[WIP] Pulse Weapons and Other Stuff

[ohartenstein23]

I'm creating this thread to release some resources and experiments I've done in modding, mostly since regular releases are a great way to remind myself to keep working on a project!  My goal is to eventually make a total conversion with a modular enough ruleset such that pieces can be easily extracted for use by the community at large.  With that in mind, here are the results of my first steps into making sprites and weapons:

==Pulse Weapons, v 1.1 (Updated 8 November 2016)==
I was inspired by a combination of TFTD's description of its Gauss technology, Mass Effect's small arms, and desire for a rifle with the versatility of an underslung grenade launcher or the variety of rounds available for a shotgun, to create these pulse weapons.  Using some of the features from OpenXcom Extended, it was possible to make a weapon that has a battery similar to the infinite laser weapons that can be quickly unloaded in favor of a specialized grenade or flare, then return to its normal firing mode all within the same turn.  If used in the vanilla game, this mod will give alternatives to the starting rifles and pistols with increased adaptability via special direct-fire grenades.  Perhaps a little broken balance-wise, they're meant to be more of a toy to play with until lasers and plasma make them obsolete.  It should be playable without OpenXcom Extended (I use Meridian's OXCE+), but the tweaks to TU costs for unloading and reloading the weapons won't work, and the battle rifle's special clip will work like a crappy shotgun instead.

The progression between the weapon types and balance will become more clear once I start putting together the story and pacing of my overarching mod, but for now, everybody loves having more sprites to share!  Feel free to take them for use wherever, just remember to credit me.

Edit 8 November 2016:  I've rebalanced the Pulse weapons and made them require some research first to compensate for increased firepower.  Also adding my second set of weapons, called LINAC after the linear particle accelerator idea.

[Jblade35]

Nice idea - I would like to see the ability for 2 ammo types to be loaded into a gun at the same time for stuff like underslung grenades or shotguns, this sounds like a cool stopgap

[ohartenstein23]

Glad you like the idea, I'm planning on doing a balance pass and some more experimentation to make it more useful for fitting in vanilla.

[RSSwizard]

Sounds cool. In scifi it seems Pulse weapons often are interpreted to work in some mysterious wsy or fit into an almost mundane weapon category. In Aliens its just implied they were caseless firearms that used an electrical Pulse to ignite the propellant. In Fallout its exotic disintegrator tech.

I always interpreted the tftd gauss weapons to fire a Particle Beam and shoot through things with unholy penetration like the Assault Phaser does in Star Trek 6 (with the vicious zorch sound to boot).

I think the real thing missing from the game are human developed weapons which have Both outstanding accuracy and speed... 2 aimed/ 4 snap shots per turn and aimed is at 120%. The firepower can even be crap starting tier ... this be like the Half Life pulse rifles the combine use. Who needs firepower when you can firing squad aliens from halfway across the map? 30 pistol damage and 36 rifle damage ate acceptable if it also gets 60 shots (laser weapins were infinite!)

Ahh but you dont always have a range advantage and sometimes you need a one shot stop (or dude will get a chance to use his blaster/dpl, or tentaculat/chrissy gets One More Turn)

[ohartenstein23]

More sprites and weapons for you guys!  My first crack at creating the assets completely from scratch rather than editing the vanilla sprites, these are meant to be an upgrade on the pulse weapons while retaining the same flavor.  Also, I took a balance pass at the mod to add all my weapons to vanilla, so they wouldn't be as gamebreaking.  See first post's zip file for full mod.

[Solarius Scorch]

Dayum Ohartenstein, you just gave me a boner.

[ohartenstein23]

Well, that's certainly a reaction you could have for new sprites.

Edit:  You're welcome to use the resources if you'd like.  They're not going to see much use beyond just adding to vanilla for a while, since I'm a ways off having a more complete mod of my own.

[Solarius Scorch]

Well, that's certainly a reaction you could have for new sprites.

Not just any sprites, these ones make me want to lick them.

Edit:  You're welcome to use the resources if you'd like.  They're not going to see much use beyond just adding to vanilla for a while, since I'm a ways off having a more complete mod of my own.

Thanks! Same to you.

[ohartenstein23]

Not just any sprites, these ones make me want to lick them.

Whatever floats your boat, but if the files get corrupted from your lovin', that's on you

[Mate]

Works pretty well, but after taking PDS Rifle into the battle, doing some firing and ammo changing I discover I have trillion pds batteries in my storage.

[ohartenstein23]

I'll admit I hadn't really tested it since the mod was just proof of concept and new sprites, but that's probably a bug with clip recovery, and likely why ammo items are never infinite, just weapons like the laser rifles themselves.  If you're using statistical bullet saving, I'd recommend just setting the ammo count from -1 to a really high number (999?) on the batteries, so recovery is likely even if you shoot a large number of rounds.