Max_Caine

So yeah, I'm on youtube when I come across Now, Francis is not real. He is a character made up by boogie2988. But damn, if the character of Francis doesn't resonate with the way that some, nay, many people behave. I meet and talk to a "Francis" every day when I go to work. Does anyone know a "Francis" themselves?

I'm glad that these ideas are spurring you onto your own, Citizen844. What tweaks would you suggest to the real-world ranking system that would be acceptable to, say, Oktober who I feel is representative of people who find a hatful of captains in a squad unacceptable.

Oktober, Gorlom, considering what you were saying about different ranking titles, it depends upon the theme of the experience progression structure you'd like to take. For example, if you wanted to a more "defenders of the earth" theme, you might have: Sentry -> Sentinel -> Guardian -> Warden -> Praetor -> Paladin Or one more modeled on types of experience, you might have: Cadet -> Tyro -> Seasoned -> Veteran -> Specialist -> Master-at-Arms

As Comassion has responded to his suggestion, I will respond to mine. How often can one fire a gun per squaddie? Let us say for this discussion we have a corporal which has 58 AP - which is reasonable if you either cherry-pick privates and train them, or have a corp level up over a period of time. If that corp is armed with an assault rifle he can:- a) fire three snap shots (51 AP). b) fire two normal and a snap (57 AP) c) Fire two aimed shots (46 AP) or d) fire a burst and either a snap or a normal (52 or 55). In comparison, with the current machinegun, our corp can fire two bursts of five (50AP). Each assault rifle bullet will do 25HP damage, with an armour penetration of 10. Verses a sebillian noncom (the type most likely to be see in the early alpha game), with an average HP of 40 and an armour of 15 it must be shot twice before dying. However, a machinegun with 40HP damage and armour penetration of 15 will kill a noncom with one bullet. As aliens scale up, the machinegun becomes more valuable. The next grade of Sebillian with an average HP of 80 but an armour of 25 will make you wish you left the assault rifles at home! There's the kicker. The machinegun as it stands doesn't need to hit as often to kill. Verses a sebillian noncom, an assault rifle armed squaddie's best option is to fire a burst and hope two shots hit, or fire two normal shots and possibly a snap. The machinegunner by comparison can fire a burst and only one shot out of five needs to hit. In either case, the squaddie is expending far more effort with an assault rifle then he is with the machinegun. By upping the AP cost to 45, the machinegunner can't blaze away like John Rambo, but he can provide supporting fire or engage a target by himself (he still has 13 AP - four tiles of movement). By reducing the number of shots the machinegun fires by 1, the machinegunner is still likely to hit with one shot (the machinegun may have a low probility to hit, but it has low variance in bullet direction), but is less likely to plow more than one shot into the target, encouraging sqaud tactics, not lone gunmen.

I'm guessing with 100 custom portraits+names, and (#looks at kickstarter#) a potential further 140 custom names, at launch there will be potentially 240 custom soliders for the aliens to kill. EDIT: I'd be impressed if somone did a reverse pokemon and killed them all!

jimbobfury, I'd take a look at this thread as some of the points you bring up here are brought up there. Also in it, Gauddlike demonstrates it's possible to mod windows to be opened and closed like doors!

RotGtIE in in this thread and Comassion in in this thread have both commented on how the machinegun is the de-facto choice of weapon for a solider due to a relatively low AP cost, a high rate of fire and an acceptable level of accuracy (given the no. of shots) with the weapon. The issue with having a de-facto weapon in alpha is that game features are harder to test fully if the best choice for the player is to equip all his soliders with the same weapon. This thread therefore proposes to suggest tweaks to ballistic weapons within the framework of the existing alpha, to enable all weapons to be fairly tested. So, without further ado. Having read Comassion and RotGtIE, I would propose the following changes to the machinegun. Increasing the AP cost to 45, while reducing the no. of shots to 4 The average AP of a corporal is between 55-61. The current AP cost of a machinegun is 25, so a machinegunner can get two bursts of 5 shots off with some change left over to move a little if necessary. It also has one of the higher suppression rates, and despite its low accuracy modifer, the sheer no. of shots almost guarantees a hit regardless of accuracy. Therefore, by increasing the AP cost to 45, the machinegunner has a between 10-15 AP to get into position (2-4 tile steps), but can only get one burst off regardless. It also "future proofs" the weapon, as the next time a machinegunner can get another burst off is when they get to 90 AP! By removing one shot from the burst, the overall accuracy of the weapon is also slightly reduced, as there are fewer chances for the machinegunner to hit a target, so a player is more likely to use a machinegunner to suppress a target than he is to kill it. However in doing this a machinegunner becomes vulnerable to suppression. With a 50% drop in AP, machinegunners in general cannot return fire the turn they are suppressed. Is that a bad thing or a good thing? I'm not certain. If you're not using Quartermasters weapon editor, look for weapon.machinegun and replace the BurstFire line with: <BurstFire ap="45" accuracy="35" sound="Weapon Machinegun Burst" shotCount="4" suppressionValue="50" suppressionRadius="5" />

Saint D, scroll down to the bottom of this page for some solid advice on dealing with fightercraft.

How would you go about presenting that? Would I have to fit out a solider, then click on a "save kit" button? Then have a "kit button" underneath the solider, or something else?

Chris said something about that a while ago. Hang on a sec, let me find it.... Found it! here's the link This is what Chris said at the time. Mind you, that was with the first AI coder they had. How this has changed since Chris had to find another, I don't know.

Game-tester, I do admire you for your persistance. But could you please move your images to a site (mediafire?) where if I click on them, my AV doesn't go crazy and warn me my PC is about to contract digital herpes.

StellarRat, of the three starting aircraft weapons in UFO, if you weren't trying to loose or not trying to shoot down the smallest UFO, you switched straight to avalanche because longer range = safer aircraft. So there wasn't any real choice in weapon type. If there was a long-range missile with a short lock-on time (the avalanche torpedo is actually quite long-range but has a long lock-on period) that would become the defacto weapon for MiGs and F-17s. Air combat would devolve pretty quickly - I expect the safest strategy would be fly all MiGs (to maximise long-range missiles), slow the MiGs down at the start of combat, wait for the AMRAAMs to fire then turn tail. Where's the fun, or challenge in that?

Korval, unfortunately, you'll be wiping savegames right up to the final release candidate. I wouldn't get too attached to any soliders you have as they'll be consigned to digital heaven come the next build!

Do you want this just for laying out a new base, or would you prefer it to be extended to putting new components into any existing bases? Furthermore, what's your preferred cut-off for undo? After you leave the screen? Before the first game-day of building is done?

Two more points on suppression. With suppression enabled, I found that it was worth shooting early, even if you stood no chance of hitting. Good example, one guy with a precision rifle was shooting from long range at a Caesian who was behind some cover. Now, my guy had at a 7% chance of hitting the Caesian - he either hit the cover or the shot went flying elsewhere. But the Caesian got suppressed after the first shot, and that let my shotgun-equipped guys move up. Also, some weird activity. In another situation, one of my machinegun armed guys missed his target (a sebillian) badly amd the shots ended up near some guys trying to flank the same suppressed sebillian (the flanking sqaud was no-where near the sebillian at the time). Those guys got suppressed. But shouldn't only the sebillian have been suppressed?

Yes, civvies can get suppressed, right alongside the aliens, actually.

So make more maps then. Make better maps then. Harness that boredom into doing something other than trying to chivvy along a developer who in his own words, has other things to do. (Like getting those CTDs fixed).

The machinegun very easily supresses anything in it's path. I found that after tweaking the damage value of the machingun so it was lower (trying to lock down the reason beind S.A.D.S.) I preferred it as a suppressor to a killer. Gauddlike was right. I was able to take two rookie corporals with machineguns, edge them into range then under the quite wild base of fire they supplied I could advance right up and take out aliens. EDIT: This did involve a LOT of shuffling about to make sure I could start with suppressing fire first.

Likewise. Didn't seem to make any difference. But hey, I like Suppressed Alien Death Syndrome! "Responsible players don't let their aliens get suppressed before dying. Suppressed Alien Death Syndrome. Together, we can beat it."

The caveat to this is I have found it doesn't CTD if the shots kill the alien. It only works if the alien is suppressed by a machinegun (to the best of my knowledge). And the machinegun can kill oh-so-easily. You might find it useful to crank the damage done my the machinegun down so you can test it.

I try not to double post, but I now have a series of steps I can show to reproduce this bug. 1) Started new game - went through base setup. Equipped all soliders with machineguns. 2) Shot down first UFO (UFO only has one alien - very suitible for testing!) 3) Found alien and shot at alien with any machinegun-armed solider. 4) When the blue S appears above the alien, the program freezes for a second, then CTDs. I've tried these steps three times now. It works each time.

There was a lot of dicsussion in this thread about ranks in Xenonauts. Chris had this to say about it:

You can wait until the alien ship makes the dodge action - by that point your MiG will have gotten closer so you can still fire off all three remaining missiles, but Death by Chains' strategy is sound.

Got into range of a Sebillian with the Ferret armed with a .50cal. Shot the Ferret at the Sebillian. The Sebillian didn't make the dying noise, and the game instantly CTD'd.

I was watching again when I realised just how much of an idiot I was when I was placing my inital base. I had been working along my old X-Com lines, putting the base in europe as that was smack dab where I had always put it. But watching the video again I realised that a) the territories are completely different and b) exactly why was I covering so much sea? I get exactly nothing for shooting down a ufo over the sea. So I had a re-think. Perhaps the first inital base is best placed in or close to where alpacapatrol places his - on the "bridge" of land linking the middle east territory to the africa territory. That then covers middle east, europe and a big wedge of soviet, indochina and both africa territories. Having a further thought, I think the second base must go to the americas, with three other territories that otherwise go uncovered. The question is, is it better to put the second base in central america, so it sort-of covers the other two territories and is a good central position if a terror site happens, or is it better to cover either north or south america, and work towards another base (fairly quickly) to give better overall coverage?