Suggestions on how to improve the mod

[Nygmus]

Improved radar, perhaps not, but it would be very nice if the Aircar were able to at least intercept some landed traffic.

I'm pretty new to Piratez with 0.99, so take anything I say with a grain of salt. While I'm largely loving it, it's frustrating seeing so much air traffic that I barely bother attempting to intercept because the Airbus is too slow to follow most traffic to a landing site. The Pachyderm was a significant upgrade and I can finally start actually interdicting air traffic around my starting base, but that first few months were a bit of a drag and I nearly failed out of the campaign during one because of traffic outside of my area of control.

Having instant access (pending cost) to the basic craft in .98 certainly made things easier (an early Skyranger meant that I could stomp all over virtually any mission I sent it to), but I can't help but feel that the .99 early game went a bit too far the other way.

[legionof1]

Hmm, that sounds like a looted academy drone... But would it be worthwhile? It's not very durable, has poor weapons and while it's a good scout, I think parrots are better...

Overall worthwhile....maybe. The weapons not actually to bad if it was in player hands. The ai just tends to blow its wad on snap shots at extreme range because the drones have good reactions and vision. And yeah its nor super durable but 32 all round armor isn't nothing either. I mean how long are we stuck with 20 armor gals?

[ivandogovich]

Hm... what are some realistic requirements for it... (The Early Drone HWP)
-Drone Wreck Examination
-Slave AI or Integrated Devices (would these put it out too far?)

With the Different Weapons Summaries completed, (Pistols, Shotguns, Rifles) you could create a platform that you could upgrade at each step. 
 Construction would require a wreck, some electronics, (slave ai, Integrated devices, etc) and a couple of the weapons (ie, 2 manstoppers, 2 Military Shotguns, 2 Assault Rifles, etc).

But with something like this would they be too delayed to be useful?

[Drasnighta]

If it were based on Drone Wreck + Integrated, then the delaying feature I've found so far is the Drone Wreck...  because Integrated is fairly easy to get - the Medics/Researchers seem to occasionally carry personal computers that break down into IDs.

If it was based on Slave AI - that's a little trickier, since you're most often having to get a UFO one way or another to end up with them...

Which might be a bit of a cyclical delay, since you're not really seeing the Drone Wreck until a UFO anyway....  at least in my Experience.



BUT

Dioxine mentioned both Beastmasters and Necromancers as for the reason why...  I'm waiting to see more about that 'Surprise'...

[khade]

I had two ideas today: the first is to have some sort of gyrojet weapon, based on a quick check on wikipedia  it would do its best damage at mid range, the gun would be light and probably easy to make, while the bullets possibly could be heavier and difficult to manufacture.

The second, for if we end up with aquatic missions is loosely related, I found out that there are guns designed for underwater use, they generally shoot flechettes.  Makes me wonder why X-Com went with spear guns and dart guns, as these appear to a bit superior.

Edit

Might have figured out the speargun thing, effective range apparently goes down the deeper you go with the underwater firearms.

[Rince Wind]

And the early Russian weapon was used around 2000, they might not have known about it.

[Dioxine]

From the wiki: "Versions of the Gyrojet that were tested were inaccurate, cumbersome, slow loading, and unreliable (at best, a 1% failure rate was suggested; users quote worse figures, with many rounds that misfired the first time but later fired)."

As for underwater weapons, yeah, but only after underwater missions are in

[DoktorV]

The old flechette rounds were based on the best available engineering knowledge from the time. There's a new generation of underwater / trans-water ammunition, supercavitating rounds. They fire from conventional cases and I think they require no modification to the host weapon. I think effective range is in the several tens of meters underwater for the light rifle rounds and maybe 100m for the .50 BMG.

The really interesting thing is that they don't change direction when passing into our out of water, which means you can fire accurately from underwater at a target out of the water, assuming you correct for the refraction properly. That particular feature probably can't be captured in the game engine though :-P

So if you are going to have underwater missions, there are basically several tech levels of underwater shooting weaponry that work. In increasing order of required manufacturing sophistication, you've got crossbows and spearguns, then flechette rifles, then supercavitating rounds for conventional firearms. Could make for a decent amount of progression.

[khade]

It also mentioned that the Gyrojet was rushed and it didn't look like the tech was really explored.  But honestly the only benefit here would be the extremely light guns, for your pansy swabbies, and that's only somewhat useful.

I'd like to see what we could do with the Gyrojet now, with a proper budget and time to work on it, but Piratez is not the place for that bit.  Flechette rounds though...

[karadoc]

As Bloax mentioned, its available in his latest executable build here: https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,4187.0.html
Down load the linked file in the first post and use it replace to the one in your OpenXcom_XPiratez folder.

Thanks for the tip. Done, and fixed.

[Nygmus]

Another thought presents itself.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me (based on what I've read of dev logs and such) that you originally started with the Bonaventura, and it was changed at some point to be the way it is?

It strikes me that, thematically (and for the benefit of new players to the mod unfamiliar with that history) it wouldn't hurt to have a research topic early on for the Menacing Hull. My first X-Piratez version was one where you didn't start with the ship, and if I hadn't read through Ufopaedia and other discussion topics so relentlessly I would have never known anything about it.

A research topic akin to Spring Cleaning would help to give a bit of story to the initial base and help to establish the Bonaventura as a major milestone goal for new players. It would also give the opportunity to give a bit of exposition as to what is needed to research toward the Bonaventura; suggesting that the player needs to capture a live pilot as part of that portion of the tech tree, for example, would be a useful early hint that other parts of the tech tree are similarly capture-locked.

Speaking which, I'm about to build her myself for the very first time, having managed to collect a set of Old Earth Books for the first time. Bit excited!

[Dioxine]

You're right, it's just that arc is simply incomplete yet (there will be 5 variants to choose from, albeit you will be able to build only a single ship).

[GarlandSP]

There are people talking about the gyrojet pistol, there is a modern desing somewhat similar, advance design for our times though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFjGbOyd2ek

I think this could solve the problem of aquatic weapons.

[GarlandSP]

BTW: Pure alkaline metal, like sodium or potassium explode in contact with water, so i suggest changing standard ammo ( that contains gunpowder ) to sodium propelant.

Here is a video explaining, i suggest subscribing as its a great science channel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmlAYnFF_s8

Edit: in case of underwater combat like in TFTD.

[Dioxine]

I think this could solve the problem of aquatic weapons.

I didn't know there was any problem