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Author Topic: [GENERAL QUESTIONS THREAD]  (Read 20431 times)

Offline Axebeard

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[GENERAL QUESTIONS THREAD]
« on: November 11, 2015, 01:20:15 am »
How does Morale actually work? I get that it drops each turn, and jumps up when you kill something, but if someone has 10 Bravery, it seems like it would take longer for them to panic than someone with 50 Bravery. I probably have this totally wrong (in fact, I know I do).

Offline Arthanor

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Re: [GENERAL QUESTIONS THREAD]
« Reply #1 on: November 11, 2015, 02:04:48 am »
Lots of info here on the ufopaedia.

Interesting stuff:

- Chance to panic = 100-2*morale
- panic = freeze, run OR berserk, with equal chances.
- you lose an amount of morale that depends on the rank of the soldier who got killed, the highest rank of surviving officer present (so if you have a commander present and alive, he reduces your morale losses a lot, a sergeant only reduces it a little) and your bravery score (higher bravery loses less).

So anything above 50 morale and you're safe from panicking. At 49 morale, you have a 2% chance to panic, etc.

XPiratez adds a new mechanic in "combat stress" where each turn you lose/gain morale if your current morale is higher/lower than your bravery. So gals with low bravery will eventually panic even if nothing happens, whereas gals with high bravery will recover quite fast from bad streaks.

Overall, there are two main benefits to bravery in XPiratez:
1 - You lose less morale when another gal dies (same as vanilla XCom)
2 - You recover morale faster if you have high bravery

And also billhooks and some other weapons work better if you have higher bravery. Also, fire damage causes significant morale losses, so enemies with incendiary weapons are quite a threat unless you are fireproof (having a gal get set on fire, only to turn berserk and shoot another down is the beginning of disaster if you don't have high bravery).

Offline Axebeard

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Re: [GENERAL QUESTIONS THREAD]
« Reply #2 on: November 11, 2015, 04:11:15 am »
Thanks for the info, I looked through the wiki and couldn't find that page  :P

Edit: Because it's from the main Xcom wiki. So the only new thing is that morale moves up and down every turn, if I'm reading this right.

Followup question: I understand fire destroys morale. Does setting an enemy on fire affect the entire enemy squad or just the ones taking damage?
« Last Edit: November 11, 2015, 04:16:35 am by Axebeard »

Offline DracoGriffin

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Re: [GENERAL QUESTIONS THREAD]
« Reply #3 on: November 11, 2015, 04:29:56 am »
Thanks for the info, I looked through the wiki and couldn't find that page  :P

Edit: Because it's from the main Xcom wiki. So the only new thing is that morale moves up and down every turn, if I'm reading this right.

Followup question: I understand fire destroys morale. Does setting an enemy on fire affect the entire enemy squad or just the ones taking damage?

Fire damages the morale of ONLY those affected; e.g., it doesn't scare anyone but the person on fire. Weird, right? I'm sure watching your buddy getting burnt to a crisp would be pretty intimidating, but not the case here.

Offline Dioxine

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Re: [GENERAL QUESTIONS THREAD]
« Reply #4 on: November 11, 2015, 01:26:18 pm »
Thanks for the info, I looked through the wiki and couldn't find that page  :P

It's explained (in shorter words) in-game as well... :P

Offline Axebeard

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Re: [GENERAL QUESTIONS THREAD]
« Reply #5 on: November 11, 2015, 10:58:41 pm »
Yeah, I've read that but I need to know on a mechanical level because I'm weird like that. Same with the "fire effects only the targets" thing. I assumed that's how it worked, but it's hard to test in-game.

Offline Boltgun

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Re: [GENERAL QUESTIONS THREAD]
« Reply #6 on: November 15, 2015, 01:15:53 pm »
I'm still trying to get laser ammo manufacturing but I am lost about the requirement. I completed back to school long ago, got power stations up and finished laser weapon assembly.

But besides 'we are one step further towards laser ammo', I have no research that remotely point towards this.

Did I miss an interrogation?

Offline Dioxine

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Re: [GENERAL QUESTIONS THREAD]
« Reply #7 on: November 15, 2015, 02:36:13 pm »
I'm still trying to get laser ammo manufacturing but I am lost about the requirement. I completed back to school long ago, got power stations up and finished laser weapon assembly.

But besides 'we are one step further towards laser ammo', I have no research that remotely point towards this.

Did I miss an interrogation?

You already got Electropulse Ammo and Huntig Laser, ja? Then you're missing one interrogation (one of the Broken McEnemy ones, not very high-profile). If you don't have the Hunting Laser, dust off Gun Almanachs to get it.

Offline Boltgun

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Re: [GENERAL QUESTIONS THREAD]
« Reply #8 on: November 15, 2015, 11:52:42 pm »
I got both, and got broken church rev, guild rep and guildmaster. I'll stopped stunning enemies out of laziness, but I guess I'll resume interrogations.

Offline Arthanor

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Re: [GENERAL QUESTIONS THREAD]
« Reply #9 on: November 16, 2015, 12:14:29 am »
haha in this playthrough, I am struggling with weapons too. It's hard to resist not looking up in the ruleset what to do to get 'em, but it's also nice that playthrough are different even though you should be learning what needs what, since there are SO MANY pre-requisites and cross-prerequisites.

In Piratez, I had custom and smart guns in October, along with advanced personal armor. In this one, no sign of either and I'm now in february. Got a whole bunch of other stuff though, mostly that I don't really know what it gave me. But I discovered revenant armor, and that made me quite happy :D

@Dioxine: Are there research projects that require facilities to be on site before you can research them? If there is a combination of required facility + item + prerequisites, it could make it quite unlikely to even become aware of needing the combination.. Maybe there could be a "pre-research project" that doesn't require facilities, which then would tell you the brainers need facility x to continue working on it. It's not always possible to have every facility on site where the lab is (but I have started building a "hi-tech base" where I build everything fancy. Printer, power plant, etc. so hopefully I have everything together)

Also.. The loader suit.. I'm really trying to like it, but I am having issues with it. The TU reduction combined with high TU cost of heavy weapons means that you need a whole turn to setup shooting, which is often more than you can afford to wait, so the target ends up being killed by other gals focusing on it. And at least the vulcan (haven't researched the other gun that's unlocked by the loader yet) can be carried by a gal in hover suit just as well, which is a lot more manoeuvrable.

Could it be possible to up the weight of the "very heavy guns" but drop their TU cost to.. 51-60%? Still can only fire once a turn, but can move a little bit more, and it would further restrict them to suits with carrying capacity bonuses. Or decrease the TU cost of the loader armor, I guess..

Offline Dioxine

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Re: [GENERAL QUESTIONS THREAD]
« Reply #10 on: November 16, 2015, 03:35:44 pm »
@Dioxine: Are there research projects that require facilities to be on site before you can research them? If there is a combination of required facility + item + prerequisites, it could make it quite unlikely to even become aware of needing the combination.. Maybe there could be a "pre-research project" that doesn't require facilities, which then would tell you the brainers need facility x to continue working on it. It's not always possible to have every facility on site where the lab is (but I have started building a "hi-tech base" where I build everything fancy. Printer, power plant, etc. so hopefully I have everything together)

For manufacture, every item that requires a facility has that noted down in the description. As for researches, there are a grant total of 2 which require facilities (the two final 'educational' researches); facilities in question have that in their descriptions.

Could it be possible to up the weight of the "very heavy guns" but drop their TU cost to.. 51-60%? Still can only fire once a turn, but can move a little bit more, and it would further restrict them to suits with carrying capacity bonuses. Or decrease the TU cost of the loader armor, I guess..

Might be a good idea, but I didn't want to make these weapons so heavy that only an expert gal in Loader Suit would be able to use them. There's 30 points of capacity in difference between Hover and Loader, but a starting gal has, say, 30 strength, while the maximum is 80, thus making 50 difference. Maybe I'll up the weight of these weapons by say, 15 or so, while buffing Power Armor to +35 cap, and the Loader to +60? And indeed, the firing cost can be dropped a bit (although the Vulcan is probably the least useful of the 3 dedicated weapons - I don't think Tornado needs any buffs).

I got both, and got broken church rev, guild rep and guildmaster. I'll stopped stunning enemies out of laziness, but I guess I'll resume interrogations.

Yeah, you're missing half a dozen of those, it's one of them what you need for Lazors :) (although the Rep provides you with a follow-up, so you're good having already chatted with her :) )
« Last Edit: November 16, 2015, 03:39:32 pm by Dioxine »

Offline ivandogovich

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Re: [GENERAL QUESTIONS THREAD]
« Reply #11 on: November 16, 2015, 03:51:56 pm »
Star God images:  Are there inventory images for Star Gods? (I'm using the inv images for the factions in the wiki.)  Or are the Star Gods supposed to be so powerful that there is no way the player could ever gain control over them with voodoo, thus, no need for images?

Offline Dioxine

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Re: [GENERAL QUESTIONS THREAD]
« Reply #12 on: November 16, 2015, 04:45:02 pm »
Star God images:  Are there inventory images for Star Gods? (I'm using the inv images for the factions in the wiki.)  Or are the Star Gods supposed to be so powerful that there is no way the player could ever gain control over them with voodoo, thus, no need for images?

I haven't been able to declare inv images so they're visible BOTH in the battle and in the pedia - it's either one or another... if I use a normal file declaration, it's visible in battle but crashes the Pedia (the personal armor etc you see in Pedia are done through trickery); if I do it through MANxx mechanics, it's visible in Pedia but not displayed in battle... Maybe someone knows how to circumvent this?

Offline ivandogovich

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Re: [GENERAL QUESTIONS THREAD]
« Reply #13 on: November 16, 2015, 04:55:43 pm »
Hmmm... I must just be missing these files in the  /pedia and /body-x directories?  At least I haven't seen any references to the StarGods in there.  Or do they just use standard Ethereal images from UFO? (and I haven't debugged the Bootypedia, so I don't really know if they have an entry there or not.)

Offline Arthanor

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Re: [GENERAL QUESTIONS THREAD]
« Reply #14 on: November 16, 2015, 05:23:04 pm »
For manufacture, every item that requires a facility has that noted down in the description. As for researches, there are a grant total of 2 which require facilities (the two final 'educational' researches); facilities in question have that in their descriptions.
That's fine, I am not worried about manufacture. It's good to know about the research! I can stop being paranoid.

Quote
Might be a good idea, but I didn't want to make these weapons so heavy that only an expert gal in Loader Suit would be able to use them. There's 30 points of capacity in difference between Hover and Loader, but a starting gal has, say, 30 strength, while the maximum is 80, thus making 50 difference. Maybe I'll up the weight of these weapons by say, 15 or so, while buffing Power Armor to +35 cap, and the Loader to +60? And indeed, the firing cost can be dropped a bit (although the Vulcan is probably the least useful of the 3 dedicated weapons - I don't think Tornado needs any buffs).

Actually, I realized last night that I was sort of misusing the loader suit, since that was my first playtest of the vulcan. It takes a fair bit less time to fire than a HMG already and my loader gal was a lot more useful, sort of keeping up with the main advance. The only issue is that my hover gal also upgraded her HMG to a vulcan, and she can move more, plus has the benefit of being able to shoot over the head of the frontline, instead of having to try to keep up with it, but she's also more able to keep up since she has more TUs. (I very much enjoyed using the vulcan to shred everything in front of the gals :) I think that weapon is awesome!)

I guess it depends on what you want with the loader. Either it is dedicated to carrying one very heavy gun and then it'd need a buff (or more restriction on carrying the very heavy guns in other armors), or its advantage is being able to carry two very heavy guns while a hover gal can only carry one.

I use a "Space marines" training regime for the gals (dedicated training squad to take on easy shipping like smalls with ballistic weapons, then they are first integrated in the "real team" as sniper rifle gals since that helps them hit, which in turn trains accuracy and strength further, and then they move on to heavy weapons and/or closer to the frontline). This means my heavies are capped in strength already. My heavies and sniper have a very low injury rate (except when something spots them exiting the top hatch on T1..) so they are really good after a year of machine gunning (multiple hits per kill) or sniping (multiple gals hit once on a target to eventually bring it down).

The hover gal has a HMG and a Mortar, and up until last mission, my loader gal was HMG + Rocket Launcher. That was a bad setup for the loader since those weapons are too slow to fire. Now the Hover is upgraded to a vulcan + mortar, Loader is vulcan + rocket, and at least she can move a little and fire. So the loader got a bit better (and I am guessing I will replace the rocket with the rocket-mortar, whereas that'll be too heavy for the hover gal). But it remains to be seen if that's enough of an edge for the loader. (there's a bit of increased armor, but being able to fly and shoot over other gals means that you can stay back more in hover and get better fields of fire, so that's generally better. Won't work in base assaults, obviously.. I haven't done one of those yet. Need better mid-range guns).

Personally, I would make it so a loaded vulcan is 75-80 weight (a small change, I guess, from the 68 it is now). That means your strongest gal can lift it, if she's not wearing/carrying anything. This is probably best done by upping the weight of the gun itself (since that helps with carrying extra ammo). With +15 carrying cap on Hover, you get to carry a few extra things, IF you are super strong (70+), or you just benefit from the added mobility. With that, I'd reduce the TU cost from 70% to.. 60%? It's not that much, but it will help the loader take the few extra steps. The tradeoff for Hover then becomes "mobile vulcan + not much" or "less mobile HMG + more stuff". The HMG is also very slow to fire..

I think explosive weapons might need a weight boost too (Currently: RPG: 8+6; Rocket Launcher: 10+8; Mortar: 12+6; Maybe up to RPG: 12+6; RL: 18+6; Mortar: 20-24+6) which would make them less easy to carry as a secondary weapon, especially the mortar which to me should be a big clunky thing.

Or maybe I just failed at developing advanced (heavy) weapons, and I am not seeing the benefits of the Loader because I am still using "early" weapons with 80 Str gals after a year of play...