Messages

31

Released Mods / Re: [SOURCEMOD] Brutal-OXCE 7.8.0

« on: November 20, 2023, 08:59:53 pm »

The main problem is not that the bonus damage is large and solving this with some kind of limiting crutches is simply stupid.
The problem is the spread of damage itself. 0-200 is too inadequate a spread, at which it is possible to penetrate medium armor with a simple pistol.
I tried playing XCF with 0-200 and with 50-150 and I can say that in the second case the armor actually feels like armor, and not cardboard, which helps exactly until the first big damage roll. Take a pistol with 25 damage, the maximum throw will give 50 damage and when you shoot at a armor vest, which has 28 armor in the forehead and 30% absorption, we will get 35 damage, which will wound for 7 hp. I won’t even mention getting hit in the side.

Could you consider a case of a pistol with the same spread, but lower armor penetration set by increasing armoreEffectiveness?  Pistols could cause pretty powerful damage to unarmored targets in general, and are much less efficient against armored targets.  This applies especially to higher grades of armor.

My question is would you rather edit the individual parameters and tweak the armors in the mods, or solve the issue with an extra parameter?  Why?

32

Released Mods / Re: [SOURCEMOD] Brutal-OXCE 7.8.0

« on: November 20, 2023, 08:57:14 pm »

Isn't this something you should talk about in the XCF-forums? This really doesn't sound like something related to AI.

I mentioned the pieces that may be done by editing the mod definitions.  However, one of the approaches to solving these weapon definitions problems is to limit the weapon power through a parameter.  Basically, I'm asking if you think that a new parameter maxPower or similar could be added to that end.

33

The X-Com Files / Re: Firearms vs. heavy armor

« on: November 20, 2023, 07:39:50 am »

A rookie with a single promo II-ish EMP grenade could one shot those. Actually, rookie can throw 3-4, per turn, so, you know. 3-4 one-shots. And that's with captured suits intact! Imagine the possibilities...

The notion that a crappy rifle is "OP" or even relatively good is completely hilarious.

I mean, I see that your point is mainly about low-tech and stuff. But 150 accuracy soldiers can solo entire missions with proper weapons, so it's kinda moot.

What kind of armor would a single soldier need to solo an entire HQ or a base?  Or a battleship?

If the weapons are powerful yet compact alien designs, then the point is moot indeed.  However, if
the designs are familiar kinetic rifles, then we have a logical contradiction with reality.  That means that there is an issue with the computer model of that reality.  In practice, even a marksman rifle could not destroy a tank in real combat.  In-game, such possibility should not exist as well.  Also, it from the purely game standpoint, it is desirable to nudge some evolution in weapons into the domain of energy weapons, and other advanced designs.

The rifle in question is not an anti-materiel weapon.  It could not conceivably defeat that level of armor.

I would also like to mention that EMP grenades are very plausible and fitting weapons for destroying such armored targets.  Those types of weapons in reality would have a similar effect, possibly even on a modern tank (albeit, not WW-2 era one).  These grenades model the reality correctly and make sense in-game.

34

The X-Com Files / Re: Firearms vs. heavy armor

« on: November 20, 2023, 02:58:41 am »

This is only my opinion but I like it where it is. This game can be extremely challenging for newbies. I know for me personally, I almost gave up on this mod. It was simply too difficult. the only thing that kept me playing this mod was the Black ops auto sniper rifle. I had 2 of my best soldiers (best firing accuracy) using them and it saved many campaigns/missions.

In mid game it can be essential to taking down tough enemies to score gold (open more research to get better weapons). Changing this could leave newbies in difficult positions and possibly abandoning the mod altogether. It's the one bright spot in a game which is very tilted toward the enemy.

I do love the challenge, that is one of my favorite things. but it's one of my favorite mid game weapons. But I'm only speaking for myself.

The issue is that with power armor that is so vulnerable to a trivial rifle like BlackOps Auto-Sniper, some important parts of the walkthrough are too easy.  This rifle becomes a universal weapon against MiB heavy troops and even shock troops.  I think this is wrong.  At least, those should be dealt with rockets and miniguns, preferably with AA ammo.  Yet, a soldier (a pair for reliability) with 150+ accuracy could demolish such heavy troops in just 1 turn.

With Auto-Mortar and Psi-Amp, the game is really easy enough.

Also, keep in mind the suggestion to increase the piercing on the Gauss  munitions, to keep armor vulnerability at the same level as it has been now.

In general, a user of power suit should not fear any low-tech threats.  The overall level of protection against higher-tech threats should remain the same.

35

The X-Com Files / Firearms vs. heavy armor

« on: November 19, 2023, 10:58:16 pm »

I wonder, how could we deal with the fact that BlackOps auto-sniper rifle, when used by a soldier with really high accuracy, using default bullets could demolish in 2-3 auto bursts an enemy wearing Power Suit or Shock Armor?  Should there be a cap on the maximum damage for a given weapon, regardless of how high a damageBonus may be?

I see the following ways to fix this situation:

• Increase armorEffectiveness to for all human rifle shots.
• Increase kinetic resistance on all armors starting with Power Suit (thus, to enumerate all: Power Suit, Shock Armor, Jugernaut Armor).
• Adjust OXCE to provide a special configuration option that would limit maximum total damage.
  E.g. maxPower defined either at the level of a weapon or a clip.
• Make the shot power vary on a curve.  Probably, a pretty flat inverted parabola would work best.
  However, it would complicate the damage definition formula visible in Ufopaedia a bit, making it slightly counter-intuitive.
• Perhaps, (1) and (2) should be used together.  Thus, increase armorEffectiveness and armor resistance against kinetic.  (If this creates a slight disbalance with weaker armor types, then either (a) adjust resistance of the weaker armors against kinetic to a lower value, or (b) increase slightly damage multiplier for a munition.  However, for a genuine AP bullet, there's no need to increase the multiplier, and the increase in power should come from switching to a more armor-piercing TT variant anyway.)
• Increase the power armor resistance against kinetic by lowering the damage modifier to 0.6-0.7, and also increase the armor penetration of gauss and mass driver weapons by lowering the armor effectiveness modifier.  Keep the rest intact.

I think, option (6) would be a best approach.

Also, the tile damage for the lower caliber sniper guns seems to be excessive.  For instance, having the auto-sniper rifle remove a section of a brick barn wall is a bit excessive.  It's much more appropriate to have a larger-caliber M82 accomplish that.  So, for lower-caliber sniper guns we should probably have something like damageAlter.ToTile: 0.1.

36

Released Mods / Re: [SOURCEMOD] Brutal-OXCE 7.7.4

« on: November 19, 2023, 10:54:14 pm »

I may be the wrong person and this the wrong thread to ask questions like this.
I'm just the author of this particular mod and relied on the made nest provided by others who came before me. Sure, I have dabbled into the engine a little bit too. And at least to me it was indeed quite challenging.
I've been working with the OpenXCom-code for a little over a year now and still don't feel competent enough to answer questions like these.

The question is more about allowing the interface with external controllers.  Basically, the current code should still implement game rules, etc..  This way, the hard pieces of puzzle could be solved without affecting the current code base.

Actually, a good start may be to put the default logic into a separate component.  So, we might have pluggable vanilla AI, Brutal AI.  At some later a point, a much better solver may be devised, and it would become a third available option.

37

Released Mods / Re: [SOURCEMOD] Brutal-OXCE 7.8.0

« on: November 19, 2023, 10:50:10 pm »

@Xilmi,

I noticed that in XCF mod soldiers with very high accuracy could use BlackOps auto-sniper rifle to demolish enemy troops in Power Suit and Shock Armor outfits.  This must be the effect of powerBonus.

• I wonder, if it may be possible to somehow specify the maximum effect that a damageBonus may have on the damage?
  
• I also wonder, if it may be possible to spill over (configurably) any extra damage into the relevant damage multiplier?
• I think option (1) without (2) is probably the best solution, since frankly there's no way a most optimal and efficient rifle bullet could more than scratch a walking tank outfitted with alien armor.

38

Released Mods / Re: [SOURCEMOD] Brutal-OXCE 7.7.4

« on: November 18, 2023, 09:05:03 pm »

So if you have the expertise and are willing to rewrite the engine in a way that makes it run more quickly, uses multithreading and gpu-features, no one is stopping you.
The underlying model in the battlescape is a voxel-engine. Each map-tile consists of 16x16x32 voxels that are calculated internally for stuff like lines of sight and fire. Sprites losely represent the voxels of the shown objects. Sometimes better sometimes worse. The engine is also a replication of the original from 1993, which worked in the same way.

Thank you for sharing this.

I thought that since SDL is being used, the hardware acceleration should have come "for free".  Certainly for graphics rendering.  For motion calculations, I think the parallel engine would not be too much of a challenge.

However, for more advance features, I think it may be better to implement those as external plugins -- the separate processes that need not be a part of the game's code base.  How challenging would it be to setup an external AI engine, and game control?  That almost sounds like external debugging, in fact.

39

Released Mods / Re: [SOURCEMOD] Brutal-OXCE 7.7.4

« on: November 18, 2023, 06:17:37 pm »

Do you mean in regards to performance or for gameplay?

If the AI calculations are slow that is on me. I've done quite a bunch of things to optimize it but things like the analysis of where there is good cover or what are good locations to attack from will slow it down noticably. The option "Perfomance optmisation" reduces the amount of tiles analyzed for seeking cover. It especially has an impact on flying units, who would otherwise also consider all possible locations they could move to. Units like the bats for examle with very high TUs sometimes analyze like 6000 positions on the map otherwise.

When it comes to rendering-performance I know that stuff like light-propagation is an issue, especially with increased viewing-ranges (40 instead of 20 tiles). OXCE (and thus also Brutal-OXCE) should be quite a bit better at that than regular OXC, since the OXCE-guys put a lot of effort into optimization in this regard. But there's still potential. Modern games do these things with using all of the hardware, especially the GPU, which I believe OpenXCom makes no use of. I personally lack the expertise in that regard and imagine it would be a gargantuan task, even if I had the expertise. So I can't really improve it.

I wonder, what causes a behavior, when an enemy approaches a trooper who is stronger in melee, then goes back a couple of steps, then approaches, etc., until it runs out of TU.  This looks like a waste of points.  And, this feels like taking advantage of a retard on disability when trying to play hard-edge ninja tactics with Kill-Bill-style melee scenes inside the rooms.

I also occasionally see enemy troops going back and forth along a line.  Is it possible to eliminate such behaviors?  What could be causing them?

40

Released Mods / Re: [SOURCEMOD] Brutal-OXCE 7.7.4

« on: November 18, 2023, 06:14:07 pm »

Do you mean in regards to performance or for gameplay?

If the AI calculations are slow that is on me. I've done quite a bunch of things to optimize it but things like the analysis of where there is good cover or what are good locations to attack from will slow it down noticably. The option "Perfomance optmisation" reduces the amount of tiles analyzed for seeking cover. It especially has an impact on flying units, who would otherwise also consider all possible locations they could move to. Units like the bats for examle with very high TUs sometimes analyze like 6000 positions on the map otherwise.

When it comes to rendering-performance I know that stuff like light-propagation is an issue, especially with increased viewing-ranges (40 instead of 20 tiles). OXCE (and thus also Brutal-OXCE) should be quite a bit better at that than regular OXC, since the OXCE-guys put a lot of effort into optimization in this regard. But there's still potential. Modern games do these things with using all of the hardware, especially the GPU, which I believe OpenXCom makes no use of. I personally lack the expertise in that regard and imagine it would be a gargantuan task, even if I had the expertise. So I can't really improve it.

I see.  I play with longer ranges.

Are there any principal obstacles to increasing the graphics resolution in game?  Also, what is the underlying model in the tactical game?  Is it just a region of space split into relatively coarse-sized voxel cubes?

Also, it seems that the types of analysis related to motion could be performed in parallel, and the problem looks on the surface as an embarrasingly parallel.  I observe that only one (or two?) core is being used by the game so far.

41

Released Mods / Re: [SOURCEMOD] Brutal-OXCE 7.7.4

« on: November 18, 2023, 06:10:38 pm »

When it comes to gameplay, I pretty much go with the default-configuration for AI, which is the default because I think it's the strongest that doesn't cheat yet. I also enable "Aggressive Retaliation", which is different than in basic-OXC/OXCE in that it normalizes the search-pattern and also triggers off successful landing-missions and "Enhanced Dogfight Behavior", which makes it so that you can't outrun faster craft once you have engaged them.

What is the default configuration specifically?  Particularly, the settings aiTargetMode, aiAggression, autoAggression, cheatOnMovement?

With Aggressive Retaliation, I found that the enemy is actually being smart and trying to expend resources.  This also makes early defenses useful (e.g. 6 SAMs, with 1 hit to sufficient to kill).  I still have not seen if the retaliation stops after N attempts or not.  What is the actual behavior in that respect?  Would the attempts continue to infinity?

I think, it has never been possible to outrun a faster craft.  Certainly not when those are on hunt/pursuit.

42

Released Mods / Re: [SOURCEMOD] Brutal-OXCE 7.7.4

« on: November 18, 2023, 01:51:04 am »

@Xilmi,

I think the essential feature of Brutal AI mod that would make a gameplay interesting is the ability to configure the ability to play by stealth, while at the same time allowing the enemies to blaster you early.

So far, the observed behavior on the latest versions, when playing custom XCF-based mod, has been very plausible.  With aiTargetMode: 3, aiAggression: 2, autoAggression: 3, cheatOnMovement: false, the stealth play is satisfactory, while the enemy does not seem to be dumb (e.g. the enemy does not attempt a zergling rush, and does not refrain from trying to actually do damage every turn, relentlessly).  It is still possible to take Durathread Factory or a Cult Base with only two agents this way, albeit such encounter is a challenge in general.  The enemy is also actually using launchers in that mode, which makes a huge, huge difference when encountering early legates or mummies in XCF.

So far, the only downside is relatively slow performance, especially graphical one, when soldiers are on the upper levels.  I don't understand why that is the case: the openxcom level of graphics should pose no challenge for any hardware accelerated setup, even if coded straightforwardly and inefficiently.

I also noticed that the engine is not taking advantage of multi-core setups.

In terms of features, I think the most pertinent ones at this point would be the ones that allow certain types of explosion (e.g. "spectral smoke", which might as well be a regular smoke with a special flag set) to propagate through the walls.

I wonder, what set of config flags you find to be most optimal when playing your sessions?

43

OXCE Support / Blast radius calculations in OXCE

« on: November 18, 2023, 01:34:45 am »

I would like to start using dynamic radius more widely in a mod that I am working on.  I would like to inquire, how is the dynamic blast radius calculated as a function of damage power?  Would it be possible to post a table of this somewhere on the wiki?  The table is going to be much more useful than a direct formula.

The forum search reveals little w.r.t. this issue.

44

The X-Com Files / Re: The X-Com Files - 3.0: Beyond Human

« on: November 18, 2023, 01:32:39 am »

Oh, great! This mission was a hell earlier, considering how early it spawns, and now with unspecified amount of reinforcements...  :'(The only mission where Dagon's Staff was useful...

Dagon's Staff is pretty good on underwater missions as well.  You could even take a city with it (if your agents are high in psiStrength).  This obviates the need to research sonic weapons by that point (which may or may not be possible by then).

45

The X-Com Files / Re: [submod]Submod list for XCF

« on: October 23, 2023, 08:24:54 am »

No, 'cheatTurn' is a ruleset variable.


I think someone has been streaming XCF+BAI for a while now (and giving Xilmi feedback based on that), plus the other reports that occasionally surface here. I'm not sure it's fully 'supported', nor will ever be, but it seems to be compatible.


I imagine if you come up with some concrete proposals for the artillery commendations and, better yet, some artwork for them, Solarius will consider them. If they're not doable under the current commendation framework, you can always give it a shot in the OXCE subforum, too.

Ok.  All in all, it seems that the best approach would be to run BAI instead of OXCE for my long XCF sessions.

I have some developments with the ordnance variants.  If there's a way to post them on e.g. Github, or a similar public development repository, I'll consider contributing my rulesets and artwork.

Concerning the additional artillery commendations, I think that most relevant commendations should probably fall into the realm of total carnage and large weapons master.  Such commendations should be earnable by both artillery characters and also by BFG characters.

Perhaps, someone causing massive carnage while wielding a weapon that has explosive area effect and weighs more than e.g. 22 or 24, would be a source of commendation.