Too much research...

[Charly1]

I cannot play either of the new games without long war. They are just too "vanilla". The first game had that "the aliens are attacking three different countrie at the same time, and you as humanities last line of defence can only defend one of them" bullshit. I have no idea what the programmers thought when they came up with that one. The Longwar mod totally saved that game. I couldnt understand how a game made in 1996 was more "complex" than a modern AAA game.

There has been a longwar mod for the Xcom2 expansion. It took me a while to warm to it. It just felt a bit "short" for some reason. The missions were all too samey. It needed more underound base type missions, or ufos. The generated maps seemed very samey too. But I did get a kick out the  80s "V" miniseries vibes, though.

At least Xcomfiles makes me feel like I am actualy fighting a proper war, and has some proper resource management. Working in local government, I also appreciate the added bureaucracy... "a flamethrower? Shapeshifting aliens in antarctica you say? But you dont have the correct licence sir. Humanity is doomed? Sorry sir, my hands are tied"

[Stoddard]

I have no idea what the programmers thought when they came up with that one.

Well, Jake Solomon is full of shit, and that was obvious from the start. Which is why I never played nucoms. He never had it in himself to create a world. He even said it himself many times in them interviews. So he made a blinky shooter. Phew. Nothing better could have come out of this effort and didn't.

That said, even people who did have it once tend to lose it. Case in point - original Syndicate vs Satellite Reign. The latter is just meh and lots of rain.

[tarkalak]

Neither of the Nucoms have generated maps. They are all static maps, you just start in different places.

Long War 2 is pretty decent. It has the atmosphere of fighting a guerilla war and most missions are in the line of: go in, do the objective and then GTFO, which I like. Of course you need to load up a ton of mods if you do want some quality of life and new maps. xwynns on youtube has a good series along with a nice modlist for it.

One thing I disliked on Nucom 1 was the aestetics. Women look like men, men look like the hulk and the hulk (mutons) looks like a bipedal pig. Ugh.

[Charly1]

Xcom 2 sort of had random maps. I think it worked using pregenerated "blocks". Problem for me was that they were still a bit samey, and there was too much wide open space that made you go sniper heavy. The buildings were someting to go around. There were not enough enclosed spaces like the ufos and alien bases. It lost that sense of claustraphobia from the first game. Too many of the maps seemed almost identical though.

I just did the Black Lotus and Red Dawn bases. I was really confused with the Red Dawn one. Was great fun!

[andrewgreve]

One thing to consider is researcher efficiency. each additional scientist has diminishing returns on the same topic. Stacking all your scientists on one topic at a time will really slow you down. Not sure how much of your 156 topics are mundane items, but a single scientist will bang out most mundane items in a matter of hours to days. So 40 scientists each doing 1 item would clear your queue quickly.

[tarkalak]

One thing to consider is researcher efficiency. each additional scientist has diminishing returns on the same topic. Stacking all your scientists on one topic at a time will really slow you down. Not sure how much of your 156 topics are mundane items, but a single scientist will bang out most mundane items in a matter of hours to days. So 40 scientists each doing 1 item would clear your queue quickly.

The hours part is wrong. Research progress is checked once a day at exactly 0:00. Each scientist gives one point per day to whatever he was assigned at 0:00 o'clock (even if he was assigned just a minute before that he counts as a whole scientist day). If, at the day a project is finished, you generate more research points than needed, they are wasted.

So if you have an item that takes 1 research point to be done and you assign 20 people on it, you have wasted 19. If you had a 20 point project you would waste nothing. You can look at how much research each item needs in the INFO ('.' day, '-' 5 days, '=' 20 days, # 100 days, sum them all. Actual research is between 50-150% of that value).

[ZakG]

Dont bother researching "ordinary" items, unless you intend to use them in the field. You can use most convential weapons without researching them anyway.

I'm putting together a 'list' of items i'm struggling to understand why they are in the research list at all. Is there a reason for that like maybe if i really WANTED to use a Pitchfork i can't until i have researched it? I can see you can't buy an item until some research is done, but i seem to be able to get a bunch of pitchforks/wrenches/baseball bats/lead pipes etc from missions and equip those right away.

So why are those items in the research lists? Just wondering aloud

You need to increase your research capabilities asap. You can get a bio lab (5 scientists) and intel centre (5 scientists) early on. Research lab comes later to bring you up to 40 scientists. You cannot build multiple research labs in one base... so it might help to get another base up sooner rather than later.

I seem to be very bad at this, like i'm not sure what i should be doing to get to a stage where research can be weaponised. I have the HQ (5 scientists) plus a recent bio-lab (5 scientists) and no clue as what to do next (nothing showing in my current available research topics to give a hint etc).

Could we have some dialogue from the base staff (those fun additions when they pop up and give advice - i love it!) to maybe better guide the player here in the early game? Sure we can use forums and wiki's etc, but it always feels mos natural when the game guides you (the original game was quite genius in this). I can see these staff topics are triggered by stuff so i was thinking have an extra one from the Scientist that triggers sometime after 'Promotion 1' with more details on how to organise your science (like "ok we got some recent UN recognition for our work, so to make sure we get my teams working full speed on our research we need x,y,z and the best way to get there is to do missions x,y,z and get [live captives/ new tech/ etc]").

Something along those lines, and in-game clue on how to progress etc. I'm just currently fumbling around not really sure how to get a science lab to be able to employ 40 scientists etc.

[Solarius Scorch]

I think it's fine to stumble in the dark. This isn't a race. Do research at your own pace, just make sure you don't lose.

[ZakG]

I think it's fine to stumble in the dark. This isn't a race. Do research at your own pace, just make sure you don't lose.

Yeah I'm absolutely loving your creation here Solarius Scorch. Not sure why it took me this long to find your mod in truth, as i've been playing OpenXcom pretty much religously since the 1.0 was released.

I never really liked ANY of the other X-com variants since the original game, they all just streamlined too much or had focus on the 'wrong' things (looking cool over being cool etc). The Long War mod just about saves the newer Xcom game (the hyphen matters!), but they are still shallow, reduced games compared to the classic original imho, and OpenXcom and the mods for that have breathed new life and personality into one of arguably the most amazing games ever made.

So thank you very much for your efforts and the awesome game we (original X-com fans) get to keep playing and for free via this amazing mod work

I've been in the modding scene for many years (I was part of the team that got the source code released for Call to Power II on the Apolyton forums years back, and helped design the religion system we have in Civ IV's Beyond the Sword expansion) and am looking forward to giving you constructive feedback and questions on this mod once i got the feels for it

X-files AND X-com just makes so much sense, i can see why you wanted to explore that.

[Solarius Scorch]

Yeah I'm absolutely loving your creation here Solarius Scorch. Not sure why it took me this long to find your mod in truth, as i've been playing OpenXcom pretty much religously since the 1.0 was released.

Thank you very much for the kind words!

I never really liked ANY of the other X-com variants since the original game, they all just streamlined too much or had focus on the 'wrong' things (looking cool over being cool etc). The Long War mod just about saves the newer Xcom game (the hyphen matters!), but they are still shallow, reduced games compared to the classic original imho, and OpenXcom and the mods for that have breathed new life and personality into one of arguably the most amazing games ever made.

I generally argee. UFO: Exteraterrestrials with UNIMOD was probably the best such project (but only with UNIMOD, which added multiple interesting concepts like a sound detection system).

I've been in the modding scene for many years (I was part of the team that got the source code released for Call to Power II on the Apolyton forums years back, and helped design the religion system we have in Civ IV's Beyond the Sword expansion) and am looking forward to giving you constructive feedback and questions on this mod once i got the feels for it

  That sounds great, and also an interesting coincidence - the first serious modding project I made together with Dioxine was a megamod for Call to Power I, "Forever Future". If you are into CtP, then you check out this - I guarantee it's worth it (contains the link).

X-files AND X-com just makes so much sense, i can see why you wanted to explore that.

Yeah, and I hope I didn't fail too much... Since opinions, ehm, vary.

[ZakG]

That sounds great, and also an interesting coincidence - the first serious modding project I made together with Dioxine was a megamod for Call to Power I, "Forever Future". If you are into CtP, then you check out this - I guarantee it's worth it (contains the link).

Hey thx I loved CTP when it came out, it was the right kind of spin on Civ for me at that time and i had moved onto CTPII (bad AI!) when i got into modding, so had not looked at any of the CTP mods. I'll look for my CD of CTP and make some time to give your link a go

I did not know about UFO: Exteraterrestrials either, was that not related to the other UFO games (Aftermath etc)? I found that series too 'action' focused (as i do the new Fireaxis Xcom games) in general and as typical for games of that era the 3D camera angles had to be fought etc. Anyway another new game to look into (with the mod you mention obviously!) when my run(s) of OpenXcom+The X-com files finds a pause.

Considering how small a space (2-3years) in game time you have to squeeze the 'X-files' influences in, and the changes in the game process to fit those kind of changes (i mean you basically bought in the 'factions/sects' aspect from X-com Apocolypse and grafted that nicely into X-com, and it feels more natural and organic than that game did to me!!) and the different kind of 'flavour' you've been able to create from that.......i'd say (from my 12hours or so playing so far (i've re-started twice just to test stuff!)) that you have pretty much nailed your objective. Obviously nothing can be perfect (unless you build a game from scratch yourself etc!) but it is quite amazing what you've managed to do here. It's tough as nails often (those undercover missions kick my butt nearly every time so far!) but i'm making progress and starting to better understand the path forward to 1999, what to take on and what to leave alone etc

[Solarius Scorch]

Glad it's working out for you, I hope later stages will also be fun.

And as aside note, I really really like UFO: Aftershock. It's obviously not X-Com, but I enjoy its combat system very much and I find it super fun! Especially with Okim's ACM mod, which really expands on your options.

[ZakG]

"Not enough research" was my common complaint of other X-com games (or just having one base etc etc). The Meta game in the original games were just so perfect for a young hungry mind to get really into back in the day

Oh also i forgot to mention the Terror from the Deep influence you also put in this new starting period (to go along with the 'sects' stuff from Apocalypse). It's a really nice nod to those games and all fits nice and neat in this new Xcom Files parcel.

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Edit a little later added question on the theme of this thread in general:

Q: Why have these items appear as topics to 'research':

1. Wrench
2. knife
3. Iron pipe
4. Wooden club
5. Baseball bat
6. Pitchfork
7. Money
8. Money briefcase
9. crowbar

Do some of those require a research 'unlock' to other things? Not all of them though, so do you research those 'redundant' items or leave them be? I tend to be a bit OCD with game offerings, so i find it hard not to research the Iron Pipe for example, even though i know it leads to nothing? I like to clear it off the list.

[Bananas_Akimbo]

Mundane items such as the pitchfork typically don't lead to any further research (besides aquisition of the same item). You only get the benefit of knowing their stats and getting some score through research. On the other hand, such items also tend to be very quick to research. It is up to you.

I always wait until I have some more scientists, before tackling these topics. In the beginning, even a single research day spent on non-essential stuff is unattractive to me.

[tarkalak]

Do some of those require a research 'unlock' to other things? Not all of them though, so do you research those 'redundant' items or leave them be? I tend to be a bit OCD with game offerings, so i find it hard not to research the Iron Pipe for example, even though i know it leads to nothing? I like to clear it off the list.

The Iron Pipe is a pretty good stun weapon, if you don't mind wounds and occasionally killing the suspects.

Most of these and weapon acquisitions cost 2 scientist-days (so between 1 and 3 days after RNG). I just drop one of my scientist to do these for the points.

There is a weapon that takes ages to research and leads to things but it isn't a mundane equipment.