Messages

76

Work In Progress / Re: Make the world a brighter place - Elerium flare

« on: June 27, 2014, 02:19:58 pm »

Nice!

I asked for something kind of like this a while ago.

Is there any chance we can see a time limit attached to flares? e.g. provide light for x amount of turns, or would that require too much coding changes?

77

Suggestions / Re: Auto-calc battles?

« on: June 22, 2014, 07:37:25 pm »

I wonder how long it would take the AI to fight out against another AI player if it was done at computer speed; with no pauses for the player?

I think part of the problem is that people are used to autocombat being just literally that -- auto combat.

But what if autocombat was slightly more detailed than just "see odds, click proceed yes/no" then get results?

Just spitballing ideas out here; but try approaching it from the point of view of a XCOM commander overseeing a routine mission from XCOMHQ:

When you've decided to do an AutoCombat Mission: you get shown a AutoCombat Mission screen; giving you three main choices (you could set preferences for each choice):

1.) What type of mission are we going to do here? Is it a standard search and clear mission with 100% alien fatalities expected, or do we need to capture an alien?

2.) Rules of engagement: Do we go for high explosive spray and pray; or precision rifle fire? Do you push for extremely aggressive movements or do you go for a methodical search and clear movement with lots of overwatch?

3.) Acceptable loss rate: How far does XCOM Push before a decision to initiate a tactical withdrawal to the transport is made?

You hit GO; and the mission starts and plays to first contact -- then you get a popup saying: "SIR, the team in the field is reporting that CRYSSALIDS have been encountered. Continue Mission or ABORT."

If you tell them to abort; they do a fighting retreat back to the transport.

This gets around the issue of an autocombat team made up of rookies and equipped with moderate gear suddenly finding themselves against Ethereals and getting killed dead because they continued to blindly push forward; when if you were playing normally; you would abort the mission the moment you noticed you were going up against aliens way out of your team's weight class.

78

Suggestions / Re: Auto-calc battles?

« on: June 18, 2014, 08:18:32 am »

I'd actually use autocombat a decent amount.

This was a major feature of XCOMUTIL later on, allowing automatic combat resolution.

There are times when you just don't feel like doing "one more" battle, particularly if it's a milk run where you know you'll triumph over the aliens (cleaning up a small scout with flying armor, etc); so autocombat could be good for bulking up the stats of your fresh rookie class to replenish your veteran ranks without having to fight 25 more battles again.

79

Work In Progress / Re: Limit weapons for certain alien races

« on: June 12, 2014, 05:20:21 pm »

Snakemen having a venomous 'bite' special HTH attack that inflicts x amount of fatal wounds automatically?

Etc.

There's more we can do to make each alien race unique other than slightly different stats and graphics. 

80

Work In Progress / Re: Limit weapons for certain alien races

« on: June 10, 2014, 08:13:33 pm »

How about special weapons for certain alien races?

Psonically powered blaster?  for ethereals?

Heavy Cannon style automatic plasma blaster for mutons?

81

Released Mods / Re: [WEAPON] Stun Ammo for the Rifle

« on: May 15, 2014, 08:45:01 pm »

One way to balance it would be that this would have a 50/50 chance of inflicting either 15 STUN or 15 AP damage. Rubber bullets can kill, if they strike someone in the wrong place.

82

Work In Progress / Re: [BETA] Alternative psionics (hardcore, introducing a new resource) new version

« on: May 13, 2014, 04:57:49 pm »

Adds new resource "psioline" required for psionic equipment and armor. Psioline must be extracted from LIVE psionic aliens.

  Stick that needle into their brains, soldier! It's for the good of all mankind!

[IOW, even more icky than the "interrogation" sequences in XCOM 2012. 

83

Released Mods / Re: [COMPILATION][RESEARCH] FMP Core/Tech Tree part

« on: May 09, 2014, 07:41:26 pm »

But who told you that 2000 medicine was any worse than the one today?

There have been a lot of advances in bleeding edge tactical (battlefield) medicine from 1999 to 2014; mostly driven by the Iraq/Afghanistan wars. Among the new stuff (as of 2006) was:

One-Armed Tourniquet -- you can tie it with only one arm, where previous designs needed two.

HemCon bandage made from an extract from Shrimp cells -- it can stop bleeding almost instantly through a tight bond.

Using expensive clotting drugs designed for hemophilacs to stop bleeding in people suffering from massive trauma from IEDs.

Etc. Even back then, the pentagon was putting forth requests for a portable ultrasound device that would stop internal bleeding with intense ultrasound.

84

Released Mods / Re: [COMPILATION][RESEARCH] FMP Core/Tech Tree part

« on: May 08, 2014, 09:41:01 pm »

That's exactly what we've been doing since the beginning of this thread.

Sorry if I'm rehashing things you've already hashed over

Regarding Medikits, is it possible to have a single-use medikit that only stops one (1) fatal wound at the beginning of the game, to represent standard battlefield medicine circa 2000?

No stimulants or painkillers; as all the space is taken up by the stuff needed to stop a sucking chest wound.

It always bugged me that you had to research this to keep your soldiers from dying from easily preventable wounds at the start.

Regarding the use of alien research to unlock medikits; you probably have thrashed this out; but what if autopsying a chrysallid or snakeman unlocks ADVANCED COAGULANTS based on research of weird stuff found in their blood; which enables super quick clotting agents; allowing compact medikits with multiple fatal wounds capability?

85

Released Mods / Re: [COMPILATION][RESEARCH] FMP Core/Tech Tree part

« on: May 08, 2014, 09:26:20 pm »

Interesting, although I don't really know what we can do with this. But it's good to have such ideas in the bank, you never know when they become useful.

Maybe eventually (after TFTD is in the game) there could be variable yield weapons that you chose the explosive power for before firing?

86

Released Mods / Re: [COMPILATION][RESEARCH] FMP Core/Tech Tree part

« on: May 08, 2014, 09:23:20 pm »

Agreed! That's why we're pushing towards lasers as a mid-game weapons, requiring quite a lot of research into alien power systems. If you look at Ktulu's latest diagram, you'll probably like the results.

While you're at it; could you reverse the typical order of weapons development?

In Stock XCOM we go like:

Pistol -> Rifle -> Heavy Weapon -> Craft Weapon -> Base Defense

Which is a bit odd to me. Shouldn't it be reversed; so that:

Base Defense -> Craft Weapon -> Heavy Weapon -> Rifle -> Pistol

To follow the general trend of miniaturization of a new technology?

First, you build a huge 50 ton weapon, then you manage to shrink it down to 500-1000 lbs (craft weapon); then down to 50-60 lbs (heavy weapon), further to 8-10 lbs (rifle), and finally 2-4 lbs (Pistol).

87

Released Mods / Re: [COMPILATION][RESEARCH] FMP Core/Tech Tree part

« on: May 08, 2014, 06:36:29 am »

I'd like to see more emphasis placed on human weaponry development that's spurred on by alien technology exploitation.

I always found it a bit silly that right from the start, you could research LASER WEAPONS, which basically obsoleted all the starting human gear within the first month of operations; when in real life; laser weapons require an enormous energy density -- thus they've been fixed and fed by a power plant or semi fixed (naval mount fed by warship powerplant).

Yet somehow X-COM somehow manages to make some sort of battery allowing 255 shots with enough lethality in each shot to one shot mortally wound an unarmored person and have good-ish penetration on armored targets?

At the very least; we're talking about battery technologies being somewhere between TNT (4.6 MJ/kg) and Gunpowder (3 MJ/kg); and approximately twice that of the present non rechargeable state of the art for lithium batteries (1.8 MJ/kg).

Speaking of that; I once read a interesting SF story by David Drake called "Redliners" that posited electric explosives instead of chemical explosives.

Basically, a piece of metal was violently overloaded with a deliberate electric arc; which created an explosion of considerable force, which could be dialed up or down in violence as needed by varying the current sent into the arc.

88

Work In Progress / [Request] Alternative Control Room Configs for Alien Base

« on: May 06, 2014, 06:03:24 pm »

Just what it says on the tin. A few alternate alien base control room designs would be nice to throw some randomness into the game, because after 20~ years of XCOM, we all know what the Alien Base Control Room lower level is set up as; so when we see that familiar corridor setup; we know the end is nigh. 

89

Work In Progress / Re: (Question) Where to find the explosion strength of the Cyberdisc?

« on: April 30, 2014, 04:02:05 am »

Is it possible to make a unit explode on purpose via action?

Example, Light Tank Scout with internal grenade

and/or

acid filled alien kamikaze unit.

90

Released Mods / Re: [HWP] Scout Drone

« on: April 29, 2014, 07:04:28 pm »

Random thought that was inspired by the locked blast radius thread:

What if Scout Drones also had "EXPLODE" button?

Basically, a grenade integrated into the chassis and triggered remotely which would destroy the scout drone, but also kill anything nearby.