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Charon

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Posts posted by Charon

  1. 34 minutes ago, PALU said:

    Is it really intentional that the Sentinel armor can't be used with sniper rifles? What I mean with "can't be used" is that the number of TUs required to fire a sniper shot is higher than the maximum number of TUs (unless there's some later, unknown, development that allows soldiers to gain more than the previous maximum). It certainly throws a spanner in my troop layout strategy (although enemies being able to hit my sniper through a roof, while the sniper can't fire back due to a 100% blocking roof negates a large part of the "sniping from a high vantage point at the rear end of the map" strategy anyway). My laser sniper rifle required about 122 TUs, with the armor only providing 115.

    I think you are "forgetting" to point out that "cant be used" means the highest aim option cant be used, while the other 2 can still be used. Thats correct.

    Apart from the fact that your snipers should already have decent accuracy with the first 2 options it is indeed to powerful to have a flying, relatively well armoured armour shoot 2 times. The side effect of this is that you cant use the highest aim option. You will need to use other, less potent snipers like the MAG Precision or the Pulse Precision one, which obviously are either less powerful or have less range. Or you climb the house like a normal human being, by foot.

  2. @Light Scout I think what @PALU said is a good summary:

    1 hour ago, PALU said:

    Having said that, you should try to equip your soldiers according to how you play so you use weapons suitable for that tactic, not based on what someone else does.

    Apart from that on more difficult levels of X-Division you will have to use whatever you have at your disposal. In my playthrough i teched straight towards laser tech, but than the game gave me 90% sebillian missions, and i reluctantly had to tech towards Division weapons for an inbetween bridge until the game decided to let me get more energy cores. From a balanced 50/50 viewpoint you will not have the tech nor the resources to either skip Division weapons or Laser weapons entirely. I usually try to get my hands on energy damage, and substitute the long range suppression with Division weapons, because suppression doesnt care about damage type. Division Miniguns are almost as good as Laser ones at point blank range so you can substitute missing miniguns with some kinetic ones most of the time. Discs are quite vulnerable to kinetic miniguns, for once because of their size and secondly because of their low kinetic resistance.

    The Laser weapons are definitely lacking in the suppression department, as they dont really have a dedicated hmg ( the Gatling is a LAB failure ). The newly introduced SHOCK effect for kinetic shotguns and smgs slightly give you more options on the kinetic side to consider. The cannons have some nice niche picks with their burst options and the ballistic sniper has more power and penetration than the Laser one.

    I was still around when everybody was only using kinetic weaponry because on paper they simply had slightly more power and mitigation all around. Then .4 introduced the new androns with their high kinetic resistance and the meta shifted heavily towards energy weapons. The weapons themself didnt change, only the meta around them did, and so they became quite valuable.

    As Palu said the most important point is that your team and your strategy is well rounded, so the prefered weapon loadout usually dictates what kind of damage type you need to bring to the battlefield.

  3. 2 minutes ago, Dagar said:

    My experience with it is obviously limited, but I liked the Division SMG Mk1, and took it for my shielders over the ballistic or laser pistol of same level. To me it seemed like the only trade-off you have to take is that you cannot finegrain your shots that well, but for damage and suppression I deemed it pretty good.

    If there was a laser SMG, I'd definitely tech and take it as is.

    No SMGs until Phase 3 !

     

    Not that you need it, every MAG weaponry has its own burst mode anyway ><.

  4. 2 hours ago, Dagar said:

    Dunno how well the SMG does it right now, but maybe alternatively you could look into it suppressing a bit more. A CQ high reflex one handed suppression weapon would be pretty cool to have. Of course it should not suppress as reliably as the LMGs or miniguns do.

    The problem that the SMG has it is never truelly the weapon of choice. If you want to deal damage you go for a pistol. If you want to be highly manouverable after shooting you take a pistol. If you want suppression than you usually take an hmg because of the longer range and better suppression. It doesnt help you one bit to 80% suppress a target, but to need support from others to finish the suppression job. It doesnt help that neither the damage, the suppression nor themanouverability is something an SMG can achieve without the support of other weapons. There is basically not a single outstanding feature for an SMG. Yet if we buff them too hard by even a hairs breath they can easily become the next meta.

    I hope with the addition of the SHOCK effect the weapon gets more a niche of its own, while the increased bullets dont really increase the damage because of the abysmall accuracy anyway, but it increases the damage a bit in point blank situations, which should give it a slight edge against pistols in point blank situations.

    @Svinedrengen

    • Like 1
  5. 23 minutes ago, Svinedrengen said:

    SMG's are now a viable option instead of pistols, but they still need a little more to make them a truly legit option. I have been thinking about lowering their TU usage from 40% to around 30-33% so when you dont move, you can fire 3 times. It would make them good for breaching and controlling small areas. What do you think? @Charon

    I looked at the situation and i dont think they need their % use lowered. Lowering the % use is the laymans first thought, but you have to keep the weapons unique. Whats so unique when every problem gets solved with lowering TU% ? Instead i think increasing the amount of bullets to a higher number and adjusting the clip capacity. From 6 to either 8 or 10 bullets and from 30 to either 32 or 40 bullets per clip. Hard to say which one is more appropriate.

    But alas that is why we have a development team, you need to throughly test these changes in the short, medium and long run. X-Division was not build upon people trying to think out problems, but with hard statistical data to back up their decisions. X-Divisions work has been layed down, but if you want to improve on the SMGs that is the direction i would be looking at.

  6. 15 minutes ago, lolo said:

    Thanks! What are the fixed researches that I will miss out on if I attempt to patch from .01 to .10?

     

    Antimatter Technology 2 is not unlockable in the current version .01. This doesnt keep you from getting Antimatter Technology 1,3 and 4 though. The armour progression has been stretched so that some armours are faster reachable, while others have a more logical progression. The goal was to better distribute armour research so you get enough time to play around with a new armour before the logically next one gets unlocked. Some roborex dependencies were removed which made 1 armour not unlockable. A data hack had an inappopriate, but still researchable requirement. A few fixes all around the board. Additionally the research was optimised for Palus Shining Xenopedia.

    • Like 1
  7. @PALU

    Quote

    resulting it the victim having to use a number of Time Units (TUs) to recover at the beginning of the next turn.

    "resulting in"

    And i think we can make a better connection from now on between "shock" and "slow", as "slowed" might be the future notification that a unit has indeed been affected by the shock effect. The resulting text could be "resulting in the victim being slowed for the next turn."

    Edit: The targeted change would be a "Slowed" text similar to the "Resisted" text when a projectile hits a target. This is still in the works though.

    Quote

    4 Caelium, 48 Light Fibre, and 49 Dense Fibre

    4 Caelium, 48 Light Fibre, and 48 Dense Fibre

    Quote

    show down

    shot down

  8. 8 minutes ago, Svinedrengen said:

    You are my last hope for this to be fixed, but it is okay I have reached the point where I accept it just cant be done. It just annoys me that I can change some things without a problem and not others. Why wont this stupid machine just do as I say and comply. 

    Give me the full path and name of a specific asset you have been working on, and your results. Maybe i can see what i can do.

  9. 1 minute ago, PALU said:

    The reason for why my previous post doesn't make sense is that my installation wasn't updated, for whatever reason, when I ran the installer, so I tried to find changes that didn't exist, and make sense out of what I found. Rerunning the installer did actually result in updated files, so I'm not sure what went wrong (running the older 1.00.10 installer?).

    Anyway, I now see the changes.

    Love you.

  10. 11 hours ago, PALU said:

    HIT AND INJURED was intended to carry through the message that injury is required, but it might be too subtle.

    Jup, at least i didnt understand it as such, especially since the more important SHOCK explanation comes right after it.

    11 hours ago, PALU said:

    The reason flaring bullets are so deadly is that the tear up so great exit holes (and the hole in the body grows as the bullet expands), not because of a huge kinetic energy transfer.

    That is ... the same. The reason why standart penetration bullets dont cause so much damage is because they shoot right through the body, only transfering very little kinetic energy into the target. The reason why expanding bullets are tearing holes into a victims body is because they increase their area upon impact, and thuse transfer an infinite more amount of energy from the bullet onto the actual body ( think about it like a miniature steel fist ).

    Check the EMP values, i increased them greatly.

    Also, that blue numbers above mechanical units appear is a pure visual vanilla bug, no stun is actually done to mechanical units. Blue numbers also dont have any correlation to EMP, EMP damage is RED, like normal damage. The way EMP works is that it checks if the actual damage, or the EMP damage ( if applied ) is higher. The game then takes the higher number and displays it as a red damage counter. Easy to understand once you know it.

    11 hours ago, PALU said:

    but I'd probably still try to use an axe, which is a great secondary weapon for a shield bearer)

    Finally somebody happy with melee weapons :).

    11 hours ago, PALU said:

    So, if I read it correctly, the only weapons actually having the Shock effect are the Kinetic shotguns/SMGs and the Shock/Electron weapons. Is the effect restricted to shotguns/SMGs + the dedicated Stun/EMP weapons, or are the effects just smaller for other Kinetic weapons? It would certainly make a fair bit of sense that non/low penetrating bullets may be the only ones to have that effect.

    The SHOCK effect is only present on kinetic shotguns/smgs and shock/electron weapons for reasons stated above. In case of the kinetic ones, i think the modified ammunition is a great explanation for the SHOCK effect ( even though you might need to find another explanation than kinetic force alone ) and it is also a great explanation why the shotgun has such low penetration ( mitigation ) values, even though there could be models with higher penetration. The same goes for the smg.

    11 hours ago, PALU said:

    Also note that there is no "wall sized sledgehammer", as the movie trope of having people flung all over the place when hit by bullets is totally bogus: the force imparted is slightly less (due to air resistance) than that felt in the recoil of the gun. Also, if there was such an effect, armor would absorb it all and still throw the unit across the street.

    Indeed.

    There is still a difference between a trained muscular arm taking the recoil which doesnt have any inner organs to worry about, and your breast taking the recoil, with far less trained muscles against the impulse and all important organs ( both lungs, heart, windpipe, liver and stomach ) taking the shock right behind. As you correctly pointed out armour cant prevent the impulse from a kinetic force, it can only dissipate it over a greater surface area. So relatively speaking there is a difference between putting out kinetic energy where your arms can support it, and taking the impulse, where your arms cant help you at all.

    Heres a bizeps for your admiration:

    https://youtu.be/qqOqdyiFz9g?t=887

  11. 1 hour ago, PALU said:

    The mid paragraph below has been inserted into Ground Combat in between the one above and below.

    :

    Our melee weapons will be a special treat because a trained soldier will almost always be able to bypass or break through the armour, but against the hardest of targets. Also note that melee attacks are able to work around shields, thus ignoring their effects, and this is valid regardless of whether the attacker is our soldier or an alien unit.

    Another consideration is that Kinetic weapons, i.e. the ones we have now, seem to have an interesting side effect that's not shared by Energy ones (wielded by Caesans): they rattle the unit hit and injured (we'll call it Shock, for the lack of a better word), which causes them to lose TUs due to the need to recover. It seems even robotic units are affected, possibly because of short circuiting. A very similar, but technically distinct, effect is caused by Shock weapons, where biological units are disoriented and subjected to spasms through the electrical current playing havoc with nerves, while robotic units have their circuits temporarily disabled by EMP effects (on top of any direct damage EMP effects present).

    Also, if your men think they can unconsciously sleep through a mission you should wake them up with some special adrenaline packs which you will find in the medipack.

    :

    I would like to get pointed out that the SHOCK effect only gets applied once the armour is penetrated ( damage numbers appear above the unit ) and that the SHOCK effect doesnt get applied if the armour absorbs all damage. This needs to be in the Xpedia.

    This is the reason why i would rather describe it along the lines of certain weapons with SHOCK effect are using special bullets with an anti-infantry structure. These kind of bullets are highly effective against non-, or less armoured targets, but possess next to no penetration effect. Since shotguns and smgs are mostly used against biological units with low armour, or as armour shredder weapons the bullets for those kind of weapons have received a modified update to complement their combat role. Before i talk further about the subject here is a picture which can represent such anti-infantry magazines.

    s7hecK3.jpg.d6fdc06b672a07dbe0f8bbfd83609545.jpg

    As you can see these kind of bullet was designed to disperse as much of its kinetic energy on impact as possible, while loosing mostly all of its penetration power. The reason why standart bullets are not that lethal is that they dont really disperse much of their kinetic energy into the body, but pass right through it. A single bullet like in the picture anywhere on an unarmoured part spells most likely instant death, even with a medic right beside the soldier. I dont have to mention that these kind of bullets are illegal to use on humans, as their only goal is to kill. You mostly also avoid using them warfare as they have worse air resistant attributes than normal penetration ones.

    The kinetic SHOCK effect is easily explained as the combined force of {\vec {p}} hitting a target, while the bullets disperse almost all of their energy onto the target. The impact is that the whole body gets crunched, which is taxing even for alien bodies, lungs are getting pressed upon, and the muscles have to work against the sudden shock. Needless to say that your reflexes will have to take a moment to recover, as getting punched by a wall sized sledgehammer means the body simply needs a few seconds to recover their normal physical capability.

    The same thing can easily be described for androns. Once the armour is done for, the dampers against physical shocks are not enough to guarantee that the bipedal system works without errors anymore, and energy has to be redirected to make sure functionality is given before taking any additional actions.

    The shock/electron SHOCK is easily explained as the attempt to overload energy circuits, and additional energy has to be spend to reinstate functionality for the unit. On biological units its the spasm as you described it, although i wound point out that shock/electronic weapons SHOCK effect is not meant to be used on biological units, so their effect is limited.

    Like i said we have to get into players head that only when the armoured is pierced, the SHOCK effect is applied. We dont have any visual indication for this, so we gotta bring that point across.

  12. 30 minutes ago, Dagar said:

    @Charonwhat happens to shocked units that are then suppressed? From what you wrote I expect them to have half TUs next turn while not being able to reaction this turn, right (so, exactly the same as if shock had not applied)? What about Xenonauts becoming shocked by enemy fire?

    Shock doesnt matter in the turn it is applied, but is exclusively used for the next turn. Whether you suppress a unit before or after you shock it is irrelevant. Units that are shocked and suppressed, first have the shock amount deducted and the remaining TU halfed. In our example above this would mean they have 25% remaining.

    In Phase 4 this may look like this:

        <Rank  type="Elite"> 90 tu, 45 ap
    unsuppressed: 90 - 45 = 45 TU
    suppressed: ( 90 - 45 ) / 2 = 22.5 TU

    <Rank  type="OperatorBattle"> 50 TU, 45 AP. 
    unsuppressed: 50 - 45 = 5 tu
    suppressed: ( 50 - 45 ) / 2 = 2.5 tu

    As you can see depending on the type of unit it may completely disable a unit forever. Dont worry about Praetors, their weapons have such low tu requirements, they squad-wipe your team even with a 45 tu penalty. Still a nice bonus if you get that penalty going though.

    If the damage for andron gets through in Phase 3 you have this example on average:

        <Rank  type="Warrior"> 65 tu
    Electron Weapnory: 65 - 15 = 50 tu
    shotgun weaponry: 65 - 35 = 30 tu

    in phase 4
    <Rank  type="Elite"> 70 tu
    electron: 70 - 15 = 55 tu
    shotgun 70 - 45 = 25 tu

    Since androns mostly carry heavy weapons that means a fully controlled andron for that turn. Although it is questionable how much effort you have to put into shredding all the armour of an andron. Shotguns are not meant to be used as a counter to androns, it is just a technical example how far you could go. Electron weapons are dedicated mechanic killers, and slow them down a bit. Here is another example using a heavy sebillian tank:

    <Rank  type="tankupg"> 45 tu
    shock weaponry: 45 - 10 = 35 tu

    That can basically take the second shot out of the equations and/or even scare the tank to retreat. Shock and Electron weapons are basically single target crowd control manipulators. Sometimes having 1 soldier deducting that 10 point of tu really takes the edge out of a situation, which otherwise could be way more dangerous. Also works well against sebs.

     

    The same principles apply to xenonauts, either targeted by hostile or friendly fire. The semi-shield roboreaper already uses shock attacks, which coincidently also ignores shields. :D ( Muahahahahaha )

  13. UNOFFICIAL

     

    updated X-Division 1.00.10

    Notes:

    • X-Divison has gone the step to replace vanilla files. There has been an original file added for every replaced one in case you want to deinstall the mod. In case of doubt make a reinstall of the game or verify game integrity through steam.
    • You only need to download and install the latest Patch avaialble, it contains all prior fixes as well.
    • The .01 to .10 patch is NOT savegame compatible. If you want to make it savegame compatible you need to make a backup of your researches.xml, run the installer, and immediately copy your backup over the new file again. You will miss out on the fixed researches but you can continue the campaign.
    • As a basic rule, never patch during Ground Combat

     

    Installation:

    1. The Base for this patch has to be version 1.00.00 or higher. This update is not available for versions lower than 1.00.00 .
    2. Download the X-Division 1.00.10 Update:
      https://mega.nz/#!dBxUSKjQ!B0UB9WrlrSlG77Z8YNDUWyp6Yc3hLmw78C8XKlGC2aI
      Link
      ( MD5: c0083b44763a0c3f5248fd22e3871a9e )
    3. Deactivate your ANTIVIRUS/UAC program(s), it can intervene with the installation. As soon as the installation finishes you can activate it again.
    4. Start the executable provided in the file. Follow the instruction of the installer
    5. After you have used the installer there is no need to change ANYTHING anymore, everything has been taken care of, including scripts, modloader priority, and everything else you may think of. The only time you might want to change something is if you are activating/deactivating No Airgame or change the soldier models. Enjoy :).

    Changelog:

    Dunno, i changed a lot. These are the things i can remember:

    • Fixed some bugs around the Roborex
    • Roborex explosion on death no longer causes overdamage
    • Roborex explosion radius decreased from 6 to 4.5
    • Halfed kinetic armour for semi-shield roboreaper. Their weak point should now be weaker
    • Halfed energy armour for melee roboreapers. Their weak point should now be weaker
    • added mitigation to human stun gas
    • added one loading tip
    • improved the AI of Drones a bit
    • most importantly added X-Divison Palu's Shining Xenopedia to the game
    • 7 new categories for the soldier equipment screen
    • I think i also added the latest Monument IV map by Svinedrengen to the map pool
    • new mod: Nerf The AI: The aliens have less sightrange, deal 20% less damage and have 10% lower stats.
    • new mod: X-Divison Don't Die On Me ! :If your soldier doesnt blow up, takes a minigun point blank or gets left behind he WILL survive the mission.
    • new mod: X-Divison Easy Airgame: Did you ever wanted to try out the manual combat but were put off by the difficulty ? Look no further, this is what you need. UFOs have 50% less hp, while your aircraft are 20% faster and have a 20% further range. Additionally the refuel, rearm, repair and recovery rate are 30% faster.
      Only TOGGLE this during a Geoscape save.
      The Xenopedia page doesnt correctly display UFO hp values with this. Its 37.5% for the lowest difficulty and 50% for all other difficulties of the displayed hp values.
    • new mod: X-Divison Slower Invasion: The Invasion escalates 25% slower
    • new mod: Empower Facehuggers: This will improve the AI of facehuggers, but as a side effect they will also be able to attack vehicles. Ofcourse this is not intended gameplay which is why it isnt in the base version. If you want to give facehuggers their intelligence back while having to drive your vehicles cautiously around this is for you.
    • appended unobtainable andron terror unit loot to appropriate robodog/roboreaper units
    • new feature: AP Damage: MAIM/SHOCK damage that reduces TUs for the next turn.
    • revised Shock and Electron weaponry

     

    I think i will let a week pass and if no major issues come up this is going public. And then we can put a rest to future updates i think. @PALU The Shining Xenopedia mod still has description as its descriptions. If you want to input a proper description you have time until the release.

    • Like 1
  14. 1 hour ago, PALU said:

    The manufacture changes should work well to cover the transformer part, yes (although it raises the question why other robodogs/roboreapers/androns are "incomplete": if they're really all the same unit, all of them should really drop the same parts. One could argue that the transformation stations added and removed parts as necessary for weight reasons, though).

    You could simply explain it as the reason why some units can transform on the battlefield, and others cant. Most other dogs also dont carry any weapons with them, because they cant transform on the field which is why they dont need them.

     

     

    @PALU @Svinedrengen @Dagar

    New AP Damage System

    I have added the new AP Damage to some weapons now. AP Damage will be something kinetic exclusive, except for dedicated shock and electron weapons. So here is the system.

    The AP Damage has been calibrated to sap around 50% of time units from the lowest AP unit in that phase. AP Damage has been given to multi projectile low penetration weapons, namely kinetic shotguns and smgs. The way it works is that as soon as the first damage point gets throught the full AP penalty gets applied. Hence why i would explain this as temporary maiming a target, since if armour fully absorbs the blows no penalty is applied. However @PALUyou can find a suitable term for it. The string for the weapons is called "MAIM up to" since only a single debuff gets ever applied, either the highest one, or the last hit ( untested ).

    What happens when an unsupressed unit gets hit ? 50 TU - 25 AP = 25 remaining TU.

    What happens when a suppressed unit gets hit ? ( 50 TU - 25 AP ) / 2 ) 12.5 remaining TU

    So as soon as a unit is supressed the penalty gets basically halfed.

    AP Damage is more maiming for targets which already have low TU in the first place ( androns, operators, non-combatatants ), and less of a problem for higher TU units ( dogs, reapers, small xenomorphs, etc ... )

     

    I dont want another unexplained feature in X-Division so i would really like to have a good explanation in the Xpedia for this. Propably in the Knowledge.GroundCombat one. @PALU I personally would make a strong connection to the maiming effect having to do with real bullets.

     

    The other thing i revised are shock and electron weapons I upped the EMP damage, and gave them a slight AP Damage bonus, since they are likely to do earlier damage than shotguns, and also their high emp damage makes sure the AP debuff gets applied to the already low TU androns asap. This makes the shock and technology slightly better in what they are doing, namely stunning and disorienting targets, while maiming and dealing considerable damage to androns. Shock and Electron weapons are the least effective against biological units with high energy resistance.

     

    I will upload a commit as soon as possible. Ofcourse all of this needs some testing so i would like to ask everybody who wants to try this out to be part of balancing, before the version goes live.

     

    Edit: Maybe we can literally use the word SHOCK for this instead of MAIM. The String would be "SHOCK up to" than.

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