aliens

Author Topic: Clarification questions  (Read 18975 times)

Offline anothrgamer1234

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Re: Clarification questions
« Reply #45 on: August 21, 2020, 06:53:22 pm »
To add to what Mrvex said, you'll also eventually unlock a "heavy" version of those armors. It doesn't have a shield and has slightly less front armor than the vest with shield, but it's got far more armor everywhere else to make up for that and has noticeably better resistance to bullets, cutting damage, and chemical damage (and one of the factions you'll deal fairly soon after the starting cults is very fond of chemical weapons, I might add). However, you might want to stick with the regular vests for melee-oriented soldiers due to its noticeable penalties to melee skill and energy.

The alien alloy variants of both the vest and the heavy suit have more armor, but they also have less inherent resistance to bullet damage (10% less resistance, to be precise). Be aware of that when you're up against enemies with miniguns, sniper rifles, and other weapons that have a good chance of ignoring or reducing your armor.

As a further word of warning, none of them has innate resistance to plasma weapons so you'll want to get your hands on the Personal Armor when the invasion starts. Remember, resistances are at least as important as armor values if not even more so.

Offline Ranakastrasz

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Re: Clarification questions
« Reply #46 on: September 10, 2020, 12:42:05 am »
Still a number of unanswered questions.

Handcuffs. how long do they take to wear off, what causes them to fail, and do stunned, but not bleeding enemies eventually have a heart attack normally, or only with handcuffs, and why cant they be reused?


How does stealth, vision, etc work? This has half the answeres, assuming it is the method used.
https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?topic=4822.0

Ninjas have +4 Camouflage at night and day.
ThIs means, day or night, you can only see them within 4 tiles?
Or is it you can see them 4 tiles less than normal? does day value get used if illuminated, and if so, just the edge, or does it need a certain brightness?
Given their speed, reflexes, even doggos aren't able to bark before being cut in half. Only doggo tracking or blundering into one lets me catch them. If my doggo goes down, I scrub the mission, it is that bad.

Jumpsuit has a -2 and 28 For night and day.
Doggo Has 15 visibility at night, and 40 at day when wearing armor. What is the default?
Base los range is 20 in vanilla, but I think it might be longer here? I know I read it somewhere, but can't find it.
Thermal vision. This is purely antismoke? How many tiles does 1 smoke count as visionwise anyway? Wiki isnt that clear.

Scout drone has 5 anticamo. How does that effect flat and negative stealth? Extra x distance up to max in each case?

melee dodge. how does this work, exactly? i can calculate the base value, and get melee coef for weapons, but that is the extent. Do both units use their melee dodge in a contest?

Overkill coef. What is this. Everything has it set to 1.5.
« Last Edit: September 10, 2020, 02:19:19 am by Ranakastrasz »

Offline the nomad

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Re: Clarification questions
« Reply #47 on: September 10, 2020, 04:28:39 am »
You can see the ninja assassins within 4 tiles.

Offline tarkalak

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Re: Clarification questions
« Reply #48 on: September 10, 2020, 09:44:07 am »
Some units have anticamo, that incrieses the range at which you can see Ninjas and other camouflaged enemies. The Scout Tank (the starting chasis, just buy a Basic AI Unit) has 5 anticamo and can see them at 9 tiles away. I think the X-XOM Rats are also better than dogs, but not sure.
Otherwise expendables with shields are better than dogs at spotting these since they don't die so easily to gunfire.
« Last Edit: September 10, 2020, 09:48:37 am by tarkalak »

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: Clarification questions
« Reply #49 on: September 10, 2020, 10:37:34 am »
Some days ago I developed the article on camouflage, hopefully it is clear now.

Offline Ranakastrasz

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Re: Clarification questions
« Reply #50 on: September 10, 2020, 03:57:58 pm »
That helps. No reason to fight black lotus during the day then.

Ford Day and Dark mean that flares make it use day camo values?

I use doggos because of the motion scanner. You can then hold Alt to reveal them, and apply napalm, or rather incendiary grenades. They see through walls, and at an extended range. But yes, if I had motion scanners, I would use armored rookies instead.
I suppose I might look into rats.

What is the basic vision range? given values of 15, 30, and 40, I highly doubt 20 is still default, unless longer vision range is a thing elsewhere.

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: Clarification questions
« Reply #51 on: September 10, 2020, 05:46:06 pm »
Ford Day and Dark mean that flares make it use day camo values?

Yes, if something is illuminated, then it works the same as normal daylight.

What is the basic vision range? given values of 15, 30, and 40, I highly doubt 20 is still default, unless longer vision range is a thing elsewhere.

Basic day vision is 40, which is trivial to see by just counting the tiles.
Basic night vision is 9 for humans with no dark vision equipment. Maximum is 20, displayed for example by most aliens and some most advanced armours.

Offline Ranakastrasz

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Re: Clarification questions
« Reply #52 on: September 11, 2020, 05:05:18 am »
Remaining Questions
Handcuffs. How do these work, do they cause stun to increase, or just slow decrease, or what. How does stacking them help. Do strong enemies actually prevent you from using them, or just animalistic enemies? Why don't you get them back after usage?

Electroflares. When you activate them, they do not give off light, until thrown. If you don't activate them, they don't give off light. This is weird. Mechanical issue, or intentional?

Fire Damage. Do you get set on fire for walking through fire, for standing in fire at the end of your turn, or only from being hit by a fire-generating weapon? How much damage do you take when standing in fire, or while on fire, do they stack, is there degrees of "on Fire", how long/what are the chances of stopping being on fire. Does unit size change fire damage. Does fire actually burn down terrain, like bushes or hedges or trees? Because It seems to do it sometimes, but not always, so it is hard to tell.

Projectile speed. Is there a way to enhance this further, at least for rapidfire weapons, such that weapons with 5-10 rounds don't take so long? I have bullet speed maxed already.

Melee Dodge. I can calculate the value, but I don't know how it is applied. I assume there is a randomized contest between the attackers melee dodge, adjusted by Close quarters combat accuracy in some way for ranged weapons, or weapon accuracy for melee weapons, as well as facing. Attacks from behind get a 50% penalty, and presumably from the sides are 62.5%, 75%, 87.5%, and 100% for the front. Anti-terrain heavy weapons like Pickaxes or Crowbars are probably considered ranged weapons for this purpose. But what is the actual equation?
Edit: Description, after rereading it, says I was hilariously wrong. it has no effect on melee weapons, but probably still has an effect on the pseudo-ranged Pickaxe and similar. There are two factors, melee dodge on both and CQCA for the weapon. But, again, still don't actually know how it works.

Crop Circle Time Limit. Why is this here, and why do your agents die? Seems kinda weird, and there isn't a justification given in the mission description.

New Question.

Black Lotus Witch's description suggests they should have a forcefield. They don't have that in their stats, in the wiki OR ingame, and also lack any special resistances like 50% kinetic or w.e.
What was intended here? Bug, bad description, or misunderstanding?
« Last Edit: September 11, 2020, 07:12:37 pm by Ranakastrasz »

Offline Ranakastrasz

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Re: Clarification questions
« Reply #53 on: August 18, 2021, 07:56:29 am »
Its been a while, and a number of questions are still unanswered.

Offline Juku121

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Re: Clarification questions
« Reply #54 on: August 18, 2021, 10:49:51 am »
Handcuffs. How do these work...
From a glance at the handcuff script, which may be wrong: handcuffs have a value that's subtracted from strength and stacks across multiple applications. Units have protection from it, which can disable applying handcuffs. These values seem to be 40 for normal cuffs and 60 for Tritanium, and 0, 50 or 100 for protection, essentially either making certain critters (Gilldogs, Waspites, rats, etc) immune or only cuffable by Tritanium (Minotaurs, Werewolves, Zombies, etc). The lists are hand-crafted, so cuff immunity is whatever Solarius wants it to be, no implied relation to strength, e.g. rats are pretty weak. Cuffed enemies are in a state of 'max stun', and recover their true stun values after breaking free. Each turn, units get a percentage roll to escape, with success being [strength - stacked cuff value]%, but always at least 10% chance to fail. Which is a bit weird, because it implies two Tritanium cuffs will keep Werewolves down forever. Maybe I'm mistaken.

I assume their consumable nature is an engine limitation.

Electroflares.
Flares are intentional, since I recall there being a time when they did glow in your hand, and it was a PITA.

Do you get set on fire for walking through fire
No.

for standing in fire at the end of your turn
In or next to a fire, since fire spreads.

How much damage do you take when standing in fire, or while on fire, do they stack
Standing in fire: 1-12 depending on what's on fire, being on fire: 5-10, seem to stack.

is there degrees of "on Fire"
No.

...how long/what are the chances of stopping being on fire.
Random roll when being set on fire, between one and armour incendiary damage modifier/20 turns, so usually fire lasts for 1-5 turns.

Does unit size change fire damage.
I don't know for sure, but I think not, except for AoE direct fire damage.

Does fire actually burn down terrain, like bushes or hedges or trees?
Yes, but looks like only more flammable types of terrain.

Projectile speed. Is there a way to enhance this further...
The 'bulletspeed' attribute of individual weapons/ammo. For regular guns, 10 is already pretty fast.

Melee Dodge. I can calculate the value, but I don't know how it is applied. I assume there is a randomized contest between the attackers melee dodge, adjusted by Close quarters combat accuracy in some way for ranged weapons, or weapon accuracy for melee weapons, as well as facing.
But what is the actual equation?
Melee dodge is a flat reduction from hit chance, so [calculated accuracy] - [dodge*facing penalty]. Which makes it very powerful at lower levels. Accuracy calculations are done beforehand, dodge only applies to melee weapons and CQC. CQC accuracy modifier just changes the defensive gun kata roll, it's not about hitting anything yourself.

Attacks from behind get a 50% penalty, and presumably from the sides are 62.5%, 75%, 87.5%, and 100% for the front.
Mostly. You calculate your melee dodge value, multiply this by the penalty, and that's the value that gets subtracted when you stab people in the back. Scaling is as you write.

Crop Circle Time Limit. Why is this here, and why do your agents die?
Engine limit, done away with after the reinforcement mechanic became available. Presumably, your agents were stuffed into a MiB cell and forgotten.

But, again, still don't actually know how it works.
Does it really matter, unless you want to mod the game yourself? Stab people in the back, take a step away to nullify gun kata, m-click your soldier and press F1 if you want to see the exact hit values (needs debug mode).

Black Lotus Witch's description suggests they should have a forcefield. They don't have that in their stats, in the wiki OR ingame, and also lack any special resistances like 50% kinetic or w.e.
What was intended here? Bug, bad description, or misunderstanding?
No telling with Solarius's take on 'realism'. I assume he just forgot, but maybe there's some extra-convoluted reasoning for it. (Yes, I'm salty. I just read the fire extinguisher debate on Discord, and that confirmed my worst assumptions about his design principles. :-\)

Offline Bonakva

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Re: Clarification questions
« Reply #55 on: August 18, 2021, 01:25:47 pm »
Projectile speed. Is there a way to enhance this further, at least for rapidfire weapons, such that weapons with 5-10 rounds don't take so long? I have bullet speed maxed already.

The answer is here. https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,8068.msg126677.html#msg126677
In brief
3 parameters which directly or indirectly affect the display of flight and projectile speed.

game settings file:
battleFireSpeed: #

game or mod files:
bulletSpeed: # (which I have never touched)
hitAnimation: #

For myself, I edit it like this:
battleFireSpeed: 1000
hitAnimation: -1
As a result, all shots are instantaneous and there is no delay between hits.
If there was a hit, the silhouette of the enemy just turns red.
You won't see any more bullets.

Offline Juku121

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Re: Clarification questions
« Reply #56 on: August 18, 2021, 01:46:04 pm »
battleFireSpeed: 1000
As a result, all shots are instantaneous and there is no delay between hits.
There will also be no firing animation to speak of. Bulletspeed is technically the better solution, or even something like the Hyper&Trajectory mod. But it requires a lot of boring manual work, because there are so effin many weapons.

Offline Bonakva

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Re: Clarification questions
« Reply #57 on: August 18, 2021, 02:01:46 pm »
There will also be no firing animation to speak of. Bulletspeed is technically the better solution, or even something like the Hyper&Trajectory mod. But it requires a lot of boring manual work, because there are so effin many weapons.

It all depends on the target.

For me, it was important to speed up the shooting process as much as possible. It didn't matter where or how the bullet flew, the main thing was to see the result.

notepad++
regular expressions
hitAnimation: \d+
replace with 
hitAnimation: -1

I'm not a fan of half measures =)
You can only edit battleFireSpeed
This will automatically make all weapons in the game faster.
By default the maximum value in the game can be 20, but through notepad it can be increased to any other.
« Last Edit: August 18, 2021, 02:22:14 pm by Bonakva »

Offline Juku121

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Re: Clarification questions
« Reply #58 on: August 18, 2021, 02:26:23 pm »
It all depends on the target.
Of course. Your method is very nice if you don't care about shooting aliens in the face with LAZORS and PLASMA BULLETS! Some others might care about that, though.

Offline Ranakastrasz

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Re: Clarification questions
« Reply #59 on: August 18, 2021, 07:56:57 pm »
From a glance at the handcuff script, which may be wrong: handcuffs have a value that's subtracted from strength and stacks across multiple applications. Units have protection from it, which can disable applying handcuffs. These values seem to be 40 for normal cuffs and 60 for Tritanium, and 0, 50 or 100 for protection, essentially either making certain critters (Gilldogs, Waspites, rats, etc) immune or only cuffable by Tritanium (Minotaurs, Werewolves, Zombies, etc). The lists are hand-crafted, so cuff immunity is whatever Solarius wants it to be, no implied relation to strength, e.g. rats are pretty weak. Cuffed enemies are in a state of 'max stun', and recover their true stun values after breaking free. Each turn, units get a percentage roll to escape, with success being [strength - stacked cuff value]%, but always at least 10% chance to fail. Which is a bit weird, because it implies two Tritanium cuffs will keep Werewolves down forever. Maybe I'm mistaken.

I assume their consumable nature is an engine limitation.
Ah, that helps. Looks like it changed since the older version, since you used to be able to handcuff zombies with the basic one. And it also implies that they should't be able to die from overstun either, which I think they used to be able to, but not 100% sure since that was like a year ago.
Not surprised about the consumable nature, although if it were added to their inventory, you would think it would be lootable like any other loot. Not a huge deal though.
Quote
Flares are intentional, since I recall there being a time when they did glow in your hand, and it was a PITA.
I can imagine. Good to know. Now if only there was an indicator for "is Illumiated" because I am not entirely sure about how far from flares I need to stand. Wish there was a filter that made the border blatent, because apperantly my eyes are terrible at judging what other people consider clear color borders.
Quote
In or next to a fire, since fire spreads.
Standing in fire: 1-12 depending on what's on fire, being on fire: 5-10, seem to stack.
Random roll when being set on fire, between one and armour incendiary damage modifier/20 turns, so usually fire lasts for 1-5 turns.
I don't know for sure, but I think not, except for AoE direct fire damage.
Yes, but looks like only more flammable types of terrain.
Fire is complex. And probably still not able to burn down sections of forest in a reasonable time period to clear LOS.
Still, thanks.
Quote
The 'bulletspeed' attribute of individual weapons/ammo. For regular guns, 10 is already pretty fast.
This, plus rest of discussion lower down. Understandable. Mainly it is the part where for rapidfire guns like the Minigun and machine gun have you follow EVERY SINGLE BULLET, which is okay for some weapons.

Red flash on damage helps a lot, but sometimes it hits with no flash, and causes bleeding. Somehow.
Quote
Melee dodge is a flat reduction from hit chance, so [calculated accuracy] - [dodge*facing penalty]. Which makes it very powerful at lower levels. Accuracy calculations are done beforehand, dodge only applies to melee weapons and CQC. CQC accuracy modifier just changes the defensive gun kata roll, it's not about hitting anything yourself.
Mostly. You calculate your melee dodge value, multiply this by the penalty, and that's the value that gets subtracted when you stab people in the back. Scaling is as you write.
Makes sense.
Quote
Engine limit, done away with after the reinforcement mechanic became available. Presumably, your agents were stuffed into a MiB cell and forgotten.
Makes sense. Good to know.
Quote
Does it really matter, unless you want to mod the game yourself? Stab people in the back, take a step away to nullify gun kata, m-click your soldier and press F1 if you want to see the exact hit values (needs debug mode).
Stepping away is something I do often, yes. But I also sometimes have a melee guy next to an enemy ranged attacker, and want to know how badly that effects them, and what the effective dodge/clash chances are.
Quote
No telling with Solarius's take on 'realism'. I assume he just forgot, but maybe there's some extra-convoluted reasoning for it. (Yes, I'm salty. I just read the fire extinguisher debate on Discord, and that confirmed my worst assumptions about his design principles. :-\)
Hmm. I should probably enter the discord. That sounds fun.