Messages

16

Programming / Re: What do you guys use for editing tiles/map sets?

« on: May 19, 2016, 02:31:10 am »

I guess you could say that. I want to go hunt down some of the broken ugly AF tiles and modify one of the terrains in xpiratez but I didn't know if mapview was the tool to begin with.

I'll take a look at the images.dat, ty.

17

XPiratez / Re: Suggestions on how to improve the mod

« on: May 18, 2016, 02:15:10 pm »

Care to list them? There might be ommisions.

Regarding bows, I'm happy Meridian loves them (but if the angle bug will be ever fixed, there will be serious nerfing ) I don't generally use them myself, maybe a single per squad, since I find them boring. I tend towards 1/3 rd melee + pistol, 1/3 rd heavy weapons (mortars, machine guns) as they allow to destroy terrain, and 1/3 rd trainees with scoped rifles, shotguns or whatever.

When I see an item that needs one and doesn't have I'll be sure to pipe up. I don't recall what I specifically had in mind but it was something that didn't need it.

Yeah I agree that bows would be nice if they weren't so bloody unreliable with the angles. Paying 45x2 TUs on multiple people just to find out the chance to hit was a practical joke the whole time is not acceptable for me personally.
Now that I checked some math on them they do seem to scale pretty nicely on the paper though.

18

XPiratez / Re: Suggestions on how to improve the mod

« on: May 18, 2016, 09:09:06 am »

It will be available in "options.cfg" as hidden option, you can then turn it on manually; I will post the option name once it is done.

I love you. This game would not be the same without you. :3

I don't agree with 90% guns being bad gameplay. Bows don't scale that well and the hitbox is so wonky. You need too many TUs to bring bigger targets down with them and the smaller targets die to whatever.
Melee scales, sort of, but you need to get in position to use it so 33% of it (melee exclusive specialists) in your squad is overkill.

19

XPZ Strategy/Tactics / Re: Pirates custom weapons vs loot weapons

« on: May 18, 2016, 04:14:33 am »

Against heavy weapons you are competing with the Vulcan RFG which is both sooner on the tech tree and has both unlimited auto range and 15 more shots in a burst. Similar accuracy. Vulcan has greater dmg per TU efficiency although it does pay a higher up front TU cost.

First up. It's still ages till I can get my hands on a RFG but I have had Bossars on my team for a month so the results may vay.
Second up. All the "bigger" firepower doesn't do squat if you can't apply it. You walk three steps and it's game over for the Vulcan/sniper rifle.
You need something that lets you move and shoot.

In the rifle mid-range slot i feel the bozzar loses out due to weight. IMO the midfield needs flexibility which often equates to more items types and extra weight. Spending 42 of max 90(before armor) weight on the primary gun is not particularly attractive. Smartrifles are available at a similar level of advancement, are slightly above 1/4 the weight and significantly greater volume of fire due lower TU costs particularly in aimed. Also more ammo per clip. The damage loss is tangible but i find anytime you need to handle a target that can ignore 40 base dmg your your probably already calling for your bombs and fire support anyway. There is just not a great deal of enemy units at 40 plus armor that are not either resistant to pierce or have so much armor that you need huge punch anyway.

Look. Reality of the situation is that you can not issue guns that can't pass 40 armor. You will be effectively issuing no gun.

Lets take Osiron Security as our baseline troop here (you do have to kill them):
https://imgur.com/7SvJQUC
Lets for the sake of simplicity say that his effective armor is 45 (50 front, 40 sides).


Bossar:
62.5% of the time you will deal damage to the target.
Average effective damage per shot is 37.5HP.
Expected damage per shot is 23.43HP.

Aimed 1 shot at 115% of 60 damage for 70% TUs
1 volley is expected to deal 23.43HP damage, killing the target in 2 volleys.

Auto 5 shots of 65% accuracy of 60 damage each for 42% TUs
1 volley is expected to deal 76.14 damage on the average, killing the target in 1 volley.


Smartrifle:
46.8% of the time you will deal damage to the target.
Average effective damage per shot is 10.99HP.

Aimed  1 shot at 115% of 46 damage for 48% TUs
1 volley is expected to deal 10.99 damage on the average, killing the target in 4 volleys.

Auto 5 shots of 50% accuracy of 46 damage each for 38% TUs
1 volley is expected to deal 27.47 damage on the average, killing the target in 2 volleys.


The 49 weight is a small price to pay for this.

20

XPZ Strategy/Tactics / Re: Pirates custom weapons vs loot weapons

« on: May 18, 2016, 01:29:47 am »

some further thoughts:

Bozzar is actually a very good gun on paper but its stuck halfway between a Heavy autofire gun and a sniper while being outclassed at both jobs by other guns at similar tech level. 

Really strange that you would say that. In my experience Bossar is the best gun by far at the point you can get it at. It's an ultimate standard-issue gun imo, even passes that magical penetrate 50 armor on average shot mark.

Give me a few examples of what outshines it's damage output at the standard ~25-10 tile engage ranges and I will show you math to prove you wrong.

21

XPiratez / Re: Suggestions on how to improve the mod

« on: May 18, 2016, 12:54:59 am »

Why remember at all?

Some items don't have ufopaedia articles on them. Ever.

Some items you want to pick up are not researched when you do it. Picking them up during battle may sometimes be life and death for the soldier and even when not it's time units I'd rather spend on something useful. I am attached to my time units like that.

During battle, picking up an item to know its weight is at leasy 16 TUs (14 to hand, 2 to drop). It's happened to me a few times to go: "Oh! I'll pick that up -> Ugh, super overweight -> Drop it -> What a waste of TUs..."

Every time unit counts.

One way to deal with that without adding to the clutter would be to add the weight of an item to the total weight as soon as it is picked up by the player's mouse (same time the game updates the TUs to put it somewhere in a gal's inventory). Then you see how severely overweight you would be and can just drop it back if you don't want to be. Some items (ex.: Gauss) are unintuitively heavy and this could help with that.

You guys don't like it with the item name: All good, how about adding it to the Weight limit temporarily like this suggestion.

Adding Throwing and Melee to the displayed stats would be great.

The soldier stat screen access is much more fluid than the ufopaedia one. (For some reason sometimes I have to click MB five times before the game registers it. And to top it off I *don't remember* all the items I have researched so I will be clicking there like "Okay this was click 12 I probably don't have this item researched".)

From my experience most of the game you don't care about those stats on randoms one bit. Mid/late game you have dedicated swordsmen and they get flagged by the stats mod anyways + 90% of your soldiers are using guns.

The point is. Throwing and melee accuracy you only care about sometimes and only for few people on your team. Item weight however is something that you care about *every* single time you equip someone to a lesser or stronger degree. If items didn't have weight you'd be talking about slot damage efficiency or some stupid cookie cutter shit like that.

You do care if that stun baton weights more than the cattle prod but you need those two grenades and maybe a high explosive.
Maybe you want to run from the mission. The mercenaries are closing in but you need to make a choice: "The Heavy Gauss or the Sniper Gauss. Maybe even that Mercenary Engineer? Can I make it? How do I know?"

22

Programming / What do you guys use for editing tiles/map sets?

« on: May 17, 2016, 11:45:51 pm »

As the title states. I found MapView via google search but after messing around with it for ten minutes it seems to me that it doesn't access the new tiles.

Should I mess around with it more to understand it better or is there some other tool?

[Spoiler]

23

XPiratez / Re: Suggestions on how to improve the mod

« on: May 17, 2016, 02:46:58 pm »

I do, it's kind of ugly. Why would THIS get displayed and not some other random stat?

This stat instead of any other random stat because it's the most important stat when I am budgeting the weight for a new soldier. It's too arbitrary to remember for all the misc pistols rifles swords whatever that are available at my disposal at that specific moment.

Spoiler:

By the way do you check your PMs.

24

XPiratez / Re: Bugs & Crash Reports

« on: May 17, 2016, 07:11:32 am »

https://imgur.com/aWwhHUP
Yet another area you can not walk to in this tileset that enemies can spawn in. There's an enemy there that walked out of vision. It might not even occur to me that he is there if I hadn't seen him two turns prior.

25

XPiratez / Re: Suggestions on how to improve the mod

« on: May 17, 2016, 05:51:58 am »

https://imgur.com/QRg2tOp
https://imgur.com/wELhzyM

Mockup of what I mean. That is not too much clutter  imo. Or maybe just the current weight of the item so 42 in case of the Bossar to avoid confusion.
You could even go "[Weight:42]".

https://imgur.com/TtQ2Eji
Like this.

26

XPiratez / Re: Suggestions on how to improve the mod

« on: May 17, 2016, 05:44:38 am »

I thought the best place for it would be to include in the item name.
When you have inventory open and hover over an item it tells you it's name. There's ample space there.

And yes, ivandogovich is correct. I want to see the item weight in the inventory just like I expressly said in my first post.

27

XPiratez / Re: Suggestions on how to improve the mod

« on: May 17, 2016, 04:01:45 am »

0.98E.
Am I missing something?
I didn't notice anything about item weights in 0.98F notes.

Edit: I don't mean the total encumbrance that is on the upper right corner of the equip screen. I mean individual item weights.
Edit2: Now I am on 0.98F and I still don't see it.

28

XPiratez / Re: Suggestions on how to improve the mod

« on: May 17, 2016, 01:32:21 am »

How about adding item weights to inventory.
Would help a lot when equipping new cannonf...er... team members.

There's room where it tells you the item names. "Laser Pistol [Weight:5/7]" would look just fine instead of "Laser Pistol".

29

XPiratez / Re: Bugs & Crash Reports

« on: May 16, 2016, 06:27:07 am »

The diagonal tunnels on the second level of Large Vaults are not traversible.
Save attached.

30

XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.98F - 13 May - Airbus Adventures

« on: May 15, 2016, 06:46:05 pm »

I think Pigeon is fine as is. You already have only time to get one as is before Zeppelin.