[OLD] Old OXCE discussion thread

[Arthanor]

Yeah, you're not sitting there as the commander, having to decide which of the two grant proposal to fund, but as you said, that's not really how science works. You don't forget one idea because you pursue another (unless you have a really crappy lab with little archival/note taking).

I guess you could have two scientists with big egos spearheading the two proposals, leading to one just leaving XCom if you don't pick his. Then by the time you complete one research tree, the weapons from the other one become available to buy because the scientists stormed out, got funding from an arms manufacturer and they are now producing it! That'd be cool (Yup, I'm a scientists and I think this can happen..!)

[Dioxine]

Speaking about moral choices... XCom morality should boil down to this:

(it's a bit like Bioware morality, but more ethical and much less veiled)

[robin]

That's silly, it's obviously poisonous gas, so you can collect all the pristine alien tech left on the ground.

[Dioxine]

Oh-ho, we have the first adept of the Lightside (Open Hand Style) here

(sorry for horrible OT )

also @Arthanor, I am relieved that the real science is still alive

[Solarius Scorch]

And for solders, right now I'm ignoring what happening in nightlys because I'm doing different things in my branch.

That's understandable, though it'd be interesting if you ad this at some point, as this feature is actually useful for many things.

Also, I'll be using OXCE for my next big project, thank you

[new_civilian]

Falko had a good idea with this. For example, to get either laser or gauss as a early gun:

- Advanced Weaponry research project: getOneFree: Laser Weapons OR Gauss Weapons

-> Player randomly gets one but not the other, representing the scientists making a breakthrough in either one of the fields instead of both at the same time.

If you want to make both eventually available, you can make a "Laser Weapons Gauss unlock" which gives Laser Weapons and has dependencies on having developed the whole Gauss tree, representing the scientists getting another idea for weapons tech after perfecting the first breakthrough.

It's actually quite nice and an interesting way to mix up how the game progresses. You could even make it so that "Advanced Weaponry" unlocks either the pistol or the heavy weapon, making it so you either develop the high power system which needs to be big, or the miniaturized system because you haven't yet figured out a big power source.

Thanks, that's a great idea!
Right now I am slowly updating my personal megamod-soup as I was absent for some month, I think I will make use of this^
About the new soldiertypes... After some thinking I realized that they are (surprising to me at the beginning) not really THAT important for my personal mod. If I want good soldiers at the start I might as well edit the default stats, and if I need them later.... well I will have troops trained in the training facilities (Extended-feature only), so basically the new soldiertapes are "only" a tiny improvement. For me, that is. I can see that they are quite useful for other purposes, though.

Anyway, I would understand if you would not add them.

I will only use the Extended exe for my Openxcom gaming. It has too many features that should be in the default exe like editing TUs for several actions.. and it is MUCH more flexible.

TLDR: Thanks, Yankes! 

[Arthanor]

I think the main advantage of different soldier stats isn't overall quality differences, but different maximum stats and spreads of initial stats.

For example, in XCom: Human generalists and Hybrid psi-specialist that are kind of bad at other stuff for an Apocalypse mod?

For other things: Potentially different mutant strains for Piratez? Normal humans and Space Marines for a 40k mod? Elves, dwarfs, orcs and trolls in a Shadowrun or Fantasy XCom mod? It's a great feature, if someone is willing to put the extra amount of work to make it work (and I don't know how sprites and inventory images would work unless all soldier types look exactly the same..)

[new_civilian]

I agree with what you say.

However, I discovered that my old personal xcom 1 mod (from september btw) no longer works with anything newer than version 2.4, so I will stick to that version from now on. So the new soldier types are irrelevant for me anyway.

[moriarty]

Yankes, do you think it would be possible to change engineers and scientists from being "special resources" to being "abilities" or "properties" of items or soldiers?

That would mean that we could have soldier/scientists or soldier/engineers (or even scientist/engineers) on one hand, and "capturable" specialists on the other hand.

Would that be possible at all?

[Solarius Scorch]

Yankes, do you think it would be possible to change engineers and scientists from being "special resources" to being "abilities" or "properties" of items or soldiers?

That would mean that we could have soldier/scientists or soldier/engineers (or even scientist/engineers) on one hand, and "capturable" specialists on the other hand.

Would that be possible at all?

You mean like in UFO: Afterlight? Oh God, yes.

I can imagine Workshops being loaded like craft... A bit of a hassle, but so much fun!

[Yankes]

This will be hard, because it will require handling all special cases of each type at once. e.g. when you use items then you need update all labs and factories because you could lost some "work hands".
Another problem is how it will fallback to basic exe, it could require breaking compatibility nightly (right now is still possible to load save without crash).

[moriarty]

I see. too bad, actually...
what about the possibility to acquire engineers and scientists from other sources, like getting them after successfully completing certain missions?
would that be possible?
perhaps even tied to stuff like survival of certain civilians on the battlescape?

...you know, the old "retrieve the specialist" mission (or, in the case of XPiratez, "capture the specialist")...

[Yankes]

This should be doable.  I could even say that partially I have it in plans because when I add full script support then adding this after mission will be trivial.

[KingMob4313]

How about flagging soldiers as 'researchers' and when they are taken out on field missions, when they return, they generate research points?

[KingMob4313]

How about flagging soldiers as 'researchers' and when they are taken out on field missions, when they return, they generate research points?

Could be done by carrying a 'research' item into the field to gather data?

Not at all sure what has been conceived so far, but the code can always be fscked with.