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

[mercy]

Illegal Trade in The X-Com Files
I have an idea:

The thing with illegal purchases is that I'm not sure how you would differentiate that from 'legal' purchases, since it would still be purchased through the same menu in theory.    There also should be some potentail risks/downsides with that approach since its not as reliable as the 'proper' channels.
[..]

I think the governments should sniff out that you are dealing on the black market with [highly] illegal goods. Then the governments should organize a raid on the XCOM-base citing laws forbidding illegal combat-drug/weapon/stuff trade.
An initially inconspicuous government gunship appears on radar: it does a few turns as if searching for something, then heads to your base to carry out a full raid. Your base location was easily spotted by the government using GPS trackers placed into those illegal shipments, which dealings of yours undercover investigators were following for some time..

[mercy]

[..]

EDIT:
Version 2.1 has been released!
[..]
EDIT 2: I forgot to release the submods too. Reuploaded the mod with the submods.

Would you please do an update to these percentages?

Cult of Apocalypse: 90%
Men in Black: 35%
Black Sun: 10%
[classified]: 4%

[Fomka]

What Position Markers, Drone Carriers and Counter-terrorists are about in the 2.1?

[AlicePaws]

Juku121,

lol, thanks!   To be hones't I've been around real firearms my whole life and had never heard the word "accurized" before. I should have googled it and not made any assumptions.

Well I got egg on my face for this one    I do apologize, and thanks for correcting me. 

Im far from a firearm expert, I believe I got that from Peace Walker's Accurized shotgun I think, if you have any other suggestions please let me know, I liked Long Barrel distinction, but I more or less took it as is from the game I think

[nicedayright]

Illegal Trade in The X-Com Files
I have an idea:
I think the governments should sniff out that you are dealing on the black market with [highly] illegal goods. Then the governments should organize a raid on the XCOM-base citing laws forbidding illegal combat-drug/weapon/stuff trade.
An initially inconspicuous government gunship appears on radar: it does a few turns as if searching for something, then heads to your base to carry out a full raid. Your base location was easily spotted by the government using GPS trackers placed into those illegal shipments, which dealings of yours undercover investigators were following for some time..

I would really prefer this doesn't happen. I think the legal complications of buying from unauthorized arms dealers are quite well represented by the score penalty you get from the research. The score penalty is just the political capital your sponsors have to expend to deflect any uncomfortable investigations headed your way, just like they do with all those farmers you accidentally murder. Having to code in a whole new faction to execute base assaults based off that one criteria sounds like a disproportionate amount of work just to make a fun tech-tree branch off less viable.

Besides, who is raiding XCOM HQ? Interpol? The ATF?

In other news, I was just here to say how much I love the soundtrack for the Asylum mission.

[GreenCake]

DRAGONFLY with light turned off during night missions? That could be some modification from WORKSHOP.

Since light around your landing zone makes you a perfect target for all bad boys around the map. I understand if this done on purpose, to make night missions harder and less suited against 50+ cultists, whose basicly have big problems with night fight.

And how about workshop-modification/on-mission-button for HAMVI or VAN/other cars to turn on/off their light?

[nicedayright]

being real, I hate craft lights at all.

[FireStarTracer]

I have a layman's knowledge/interest in firearms including some of the technical aspects (primarily internal and terminal ballistics) but I try not to talk about it because of how easy I can get carried away.   If anyone has a question I can *try* to answer it and/or suggest sources to look at.

As far as 'accurizing' goes it apparently is a thing according to wikipedia FWIW.   It suggests some ways you could do it and I can think of others that may or may not work (some of them might be more hypothetical but would still be interesting.)   One of the things I'm semi-interested in since I started to dabble with modding pertains to firearms (including some energy weapons.)   There's lots of interesting features in the game engine to explore but I'm still thinking over how they might be implemented, and possibly some existing ideas in mods like X-com Files or X-Piratez might be taken further.

Illegal Trade in The X-Com Files
I have an idea:
I think the governments should sniff out that you are dealing on the black market with [highly] illegal goods. Then the governments should organize a raid on the XCOM-base citing laws forbidding illegal combat-drug/weapon/stuff trade.
An initially inconspicuous government gunship appears on radar: it does a few turns as if searching for something, then heads to your base to carry out a full raid. Your base location was easily spotted by the government using GPS trackers placed into those illegal shipments, which dealings of yours undercover investigators were following for some time..

Eh, what Solarius Scorch said makes sense and is simpler.  I just should have read it more closely the first time.   

And not really sure X-com need another possible rival out of the gate to come down on them given they already have so many challenges they face.  And I would imagine some on the council might turn a blind eye to smuggling since it helps X-com do their job.  Not everyone is against them.   I mean its not that the idea of 'Government attacks X-com' is necessarily a bad idea (I brought it up in the 'no advent' thread) but I think it is a matter of implementation.

One thing that did occur to me out of thinking about ammo lootboxes though:  Wouldn't it make more sense for the various pro-alien factions (Dagon, Red Dawn, Exalt, etc) to have ammo boxes suited to the weapons they use?  EG EXALT and Dagon use weapons that use 5.56 ammo so that might be more favored in their loot boxes.    REd Dawn would have 5.45/7.62 WP ammo, etc.   I haven't started 2.1 yet and what I did with lootboxes in 2.0 was still doing the random thing, but its just a thought.

[nicedayright]

I think the justification for that was not wanting to clutter up an already complicated system with further complexity.

[mercy]

Eh, what Solarius Scorch said makes sense and is simpler.  I just should have read it more closely the first time.   

And not really sure X-com need another possible rival out of the gate to come down on them given they already have so many challenges they face.  And I would imagine some on the council might turn a blind eye to smuggling since it helps X-com do their job.  Not everyone is against them.   I mean its not that the idea of 'Government attacks X-com' is necessarily a bad idea (I brought it up in the 'no advent' thread) but I think it is a matter of implementation.
[..]

XCOM lore showed us there will be governments, who will completely succumb to the Alien Agenda. Look at whole continents and islands today becoming totalitarian in a way that suggests that aliens are now mass-texting the governments, what dictates to make, what tyrannical mandates to do.  So any country lost to the aliens could and should organize raids on XCOM bases.
Even governments that are in the process of being taken over could command a couple eager generals to organize Black Merc Ordinator Raids on XCOM bases citing ANY reason. They don't really need a valid reason: illegal trade would be as good an excuse as any. Or "Ooh! You are hurting our Holy Space Brothers! Die!"

[nicedayright]

XCOM lore showed us there will be governments, who will completely succumb to the Alien Agenda. Look at whole continents and islands today becoming totalitarian in a way that suggests that aliens are now mass-texting the governments, what dictates to make, what tyrannical mandates to do.  So any country lost to the aliens could and should organize raids on XCOM bases.
Even governments that are in the process of being taken over could command a couple eager generals to organize Black Merc Ordinator Raids on XCOM bases citing ANY reason. They don't really need a valid reason: illegal trade would be as good an excuse as any. Or "Ooh! You are hurting our Holy Space Brothers! Die!"

Not really sure it's worth it just for yet another slog through bullet spewing human enemies we've fought a few dozen times already. As far as I understand the code, this would require making a whole new "Alien Race" of hostile government troops, giving them an early game Base Assault condition and then never using them again. Granted, you could reuse a lot of assets you already have, but I'd rather not beg for even more of the same early game gunfights (It's a base assault, get ready for 30 plus turns of peakaboo). Especially if it takes away time that could be spent adding more of the planned content or polishing what's already there.

Not to mention the immersion fuckery surrounding why you have an underground base prior to promotion III. Yeah, you're a side-office underfunded government agency sending out agents with Berettas and cheap suits. By the way, here's the keys to Cheyenne Mountain. First base assault shouldn't happen until it starts making sense for you to have secret underground bases with actual hangars and elevators to the surface rather than second-hand offices and rental cars.

Base assaults were always the gut check "shit just got real" moment in XCOM. Where you had to face serious campaign ending consequences if you couldn't defend what you'd rightfully stolen. Throwing them at you early game just cheapens them IMHO.

IN OTHER NEWS.

I actually just wanted to ask about the math for stun damage. Just researched the KS-23 shotgun to find its stun ammo does LESS base damage than a standard shotgun's (22 vs 25). The only other way it differs statwise was 15% more HP damage. Does HP Damage Multiplier mean a percentage of the base damage is dealt as HP instead of stun or is it dealt in *addition* to the state base damage. So a 22 damage baton round is doing 11 stun and 11 hp damage (RNG dependant, obviously) or is it 22 stun and 11 hp.

[Mathel]

I actually just wanted to ask about the math for stun damage. Just researched the KS-23 shotgun to find its stun ammo does LESS base damage than a standard shotgun's (22 vs 25). The only other way it differs statwise was 15% more HP damage. Does HP Damage Multiplier mean a percentage of the base damage is dealt as HP instead of stun or is it dealt in *addition* to the state base damage. So a 22 damage baton round is doing 11 stun and 11 hp damage (RNG dependant, obviously) or is it 22 stun and 11 hp.

In addition.
The "To Health", "To Stun", etc. are separate, and presumably stuff of STUN type defaults to To_Stun=1.00 .

To a regular human with 12 front plate hit in the chest, the baton shell will do.
0 to 44 damage. Then 12*1.25 is subtracted from it, resulting in 0 to 29. The target will take 0 to 29 stun, and 0 to 14.5 HP damage.

[nicedayright]

Thanks, that's what I was wondering.


So apparently, killing downed enemies counts as a separate kill for the purpose of commendations. Got the Ice-Cold killer commendation by downing and then killing a werewolf in one burst of autofire. It was the only enemy on the map.

[Fomka]

Got the Ice-Cold killer commendation by downing and then killing a werewolf in one burst of autofire. It was the only enemy on the map.

What a lucky aim! In my experience autofired bullets do not hit a tike where an enemy fell, they fly pass it, at some height.

[Marrik]

Save games from 2.0.1 are compatible with 2.1, right? Or should I restart?

I'm actually a bit further into the game than I've ever gotten previously and the cults are long-destroyed, but I kind of want to see the new EXALT mission