictable (as far as I know). So... maybe the ghost soldiers don't get shot at 7/8ths of the time, because of invisibility, but in that other 1/8th, they just die.

Ghost soldiers die easily to a stray grenade, or reaction fire. The invisibility effect is strong, but without some way of predicting whether or not the enemy will be able to see me, I can't see how to use the armour without very high risk of getting the soldier killed.


I'm interested to hear how people are using their ghost armour, and whether they think it's useful.

203
That looks excellent. I often think about that kind of search filter, but I didn't think anyone would take the time to implement it!

The only bad thing is that if the loadout screen has a search filter, I'm going to be wishing for a search filter everywhere else as well! In particular, it would sometimes be really handy to search the Vaults and Fence screens (although, I'm getting to the point where I've memorised where the most important things are anyway...)

204
XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.98F - 13 May - Airbus Adventures
« on: May 22, 2016, 12:25:12 pm »
You're right that it is easy if you ignore all the misinformation floating around. The openxcom install instructions should probably be removed, for clarity.

205
XPZ Strategy/Tactics / Re: Pirates custom weapons vs loot weapons
« on: May 19, 2016, 12:16:36 pm »
For me, one of the strengths of the Linux SMG is it's gun-butt stun. It's a stronger hit than most guns, and so that makes the Linux a better general-purpose killings/stunning weapon.

I got a fair bit of use out of the Linux SMG and the custom shooty gun. But the home-designed weapons I've stuck with for the longest would be the Death Blossom SMG and the commando rifle.

The Death Blossom SMG is a multi-function offhand weapon for my strongest melee soldiers. A chem burst of the DB-SMG can strip away a lot of armour from armoured foes (either to kill them, or to make them more valuable to stun); and the non-chem ammo is pretty good for ranged attacks.

The commando rifle is just very accurate for long-range snap shots. Its power isn't great, but it's strong enough for most enemies given that you're going to hit them essentially every time. The accuracy is so high that you can rely on it. Also, the ammo is relatively cheap to manufacture. So for a long time, I used commando rifles on most of my team for any mission where I didn't expect heavy resistance. (For things like pograms and large military ships, I'd bring some more powerful missions; but for the bulks of my missions I was using the super-cheap and super accurate commando rifles). I don't use smartrifles much, because their ammo costs more and they are less reliable than commando rifles.

In my current game, I'm phasing commando rifles out for ES lasrifles and XG rifles.

206
XPiratez / Re: Suggestions on how to improve the mod
« on: May 19, 2016, 12:03:30 pm »
I didn't mean the contents of their pockets, just the weapon.
Describing it as "fast paced combat" is kinda....
I think what Dioxine meant is that although the gameplay for us is slow, you should imagine that it is actual fast paced and hectic from the point of view of the soldiers. They are running and shooting and throwing grenades etc as fast as they can. They are sprinting through enemy lines to slash them with an electro-sword, etc. It is fast paced for them, even if it isn't fast paced for the player. And so if the soldiers aren't able to give a detailed account of the enemy stats and weapons after seeing a glimpse of them through the darkness, then perhaps it's ok that the player doesn't know that information either.

207
XPiratez / Re: 2h weapons and why some are not 2h at all ?
« on: May 18, 2016, 12:40:03 pm »
I'm happy enough with the current system. But I am sometimes a bit unsure as to which weapons have a 1h accuracy penalty. I sometimes drop things just to see if the accuracy of my weapon will change.

I'd like if the action menu would signal to me when an accuracy penalty is being applied, perhaps with a different coloured background or something like that.

208
Also, if you pick up the enemy with one hand while holding rope in the other, you can tie them up - which adds a large amount of stun damage but uses up the rope.


...  Actually I just made that up. You can't use rope to do that.

More seriously, the strategy I use on long missions is to carry all my stunned enemies to a central location where I can easily check on them and re-stun if necessary.

209
XPiratez / Re: Piratez Difficulty Curve
« on: May 16, 2016, 11:43:31 am »
During my current (first) playthrough, at one stage I sacked a couple of brainers because 1) I could barely afford to keep them. 2) my research was just about to hit a bottle-neck. (I think I had around 13 at the time, and reduced it to 11.)

Not long after that, I finally captured an academy engineer, and the research tree opened up like a flower. Fortunately my financial situation improved a lot as well. I pretty quickly expanded my research team to 18, then started a new research base... Now I'm close to the end of the game, and I've been going along comfortably with ~29 brainers for awhile. I certainly won't need any more, because I'm running out of research topics.


In any case, I do think the high cost of brainers is a bit of a trap. But I don't think it should needs to be changed (I don't mind either way). If a player runs out of money, they can sack their brainers. No big deal.

210
XPiratez / Re: Piratez Difficulty Curve
« on: May 15, 2016, 01:11:25 pm »
One thing the player could do to influence it is to not attack dangerous factions multiple times in a row. And if you do pick on a particular faction, then that faction would be more likely to attack you (the probability vs shipping shot down would be super-linear).

Shooting down a single ship might be enough to warrant a crackdown; but you can imagine that they might only feel the need to devote those kind of resources if they feel that the problem is going to be ongoing rather than isolated. Also, they might not even know who you are if they've only been attacked by you once.


In any case, I don't really mind what the system is. If you don't like the idea, that's fine by me. I only suggested it as an alternative to having fix number of months of crackdown immunity at the start of the game. I generally prefer dynamic systems rather than hard-line immunity like that.

Pages: 1 ... 12 13 [14] 15 16