[WIP]X-Mars

[Scamps]

Looks extremely nice! And first couple of missions are not Nord difficulty, which is pleasant 

A little crash: you are not supposed to shoot down retaliation UFOs
A fatal error has occurred: Alien Deployment STR_PIRATES_AVENGER_RETA not found

[Finnik]

Looking forward to play your mod, your skills are fantastic!

[Vakrug]

Recently started playing. Noticed that Laser Pistol's damage does not diminish with distance like with Laser Rifle. Both Alt tooltip and actual damage indicates that. No Idea why, because "analysis for nerds" section correctly lists damage dropoff for tile.

[CrazedHarpooner]

Recently started playing. Notices that Laser Pistol's damage does not diminish with distance like with Laser Rifle. Both Alt tooltip and actual damage indicates that. No Idea why, because "analysis for nerds" section correctly lists damage dropoff for tile.

As far as I can tell, type L lasers have damage dropoff, while type M don't.

Anyway, while looking this up, I noticed that the text for the "Lunar-pattern Infrared Beam Carbine" or STR_LASER_RIFLE_MOON has the same text as the pistol for its name: "Laser pistol type L"

[CrazedHarpooner]

The mine facility has a mapName that doesn't exist (XBASC_01) in the XBASE terrain. Triggered this crash while trying to view the base battlescape by clicking on the Outpost starting facility. Checked the possible block, looks like it should be XBASE_M_09.

[Vakrug]

As far as I can tell, type L lasers have damage dropoff, while type M don't.

I am talking about L pistol. You can check that during "new battle". No damage dropoff. "New battle" btw is also bugged. I am supposed to have infinite equipment there, not one each. (The only ammo for L pistol is hiding inside M heavy laser.)

Triggered this crash while trying to view the base battlescape by clicking on the Outpost starting facility.

How old is this feature? I wish I knew about that earlier!

[Meridian]

How old is this feature? I wish I knew about that earlier!

3 years.

https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,6586.msg143814.html#msg143814

[CrazedHarpooner]

I am talking about L pistol. You can check that during "new battle". No damage dropoff. "New battle" btw is also bugged. I am supposed to have infinite equipment there, not one each. (The only ammo for L pistol is hiding inside M heavy laser.)

Aah, yes, I see it now and found the cause, the Pistol L doesn't have power defined and takes it from the clip instead. Looks like these dropoff values don't apply when defined on the weapon and not on the clip in this case. Since the clip is shared by multiple laser weapons it is likely undesired to define such dropoff there. I got it working by using the carbine L (the 'other' Pistol L) ruleset as an example and added this to the basic Pistol L ruleset:

Code: [Select]

    ignoreAmmoPower: true
    power: 20
and the dropoff works as expected.

While doing this I also noticed a bunch of problems reported by VSC in the items ruleset, many instances of damageAlter are defined with a period separator as in damageAlter.FireThreshold: 999, but the ruleset validator says "No". I can verify some of these properties via 'Stats for Nerds' and the game is using default values instead of the defined ones. This is how it should be defined in the example provided:

Code: [Select]

    damageAlter:
      FireThreshold: 999
I could provide a list of lines that have this issue, but I think it'll be faster by just searching for the string "damageAlter." (with a period at the end, yes). Just make sure you're not in regular expression search as the period will return anything valid in that spot.
Also, for FireThreshold, its default value is 1000, is there a special meaning for this default? or when setting it to 999?

Item STR_BLASTER_LAUNCHER has a typo in recoveryPoints

Code: [Select]

    recoveryPoints: 0r


[Vakrug]

Other few stuff:
STR_BIO_ENCHANCEMENT transformation can be applied multiple times (without any effects).
This should be added:

Code: [Select]

    forbiddenPreviousTransformations:
      - STR_BIO_ENCHANCEMENT_1

Item STR_BLASTER_LAUNCHER has a typo in recoveryPoints

Probably that is why game crashes when I open Hovertank's Blaster Launcher ufopedia article (in free battle).

[Vakrug]

1000 hours to deliver reinforcements is too harsh, especially during early game when you can't actually have sizable human reserves.
My suggestion is to be able to hire some locals quickly. It's not like Mars is completely uninhabitable. Such "locals" should have much lower stat cap and should be unable to use advanced armors (if any).

[CrazedHarpooner]

Probably that is why game crashes when I open Hovertank's Blaster Launcher ufopedia article (in free battle).

Unfortunately, no, it's not related to that. The BL launcher weapon is an item while the tank is another. It might just be unfinished WIP changes. Attaching the crashlog just in case it helps.

The crash in the log was done while in a New Battle battlescape, MMB clicked on the weapon to bring up the UFOpedia entry. I did notice that the turret visible on the tank was the plasma sprite, not your BL tank turret.

-----

I agree that the 1000 hours is harsh at the start since the earliest you can get any extra soldiers this way is 16 days (barracks) + 41 days (and some hours) for a total of 57 days, so near the end of the 2nd month. I propose alternative 'penalties' to the hiring of locals you have suggested, I would increase their hiring cost, limit their monthly availability (2 for example) and lower (most of) the min-max starting stats, but don't change their caps nor limit their armor access.

Lore-wise you can explain that 'poaching' these workers from other parts of Mars isn't easy and you need to provide a bit of incentive to convince them to change their profession or employer and not many of them are willing. Their lower stat range justified by hiring whoever is willing and available at the time, even if the lack the training in the field, you need that body, and you can always put them through boot-camp yourself. Keeping their regular caps simply means that with enough training, they'll be as good as any other troop.

[Nord]

More than a half of this bugs is fixed allready, but i'm not planning to upload new versions before really big changes will be done.
But other half of feedback is really useful and well appreciated. Thanks.

[CrazedHarpooner]

I've come accross an issue with base transfers. The monetary costs are pretty high compared to the economy we have. I've started a 2nd base opposite on the Mars globle to were I started and the costs to transfer personel is 511 when hiring them is 200, item transfers cost 102 per item when, at best, out of all the items I currently have, I can sell them for 40.

I took a peek at the code that handles the transfers to another base and it's all currently hardcoded, so the costs are based on vanilla economy, which is pretty cheap in OG UFO, but IMO, excessive for this mod's economy.

I've studied the code and am willing to start a proposal to suggest unhardcoding some of the values to adjust both transfer costs and transfer times. However, I do not know if you already have something in mind for this or not.