Shogg Lantern vs Flashlight

[betatester]

do shogg lantern illuminate better than flashlight ? if power stat is related to illumination power apparently no.
it is lighter but more cumbersome 1x2 vs 1x3
so I wonder if there's a mission where it could be useful (perhaps a mission where it could word when flashlight and night-vision tech is disabled, because it's too dark, too low under the earth, because of an emp wave and so on) or it's just  an item good to sell.
I also wonder if they work on polar, siberian mission... (I don't think the temperature issue is implemented but who knows...)

Just an idea.... make it a 1x2 item as powerfull as a flashlight but lighter.
Even a better idea shogg flashlights item that use a shogg lantern  for a cost similar of a flashlight to make a shogg flashlight 1x2 4kg same illumination (or better ?) than a flashlight and immunity of the object on possible electromagnetic dysfunction. The tech could also resolve the temperature issue.
 
And add a staff comment about the shogg lantern as alternative flashlight source

another idea is a night base defense mission (because alien launched an EMP on lights) that can be easier if you have developed the shogg illumination tech on your base allowing you to still have illuminaion after an EMP.

[Solarius Scorch]

It doesn't have to be better than a normal flashlight. Who said human tech must be worse than anything else? Also, denizens of Shogg are on average way stronger than humans, so they don't care much, and their lanterns don't require batteries (as they're pretty much living microbiomes which only need to be fed).

We could have a special condition where you can use the Shogg lantern but not the Mag-Lite, but I think it would be just annoying.

[Hadriex]

I was confused by the lantern at first too, kept trying to figure out what advantages it had before concluding it was identical in effect.

Simplest thing to clear up confusion is to just drop a line into it's description. Something about how amazing it would have been a few hundred years ago, but now humanity's got flashlights, which are superior.



How weird would it be if, instead of finding the shogg lantern in a cave, you found it in a museum storeroom. Still functional after hundreds of years, but not on display for whatever reason. Possible with some disturbing taxidermy that was supposedly found with it.

[Solarius Scorch]

Good idea, I'll do that.

[Alazar]

You can throw Shogg lantern and it will still work, unlike flashlight. Works similar to flares but reusable after mission ends. Also, whats the point of both? Flares are the way to go.

[Bananas_Akimbo]

You're wrong. Flashlights also don't turn off, when on the ground. Whether you drop or throw them.
Worst of all, unlike flares they are turned on by default and so they illuminate your landing zone, if you leave them in your stash. (Never bring more, than you intend to equip on your soldiers.)

The advantage of flashlights over normal flares is, that they illuminate a greater area. And you can use them as a weapon.
So trace flares make them obsolete, in my opinion, if you can ever make enough.

[Alazar]

You're wrong. Flashlights also don't turn off, when on the ground. Whether you drop or throw them.
Worst of all, unlike flares they are turned on by default and so they illuminate your landing zone, if you leave them in your stash. (Never bring more, than you intend to equip on your soldiers.)

The advantage of flashlights over normal flares is, that they illuminate a greater area. And you can use them as a weapon.
So trace flares make them obsolete, in my opinion, if you can ever make enough.

My mistake about flashlights, but now we have "115 flares". Besides, you love charging headon with a flashlight? Kinda useless feature imo.
Also I absolutely hate using any kind of illumination, and now thanks to "Owl" rewards I dont need to bother about vision range, besides aliens dont have that big advantage in NV in X-Com1, unlike TFTD where you need to nearly bump into aliens to see them.

[Bananas_Akimbo]

Nah I only use flashlights in easy missions (like crop circles, cult apprehension, monsters without ranged attack), so I don't have to faff about with flares.
Flares are still pretty good, though, if you can deal with the extra hassle.

[betatester]

What I like about flashlight:
- You can drop them and they still illuminate. With a minigun or a pick axe you just have to drop them for 2 TU and you got your 2 hands free to fire or destroy rocks in cavern. You can't drop flares they don't illuminate you have to throw them and that costs more TU. Of course you are illuminated too but that's the price.
- You carry your light source with you very important in large maps or on several levels maps . No need to throw and taking back flares.
- If you illuminate a target you can use grenades and explosives on the target without destroying the light source
- As said above you can stun people with it. Not the best weapon but not useless
- You can turn off the light by putting them in belt, generally in the quick draw pocket. You have a better control of battlescape illumination.
- works well on hills where you are not always sure the flare will illuminate well the landscape
- Flying drone can carry one
- in case of emergency you can still throw them to illuminate away

[Alex_D]

About flashlights and other illumination devices.

For most of my campaign (against cultist humans) I used the Flashlight (FL) to lit large areas. My usual MO was to throw FL far away and hide in darkness taking potshots from. Electro-flares (3 wgt) were used to create an illuminated circle around my troops. The only disadvantage to this was the weight of 7 the FL as it required every participating soldier to carry one. Unused ones left on the ground (starting tile) of say, a car, chopper, land rover, etc, will illuminate the starting area, which was terrible in turn one.
Eventually the cults were defeated and aliens/hybrids were the main targets. They have better night vision, hence all of these battles are fought at day time.
Also better versions of the electro-flares (3 wgt) were discovered, such as trace-flare and the elerium flare (4 wgt). The latter can lit an area almost equal to a FL, if I remember correctly. The drawback is it needs to be thrown to activate, not just dropped as the FL. This means, I haven't sold my FLs just yet.

[Solarius Scorch]

I officially apologize that I can't make the flashlight be turned off and on. This would change everything.

[WaldoTheRanger]

I officially apologize that I can't make the flashlight be turned off and on. This would change everything.

What would have to be done to make it possible?

it feels like this should be fairly simple to code into the engine.
if electroflares could illuminate stuff once they were activated, even if they were still in your hand, and you could deprime them, then that would have the same functionality.
so once something like that is possible, then you could just make the flashlights like that.
or tying the flashlights to the vanilla personal lighting attribute?

[Solarius Scorch]

Well, if it's easy then it's great news! I wouldn't know, but feel free to give it a try.

[WaldoTheRanger]

I don't know. I was hoping you could explain what the barriers were so we could convince meridian to make the necessary changes.
I was just laying out some possible ways it could be done if there were changes made to the engine that sound simple to me. (like allowing an item to have both melee and grenade properties at the same time)
but again I don't know. the closest thing to a mod i've done is copying and pasting other people's code.

[WaldoTheRanger]

actually scratch that. I think I just did by giving it attributes of both the flare and a melee weapon.

XComFiles/Ruleset/items_XCOMFILES.rul:

Code: [Select]

# field equipment
  - type: STR_MAG_LITE
    ...
#Prime/Unprime segment
    costPrime:
      time: 3
    costUnprime:
      time: 3
    primeActionName: Turn On
    unprimeActionName: Turn Off
    fuseType: -2
    fuseTriggerEvents:
      defaultBehavior: true
      throwTrigger: false
...

I basically just copied the section specifying priming, fuses and triggers from the electroflare, reversed the trigger types (so that it's default is on rather than needing it to be thrown) and specified a prime and unprime cost (both 3% tus)

It seems to work perfectly.

[edit] cropped code so it's more obvious what I did. that bit can be thrown anywhere under the STR_MAG_LITE section in items_XCOMFILES.rul