openxcom was too difficult to play. is there a way to use the original rules?

[aquatoid]

for veteran difficulty
i noticed aliens were too accurate and too deadly
after the 3rd mission, 45 days later, i couldnt even make a one step out of the skyranger, the mind control was already seriously happening and all missions were always night missions even for a daytime battle
so i concluded that openxcom was a mod, not the remastered one with added hotkeys and with better graphics. but they totally changed the rules.

is there a way to use or change to the original game rules that i am familiar with?
this is unplayable.

about a DOS version XCOM 1 -  UFO Defense - universal patched one which is not an official patch
is this as difficult as openxcom? did they change the rules here too by any chance?

[Meridian]

original had a bug that it reverted to Beginner difficulty after the first mission: https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Known_Bugs#Difficulty_Bug

if you want the original experience, play on Beginner

otherwise it's the same

[aquatoid]

>otherwise it's the same
then why would all battles be always night missions  if it was the same
i avoided all night missions at the beginning back in the day unless a local terror, because aliens would see maybe 3 times longer distance

ok fine, i played terror from the deep 10 times more than UFO one back in the day
did this also have the reverting back to the beginner difficulty bug?
it couldnt be, as i'd remember, it got more difficult, but i dont totally remember it well now

the reason why i played terror form the deep 10+ more was UFO had too many graphics smearing bugs, was fixed with patches but some smearing were still there at times, even in v1.4 unit's TU grew without a bound and became useless after TU became truncated

i will go play terror from the deep in openxcom, i hope the rules are the same.
but the tactics i used for UFO and Terror from the deep were exactly the same
my tactics were
always have10  flares just in case
equip 3~4 men with all rockets even when TU's are not quite full
get 1 or 2 rocket launcher tanks
4 men with rifles.
bust through all homes and walls to expose aliens from a long distance
rockets aoe can still kill aliens hiding behind rock covers
then i feel good... hahaha! take that, turning it into a parking lot

[yergnoor]

and all missions were always night missions even for a daytime battle

Perhaps the small mod "XcomUtil: Always Nighttime" included in the standard OpenXcom package was accidentally enabled.  This mod is "Forces all ground missions to nighttime".  But initially it should not work; the player must turn it on himself.  At least by mistake.

[aquatoid]

>"XcomUtil: Always Daytime" "XcomUtil: Always Nighttime"  both were marked yes in UFO, but not in terror from the deep. thanks i fixed it.

before i would like to ask some questions, i would like to praise you for the x-com remake or remastered version
hotkeys were SO SO SO good
buy/sell scroll bar was very good
ammo indications in white were good
skip next turn was SO good
skip intro was good
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about OpenXcom - terror from the deep with the veteran difficulty, now i am in the middle of mopping up the rest of the game, MC labs are fully operational,
but i found this along the way
the knocked out aliens are really annoying, they rise up again and again in one to several turns later, and a confirmation kill with the sonic weapons is NOT possible
i have to put 1 or 2 guards around lobstermen

in DOS original, they maybe rise 0.1 % or less, unless you stand on them
in openxcom, they may rise 70%, i didnt have many tentaculats in the missions yet, but i think they rise up too, so was this part  modded?
i am not sure of this one in the control menu, if "alien bleeding" was said to YES, then would this stop the rising behaviors?

are the number of alien colonies limited by any chance in the geoscape in openxcom? i used to have around 30 colonies all over the globe in the original DOS version before MC labs, now in OpenXCOM, all i have  is maybe 6 visible alien colonies... was kind of strange.. but much less grindy
----------------------------------------------
the next one is...
the xcom unit's movement in the control menu was set to max, but still, time wasting for moving 10 units per turn are repetitively slow and bad in my head
is there a way to make them move faster like the original? i can edit or mod a file if you can point me

the next one is my wish...
there seems to be NO hotkeys for move upward and downward when they wear the mag ion armors, i use these commands the most

[Juku121]

in DOS original, they maybe rise 0.1 % or less, unless you stand on them
in openxcom, they may rise 70%, i didnt have many tentaculats in the missions yet, but i think they rise up too, so was this part  modded?

Not that I know of. It may be that you remember wrong, I definitely recall camping downed Sectoids and Chryssalids thirty years ago. Or perhaps you're using different weapons now.

Standing on the body has never made any difference, short of blocking that spot and making them stand up on another tile.

You should be able to shoot them on the ground if there are no nearby walls, or just blast the area with a stun bomb or similar. Some mods allow you to keep fallen foes down via smoke grenades, not sure this extends to the original.

i am not sure of this one in the control menu, if "alien bleeding" was said to YES, then would this stop the rising behaviors?

Maybe a few of them, but not in general. They'd need to bleed to death faster than they recover from stun for that to work, and for that to happen, you'd need to either wound them so badly they might as well be dead anyway, or use a wound-centric weapon (which aren't in vanilla). Or stun them so hard the issues is moot anyway.

are the number of alien colonies limited by any chance in the geoscape in openxcom? i used to have around 30 colonies all over the globe in the original DOS version before MC labs, now in OpenXCOM, all i have  is maybe 6 visible alien colonies...

I'd suggest it's a matter of random mission generation. There's a lot of randomness in what you can get, so one playthrough does not necessarily resemble another. You might lose all your major sponsors to infiltration, but see just a few bases. Or there may be a million bases, but very little abduction or infiltration. Vanilla does tend to converge towards having a spread of all mission types, but nothing is ever guaranteed with RNG.

And you may, of course, be missing the other 24+ colonies that are there, chilling under your radar.

the xcom unit's movement in the control menu was set to max, but still, time wasting for moving 10 units per turn are repetitively slow and bad in my head

They always moved about as fast as they do now, just the game itself was accelerated if your CPU could handle it.

The best tip I have is to make the trajectory appear off-screen, even if the destination isn't. Then movement is near-instantanaous. You can also Shift-click to make your soldiers cease stopping when they see an alien, if you already know where the alien is and don't care about that individual soldier's vision of them.

there seems to be NO hotkeys for move upward and downward when they wear the mag ion armors, i use these commands the most

I know no hotkey for this, either, but using the scroll wheel to change height and regular movement isn't too bad.

[Yankes]

You should be able to shoot them on the ground if there are no nearby walls, or just blast the area with a stun bomb or similar. Some mods allow you to keep fallen foes down via smoke grenades, not sure this extends to the original.

At least OXCE stunned units are still units, in OXC and OG stunned units are items.

When unit is treated as item you can't hit it and only explosions can kill it (if remove corpse item itself).
In OXCE I added logic that unit first need to die before game will handle it as item, this mean you can boost stun or hit stunned units.

[Juku121]

Indeed. But the question is, how does the game data shake out. I just tried dropping dye grenades on downed Aquatoids, and it didn't seem to do much anything, they kept recovering 1 stun per turn. I tried that with XCF Sectoids, and those did get somewhat random stun damage from lying in smoke.

So OG armour vs stun values might just not work out. Or my testing was too small-scope (a few turns, no more).

Many easier enemies in XCF also have a major stun vulnerability, so stun kicks in much harder there, regardless of whether the targt is still up or not.

Hence my hesitation.

[aquatoid]

>NO hotkeys for move upward and downward
>>scroll wheel to change height and regular movement isn't too bad

it isnt bad for normal players, but the repetitiveness takes a toll on my shoulder
click a unit in manta - move a mouse to click a UP layer icon(PgUp for my hotkey) - UP layer - move a mouse to click the destination - do it 10 times

now i do it this way
you dont need to move a mouse much for this in openxcom.
click - D (my hoykey for DONE for the unit's move) - click - D - 10 times, now all units are out of the manta - wait for the next turn then do - click move up - click move up - D - do it 10 times. in this case, i dont have to MOVE a mouse, i just position a mouse and click on the move up icon.

i hope this to be done like... D - U - U - D - U - U ... do it like 10 times, without mixing with a mouse.
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my next hotkey wish is....
i need to be able to bookmark a ONE of my units by pressing CTRL+1 on it, then pressing ALT+1 (or just 1) goes to the bookmarked unit, because X-COM has a mind of its own to select whatever the random unit it likes after the next turn
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currently XCOM's 1, 2, 3... number keys are for center on the VISIBLE enemy numbers
this is ok and much better than none but not too ok for XCOM, you CAN'T pick a fight one on one in XCOM. when a scout finds the enemy who is still invisible to your other units, your firing squad NEEDS that INVISIBLE enemy number instead. how about making a hotkey  "E" for center on the enemy you just found which is NOT depended on the VISIBILITY. in this fantastic case, you dont need to change or scroll the screen at all.

believe it or not, i dreamt about these three keys 30 years ago
----------------------------
by any chance, has tentaculat's attack range been changed? they seemed to be able to travel 30% longer distance to attack.

is it ok if i post my hotkey wishes on a different thread, so that XCOM remakers and remasters could see them in some other time?

[Juku121]

If you only move all your soldiers up, maybe twice, every single one of them, I can see that. But why are you doing that? Virtually no craft has soldier positions where you can just move them two levels above.

And you're saying that you use the Manta, which is not a transport craft in the original. Are you playing with a mod?

PGUP can be replaced with a movement of the mouse wheel. At least I find it far more convenient.

About bookmarking enemies, the OG usually doesn't have so many enemies on the screen that you run out of 'enemy spotted' numbers. So if just your scout sees the enemy, in most cases the rest have that enemy on the same number.

The 'center on last spotted enemy' idea is not bad, though.

Soldier cycling is done in the same order that they appear on the craft, AFAIK. Can be a bit jumpy once you've spread everyone out.

Tentaculats should be unchanged if you aren't playing with a mod. Vanilla AI does all kinds of strange things, so one or two of them rushing you a bit better is not out of the ordinary. And Chryssalids/Tentaculats always had TU: yes and could come at you from off-screen, so I'm not sure what you're basing the 30% on.

There are two places to post your hotkey suggestions: the Suggestions subforum, and the OXCE suggestions NEW sub-subforum. The latter is the more active of the two and more likely to at least consider your requests.

[aquatoid]

>And you're saying that you use the Manta, which is not a transport craft in the original. Are you playing with a mod?
oops, my mistake, i meant hammerhead, no, it was the original floppy version,  i had it patched v2.0 or v2.1 maybe in years 2005~2010, but i havent played the patched version except for 1 or 2 small fight missions from same old savedgames,  my memory lies with v1.0 unpatched version around 1995, Terror from the deep never had a serious game stopping bug.


>in most cases the rest have that enemy on the same number
not true, they are even depended on the angles, much less different locations, getting the same number doesnt happen in my play,
except for the panicked aliens who just walk right into me all the way, even then all my units face different angles

>The 'center on last spotted enemy' idea is not bad, though.
this will save a lot of  screen scrolling back and forth between your units and the aliens.
just press "D" to go back your next unit and press "E" to make a screen jump back to center on the "invisible" alien that your other units cant see, because they are too far.  and make the key "E" toggle if your scout finds 2 or 3 aliens gathered near.  toggling is not that needed,  going to the last spotted enemy is plenty enough, because all aliens are always in the same area,  just make me go back to that screen with aliens quickly without scrolling or any aliens for that matter

>Soldier cycling is done in the same order that they appear on the craft, AFAIK. Can be a bit jumpy once you've spread everyone out.
this is why i use D  (DONE for the current turn)

> so I'm not sure what you're basing the 30% on.
i didnt count the tiles, but just feeling i built from my past experience, ...like "this much distance, i think i am safe, it wont get to me or it will stop in front of me". but with openxcom, they come out of the offscreen or the edge of screen. so i moved away maybe 30% more as i felt seen safe, i couldnt measure it well at 1st,  but save and load the game eventually did. i havent found readme.txt as to what was changed in universal patch. dye grenades are totally different in openxcom.
1st turn 4 tiles affected
2nd turn 4 tiles + 6 tiles affected
3rd turn 4 tiles +  6 tiles  + 13 tiles affected
4th turn ..... goes on like this in original. which is useless, i wont wait for 5 turns for dye to disperse more. so i am still a bit skeptical what was changed in openxcom. so far nothing much or it was maybe just my imagination. it seems that the most jellyfish aliens are not flapping around on some alien buildings anymore, they really come to get you,, which was good.

>Soldier cycling
tab tab tab.... for next unit, next unit....., which is still kind of maybe ok.
but i hope to bookmark a unit with a bound hotkey to find my scout quickly
any strategy games need bookmarks... real time strategy ...tactical strategy.... turn base... all

[Juku121]

Terror from the deep never had a serious game stopping bug.

Um, quite the opposite. TFTD was the game with the game-breaking research bug and some serious research path fuckery if you missed some important capture/artifact.

not true, they are even depended on the angles, much less different locations, getting the same number doesnt happen in my play,

But it is. See the attached save. The three soldiers in Aquatoid Central have vision of different Aquatoids, but the common ones share the same order and if you manage to get them to look at roughly the same enemies, share numbers, too. Even as it is, all of them have the same 'number 1' Aquatoid, the one in the east corner.

And even if the numbers don't match exactly, for common-ish enemies they're not off by more than one or two, so you can still quickly cycle to the right target.

i didnt count the tiles, but just feeling i built from my past experience, ...like "this much distance, i think i am safe, it wont get to me or it will stop in front of me". but with openxcom, they come out of the offscreen or the edge of screen.

That feeling of "they can't come at me from off-screen, right?" was false in the original, too.

i couldnt measure it well at 1st,  but save and load the game eventually did.

I don't know what you were measuring, but the rule files say this:

Code: [Select]

  - type: STR_TENTACULAT_TERRORIST
    stats:
      tu: 99
I haven't played the original in a long time, but Ufopedia says they have 99 - 146 time units, depending on difficulty. Which seems to fit. I don't think there are any changes to swimming/flying TU costs, these would be very noticeable.

So your observation is more of an anecdote than data, so far.

i havent found readme.txt as to what was changed in universal patch.

I think this and this are the best you can find without digging into it yourself.

dye grenades are totally different in openxcom.

Yes, and they were pretty much broken in the original. OXC(E) fixes a number of bugs like that, in addition to everything else. If you for some reason want the exact original experience, warts and all, play the original. OXC is the improved version, and went quite some distance to maintaining everything that wasn't a bug as close to the original as humanly possible.

so i am still a bit skeptical what was changed in openxcom. so far nothing much or it was maybe just my imagination.

There are so many misconceptions and false memories about the original kicking around it's not even funny any more. Yes, OXC changes some things. No, it deliberately tries to stay as close to the original as possible, while offering a variety of fixes, user options, mods and modding tools. If you search for it, I think there are posts (by SupSuper, I think) that tell you which settings will give you the most 'vanilla' OXC experience.

Myself, I don't play OXC due to nostalgia or because I want some sort of 'pure' experience with some QoL. I play it because it's a classic and proven game formula, with no true successor in sight. And for the modding potential, both existing mods and what I can do on top of those myself. YMMV.

tab tab tab.... for next unit, next unit....., which is still kind of maybe ok.
but i hope to bookmark a unit with a bound hotkey to find my scout quickly

You can also reverse cycle for faster soldier selection. Myself, I use mouse thumb buttons, it's way more convenient than tabbing and reverse tabbing.

[aquatoid]

this is the patch v2, BUT this readme.txt was NOT in the patch installation. this website's readme explained many things
i can say that i definitely had a mind set of a unpatched version
------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Equipment left in the X-COM craft on linked missions is now returned to base if you succeed in the second half of the linked mission.
so i always picked up most disrupter ammos before going to the linked colony mission, and not to overuse the disrupter same place twice
when playing openxcom, i went like, after seeing loads of ammo in the linked mission,
so i didnt have to give my manual labor to collect trashes with me. openxcom was nice. then thinking lobsters gonna start shooting disrupters soon at me, i better move my units to another evac region to protect THESE AMMOS,  was my new behavior, protecting these ammos became my main priority

* Alien molecular control defense stats have been modified.
ok they modified something....

* Proximity grenades now retain their prime from a reload on a tactical game.
i didnt use them enough to notice it

* The 'funding' bug has been fixed so that there are no discrepancies in the X-COM accounts at the end of each month.
i never noticed

* There were rare problems with panicked soldiers dropping weapons in 'mid-water' - this has now been fixed.
i see this one often, it was no big deal

* All craft automatically reload when you buy new ammunition.
i never noticed. i probably checked things manually once in a while

* You now do not require a Deep One corpse in your inventory to research aqua-plastics. However you still need to have researched a Deep One corpse.
capture another one, eventually the game progressed

* One branch of the research tree has been modified. Whereas before you needed ion accelerators, magnetic navigation and a lobsterman navigator to be allowed to research magnetic ion armor you now need to research ion armor, magnetic navigation and ion accelerators.
i never noticed

* The Leviathon troop deployment bug has been fixed.
i never noticed

* A rare bug occurred which could kill live aliens on return to base. This has now been fixed.
just capture another one, this was probably what i would have done, but it could have been a fatal bug, had it happened to the lobster commander
i once went in there with all shokbombs, i finally captured it

* The 'Groundhog day' bug
* The crash bug associated with clicking both mouse buttons has now been fixed.
my elbow hit something to have caused it, a lot of different games HAD this thing, not just x-com. must load the last savedgame
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>dye grenades are totally different in openxcom
>>Yes, and they were pretty much broken in the original...
i thought this way when i 1st played TFTD after UFO defense
it is a dye not a smoke, molecular dispersion is VERY slow in water which is as dense as solid
it was more realistic than practical.
i like the openxcom one better, because i didnt have to wait 5 turns to see the same effect, i often waited many turns when some aliens with disupters were just outside the sub,  it was more like a different but practical rule


>OXC changes some things. No, it deliberately tries to stay as close to the original as possible, while offering a variety of fixes, user options
now i understood, this was because i didnt play the patched version, i had the mind set of the unpatched version, i wont bother anyone with different rules that i may think it might have

once i am done with openxcom, i will try openxcom extended
it reminds me of doxbox and dosbox-x (extended) i think i know how it may go

[aquatoid]

about my thoughts on the lobster commander...
more elusive lobster commander could probably be a better gaming. once or twice back in the day, these were what i have done to get it through with the unpatched version

case 1: i detonated a sonic pulser by the leviathan just to see if any explosion or firing a sonic weapon in the air could cause a lobster commander to auto-die at the end then i raided the very large UFO with only shokbombs
case 2: i blew up the very large UFO's side hull at the 3rd layer or the top hull with the disrupter just to make an opening, attacking from top to down was much much easier than the frontal assault, then raided it with shokbombs only
case 3: frontal assault with only shokbombs without using any other weapons whatsoever

i forgot which case to capture the lobster commander now, but it was DONE with shokbombs only
missing a lobster commander might not be a bug that most people have said made out to be, when the lobster was more elusive to me, i had a time to play with he leviathans

i just finished the openxcom and started the openxcom extended, it HAD the hotkey that i wanted the most, the alien bookmark keys were available for all my units who were not in the range, this just made the openxcom obsolete to me. they did it!

[aquatoid]

i just finished playing terror from the deep x-com  patch version 2.1
there was no difference i found from the one with the unpatched version. even the linked mission doesnt relay the weapons to the final, except you receive all the weapons at the end.


>in DOS original, they maybe rise 0.1 % or less, unless you stand on them
>>Not that I know of. It may be that you remember wrong, I definitely recall camping downed Sectoids and Chryssalids thirty >>years ago. Or perhaps you're using different weapons now.
>>Standing on the body has never made any difference, short of blocking that spot and making them stand up on another tile.

no you havent actually played the original, ones you played must have been the universal patched one disguised as the original, there is no way you would havent known this from the original


>by any chance, has tentaculat's attack range been changed? they seemed to be able to travel 30% longer distance to attack.
>>Tentaculats should be unchanged

Tentaculats and calcinites and maybe lobsters too are noticeably different from the origianal, probably all other aliens were changed too. the reason i found was modders probably straightened out their paths by doing something like this

o = going right
x = going left
original  one : oooooxxxxoooooooo was most likely the zigzagging way
universal one : ooooooooooooooooo
by doing so, they changed some kind of game balance further, but now it is ok for universal patch, if i just consider universal patch is not a patch but a mod.

>dye grenades are totally different in openxcom.
>>Yes, and they were pretty much broken in the original.

no it was NOT broken, please play the original. the original dye served its perfect purpose, dye grenades disperse slowly
by changing this, they changed the ENTIRE original game play like this
let me put it this way, the original XCOM was all about players being offensive
the universal patch made players as defense as they could get

since aliens can not see you in the blanket of smoke. so modders made all field aliens converge toward you, and in 2 turns, some of them WILL already reach your submarine's door. so you players now in trouble with 80 limit item carry. so universal patch removed the 80 item carry limit. PLAYERS need to carry more items for the universal patch, a lot of dye grenades and at least 20 flares.
after 1st dye grenade's power is gone after 10th turn, you use another dye grenade, now rest of the aliens in the UFO vessel's core place starts to come out and comes to you. YOU DONT EVER NEED TO RAID ALIENS in vessels

in the original, aliens who jump from the roof of the UFO vessel to the ground are extremely rare,
but in the universal patch one, they come out of there like boiling water

what is the meaning of original XCOM that was all about players being offensive
you come to them by dragging all 10 marines to them. aliens in there are SO defensive, there EXISTS an impossibility for you to win(no amounts of saving and loading games can do), if you tell me what this impossibility is, i will praise you

and finally universal patch workshop production has about 30% faster duration.

the reason i havent played patched version 2, because TFTD's scrolling was too fast unless i used 386 or pentium 90mhz
even in year 2024 under dosbox, scrolling left and right was too fast but scrolling up and down was too slow and scrolling diagonally was slower than up-down, all these cause weird pain in my already damaged shoulders.


openxcom using universal patch doesnt represent the original xcom ufo, IT IS JUST A MOD.
i would like to post this openxcom extended forum section as a wish that openxcom also consider a original version to be used as well