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

[Fomka]

Maybe by turning the bite into a gunbutt weapon? Not sure, but I think you'll lose reaction biting that way.
Otherwise, I don't think so. The dogs are already laden with built-in weapons.
Maybe just give them a belt or backpack slot.

Thanks for the hint about possible loss of reaction bite.

I'm currently playing 2.5 and my dogs have pockets? They just have to be wearing dog combat gear. Unless I've been hallucinating furry guided missiles carrying hi-ex payloads for the last hundred missions or so.

Dog combat gear are the right words. Sorry for the confusion, I actually forgot about that. Dogs are pocketable with right gear.

[Juku121]

What is that at the back of the Syndicate Mercenary supposed to be? Do they have eyes at the backs of their heads?



Edit: So that's where the BL ninjas practice their swordsmanship.

[Solarius Scorch]

Okay, give me an example. Or another player can tell me that their experience is also different. Because mine is quite the opposite. Even +15 is not very noticeable.

In most situations, a Disciple of Dagon takes 1-2 taps with a light weapon to go down, and 1 with a heavy one. A Red Dawn Ganger/Lad is the same, except the OHKOs are somewhat rarer. Not enough to translate to any difference in how I treat the two. I've now killed at least a few hundred of either in relatively close succession, and their survivability is entirely too close. Both are significantly more likely to survive a single hit than the weakest enemies/civilians, and neither is worth any special consideration a la trying to shoot Goons and Enforcers in the back.

When I'm in the Gang War and occasionally gank a 'red' ganger for his weapons, I literally can not tell their survivability from their opponents. That's the +5 HP situation.

Well, I do feel that they're sturdier, but it's purely subjective and I'm not the best judge.

Still, what would I do? Add 10 HP to all Red Dawn people across the board?
1) This would make them significantly harder, and they're already the most difficult cult from the starting 4 (at least in my view) due to their sniper/spotter specialization.
2) I would have to give the same buff to enhanced X-Com agents. Not a game breaker, but +25 HP is perhaps too much at once.
3) It would logically require adding the same buff to many other enemies from some later organizations like the MiB, the Syndicate, the UAC... All these have access to biotech at a level equal to or surpassing Red Dawn's, so it would also buff them. Not sure if it's okay, but maybe.

Why did you add this extra wordage, then? The question would have been the same without this bit. I could only read it as a reason for you to doubt my Thunderwing120's word. But whatever.

Sorry if it came off as rude, that wasn't my intention. But if you point out an error after literally years of everything being a-okay, I think I'm justified in being a little sceptical.

People who play 'gun porn' games. Firearms enthusiasts. History buffs focused on whatever period these come from.

Oh dear. What am I supposed to answer? It's like a geologist shown up one day and started berating me for rocks in the desert being the wrong colour. I am all for realism when possible, but I am not omniscient and this is a game.

On a personal level, during 42 years of my life and having lived in several countries across Europe, I've never met these types of people you mentioned and I won't pretend to be particularly concerned about their needs. To me they are an exotic internet phenomena like all the weird crap you see on the net.

But in the end of the day, I am totally fine with replacing the Sten sprite if someone makes a proper one, since I do care about accuracy. I'm not doing it myself, since I have no gun drawing skills. I'll ask around for help.

EDIT: I saw SladeHiro's sprite, and thanks man, much appreciated. But from the context it appears disputable as a candidate for the generic Sten. Awaiting further developments.

As I told you before, by going the 'gun porn' route you made your own bed.

Dude, I had no idea 'gun porn' was a thing. How was I supposed to expect something like this?

And switching some strings around to say "Sterling" instead of "Sten" is not much work. Well, the history blurb would also need replacing. Sterling is not as famous as Sten, and I guess it's greatest claim to fame is being the official British SMG for most of post-WW2, and being used as a base for Star Wars blasters.

I'd rather replace the sprite and leave the stats and descriptions alone.

Well, it's mostly been you who's concerned with such details.

Making such a remark about arguing about some old gun nobody cares about is cringe, bro.

The perforated cylinder around the business end of the gun. What, you thought a 9mm SMG has such a beefy barrel?

I can't say I've had any thoughts regarding that. It's just a fucking gun.

On a completely different topic, why are Crop Circle and Cattle Mutilation farmers always male? Are they hiding their women and children under the bed?

Technical reasons. I tried changing this once or twice, and dropped due to being too involved.

Edit: Strange that the Flame Glove does not have a handob. I have this one, and I can't recall where I got it.

Thanks, the concept is pretty cool, but I'm not sure if it's positioned correctly... I'll use it and maybe tweak this later.
Since the author is unknown, I'll credit you as the sprite provider, OK?

Solarius really needs to put a chicken on every road map.

It would be easy, as long as you don't care about the number of chickens.

Edit: Just had a thought. I get that it's largely a gameplay contrivance to make dogs more useful, but why do dogs and rats get motion sensors whereas it's actually the bats who genuinely have a sort of motion sensor 'built in', yet they get nothing?

Hmm, I guess I could give them their own motion scanner analogue. Todolisted.

The tamed cryptids are a gimmick is what I'm saying here. And not a very good one. If bats had very high nighttime camo and their bite drained TU, one might try to use them to pick off isolated targets, assassin-style. Right now, not so much. Rats are even worse and fall off badly when enemies start sporting armour.

I suppose I have no real grounds to complain since animals being worse than humans at squad-level warfare is pretty realistic.

I have some loose ideas regarding improving these issues, but not sure yet how to make them not too silly.

But I actually buffed bats' camo. They probably deserved it. (Enemy bats too, of course.)

Apologies if this isn't an appropriate place to post a suggestion - but I was thinking about the various xcom animals and it occurs to me that they all fall into the "relatively weak but nimble" category. Given that fenrir wolves have very little presence in the mod currently, have you considered the possibility of a dog-specific form of bio-enhancement that transforms them into a fenrir wolf? I think it has a lot of interesting potential tactically, almost like an organic tank with fangs.

I've considered this, but their entire shtick is being 2 savage 4 this Earth, so I can't see taming them any more than taming... well, pretty much any other animal.

Maybe I'll make a special mission with them. Perhaps mixed with werevolves. I don't have any groundbreaking ideas.

Well, Fenrir wolves will probably come and go before you get an actual tank, unless you beeline for those.

I do want me some tamed Reapers, though. Mmm, fluffy!

Yeah, that's a bit more realistic.

Edit2: How about adding a guy like that? I feel there's a lack of Really Manly dudes on the RD side. Sadly, I can't draw, so I can't make him a truly awesome mansome paperdoll. :'(

You know, I'm not against this!

What is that at the back of the Syndicate Mercenary supposed to be? Do they have eyes at the backs of their heads?

It's just a green finishing on their backpack. Not on the face level and more clearly visible from other angles.

Edit: So that's where the BL ninjas practice their swordsmanship.

No, that's where they practice their cooking skills. Food porn anime and all that.

[Juku121]

Still, what would I do? Add 10 HP to all Red Dawn people across the board?
1) This would make them significantly harder, and they're already the most difficult cult from the starting 4 (at least in my view) due to their sniper/spotter specialization.

Hmm, I get the problem. Well, I myself did exactly that, gave RD 10-20 extra HP across the board. But I also nerfed sniping a lot, for everyone. Because I really dislike it as a general-use concept, especially due to the "I spot whoever hits me!" thing.

Maybe remove sniping from the lowest-level RD dudes, at least Gangers and possibly also Lads? Or reduce their sniper values so they won't be sniping a lot.

I do get that it's kind of a lot of rebalancing for something that's not such a great deal in the grand scheme of things.

2) I would have to give the same buff to enhanced X-Com agents. Not a game breaker, but +25 HP is perhaps too much at once.

Yeah.

3) It would logically require adding the same buff to many other enemies from some later organizations like the MiB, the Syndicate, the UAC... All these have access to biotech at a level equal to or surpassing Red Dawn's, so it would also buff them. Not sure if it's okay, but maybe.

Who says they want to use said biotech in exactly the same way (+HP steroids instead of weapon grafts, mind-machine interfaces, combat drugs, etc)? The Syndicate Supersoldiers and Minotaurs, okay. These are already pretty tough, and another 10-15 HP wouldn't make them all that much tougher. The others are mercs/hired goons for the most part, no need to feed the temps the good juice.

MiB guys are actually pretty wimpy HP-wise. I wouldn't mind the more advanced versions getting some steroids.

The UAC Space Marines could get a boost, too. Memetic Doomguy toughness, you know.

Sorry if it came off as rude, that wasn't my intention. But if you point out an error after literally years of everything being a-okay, I think I'm justified in being a little sceptical.

Okay, fair enough.

What am I supposed to answer? It's like a geologist shown up one day and started berating me for rocks in the desert being the wrong colour. I am all for realism when possible, but I am not omniscient and this is a game.

Well, the difference is that the rocks are incidental and the game would be little different if all the rocks suddenly disappeared from the game. Or changed colour to iridescent pink across the board, and were renamed to 'ancient silicoids'. Not so with the guns.

I get that 'realism' is virtually always trumped by gameplay, but in this case the differences are marginal (research gun names, appearances and (pop) history before you put them in the game).

On a personal level, during 42 years of my life and having lived in several countries across Europe, I've never met these types of people you mentioned and I won't pretend to be particularly concerned about their needs. To me they are an exotic internet phenomena like all the weird crap you see on the net.

So are people who play e-sports, people who like pixel graphics, people who play old-school X-Com, professional geologists...

If you don't care about any of them, why are you using RL guns as a basis? You could have just used generic names for most things, kind of like Piratez does for a lot of its weapons. Or even how you have a 'Colt .45' in the game that's a pretty blatant expy of an M1911.

Dude, I had no idea 'gun porn' was a thing. How was I supposed to expect something like this?

Squad-level tactical games are one of two genres that attract gun porn like honey.

Technical reasons. I tried changing this once or twice, and dropped due to being too involved.

What's so involved about that? I made some hostile female farmers with little trouble. Granted, you can't research them, but that's not all that much more work.

I'm not insisting, though. I just wanted some visual variety during the mission.

Since the author is unknown, I'll credit you as the sprite provider, OK?

I don't really care about credits. Do as you wish. I might have recoloured this from some other fist weapon. Possibly from Piratez? It's been several years, at least.

Hmm, I guess I could give them their own motion scanner analogue.

Yay!

It's just a green finishing on their backpack. Not on the face level and more clearly visible from other angles.

The other angles are fine, it's a thin line there. But the back view is pretty much the same size as their visor from the front. I actually had trouble telling which way the guy was facing because of this and the weapon sprite looking very similar on both ends. The only real hint was the legs.

You know, I'm not against this!

I assume you can recolour the Piratez sprite on your own? I did notice that these guys need the 'Muton' drawingroutine, or pistols will look bad.

I kinda thought about them replacing the Coordinators, since those guys share their paperdoll with the maniacs, and look a bit too edgy overall. But I don't think a giant telnyashka-clad dude qualifies as top dog, either.

That reminds me, you never said anything about the red Salamandrons. I guess they didn't pan out?

Yeah, that's a bit more realistic.

I'm sure the red-headed bitch will have something against regular Reapers, too. :'(



Edit... uh, Edit2! Yeah! Definitely Edit2.

Psiclones seem to be excessibely rare these days before getting rid of EXALT, while there are several uses for those.

Also, the way a lot of (mainly melee) weapons scale with stats makes highly leveled agents ridiculously effective. A baseball bat is a weapon of mass destruction far better than a high-caliber rifle now.



Edit3: As much as I liked the Hacienda, I hate the Syndicate HQ. A more dirty version of the BL base does not really do it for me. Also, it's full of Supersoldiers, Minotaurs and... dogs. Plain ole dogs. Not a Bloodhound in sight.

It's also nominally an inflitration mission, but you get to bring all your HMGs, rocket launchers, mortars and other 'pocket' devices of doom.

BTW, what happened to the original RD base map? Haven't seen it anywhere this time around.



Edit4: Upon reflection, I quite dislike how the Syndicate arc goes out with a whimper instead of a bang. To wit:

• The final mission has me fight the same old enemies on the same old map, it's just that these particular fellows haven't been paired with this map before. And the map looks... not as good as the BL version.
  
• The 'final message' is kinda insulting. X-Com has been doing exactly that the entire game so far. It's almost on the level of "Okay, I'll take my toys out of the sandbox and go home, then. Remember to kick your father in the balls when he comes to collect you or I'll be back with a dog tomorrow." Not quite, but close.
  
• While I believe not everything has to be explained, and the contortionist CEO dudes can be left as a mystery... It still leaves it entirely open why Syndicate the organisation suddenly stops doing all the illicit shit they've been doing. It's perfectly in-character for them to continue even when a secretive cabal is no longer pulling their strings. But they just suddenly drop off the map.
  
• I also dislike that the 'giant eye' dudes are something as mundane as bio-enchancement and not actual alien infiltrators, but that's more of a matter of personal taste than the other three.
  

Edit6: Are nooses supposed to kill people? The 0.2 health multiplier and the general x4 choke damage multiplier mean it's doing ~80% HP damage, comparable to baseball bats and other dangerous stun weapons.



Edit7: Not sure if it's intended, but Deep One villages/trading posts and Embassies of T'Leth still use the tiny sub when I've unlocked the Trident and raided the Underwater City, but haven't progressed beyond that yet.



Edit: Are these Dagon (skid?!) marks? The fumes seem pretty strong...



Edit5: When you absolutely need to hit that target.

[Bandaid]

Hi, found OpenXcom and this Mod recently and I am having a blast (as well as being blasted with everything and the kitchen sink), thanks for all your work. Just wanted to chime in, hope this the right thread to do it, sorry if not.

[Moth_Of_Decay]

How on earth are you meant to kill the xenomorph things? I lined up a dozen people with blackops weapons, and emptied everything into one without it flinching. Took a straight mortar to the face, a dozen napalm grenades, a full auto minigun, taser cannon, and a few shots from a heavy sniper rifle! Even with all that I couldn't get a single one down, and there were about three on the mission! I get that these things are meant to be tough and scary as hell, but it seems downright impossible at the moment. (At least with my earth technology.)

Entirely unrelated: Is the MAGMA corporation a reference to something, or is it just something you came up with?

[Juku121]

How on earth are you meant to kill the xenomorph things?

You mean the Ultra Chryssalids? They're weak to fire. But very beefy, with over 400 HP.

I tested every weapon loaded with incendiary ammo. But just once, and I might have changed some RandomTypes at one point, so the following are only rough estimates. The number is the number of consecutive direct hits before the critter gave up the ghost.

• Mortar: 1.
  
• Macro Flamer: 1.
  
• Flamethrower: 2.
  
• Rocket Launcher: 5.
  
• Heavy Cannon: 5.
  
• Auto-Cannon: 6.
  
• Light Cannon: 7.
  
• Napalm Grenade: 7.
  
• All grenade launchers: 9.
  
• Agricultural Flamer: 13
  

Your results with Napalm Grenades seem strange. I checked, and my damage values are still the same as vanilla. Perhaps not all your grenades actually hit the beastie?

Answering your question, I thus suggest incendiary mortar rounds and flamers.

As an aside, I think the 80% armor reduction on those mortar rounds is way too much. After I changed it to 100%, i.e. no reduction, it still only took me two rounds to kill the big Chryssalid.

[Moth_Of_Decay]

I must have been getting awful luck with damage rolls, because those things were NOT going down. I'll keep the fire weapons in mind next time I see them and hope for the best.

[Juku121]

What's this? A Zombie group hug?

[Goobers]

Hi Solarius and OXC community, I haven't played XComFiles in what must have been in over a year. I loved the mod and I came back to UFO and just got done with a run on Final Modpack so I'm currently trying XComFiles again on beginner (I know, I know) and I'm finding it a lot harder and frustrating than I remember.
I'm not even one month into this run and I'm getting flooded with mission prompts popping up all over the globe at one hell of a rate. There's simply too many to handle and my score goes into the negative extremely rapidly due to despawns. I can't field enough crews/bases to deal with it without running out of cash, my vans can't reach anything in time, etc.
I'm also running 8mono's expansion.

Am I just being bad at the game or am I supposed to expect to get assblasted and tolerate a few months of negative score? Any advice is welcome.

[Mathel]

Entirely unrelated: Is the MAGMA corporation a reference to something, or is it just something you came up with?

Looking it up, turns out they were a real company up until 2011, when they merged with Plutonic Power Corp to become Alterra Power Corp.

Not sure if Solarius Scorch knew this though.

[Jimboman]

I'm also running 8mono's expansion.

This could be your problem.  As well as adding additional items 8mono's mod adds missions.  Try it without that mod.

[Goobers]

This could be your problem.  As well as adding additional items 8mono's mod adds missions.  Try it without that mod.

I've been playing a couple hours without 8mono's mod and nope, still having the same problem. I'd say I obviously just suck at the mod. If nothing else I could use some tips. I can never figure out a research priority. I have 3 vans going and I can never reach Cult Safehouse missions in time before they despawn, leaving me with all kinds of other missions spawning and despawning in the midst of that. I usually start a game in the USA or in the Middle East.

[Juku121]

I've been playing a couple hours without 8mono's mod and nope, still having the same problem.

A few hours is probably not enough to make a difference, unless you're just skipping missions. Try a few in-game months.

If nothing else I could use some tips. I can never figure out a research priority.

Fomka has an entire Gantt chart for the early game.

I have 3 vans going and I can never reach Cult Safehouse missions in time before they despawn, leaving me with all kinds of other missions spawning and despawning in the midst of that.

Some players have just spammed vans and launched them all over the world, ready to pounce on whatever missions pop up nearby. Me, I just upped van speed.

Cars are considerably faster than vans, so you can try sending these to easy missions, like apprehensions or crop circles.

I usually start a game in the USA or in the Middle East.

US is usually a bad idea since only the feds pay you, not individual states. Unless they roll really high starting funds, you're better off covering Europe since we now have an absolutely massive number of countries there.

[Jimboman]

I usually start a game in the USA or in the Middle East.

I agree with Juku, build your first base in somewhere like the Swiss alps.  That way you can cover most of Europe and part of North Africa.  Try rushing promotion two and/or the helicopter/Osprey as it gives you more options.

Can't understand why you don't have time to reach missions.  It's been a while since I played this (but I still check the forums) but from what I remember the mission stays as long as at least one craft (car/van) is targeted on it.  Don't skip missions, even 'bug-hunts', as you get points for at least trying if you land, see around 20 Chupus and think 'f-this' and abort.