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

[Slaughter]

Didn't play this yet (waiting for the Android port) but I was wondering: How the transition from X-COM files to X-COM itself is handled?

I was thinking these days it would be cool if there's sorta of a X-COM "0.8" feeling to that period - I'm thinking cold war/post-cold war NATO/Warsaw Pact airplanes and air weapons, choppers for transport, NATO/Warsaw firearms (say, M16, AK74M, etc), prototype tanks, etc. The transition from post-cold war national equipment to X-COM weapons we see in vanilla and FMP.

BTW, am I the only who wants to intercept UFOs with one of these babies? The range would probably be crap, but it can probably outspeed most UFOs for a while. Like a missile that fires missiles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_X-15

[Solarius Scorch]

I've checked in ruleset, that you need also PSICLONE (i presume it is an item) but it does not spawn on enemies even in EXALT bases.

Well, I verified this item should spawn on them. It's just not very common.

Didn't play this yet (waiting for the Android port) but I was wondering: How the transition from X-COM files to X-COM itself is handled?

I was thinking these days it would be cool if there's sorta of a X-COM "0.8" feeling to that period - I'm thinking cold war/post-cold war NATO/Warsaw Pact airplanes and air weapons, choppers for transport, NATO/Warsaw firearms (say, M16, AK74M, etc), prototype tanks, etc. The transition from post-cold war national equipment to X-COM weapons we see in vanilla and FMP.

BTW, am I the only who wants to intercept UFOs with one of these babies? The range would probably be crap, but it can probably outspeed most UFOs for a while. Like a missile that fires missiles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_X-15

Actually a lot of this already is or soon will be implemented. Well, there's no X-15... But we have these:

[Slaughter]

Hell yeah Mig-31! Now that is a fine bird!

What's the NATO equivalent - F15E? F22? I think there were a few F22 produced by 1999 or so.

Just struck by a thought - the early game missions may be a lot more, shall I say, "fair" in the sense that alien small UFOs are not outnumbered by the Skyranger's vast number of soldiers (I think the early ships carry somewhere in the neighboor of 6-8 aliens, right?) that allow you to deploy immense firepower by day 1, and they're fighting inferior MiGs and other planes with inferior weaponry, rather than X-COM swatting everything that's not a Large ship from out of the sky with dual avengers.

[Hobbes]

Hell yeah Mig-31! Now that is a fine bird!

What's the NATO equivalent - F15E? F22? I think there were a few F22 produced by 1999 or so.

There's no US direct equivalent actually. The MiG-25 was designed as a high speed interceptor to launch long range missiles at US nuclear bombers attacking the URSS, and the MiG-31 is a upgrade to the original design. However both aircraft are not agile and will most likely lose in a dogfight.

The F-15 was designed as an air superiority fighter, designed to gain control of airspace by defeating other fighter planes and capable of carrying both long range missiles and engaging in dogfights. It can be used in an interceptor role (as well as the F-16) but it doesn't have the Mach 2.5+ speed ability of the MiG-25/31. The F-15E was designed to be a multirole aircraft, also capable of ground attack, and the F-22 was also designed for air superiority since it was supposed to be the replacement for the F-15. 

The closest to the MiG-25 would be the British Tornado ADV variant, which was designed as an interceptor. Or, in the case of the US, the F-14 Tomcat which was designed to shoot down Soviet bombers before they could attack US carriers with their missiles.

[Solarius Scorch]

OMG what have I done?

[Slaughter]

I don't even know what I'm looking at - Underwater mission?

Enviado de meu SM-G3502T usando Tapatalk

[Blank]

This could get interesting

[Solarius Scorch]

Yes, it's one of the most advanced underwater missions. It's the first "arc" I want to complete.

[The Think Tank]

So, I downloaded this and attempted to get it to work on my OXE Nightly game (Nightly is quite old, so that may be an issue) but from what I can see it is just Vanilla X-Com at the start with no changes, did I do something wrong here, or is there no new content in the beginning?

[Solarius Scorch]

So, I downloaded this and attempted to get it to work on my OXE Nightly game (Nightly is quite old, so that may be an issue) but from what I can see it is just Vanilla X-Com at the start with no changes, did I do something wrong here, or is there no new content in the beginning?

Eh? The mod contains the appropriate .exe and everything (well, except for the original UFO files).
Is there something missing?

EDIT:
Version 0.2 released!
Get it here: https://www.mediafire.com/download/cje82aboad1ldah/OpenXcom_XFiles_0.2.zip

I've upgraded the number from 0.1 to 0.2, because I managed to complete the T'leth arc. I'm not saying it won't be altered further, since I still have some esthetic issues with it, but you can play it and complete it. (Hopefully.) I still haven't decided how exactly go about sonic weapons, so they're not enabled for you yet - expect a patch.

Here's the complete list of changes:

• T'leth arc completed (terrains, enemies, items etc.; some beautifying is still in order).
• Implemented Hellrazor's darkened (non-transparent) ship maps.
• Added Dart Pistol.
• Added Enfield Revolver.
• New music for monster hunts.
• No more large swarms of Shadowbats, because it took so damn long for them all to move.
• Some missing strings added.
• Smartgun and Smartifle ammo are no longer available from day 1 (was a bug).

[yrizoud]

I forgot to report : I started a new campaign, and after 3 game months of playing, I have one standing critic : there seems to very little incentive to actually capture live or dead aliens or cultists "as soon as possible". If you heroically recover a corpse or live specimen and abort out of a hopeless situation, it's actually not useful, because the captured stuff will stay in the research queue for months. It's especially disappointing that if you delay lifesaving items (van, bulletproof vest, magnum) for a month to research alien stuff, nothing gets unlocked. There may be bonus score (and thus more money for the next months), but then it would be better to show the score in the ufopedia screen itself - and for non-humans, it had better be a 3-digit number.
About practical gains, I don't know, but if XCOM manages to prove an alien threat by bringing back corpses/specimen, this could unlock random pieces of "military-grade" items (grenades, smoke), as they are bringing proof that they are facing something big.

[Solarius Scorch]

I forgot to report : I started a new campaign, and after 3 game months of playing, I have one standing critic : there seems to very little incentive to actually capture live or dead aliens or cultists "as soon as possible". If you heroically recover a corpse or live specimen and abort out of a hopeless situation, it's actually not useful, because the captured stuff will stay in the research queue for months. It's especially disappointing that if you delay lifesaving items (van, bulletproof vest, magnum) for a month to research alien stuff, nothing gets unlocked. There may be bonus score (and thus more money for the next months), but then it would be better to show the score in the ufopedia screen itself - and for non-humans, it had better be a 3-digit number.
About practical gains, I don't know, but if XCOM manages to prove an alien threat by bringing back corpses/specimen, this could unlock random pieces of "military-grade" items (grenades, smoke), as they are bringing proof that they are facing something big.

Thanks for the report. So, does it boil down to the fact that research times for creatures are too long? (Cultists should be fine, they're cheap.)

Unlocking items through researching enemies isn't a bad idea per se, but I have no idea how it would be balanced. I'd rather find another solution, as this would certainly get messy soon.

[The Think Tank]

Okay, so I identified my issue, which was just a small error on my part, so nothing to worry about there. Now, I am faced with another issue (on v1.1, updating to v2 to see if that helps) where the entire game crashes after running the geoscape a few seconds after what I can only assume is a UFO detection (I cannot tell because nothing shows up before the game crashes).

Any help you can offer is greatly appreciated, because this looks like a very fun mod!

[Solarius Scorch]

Okay, so I identified my issue, which was just a small error on my part, so nothing to worry about there. Now, I am faced with another issue (on v1.1, updating to v2 to see if that helps) where the entire game crashes after running the geoscape a few seconds after what I can only assume is a UFO detection (I cannot tell because nothing shows up before the game crashes).

Any help you can offer is greatly appreciated, because this looks like a very fun mod!

Thank you!

Can you please send me a save game for that bug? (Assuming you have the time to save it.) If there's a bug, I'd like to fix it ASAP, since I plan to release a minor update soon.

[The Think Tank]

Thank you!

Can you please send me a save game for that bug? (Assuming you have the time to save it.) If there's a bug, I'd like to fix it ASAP, since I plan to release a minor update soon.

Most unusual, it seems to work with v2 now, but that you anyway!