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

[alexander steel wolf]

Is it possible that there are "positive" penalties in open x com? I explain:

Right now ignoring a MIB meeting aliens has a pretty high penalty, could it be implemented that if the player ignores it they receive, for example, 100 positive points?

I say this because it is assumed that at least part of the council does not want you to interfere in the affairs of MIB. That positive score for not attending that mission would be like accepting a "bribe", and in a way it would represent a moral decision (the council is supposed to keep up appearances, so it could not arbitrarily expel x-com)

If you ignore the advice and complete the mission you receive the penalty (as if you canceled a critical mission). Of course, doing the mission would have the benefit for the player to have the possibility of unlocking new investigations that they would not otherwise be able to. In this way, the player would have to manage the monthly score with respect to this type of "ethical" missions.

I don't know if it could, or if you think it's a good idea, but I think it could be a good addition to the game.

[Solarius Scorch]

I am not sure it would work, but probably yes.

I understand what effect you're going for. Lack of an actual diplomacy system makes such things problematic. What happens remains to be seen.

[Bonakva]

Sol, maybe we should make the hangars roomy or small hangars in 1 cell? Very strange that 1 car takes a hangar for the plane. I understand that the game convention, but still...

[JustTheDude/CABSHEP]

Sol, maybe we should make the hangars roomy or small hangars in 1 cell? Very strange that 1 car takes a hangar for the plane. I understand that the game convention, but still...

Technically its not even one car sitting in a hangar, because agents travel via public (and later) private civilian transport (planes) and then they rent a car to their destination.

[Xolvix]

OK, I have to ask if I'm playing this game wrong.

I'd gotten to August 1999 and had a negative score leading to a warning not to do it again the next month. But there were so many missions coming up, more than I had available craft. Frankly a lot of missions were getting kinda boring so I wanted to skip yet another strange life form, yet I was missing so many missions due to the frequency I felt I had to do as much as I could. I had too much research to do and it was taking so damn long that I wanted the game to just ease up for a bit!

So at the end of that month I did a little experiment and simply did research in September, no missions at all. I knew I was gonna fail but I felt like I wasn't going to avoid it even if I tried really hard, so I was curious...



Is this... expected? This seems way too negative even for not doing anything in a single month.

Anyway, now I gotta track now the procedure for enabling debug mod and resetting my score.

[krautbernd]

OK, I have to ask if I'm playing this game wrong.

I'd gotten to August 1999 and had a negative score leading to a warning not to do it again the next month. But there were so many missions coming up, more than I had available craft. Frankly a lot of missions were getting kinda boring so I wanted to skip yet another strange life form, yet I was missing so many missions due to the frequency I felt I had to do as much as I could. I had too much research to do and it was taking so damn long that I wanted the game to just ease up for a bit!

So at the end of that month I did a little experiment and simply did research in September, no missions at all. I knew I was gonna fail but I felt like I wasn't going to avoid it even if I tried really hard, so I was curious...



Is this... expected? This seems way too negative even for not doing anything in a single month.

Working as intended if I understand Solarius correctly, the player is supposed to get punished for skipping repetetive and pointless missions. Even more so the easier they are, not mention random negative events that the player has no way of avoiding or preventing ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Anyway, now I gotta track now the procedure for enabling debug mod and resetting my score.

No need for debug mode, you can simply edit the save.

[Xolvix]

No need for debug mode, you can simply edit the save.

I haven't worked out a reliable method for doing so, since the rating is an attribute derived from several other values. People just say to enable debug mode, then Ctrl-D and Ctrl-6 to reset all your problems away.

[krautbernd]

I haven't worked out a reliable method for doing so, since the rating is an attribute derived from several other values. People just say to enable debug mode, then Ctrl-D and Ctrl-6 to reset all your problems away.

My bad, actually adjusting the rating is indeed not straight forward. You can however reset the warning.

[BoToJu]

Hi,

having an error in my current playthrough. Attached the save file. Just let the upcomming mission start. Meanwhile i'll try to edit the save file to fix it myself. I think it's a faulty map.

Anyway ... great mod Solarius!

EDIT: Loaded a previous gamestate. Now it's working. I think now another map is choosen for the mission.

[krautbernd]

Save contains:

Code: [Select]

        customSoldierDeployment:
          1:
            -
              - 3
              - 4
              - 0
            - 7
          2:
            -
              - 5
              - 2
              - 0
            - 0
          3:
            -
              - 6
              - 4
              - 0
            - 1
          4:
            -
              - 3
              - 5
              - 0
            - 5
          5:
            -
              - 6
              - 5
              - 0
            - 3
No idea why that would be in there, but I guess it crashes the map generator because the positions are invalid for the map since the HUMVEE doesn't spawn. Temporarily assigning the soldiers to other verhicles (all of them) and then assigning them to the HUMVEE removes the section and prevents the crash.

@Meridian I haven't messed around we the new deployment/map/whater viewer feature that was recently implemented, but I guess this has something to do with it? Might wanna have a look at this becasue I can't tell if this is intended behaviour.

Also I think both this and the previous post belong in the bug thread, maybe somebody can move them.

[Meridian]

No idea why that would be in there, but I guess it crashes the map generator because the positions are invalid for the map since the HUMVEE doesn't spawn. Temporarily assigning the soldiers to other verhicles (all of them) and then assigning them to the HUMVEE removes the section and prevents the crash.

Just adding 1 soldier to HUMVEE (or removing 1 and then adding him back) already removes the saved positions.

@Meridian I haven't messed around we the new deployment/map/whater viewer feature that was recently implemented, but I guess this has something to do with it? Might wanna have a look at this becasue I can't tell if this is intended behaviour.

Yes, the case where a craft doesn't spawn is probably not handled.

I'll fix it soon-ish.

[krautbernd]

Just adding 1 soldier to HUMVEE (or removing 1 and then adding him back) already removes the saved positions.

Good catch, I could have sworn I tried that. Good to know it's easy to fix if it does crop up.

[Meridian]

Turns out the craft is deployed... it's just that the craft is modded/overridden to look like a house 

Don't know what to do about it, yet...

[krautbernd]

I don't know of the top of my head how all those deployment/map generation mechanics interact or work. Would this be something that Solarius would be able to fix mod-side? I vaguely remember that were issues with "randomized" deployment on the council member defense mission as well, no idea if this related in any way.

[Meridian]

Looks like using a house instead of a craft is intended in this case.

And even if it wasn't, the crash could happen also if a craft was replaced by a different craft (see `craftName` field in the map script ruleset).

I was able to fix/prevent it at the end: https://github.com/MeridianOXC/OpenXcom/commit/a680d38c8e92f11a0fcbb950e6f93cd52945a558