Got a few questions about UFO Defense.

[Countdown]

Well, thats something to think about.. allthough i dont feel as though psionics is something that adds complexity to the game at all.
The optimal way of dealing with it, is making the needed sacrifices in the midgame by going grenade less against sectoids and dropping your weapon at the end of each turn. (you dont get to have any reaction shots but that is something you can deal with quite easily) the only thing it did to me, was making me sort of annoyed at having to do inventory management each turn (hence my midgame fatigue)

Yeah there are definitely ways around alien psi. Even better than dropping weapons is having a couple of "Psi Rods". Those are soldiers that have very low psi strength and you equip them with a stun rod or something and let the aliens go wild with them. Both methods still put the player at a slight disadvantage since you are down a man that will likely die (with the psi rod) or you can't reaction shot and waste TUs rearming if you do the drop weapons method.

Alien psi at least adds another element to consider and definitely gives the aliens a leg up in the early game.

i dont know, i would have liked to see psionics adhere to squadsight for the aliens and pure LoS for Xcom, that i think would be the perfect way to handle it.

Right, that's exactly what I was saying. The aliens have squadsight with Psionics by default, so the only thing you need to do is make the Psi Amp LOS and then you have the situation you just described.

edit: i do have one regret though, and that was not testing out heavy lasers vs sectopods. i really want to see if they are a viable way of dealing with them late game.

For the record, you can test any Battlescape game mechanic in the "New Battle" option from the start menu. There, you can equip your squad with whatever items you like while going up against whatever alien race you want, on the map you want, at the difficulty you want. You can even set the darkness level so it's a very helpful option for testing.

[Dybdal]

Hey countdown.

On my phone so this might end up a mess.
The way Psionics work in UFO defense, dors not adhere to the rules of squadsight.

Squadsight would mean that any alien would need vision (on that turn) of the xcom operative before psionic attacks is eligable to be used on that target (by anyone, regardless of los)

Testing tells me it dors not work like this in the game (someone who knows the exact inner workings of the engine would be needed to give you a definitive answer) but all i can tell you is, it does not adhere to the squadsight ruleset (from xcom 2012)

[Countdown]

Okay, I think I'm understanding what you're saying. I have never played XCOM 2012, so wasn't 100% sure about squadsight. The thing is, in UFO Defense, "vision" or "sight" doesn't necessarily work realistically. The aliens have memory (the technical term is "intelligence" and different races and ranks have a different memory length) where if they spot your soldier, they know your soldier's location (aka "see" you) for the next X turns (where X is dependent on the race/rank of the alien).

So if an alien spots you, and then you go hide behind a wall or go through another door, in UFO Defense, the alien still "sees" you (or remembers your location) even though they don't have LOS on you because you go behind that wall or through that door. In that sense, UFO does use figurative "squadsight" for psionics because only one alien needs to know your location for any alien to launch a psionic attack.

But you are right, no, in UFO there doesn't actually need to be an alien who currently literally sees you to use Psi. They just need to have seen you and still remember where you went.

Hopefully that made sense.

[The Reaver of Darkness]

So if an alien spots you, and then you go hide behind a wall or go through another door, in UFO Defense, the alien still "sees" you (or remembers your location) even though they don't have LOS on you because you go behind that wall or through that door. In that sense, UFO does use figurative "squadsight" for psionics because only one alien needs to know your location for any alien to launch a psionic attack.

The alien using the psionic attack must know your soldier's location to attack. For example, if we have a sectoid soldier with intelligence 3 and a sectoid leader with intelligence 2 (values altered from vanilla), the sectoid soldier spots Rookie McFleesalot, who promptly runs away and disappears from sight. 2 turns later the sectoid soldier knows where Rookie McFleesalot is hiding, but the sectoid leader forgets and cannot launch a psi attack.

This is only relevant when you alter the intelligence values because by default, all aliens who can use psionic attacks have a higher intelligence than any aliens who cannot.

Also, if you set intelligence to 0, it acts exactly the same as if it were set to 1, and the alien will remember units spotted during both your turn immediately prior to theirs as well as their own previous turn.

[Dybdal]

Here's a question i forgot to ask, while i played though the game.

Does throwing accuracy work in 1.0? or is there a difference in that department between UFO and TFTD?
I've been doing some small skirmish(s) in the newest nightly build playing TFTD and i've noticed grenades going off target quite abit.
That made me think back to UFO and i cannot recall that happening once.

also a posibility i just didnt notice grenades going of course in UFO defense

[NKF]

Throwing accuracy does work. It's just that the inaccuracy is much more obvious with thrown items as you see exactly where the projectile ends up. The area effect nature of explosives usually masks the inaccuracy as you only need to get an explosive close enough for it to work.

[Dybdal]

Im not so sure your right NKF.

Just did some tests in OpenXcom v1.0
8x2 Grenades thrown max distance out the back of the skyranger (with acc ranging from 50%->90%)

Did the test three times (a total of 48 throws) and not a single one missed.

I know the sample size isnt optimal (im low on time as i have to go to work soonish) but my gut is telling me something aint right here. (if the accuracy numbers of the throw are correct, then you would expect a bigger number of miss placed grenades)
* or its handled differently between the two games

edit: just did another round before going out the door, still no misses even with soldiers with 50-60% accuracy, i have yet to miss a throw of a grenade in any of my tests (they allways land exactly where i place the mouse curser)

[Dybdal]

Just did another test at work on the newest nightly build with TFTD & UFO (if my boss finds out, he'll kill me )
20 grenades, 4 missed its target in TFTD and 20 grenades, 5 missed its target in UFO.

Now thats the type of numbers i would expect to see in v1.0 but i just dont.

[NKF]

I thought I'd run some tests as I was starting to wonder about that myself. I set up separate saves in OpenXCom and in good old vanilla UFO with a brand new beginner game, loaded the Skyranger up with 8 rifles and on the first mission everyone just walks down to the base of the ramp and tosses their rifle into the top corner of the Skyranger's tile area where the tiles visibly change. In some 20+ tosses, OpenXcom hasn't missed. But in vanilla at least 40%~60% of the tosses were misses with the rifles landing in a spread around the target tile.

Peculiar, there should be some variation there.

edit:

Restarting the test with a new batch of soldiers managed to get about 1 ~ 2 misses per 8 tosses in OpenXcom. Guess my last batch were too accurate. That's with the Nightly build. No change in 1.0 where every toss was hitting the exact target every time.

edit: edit:

And found the answer after a forum search. There's a division error in 1.0 affecting the throw trajectory.

[Dybdal]

Ok, well guess that sorts that out then

Gonna switch to the nightly build for my next playthough of UFO Defense
Oh and thanks for the time & effort you put into it NKF, much appriciated

[The Reaver of Darkness]

I had noticed in the original that grenades seemed to almost never miss, and when they did miss they were rarely off by more than 1 tile. I guess that explains it.

[Hobbes]

Gonna switch to the nightly build for my next playthough of UFO Defense

1.0 is outdated at this point considering the amount of fixes and modding features that were added to the nightlies since 1.0 was released

[Dybdal]

As someone who's recently come into contact with OpenXcom, i can say from my point of view that when deciding what to download (v1.0 or the newest nightly) i chose to go for v1.0 as information on the stability or the added features between the two isnt easy to come by.

Food for thought.
Thanks all.

[The Reaver of Darkness]

1.0 is beyond outdated. I keep telling them they need to make a version 1.1 because people will keep falling into that trap otherwise.

[Hobbes]

1.0 is beyond outdated. I keep telling them they need to make a version 1.1 because people will keep falling into that trap otherwise.

This discussion has surfaced several times. Devs have their reasons