Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - N7 16-Dec-2023 Flying Tiger, Hidden Tentacle

[RSSwizard]

Hey guys has anything changed with the research formula?

Ive noticed that research speed for topics seems to vary in some way. Either the first day that research is applied its either ignoring the efforts of 1 brainer, or its halving the research from the first day.

I know its not ignoring the first day entirely because 2 brainers will crack a data disk and 3 brainers will finish a gun magazine by the end of the day.

But I mean I can put like 10 brainers on researching something else and itll still say either "excellent" or "unknown" the following day, but the day after that the topic will crack.
(yeah it would be nice to metagame and know exactly how many to put on an interrogation, but it seems like the First Day is throwing a curve ball against research topics. This has me tempted to just put 1 brainer on a subject the first day, then dump the remaining number on it that I want to commit after that)

[BBHood217]

It's all RNG, the research time needed for any research topic could be less or more than what's defined in the ruleset.  As an example, the nonexistent tech Flying Galleons has 30 as its defined goal; in one playthrough it'll take 40 brainers to research, but in another it'll take only 20.  The research progress text (the "Unknown" and "Excellent" and stuff) only refers to its defined goal and doesn't take any randomizations into account, so an Excellent topic could take a few more days while an Average topic suddenly finishes early.

[Ethereal_Medic]

The slowest and most efficient way to get research rolling is to set most topics with 1 brainer and add the focus onto this one particular topic to advance 'faster' towards the goal further beyond.
Knowledge about guns you can use even without 'knowing' what they do can be researched using 1 brainer only while you add 10 brainers to the topic 'modern personal protection' to get better armor and more value out of tactical vests.

Speaking of 'hard to read' mechanics: The beloved M-Cougar has two types of ammo. Does HVAP-ammo (41dmg) ignore a portion of armor just like the ETAP-ammo (35dmg /-25%)?

[BBHood217]

I don't think it does; if it did, the description would've also included HVAP or said all ammo types but it only mentions ETAP as the armor-ignoring one.

What does ETAP mean anyway?  I've figured that HVAP is "heavy armor piercing", but ETAP?  "Extraterrestrial armor piercing"?

[Ethereal_Medic]

The bootypedia mentions both ammo-types in the same sentence.
I read it like this, that both ammo-types ignore 25% armor.

I love the weapon anyway and opt. for HVAP since RNG hates me so I go with bigger numbers (0-82 instead of 0-70) to eventually get one good roll for a 5x auto burst.
Some sort of indicator would help here. We got a * to tell us that a weapon does armor damage but the stat of 'ignores armor' needs to be remembered instead.

Both 'shreds armor' and 'ignores armor %' indicator should be located somehow and somewhere to outrule a guessing game.
More a QoL fix but nothing game breaking, just a curiosity I questioned myself.

If HVAP stands for Heavy armor piercing that would mean, that the death blossoms API and HVAP should ignore armor as well.
It's also nowhere stated, that assault rifle /ap-clips ignore armor while sporting a smaller clip-size. Plastasteel ammo (35dmg) and basic ammo (30dmg without armor-ignore) are all stated as *piercing* damage. This is not meant to annoy or nitpicking, it's just 'complex' to look behind and it's not easy to read the ruleset or even find the actual entry for the issue in question.

[BBHood217]

I see the potential problem now.  The mini-cougar's description does say "Fed with HVAP or ETAP (ignores 25% armor) ammo.", so that might be unclear.  Maybe one solution would be to copy-paste the line from the omega rifle's description that clearly states how the ETAP and only the ETAP ignores armor.

[Ethereal_Medic]

Not a real problem, just text not delivering a clear answer.
The thing with '% armor ignored' is a missing feedback to the player. We got the * for the cursor for the hint that armor will be damaged.
Why not add something like:

Damage roll: 0-82*_-25% to remind the player that you use a gun that ignores a portion of armor.
It's a given that lasers have inbuilt 33% armor-ignore but all those piercing weapons need a little hint to remind the player of the given fact.

  is a placeholder for a shield-icon or bodyarmor-icon. Or simply use _{-XX% Armor} if that work.

[Eddie]

Damage calculation is complicated, so it's hard to display in a single number. It would be possible to calculate the exact damage range, but that would need to include resistance, armour and facing of the target. People have argued against it because it takes away the surprise of fighting against unidentified enemies. I on the other hand would like to have it, because you have the surprise only on your first playthrough anyway.

An example of complicated damage calculation is the battle rifle AP clip. It has an armor modifier of 0.7, but a health modifier of 0.9. How do you display that? It does 36 damage, so the displayed damage range would be 0-72. However, because of the 0.9 health modifier the maximum damage the round can do is not 72 but 64. The 72 is still important because that is the number that is compared to the armour of the target. The 0.9 health modifier is then applied to the damage that gets past the armour. To be immune vs this round, you need a little over 100 armour.

Sooo... when you want to know weapon efectiveness, the best you can do is to test the weapons in battlescape. Exact calculations are complicated, especially once you want to include the effect of multiple hits that each damage the armour.

[Ethereal_Medic]

Nonono, I just want an indicator for the feature: %xx armor ignored
We got the hint of * for weaponry shredding armor so I wonder if it's possible to add another 'icon' to show the player this feature.

Edit:
I randomly checked the loader bootypedia-entry. "Is Exosuit." is mentioned twice in the article.

[cc]

What does ETAP mean anyway?  I've figured that HVAP is "heavy armor piercing", but ETAP?  "Extraterrestrial armor piercing"?

HVAP = High-Velocity Armor-Piercing (a real thing)
I forgot what ETAP means, but I think it was hellerium based munition that requires industrial-scale manufacturing.

[ohartenstein23]

HVAP = High-Velocity Armor-Piercing (a real thing)
I forgot what ETAP means, but I think it was hellerium based munition that requires industrial-scale manufacturing.

I always assumed that ETAP mean Elerium-Tipped Armor Piercing.

[Ragshak]

I keep recruiting more soldiers over the cause of the run, around 100 soldiers either maxed-out for 'serious business' operations or trainees for milk runs.
The first stats maxed for me is always firing (120+), TUs (100) and bravery (90-100).

Do you train them one by one? In the beginning babysiting each gal is even fun but later on when player needs to think more global and a lot of management is being involved its quite frusraiting for me to keep track of ech gal progress.

Would really like to see a mod that unclocks full gal's potential with Dojo and Luxury Spa. Then I could build special base only for gal training.

[Ethereal_Medic]

Elite-crew takes up the lower slots and armed to the teeth for the tough missions (everything involving ethereals and mutons).
Harmless missions where the opposition can't scratch my armor I bring the rooks.
Yes I've got an eye for the soldiers located in my main dropship base. A luxury spa helps building them up even faster and I can benefit from the SUPERMAID upgrade.

I also screen everyone to get voodoo up faster.
Afterall we need 32-36 decent supersoldiers on crack to bust cydonia. No voodoo-wimps allowed.

[RSSwizard]

Damage calculation is complicated, so it's hard to display in a single number.

Its worth mentioning that your Facing does determine which armor plate you get hit on, but it isnt guaranteed to always hit that section. You can be facing someone directly and most of those hits will affect their Front Armor but sometimes it will hit their Left/Right Armor. Im not sure but a shot from above or below may have a chance to hit your Under armor too.
(im betting its alot less straightforward when shooting a 2x2 size unit... where exactly IS its front and back with regard to a shooter, what happens if you're above it and its facing you, and you shoot it in the rear tile by accident, is that a Rear Armor hit? When being, or shooting a 2x2 size critter you're probably looking at an equal chance between Side Armors and the one you're facing)


Another note about armor penetration that I guess is a forest-for-the-trees note is that the Light Cannon with AP rounds might as well be a Heavy Laser, and is probably better at doing the job while being much easier to get your hands on (alot of enemy armors have laser resistance but not as many have piercing, if its got piercing resistance then its probably some weird ass thing)

Kinda weird how that works huh, a Light Cannon, much more easily supplied and available, is just as mean as a Heavy Laser, which takes alot more teching to get to.

(Its also worth considering that ALL enemies have at least 5 armor, as per soft targets, so when it comes to shotguns you might as well deduct 5 damage from the power value before figuring out in your head how much its likely to do. For example zombies have 5 and the birdshot from the small shotguns does 14 so they're only going to take probably ~70ish damage from a full blast, you can assume 9 per pellet due to -5DR from the armor. Thats I guess one reason that sawed off shotguns are such an easy backup for a zombie mission because they'll get ~120 per blast or ~240 for the double shot, and rather than reload just pull out another sawed off)

(Ubers like Ninja Gals have 20 armor just like your gals, so while shotgun blasts can be effective against them, on average each pellet will cause no damage and you're only looking for high rolls with them. This is the benefit of using higher base-damage shotgun ammo because its much less likely to be left underwater in terms of not beating the armor, even if you get less pellets. Reapers are another example, you'd think they're a soft target but with 28 armor thats actually alot to shoot through even when you've got multiple pellets, since birdshot only does 14 it literally cannot damage them at all)

An example of complicated damage calculation is the battle rifle AP clip. It has an armor modifier of 0.7, but a health modifier of 0.9. How do you display that?

I guess the proper, responsible way to do it would really be to reduce the actual Power of that ammo type to 32, so it doesn't have a health modifier and it does what it says on the tin (while driving the armor modifier down to 0.63 and writing it as -37% armor).

The health modifier is basically the other half of the equation when it comes to hurting something, and not everything has armor piercing, so whatever it might do to your health is what should dictate its Power value first. The 36 power value does mean that it will still do the same scenery damage as the regular ammo though, the health and armor modifiers mean nothing when it comes to its demolitions (ToTile) modifier. So there is kinda a reason to still leave it at 36, however this would be better done by giving it +11% demolitions and not writing that because that much, at that low of a damage value isnt enough to bother mentioning.

[Ethereal_Medic]

In terms of 'how much damage done' not even something like rebooted X-Com longwar gave you a flashing max-damage indicator for the healthbar and the actual damage range in the HUD.
Not even this mod took the inbuilt damage reduction into account (DR even ramped up over the cause of the run).

A bit hidden but we got Ctrl + H to give us at least a hint that we caused a hit at all and in terms of damage we got "Hit" or "0".
Instead of "Hit" I wonder if it's possible to show the exact health-damage done.