Messages

31

XPiratez / Re: Bugs & Crash Reports

« on: September 20, 2018, 12:04:35 am »

Another bug from 99J2.

There is cyberdisc on the slope, right outside middle door. No matter what, I can't hit it in melee, or rather I can hit it, but it is invulnerable to damage. Vibro blade makes sound like attack connected, but there is no damage to HP or armor. Nurse has mind probe.
I also noticed that vibro blade and vibro sword produce different sounds during attack. And there is no difference in sound when vibro sword hits or miss. Its kinda messy. 
VB miss - no sound
VB hit - sound 1
VS miss - sound 2
VS hit - sound 2

Save file attached.
       

32

XPiratez / Re: Newbe questions

« on: September 19, 2018, 10:16:32 pm »

Quote, please.

33

XPiratez / Re: Newbe questions

« on: September 19, 2018, 09:00:42 pm »

And it is pretty clearly a feature and not a bug, otherwise why implement 2 points of origin at all?

I think that you are wrong, and this is bug. It is simply more realistic and probable explanation. UFO is a rushed game, that had to be published before end of fiscal year or be cancelled. You encounter bug, soldiers see enemies, but can't shoot them. It is game breaking bug. You find what to do to live with it, but you don't have time to search the code, fix it and test it. So you add "no line of fire" because that all you can do. It is 1994, there is no such thing like post launch patch. And TERROR was made by someone else with as minimum effort as possible.

All those complaining and especially calling the devs "kind of dumb" (yeah, it was formulated so that they would feel so themselves, but this is what I took away from that post)

That is very serius accusation. Could you provide example, please? 

Regarding all this discussion: I really think you're going to far, pushing devs around and trying to manage this project. They're nice people, but someone should issue a fair warning: calm down, this is not cool.

I can't force anybody to do anything. You all, as a devs/modders gonna do whatever you like. I, as a target audience of Open Xcom project on the one side I am grateful for all the changes and improvements. But on the other side I am pissed off, that quarter century old bug is still around and some even defend it with explanations on the level of 5 yo kid.

And you must be aware that no change for better ever occured without pushing, criticising and questioning status quo.   


                   

34

XPiratez / Re: Bugs & Crash Reports

« on: September 19, 2018, 08:21:32 pm »

This is an arms race against real campers, who exploit every tiny detail and then walk around boasting about their superior tactics and supremacy. Trust me, you have no idea.

This is what really bothers you? Grow some thicker skin and ignore them. If this are your priorities for developing mod, then you are going to kill Piratez, just like Jagged Alliance 2 ver. 1.13 was killed by misguided devs.

Well, that's just disgraceful and rude.
You showed up here like, a week ago, and suddenly you are an expert on the history of Dioxine's customer relationship?

I am pretty sure, that if I cross that red line, Dioxine will tell me without your help. And Internet remembers. Dioxine has a past and history of certain behaviors. This is not only forum, where Piratez are discussed.   

I already wrote that allowing crafts with doors is the real enabler

     

You are wrong.

In original game sometimes in order to leave Skyranger and set boots on the ground 3 or 4 soldiers had to die. Missions where nobody on my side died were exception. Was I reloading, aborting mission? No. I was pressing on. Forward. No matter the losses. Or I could put to Skyranger 3 hover tanks and finish mission in 3 turns. But you have made changes, and this is impossible in Piratez.

You made cost of loosing gal too high. Loose two in single turn, and there is mass panic. Loose one elite officer, mass panic. Morale system in 99J2 is like doomsday device, primitive system, which is ignoring most important thing - answer to question "who is winning". System that is triggering panic when I defeated enemy and I am about to finish mission, nobody even shoots and there is no threat. And you took page from Firaxis jerks - panicked gal runs straight towards nearest enemy or shoots nearest ally.

And there is that absurdal notion that reactions can be trained only on mission, which prevents training combat ready replacements.

And it is very easy to suffers losses. You too soon overcompensated bad AI with powerfull and accurate weapons. And they don't sit in their shot down ships. No, they camp right outside your doors, armed with handheld nukes. Do you really don't see connection between nukes and camping?       

You did introduced artificial limitations like auxiliary slots. Starting ships have too small capacity and loosing few gals means that mission will be 50% or 100% longer or unwinnable.       
 

   
Hit me with all that hate, dood. It ain't my first rodeo. Tell me exactly what kind of a dev I am.

What is wrong with you, dude? Do you really think that I care so much that I have some feelings for you? You're just a few letters in Firefox window. 

   
Cut down on that ego of yours, dude.

That is funny how constatly you are bothered with my ego. I wonder what good, old Freud would say about that. My ego is not a problem, your is.

 

35

XPiratez / Re: Bugs & Crash Reports

« on: September 19, 2018, 06:54:52 am »

You're kind of missing what I'm getting at.  I'm not saying you shouldn't do certain missions, but you have to know when you're ready to do those missions. 

I am attempting every mission, even when I know it will be hard. Camping help a lot against strong enemies during beginning of mission. But sometimes I retreat. First reason - repeated fire inside transporter that wounds many gals and breaks their morale. Second reason - destroyed doors, it kills your safe harbour inside Turtle. Third reason -  Star Gods. On maybe 10 attempts I defeated them so far only once, in urban enviroment during mutant pogrom. All other cases - shot down enemy ship, I retreated, as even camping is not enough. Simply I don't stand a chance in open area. Yet.         

Generally speaking if you feel like the only way to beat a particular mission is by camping, you're probably not quite ready for that mission yet.

Yes, you have mostly right, but I like to try anyway. There are supply ships, and you can do them only by camping. I did them several times and I stopped. Crew has a lots of big boom sticks, it is boring camping from beginning to almost very end, and there is nothing valuable on the ship.

And sure some of the bigger UFO's are a challenge, but if you have the tech to shoot them down you should have the tech you'll need to deal with the enemies on the ground as well. 

Right now (third year, third month) I can shoot down everything, except corvette and cruiser. I can clear up every ship, even cruiser, if it decides to land. If crew is armed with high end weapons, it requires camping.  But, if crew is Star Gods, even on small ship, well I can try for few turns, test weapons and tactic, but in the end they will force me to escape.         

Nobody is saying you should be suicidal or stupid when you attack, but you shouldn't expect to be able to be 100% safe either.

I don't expect safety on mission. There is always nurse and at least 50 pieces of mutant meat with canteens.       

There is a middle ground between reckless charging and lining up outside a UFO and pressing end turn till you win.

Of course. And I very doubt if you can win mission just by pressing "end turn" button.   

36

XPiratez / Re: Bugs & Crash Reports

« on: September 19, 2018, 04:02:38 am »

You aren't really meant to be able to smash every mission with impunity, sometimes you have to know when to get the hell out of there.

I like to try every mission at least once, to see what is there. And sometimes these are very difficult missions and they require camping. Sometimes very hard missions can be beaten by camping, prudence and patience and burning lots of mutant meat. And some very difficult missions I did only once. For example, Heavy Freighter, crew 80+ and 6 tanks. And now I would like to see aggressive player in action against this numbers, like he takes 12 gals screaming and leaping into open field and defeats them.

And there is no impunity. I had to skip many missions because out of my 30 gals in my first base only 3 or 4 were ready for combat, rest was healing. But I am a bad camper and my playstyle must be eradicated.         

In the end, it's Dioxine's mod so he'll make it in his vision. 

Well I hope, that sometimes he will listen what others have to say.

If you don't like it, play a different mod or make your own mod.

Oh, but I like it. I just don't like where it is going. It looks like Dioxine is hellbent to take away freedom of playstyle from players, and this is never a good change. No one likes being forced to play in this or that way.     

37

XPiratez / Re: Newbe questions

« on: September 19, 2018, 02:31:11 am »

There are a number of things that could be done differently if our goal was creating our own open-source turn-based tactical game engine, but instead we have a re-implementation of X-Com on top of which we're trying to load a bunch of cool modding features.

Edit: For full disclosure, I'm somewhat annoyed with the LOS/LOF difference, but it is nowhere near aggravating enough to me to spend my mod and code development time on it.

Do a mind trick. Consider this a bug that must be fixed.  Or even better... take new member of the dev team. Let him prove his skills by fixing it.   

38

XPiratez / Re: Bugs & Crash Reports

« on: September 19, 2018, 02:25:02 am »

Dioxine have biased view of camping. He thinks that I camp in every mission and that I simply wait until all enemies came to my door. It is not the case. Camping is triggered by high threat level from very strong enemies.

Bad AI is one of many problems contributing to camping. Bad AI in order to provide challenge for the player is compensated by high end weapons with 90%+ real hit ratio and power that makes your armor completely irrelevant. Enemies with gauss and plasma weapons start appearing way too soon in campaign, when you are on 20%+ progress of total research.

And you don't need much to improve bad AI in Open Xcom. Right now action of enemy is choosen randomly, it stays in place, move aimlessly, move toward/from target or shoots at target. Cut down staying in place and aimless moves, put more emphasis on shooting. And take away from them super accurate weapons that can kill your elite with best armor in single shot. Because if you know that low level enemy like church neophyte can kill you with one shot, then you camp.                       

39

XPiratez / Re: Newbe questions

« on: September 19, 2018, 02:01:53 am »

The point I wanted to make that yelling at Dioxine or on the Piratez subforum about the LOS/LOF stuff isn't going to get you far.

You are probably right. But didn't Meridian just said that "no line of fire" is not an issue, and everything is working as it should in opinion of all devs? I am beggining to see, that going with this problem somewhere else may not accomplish much more. 

The "if I can see it, then I can shoot it" idea is not so simple a rule to implement.

Just think about it, this it is the simplest, most obvious solution.   

40

XPiratez / Re: Newbe questions

« on: September 19, 2018, 01:05:27 am »

As for the the LOF/LOS difference, you're barking up the wrong tree here if you want to see it changed.  Once of the OXC devs left the project over this exact issue - yes, we get that it's frustrating, but changing it has been deemed outside the scope of the OXC project and in the meantime we try to work around it with things like the new highlighting of objects blocking your LOF.

How sad it is. Reasonable people who wanted to fix bugs were chased away and replaced by people who said "Fixing this bug is outside the scope of Open Xcom. Instead fixing that bug, we will create new system that will make that bug irrelevant". It sounds like Open Xcom is now managed by former Apple employees and they just invented a new dongle.

New system will be a dud. There is no guarantee that in new place something else won't block my LOF. Instead of highlighting objects blocking your LOF, it should highlight places (in 3-5 tiles radius from soldier) from which making that particular shot is possible.

Or very simple rule "I can see it, I can shoot it". 

41

XPiratez / Re: Newbe questions

« on: September 19, 2018, 12:08:12 am »

They were not. Both EU and TFTD had 30 minute scan intervals, no matter what the description (which is wrong about pretty much everything) of the buildings said.

I have original, boxed Ufo: Enemy Unknown from 1994 on floppy discs. There is manual, and there is technical appendix for info omitted from manual. It is stated there "long range detection system rotate very slow, once every 10 minutes".     

Stop labeling conscious design decisions as bugs. Having line-of-fire and line-of-sight identical is far easier than the implemented model, so quite clearly effort was spent to make it work with different origins instead of copping out and accepting cliping.

Ufo: Enemy Unknown is rushed game, made by two people team (if I remember correctly). As they ran out of time to fix all bugs, they simply added warning "no line of fire", changing game breaking bug into "feature".       

42

XPiratez / Re: Bugs & Crash Reports

« on: September 18, 2018, 11:54:02 pm »

OMFG. You really don't get it... Nobody told you? You are so blind and in love in your work, that you can't see it?

CAMPING. IS. YOUR. FAULT.

It is byproduct of all your bad and good design decisions, but mostly bad. It is also price paid for size and complexity. I never camped in original game. But here... Don't get me wrong, Piratez is best and biggest mod for UFO, but... it is also full of glaring flaws, inconsistent design, artificial limitations, absent features that are begging to be added, balance is all over the place... It has also lots of unfullfilled potential.

I could write here list of changes to potentialy reduce camping, but I am convicted that you will simply ignore it. This is free mod, and no one can force you to make any changes. And I am nearly100% sure that you have lost long time ago any objectivity regarding Piratez as you are your own boss. And instead of removing bad design choices that lead to camping, and gently encourage more aggressive plastyle, you will try force players into more aggresion by putting more restrictions and limitations on "campers". You will choose stick over the carrot.     

Thunderhorse is too big and clumsy to hover gently enough (or land on water) to allow your troops to deploy on a moving ship.

             
Let me guess. You have build model and tested it in your backyard. This is exactly this kind of artificial and unnecessary limitation, that is adding nothing to game, but only pisses off people and shows what kind of dev you are.   

43

XPiratez / Re: Newbe questions

« on: September 18, 2018, 10:27:27 pm »

Exactly that. If we added that, then next thing in line is the need to add ECM to the enemy craft to restore skewed balance. Then ECCM to player's radars. Then antiradar missiles to target ECCMs. Then antimissiles to player bases. Then all the reverse. Then CIWS to both. How deep the rabbit hole does go? If you read Alice carefully, you will know that rabbit holes have infinite depth.

However, this isn't even about that. If I considered half-hour scale to be too disadvantageous to the player, I'd have all craft slower and/or all radars having more range. It would be done if the current abstraction was considered unbalanced (and was being adjusted in the past for that reason).

I just consider this rabbit hole not adding anything interesting to the model.

In original game radar pings were send every 10 minutes. So you actally DOWNGRADED Open Xcom, and radar pings are send every 30 minutes in order to bring "balance". The end result is that enemy fast ship can fly past radar undetected and therefore radar is useless. This is not a balance, this is AI cheating.     

It's not about awesomeness, it's about the simple fact that a unit sees from its eye level, but shoots from the hip. Therefore you may see something, but not have the line of fire. It's that easy.

Don't treat me like I am an idiot, I don't like this.

Applying your logic aimed shot from eyes level should instantly resolve the issue. But it doesn't, it only shows how pathetic is your excuse for 24 years old bug in the code. And now probably you will start arguing that aimed shots are made also from hip level.

Before you ask: no, Meridian will not change the code to make units shoot from the eye level. It's mostly about vanilla compatibility.

Ah, the compatibility. So when are you going to restore 80 items limit in craft inventory? It is so incompatible with OG. Open Xcom was suppose to be improvement over bugged and limited OG, but old bugs are preserved in the name of compatibility.       

44

XPiratez / Re: Newbe questions

« on: September 18, 2018, 06:24:44 am »

Having radar sweeps and ship-spawns more often doesn't improve the game, so I'm not sure what you're complaining about.

I dare to disagree. Right now very fast ship can penetrate your radar coverage without detection and attack your base without warning. Entire purpose of radar system is to detect enemy and give you early warning, so this obsolete game machanics strips radar of its purpose.     

And the line of fire rules are awesome (well, maybe except for the miscalculations), so it shouldn't ever be removed.

Could you elaborate, what is so awesome in fact, that you can see enemy, but you can't shoot him? It is absurd.   

45

XPiratez / Re: Newbe questions

« on: September 18, 2018, 05:06:47 am »

This kinda sucks. I was under impression that Open Xcom was created to improve original game. What is the point of remaking two and half decades old limitations? And whose great idea was recreating "no fire line" fiasco? It was single most infuriating flaw of original games and someone put effort into bringing it back? How about simple rule "I can see it, I can shoot it"?