Hello!
I want to say a big thank you to the authors of this mod. It is truly wonderful. If the original X-COM development was not stopped at 90-s, I believe the game would evolve into something similar to this mod. I suspected earlier that the original X-COM was somewhat unpolished, but only after I played this mod I realized how many flaws were in the original X-COM's mechanics.
Thank you in the name of the entire team! We're having much fun doing this.
One of the greatest issue I faced with this mod (and in X-COM game in general) is a lack of available information about some core mechanics. And I searched a lot, trust me! In this forum and in other places. I managed to find some useful info, like that “#” means 50 science days or that “damage from fire” is 5-10. But I still cannot figure out many other things.
Yes, this is indeed a bit obscure. I will make a note to finally make some Pedia article to address some of these issues. Feel free to let me know what should be explained (apart from below).
How exactly smoke decreases vision? (Formula?) Is there different types of smoke on the map with different properties? (It feels yes.) How much choke damage is inflicted each turn to a unit that stands in a smoke cloud?
There's only one type of smoke, with variable density. As for the formula, I also had to look for it, found it here:
https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Smoke_Grenade. The final value is 1-3 points per round, but most unprotected units in XCF have 400% modifire to smoke, so multiply this by 4.
Can someone, please, explain me how exactly colorful shields work? (Zero info on this topic out there!) I teared out many of my hair trying to figure that out. For example, both Black Lotus Avatar and Ethereal has Gold Shield, but it seems, that they work differently. Black Lotus Avatar's shield will not diminish if your bullet did no damage. In contrary to this it is impossible to harm Ethereal at all until he has a shield that will disappear after few shots. And how shields work together with armor? And what exactly means “good protection against” and “bad protection against” in ufopedia page? I need a proper formula!
These shields should work exactly the same, the only difference being in how much damage they can absorb.
Shields work before armour, and armour only starts working after a shield is coimpletely depleted. Unless it's a damage type that completely ignores this type of shield.
Sorry, no pklan to adding more formulas. That would be pointless info dump. If you're interested, you can check the script in scripts_XCOMFILES.rul.
Ridiculously, but there is a formula for psi defense, and no formula for psi attack! So how exactly likelihood of successful psi attack (panic and control respectfully) is calculated? Hybrids are capable of psi attacking even without psi-amps, but it looks like their attacks are less likely to succeed. And I also read something about distance from target that matter. Is that true?
Distance definitely matters, yes. As for the formula, I don't keep such things to memory, but it should be easy to find on the ufopaedia.org page.
How moral damage is calculated? I know it depends on damage amount and bravery, but how exactly? Very strange seeing 1500% moral damage from Incendiary Grenade and not knowing how good this bonus actually is.
That's another vanilla mechanic which I never bothered to check. Honestly, what's the point? It works, that's what matters.
I think it is very unfair showing that there is 60% chance to successfully attack with a knife, while in reality there is 10% chance because of opponent's dodging capabilities. I understand, that it is impossible to show real success chance before strike, but may be there is a way to notify player about real chances after few attack attempts? Same issue is with obstacles on line of fire. Game says 146% chance to hit, but all bullets miss, because in reality only opponent's nose is visible above the rock. Again, it would be nice to see how well an opponent was hidden after a shot using something like Ctrl+H screen.
If I recall correctly, Meridian specifically rejected this, because he considered it a cheat. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Then I wish to talk about game balance around sniper rifles. It looks like they are very overpowered and useful in pretty much every situation. Of course you need an agent with good aim to use sniper rifles, bet this is not an issue at all in the mid game and later on. During my playthrough I tried hard to use heavy weapons, like canons. After all, if an agent is very strong, then giving him a heavy weapon is reasonable thing to do, right? This extra weight supposes to contain more power, right? But in reality canons do a little more damage than sniper rifles, are way less accurate and have similar rate of fire. So sniper rifles completely outshine canons and many other weapon classes. This is sad.
I think that means you're a sniper player. I am much feedback like this, but for different weapon classes - for example "pistols are the only viable weapons" is fairly popular. I personally find sniper rifles very useful, but only on large open areas, whereas cannons are more for city warfare.
Similar question I have about SMG's, especially about 2-handed ones. What are they for? I think they should be more deadly than regular rifles at short distances, but they don't. I don't want to believe, that most SMG's are garbage, but I can't find an application for them either.
Weird - everyone is saying how rubbish assault rifles are compared to SMGs...
A matter of preference, I suppose.
Maybe I am completely wrong about weapon balance. I was slightly shocked reading that someone finds CAWS useful, while I find it to be a worse version of a shotgun. I am certain that being able to shoot enemies from afar with great precision is much more important than anything else even on not so open maps, but I read that someone thinks shotguns are great. I really wish to know other people opinions about weapon efficiency in different situations.
Well, I am doing my best to make weapon classes "balanced" in the sense of catering to various player types. I totally hear your arguments, I treat them seriously and will keep them in mind. But there are many players making claims and their opinions vary wildly...
And now, to announce:
Version 2.5 is ready.- New missions: MiB Base, MiB Ground Supply.
- New staff input.
- New cities: Bratislava, Vilnius, Talinn, Tbilisi, Bishkek, Dushanbe.
- New countries: Kirgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Ethiopia, Uganda, Senegal, Democratic Republic of Congo, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Slovakia, Hungary, Austria, Belgium, Netherlands, Switzerland, Croatia, Bulgaria, Romania, Thailand, Vietnam.
- New agent nationalities: Afghani, Algerian, Australian, Austrian, Azeri, Chilean, Colombian, Ecuadorian, Egyptian, Iraqi, Libyan, Lithuanian, Moroccan, New Zealander, Pakistani, Peruvian, Tunisian, Turkmen, Venezuelan (several name lists provided by LFM).
- More Cuban names.
- Better country funding model (by Buscher).
- Dimension X Expeditions.
- Chemical Flares can be recovered.
- Proteans are immune to zombification.
- Custom desert roads.
- Cydonia requires space-capable suits.
- MiB Outpost reworked.
- Simplified the Moon satellite project.
- Cult vehicles have white markers.
- Battleship map 7 fixes.
- Corrected "Lassa" to "Lhasa".
- Some country border corrections.
- Fixed Kigali, Dakar and Nouakchott placement.
- Fixed a crash on some humans vs. monsters missions.
- Fixed Golden Academy Towers not spawning in some scenarios.
- Fixed damage display on some power armors.
- Muton sprites fix (by Alex_D).
- Fixed Dimension X ending.
- Minor fixes (thanks to Emil J. Schroeder).
If you want to see the new countries on an older campaign, you will have to add them manually - please refer to the previous release post for details.
