Gazz

This is as old as muskets and volley fire. =)

This never ever works on modders. Just some free advice. =P Hmm. In order to put some horizontal upgrading into the aircraft weapons, how about this? You originally start with a 1-Sidewinder mount (normal) and 2-Sidewinder mount (heavy). After you research [insert apropriate], you get a research project for Sidewinder Miniaturisation, resulting in 2-Sidewinder mount (normal) and 3-Sidewinder mount (heavy).

Some topics simply don't change, like the "no time units" topic over at XCOMEU. The topic doesn't change, the arguments don't change, and for the most part, neither do the posters. No point in having 5 similar threads litter the forum instead. The real thread necromancy issue is rather on or off topic. If the post is referring to current issues while the rest of the thread is about past and long-changed issues, the post is off-topic. Necromancy is just a redundant label. (although is sounds cooler)

Long ago I altered the missile graphics because the "half fantasy" look didn't work for me. Why use a realistic (Sidewinder) missile but also have a fantasy missile (Avalanche) when the Phoenix would do the job just as well? http://www.hentschke-keramik.de/transfer/xeno_missile_mod.zip The relative scale is correct, too. The Sidewinder is a much smaller missile.

But it's the same question. Going overboard is the whole point of gun porn. A silly amount of different guns, implemented as realistically as possible... which is usually silly as well because realistic stats rarely benefit gameplay.

You can buy pictures with a license, like this one for something like 1 €. Cutting extras like a stock goes quickly when you have good base material.

So Xenonauts is basically a Clothed Mod of X-Com? =P But as for the WHY of gun porn? I don't think there is one. Gamers want to use their favourite toys and if you get a lot of them on a project, you end up with something like JA2 1.13 with somewhere over 1000 different guns.

AFAIK, the "a" is customary, not mandatory. It's an old naming convention that some use... and some do not. WRT units that "were not officially there", like russian advisers in Vietnam, how about blacking some of their service record? An entry of "Confidential" or "File not available". Maybe a reference to something like "File D7891-8173 not available". It fits with the whole cold war / spec ops theme. =) "Top Secret" is overused besides being too blunt.

I applaud your attempt to educate the unwashed masses. Don't think it's going to have much of an effect, though. =P I actually prefer elite soldiers standing out in the open, firing a machine gun from the hip. That's totally elite! Like, totally, y'know?

A one-time training course for new recruits is just fiddly and not what the commander of the entire organisation would deal with. It would be more apropriate to slightly adjust the stats of new recruits upwards as the game progresses. Say, you have researched the Alien Retina Improvement technology which gives +3 Accuracy to new recruits and +1 to all existing ones. The (very small) bonus to existing soldiers makes sure it's always useful - but may not be worth it for that alone. This way you do have to make a long term choice, balancing your funds and research capabilities versus better recruits and a tiny bonus to existing soldiers. It is not fiddly, though. Once the research is ordered, the decision is made and the computer never makes you go through any "maintenance clicking" afterwards. Zero ongoing micromanagement. No UI required to order any particular training or even list training courses completed or not. It becomes part of your grand strategy.

Or they are built with the ability to change barrels. You can change the barrel of an MG3 (nearly unchanged from the MG42, "Hitler's Buzzsaw") in way under 10 seconds. Back then they had a higher rate of fire, too (hence the nickname), so it wouldn't have been nearly as scary if the soldiers had had to wait for the barrel to cool. Oh, and when you have to carry the cursed thing you quickly realise that it's not an assault rifle. Only takes a few kilometers.

Xenonauts simply isn't structured for deep modability. You can edit some content, pretty much exactly like you can edit Apocalypse with the APOC'D Editor. Change the values for damage, hit points, and alien spawn distribution around but you can't change how air combat works or how a seeking missile seeks. You can only use the pre-coded features and tell it to seek... or not seek. That's nothing you can tack on, either. If such a modding capability isn't part of the design before you start coding, it's not happening. As development went on, an increasing number of variables had been externalised into the config file. I guess it would be a reasonable compromise to have more key values configurable once the formulas are locked down. Any change to the code is a potential problem but changing a hardcoded value to the same value read from the config file is relatively harmless. Since we still don't know how the formulas will look like in the end, it's too early to haggle about this or that specific value being moddable. =)

So for a recoil < 1 you get an accuracy that constantly decreases the longer the burst is? IRL, accuracy of the first shot is very high because a long and heavy weapon, typically with a bipod, gives you a very stable platform. I did my most "accurate" shooting ever with a machine gun, using 2-3 round bursts. With a long burst you get an initial big kick but then you get to walk the fire back onto your target so I think you should instead aim for something like this: This is what the latest revision of JA2 v1.13 autofire looks like. (in principle) That's pretty much exactly how it's done in Ja2 v1.13. There is no random distribution of hits around the target but the bullets actually describe a path that leads across / away / back to the target. For each shot the weapon kicks a random amount in a vertical / horizontal direction and the gunner (depending on skill) walks it back towards the target by increasing amounts, depending on the burst length. It's crazy hard to balance. They tinkered with that for like months. Then again, that game has several hundred different automatic weapons, ammo types, skills, and whatnot. =P IMO, "just" a simple function like the scribble above, with a random hit location per individual bullet, would be plenty realistic in the greater scheme of things. For short 3 round bursts you'd get an increasing inaccuracy. For longer full-auto bursts the "walk back to target" part eventually kicks in. The weapon role could then be adjusted by the number of rounds fired per burst and the weapon's magazine capacity.

Some of the smarter bots generate "serious" posts before starting to spew links because some forums require a minimum of x posts before any links / pictures / signatures can be posted. Or a signature might magically appear after a while... when the post is no longer "new" and likely to arouse moderator suspicion.

Based on the available input, it's obvious! Wet grass (it was hot enough to turn the hose on) -> diagnosis is sunburn. Watching computers "learn" the world is pure comedy. A brain the size of a planet... and not the good sense god gave a goose. But that's the fun part of AI programming. To teach the AI to understand the situation. How much is a position worth? How much is staying out of the line of fire worth? Own survival? The mission objective? Keeping the other side from reaching the objective? Figuring out what to do about it is not so bad after that. Until the AI starts happily running back and forth because these two positions score the most points. Owell.

So... if the grass was wet, the patient was diagnosed with the flu?

When every situation has a fixed, scripted response, the challenge is to maintain the resulting monster of a script. I far more prefer an AI that weighs situations. (however coarse or compartmented it's picture may be) These are more likely to positively surprise you by behaving in a way that looks smart. A long time ago in game far far away I taught a spaceship's laser turret script to compare the closing rate of a target with it's total speed to guesstimate relative lateral movement of the target. Something with a low lateral movement was coming or going more or less in a straight line. These required the smallest "lead" adjustment and the gunnery accuracy was immensely better. As a result the script "figured out" to shoot at the fighters that were doing nice, straight attack runs, convincing them to abort said attack runs (to evade) and vastly improving the defensive value of a technically purely offensive system. The ships ended up taking like 30-50% fewer hits. With only comparing two integers the script got a lot smarter. Doing "real" 3D math would have been more awesome but the result was already somewhat distressing when the player was piloting said fighter craft. =P Wasn't in my design but the script figured it would be a good idea. =)

No doubt. Over here I'm a moderator in the S&M section.

Looking forward to receiving a good spanking. =)

It's what machine guns do. They really carve up the landscape. It can only work if reloading is a major factor and your ammo evaporates like whisky on St.Patrick's day. And at short range, where the range/damage reduction wouldn't count? "It" would need one helluvalot of armour to shrug off half a belt of 7.62mm ammo. Most things would turn into hamburger. But... then you might end up with an empty and slow to reload weapon quite close to the friends of the unlucky target.

As others have already mentioned, the JA2 system of variable auto-fire lengths could be useful. I wouldn't make it fiddly, though. You order one such barrage as one action, the machine gunner fires half a belt. If he happens to have only 50-99% of the required AP for this autofire action, he can fire one long burst but only that percentage of bullets. That would make fire and movement a bit less static allowing some movement while still suppressing targets... or doing reaction fire.

That burst fire should cost more ammunition is a given but I think we should really differentiate between burst fire, which is usually understood as a 3 round burst and mostly aimed, and full auto, which is the most obvious tool to generate suppression. 1. There needs to be a clear distinction between semi auto and burst. For instance, single shot means carefully aimed and increases the nominal weapon range by 30-50%. This does not only affect the accuracy of the fire mode (which you can probably already set separately) but it also increases the effective range of the weapon - the distance at which the damage falls off. Burst fire would not nearly be as useful for a "super sniper" given sufficient soldier accuracy. The inaccuracy of a long range burst would somewhat be countered by soldier accuracy but you're getting better punch with carefully aimed single shots. It's a little gamey but not very. Mostly it achieves the goal of not being able to carefully aim an entire burst at a vulnerable spot of the target. You do less damage on average. At shorter range, either fire mode is within nominal range so either fire mode does the same damage per bullet. The added firepower of using bursts becomes more advantageous. Both fire modes should be useful. That's the reason of having two. 2. Auto fire This is something they do in Firaxis' approach and I like the thinking behind it. Full auto is what you mainly use to suppress targets. Not single shots or short bursts. Uses maybe half a belt / magazine for one action and reloading takes time. In their version an entire turn so there is a major cost factor attached to it. The "cost" of having to bring an extra magazine is laughable. It was irrelevant in UFO1, it is in Xenonauts, and in Firaxis' XCOM they tossed the magazine counting out the window because it had never made any difference. Firing full auto with an assault rifle could empty maybe 2/3 a magazine, making it possible to occasionally lay down covering fire but making heavier weapons with larger magazine capacities much better suited for it. To justify "full auto" firing a lot of "real", damaging bullets, the firing costs must obviously be high enough that you won't fire multiple barrages per round and the reload time of "heavy" weapons should also cost most of a turn. Operating a machine gun without a loader to assist you is no fun. If you have a loader to basically place an ammo box with a loose belt right next to your feed, reloading takes maybe 4 seconds. Less if you're motivated. If you have to move around and arrange ammo boxes or belts - forget it. You'll get it done... eventually. Akin to 1., the weapon range could be reduced when firing full auto. While it's possible to shower a target in bullets at long range, the damage would be greatly reduced. Great to suppress something. Not so great to kill something. Duh! Use aimed fire to hit something vulnerable or get closer! 3. Heavy machine guns like the Ferret's .50 cal should also have to reload. Say, the weapon automatically comes with 3 or 4 "belts". When empty, it costs a lot of AP to insert a new belt. Again, it's gamey that this would interfere with it's movement but you have to balance it's firepower somehow. Maybe 3 barrages per belt, then most of a round to reload. Time / actions are the true currency of the game, not the number of bullets. The bullets are really only there for looks. In a strategy game it's the actions that you can perform in a turn that are important. Normally, the damage of the bullets is reduced at long range. How about not reducing bullet damage when hitting any kind of terrain? It's the damage vs live targets that is in need of balancing. If more things explode all around, it's just cooler. =) If you use variable weapon ranges depending on the fire mode, you can balance the roles of those fire modes without those pesky high-accuracy soldiers tossing a wrench in the works.

Does not compute.

Like I said. A small one. Breaking your own arm seems counterproductive when the Chryssalid is charging you. There are at least 2 immediate approaches to make it work. You could press the shield to your body to spread the impact over a large area and you could also fire smaller charges in sequence like a firecracker. Using both you should be able to put a lot of punch into it without serious injury to yourself. The other side of the room would be pretty thoroughly wrecked so it might not be ideal for recovering fragile alien equipment. Wouldn't be fun if there weren't any downsides. =)

I already did. If civs react to gunfire during "their" round which now coincides with "your" round, you have the option of firing somewhere you don't want them going.