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Concept! Psi-Corp Mod


DarkExcalibur42

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Now, I know there are a lot of issues with this sort of an addition but I have solutions to some of them and an innovative approach and this is something I may want to attempt!

First, lemme start off by saying I thought it'd be a neat idea to add some sort of psychic unit to the game which draws upon the classic conspiracy literature / X-Filesy sort of genre. A remote viewer or tele/pyrokinetic perhaps as a support unit! I'm quite opposed to the mod adding mind controlling units, but units that can make indirect suppression/fear attacks? That'd be pretty cool! It'd require a whole new tech tree, but that's balancey stuff and easy to do. I want to pitch my implementation concept!

Modded Garages, and treating the Psykers as a class of vehicle. We can build a garage, and that can house vehicles which can take up a "vehicle slot" on our dropships in exchange for 2x soldiers. The more complicated version of this mod would require me to code a brand new building which behaves like a garage but which can only hold specific types of "vehicles" (psychics). First off, is that possible? It seems like it ought to be. We have Hangars which serve as prerequisites for aircraft and garages as prerequisites for vehicles, so there's two precedents...

If it is, it may be worth going the extra mile to try and code some new UI and add a new screen for the and Base tab for psychics....

If not, the rest of this idea is still feasible and I could write up Psychics as a vehicle-like entity which fills the dropship's vehicle slot. Though I don't yet know how to avoid having them "built" by the engineers, and at present this would mean Psykers never leveled up their attributes and couldn't be equipped with armor or weapons.... This post points out that modders can still access the secondary weapon function on vehicles. Each psychic power a unit possesses could be researched as a separate weapon system, and then two powers could be equipped before a mission. So far this all tracks as feasible, right?

Now, the trick would be assigning a human sprite and size to a vehicle. I recall reading somewhere that vehicles don't like being made different sizes. Something about when someone was trying to mod in the T-80 or Warrior which was a 4x3 vehicle. Could a 1x1 vehicle be produced?

The other issue is one of balance. Unless the psychic's powers are just THAT good, it'd be hard to justify a psychic taking up two soldier slots. Can vehicles be modded to take up more or fewer slots?

If this concept is functional, then it could provide a solution for how to implement ServantOfCTan's K-9 unit concept! Just mod in a kennel building.

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It's a lovely idea. However there are practical considerations.

1) Modded garages. Hangars and garages are not precedents as the game (even in CE) does not treat a building as a container into which you can fill whatever you please. They are hard-coded specifically to hold aircraft and vehicles respectively.

2) You can't access secondary weapons in the vehicle UI anymore. That has been removed.

3) 1x1 vehicles. Yes... but the game doesn't like it. At all. It likes 3x3 vehicles. I have a concept 2x2 vehicle which works but you can't move it around in the dropship screen or it crashes. So it's do-able.

Currently the closest you can get to a psychic power is a weapon without a bullet (or an invisible bullet) and a fancy impact. Solver has opened up several features which make weapons closer to psychic powers without actually being psychic powers.

Edited by Max_Caine
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It's a lovely idea. However there are practical considerations.

1) Modded garages. Hangars and garages are not precedents as the game (even in CE) does not treat a building as a container into which you can fill whatever you please. They are hard-coded specifically to hold aircraft and vehicles respectively.

I didn't mean they were containers. I meant that the game checks "base contains Hangar. Hangar is not assigned aircraft. Aircraft can be built/purchased". When I referred to them as precedents I meant that there are buildings which the game treats as prerequisites to recruiting units. I did have a pretty strong feeling that these would be hard-coded items. which was why I thought a vehicle-in-name-only would be a great way to go about this. If the game thinks it's a tank, what's the difference? However....

3) 1x1 vehicles. Yes... but the game doesn't like it. At all. It likes 3x3 vehicles. I have a concept 2x2 vehicle which works but you can't move it around in the dropship screen or it crashes. So it's do-able.

This seems to shoot down that idea. Except... the problem is mostly on the dropship screen. I've got no problem with using like a cryopod-or-whatever that takes up a 3x3 space on the dropship as the representation of the psychic. I was more worried about making the ground combat unit only take up a 1x1 space. Is that possible? Having a 3x3 Dropship icon for a 1x1 vehicle?

2) You can't access secondary weapons in the vehicle UI anymore. That has been removed.

Darn. Well, I was citing a pretty old thread. Guess that means if I were to make a psychic as a vehicle, you'd only be able to use a single psychic weapon per mission. Which makes the likelihood of a psychic being worth the two soldier trade-off even less likely.

Currently the closest you can get to a psychic power is a weapon without a bullet (or an invisible bullet) and a fancy impact. Solver has opened up several features which make weapons closer to psychic powers without actually being psychic powers.

What about invisible grenades? Would that work? Heck, I could make a "weapon" that deals zero damage but drops 200 Suppression damage on a 3 tile radius. If that's not a psychic attack I don't know what is. Or can't you make weapons with a high chance to set fire to tiles? I thought there was a way to do that for some reason... didn't one of your mad armory inventions do that? For a telekinetic attack, just make a grenade (indirect fire so it can ignore some cover effects) that does loads of stun damage... these all sound like things that should be doable without heavy coding (at least I think they sound like it).

Is it not possible to make a weapon that triggers the Wraith teleport effect? That's not ideally a thing I wanted to do, but it is a concept. Unrelated, but teleport armor would be a pretty sweet mod.

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You've totally inspired me to build Psy-Amp weaponry now...

This is actually a really cool idea. Worn Psychic Amplifiers powered by Alenium batteries (ammo source) which enhance the wearer's natural psychic powers into a weaponized form!

By making them of a sufficient weight, I could by default restrict players from equipping non-psy related gear on a soldier, thus creating a Psy-class role!

This is a mod I could craft immediately.... though... admittedly it would be lacking in art assets. It's still immediately feasible and good practice whereas the original idea is something that will take me much longer to build towards or be able to achieve. The take-away? I've come up with a means of instant gratification, but this doesn't mean I've abandoned the original post.

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Regarding different vehicle sizes. It's not something I've tried myself, but in theory it may work as there's a separation of church and state when it comes to ground combat and the geoscape. I'd have to look up the appropriate files to see if that's do-able.

Regarding invisible grenades. Yes, you can make invisible grenades. You can make any weapon invisible. You don't even have to provide the spritesheets. You could appropriate the "not holding anything" spritesheets. However, you can't use an alien ability in a weapon effect, you can only use weapon effects. Which include setting tiles on fire - there are specific percentage chances to set tiles on fire, so if you wanted to simulate a pyrokinetic effect, you can have an invisible weapon with a 100% chance of setting a tile on fire.

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Regarding different vehicle sizes. It's not something I've tried myself, but in theory it may work as there's a separation of church and state when it comes to ground combat and the geoscape. I'd have to look up the appropriate files to see if that's do-able.

I did notice that from my forum research, as well as my trial and error with the weapons and weapons_gc files, so I was kinda banking on that :D

Regarding invisible grenades. Yes, you can make invisible grenades. You can make any weapon invisible. You don't even have to provide the spritesheets. You could appropriate the "not holding anything" spritesheets. However, you can't use an alien ability in a weapon effect, you can only use weapon effects. Which include setting tiles on fire - there are specific percentage chances to set tiles on fire, so if you wanted to simulate a pyrokinetic effect, you can have an invisible weapon with a 100% chance of setting a tile on fire.

BINGO! This stuff doesn't have to mechanically be word-for-word psionic, since players don't see the mechanics. It just has to look and feel right. :D One other question, which I'm worried will be a negative: I can't make a gun that fires a grenade effect, can I? A rocket effect, clearly. But not a grenade effect?

And thanks very much for the answers! It may not look like I'm accomplishing very much yet, but I'm learning and getting a feel for my limitations before I set a specific design goal for myself :)

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You can have a bulletType="normal" type of weapon which causes AOE. If you check the medium and heavy drones, their weapons do that, but no, if you want a grenade effect you have to set it to a grenade type. Be careful if you set the bulletType to rocket. That means the rocket launcher would be able to fire psi-amp ammo and visa-versa.

Confession time, I'm not super up-to-date on the workings on weapons_gc. You really want to talk to people like drages or TacticalDragon if you want the inside track.

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Good warning on the rockets! I hadn't thought of that, since I assumed that for most weapons the damage characteristics were a part of the weapon and not the ammunition.

If drages or TacticalDragon drop in on this thread, I'll happily listen to their insight. But I'm plenty happy with any conversation, expert or otherwise.

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Vehicles don't have sadly 2. Weapon. This is one of the main flows of this game with multi ammo types to weapons. These are not hard things to add this game engine but sadly they are not implemented to finished version..

When u try to figure out different weapon types coding, you should not to be so logical. Like weapon and weapon GC xml files should not be same as stats.. at melee weapons and medikits they are unique coded and their modding code is not behave like normal weapons. As best just copy paste if it looks absurd..

Grenade bullet types are sadly broken a bit. Because the grenade disappear when you throw it.. the problem is when u try to make a grenade launcher, launcher disappear as well..

So if u want a grenade style weapon they will be 1 per shot..

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