Messages

31

OXCE Support / Re: Bughunt mode

« on: July 15, 2018, 07:26:10 pm »

Thanks again! just d/l'd and updated.. much appreciated

32

Released Mods / Re: [COMPILATION] Final Mod Pack (FMP)

« on: July 15, 2018, 12:26:43 am »

if you're considering any further tweaks, it would be nice if the ironfist item location was a bit further inside... all my toys keep getting blown up 

33

OXCE Support / Re: Bughunt mode

« on: July 14, 2018, 08:26:55 pm »

Hey this came up again for me yesterday...

I had cleared a large supply UFO's 1st and 3rd floors, as well as the exterior.  Bughunt mode turned on w/ only one left, but I declined to check the map.  As I was about to breach floor 2, alien had flanked behind out the supply doors, then back in the front door, and got one of my remaining 3 (i had 3 hwp and 6 soldiers at start, but our door approach went poorly due to blaster bombs). Because I knew there were 1-2 left from the msg, my 2 rushed forward to kill the last and mission ended.

Anyway, had I checked map, I probably wouldn't have lost that guy at end.. on the other hand, had their been no message, in my mind there was anywhere from 1-4 left, and I might not have rushed forward for the end kill (both survivors were wounded).  If bughunt could be tuned to stay 'off' in these situations, I'd be happy to leave it on elsewhere

34

Released Mods / Re: [COMPILATION] Final Mod Pack (FMP)

« on: July 12, 2018, 02:42:16 pm »

2. I get the complaint about the terrains, though TBH nobody has ever complained about this before, so I paid no attention to it. Should I decrease probability of these dense terrains?

I generally enjoy these fwiw; it would be cool if the chance of buildings increased/decrease based on some assessment of how populated the area is (distance from nearest city?), but I understand this might be a lot of work under the hood here.

3. These missions with MiB and Hybrids should not have UFOs at all, it was simply the only way to implement them. I believe it's possible to do it more elegantly now; I should have a look.

if they could appear as just "landed" for the entirety of their existence on the geoscape, or with an indicator like the terror missions, this might "fit" better with what they are up close.  As it is, sometimes they seem to appear this way (or maybe my radar just doesn't pick them up), but sometimes they fly around and have to be shot down/chased & raided.

35

Released Mods / Re: [COMPILATION] Final Mod Pack (FMP)

« on: July 12, 2018, 07:13:23 am »

I appreciate a lot playing FMP with its approach to keep the flair of the game close to the original.

However, there is one thing which I don't like:

Or you shoot down an ufo in the middle of Africa and then you wonder how your Skyranger managed to land in a spot completely surrounded by winding two-story "farm" buildings with flower gardens and whatever. I mean, take a random spot in the middle of Africa, what is the chance that you will encounter only a single building nearby, let alone the luxury gardens and TV devices etc.

The addition of new map tiles is fine and welcome, but it should be made sure that the balance open-vs-cramped tiles is not changed too much.

Agreed on this point in general.. I havent noticed the issue in connection to any geography necessarily, and I love the added mission variety overall, but sometimes the maps are indeed a little odd in connection to the ufo/crash that started them.. i've shot down several "UFO"s, or chased and raided "landed" ships, only to find a hybrid or MiB fortress of some kind with no craft or crash or damage whatsoever in sight.. I've let these scenarios stretch my imagination to accept that somehow these UFO's were full of pre-fab building parts or something, and the ship themselves dismantled/destroyed before my arrival.  The missions themselves are generally fun; I'd be happier, though, if these maps were tweaked in some way, maybe made bigger to also include the ship or wreckage itself.. or to spawn as fixed landing sites only, or some other indicator rather than as "UFO"s, if that were possible.

36

OXCE Support / Re: Bughunt mode

« on: July 12, 2018, 03:50:01 am »

This assumption is going to be true only for a certain subset of mods, and/or a certain subset of missions within.

....

This outlook looks limited to the classic ufo:eu narrative, that there are some coherent forces acting against player's team.

agreed, thats the perspective i'm playing from.. I imagine this is a large portion of OXCE+'s audience these days, and I can respect that oxce+ has other origins, and others have taken mods elsewhere

If your team is facing a mob - well, what's you going to do? There is no tile to sit on, there is no leader to rob. So the mechanic wouldn't work at all, and if the requirement is that it works for any mission, then the suggested solution doesn't cut it.

I'm not certain of the context you're referring to -- I've only returned to playing x-com in its modded form a few months ago, and I've been working through area 51, fmp, & twots... with x-piratez and others further down my priority list. 

I really enjoy the feature on area 51 and twots, so I wouldn't mind if it stayed available as-is at all.  If it were developed a little further, though, I could easily see how I could enjoy it everywhere.  I see an opportunity to add depth to that classic eu world here, using a feature that's *mostly* all the way there... all I'm talking about really is one or two additional triggers, tied to either the map or an item, or both.  Considering your examples of maps w/ no navigation or other "tech" from a broad sense, and w/o necessarily being familiar with all the mod specifics, surely this property could be then set to trigger off of other tiles/items ie doesn't have to be *just* the nav console, once the framework's in place (though maybe nav console is the default, so that it fits on mods that haven't necessarily considered how to implement bughunt).  As I'm thinking this through a little further, in the vanilla world, ideally you'd have to have some tech to enable this as well, or maybe even a tech, item, and x map position to make sense... so maybe 3 triggers.  I can imagine further modding possbilities, like different techs for different races, ie you gotta learn to track each one, if the underlying structure of bughunt were a little broader and tied to the world.

Anyway, while admittedly a little half-baked, I feel this tile-hold in particular would add the possibility of some depth via creating a secondary or tactical "objective" in most missions.. i'd probably even tweak it to be a little easier on the other restrictions, or remove some altogether, giving a true bonus to prioritizing an early command area capture, or w/e other items/areas it might be tied to.  As-is I usually move on these last.

Maybe as an alternative, you might consider adding a check that requires a high portion of your units to still be alive/conscious/uninjured?  Or just even a straight-up max friendly deathcount? Or each death adds to the min turn timer? These might be simpler ways to eliminate most of the occasions that I've found bughunt to be a distraction from the original game decisions to be made

37

OXCE Support / Re: Bughunt mode

« on: July 12, 2018, 12:08:20 am »

Well, there is no official explanation how it "works"... and yes, it is probably immersion-breaking for some people.

I tried to tweak the conditions, so that it only triggers when the pain threshold on the player's side has been reached... and he's willing to sacrifice immersion to save time (and preserve sanity) in real life. After some playtesting, I think it triggers even less than I would want it to.

I understand that each player has a different threshold, and that default settings are biased towards my preference... but they are moddable and will be turned off by default. I am also open to suggestions for more parameters (of course I reserve the right to decide if I implement them or not).

PS: I would also like to add that other games have similar concepts too, for example in Heroes of Might & Magic... if AI hero doesn't have a town for 7 days, he's automatically banished from the game even though there is no real explanation why would that be... or in Warcraft 3, if you don't have a "town hall"-like structure, entire map is revealed for your opponent after 60 seconds even though there is no reason to... other than to speed up the game And so on...

Yeah I can appreciate where the feature comes from, and enjoy it especially on missions w/ timers in some of the modpacks. On a more vanilla play through, I enjoy the 'unknown' of the final turns of some missions -- its not unheard of, for example, to think there's only 1 left at the end of a mission, and encounter several, or vice versa.  On missions against sectoid/cyberdisk, for example, or reaper/floater etc., where your squad has suffered heavy losses, near the end with only a fraction of your original units (w/ suppress panic messages on), some of your guys maybe w/ fatal wounds, all the remaining meds on corpses out in the dark somewhere, unsure if you should salvage a few items and abort, or risk the unknown for a marginal win... the bughunt message in these scenarios, or lack thereof once I became accustomed to it, has ruined this effect once or twice w/o needing to check the minimap, or necessarily reach the bughunt mode at all.. but I don't think this feature is out-of-place overall, and its only really occasionally where i've found it a detriment.  I understand that some find these final turns tedious, and I do too often, but the option to play w/o will be nice to maintain some of the original suspense.

It's my extremely personal opinion, but I think this just can't fit into or be adequately explained by any narrative. How are those enemies hiding all over the map in cupboards, including dogs and b-boys, get to learn that someone's stepped on a certain tile or picked up a certain item?

The whole 'capture and hold a tile' mechanic is also quite alien to the engine. What does it exactly mean to 'capture and hold' a tile?

I think if the 'quest for the last alien' is still a problem, there has to be some other way to solve it. Or is the problem you're trying to solve a some different one? Please tell.

W/o ever having looked at the code or modding aspects of OXC(E+) very deeply, and acknowledging that some things might just not be possible, I imagine this would fit into the narrative & game structure as follows: assuming the aliens are coordinated in their combat opposition w/in the game narrative, I would assume this is enabled through some tech in the UFO.. the only tech present on nearly every map, is the navigation terminals, and I imagine it may be a trivial trigger to check if adjacent tiles are occupied by a player unit or not.. this is what i meant by "hold".  Through this mechanism, we're thus imagining that these UFO terminals give access to the "bughunt" feature.  Alternatively, an item held in inventory could enable it, suggesting its a feature of that item?  To my tastes, I feel this would fit w/in the mind probe/motion scanner item dynamic quite well.  If it were setup this way, or a bit more connected to the world in some other way, I'd probably have it turned on permanently, rather than just with certain mods.

38

OXCE Support / Re: Bughunt mode

« on: July 11, 2018, 10:03:46 pm »

Capturing a tile or item is easier to achieve than the current conditions... so it would be more gamey.

Anyway, in the next version the bughunt will be disabled by default, so you get your vanilla experience back.

I meant on top of the existing conditions; I'm craving it to be part of the world somehow w/o re-arranging the existing implementation altogether.  As it is, if we're to assume its part of the existing squad equipment somehow, one wonders why they wouldn't just turn this mode on from the beginning.

Anyway, can understand that this might not fit, or suit everyone's tastes.  Appreciate the option to toggle it on/off. Thanks again!

39

OXCE Support / Re: Bughunt mode

« on: July 11, 2018, 05:37:39 pm »

I wonder if this feature could be built into the game somehow? like if you capture and hold a tile next to a navigation console in the UFO, bughunt is enabled... or maybe from an item held by a high ranking enemy..  Its jsut a little gamey for my tastes in its current implementation, but I understand the value of the idea here.

Thanks again, love your work!

40

OXCE Support / Re: Bughunt mode

« on: July 11, 2018, 02:45:31 am »

Thanks! and sorry for my poor search skills

41

OXCE Support / [Solved] How to turn off Bughunt mode?

« on: July 10, 2018, 05:22:51 pm »

Is there any option to turn off 'bughunt mode' when using OXCE+?

Thanks!

42

Released Mods / Re: [COMPILATION] Final Mod Pack (FMP)

« on: June 27, 2018, 12:33:31 am »

Also, tangentially related, has anyone found a good use for incendiary grenades? I usually ignore them, but I consistently see them in grenade-related mods so I figured someone must have found a use for them.

I could be confusing them with some other grenade, but I believe i had some success early in my game by stacking them, as they don't blow each other up the way HE grenades do iirc.  On night missions they double as a flare.  More commonly a dropship floor item though

43

Released Mods / Re: [COMPILATION] Final Mod Pack (FMP)

« on: June 25, 2018, 06:36:49 pm »

I'm ashamed to admit that I had backed-up my ironman save mid-base.. so yes I do.  Checked the save and objectivesneeded showed 20, not 16... so I went back and replayed... turns out there was another room across the base with 4 more consoles sticking out of the wall.

Had never seen that 2nd command centre area; couldn't say if it was FMP or an obscure part of vanilla I had never seen/noticed.

Anyway it all worked as expected once I found that bit.  On the way back to the lift from that 2nd area, the last alien was killed, but I def had the "base destroyed" dialogue come up.  Probably just user error here

44

Released Mods / Re: [COMPILATION] Final Mod Pack (FMP)

« on: June 25, 2018, 05:07:15 am »

is the alien base layout different in FMP?  I had 2 soldiers survive back to the lift w/ a unconscious leader after blowing the 16 command table bits; but the base stayed

45

Released Mods / Re: [COMPILATION] Final Mod Pack (FMP)

« on: June 19, 2018, 11:50:00 pm »

Just registered to say thanks!

Original x-com has captured my attention again and again ever since I received the demo as an 11-year old with a CGW magazine subscription.

Mods finally caught my attention on this latest revisit; FMP first up.  Its been great so far!  I wish I could level-up and name the dogs though lol. I've been pairing them with scout tanks and some fire support, love this new combo, when i can flank behind successfully.

I read a request or two earlier in the thread for dog armor; that would be kinda cool too, though they fit in well enough w/o. Names/skill training would be sweet, if you ever revisited this aspect for FMP.

Mod is great as-is though, thanks again!