Messages

61

The X-Com Files / Re: The X-Com Files - 3.4: Daggers for Hire

« on: August 19, 2024, 08:26:26 am »

Is there a new feature that limits the types of engagements that the Humvee could participate in?  I thought that the vehicles could attack anything, including even airplanes and helicopters, as well as UFOs (hypothetically, since there's an issue of matching speeds, but it would work with hunter UFOs most likely).

No. While OXC provides for "maxAltitude" (most probably remember this at least from TFTD where you may not be able to dogfight alien subs going "very deep" with barracuda), it is not used in XCF.

I suppose your comment refers to description where "to be used for vehicle combat only" could be read this way, but it is intended just to say that you can't use the HUMVEE pintle-mounted gun on battlescape.

Obviously due to the slow speed many of those dogfights you refer to are actually possible only if the UFO is a hunter-killer and attacks you.

62

The X-Com Files / Re: [submod] X-Com Files: Air Raids (2.0.0)

« on: August 19, 2024, 08:22:59 am »

With a good enough air defense, is it possible to prevent any damage from occurring to the base?  Would it make a difference if the air defense is based on kinetic cannons, lasers, plasma, or blaster rockets?

I have not played this mod, but with other mods with missile strikes, the answer is yes. The crucial thing, however, is the hit-ratio of your defenses. How many defenses you want depends mostly on how certain you want to be that one of the defenses will not miss. This depends on what defenses you have and I suppose whether you have grav shield or not. I did not check if some missiles/bombs in this mod have so many hit points that you need multiple hits with some of the defenses.

This is an interesting submod because in vanilla XCF you don't need to bother (or fill the bases) with any air defenses at all.

63

The X-Com Files / Re: Issues with mision generation

« on: August 18, 2024, 07:50:35 pm »

On my current run I somehow got an alien scout ship landing in January 1997, I expected to need to savescum like mad but the combat knife was ridiculously effective and the main difficulty was just sending the car ahead of time to reach its landing site. You'd think it would be a massive boost to my campaign but outside of an early alien containment facility I can't use anything from it for like 1-2 years. I got a second landing site around August 1997 but sadly I lacked a proper backup save to reach it that time. RNG giveth and taketh, but usually taketh

Getting an alien corpse early (say, in the first half of 1997) is good because that allows you to research various (rather costly) things and eventually build alien containment. Then you can capture aliens and start interrogating them. In the early game this is most important for getting a deep one and therefore unlocking the underwater missions. It might also allow you to get an early capture of sectoids if you chance upon, for example, military shot down a ufo mission.

64

The X-Com Files / Re: Any downsides to requesting Veteran agents? Also 1 handed gun + shield choice

« on: August 18, 2024, 09:29:57 am »

A more interesting question if it is actually possible to opt out from the veteran system?

You can definitely sell all the veteran agent acquisition rights you obtain, you're not forced to claim them.

65

The X-Com Files / Re: Any downsides to requesting Veteran agents? Also 1 handed gun + shield choice

« on: August 18, 2024, 07:46:18 am »

My veteran agents have turned out to be excellent. For whatever reason, for example they might end up having higher STR than my other agents. But I have not analyzed where (which commendations) this comes from. Once you can get veterans, you pretty much can stop buying rookies (except for buying 30-40+ hybrids for to get bunch of >80 PST for psionics).

If you want to use the shield, I suggest trying black-ops pistol. Good range, accuracy and speed, and 30 damage with 0-200 % rolls eventually punch through.

But note that I essentially never use shields against cultists myself. At least after promo II (and explosives license) I would not suggest it as a tactic. Shooting most cultists triggers sniper/spotter mechanics and your units are liable to to get grenaded or grenade launched (in addition to blind shotted), unless you have favourable cover. Throw lots of grenades instead or weapons with area effect rather than direct hit.

Melee is essentially waste of time for the first 6 months of the game due to poor agent MELEE stat. Once you get decent melee stats, combat knives and kukris are both good, as well the stunning options. I usually end up using kukris. But note that combat knifes are concealable, sporting and beach gear, and kukris are none of those, so you may need to keep both to deal with all the mission types.

66

The X-Com Files / Re: Issues with mision generation

« on: August 18, 2024, 07:27:44 am »

It's just bad RNG.

Further, Environment Alert missions don't incur any point penalty for aborting, so you definitely have to figure out when is the time to take your chances and when to run. While you need something for Promo I and later as one of the paths for Promo III, you're in no particular hurry to get these during the first month or two. I think I usually end up aborting almost all these missions (unless you get the single/few enemies variant of the mission) during the first two months, because there are just too many enemy units (or too tough ones) to cope with with a car. Until after you obtain a helicopter I have a decent anticipation of being able to deal with at least some of them.

While cult missions do incur point penalty for aborting, it's only rarely you need to abort outright. I suggest going in the night to reduce the chances of cultists seeing you straight out and reaction firing at you if they face you. Research non-standard weapons and get 'Shotgun' right away. That's a significant improvement on start of game shotguns. Because these shotguns usually deliver enough punch to kill with one hit, you don't need to worry that much about reaction shots. You need little else to begin with (though I usually have a light sidearm for longer shots; glock is sufficient for this). I use very rarely the arms loot of early cultists, but they do spawn some stuff that is useful, particularly double-barreled shotgun stuff (especially useful against early-game zombies).

Early game homicidal maniac missions are actually extremely lucky for you, because capturing a maniac alive gives you a kevlar vest (and a lot of points), and I don't think it makes sense to spend the effort researching kevlar vests otherwise before you have progressed on the research and put up some research infrastructure.

67

OXCE Suggestions DONE / Re: [DONE][Suggestion] Negative events - Remove items from base

« on: August 17, 2024, 10:37:27 pm »

Question: what will be, if base does not have proper item when event happens?

The code iterates through the bases, including crafts that are not out of the base, and removes the items until the desired amount has been reached. Nothing happens if there are no items to remove.

I suppose this imposes some limitations how this can be used. The example in the original suggestion does not make sense, because displaying a message about base theft makes little sense if nothing is in fact stolen.

68

The X-Com Files / Re: the frustration about base size

« on: August 16, 2024, 07:08:10 pm »

The current design of facilities provides a lot of tradeoffs. This is a good thing because players have multiple viable options how to go about their bases, not just one or just put everything in it. Because you can have 8 bases and you can cover the most important areas with 4-5 bases, you have some to spare. So actually the answer for you is that you don't need to try cram everything in single base (or all of your bases) but you need some variability.

69

The X-Com Files / Re: The X-Com Files - 3.4: Daggers for Hire

« on: August 15, 2024, 04:10:27 pm »

I don't understand the problem at all. By clicking on the weapon slot you can easily check what goes there. Why would anything else be needed? Maybe if you have the Little Bird, but not a single heavy weapon, but how likely is that?

You could order the craft on a secondary base that has no weapons at all (or only few of them) and you have to transfer/acquire them. Then this method will not work.

This is not unheard of, because at least in my games the primary base hangars are always full and when getting new crafts I either have to get them somewhere else or move out an existing craft. And at least LITTLE BIRD I have usually obtained directly to a secondary base that is close to the cult manor I want to trigger and crush its interception craft.

70

The X-Com Files / Re: Research Wall

« on: August 15, 2024, 12:42:16 pm »

You find leaders in medium and larger ufos. There are also a few earlyish guaranteed ways to obtain a sectoid leader. The first and foremost is a mission you get once you learn of Gertrud Ellison. A second is when you learn of hybrid controllers and get Hybrid Control Center assault mission.

In general the safest and easiest way to do captures is within UFOs, because you can use dogs and their barking to stop enemies from reaction firing. Outside TAC grenade launcher with gas grenades is also an option against some alien races.

71

The X-Com Files / Re: Research Wall

« on: August 15, 2024, 06:14:09 am »

This could very easily be observed by making a few searches in the tech tree viewer. The mod author thinks it's cheating (strictly speaking), but if that's the case, so would be asking questions here, so.. It is impossible to say for certain without a save, but let me make a few guesses.

It is very likely that you have failed to research an alien leader, engineer and/or navigator, because you're missing essentially all the alien tech. (Tritanium foundry shows you have interrogated an alien though.) Or you have researched just one and thought that's enough. You have likely gained psionics through alien psionics (werewolves, cats and/or Dr. Alpha), not through sectoid leader. But if you have researched the leader, you're still missing the engineer. You'll have to research about three dozen alien engineers and leaders to get access to most of the alien tech (+ a navigator and a medic). This mod is all about live captures and interrogating (there are probably a couple of hundred interrogations you should do), and you have done only very little of this and have just killed the enemy units instead.

You get underwater missions by capturing and interrogating a deep one. It is the easiest to do it before you terminate Church of Dagon, because many missions stop spawning then, but even after it has been terminated, there's still a small chance to spawn a mission or two. And you can get the info from MIB scientist.

Lack of UFOs is a RNG thing. The rate will ramp up rather than go down. You're way behind at this point, but that doesn't really matter. (You can usually complete the game by or about 2000 if you play properly.)

72

The X-Com Files / Re: The X-Com Files - 3.4: Daggers for Hire

« on: August 14, 2024, 07:36:24 pm »

For what it's worth, during my first couple of campaigns I had no idea what "Pintle-Mounted Gun" meant, even after a brief search through the rulesets. Only after watching Stone Lake's streams I figured out you could put for example various machine guns in there.

This could very easily be clarified in the descriptions of HUMVEE and especially LITTLE BIRD.

HUMVEE description includes: "It can be equipped with a variety of heavy infantry weapons to be used for vehicle combat only." -- This is already pretty clear, but you could make it really explicit with, for example, "It can be equipped with a variety of heavy infantry weapons such as machine guns or rocket launchers to be used for vehicle combat only."

AH-6 Little Bird description is very vague:

"This version can carry up to 4 pintle-mounted weapons." -- As said, this is very difficult to understand, and could be rephrased for example as "This version can carry up to 4 pintle-mounted heavy infantry weapons such as machine guns or rocket launchers."

BTW. Speaking of SL streams, also learned of using Gas Mines as the ultimate underwater meta. That has just been removed. Sounds realistic, though to be fair I have no idea if underwater gas could be made to work or not 

73

The X-Com Files / Re: The X-Com Files - 3.4: Daggers for Hire

« on: August 12, 2024, 09:22:03 pm »

What I want is for game to penalise me for ignoring such crucial topics with for example some random events which decrease my ratings for ongoing game month (Maybe something about increasing frequencies of minor zombie attacks, or assault of deep see dwellers).  I would still be able to ignore such topics, but there would be now price for that.

You're already paying a high price by making the game run much slower and more difficult. Ghost arc offers excellent armor-ignoring weapons (to both kill enemies or capture them, including heavily protected ones like heavy MIBs). Underwater arc offers huge amounts of money and juggernaut suit(s). For eexample, the rest of the game becomes so much smoother if you have a couple of juggernaut suits to play with already in 1998.

I doubt many players would like the mod to penalize them even more for bad play.

74

Released Mods / Re: [TFTD] [Expansion] TWoTS+ Release (v.2.61)

« on: August 12, 2024, 06:13:31 pm »

Not sure if it was your original intention but - vibro knife is insanely powerful. When fully trained, aquanaut can kill basically any kind of enemy (including hellcrabs) with 1-3 well aimed hits with minimal ammount of action points.

Given that melee weapons (esp. knives) have been rebalanced multiple times in the last couple of years, I suspect this is pretty close to Nord's vision of how things are.

Even after the various nerfs, knives (even regular ones) are extremely effective in a good melee user's hands (of course it takes a while to train melee). They are also the easiest way to kill lobsters.

75

The X-Com Files / Re: The X-Com Files - 3.4: Daggers for Hire

« on: August 10, 2024, 11:39:24 am »

Probably a stupid question, but...
Is there a safe way to update this thing without just replacing all the files?

Why wouldn't you want to do that? Have you modified the rulesets yourself? I always delete the whole mod's directory and replace it with the new one.