Any way to make your gals emit light on night missions?

[khade]

I used to avoid night missions, they were just irritating, now you're playing murder in the dark, except against those with better eyes than you, like ratlings, mercs and reticulans, maybe a few others who I don't know the sight range, everything else I know of has lower sight range than you.  As mentioned earlier, ALT is your friend, in or out of the light, it helps you see your gals a little easier and lets you know exactly where your just barely noticed target is, as well as where they are looking.

Most maps have at least a little bit of light, ships tend to have some, the aircar seems to brighten a large chunk of the smaller maps.

[Premier]

Right now I'm playing on the version before the current one where I'd like to finish a playthrough before updating (and if this has been addressed in the new version, please tell me and I'll switch over right away).

I understand that the extreme darkness is because of engine reasons, and Dioxine can't really change that. However, my big beef with nighttime UFO assaults is that the enemy UFO itself is also pretty much completely dark even on the inside. Now sure, you can use flares and maglites and whatnot, but for me it breaks the suspension of disbelief. Most of those UFOs are crewed by humans, who need light to see. Why don't they turn on the lights inside their UFO? It just doesn't make sense to me that a vehicle actively operated by human beings is shrouded in complete darkness. Are all the controls marked in Braille, or what?

I guess my question is ultimately this: the inside (and immediate surroundings) of your own craft is well let it, even at night time. Why aren't landed UFOs the same? The rest of the map can be dark, sure, but why don't they have the same internal lighting as your own planes?

[Dioxine]

I guess my question is ultimately this: the inside (and immediate surroundings) of your own craft is well let it, even at night time. Why aren't landed UFOs the same? The rest of the map can be dark, sure, but why don't they have the same internal lighting as your own planes?

The short answer: this is simply not true.
The long answer: survey ships, freighters etc. have lights on, while military ships (likely to be crewed by NV-wearing troops) turn them off. What's illogical in this? Also, as for pirate ships, at least half of the models doesn't have any lights on. I call it variety.

[rezaf]

I played (very) many more missions since starting this thread and have basically come to avoid night missions if at all possible.
IMO, IF I was doing that, it should be for reasons like in the original X-COM, where night missions were just considerably harder.
In PirateZ, first and foremost, night missions are hard on my eyes. Were it not for the interface, I'd be hard pressed to tell whether my monitor is turned on or not.
At least before I create some illumination with flares, flames or whatever.
I still call bullshit on the idea that this somehow increases immersion or whatever. It's ridiculous and should be rolled back to the way it was before if no way can be found to make everything properly lit without alerting the enemies to you.
Call me an idiot, but I want to be able to actually SEE the game I'm playing.

Note that on some map types - like arctic or desert - night fighting is usually not a big deal, due to the high contrast (background is yellow or whiteish), but still.
All recommendations found herein are like when I go to the car dealership because the lights of my new BMW don't work and he tells me: Don't drive the BMW at night then...

[Arthanor]

I tend to avoid night missions too. I like that the gals are no-longer bullet magnets when their minimal lighting is on, but overall, the level of darkness is quite difficult to handle unless you are playing in a room with no window, no light, at night. It's not really feasible to play the night strike commando game because even though your gals see, you as a player don't see nearly enough so you stumble on stumps and never get line of fire. because of the obstacle you don't see. Indeed, arctic, desert and urban terrains are better either because of native high contrast or urban lighting.

I'd love to see the engine to remain exactly the same, but the graphics to be brighter. Capping the darkening at one or two indices brighter than currently would make a world of difference.

[ivandogovich]

Welp, sorry, but the issue you are experiencing is a feature, not a bug.

If you would like to create a mod to "roll back" the experience for you, all you need to do is change all of the armor entries

where it is something like this:
  - type: STR_PERSONAL_ARMOR_UC

Change the personal light value from
    personalLight: 5

to something higher.... like 10 or something.

That or use the out of the box XCOMUtil Always Day mod.

[Premier]

The short answer: this is simply not true.
The long answer: survey ships, freighters etc. have lights on, while military ships (likely to be crewed by NV-wearing troops) turn them off. What's illogical in this? Also, as for pirate ships, at least half of the models doesn't have any lights on. I call it variety.

Well, maybe I just happened to meet the wrong types of ships at night, I guess that's possible. I also get the idea of variety, it's just that in some specific cases I don't really see the logic. Like, recently, I assault a small- or medium-sized ship occupied by raiders, and IIRC, it was dark. And I don't think raiders have night vision equipment, since they're described as poorly equipped, and graphically, some of them barely have even trousers. Also, still on the topic of in-game logic, even military ships surely have crewmembers - pilots, technicians, whatever - who don't have NV. At least I don't think I've ever found a ship that was crewed exclusively by helmet- or power armour-wearing units.

EDIT: Actually, it just occured to me that fully dark ships WOULD make perfect sense when assaulting one that has crashed, rather than landed. Electrical systems failure due to combat damage and all that. THAT makes perfect sense to me, and I would never complain about.

[Arthanor]

Welp, sorry, but the issue you are experiencing is a feature, not a bug.

The issue is not with the gal's lightning (in fact, doing what you suggest would turn the gals into bullet magnets. It's a terrible idea). WIth Piratez view range of 40, if you turn up your personal light to that kind of level, enemies will see you from 40 tiles, but since most enemies don't emit light, you'll only see them from 12 or something tiles. You'll get murdered. In vanilla, it worked, because the aliens saw 20 tiles regardless of lighting, so you just lit up the whole place and kept personal lights on without gimping yourself. That is not the case in Piratez so your suggestion is not a solution.

The problem is that although the gals can see quite far in the dark, the game is rendered in such dark colors that some players, myself included, can barely see a thing when fighting night missions without using fire or flares. It might well depend on what screen you have and where/when you play (in your living room with lights on vs in a dark room), but it is a problem when the game is machine dependent. This was the reason I was suggesting to reduce the amount of darkening done for night mission when drawing the battlescape, without changing the light level that the engine calculates spotting distances with. This would just help the player see the battle and change nothing of the battle itself. But of course, that's not something Dioxine can fix, it's in the engine.

[ivandogovich]

I understand what you are saying about the dark screen, Arthanor. 

What I was saying is that the "change" that rezaf wanted rolled back was the personalLight: values that Dioxine applied in a recent release.  This changed the brightness of the gals with their "lights on" down to 5, which means barely visible in the dark but not invisible. Unfortunately it doesn't light up the area around them enough to show the terrain.  Thats why maglites were introduced around the same time.  Powered armors got some lights that really light up the terrain with "lights on." 

So the "feature" is that your gals are still dark in night missions (level 5) so they can't be spotted by most foes, but you can spot them slightly easier (without the alt key).  Because this is part of the mod, the option is to mod it back out to the more vanilla experience that rezaf was requesting.

[yrizoud]

rezaf, I wonder if you're having an actual graphic problem.
You can hit F12 to create a screenshot.
If the screenshot (when viewed in an image browser) looks brighter than the game screen...

[Yankes]

You can grab glowing objects in hands and move with it.

[rezaf]

rezaf, I wonder if you're having an actual graphic problem.
You can hit F12 to create a screenshot.
If the screenshot (when viewed in an image browser) looks brighter than the game screen...

Nah, no such luck. See for yourself.

[Solarius Scorch]

The complaint of not being able to see is valid. It's just a problem with the engine than needs to be addressed on the developer level to be solved. The only solution is to cut a significant portion of the tactical mechanics and throw it out the window, which I guess is not an option.
The solution? My only idea is introducing some sort of toggable "night display", where the terrain and known units are displayed fully; perhaps in greyscale. But I imagine it would be a nightmare to add, as it probably depends on libraries and other complicated stuff that is part of the very core of the game. I wish I was wrong, but I can't really see it happening.

What we can do is, well, use light sources. Not just flares, but also held flashlights. Yes, you'll be visible, but if you turn it on and off you should be fine, more or less. And Molotovs (and other fire weapons) are extremely helpful!

[Yankes]

The complaint of not being able to see is valid. It's just a problem with the engine than needs to be addressed on the developer level to be solved. The only solution is to cut a significant portion of the tactical mechanics and throw it out the window, which I guess is not an option.
The solution? My only idea is introducing some sort of toggable "night display", where the terrain and known units are displayed fully; perhaps in greyscale. But I imagine it would be a nightmare to add, as it probably depends on libraries and other complicated stuff that is part of the very core of the game. I wish I was wrong, but I can't really see it happening.

What we can do is, well, use light sources. Not just flares, but also held flashlights. Yes, you'll be visible, but if you turn it on and off you should be fine, more or less. And Molotovs (and other fire weapons) are extremely helpful!

Simply gray scale battlescape graphic is not something impossible. Right now game can recolors tiles to one color for debugging proposes. Probably bigger problems is how it should work exactly and how it will look.

[Solarius Scorch]

Simply gray scale battlescape graphic is not something impossible. Right now game can recolors tiles to one color for debugging proposes. Probably bigger problems is how it should work exactly and how it will look.

Then I humbly request that you add it to your list - with as high priority as we can.

The UI is a problem, yes, but I think just a key bind would be enough for starters.