Ishantil

I very much look forward to testing out the new accuracy system! I'm glad that something that was such a long drawn out discussion on the forums (as StellarRat mentioned) made it into the game. I think that change will vastly improve the way that the combat system behaves. Great work!

Seconded!

This is our finest hour!

Wow, Max, these are great! It really adds flavor to the game!

I think you should be able to throw anything, and it should be limited by weight. Just like in X-COM. So I can toss a guy a magazine, or toss a weapon, or whatever.

I would highly recommend the books, Jean-Luc. The earlier Jack Ryan books are quite good. My favorite is probably Without Remorse.

I should have known, Max.

Why would you take something out that was so awesome? That was perfect. Even if the Electroshock grenades don't do both types, there should be an EMP or electrical damage type. Better yet, let us mod in our own damage types.

Can something have more than one damage type? If so, they should do both stun and EMP damage. EMP should be harmless to biological units, but should do full damage to synthetic units. Stun damage should only work on biological units, obviously. Either that, or we should have EMP grenades. Maybe the damage type should be "electrical" instead of EMP.

Fantastic work!

I've always thought that things were a big wonky with the inventory stuffs. I hope that they have time to smooth out the code if they get the chance. Your proposal looks good, but it'll require some expansions of the existing code (like knowing to rotate the guns sideways when you go into the hands).

What enemy were you facing? Sebillians with Reapers?

Slapping a fresh magazine/power cell into a weapon: 25 Slapping a fresh large magazine/power cell into a weapon: 25 Attaching a new box of ammunition to a machine gun: 30 Slotting 8 shotshells into a tubular magazine: 35 Loading a new rocket into a rocket launcher: 40 This would of course apply to both sides. I see that with the addition of E4D that all the usual suspects are now in my thread.

I was never able to find the post E4D made about what all the guns are. Is that shotgun a pump or an autoloader?

I was agreeing with you. It should be 30 to reload the scatter laser/whatever.

Reloading a rocket launcher or machine gun should be fairly involved, like 40AP. Slapping a clip in a rifle, pistol, or whatever, should be easy to do, say 20-30AP I agree with your overall assessment of the machine gun weapons. I don't think that weapons should be forced into roles like that, either. I machine gun is great for suppressing. It's also great at chewing up medium (lightly armored) targets, putting holes in cover, and generally making a nuisance of itself as far as the enemy is concerned.

Okay, so after some careful consideration of this discussion, I think I'm going to create separate formulas for each weapon type, taking into consideration the various variables. I think I'm going to reduce the effect that range has, but I am not sure about how much. I'll need to take a better look at the in game lore to form a better idea of what the plasma calculation should be. Keep in mind, the purpose is to balance the weapons energy output against themselves, rather than the various eras. Meaning to make the weapons make sense in that they all use the same power cell. I think I'll add in the MAG weapons as well. Just for fun.

They idea of heating something up to 4400 degrees Fahrenheit was basically to kill whatever it was then. Not have it live and keep burning. Anything that dies when you point a rocket engine at it. Like xenomorphs of various and extremely dangerous close in varieties. When you don't want to have to aim much and burn everything that lives. In space, you could always use it as a low intensity rocket engine.

I meant that the stuff burns rather hot. The two materials could easily be adapted into a flamethrower, rather than a rocket engine. Granted, hydrazine is extremely nasty stuff. The one reference to the stuff I found was that hydrazine+hydrogen peroxide burns at around 2700K (~4400F). You'd store it in apart of course, and then combine them together where they would react immediately on contact with each other. There are, of course, somewhat safer ways to make a flamethrower, but they wouldn't work in space as well. My dad and I were were talking about how to make a good flamethrower on Mars (in relation to UFO Afterlight) and this is what we came up with. Basically you'd have a nice big nozzle and point the thing in the general direction of the enemy. Burning cone of doom. Edit: Oh, and sorry about your plans

I just described a rocket engine. It was used in Me-262s in WWII. And rocket engines in the Viking landers. So it'd be easily available.

Hydrazine and hydrogen peroxide. Hypergolic flamethrower. Works in space because it's got it's own oxidizer.

Some of these are pretty cool. I hate it when there's down time between researches. If there were a bunch of "improvement" researches in the game, that would be cool with me. Where you get a bonus to x or something.

Too many diminishing returns. It would be far better to make a better rocket. Plasma weaponry doesn't really work well in atmosphere, the advantages are fairly easily overcome and the actual delivery of energy isn't that good. In fact, it would be a lot like a blowtorch. The only way you'd get it to work is for handwavery to solve the major problems with it. Even said, ceramic plates would work really well against it. The gaviton particle supposedly keeps the field cohesive long enough for it to strike the target. Plasma guns are cool though.

From what I've been able to gather from from various articles about thermal blooming, the effect would be exactly the same...assuming that the plasma wasn't contained in a force field (and actually, plasma weapons wouldn't work at all, except with this fictional field). In fact, the effect would be worse on plasma due to the addition it's charged. Since the field contains the plasma bolt, we must assume that it collapses when it impact a solid mass. At that point the plasma would burn whatever it touched at high temperatures. For the sake of total energy delivery (measured against a single power source), I still like my formula. Feel free to suggest something better, rynait. And I appreciate you taking the time to post about it.

From Wikipedia: "Laser beams begin to cause plasma breakdown in the atmosphere at energy densities of around one megajoule per cubic centimetre. This effect, called "blooming," causes the laser to defocus and disperse energy into the surrounding air. Blooming can be more severe if there is fog, smoke, or dust in the air." As I read that, basically the more energy you put into it (joules), the worse it is. The amount of energy it takes to delivery a high energy beam versus a low energy isn't free. The higher the intensity, the worse the dissipation effect is. Granted, this isn't intended to be a scientific equation. I found it to be the easiest way to calculate the total energy of a battery, given what I have to work with. If anyone has suggestions as to how to better take the range into account I welcome them. But I'd like to hear some reasoning to back it up.