Tam Elbrun

compared to other indie games this one seems to be getting delayed a lot. any timeframe on beta?

You should seriously give your staff badges, that show up the way our preorder badges do. Other than Chris, I can never remember who's staff and who isn't. It's confusing.

One possible solution to that is to have the advanced weapons be 'combined effects' weapons that require varying combinations of the type 1, type 2, and type 3 weapons as stepping stones: Ie: reverse engineering the magnetic components of plasma weapons for use in Gauss weaponry, modifying the particle beam emitter from a laser rifle to boos the power of a plasma weapon, etc. the other possible solution is type-specific defenses: Magnetic deflectors that disrupt lasers, but can't stop shells or plasma. Kinetic repulsion fields that stop solid rounds, but don't do a thing to energy ammo. smoke-like grenades that create an ionization/scattering effect which dissipates plasma charges, but doesn't stop the other two. Armor that effects all three equally, but can be taken down with heavy explosives, which would be a waste to use otherwise. these force the player to use a mix, so they're ready for anything. or do both.

Pointless feature given the game's turn based nature and the scarcity of cover tiles. having to uncrouch manually in the jagged alliance games always bugged the crap out of me, so I can see it being just as big a pain in the ass here. Chris should spend his time on something worth while, like fixing the medkits.

except that refitting an existing machine that's still in working condition is faster and cheaper than building a completely new one from scratch in a lot of cases. what if the player doesn't have the funds/extra hangars/down time, to build all new craft? This gives them an alternative.

Ooh! that gives me an idea. New missile type with it's own firing mechanic that DOES spawn multiple projectiles from one launch. CLUSTER MISSILES! Useless against small targets as the warheads spread too much and the main warhead is weaker than normal to make room for the cluster launch mechanism, but against big targets, LOTS of secondary damage from the spread. think the game engine would be able to handle those?

this will make the idea i had MUCH easier, though I'm waiting until it has an 'add weapon' function otherwise i'd have to do that part manually.

in the plasma research it very clearly shows magnetic accelerator coils, which has me wondering if there's going to be gauss weapons showing up at some point. Until i've played the beta version to see for sure i haven't a clue, but it doesn't stop me from wondering. Either way come beta, i'd be interested in seeing, or if no one beats me to it, making a mod that lets you A) build upgraded versions of your existing weapons by jurryrigging salvaged magnetic coils to them and using iron rounds, B) use Gauss weapons later in the game, & C) have the aliens catch on to what you're doing and expand/improve their own arsenal by mimicking bits of your gear they don't have or didn't think of later on when you start getting the upper hand. which will probably take forever due to editing a bajilion sprites but whatever. REALLY wish gold hawk had used a more efficient sprite system... Oppinions? ideas?

Well, yeah, that's kinda what i was thinking when the whole researching miniaturizing thing got brought up. build your own milti-missile pods. Not quite what the op had intended I'd wager, but if they're unlocked by research anyway, manufacturing them yourself opens doors that wouldn't otherwise be possible. Alternately, you can eliminate those two materials by haveing a pair in-between techs where failed attempts at synthesizing those materials leads to ones humans can synthesize, that's close enough for this but not good enough for other projects? or, hell i dunno.

ok, if upgrading the ufos is out due to cannons, make it come after alenium and alien alloy research then add the following dialogue to the upgraded missile capacity research: "Ever since we refitted the F-17's with reinforced armor, in order to combat the alien menace, our pilots have been grumbling about the reduced missile load out they have available due to the weight. However, thanks to the alien ship components and hull metal we've recovered, we believe we've solved that problem. By reducing the weight of our fighter armor, and using alenium to make smaller equal yield warheads with the same impact force, our fighters are once again capable of carrying their normal payloads." why after alenium you might ask? because the combined destructive force of the multiple missiles might be equal to or less than a single upgraded missile, i can't say, but it's certainly more versatile. Plus alenium warhead tech being part of how they kept the same yield in a smaller package rules out miniaturized alenium warheads which could easily be rather be broken.

not if you alter the game so it thinks the mig sidewinders and the f-17 sidewinders are different weapons... of course that creates other issues. as for the more missiles tipping the balance, reinforce the hulls of the ufos, and give the late-game craft similar ammo increases.

So i WAS going to try and check if a few old bugs were still happening and if any new ones had popped up but this happened.

Can someone confirm how many of these are still in 14.11? I'm going to go test that now.

...i can't do that with a laptop. no mouse.

Got a picture of this one. Malformed window.

Wait, you can zoom in? i never saw a gui button for that... where is it?

yes, but then that invites them to throw grenades and take you all out at once, you have to be smart about it. flank em, while staying within sight of eachother (which is what, 10 paces? not actually that hard to do without bunching up.) break into two teams of four, and have them move in pairs with each pair staying at the edge of sight range for their partner pair. I dunno.

the car-15, which i linked in the above post is an AR-15 derivative from the 60s, as opposed to the M-4 which is from the 90s.

those are first two look like modern designs though, you might want to use their period accurate counterparts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAR-15 & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterling_submachine_gun might be suitable. the Car-15 is mostly the same as the image you used, but has a less complex stock and a few other subtle differences, and the sterling is completely different. EDIT: Nevermind, forgot how old the MP5 is still see it in games from time to time so i tend to assume it's modern. My point regarding the carbine though still stands, the one you used looks too new (it's the way the stock is shaped, doesn't look right. I'm used to old rifles looking simpler than that.)

Yeah, that would certainly throw a wrench into using recolored or composite sprites as well...

All of them. Oddly enough, I've yet to have ANY of that happen, so i wasn't aware it had been implemented. My bad. Still, panicking due to being surounded/outnumbered would make sense at least to me.

that could be done in game, if the original sprites were keyed to have sections of their palettes be adjustable, which was common in some pre-3D RTS games to assign team colors. however, much like the paper doll sprites I suggested, i don't think that kind of thing can be added after the fact, it has to be a planned part of the design from day 1. Maybe if they do a sequel or another Turn based Tactics/Strategy game that uses sprites, they could implement one or both ideas, but I suspect it's too late to change that here.

looking at this from the perspective of it being a mod (as i honestly can't see a change this big happening this late in the game without the sprite system being reworked first, there's just not enough time to draw everyone the way it's set up right now) Here's my two cents: You would have to completely re-sprite the basic civilians, and copy their AI, but it's doable as a mod as long as said AI is accessible to modders. I honestly don't see the point. other than pilots and operatives why bother tracking levels? they can't fight, and i never have less than 10 people working on any one project so a slight boost to one or two of there efficiency isn't worth the effort of the mod. Easiest way to do this would be assigning existing xenonauts to "covert ops" as if you were assigning them to the chinook. as a trade off, you could have recalling them take a few days, that way having troops you're paying for but can't use as often would balance the benefit of extra men in the field and improved detection. Again though, the soldier assignment and equipment screens would need to be modifiable. this i like, and i think it's been suggested before. Unbalancing, and like the level mechanic, unnecessary. Easy enough to do, just jack the local forces sprite sheet & AI, edit to resemble xenonaut uniforms more closely. Also the reaper fodder joke in their info is a must. Combined with the support staff it would give the base defense missions a similar feel to the city missions with local support & civilians, and similar penalties for getting your secondary personnel killed. Would certainly add a unique challenge to defense of your bases if there were a random chance 'you' were there in person (higher the fewer bases you have). But i wouldn't have them as an active unit for missions. not sure how you would implement it though.

here's my idea, a little something just to make the higher difficulties even worse. Add a line of to code or two to the ai scripting that does the following: If (non-supressed, visible hostile forces within sight radius of this unit - non-supressed Friendly forces in same range) x panic modifier > Bravery, unit panics and either freezes up or tries to flee, regardless of what you or the AI tell them to do. each race would have a base modifier, that the game tracks. Armor would reduce the panic modifier, better the armor better the reduction. riding around in a tank reducing it to 0. bleeding wounds, low HP, or Critical HP could increase it. suppression level influences whether you run or freeze up. Run away? blow all your ap moving in the direction with the least hostiles, regardless of what the player/ai told you to do. Freeze up? reduced to half ap. normal reaction. Freeze up while suppressed? reduced to one quarter ap. suppressed reaction. Freeze up while suppressed repeatedly? reduced to one quarter ap. suppressed reaction. cumulative 5% chance of being removed from active duty after mission due to PTSD therapy. Because when outnumbered, cowards rarely keep calm and stick around, even those who consider them self brave start to get a bit shaky.

I'm surprised you're rendering the soldiers as one complete sprite instead of chunks the game composites together as needed. (the Baldurs Gate games used to do that, build a sprite from pieces based on inventory, I mean. I think that method was called 'paper doll' sprites?) Wouldn't having, "x" poses of soldier A, B, or C, "x" poses of gun A, B, C, & D, and "x" poses of item A, B, C, & D, be more efficient than rendering out every possible combination of those items and weapons? Come to think of it, i'm pretty sure the original Xcom did that too, because I remember trying to edit XC:TFFD to include XC:UD gear.