Agents used in manufacturing

[ThatDude]

Can I make manufacturing projects use a soldier by a specific name, or a soldier in the first place? I've been testing different methods for hours and have yet to find a way to do either. Any help?

[Warboy1982]

in a word: no.

in more words: manufacturing projects use items from general stores, or money. soldiers are neither of these things.

[Falko]

you can use corpses
you at least need to buy a soldier to get a corpse

new development from out crazy xcom scientists!
our own bionic zombie take that chrysalids
costs: corpse + elerium + alloy + money (most of the money is for bribing the ethics board .. but hey what else will you do with all the dead rookies)

[new_civilian]

I was thinking about that, too: Use dead corpses for a zombie squad... or as someone else suggested as a pilot-brain for HWP's 
Stiill haven't thought of anything plausible....

[NoelBuddy]

I was thinking of using the MIB corpses in a way like this.  I wanted to use the guys in the gas mask and black armor as a part for a second tier hazmat suit that gives both the high environmental defenses but also some armor, or using alien corpses for components: Snakeman skin Leather armor anyone?

[new_civilian]

Good ideas! In one of my personal mods I use snakeman/chryssalid/celetid corspes to make poison ammo 

[Harald_Gray]

I'm not really sure that using alien corpses to manufacture armor is a good idea, given that the only alien tougher than a power suit is the Sectopod. In fact all aliens except Sectopods and Ethereal Commanders are less armored than personal armor.

Using the corpses for other purposes, like the toxic ammo, is a better idea. However, I'm afraid that in near-vanilla mods this will be limited mostly to toys or specialty equipment, given how good the powersuit/heavy plasma combo is and how weak the aliens are as individuals. Sure, one could create items that are even better than vanilla items, e.g. a powersuit upgrade that uses muton cyberimplants to grant +5 to Firing or one that uses a sectopod wreck to build powerarmor with 0.9 plasma resistance. But every such toy one gives to the player makes the game easier, so a modder has to think about game balance too.

Mmmmm... Come to think of it... I guess it is time to create a mod that would rip the lascannon out of the Sectopod wreck and rebuild it into a man-portable superheavy laser. Say Power 100 and weight 20, so it is both weaker and heavier than a heavy plasma plus all the ammo you can shoot during a sensible mission. But it would still make a good endgame laser weapon....

[NoelBuddy]

I'm not really sure that using alien corpses to manufacture armor is a good idea, given that the only alien tougher than a power suit is the Sectopod. In fact all aliens except Sectopods and Ethereal Commanders are less armored than personal armor.

This is a fact about the game that I'm not terribly fond of. It's neat to have the awesome armor, but it's too dramatic a transition and never made sense that humans would be able to suddenly make armor that was better than any alien design as soon as they discovered the new material to make it... also not a fan of the Heavy plasma is better than any other gun in every possible way mechanic.  There's very little usage of strong damage resistances too which seems a shame to me.  The main appeal of OXcom is that you can fill in those gaps and make it more of a complex strategy game

Mmmmm... Come to think of it... I guess it is time to create a mod that would rip the lascannon out of the Sectopod wreck and rebuild it into a man-portable superheavy laser. Say Power 100 and weight 20, so it is both weaker and heavier than a heavy plasma plus all the ammo you can shoot during a sensible mission. But it would still make a good endgame laser weapon....

So something like the improved heavy laser... except weaker, and heavier. 

[Harald_Gray]

This is a fact about the game that I'm not terribly fond of. It's neat to have the awesome armor, but it's too dramatic a transition and never made sense that humans would be able to suddenly make armor that was better than any alien design as soon as they discovered the new material to make it.

Mind if I point you towards my own Personal Armor variants mod?

https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?topic=2611.0

As for the armor being better than what the aliens use, I'd put that down to their design philosophy. And to game balance issues, because a player has to kill way more aliens than he can lose soldiers.

[NoelBuddy]

a player has to kill way more aliens than he can lose soldiers.

This may make an interesting playthru option, eye for an eye see how many soldiers i can feed to the meat grinder and still win.

I'm thinking more about options between the Armored Vest and personal armor, but I'll check yours out once the mod site's back up.

The vanilla armors are definitely a balance within their limitations at the time decision, but that shouldn't stop us from going further.

[Harald_Gray]

The problem here is that game mechanics and plasma weapon stats make armors weaker than personal armor nearly useless.

Say you're facing a plasma rifle and your soldier has 40 health. Personal armor has about 30% chance of keeping the soldier unharmed and about 55% chance of keeping him alive (assuming front armor hits). Armor 40 (somewhere between the Armored Vest and Personal Armor) means about 25% chance of no harm and 50% chance of survival, which makes it too similar to Personal Armor to to create a perceptible difference.

[NoelBuddy]

The problem here is that game mechanics and plasma weapon stats make armors weaker than personal armor nearly useless.

Agreed and thanks for the breakdown, this discussion has helped me hash out where the gaps in the armor repertoire I'd like to fill.

I can understand why the developers would make the human armor all about increasing your chances of getting away unscathed given how much of a hassle wounded soldiers are, at times it can be worse to have a wounded badass than a fresh rookie.  Where it's cool for the aliens to be susceptible to sustained firepower.

So what I'm going to work on is a set of armor options that feature lower armor values but have resistances and stat adjustments that make them helpful in improving overall survivability but not as all protective as the personal armor set.

[Harald_Gray]

Thing is, armor with resistance is also good for increasing the chance a soldier stays unharmed. Again, let me use my own mod as an example. My Ablative Armor is a Personal Armor variant that has front armor 40 and plasma resistance 0.7. This means that a Health 40 soldier hit by a plasma rifle has about 36% chance of no injury and 71% chance of survival. The downside (to keep it more balanced) is that such armor is more vulnerable to some other damage types, e.g. HE or melee.

Resistance lowers both the damage maximum and average damage of a weapon, which makes it possible to create armor that has both greater chances of no injury and greater chances of survival than a similar vanilla armor. You can also create armor that will increase chances of survival but not chances of no harm, e.g. armor 30 and resistance 0.6 has virtually the same chance of no harm as vanilla armor 50 but greater chances of survival. The reason for this is that the damage that penetrates the armor is lowered too.

If you need more help with such numbercrunching, just ask :-)

[new_civilian]

Mmmmm... Come to think of it... I guess it is time to create a mod that would rip the lascannon out of the Sectopod wreck and rebuild it into a man-portable superheavy laser. Say Power 100 and weight 20, so it is both weaker and heavier than a heavy plasma plus all the ammo you can shoot during a sensible mission. But it would still make a good endgame laser weapon....

Cool idea!