Messages

16

Open Feedback / Re: Hello and a few questions.

« on: March 17, 2018, 12:58:59 am »

I would be open to playing the original versions at least once. The GOG release has the all important difficulty bug fixed in UFO and TFTD (v2.0) is good as-is. Both are ready to play with no (additional) 3rd party support unless you want to install some GUS patches for enhanced music playback.

It will help give you a chance to experience the game how it was and gain an extra appreciation for the updates and modern conveniences that are available in OpenXcom.

17

Open Feedback / Re: saucer repair time

« on: February 21, 2018, 01:41:02 pm »

I don't disagree with repair speed being a bit flawed. The difference to fully repair an Interceptor (100HP) and an Avenger (1200HP) when both have been reduced to 1HP is quite remarkable. If my calculations are correct, the Interceptor would need 4 days 3hrs to the Avenger's 46 days 15hrs. 

However to be fair, we do have full control over how many engineers that are assigned to any project. Build times are therefore variable depending on the resources you have invested in the workshops. On the other hand we have no control over how many mechanics are assigned to the hangar maintenance crews. They simply restore a flat 1HP per hour.

One idea that comes to mind is to have a mode where the repair teams are allowed to pool and redistribute their resources to  increase the efficiency of the repairs.

For example you have three hangars and three damaged ships. The repairs will be at the usual rate of 1HP/Hr. As soon as one ship is fixed, the team that just finished will split up and head to the other hangars to help. Then when the second ship is fixed all three teams will combine their efforts on the last ship.

For the implementation this would probably involve a count of how many hangars that aren't busy, use some clever algorithm to calculate a fair repair speed bonus and then share it between the busy hangars. Bonus adjusted or limited to prevent abuse by purchasing lots of redundant hangars.

Is it necessary or practical? I don't know. But I suppose it would be a way to bring some parity with the workshops where performance is directly correlated to the number of workshops and engineers you have.

18

Open Feedback / Re: saucer repair time

« on: February 20, 2018, 08:34:01 am »

Don't forget the repair work is done by a regular repair team. The construction is done by highly paid engineers who probably know what they're doing. 

19

Suggestions / Re: Dinamic Base

« on: January 27, 2018, 03:52:33 am »

This is just me throwing an idea out, but how about this:

Perhaps one solution would be to add a way to access predefined maps and non-player controlled base screens directly on the Geoscape through the nodes that make up the ships, bases, waypoints, etc. Basically by adding a new node type for modders to be able to create and define new locations that can be added to the globe. Each one could then be linked to a custom base, map, etc.

To interact with the node you would do it through context-sensitive buttons in the pop-up dialogues. These would change depending on what the site has been set up for. If you click on the site on its own you would just get the standard pop-up with the name. But if you were to land a ship with crew at the site, the pop up will have the relevant buttons added to it.

If it's a friendly base for example, you could get a button to access the base screen where you could do things like buy/sell/transfer, refuel and refit the ship, etc. If it is a mission node such as a captured facility, you would have the option to launch a mission.

As with any idea this would be a lot of work to implement. Still it does seem it would be a fun way to add and access a variety of fan crafted content.

20

Suggestions / Re: TFTD underwater smoke

« on: January 27, 2018, 01:37:20 am »

In the original TFTD, all they did was add a few extra bits into the move routine to check the depth and if there was smoke in the current tile and then added the extra 2 tus to the cost. Having your helmet on underwater helps mitigate the stun damage from the particles.

An interesting idea would be to go the other way and option to make it affect land smoke particles as well if not wearing some sort of breathing apparatus.

21

Open Feedback / Re: Melee reactions (bug?)

« on: January 10, 2018, 01:11:38 am »

In addition to melee reactions, other non-vanilla behaviour I've noticed is that terror units with arcing weapons will reaction fire even though traditionally they could not react. Aliens carrying blaster launchers/DPL launchers will also fire at point blank range, so you can no longer rely on their sense of self preservation as a last ditch effort to saving yourself.

I'm guessing these were a deliberate design choice. However I do feel these need to be toggle-able in the options like many of the other introduced features.

22

Open Feedback / Re: Rebalanced?

« on: December 16, 2017, 01:17:43 am »

You couldn't actually crowd out all spawn points because you and the aliens have different spawn points for the most part.

Assuming OpenXcom doesn't allow soldiers to encroach on alien spawn points, then definitely not a problem. However the original game will make use of alien nodes if there were insufficient soldier nodes to place all your soldiers.

This is what caused the issue in TFTD where the occasional aquanaut would spawn deep inside the second level of an alien colony rather than at the two entry areas.

23

Open Feedback / Re: Rebalanced?

« on: December 15, 2017, 06:54:18 am »

On a somewhat related bit of trivia regarding spawn points, it was quite possible to abuse the spawn point limitations in the original game to create bases that could never by destroyed by simply hogging all the spawn points. Since the aliens cannot populate the map you end winning the base attack by default.

It is done by building an extremely minimalist base and then cramming it full of soldiers. Like a clown car.

I haven't attempted to try this in OpenXcom, so hopefully it has been address to some extent. 

24

Playthroughs / Re: Alien Species Triggers?

« on: December 10, 2017, 02:39:05 am »

The standard game uses a schedule that dictates when the different races may start to appear and what mission types they will go on. Unfortunately you cannot stall them by holding off on research.

See: 

https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Alien_Appearance_Ratios_(TFTD)

25

Playthroughs / Re: Let's play TFTD Ironman with a french guy

« on: October 27, 2017, 07:36:35 am »

Which bring an interesting info. The x-com wiki tells that Deep Ones cannot reaction fire, I lost quite a few aquanauts to them reacting in their face. I guess that's a trade off to the actually working dye grenades.

I've only just started reading this thread so this is a belated response to the above:

I noticed this as well while watching another OpenXcom LP I've been following where a Celatid started to react to a soldier walking nearby. This is unique to OpenXcom and isn't in the original game. So the wiki is correct but the info only applies to the original game.

The thing that was wrong on the Deep One wiki article for a very-very long time was that we had the incorrect weapon assigned to it.

26

Open Feedback / Re: Increasing psionic strength beyond the point, where the skill is 100?

« on: October 13, 2017, 03:30:51 pm »

Without looking at the source, and just going purely off of what you've mentioned, it sounds like the code for the strength increase is nested inside the code for the skill increase. So when the skill is at the cap, the block of code that normally updates the skill is terminating immediately and bypassing the instructions that update the strength.

If this is the case, then I believe it is unintentional.

27

Suggestions / Re: Suggestions for the website and community resources

« on: September 21, 2017, 10:37:04 am »

Two suggestions:

The forums do indeed need a choice of light and dark themes. The light theme would more mobile device friendly as is it very hard to read the forum's grey on black on a smartphone when you are out and about.

The other suggestion is regarding keeping the website up-to-date might be to make it a wiki. You would still need to restrict some pages to administrator access only such as the landing page, but then you can outsource much of the work and rely on the power of the community to keep everything up to date. Not to mention self moderate. It's a crazy idea, but crazy ideas sometimes work.

This doesn't eliminate the need for the official wiki. which is still there for its encyclopaedic presentation of information. Of course, there is still the ongoing issue with contacting our absent host... 

28

Open Feedback / Pathing down the Skyranger ramp

« on: September 12, 2017, 02:26:09 pm »

More an observation than anything else, but when walking my troops straight down the Skyranger ramp, I'm finding they're jumping off the side before getting back on the path. In the vanilla game they would just walk down in a straight line.

To see what I mean, select a soldier inside the Skyranger and pick the first ground tile past the ramp. In fact you can be on the ramp and select the ground tile past the ramp to see this happen.

Is OpenXcom just following good old Dijkstra's shortest path and selecting the most optimal path to get to the destination? It looks awkward, but does seem to give you a 4 ~ 5 TU saving.

29

Offtopic / Re: Got a few questions about UFO Defense.

« on: September 12, 2017, 12:20:52 pm »

I thought I'd run some tests as I was starting to wonder about that myself. I set up separate saves in OpenXCom and in good old vanilla UFO with a brand new beginner game, loaded the Skyranger up with 8 rifles and on the first mission everyone just walks down to the base of the ramp and tosses their rifle into the top corner of the Skyranger's tile area where the tiles visibly change. In some 20+ tosses, OpenXcom hasn't missed. But in vanilla at least 40%~60% of the tosses were misses with the rifles landing in a spread around the target tile.

Peculiar, there should be some variation there.

edit:

Restarting the test with a new batch of soldiers managed to get about 1 ~ 2 misses per 8 tosses in OpenXcom. Guess my last batch were too accurate. That's with the Nightly build. No change in 1.0 where every toss was hitting the exact target every time.

edit: edit:

And found the answer after a forum search. There's a division error in 1.0 affecting the throw trajectory.

[Spoiler]

30

Offtopic / Re: Look what I found in the attic :)

« on: September 12, 2017, 08:46:23 am »

After the free main chapter, here's a tl;dr of the rest of the plot: 

Spoiler:

Main female protagonist is appointed commander. Sets up base. Alien base is found and promptly destroyed. End.

Not overly complex, but a nice slice in the life of an X-Com commander. It's the plot in between that fleshes it out.

I quite liked it, but it is written with the X-Com fan in mind. Your average reader might struggle with things and concepts from the game thrown at them without a great deal of explanation. The main problem with the book being written for the fan is that the fan is going to pick up on the inconsistencies. The sheer scale of the forces on both sides in the final battle for example.

The one thing that did leave me unsatisfied was the subplot for the male lead. Or at least that's what I think he was. There was a bit of effort put into setting him up in a quite interesting and precarious situation, but then you cut back to the main plot and he just shows up again.