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DNK

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Everything posted by DNK

  1. I had a brainfart piece of inspired genius come to me right now. I mentioned in another thread about the issues with the crew assignments UI, and I was just thinking "what if we could set up permanent squads and switch those in and out of dropships?" Seemed genius enough for its own thread, sorry if that's too modest. The idea is that we can create squads and assign soldiers to those squads, then assign squads (not soldier by soldier individually) to dropships or bases. Maybe you have an alpha squad of your best vets, and then that old delta squad with a couple Lt.s in command and then cannon fodder all the way down the roster. Then as the fodder progress into pros, they can fill in the "sudden vacancies" in your alpha squad... and so on, you get the idea. Just seems to make sense to me. Also, you can get combat bonuses for squads that have fought together for a long time, like morale bonuses, maybe some extra time points since they're so much more efficient in communicating/moving together. But these bonuses are dependent on some maths... For each individual it would be (one approach): sum { [XP gained while fighting with squad member X in the past while in this squad] } for each other soldier .... divided by some reasonable coefficient IF the other member is the current squad leader, it's like 3x multiplier on top (the actual squad leader doesn't get this bonus when doing the calc) Example: Joey Bloke is in a squad with 4 people He's gained 3XP when on missions with person 1 while they were in this squad He's gained 10XP with person 2 He's gained 0XP with person 3 He's gained 5XP with person 4 (the current leader) His total bonus will be something like 28XP / 20 = 1.4x bonus to his morale (different division coefs to other skills perhaps?) (note the division coefficient will be like "5 per squad member" or something, rather than a set amount, scales with size) This will decrease during the mission when anyone dies btw, or improve as XP is gained in real time (I think there's something similar already in place for morale, so maybe this can replace that) So, one of the things I felt X1 could have improved on was storytelling. Basically, I had 0 connection to any of my soldiers as they blasted through the invasion. Losing one was little more than an inconvenience in terms of built up XP and skills. This way you can add a little in, as now everyone has a technical connection to everyone else, and squads have a persistent presence (and you can name them for extra flavor!). Perhaps we can add in personalities and relationships that alter how well the squad works together too (storytelling DLC hype starts now). I'm sure there's plenty of open source code that's simple enough to be adapted and thrown in without too much fuss, since it's all happening sort of on top of the rest of the mechanics, maybe updated after each mission, easy simple coding stuff, as much as it can be.
  2. I'm not sure how to add it into the current UI scheme more seamlessly than something like what you said. I do feel like the checkmark boxes could be utilized more fully in that screen, this would be one way, also aircraft assignment. Just a lot of clicks are required, if you have whatever 10 or 12 people you're removing from a chopper and adding (say moving from a hard base mission with vets to an easy crash site for rookies), having to click twice on the assignment for each, it's 40+ clicks without using the checkmarks, versus 20+2 with. It's one of the few parts of the UI that feels slow/clunky. You've already got the check boxes in there, so I figure you can figure out something to make it work well.
  3. Personally, I think the pistol is just a bad weapon to include. It is practically useless, as it should be against armored targets. Submachine guns with a like TU-cheap large burst of 9mm would be a lot better. An MP5 >>> M9. You at least get suppression, it makes a lot more sense, and you get a chance to either chip away at resistance or do some real damage at very close ranges. I'm not sure what you're talking about with single shot on rifles - that's how they're supposed to be used. I would like a "full auto" style 6/8/10-round burst to be added that's hella inaccurate but lets them be the true all-rounders that makes them valuable (otherwise why not just give everyone snipers and shotguns?).
  4. While I haven't played X2, I have to say that psionics has been the worst in both TOG and X1, just the worst, and while it might make balancing harder, I'd love an option to turn it off. It would be nice if we could train our troops against it at least, but then that needs to be a balance thing on its own, as in like each week/month you can select what training to give each of your troops, with psy being one option (accuracy, speed, strength, etc, being others). But just anything other than "randomly this guy runs away or panics" because it's just a mechanic that at best is obnoxious and at worst is unbalancing in the extreme (like in TOG). I'm not sure there's a really good way to handle it, but I get that it's a good flavor thing.
  5. 1. Making ground missions more of a "looting" operation rather than a "get tech to research and grind stats" operation would be welcomed. In X1 I never really felt like I didn't have enough of any alien components, so ground missions had a sort of pointless feel to them as far as progression went - money was always the issue. X-Div definitely improved on that, though it then went into hyperdrive and drove off a cliff with that, so maybe dial it back a bit. I just recall in TOG that I always craved a good ground mission so I could get whatever it was I needed, alenium usually was the thing. X1 the only thing really lacking was money always, so while ground missions worked into that (if you were good at them...), money alone is a very uninspired scarcity mechanic that rings a little too close to my real home. 2. For the love of god, do not implement X-Div's research/manufacturing process. Every R&D project they added was basically pointless, and I still have no clue how the actual manufacturing worked, and regardless figuring out what you could produce after a ground mission was a PITA given you had to click around a bunch to find entries that had all black material prereqs... and there were a bajillion materials... just no. I'm sure there's a better way to handle that, but it will require a significant UI overhaul or a very streamlined approach. 3. Giving the player a [TOG laser weapons-esque] profitable manufacturing option, but have it be limited by ground mission loot would be nice (alloys work well for that, but multiple options is nice). I know ground missions are inherently profitable from what you can sell off, but this integrates it more fully with base management and adds depth for those players that want it for pretty minimal coding input I imagine. Balancing shouldn't be too hard when it's basically an "extra loot" from missions. If players want to grind out every GC so they can build up a few manufacturing-mill bases for profit and crush the game financially, well, they should be allowed to. The vast majority of players probably won't go through all that, but the hardcore will love you for it. Increasing difficulty levels should drop that profitability sharply, so NG+3 will basically nix it. It's fine if NG is unbalanced for being too easy (I like that, I want to just have fun sometimes).
  6. QoL improvement on top of XCE: let us "select all" and "apply to all" both loadouts and aircraft/unassigned. I constantly rotate and completely cycle out squads in the game, and it's incredibly tedious with the current (X1 XCE) UI... dozens of clicks just to get everyone out of their assigned craft and give everyone an "unassigned loadout" so I can start to build a squad from scratch.
  7. Any interest in doing more developing world themed biomes, since that's the vast majority of the planet? I haven't played the new game, but the old game only really had the desert biome as developing world, while everything else was American farms basically, which is not how 90% of farms on the planet look. Developing world tile set would be a lot more tactically interesting than the griddy and bland American farm tileset. Consider it for a DLC at least, I would gladly pay like $2-4 for a well made additional tileset like that.
  8. Is there any way to install this on Linux? The installer will not run on Linux. I just need the files and where to place them...
  9. Here's a Google doc: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1C73fP4cHtrer5oCM4zH1ZyR9DEUhh_7KkYUbfT6xYqM/edit?usp=sharing You can only edit the item profit and days values to see how it affects profitability over a given term. I like what $1500-1600 profit does.
  10. I'm having two bugs, I'm not sure if they're both XMC-related: 1) manufacturing bug: one of my bases now has -8 days manufacturing time for all items and I cannot build anything there after fiddling with a sniper rifle build order. 2) game crashes in GC when clicking on inventory while over a dead Xenonaut. Pretty much every time. In addition, I wanted to say there's balance issues with the top-tier firearms. The 50cal sniper rifle and the sweet shotgun seem pretty OP, especially for the point in the game where you acquire them. I'm through plasma weapons now and still don't see a reason to switch from these. Is there a point to making them so powerful? Otherwise, I'm loving this mod. It's exactly what I wanted, as I found X-Division to be an unfortunately very unbalanced and overly difficult mod that messed with too much. I've wanted basically Vanilla-Plus for a while, and this is just that. Well done. I note those two balance issues since they're the only ones I've otherwise noted. However, you could also probably reduce the profit on the sniper rifle (not sure if I've found any other profitable items yet, so just commenting on this one). Currently, it's around $20K/month/engineer with full costs included. If you look at it from a return on investment approach, you pay about $1,140,000 for a full 90-engineer setup and in the first month you make $2,745,000 in profit from these. After that first month, upkeep is just $610,000/month while you still make that $2.745M in profit. These things are really, really OP in how quickly you can build up a ton of money and buy a win. I would suggest, in general, keeping profitability down to something where it doesn't win the game for you but rather makes it a bit easier financially. So, something more like 20% profit over 6 months (meaning unprofitable the first month even). For a 5-man-day project: profit/6mo = (( [30.5days/5days]*[$ profit/item]*6mo )) / (( [engineer hire cost] + [engineer upkeep]*5mo + [large living quarters build cost]/100people + [LLC upkeep]*5mo/100ppl + [workshop build cost]/15ppl + [workshop upkeep]*5mo/15ppl )) Currently, it's 300% profit margin. A 20% profit margin would be a $1525/unit profit (so sell cost of $24520) OR a 16.5 man-day time cost. Whether you want to go exactly 20% is arbitrary. I would just suggest something much lower than 300% currently, where you're at least in the red on the first month, if not second, so it slows down the rate of expansion you can manage and requires an actual STRATEGIC DECISION to be made as to whether you should sink money into a long-term profit from manufacturing or into other near-term needs like armor/interceptors.
  11. Well, if it's an XMC problem then I guess I'll deal with it there. I tried cancelling the project, firing all engineers, hiring all new ones. Pretty much everything I could think of. I did find that only the one base was affected, so I just shifted all my manufacturing to a different base now, but that one base is still screwed up months later.
  12. I am playing with a few mods (CE 0.34 + Choices 1,2,4,5,6 and a few that came with XCE). I set the sniper rifles on 99 to build and forgot about it a while. I'm not sure what happened but when I went to reset the build to 0 and add just 1 (so it was 16/99 and I went 16/16 then 16/17) it said there were -8 hours to build on the bottom tab and something like -12341351235135 man hours for any thing to be built on the top tab. All save games are ruined now for that campaign, so I'm a bit pissed. Any help would be appreciated.
  13. Pretty sure I've seen Unity thrown around as the new engine.
  14. Excellent. The engine issues with GC were/are a big turn-off from Xenonauts for me. I mean, I still love the game but, well we all know the issues. #1 for me was a lack of 3D terrain, which I assume Unity will allow.I would suggest involving more animations/stances for GC since you'll have a better engine to work with. Leaning (around corners and back-to-wall type stuff), peeking around corners, sneaking while moving, prone, stuff like that. More control over characters, yet still within a top-down TBS approach would be awesome. Also things like stealth would be nice: walk/sneak speed which increases TU usage per tile crossed but reduces noise/visibility. We have a lot of night missions and creeping through dark buildings. And with Unity we can get more audio feedback on noises and use the soundscape more fully (ambient noises and alien breathing even if unseen and alien "speaking" orders or cursing). Sound was a definite weak spot for Xenonauts after all. Of course, even a non-Xeno game could incorporate all the above GC additions. JA is another good one to base it off of. I'd be fine with another Xenonauts, with expanded alien classes/species, more varied alien traits (as detailed above), and just more varied gameplay as it progresses. That was the big issue many and I had: GC got very samey and repetitive after a while, due to samey aliens just with different stats (which you're improving in the OP), samey weapons with a small selection, and a small variety of maps. The community maps helped the last one, so I guess that's okay, but still I'd liked to have seen more variety from you guys, especially on props, which always limited the variety the modders could put in. Oh, and more cultural variety - South/East Asian (50% of world population = 0% Xenonauts assets), more developing world, European, etc. All we really had was developed modern Western and rural Middle Eastern. And more rural/wilderness maps (well, any would be nice). One more hope is way more weapon variety, add-ons, mods, etc. Xenonauts' weaponry always felt really simplified, though I get that TOG also was so simplified, but then we've come a few decades forward, and there's no reason to not flesh out the weaponry more fully for GC in the next version. Again, this carries over to a JA-style game or really any similar sort with GC. People like to customize their loadouts, which includes armor, vests, backpacks and peripherals. I'd look to ArmA 3 to see a game that handles balancing and customization well, with space/weight tradeoffs that seamlessly affect gameplay for items carried. That with a BF4 level of weapon options would be very nice, since you're making GC the focus after all. TL;DR: Yes to another Xenonauts IF there's a significant improvement to weapon variety, alien variety, the GC system in general, map variety and asset variety, and 3D terrain. Xenonauts was a great game, but replayability has suffered and due to engine issues it never "grabbed" me the way other horror genre games have (including TOG).
  15. I like what you've done. I've done a lot of similar stuff to my own mod copy since I found the early game just way too brutal to be enjoyable. What I also did was severely reduce throwing distance for all grenades. Like down to 4. It makes no sense you can throw something farther than you can shoot, and it reduces the amount of nade battles and OP alien nading. To balance some of this, though, I added significant recoil to almost all weapons and didn't alter accuracy. So a rifle has 60 recoil, LMG and sniper 70, shotgun 65. Basically, it rewards having more experienced soldiers and makes newbie soldiers less effective, also makes the strength trait all that much more important. Recoil is one of the most underused stats.
  16. More 4-10 range usually, and at that range it's almost always better to either close distance and fire off 1-2 shotgun blasts OR retreat and use a sniper rifle. The rifles are fairly useless, since they lack the damage of sniper rifles and shotguns to kill with just 1-2 shots. They really feel more like SMGs: moderate damage, short range, low accuracy.
  17. Some feedback on weapons. Rifles seem pointless currently. You can't use them at long range (15+), they suck at mid range (10-15), and they're far worse than shotguns at close range (<10). Any chance we could get a buff for this class? I'd specifically want longer range.
  18. Haven't played the new release, but I have to agree: - androns from the start is too much - corvettes from the start is too much - both muck up an otherwise solid early game progression (a bit slow, but that's better than BAM! at the start)
  19. For ranks, it's basically just 2: the guy leading everyone and then everyone else in the mission. You, as the player, basically choose who's the leader by who you choose as the highest ranked officer in the mission (though I'm not sure what happens in ties).
  20. I also have noticed this, where I get repeated hits against an alien that just do nothing, not even getting hit like 8 times by a LMG-variant do it, plus a sniper shot, plus 3 or so others. Only grenades.
  21. Also, it's important to do UFO missions just to get the resources to build things you need (alenium/alloys). Yeah, loading times for this game are higher than any other game I have (including things like Blacklist, Arma 3, and HOI3). I have an SSD, and it can easily take a full minute to load up a GC.
  22. #1 priority needs to always be AIRCRAFT. Those win or lose the game. This includes aircraft damage upgrades (alenium explosives, etc) #2 is ARMOR. You want your men to actually survive. Better to have a force of high-accuracy, high HP, high TU, high strength men with weak guns than rookies with awesome ones (they can't use because they're too weak). #3 is WEAPONRY. Ultimately, heavily armored men with grenades can be very effective offensively, and they still die less than weakly armored men with the best guns.
  23. It's in the menu when you right click on the game and select properties. Look through there.
  24. Your #1 problem: 3 bases. 2 in the first few months is key. You just can't properly support 3 bases that early on, and you're constantly playing catch-up when you do. You don't need to spend all your money at once. Also, key to survival of ground units: shields. Keep your snipers/LMGs back 15 or more tiles from UFO entrance. Use the shields for the initial opening, then retreat them along the sides and snipe/shoot everything inside from far enough away that they can't really return fire. Then use shields to open doors and do most of the heavy lifting. It's also key to use rookies as shields, and to choose rookies with at least ~58 strength to make it work. Once the rookie shields shoot up the aliens inside somewhere and trigger reaction shots, you can move them out of the way for your better, non-shield troops to shoot without concern for reaction fire, then just close the door or move the shields back in front before ending the turn. Also bring additional shields for each mission, and drop them in the dropship on the first turn. You can run back for them later, which is a bit tedious but essential for maintaining your soldiers. Note the same can be done for ammo. It's nice to have a high strenght/high TU guy to do gear runs in the late combat period when you're depleted. Just remember to gear up your guys with lots of extras of each for when they're needed. Then they can carry a lighter loadout at the start, with more nades. Shields should always be your spearhead/breach/frontline troops, used either to cover more valuable troops, to initially scout an area or find aliens, or to draw alien fire. Then they have a supportive base of fire some tiles back behind cover. Note that nades, especially stun grenades, are great. They have a wide area of coverage, so it's not so important you have high accuracy with them, and they usually work with just one. Only drawback is you need to make sure they'll land at least 5 tiles away. They also can work as a temporary area shield for your flanks, since a lot of aliens will be knocked out when they move through the tiles. For a big ship, my loadouts are: 3x shields (plus backup shields on dropship) 2x rifles 1x assault 1x sniper 1x LMG For terror missions: 4x shields 1x rifles 1x sniper 1x LMG 1x assault For base assaults: 4x shields 2x assault 2x rifles For other smaller ships: 2x shields 1x assault 2x rifles 2x snipers 1x LMG
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