Ideas for better aircombat?

[ohartenstein23]

Okay, got something for y'all - the basic hit indicator is implemented, with a globally-defined threshold.  Here are two examples of it in action, both with the damage threshold for glancing defined at 5% of the damage required to crash land the ship (2.5% of total damage capacity):

The first image is against an Envoy, 1000 HP, going up against a Gatling Lascannon, which can do 3-6 damage per hit, less than the threshold of 25 (1000 / 2 * 5%) - all hits should be glancing, so the gat doesn't tell you much information about the ship's total health.  If you used something that does 30-40 damage, some hits would be glancing, some not, so you can guess at the total HP if you didn't know it before.

The second image is against a Gov't Fusion Cruiser, 30 armor, so my craft's Bulldog Cannon does nothing - we see the message for no damage.

Here are the necessary items defined in the ruleset:

Code: [Select]

ufoGlancingHitThreshold: 5
extraStrings:
  - type: en-US
    strings:
      STR_UFO_HIT_NO_DAMAGE: "BOUNCED OFF THE HULL!"
      STR_UFO_HIT_GLANCING: "GLANCING HIT!"

Edit: I've successfully exposed firing sound per ufo to ruleset, only need to define fireSound: on a ufo based on what you've added through extraSounds to GEO.CAT.  It defaults to the original sound, so the vanilla compatibility is preserved.  Looking at the beam size comes next!  Source can be found here.

[ohartenstein23]

And one more message for some spam, but here's a prototype of the width of the ufo's beam weapon changing with power, based on the ruleset parameter ufoBeamWidthParameter:

Using an Envoy (weapon power 90), the first image shows what happens with ufoBeamWidthParameter: 50, and the second with ufoBeamWidthParameter: 25.  To draw the beam, it takes the weapon power, divides by ufoBeamWidthParameter, and rounds down.  This result is added to the width of the beam, so in the first case, it's an extra 1 (90 / 50 = 1.8 => 1)  pixel on each side, and in the second it's 3 (90 / 25 = 3.6 => 3) pixels.  The extra width is capped at 3, but the color will be more intense if the result is greater than 3.

The default ufoBeamWidthParameter is 1000, which will return to the vanilla case of a one-pixel-wide beam unless you modded in a UFO to kill fun.

[Solarius Scorch]

Looks nice, informative and aesthetic!

[Dioxine]

Indeed. Great little things

[stepbystep]

It would make for an interesting mission though.

+1 to this.

[EDIT] I've found the same basic idea already listed in Solar's wishlist, yay!  (...also I'm a noob for not checking first  )

I have no idea if it can even be done but I really like the idea of player crafts having a chance to crash to the ground instead of being completely destroyed when losing air combat. It could spawn a mission site with:

• the damaged craft and part of the items that were inside, maybe with the ability to scavenge survived parts
• friendly units in various health conditions
• a second landed enemy craft with enemies hunting the crash-landed (that would bump the count to 3 which I realize seems a bit of a stretch, but then again the whole idea already is so I'm going wild)
• alternatively hostile creatures like in the monster hunts

[alinare]

Hello
I do not know if this has already been raised.
Possibility that several ships attack the same target.
The Skyranger, or any other transport ship, can be attacked by a UFO, as in Xenonauts.

[Solarius Scorch]

Hello
I do not know if this has already been raised.
Possibility that several ships attack the same target.
The Skyranger, or any other transport ship, can be attacked by a UFO, as in Xenonauts.

Is this one request, or two?

Alien ships attacking your crafts came up a few times, yes. Hard to say if anyone's interested in implementing it though.

Several ships attacking the same target... You mean more than 4?

[alinare]

Hello:
Well, there are two different issues. As to the other question, I was referring to that, three ships of XCOM, one simultaneously UFO attack, as fighter squadrons of Xenonauts. Just to give it a little more variety, but just it, I ask impossible, the game engine.

[ohartenstein23]

You can already attack one UFO with up to four craft, this has always been the case.

As for UFOs being able to attack your craft, that is, start the interception themselves, I thought Stoddard was working on it.

[Meridian]

Source can be found here.

Just had a first look, looks fine, I'll be merging it as soon as I can (might be next weekend).

What is this tho?
https://github.com/ohartenstein23/OpenXcom/commit/7dd24478d39d0f8034e81a5601ad56988e9e368c

It shows me as if you added the whole file new... can't see the changes :/

[ohartenstein23]

Just had a first look, looks fine, I'll be merging it as soon as I can (might be next weekend).

What is this tho?
https://github.com/ohartenstein23/OpenXcom/commit/7dd24478d39d0f8034e81a5601ad56988e9e368c

It shows me as if you added the whole file new... can't see the changes :/

Yes, I did just upload the file from my hard drive with the changes... sorry.  Lines 1629-1646, I changed how a UFO's beam is drawn in the interception window, making width/intensity based on power divided by ufoBeamWidthParameter defined in the ruleset.  And I just realized that it isn't in the proper place, or merged correctly with my other changes.  I'm working on fixing that right now.

Edit: Fixed!  Here's what that commit should look like.

[Meridian]

Merged: https://github.com/MeridianOXC/OpenXcom/commit/099897de5bf5b9d5ebf5458473026ba8a9fb9cd3

[CaptainCorkscrew]

I have an idea:
It is a bit odd that only government ships have their special lights on.
They could turn them on only if needed, so you would need to hit the ship a bit until they show their 'flag' but not destroy it if it is a government ship.
Additionally, ships could  show false flags.

Just a thought that could be improved on.

[RSSwizard]

When I mentioned xenonauts before dioxine countered with saying it was flashy and inflexible and thats not what I was talking about at all.

I was speaking about - Ufos not letting you escape and choosing to engage you in a dogfight to shoot YOU down.

Then force a ground mission with your air vehicle shot down, as they walk out of their UFO fully armed to hunt down your guys (just like you do), which is a better way to lose an air vehicle than being blown up just for being greedy.

And also rubs it in the player's nose too because now you have a mission to deal with in addition to having lost your vehicle, and the only things you get to SAVE from the ruined vehicle are the Hands on board and the Equipment they had with them (no UFO recovery if you defeat them, since getting out of the area before rienforcements arrive and managing somehow to get back to base 96 hours later is already going to be a feat for the survivors).

This is one of the only reasons to have Pilots for your craft, then just like a base attack you have to defend your pilot (which is also why you would put equip in a 1 or 2 seater craft).


And to go along with this:

UFOs intercepting Your Craft and following them back if possible. Again if the crew of the UFO is aggressive enough or thinks (a check based on relative vehicle stats) that they can take you.

And calling for rienforcements, even if you run away from an air battle, diverting other eligible craft of tagged factions within a certain radius to give chase and intercept (which is where good speed comes into play because if you can GET BACK to your base in time, you disappear off the map and now they cant find you)

[Dioxine]

That's hardly Xenonauts-specific, it was like this in most UFO-like games. It was also discussed and deemed a worthy improvement - active UFOs that try to shoot you down are quite sweet. So were consequences of being shot down discussed, but that's a separate topic.
I'm all for the possibility of UFOs hunting your craft down, however, not in Piratez, because Cloaking Devices.