[BETA][WIP][BUNCHOFSTUFF] Xeno Operations v0.98

[Dioxine]

Yeah it is actually very silly (and old), the default clipsize for weapon is = 0 making aliens think oh wow, such no ammo, weapon such  useless. It's easy to overlook to a modder, as for every other intent and purpose, clipsize = 0 is the same as -1 for a melee weapon and never gets displayed. But for the AI to understand it can use a weapon, you have to set clipsize to a non-zero value (probably -1, unlimited; if you set it to a positive value the weapon will disappear after that many attacks, or after the battle unless it wasn't used at all - this is naturally useful for making magazine-less expendable weapons like single-shot launchers or shurikens).

[XOps]

Yeah it is actually very silly (and old), the default clipsize for weapon is = 0 making aliens think oh wow, such no ammo, weapon such  useless. It's easy to overlook to a modder, as for every other intent and purpose, clipsize = 0 is the same as -1 for a melee weapon and never gets displayed. But for the AI to understand it can use a weapon, you have to set clipsize to a non-zero value (probably -1, unlimited; if you set it to a positive value the weapon will disappear after that many attacks, or after the battle unless it wasn't used at all - this is naturally useful for making magazine-less expendable weapons like single-shot launchers or shurikens).

Yep. That fixed it. I had noticed this, but I thought surely this isn't the problem. Shows how much I know. Thanks guys. I'll include that fix on the next update.

[Solarius Scorch]

X-Ops, I went ahead and used some of your sprites for the Final Mod Pack - all were credited to you, of course. Here's the list, in case you want to know:
- Black Power Armour. For the Men in Black, it will be used as is (not implemented yet). For X-Com, I changed the helmet a little, got rid of the way-too-awesome triple green light and substituted it with an orange visor, loosely based on Shadics' black Power Suit version.
- Assault Rifle. Not sure how it was originally called in your mod, but it's the carbine (?) weapon. I only changed the clip, because I wanted it to be interchangeable with the vanilla Rifle.
- Armoured Sectoid. Made it normal Sectoid Commander, just with better armour stats (same as yours), since I couldn't fir an entire Sectoid race in the game. I also changed the proportions a little, since the helmet was visibly smaller than an unarmoured Sectoid's head.
-Mutant sprites. Used for Praetorian and Guard Muton ranks.

Many thanks for the awesome sprites!

[cjones]

Loving this mod, some observations if I may.

First, the bug I had encountered before may have also been something on my side.  I did a clean install, installed the 9/30 nightly and havent encountered a single bug since.

The X3 craft, the name escapes me as of now, but i noticed I was able to take a battle ship down with minimal damage using plasma weaps, is this intended?  seems a tad OP

My other observations aren't really specific to this mod, but having played a number of mods I was wondering if anyone knows if it would be possible for manu items to go "obsolete".  Reason I ask is my manu screens always get cluttered with stuff I haven't made since the 2nd month of the game, would be nice if you could filter out the obs techs.

Also, when it comes to global radar, it would be cool if you could filter out the fluff ships, like the very small and small ships.  or maybe even only show ships with a certain race.  I dunno, I guess the prob is me, I tend to linger before doing cydonia, and it just gets annoying dealing with all the UFOs when you are sitting on most of the tech and tons of alien stuff such as elerium and alloys.

All in all, love the mod, great work, now if I can just get my nerve up to take on those armored mutons...

Thanks!

[Arthanor]

My other observations aren't really specific to this mod, but having played a number of mods I was wondering if anyone knows if it would be possible for manu items to go "obsolete".  Reason I ask is my manu screens always get cluttered with stuff I haven't made since the 2nd month of the game, would be nice if you could filter out the obs techs.

Also, when it comes to global radar, it would be cool if you could filter out the fluff ships, like the very small and small ships.  or maybe even only show ships with a certain race.  I dunno, I guess the prob is me, I tend to linger before doing cydonia, and it just gets annoying dealing with all the UFOs when you are sitting on most of the tech and tons of alien stuff such as elerium and alloys.

All in all, love the mod, great work, now if I can just get my nerve up to take on those armored mutons...

Thanks!

The answer is using categories to sort through it. Version 1.0 doesn't support the sorting, but the nightly does. Ideally, we would have categories for laser weapons, plasma weapons, HWPs, Crafts, etc. which would make going through the list easier. And good listOrder. They are a pain to setup, but it is well worth it since you end up learning where in the line up a given category is and can quickly scroll through the useless stuff.

Regarding radars, I don't think there is a way as of now. Usually I find it worthwhile to at least shoot down the small UFOs, even if I don't necessarily clean them up. It's some easy score to come by. Bonus if you shoot it over water and drown the crash survivors!

[XOps]

X-Ops, I went ahead and used some of your sprites for the Final Mod Pack - all were credited to you, of course. Here's the list, in case you want to know:
- Black Power Armour. For the Men in Black, it will be used as is (not implemented yet). For X-Com, I changed the helmet a little, got rid of the way-too-awesome triple green light and substituted it with an orange visor, loosely based on Shadics' black Power Suit version.
- Assault Rifle. Not sure how it was originally called in your mod, but it's the carbine (?) weapon. I only changed the clip, because I wanted it to be interchangeable with the vanilla Rifle.
- Armoured Sectoid. Made it normal Sectoid Commander, just with better armour stats (same as yours), since I couldn't fir an entire Sectoid race in the game. I also changed the proportions a little, since the helmet was visibly smaller than an unarmoured Sectoid's head.
-Mutant sprites. Used for Praetorian and Guard Muton ranks.

Many thanks for the awesome sprites!

All cool with me  . Totally agree with using Armored Sectoids and other Muton sprites as extra ranks. The FMP has plenty of races as is. Looking forward to fighting the MIB in black armor. I think it suits them. On a side note, you have no idea how many different helmets I designed for that armor. Easily twenty variations trying to get one that looked just right. Ended up with the splinter cell look.

Loving this mod, some observations if I may.

First, the bug I had encountered before may have also been something on my side.  I did a clean install, installed the 9/30 nightly and havent encountered a single bug since.

The X3 craft, the name escapes me as of now, but i noticed I was able to take a battle ship down with minimal damage using plasma weaps, is this intended?  seems a tad OP

My other observations aren't really specific to this mod, but having played a number of mods I was wondering if anyone knows if it would be possible for manu items to go "obsolete".  Reason I ask is my manu screens always get cluttered with stuff I haven't made since the 2nd month of the game, would be nice if you could filter out the obs techs.

Also, when it comes to global radar, it would be cool if you could filter out the fluff ships, like the very small and small ships.  or maybe even only show ships with a certain race.  I dunno, I guess the prob is me, I tend to linger before doing cydonia, and it just gets annoying dealing with all the UFOs when you are sitting on most of the tech and tons of alien stuff such as elerium and alloys.

All in all, love the mod, great work, now if I can just get my nerve up to take on those armored mutons...

Thanks!

Thanks for the feedback! The next version should fix that crash bug and be compatible with the latest nightly again. Hope to have that out this weekend maybe. As for the XCF-3, the stats are close but slightly inferior to the Firestorm which could tank a Battleship on a good day with a bit of luck. Regardless I do plan to rebalanced crafts in the near future.

For the menu items, I would love a way to obsolete items in the manufacturing list. Unfortunately there is no way that I know of to do this. As Arthanor said using the drop down category list on the production menu helps narrow things down slightly (I need to actually add some categories to help this).

For radars, well as Arthanor also said, this is currently impossible. Like you, I tend to linger before Cydonia building up a dream team before setting off for mars and eventually I start to grow weary of the constant UFO detections. As of now though there is no way to sort through UFO activity.

The answer is using categories to sort through it. Version 1.0 doesn't support the sorting, but the nightly does. Ideally, we would have categories for laser weapons, plasma weapons, HWPs, Crafts, etc. which would make going through the list easier. And good listOrder. They are a pain to setup, but it is well worth it since you end up learning where in the line up a given category is and can quickly scroll through the useless stuff.

Are there any extra categories you could suggest for the manufacturing screen? I have listOrders set for everything save for research.

[Arthanor]

I am guessing that the main offender is gear for operatives. Currently there are a few categories:
Weapons, Ammunition, Equipment, Personal Armor

Maybe these categories could easily be split into "sub-Categories":
Weapons (and their ammunition) into:
Ballistic Weapons
Laser Weapons
Plasma Weapons
Thrown Weapons (All kinds of grenades and stuff)
Utility Weapons (Small Launcher, grenade launcher, Toxigun if you have it, etc.)

Equipment into:
Medi-Kits (I think you have multiple ones?)
Scanners (Mind Probe and Motion Scanner, etc.)

Personal Armor into:
Tier 1 (or Light) Armor (Personal Armors and its modification)
Tier 2 (or Medium) Armor (not in the current game, but stuff that fits between PA and the suits)
Tier 3 (or Heavy) Armor (Power Suit, Flying Suit, etc.)

That's a fair few categories already, grouping your listOrder so that all items from a given category are together makes even the full list easy to navigate (your eyes quickly catch a change in category) just with the mouse wheel, the filtering is just gravy.

[cjones]

Heya again, still playing and loving the mod,

I just realized when a floater jumped out and tried to knife me, I never fixed the alien melee problem.  Still using latest nightly as of 9/30.

My question is, is it possible for me to edit the ruleset to fix this myself?  I have no idea what I am doing except I have notepad++ and I tried to add a line just under damage type on the alloy blade and plasma sword in the alien arsenal ruleset that said clipSize= -1.

After I save the edit and try to load, it says alien arsenal mod failed to load due to error at the line I edited, illegal tab indentation?

I realize I sound like a complete idiot and I am sure I am going about this all wrong, but I appreciate if anyone could point out the proper way to edit the ruleset for this fix.  I guess I'm more of a playtester to this forum vs. modder, lol

I have also attached my save, since I recall Dioxine said it helped with modding since it allowed modder to see other peoples playstyles and what not.

Thanks!

Thanks!

[Arthanor]

You can indeed fix it yourself, but yaml does not use tabs for indentation. You need to use spaces. Just copy and paste the line below in the ruleset for melee weapons and it should work.

Code: [Select]

    clipSize: -1

[cjones]

That fixed it!

Thanks soooooo much! Now I can continue taking down the 10+ alien bases in my save, lol

[Arthanor]

Good Have fun!

[cjones]

Just finished a playthru, gotta say A+!

Thanks for the mod and your hardwork!

Cydonia was friggin awesome, I really like the changes, it did always feel kinda anticlimactic in the vanilla, you really amped up the challenge!

I do appreciate your one concession, which I won't mention lest I spoil it for someone else, but was a pleasant surprise.

Thanks again for the awesome work!

[XOps]

Just finished a playthru, gotta say A+!

Thanks for the mod and your hardwork!

Cydonia was friggin awesome, I really like the changes, it did always feel kinda anticlimactic in the vanilla, you really amped up the challenge!

I do appreciate your one concession, which I won't mention lest I spoil it for someone else, but was a pleasant surprise.

Thanks again for the awesome work!

Thanks for the praise. Amusingly the first time I play tested the changes to Cydonia it was a really intense fight. I had almost given up hope wandering through the base trying to find the command center. I watched as over half of my best forces all loaded down with the best armor and weapons in the game fell to ambushes and terror units. It was intense. Finally I found my target and was preparing my soldiers for the final assault on the Alien command center. I was running low on ammo and my soldiers were really beat up. It was then I realized I was having fun. I loaded up what ammo and readied my explosives preparing for the final desperate assault. Then one of the guards went berserk and fired an explosive of some kind into the brain . Needless to say I adjusted the guard's bravery after that.

As for the concession, well it does make things a little easier, but I thought why not. It would be the only chance the player ever got.

Glad you enjoyed it. Hopefully there will be more to come in the near future.

[cjones]

hehe, yeah, It was cool how Cydonia gave me deja vu going back to month 1.  All my cool weaps suddenly felt way underpowered. 

Its just not natural for a bug to take 2 blaster bombs and still live, lol

[Arthanor]

I've been following this thread as I think the mod looks really interesting. It's rare to find a whole experience change designed by one person (the only other being Dioxine's Piratez, as far as I know). This talk of Cydonia makes me curious and eager to try it (just have to finish the XAE 1.0! Come on..!).

Mind the spoilers!