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

[Arthanor]

Another thing I should mention.. Ivan's code change works great for melee statstring, so I modified the statstring mod I use for Piratez. I thought I'd share it since maybe some others would like it. There's a screenshot of my gals below, with the statstrings.

By category, badges are:

Overall soldier quality badges:
A - Awesome soldier, good at everything. They're a bit like batman.
a - awesome soldier, good at everything too, but not quite as good. They're the robin to your batman.

B - Balanced soldier, can handle pretty much everything.
b - balanced soldier, doesn't particularly suck at anything.

D - Detritus. This soldier is a waste of money

Notes:
- A soldier can only get one of the above (obviously)
- Awesome soldiers only get special uppercase ability badges for really outstanding scores.
- "a" and "B" soldiers don't get lowercase ability badges, those are a given for being that good.

Specific ability badges:
F - Fighty soldier (of Feisty gal?), great melee accuracy
f - fighty soldier. Will hit.. most of the time?

M - Marksman (or markswoman!), great firing accuracy
m - marksman, not quite a sniper but can be trusted not to waste ammo

Q - Quick soldier. Moves faster than the eye can see. (lots of TUs)
q - quick, but not lightning quick

R - Reactive soldier. You won't surprise them.
r - good reactions. Unlikely to be caught flat-footed, unless you move them too much.

w - weakling. Can barely carry their own weight..

V - Voodoo witch
v - voodoo practitioner
+ - voodoo resistant
- - vulnerable to voodoo
x - designated voodoo target
X - voodoo lightning rod. A liability unless you planned for it.

Note2: Sometimes OpenXCom goes stupid and repeats some strings. Reloading the mod (go to the mod screen, deselect it, reselect it) seems to fix it. No idea why it happens.

[ivandogovich]

Looks really good, Arthanor.  I've been trying to figure out my scheme too.

[ivandogovich]

Just wondering... would it be possible to add a "zap" sound when a stun rod hits?  Better feedback for the player that they have or have not hit.

[pilot00]

Arthanor how does it exactly work? They get the designation automatically or as they level so to speak?
Also you can remove those manually if you want?

[Dioxine]

Cool statstrings! A note though: Quick soldiers are useless if their stamina is low, so there should be a conditional for this too (Q should require about 65 Stamina, while q - 55). As for voodoo, about 50 Power is a watermark I divine from my experience - these won't be MC'ed by anyone less than a Star God Operative and he has to be close, pretty much immune to all other psi enemies (well, can get panicked sometimes). Below 40 it's where the dangerous territory starts (susceptibility to Academy Esper attacks, and they're by far most abundant psi enemies).

@Ivan: Tried to fix the stunrod sound but it's not responding to ruleset commands, some hardcoded behaviour maybe? I probably should add a differently named item that is a cloned stunrod, and it would probably work, but such a change equals the loss of stunrods a player has bought already.

[ivandogovich]

Arthanor how does it exactly work? They get the designation automatically or as they level so to speak?
Also you can remove those manually if you want?

Statstrings reads the current stats of the soldier from the save file, iirc (actually, it probably reads from the soldier stats cached in memory).  It will definitely grow with the soldier.  You can remove entries from the ruleset and it won't report them, but you can't just click on the soldier name to remove it, etc.

[Arthanor]

@pilot & Ivan: Indeed, the strings reflect the actual current raw stats of the soldier. Note that they are stats before wearing armor, so sometimes it seems to be working wonky but isn't. I spent 20 minutes trying to debug a gal in runt armor being "erroneously" labelled a markswoman before realizing that she would deserve the badge if only I took the armor away...

@Dioxine: That's a pretty good point on stamina. The reason it was not a prerequisite is that other actions take TUs as well. Ex.: A quick soldier with low stamina can walk a bit and then take a few shots (even more relevant with walking up to a trader and punching him since that's a fixed cost), whereas a slow one can't. Requiring some stamina is a good idea though, I added (slightly smaller) requirements to the Q/q badges but not to the quality ones.

The previous "Voodoo" stats were just copied from my statstring for vanilla. I hadn't realized the stats were so different in Piratez. Thanks for the info I fixed that!

Re: stunrod
I had noticed the lack of a hit sound previously and it makes the stun rod a bit more annoying to use. I'd support making a clone that works as intended.

If you set the stun rod's "costBuy" to 0, you can prevent players from buying more of them. Meanwhile, you can replace it with your own new "Zapping Rod" in the market and on enemies. That should phase out stun rods without making those bought from previous versions obsolete since the resources still exist. It's just unavailable anywhere.

[Dioxine]

So just to make things clear, maybe I'll write down the stat ranges here. (min/max/cap)
TUs: 60/80/100
Stamina: 30/80/140
Health: 30/50/80
Bravery: 10/80/100
Reactions: 40/70/100
Firing: 40/70/120
Throwing: 40/90/130
Strength: 10/50/80
Melee: 50/100/140
VooDoo Power: 25/60
VooDoo Skill: cap at 50

So maybe we should tweak the big A to Reactions 60+ (not hiring anyone with lower Reactions once I have the money), but lower Firing prerequisite to 65+? 70 is the very peak and it happens very rarely Conversely, I consider only melee 90+ to be awesome enough

I should make the new release soon, I need to experiment on that stun rod first though. As a teaser, Roxis231 messed around with some armors (big thanks!) and below is the result (each gal will wear a bit different Pirate outfit, later there will be more personalized outfits)

[Arthanor]

Oh wow! Those stats are rather different from vanilla. I was going to play along and tweak it, but since I shared something, I should have looked. Thanks for putting the stats in such an easy format.

I am thinking of making these changes to better reflect the starting ranges from Piratez:

• Move the capital letters to just under the starting cap. The intent is to highlight remarkable stats, which they aren't if it's not even that unlikely for a swabbie to have them.
• "A" soldiers would require tu: 75, firing: 65, melee: 90, reactions: 65, which would is pretty much a capital letter in everything. It seems somewhat high but that is still within the starting range for all stats (but you'd need to be really lucky to get one straight from hiring). Good all-rounders can get there by practicing everything, others should just specialize and capitalize on their strength. The goal is not to get a full crew of "A"s but to highlight the special forces.
• Lowercase letters move to about the higher third of starting stats: they highlight a good stat.
• "A" graders also have a special case for ability capital letters, which moved to take into account the max starting caps and absolute caps.

Overall, it reflects most of what you said:

• Reactions 65+ for "A" and "R". Bit higher than what you said, but that's the outstanding stat. "a" and "r" will drop to 60 which is what you consider good for keeping after hire (under that and it would not be worth highlighting).
• Melee 90+ for both "A" and "F", "a" and "f" moved to 80. I hadn't realized that starting melee was so high.
• Firing requisite for "A" dropped to 65 but "M" stayed at 70 as it is for those few pirates that are great at shooting. I play with 2 of my 4 best shooters on the roof (the ones with the lowest reaction), and 2 others (with the highest reaction) walking up with my front liners to cover them. The roof ones have a boarding gun and explosive weapons, the walking ones have good snap shot weapons and harpoon guns. Keep them shooting, they hit most of the time and 70 is certainly within reach.

[eatthepath]

@pilot & Ivan: Indeed, the strings reflect the actual current raw stats of the soldier. Note that they are stats before wearing armor, so sometimes it seems to be working wonky but isn't. I spent 20 minutes trying to debug a gal in runt armor being "erroneously" labelled a markswoman before realizing that she would deserve the badge if only I took the armor away...

I downloaded and enabled the mod from this post on a current save, and I got this...



Something seems a bit off here...

Edit: ack, too used to forums with auto-resize

Edit 2: Oh, reading comprehension. This probably needs a newer nightly than 04-12

[ivandogovich]

I downloaded and enabled the mod from this post on a current save, and I got this...

Something seems a bit off here...

You will also need the custom executable that exposed the melee attribute, or you should comment those values out of Arthanor's ruleset.  I don't know if Warboy will pull that feature into the nightly or not.  I've mentioned it to him a couple times, but he doesn't seem keen on it.

Here is the link for the custom .exe that Meridian mastered for me. https://www.dropbox.com/s/8qyoj1lgk2hump6/openxcom_git_master_2015_04_30_0720-ivan-melee.zip?dl=0

This will work with any build mod or even vanilla nightly OpenXcom that are compatible with the 4/30 nightly.

Cheers, Ivan

[eatthepath]

That's a lot better. Thanks.

[eatthepath]

Okay. I don't know for sure, since I don't know how the landing sites are generated, but this one seems a bit... off.



Need to take the rum away from the pilots maybe.

Edit: Yeah, I can walk off the ramp, but not back into the ship. Guess this is an all-or-nothing mission.

[Arthanor]

I hope you get good use out of it. I'll get a new version up in a few days at most. I was busy tonight fighting off Pest Control (?!?) and getting maimed trying to save some poor mutants. Caught a guild rep though Now.. do I ransom her (enough for a brainer!) or question her... Damn!

The mod indeed only works if you have the melee executable. I sort of forgot to mention that. Otherwise, you will get most things doubled since the melee checks are voided. Because I don't want lowercase ability badges to show up for "B" or better pirates, (or uppercase for "A" ones), it needs to check for melee for pretty much everything.

@eatthepath: that's pretty funny! Throw an explosive down the ramp? Seems like a map block that was erroneously labelled as a landing site.

@Dioxine: When I first landed on the pogrom (which work fine now! Thanks for the fix , the game crashed to desktop. It was the train track map the 2nd time I generated (I'm not 100% sure if terrains are random for a given pogrom), in "Doom Harbor" or something, East Coast of the US.

[Dioxine]

Hehehe, some of these maps are a bit... iffy. But you have Hobbes to thank for bug-squashing, all these cool terrain are his (although I think Solar did most basic work on the Railyard, and I also have Civilian's extra farms).

As for the Crate Problem - Hobbes never intended this terrain for a normal Terror, so I guess it's my fault. BUT! To get back to the ship, simply squash these crates (barrels?) that ended up underneath the stairs, or rather, underneath Bonaventura's tiles that are next to the ramp. If HE Pack is too risky... well don't tell me you don't have any hammers or chainsaws?

Terrains are random but if you have savescumming: off, the same terrain will be generated each time you retry a Pogrom (or any mission for that matter). However, they're not tied to cities, any of about 10 possible terrains can spawn in any city.