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Author Topic: Detailed changes from original game. Known research limits for instance?  (Read 3266 times)

Offline humbe

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Hi..

Just checked out the original game again after I found it on Steam, and I found this awesome project. Way to go. I really like some of the quality of life improvements, like for instance being able to see radar coverage when putting down a base, or see how many movement points I'll have left if I let the game pick where to go over to some square. I see you've been conservative in what is enabled by default and have gone for being close to the original by default which is great.

I'm used to managing the AI on superhuman, but the AI here seems to make it considerably harder, at least initially. Doesn't help that I've been forced into night missions. Seems to be higher probability of aliens being close to Skyranger and facing it (last one on purpose I read), and while aliens seem to wonder around aimlessly by themselves doing whatever they might be doing in the original game, in openxcom they seem to be more likely to have a friend close, and actively attack X-Com soldiers. I'm hoping I will like this change, just have to find how to cope with early missions first ;D

But I know quite a bit about the original game, and there's quite a lot of resources on the original game in ufopedia for instance, so I found the wiki page on differences with the original game a bit lacking. Could it be possible to flesh this out a little?

For instance, I've noticed that I've yet to start a research progress where I get known progress from the start, which was 1/6th chance in original game. Why? Is it just hidden at the start to avoid people reloading to retry? Or have limits for known progress changed, or has random part of research time been changed, so you never get down below 67% of initial value?

It's nice that you have removed the 80 item limit, but it doesn't really sound like a bug that the Skyranger has finite storage for gear. Certainly worth mentioning on its own, and possibly also being able to still have the limit. When the content counts against base storage, you get less storage than you had in the original game. Is there any limit at all for what you can bring in the Skyranger now? Item count limit? Item weight limit? A bit strange that items in your Skyranger is removing space from the general stores, though I guess it's a practical workaround to a too restrictive 80 item limit.
 
Research rollover. It sounds like a bug that you get to use all the scientists for a new project, especially as it happens only if you choose a new project that is later in the order. But maybe you should get to reuse the extra resource capacity you didn't need? In the original game, you wasted half the scientists on average but if you chose new project on random you'd have a 50% chance of being able to use all of them a second time, so if you didn't try to take advantage of it in particular, the end effect would be that you would reclaim about the same amount that you had overflowing. I'm guessing that you don't get rollover of either required or extra research hours used in openxcom. Might be closer to the original game to let overflow research roll over, but to any new project you assign them to. Does anything overflow in openxcom? Not a big deal, but as it is debatable what is a bug and what is a feature, and there might not be one single obviously correct way of getting around it, it would be nice with some more info.

Also I didn't find a list of known issues with openxcom, but it has been dead stable for the testing I've done so far, so I'm hoping that means there's none ;D

Anyhow.. My comments are just nitpicking.. Thanks for the great effort of this project :)

Offline Meridian

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I'm used to managing the AI on superhuman, but the AI here seems to make it considerably harder, at least initially. Doesn't help that I've been forced into night missions. Seems to be higher probability of aliens being close to Skyranger and facing it (last one on purpose I read), and while aliens seem to wonder around aimlessly by themselves doing whatever they might be doing in the original game, in openxcom they seem to be more likely to have a friend close, and actively attack X-Com soldiers. I'm hoping I will like this change, just have to find how to cope with early missions first ;D

The original had a bug that the difficulty reset to Beginner after the first mission.
You've probably been playing on Beginner for all those years and now play Superhuman for the first time in OpenXcom :)

Probability of aliens being close to the Skyranger is the same as in the original.

Probability of aliens facing the Skyranger depends on the difficulty (at least in OpenXcom, not sure about the original), so playing on Superhuman increases aliens facing the craft.

The AI decision making is 98% identical to the original. Even with all the imperfections. Intentionally.
The remaining 2% are things that were impractical or impossible to replicate.

But I know quite a bit about the original game, and there's quite a lot of resources on the original game in ufopedia for instance, so I found the wiki page on differences with the original game a bit lacking. Could it be possible to flesh this out a little?

For a casual player, there are practically no differences between the original and OpenXcom.

For a developer or a guru, there are conservatively speaking hundreds of differences, realistically thousands.

It would take forever to describe all the differences.
And deciding which differences are worth describing and which are not is equally futile effort.

For instance, I've noticed that I've yet to start a research progress where I get known progress from the start, which was 1/6th chance in original game. Why? Is it just hidden at the start to avoid people reloading to retry? Or have limits for known progress changed, or has random part of research time been changed, so you never get down below 67% of initial value?

Was a bug.

It's nice that you have removed the 80 item limit, but it doesn't really sound like a bug that the Skyranger has finite storage for gear. Certainly worth mentioning on its own, and possibly also being able to still have the limit. When the content counts against base storage, you get less storage than you had in the original game. Is there any limit at all for what you can bring in the Skyranger now? Item count limit? Item weight limit? A bit strange that items in your Skyranger is removing space from the general stores, though I guess it's a practical workaround to a too restrictive 80 item limit.

By default, there is no limit.
But there is a built-in mod in OpenXcom, which you can use to restore the 80 item limit from the original.
Go into the MODS screen and look for the "Limit Craft Item Capacities" mod.

Research rollover. It sounds like a bug that you get to use all the scientists for a new project, especially as it happens only if you choose a new project that is later in the order. But maybe you should get to reuse the extra resource capacity you didn't need? In the original game, you wasted half the scientists on average but if you chose new project on random you'd have a 50% chance of being able to use all of them a second time, so if you didn't try to take advantage of it in particular, the end effect would be that you would reclaim about the same amount that you had overflowing. I'm guessing that you don't get rollover of either required or extra research hours used in openxcom. Might be closer to the original game to let overflow research roll over, but to any new project you assign them to. Does anything overflow in openxcom? Not a big deal, but as it is debatable what is a bug and what is a feature, and there might not be one single obviously correct way of getting around it, it would be nice with some more info.

There is no rollover in OpenXcom.
It was a known bug of the original and it was not replicated in OpenXcom.
Of course, there is always at least one person alive that says it was a feature... but majority wins.

Also I didn't find a list of known issues with openxcom, but it has been dead stable for the testing I've done so far, so I'm hoping that means there's none ;D

There are a few known issues that are impractical to solve or which we are too lazy to solve.
I won't describe them individually, so that people can sleep well at night... and more importantly so that they don't annoy the living heck out of the DEVs.

And of course, any software more complicated than TicTacToe has bugs... that's a universal fact, and it applies to OpenXcom too.
If you find a bug, report it.
We're still actively fixing bug reports.
« Last Edit: July 29, 2020, 11:54:21 am by Meridian »

Offline humbe

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The original had a bug that the difficulty reset to Beginner after the first mission.
You've probably been playing on Beginner for all those years and now play Superhuman for the first time in OpenXcom :)

Thanks for the reply..  :D

I was certainly there in 94. Though later I have been using UFO Extender or XComUtil and was aware of the issues and thought it was fixed, and felt like funding nations were much more easier to say game over if I didn't see enough on the radars two months in a row. I haven't patched my steam game for my last playthrough, but saw a forum post saying that the difficulty bug was fixed, but maybe it wasn't true. But if you're saying the AI is that close to the original, I'll put it down to having bad luck with OpenXCom for the first few combat spawns.

I do like a bigger challenge from the AI, but it feels like the battlescape battles gets easier and easier as you get better equipment and tech, and psi-amps feels like cheating.. So would be nice if there was a way to ramp up later difficulty without making it even harder to begin with :P

I don't disagree with any of your decisions. I was just hoping for the page with differences to original game contained a bit more info. Even if it's a clear bug, a fix is likely to adjust the game mechanics in some way. For instance (I dunno how you've done it, so I dunno if the examples are correct):

- The 80 item limit for troop transports have been removed. Transports are now just limited by what can be stored in general stores on the base they are stationed. Transferring a craft with gear, will be denied if base doesn't have free space at transfer start time, but will potentially overflow general stores in target base at end time.

- Research rollover bug have been fixed. Researchers assigned during research completed notifications will never contribute hours from the previous day to the new project, regardless of whether they had spare time or not the preceding day. Use known progress to reduce effort if you want to limit the loss.

- Research now only gets to known progress after researching 67% of actual hours, rather than average hours. Known progress can thus be used to estimate actual research hours needed much more accurately.
or maybe
- Research now only gets to known progress after researching 33% of average hours AND 15% of actual hours, keeping the known progress equally fuzzy as before, but not showing it immediately for new projects.
or maybe
- Actual research hours is now just +/- 30% of the average, ensuring you never get known progress immediately.

Cheers...  :)

Offline R1dO

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If you want a starting point of differences (and a link to known bugs in original which are all fixed except for one) try: https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Differences_to_X-COM_(OpenXcom)

Might be slightly outdated (last edit is 2018) but it is the most comprehensive list I've seen to date.


Offline humbe

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If you want a starting point of differences (and a link to known bugs in original which are all fixed except for one) try: https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Differences_to_X-COM_(OpenXcom)

Might be slightly outdated (last edit is 2018) but it is the most comprehensive list I've seen to date.

Yeah.. Thats the list Ive been reading. Just thought Id suggest trying to flesh it out a bit to state how mechanics work after change where it isnt obvious, and the list seems to lack some entries too.

Offline Meridian

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- Research now only gets to known progress after researching 67% of actual hours, rather than average hours. Known progress can thus be used to estimate actual research hours needed much more accurately.
or maybe
- Research now only gets to known progress after researching 33% of average hours AND 15% of actual hours, keeping the known progress equally fuzzy as before, but not showing it immediately for new projects.
or maybe
- Actual research hours is now just +/- 30% of the average, ensuring you never get known progress immediately.

Research now only gets to known progress after researching 33% of average hours. Actual hours have no impact on this.

You cannot estimate actual research hours accurately.

Actual research hours are still +/- 50%.

Offline humbe

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Aah.. Good solution with less impact on mechanics than I came up with.. ;D