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X-DIVISION New Mod, New Ideas, New Disscussions


drages

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Xenoauts

X-DIVISION

Future of XNT

357420e4-29bb-4abd-979a-aa72008341f8_zpsfe14e001.jpg

X-Division.. a division who fight against galaxy with cold war weapons.. omg...

Hi ppl.. After hours of coding, photoshoping, searching, reading, asking.. i manage to handle some simple things.. I am working on XNT 6.0 after i handle the ropes from TacticalDragon.. i hope he returns... atleast he and his team left us a realy good example how a mod can make a difference at this game..

I am a very old gamer and a navy officer, so i got many ideas about a X-Com game for years.. Now its time to start to do it thx to Chris and all Goldenhawk..

XNT is very good mod which contains very good examples.. i am decoding it to code.. I like most of the ideas behind it. So with impruving it, i will add my ideas.. but i will add so many things to it, i wanted to name it different.. IF i can finish this mod, it will be nearly totally new mod over XNT...

So what do i got in my mind?

1. We need quality over quantity... Having 100 more weapon doesnt make this game good.. You need to have a reason to use that weapons.. You got 10 soldier out there.. Good 20 weapon is what you need.. So i will reorder all new weapons at XNT, i will give them a meaningfull tier category..

If you think this game has 4 tiers of weapons, i will try to make 1 energy and 1 ballistic weapon series per tier and incenerate and chemical weapons between them.. Game has nearly non chemical weapons and just explosions as incenerate damage.. This will change.. you will need to have all 4 damage weapons to overcome supreme enemy..

2. Enemies.. At vanilla we got many enemy types but they have no armor and they only have "plasma" as energy weapons with 2 bomb types.. I dont wanna give spoilers but they are different enemies from different worlds.. so they need to have unique weapons, armors and abilities.. So all enemies should have damage types and resistances to specific damage types. XNT started this but there is a long way to go..

So for example, Androns will be like terminators.. high resistance against ballistic-incenerate, vulnerable to energy and normal to chemical.. their weapon will be heavy cannons and miniguns with high dmg but low accuricy... their helpers harridans will have high tech neutron rifle and snipers.. their armor will be low against bullets and explosives but they will resist energy mostly..

3. Special Forces to enemies.. We are against an army and aliens got an army.. but we fight as a special force so they got their owns.. I will add assasins and saboteurs to enemy ranks.. they will be more black colored and top tear weapon/armor/ai with their own ufos.. when u see them, u will think of escaping, mostly at early times..

4. Armors... So enemy and us will have many more weapons with different styles and damage types.. we will manufacture new armors to our needs.. thx to kabills armors..

5. Manufacturing.. Xeunauts erased most of micromanaging like infinity armo, total researchs of weapon tiers.. first i liked that but after then i missed it.. I want to have more complex manufacture web.. I wanted to use the loots i have.. Now you only research or autosell them.. u dont care what droped from that last hard fight..

So i will add rewerse enginering and you will try to get right weapons and right parts to create your own weapons/planes/ammos... I dont want to make it overcomplex so i still try to find a balanced way...

6. Research.. ofcourse with tons of new things u need to have enough time to reseach them.. You would need pass something but u can miss a better opportunity.. the game will be slower and techs will be faster..

7. Air fight.. aircrafts will have purposes.. heavy missile carriers and dog fighters.. there will be more dog fights and wont be alone ufos so much..

I will post the progress with time.. i am waiting your ideas.. I got very long way.. I am still noob at AI and ufo coding.. but with helps and answers of nice ppl like kabill and max, i can handle them i hope..

I am accepting all kind of help, mostly about Xeunopedia.. becouse as u see my english is not well..

Cyu soon!

Edited by drages
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I am glad to see that someone is willing to pick up and continue this project (mod). Word of advice though.If I am you,I would re-build XNT from scratch,although I would keep core rules and start from there.Thing is that mod was in constant development and things were just kept piling up without much sense and as just as we started working on sorting things out,couple of disasters happened,real life ..... and team pretty much is broken now,leaving behind a lot of content unfinished or not fully implemented, not to mention that dozen of ideas dropped in rush to release v6,which was basically an attempt towards new approach but it just didn't hold a water.That said you should pay attention to two things.

First don't rush thing with new aliens and it wouldn't hurt to remove creepers all together and add them back when you are ready to give them more purpose and unique role.They are cool and all but they are also the major problem with XNT:ID.A lot of complains were about being OP opponents but there were a lot complaints about lore and how they don't fit.Also rigging of models is not finished,they contain like dozen of problems (like eggs getting invisible).

Second try to recruit artist.Artist will be crucial if you want to brief life into this mod and you should also get talented writer because that matters to people.Don't rush with features,try to implement as few as possible per update but they should be very detailed and they should keep people interesting until you get others implemented.

Oh one more thing,try to re-design new alien weapons from XNT and also be careful with micromanagement.Well that's all I have to say and good luck.

Edit:Oh and by the way there is a Github branch of this mod but it's abonded for quite some time and version of mod is v5-v5.1 experimental.

Edited by Sentelin
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Man, I so want to help with this... once I finish with my finals (a few days before christmas) you'll have an extra pair of doubtfuly able hands with you!

It seems like an interesting project and as it looks like a major overhaul, there's room for some ideas I had.

I'm a decent theorycrafter (and I've worked for a while as a game tester), so I'm decent at finding unbalancing problems and bugs. Besides that, I've always wanted to learn coding, and it looks like this is a great game to start with.

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I am glad to see that someone is willing to pick up and continue this project (mod). Word of advice though.If I am you,I would re-build XNT from scratch,although I would keep core rules and start from there.Thing is that mod was in constant development and things were just kept piling up without much sense and as just as we started working on sorting things out,couple of disasters happened,real life ..... and team pretty much is broken now,leaving behind a lot of content unfinished or not fully implemented, not to mention that dozen of ideas dropped in rush to release v6,which was basically an attempt towards new approach but it just didn't hold a water.That said you should pay attention to two things.

First don't rush thing with new aliens and it wouldn't hurt to remove creepers all together and add them back when you are ready to give them more purpose and unique role.They are cool and all but they are also the major problem with XNT:ID.A lot of complains were about being OP opponents but there were a lot complaints about lore and how they don't fit.Also rigging of models is not finished,they contain like dozen of problems (like eggs getting invisible).

Second try to recruit artist.Artist will be crucial if you want to brief life into this mod and you should also get talented writer because that matters to people.Don't rush with features,try to implement as few as possible per update but they should be very detailed and they should keep people interesting until you get others implemented.

Oh one more thing,try to re-design new alien weapons from XNT and also be careful with micromanagement.Well that's all I have to say and good luck.

Edit:Oh and by the way there is a Github branch of this mod but it's abonded for quite some time and version of mod is v5-v5.1 experimental.

Thank u sentelin.. but i wish modders like u to continiue modding..

I am good at editing.. I edit codes,pictures,sprites.. So i decode XNT and other good mods to create mine.. Now i am going over XNT as an example.. As i said when this mod finished it will be whole new..

1. Creepers as i named them xenomorphs.. i think same as first, like they dont fit the game but as i play 5.3, i feel the tension from them becouse they were realy deadly.. then i start to like them.. i dont know who modelled them.. i wish i know and talk about the unfinished little parts.. and i will give them a lore.. i already done their pedia pages just need a story telling good english writers and thx to firends here i think i will get the help i need..

2. Artists are hardest to find.. i try to fill that part with photoshop eiting and crazy searching at internet.. i probably checked every weapon design and posible pedia pictures at net..

3. I already revised all the alien weaponary and add nearly 20-25 new alien weapons to game with totally new GUI pictures, mostly new bullet projectiles/plummers, cannons, miniguns, snipers... new alien weapon sprites (additional black and white versions of the red plasmas).. they will have all pedia infos.. micromanagement yeah as i said, i am still thinking about it and open all ideas..

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Man, I so want to help with this... once I finish with my finals (a few days before christmas) you'll have an extra pair of doubtfuly able hands with you!

It seems like an interesting project and as it looks like a major overhaul, there's room for some ideas I had.

I'm a decent theorycrafter (and I've worked for a while as a game tester), so I'm decent at finding unbalancing problems and bugs. Besides that, I've always wanted to learn coding, and it looks like this is a great game to start with.

Thank you Gurbo.. i hope u get good results.. i will need good testers to create the balance with so many additions.. and a coder will buy me tons of time to me handle other things..

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Good things about XNT:

1. The battles are much more violent with lots of bullets and explosions, and armor is much stronger, which means your troops can get into shoot-outs with the aliens without getting one shotted usually. It's fun.

2. The alien AI seems to be a lot smarter.

3. I like the new enemies, especially the xenomorphs, I don't think they're overpowered, although the Omega and the other big ones should be delayed until the later game.

4. The new tech is very cool, particularly napalm grenades.

Bad things about XNT:

1. Writing of Xenopedia very bad! :)

2. A lot of the new tech has no pictures. A lot of the new guns have no stats telling what they do and how they're different. It would be neat to give each xenomorph its own lab dissection picture.

3. New guns should not replace lasers, but be a stepping stone towards them. Lasers should be better and required. Maybe increase the armor of later enemies to make lasers required, or make the later enemies resist ballistic. Also maybe instead of requiring the manufacture of new guns just replace the first guns with the new ones automatically as they're discovered. Also don't make more than one new ballistic gun, just replace the pistol with a new pistol, the rifle with a new rifle, the sniper with a new sniper etc no need for two new ballistic shotguns, three new ballistic pistols...

4. Stats of xcom soldiers are weird. TUs have no upper limit? Strenght is capped at 82? Not sure...

Overall though I like XNT more than vanilla and hope it gets polished, I can help with editing xenopedia

Edited by Argh
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To Argh:

1. Bad things answers: Not bad but so much missing..

2. Yep.. it will be added!

3. Replacing weaponary is good idea if they just only better.. lasers are the main energy guns and the only tech humans owned energy tech branch..

4. Its more complicated.. there is a cap for total skill point of ur soldier.. not str or acc alone.. so if your soldier became superman he cant get any to any skill.. str comes from armors anyway..

I will ask your help soon dont worry.. just i want to finish some steps i try to do...

---------------------------------

PROGRESS:

29 Extra Enemy weapon finished with fully new pictures,with %95 new projectiles and with mostly new GC sprites.. i will add new sounds to everyone soon.. with all kind of damage types.. just didnt coded to give them to aliens..

4 Chemical Weapon - 2 Chemical Granade - 1 Chemical High Explosive finished with unique pictures, green explosion and smoke effects.. for us..

5 Electron Stun Based Stun/EMP weapon - 3 Electron EMP based Stun/EMP Weapon finished for us..

------

NEXT STEP:

-Making Sound additing for new Alien weapons..

-Giving them to proper aliens

-Handling all the enemies resistances from start, so they will got weak and strong points..and finishing first part of Before the Fall Module for XNT.. then i will give it to public for balance tests..

-Needle Weapon named high AP bullet using ballistic human weapons..

-Unique weapons coding for humans.. to get from tons of enemy weapon researchs

-New Armor and Shields design when the balancing continiues..

-Designing of new research and manifacture web.. omg..

------

Some examples from your new nightmares..:

AlienPhaserPistol3.jpg

AlienPulseSniper.jpg

AlienSalarianRifle.jpg

AlienMatergyRifle.jpg

AlienPhaserPistol3.jpg

AlienPulseSniper.jpg

AlienSalarianRifle.jpg

AlienMatergyRifle.jpg

AlienPhaserPistol3.jpg.26db2c6f6176894d8

AlienPulseSniper.jpg.52e809588cbb21020a0

AlienSalarianRifle.jpg.5a0ea8ce3676cffa4

AlienMatergyRifle.jpg.42a0892bc0c3c4ed19

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I like your ideas. I like new weapons.

And the third (white one) and first is for special alien forces? Like high-aristocratic aliens?

This guns is looking so higher costly and fashioner, only high-elfs can afford this =)

Thx. They are ordinary weapons.. special forces will have more dark and special weapons.. I didn't put here any of it.. I don't want to spoil everything :)

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Thx TD, its nice to hear that from u..

Can u give me an advise about how to make an enemy weapon at late game?

Desing a high tier weapons is adifficult task, you need to focus in other stats than Damage.

For example, in XNT the Dread Tactical Laser Cannon is a good template. This is a Tier2+ weapon with very high damage value, any weapon with damage higher than 100 is difficult to balance, because the random factor is higher too. This weapon can deal 60 to 140 damage, enough to tear apart the most hard alien armora or resilent beast. The balancing factor of Dread Cannon is the low fire rate, high TU comsuption, long range and high accuracy.

This weapon is safe, but costly and depend too much of the map. You can work with the amount of shots per turn, cost, ammunition, range.... the best way is make a Calculation sheet with "Nominal damage per turn", "Effective Range", "Cost", etc....

Try to build a weapon point system (XNT has one), a little example with the same weapon:

Dread Tactical Laser Cannon

Long Range 15pts

100 Nominal damage 4pts

High Accuracy 15pts

Low Ammo 3pts

High cost 3pts

Heavy 3pts

2Handed 3pts

Total points 46

Compared to Plasma Rifle that has 56 points.

I hope that help.

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I thought about that.. taking a weapon with all aspects.. I want to give all weapons branch.. the point system is very good idea. . Thx for that.. I need to make a point chart first.. I will do it to aliens too.

Not only weapons.. different gas types.. enemies will be more deadly armed and smoke and flash grenades will be very important.. alive aliens will be a necessary thing for many research so stun guns bombs and even injectors will be an important branch..

I am thinking about changing the damage limits more shorter.. rather then 50 to 150 dmg I can use 80 to 120 so I can control the balance easier..

Enemies will have energy shields.. so u will want to use shields more too.. more advance ones.. rechargeable ones.. there will be a hell of a battleground :)

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Changing the randome value of damage to 20% makes the game preditable and quiet pasive against armors. I calculate that for this game the randome value need to float around 38% to 50% to make less predictable and fun.

I dont recomend change the core rules of XNT, try to follow examples of other weapons and make new ones.

Suggestions:

1. Is not completly logic make weapons researches from living aliens, except harridans and armored aliens. You can trigger the research with the item itself or list of items.

2. To test the lock feature try "lockresearch" command in researches.xml. the idea is to put a symbol and description on xenophedia that say "DANGER if you choose this path Hellgate project will be blocked"

3. To build different weapons try to stay away from the common build. For example, alien heavy weapon that shot 50 heavy powered plasma bolts with only 1 ammo, medium range, 80 damage per bolt, high TU comsuption and really high recoil. Sounds fun for me :)

4. I had test this some time ago... make NON manufacturable alien weapons. You recover the weapon in combat, you research it and learn how to use it but you can manufacture it. This give a sense of... taste to the game, reduce micromanagment and makes eveey alien special weapon UNIQUE.

You have a lot work to do....

:) energy fields sounds great!

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- Okkay i will try to not change the values for now.. there is a long way to do it anyway..

1- I got the logic.. Just like EU 2012.. but a bit different.. if you cant touch an enemy weapon without the alien, its against capturing the tech.. so u need to have the alien to search the weapon.. even more..

The stun mechanism is needed only 3-4 times in whole game.. I dont like this.. i want a reason to capture them alive!!

2- First i need to design the research branches and web.. then i will look for locks.. i prefer Sots style research.. having a random chance to get the next research more then one way rather then locking it complatly..

3- My weapons wont be common its for sure :)

4- This was in my mind.. non manufacturable weapons.. but i couldnt find an idea to limit it.. i mean, u get an item weapon, u need to search it and then u need to manufacture the same weapon (another weapon coded as same, just without the "isAlien=1").. ok with that but how will i make it unique.. i can manufacture as much as i get that weapon from aliens...

Energy fields are always cool :P

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I want to throw in a couple of ideas before I'm able to jump in and help:

I was already thinking about the randomness of damage, 25-30% instead of 50 seems like a good compromise to be able to put more powerful weapons. Keeping the standard 50% value but messing with armor resistance to certain types of damage and tweaking penetration could work too.

My pet project that I was eager to show you in case you want to add it was a direct upgrade to starting ballistics, with all the parts exposed to the ingnition made of alien alloys, and FAAJ (Full alien alloy jacket) bullets propelled by a minimal allenium explosion (the reason why the parts had to be reinforced). This would give them insane penetration, basically ignoring most forms of armor, while almost keeping the basic bullets damage.

What I was working in was to be able to load different kinds of ammo, especially small propelled ElectroShock projectiles, that suffer severely in range and kinetic energy, and are barely able to break a window, but provide a non-lethat option meant for capture. My idea was to modify them to the point where ES ammo in a sniper rifle get the rangeof an assault rifle or so, and the same kind of reduction for other weapons except maybe pistols.

Other ammos could be Small Explosive (mainly for the guns that have burst fire), for supression, etc.

No need to say that it's hard to place the ammo, but I've had a nice idea to do it and as soon as I get free from my remaining classes I'll give it a try.

To keep the dart gun useful if you decide on the ES bullets, maybe change it to drain 100% TUs from the target and give it decent accuracy, as a gas powered dart gun has barely any recoil.

Another one is a great missed opportunity on the OG, ES rockets: Less AoE than gas, much more powerful stunning power and doesn't damage props.

P.S.: Once it's done it would be nice to put all this(at least the changes to humans) on a separated wiki, to help players decide their strategy.

P.S.2: If you're willing to take the challenge, I have great ideas for an extra 2 end-game armor suits.

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Gurbo.. your ideas are nice and i already done stun weapons like u said.. i dont wanna give more spoils.. ES is much more logical rather then darts.. Darts cant penetrate armor, shields... and if they cant pass that defences they should be useless.. ES can stop by armor/shield but they will give damage at least..

I am sure i got u right but you talk about more then 1 ammo type for a weapon i guess... it would be very nice if it was easy as old xcoms.. the game made many things easier and logical more then xcom but this ammo types sadly it fails... U can do that but u need put the magazines to rocket section.. so for every weapon you need to choose the ammo u need from tons of other ammos.. Not looking good..

I will still make it but for 2-3 weapons only..

------------------------------

I realy confused with so many weapons i created... its hard to do it alone..

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Besides, ES works on androns ;)

The problem as I see it is that the HUD is unable to give multiple choices of ammo for the same gun, with the exception of rocket launcher that has it's dedicated ammo window, but programming a gun to take different kinds of ammo is easy.

One of the workarounds I thought of is to make the ammo clips usable by all of the weapons of the same kind, like seen on laser, plasma and mag, but using those slots to put the different varieties of ammo that work on every gun on the tier.

I.E.: Pistol has the tranq dart ammo next to it, shotgun, rifle and machinegun have the explosive ones and sniper has the FAAJ ammo, but all the guns can use any of those ammos.

EDIT: I'll add my endgame armor ideas here too

Blinker: Able to teleport, need to research Predator and a living Wraith Elite, TP works exactly as Wraiths, it consumes 100% TUs. A bit heavier than Wolf armor. 360º vision.

Tyrant: When researching the aliens, your lead scientist said that they communicate by radio signals, and in a controlled lab environment they were able to make them commit suicide. It's impossible to take that into the battlefield, but the Tyrant provides the next best thing: it scrambles the communication signals of the alien pawns, suppressing any nearby AL. Developed after Predator and Quantum Cryptology Center. Weighs the same as Wolf Armor. 180º vision.

Both of these would provide less armor than predator, but more than sentinel, as they don't need to control the weight to avoid overloading the antigravity engine.

The defense would go Predator>Tyrant>Blinker>Sentinel.

Any thoughts?

Edited by Gurbo
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I used elektrical charges to stun and emp.. some more stun, others more EMP..

You cant choose which ammo will be shown near weapon at UI.. the ammo used by that weapon will be together at weapon UI.. If u make more then one ammo, u only see the weapon at weapon UI and ammos at ROCKETS.. but i didnt try it by myself..

Teleportation cant be used by us as i know.. its an alien ability, can be coded at aiprop like regeneration.. there is no place for human..

I didnt understand what Tyrant does.. Armors doesnt have special abilities.. just vision angle, stat inc-dec and resistances..

So u can only classify armors with stat differences and resistances..

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Maybe not so special, but predator lets you go trough walls and gives 100 strenght, and Sentinel has flight.

I alwas saw them as making your soldiers into Harridans and Androns, so why not a fear-like aura and teleport to simulate Psionics and Wraiths? It might be hard to code, but meh... I guess it's worth a try if you plan on making the game harder.

On the multi ammo subject: Have you tried putting the kind of ammo you want shown next to the gun in the HUD as the first one in the ammo list for the gun?

Clarification on the Tyrant: Aliens communicate pseudo-telepathically via radio waves, Tyrant armor carries a radio emitter that basically interrupts every other signal, making the almost mindless and completely obedient to their superior's orders cannon fodder wonder wth to do next (effectively supressing them).

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Maybe not so special, but predator lets you go trough walls and gives 100 strenght, and Sentinel has flight.

I alwas saw them as making your soldiers into Harridans and Androns, so why not a fear-like aura and teleport to simulate Psionics and Wraiths? It might be hard to code, but meh... I guess it's worth a try if you plan on making the game harder.

On the multi ammo subject: Have you tried putting the kind of ammo you want shown next to the gun in the HUD as the first one in the ammo list for the gun?

Clarification on the Tyrant: Aliens communicate pseudo-telepathically via radio waves, Tyrant armor carries a radio emitter that basically interrupts every other signal, making the almost mindless and completely obedient to their superior's orders cannon fodder wonder wth to do next (effectively supressing them).

the aliens should be terrified to begin with! they get shot out of the sky and land on a strange planet with a toxic atmosphere (over time to to hyperoxia) and now a bunch of weird looking things are attacking them. put yourself in their shoes how would you react? the non-combatants should try to flee and be crappy shots (more than already) and the soldiers, who, presumably, have dealt with this sort of situation before should be shaken up due to the impact and environment (especially true for the Ceseans) but still able to fight effectively.

Edited by LORDPrometheus
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