Quartermaster

The program will start getting more regular updates as soon as the latest version of Xenonauts is working with Desura. I took some time off from working on this, because I had to turn a long paper in for my graduate school to begin the doctoral qualifying process. Once I update this to function with the current files, I am going to finally tackle having a weapon "add" and "delete" method. Since the code is finally approaching beta I now feel more comfortable putting in the effort to add those methods.

How would folks feel about new modes of recruitment being added as the game progresses? As the game progresses you would gain access to team (3 members) and then squad (6 members) recruitment . The rationale would be that the nations have begun building elite teams to attack alien craft and that the number of troops they have increases over time. If you hire a team you would get a corporal and two privates and if you hire a squad a sergeant, two corporals, and 3 privates. The teams would be priced the same as if you recruited that many privates so 60k for a team and 120k for a squad. The disadvantage is that you can't just skim off the cream of the crop, because it would get pricey. Plus it could be used as a mechanism to bring in some story about what is happening in the world. You could get the option to hire one of three teams which would have programmatically generated backstories. For example, one team could be from the Navy Seals and the story could describe the battle of New York (a terror site you didn't get to) where they performed exemplarly by taking down a light drone. Another story, would be about a team of Mujahideen who killed the aliens from a crashed scout and mention the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan due to the alien invasion. It may be too late in the game for something like this to be added, but I think it would be very interesting to add as a method of getting more story about what is happening into the gameplay. To make it more possible, I imagine that there are plenty of budding authors that would love to write short report style stories about events that are occuring during the invasion. Simply point out some tags that would accessible to the authors like [site of Terror Attack], [Elite Troop of Country], and [Country name] that would be accessible from within their stories.

At the start up menu did you click on "Options" and then select your game mod prior to playing? As far as I know it has not been officially disabled, but I have not spent much time using that method to change the files.

I'm going to assume that you have already changed the clipsize in weapons.xml and weapons_gc.xml. If that is not working, your best option would be to change the bullettype to normal, like the rifle, but to maintain the properties of the ammo exploding. I have not tried this before, but it seems like a viable solution to your problem if simply changing the clipsize parameters is not working.

I'm not saying it is a sprite issue. The alien turn was going fine until a shadow ran up to a wall and then the game crashed. I suppose there are two alternative interpretations besides my original vaulting hypothesis. The first is that the shadow could have crouched next to the wall and that caused the crash. The second is that whatever unit followed the shadow crashed it.

I'm going to assume what I saw is related to this. One of the civilian shadows on the farm map (which is missing roads by the way) went to hurtle a fence and that was when it CTD'ed. Maybe that is what is occuring for folks. Since there are so many fences on walls on the farm it may just be occuring more often there.

For the roles, the armor set for all of them appears to be Basic and my attempts to change it seem to have had no effect.

I'm not sure if this might cause the error, but in the tilesetmask.png file, it looks like Greenland does not exist. I can't tell if the color used for the Arctic is identical to the ocean (visually they look the same) which may be why it is not functioning.

To add to this, the map I encountered before this occured was just a flat green landscape. Also, this battle occured in Iceland so it should have been an artic map. My guess on the error is that it checks to see if the alien craft is occupied (in order to give a capture victory), but no alien craft exists hence the crash.

Personnally, I really like your idea Ductape for how the levels would function and I think I have a couple thoughts that might alleviate your concern about claustrophobia. First, organic sections of the ship could exist like the farms in alien bases in XCOM. These aliens live in their ships, how are they getting food, reproducing, etc.? With maps working the way they do, the ships could be designed such that they convey a secondary role in the fleet that can range from food production centers (farms and alien butchering centers to be used on abductees) to manufacturing centers (lots of machinery and storage facilities). This would provide some of the organic feel that would be missing from outdoor missions. Your idea of selecting entry points really reminds me of Shadow Watch which led to some interesting strategies. To make the most of that system, it would be nice to be able to research technologies that would give you information of the internals of the ship. For example, you could research an Alenium Detector technology which would tell you where the engines are which would inform your choice of where to breach at. Better yet, if you are given the option of splitting your teams and reasons to move to certain objectives quickly. Some inspiration for this could be borrowed from Space Hulk.

I've been staying away from this thread for a while, but I have been keeping track of this. I am really looking forward to seeing actual player feedback rather than company reviews. The company reviews look promising as of now, but I have a couple concerns based on reading the reviews, playing the demo, and watching multiplayer. First, this game seems like a simplified version of D&D 4.0 that is set in the futuristic era. The action system is almost an exact duplicate and even the ability system looks the same. For example the rocket launcher would be a "daily" attack and the run and gun would be an "encounter" ability. That system can be fun and I'm sure most people will enjoy it, but it isn't my cup of tea and I found that it got boring after about 20 hours. Secondly, I don't understand why this is called XCOM beyond profit margins based on what I have seen. Yes it is a reimagining, but it just looks like a bland copy of modern science fiction tropes. The aliens look cool, but they don't look much like the original game. That is fine, but then they can just give the game a different name and wouldn't have to deal with comparisons. Third, the demo is boring, boring, boring. I need to see actual gameplay for me to be sold on this game. The multiplayer footage has looked to me that people still don't understand the game's mechanics and their enjoyment is tied to the "cut scenes." Maybe on a higher level of difficulty it might be enjoyable, but I need to see it to believe it. Anyways I just wanted to give my thoughts about the new X-COM and I was curious whether other people were seeing what I am seeing.

Well if you want to modify the image within the next two weeks I would be happy to swap the image out. However, as I said before, there are other more important things for me to be doing in the next two weeks.

Of the potential weapons, the CAR-15 could make the cut. It simply takes a lot of time to edit an image to make it right, but the CAR-15 would be a pretty easy image to make since we have the existing M16 which is similar looking. Any changes to mod will have to wait for a couple weeks, because of obligations I have at school.

MIGs are not as good at taking down the fighters as they used to be. Now that fighters launch a lower damage missile earlier, it can mess up the MIG. This is probably rare, but I had an air duel where the initial missile from the alien fighter disabled three of the MIGs missiles. Needless to say the MIG did not win that fight.

@ Max_Caine: I used GIMP to edit the images. The M4 and RPG were already done by the team. I put together the RPG ammo round from the existing RPG image and extended the shaft to its current size with extensive editing. The MP5 has components of the Precision Rifle, AK47, and M4 images that already existed. It was a matter of editing and blending everything together to get an appearance that looked good. As for the research image I simply used the backdrop for the Laser Weapons and replaced them with the images I made. @Buzzles: At some point I might try to swap it out for the MP5K, but after how long it took me to get the MP5 together it will probably be a while. What I felt like I wanted was an ability between 2 handed and 1 handed. Namely a weapon that would fire better if both hands were empty, but allowed the option to have something in the off hand.

This mod adds 3 new weapons that can be researched for the ballistics tier. These weapons are the submachine gun, carbine, and RPG. I've tried to fill specific roles with each of these weapons that (while not necessarily true to reality) enhance the game in my opinion. After researching Alien Invasion the Improved Ballistic Weaponry research becomes available which opens up these weapons. The research takes 20 man hours. Here is the research screen on completion: The submachine gun is modeled after the MP5 and I am using it as a one-handed weapon that is meant to give the scout a weapon that is useful. I am aware that the MP5 is not in reality a one-handed weapon, but I set it that way because I wanted to simulate having easy access to grenades. This is much more of a combat weapon than the pistol and while terrible at range, can cause significant damage up close. To counter this you will chew through ammo very quickly. The carbine (modeled after the M4) fills about the same role as the laser carbine in the next tier. Namely it fires a lot of rounds at close range, but has trouble with range. Its range is slightly better than the shotgun so it is suitable for close to medium range engagements. The RPG is designed to be a single shot rocket launcher. The reason I added this is that I wanted a general purpose rocket which could knock out lighter vehicles and so that the rocket launcher was not a weapon that felt required to bring. Compared to the rocket launcher it is inferior in almost all regards, but can be carried by a rifleman and is still quite capable of doing some serious damage. I have also added some other changes: - Most of the weapons have smaller magazines - The machine gun fires more rounds in a burst, but its damage, mitigation, and accuracy have been reduced. - The frag grenade's damage was dropped to 60 and 30 stun - Alenium grenades do 90 damage with 45 stun - The C4's damage was upped to 200 and the radius is now 4.0 for serious wall destruction. - The stun on Flashbangs is now 60 as I was having difficulty stunning anyone with them. Download the mod: https://www.box.com/s/30714ad8c006a43d4ab8 To add it to the game extract the contents into the "assets" folder of Xenonauts. I recommend making backups in case you have any problems, but I have no difficulty with it. If you do run into a problem I do have backups of the original files which I can send to you. Let me know what you think!

I believe that was the case, but I'm not 100% on it. EDIT: After looking at your other post about the reloading bug, that was also occurring in my game.

I just hit my 11th mission with my core team of soldiers. After moving all of my soldier's out of the Chinook on the first turn, the one's with C4 exploded. Some of this might be useless, but here is a list of things that might be of interest: - The one's that exploded had just received service medals after the last mission (If this ends up being why, Xenonauts does not apparently like to pay for retirement funds). - The damage and radius of the C4 had been modded on my end to be higher and larger (200 and 5 squares respectively) - I had used C4 2 or 3 times in previous missions (I believe once in the mission immediately prior to this). - I had saved and loaded the game from about 5 missions ago. - The mission was against Caesans which I had fought before.

Other than the isHeavy and range attributes the changes would be: The fire modes I would set for the carbine would be: - The reaction score would be much higher - The clip size would be set up for about 3 long bursts in the middle tiers and 2 long bursts at the high tier - Damage relative to the machine gun per bullet would not be that much lower and I would keep mitigation about the same. 2 x single shot that are a little less AP than the shotgun right now. 2 burst fire options: - 1 Short burst of three rounds - 1 Long burst of five rounds (compared to the MG's short burst about 75% as much AP, but less suppression) So in short how I imagine the carbine being used as something that has a lot of mobility so that you can pop around a corner, fire an accurate burst or two at close range, and then duck back around the corner or into some cover. This would be compared to the MG which will be set in a position and will hold the enemy in position OR be hip fired while moving around to destroy terrain around the target making it easier for riflemen and snipers to hit the target.

My more extreme version of how to set up the MG is the following: - Increase the move penalty to 30% or 35% for heavy weapons (depending on testing) - Drop the kneel bonus to 10%. - Decrease the damage to 30. - Decrease the mitigation to 10. - The long burst fires 10 rounds, has 10 less accuracy than currently, same AP. - The long burst fires 5 rounds at about 30 AP - The suppression per bullet would be 4 per bullet (if there was not a system that decreased the value by proximity) - Increase recoil by 5 more points. The suppression value would be smaller for the shorter burst and since suppression has the target's armor (I think) subtracted from it its suppressive abilities on the short burst would be dramatically reduced. I have tested an MG with some of these changes and it works pretty decently although with all of these it would be interesting to see.

Right, but it would only firing three rounds at a lower AP (multiple burst modes). If that is not sufficient than jacking up the movement penalty for heavy weapons would be an option.

The Weapon Range/ Range to Target is capped at 1, for that reason.

I agree with Gauddlike on this completely. The only tricky thing about doing multiple burst modes would be doing suppression for each burst. Chris seems okay with doing the suppression by bullet thing now anyways so that makes it a non-problem. Allowing multiple burst modes for weapons will solve the choice problem and the current amount of restriction in how the game is played. We already have a mechanic that limits movement for heavy weapons (the movement penalty) so why have the high AP requirements?

This may not be perfect, but here is an image of an MP5 I put together that I thought folks might want to use for modding purposes: And it's ammo:

Based on how the weapons.xml file has changed it looks like there is going to be an overhaul of the inventory system.