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Author Topic: [TOTAL CONVERSION] The Piratez Mod - 0.9.j - 9 May - Holiday Edition  (Read 750096 times)

Offline guille1434

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Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] The Piratez Mod - 0.86 - 3 Oct - DEEP ONES
« Reply #570 on: October 06, 2014, 07:01:10 pm »
I forgot... Here I attach the crfts only section of the ruleset including the deployment strings. To implement the craft in the game, it is also necessary to add the Reserach, manufacture, and ufopaedia sections (which I have made, and would gladly upload if someone asks).
Also, a screenshot of the Ufopedia entry for this craft. Dioxine is also crdited for this fine image.

Offline Dioxine

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Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] The Piratez Mod - 0.86 - 3 Oct - DEEP ONES
« Reply #571 on: October 06, 2014, 09:29:44 pm »
I take no credit for the image, the mod readme makes it clear that none of the background images is of my production.

Offline guille1434

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Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] The Piratez Mod - 0.86 - 3 Oct - DEEP ONES
« Reply #572 on: October 06, 2014, 09:59:36 pm »
Well, at least you cared to choose a good image of a craft wich resembles what the player sees in the battlescape map or, may be you designed the craft map after finding the "right looking" background image for the Ufopedia! 8)

Offline Dioxine

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Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] The Piratez Mod - 0.86 - 3 Oct - DEEP ONES
« Reply #573 on: October 07, 2014, 03:33:37 am »
I happen to have huge libraries of good SF art, but thanks none the less. Actually the hardest part is the graphic conversion :)

As for your craft, I'd advise resizing the text window, make the text box wider but shorter, so the long text won't obscure ship's cockpit - it'd look much better that way.

Oh yeah and with 2 weapons and 1200 damage cap, it can take any UFO single-handedly, so the text is a bit misleading - with 2500 speed it won't be a top interceptor, but this is enough to catch most UFO's, and when it does... :)
« Last Edit: October 07, 2014, 03:35:45 am by Dioxine »

Offline guille1434

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Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] The Piratez Mod - 0.86 - 3 Oct - DEEP ONES
« Reply #574 on: October 07, 2014, 09:04:53 pm »
Oh, yes! Your opinions are right on target... I already changed the text position over the image, because right after uploading the image you saw, I noticed that it was obscuring too much of the craft excellent image, and that was a pity. So, here is the new version...

You are right about this craft being a little over-armed... So, it now has only one weapon hardpoint. The idea for this is to have some self-defense capability, and that is the reason for the high damage (meaning = Heavy armor/protective systems) value. It would be wonderful that the weapon type feature present in Oxc Extended be added to the "officail" .exe, so I would model this craft to be able to only carry short range missiles and/or small cannon pods.

About its speed: I felt that it had to be faster than the Ironfist (1900 speed) and its max speed be lower than that of the big ufos (Transport = 2560, Terror = 4800, Battleship = 5000), so it would not be able to catch those if they run at max speed. It would be only able to catch smaller ones (and I think the big scout is capable of 2700 knots), and those big ones if they slow down (and then, I would rather wait for them to land). Also its acceleration is low (but I think I would make it lower, say 3, instead of 5).

Thanks for the very correct opinions/feedback! 8)

Offline Dioxine

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Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] The Piratez Mod - 0.86 - 3 Oct - DEEP ONES
« Reply #575 on: October 07, 2014, 09:46:50 pm »
UFOs rarely fly at max speed, so interceptions at these speeds  are perfectly possible... although to defend a large area you indeed need faster craft :) Also, afaik, Acceleration stat is completely irrelevant, basically an empty number; it certainly doesn't govern acceleration (all craft accelerate/decelerate instantly) nor the launch time (about 5 minutes in all cases).

Offline guille1434

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Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] The Piratez Mod - 0.86 - 3 Oct - DEEP ONES
« Reply #576 on: October 07, 2014, 10:28:19 pm »
Too bad about the acceleration stat uselessness...
About ufo speed: After I discover some Alien bases, the regular transport ufos which go to deliver stuff for base replenishment are always running at full speed, the same for the Battleships which are going to attack a X-Com base, so you cannot intercept them... That, at least gives that craft less value as an interceptor, at least to try to fight against the big alien ships...

Offline Dioxine

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Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] The Piratez Mod - 0.86 - 3 Oct - DEEP ONES
« Reply #577 on: October 08, 2014, 08:41:16 am »
Oh yeah there are things it can't do, you're absolutely right, it cannot ever replace fast interceptors. I was just pointing out that you shouldn't underestimate the power of a ship with 2 weapons and a ton of HP when intercepting your everyday UFOs, especially those who fly close to your base :)

Offline cjones

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Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] The Piratez Mod - 0.86 - 3 Oct - DEEP ONES
« Reply #578 on: October 08, 2014, 03:59:40 pm »
************SPOILER WARNING***************************



Hello,  running thru .86 (superhuman, wow, the carnage!) and noticed something odd with HWP.

Firstly, I just got tank/battlecannons and It kinda feels like PSI (which I have turned to line of sight only on this run to try and avoid tempation to spam it, lol). It seems a bit gamebreaky.  Of course I imagine it will be less effective against star gods and maybe the church, but I am steamrolling academy, raiders and traders with just my HWPs machine guns.  Of course , more I think about it, it makes sense in some ways, not a big deal to be able to steamroll lesser mobs once you"level up", especially since lesser mobs don't really give you much more than money and points.

But the real reason i wanted to post was a strange thing I noticed with the tank/battlecannon.  if you leave it TUs it does a reaction on enemy turn.  At first I thought it was when I left all its TUs, but just noticed on my last play that I left one take 26 TUs and it still reacted.  And when it reacts, it uses its main cannon!  I have seen a tank I have left with 100 TUs do 3 reaction cannon shots.  Of course this action usually takes I think 56 TUs, so on player turn it is impossible to shoot more than once per turn.  But the cannon takes 3 shots per reaction turn!  I think maybe this is because its AI is thinking its machine gun takes 17 TU, so it "uses" machine gun TU amounts but fires main cannon?

Also, I have been getting hammered by base assault missions.  And its be a race I never faced in .85 and omg they are kicking my butt. I wont go into detail about them in case it spoils for anyone, but they wear black armor.  I can take em by jumping in and out of the little side rooms with dynamite, but it takes FOREVER, like 100+turns.  I take out the 1x1 units in about 20 turns, but I end up tank hunting for 50+ turns, and they are bringing like 5 tanks.  In process of blowing stuff up to keep base, I end up destroying my equipment (prob my fault, I have explosions set to 3) and even losing facilities).  I fought over an hour to defend a base, was down to my last girl and when I got back to geoscape, my lab was destroyed! blasterbomb got it on round 50 or something.   my first thought was, man, thats gonna set me back until it gets rebuilt, then I realized, omg, this is Piratez!  I cant rebuild it!

Im sorry, im weak, I dont save abuse, reload constantly, but I just couldnt let my 16+ hour save game go and restart.  So I have to admit, I edited the ruleset (temporarily!  I put it back to normal after!) to allow me to rebuild my lab.

I got no prob with the increased difficulty level, but i dunno about lab being destroyable.  Its kinda a gotcha way to lose your game.  that being said, I did notice a string in the ruleset about requiring lab unlock to build?  I think i had to delete it to build the lab.  I don't recall ever being able to build more labs in older piratez versions, is that added now or did i miss before?

Thanks for the great mod, oh and I attached my save and config if that helps with the odd HWP issue.

Offline cjones

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Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] The Piratez Mod - 0.86 - 3 Oct - DEEP ONES
« Reply #579 on: October 08, 2014, 05:58:22 pm »
Hehe, church just assaulted my base, punished my tanks hard.  Luckily I made sure not to blow up the wrecked ones!

What an awesome mod!

Offline cjones

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Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] The Piratez Mod - 0.86 - 3 Oct - DEEP ONES
« Reply #580 on: October 09, 2014, 12:26:02 am »
Wow, forget what I said about tanks, its almost as if the AI adapted to my strategy, now I am facing heavier weapons that are toasting my tanks! 

Offline Dioxine

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Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] The Piratez Mod - 0.86 - 3 Oct - DEEP ONES
« Reply #581 on: October 09, 2014, 04:30:05 am »
Well, tanks are indeed very powerful and basically impervious to firearms and most explosives.... However, they cannot stand up to plasma weapons, and with the machinegun, they've also received susceptibility to laser, so even a lasgun has a chance to damage them, especially from the side. I realize that they're steamrolling weak opponents, but then again, the player worked hard to obtain these tanks...

About the psi, it worked perfectly fine with range limiter, but the devs despite promising me to enable that option, couldn't do that properly and disabled it back. So the Psi will stay OP until I move to the OpenXCom Extended .exe, which now is just a question of time (it allows to make PSI exactly as I wanted it, and offers a ton of new options for a modder anyway, like up to 4 weapons per craft or moddable nightvision ranges); I plan work on the main branch up to Piratez 0.9 and leave it at that, so everyone can enjoy a full "demo" version of Piratez without the need to DL the OXCom Extended, but the updates will only be the coming for the Extended branch from that point on.

So, firstly, I cannot make the tanks to retaliate with the machinegun. Units can only retaliate with the Snap Shot, and I don't want the machinegun to be able to fire single rounds because that'd just look weird (also it's already only using like 25% TUs for Autofire). I could, however, disable the Snap shot of the main cannon (and reduce TU for Aimed shot so you'd still be able to fire thrice in your round), if you feel that reaction fire makes the tanks even more OP. Oh yeah and it seems you've been only using 80% TU Aimed shot on the main cannon, you can use it in the Snap mode too, you know (and with 33% TU, it allows 3 shots per round) ;) Naturally if you think 3 shots per round are too much as well, we can think about modyfying that too...

Secondly - dw about the lab. It was meant to be unbuildable, that line you saw is a requirement for a non-existing tech. However, I do realize the fact that losing the lab costs you a game; and I can't mod it to be indestructible. I wasn't paying much attention to this, since I've never been shot at with a Blaster and equalled losing the lab with losing the main base, which would be a KO blow anyway... HOWEVER. This is indeed wrong, and there has been something planned from a long time, just not implemented yet: Alchemy Workshop - an alternate poor man's lab, that'd would house only 1 Brainer, unlockable after some research. This would allow you to increase your scientific potential but would require a LOT of space and, what comes with it, money. Therefore in the future versions, after this tech has been researched, the player won't lose by losing the Lab anymore, although it'd still be a severe blow.

About the assault missions I can't do anything, they're harcoded to happen very often after Month 10 of the first year has passed (normally up to 3 times in a month, although once I had to defend the base 4 times in a single month).

Using explosives to defend a base is "on your own risk" action. You're not only risking your buildings, note that you can also accidentally destroy weapons, ammo and other stuff stored at the base. There are other methods of tankhunting too, starting with Molotovs, ending with the usual can-opener, Portable Lascannon (and since latest versions, also MAG Missile for the Missile Launcher). Naturally plasma guns work too but it is hard to obtain them.

Finally I recommend Explosion Height 2, as it seems to give the most realistic blast propagation. When you set it to 3, each vertical tile counts the same as horizontal one for distance, and the tiles obviously have their width smaller than height.
« Last Edit: October 09, 2014, 04:52:46 am by Dioxine »

Offline cjones

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Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] The Piratez Mod - 0.86 - 3 Oct - DEEP ONES
« Reply #582 on: October 09, 2014, 05:19:06 am »
Thanks for the feedback. I may dial that explosion down to 3.  As for tank hunting, yeah I am having a blast finding diff ways to anti tank.  Just discovered the CAWS has an awesome ap clip that destroys em.  I   am loving superhuman.  The mayhem is awesome!

I did notice something weird about the passenger freight UFO.  I noticed you can see you troops legs thru the north wall.  Even stranger you can hear ship footsteps when you hug that wall and walk by it.  I  am guessing the game thinks the tile is outside of the UFO?

And I wanted to add, I only point out these nitpicking things as an unofficial playtester.  Not mad at them or demanding they be fixed.  Just passing my observations along.

My only humble request is that when u branch to UFO extended that you create install instructions for fans like me that need help installing mods.  You did an excellent job with install Notes on this build.

Thanks for making me feel like my 13 yr old self again!

Offline Dioxine

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Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] The Piratez Mod - 0.86 - 3 Oct - DEEP ONES
« Reply #583 on: October 09, 2014, 05:40:26 am »
Thanks for such great feedback, it helps making this mod even better. I'm just a human and I can't make everything work perfectly without playtesters.

Yes heavy melee weapons like claws, hammers, even electro-swords or axes (if you have a fully-buffed Str 80 powergirl, especially with a str-boosting armor) work too, tanks have high resistance to melee but that resistance can't help them when enough brute force is applied :)

About the Hopper, the thing you're reporting is exactly what has been fixed in 0.86... or so I thought? The outer wall of the fixed Hopper should have a row of screens on the inside and should no longer cause the effect you've mentioned. Ohh, you've probably installed the map pack which still has the old map. Reinstall the MAPS folder from the 0.86 over again to get rid of this (and a couple of other) problem with enemy crafts.
« Last Edit: October 09, 2014, 05:42:27 am by Dioxine »

Offline cjones

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Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] The Piratez Mod - 0.86 - 3 Oct - DEEP ONES
« Reply #584 on: October 09, 2014, 05:43:11 am »
Ah got ya.  Will try that tomorrow. 

Yeah.  I just got a bunch a new recruits and all strength less than 20.  Sheesh.  Luck o the draw.