'Equal Terms' 1.0 Mod Discussion.

[KingMob4313]

I have to reiterate the bug report, line 764 of a freshly downloaded Equalterms_v1011.ru reads as:

Code: [Select]

    corpseItem: STR_CORP

dunno why that coudl be....

also, the proposed fix in grenades weight seems to not be there, we still have anyday grenades weight 2 instead of 3....or maybe I am mistaken?

Grenade item reads as:

Code: [Select]

  - type: STR_GRENADE
    weight: 2 # 3
    power: 75 # 50

or, lighter and more powerful than vanilla.

Same for the High Explosive

Code: [Select]

  - type: STR_HIGH_EXPLOSIVE
    weight: 4 # 6
    power: 150 # 110
    blastRadius: 4 # 0

lighter and more powerful...unsure about blastradius.

I'll investigate the armor issue. I may have just had a 'intellisense' issue with it not completing what I was typing.

Yeah, the grenades should be 2 weight and the canister grenades 3 weight.  Also the high explosive is more powerful but has a slightly smaller blast radius. In the 2.0, it's even smaller.

[KingMob4313]

The Gunpowder version of the Equal Terms 2.0 mod: Wolfram Lance is just in testing now.

I am just finishing up work on the handobs for Coherency, I then have some issues with getting the research data to display then it will be on to testing.

I have most of the code done for Fourth State, but no graphics done yet.

Retaliation may need to wait to be a DLC (so to speak) for version 2.0.

I really want to incorporate Aldorn's ufopedia mod into 2.0 so that may delay things.

[KingMob4313]

The Gunpowder version of the Equal Terms 2.0 mod: Wolfram Lance is done, got most of the listorder issues sorted so there will be more testing before it's ready.

Coherency just needs another set of armor and an alloy interceptor (both taken from other mods) to be complete.

Fourth State has a very complicated ruleset, but is almost done. I just need to start the graphics.

[KingMob4313]

Testing goes well with ET: Wolfram Lance. It's at version 1.95 right now.

Getting to research lasers now.

[KingMob4313]

Okay, both Wolfram and Coherency are at version 1.95 and ready for release.  I am only need to complete the bigobs for the Plasma LMG and then I'll work on the hand and floorobs and all the clips.  Still looking for a mid sept release.

[RSSwizard]

I was working on the design of my own XCom style spinoff game for years.

(this is a feature request, or at least consideration, inspired by this thread)

One of the main features It Had was a differentiation between Penetration and Damage for weapons. Also for Explosives it "added damage" on a direct hit to make impact explosions much more deadly, while still retaining a moderately effective or even weak area of effect.

Overpenetration is the realistic effect, where you can shoot a wall with a high powered rifle, and the bullet will blow through the wall (without destroying it) but still carry lethal wounding effects through it. Raise this up to advanced technology levels . . . Laser Cannons, Railguns, Particle Beams . . . and you have a shot that can keep on going for quite abit.
--- Yet at the same time its Penetration doesnt mean it has to do alot of Damage either. Using Xcom Scale stats a particle beam could do like 60 damage but penetrate armor and scenery like it was doing 120.

Likewise a Penetration scaler should be possible so that way you dont necessarily have to make certain Armor types make it cause more damage, to compensate for their poor effectiveness at stopping it.

The same thing should be available for Explosions too.
Hand Grenades derive most of their explosive power from the Shrapnel they spit out. But despite the shrapnel being exceptionally lethal it does not have much armor penetrating power (about as much as a pistol maybe) so it would have a Penetration scaler lower than 1.0. That means tossing Hand Grenades at stuff that has good Armor isnt going to do hardly anything to them, and they would cause less scenery damage too.


This also opens up all sorts of doors for Tier 0 mundane Ammunition which has Anti-Personnel effects, such as Hollowpoint bullets. That way you can make a pistol do 35 damage straight up but it doesnt penetrate good against Armor. But yet you can load up some Armor Piercing bullets and they'll do 30 without a penetration penalty.

Likewise you could have Sabot penetrator rounds which do 15 damage but penetrate like they were a rifle shot.

Most of this inspiration came from the ammo dynamics in the Fallout 1 and 2 games which were fairly realisitc on their own (though I wont give it much credit, because their rules/balance for it had bugs and they never fixed it).

A Black Ops world defense agency is going to maximize their chances in the face of alien threats (and before its mentioned, Depleted Uranium is not only dense, its also Polyphoric which means it catches fire and explodes on impact too, though perhaps not enough to create a blast radius - so it does +damage and +penetration both at the same time).

[KingMob4313]

I was working on the design of my own XCom style spinoff game for years.

(this is a feature request, or at least consideration, inspired by this thread)

One of the main features It Had was a differentiation between Penetration and Damage for weapons. Also for Explosives it "added damage" on a direct hit to make impact explosions much more deadly, while still retaining a moderately effective or even weak area of effect.

Overpenetration is the realistic effect, where you can shoot a wall with a high powered rifle, and the bullet will blow through the wall (without destroying it) but still carry lethal wounding effects through it. Raise this up to advanced technology levels . . . Laser Cannons, Railguns, Particle Beams . . . and you have a shot that can keep on going for quite abit.
--- Yet at the same time its Penetration doesnt mean it has to do alot of Damage either. Using Xcom Scale stats a particle beam could do like 60 damage but penetrate armor and scenery like it was doing 120.

Likewise a Penetration scaler should be possible so that way you dont necessarily have to make certain Armor types make it cause more damage, to compensate for their poor effectiveness at stopping it.

The same thing should be available for Explosions too.
Hand Grenades derive most of their explosive power from the Shrapnel they spit out. But despite the shrapnel being exceptionally lethal it does not have much armor penetrating power (about as much as a pistol maybe) so it would have a Penetration scaler lower than 1.0. That means tossing Hand Grenades at stuff that has good Armor isnt going to do hardly anything to them, and they would cause less scenery damage too.


This also opens up all sorts of doors for Tier 0 mundane Ammunition which has Anti-Personnel effects, such as Hollowpoint bullets. That way you can make a pistol do 35 damage straight up but it doesnt penetrate good against Armor. But yet you can load up some Armor Piercing bullets and they'll do 30 without a penetration penalty.

Likewise you could have Sabot penetrator rounds which do 15 damage but penetrate like they were a rifle shot.

Most of this inspiration came from the ammo dynamics in the Fallout 1 and 2 games which were fairly realisitc on their own (though I wont give it much credit, because their rules/balance for it had bugs and they never fixed it).

A Black Ops world defense agency is going to maximize their chances in the face of alien threats (and before its mentioned, Depleted Uranium is not only dense, its also Polyphoric which means it catches fire and explodes on impact too, though perhaps not enough to create a blast radius - so it does +damage and +penetration both at the same time).

I love all of those ideas, as I was considering adding code for recoil (abandoned) and penetratiom as well, but both would require quite the codebase change. But I was beginning work on it regardless.

May have to be a 2.5 version.

[RSSwizard]

I love all of those ideas, as I was considering adding code for recoil (abandoned) and penetratiom as well, but both would require quite the codebase change. But I was beginning work on it regardless.

May have to be a 2.5 version.

The Penetration scaler wouldnt require a major code change, unless the coding is really bizarre already compared to what im thinking it is.

When you go to do the Damage vs. Armor check, . . . check to see if the ammo has a Penetration Scaler (IF/Then). If so apply the inverse of it as a multiplier to Armor Value before testing vs Damage (1/Scaler, and also check to see if the value is something ludicrous to avoid divide by zero, anything lower than 0.01 and it doesnt bother). You dont need to run another function, this could be tucked neatly into the existing one.

Thus if something had a 0.5 scaler (crappy penetration) your code would apply a 1/0.5 = 2x multiplier on the Armor Value before the damage is tested against it.

So it doesnt touch the Damage Scaling side of the equation (eg, damage types and so forth).


As for the Mod itself . . . some modern weapon considerations . . .
(I know alot about guns)
* Replaces Standard Pistol . . . Glock 20 Longslide in 10mm Auto (hits like a .357 magnum). The caliber .40s&w and .357sig were patterned after the 10mm auto because the pu$sies at the FBI complained about the recoil, so they gave them a weaker dumbed down 10mm (the .40s&w). But Spec Ops would not care.
https://andrewmoreland.com/Toyota/pics/lodge/Glock_20L_and_29.jpg
15 rounds @ 30 damage.

* Replaces Standard Rifle . . . Kel-Tec RFB bullpup rifle in .308 caliber - easy to use and accurate but no auto fire. Yes folks that standard size rifle there is a .308.
https://www.onpointsupply.com/images/keltec_rfb_fde_2.jpg
20 rounds @ 36 damage.

* Replaces Auto-Cannon . . . SRM-1216 shotgun (yes its real, not just a COD weapon)
https://files.tactical-life.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/srm-1216.jpg
16 rounds @ 40-45 damage range. (armor piercing slugs, and explosive rounds)
With Auto Fire, because anyone using it would be trigger happy.
(should have a 20 square falloff for accuracy)

* Replaces Heavy Cannon . . . 6-Pak Grenade Launcher (40mm grenades).
6 shots @ 50 damage (or 60 for Hellhound grenades, which weigh 2 more pounds for the ammo pack, like a "Large rocket" version of ammo for the Cannon).

* Assault Rifle / SMG Role . . . AAC Honey Badger Compact (suppressed, subsonic rounds).
30 shots @ 30 damage.
easy and accurate burst fire, 2x3 weapon size but weight is 4.

* Sniper Rifle role . . . AR-15 Rifle with .458 SOCOM upper. (this thing is beautiful)
https://www.gunsandammo.com/files/2012/01/458-SOCOM1.jpg
https://files.tactical-life.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/tomahawk-cqtc-458-socom-c.jpg
https://shwat.com/Portals/0/Images/BlogPics/Wilson/458/size-matters.jpg
9 rounds @ 40-45 damage range.

(as for long distance shooting, how many Xcom missions do you actually need 1000 yards of range? Accuracy for a "sniper rifle" in Xcom should be about Handling and Secure Target Acquisition rather than long distance fire. As for damage those .458s are practically as big and heavy as a .50bmg, its like getting hit with a shotgun slug but with much better range - this thing can reach out reliably to 300 or 400 yards)

(alternatively there is a new version of the Dragunov SVD which is chambered in 9.3x64mm, and it would fit the bill nicely)

[Dioxine]

The scaler is one idea, but it can be also done by "Penetration" value added to all ammo (default 0), which tells the game how many armor points to ignore. I think it's even better than a scaler, because won't lead to situations where a high-powered rifle with a good scaler busts through the frontal armor of a MBT.

OTOH, if a pistol would have a crappy multiplier, it'd never have a chance to penetrate even medium body armor - which is only half true, as people in such armor still can be killed and wounded even by humble 9mm para, if it hits an unarmored part of the body, or hits the armor at its seam.

The penetration != damage concept is really a basic and important one, and it would on the most basic level, at least allow to differentiate between pistols, rifles and shotguns, but I don't expect it appearing in this game anytime soon. Anyway thumbs up for the idea!

Oh yeah, RSSWizard, no offence meant but why should the author of the mod chose your gun waifus over more common/generic models that'd appeal to everyone?

[KingMob4313]

The scaler is one idea, but it can be also done by "Penetration" value added to all ammo (default 0), which tells the game how many armor points to ignore. I think it's even better than a scaler, because won't lead to situations where a high-powered rifle with a good scaler busts through the frontal armor of a MBT.

Oh, weird. I didn't know there was a penetration value in the game already.

If not, this was what I was already playing with in my code.  A straight number that removes armor before calculating damage and if it goes under zero (0), it doesn't add to damage.

OTOH, if a pistol would have a crappy multiplier, it'd never have a chance to penetrate even medium body armor - which is only half true, as people in such armor still can be killed and wounded even by humble 9mm para, if it hits an unarmored part of the body, or hits the armor at its seam.

The penetration != damage concept is really a basic and important one, and it would on the most basic level, at least allow to differentiate between pistols, rifles and shotguns, but I don't expect it appearing in this game anytime soon. Anyway thumbs up for the idea!

Oh yeah, RSSWizard, no offence meant but why should the author of the mod chose your gun waifus over more common/generic models that'd appeal to everyone?

I'm pretty sure I can get the penetratiion into my build without much trouble.

[Arpia]

...we seriously have a penetration flag now?!? ...really?? i so want this.

...no seriously, for real and legit? ._.

[KingMob4313]

...we seriously have a penetration flag now?!? ...really?? i so want this.

...no seriously, for real and legit? ._.

I read it as that too.

Pretty sure there is no penetration flag..

[Arpia]

*sigh...* suchatease

[Dioxine]

No I meant the flag could be *added*. Sorry for my clunky English and that misunderstanding

[KingMob4313]

No I meant the flag could be *added*. Sorry for my clunky English and that misunderstanding

It was clear enough, I just read too fast.

Working on adding it to the code right now.