Any way to put the tank in the back?

[TaxxiDriver]

One of the many reluctant reasons to use tanks in the battle is that it is always put at the front of the exit gate of Skyranger. As we all know, aliens have full TUs at the first turn so you have a very high chance of getting a full barrage of reaction fires if you move your tank for the first time (my record is 12 continuous reaction fires triggered by 4 sectoids just by moving one single tile...). I am also doubtful if when I let one of my solider to put primed gas grenade on the ground, it will safely cover the tank (I cannot see if the gas is covering the tank perfectly. Maybe less effective than doing the same trick using your front soldier without tank).

So I was wondering if there is a way to change the position using the ruleset. Or, any recommendation for the problem would be also great 

[Edited] New question: Is it possible for all the excess items loaded in the Skyranger to be put in the back? I sometimes adopt tactics using explosives near the exit and all the items get blown up 

Also, though it is not relevant in this topic, I've heard that after you have researched alien artifacts such as mind probe or corpses you cannot gain points for retrieving those items. Is it still true in OpenXCOM?

[kkmic]

1. Tanks are hardcoded to the front of the craft, for now. I would like to see that changed too.

In the meantime, use a smoke grenade to cover your troop deployment. Enable Instant grenades and drop two smokes - one in the skyranger, the other at the bottom of the ramp. Or delay deployment to the second turn.

2. This is also harcoded, as this is the Vanilla behaviour. AFAIK, the basic idea was that you could park your Blaster Launcher guy over the blaster bombs pile and keep pounding them every other turn.

[Arthanor]

1 - You can define deployment orders for your crafts as part of the ruleset. (Dioxine gave a good description of it here: https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?topic=2808.msg30741#msg30741). The game goes down the list and places soldiers on the coordinates you defined in that order.

Otherwise the default behaviour is to start from the north-west-most corner of the craft and fill it from there.

2 - I suspect that the pile of stuff goes where the first deployment tile is. Which means that it will always be where the tank is, but if you change the location of the tank, that should change to location of the pile of stuff too.

Conclusion: Write a deployment entry for your skyranger, starting from the middle of the craft, then fill the rest of it. Both the tank and the pile of stuff should be in the middle. It will be annoying at the beginning of the game though, since the first soldier selected will be unable to move, stuck in the middle of the craft.

Also, I like the tank being first because it is the best at resisting the damage (and if I lose it, I don't lose hard earned experience, just a tank I can rebuild), but play styles do differ.

[TaxxiDriver]

In the meantime, use a smoke grenade to cover your troop deployment. Enable Instant grenades and drop two smokes - one in the skyranger, the other at the bottom of the ramp. Or delay deployment to the second turn.

I do use the trick! (usually disable Instant Grenade and just delay the turn after dropping one smoke grenade). I was just wondering if my soldier at the back of the tank drops smoke grenade right below him it would be enough to cover the tank (since the grenade is exploded at the back of the tank the smoke might not be thick enough compared to the one exploded at the very entrance of the Skyranger). It is rather related to the smoke mechanics in the game, I guess.

1 - You can define deployment orders for your crafts as part of the ruleset. (Dioxine gave a good description of it here: https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?topic=2808.msg30741#msg30741). The game goes down the list and places soldiers on the coordinates you defined in that order.

Thanks for the link. I might give it a try.

By the way, someone could also answer my last queston? 

Also, though it is not relevant in this topic, I've heard that after you have researched alien artifacts such as mind probe or corpses you cannot gain points for retrieving those items. Is it still true in OpenXCOM?

[kkmic]

I've heard that after you have researched alien artifacts such as mind probe or corpses you cannot gain points for retrieving those items. Is it still true in OpenXCOM?

AFAIK, it is true. Once an artifact is researched (while it still is alien in origin) is no longer an artifact, is a piece of equipment, and you no longer get points for it.

So, for extra points in the long term, do not research stuff that you will never use. Unless you need it to unlock another research topic

Warboy?

[Warboy1982]

true, but you're talking about a handful of points per mission, compared to the hundreds or even thousands of points you get for completing the research, and considering everyone packs heavy plasma, small launchers and fusion blasters in the late months, it's kind of a moot point.

[pmprog]

[Edited] New question: Is it possible for all the excess items loaded in the Skyranger to be put in the back? I sometimes adopt tactics using explosives near the exit and all the items get blown up 

You know, I thought in the original, Skyranger items were accessible for every spot in the Skyranger. That's a good chance I'm actually wrong though

[Warboy1982]

yeah, BEFORE the battle

[TaxxiDriver]

I'm quite new to this game and I have fairly recently played the vanilla: once you get into the battle all the equipments are at the front just as like as in OpenXCOM.

By the way, another question ( I have a lot of questions these days): Can I just increase the number of soldiers that can be transported by that craft? I haven't done it but since Skyranger has just enough rooms to hold 14 soldiers, I was thinking I might not try to increase the number higher than 14. I haven't used Lightning, but how about that?

[Arthanor]

Tanks can only spawn soldiers on designated "XCom craft floors". For the Skyranger, you can only have 14 soldiers. Different mods have tackled that issue by making longer planes with the Skyranger tilesets. The XCom Armoury Expanded, for example, has a plane which can carry 16, and in theory could carry 18.

The lightning has a defined deployment, which will cap the possible number of soldiers. But you could both increase the number and define extra deployment spots.

[TaxxiDriver]

@Arthanor: Thanks as always! I was always pissed off by how the lightning is inferior compared to other modded transporters. I really wish there is an upgraded version of lightning to replace the original similar to the Skyguardian in your mod.

[Firestorm]

Since we're talking about moving the equipment pile, is it possible to move it off the grav lift in base assault missions and onto the actual evac zone, so that I don't have to manually pack everything out for smash and grab missions?