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

[TaxxiDriver]

Developers might hate me, but I think letting the possibility of zombification for other units might be great, not just restricting it It gives a lot more freedom for ruleset-modders.

By the way, does the flying armor(power armor) use the same sprites as flying suit(power suit)? I think maybe giving a slight change would be nice.

[Arthanor]

Well, if it's not a civilian and it's not a soldier, it's a HWP or alien. It could be interesting to have zombifiable aliens (where the zombie remains under alien control?), but it's not necessary and not in vanilla either.

For HWPs, they are supposed to be mechanical, or dogs, which probably don't have a compatible biology, much like the aliens (if that's the excuse we want to use). The best ruleset would be to define whether a unit can be turned into a zombi and what kind of zombie it should turn into.

However, even if you do that, one can come up with a new different way of making zombies that turn into something else and the whole system breaks down. Keeping humans as the only zombifiable target keeps it simple (but unfortunately prevents MiB operatives from becoming zombies, maybe they have the antidote?!).

Power/flying armor do have different graphics from power/flying suits. Unless I messed up something in the release. They are supposed to look like this:

[TaxxiDriver]

Is it possible to define a dog as a 'soldier'? I don't think so, but if it becomes possible, some modders who want their new type of 'soldier' to be able to get zombified would find it to be useful. But I really don't know which way would require less coding...

For the armors, yes you were right... I was somehow messing with the 1.02 and 1.03 and moved the suit images to the armor folders, I guess. Sorry for that. I knew that the sprites were indeed different because I've seen them in the game lol

[Arthanor]

I'm glad the armors work!

There will be a major rework of the armors modules in v1.04-v1.05. I have integrated the grav armor mod in the XAE, so 1.04 will now have grav modules and flying personal armor (early snipers rejoice!) and armor repairs for all armors. (And 2 weapons tanks for those using the nightly)

I just came up with a way to add markings to armors as well, using different colors for the shoulders, but that's just in the design phase right now. It will likely be released in 1.05, along with the advanced tanks.

I need to work on my alien mods too.. the Christmas break is not coming quickly enough..

For zombies, unfortunately, the game only supports one kind of soldier right now. Many modders dream of the day when we can have multiple soldiers.

That would open up the possibility to recruit different kind of soldiers (rookie, soldier, vet?), make classes with different stats (snipers cap at higher firing accuracy, scouts at higher TUs, breachers at higher reactions, etc.) or even, if soldiers ever get added as a useable item for manufacturing, cybernetic/gene spliced soldiers. But that's not happening until major work is put in it (sorry for the tease ), since only 1 kind of soldier is hardcoded.

[Arthanor]

Man it's quiet here. No excitement for armor markings and early flying armors? Good thing one is just stealing work and the other is stuff I will enjoy

This post caught my attention (I don't know why I did not see it before) and I was thinking.. maybe I should add a redesigned Lightning to the XAE? I have been using one for a while and it works pretty well (see below).

I'm not 100% happy with it (it's too square and the inside could be cleaned up a bit), which is why I never thought of sharing, but if there's demand, why not?

[NoelBuddy]

Developers might hate me, but I think letting the possibility of zombification for other units might be great, not just restricting it It gives a lot more freedom for ruleset-modders.

They did that to solve the problem of probes and other one-square HWP equivalents becoming zombifyed... if someone is capable of writing a branch that allows more zombie control without breaking anything else a good argument to merge it with the main branch could be made, but otherwise the developers have bigger fish on their plate to fry.

[Arthanor]

Hopefully, one day the game can handle multiple soldiers type (each with their own zombie sprite) and we won't have these issues. HWPs will be restricted to mechanical units, dogs can be "soldiers" so can turn into zombies, etc. But that's not something that will come anytime soon any ways.

[BBHood217]

I can't repair alloy tanks.  It specifically requires an Alloy Tank Wreck, but all I have is an ALLOY_TANK_CORPSE_1 which it doesn't accept.  I dunno if this also extends to the other tank wrecks.

In the meantime, I guess I'll sell the CORPSE_1 and just make a new hull.

[Arthanor]

Tank corpses don't follow the usual naming convention of OpenXCom. Try this ruleset instead.

[BBHood217]

Well, now the repairs require CORPSE_1's instead of Wrecks.  But I think that means it'll work now, though I haven't tested it yet because I take very good care of my tanks

[Arthanor]

hehe That's good. Or maybe it means the armor needs to be nerfed?

I've updated the ruleset above to have the proper string definitions so the wrecks no longer show up as corpses_1.

[BBHood217]

After losing a hovertank to a pair of mutons with heavy plasmas, I can confirm that the wrecks are correctly named Wrecks and perfectly repairable with no issues.

[Arthanor]

Cool stuff!

Since we're talking about tanks, what would you guys think if assembling alloy and hover tanks required Alien Electronics (the targetting computer that goes in the turret) and Alien Energy cells (for tanks with energy weapons)?

It would make these components more useful, although it would make the tanks more resource intensive. Dismantling a tank would of course give you those back, although a destroyed tank would lose them.

I am also starting to think about further work with weapon ranges. Basically trying to make pistols and shotguns the the main breaching weapons, rifles for short-medium range, heavy and blasters for medium range, sniper for long range.

This is mostly relevant to the heavy weapons which are great at everything (especially plasma). My view of them is that they should be too cumbersome to use at short range, and too heavy to aim precisely enough to use at long range. They would become more of a support weapon for taking out large/tougher targets at medium range, whereas the laser blasters, gauss launcher and plasma blaster become special weapons since they offer utility instead of raw power.

[BBHood217]

Hovertank/Plasma's auto shot costs 0 TUs, so I can actually fire it forever.

[Arthanor]

Ha! That's funny. I fixed that 30 minutes ago while working on the 2-weapons tanks.

Look at these guys, aren't they cute? Who can survive the XCom HWP Swarm?