[XCE Only] Kabill's Tactical Armouries

[Valerian]

Do you have a git repository for this mod?

[kabill]

No, there's never been a need for it. If you're interested in helping get the mod up to scratch I can see about sorting something, though.

[Grimandevil]

so i'm trying to get that "strings - backup with weapon stats.xml" to work by myself, but failing miserably so far. and playing w/o those info really bothers me.

[kabill]

so i'm trying to get that "strings - backup with weapon stats.xml" to work by myself, but failing miserably so far. and playing w/o those info really bothers me.

I literally don't have time to look at it for another week but will try and do something it it afterwards.

As I suspect the issue is a character limit (I use lots of spaces for formatting), what are the bits of information that are most pertinent for you? The ammo row could be removed as this is clear in the UI anyway and I'm not sure the reload TU cost is very helpful either (seems improbable you will make an equipment choice based on reload speed and this should display in the GC UI so information is available where it is needed). Just removing those might do it. Probably what I will try first anyway.

[Grimandevil]

actually u've used less characters than in vanilla.

after some copy/pasting, i've got curious, why the game accepts default descriptions, but not yours. added image will demonstrate.

here is fixed file w/o text aligning: http://rghost.net/84SPj9mz7

>and here is where i've tried to align text for default game font: httр://rghost.net/892CkQcFw (havent tested it yet) -- apparently, excel ate up all the styles. heres fixed+aligned file: http://rghost.net/6fywBjGsJ

concerning the idea of not selling alien weapons, in vanilla u get paid for both: weapon and power cell; while in this mod u can only sell cells (you doubled the price, but only half of batteries are scavenged, i.e. for 10 guns in vanilla comes 20 power cells, 10 cells with mod). u should make gun parts a valid resource, or make em sell.

btw 12-kilo shield is a nonsence, as nobody would wield such weight on 1 hand for a continuous time.

Edited March 2, 2016 by Grimandevil

[kabill]

I'm not 100% sure what the issue was. Was the % character stopping it from being read properly as a string? Well, never mind. Thanks for finding the issue - I'm not sure I'd have figured that out.

Re: selling alien weapons - I was originally going to use weapon parts as a resource. However, this makes things very complicated. The easiest solution is for aliens to be given useless 'weapon fragment' items but this will be weird if you go to loot an alien as they will be carrying the weapon and the parts and in theory you could just loot the parts and not the weapon. Alternatively, it would be possible to have a manufacturing project which turns weapons into parts but that's adding a layer of faff for no good reason.

So the solution I went with instead was to use the alien power cells essentially as a representation of dismantled alien weapons. Lore-wise, it is assumed that all alien weapons are dismantled for parts by default but rather than keeping a separate tally the power cells are used as a catch-all. Since aliens don't actually use ammo clips, the number of power cells they carry doesn't change and I have scaled it so that larger weapons come with more power cells. It's not perfect, for sure, but I remain convinced it's the best way to handle things.

(In terms of money, it is worth noting that I increased - maybe doubled - the value of UFO components like Power Cores to offset the reduction in income from weapons. I'm not going to pretend I made any actual attempt to ensure the numbers come out about the same - I didn't - but in my playtests I've never found money any more problematic than in vanilla I don't think.)

re: Shields - research has told me that ballistic shields some in a range of sizes and weights. The lightest seem to come in around 7-8kg and higher protection variants come in significantly heavier (this link shows what appears to be a manually-carried ballistic shield weighing 20kg: http://www.eurokompozit.mk/product/en/ballistic-shields/). My hypothesis is that Xenonaut shields are going to be towards the higher-protection end (hello plasma guns!) and 1970s tech is probably less advanced than contemporary tech. In that context, 12kg is probably on the generous side.

All that notwithstanding, part of my reasoning was to set the weight at a level that felt reasonable considering that carrying a shield is also much more cumbersome than wearing the equivalent weight on your body. Again, even an 8kg shield is probably worth more than 12kg of encumbrance when you consider that the weight is not well distributed and the size of the shield will fast movement.

I also hate shields in the game. But that wasn't actually a factor.

(To answer your question about carrying - I'm pretty sure heavier ballistic shields are generally carried around in two hands and are only braced in one while stationary and in combat, if at all. With that in mind, I'm not sure Xenonauts depicts that kind of shield very well. But I find the idea of someone with a giant great shield dashing down a road at the same pace as someone carrying noting but a rifle and a few hand grenades significantly more obnoxious.)

[Grimandevil]

yea, the % char is used as prefix for special characters, and therefore alone was breaking the string.

as for your comments, its reasonable enough, thanks for answering.

[Dr. Somgosomgo]

Greetings to anyone interested in this reply.

I'm not a particularly active user as you may have noticed and that is because I usually only post bug reports whenever I happen to be playing the modded game.

I'd like to report the following: Game crashes when clicking on "Alloy Shield Upgrade" in engineering that becomes available for manufacture after researching advanced armour plating.

[kabill]

Greetings to anyone interested in this reply.

I'm not a particularly active user as you may have noticed and that is because I usually only post bug reports whenever I happen to be playing the modded game.

I'd like to report the following: Game crashes when clicking on "Alloy Shield Upgrade" in engineering that becomes available for manufacture after researching advanced armour plating.

This is fixed in the unreleased build of this mod. But thanks for reporting, and if you do find any other problems please pass them on.

[Dr. Somgosomgo]

Will do.

Good day to you.

[kubi]

This is fixed in the unreleased build of this mod. But thanks for reporting, and if you do find any other problems please pass them on.

Kabil, could you please tell us what was the problem? Unless you release soon...

--- edit ---

Found it

AlienAlloys should be Alienalloys in the manufacures.xml

--- edit 2 ---

There is a crash when the manufacturing finishes.

Edited March 6, 2016 by kubi

[kubi]

Another crash-like thing: when Advanced Plasma Weaponry research finishes, I can't close the xenopedia window. Close button blinks when mouse is over it, I can click on other entries to view them etc. But the window does not close.

Running on Linux & Wine not even ALT-F4 works.

[kabill]

Kabil, could you please tell us what was the problem? Unless you release soon...

--- edit ---

Found it

AlienAlloys should be Alienalloys in the manufacures.xml

--- edit 2 ---

There is a crash when the manufacturing finishes.

Hmm, maybe there were two issues then? I think the thing I fixed was a missing item in items.xml which is supposed to be produced when the project finishes. I don't think I changed the alien alloys thing.

Re: Advanced Plasma Weappnry - I will have a look. It is probably a typo somewhere in researches.xml - I've seen similar problems before.

Regarding a new upload - I might have time for it mid this week. I have a big deadline for Monday and might have to deal with some overspill of work. But hopefully.

[kabill]

Update(!)

I have just uploaded a new version of Tactical Armouries which can be downloaded as usual. The update should simply overwrite previous versions of the mod.

As well as uploading it here, I am also uploading it to Steam Workshop. While I suspect there are a few minor issues still to be resolved, I feel the mod is more or less done at this point.

Change log:

- (Balance): Vehicles now have a sight range which is short than regular soldiers (20 vs 24). This means that vehicles must rely on mobility and armour to scout alien units and resist their attacks, or rely on soldiers to sport for them. This change was implemented to make vehicles more distinct from soldiers, to encourage synergy between vehicles and soldiers and to offset the quite considerable strengths of vehicles over soldiers. (Thanks to lluank for this suggestion)

- (Balance): Added extra soldier slots on missions: Chinook now has 9 (from 8) spaces, Shriek has 12 (from 10) spaces, and the Valkyrie 15 spaces (from 12). In my experience, this mod was somewhat harder than vanilla and I've always liked the idea of having a few more soldiers on missions. Playing with the extra crew slots seems to work quite well. But feedback welcome.

- (Balance): Vehicles now take up 3 crew slots rather than 2. Shriek and Valkyrie can carry two vehicles rather than only one.

- (Bug Fix): Fix some crash/lock up issues with the tech tree (advanced plasma and alloy shield manufacture)

- (UI): Tool-tip weapon info now included (thanks to Grimandevil for sorting this)

[Dr. Somgosomgo]

Not sure if the issue is related to this mod, but I noticed that some weapons are not drawn on sebillians and harridans. Their stripes look like they have nothing in their hands. (I have yet to check the update).

In addition, I am not sure how I feel about having ~2000 cells in the storage.

Edited March 14, 2016 by Dr. Somgosomgo

[kabill]

Not sure if the issue is related to this mod, but I noticed that some weapons are not drawn on sebillians and harridans. Their stripes look like they have nothing in their hands. (I have yet to check the update).

In addition, I am not sure how I feel about having ~2000 cells in the storage.

Re: weapons - hmm, shouldn't be the case. Any idea what rank these aliens are or what weapons they should be using (probably not, but hard to pin down the issue without further data). I do know there are some animation issues, mind (e.g. burst fire on the assault plasma) which I had forgotten to track down and fix.

re: cells - is this at end game? The balance for cells is pretty rough currently and I'm not honestly sure they do their job very well (looking for a trade-off between cash and weapon manufacturing but I don't think it works). Do you think increasing power cell costs for weapons is warranted?

[digital wisp]

Hello kabill.

I am quite new to Xenonauts modding and have one question - if you update your mod while I'm doing my playthrough, will I be able to seamlessly integrate the new version and all its changes into the game?

[Dr. Somgosomgo]

Re: weapons - Any idea what rank these aliens are or what weapons they should be using

re: cells - is this at end game? Do you think increasing power cell costs for weapons is warranted?

re: Weapons - The aliens' ranks range between soldier and officer. The invisible weapon so far appears to be the plasma shotgun on sebillians and (probably) the precision plasma on harridans. I'm fairly sure I've seen other types not showing but that is what I have for now.

re: Cells - Currently it is February 1980, and the biggest UFOs I get are cruisers (I'm playing on veteran if that is relevant). IMO with such abundance of cells, it is warranted. By the way, selling most of them at the moment can afford me a command centre.

[Dr. Somgosomgo]

In addition, after installing the latest build, I can't use the geoscape UI in its entirety. Most importantly I cannot select UFOs, and base icons (construction, research, engineering and etc.). Disabling Skitso's oppressive UI didn't help. The clickable stuff doesn't even highlight on hover.

Edited March 15, 2016 by Dr. Somgosomgo

[kabill]

Hello kabill.

I am quite new to Xenonauts modding and have one question - if you update your mod while I'm doing my playthrough, will I be able to seamlessly integrate the new version and all its changes into the game?

At this stage I am not likely to add anything other than bug fixes, so it should be pretty safe. I can't say with absolute certainty but I'm pretty confident you shouldn't have problems.

In addition, after installing the latest build, I can't use the geoscape UI in its entirety. Most importantly I cannot select UFOs, and base icons (construction, research, engineering and etc.). Disabling Skitso's oppressive UI didn't help. The clickable stuff doesn't even highlight on hover.

I have literally no idea why that might be happening. Is this an existing save or a new game? And how did you install the mod?

Hmm, actually, that might be an issue with XCE - I had a similar issue a month or two back. Try loading a game in ground combat then aborting the mission, then load your actual game. I'm not sure how you might fix it if you don't have a ground combat save.

[meerkatking]

Hey Kabill, thanks for taking the time to put this mod together. I really appreciate the work you've done, it really shows in the final product. Just one question, do you know if this mod is compatible with mods such as the german or soviet ballistic wepaons pack?

[Dr. Somgosomgo]

Hmm, actually, that might be an issue with XCE - I had a similar issue a month or two back. Try loading a game in ground combat then aborting the mission, then load your actual game. I'm not sure how you might fix it if you don't have a ground combat save.

It worked.

[kabill]

Hey Kabill, thanks for taking the time to put this mod together. I really appreciate the work you've done, it really shows in the final product. Just one question, do you know if this mod is compatible with mods such as the german or soviet ballistic wepaons pack?

I don't actually know but I very much doubt it.

It worked.

Good to know and glad I don't have a serious bug to track down!

[Grimandevil]

In addition, after installing the latest build, I can't use the geoscape UI in its entirety. Most importantly I cannot select UFOs, and base icons (construction, research, engineering and etc.). Disabling Skitso's oppressive UI didn't help. The clickable stuff doesn't even highlight on hover.

Hmm, actually, that might be an issue with XCE - I had a similar issue a month or two back. Try loading a game in ground combat then aborting the mission, then load your actual game. I'm not sure how you might fix it if you don't have a ground combat save.

I had the same. changing some (non-crucial)mod load order may help. It only happens on the first load of the mod.

[Dr. Somgosomgo]

Good time of day Kabill.

Once again I suspect that there is a bug.

During base defence, and only there (so far), Xenonauts equipped with Predator armour and its weapons cannot fire at all because the volley costs more than 100% of all their TUs.

My modlist.

Providing savefiles should you find them relevant.

Pre-attack savefile

Base attack start

Edited March 19, 2016 by Dr. Somgosomgo