[UFO] HWP AI Units

[ohartenstein23]

== HWP AI Units v1.1.10 ==

Inspired to finish this idea thanks to Drages and his fantastic mod, I present HWP AI units as a type of soldier!  Able to gain firing and reactions experience as well as increase TUs over time, these versions of the vanilla HWPs should be a bit less useless junk as your campaign progresses.  Most of the HWP weapons have gained the ability to fire two aimed shots per turn or have an added automatic firing mode to further differentiate from the man-portable counterparts, and a new incendiary cannon will allow you to roast large terror units with minimal collateral damage.

Features:

• AI Unit soldier type that wears HWP chassis as armor and gains experience
• Napalm Cannon HWP
• Hover MLRS HWP
• Lightly rebalanced vanilla HWPs
• Recovering and repairing damaged HWPs
• Beautiful HWP inventory images by Bloax taken shamelessly from Piratez

Intended to be used with Meridian's OXCE+, this mod will still run on the nightly OXC versions, but some features will not work.  For installation instructions of OXCE+, see here.

Note:  This mod is meant to be more or less a vanilla UFO Defense rebalance of HWPs using the features of OXCE+, if you're looking for something a bit more expansive, see Drages' mod linked at the top of the post.

== Changelog ==
1.1.10

• Changed MLRS Napalm Rockets to use 50-150% damage roll.
• Added custom armor preview sprites.
• Added float and stand height to hover armors to match vanilla values.
• Gave tanks some thermal vision and made their weapons more accurate if no-LOS penalty is on.

1.1.9

• HWP soldiers no longer have to recover from wounds.
• Removed 'system damage' resistance type that reduced all damage done to HWPs
• Returned HWP soldiers' HP to vanilla values since we no longer need to worry about wound time.

1.1.8

• Disallowed kneeling and sprinting on all HWP armors.
• Set psi strength to 0 for AI Units, since the AI doesn't target 2x2 units with psi attacks.

1.1.7

• Set training caps to 0 for AI Units so that they can't be trained in a gym added by another mod.
• Removed "no rank" string since it's part of OXCE+ data files now.
• Fixed HWP Laser Cannon pedia article showing when laser cannon was not researched.
• Reduced Hover MLRS susceptibility to incendiary to match napalm tank.

1.1.6

• Changed some strings from wound recovery to recovery time.
• Doubled the number of rockets the Hovertank MRLS holds, since it doesn't do much to small units.

1.1.5

• Added Hovertank MLRS as a new HWP armor.
• Added weights to HWP corpse items to make sure the floor sprite is on top of the stack when killed.
• Tank/Cannon armor now no longer requires an item in stores, changed Repair Tank/Cannon to give back some ammo instead.
• Fixed damaged AI unit recovery giving the wrong stores item, which made repairing impossible.

1.0.1

• Added back research requirements for HWP repair that were removed for earlier testing.

1.0.0

• Initial release

[nadir-1648]

HWPs in UFO have had some issues with staying competitive with veterans, and are just outclassed against power suited veterans with plasma weapons.  Letting them improve should help them maintain relevance. And even if they're still easily obsoleted, I for one appreciate the effort to give some love to a piece of equipment that, in vanilla, at least, is a lot less of an equaliser than it ought to be.

Wait, what? Did you say napalm cannon?



... You've got yourself a download.

[ohartenstein23]

HWPs in UFO have had some issues with staying competitive with veterans, and are just outclassed against power suited veterans with plasma weapons.  Letting them improve should help them maintain relevance. And even if they're still easily obsoleted, I for one appreciate the effort to give some love to a piece of equipment that, in vanilla, at least, is a lot less of an equaliser than it ought to be.

Wait, what? Did you say napalm cannon?

<img>

... You've got yourself a download.

Glad you appreciate it!

I've got an update (see first post) that fixes a few issues, and adds something you might enjoy if you like incendiary weapons...

Edit 171113: New version available!  See the first post for the download and changelog.  I had a few changes and improvements sitting around on my personal copy, so it was high time for an update.

[ohartenstein23]

Is that Bloax's sprite in the image?

Features:

• <snip>
• Beautiful HWP inventory images by Bloax taken shamelessly from Piratez

Yep.

180309 Edit: New version has been released!  See the first post for changelog and download.

[Gul]

I've been looking to start a new playthrough (using OXCE+ 3.10a, v2018-03-21) with just a few mods, and this looks like a great 'simple' mod that helps fix one of the annoyances I have with Xcom.  After playing around with a little, I have a bug report and some comments:

• If I don't change the AI's armor (iow, leave it to use the default cannon), when I go into the inventory, the game crashes:
  [FATAL]   A fatal error has occurred: Sprite TANK.SPK not found
  [FATAL]   Unfortunately, no stack trace information is available
  [FATAL]   OpenXcom has crashed: Sprite TANK.SPK not found
  As a quick workaround I modified the aiUnits.rul and changed 'type: TANKM0.SPK' to TANK.SPK, so I could take the mod for a spin.
• In a UFOPaedia entry, there's a 'HWP Napalm Cannon' entry, where other entries are shown something like 'Tank/Cannon'
• Tank weapons don't stay loaded after loading them using 'inventory' from 'equipment' when at base (actually it looks like tank inventories aren't saved).  This may be intentional as you can't unload the weapon after.
• The number that shows the amount in the stack for 'HWP Cannon Shells' and 'HWP Napalm Shells' is off by an inventory 'square' ('HWP Rockets' are fine).  Hmm, it's probably more like the graphic takes up three squares but looks like it should only take up two.

Anyway, thanks for the mod!

[ohartenstein23]

I've been looking to start a new playthrough (using OXCE+ 3.10a, v2018-03-21) with just a few mods, and this looks like a great 'simple' mod that helps fix one of the annoyances I have with Xcom.  After playing around with a little, I have a bug report and some comments:

• If I don't change the AI's armor (iow, leave it to use the default cannon), when I go into the inventory, the game crashes:
  [FATAL]   A fatal error has occurred: Sprite TANK.SPK not found
  [FATAL]   Unfortunately, no stack trace information is available
  [FATAL]   OpenXcom has crashed: Sprite TANK.SPK not found
  As a quick workaround I modified the aiUnits.rul and changed 'type: TANKM0.SPK' to TANK.SPK, so I could take the mod for a spin.
• In a UFOPaedia entry, there's a 'HWP Napalm Cannon' entry, where other entries are shown something like 'Tank/Cannon'
• Tank weapons don't stay loaded after loading them using 'inventory' from 'equipment' when at base (actually it looks like tank inventories aren't saved).  This may be intentional as you can't unload the weapon after.
• The number that shows the amount in the stack for 'HWP Cannon Shells' and 'HWP Napalm Shells' is off by an inventory 'square' ('HWP Rockets' are fine).  Hmm, it's probably more like the graphic takes up three squares but looks like it should only take up two.

Anyway, thanks for the mod!

Are you playing the latest version (1.1.10)?  I know what the first crash is about and had fixed it recently, can't reproduce on my end.  If you are using the latest version, can you send me a saved game where you can reproduce it?

For the ufopaedia thing, what other mods are you using?  If those mods use the regular HWP article style, then that will likely overwrite what this mod is doing, and that's something you have to work around on your end.  You can try moving this mod down to the bottom of the list so that it gets loaded last, and therefore can't be overridden.

Tank weapons not staying loaded from the base inventory screen to pre-battle equip is a known issue, but nothing I can do about it mod-wise.  You'll just have to make sure your tank is loaded in that inventory screen.

Since I don't use any extra sprites but the inventory tank images and black squares to cover blocked inventory space, I just re-use vanilla sprites.  That means I haven't enlarged them to match the size I wanted them to be, i.e. 3 slots wide to fill up the backpack.

[Gul]

Are you playing the latest version (1.1.10)?

Just checking, you meant 1.1.9? I can't see a 1.1.10

Anyway, to be sure, I redownloaded the OP's attached file (AIUnits_1_1_9.zip), cleared out my mods folder, extracted the mod, ran OXCE+, hit 'restore defaults' in options, and enabled 'HWPs as Soldier Type' in mods. Started a new game.

So, to replicate the crash exactly, after loading this post's attached save: 'bases' -> 'equip craft' -> 'skyranger-1' -> 'equipment' -> 'inventory' -> use arrows to scroll through squad.

HTH

[ohartenstein23]

Ah, oops I forgot to actually release the updated version.  I'll upload it later today.

Edit: Done, check the first post!

[Gul]

Yep, that's it, crash gone.  Cheers!