aliens

Author Topic: [RESEARCH] Research Alive Aliens - v1.54 Final - Translators needed  (Read 60530 times)

Offline hellrazor

  • Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 2027
  • Deep Ruleset Digger & Bughunter
    • View Profile
    • Github Account
Re: [RESEARCH] Research Alive Aliens Mod. (Alternate Research Tree.)
« Reply #15 on: January 27, 2015, 01:03:18 am »
I am at the moment also working on Version 1.3.
Which will have Dual unlocks, for Crafts and the psi lab.

Offline hellrazor

  • Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 2027
  • Deep Ruleset Digger & Bughunter
    • View Profile
    • Github Account
Re: [RESEARCH][WIP] Research Alive Aliens Mod. (Alternate Research Tree.)
« Reply #16 on: January 28, 2015, 09:40:06 pm »
Hello there Version 1.3 Research rules are ready and i am testing them right now.

I am also planning on doing "Hints" for the Research tree, which would be as i have planned them,
UFOpaedia entries, which get unlocked for free, and would tell a little bit about which aliens are required for the
next research to unlock.

Please let me know if you think this a good Idea. :)

Offline hellrazor

  • Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 2027
  • Deep Ruleset Digger & Bughunter
    • View Profile
    • Github Account
Re: [RESEARCH][WIP] Research Alive Aliens Mod. (Alternate Research Tree.)
« Reply #17 on: February 13, 2015, 01:18:23 am »
TODO LIST for Version 1.3:

- Force First Alien Mission to be Base Missions, to ensure Alien Base comes earlie - DONE (Floaters)
- Alien Containment needs research -DONE
- Delay Alien Races (Snakeman, Muton, Ethereals) by 2 Months (balancing) - DONE
- Remove Alien Commanders from Battleship and Base Defense Mission -DONE
- Integrate Fatrats Elerium Bomb (More Explosives for the Aliens!) -DONE
- Integrate Alloy Ground Tanks (balancing) (with Alloy corpse) -DONE
- Added Hovertank/Laser -DONE
- Integrate Retaliator (balancing) (with Rent Cost) -DONE
- Research Hints and New Topics

« Last Edit: February 15, 2015, 10:58:19 am by hellrazor »

Offline Arthanor

  • Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 2488
  • XCom Armoury Quartermaster
    • View Profile
Re: [RESEARCH][WIP] Research Alive Aliens Mod. (Alternate Research Tree.)
« Reply #18 on: February 13, 2015, 01:40:58 am »
Hi! I am looking at what you are doing and it reminds me a lot of what I have done/have on my ToDo list for the XCom Armoury Expanded.

I already have alloy ground tanks there, more crafts (rebalanced along with their weapons) and an expanded research/manufacture tree. On the top of the ToDo list now (beyond ironing the code) is splitting research and manufacture, and designing an alternate research tree that requires more live aliens.

The XCom Armoury Expanded is intended to be a collection of mods, which are all made compatible and balanced with each others, but still modular in that you don't have one giant file that does it all, but an actual choice on which part of the mod you want to use but turning on one/many submods. Generally I take existing mods and ask their author's permission to include them, but I am increasingly looking into collaboration as I develop new content for the XAE.

It looks to me like your research mod would fit right in for the "hard research variant" I am tinkering with, and being part of the XAE would save you the trouble of integrating alloy tanks and crafts. It would also keep your mod "clean" in its intention: "Research needs live aliens" would be about that instead of it becoming a megamod or a full conversion (unless that's what you want, of course).

Between the alloy ammo, alloy tanks and alloy crafts of the XAE, players would have the tools to cope with the delay I think. And I am also planning an alien race collection/rebalance to go with the XAE, in which your tweaks on the alien side could very well fit.

What do you say? Or I could just plunder your ruleset for the bits I am looking for, with your permission ;)

Offline hellrazor

  • Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 2027
  • Deep Ruleset Digger & Bughunter
    • View Profile
    • Github Account
Re: [RESEARCH][WIP] Research Alive Aliens Mod. (Alternate Research Tree.)
« Reply #19 on: February 13, 2015, 02:12:25 am »
Plunder all you want :>

And btw my Mod should still give the Player a somewhat vanilla Gamefeeling. The Alloy ground Tanks i only see as an extension to the Personal Armor (it just make sense).
Hovertanks are delayed a lot timewise in the research so something inbetween is needed.
The only thing i wanna add else Tankwise is Hovertank Laser, because the player is much more likely to have Hovertanks unlocked then Plasma Cannon.

The integration of Alloy Ground Tanks in XAE, i found a little bit to overpowered and they were to cheap i increased cost of Production Moneywise and the Cost Alien Alloys 10, also Alien Alloys can not be manufactured, but there are still plenty around. But i liked the Alloy Corpse :)

I also did not like what the Mod Author of the Retaliator did, he removed/forgot the Rent Cost and made it cheap, my integration of his mod costs rent, cost much more money to produce and only has a small sell value, also i doubled the Production time.

Offline Arthanor

  • Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 2488
  • XCom Armoury Quartermaster
    • View Profile
Re: [RESEARCH][WIP] Research Alive Aliens Mod. (Alternate Research Tree.)
« Reply #20 on: February 13, 2015, 05:48:42 am »
Alright, plundering it will be then. I agree that the XAE alloy tanks are not right yet. It is hard to add content and balance it as well since they both take time and new content tends to upset the balance so old content needs to be tweaked. The more ambitious the mod, the crazier the balance. Good luck with yours!

Offline hellrazor

  • Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 2027
  • Deep Ruleset Digger & Bughunter
    • View Profile
    • Github Account
Re: [RESEARCH][WIP] Research Alive Aliens Mod. (Alternate Research Tree.)
« Reply #21 on: February 13, 2015, 09:26:51 pm »
Alright, plundering it will be then. I agree that the XAE alloy tanks are not right yet. It is hard to add content and balance it as well since they both take time and new content tends to upset the balance so old content needs to be tweaked. The more ambitious the mod, the crazier the balance. Good luck with yours!

Well i will focus mainly on the alive aliens, eversthing else is just a littel balancing to give a fighting chance.
Mutons with Heavy Plasma are scary. They are even scarier if you don't have heavy plasma yourself :D

Offline hellrazor

  • Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 2027
  • Deep Ruleset Digger & Bughunter
    • View Profile
    • Github Account
Re: [RESEARCH][WIP] Research Alive Aliens Mod. (Alternate Research Tree.)
« Reply #22 on: February 15, 2015, 12:11:26 pm »
My TODO list is now nearly complete.

The last i need to do is add in Hints for Research (they are free)

I increased the number of Aliens you will encounter, depending on the size of the ship should be 2-5 more Alien Soldiers.
Alien Commanders in Battleships and Base Defense Missions have been removed and replaced by Alien Leaders. (1to1)

I was also considering a little bit off balancing, due to the nature of the mod, and the late showing of Heavy Plasmas i decided to incorporate the following craftweapon changes:
Range of Stingray from 30 to 21 (it a air-to-air short range Missile)
Range of Avalanche cut down to 42 (Terrorship range)
Range of Laser Cannon from 21 to 30
Range of Plasma Beam cut down to 42 (Terrorship range)
Increased Clip for Fusion missile from 2 to 3

This make Terrorships even more dangerous now since you always have to into their range if you wanna shot them down.

Ground Weapons changes:
- Heavy Laser Dam from 85 to 90, Snap Accuracy: 75, Aimed Accuracy: 110 (its XcomUtils improved Heavy Laser with reduced Damage XcomUtil had 120 which is overpowered)
- Blaster Launcher: Aimed TU usage reduced to 66% instead of 80% to simulate original Game behaviour, should also make the Aliens able to use it now (i had several playthroughs on Superhuman and they fired not even one Blasterbomb at me, now they will)
- Elerium Bomb gets Damage from 80 to 90 + Blast radius +1 (has now same stats as the Stun Bomb, except Damage type)

The Hovertank/Laser i added has the same stats as Hovertank/Plasma but another Turret and Fires Laserbeams (Dam 110).

Craft Costs:
Building Crafts is expensive and i always considered the Craft costs in the vanilla game to be way to cheap (Hovertank plasma cost nearly equal to the Avenger O_o).
So i decided to increase the Money cost of them to the following values:
- Firestorm: 1.500.000 $
- Lightning or (Thunder): 2.000.000 $
- Avenger: 3.600.000 $

Armor Costs:
Building Armor for your Soldiers is important i doubled all money cost for Armor too:
- Personal Armor: 44.000 $
- Power Suit: 84.000 $
- Flying Suit: 116.000 $

You can also not produce Alien Alloys, you have to capture them.

Offline hellrazor

  • Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 2027
  • Deep Ruleset Digger & Bughunter
    • View Profile
    • Github Account
Re: [RESEARCH][WIP] Research Alive Aliens Mod. (Alternate Research Tree.)
« Reply #23 on: February 15, 2015, 01:28:46 pm »
Removed Newest Readme and attachment avaible on first Post of this Thread

https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,3260.msg37294.html#msg37294
« Last Edit: February 25, 2015, 03:11:58 pm by hellrazor »

Offline hellrazor

  • Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 2027
  • Deep Ruleset Digger & Bughunter
    • View Profile
    • Github Account
Re: [RESEARCH][WIP] Research Alive Aliens Mod. (Alternate Research Tree.)
« Reply #24 on: February 15, 2015, 06:20:09 pm »
I am just started testplaying and i was able to eliminate the Alien Base with a Floater Crew end of February.
Tech's Laser Rifles, Personal Armor, Motion Scanner, Medikit, Alloy Tanks.
Total of 33 Aliens awaited me in the Base, they spawned a lot of Reapers... (i got 12 Reaper Corpses maybe more)

See Screenshot

Offline hellrazor

  • Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 2027
  • Deep Ruleset Digger & Bughunter
    • View Profile
    • Github Account
Re: [RESEARCH][WIP] Research Alive Aliens Mod. (Alternate Research Tree.)
« Reply #25 on: February 17, 2015, 10:24:52 pm »
Some Screenshots from the UfoPaedia

Offline hellrazor

  • Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 2027
  • Deep Ruleset Digger & Bughunter
    • View Profile
    • Github Account
Re: [RESEARCH][WIP] Research Alive Aliens Mod. (Alternate Research Tree.)
« Reply #26 on: February 17, 2015, 10:27:09 pm »
Some more Screenshots

Offline hellrazor

  • Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 2027
  • Deep Ruleset Digger & Bughunter
    • View Profile
    • Github Account
Re: [RESEARCH][WIP] Research Alive Aliens Mod. (Alternate Research Tree.)
« Reply #27 on: February 18, 2015, 10:08:55 am »
Reserach Tree Graphic (corrected Multilocks (Layers got mixed up)
« Last Edit: February 19, 2015, 02:13:26 am by hellrazor »

Offline SIMON BAILIE

  • Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 676
    • View Profile
Re: [RESEARCH][WIP] Research Alive Aliens Mod. (Alternate Research Tree.)
« Reply #28 on: February 18, 2015, 08:08:52 pm »
Just tried this mod, v1.3 and the following happens on the 1st mission, see pictures regarding the black areas. I've the following mods on:

rulesets:
  - Xcom1Ruleset
  - Acid_Weaponry
  - Batman
  - CUSTOM STATSTRINGS
  - CivArmorRich
  - CraftMissleSound
  - EleriumFlare
  - Enforcer
  - ExtraPockets
  - Extra_Explosions
  - FireStormGfx
  - GaussWeaponry
  - GenderDetail
  - GuidedMissile
  - HWP_Mortar
  - Improved_HandOb
  - Improved_Recruit_Start_Stat
  - Ironman Super Suit
  - Laser_Sniper_Rifle
  - MassAccelerator
  - PSX_Static_Cydonia_Map
  - PowerSuitHelmOff
  - Predator
  - SECTOPOD_HWP
  - SPACEMARINES
  - SniperRifle_custom
  - SniperRifle_u2s
  - TacticalNuke
  - UFOextender_Gun_Melee
  - ViperAssaultCannon
  - WeaponNaymore
  - WeaponTranquilizer
  - XcomUtil_Fighter_Transports
  - XcomUtil_High_Explosive_Damage
  - XcomUtil_Improved_Ground_Tanks
  - XcomUtil_Pistol_Auto_Shot
  - XcomUtil_Skyranger_Weapon_Slot
  - small_rocket_small
  - Research_Alive_Aliens
  - Alternate_Lightning_Thunder
  - 2012DeathSounds
  - Commendations
  - CommendationsUFOpedia
  - ITEM LIST ORDER
  - XcomUtil_Starting_Defensive_Improved_Base
  - LukesDarkUFOs

Have tried various things like reloading, taking off Luke's Dark Ufo's but it seems that if any of my units get reaction shot in a dark area the game crashes to the desktop. I'm using the nightly of 2015-02-17 and I don't think any of the mods r causing a conflict but this is beyond my knowledge. Item list order is something of mine just to put stores/purchase screens in what I consider a more sensible order. Wud "Yet more ufos" work better?

Offline hellrazor

  • Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 2027
  • Deep Ruleset Digger & Bughunter
    • View Profile
    • Github Account
Re: [RESEARCH][WIP] Research Alive Aliens Mod. (Alternate Research Tree.)
« Reply #29 on: February 18, 2015, 08:45:46 pm »
Just tried this mod, v1.3 and the following happens on the 1st mission, see pictures regarding the black areas. I've the following mods on:

rulesets:
  - Xcom1Ruleset
  - Acid_Weaponry
  - Batman
  - CUSTOM STATSTRINGS
  - CivArmorRich
  - CraftMissleSound
  - EleriumFlare
  - Enforcer
  - ExtraPockets
  - Extra_Explosions
  - FireStormGfx
  - GaussWeaponry
  - GenderDetail
  - GuidedMissile
  - HWP_Mortar
  - Improved_HandOb
  - Improved_Recruit_Start_Stat
  - Ironman Super Suit
  - Laser_Sniper_Rifle
  - MassAccelerator
  - PSX_Static_Cydonia_Map
  - PowerSuitHelmOff
  - Predator
  - SECTOPOD_HWP
  - SPACEMARINES
  - SniperRifle_custom
  - SniperRifle_u2s
  - TacticalNuke
  - UFOextender_Gun_Melee
  - ViperAssaultCannon
  - WeaponNaymore
  - WeaponTranquilizer
  - XcomUtil_Fighter_Transports
  - XcomUtil_High_Explosive_Damage
  - XcomUtil_Improved_Ground_Tanks
  - XcomUtil_Pistol_Auto_Shot
  - XcomUtil_Skyranger_Weapon_Slot
  - small_rocket_small
  - Research_Alive_Aliens
  - Alternate_Lightning_Thunder
  - 2012DeathSounds
  - Commendations
  - CommendationsUFOpedia
  - ITEM LIST ORDER
  - XcomUtil_Starting_Defensive_Improved_Base
  - LukesDarkUFOs

Have tried various things like reloading, taking off Luke's Dark Ufo's but it seems that if any of my units get reaction shot in a dark area the game crashes to the desktop. I'm using the nightly of 2015-02-17 and I don't think any of the mods r causing a conflict but this is beyond my knowledge. Item list order is something of mine just to put stores/purchase screens in what I consider a more sensible order. Wud "Yet more ufos" work better?

Did you try my Mod alone?

Usually all Mods which add new Graphics shouldn't be a Problem.
Mods which add UFO's and Maps also should cause no Problem.

I can not explain the what happens when you switch into Battlescape, usually there is a Problem with filling those map tiles or they are not drawn.
But my Mod only adds a few new Items, changes the research massively, and changes Alien Deployments and changes the Order of the Missions ( so you get your Basemission first Month).

Please tellme if this also happens if you deactivate all Mods and only activate my Mod. ( Because it shouldn't).
I use the following Mods:
  - Xcom1Ruleset
  - Screening_Statstrings
  - Aliens_Pick_Up_Weapons
  - Improved_HandOb
  - Jumpsuit_Ufopaedia_Entry
  - Laser_Rifle_Recolor
  - Laser_Sectopod
  - Lukes_Extra_UFOs
  - Power_Suit_Helm_Off
  - Alternate_Lightning_Thunder
  - Research_Alive_Aliens
  - Terrain_Pack_Nightly