Author Topic: [EXPANSION]Hardmode Expansion -- General Feedback Thread  (Read 352646 times)

Offline hellrazor

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Re: [WIP][EXPANSION]Hardmode Expansion - v0.99.2b Fix Alien Base Spawning
« Reply #720 on: September 17, 2016, 01:19:41 am »
Yeah, I use the latest version (without drones).

The typos I found so far:
Alien language: then should be than
Alien biology: then should be than
If I find more I shall note you but so far I researched only that much topics...

Ok thanks, i recheck them.

Monetary troubles? Yeah, first month is an "inkasso" as I were need to set up at least two more bases. That and recruit more scientists quickly depleted my cash (Floater base could brought back some of the money thanks for the loot)...

Well my current testrun might come to an soon. Since my financial situation is kinda desperate. I am forced to raid every ufo i can get... Well but i always go for a full macrogame with 6 combat teams and shitload of scientists and engineer.

And grenade launchers need constant manually reload. All the other girls and boys resupply from available clips and put them in their inventory but grenades not. If I not check the Skyranger (it is enough to enter the list screen of weapons on board) after every missions, grenadier boy forget to pick some grenades for his baby... What is a big surprise in the next battle! Boom! No ammo lads, we sucked... Even rocket launchers auto-resupply untill there are enough reserves in the stores.

If you equip your soldiers in the base inventory they will automatically restock themselves, as long as your base has enough of the item in question.
Even for grenade launchers. In tactical battles useing "R" will give you a reload without having to enter inventory.

Offline Duke_Falcon

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Re: [WIP][EXPANSION]Hardmode Expansion - v0.99.2b Fix Alien Base Spawning
« Reply #721 on: September 19, 2016, 08:51:52 am »
It seems this mod in the current state is almost impossible to accomplish. I were beaten again and there are no levels down in difficulty...
Problems:
- Aliens receive tons of points while player receives minimum. So either accomplish EVERYTHING in a month or you start to lose to much point around april-may and onward. Not even Alien base raids can help.
- Money problems. There were a month when I got no money (have six base for radar coverage, three interceptors to air assaults, 10 soldiers per base for protection albeit no retaliation ever occured). Interceptors run out of Avalanche quickly and if no money to resupply then no shot-down then minus point then bad score then defeat then restart then... And even more interceptors may need as to much repair time occurs since weapon ranges way under the UFO's and these bastards shot really hard. And since repair occurs before rearm there is no meaning to send out damaged interceptors only wait while all the UFOs fly away and generates some really nice amount of negative score...
- Research is sometimes took just to long. I mean an autopsy needs only 1-3 days at best since those corpses and their internals decay. Strange when 10 scientists work on laser rifle, 10 on snakeman autopsy and 10 on floater leader (as it were in my case) and all research started in the same time AND finishes in the same time (well, 4-8 hours in difference).
- Terrains. Some of them, as I noted in an earlier post, is just to dense and sometimes there is no way to get through except to burn and explode everything. Floaters laugh on me as they flought above obstackles and shooted my soldiers stucked in the bocages. I know that terrains are not made (at least not all) by you but such things make the game unintentionally harder.

Otherwise it do challenging just there is no "winner" strategy I found so far. Maybe I need to try debug mode? That kills the fun but give some chance to generate above -3000 per month. On the other hand this mod is REAL so it contains only what happen in a real life alien invasion: No matter how hard we try we utterly lost... All hail our new alien overlords!

Offline hellrazor

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Re: [WIP][EXPANSION]Hardmode Expansion - v0.99.2b Fix Alien Base Spawning
« Reply #722 on: September 19, 2016, 09:15:33 am »
It seems this mod in the current state is almost impossible to accomplish. I were beaten again and there are no levels down in difficulty...
Problems:
- Aliens receive tons of points while player receives minimum. So either accomplish EVERYTHING in a month or you start to lose to much point around april-may and onward. Not even Alien base raids can help.
- Money problems. There were a month when I got no money (have six base for radar coverage, three interceptors to air assaults, 10 soldiers per base for protection albeit no retaliation ever occured). Interceptors run out of Avalanche quickly and if no money to resupply then no shot-down then minus point then bad score then defeat then restart then... And even more interceptors may need as to much repair time occurs since weapon ranges way under the UFO's and these bastards shot really hard. And since repair occurs before rearm there is no meaning to send out damaged interceptors only wait while all the UFOs fly away and generates some really nice amount of negative score...
- Research is sometimes took just to long. I mean an autopsy needs only 1-3 days at best since those corpses and their internals decay. Strange when 10 scientists work on laser rifle, 10 on snakeman autopsy and 10 on floater leader (as it were in my case) and all research started in the same time AND finishes in the same time (well, 4-8 hours in difference).
- Terrains. Some of them, as I noted in an earlier post, is just to dense and sometimes there is no way to get through except to burn and explode everything. Floaters laugh on me as they flought above obstackles and shooted my soldiers stucked in the bocages. I know that terrains are not made (at least not all) by you but such things make the game unintentionally harder.

Otherwise it do challenging just there is no "winner" strategy I found so far. Maybe I need to try debug mode? That kills the fun but give some chance to generate above -3000 per month. On the other hand this mod is REAL so it contains only what happen in a real life alien invasion: No matter how hard we try we utterly lost... All hail our new alien overlords!

Why do you even bother shooting them down? Wait until they are landed and raid them. I strongly advise building 3 Large Radars at each base, radar detection chance improves greatly. Also you have the graphs and once you have a infiltration mission some were, you need to counter it. Raid those landed infiltration UFO's its essential.
You only need to have a  positive score. Alien bases do also generate some other missions and also give the aliens more points, building a base near a alien base will grant you loads of loot. Raid more, receive more money, research faster or get slowly pummeled into submission at least when your weapons do no more damage to new enemies occurying.
I recommend "Force Craft Launch" for a reason. The Airgame improves once you get Retaliators, they can even shoot down Terrorships once you put 4 of them on one, i tend to use Laser Cannon + Avalanche on them, works great.

The more you fight on the ground, the more money you get. The more success you have, the easier it becomes.

The following goals should be fulfilled until end of may:
- Alien Containment unit build
- Lasers / Personal Armor researched
Optional: Laser Canon Production for money

Fight fight fight!
There is a winning strategy, find it. Actually there are more then one :P

The terrains will be fixed in the future, i myself do not like some of them, thats already of a long list of mine.

« Last Edit: September 19, 2016, 10:32:57 pm by hellrazor »

Offline hellrazor

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Re: [WIP][EXPANSION]Hardmode Expansion - v0.99.2b Fix Alien Base Spawning
« Reply #723 on: September 20, 2016, 08:50:57 am »
Btw Duke_Falcon,

I would be inclined to have savegame file to check what is going on with Alien Missions and scoring.
Just wanna have a look. Would be nice to have.

Offline hellrazor

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Re: [WIP][EXPANSION]Hardmode Expansion - v0.99.2b Fix Alien Base Spawning
« Reply #724 on: September 21, 2016, 12:49:15 am »
I really got annoyed with the bulletsprites for the Alloy Ammo, so i changed them now looks like this:
(Yes i like details and yes i am meticulous...)

Offline hellrazor

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Re: [WIP][EXPANSION]Hardmode Expansion - v0.99.2d Bugfixes/Adjustments/Overwork
« Reply #725 on: September 21, 2016, 03:54:08 am »
Bugfixes, Adjustments and some Minor Map Overwork:

Changelog:
Version 0.99.2d
 - Simplyfied some Missionscripts
 - Fix ROUTES for UBASE_06 and UBASE_15
 - Fix Map Error for UFO_160e.MAP
 - Fix Terrain issues for:
   - TAIGAPOLAR
   - JUNGLEPOLAR
   - GRASSLANDFOREST
   - CRASHEDPLANE
   - TUNDRAPLANE
   - DESERTPLANE
   - POLARPLANE
 - Fix Shotgun Class BulletSprites
 - Fix some minor UFOPaedia typos
 - Fix Alloy Tank Laser Autoshot
 - Adjust Alien Alloy Ammo Prices
 - Adjust Alloy Cannon and Alloy Cannon Ammo Prices (Craft Weapon)
 - Adjust UFO Extender Dropoff values and Ranges to be more balanced
 - Adjust Muton Berserkers (no more energy issues *evilgrin*)
 - Adjust HandObs for HeavyLaser/Auto and HeavyLaser/Sniper
 - Adjust Alien Race occurances (Mutons come 1 month earlier)
 - Adjust Vanilla Tanks back to original values
 - Added proper Raceweights for Retaliation Missions
 - Added proper BulletSprites for Alloy Ammo
 - Added Earlier Alien Cheat Turn for ALL Deployments
 - Added increased scoring for VERY LARGE UFO's (double the vanilla value)
 - Added overworked CRASHEDPLANE Maps

Please use newest Nightly, or at least Nightly Version: openxcom_git_master_2016_08_28_1950

Modportal Link Hardmode Expansion
Dropbox Links Latest Version

Documentation:
Current ToDo List
Credit List
Changelog

EDIT: This will be the last update until I have fixed my apartment situation once again *sign* ... SOLVED :> Lets continue modding ^^
« Last Edit: October 06, 2016, 06:04:46 am by hellrazor »

Offline Duke_Falcon

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My playing laptop had an OS break-down and not all stuff is reinstalled upon it yet. If I will reset OXC and Hardmode and will have ample time to play it again I shall post saves.

Now, that my working laptop works I can only post graphics and other small things. But Hardmode is promising and I think it has a minor glitch what even vanilla had: Alien grenade + Personal armour + Lasers win the game for you. Or you find a way to balance that to? I hope you did as it will make late-game armour researches usefull at last.

Offline hellrazor

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My playing laptop had an OS break-down and not all stuff is reinstalled upon it yet. If I will reset OXC and Hardmode and will have ample time to play it again I shall post saves.

Now, that my working laptop works I can only post graphics and other small things. But Hardmode is promising and I think it has a minor glitch what even vanilla had: Alien grenade + Personal armour + Lasers win the game for you. Or you find a way to balance that to? I hope you did as it will make late-game armour researches usefull at last.

Lategame enemies are mostly immune to Lasers, so the combination you mentioned will get you through most battles until ingame October, were Laser resistent enemies show up.
Maybe reading the Mods description would be a nice idea right?

I appreciate the offer for savegames :)

Offline hellrazor

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Re: [EXPANSION]Hardmode Expansion - v0.99.2d - General Feedback Thread
« Reply #728 on: October 13, 2016, 12:36:16 pm »
Due to the fact, that I am moving into my new apartment end of this month.
I will not be able to actively mod until mid of November.

I will conduct Bugfixes if any bugs are reported, as usual :)

After that I will follow the roadmap in the Future Development Plan.

Feel free to leave any feedback or suggestions here.
« Last Edit: October 13, 2016, 12:37:55 pm by hellrazor »

Offline Arthanor

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Re: [EXPANSION]Hardmode Expansion - v0.99.2d - General Feedback Thread
« Reply #729 on: October 27, 2016, 07:39:36 pm »
Just finished watching Lion66six's 9th episode and noticed that the scout drone lost cost him 30 points to a soldier (Hobbes the 5th!) 20 points. I thought that was peculiar. Of course, the drone is still less of a loss since it is easier to replace than a soldier with experience, but it still seemed worth mentioning.

Offline hellrazor

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Re: [EXPANSION]Hardmode Expansion - v0.99.2d - General Feedback Thread
« Reply #730 on: October 28, 2016, 07:42:36 pm »
Just finished watching Lion66six's 9th episode and noticed that the scout drone lost cost him 30 points to a soldier (Hobbes the 5th!) 20 points. I thought that was peculiar. Of course, the drone is still less of a loss since it is easier to replace than a soldier with experience, but it still seemed worth mentioning.

Well once your soldier survives a few missions, loosing him is more expensive.
Loosing a Walkertank/Plasma costs you 60 points.

The Drones are not a fully integrated part of the mod, not now since I so far did not had the time to add them properly.
I made a adjusted Version of the Scout Drone Mod for Hardmode Expansion it is located here.

There will be a dedicated standalone Mod called Support Drones, which will also be integrated part of Hardmode Expansion of course.

Offline hellrazor

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Re: [EXPANSION]Hardmode Expansion - v0.99.2d - General Feedback Thread
« Reply #731 on: December 13, 2016, 03:15:39 am »
I decided to turn the Lightning Replacement Map by 90 degree.
The turned THUNDER looks like this:

Offline hellrazor

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Re: [EXPANSION]Hardmode Expansion - v0.99.2d - General Feedback Thread
« Reply #732 on: December 13, 2016, 04:29:46 am »
Cydonias new Dimensions (For the Final Fuckup so to say - still haven't turned the Large Gardens *sign*):

Offline Lion66six

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Re: [EXPANSION]Hardmode Expansion - v0.99.2d - General Feedback Thread
« Reply #733 on: December 13, 2016, 12:32:50 pm »
Is it me or is there two brains in them screenshots. One in a box? How random, how does that work?

Offline hellrazor

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Re: [EXPANSION]Hardmode Expansion - v0.99.2d - General Feedback Thread
« Reply #734 on: December 13, 2016, 02:25:49 pm »
Is it me or is there two brains in them screenshots. One in a box? How random, how does that work?

The one in the box is a old already dead alien brain, a "FAKE" brain, it has no function other then to mislead you :P