[WIP]Xenonauts Assault Vehicles Expansion Pack

Well, I'm not sure where to go with this, starting from 2D Texturing to 3D Modelling, I'm quite happy that I've managed to get started with modding the difficult. It's a time sink no doubt, more fustrating than creating a 2D image of a weapon, but I guess I'd still liked Xenonauts, Clearly scripting for me is like finding a stalk of hay in a stack full of needles, so I'd thought I'd have a shot at ambitiousness in my old passion, 3D modelling.

Note that this is a Work IN Progress, but the Rhino is nearing completion to be the first release, followed by the Dragoon and X-Tank.

W.I.P FEATURES:
- 3 Tanks that would suit your different expectations of a well prepared Anti-Alien Invasion squads. The M-50 Dragoon Assault Tank, the VH-4 Rhino SPG, and THE upcoming X-Tank project that can be the competitor to the Hyperion

- Planned roles and tweaked stats
- Hunter: Speedster
- Dragoon: Sniper Menace
- Scimitar: Flabby Well-round
- Rhino: Slow, Tough Guy
- Hyperion: King of Tanks
- X-Tank: ???

M-50 Dragoon Assault Tank

VH-4 Rhino SPG

Ground Combat Screenshot:

Of course, credit for making these also goes to our fellow modders in the community:
SkaianDestiny: Xenopedia Log Entry for the Chief Weapons Officer
Kabill:Scripting and Troubleshooting

Alright people, if there is any nitpick or feedback you want to talk about, feel free to reply here. Also, I might need some ideas for the incoming third tank, which is a direct reflection to the Hyperion, and will be vastly different to it's roles as an end-tech tank.

Release will be nearing soon as long as I get all the things piled up first, and modders will be able to use this resource once it's released(with my permission of course).
And this vehicular expansion pack will be part of a total conversion that I'm planning to create in the future.

Stay tuned for more updates.

Edited August 28, 2014 by LordJulian

I'll just need someone to actually script this in, since you cannot be both a texture artist and understand basic coding in this world. Apparently those two don't mix in my life.

This would be absurdly easy. I'm quite happy to do it (if no one else wants to; I've plenty of modding stuff to keep me busy!)

Something you might not have realised yet, but you'll need images for the vehicle in the dropship arrangement screen. If you look in the 'vehicles' folder you'll see what I mean.

Yep, I knew that. It's rather simple, just get the 3D model from top view and 2d-fy it.

Would be appreciated to. I think my brain got fried at my latest attempt to look at black and white notepads. You might find this absurdly easy. I find that adding manufacturing, research, and other xml files whatnot is like disarming a bomb with a wild bear ravaging your innards.

I think i should just stick to texturing.... maybe.

When making a sprite sheet for the tank, I believe you'd only need 1 sprite. The spritesheets are extensive, but I don't think 11 sprites of the vehicle in one direction doing nothing is really necessary. Aaron very kindly put up the Blender template he used so that should be your go-to for setting up the right angles.

EDIT: kabill, did you ever have any problems with setting up the drop-ship boarding template? I find that when I do a boarding template that isn't one of the three established vehicles, it'll put it in, but if you click on it, it crashes the game.

Edited August 22, 2014 by Max_Caine

When making a sprite sheet for the tank, I believe you'd only need 1 sprite. The spritesheets are extensive, but I don't think 11 sprites of the vehicle in one direction doing nothing is really necessary. Aaron very kindly put up the Blender template he used so that should be your go-to for setting up the right angles.

Sweet. I'll look into it tmr, but for now I need to catch some zzzs.

Thanks for the link.

Would be appreciated to. I think my brain got fried at my latest attempt to look at black and white notepads. You might find this absurdly easy. I find that adding manufacturing, research, and other xml files whatnot is like disarming a bomb with a wild bear ravaging your innards.

Sorry, I didn't mean that in a "seriously, you can't do this?" way but a "since I know what I'd be doing this is something I would find very easy and wouldn't take me any time".

In fact, if you post up the stats you want it to have I'll get the files uploaded right away.

Sorry, I didn't mean that in a "seriously, you can't do this?" way but a "since I know what I'd be doing this is something I would find very easy and wouldn't take me any time".

In fact, if you post up the stats you want it to have I'll get the files uploaded right away.

Eh, It wasn't implied to you, it's my personality disorder that I tend to speak with distorted humour that falls flat, sometimes I like to describe the things that came out of my crazed mind, don't need to apologize.

Well, I havent been playing Xenonauts for quite some time...... so I'll just list the general idea.

Advantages

- High Armour, able to withstand twice the hits than the Scimitar, well armoured all round

- High offensive firepower, think of it like a rocket launcher, dmg should be between alenium & plasma, blast radius, 2 tiles bigger than rocket launcher

- Super Long Range, able to fire to the end of map if possible

It has a custom alenium artillery gun btw.

Disadvantages

- Poor Mobility, probably 50-60?

- Mediocre Accuracy. Main gun isnt outstandingly accurate, there might be a few miss shots here and there, but not too terrible

- Long load time, 90% for snap shot to fire cannon

- Poor sight range, needs troops to spot enemy

- Somewhat expansive to build, takes up alot of alloys and money

Just tweak it if you deemed it necessary to balance it to be viable to build it mid-game. Nosorog research is after Scimitar research

It has a custom alenium artillery gun btw.

Inspired by a previous conversation with Max: what about an arcing trajectory? I.e. like a grenade? Seems like it might fit.

Yeah, a custom grenade type would really suit this.

Maybe to retain relevancy in the late game, you could have it be able to mount a singularity cannon like the scrapped Archangel.

Also fantastic job on the model! One thing: you might want to shrink the vehicle in the xenopedia image to better fit the size of the other vehicles.

Edited August 22, 2014 by skaianDestiny

kabill, wait. Looking at the picture again it clearly can't fire shells on a parabolic arc. There's very little gun depression or elevation, and artillery absolutely needs a lot more elevation than it can give. That being said, alenium-powered shells could fire over very long distances, it just has to do direct fire.

Right, I think I have all this sorted. I apparently lied before when I said it was absurdly easy - there was slightly more work than I was thinking - but it's done now.

Generally, I've set things so that it's between the scimitar and hyperion in terms of stats and cost. It's manufacturing time and research time is right in the middle, and it uses the Alloy Hardening tech as its prerequisite (while Hyperion uses anti-gravity as well).

For the stats, I've given it the same armour as the Hyperion (90 kinetic and energy and 40 incendiary) and given it a higher than usual hitpoint total (140). This makes it significantly more durable than any other vehicle in the game, but should hopefully not be so tough as to be indestructible.

It's sight range has been set to 8, which is just under half of a normal soldier's. It also has 50 TUs and a 90% shot, meaning that it has basically no ability to move and fire but can rotate on the spot to take a shot. One thing it will retain, however, is the long vehicle head-lights which can't be set for individual vehicles.

I've currently set it up to use a grenade-like weapon, but I'm not sure whether I like it as a result of a few issues. Firstly, it doesn't display the ammunition count for the weapon. Secondly, it displays the hit-chance as always 0%, which I think is because grenades use STR for accuracy and vehicles don't have any STR. I've not been able to tell how much of a difference this makes in practice, though: the attacks still feel fairly accurate and certainly the scatter isn't anything unreasonable. Thirdly, the attack itself has a delay on playing the explosion animation (like other grenades), which means it looks odd with a rocket sprite. Therefore, for the grenade idea to work, it would be necessary to make the weapon actually a grenade/bomb launcher I think so it doesn't look odd.

So the grenade launcher idea works, but it's not perfect. It would be really easy to change it to a regular rocket launcher, though, if you'd prefer. I wanted to do it this way so I could see if it works, as much as anything.

In terms of completing the mod, it's up to you how you want to proceed. I've currently used images for the scimitar as placeholders for all the missing artwork, so basically all that needs to happen is for the new images to replace the placeholders*. So if you want, I can send you the files and you can finish up yourself. Or you can send me the images when you're done and I'll add them in and testing things, and once everything's straightened up I'll send the finished package back for you to upload for distribution.

*This does mean that the animation spectres might not be set up properly. I think I've done all the necessary changes to the files, but I can't tell since if it was broken, it would be referencing the same images anyway.

EDIT: @Max: Yeah, that did briefly cross my mind (although looking back it's actually worse than I thought - I seemed to remember it having some vertical space for manouevre). With that, and the other issues with the grenade launcher idea, it might be better just to make it a regular rocket. Which is a shame, because it would have made the vehicle a little extra special. But nevermind. There'll be other opportunities, I'm sure!

Edited August 22, 2014 by kabill

Did you have any problems with the dropship boarding pictures? I can never get them to work properly - they always crash if I try to move them in the dropship.

No, works fine for me. (Just went back to check just to be sure). Only thing I can think of that might cause that is not setting the weapon prefixes correctly? Otherwise, I'd have thought you'd have just gotten a crash as soon as you load up the screen rather than specifically when you try and move it around.

An additional tip for the xenopedia entry, the light source seems to come from directly above the vehicle. There also is no outline.

I'm not really that keen on critiquing other peoples' writing, but the one thing I will say about it is that the Chief Weapons Officer doesn't feel to me a distinct character in comparison to the Chief Scientist. When I wrote in the voice of the Operations Officer for the Ufo Mission Analysis, I took care to use phrases, slang and wording to mould the character. The Ops Officer referred to aliens as ETs. He used a more familiar style with the epyonmous commander, spouted military jargon, used the collective "we" rather than the Chief Scientists "I", discussed other departments without immediatly spitting on them and recounted solider stories, wheras the Chief Scientist was aloof, concending and didn't get on with anyone. However you want to mould the CWO is your choice, but if you want the CWO to be a unique voice, then give him/her that voice.

Ok, processing feedback......

Well, yes, there are slight..... errors on my part here for revelancy.

@kabill @Max_Caine

I was designing the artillery gun similar to the Soviet SU-76 and ISU-152 tanks though, but yes. I've probably need to redesign the turret to allow the turret to have a bigger firing arc, although I was more implying the 'artillery' gun as a large caliber cannon.

I wasn't thinking of it to function like a grenade launcher actually. However, if this tank is to be considered artillery, then wot I think of the concept would be that there is no grenade throwing sprite from firing the cannon, and there should be a slight delay before the explosion occurs.

The turret is tweakable. I can easily change it up to fit more suitable variants of it's weapon function. So either I could change the turret to make it look like it's firing in an arc, but it mght bollock up the sprite image due to the turret taking up space when tilted above, or just make it aim directly to the front and it functions like a tank. Of course the game is currently limited to only one weapon on the vehicle, having a feature for the turret to be used like a grenade launcher but cannot tilt the gun back to tank mode in combat seems absurd.

I certainly like what I see from the stats that you've made Kabill. Since you've set it as a grenade launcher I'll design the cannon to be on a higher firing arc, but I have to make sure that it doesn't interfere with the ground combat sprites though.

@skaianDestiny

I probably intend to start out with the Alenium Cannon first, with a big destruction radius, but the damage would be inferior once MAG weapons came out. The second tier cannon on this list would be what you might describe, retaining the usefulness of the Nosorog as a long range hell inducing artillery gun. Either I could have the 2nd tier a direct replacement of the alenium cannon, or I can turn it to a sniper cannon with a tiny blast radius to diversify its role in the battlefield.

Also, the pic shown isn't fully complete. The light sources that you see are actually sensors rather than lights. But yes, I should change the colour to make it more 'sensorey' I still have to tweak the 3D modelling side of the tank, and manually outlining it to be suitable for Xenopedia art.

I should work on an early tier protective tank after this, the sherridan M-551 seems to be top choice.

I'm not really that keen on critiquing other peoples' writing, but the one thing I will say about it is that the Chief Weapons Officer doesn't feel to me a distinct character in comparison to the Chief Scientist. When I wrote in the voice of the Operations Officer for the Ufo Mission Analysis, I took care to use phrases, slang and wording to mould the character. The Ops Officer referred to aliens as ETs. He used a more familiar style with the epyonmous commander, spouted military jargon, used the collective "we" rather than the Chief Scientists "I", discussed other departments without immediatly spitting on them and recounted solider stories, wheras the Chief Scientist was aloof, concending and didn't get on with anyone. However you want to mould the CWO is your choice, but if you want the CWO to be a unique voice, then give him/her that voice.

Yes...... my writing skills aren't so good, and I was typing it under the wee hours. So my idea was to get the CWO to be a gruff but romantic(not what you're thinking ) military man. He's the sort of guy that you see in military briefings in video games that sound optimistically inspiring, and a friendly kind of guy unlike the big nose scientist and the Ops officer driven to 'other' the Aliens.. He's meant to be a history of military buff, so he'll throw in alot of jargoney stuff about weapon functions and histories of it and lose himself on it.

Honestly, I have no idea how to write this and was using the xenopedia more as a placeholder, but considering that I might want a new character for my future projects, I'll should flesh him out more.

Edited August 23, 2014 by LordJulian

The reason kabill talks about grenades is a custom grenade type is the closest we can get to true artillery, because the game supports hand grenades as the only form of indirect weaponry. It would take the community coders to code in a more generic form of indirect fire, and I think they have their hands full at the moment.

@skaianDestiny

I probably intend to start out with the Alenium Cannon first, with a big destruction radius, but the damage would be inferior once MAG weapons came out. The second tier cannon on this list would be what you might describe, retaining the usefulness of the Nosorog as a long range hell inducing artillery gun. Either I could have the 2nd tier a direct replacement of the alenium cannon, or I can turn it to a sniper cannon with a tiny blast radius to diversify its role in the battlefield.

Also, the pic shown isn't fully complete. The light sources that you see are actually sensors rather than lights. But yes, I should change the colour to make it more 'sensorey' I still have to tweak the 3D modelling side of the tank, and manually outlining it to be suitable for Xenopedia art.

I'd suggest having both weapons available, a large AOE weapon and a more accurate "sniper" weapon. Diversity is always a good thing.

I should work on an early tier protective tank after this, the sherridan M-551 seems to be top choice.

Awesome! Can't wait to see it.

Yes...... my writing skills aren't so good, and I was typing it under the wee hours. So my idea was to get the CWO to be a gruff but romantic(not what you're thinking ) military man. He's the sort of guy that you see in military briefings in video games that sound optimistically inspiring, and a friendly kind of guy unlike the big nose scientist and the Ops officer driven to 'other' the Aliens.. He's meant to be a history of military buff, so he'll throw in alot of jargoney stuff about weapon functions and histories of it and lose himself on it.

Honestly, I have no idea how to write this and was using the xenopedia more as a placeholder, but considering that I might want a new character for my future projects, I'll should flesh him out more.

I'd be willing to help with the xenopedia entry. It would be good practice for my writing skills. If you can tell me what kind of person the Chief Weapons Expert is, I could try and write something out. If we want to flesh him out even more, we could even replace all the vehicle xenopedia entries with his voice.

The reason kabill talks about grenades is a custom grenade type is the closest we can get to true artillery, because the game supports hand grenades as the only form of indirect weaponry. It would take the community coders to code in a more generic form of indirect fire, and I think they have their hands full at the moment.

The suggestion made about having no bullet sprite actually would make it work reasonably well graphically speaking.

That said, I still wonder whether a regular rocket attack wouldn't be better at least for the time being. It would be a simple change if code support appeared at a later date. Since last night, I've also had some balance reservations as well since as it stands it can attack almost anywhere on the map with (seemingly) good accuracy for lots of damage in a wide area. The only thing that troubles it is aliens hanging around just behind large structures that the weapon trajectory can't quite hit. Which means it will utterly dominate on Farm, Desert and Arctic tilesets.

The suggestion made about having no bullet sprite actually would make it work reasonably well graphically speaking.

That said, I still wonder whether a regular rocket attack wouldn't be better at least for the time being. It would be a simple change if code support appeared at a later date. Since last night, I've also had some balance reservations as well since as it stands it can attack almost anywhere on the map with (seemingly) good accuracy for lots of damage in a wide area. The only thing that troubles it is aliens hanging around just behind large structures that the weapon trajectory can't quite hit. Which means it will utterly dominate on Farm, Desert and Arctic tilesets.

In that case you should either reduce the blast radius and the accuracy of the weapon, or that would be akin to literally raining hell on them aliens, and the Nosorog isn't meant to be a Hyperion Killer.

I could reduce the blast radius. Can't do anything about the accuracy as a grenade-like, as it's based solely on strength. (Indeed, in theory it has a 0% chance of hitting already, but that doesn't seem to make it scatter very much in any case.

Ok, I've updated the pic to make it look more artillery-like.

@Kabill

I have to ask from your testing of the weapon, is the artillery code that you've made too OP for the game? I might revert back to a tank cannon if that is the case.

It's hard to say. All I did was a test of function (i.e. to test that it was working). I suspect on some maps - middle east and any urban ones - it will be reasonable since the number of tall buildings will make it difficult to bombard effectively. I think the weapon in that instance will still be useful, but quite limited.

In open maps, however, I suspect it could be overpowered. There's relatively little that will be able to stop it due to an absence of tall props/buildings.

All that aside, arguably a bombardment ability would waste a lot of the other features of the vehicle. It's high armour is more or less meaningless, as it will have no particular need to be near the front of combat. Moreover, it's low TUs are more or less irrelevant since it doesn't need to move anywhere to take shots.

I think actually all of this could be cured by simply lowering the range of the weapon to say 20 tiles). The main issue at the moment is that you can attack from more or less anywhere, while a shorter range would require it to move up with the squad (as, unlike other weapons, it would be incapable of firing beyond maximum range as it's a grenade-like).

Ok, I think we should keep the idea of it being artillery but nerf it at other place, probably ammunition would be limited to 8 rounds. I don't find that it makes sense to have such a short range when it looked 'able' for long range combat. Besides, with limited range, it's capability is far worse when fighting in cities and urban areas.

The idea that the Nosorog surpasses other vehicles in open areas could be an indirect advantage for the player to deploy it rather than other vehicles. Urban areas might be a hindrance but all it needs is a direct line of fire to be able to hit the enemy. Since it has to take 2 turns to move and fire, the Nosorog can be used strategically rather than bulldozing everything in it's way, but for open crash sites, it will dominate. But vehicles will be pretty much nulified when the squad arrives at a crashed UFO, since mid-game onwards there will still be alot of ground to cover for larger UFOs.

I think we should go ahead with the grenade launcher idea. Better unique and quirky than be same-old same-old. Just some final tweaks though:

- Blast radius should be only 1 tile more than rocket launcher

- Carries 8 rounds

- Damage should outright kill an early-tier alien, kill or severely damage a mid-tier, and wound an end-tier much.

Once I'm done with all the picture taking, I'll PM you for the files, and I'll be sure to credit you for your hard work in making this possible.