[new mechanics] making pistols more useful

[moriarty]

I wonder if it would be possible to include special time unit rules for transfer of "1x2" weapons from the "belt" to the "hand" slots. something that emulates a "quickdraw" routine, which is surely something a soldier would train for.

this is one thing that xcom2012 got right, I think: it should probably not take time units (or very few, at the least) to let go of your primary weapon and bring up your sidearm.

this is not as easily donw as changing the transfer cost "from belt to hand", though: detaching a grenade or ammo clip from the belt should take longer. it's just the "drawing a pistol" action that should be free. is that even possible? is there any way I could achieve this with a mod?

[Arpia]

How's this?
You can use it for quick access to grenades, a sidearm or a medkit. I'd rather it not be used for grenades but theres really no way to do that within current rulesets. I didn't think it would be a good idea to provide *more* inventory even if it was only 2. So I split it off from the belt. The TU costs are the same as the belt, however hand-to-hip is 0 TU and hip-to-hand is 2 TUs.

edit:
It turns out this creates problems with the game auto-equipping to the belt, so you shouldn't really mess with the belts slots. Also it does this odd thing where it won't allow access to the inventory from the craft-equip in base-scape until you've refueled or gone on a mission :/

[moriarty]

nice! I thought it might be possible with something like that, but I just didn't know how to pull it off. thank you!

[Arpia]

not bad for about 5 minutes work
I'll throw this up in the mod section then >.>

[mercy]

How it should work:   Rewrite critical hit code by allowing

1. INCREASED Pistol & Rifle criticals at short distance = increased hit chance starting from mininum value displayed on Ufopaedia page and if critical_hit then almost always do the maximum amount damage, exception muton or other alien with hardened skin. But even in this case calculate a better armor penetration. Of course pistol shots are ricocheting from heavily armored aliens and Sectopod.

2. calculate even more higher criticals if enemy distance shortens into melee range.

3. Do all crits and damage calculations, but if the bullets hit solid alien mechanic armor, NEGATE penetration. So a heavily armored alien only hears a "knock-knock" sound on his armor, but remains unharmed from simple pistol & Rifle shots. In this case our soldiers should request better weapons from the Applied Science Division of XCOM.

[Warboy1982]

wtf is a crit?

[mercy]

crit   Critical Hit

[EchoFourDelta]

X-COM doesn't have critical hits. The newer one does; the legacy version that OXC is replicating doesn't.

[kkmic]

The "old" X-Com randomizes damage for each shot between 0% and 200%, so while there was no "CRITICAL HIT" icon or something, the crit mechanic was somewhat implemented in the game.

[Warboy1982]

you're confusing damage range with crit damage. depending on the system used, crits are usually something along the lines of x * max damage or damage + crit modifier (as a fixed value, a percentage or a multplier), not the upper levels of the damage range. Xcom has no critical hit scenario.

[kkmic]

Emphasis on somewhat.

[moriarty]

speaking of critical hits... the mechanic for armor "resistances" is that each armor defines its protective value against certain types of damage, right? is it possible to create an additional damage type? or is that too deep into the game mechanics? would it theoretically then be possible to create a damage type "critical" which ignores armor? and possibly a mechanic that allows for weapon damage to become "critical" damage with a certain chance?

(just checking out theoretical possibilities here)

[Arpia]

Yes you can make new damage types. use damageType: 10 or above (-1 works too)
the new type won't do any damage to units until you can units a resistance value to it however.
but... the weapon will still damage terrain, and it will revert itself to HE damage if you give it a blast radius value.
The UFOpedia will list these new damTypes as "unknown" dunno if you can change that or not.

Uses...
you could give robotic enemies a resistance to this new damType... Creating EMP that only affects robotics.
you could make a weapon that only affects terrain...
Limitations...
can't give it a stun effect or a blast radius.
Example ruleset item included

Edit: yeah... I sorta forgot to define clipSize in that ruleset -_-' it's fixed now.

[SupSuper]

Armors are hardcoded to 10 damage types, so any extra ones will probably be ignored, if they don't outright cause weird issues.

[alienfood]

If you've seen the movie Unforgiven, you'll see that it is by no means an easy thing to drop whatever is in your hand, unholster a pistol, and shoot the thing in front of you.

But yes, currently, pistols are worse than useless, I would rather have a grenade or even a flare. Pistols are there mostly to confuse and distract beginners