Here we go again. As always, please keep in mind that while it may seem mostly like finding issues, I still enjoy the game quite much, simply concentrating on pointing out things that are really janky, going out ot their way to grab my attention or disrupt things - and usually it's just negative things that do so. As before, what seemed to be outright bugs rather than design or balancing issue was posted in a relevant thread.
Of course, that's what useful feedback is.
Then it shouldn't be a problem. X-Com would be involved because local authorities are one thing, but if X-Com wants to apprehend and fly out enemies for enhanced interrogation and disposal, pulling them out of police custody is not a great thing. As for camping, again it shouldn't be an issue with proper balancing of number of police vs enemies. Two policemen, for example, are unlikely to turn the losing battle, but they may kill some enemies denying the captures or be killed, lowering points. At least they could help one look for enemies in those pesky multi-store-buildings maps. But sure, I understand your concern.
Sorry, I just don't think it makes much sense to see X-Com taking action
in exactly the same time as the local police. It is not only extremely unlikely, but also inexplicably messy. Co-op missions only makes sense when they're pre-arranged.
Also, this particular mission is supposed to put you into a 2-on-2 situation. I am not going to spoil it by adding a pesky third side
If we talk ufopedia entries and what one can learn about sectoids, their mentality etc, stereotypical skinny gopniks on speed are already much more alien and Lovercraftian. 
A valid point!
Anyway, I understand the intent. But if the enemy is portrayed and described in a certain way, ignoring those to raise their stats appears to me as very artificial ramping of difficulty for difficulty sake and not adding to the impression of fighting some eldritch opponents at all, at least to me.
*shrug* It's a matter of personal feelings. I do not feel like they're "artificially ramped up" - I don't do that as a designer. I could reconsider their shield power, it might be too strong on lower ranks, but I don't think they're too good at CQC, honest.
Then there's some bug, because it's not that hard to find oneself in a situation where enemies, not only alien but human as well shoot from beyond the range of what X-Com operatives see, no matter during the day or night. Again, I am talking (flat) terrain still not uncovered (black), many tiles away, on the other end of the midsize map as if AI would use a spotter mechanic X-Com can use (shoot at a target the sniper himself doesn't see, with a penalty) but sometimes without actual spotters being visible either.
This kind of thing can only be discussed with a save game.
As long as those can be turned on and off without penalty and whether the troopers are seen or see the enemy depends on whether they have light on at that very moment - it could work fine. Still not ideal and a bit rough, but hey, at least you don't have to carry a start-game flashlight into the endgame!
I don't think we have the options to do this well... Best I could do is add an armour with big ass illumination, toggable with the 'L' key (along all the other armours which are not lit, except to make them stand out more in the dark, but it's a purely visual effect).
You're right, that is a problem. Is it possible to make QD slot allow only items with certain tags? That'd solve it. If it's not possible, I guess making at least some of those weapons have smaller graphics - wakizashi, stun rods etc - would make sense.
It is possible, but wouldn't look elegant. Anyway, that's not what the QD slot is for. I've considered it many times before and I still don't like it. Even though I agree that swords should fit on a hip.
Problem with that weight requirement is that rookies are often unable to fight at all as they're unable to wield equipment that would let them do things in mission and get better. It's the problem some other people had with when there's no strange creatures missions anymore - at some point there's no way to effectively bring rookies up to speed in general, while veterans still keep being killed later in the game with no even half as effective replacements despite full gym course done.
Well, the gym lets you train them more now, so you don't have to rely on field experience so much. But yeah, it was a huge pain before.
Understandable. I, myself really want to like the feature, it sounds nice on paper, it's just I worry it won't work well in the game in the current form, not without being situational and dependant on many changing factors during the mission. And I bring another example of woes I had with it:
Finishing up Black Lotus. Seems like some single ninja survived and his morale is rock solid, despite his glowy idol and all his compatriots strewn all around the place dead. (...)
It seems that the problem is most noticeable whenever it's not a quick mission or one where the enemies gun for one's troopers soon. I probably would leave weakened ambient sanity effect only on the most bizarre, paranormal missions (rituals, hauntings, underground tombs or whatever missions only if they don't require too much navigation of tiny nooks before finding enemies) and make the rest of it additional, long-term damage from morale-decreasing situations or being hit by psionic attacks (to be honest, the stronger of those attacks probably could be buffed vs sanity, rather than morale and lead to a nice trade-off of long-term recuperation vs "mind control is the best ever, in every situation").
TBH I don't know how to understand your point. You can't lose less than 1 point per turn (which is the case of the BL HQ, due to the presence of star spectres), and I don't know what other long-term effects might be. Please elaborate.
Yankes' post confirms the problem.
Glad you like them! Of course, if you feel some other faction than the one presented would befit an event more, feel free to make any necessary adjustments, I have no problem with that whatsoever. Also, do tell what's the issue with the events that you didn't mention, I don't mind adjusting them. I also repeat my offer of making events for various parts of the game that you'd want to prioritize, just tell me what would you like to see, about what and/or where.
I'm not sure what else I could add - I wrote short remarks on them all. Feel free to ask.
As for future events, I really liked UAC letter thing that is more than one screen of text. To be honest, as with randomized loot I wasn't aware was possible, I'd like to know what's the limitations of event system so I could make more events and more advanced ones.
Everything is here:
https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Ruleset_Reference_Nightly_(OpenXcom)#Event_ScriptsI would be happy to discuss it in more details, but not like this - if you have questions, let's chat on Discord, a forum is too unwieldy to do it efficiently.
Also, what are the character/paragraph/line length limits for various messages? I offer to preformat them for the future.
Sorry, it's not like I know such things in precise terms... I just do shit and then see how it looks.
I tried to make it limited to stuff one could expect during some gorey ritual, so probably remains one can sometimes find in the caves could also work. A few suggestions:
Those-remains/piles-of-meat-I-cannot-remember-the-item-name-of. Mysterious skull. Regular skull. Ancient Tablet. Strange Aluminum Tablet. Rusty blade (the one ghouls wield). Dulled Prometheum Crystal.
Outside of cave stuff:
Ectoplasm (especially useful since it's hard to stumble upon it outside of two non-repeatable missions for now), rosary.
Yeah, it should all work. Not sure about some cave stuff, I'd have to make sure it wouldn't break the plot (like making the game assume you've explored caves when in fact you haven't).
The main problem is just the lack of occult items (...)
I could make a few more simple items if required.
True. As mentioned I don't know what are the limitations of the events (what triggers them, what they can activate in turn) so I work kinda blind, using the events I've already seen as the basis. Apologies.
Like missions, events can be enabled by having or not having a particular research. Can be a combination of multiple researches (like "only fires if the player researched Laser Rifle and Sectoid Soldier, but not Cydonia or Bust"), but cannot be an "or" condition. So I'd have to make a new hidden research, which is automatically enabled when either of its two prerequisites is discovered, and make this hidden research a condition for the event to happen. Not a big deal, just kinda dirty.
Sure. Though if the event is to be prelude, it probably should be triggered a bit before invasion itself, just when first scout UFOs are being seen (which is usually, IIRC, third quarter of 1998?)
It's not like the aliens show up on 01.01.1999 with a huge army of conquest, so honestly, doesn't matter. But I personally think the text fits 1999 better than 1998.
- Knockout grenades give "correctional officer", likely due to their stunning nature but almost never "grenadier". In general grenadier progresses very slow because compared to number of times an agent shoots a gun per mission, grenades aren't used as often even if from player's perspective every mission finds some use of them.
Indeed they don't give you Grenadier, they're categorized as stun weapons. Grenadier is for kills, whereas these grenades normally don't kill.
- Currently one either has to force agents to use thrown weapons like throwing knives or shurikens or they'll have a very hard time improving throwing accuracy with stuff like grenades as well.
Why? Is there an issue with grenades?
- You can get laser weapons technology lead by researching alien laser rifle, but you cannot do the same with human laser tech (used by MiB), laser pistols, hydra laser and similar if you find them first - they don't lead to the laser tech at all and/or cannot be researched till later in the tech tree than alien laser rifle tends to be.
Yes, this is planned for the future. Simply WIP.
- Lost CQC struggle with a spider. While using pretty strong character. Spiders and other smaller creatures shouldn't even attempt such thing, not knowing what a gun is. I can understand them generally flailing at whatever is pointed at them and can also imagine CQC involving them jumping at an agent, but they still should have considerable disadvantage.
Movies disagree
- Exalt HQ raid is a battle mostly inside a modern, furnished building. It should get many more artificial lights, if only for the sake of defenders protecting it at night.
I dunno, maybe they're in combat mode and lights are off. Anyway, it's not easy to do anything about it.
- One can fly fighter jets (Arrow), make and fly Shyhawk and Skyrider before researching advanced flight training. An early game anti-UFO ship that's dependant on regular flight training would be good, possibly with Arrow pushed a bit further back and slightly upgraded into an actual tech (maybe even making it a choice - one either can unpack mothballed Arrow to get a single fully functional aircraft or research it to design something that will cost time and money themselves). At the same time Helix transformation tech depending on some advanced aircraft flying skill seems kinda weird.
Flying a fighter without training for piloting a fighter would be rather cheaty. A helicopter is one thing, but modern Earth fighter planes are a different matter.
- Many "normal" (as in not energy-blade ones, but tritanium and below, including regular combat ones) knives still unavailable for covert labor missions.
Well yeah, as designed... How would you carry a Rambo knife around a factory floor?
- Muton corpses allow one to extract synthmuscles but mutons captured alive who then turn useless (no new research topics to investigate) can only be sold. An analogy to bioextraction option for zombies, that allows processing of both corpses and alive subjects would be welcome.
OK, I'll note it down for consideration. Though unlike to zombies, Mutons are sentient creatures, so butchering them for parts feels rather... awkward.
- Gillman attack is very strong, while accurately employed as a mortar attack outside of whatever gillman sees. Stuff like cyber armor seems to not really protect against it despite resistances, allowing it to instakill troopers that can tank high-caliber sniper rounds and rarely even energy weapon like laser or plasma (one-shot kills against experienced, 60+ health agents in cyber armor are hardly rare). The ufopedia entry is suspicious in that it's supposed to be 90% accuracy aimed attack but there seems to be no accuracy penalty with distance, allowing gillman that accuracy even when shooting from 20 - 25 tiles away at a trooper hiding in a narrow alley between two buildings. The enemy's pretty alright but if their attack is more powerful than what majority of their compatriots can throw at the player - be they Dagon cultists or Deep Ones - shouldn't they attack in boundaries of what they see or be moved to more strategically important missions like outpost defense (especially since their ufopedia entry claims they're mostly employed for guard duty but I see them in every deep ones raid)?
Gillmen don't appear on Deep One raids.
- Also, I assume it's a matter of redesign and assets, but ufopedia portrays Gillmen as using guns.
Yes, and indeed they can do that, but there's little point, as their built-in attack is superior to almost anything. Still they sometimes pick stuff up and use it.
Gillman's electricity attack is pure bullshit in its damage output. I wouldnt mind if they were close ranged enemies that fry you with electricity but the fact that they can shoot across the map and do massive damage at the same time is abit too much for a somewhat early game enemy.
Vanilla lore! And one I can't see anything clearly wrong with.
One solution could be to add a padding type against electric damage like Webwear or Carapace plating against electricity, Carapace plate helped quite alot against sonic weapons in armoured vests and turns alot of deadly hits to just major injuries. So atleast with preparation you can do something with it.
Maybe, maybe!
Carapace and webwear come with their own problems, one of them being that they have to go into backpacks - which is not only unrealstic
That's a dirty word. It's not unrealistic, it's a simplification, meaning that you can't wear a backpack with this item (or at least a smaller one).
Solarius, are you planning to implement those items in a diffrent way, maybe with an additonal "armor slot" being added to armors (this could extend to having ceramic armor plate inserts or other stuff)?
Onj top of what Mrvex said, there's little space on it in the inventory screen, and we only have two such items now, but in the future it might happen.
