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Dagar

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Everything posted by Dagar

  1. I agree with Bobit. I can't really wrap my head around why it would be good to limit the player to one dropship. First of all, the possibility for multiple dropships exists in X1 already (and is useful in X-Division at least), second I want to lead a global (para-)military unsurgency operation, not a squad of comically overpowered popcorn cinema heros like in FiraXCOM, and multiple cells are definitely part of this, third I always find it bad if my decision space is artificially limited, and fourth it may make it harder for modders to take that limitation out again, so why not just allow it in the first place? The rest sounds sensible though. Energy need as a limiting factor for base growth sounds good, but I would also be okay with an energy-less system like X1, where money and the base size were limiting you. If the energy system does something unique there, go for it.
  2. I wouldn't say that. Reskinning is essentially just a palette swap. But even if you talk about adding new units, it is not impossible; it depends heavily on how the game is made. And then, you mostly see it for AAA games, as they have the audience needed to attract the few people who do that for fun in their spare time.
  3. Well, if your game has 3D graphics, you usually have a 3D grid model of a unit, then its textures on top (for colour, light reflection, ...), and then you have to animate that 3D unit for any action that needs animation. That is a lot of work and in most cases hard coded in the game files, so you can't easily add your own units. Even if you can, that process takes 3D animation skills, whereas a palette swap only needs a new colour texture. If the textures exist in extra files, that is pretty easy to do, so palette swaps is what you usually see from mods. In a 2D sprite based game, that whole process is comparatively easy to do, where you "just" add a new sprite for each step of an animation.
  4. Ah, now it works again. It did not when I wrote that post above.
  5. A question regarding the Xsolla version: isn't it like an early access version that one can purchase? I don't find any option to do that, sadly, or I would...
  6. I think I remember a post where Chris stated that the research tree was really bare bones right now, with much placeholder stuff and little functionality.
  7. That sounds a lot like a discussion I want to have in a thread that was about something else entirely. But maybe we want to continue this train of thought in the off-topic section? If so, just tag me there and we can philosophise about the nature of time, be it amateurishly (at least from my side).
  8. I am not fond of a further discussion with you, but this post is so shallow and wrong I have to post something. Even if it derails this conversation even further. First of all, there is a fundamental difference between Diablo being turn-based and real-time games, even if these turns are very quick. That might not show in gameplay, but it certainly has the potential to. Just figure the difference between the following courses of action: 0ms - Warrior attacks Goblin, dealing 13 damage and staggering it for two rounds; 25ms - Goblin is staggered; 50ms - Warrior recovers from attack; 75ms - Goblin is staggered; 100ms - Warrior moves one tile to the right; 125ms Goblin attacks Warrior, misses; 150ms Warrior still in movement ... and in comparison: 0ms - Warrior starts attack on Goblin; 27ms Goblin starts movement one tile to the right; 83ms Warrior hits Goblin's hitbox, dealing 13 damage and staggering it for 56ms; 113ms Warrior has finished attack; 125ms Warrior starts movement one tile to the right; 139ms Goblin no longer staggered, movement stopped; 142ms Goblin starts attack at Warrior; ... To me these systems seem like they have the potential to lead to very different gameplay. Agree? Second, even though a single computation unit performs computations in serial, that does not mean that the overall computation follows a deterministic path. You can experience that yourself if you experiment a bit with parallel computation and/or schedulers. It is not for no reason that there is a whole field of Computer Science concerned with securing that programmes follow their defined behaviour - or not, depending on what you need. Third, it is Planck time (named after the Physicist Planck), and while it is the shortest time measurable that does NOT mean that Planck times are like turns in a turn based game. Rather they can of course overlap, so reality likely is NOT turn based but real time. Though physics to my knowledge has not yet found an answer to the question if time "shorter" than Planck time has discrete intervals or is continuous. At least I agree with your last paragraph. For all intents and purposes, the Geoscape is in real time. The only aspect that matters for gameplay though is, I would argue, that you do not have to perform any action on the Geoscape that relies on your reaction time, to which also contributes the fact that you can pause at any time (but, and this is the distinction to the air game, the ability to pause is not sufficient in all cases to take reaction time out of the equation). And this is what seperates the X1 air game from all the other parts of the game and can make it frustrating, especially for elderly or disabled players, and why it may be good to change the air game. That does not mean it has to be turn based, but it may be desirable to at least take reaction time out of the equation to create a more coherent experience. And it seems, that is exactly what Goldhawk are trying to do with X2, so it is not beyond imagination that they also identified that as a problem, no matter how much you and I like the X1 (X-Division) air game.
  9. Come on, the Geoscape is different and you know it. Don't argue just for the sake of it. Nothing that happens on the geoscape relies on you getting the fraction of a second right where you have to pause (or slow down to the minimum), not even in X-Division, which is much more demanding in that regard. As to your question: because it makes sense and most games keep that kind of consistency, so players expect it. Everything else I already stated, no need to repeat myself.
  10. Umm... because people buy XCOM-like games because of the tile-based, turn-based tactical combat, and the Xenonauts air game is neither turnbased (i.e. you want to unpause-pause the game as quickly as you can in order to maximize efficiency) nor tile-based (meaning that you have to navigate in very small increments of two dimensions instead of the coarse tileset that is present in ground combat). I.e. by the logic that it has very different game mechanics compared to the meat of the game. And no, it's not like saying don't make hard games. It's like saying don't make mechanically inconsistent games. As for the rest, I don't think repetition is the bad thing about the new air game. Any hack'n'slay and any mmorpg is a testimony to the fact that repetition is not inherently bad in game design. But if your underlying system is not fun to begin with, it certainly won't help. And also, I don't think a 3D dogfight system is either feasible nor in context of the game a sensible decision. But we'll see what Goldhawk come up with.
  11. Make sure you follow the installation instructions to 100%. There are some funny things in there you are not used to from normal game installation like starting the vanilla game before continuing the installation and so on.
  12. I have contemplated vision systems a bit, and I'd actually like a system that emulates that a) you can move your eyes and head around more easily than you can rotate your body, so within a certain angle it should be really cheap to explore. b) Humans have vision focused on the centre of their vision cone, so things on the peripheral are not really perceived well. c) different lifeforms see well in different lighting conditions. d) movement is more easily perceived than a static target, and areas different in texture or colour are more focused on than very uniform areas. In a Xenonauts-like system, simulating this to a reasonable degree could look like this: a) when the unit is static or moving slowly, a large portion of its forward area is explored, while when panicked, suppressed or sprinting only a small, specific area is perceived. b) towards the edges of the vision area, it is less likely (percentage-wise) to spot a threat. This could be extreme in e.g. the case of an unexperienced sniper just staring through his scope, but that would lead to all kinds of wonky extra rules, which I am not a fan of. c) the brightness of the surroundings play a role in how far you can see and where you most likely spot enemies. At the same time, it makes it less likely to spot targets in darker areas, because the light also draws your vision focus and "overshines" darker areas. Also, that could make cool use of light mechanisms and items like flares, night vision goggles, flashlights, if different aliens had different light levels at which they perceive vision cues well. d) That could give rise to ambush and hiding mechanisms. In the extreme, e.g. a Sebillian grunt may not even perceive your troops if they stand perfectly still and do not attack, and Psyons panicking your troops to run around or twitch could be even more devastating. At the same time, Ghillie suits and other camouflage (also for Aliens) could become a useful and cool thing.
  13. Pretty easy, you should be able to find it online. If you can stand waiting a few weeks, I can send a scan to you once I unpacked my moving boxes.
  14. Keine Ahnung, was Sentinel genau ist, hab Vanilla nie so weit gespielt und in X-Division bin ich da noch nicht. Ich würde aber generell solche Eigennamen nicht übersetzen. Du übersetzt doch bestimmt auch Foxtrot nicht.
  15. To be the devil's advocate, the pilot is not inherently worth more, it is just that you can more easily store spare aircraft in the event that your pilots need more than you can store spare pilots in case your plane comes back in one piece without a pilot...
  16. What exactly does retiring for you mean? You are not going to make any more changes, I presume. But will you also stop communicating here? Good on you regardless, you earned it. Thanks for all the work you put in that wonderful project!
  17. Not to my knowledge, and it can be a hassle especially when running around the map collecting stuff without aliens being a threat. But then again, situations where you may need that are pretty rare in my experience.
  18. I think that is a problem where the rift between how the game plays and its lore is not really feasible to bridge. Personally I am on the train of "we never encountered such opposition, so we all are essentially rookies here". It could be argued that in real life military, for the individual the familiarity with the situation and the according experience are worth more than the "natural abilities" or training for other circumstances, as well as tactical cohesion of a group of soldiers is more important. That does not really play well with the aliens pretty much behaving as human soldiers do individually (i.e. shooting, going for cover, throwing grenades...), but that can't really be helped. From history you could e.g. make the analogy to the soldiers in WW 1 hunkering in their ditches when encountering mustard gas. I bet many of them had fighting experience prior, but the new element made rookie and trained soldier react in the same way.
  19. Hey, schön, dass du das machst. Ich bin neugierig: Was hat die Übersetzung mit der Bildschirmauflösung zu tun? Wo verschwinden bei geringeren Auflösungen Textstücke?
  20. Yeah, that's not intended, and afaik fixed in one of the latest unofficial versions.
  21. @LagannPM Welcome to the community: 1. Yeah, that one is actually pretty bad Edit: see posts below for correct and detailed answers 2. Try it out I'd say. If the missile screen of a UFO is too much for aircraft without Antimissiles, you'll know when you need them. 3. Not completely sure (I am not that far yet), but I think Alien Fighters are slower but sturdier and thus better suited against medium sized targets, while Asierus are the pure Anti-Fighter plane. 4. Understand the stun system. A unit's stun threshold is as high as its max HP, so that many stun damage you will have to do. At the same time, each HP damage is halved and applied as stun damage as well. That means hard tu stun enemies should be damaged first. Note that some units regenerate HP, but nothing raises its stun threshold again. That means you can essentially stun Sebillians with conventional force if you wait for enough regenerates. 5. Nope, that's an artefact from the base game (that was not even present there I think). Sebillians are affected by smoke and fire as any unit is: smoke blocks sight, fire damages. Smoke stacking is a thing. 6. You can collapse any building if you do enough damage to it. 7. Not sure if better, but you can damage doors with gun fire also. But improved Alenium explosives do pretty good damage. 8. That I don't know. 9. Yeah, try not to destroy the stuff inside the UFO. 10. Yep. And they are two different aliens, so Scout Op does not necessarily unlock everything Light Scout Op would have.
  22. Nope, haven't, and I can't say that my intuition about the intuitiveness of that system is right, especially after @wulf 21 already stated that it plays good.
  23. Xeno 1 already solved that by stripping soldiers of all finite equipment, at least if they are too wounded to participate on a mission. But it's good that the system is intuitive to you!
  24. One idea that came to my mind to justify giving more crash sites to the factions instead of doing them yourselves from a lore standpoint: This is the Cold War era, where the significant powers were on a race for technological supremacy as much as military strength. That means they will want these alien artefacts, and that without your interference (who is to say that you don't keep crucial technology from them if you salvage all the crash sites first, and give it to their opponents?). They may even get angry at you, deterioriating relations and cutting funding, if you do not share artefacts and/or technological advances and/or resulting military equipment with them. What is more, with that kind of technological leap, any nation could have the potential to become a new, third super power next to the established ones... Maybe you would actually race against the nation's military and intelligence agencies to the crash sites, especially if they are not fond of you. Which could be an incentive to do night missions, something which you pretty much never had to do in Xeno 1.
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