[Crafts][Weapons] XCom Armoury Expanded - v1.03

[Arthanor]

I suspected the armor thing but never investigated. I'll add it to the list.

Stupid research. I'm pretty sure I had other strings that worked.

Dogs do take a lot of space, but nothing in the living quarters. I think it makes sense since kennels would take a fair amount of space. More than the storage space for a tank easily, since tanks don't need to move much.

[BBHood217]

Some stuff:

- The Skyguardian still has an HWP capacity of 16.  Is it so that 1 soldier can take 15 attack dogs out for a walk?
- Can I still make a Hovertank/Plasma with the vanilla Plasma Beam (i.e., not using moriarty's Plasma Cannon mod)?
- Is the Dragon's Kiss ammo of the Reinforced Shotgun implemented (in a normal game I mean, not in New Battle)?  Because I cannot find it anywhere at all and it never showed up for research.

[Arthanor]

- The skyguardian is indeed intended to have the ability to support special units. You can take 15 dogs, or a mix of dogs, enforcers and scout drones on a mission should you wish to.

Honestly, the first ruleset I used for the skyguardian and skywarden had that as a feature (I guess whoever wrote it really liked HWPs) and I kept it. I could drop it to.. 4 maybe? If that seems more reasonable to you guys. I don't use HWPs much (although I am loving the dogs with motion sensors! If only I could make them work properly for release..) so it doesn't matter to me.

- There should be no issue making a Hovertank/Plasma without Moriarty's mod. It depends on the same research as the vanilla craft weapon and hovertank. (Note: You also need Hovertank research, which requires New Fighter Craft for the construction and Cyberdisc Autopsy for the automation).

- The Dragon's Kiss ammo is indeed impossible to research as the mod is currently written. It will be fixed in the next update. I probably should not have shared this mod yet, as I did not make it, use it or balance it.

Currently, I don't know how to integrate alloy firearms in the progression. It happens too fast, taking away the need for the starting weapons and alloy ammo. At that point, the aliens can't cope with stuff like an automatic shotgun either. They need armor, which they don't get until snakemen show up.

[Arthanor]

Alright, I've just finished working on integrating the armor repairs to the XAE fully. Just need to test it when I have time. On the stunned soldier armor duplication, there's nothing I can do. It is an artefact of the way it is done. I have made a report in the Troubleshooting section with a suggested fix. We'll see where this goes (but like the rest, it will only ever go in the Nightly).

I have started thinking about the 2 weapons tanks and I have come up with a 5 tiers, 3 roles system. Tiers represent the "tech level" of the weapon combination. The three roles are: close, mid and long range support (C, M and L, respectively). Here are the combinations I have:

Base
T0C: Cannon+Smoke (Handled like the grenade launcher)
T0L: Rocket+Cannon
T1C: Laser+Smoke
T1L: Gauss+Rocket

Alloy
T1C: Laser+Smoke
T1L: Gauss+Rocket
T1M: Gauss+Laser

T2C: ELaser+Smoke
T2L: DE Gauss+Rocket
T2M: DE Gauss+ELaser

Hover
T2C: ELaser+Smoke
T2L: DE Gauss+Rocket
T3C: Plasma+Smoke
T3L: Plasma+Rocket
T4:  Launcher+Plasma

[BBHood217]

I just had a chryssalid kill an armored attack dog.  And the dog turned into a zombie.  A human zombie, not a dog zombie.

I'm like, "wat".

[pkrcel]

ALL 1x1 units can be Zombified in "standard" openxcom, even non-biological ones (scout drones for example).


Openxcom extended project implemented a feature that allows for zombification to be prevented with an armor flag...we all hope this will be pulled in the main branch sooner or later....you know for that anti-chrissalid armor we want so badly 

[BBHood217]

Not all 1x1 units.  MC a chryssalid and have it kill an alien.  It dies and there's no zombie, so a way to prevent zombification is already implemented.

Although it's probably only a simple "enemies cannot become zombies" line or something.

[Arthanor]

Maybe the chryssalid made it into a werezombiedog? It's hard to tell with the pixelated graphics (although I bet it was wearing a jumpsuit)

I suspect you are right and zombification "only" works on all 1x1 XCom units. Sadly, there is nothing I can do about that. Would be interesting to try using a MC'd chryssalid to attack a soldier that has been MC'd by aliens. But that's unlikely to happen since snakemen are not psychic.

Ideally, one day we can define what kind of zombie is produced by a unit and we can have dog zombies (and the absence of a zombie unit could denote immunity), like how we can define what a unit turns into upon death for zombies and spitters.

[HelmetHair]

Zombie Dogs..Chrysanines?

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

On another note, how tough are your tanks going to be?

-HH

[Warboy1982]

you're clearly not using the nightlies.
that was fixed a while back

[Arthanor]

@HelmetHair: Technically, if you could pick the zombie unit that is created, it could be possible! There the graphic work for a zombie dog too though.

Regarding tanks:
Currently the stats (Front/Sides/Rear/Under) are:
Regular tanks: 90/75/60/60 (as per vanilla)
Alloy tanks: 130/110/90/90
Hovertanks: 130/130/130/100 (as per vanilla as well)

The alloy tank is a big improvement on the starting tank (maybe still too big?) for only an investment in alien alloys and a little bit of research, especially against the aliens rather weak starting weapons (pistols are useless, rifles not so good.. grenades are ok but rarely used). Of course, you have to manufacture it.

It's hard to balance for me since I prefer soldiers to tanks to begin with, so I don't use them much.. They correspond to tiers 1 to 3 of my intented tanks, missing the tier 3 ground tank (Elerium Engine + heavier plating) and tier 4 hovertank.

The dual weapon tanks I am working on currently will be the same hulls as the current alloy tank and hovertank. There will other rulesets (XAE Advanced Tanks and XAE Advanced 2W Tanks) with the T3 ground tank and T4 hovertank shortly after the release of XAE 2W Tanks (It should be a relatively quick matter of find and replace plus tweaking some numbers in the Tanks and 2W Tanks mods). That will probably be accompanied by a rework of the stats too (tanks are really inaccurate...)

@Warboy: I'm not sure what the commit you showed actually does. It looks to me like it takes respawns out of specabs (so you can have a unit which burns stuff when walking/explodes on death AND respawns?) but I can't see how to use that.

Unless it allows a certain respawn value to prevent zombie creation? Or to provide which units a dog would turn into when zombified while still allowing the dog to die normally when not zombified.

[Warboy1982]

ExplosionBState, line 270.

&& (victim->getGeoscapeSoldier() || victim->getUnitRules()->getRace() == "STR_CIVILIAN")

translation: only soldiers and civilians get zombified.

[Arthanor]

Ooh, I see! That makes sense. Dogs have incompatible genetics I guess.. Too bad for the werezombiedog idea. That's still pretty cool though. Thanks for the heads up!

[HelmetHair]

@HelmetHair: Technically, if you could pick the zombie unit that is created, it could be possible! There the graphic work for a zombie dog too though.

Regarding tanks:
Currently the stats (Front/Sides/Rear/Under) are:
Regular tanks: 90/75/60/60 (as per vanilla)
Alloy tanks: 130/110/90/90
Hovertanks: 130/130/130/100 (as per vanilla as well)

The alloy tank is a big improvement on the starting tank (maybe still too big?) for only an investment in alien alloys and a little bit of research, especially against the aliens rather weak starting weapons (pistols are useless, rifles not so good.. grenades are ok but rarely used). Of course, you have to manufacture it.

It's hard to balance for me since I prefer soldiers to tanks to begin with, so I don't use them much.. They correspond to tiers 1 to 3 of my intented tanks, missing the tier 3 ground tank (Elerium Engine + heavier plating) and tier 4 hovertank.

The dual weapon tanks I am working on currently will be the same hulls as the current alloy tank and hovertank. There will other rulesets (XAE Advanced Tanks and XAE Advanced 2W Tanks) with the T3 ground tank and T4 hovertank shortly after the release of XAE 2W Tanks (It should be a relatively quick matter of find and replace plus tweaking some numbers in the Tanks and 2W Tanks mods). That will probably be accompanied by a rework of the stats too (tanks are really inaccurate...)

Just remember that it is a machine that is specifically designed to be shot at so humans lives are not spent in its place. That is seriously the point of an HWP. All the guns, ammo, and WTFE don't matter if a tank can't TANK . Tanks should be used to bully an alien. I mean seriously... if you are worried about them eating it because little skiiny Sucktoid  shot it with a plasma pistol and it just folds up , then it is useless.

The tanks in Equal terms reflects this pretty well...they are power pieces and taking a GMG/GL tank for a spin will give you some perspective on this... Roll out one into the field under cover of smoke and proceed to allow the aliens to shoot the shit out of it, revealing their position and giving you a quick option to break the building down on their ass, shoot them to pieces,  or use the tank as cover (duck behind it)  and stun his ass.

Love the doges though... so useful... so Fucking useful.

-HH

[Arthanor]

I'm glad you enjoy the dogges. If you find those useful, you should see the ones with doggy senses. I can't make them work properly with the current version, unfortunately, so I have not released them. Non-weapon items don't get put in hands, so the scanner goes in the backpack.. I have a hacked solution to make it possible, if clunky and exploitable, which I could upload as a test mod I guess.

For tanks, a plasma pistol's mean damage is 52, that's 26 to 78 or 0 to 104 damage, depending on the formula you use. That means a starting tank is pretty safe using TftD formula, unless shot at the rear. Sides are also somewhat vulnerable for EU formula. But that's acceptable I'd say. The Alloy tank is immune to pistol shots except for the rear armor with EU formula.

For rifles, the alloy tank is still pretty much immune to the front and side with TftD formula (40-120 damage), but can be hurt more reliably using EU (0-160 damage). It should survive a salvo though. Heavy plasma is a danger later in the game, even with 130 armor, but that will be the point where you will roll out the T3 tank and T4 hovertank which will come with plasma resistance and/or heavier armor (gained from sectopod research).

I agree that tanks should be able to tank (and that weapons are a secondary concern), but it becomes problematic/exploitable when aliens can't deal with a tank and the AI is not willing to switch target. Players don't shoot cyberdiscs with pistols, RL soldiers don't shoot tanks with rifles, but we can't prevent aliens from shooting tanks with inappropriate weapons, so those must have the possibility to do some damage at least.

I am thinking of doing things such that a tank can survive a round of fire from a few aliens of its tier (starting tank vs pistol, alloy tank vs rifle, advanced tank vs heavy plasma). With the possibility to repair a tank hull, getting a destroyed tank is not really that dramatic. You lose the weapon(s) installed on it (~200k for more advanced weapons) plus repair costs and time. I think that's acceptable if it otherwise would have been a veteran (or a few).

Using a tank to save rookies in the early game is a different thing though. Sadly, rookies are one of the most expendable thing in XCom, except dogs I guess. But at that point, using (and potentially losing) the tank can be the only way to victory, which again makes it worth it.