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

[new_civilian]

*adds more praise* Have to say one thing: I especially like your creative and unconventional ideas. Really good work! 

[cjones]

@Dioxine,

As for craft deployment, I think it would be kinda cool if my pirates started closer to the cutout in the bottom of ship and maybe some spawned up on 2nd level.  That massive door is such a reaction fire magnet, plus it is kinda cool to think of the bonaventure landing and pirates spilling out bottom and over top to assualt enemy. 

Also, in my latest playthru I noticed smoke seems to effect pirates more? as for stun damage,

Also, all my pirates are facing the wall when battlescape opens?

THanks! sorry for short post, oven going off!

[Edrick]

Installed OpenXcom instead of downloading it directly, and followed Dioxine's instructions thorougly. Good thing, not getting anymore earth-filled crafts. Bad things, all other problems persist AND I'm getting a consistent crash when finishing a battle. Exactly like the Large facilities one: it simply freezes, with no warning code whatsoever.

Okay, aside from that, three requests: one, being able to buy some kind of armor through the shop, aside from the Tac Vest (because in the very early game, I can only equip Pirate, Warrior, Runt or Tac armours, all of them either not offering any protection bonus or slowing mah crew). I don't know, some kind of slightly-watered down, $100.000-priced Defender armor. Second request, getting the Auto 9 AKA Robocop's über pistol. Just for the lulz. And blowing people open. Third, getting a nuclear fuel molotov, ideal to bring hell on earth without having to resort to rockets and all that stuff. And for the lights on night missions.

[Dioxine]

@Edrick
Sorry to hear that. I'm out of ideas since I haven't experieced such a crash, like, ever. Missing assets cause the game to bomb out to the desktop, so it's not that.

As for ideas :
- there will be some heavier armor or two in the shop, yeah (one kevlar suit, one EVA-kinda-thingy), plus, Basic Armor is just a few days of research away if you want to have it
- a big pistol of some sort, possibly that one, might appear eventually but that's not on priority list
- good idea with the super-firebomb, added to the list, although I've finally come to realization that the whole fear-of-the-dark thing isn't playing that well in Piratez (even if I love it in vanilla), hence I will eventually (post 1.0) move to some custom .exe file where armors with night vision will be possible (as well as enemies lacking it).

@cjones
Hmm interesting thoughts about the deployment, although I personally use the big door a lot (that's why it has hiding spaces on both sides, for the opportunity fire to be less of a threat). Ideally there should be an option for manual deployment, but, well... It didn't make it to the main build. They're facing Northern wall because that's how default deployment works.

About the smoke, yeah, I've raised the default susceptibility to smoke to 200% to make the smoke a non-negligible enviro threat (it affects many enemies too, and was mentioned on the changelist, this list is there for a reason ). Still seems to work too weakly to be of much concern, maybe I'll raise it to 300%.

[VodkaBear]

Tried reinstall another time, now I opened large quarters without crash, and think there will be no crash at battle, have no idea what changed, comparing to previous times. Can it be Luke's UFO's?

[guille1434]

@guille1434

This crash is consistent with ship's layout, that much I can tell. There are 28 spaces on the lower floor, and you're getting a crash when trying to put 29th soldier... The thing is, on my machine, the 29th and next soldiers are getting deployed on the second floor without any problems, I've even tried 50 soldiers... I have no idea what could be causing the problem for you. Try using my AVENGER and LIGHTNIN tilesets provided in the TERRAIN_FIX directory?
As for the ruleset deployment, it is a very unruly beast. You don't *need* it since it's just an override: normally the game simply deploys units on xcom craft floor tiles, starting with the NW corner of the lowest floor. When there is no more space in the nortmost row, it starts deploy in the next row. If there is no space left on the lowest floor, it goes (or should I say, it SHOULD go) to the next floor.
You can try overriding this with ruleset to see what happens. Just remember that 1st, 5th, 9th (and so on, as many iterations as you have tanks) soldiers need to be deployed in a NW corner of a 4x4 floor space else the game will go haywire when trying to deploy 2x2 units.

Oh yeah and here's question for cjones and other people: do you want custom deployment in Bonaventura instead of how currently the soldiers are just haphazardly thrown there (which sometimes makes planning hard)? And if, what the deployment should look like, who should be facing where? The 2nd floor is also useable, and the Bonaventura could fit even 24 or so soldiers, the 18 cap is there for balance reasons.

Dioxine:
  Thanks for the answer to my request... I made more tests and found that it is not relevant how many HWP you load in the ship, the 15th soldier cause the game to crash, with 3, 2, 1 or none HWP loaded with them in the ship... If you load only fourteen soldiers, everything is OK no matter hoe many HWP go with them (I tested with uo to three of them). Copying to my game folder the files present in the Piratez mod "TERRAIN_FIX" subfolder made no difference (and possibly garbled the map for the Ironfist assault craft present in the FMP mod, but this I have to test, to make clear if this was really the cause for this new problem).
Any more ideas? And if i try the ruleset deplyment way... where can I find references about how the numbers in the deployment work?

Thanks for the help!

[Dioxine]

Hmm... are you using any ruleset Deployment for the Brig? Skyranger has 14-men deployment, sooo... are you sure there is no Skyranger lurking somewhere in your ruleset?

Also how does it work? The order is sequential (first soldier is first in the list etc) and the numbers are, in the order of appearance, x, y, z coordinates, and facing (0-NW, as per default, then clockwise, up to 7 - straight north)

Ironfist shouldn't become garbled, as Solarius is using the same tilesets as I do (99% certainty)

[guille1434]

Well, I am positive that I am not using any deployment numbers in the ruleset, I attach here the parts of my ruleset that are related to the ship (I only changed its name to "Marauder" and modified some stats, but that's all).

About the deployment coordinates system, now I am starting to form some idea about how its works... Two questions:

1) In the Brig assault craft map, what would be the coordinates for the first soldier, counting from the northwesternmost available position?
2) And how is the program told that the HWP are ALWAYS stored in the lower rearmost cargo hold? They never appear in the lower forward hold (the one with the four place elevator)... Is this because in such cargo hold there are no four places blocks defined by such coordinates?

Thanks for your time and help!

[VodkaBear]

What different symbols for slaves manufacture means?(three numbers like 0/1/0) and ($, S, s+, etc). Bows still have strength modifier or not? How actually dmg for str mod calculates, (roll plain 25*0-200% + str, or (str+25)*0-200%? Where difference between cutting and conclusive(hammers) damage at melee, almost all enemies seems have no modifiers for this types of damage or they just work different ways(ignoring armor?)

[Dioxine]

1) In the Brig assault craft map, what would be the coordinates for the first soldier, counting from the northwesternmost available position?
2) And how is the program told that the HWP are ALWAYS stored in the lower rearmost cargo hold? They never appear in the lower forward hold (the one with the four place elevator)... Is this because in such cargo hold there are no four places blocks defined by such coordinates?

Thanks for your time and help!

argh, I've misplaced the map somewhere and I don't feel like setting up PCKview just to check it. Use the debug mode, it shows the coordinates of where you click. I'm not sure what do you mean with the HWPs, they follow the same default pattern of deployment, starting with NW, then going E, if not possible, S.

@VodkaBear
- Slaves - it simply says what kind of a slave you get, you can check what has become of the prisoner on the base Vaults.
- Bow - it does no longer use Str (there is NO false info in the Pedia), and the formula is 0-200% of final damage (which is Power + soldier's Strength).
- No, neither damage type does ignore armor, and many enemies have resistances to one or the other (even if the most common types don't). Ex. Mercs have high Concussive resistance, while tanks & flying enemies, and a host of melee-oriented enemies have Cutting resistance. Also, Concussive deals 50-150% damage instead of 0-200%. Or at least it is supposed to. The only damage types that ignore armor are Fire and Smoke.

[XOps]

Hey Dioxine. Do you mind if I plunder... er borrow your expanded Living Quarters and expanded Stores for my mod? I know I probably don't need to ask, but I have never liked stealing other's mods unless I ask first. In this case I have a whole bunch of new facilities with custom maps slated for my next release and it would be easier just to integrate your living quarters and stores into the mod as a whole rather than releasing a compatibility patch. Well that and I don't think I could a better job than what you have made already.

Also thanks again for the melee fix. I was really hung up on that until your suggestion about the unlimited ammo.

[Dioxine]

Yeah don't remind me of that, I had to go through a long talk with the devs about why melee doesn't work (that obnoxious modder again! ), got no answer and discovered this by myself.

About the resources, like Jarmush said after someone he stole this sentence from, taleneted men copy, geniuses steal. So don't feel ashamed, I've already stolen your X-3 fighter anyways so it's only fair (just include me in the credits). I've only given it a more "evil" look and fixed the shadow, and tried to somewhat mask the fact you've made half a fighter then mirror-cloned it, take a look below Likewise, if you want to improve these maps of mine, don't let me stop you (there is also another map, "outpost", only published in Piratez - basically a 10 men small barracks+small store, meant for small radar bases).

I'm also planning on stealing your three-eyed evil armor, the sprite is just too cool to not steal it - although I'll have to draw a new inventory picture for it, recolored TFTD armor just won't do

[XOps]

Thanks. Yeah I saw that my X3 sprite was stolen and repainted. Darn pirates! Pirating my sprites!  You are more than welcome to my any part of my mod of course. I just have a habit of asking. Occasionally mod communities get rather touchy about that.

[cjones]

Alrighty, hoping someone can help me on this.

So I finally tried superhuman on piratez.

Had a bad month, month previous.

On my current month, its last day of month.  I am in a terror site I have little to no hope winning. Chrysalids everywhere.

I abort terror mission, month ends and I crash to desktop, no error given.

I am assuming the event that creates the crash if project being terminated, game over.  Is this the "Game over" method of piratez?  Crash to desktop?  If not, does anyone know what my prob is?
 
I don't mind starting over, but I was curious about this.  My save and cfg file are attached, meanwhile imma start a new save, lol.

Thanks!

[guille1434]

Success!!

I finally managed to code a deployment list in the ruleset for the Brig assault craft (I give it the new name of "Marauder"). I included it in my personal mod, which is based on the FMP mod. The deployment gives positioning and facing for up to 38 troops including 4 HWPs (16 troops and 4 HWP in the lower deck, the rest in the front upper deck), all are arranged with "customized" facings in order to be able to exit the craft in a fast way. I topped the max troops carrying capacity to 32 (including 4 HWPs) but it can be currently expanded to the said 38 places, and I could add some deplyment strings for up to 54 troops I think...

If someone is interested in adding a big, heavy assault craft to his/her game, just ask and I will upload a mini-mod for adding the Brig (Aka "Marauder") super-heavy assault craft to any game with complete instructions about how to do it.

Credits to Dioxine who designed such a well thought craft!
Thanks also to him who gave me advise and help on how to do it!

About the garbled Ironfist map, I did not knew what the problem was, may be some mistake made by myself, but a re-install of the FMP v0.9.5 files on top of my Open Xcom directory ended that problem!