Some feedback, some questions

[ivandogovich]

For that matter, use Debug Mode in New Battle.  Then you could just check how much damage X enemy took from Y weapon, etc.

You *can* edit the saved squad for the New Battle and put your own squad in.  I've done it before.  A nice write up on it for the Bootypedia would be nice if someone wants to tackle that.

[yrizoud]

A specific mission type could be permanently available and impossible to "win" (you need to retreat and abort), and have no-score harmless opponents. But this may be clunky and abusable for experience.

[Solarius Scorch]

If someone really wants, I can write a mod that adds a special testing parameters to the QB, namely a faction that only consists of Ratmen and a deployment type (namely a ship) with no weapons for . But I really don't think it's necessary for tests.

[Eddie]

I did some more thinking on the target dummies. You wouldn't need a battlescape to get the relevant info. You could add a button to the soldier equip screen that says "weapon testing". When clicking it, you get a prompt to choose a target dummy (armor, resitances, maybe actual enemy if researched). Then a calculation runs using the equipped weapon and returns the stats like average damage, min/max damage etc.
For weapons with non linear accuracy scaling like the sniper rifle it would also be helpful to know the actual accuracy before the battlescape.

[Dioxine]

I'm not against external tools; anyone can write an excel spritesheet if they have nothing better to do. But I won't add such a thing to my mod, at least not in such an overt way; maybe a number indicator of the base damage (after buffs) in the weapon window in Battlescape. At least for melee weapons and guns.

More would allow to circumvent actual battle experience and create a false feeling that weapon stats are the most important thing, as well as it could mislead (most formulas deal several damage types). The thing you propose would be critical for a small game, but here you will have dozens or hundreds of missions to rack up the experience and test things out. Player does need feedback, but for that, I have proposed pain sounds and short damage logs - so far no one stepped up to the challenge of coding that.

[Meridian]

I'm not against external tools; anyone can write an excel spritesheet if they have nothing better to do. But I won't add such a thing to my mod, at least not in such an overt way; maybe a number indicator of the base damage (after buffs) in the weapon window in Battlescape. At least for melee weapons and guns.

Jadestar asked for this on the stream too. I could do it for vanilla, but OXCE just has too many damage components, it would be quite useless/overwhelming I think.

More would allow to circumvent actual battle experience and create a false feeling that weapon stats are the most important thing, as well as it could mislead (most formulas deal several damage types). The thing you propose would be critical for a small game, but here you will have dozens or hundreds of missions to rack up the experience and test things out. Player does need feedback, but for that, I have proposed pain sounds and short damage logs - so far no one stepped up to the challenge of coding that.

I have an experimental version of this (in hit log, not published yet). It sort of works for weapons, which hurt only one enemy at a time... but anything explosive/AOE would be too confusing again. All components of the log are just too disconnected in time and space. I am working on improving this, but I don't think I can cover all cases.

Btw. I am torn between these two:

... based on percentage of the targets health.
- light = 0 - 10 %
- medium = 10 - 30%
- heavy = 30 - 60%
- critical = 60% +
etc

Actually Bloax had the best idea so far:

<+Bloaxor> ![2/3]: If you hit something and the message ends with !, that means you did 7-17 damage. !!: 18-35. !!!: 36-71. !!!!: 72-143. !!!!!: 144-287. !!!!!!: 288+; and so on. Yikes!

(damage after armor)

Currently I have:
- no (health) damage = no exclamation mark
- 1 to 8 damage = !
- 9 to 32 damage = !!
- 33+ damage = !!!

[ivandogovich]

Yeah, I like the !! exclamation points.  Very clean and intuitive.

[sabrecat]

I'm also new to the mod. I think the overwhelm factor is intentional/desirable, though. XPiratez is an "everything up to 11" style of mod: more weapons, more research, more enemies, etc. etc. If you're not feeling overwhelmed, the mod's not doing its job! After all, nothing's stopping you from fencing everything you get at the beginning and buying up a low-stress loadout of your choice. Muskets, cutlasses, and black powder bombs, perhaps?

Training dummies that calculate your DPS would go counter to the spirit of the mod, too. The RPS article emphasized the "ignorant pirates" angle. How does a pirate figure out if a weapon's effective? Hit somebody with it! Are they still standing? Hit them again! If they're still standing after that, maybe your weapon sucks and you should try something else. In that sense, you have a training room, and it's called "New Game". I don't know about everyone else, but whenever I play an X-Com game, I have at least two or three false starts before I play through to conclusion...

The only place I have gripes with the above is where weapon effectiveness runs way counter to common sense, such that you're unlikely to even try a given combination without forum/wiki reference. But those are pretty rare, and seem to follow the general rule of "primitive weapons are cinematically effective, Ewok style."

[Dioxine]

Now that's someone who understands The 'unintuitive' cases are being curbed anyway.

@Meridian: I'm still for the solution Bloax proposed, although if you're torn on exact numbers, just make it moddable (just like scores are now: score threshold, custom string). Also while hit log is nice and dandy, most people won't use it since it's undocumented. What about printing the text in the tooltip area, just over the GUI?

Also, if you make the new proposed 'fatal wounds' on-screen indicator (flashing boxes), please make it switchable. IMO for many players, me included, it'd be just one Fatal Wound indicator too many, I don't like being prompted to heal damned injuries like I'm some sort of an underling. On-screen prompt obscures vision and you will be annoyed by it, and you will heal the wounds just to get rid of it. I don't want the players to be treated like this. But I support the idea, some players might simply need that extra reminder. Also be sure not to crash the game if there are >10 fatally wounded people

[Meridian]

OK, I made some improvements and will release today so that you can do some testing if you want.

I decided for percentual damage at the end with 3 levels only:
miss = " "
hit 0% = "0 "
hit <20% = "hit! " (edit: changed to "hit ")
hit >20% = "hit!! " (edit: changed to "hit! ")

The number of levels, actual numbers, text and percent or flat will be configurable later via ruleset, this is just for testing and initial feedback.

Below screenshot shows:
- miss
- bad hit
- miss
- good hit
- miss
- hit, no damage
- miss
- miss

[Yankes]

If we have only "hit!" and "hit!!" then better would be "hit" and "hit!".
Another is something different than "0" maybe "glance" or "block"?

[Meridian]

If we have only "hit!" and "hit!!" then better would be "hit" and "hit!".
Another is something different than "0" maybe "glance" or "block"?

It's just quite hard to read (at least for me) if the words are longer. It's either big letters and not enough space, or very small letters in that message box. And it also disappear after short time, so I want to be able to read it instantly.
I am very happy with the "0 " (I had it as "hit " before).
But you're right about the other two, I can save one exclamation mark from both messages (i.e. <20% "hit ", >20% "hit! ").

Anyway, as I said, it will be configurable once I test it and do it properly... so far, this is the ugliest piece of code I've ever written.

[Eddie]

Another proposal for formatting: Misses as 0, hits as X with no arrows in between. So four shots with one hit would look like 0 0 X 0
Exclamationmarks can be put after the X to indicate more damage 0 0 X! 0

[Intikhab]

I didn't wanted to create new topic for feedback and questions since this one is here.
1. Are slaves only used for creating negative space? if no what else they can be used for?
my feedback will be to allow them to reduce the maintenance cost for the base including everything, also discounts when manufacturing and faster researches marginally(it will affect only longer researches more as if 100 normal slaves give 1% to reduces research time etc it could be anything).
discount on manufactures due to using free slaves to do simple tasks for runts and helping them out free of cost, or get supervised by runts to works for them etc.
faster research speeds where brainers uses slaves as test subjects, moving heavy machinery for them etc. for free of cost.

2. Let slaves be used to gives boosts to training and health care of the hands we have. Like they cook food, entertain and meatbags to exercise so that our troops grow stronger than normal doing training.
3. When technologies are researched shouldn't default armors or easier to manufacture armors be improved little by little by the knowledge gained. Just to give them more use overtime or if enough technology have been research then some easier to produce armor become infinite to use but still require materials to manufacture and sell them to get profits if they can fetch.
4. Any playing advice for me, i want to capture live aliens with no casualties for me. Extremely wounded gals is fine by me, can get more but training rookies from scratch and losing when about to be trained to max is saddening. losing even on easiest difficulty due to no knowledge how to play the game much. Doing Save scumming for third try to learn game XD is it still cheating? but i will most likely forget what i learned, but not all.
5. Can anyone tell me what to research to have better armors to captures enemies alive, so i can use their stuff for myself? First eight i researched are not good at all to even compare to pirate clothing. Any guide? anything to learn how to play this? i tried using cattle prod but enemy seems to not get stunned every time even i hear shock sound that it hit!
6. Read newbie guide in forum not much to go on as it doesn't tell you most things which i figured out my self playing a week.

[ivandogovich]

1/2. Slaves are only negative space. All your other suggestions while interesting are not possible with the current game engine.
3 etc. There are no magic bullets to get free captives. 
Warrior armor will keep you alive vs. most bullets and shotguns (early enemy weapons).  Better weapons take time and a lot of tech. 
Bows, and Black Powder bombs are great solutions for a lot of problems. 
Cattle prods do work and are vital, but often need repeated use to complete a stun.  I like handles too for smaller size and faster.