aliens

Author Topic: Alien autopsy damage bonus  (Read 5198 times)

Offline psyHoTik

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Alien autopsy damage bonus
« on: January 29, 2016, 10:01:21 am »
UFO: Aftermath or Aftershock (or both?) had some interesting idea - performing an autopsy of an alien creature allowed scientists to know its weak spots and train soldiers where to aim to inflict maximum damage. In the terms of gameplay such research resulted in small damage bonus against this particular creature. Do openXcom engine allows such thing? It would make corpses research more useful - right now most of them are only for flavor, often not giving any useful information (not counting bizarre TFTD ideas like Gillmen autopsy required to unlock Thermic Lance). Such bonus may be a reason to give autopsies higher priority.

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: Alien autopsy damage bonus
« Reply #1 on: January 29, 2016, 07:37:48 pm »
The engine doesn't support anything like this, because nobody has ever needed it. But should it happen? Well, I'm torn on this. Certainly not for humanoid aliens, like Sectoids, because their kill zone is pretty much the same as human's, but could make sense for Silacoids. Then again, bullet hits are pretty random, so I don't think it would make much of the difference to know where Silacoid's balls are located. :P
And when you're not as much in battle as performing an execution on a helpless enemy, you can use Meridian's OXCE build for the execute option.


But UFO: Aftershock with ACM mod is one of the best games ever!

Offline psyHoTik

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Re: Alien autopsy damage bonus
« Reply #2 on: January 30, 2016, 09:21:26 am »
OFFTOP:
But UFO: Aftershock with ACM mod is one of the best games ever!
That's true. If only someone could make a patch to fix bugs present in the engine then it would be the game of the century.  I liked the whole series (AM, AS, AL) very much - I know it wasn't well received and AS was (and still is) buggy as hell but for me those games were very entertaining, especially AM with its apocalyptic setting.
« Last Edit: January 30, 2016, 09:26:31 am by psyHoTik »

Offline Dioxine

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Re: Alien autopsy damage bonus
« Reply #3 on: January 30, 2016, 02:52:23 pm »
Well, you could do it more x-comy way - make autopsy article type 5, so it'd display all armor values and resistances, allowing the player to always take the best weapon against that alien. But I understand it's not quite the same, and has little value for someone who's not playing the game for the first time.

Offline Yankes

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Re: Alien autopsy damage bonus
« Reply #4 on: January 30, 2016, 03:26:06 pm »
I could say that at some point in future it will be possible for OXC Extended. This is only question of exposing right parts of game engine to script (fact that you do research and that you hit correct enemy).

Offline Eddie

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Re: Alien autopsy damage bonus
« Reply #5 on: February 01, 2016, 10:58:48 pm »
We have a damage range of 50-150% or 0-200% right now anyway, which can be interpreted as "hitting the weak spots". Right now, the distribution for the damage range is even. Instead of a damage bonus, I would change the distribution to make the higher percentages more likely than the lower ones.

Example: for the 50-150% range, a result in the 50-100% range has a chance of 1/3 and a 100-150% result a 2/3 chance.

Edit: Also, this should be dependent on damage type. Explosions should not benefit, as you can't aim a granade at a weak spot.
« Last Edit: February 01, 2016, 11:01:21 pm by Eddie »

Offline pWWWa

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Re: Alien autopsy damage bonus
« Reply #6 on: February 09, 2016, 12:05:51 am »
That idea was realised in UFO EXtender/TFTD Extender --  "Know Thy Enemy" option.