Quartermaster
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Posts posted by Quartermaster
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I have always found losing armor when soldiers are wounded or killed particularly expensive and time consuming in X-Com and I suspect it is going to be even more expensive in Xenonauts given the deadliness of the aliens. Rather than having armor be destroyed when your soldier is heavily wounded or dead, would it be possible to have the Xenonaut drop a 'Damaged Armor' item that could be repaired for a discounted price at base? This would make armor feel just as costly as weapons do in the game since they persist rather than more expensive because they feel like a couple use item.
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The code is in Visual Basic .Net 2010. Regarding commenting, I will take a pass through the code to improve the documentation.
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I wanted to let everyone know that I will not update this in the future. About a month ago my fiance had me promise to not play computer games anymore. If anyone would like to take over maintaining this program, please send me a message and I will send you the code I have. After someone takes over maintaining the program I will still be available for assistance and answering questions regarding it.
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I can't seem to find it at the moment but doesn't the range affect suppression as well?
I remember reading that a weapon can only suppress out to its effective range, making your modification of the machine gun go from the best suppression weapon to the worst.
Good find. I did not remember this from the suppression thread. I suppose it be countered by upping the suppression value (depending on how it decays by range), but that would probably be more difficult than it would be worth. Range's importance with every single attribute makes all of this balancing stuff so much more complicated. Thanks for finding that note on how suppression is affected again.
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The purpose of this post is to discuss a method to modify weapons so that they have the same long range profile, but with better close range accuracy. There are two weapon parameters that have an effect on the accuracy of the weapon. The first is the Accuracy Modifier that weapon uses to different fire modes. The second is the Range of the weapon.
The accuracy of the weapon is governed by the following equation. The names in () are abbreviations:
Shooter Accuracy (SA) * Weapon Accuracy Modifier (WAM) * Range Modifier = Unmodified Accuracy (UA)
where,
Range Modifier = Weapon Operation Range (WOR) / Range To Target (RTT)
IF Range Modifier > 1 Then Range Modifier = 1
On the wiki it says that Range Modifier = RTT / WOR. This cannot be the case, because weapons would get less accurate as you get closer to the target. I am, thus, assuming that this part of the equation is typed backwards. We also know that weapons do not get more accurate when within Weapon Operation Range, so when within that range the Range Modifier caps at 1 (no penalty).
Conveniently, this equation can be used to modify a weapon to have the same long range profile, but with increased close range accuracy. To do this we merely need to select how accurate we want the weapon to be at close range. In this case we will modify the pistol so that it has a close range accuracy of 0.95, but is just as accurate at it's currently is at its current operational range. Since we are setting the Unmodified Accuracy to be equivalent at the operational range we will use the following format:
Generally: Weapon1 Accuracy = Weapon2 Accuracy
Specifically: SA * WAM1 * WOR1 / RTT = SA * WAM2 * WOR2 / RTT
And After Cancellation: WAM1 * WOR1 = WAM2 * WOR2
We can now substitute our values in and solve:
WAM1 * WOR1 = WAM2 * WOR2
(0.65) * (10) = (0.95) * WOR2
Weapon Operation Range 2 = 0.65 * 10 / 0.95 = 6.842 -> Rounds to 7
Here is an image of how accuracy changes by range for the old and the current weapon:
The main downside with this method is that the weapon's damage is also affected by range, so you will see slight decreases in the weapon's killing power at its old range.
I hope that other modders find this methodology useful.
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This post is going to be a little more general about the difficulty with setting weapon properties for balance purposes before it focuses on the machine gun problem. The main weapon property that causes difficulty in balancing is the Operational Range because it simultaneously affects two properties regarding accuracy. The first is that it sets where range penalties start to apply. The second, less obvious way is that it changes the rate at which the weapon loses accuracy once range penalties start to apply. For example, if a weapon has an operational range of 30, you have to go another 15 squares before the range penalty = 0.5. If a weapon has an operational range of 10, you only have to go 5 squares for the same effect.
Regarding the machine gun, the simplest way to make this weapon balanced is to modify the range rather than the accuracy modifier. This is the similar to the way that machine guns function in Company of Heroes and Dawn of War II. At long range they suppress targets just fine, but don't cause much damage. However, if you get close to the weapon it causes huge amounts of damage to the target. A more appropriate value for the range of the machine gun might be 6 squares so that it's potential damage dramatically drops. This should allow for the number of rounds to be increased so that belts are more quickly expended without making the weapon too powerful.
Addendum: My Understanding of How the Accuracy Function Actually Works In The Game
(Based on the equation in the wiki, but with changes based on previous forum conversations)
Main Equation:
Shooter Accuracy * Weapon Accuracy Modifier * Range Modifier = Unmodified Accuracy
Range Modifier (the main thing that is inaccurate on the wiki)
Range Modifier = Weapon Operation Range / Range To Target
IF Range Modifier > 1 Then Range Modifier = 1
On the wiki it says that Range Modifier = Range To Target / Weapon Operation Range. This cannot be the case, because weapons would get less accurate as you get closer to the target. I am, thus, assuming that this part of the equation is typed backwards. We also know that weapons do not get more accurate when within Weapon Operation Range, so when within that range the Range Modifier caps at 1 (no penalty).
*I am coining the term Range Modifier to refer to part of the original equation for clarity.
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I suggested something like that in the artillery support thread.
Add a 'laser designator' weapon that fires an invisible projectile to mimic an off screen strike.
The down sides I couldn't work round:
You would be able to use it indoors, or even underground.
It would require line of sight to the target and would need to travel between the two locations, potentially hitting any object along the path between the two, unlike a strike from another source.
You could carry as many of them as you had available to make multiple strikes possible.
I was thinking about some about the unlimited number you could potentially carry and thought of a potential solution. The item could be set up to only be recovered from UFOs. This would limit the number of them in the game so that you can't use them all of the time. In game it could be argued that the item is essentially a "thank you" from the country and a promise to help in the future.
As for the in doors part, would it be possible to make it a multiple shot grenade? That would force it to use a parabolic arc which would limit its ability to hit something in doors. However, I do not believe that it is possible to set up a weapon that fires multiple times and uses an arc. Maybe once the flamethrower is implemented it will be possible to use that as the basis for a multiple shot weapon with an arc.
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Would there be much of a difference if you just added a weapon that was essentially a "air to ground targeting laser" that had no image for the bullets travel, but had explosions for the impact? Thematically it would appear to function in a similar way to what you want.
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Very Nice.
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Thanks QM. So any idea why the spawns aren't working right? That's really my only concern.
Spawn locations are generally set by the map. With that said I do not have any suggestions for how to counter that if setting the ma is not working.
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I read the wiki and changed the levelsetup_quickbattle.xml to the following:
But it still only spawns 3 aliens along with a few civilians and friendly soldiers, and xeno's spawn in a chinook.
Help please?
The <!--> tags indicate that the maps are commented out.
I think you need to set a specific map for the part where you state that it is a town map.
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Use
instead. Just make sure the pic isn't too big.
EDIT: Oh yes, you need to host the pic....
Thanks!
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Are you using the
I just used the Insert Image->From Computer method which puts a random number in [ATTACH=CONFIG] tags.
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How are external doors going to be shown? Are they not going to be affected by this change or will they disappear as the walls do.
Secondly, since you are already drawing the lines around the bottom of the UFO, can they be copied and pasted about X many pixels up to look something like this:
By the way can someone tell me how to make the image look larger?
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I like it. Would there be any way to add an indicator of some sort so that if someone tries to shoot through the exterior it will inform them that there is no line of fire? Otherwise it may not be immediately apparent to some first time players.
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I will agree there are some issues with fire accuracy. I was standing next to an alien with a shotgun, litrally the next tile and had a 0% chance to hit (WTF sprung to mind) took the shot anyway and hit and killed it.
There is a bug where sometime it pops up as 0% even though you can still hit them.
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Curious to know if this will work with V17.1
Also curious to know if this will eventually be able to add or delete weapons?
(By adding weapons I mean like this type of scenario... Having a FN p90 already in the game and using that weapon stats and graphics to create a new weapon, or allowing the user to select a different weapon picture for the new weapon.)
I just sat down yesterday and looked through the files. It does not look like there have been many changes to the underlying code since the last time I worked on it so I should be able to update it this weekend (I have not tested it yet, but it actually looks like it should work with the new code right now). My next goal with development is to add the ability to add and delete weapons. You can actually already set a different weapon picture with the existing code.
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The AK47 now it's in game for the use of the civilians (and for your troopers to pick up in Ground Combat) is *really* trivial to have available at all times:
Go into items.xml, locate the line "weapon.ak47". Change the type from Normal to Unlimited. Job done.
You also can if you want to go into strings.xml and add an entry for "weapon.ak47.desc" if you want a tooltip pop up like the other weapons in the load out screen, but it's a minor thing.
The only caveat is that it uses the same magazines as the normal assault rifle, which isn't correct from a RL perspective, but requires a fair bit of faffing if you want to add new ammo entries and update other files specifically for it.
You can do the same for the farmer's shotgun as well if you want.
The mods that Quartermaster are on about are just the mods which swap out the default images for the alternate / Soviet images that Chris kindly got made for us and update the descriptions, they don't add any new guns afaik.
There was one a while ago, but those files are so out of date now (V11 or V12) that it really isn't worth looking into.
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Yes there have been a couple mods that have done this already. If you want to just swap the AK47 for the M16 you can just replace the image files. To have it in addition is a little more complicated, but has been done previously.
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Thank you for the update and doing an awesome job on the game thus far!
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I have a suggestion to add to this:
1. Deviations appear to be done in terms of tiles on the X (left to right) and Y axis (forward to back), the Y axis should be replaced with the Z axis (height) which would make the problem of bullets landing behind the target go away. Instead they will either go to the side OR above/below.
2. Each axis should be treated as a separate gaussian distribution. Using what we know about Gaussian distributions the "cone" would adjust appropriately based on the firers accuracy. For each shot generate two Z-values (one for each axis) that range between -3 and 3 using a uniform distribution.
3. The % chance to hit can be used to calculate how many standard deviations fall within the tile, which allows one to create a cone that reflects the firer's accuracy. First you calculate the probability value for each axis which will equal the square root of the probability to hit. Next consult a Z-table to determine what the z-value is. For example if the probability to hit is 95%, then the probability for each axis is sqrt(0.95) = 0.97. I don't have my stats book nearby, but the Z value for that range that would hit the target would be around -2.5 to 2.5.
4. If both gaussian distributions don't fall within that range then determine which tile the bullet will hit or pass through using your knowledge of where certain Z values would land. Ie. if the Z-values of -1 to 1 are in the target box, values of between +- 1 and +-2 would be one tile away and those between +-2 and +- 3 would be 2 tiles away.
5. The result would look like this:
with the Blue dots being Xenonauts and the Red dots being Aliens. Sorry for the small picture.
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Thanks Chris!
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I don't know about eating babies, but the rest of the set up looks pretty good to me. The only thing I am not so sure about is "Other Files by Author." Would the modder have to go back and update his previous mods as he creates new ones?
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Something similar was mentioned earlier, and linked into using countries facilities. Having the ranks they come in at be very low, would be ideal. More global events for me is always a good thing. I was hoping that the ticker would be able to bring these up as the game progressed, showing the increasingly desperate nature of the conflict.
Can you point out where that is? I looked through the entire thread again and nothing of the sort was mentioned previously that at least outlined something like what I wrote. The closest I saw was that the occassional corporal and sergeants would pop up in the hiring pool which is not what I wrote.
QM's More Ballistic Weapons Mod
in Modding Discussion
Posted
As a note, I do check the site about once a week to see how things are developing because I love this game. If anyone wants to resurrect the weapon modification program I created and has question about it, please send me a message and I will get back to you at some point.