Belmakor

I know the feeling. I can't bring myself to play more than a few missions in the latest version as I end up just playing the same maps over and over.

I am sure this has been mentioned before but I can't find any trace of it in the forum so I will raise it again as I think its important. Please can we have sound effects for soldier (and aliens) walking through snow? Given that there are reasonable chances of getting snow maps now it makes sense for them to have their own sound effects. I'd also be tempted to request a further addition to snow maps: The sound of strong wind as a background sound effect. I think it is the only map type that currently lacks any character and some extra sound effects might do it. A more technical question. Is it possible to put noise sources on the maps? I'm talking about the sound of running water, the sound of wind rustling trees married to a specific point such that they only play when on screen? I am sure lots of isometric games have done this in the past but my specific example would be the Sudden Strike series. I won't argue the point any more for now as Chris might feel that any of these points are not within the scope for now.

Having the Light Scout dodge is a minimum. It might be worth looking at making it possible for dodge countdown to be specified in the Aircraft.xml so that you can specify lower cooldowns for more nimble craft and offer up some variation. Alternatively give both it and the scout a way of shooting down missiles in a 30 degree to their front. That way the player either need to flank with a second aircraft or take a much bigger risk of being shot down by a critical hit. I made a mod in the mod section you can try out to see if it is a change for the positive.

Having the Light Scout dodge is a minimum. It might be worth looking at making it possible for dodge countdown to be specified in the Aircraft.xml so that you can specify lower cooldowns for more nimble craft and offer up some variation. Alternatively give both it and the scout a way of shooting down missiles in a 30 degree to their front. That way the player either need to flank with a second aircraft or take a much bigger risk of being shot down by a critical hit. I made a mod in the mod section you can try out to see if it is a change for the positive.

WHAAAAAT!?! All this time I have been applying it 5 TUs at a time *dolt*

Improved Light Scout and Scout Mod by Belmakor Compatibility: V18.1 (hot fix 2) and V18.3 (hot fix 2) Description Both the light scout and scout have had their weapon characteristics altered to result in more varied and challenging combat (within the limits of current AI). Both now have two weapons as standard, if you want to experience this change first hand and get a surprise like a real Xenonaut then read no further. *SPOILER* Light scout now has a beam weapon with short range that will shoot down any incoming missiles in a 30 degree arc to the front. Light scouts main weapon is a pulse weapon with which fires 1.8 rounds per second but does only minimal damage. Scouts main weapon is a beam weapon with more range than Xenonauts cannon and will tear a single F-17 to shreds long before you can bring it down with cannon fire. Scout has a secondary pulse weapon of short range with 30 degree arc for shooting down missiles. * SPOILER END* Instructions to install. Unzip contents of .zip file to your Xenonauts assets folder and over-write existing files. OR Download zip file, open Xenonauts launcher, click on 'Mod Tools', select 'install new mod', navigate to your downloaded zip file and install from there. GET IT HERE https://www.dropbox.com/s/oyiv7rx89z9c6p4/ImprovedScoutMod.zip

If you could post a couple of pics of each that would help us make an informed decision?

+1 to this

Basic system would be for the marginal gains of 0.1kg per point of strength on top of base or some variation there of with a hard cap on the maximum strength achievable without the aid of special armour. An alternative would be to put increasingly diminishing return on the modifier that determines whether there should be a TU reduction (for example 2% modifier change per 10 str). For example (the 15kg set point is just notional - it should be the same as a trooper wearing jackal, with a rifle and one clip): 30% of 50 strength = 15kg carry capacity before TU reduction. 28% of 60 strength = 16.8kg capacity before TU reduction 26% of 70 strength = 18.2kg capacity before TU reduction 24% of 80 strength = 19.2kg capacity before TU reduction 22% of 90 strength = 19.8kg capacity before TU reduction 20% of 100 strength = 20kg (hard cap). The second aspect of this system would be to balance the TU reduction. I'm thinking 1 TU per 0.1kg over the limit for a 50 str soldier and 1 TU per 0.14kg for a 70 str (70 divided by 50). So assuming that strength rises roughly in proportion to TU then a 50/50 base soldier might become 70/70 solider after 20 missions (1 str gain per mission hardcap). So he's able to carry an extra 3.2kg. Assuming a high tier armour is in the region of +4kg. He can take that armour but he will suffer a 6TU penalty, giving him 64 after modifiers. He can now load up on two clips at 0.2 kg each + 2 grenades at 0.1kg each i.e a total weight of 0.6kg or rounded to 4TU lost, so 60 total. He still has 10 more TU's than the rookie, and he has got better armour and is carrying extra kit - but he hasn't got so much kit that he appears superhuman and at the same time isn't magically able to travel an extra 5 extra tiles with all that extra kit on him. You can do the maths on the same system for the rookie with 50 strength, but you will notice that even adding that 0.6kg is going to 6 TU from his already meager 50. I know this is very similar to current system but the difference lies in the fact that the TU reduction is tied to strength in the negative and limits troop capacity in that way.

Personally one of my favorite choices of the OG was that you had a choice on day one to either plop down an access lift and a radar (virtually breaking the bank and counting on the perfect start) or leaving it a month or so. Your game tended to play out so differently in terms of difficulty - either struggling along for a month or two with a limp (cash wise) but reaping the benefits later OR going for a really strong starter base and climbing up the tech tree quickly. Certainly I don't think you should be up an running with a full second base (with living quarters, stores, hangars, 2 fighters and a chinook) until the end of month 3 unless you make that risky decision early on and it pays off. Risk reward is good That second bases needs to feel/be earned or at the very least a decision that stretches your early finances to the limit. Not just something that comes about because you have lots of spare cash lying around (which there might be a danger of if you can manufacture willy nilly). What I think I am driving at is that manufacturing for profit should at maximum match funding from nations for 1 workshops. In the extreme play: With space limits that probably means maximum 3 workshops in original base (assuming no other upgrades) an means you could in theory earn in the region of $1m per month from manufacture on top of your $500k or so funding in month one - that's assuming one is dedicated to producing actual consumables and the other 2 are profit generating. On the balanced play: For a two workshop play, you would probably not be able to do much more than just cover your base expenses with a second workshop, but freeing about $500k per month extra to play with. Either way your not going to reap the benefits until month 2 whereas another player might have a basic intercept base set up by then.

Yeh I understood that to be your meaning but seems Chris said it wasn't possible. So I figured only other way of distinguishing that from a regular high accuracy shot would be to make it the same as switching mode to burst. Obviously that means standard rifles could only burst fire or over-charge. Not both.

I'm really keen on Gaudlike's idea of having supercharged shots as a single shot option. You could always replace the burst icon with another "supercharged" icon in the same location for the scatter laser (shotgun). In any case we need the clip size to move to the ammo type. and we need ammo cost to move to shot type and be seperate from ammo count. Laser cells are already universal right? There is a problem I can't get my head around in the time i'm willing to spend writing this though. How does the code determine how much ammo you have in relation to shots? I mean could you fire a double charge shot even if you only had 1 cell of power left? Or would it be like the MG in that it would only fire out a single damage shot.

The second point doesn't matter too much. Is it easy enough to add shot type icons below the weapon on the battlescape GUI and have them link in to specific shot characteristics? Also, what about putting a damage multiplier value into the shot characteristics so the over-charged pulse can be added in? Those two things would be enough to achieve what Gaudlike was looking for.

The only way that someone could mod it in without being on the dev team would be to (using laser rifle as an example)... * Make the first production of laser rifle the equivalent of capturing alien tech such that it unlocks a new laser rifle. * The new laser rifle replaces the old one, has exactly the same stats but has lower value. It would need to be called laser.rifle1 etc. * Repeat ad infinitum (well until the profit is close to zero which might be 10 iterations or something). The problem; Calling laser.riflex might cause all sorts of bugs in ground combat. You would need this to be a local variable in weapons.xml that is pointed to by laser.rifle in weapons_gc. If set to manufacture 200 of these off the bat, does the production of the first one make the second more expensive? Or would this only apply to the second batch? I suppose you could argue that this would be like getting a contract for 200 pcs of the US for example and them guaranteeing a price. Then subsequent batches are priced against (likely) US copies that would also be on the market (justifying the price decrease) and so on and so forth. However you could exploit this by setting up a project to 2000 or something but never assigning any engineers until you needed the cash. You would have to put a hard limit on the maximum number you can assign to a production batch or make it so that cash comes out when you assign the project - not actually produce the goods (like the OG). But that throws up that nasty mechanic.

I am undecided on the topic of manufacturing. My gut feeling is that it should probably be profitable for some items. I wonder if there would be any way to make the first sale of something worth more with every additional sale of that same item giving you less cash. I'm not proposing any sort of dynamic market. It could just follow some sort of linear or exponential relationship so that even from laser sales for example you could perhaps only net a maximum profit of $100k in the whole game. I would certainly agree that I prefer if the main source of funding is nations. This certainly needs to be balance as it is too low just now. I wondered if making the increase for successfully defending a nation much larger than the rating decreases. So if you defend Europe, Asia and Africa well in one month the change might be $1m instead of (typical in my case) $400k. It may already do this but i've never played past October since v14

Well yes! But I didn't realise the physics engine in the game was as sophisticated as that!

Its weird but when you increase projectile speed it feels like accuracy improves. Is it my imagination? If its not then sounds like a bug!

But the 16 would hold 12 and two tanks which to me sounds perfect. 8 is far too little tbh. Just walking out of the dropship I usually seem to lose 1 or 2 men as it stands by end of first turn (on terror missions). If you really felt a nerf was in order then you could go 8,10,14

I felt that there was something wrong with lasers. They just feel a little wimpy and I couldn't put my foot on it - but I felt like it was a step down from ballistics. Then I realised that it is the lumbering projectile speed that seems to drag across the screen slower than the speed of sound let alone the speed of light. So putting the projectile speed in weapons_gc to 1400 solves that problem (and you can still see the path of the projectile no problem as its red). Enjoy much improved laser weapon satisfaction This is my case for this being default laser projectile speed in vanilla.

I notice that everyone pretty much just uses heavy weapons all the time - perhaps with one or two scouts and CQB troops thrown in. Does that suggest something to you? It suggest to me that the benefits of using heavy weapons outweigh the cons considerably. Seems to me that a movement penalty is not enough given that an MG firing 5 rounds still seems to have a pretty good chance of landing one or more hits over 5-6 tile range even after moving. Perhaps the weight of the MG and possibly even precision rifle should be upped such that starting soldiers can only move OR fire due to the reduced TU they get due to weight penalties at the start. That way they have to earn the ability to use such a weapon through repeated use (building up TUs). This would also mean that come Jackal armour you will still struggle to equip this and an MG on a baseline solider giving them a somewhat glass cannon trait. I think this would improve the usefulness of the humble rifle as a compromise between offering protection and firepower. I think this would be preferable to upping the cost of firing the MG for example - what do others think?

Good point. You could make it really heavy so that you are pretty much unable to put it on a rookie (as he would have so little TUs). That way its going to be limited to your top soldiers of which you well likely only be fielding 2 or 3 per mission anyway (assuming that the life expectancy of your guys is like 6-7 missions).

Sorry yeh I meant the projectile. It should be relatively painless to mod In I would imagine if the dev team don't get round to it. On 4) I was thinking that the flares would burn out after about 3 turns. Is it my imagination or don't they already disappear after about 3 turns presently?

1. Flares should be able to be picked up again once thrown (I think this is planned). 2. Flares need there own animation (i.e not a grenade). 3. Flares should hiss and give out 1 tile of the wispy grey/white smoke (the type of smoke caused by plasma hitting the ground). They are abit lack-lustre at present. A groovy new hissing sound effect would add to the ambience in night missions - breaking the silence between screams! 4. Each soldier should have 3 flares, 2 flares isn't quite enough (though this might be intentional so as to make them more valuable).

I am running with an 8 man team 1 sniper 1 mg 1 rocket 5 rifles and having played around 9 missions now I am losing men at a rate of about 1 xeno casualty for every 2-2.5 aliens. Given that its mid October I have so far lost (I think) about 6 soldiers. Would that be about right for early game? (seems like a reasonable number and it certainly feels like i'm getting my ass kicked). I notice many others are running with 2 sniper, 2mg or 2 rockets and less rifles. This seems like a no brainer to me as the rifles are pretty much pea shooters - but I am old fashioned and dont like the idea of heavy weapons units. I feel like there needs to be some incentive for me to keep my rifles. Perhaps you could make it so that only rifles/shotguns are able to be shoot around corners? Then I would have an incentive to trade firepower for my mens safety. At the moment they have to step out of cover, get 2 shots (usually only 1 hits) and it almost always takes at-least 4 shots to kill a Sebillian which means I need to have 4 men shooting at a single target and risk being reaction fired to death. Yes I know rifles already can move and shoot, but thats not much of an advantage given typical map layouts that force you to move from cover to cover anyway and if you don't use some sort of 'cover and advance' tactic you will die.

Played 11 missions now and not one crash!