Black Cat
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Posts posted by Black Cat
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It's too late to change the UFO designs, I'm afraid. In hindsight it would have been much better to do something more geometric than we actually did. If we ever do a Xenonauts 2, the lesson will very much have been learned.
The current UFO interior maps will get a bit of love though. Chairs are indeed planned.
I am curious as to why this is. I'll be the first to admit when it comes to programming I won't even pretend to know anything close to you guys. But having played with the map editor and submap editor, I would assume you could just change the alien ships maps and submaps and footprints. Again I realize it is never just "that" easy but if someone would explain the technical reasons as why not I am honestly curious.
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My only real complaint with sight ranges is night time sight.
I just think it is a bit to low. Yeah that would probably require upping the daylight ranges a bit but immersion wise they are to low also. But they are livable.
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My favorite hit lists would be....
Aliens in Alien Bases/UFO's constantly shooting without LOS and sometimes shooting through walls
Inability to see aliens in the dark or behind mesa's even though my soldiers can see them.
Doors in aliens bases somehow magically locking. Had the teleporter aliens teleport into the deployment room on a alien base and when I went back to get him none of my troops could open the door. Ran into that in a few rooms in the base.
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Aliens Shooting through walls in alien bases
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Or just give the aliens bats. After a few grenades get line driven back at the thrower I think they would be a little less toss happy ;-p
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I actually like the idea of research and invest to get to new planes. Not sure the idea is feasible at this point. But it actually is a very interesting and novel idea.
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Regarding weight, a new system was proposed by Chris a while ago. I wonder if we'll see it in place?
I still think the problem is our guys skill up way to much.
8 ranks should equal 8 skill up. The fact that there is such a huge huge difference between a 20 mission vet and a 3 mission rookie is just bad. On top of that balancing becomes so much easier for things if you know a soldier's stats are going to fall between x and y.
Plus it eliminates the powerleveling of guys through means that make no actual sense in combat such as overloading you troops with weight and spamming shots you hope to miss at.
It also kills the worry about only wanting 8 super soldiers and anything beyond that becomes wasted because their stats are so low by the time you get them up and running.
It makes losses become more acceptable because while a lost soldier is bad, replacing him isn't the end of the world. My first squad is a full 8 guys with almost 100 TU's or more each. At this point if one dies it is a reload because that kind of skill is just to much to lose.
It also makes starting stats more important. A guy who starts with 60 TU's is going to be way more desirable vrs a guy who starts with 50 when you know at best he is going to get another 8-16 TUs throughout his career.
It also makes the tradeoffs are starting stats more important. That guy with only 50 TU's might look really nice when he starts with 60 Strength.
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I could see an accuracy nerf for non crouched shooting to sniper rifles. But I have to echo the "Don't touch the damage at short" bit.
Our guys are elite soldiers. While it may be harder to be precise with a sniper rifle at 20 feet or less. The fact is our guys "should" be proficient enough that at 20 feet or less they aren't missing anyways unless under heavy fire. And while I am all for bending reality to make it fit the game. I guarantee you get hit by a 7.62 round from 20 feet you aren't going to care if it came from a sniper rifle, assault rifle, or some kind of whacked out modified SMG. It is going to hurt and hurt about the same regardless of platform used to deliver it.
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18.x Currently coming up on the end of Nov. 3 Bases up and running, two condors and a fox Each. Two 8 man squads with full wolf and laser rifles and two chinooks.
Granted in fairness... Been save scrumming like a little bi***. And still spending every dime I make and end up waiting on something to shoot down to get more cash.
And numerous play throughs learning the systems.
PS. Oh and knocking off an alien base with 8 relatively new rookies (was their third mission out) all with about 50 tu's each due to weight of wolf and laser rifles...sucks!!! Especially when you add in the shooting through the wall bugs and the damn base was androns and teleporters.
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Hey, that's a good point that kabill made, about C4 and reaction fire:
How about the UFO doors are unlocked (as they are now) and destroyable (as Aaron wants them to be), and make it so that opening the UFO door triggers reaction fire, but blowing the door does not?
This makes sense from a real world perspective; you'd assume they'd know the sound of their own door being opened, and be prepared for that to happen, guns waiting. However, the door being destroyed isn't something they'd expect as much, and it'd probably create a good deal of smoke, dust, etc that would blind them for a bit, removing the chance for them to use reaction fire.
I could get behind a system like this. Of course I would probably end up having one poor bastard with a pistol and 10 C4 Packs running around specifically to blow doors.
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From my understanding pistols shine when combined with combat shields. Granted never used shields.
My squads are always the same. Full sniper rifles till I research Lasers. Then I switch over to standard Laser rifles for everyone. Why worry about a shotgun when a full burst fire Laser rifle will do the same from short range it seems.
I am going to switch things up and do 2 precision plasma's this time through for each squad. See how those play out.
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I'll be honest. I find having to throw multiple sorties at aliens to be very vexing. Generally if I cannot take them out in a single pass I let them go. Granted the furthest I have gotten to so far has been the beginning of January I believe. But I tend to think if we need 5 planes to down a ufo then we should be able to launch 5 plane sorties.
It just seems to really go against my tactical thinking of sending a sortie at a target I know they cannot take down.
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40 missions seems way to small a number for the game.
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Basically every room has an access point on each wall (if it is a double room then it has two access points on the long axis). When rooms are placed next to each other those access points are linked to become the big doors, otherwise they are invisible.
However when aliens attack they choose one or more (at random) of the unused access points (so normally around the edge of the base) and break in through that section of wall - you can see this as a generic looking small brown room attached to the base at the moment. Those are just place holders and the final versions will look like alien transport pods of some sort, and the walls will have some sort of damage effect to show they've been breached. This way you cannot build your base to make easy alien choke points as you could in the original.
Well Bloody Hell. Well guess it is good to see the aliens getting smarter ;-p
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Hey guys. Just wanted to pop in a say just started playing with the editors. Looking over some of the work you have already done and it is amazing. almost enough to keep me from even trying to throw down with you folks lol.
Anyways Have a few questions if someone could take few minutes for me.
First I am starting my attempts with a small scout farm map. Couple things that are jumping out at me already are..
Lack of buildings, is it possible to use town buildings on the farm map and if so how?
Also in the process of getting things looking right I am overlapping tiles like the roads and the farm grass 10x10. Is that going to cause problems moving forward?
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Okay stinky, first great guide. I only have done the map editor part so far (the sub map part looks scary lol) but so far going great.
Just a couple feedback points.
1. Can you rotate objects? And if so how? I used a lot of the 2x1 cover rocks but they are all oriented the same way.
2. Bat files are scary. So when trying to test my map I ran into a problem of knowing exactly what to do there.
Where is the file that needs to be modified?
How do I modify the file?
Where does it go after I modify it?
One could argue that if you are afraid of modifying files this might not be for you :-) But I always figured map making was pretty different from modding.
Edit: Okay found the .bat file for the quick battle. Modified it and made it work.
Had a few issues which I was wondering if it was a mistake on my part. First all 6 of the aliens were encountered near the ship even though my spawn points were pretty spread.
Second none of the civvies or npc's spawned. Or they were killed before I saw them, but I didn't hear any firing.
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Almost every one of my alien base missions saw the aliens trying to shoot me from 3 rooms over. Very Rarely did it result in them succeeding in shooting through the walls. but they constantly try.
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True it was and it was one of the more frustrating parts. Open door, get shot in the face. Nothing to be done about it but accept the man who opens the door was dead. Granted it was still better than the OG where the only way to open a door was walk through it. I Don't think I would mind as much "IF" we can still open the doors from the side of them like we can now.
Otherwise they need to make a way to breech a UFO with explosives then. I like my troops and while I accept death happens occasionally. But being put in a position of having to send the sacrificial goat recruit to take the blast to the face will get old incredibly fast.
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To me it comes down to the economic term "Opportunity Cost"
Armor as is already comes with the costs of Time to make, cost per unit, materials (if needed), and the techs needed to make it.
Basic weight of armor is also just a given with the cost of other equipment not able to be carried.
Adding a vision cost seems like overkill in my thoughts. Now as for Jackal vrs Wolf vrs Buzzard for example..
Jackal vrs Wolf is already covered in the above. Wolf requires more base tech, requires more per unit, requires more time per unit, and if I am correct also require materials. The opportunity cost is already payed there. Vision is just adding to an already large overhead of costs.
Wolf vrs Buzzard could make the argument of additional costs for additional abilities. In this case the hypothetical ability to fly (granted I have yet to find a case where flying or even quick hopping a roof was worth the use.) so an additional cost would be justified if Buzzard provides equal protection to Wolf. If the protection of buzzard is less than wolf then the cost is paid for flight ability there.
Wolf vrs ?. Can't remember the name of the set that provides the ability to stomp through walls. But mabey a vision there.... then again that suit already has costs involved with weapon limitations if I remember correctly. I just know I read the offsets for it and decided it wasn't needed or wanted where I was at in my games. The cost was just to much.
But Ultimately no armor should be a very rare exception for a soldier. Least for a advanced unit like Xeno's. Any commander isn't going to send unarmored troops into a conflict unless the mission parameters make a good reason for it or access to it isn't possible. also in combat, Mobility, Fire Power, And Battlefield Awareness are critical. I just think vision reduction is a game where we already have incredible short lines of sight as is due to map and engine limitations is going to far.
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I was thinking about how I used to build my bases in TFTD and how I build them here.
One thing really jumps out at me. To me it is the lack of space, please allow me to elaborate.
One of my basic base building strategies in other games of this ilk is to keep the possible access points to my base chokeholded as much as possible. In TFTD I made it a habit of keeping my hangers connected to the rest of my base by the single access point that the base started with. Yeah I wasted a bit of building space but when the inevitable base assault did happen that paid off by a much easier defensible position. The opportunity cost being the wasted line of space between my hangers and the rest of my base.
Now in this game for my first couple play throughs I tried to do the same thing and quickly realized it really wasn't possible.
So my next Idea was to specialize my bases, airbase here, research base there, manufacturing in another. But I found quickly the economy doesn't support such grand ideas.
I think the problem I have ran into can be tied to two very specific things.
1: The cost of the command center starting a base. 500k is hugely expensive for just the core of a base without any functional rooms.
or
2: The size of the rooms in the base. Almost all the rooms are 1x2 squares in size. Very few are 1x1.
To me I am of the opinion that this is a bit of a overburden for trying to make either functional bases or economic choices. Especially with the manufacturing of late game items taking so many techs and the requisite living space and manufacturing rooms to make any of the ships at a reasonable speed.
My suggestion would be either lower the cost of the command center (aka the core of the new base) to allow us to specialize a bit more. Or reduce the size of such rooms as the living quarters, research and manufacturing to give us more real estate for our initial investment.
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I would like to take a stab at this one again.
I love the idea of a pyramid ranking scheme. It solves a lot of the other problems I have seen crop up like super soldiers, immersion, power creep, yadda, yadda.
Basic hypothetical idea is a total of 4 normal ranks, and maybe 4 officer ranks. Tie rank promotion to skilling up your soldiers. And you eliminate a full squad of super soldiers. You eliminate power creep, You make balancing the game easier as the developer can safely assume that there will be a set amount of troops within a certain skill range. you can then handle the horrible accuracy issue of rookies vrs vets. And you can also address the problem of trying to get rookies to survive those late game missions when you have to replace the inevitable losses if you aren't save scrumming.
Hell an easy quick thought is...
Figure max 3 bases in the world (not counting dedicated airbases) an assume maybe max 20 soldiers per base. that number is probably to high but it is a good starting point. From there figure the breakdown.
60 soldiers equal
Four beginning ranks, Recruit, Private, Corporal, and Sargent. these 4 ranks all soldiers can attain with the 4 corresponding skill ups.
Then we start limiting ranks after that, lets say...
1 Lieutenant per 10 which would equal 6
1 Captain per 15 which would be 4
1 Major per 30 for a total of 2
and 1 Coronel per 60 for a total of 1
Total of tops 13 soldiers that can attain more than 4 skill ups. and only one of those can get a total of 8 skill ups.
After that it is just a matter of deciding what Power level you want the bulk of the soldiers to fall in. Makes Balancing much much easier. It becomes a whole lot easier to deal with the accuracy issue because you know at best the player will have mabey 1 soldier with a super high accuracy but the bulk will fall well below that. With a handful of others between good and godly.
On top of that if you know you are a lot more limited in the number of skill ups. then those starting stats start taking on even more importance.
Can the system still be gamed to a degree, yep. But to do so you would have to have 120 soldiers to get 2 Coronels and 4 Majors. and if the player is good enough to be able to buy and support 120 troops along with the requisite buildings to bunk them. Bah at that point all the power to them.
Anyways just a quick and dirty idea. Take it or leave it.
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I always wondered also why the mig stayed so useful, why do we not end up with a new bomber also?
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You know our world is getting invaded by aliens from space... is it me or is expecting the loss of life to be in the 100's of thousands not an unreasonable expectation.
You know America I am sorry they shot down that jumbo jet and 90 people lost their lives. But hey guys wake up, alien invasion going on here. Your lucky they haven't nuked (or whatever the aliens equivalent of that is) cities from orbit and put the loss of life in the millions or billions.
Seriously who the hell gets on a plane when you know there are alien ships running around shooting down anything that moves.
To quote the greatest cartoon song ever...
It is a great big universe and were all really puny.
Just tiny little specks the size of Mickey Rooney
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I guess it is just the mutable nature of language. UFO started out as one thing and in specific areas it retains that distinction. But the general public UFO has equated to Alien ship for so long that now regardless of whether we know what it is or not. If it is alien it is a ufo.
UFO Design
in Xenonauts General Discussion
Posted
This is why I chose to buy this game early and will support you guys for a long long time. Why because when we ask a question a lot of times we get answered. Thank you very much for taking the time to reply to my query Aaron.