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

[Juku121]

You are not the first who has this problem, and Solarius promised to think about making (or not making) a failsafe a while ago.

This is also why I play with 'Retain interrogated aliens' on. Although I don't know how you only got two. The Zombie outbreak mission is absolutely filled with Zombie Troopers, not to mention giant Zombies and other variants. Even the easiest difficulty has at least 5 Troopers on the map.

You can always edit a corpse into your save if you don't want to start over. Which is very understandable considering the length of the mod.

[Akamashi]

I have an issue with zombie soldiers.... I had only 2 of them in 1 mission (something with failed MAGMA experiments). I got both of thme stunned and researched and then spent them on Blood Plasma.... and i neede their corpse to make power armor O_O And now i don't know where to find another one.... I already finished the ark of mummies, but it took game years and 5 castles and 10 temples - no zombie soldiers... so i guess it was a unique one? And now i need to restart a game so that i take that one soldier and kill the MF so i can progress to Power Armor?

It seems to me that non-linear progress with missing content is normal. x com files is a very extensive mod. In my current playthrough, I came to something quite simple already in the fifth game year, and I completely missed something. I don't think it's a bad thing. Conversely. This means that next time I can find something in the game that I didn't see last time. Each game is a separate unique story.

[Xylon666Darkstar]

Juku,

Any guidance for getting Brutal-AI mod to function/install? I presumed it was a c/p of the zip file into user>mods to enable, but it's not showing as available in game to do so.

What am I missing? 

[Juku121]

Brutal AI is its own install. Think of it as an alternative OXCE. So you paste mods into it.

[Chuckebaby]

I really enjoyed the David Vincent mission. Those type of missions are really cool. Would love to see similar missions like maybe the UN council of funding is under attack and must go and save some of the members.

The only thing I found less challenging about the David Vincent mission was You could keep him safe through out the mission by leaving him down stairs in the concrete walls of the basement.

[Juku121]

What, you wanted him to scream "Leeeeeroy!" "Daaavvid!" and charge the attacking doggies?


If the Council wants me to provide their security after they've been fucking with X-Com for months if not years... Well, okay. I'm not responsible for any minor accidents that might happen along the way, though. Like the councilman happening to pick up some interesting beeping rocks with a grid pattern.

[Chuckebaby]

What, you wanted him to scream "Leeeeeroy!" "Daaavvid!" and charge the attacking doggies?

No idea what you're going on about here

[Juku121]

Are you still not familiar with the relationship between 'keep civilians/VIPs safe' and 'Leeroy MF-ing Jenkins', after witnessing armed civilian AI in action throughout the mod?

[Chuckebaby]

Never heard of him. But I did just watch a 7 minute video on the history of this meme sensation. Slightly impressive.
Never played World of warcraft or any of those games.

I've spent most of my years in a recording studio, playing videos games is a way to get away from work now and then. Never a serious gamer though.

[Akamashi]

I've been playing all my youth and managed to miss this meme. Until now, when I met him, I always thought it had something to do with a curly-haired black man pretending to be Bruce Lee.

[Solarius Scorch]

I thought of a few myself.
I'm on my second round of playing this game and would love a way to speed up research.

- purchasing "Research redemption tokens".  Would be put to use for the Cost/spent hours in research time. Could make them fairly expensive too so it would not be abused. Example 1k per hour.

So it's something like outsourcing the research to some other lab? And then getting a random research from from a list? Am I getting it right?

Mechanically it would work, yes; but goes against the spirit of secrecy. However, it could be some mid-late game option for making peace with some Big Faction.

- Maybe even applying this same method towards score. Buying score points.

Also doable, but I can't see how it makes sense in-setting. Unless it's bribes to the Council... I wonder if anyone could afford that.

The major flaw I encountered was losing this game due to low score. The game is difficult enough without having to worry about this. But can't be totally excluded. That is why purchasing score points, research points and possibly even manufacturing points (to speed up manufacturing) might be worth exploring.

The point of the game is to rack up points... Buying them with money just eliminates one facet of the main model, since it introduces money as the lowest common denominator. Sure, money making is hard in XCF, but still - if changes are necessary, I'd rather fix the source of the problem.

Would it be cool with you if I start a thread theory-crafting new mission ideas? I think exploring various gimmicky ideas would be an interesting and potentially fruitful discussion, but I don't want to clog up this thread or come off as a backseat dev.

Sure I'd be cool with it! No need to ask

But you know, if it's beyond the current engine, then it's mostly just for fun.

Trying to make a game (or mod) that pleases everyone frequently leads to pleasing no-one.

True! Which is why a good modder makes a mod to please themselves above everyone else. Then it will be liked by at least some people...

I don't really know why 'lessAliensDuringBaseDefense' got disabled - the changelog says "Shooting at UFOs no longer decreases their crews (for lore reasons)" yet I don't recall any discussion about those - but you can also re-enable that. Then the aliens get to the 'as the last few hide' phase a lot quicker.

It got cut because it was stupid.

How would this work? You vaporise half of the UFO, but the rest still safely lands and deploys the troops?

Edit: Come to think of it, maybe Solarius could also take a clue from Reaver and play around with UFO base detection radii and the mind shield formula?

Id did some of it... But I'm focusing on mission scripts and such.

Edit2: Now manufacturing, that indeed has some pretty weird costs sometimes. But that isn't really solved by adding extra sources of manufacturing points.

Actually manufacturing costs are the most meticulously calculated part of the mod by far. I don't think any of them should be "weird".

Please, limit the number of manors that can spawn. Two or three per faction would be enough.

It will be limited in the upcoming version. You can get it now from GitHub, if you don't want to wait.

Do not place a limit on the manors. I enjoy my experience farms for solo/dual agents.

No worries, I just decreased the chances and growth speed, no hard limits.

In the original, the enforcer will give odds to anyone in terms of mobility and endurance. Try to find such a running-jumping indefatigable creature. So it's not canon...

This is the nth iteration of "making the Enforcer not completely eliminate the need of human agents".

...wait, does this mean you actually played Enforcer?

I actually did for a bit, and it wasn't so bad

Something else: I find it curious that there are no commendations for using medical items. And commendations for psi-stuff seem almost entirely absent from OXC(E) itself, barring the totalSlaveKills one.

With the Bravery training, they're already borderline too good.

Edit: Another thing, about the "Winners Don't Use Drugs" event. Testing prominent MMA fighters for performance-enhancing drugs and hitting them with arrests, fines, bans and whatnot was really not a thing in the 1990s. It was and to an entirely too large extent still is a joke how little MMA organisers care about doping.

MMA fighters? In the 90's?
That was called kickboxing... Or Thai boxing.

[Juku121]

How would this work? You vaporise half of the UFO, but the rest still safely lands and deploys the troops?

UFOs are spacecraft. Many are even combat spacecraft, and most of them have visible internal sections that can presumably be cut off from the rest of the ship when compromised. You know, like any spaceship with even a modicum of thought given to damage control.

I mean, the current situation doesn't really make all that much more sense to me. Right now that very same half-vaporised UFO still lands and deploys all the troops.

But, in any case, the problem is not so much with the fluff but the gameplay effects. Right now, your defences either work or they do not, no middle ground. Putting up just one plasma cannon in one corner of the base is worse than useless.

Actually manufacturing costs are the most meticulously calculated part of the mod by far. I don't think any of them should be "weird".

The monetary costs themselves seem fine, I haven't really spotted anything outrageous and I do believe you've gone to great lengths to make them consistent. It's the manufacturing times I'm a bit salty about.

E.g. I've found dart manufacturing times quite excessive. Six tiny darts with a somewhat exotic payload take an order of magnitude longer than 80 giant alloy bullets.

In fact, how many alloys a bullet takes is wildly divergent. One unit of alloys gets you either 11 tiny Spypistol rounds or 25+ HMG rounds. I suspect someone in Engineering is engaged in some creative alloy accounting.

To be honest, pretty much all the ammo vs weapon build times are kinda suspect. IRL, you pay something like two orders of magnitude less for a mag+ammo than the corresponding weapon. In XCF, it's more like 5-10x more for the weapon. I'm not sure why X-Com doesn't just make all weapons disposable and dispense with this reloading business altogether.

With the Bravery training, they're already borderline too good.

I don't want the medical commendations for the stats, I want them for memories. The dedicated medic deserves a medal to show who patched up everyone after the Commander let the cat sit in his chair. Twice.

MMA fighters? In the 90's?

What was later called UFC 1 happened in November 1993. MMA had quite a bit of momentum by the late 90s.

[Solarius Scorch]

UFOs are spacecraft. Many are even combat spacecraft, and most of them have visible internal sections that can presumably be cut off from the rest of the ship when compromised. You know, like any spaceship with even a modicum of thought given to damage control.

Yes, but UFOs don't fly like that. A UFO will usually fall long before its armour is breached. Refer to the relevant Pedia articles.

But, in any case, the problem is not so much with the fluff but the gameplay effects. Right now, your defences either work or they do not, no middle ground. Putting up just one plasma cannon in one corner of the base is worse than useless.

I plan to improve this by adding several different sizes of assault UFOs.

The monetary costs themselves seem fine, I haven't really spotted anything outrageous and I do believe you've gone to great lengths to make them consistent. It's the manufacturing times I'm a bit salty about.

Well... I'm salty about lot of things when I play.

I understand yur arguments, but I don't think anything is illogical here. although admittedly I haven't made any special calculations here, so various cost levels are ass pulls.

E.g. I've found dart manufacturing times quite excessive. Six tiny darts with a somewhat exotic payload take an order of magnitude longer than 80 giant alloy bullets.

It's kind of a legacy feature by now? Tradition? Well, I agree it may be a tad long, but it's kind of canon by now... At least to me

I don't want the medical commendations for the stats, I want them for memories. The dedicated medic deserves a medal to show who patched up everyone after the Commander let the cat sit in his chair. Twice.

Ah, okay. We can do something here

What was later called UFC 1 happened in November 1993. MMA had quite a bit of momentum by the late 90s.

I ceertainly haven't heard of it back then...

[Juku121]

Yes, but UFOs don't fly like that. A UFO will usually fall long before its armour is breached. Refer to the relevant Pedia articles.

That's more "My new interpretation of UFO propulsion means it no longer makes sense", but fair enough. That's consistent and makes sense.

Though it's a bit different during base defence. Mechanically, that is. UFOs attacking bases and HKs don't crash at 50% HP, they need to be fully 'destroyed'.

I plan to improve this by adding several different sizes of assault UFOs.

Woohoo!

I understand yur arguments, but I don't think anything is illogical here. although admittedly I haven't made any special calculations here, so various cost levels are ass pulls.

I understand and sympathise, I've done a lot of the same myself. Where the heck do I take these numbers from and do they even make sense? Oh, of course they don't. Tweak-tweak.

Ultimately, it's not that important, and a large chunk of my saltiness stems from my pack rat tendency of supplying every base with copious amounts of ammo, usually to the tune of 1K per type across the organisation. I doubt there's another player like me in this regard.

Edit: MMA discussion moved here.

[Solarius Scorch]

Jesus Christ, I wonder how on Earth you managed to survive those several days without this forum. Seriously! Get a life! :/

Though it's a bit different during base defence. Mechanically, that is. UFOs attacking bases and HKs don't crash at 50% HP, they need to be fully 'destroyed'.

Yes yes, different minigame, different rules. The process is too vague to worry about (how does troop insertion really works, etc.)

Ultimately, it's not that important, and a large chunk of my saltiness stems from my pack rat tendency of supplying every base with copious amounts of ammo, usually to the tune of 1K per type across the organisation. I doubt there's another player like me in this regard.

Well, I don't think I can do much about this inconvenience...

Neither had I. But for the enthusiast (mostly in the US, Japan or maybe Brazil), late 90s had a whole bunch of MMA competitions getting themselves established.

Eh, my point was that since X-Com obviously has heard of MMA, it's a strange timeline where it's also heard of drug testing with consequences for MMA fighters. But it's your timeline. I have nothing against an alien invasion that causes MMA promoters to start a serious anti-extraterrestrial-drug-use program. I'd just find it more immersive and funny if there was a reference to the Illuminati (or whatever faction suits best) MMA-afficionados flexing on the promoters.

I dunno, drug testing in sports is a thing? Seriously, what are you going on about?