Author Topic: Re: The X-Com Files - 3.5: Whispers In The Dark  (Read 2487422 times)

Offline Stone Lake

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Re: The X-Com Files - 3.4: Daggers for Hire
« Reply #6210 on: September 21, 2024, 10:40:40 pm »
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This will only work if UFO is hunter killer. If it is not, then only the craft that actually target UFO will open it's air combat screen.
You can join multiple crafts and then quickly target single UFO for each, then they'll all join the fight as long as they close enough to each other. There's also button to do this in newer OXCE, I think - target UFO for multiple crafts individually.

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But this will not work with Arbiter, because there is no safe distance to him.
Did you try, though? I was able to minimize on arbiter even though it was shooting at me (have it on video, but the link doesn't work for some reason). Albeit didn't gain much from that... Was that a bug that got fixed or something?

Well anyway, arbiter can be quickly downed by 2-3 gauss-tormentors working individually.

Offline Nerro

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Re: The X-Com Files - 3.4: Daggers for Hire
« Reply #6211 on: September 22, 2024, 12:05:43 am »
I looked at my video to refresh my memory, and indeed, the ships with follow order did not attack.
But as Stone Make said, I was able to minimize the battle window and order to other ships to attack manually.
https://youtu.be/tB7CU0eVtLk?si=lYVsBXAx8ZDFep-H&t=4672

I was using tormentors, but I don't see how that would make a difference.

Offline Dadimus_Maximus

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Re: The X-Com Files - 3.4: Daggers for Hire
« Reply #6212 on: September 22, 2024, 04:44:10 pm »
This lizard running on an F1 track reminded me of how some cryptids look when they're moving in this mod
https://twitter.com/formuLau16/status/1837579677055307983

Offline spazeroid

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Re: The X-Com Files - 3.4: Daggers for Hire
« Reply #6213 on: September 25, 2024, 06:43:27 pm »
Hi, I am writing to say that I am having a fantastic time playing your mod! I recently finished a long running playthrough of x-piratez and like a siren song this mod called to me. It really nails the gradual build up of power and resources that makes X-Com so great. It's fun to slowly become the X-Com we all know and love. I giggled when I saw the black ops rifle, of course that's what it looks like. It's also a credit to the campaign design that when I finally got my hands on one it was a legitimate improvement. So yeah great job!

I've played a lot of X-COM starting when I was just little, and been playing it regularly since then, and this is a great addition to the cannon.

So in my current playthrough I'm in difficulty 2, may 1999. I'm a bit ahead of the difficulty curve with cyber armor and tritanium ammo. So I can do most missions without too much risk and have strong interceptor coverage. My guess is that I'm in the early middle game, and that an x-com files campaign is about as long an x-piratez campaign. No spoilers please!

So my feedback is based on a player there. I started on difficulty 1 because mods can be really uneven, and I stopped that play-through when I realized I kneecapped myself by not doing research correctly. I'm probably going to start over on a harder difficulty because a difficulty doldrum like this suggests I'll have more fun with more challenge.

Loose feedback! (lots of spoilers)
Spoiler:
Seriously a big congratulations on how the campaign ramps up. Getting the helicopter and armored vests feels like a legitimate game changer and like you can finally let loose. I love it so much. It's also very smart to start you with the glock, it's a good subtle way to say "hey you want accuracy over power for the start"

It's fun to be legitimate g-men crossing national boundaries to extradionarily rendition fools. Especially when you get sci-fi dart guns. All those conspiracy theories were right! Similarly the messages from the factions were great because they helped to drive home just what X-COM looks like from the outside. I kind of missed them for the factions after the initial four, but it makes sense they have better security or are too loosely organized to have messages.

Coming off x-piratez it's really funny how some things get recontextualized by being back in a more mundane setting. The L-85 was just good in x-piratez but I shouted for joy when I got my hands on one here. Similarly I forgot where the standard human TU cap was, and that was a surprise let me tell you. Finally I forgot just how much armor gates the amount of risk you can take.

It'd gunk up the manufacturing screen, but it'd be nice to have a way to kill captured monsters that you can use their parts for things. Bullfrogs are the biggest one of these. The dart musket rules and is borderline essential, but bullfrogs at least on the difficulty I'm playing are the biggest offenders for getting knocked unconscious for wounds.

Similarly the webwear, so useful oh my god. But it's a real RNG roulette on when you can get it. I don't know if there's a better way to do it, but maybe 3 of 4 of any combination of spider types? Not sure the research system supports that.

So on my first play through I was difficulty 1, and I really kneecapped myself because I didn't realize that some of the research is literally trivial. I was stuck in the old x-com mode of thinking where you hit every topic with all of your scientists sequentially. Maybe a comment about how you have a lot of ground to cover and most terrestrial objects are a bureaucratic formality? (That's kind of in the manual messages but might be helpful to have in the pop ups.)

If vanilla x-com had access to knockout grenades the war would be over in four months and we'd just nuke mars. Maybe we could rig up blowers and just fumigate ufos?

The only mission I had a legitimately bad time with was the Dr. Alpha mission. It was just the most tedious thing. A one hit melee could drop from the vents and just wreck someone. Since it's mostly animals you can't win on morale. And I wound up with a low TU beetle stuck in the vents so I had to sweep the whole friggin map twice. Just a bad time, not sure there's much you can do about it with how the AI and spawns work.

There was very little more satisfying than getting the ADS and introducing deep ones and aquatoids to the tempo of above water combat. They were not prepared. I'm not all the way through the plot line either, but all of the interrogations telling you about TFTD monsters really builds the paranoia. If lobstermen show up, no amount of ADS is gonna save my ass. No Spoilers!

So there's three mundane weapon platforms that statistically are just about as good as a gun can get under x-com rules and they don't seem to have exact analogues in the more advanced bullet guns. (I haven't reached laser, mass driver or plasma.) These were the SVD (three accurate, accuracy boosted, three sniper snap shots per turn my god.) the L-85 (so many accurate snap shots.) and p-90 (it's compact, it's armor piecing, it's clip is huge and it's great on TU economy.) To the point where I wasn't sure it was wise to switch until I hit higher armor enemies. It'd be probably more work than it's worth but for mundane gun platforms maybe there's a research branch about making alien fuel trace ammo? You get a small damage boost, but clip size majorly suffers and it's expensive in money and traces? (it's jury rigged technology that only works because we have thousands of cartridges to try with.) It'd honestly probably be a research trap, but my guns!

So probably because I was on an easy difficulty but I took the message about when the war was going to start to mean that I needed radar and interceptor coverage by then. I managed it, but I felt super overprepared. Not sure that's worth doing anything on your part, but I thought it was worth mentioning. I sort of assumed the aliens were going to try and knock me out by launching a terror mission or two. In a way like the syndicate would eventually try.

It got introduced in the version I started on, but I really enjoy the council giving you advanced agents. It's nice to not have to train up mouth breathers and they almost always have commendations my strategy wouldn't get them. It also lets losses feel less like I need to load, an x-com agent is valuable but I can deal with losing someone good. At the same time though, something which reduces tension needs to be managed carefully in an x-com game. I like it, and it's making things easier for me but it's my choice to use it.

I'm mostly done fighting ghosts but it's fun and a great way to push the engine to do interesting things. Having to check for enemies as light sources is a really neat touch.

Similarly I very much enjoyed the arctic base mission. Would have gone a lot different if Macready brought an m-60.

Oh the company HQ mission was a test in patience because, that's a lot of stairs. like ten minutes of clicking lots of stairs, like final fantasy 7 lots of stairs. Please a hidden elevator every three floors or something. You can't get the CEO with morale so it was just annoying by the end.

I never played apocalypse, so the dimension x stuff took me much by surprise. It's really fun to run into something completely novel like that. Being limited to certain armors also really reinforces how vulnerable you are. Friggin spitters man.

I'm a completionist, at the same time X-COM files is pushing me to go as fast as I can. This is good, that's the tension of X-COM, you can play quite well but take too long and the aliens will win. The downside is that researching prisoners/aliens/corpses/animals almost always feels like there's not much reward. The x-dimension is the worst for this. Maybe a couple of Technomad files in the dimension X base so if you want to research the dimension x creatures you don't have to fish for all of them? Similarly you could get the files or corpse/captives from the expeditions. It'd be a crappy reward for the cost, but my completionism! (I just saw in a post above this one that land surveys might do the same thing?)

I'm sort of surprised you can't get gas masks, as that was how I got around Choking in X-piratez but at the same time I don't want em if it means the enemy gets em. Knockout grenades my beloved.

I managed to get a Base Invasion before 1999, which I thought was a great way to say "Oh you want to do interceptions? Why don't you say that to my face."

I never really bothered with Psionics in base x-com or VooDoo in x-piratez and I was pleasantly surprised by it's implementation here. The ghosts are great for going "Okay, guns aren't always going to be the solution." Also it was neat that things like the plasma glove have the stats to have utility outside of combat. Being able to melt doors etc, is legitimately useful. Similarly they are good for getting damage types you might need but not have access to otherwise.

Oh relatedly a message in the Osiris casenda mission about how to expect a fortified locked position would be good. I don't normally use explosives and you gotta breach. Flame glove will get you inside though.

My favorite faction to fight was the red dawn, yes I'd like free reasonably good guns and durathread. My most annoying was black lotus. Friggin ninjas man. On the flip side the red dawn HQ mission was a real wall in terms of difficulty, which I enjoyed. It was nice to see someone smart enough to bring armor to the fight and having to scrounge up anti-armor before I could buy it.

After my first run I found the best strategy for the initial factions was to move up in mission difficulty for all factions at once. On my first run through I put myself in a cult-de-sac by leveling up the black lotus chain too high before I had access to anything bigger than a helicopter. The avatar mission is not kind if you don't have good guns and a good number of guys.

It’s a very minor note, but because I was sure the aliens were going to come out swinging I wrapped up the enemy factions as fast as I could and then missed being able to do safehouses for free briefcases of money. Not sure that’s worth addressing.

I was sort of surprised you couldn't cut a very expensive deal with the Black Lotuses patron. You want to defend humanity, she kind of wants to defend humanity, friendship! It definitely wouldn't be the most morally ambiguous thing you do in this game. Friggin Neoderm. Similarly given how plot lines and monthly events work, it'd work well if in exchange for access to avatar forms you pay in monthly score events. (I wouldn't take the deal and I'm not sure it could be mechanically balanced but it occurred to me.) Things could resolve in the middle/late game when you double cross her. (But then people might feel like they have to for completionist reasons? I really hate being locked out of content myself.)

The kitsune is a really big gift to the player. Which I don't mind, I love that thing. But before that I had been building bases entirely to get within osprey range of HQs. A big, fast "go anywhere" troop transport for free is hella useful. I’d be surprised if it’s given in higher difficulties.

I'm gonna wait until I beat the game to ask how it works, but I am so curious how events and missions spawn within the x-com geoscape framework. It's fun system, I love that there are events happening that you can't know about, really ties into the feeling that you are trying to manage slowly spiraling chaos. Similarly it's fun when you get a good event, I'm hoping it's tied somehow to your level of intelligence capability so that investing there has subtle effects.

I liked the syndicate is angry plot line. It really felt like they were a rival actor who knew exactly the levers to push to make me lose in a smart way. They don't need to kill me, just my support.

Oh I thought making alien alloys a rate limiting material was inspired. Coming off x-piratez where it was per faction enemy drops, it seemed like a nice way to simplify the system while still making you have to carefully conserve resources. Do I want better ammo for the guns more than I want better armor or stuff for labs? I'm guessing tritanium ammo will get superceded by laser, but getting to lasers takes knowing the tech tree pretty well.

Making progress gated behind high research projects is an interesting touch. For me it seems to incentivize knowing the research tree and figuring out how to get the most labs in a single base, and then building smaller research bases for things like interrogations and autopsies. I think this is the desired behavior?

Similarly it's interesting how certain high research things are effectively traps for a new player. "Surely researching an MIB agent won't take that long?" (<someone about to have a bad time.)

The final note I have is just as someone new to the mod, it's interesting how much of the management comes from trying to manage storage. Partially this is bad habits I picked up from x-piratez where taking captives could manage your storage problems by generating negative size items. I might need ancient guns eventually! I like to run teams from a central base, so keeping all the kinds of armors, and various guns is running up pretty hard against storage limits and items I need to research. I feel like this is working as intended to make you commit to moving up the tech tree and sell things you legitimately don't need anymore, but it's annoying at times.

So I've got a few questions that I don't really want spoilers for, but I could use the advice of someone who is familiar with how the mod progresses.
1. Transformations seem to be a big part of the intended design. Coming off x-piratez it's been humbling to have to deal with puny purebloods again, so I'd love to upgrade. At the same time in the version of x-piratez I was playing (an old one about 2 years out of date.) Freshness, the sanity analogue; was the stat I was working around in the end game. The high level armors sucked it out of Gals, and late game missions were all freshness draining. So basically any transformations which limited freshness made that character useless in the endgame. A veteran Gal, in high level armor became basically useless after 20 turns, and that was without freshness reductions from stat boosts. (There was an item to get around it at an HP drain but I didn't realize that it existed until I was trying to get onto mars.)

Is that true here? Can I use transformations without making soldiers so sanity limited they are basically useless after 20 turns in the end game? It's a real bother to have to play the whole game to realize you crippled your best soldiers a hundred hours ago.

2. So I'm probably going to start over my campaign on a higher difficulty. I beat x-piratez on 3 and I thought that was a fair challenge. X-piratez is much more of a power fantasy though. At the same time this is hopefully the last massive X-COM mod I'm going to beat like a drum. I need to play other games, to touch grass. So I might go up to 4.

Is difficulty 4 manageable if you are good at X-COM but don't know X-COM files like the back of your hand? The nature of long campaign mods like this means that you can screw yourself over and not realize for dozens of hours. X-piratez got around this by making the game basically unlosable past a certain point, I’m doubting x-files is as nice. I'm not touching 5 or 6, I'm neurotic enough about losses, higher difficulty is going to make that worse.

3. Is sneaky Ai recommended? Given the way TU economy works, enemies taking cover around corners does actually make things a lot harder. At the same time it might mess up animals/zombies?

Again thanks for making a really great mod! It's so fun to see how people are pushing the engine in ways I never thought possible.


Offline Stone Lake

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Re: The X-Com Files - 3.4: Daggers for Hire
« Reply #6214 on: September 26, 2024, 04:14:06 am »
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Is that true here? Can I use transformations without making soldiers so sanity limited they are basically useless after 20 turns in the end game?
Mostly, yes. But also you should've researched nobelon long ago. It pretty much negates most sanity issues.

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Is difficulty 4 manageable if you are good at X-COM...making the game basically unlosable past a certain point, I’m doubting x-files is as nice.
XCF is WAY nicer than XPZ, especially late patches (spartans, hirable vets). It's also nearly unlosable (past early game). That's what difficulty affects the most.  That is, SH/5 difficulty roughly makes encounters up to finishing off first cults one head above their VET/3 counterparts. Past these, difficulty increase is also noticeable, but not that important. To put into perspective, SH/IM is pretty easy (past early game) if you've beat XCF once.
VET/3 is the recommended difficulty. If you think you're good, /4 or even /5 should be fine.
« Last Edit: September 26, 2024, 04:19:44 am by Stone Lake »

Offline Asheram

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Re: The X-Com Files - 3.4: Daggers for Hire
« Reply #6215 on: September 26, 2024, 09:44:59 pm »
Terribly sorry to bother, but I had a question about the researchRuleStatus.
I was curious as to why I couldn't research Helix Knight when I was certain I had everything unlocked for it, and the research itself had unlocked in "poppedResearch".
When I looked at "researchRuleStatus", for some reason it had a value of 3. I've seen 1 and 2, but never 3. Would any of you happen to know what that value means? And I must admit I cheated by setting it to 1 and the research unlocked as it should have.

Offline CrazedHarpooner

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Re: The X-Com Files - 3.4: Daggers for Hire
« Reply #6216 on: September 26, 2024, 10:50:07 pm »
If a research topic has that value then a) The mod or a submod has enabled the new research sorting and b) you have hidden it, probably unintentionally.
If you load a save before your edit, you should probably see it if you change the view in the research window to show hidden topics.

Offline Asheram

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Re: The X-Com Files - 3.4: Daggers for Hire
« Reply #6217 on: September 26, 2024, 10:53:39 pm »
If a research topic has that value then a) The mod or a submod has enabled the new research sorting and b) you have hidden it, probably unintentionally.
If you load a save before your edit, you should probably see it if you change the view in the research window to show hidden topics.
Ah! Thank you kindly. It must've happened accidentally.

Offline termidor

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Re: The X-Com Files - 3.4: Daggers for Hire
« Reply #6218 on: September 28, 2024, 01:35:57 am »
Three small feedback items:
-Reptoid missions shouldn't appear before making contact with then, is a bit strange to get the assination mission without even knowing what is Shogg. Additionally, they can make terramite super fast to get which can easily transform into  early power armor.
- Batteries for  alien laser weapons should be buildable without elirium battery . This tech also kinda of locks a lot of relevant stuff so more dispersion would be nice.
-Maybe have a mission to snatch a tritanium matrix from Osirion/ Syndicate/Hybrids. Having it on alien bases make it appear to late, and how it was before with no limits made getting nice stuff very easy, so maybe having a hard mission to take it away from then could balance it out (and considering they make use of tritatnium, they must be getting it somewhere).

Offline spazeroid

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Re: The X-Com Files - 3.4: Daggers for Hire
« Reply #6219 on: September 28, 2024, 08:21:14 am »
Mostly, yes. But also you should've researched nobelon long ago. It pretty much negates most sanity issues.
Oh so it does! Funnily enough I missed it the same way I missed cigars back in X-piratez. I wonder if I mentally edited sanity to morale as that's close to a X-piratez item. Thanks! It's mad science time boys!

XCF is WAY nicer than XPZ, especially late patches (spartans, hirable vets). It's also nearly unlosable (past early game). That's what difficulty affects the most.  That is, SH/5 difficulty roughly makes encounters up to finishing off first cults one head above their VET/3 counterparts. Past these, difficulty increase is also noticeable, but not that important. To put into perspective, SH/IM is pretty easy (past early game) if you've beat XCF once.
VET/3 is the recommended difficulty. If you think you're good, /4 or even /5 should be fine.

Hmm, yeah the early game is really when the difficulty would show. Early game X-com files is the formula cooked down to the richest syrup. Where it's all about making the best dice rolls out of limited options. Close to whatever the remake was going for. I kind want to try high difficulty to prove that I am the x-com master. We will see. Thanks!

It's off topic for this thread, but amusingly because I was updating my X-Piratez install continuously and then stopped with the early games sky ninja stuff (I didn't want to start a new campaign.) I missed a lot of the updates that made the X-Piratez early game harder. I kind of want to start a new X-Piratez playthrough but I can't spend more years playing it.

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: The X-Com Files - 3.4: Daggers for Hire
« Reply #6220 on: September 28, 2024, 01:35:24 pm »
Thanks for the clarification.

I don't feel you need to remove any terminology, just fix the UFOpaedia text in the screenshot to say "Building it requires: 150 Alien Alloys".

Over the course of my whole game that screenshot was the only use of the term that really confused me.  I actually went and tried to find "Tritanium" in the UFOpaedia, thinking maybe it's some kind of new, distinct component.  It's a bit unfair that page uses a term that's different from the actual component.  I recognize you want to maintain the "engineering" feel of the text, but since it's a footnote anyway is it really that important to use "Tritanium" in the context of the help page?

"Alien Alloys" is an actual item you can find in UFOpaedia, and in your inventory lists in the game.  "Tritanium" is not.  In my own view this makes the occurrence in that UFOpaedia page a no-brainer typographic error, regardless of the intended interpretation of the words.  (I wouldn't care so much if the page was just lore).

I understand the problem, and your argumentation makes sense. Still, I would rather use "Tritanium" in an engineering context. I'll consider the options some more before deciding.

Just obtained Schutzstaffeln Ring from one the three land surveys granted in June 1997. While this does not break the game (you only get parapsychology pre-req for now) and it is not unheard of that such a treasure could be found, I suppose you could also argue that such "quest artifacts" should not be available in the land surveys.

Looking at what else can be obtained, the only other thing that raises an eyebrow is Black Lotus Avatar Remains (though it does not give you anything).

I prefer to keep things chaotic when I can. :P

The current OXCE provides a possibility to give user a confirmation screen before selling an important item. I suppose that could used for some important items if SS wants to do so. I'm a bit doubtful that SS wants to do so, because you actually want to sell some of those to get rid of the extras (and SS will probably say it would be in principle cheating to give players such a warning).

I don't mind that much either way, but the criteria of what qualifies as a a critical item is not easy. I'd rather make the mod resistant to errors (for example by giving the player an option to redo a mission where you can get it).

Invisible ghosts are emitting light now. They are still invisible, but now it is much easier to find them on a map.

Yeah, but I think it's good.

Earlier it was never so hard to get a Zombie Infector. An underground mission with them (and 1 Strix) no longer in the game (I guses), and chances of "Major Zombie Infestation" (not to be confused with "Zombie Infestation") mission chance is very low. In fact I got "Infector" only from Syndicate Scientist.

I haven't touched zombie stuff in years.

Btw, syndicate underground lab spawned first time... without a lab. Only caves. Second time lab spawned. And spawned differently than usual, that is good. Earlier my troops always spawned at north, but not this time.

That is very strange, never happened to me to not have the HQ. A savegame would be nice.

I tried to rush for Skyraider as mush as I could, but Kitsune still appeared earlier. In june 1998, more specifically.

I'm considering moving it a bit further.

Impulse weaponry is too hard to get and when you do, they are already outdated. Although Impulse Machine Gun with Chem Ammo is still a doomsday weapon!

Shhh! It's a secret! :)

Same with tritanium ammo. Too expensive at early game and when you do get enough tritanium, you no longer need ammo out of it.

That's why there are extra sources of tritanium ammo (Osiron, MiB).

Reptiloids no longer use Gauss. Instead they use plasma machine guns.

Plasma machine gun? Is it some submod stuff?
Then again, calling dragonreath weapons plasma is not inaccurate.

Very good against Ethereals. Now nobody uses Gauss... Can only be found in crates.

Nah, MiBs use it every day.

New mission "MiB vs Magam Reactor" enabled relatively easy MiB commander capturing. That was needed.

Good to hear. THis mission isn't easy, but I guess at this point it's still easier than doing a MiB base.

In the end I was able to shoot this thing down. Eh... I knew that ground mission with Arbiter would be hard, but not that hard. Also Ethereal Commander is as orange as every other dudes so you essentially need to scan every robe wearer before shooting it. I definitely could performed better, but in the end I lost. I can reload, but the main point of this champagne was to beat the game without reloading. And no, I don't have morale strength to recover, game morally defeated me again...

Unfortunately, this is one of several key missions in the campaign, and it's supposed to be a challenge.

I am slightly missing those lovely sounds like "Braaaaaains!" or "The aliens have returned, run!" or "Why everybody hates me?". Will they ever return?

Doesn't sound familiar, probably a submod?

How do you think, would it be better to allow players to know how mush energy is left in the shield you are shooting? Like in X-Chronicle?

I think it would, bur it's waaaaay beyond my understanding of scripts (which is at about 0).

This lizard running on an F1 track reminded me of how some cryptids look when they're moving in this mod

Haha, you're right - the "animation" looks familiar.

Hi, I am writing to say that I am having a fantastic time playing your mod! I recently finished a long running playthrough of x-piratez and like a siren song this mod called to me. It really nails the gradual build up of power and resources that makes X-Com so great. It's fun to slowly become the X-Com we all know and love. I giggled when I saw the black ops rifle, of course that's what it looks like. It's also a credit to the campaign design that when I finally got my hands on one it was a legitimate improvement. So yeah great job!

Thank you! I really appreciate it, especially from a Piratez player.

So in my current playthrough I'm in difficulty 2, may 1999. I'm a bit ahead of the difficulty curve with cyber armor and tritanium ammo. So I can do most missions without too much risk and have strong interceptor coverage. My guess is that I'm in the early middle game, and that an x-com files campaign is about as long an x-piratez campaign. No spoilers please!

It's not that long. ;) (hopefully not too spoilery)

My answers below can't be put in a spoiler tag due to quotes, so sorry about that. I will only address the points I have something to comment on, but thanks for all the feedback.

Seriously a big congratulations on how the campaign ramps up. Getting the helicopter and armored vests feels like a legitimate game changer and like you can finally let loose. I love it so much. It's also very smart to start you with the glock, it's a good subtle way to say "hey you want accuracy over power for the start"

Thanks; I also think the late early game is the strongest part of the mod.

It's fun to be legitimate g-men crossing national boundaries to extradionarily rendition fools. Especially when you get sci-fi dart guns. All those conspiracy theories were right! Similarly the messages from the factions were great because they helped to drive home just what X-COM looks like from the outside. I kind of missed them for the factions after the initial four, but it makes sense they have better security or are too loosely organized to have messages.

Yeah, although I can think of writing something similar for at least some of them.

Coming off x-piratez it's really funny how some things get recontextualized by being back in a more mundane setting. The L-85 was just good in x-piratez but I shouted for joy when I got my hands on one here. Similarly I forgot where the standard human TU cap was, and that was a surprise let me tell you. Finally I forgot just how much armor gates the amount of risk you can take.

Indeed we're keeping a certain amount of common ground between XPZ and XCF when it comes to mechanics and lore. We succeed most of times. ;)

It'd gunk up the manufacturing screen, but it'd be nice to have a way to kill captured monsters that you can use their parts for things. Bullfrogs are the biggest one of these. The dart musket rules and is borderline essential, but bullfrogs at least on the difficulty I'm playing are the biggest offenders for getting knocked unconscious for wounds.

I'm trying to be conservative here, but each monster should give something. As of now, Muckstars, Fenrirs, Shamblers and Asmodean Cobras do not, because I haven't had a good enough idea.

Similarly the webwear, so useful oh my god. But it's a real RNG roulette on when you can get it. I don't know if there's a better way to do it, but maybe 3 of 4 of any combination of spider types? Not sure the research system supports that.

Wold be hard, and it's mostly a reward for madmen anyway.

So on my first play through I was difficulty 1, and I really kneecapped myself because I didn't realize that some of the research is literally trivial. I was stuck in the old x-com mode of thinking where you hit every topic with all of your scientists sequentially. Maybe a comment about how you have a lot of ground to cover and most terrestrial objects are a bureaucratic formality? (That's kind of in the manual messages but might be helpful to have in the pop ups.)

That's more or less already written. I can do some tweaks.

The only mission I had a legitimately bad time with was the Dr. Alpha mission. It was just the most tedious thing. A one hit melee could drop from the vents and just wreck someone. Since it's mostly animals you can't win on morale. And I wound up with a low TU beetle stuck in the vents so I had to sweep the whole friggin map twice. Just a bad time, not sure there's much you can do about it with how the AI and spawns work.

Sorry, this kind of things happen. And it's a dossier mission, these tend to be particularly nasty.

It'd be probably more work than it's worth but for mundane gun platforms maybe there's a research branch about making alien fuel trace ammo? You get a small damage boost, but clip size majorly suffers and it's expensive in money and traces? (it's jury rigged technology that only works because we have thousands of cartridges to try with.) It'd honestly probably be a research trap, but my guns!

Interesting, but no; using Elerium as an explosive, even in a primitive way, is a major scientific challenge. Doing something like this in 1999 would be against the lore.

So probably because I was on an easy difficulty but I took the message about when the war was going to start to mean that I needed radar and interceptor coverage by then. I managed it, but I felt super overprepared. Not sure that's worth doing anything on your part, but I thought it was worth mentioning. I sort of assumed the aliens were going to try and knock me out by launching a terror mission or two. In a way like the syndicate would eventually try.

Well, it's mostly a misdirection, although it's not a lie.

Oh the company HQ mission was a test in patience because, that's a lot of stairs. like ten minutes of clicking lots of stairs, like final fantasy 7 lots of stairs. Please a hidden elevator every three floors or something. You can't get the CEO with morale so it was just annoying by the end.

Nah, I think it's just the right amount of suffering, sorry :)

I'm a completionist, at the same time X-COM files is pushing me to go as fast as I can. This is good, that's the tension of X-COM, you can play quite well but take too long and the aliens will win. The downside is that researching prisoners/aliens/corpses/animals almost always feels like there's not much reward. The x-dimension is the worst for this. Maybe a couple of Technomad files in the dimension X base so if you want to research the dimension x creatures you don't have to fish for all of them?

OK, I guess it's a reasonable idea. Todolisted.

Similarly you could get the files or corpse/captives from the expeditions. It'd be a crappy reward for the cost, but my completionism! (I just saw in a post above this one that land surveys might do the same thing?)

I didn't want to give corpses here because they're pretty much useless once you research them.

I'm sort of surprised you can't get gas masks, as that was how I got around Choking in X-piratez but at the same time I don't want em if it means the enemy gets em. Knockout grenades my beloved.

Yeah, Piratez are a bit more particular about equipment, being a postapoc setting and all. XCF is more standardized, so gas masks, NV goggles etc. simply exist as part of outfits or are not shown within the game engine.

I managed to get a Base Invasion before 1999, which I thought was a great way to say "Oh you want to do interceptions? Why don't you say that to my face."

Bad luck! (or is it?)

Oh relatedly a message in the Osiris casenda mission about how to expect a fortified locked position would be good. I don't normally use explosives and you gotta breach. Flame glove will get you inside though.

Raiding a building without explosives? How strange! :)

I was sort of surprised you couldn't cut a very expensive deal with the Black Lotuses patron. You want to defend humanity, she kind of wants to defend humanity, friendship! It definitely wouldn't be the most morally ambiguous thing you do in this game.

It's a concept, but would require a major arc. Maybe someday.

(But then people might feel like they have to for completionist reasons? I really hate being locked out of content myself.)

There are already mutually exclusive decisions, so it's too late to worry about this. :)

I'm gonna wait until I beat the game to ask how it works, but I am so curious how events and missions spawn within the x-com geoscape framework. It's fun system, I love that there are events happening that you can't know about, really ties into the feeling that you are trying to manage slowly spiraling chaos. Similarly it's fun when you get a good event, I'm hoping it's tied somehow to your level of intelligence capability so that investing there has subtle effects.

Generally speaking, most events fire based on a certain research being completed or not, or a combination thereof.

Is that true here? Can I use transformations without making soldiers so sanity limited they are basically useless after 20 turns in the end game? It's a real bother to have to play the whole game to realize you crippled your best soldiers a hundred hours ago.

20 turns is a lot of time, most missions don't take that long. I've never felt Freshness to be a major problem in Piratez, unless I was doing many missions in short succession, and XCF should be even easier. There are obviously long missions with heavy Sanity drain, but they're rare.

Is difficulty 4 manageable if you are good at X-COM but don't know X-COM files like the back of your hand? The nature of long campaign mods like this means that you can screw yourself over and not realize for dozens of hours. X-piratez got around this by making the game basically unlosable past a certain point, I’m doubting x-files is as nice. I'm not touching 5 or 6, I'm neurotic enough about losses, higher difficulty is going to make that worse.

Should be maneagable. It's mostly more enemies with better stats. Up to you if you're into that.

3. Is sneaky Ai recommended? Given the way TU economy works, enemies taking cover around corners does actually make things a lot harder. At the same time it might mess up animals/zombies?

I wouldn't recommend it. In my experience it cripples the AI more than it helps it.

Again thanks for making a really great mod! It's so fun to see how people are pushing the engine in ways I never thought possible.

Peace!

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: The X-Com Files - 3.4: Daggers for Hire
« Reply #6221 on: September 28, 2024, 01:35:48 pm »
Double posting, because I ran out of characters:

-Reptoid missions shouldn't appear before making contact with then, is a bit strange to get the assination mission without even knowing what is Shogg.

But they don't care about your progress, they work on their own clock, just like Cydonians. So I can't really make it dependent on your knowledge. I think it's fine as is.

Additionally, they can make terramite super fast to get which can easily transform into  early power armor.

True, but it's also not that easy, I think.

- Batteries for  alien laser weapons should be buildable without elirium battery.

But how?

-Maybe have a mission to snatch a tritanium matrix from Osirion/ Syndicate/Hybrids. Having it on alien bases make it appear to late, and how it was before with no limits made getting nice stuff very easy, so maybe having a hard mission to take it away from then could balance it out (and considering they make use of tritatnium, they must be getting it somewhere).

Perhaps. I'll think about it.
(But from among your enemies, only MiBs have this tech.)

It's off topic for this thread, but amusingly because I was updating my X-Piratez install continuously and then stopped with the early games sky ninja stuff (I didn't want to start a new campaign.) I missed a lot of the updates that made the X-Piratez early game harder. I kind of want to start a new X-Piratez playthrough but I can't spend more years playing it.

Piratez is a very different game now, with a different early balance and way more options; so revisiting it wouldn't be too much of a repetition, I guess. If time allows, of course.

Offline Vakrug

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Re: The X-Com Files - 3.4: Daggers for Hire
« Reply #6222 on: September 29, 2024, 10:23:37 am »
I haven't touched zombie stuff in years.
I don't see STR_ZOMBIE_HIVE in eventScripts_XCOMFILES.rul file!
That is very strange, never happened to me to not have the HQ. A savegame would be nice.
Well, you know how bad I am at keeping saves...
THis mission isn't easy, but I guess at this point it's still easier than doing a MiB base.
A walk in a park in comparison with Arbiter. Also I saw MiB Base only once despite playing this mod a lot.
Doesn't sound familiar, probably a submod?
It actually could be... For the first time I downloaded this mod not from the official place. So sad...
I think it would, bur it's waaaaay beyond my understanding of scripts (which is at about 0).
Probably just a copy and paste. Nord probably can explain...
« Last Edit: September 29, 2024, 04:15:05 pm by Vakrug »

Offline psavola

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Re: The X-Com Files - 3.4: Daggers for Hire
« Reply #6223 on: September 29, 2024, 10:44:22 am »
For the first time I noticed that you can kill Red Dawn Armored Cars (and make them explode) with gas (CHOKE) damage. This was a bit surprising because many mechanized units are resistant. Maybe this is intentional, and a result of division between completely AI-controlled robotic units versus human-driven units. I suppose the driver has some kind of dead man's switch, and once the driver gets killed by gas, the armored car will explode..

BTW. "The aliens have returned" sound (bewildered or brainwashed farmer I think) is from Resound mod.


Offline coorta88

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Re: The X-Com Files - 3.4: Daggers for Hire
« Reply #6224 on: September 29, 2024, 04:44:47 pm »
First part of game/mod (years 1997. 1998) are probably best parts of game (not that the rest of it is bad). There are only few things missing in this part of game so far:

1.Some unique Black lotus HQ dungeon as it is still using slightly modified TFTD X-com base.
2.Similar information messages for Syndicate, Cyberweb as those you can intercept from Black Lotus, Red Dawn, Exalt, Cult of Dagon /just some flavour text to inform you how they view your progress towards their destruction).
3.Some unique Syndicate dungeon as it is still using slightly modified TFTD X-com base (if I´m mistaken in this since in 3.4 version I´ve not destroyed Syndicate HQ so far, only in versions 2.9, 3.1, 3.3 then I apologise for my mistake).

And thanks for good work.