Re: The X-Com Files - 3.5: Whispers In The Dark

[Solarius Scorch]

Guys, sorry for disappearing for 20 days. I was, well, busy. I hope you'll forgive me, it's summer after all.
To my defence, I modded quite a bit. 1.0 is coming... Slowly.

Let me respond to the posts below. It will be brief, so feel free to ask for clarifications.

What's the name of the modified doom song with the sounds of battle being part of the music itself?

I think you mean "At Doom's Gate", by Robert Prince. It's from "DOOM" OST.
I couldn't find this particular version on YouTube, though. I have the mp3s from somewhere, long ago.

Beach / Swimsuit mission: no escape  (Superhuman/ironman)

What is the purpose of this mission?  Four of my agents are allowed in swimsuits. There were at least 8 gang members with automatic weapons and they moved down my squad.  I had dart rifles and managed to tranquilize two of them.

The purpose is to have a fun mission with good loot. If it's too hard for you, decrease your difficulty or ignore it. Osiron missions are pretty much extras anyway.
As usual, Krautbernd's advice is pretty good.

Having said that, it's not like the game is impossible or even not recommended on superhuman... But it's meant to be pretty masochistic.

SMOKES!!!

Is there any hope for the fixing of smoke grenades? Typical situation: my agents sitting in the smoked area, and MY guys can't see anything while enemies can see them and shoot with no penalty accuracy! WTF??? Look at this http://prntscr.com/opoflg
He can see me and I can't! How could that be???

P.S. Sorry for my bad english.

This generally applies to aliens and a few other forces. Against ordinary humans smoke works fine, but aliens have advanced vision modes which allow them to partially negate the smoke.
Making more smoke should help (no kill like overkill), unless the enemy in question has psi vision, in which case nothing can be done.
Ridаn is right.

Night missions

I'm always wait till daytime to begin mission... Today I've decided to go into the NIGH. And what is the result? Have a look http://prntscr.com/opvznx

Here is my soldier. He had shooted at frontal enemy and catched reaction shoot from the right corner. What does it mean? The night does not give you any tactical advantage, so the nightvision of drones and biosuits is useless. AI soldiers are cheaters

No, Red Dawn simply coordinates its actions, like the player does.
This is the whole point of the sniper/spotter mechanics. If a units with a "spotter" flag sees an enemy, it communicates their location to to all units with the "sniper" tag. This allows enemy snipers to shoot at targets they normally wouldn't see, though with a hefty penalty of -50% accuracy.
Out of the 4 initial cults, Red Dawn is arguably the best at this, with many units having these tags.

I love this mayhem! A huge zombie army.
(Superhuman/ironman)

Good. I realize many people think it's a chore to kill so many zombies, but I personally enjoy a large battle once in a while.

Looks unpromising... In vanilla UFO and Final Mod Pack smoke was the first thing you should do at the landing place to hide yor first moves. Now its useless even against humans. Very strange...

Nah, it's fine against most humans, as long as there are no snipers.

Comrades, tell me, please:
1. If I sit down, will it be harder to hit me?

It depends, but if it helps, then only marginally. However, if kneeling hides you completely from enemy sight, then you're safe.

2. If you hide behind a tree or other object, does it somehow affect the probability of getting into me?

Yes, but don't count on it too much.

Yeah but, then again the mod isn't balanced for higher difficulties. Spike boars are already kind of OP on normal difficulties. What were you expecting? At least on normal it kind of makes sense that military might stand a chance because of their numbers. On higher difficulties it just get's utterly ridiculous.

With all due respect, I don't think spikeboars are very hard. At last not in forests, where they're usually found. Just stay under the canopies and they won't be able to target you.
Now, if it's open terrain... Ouch.

It varies. Among those dossiers and jokes there may be several important items. Cultists usually give weapons and some information about their cult. Alien medics and Syndicate scientists give information about alien species and monsters. Alien engineers and Cyberweb unlock technologies. If you are not afraid of spoilers, middle-click the researchable item to find out. (You may need to allow research tree spoilers in options.)

By the way, several dossiers unlock unique missions with expensive prizes.

All true, but also note that all research grants points.

Looks like Iceland can spawn with a funding level of 0, which I think would preclude you from ever getting any funding from that country since funding increases are based on a percentage increase. I know they're a poor nation, but it is a little sad to have a game where they can't ever contribute anything to the global defense effort.

Thanks. I'll fix this. Hopefully 20 will high enough for the minimum (now is 15).
For now, I suggest editing your save file and give Iceland something more than 0.

@Solarius Scorch:  I noticed, when I put even one black grenade onto a German shepherd dog, its weight goes immediately from 1 to 3 in red ==> the dogs TUs are down to 30% of the original 100%.  This was a highly unfortunate decision to put it politely.
 This tells me that strong dog breed cannot even handle to carry one grenade without slowing down???  Those dogs are super strong and can carry even a gallon of water!

It's abstracted, of course. It's not like the dog can't carry a grenade, but it has no hands and running around with a load slows it down considerably.
Training your dog will alleviate the issue.

However, I'm a game developer and as I'm not smoking any weed or taking any pills / drugs as masses of peeps do in the US habitually as easily as they are breathing air, I need frequent emotional UPs or highs to energize my willingness to do hard work

Darn, I should stop making mods for drug addicts and assorted riffraff.
THIS IS A GOOD CHRISTIAN MOD!

The mudranger original range is a joke: its completely unplayable

No, you just can't use it properly.

Mentioned slowdown:
My CPU 10 year old. That might be, why it is lagging on not super-optimized code.
Of course its the main engine that has some room left for optimization: the mod only defines rules.

My CPU is just as old. No special issues.

Solarius, would you mind rising the mission despawn time for terror missions, or across the whole board? In a first for me, I recently had a terror mission despawn which my skymarshall couldn't reach despite deploying derictly after the site popped up. I don't mind taking on every terro mission even it means injured or killed agents, but at least give us the chance to reach it.

Maybe a little, but there's a limit on how much I can increase the times and stay somewhat believable.
The time is randomized, so I increased the minima - should help.

I've been looking for how to find Alien Electronics, it seems I can find them on Alien_Rank2 and Orison nests. Which mission is Orison nest and I presume alien rank 2 are engineers? If so that means there is a 20% chance to find alien electronics on engineers?

You can also tear down alien robots to get Alien Electronics.
It's meant to be rare. In fact, it's easier to obtain now than any time before.

Also, as an extra, some proof that I haven't been just bumming around.

[X-Man]

Also, as an extra, some proof that I haven't been just bumming around.

So, the space missions are coming and UAC weapons will be in great demand?

[HT]

I think you mean "At Doom's Gate", by Robert Prince. It's from "DOOM" OST.
I couldn't find this particular version on YouTube, though. I have the mp3s from somewhere, long ago.

Figures. Thanks for the answer!

No, Red Dawn simply coordinates its actions, like the player does.
This is the whole point of the sniper/spotter mechanics. If a units with a "spotter" flag sees an enemy, it communicates their location to to all units with the "sniper" tag. This allows enemy snipers to shoot at targets they normally wouldn't see, though with a hefty penalty of -50% accuracy.
Out of the 4 initial cults, Red Dawn is arguably the best at this, with many units having these tags.

Does this have an Ufopaedia article? This mechanic should have one, as well as the hunter-killer ufos if they don't already.

Also, as an extra, some proof that I haven't been just bumming around.

Moon missions, yay! To be fair, I cheat and I snoop the Github directory from time to time. Will the 1.0 version have the

Spoiler:

lol moon nazis!

arc completed, or will it be a few random missions since it's kind of a joke arc? What about the ghost-busters one?

[justaround]

So, let me sum this up - in order to not have to adress the glaring issue of aliens dragging their dead comrades into your base

Which is an issue only if you literally implement it as aliens dragging their comrades into your base. I certainly didn't argue for it being posed as aliens dragging the corpses onto battlefield for some reason, I have not suggested corpses of dead crewmembers being on the battlefield at all. Why are you?

your proposal is that you should get 'some form of resources' to offset your perceived penalty? What kind of resources? And from where? From the vaporized parts of the UFO that took off? In that case you should get even more resources from supposedly destroyed UFOs if they apparently just rain down from the sky.

Yes, from UFO and even more that what? Even more than not getting any resources due to being unable to damage an UFO? Certainly. More than an option of retrieving a whole UFO? Not at all.

If you recover a downed UFO you don't magically get the same amount of resources as from a landed UFO. Parts and bodies that were destroyed are lost. Why should this be handled any differently? If you destroy parts of the UFO and it's occupants you don't get that part of the loot.

Mechanics and balance consideration. You can also have severely damaged UFO downed in regular rerieval mission and still get some bits, suggesting that there is some salvage as long as the damaged parts can be retrieved at all. Base assaults are already handled differently and without consistency to the rest of UFO encounters with having that severely damaged UFO always be able to hover, drop assault troopers at tactical locations and then leave unmolested further.

Protip: It's not a strawn man argument if you have to go through the trouble to explain it away for your idea to work.

But it is a strawman argument when you try to force some claims as mine and then build your defence on their basis.

How does you proposed explanation make any more sense than not giving players resources for enemies that simply didn't spawn?

By making it a mechanics that makes damaging of assaulting UFOs purely beneficial, rather than leading to situation where setting up defences while you can defend a base against full set of enemies simply means you'll get less of them/loot if you won't be able to fully take down the UFO.

Nobody is forcing you build base defences in the first place - if anything you're the one building a strawn man argument on being forced to endure this.

What you define as strawman argument is not. It is slightly insulting and only makes discussing harder when you keep misusing the term. I certainly didn't say that you make an argument on being forced to endure aspect of a game, which then would make it a strawman argument. Strawman argument however is in your claim I have some issue with being able to play base defence missions, rather than an aspect of its balance - and arguing from that standpoint.

You don't. Players that 'enjoy base defense mission' can simply refrain from building base defence structures or deactivate them when they get attacked. You are not being penalized by being forced to fight less enemies since nobody forces you to fight less enemies.

If someone does a logical thing, establishing base defences, they are at fault because reward has to be in proportion to number of enemies while the fact that the number is lessened is due to considerations and partially effective defensive endeavor of the player?

Turn your proposal around, players might not want to be rewarded for enemies they didn't fight and because your idea is simply ridiculous and doesn't make sense in-game. What about them?

Spare me such rhetoric. Arguments, please. I can also claim that players might want to be rewarded because "your claims are completely inane, you have no idea what you're talking about, are bad at considering balance", yadda yadda ad hominem. For baseline respect for you and others, I refuse to stoop to such level of simply subjective insults and I'd like to ask you to attempt the same, 'because your idea is simply ridiculous' is not an argument and if you plan to base your approach on repeating such things, that's neither productive nor intellectually honest and certainly makes it pointless to talk further.

As for you calling me out on 'perceived threats' - maybe actually adress my arguments instead pretending they don't exist? People don't take too kindly to that.

Then the people should be satisfied, because your arguments I addressed in lines separate from the tone and attitude of the poster - you - and the threat/warning.

And my warning was exactly that - a warning.

About what? Sorry, I am very fine with you disagreeing with the idea and by pointing flaws of it, for the sake of refinement, even when in this particular case it's of much lesser value as you've taken up quite antagonistic tone and fuel it with aggravation.

What I am not fine with it is 'you're on thin ice'. Suggesting that just with this line of reasoning, some harm you'd warn against may befall me. No, my idea may be proven unworkable due to some factors or Scorch may be simply uninterested, but that won't harm anyone. So please limit condescending tone, I certainly don't plan to employ the same with you and it frankly makes me frown that you treat the whole exchange personally enough to attempt ridicule and issue warnings rather than debate. I do try to be patient, it's easy to get carried by emotions even (especially?) in internet disagreement but it does get borderline unhealthy when one reached for insults, no matter how deserved they think those are.

And you need to actually find a way to implement this - as far as i can tell this is beyond the scope of XCF. You'd need to add that functionality to OXCE.

Now this is a valid concern, by which - if true - decision can be made whether it's worth the work to implement in case the idea behind it is argued sufficiently.

We can continue this if you want, and will continue to point out why your idea is inherently flawed, inconsistent and not worth the effort to implement.

Gladly, assuming you are able to maintain neutral tone befitting such conversations and limit logical fallacies.

Instead I'd suggest you simply deactivate the feature instead. Problem solved.

Not really if I'd argue the problem is with changed loot due to employing of defences that should be purely beneficial in the feature, not its existence. Your offered solution would be really one only if my problem would be with existence of base defence in general, rather than musings about the balance of it.

So, there you have another answer. Willing to have a go at it, assuming you have some new arguments?

[krautbernd]

So you're still going on about this?

Okay, time for the next summary i guess...

Your initial proposal was

Also, what about loot? It'd be nice if such damaged UFO also had a chance of providing some corpses or "loose" equipment as remains of dead attackers, so it wouldn't be decreasing loot as a penalty for damaging the UFO.

So apparently you want the loot+corpses...but they shouldn't actually be spawned during the base defence? Which would raise a whole lot of different problems as to how this should be implemented. Yeah, as in, not possible given the current mechanics. In case you haven't noticed it yet, the feature you're complaining about was implemented in OXCE, not in XCF. Which is why I pointed you to the OXCE subforum. I'm pointing you in that direction again, NOW.

Your proposal entails ignoring actual game mechanics (UFOs during base defence aren't recovered), pretending that fighting less aliens penalizes players because they get less loot, which they should - somehow - be entitled to as long as their base defences aren't strong enough to destroy incoming UFOs. Which makes absolutely no sense considering that having a strong enough defences doesn't net you anything. Getting less loot and having to fight less aliens is simply a natural progression of that. You actually admitted as much by mentioning how shot down UFOs don't net as much loot, but only some parts. Treating base defense missions along the same lines, with a full alien contingent being 100% loot, damaging the UFO reduces the numbers and the loot you get. Since you don't recover any UFO parts during base defence missions, fighting less aliens and accordingly recovering less total loot is the expected outcome.

This is also why you mentioning "Mechanics and balance considerations" is kind of amusing, since what you're requesting is the exact opposite of how the mechanics should work, and probably why they were implemented this way (apart from the fact that it's infitiley easier this way than the hare-brained scheme you're proposing).

Apart from all of that what is keeping you from simply disabling that feature if you feel victimized and disenfranchised by it? I'm saying you're acting like you're being forced to use this option because you are. The logical and sane way to go about this would be not to act like you're entitled to loot you didn't fight for, but simply fight for the loot. Problem solved. As far as i can tell you have no idea what implementing these features would entail. I don't know how many times I have to point this out to you, but this is not a matter of a mod author "including" or "being interested" in such a feature. It's impossible to implement given the current game mechanics, as there is no way of parsing randomized 'resources' or the UFO damage state to the base defense battlescape mission, yet alone spawn items based on that. The implemented feature simply reduces the number of spawned enemies.

So, in essence:

Your initial request was for "bodies and loot" - something you're now denying. This is also kind of amusing, since you're blaming me for using that as a strawman argument. Pointing out obvious flaws in implementing that idea, you switched over to some - not further described - kind of 'resources', with no idea how to implement or balance this. The whole reason you're requesting this is because of a perceived penalty for the reduced number of aliens during base defence mission - because you should somehow get the same, or at least additional loot for aliens you didn't fight, disregarding that having strong enough defences don't net you any loot. Instead of simply accepting this as part of a natural progression - which you actually seem to be aware of, given your insight considering shot down UFOs - in your head this somehow amounts to players being 'rewarded less'. If I understand you correctly, you're actually trying to cite game mechanics and balance to defend your idea, when it actually breaks both - not only can't it be implemented using current mechanics, it goes against established lore (as in, the UFO isn't recoverd after a sucessful base defence) and it would also break game balance, as rewards are normally tied to difficulty and risk - which are actually lowered by having less aliens during a base defence.

And instead of actually acknowledging any of that, and taking my advice of simply disabling that option, you end up going down a rabbit hole to somehow make your proposal work in spite of all the inconsistencies and fallacies that it entails.

I warned you about being on thin ice. I'm re-iterating that warning, because your feet are starting to get wet.

Let me point out again that implementing this isn't on the mod author. Let me also point out - again - that you're whole conundrum can easily be solved by simply disabling this feature, something you're apparently too dense to understand:

Your offered solution would be really one only if my problem would be with existence of base defence in general, rather than musings about the balance of it.

No, my offered solution would actually solve your 'problem' without touching base defences at all. It would do exactely do what you're requesting - restore the loot that you're 'missing out on' - you just have to fight for it. Disabling the feature would make loot independant of base defences, just like it was before.

It's the easiest way, it doesn't require any additional work and it doesn't brake game mechanics or balance and your not going to have to drag yourself out of that lake you're about to fall in.

[X-Man]

Guys! If we have Hyperwave decoder, we no longer need any of radar systems???

[mercy]

Guys! If we have Hyperwave decoder, we no longer need any of radar systems???

I was told you don't need anything else. The decoders work flawlessly.

[X-Man]

I was told you don't need anything else. The decoders work flawlessly.

Thanks! But it definitely wasn't me, because I'm asking this question the first time

[mercy]

This equipment lying there "on the floor" caused the game & cursor movement to lag: especially the Battlescape was slow!!

Deleting all unused equipment speeds the game up nicely:

[..]

FOUND THE CULPRIT!!!
Large stacks of many types of equipment slows down the game!   OXCE 5.6.1  and no matter if its XPiratez or this mod, it will always slow down the game.  I tried with many 200+ .. 350+ .. 1500+ stacks of at least 2 or 3 pages worth of various equipment and it slowed down the game considerably => already on the base, while equipping my squad.   

So the problem is now solved.   Clear out large stacks of stuff and only take with you the basics, some important healing, pickaxes, etc..  and don't dump big stacks of several equipment types into your ship while you are equipping ==>  the game will never slow down!

[Meridian]

@Solarius: maybe you can introduce a 1000-item limit for all craft? for people who don't know when to stop...

[krautbernd]

@Solarius: maybe you can introduce a 1000-item limit for all craft? for people who don't know when to stop...

1000 is still too high, at least when I try to replicate this. Lag/FPS issues start to appear at about 300 items. The interesting thing is that the lag is more pronounced on the equip screen, while it's not an issue on the actual battlescape.

FYI, 1000 items on the equip screen reduce FPS by about 50%, at least on my config.

[X-Man]

I'm reading you, guys, and asking myself the question "Why people equip their crafts with soooo many items?"

[krautbernd]

I'm reading you, guys, and asking myself the question "Why people equip their crafts with soooo many items?"

People usually don't.

[Meridian]

1000 is still too high, at least when I try to replicate this. Lag/FPS issues start to appear at about 300 items. The interesting thing is that the lag is more pronounced on the equip screen, while it's not an issue on the actual battlescape.

FYI, 1000 items on the equip screen reduce FPS by about 50%, at least on my config.

Well, I can add an option to disable script item animation... then you can have as many items as you want... but I sorta don't want to break Yankes's features.

[krautbernd]

Well, I can add an option to disable script item animation... then you can have as many items as you want... but I sorta don't want to break Yankes's features.

I'm not even sure what the underlaying issue is here, so i have no idea how changing this behaviour would impact scripts or the game in general. It's just a bit worrying what impact item numbers have on the performance of the engine. Isn't there a way to cut down on item checks on items that are still located in the initial equipment pile?