[TOTAL CONVERSION] The Piratez Mod - 0.9.j - 9 May - Holiday Edition

[Voiddweller]

Yeah, i guess "loading" bows with any ammo clips will be weird, but there is a repeater crossbows in reality. Can be good stealth weapon, but there is no stealth mechanics in OXC. Looking forward to see a bow alternative as well as slings and spears (yeah, i can make some myself, but it is always more intriguing to play by rules other person made)

About ES weapons. ES pistols is not that good actually, so even with unlimited ammo it will still have limited use. Rifles is awesome though, but honestly ES guns IS endgame weapons because even though that stuff is easily affordable a bit later trough game progress, it is still not cost-effective. Unlimited ammo can make it cost-effective, even with 10x or 20x time weapon price increase. Mostly because OXC can't handle half-empty magazines. Or it can? Anyway 16k burst or even single shot? No, thanks.

Mortars have very limited use, unless you want to burn/blow up all your potential loot, so having a couple of OP weapons late game seems convenient to me. Mostly because you often feel like you need a fast-forward or auto-resolve button for boring, repetative tactical missions that game can spawn sometimes...

[Dioxine]

Noted for the big weapons overhaul that's coming within 1-2 updates. I'll probably add a whole new tier of late-game Plasma damage weapons - not as accurate or powerful, but with unlimited ammo and more variations (hmg, shotgun, area effect weapons) than Alien plasma (some weapons will move from plasma to that new category, like shotgun). As for the ES lasrifle... Yeah I feel convinced, but the price must be limited to 75% of your starting cash. Sadly many of the expensive-end of starting weapons suffer the same fate - too expensive for their ability, hence never used (initially you need every cent, later on you have comparable weapons that are much cheaper to use). Seems the store needs fixing too. And this means more research. I plan to allow expanding the research capability a bit (at a great monetary/base space cost), but I need to make a new tileset for this.

[Dioxine]

I'm starting to consider the idea that a starting base should only have pirate weapons... so the black market will be of some more use (or you can proactively research production of ammo for these weapons and the weapons themselves).

Also with more lasers planned (SMG and machine gun -likes), you'll be able to disassemble advanced weapons into components to save on storage and increase compatibility - no longer there will be the need of storing multiples of laser rifles and heavy lasers because they might be someday needed to construct new weapons).

Also, since the old bow has been gutted (no longer Str bonus)...

[Imeryak]

you'll be able to disassemble advanced weapons into components to save on storage and increase compatibility

How about Vessel weapons? HWPs? Broken Armor Pieces?

[Dioxine]

Vessel weapons - included (energy weapons at least);

HWPs - do you think it's needed? How would you see the dissassembly feature there?

Armors - I'm trying to keep it so (almost) every armor is useable for production of more advanced armor (and profitable to sell), but I can add some disassembly options when the armor tree is overhauled... which will happen once the store is overhauled (Apocalypse-style: you cannot buy much at the start, the selection increases over time; on the flip side, the store will have much more reasonable prices than now).

I'll be also increasing points for research to help avoid low score termination.

As you see I'm doing a lot of "base work" now, but there will be some new content too.

[Imeryak]

HWPs - do you think it's needed? How would you see the dissassembly feature there?

Disassemble tanks into two parts - turret (weapon) and chassis, produce them separately, and then gather chassis and another turret back together to make a HWP you want. This will make the game mechanics more complex and interesting, especially if make chassis progress less linear - as with current armor. For example, you can progress from light tank to a land cruiser with very thick armor, but unable to fly and low ap, or  fly "glass cannon's" tanks with nuclear core (explode on death, more FUN for player), low armor or with dangerous vulnerability to certain types of damage and ability to install very powerful weapon, or heavy scout with large ap pull, light weapon and self-destruct option, or what your imagination tell you. It is hell of a work, but i think it's interesting idea to try.

[Dioxine]

Great idea - and I think it can be done. It'd of course require coding down many, many tanks - with 6 turrets and 4 chassii that's already 24 tanks, plus all the complex production patterns... And graphics, naturally.

[Alex_D]

Anomaly report: It appears that when researching "STR_GAT_LASCANNON_PARTS" the game crashes.

[Dioxine]

Code: [Select]

  - name: STR_GAT_LASCANNON_PARTS
    cost: 20
    lookup: STR_GAT_LASCANNON_UC
    needItem: true
Try deleting that _UC and reloading...? Maybe that'll help, there is no STR_GAT_LASCANNON_UC research topic (even if all Pedia entries use _UC)... I'm not 100% sure how this works, prayers to Omnissiah are in order. Testing all this stuff by myself is impossible, hard to stumble upon Smuggler ships since it's Retaliation time all the time...

[Voiddweller]

"future bow" XD ROFLMAO well, that's funny, but i thought about playing with TU costs instead, because now it may be like "game before future bow research" and "game after future bow research" ranged weapon with stat damage bonus is still OP, especially with fixed TU costs. Wish you were able to change magnitude of damage boost from stat.

It seems that it is impossible to make an infinite ammo clip that not disappear after battle ends. I thought about precious special infinite clips for some energy weapons.

Also, i noticed that sniper/hunting rifle is useless too after your team improves their accuracy. Nobody actually need 200% CTH with ridiculously low damage and crazy TU costs. My team successfully uses cannons as sniper weapons instead, because that stuff beats sniper weapons in every aspect and still have 100+%CTH with aimed shots. Maybe some acid/concussive ammo with slight damage boost can solve that problem?

I just remembered my old apocalypse mod, where i changed only sniper weapon in game - the laser sniper. I set damage to 80, that is more than main alien weapon the devastator cannon have, increased TU costs and reduced clip size to 5. It became very useful sniper weapon, but useless at close range, because any charging enemy or a thrown grenade is able to cripple your sniper team. I really had a specialized troops that way)

OpenXcom Extended exe is compiled! https://www.openxcom.com/mod/openxcom-extended I am going to draw a plasma mortar this weekend, and maybe a psi blaster too
Aaand it seems that with extended exe you can actually set a scale for applied stat bonus.

[VSx86]

It's not a bug report, but this looks a little weird:
by somehow, AI can kneel its operative in midair...
 

[Dioxine]

@VSx86: That's because no one has drawn legs for flying XCom Overalls man... yet. So unused kneeling frames are recycled for flying frames.

"future bow" XD ROFLMAO well, that's funny, but i thought about playing with TU costs instead, because now it may be like "game before future bow research" and "game after future bow research" ranged weapon with stat damage bonus is still OP, especially with fixed TU costs. Wish you were able to change magnitude of damage boost from stat.

It ain't easy to get the bow and  it requires valuable resources to manufacture. Is it pretty OP? Yes but by that time, you should be starting to get OP weapons.

It seems that it is impossible to make an infinite ammo clip that not disappear after battle ends. I thought about precious special infinite clips for some energy weapons.

Yeah, true. Tested that months ago (interchangeable "coils" for the Power Mace; thankfully secondary stun attack was introduced by the devs so the weapon functions as intended).

Also, i noticed that sniper/hunting rifle is useless too after your team improves their accuracy. Nobody actually need 200% CTH with ridiculously low damage and crazy TU costs. My team successfully uses cannons as sniper weapons instead, because that stuff beats sniper weapons in every aspect and still have 100+%CTH with aimed shots. Maybe some acid/concussive ammo with slight damage boost can solve that problem?

I just remembered my old apocalypse mod, where i changed only sniper weapon in game - the laser sniper. I set damage to 80, that is more than main alien weapon the devastator cannon have, increased TU costs and reduced clip size to 5. It became very useful sniper weapon, but useless at close range, because any charging enemy or a thrown grenade is able to cripple your sniper team. I really had a specialized troops that way)

This is exactly as intended. If you manage to keep your soldiers alive for long enough to attain 100+ Accuracy, you'll be sniping with heavy weapons. Also, Heavy Sniper Rifle ("Python") has 65 Concussive /  75 AP / 85 Acid, more than a match for anything short of Autocannon or launchers, at least as long as firearms are concerned (and good luck sniping with Autocannon...). Hunting rifles are lo-end weapons, and a new weapon of similar role but much stronger will appear in next version.

OpenXcom Extended exe is compiled! https://www.openxcom.com/mod/openxcom-extended I am going to draw a plasma mortar this weekend, and maybe a psi blaster too

Good news! Although I'm not considering moving the mod to Extended just yet... I hope these features will be implemented in the post-TFTD OXCom. I don't want to force extra hassle on the users or cause any splits in the community. Also... the amount of people who play this mod would probably fall by a factor of 10 if I moved, for the first time I have a mod which is played by more than a handful people and I want to enjoy it But naturally, my wishlist for Extended revolves around what could be used in Piratez in the future.

[Voiddweller]

This is exactly as intended. If you manage to keep your soldiers alive for long enough to attain 100+ Accuracy, you'll be sniping with heavy weapons.

Well, all this is relative. Sniper rifle ammo is scarce, while lasgun/heavy laser loot is common, and boarding gun is easier to research and produce. That makes SR useless. Hunting rifle/xbow also beats SR because of that, even though SR does a bit more dmg. So if you intend to keep SR one tier above starting weapons, it must have some slight advantage. Some more sniper ammo carried by enemy can help too.
Just an example: A trained girl can fire aimed shots from x-bow 2 times, doing~60 dmg on unarmored target, or even 3 times with snap shot, that will be ~90, while SR will fire only one time, dealing 50 dmg with plastosteel ammo, and 50 can't pierce much either.

[Dioxine]

With the X-Bow, you can't reliably fire at targets more than 20-25 tiles away, while the sniper rifle has unlimited range and guarantees a hit if your Accuracy is about 65+. Similarly, taking 2 aimed shots with X-Bow requires a highly trained soldier (96 TU!). While 50 damage isn't staggering, it can often pierce a Carapace Armor (50 frontal) and at least cause bleeding. Unarmored targets are no issue, they can even be engaged with basic firearms But indeed, the X-Bow seems to be a really good starting weapon - you really lack other cheap options for high damage early on. The balance is off here, I think I'll boost the enhanced Sniper Rifle ammo a bit (it only gets+5, the smallest gain of all Plastasteel munitions), and maybe nerf the X-Bow a bit (maybe too accurate, even if the range is limited). The sniper rifle, however, will never become a general-purpose weapon like the X-Bow. Another note: I'm into 2nd year of war and half of my main squad is still Accuracy 50-70, so they really need weapons like Sniper Rifles to keep pace with veterans.

[Voiddweller]

With the X-Bow, you can't reliably fire at targets more than 20-25 tiles away, while the sniper rifle has unlimited range and guarantees a hit if your Accuracy is about 65+. Similarly, taking 2 aimed shots with X-Bow requires a highly trained soldier (96 TU!).

Usually with targets that is 25+ tiles away you won't have a clean LOS, and some armors have a good TU boost. Ability to fire a snap shot can be critical as well. Anyway x-bow is more like training weapon.

While 50 damage isn't staggering, it can often pierce a Carapace Armor (50 frontal) and at least cause bleeding. Unarmored targets are no issue, they can even be engaged with basic firearms But indeed, the X-Bow seems to be a really good starting weapon - you really lack other cheap options for high damage early on. The balance is off here, I think I'll boost the enhanced Sniper Rifle ammo a bit (it only gets+5, the smallest gain of all Plastasteel munitions), and maybe nerf the X-Bow a bit (maybe too accurate, even if the range is limited). The sniper rifle, however, will never become a general-purpose weapon like the X-Bow. Another note: I'm into 2nd year of war and half of my main squad is still Accuracy 50-70, so they really need weapons like Sniper Rifles to keep pace with veterans.

 Why trying to wound target with SR when you can kill it outright with Heavy Laser or Rail Driver? Well yeah, You need extreme training to use Rail Driver as sniper weapon, and it is not cheap to fire, but 95 dmg beats all. And why not add an acid ammo for sniper and increase overall carried ammo by enemy? To actually become a general purpose weapon, SR needs autofire, but honestly, melee beats everything at close range because of str boost. Use spotters and smoke grenades, and you can hammer the shit out of anyone, without even thinking about using shotguns and pistols.