FriarBob
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Posts posted by FriarBob
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I've noticed several load issues too (same version). I sometimes get a "dead hang" at 17 % load such that I have to kill the process, but that's rare. In others I get to 86% or 87% and the game hangs up and goes "not responding" per task manager, but then (usually) recovers. I do not recall ever getting a full CTD on a load.
It's also sloooowww. My machine isn't as new as the OP but I've still got a AMD Ryzen 5 2600X Six-Core @ 3.60 GHz with 16GB ram. Video card is only a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB but this doesn't seem a game that should need top of the line here either. I'm sure there is a lot to load and it takes time to process, but it still seems VERY slow to load. Perhaps that's just something you plan to polish later?
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I think this is a bug, unless for reasons I don't understand this is intentional?? ...but the item is tagged in the JSON as StrategyItemMetaComponent. This makes you unable to sell it or transfer between bases. I removed that to see what happens and now I can dispose of extras.
Considering I had about 20 in a base that I built with the intention of transferring them to the second base that was still under construction (not realizing I would not be allowed to) that 'fix' was pretty important for me.
IMO, if you can't transfer it then it also should not take up space in your warehouse. "My fault" or not, at 10 space a pop this was a KILLER for my available storage space.
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On 11/22/2019 at 7:47 AM, Max_Caine said:
It's a good point, but if I do that then I pretty much close down the pistol, because the SMG then does everything you could want out of a secondary. I've been experimenting a lot with both SMG and the pistol and my personal conclsion is that the pistol can be a viable secondary but to compete with the SMG it has to be able to do things that the SMG can't do. I haven't fully locked down the pistol yet, but I do have a number of changes to it which makes it more viable.
Increase damage from 12 to 20: This is the damage the pistol did in X1, similar to the rifle. This upgrades the pistol to a magnum .50 Action-Express. The kind of weapon you take around bear country. The boost in damage is necessary because the pistol is single-shot, so every shot that hits has to count.
Decrease snap TU cost to 10%, and aimed to 20%: The hallmark of primary weapons is they don't have a TU cost below 22-25% for the lowest cost shot. Secondaries can back this up by being cheap to shoot so complimenting the more expensive primary.
Reduce ammo count to 7: If I boost the damage up and reduce cost of shots, then exactly why am I using a primary again? By halving the ammo count per magazine, you gotta be more careful about ammo conservaion, something you don't have to be with the primaries.
Reduce magazine weight to 0.5: In tandem with the reduction of shots per magazine, you need to carry more of them so reucing the weight makes the pistol a more attractive weapon.
Yeah. If the pistol did a bit more damage (or took less TUs, and especially if both) I would put those as the secondary on my snipers in a heartbeat. Perhaps that's the better option.
Of course I then have to wonder if I'd like the SMG enough to use it at all. Definitely not vanilla, at any rate, nor on the snipers anymore. Maybe your version though could be the long-range variant for the shotgun folks? And it does fit thematically, two (very) different "spray-and-pray" type weapons. To date I've always put med packs on them figuring they are GOING to need them. But I also completely loathe the starting rifle, so I'm tempted to try two variant assault classes with snipers and see if that works or not.
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15 hours ago, Max_Caine said:
I'd like to take a moment to talk about the weapon I use the very least, the submachinegun.
The submachinegun could be a great secondary weapon to compliment pretty much any primary except perhaps the assault rifle. The problem as I see it is that there's nothing the submachinegun does that isn't done already by the primary set. The current statline has't changed pretty much since v1, and all it is at the moment is a cut-down version of an assault rifle. Some of it's biggest failures are it's expensive to use, easy to miss with and doesn't give enough bang for your buck. It's generally better to have a medkit and rely on your primary than get some use out of the secondary. I tried out a lot of different ways the submachine could compliment primary weapons and retain the feel of a submachinegun, and came up with the following:
Remove all options except burst, and give the burst 4 shots: Most primary weapons have a single shot mode already, with the exception of the LMG. The submachinegun shouldn't be trying to compete with primary weapons that do a job probably better than the SMG can do. A burst fire of 4 shots slots alongside al primary weapon types, but won't directly compete with the LMG that has a higher ROF.
I like most of your ideas and even to some degree this one. But not entirely. When I'm not save-scumming (or before I call the turn a failure and do so) I'm usually using the SMG as a way to get my snipers an extra shot in trying to finish off the alien before he can execute one of my soldiers (or a civilian). And for that mode you DO need the ability to shoot single shot (or at least less).
Perhaps instead it should have light burst and full burst only? Perhaps 2x shots for less TUs and 4x for "full" TUs?
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On 11/10/2019 at 7:48 AM, Chris said:
The release of V9.2 sees a bunch of usability and balance updates to the game (mostly the former). The changelog for V9.2 can be found here and my closing remarks on the previous balance thread can be found here where I answer some of the issues raised in the previous threads.
A few things to highlight:
- The changes to the research tree may not all make much sense, particularly with regards to the armour. You should read our plans for the Modular Armour system as you'll need to understand what we're planning to understand why I've made those changes.
- I've reduced the money and resource income from the strategy layer quite significantly, and I'd be interested in whether people feel like it has gone too far. Things are definitely much harder!
- Converted alien weapons are being disabled in the next build. I'm open to arguments for re-enabling them but I'm not convinced there's a valid reason to do so, as I feel like there's already a disproprotionate number of weapons in the game and I don't feel there's niches for all of them. But I'm willing to have my mind changed on that point.
- Combat Armour is now a starting item and it's default equipment for the Infantry and Assault loadouts. Because all your soldiers start out as Infantry, it means everyone has it - one of the priority changes in the next major build will be to restore the weapon / armour mix to the starting troops so it's not all rifles and combat armour (it can make missions a bit boring).
- Map variation is definitely a problem in the current build, but unfortunately we probably won't be able to fix that until V10 or V11.
Other than that, comments are welcome. I'm planning to play a bit deeper into the game in my next playthrough because my previous set of changes were mostly focused on the first hour or so of gameplay.
- Not a fan of the armor changes yet but I very much expect I will be in the long run once you finish building all of what you talk about in that thread.
- I thought it was too low before these changes. So yeah now it's WAY too low. Especially since you critically need those scientists and engineers. Well and money now too...
- If your starting weapons didn't absolutely suck wind I would agree. And if you could spend less than 50 months to research and build replacements (ok 2-5 for the first level of them, but still a long time) ditto. At least with the converted weapons (and save scum) you can do enough damage to survive. Sure you often can't hit the broadside of a barn for the first 50 reloads, but you can at least do damage when finally you do hit. (Obviously again I'm exaggerating for effect, but still.)
- See #1
- As expected, no sweat.
Frankly, I can understand reducing the supply of the engineers and scientists (and money). I don't agree mind you -- not at all -- but I understand. Both sides actually. I too am better at using my own software than the average user, what seems merely "harder" to you will seem "crushingly impossible" to a normal user. You do need to take that into account.
That said, especially once you get around to re-implementing difficultly levels this actually would be a GREAT idea for that... perhaps 3 engineers/scientists on baby-easy, 2 for the middle level(s), and 1 for impossible. And similar tiers on money.
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I don't know if this is intentional, testing out crappy ideas, lack of sufficient UI explanation leading to my misunderstanding of things, or a bug. Probably some of all of them.
I built a foxhound and it literally was ON TOP OF the alien ship before the missiles locked on and fired. In x1 the Foxtrot (or whatever) would take time to lock but it was a LOT less than the time it took to reach firing range on the alien craft, so you could still fire without getting the ship shot to pieces. (And frankly, that was the ONLY reason I ever built them. They sucked otherwise. But for that period between the dodgy probes and the later ships that needed a "real" interceptor they were quite useful in this role.)
Similarly the sidewinders now have an excessively long lock-on time (vs. none for x1) and they don't even start the countdown until you are already in range. Which also means the alien has shot the hell out of your ship before you can fire.
I wouldn't mind this as much if you could still order two or three baby-interceptors at a time. But with the achingly slow ability to slloooowly build ONE fighter at at time also in this build, it makes the fact that air combat is impossible to get through without damage a real pain in the butt. Not so much for the first combat. That's annoying, perhaps, but seems realistic at first and almost seems cool then too. But I quickly realized it's a massive downside because there often won't be time to repair the ship before you have to send it after another alien. Which means cumulative damage. Wash rinse repeat boom no more interceptor... and not even close to enough time yet to build the new one(s) you need before the NEXT wave has spawned.
If this is something that needs to be fixed by research, well... ok, that at least would explain things. Maybe a project after the first air combat where your pilots say "shoot man our weapons aren't locking on fast enough we need you eggheads to improve our tech". But otherwise, I can't see any logical reason for you to not even try to lock on until they're already blasting the crap out of your fighter. NO fighter jock in the history of the world does that. Not at least a "jock" that is sufficiently skilled to survive a standard takeoff and landing, at least. Maybe you don't succeed in locking on. Maybe you miss when you fire. But you at least start trying the millisecond you become aware of the enemy. Short of cloaking devices, this is WAY before you are in their range (and vice versa).
Hopefully this is just testing crappy ideas out and this will be "fixed" (or at least explained) at some point.
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I have had very limited numbers of times when the walls on a UFO came down so far in my plays, and in general I didn't like it. A time or two it made no real difference, at least once it got my soldiers massacred and I had to reload, and one time it let me have direct access to the back of a better ship and it almost seemed like outright abuse of the AI. Yeah yeah I know, in war if you aren't cheating you aren't trying hard enough. Duh. But it really seemed more like a bug than a tactic, that's how unbalanced it was.
If I wanted aesthetics before function I too would never have bought X1 (or tried to talk any of my friends into buying it either). But it is nice to have both if you can. So on this point I VERY strongly do not like the butt-ugly current UFOs.
But I also consider the ability to rotate the map a HUGE upgrade. One that the lack-of was a huge minus for X1. If the price of getting to rotate the screen is butt-ugly UFOs I suppose I'm grudgingly willing to pay it.
But I won't pretend I like it. And while I won't angrily demand a refund or anything, I will say that if I had known about this (and a few other things) in advance I would not have backed the game. I very likely would still have bought it eventually, but I probably would have waited for a sale.
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8 hours ago, Chris said:
This is a very simple thing to update if we wanted to, but the effect on the overall game is enormous - and like others I'm fundamentally unusure about whether selling for profit is a good idea. I certainly don't think it's a good idea to use the X-Com setup where manufacturing laser cannons can become your main source of income for the entire war, but possibly I went a bit overboard shutting down manufacturing profits in the first Xenonauts.
Really, it depends on the setup of the strategy layer as a whole. If Engineers are staff you can recruit in unlimited numbers whenever you want, it's very difficult to support manufacturing for profit without it getting out of control. Currently, however, Engineers are staff that you have to spend time and effort recruiting from the Geoscape - which means they're a resource in themselves, and if they're capable of earning you money when not manufacturing items you need then that's not necessarily a problem (there needs to be a reason why a player would sometimes choose to recruit an Engineer instead of a Scientist).
To be honest this is just something we'll need to experiment with as the game approaches completion so we can see what the most fun way to set it up is.
Oh you definitely went (way) too far in my book. (Others of course will disagree.) But thankfully you made the game easy to mod too, so those of us who wanted to tweak it could do so. I'm sure 5 minutes after release (if even that long) someone will do so again no matter what you decide here. Indeed almost certainly some folks adding and other folks taking it away.
That said, I also agree that making the economic side the primary as in XCom is 'meh' at best and dumb at worst. It shouldn't be the primary. And I agree that the 'unlimited' engineers did provide justification for your prior decision. But I also think there should be options such that when you don't have something better to do there is a reason to not fire all your engineers until you need them again. And now with firing them (or rehiring them) no longer an option with these recruiting missions this makes for a very good reason to revisit it.
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I initially was not a fan of the side-view base, but I went "well I'll try it" and it grew on me. But not anywhere near enough that I would "hate" changing back either. Not at least from aesthetic concerns.
But if you go top-down, are you going to then decentralize manufacturing? I'm not sure you should. I mean, what's the point? Decentralization for the sake of decentralization is basically just being inefficient for the sake of inefficiency. Previously there was a reason to decentralize, and that reason was workshops couldn't share work between multiple bases. Well that and that it took a day+ to transfer stuff around the world, so a four-workshop base could make stuff very quickly but would lose much of that savings in transporting raw materials to it and distributing stuff from it around the world.
Now, though, why do it? Sure things can now port around the world instantly such that you can easily decentralize, but why do so other than merely for the sake of decentralizing? Granted if you do decentralize manufacturing then you kinda have to decentralize storage. And power. And then soldiers fit right back into the decentralized model so easily that it's seamless. It fits. I see the appeal, especially for the folks who are missing their multiple dropships so badly. But I don't agree.
And if you aren't decentralizing science or manufacturing nor soldier pool, what else IS there to decentralize that isn't already covered by the current model? (i.e. planes and radar already are decentralized.) Soldier training? Nope. Generators? Storage? Housing? Medical? None of those seem to fit. What else is left? I don't see anything.
There were a lot of things about the original X1 that I really liked. The defense missions were definitely one of them. But if the only point of going back to top-down is for the defense missions, then I don't think you should do it. Those were fun. But we can easily live without them.
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They don't have the on-staff fluency. But that's what fans are for.
https://www.nexusmods.com/xenonauts/mods/30
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I probably would rather like to see the rank system follow actual US ranks, or perhaps even actual Soviet ranks. (Hmm, maybe that would 'improve immersion' a bit if it was even in Cyrillic characters.) And I suppose for realism's sake I do agree that there should only be one 'officer'... if any.
But I also think that trying to program special stuff for that is almost certainly overkill. Just use only enlisted and NCO ranks and be done with it.
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16 hours ago, wulf 21 said:
While I get the idea to assign a low accuracy soldier a sniper loadout so the bonus compensates, I am not entirely sure if this really is the best option in X2 currently. Because I found a high accuracy sniper can do things no other soldier can do, what is:
- get off 2 100% hit chance shots with the lower accuracy/low TU aim mode in one turn
- with the scoped mode, have 100% hit chance on an enemy behind an obstacle - which is especially useful if the obstacle happens to be another xenonaut that unexpectedly did not manage to kill the enemy and is now out of TU
Agreed. I have had to use them that way quite a bit unfortunately. Although it hasn't really been a problem since I upgraded to lasers, but with basic guns it seemed like part B happened all.the.time. ...
And part A is VERY useful against the sebilians when even 2 laser shots isn't always enough to put them down.
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12 hours ago, Max_Caine said:
That's certainly true. There's no problem with equipping everyone with a sniper rifle if one wanted to as there's unlimited quantities, so it's possible to grasp benefits for both ends of the spectrum. I think it would be worthwhile to try kitting everyone out with a sniper loadout and see how well that plays.
Hmm. That's tempting. I didn't try that yet because 35 TUs meant I could only get one scoped shot per round and the stinkin lizards sometimes needed four to put them down. Which makes sense, BTW, not complaining about that. I just didn't have enough TUs to do it when two (much less four!, though that has only happened once) of them showed up in visual range of the chopper.
I do question how ridiculously accurate their return fire was though. I could hit a lizard with a scoped shot and he'd BURST fire four shots right back into me from the same range. That seems a bit... off. Granted probably only two would hit, but when they did 50+ damage a pop my poor soldier was now a smear on the pavement. And it seemed like it was always *at least* 30+ damage on the return shots.
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Ah. Well unfortunately I wasn't around for that one. I just read through it and I agree with those who say this is going to be a major learning curve issue for folks. I'm all for trying new things. I do too in my (business) code. But when it doesn't work, I change it. As is this doesn't work. It's horribly counterintuitive in the first place, and not enough info to work around it.
I do like the idea of being able to "autotransfer" the equipment. That's actually quite good. But you need a way to see that the replacement soldier is a good replacement choice. Again, my example on being able to hit the broadside of a barn. Some base soldiers probably have a 35 or 40 aim or something similarly pathetic like that. I personally don't think anyone under 50 can hit the broadside of a barn, but maybe I'm just trying to make too hard of shots. Or something. No matter what, if they have a 40 I'm not going to pick them for a sniper. I'd switch plans to go with a more assault folks or something. Or even abandon the mission entirely and wait for the recovery mission.
Similarly, I would never waste a 60 accuracy (or 60 reflexes for that matter) guy/gal on a geoscape mission. Just ain't happening. They're too valuable in real combat. Even if they need a break (assuming stress becomes something to manage later on) they'll just take a break but remain available for the next time they are needed.
But if you don't have a defined role, then you need the stats. You need something beyond just the name.
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At least at present it seems that there is no such thing as a soldier role and instead there is a "chopper slot role" that is taken by any soldier assigned to it. If so, I don't like this. It's actually somewhat useful if the intent is that the soldier moved off the chopper de-equips all 'special' items, especially early on while you have an extremely limited quantity of them. Of course that's only true until/unless equipment starts to make a difference in speed/success/etc. for the Strategic Operations. But even if that never is a problem I still prefer the way the newest xcom2s allowed you to CHOOSE to de-equip that stuff from soldiers not going on the current mission. (You may well want to most of the time, but then again you also might not. Especially if in late game you actually have excess and find it hard to manage the clutter.)
I'm guessing/hoping this is just a temporary kludge to get people equipped and off to the ground combat without any real soldier management required. I hope so at least. Because the current system is not very intuitive to use for anyone used to x1 or xcom, and even if they are always/intentionally de-equipped I would really prefer the soldier's role to stick to them even when off-duty.
X1 didn't have a 'perfect' soldier management screen of course, but it was trivially easy to see (and even assign!) the role to the soldier there. I really think being able to set the role to the soldier is important for managing your roster. Especially so if the way Stress seems to climb means we're going to have to use more than one "super team" (at least for those which survive long enough to GET super). The role you intend to use for solider X isn't going to change just because they aren't going on the next mission. Well they won't for me, at least, and I suspect they won't for most others either. After all if they can't hit the broadside of a barn I'm not going to make them a sniper. Or if they have pathetic reaction speed they won't be on assault role. Etc. Yes you can figure that out again from the soldier screen easily enough. You can not currently figure that out from the chopper assign screen or the strategic assign screen. Having the role tied to the soldier (and preferably displayed with their name when assigning to the chopper or strategic mission) would really help a LOT.
Even if the intent both is and will always be for only the soldiers going out on a mission to carry gear, even then the role still should be on the soldier. This will really help when assigning crew to a mission as well, because there are going to be some missions (like sebilians) where you want different weapon mixes (in this case for getting through their annoyingly tough skin) than for the wraith (where you HAVE to get in reaction fire to avoid getting blown to smithereens). Being able to see both the weapons you are sending AND whether or not the crewman you selected is appropriately able to effectively carry it would REALLY be helpful. And unfortunately right now all you can see is what weapon you are sending.
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I'm just glad to know that they have plans to improve this. I have to agree that the current version is very soulless, which stinks because I'm one of those rare few who actually loved the original air combat. (Of course I hadn't played it in a long time so after trying the new out I went back to trying the old and quickly realized it wasn't as good as I remembered either. But at the time I did truly love it.)
That said, I'm also hoping the devs can find a way to keep it. If they can't make it fun then it truly is better to drop it, but I hope they can find a way. Because it really did make X1 unique and different (at least from any other xcom/clone I had ever played). And when X2 was announced the fact that it wasn't going to be in there almost made me write it off entirely. Glad I didn't, of course, but I came a lot closer to missing out on another good game than I should have. (Obviously I am NOT kidding when I said I loved the original!)
[v22.6] Laser battery upgrade requires gauss upgrade
in Xenonauts-2 Bug Reports
Posted
Which, amusingly enough, requires the laser base upgrade. Which puts you in a catch-22 circular logic loop.