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

[Juku121]

Actually, only armors with a Ufopedia entry seem to be included. That includes unlocking the right soldier type, usually.

It's a pretty nice if a little cumbersome way to manage the list.


Scrolling is indeed not included. No, it is, I'm blind.


Also, don't use my Stealth Armours submod, or alter it to use !add. Among other things that don't really work in it as a submod (scripts, mainly), it also lazily overwrites starting conditions.

[0xEBJC]

Actually, only armors with a Ufopedia entry seem to be included. That includes unlocking the right soldier type, usually.

It's a pretty nice if a little cumbersome way to manage the list.

Scrolling is indeed not included.

Ok, yeah so I think that is a tough one to consider, as some armors are 'equippable' before they are researched, and you probably don't want to show an 'entire' list of allowable armors for an environment way before a bunch of those armors are researched or even discovered.

Maybe, I think it would be a benefit to somehow from ufopedia page for an armor what it's allowable environments are.. but that may get complicated if you haven't discovered specific environments yet like dimension-x or space, etc.

The solution I'm looking for is how can you tell if an armor will work for an environment 'before' it is researched?  so when equipping it from the armor menu you can guarantee that it will not be auto-replaced when you get to the site location.

Here's my suggestion, and this may need to go into the OXCE suggestions.  When you are at the items menu for adding items to a craft there is a drop down menu that filters items based on 'allowed' or 'categories' like 'labor gear'  I think a good solution would be to have a drop down menu in the armors menu for each 'environment' so even it an armor isn't researched yet you could filter in the armors menu for say 'dimension-x' and it would show you allowable armors in dimension-x even for available armors in the inventory and equippable although not yet researched.  and scrolling would be a nice feature improvement.

[0xEBJC]

Also, don't use my Stealth Armours submod, or alter it to use !add. Among other things that don't really work in it as a submod (scripts, mainly), it also lazily overwrites starting conditions.

so for a 'lazy' overwrite is this just something that needs to be worked a lot in the source by the devs, I'm assuming?

I did notice that some oddities in testing, when I directly entered a crash site for aquatoids with my armor using the add! to starting conditions I ended up with the correct armor equipped, but my inventory was complete empty and I had to go around and 'punch' all the enemies.

[Juku121]

Some sort of armour tags system would be best, I think, but would need serious consideration in how to implement it.

Otherwise, one could add tags similar to the no longer extant 'Concealable' to armour pedia entries; or add one or even several pedia articles on a discovered environment (possibly via auto-completed research) vs allowable armours. Maybe even a whole bunch of articles that get unlocked and locked depending on your researched armour list. And potentially allowing to research looted armour without unlocking the full manufacture/buy/tech development, similar to how looted weapons work.

All of this is a lot of work for the modder for rather limited gains.


Asking for scrolling and armour tags seem much easier for the modder, but OXCE development has a giant todo list and is at a low point right now.



The overwrite was just my own laziness, AFAIK you can just !add the armours with no ill effects. The scripts were where I had trouble.

I don't understand what the 'empty inventory' issues was, exactly. Did you test in Quick Battles? And were somehow unable to equip the soldier? Or it wiped their equipment 'memory'? Something else?

[0xEBJC]

It didn't empty their inventory permanently, after shooting down an aquatoid ship over land and directly entering battle the soldier had the new test armor I added, but their inventory was empty, I'm guessing some issues with "allowed items for that battle type" like how if you have guns equipped to a soldier and then they deploy to a beach all the guns go away for that battle. 


For identifying if an unresearched armor could be used in a specific environment I don't think you would need to do any sort of complex udopedia flags...  The easiest ways would be to implement this would be to have a drop down filter in the armor equip menu with the ability to choose environments like dimension-x and then it would only show the armors equippable for that battlescape type, so this would be something complete independent from the research requirements / accomplishments, and would not affect the "mission menu" that only shows researched armors.

[Juku121]

So you only had 'abovewater' guns? If so, that seems to be working as intended.

The advantage of pedia tags you the tags is that it's doable right now. The disadvantage is that it's a lot of manual work (which is why 'Concealed' was moved to item tags and discontinued in the pedia) and won't account for 'unencountered' environments.

The drop down you're envisioning would be basically extending current item tags to armours - as armours and not items. I suppose one can kinda filter for armours in inventory even right now, but not while equipping a craft. Which is what really matters.

I don't know if there are any issues with corner cases and/or UI if such a suggestion were to be considered. Probably not deal-breakers.

[0xEBJC]

so I did find that there is a scrollbar when the list is big enough, so that's working great

[Zharkov]

This is fine!

[0xEBJC]

So you only had 'abovewater' guns? If so, that seems to be working as intended.

It would make sense for a water mission, but this was where I shot down an aquatoid ship over land and the mission was on in farmland with houses.  So, I'm still thinking there's something not quite right.  I had this issue come up a couple of times, but haven't been able to duplicate it again.

[Solarius Scorch]

@Solarius: Have you thought about something like what got buried in the hangar discussion?

I don't think there currently exist very good tools to make something like that happen in OXCE, at least not without seriously restructuring the mission scripts. And the mod has moved away from a mono-focus on just one enemy ever since the beginning.

But I just can't but remember how much more fun the geoscape part with this kind of dynamic was in Xeno1/UFO:ET. Neither the original X-Com nor any mod I've played (except Piratez to a degree) has quite scrathed that itch.

At this point I'm trying to move away from just fighting aliens in an interplanetary war, that's what basic X-Com is for (and its expansions, like the FMP). If more involved combat situations come in the future, they will be focused either on Earth enemies or very special alien missions.

But indeed, I don't know what else is possible to do apart from convoys (where enemy fighters protect an enemy ship).

Also, I wanted to say my piece about the EMP discussion going on in the bug thread. I think the simplest solution would be to let the jarhead mission have a separate clue that guarantees 100% mission spawn that comes from one of the more obscure but readily available investigations. Perhaps the 'secret files' item? Or the 'really secret files'? Probably not the 'really, really secret files'... Although maybe some promotions could come with an "X-Com files" item that tells us about our predecessors?

Nah, I think it's okay as is... I'd rather add some new mission with Jarheads (probably triggered from advanced Dagon sites). Todolisted.

No. You just get the dog (or some other random soldier). X-Com doesn't really seem to have a proper base defence protocol, everyone just grabs a gun whereever they happen to be when the aliens land.

At least (unlike in Piratez), your men can't be caught literally with their pants down, or having to defend the base wearing sexy lingerie (and nothing else) despite having a powered exoskeleton assigned.

I see, thank you, I guess I will just leave the mission for now as I'm not at that point yet. It would be nice if this mission description could be changed to be more clear though as to me it highly suggests you are supposed to grab the item and flee.

Hmm, instead I decided to do this:

Code: [Select]

research:
  - name: STR_SYNDICATE_FLOPPY
    getOneFree:
      - STR_SYNDICATE_PISSED

I think it should merge both paths without issues.

I did try shooting the computer but I didn't have any weapons that could damage it.

You need a stronger hacking tool! (sorry, couldn't resist)

[Juku121]

If more involved combat situations come in the future, they will be focused either on Earth enemies or very special alien missions.

Well, while personally I'm all for more UFOs and aliens, in theory this kind of dynamic can be achieved with pretty much any faction. I don't see a good way to do it on a technical level, though. One can always just make giant waves of UFO-equivalents, or spam mission scripts, but the latter are hard to link together without really convoluted scripting, and the former seems off-theme and/or lazy.

If more At least (unlike in Piratez), your men can't be caught literally with their pants down, or having to defend the base wearing sexy lingerie (and nothing else) despite having a powered exoskeleton assigned.

How does this even work? Some sort of armour-forbidding starting condition on base defences?

[Solarius Scorch]

How does this even work? Some sort of armour-forbidding starting condition on base defences?

It's a feature made specifically for XPZ. During a base defence, for every gal there's a 15% chance to end up in a non-standard outfit (generally nude, semi-nude or in some kind of underwear). If you're interested, go to Piratez_Globals.rul and search for STR_STARCON_HIDEOUT.

[Juku121]

Thanks for the tip!

It's indeed a special starting condition, but with an extra-funky 'defaultArmor' setting. Even the ruleset reference writer (Meridian, probably) is a bit perplexed.

[Juku121]

I can easily remove the counter from grenades (and set it to 0 turns), but God knows how many people use the counter and would be sad to see it go.

I've also never used any setting but 0 turns, so add me to the list of those for whom the timer is superfluous. I've never seen anyone use any other setting else, either, though I'm sure there are some cases when it might be useful.

A simple solution would be to make an 'official' submod that either removes the timer or puts it back, depending on which population of mod players gets the upper hand.



Moreover, I propose adding 'isExplodingInHands: true' to most if not all grenades, to discourage the excessive pre-priming mentioned by psavola in the thread the quoted post came from. As I recall, Solarius isn't a fan of pre-priming, either.

[HinterDemGlas]

I've used setting turn 1 in front of doors and corners for letting enemies walk into it; maybe not the most reliable tactic, but occasionally very successful-- e.g. when  throwing an incendiary in front of the only exit of a safe house on turn one. And in my current game I once used 8 carefully pre-primed dynamites to booby-trap MiB reinforcements. (Mixed success, the dang farmers threw one back and pocketed another two )

However, thematically it would be fine, an agent in the field is probably not going to do a lot of combat engineer bullshit to give a grenade a five minute fuse. I assume the vanilla X-Com assumption was that in the far flung future of 1999 hand grenades would be intricately programmable with a convenient holographic interface

isExplodingInHands would be !!FUN!!.