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

[ohartenstein23]

Any way to override the "Mission complete - Returning to Base" behavior after I complete a mission? Having to return to base after every mission before I can respond to another one is a bit weird, and by the time my agents finally return to base the missions will usually have despawned. Being able to respond to (and try to complete) multiple missions in one go (at the cost of not being able to resupply since you're not returning to base and managing craft inventory) would be nice.

Nope, the engine is written this way, likely in part to avoid dealing with wounded units in missions.  You can always get more hangars/transports and agents to do more missions in a shorter time. The three vans the starting base can easily support is plenty for the early game.

[NazarTyagun]

Is it still possible to increase the stats? did not see strength higher than 70 or accuracy 122

[Lohland]

Is it still possible to increase the stats?

Yes, see the file: soldiers_XCOMFILES.rul

[jinxed]

Damn, this mod is really addictive
Made it into Sep '99 now. I got a bit scared during the first two months of the invasion, as the skies were swarming with UFOs of all sizes, and promptly lost the US as a funding nation. But alien activity slowed down considerably after that. The usual monthly Terror Mission aside, I've been mostly busy with dealing with the Syndicate, and chasing the Zombie Plot.
A couple of observations:

- The AI seems to need a bit of tweaking, especially the Syndicate missions tend to suffer from an overemphasis on self-preservation which often leads to them running around like headless chicken searching for cover instead of actually attacking. It was most obvious during the Base Attacks, where I had them trapped at the classic elevator chokepoint. The pattern was always the same: Syndicate Goon steps through the elevator door, sees half a dozen guns pointed at him, tries to run away. It made every of their Base Attacks a turkey shoot, even though it was a base with Rookie Agents and suboptimal equipment.

- I'm impressed with how effective the "conventional" weapons still are. All the Smart Gun types, the Miniguns and the BlackOps Auto-Sniper Rifles were up to any given task so far. Oh, and the Thrasher with AA BS is just absurd I have already researched and built a whole array of Gauss weaponry now sitting on the shleves bacause I just don't feel the need for them yet. Well, maybe when the T'leth arc continues.

- If you want to shoot down a UFO, don't equip your craft with an Avalanche launcher, because 1 hit with these things is usually enough to outright destroy it.

One thing I'm wondering is, how do you get access to AA ammo for the UAC weapons? The UFOPAEDIA has them listed in the weapon descriptions, but I can't manufacture them so far.

[Solarius Scorch]

Thanks for the thoughts!

The AI is not something I can do anything about. Maybe they need a bit more Bravery?

UAC AA ammo is unfinished, will be available in the next update.

[jinxed]

Sooo, I played a bit further along. Made it into October, and got my first base attack conducted by actual aliens...and faced effin Etherals
Thankfully they attacked my NA base with the convienient chokepoint set up, and the same issue I had with the Syndicate applied here, too.
I had half a dozen tanks at my disposal, and since I built the large storage facility just beneath the elevator, they had a short drive, haha.
So long story short, I faced 18 Ethereals and 7 Sectopods, and slaughtered them left and right.
I've indicated it before, but during that mission, and a Terror mission with Cyberdiscs, one thing became really clear:
Miniguns are absurdly effective, a little too effective I'd say.
The dynamic of the base attack had it, that the Sectopods didn't show till every Ethereal was gunned down. After that I just parked a Minigun HWP in front of the elevator door, and waited for them to show up. Every turn I opened the door, had a "customer" and killed it with one salvo from point blank range. That went on for 7 turns and was quite hilarious, but also a little too easy.
I mean, it was Sectopods, it doesn't get any harder than that, right?

The Terror mission wasn't any more difficult. I had 2 guys with Black Ops Minigun, and they murdered just everything.
With 30% TU costs you can dish out up to 480 damage with an accuracy of 48%, and the accurate range is almost competing with Sniper Rifles, too. And I can do that 3 times a turn with a single soldier if I stay put.
That's just insane. I'm usually not a guy calling for nerfs, I like awesome guns just as much as anyone, but this is definitely game breaking territory in my book.
I think they shouldn't be that cheap to fire, and also the accuracy of these things is a bit over the top.
 

[Solarius Scorch]

Congratulations on the base defence.

Now, regarding the miniguns. I understand your point and I am taking it seriously. But all I have ever heard about miniguns in general was that they were relatively useless. I don't think any other weapon group has been modified as many times as miniguns, since I kept looking for a way to make them useful. It could be that I took it too far, but on the other hand many different weapons were reported as "OP" in the mod, so it could be down to a personal preference/playstyle, at least partially.

Therefore I would be very interested in hearing more opinions on miniguns. Should they be nerfed?

EDIT: Version 0.7.3 has been released.
- Added a smaller money prize to missions.
- New weapons: Smart Shotgun, M.A.G.M.A. Pulse Pistol.
- Tactical Sniper Rifle and Multilauncher reskinned to match the X-Com theme.
- New dossier: Krazy Hassan (by Dioxine).
- New Vampire Castle map block (by Dioxine).
- New Caves blocks (by Dioxine).
- New cave treasure.
- Auto-Cannon now has 5 bullets auto shot.
- Stims are stronger.
- Osiron Goons have more armor.
- Fixed a problem with mind-controlled X-Com agents.
- Fixed visibility range on some armours.
- Fixed some maps.
- Minor additions.

[mumble]

I think miniguns, and many other guns would do well to have a heavy reliance on strength for accuracy. In fact, i honestly would love dropping the tus of the heavy machine gun by 10 or 15 and making a semi exponential increase in accuracy with higher strength, but allowing use of it by weaker troops, albeit very poorly. (currently its not possible to even fire unless you have pretty high strength and no items / armor)

I think this would be a great way to capitalize on meat head troops, having gun accuracy more attributed to strength than JUST accuracy. In fact i think magma weapons would also do well with this.

And honestly this is very realistic especially for automatics of large caliburs. Weaker men struggle to handle ak47s on automatic, i imaging a minigun would be far worse, and this would allow a minigun or similar guns to have better performance with accurate firing hulks than accurate firing featherweights, even if they are under the weight limit. And while this especially applies to automatics, single fire guns are still an issue... Holding A heavy gun steady for a good shot isn't as easy as holding a lighter rifle steady, and this would allow for higher cannon accuracy for particularly gifted troops.

Say, just an idea, but could selling AA ammo to magma result in AA ammo eventually on the free market of cultists? This would be a fun twist if possible, seeing nasty results of breaching the xcom code of secrecy. Also, since AA are lighter than normal steel, any possibility we could get lighter versions of some guns using them? I'd love an AA thrasher shotgun or other items.

Also, i still think the beach / ski resorts are bs missions, they might be possible packing a lot of crossbows, but they feel badly balanced.. I know it is optional but still

[Solarius Scorch]

I have actually entertained the idea of strength bonus to accuracy, but ultimately it doesn't make sense in such a game. It would be okay in a more mundane scenario with only non-augmented humans, but consider this: if a weak soldier has hopeless accuracy with a minigun and a strong soldier has okay accuracy, then a Muton will be a fucking virtuoso of automatic fire from his strength alone - in fact more accurate than with a precise rifle. This is obviously absurd and a sign of bad design/going against the game engine. So, no.

The alloy ammo proliferation is already in for a long time.

Beach missions etc. are like minigames in Saints Row: different people like different missions.

[mumble]

Well, can you make the effect of strength plateu at a point like a curved graph line? I mainly suggest that, so firing is the ultimate determining factor, but lower strength is a penalization. What about every point of strength under 60 (flexible obviously) deducts aim, or something? Just a way to penalize people who struggle to hold it steady / handle the mule like kick of large automatics, while super gym rats won't be magically better past the "ok, this is effectively as light as an ak with my strength", level of power?

It would also be a good addition to xcom in general having soft "floors" for skills of several types..

I'm not entirely sure if this kind of math would be doable, but if it is i imagine it would be a good way to skill floor (in a sense) many guns.

[ohartenstein23]

There's no way right now to make an accuracy 'plateau,' except by very carefully designing a polynomial function based on stats, which is difficult to communicate to the player.

[Solarius Scorch]

Exactly, I am working with what we can have, not some theoretical mechanics.
Having said that, having the option to add some sort of limited bonus from Strength would be nice... But would probably require a whole new design (something like a recoil stat on a weapon?). I don't think it's worth the effort, practically speaking.

I know players have dreams. I have dreams too, otherwise this mod wouldn't exist. But my dreams are by necessity way more grounded in reality.

[tkzv]

I just though to ask. EXALT investigation opens Hybrid Network. Red Dawn opens Cyberweb. Church of Dagon opens Aquatoids. Does Black Lotus open anything?


An unrelated question: which missions give penalties for skipping them and which don't?

[Solarius Scorch]

I just though to ask. EXALT investigation opens Hybrid Network. Red Dawn opens Cyberweb. Church of Dagon opens Aquatoids. Does Black Lotus open anything?

Not yet, but it will. Though I'm not sure if it will be a whole faction.

An unrelated question: which missions give penalties for skipping them and which don't?

This mod has waaaaay too many missions to list them. But most of the time easy missions yield bigger penalties.

[tkzv]

Glad to hear Black Lotus doesn't end there.

This mod has waaaaay too many missions to list them. But most of the time easy missions yield bigger penalties.

Is there an easy way to find it in *.rul files? Is it "despawnPenalty" in alienDeployments_XCOMFILES.rul ?

Update: Yes, it is. 176 missions out of 251 give penalties. Not sure how many of those are not accessible. The ones without penalty seem to primarily be UFO missions that didn't change from the original UFOEU and base assaults and defence:
STR_SMALL_SCOUT
STR_SMALL_SCOUT_SECTOID
STR_SMALL_SCOUT_FLOATER
STR_SMALL_SCOUT_MUTON
...
STR_ENVOY_SHIP
STR_ALIEN_BASE_ASSAULT
STR_BASE_DEFENSE
STR_MARS_CYDONIA_LANDING
STR_MARS_THE_FINAL_ASSAULT
STR_MIB_COVERUP_0
STR_MIB_COVERUP_1
STR_MIB_COVERUP_2
STR_MIB_TERROR_MISSION
STR_MIB_BASE_LANDING
STR_MANSION
STR_MANSION_MIB
STR_KEEP
STR_DRAGONFLY_DARK
STR_SCARAB
STR_BASE_DEFENSE_SYNDICATE
STR_CHTONITE_MINIBASE_ASSAULT

The cheapest (10) are:
STR_HIDDEN_CAVES_FEW
STR_HIDDEN_CAVES_SEVERAL
STR_HYBRID_PURGE
STR_HYBRID_STORAGE
STR_SPIDER_SIBERIA
STR_SYNDICATE_PHASE_1
STR_PINK_CAVES

The most expensive are:
1000:
most terror missions
STR_JARHEAD_FACTORY
STR_MANSION_DEFENSE_SYNDICATE
STR_OLD_ARCHIVES_DEFENSE_SYNDICATE
2000:
STR_SILO_ATTACK
STR_DOWNTOWN_ATTACK
STR_ALIEN_PURGE

Jarhead Terror is 700, Deep Ones Rituals is 500, Soul Harvest is only 300, and Blood/Black Moon are 150. Surf Time and Ski Resort are 50. Monster hunts are 150 alone, 300 with militia or police, 600 with army. Cults are 200 for apprehension, 150 for investigation, 100 for most other missions.