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Jebediah

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Everything posted by Jebediah

  1. +1 to that. Kinda doesn't make sense that a blast door can open and close in the time it takes a frag grenade to go boom.
  2. I find the best way to go (usually only results in one casualty-guess who it is) is to use smoke to try to bisect the room, so that you can handle one blind corner at a time. Following that, I send in someone with a shield to try to cope with the reaction fire, then try to baton/gun down the people in that corner. Finally a barrage of flash/frags to the other corner to try to suppress whatever happens to be over there before their turn starts.
  3. Much, much better, just one suggestion for you though. It looks like the helmet's riding a bit too high on the sides...the level it sits at on the front is correct, usually you want your helmet to come to about the tops of the eyebrows. But compare here, notice where the edge of the helmet is in relation to his ear. I can see the tops of the ears, which shouldn't be visible. Looking at the picture, I see you did flare out the back of the helmet a bit to attempt the back-half curvature common on most military helmets, most prominent in the Soviet SSh-60 that Soviet Army soldiers would be wearing in this time period. I just think it needs to be a bit more pronounced, it seems like the entire helmet's horizontal-ness might be coming a bit from that. Try to imagine a profile view of it and work from there, that might help.
  4. Sorry about the gravedig, I followed the link off the mod list and didn't notice how old the thread was.
  5. I say a balancing measure could be 250 rounds, in 50 round belts, that take two turns to swap out. Have you ever tried reloading dual solenoid-fired MMGs in a cramped-ass turret in a moving vehicle on rough terrain? Well, I haven't either, that sure isn't my MOS. But from what I gather from the occasional armor guys I bump into, it's not a cakewalk.
  6. What if there were reverse crash site missions, guys? Hear me out: you failed to provide sufficient air supremacy in your base's AO, and there are fighters prowling the skies within radar range. A vital military/government aircraft carrying something essential to the war effort (high ranking personnel, captured alien equipment, prototypes, etc) is shot down by fighters with EMP/other less-destructive weaponry, and apparently an alien strike force conspicuously similar to ours is moving in to secure the crash site and take the hardware/personnel. It's extremely time-sensitive: you get there in time, you get to array your forces nice and strategically like a base defense mission, and there are plenty of survivors ready to help you defend it. You drag your feet and don't make it there fast enough, it's a blitzkrieg rush to hopefully reach the downed plane...or hell, downed Charlie, I feel like it would save you boys some time with the artwork...before the aliens finish their collection. I think it would be really cool to occasionally find yourself in a role-reversal situation, in which you are the one with the crash site and they're the ones trying to kick you out. Victory conditions: wipe out aliens. Loss conditions: lose all men, they control crash site for five turns.
  7. You do bring up a good point, although I would like to point back to the titanium armor developed by the Soviets in this time period while cross-applying the Condor's page that states titanium holds up better against their weapons than anything else. Don't know where there was titanium in the 1950s, but still. I'm not saying it would offer protection from energy weapons, I'm just saying that a vest of titanium probably wouldn't cause the negatives a steel trauma plate would in terms of molten hellmetal right next to your vital organs.
  8. I suppose I didn't play enough Tetris as a child, I didn't think of that until just now. Could we please have a "hold fire" button for preventing reaction fire that risks friendly fire? At present I have to physically rotate soldiers I think might hit their buddies with stupid shots, and that seems silly. I used to think they'd only fire if I hit the TU reserve button, but I suppose not.
  9. If someone happens to mod the game to allow it, do remember to alter the code so it doesn't explode the next turn. A friend of mine tried to do this exact thing for another game, I seem to recall it being Fallout Tactics. He threw in elements of grenades' code to facilitate it...the explody part being one he unfortunately forgot to remove. First thing he tested it on was a single bullet. Hilarity ensued.
  10. At present, there are only two things a terror mission can be for players- an opportunity to lose a number of good troops, or an opportunity to lose funding and standing. They can either send a ground force into the city and take heavy casualties trying to clean out the...twenty or so aliens that are terrorizing the entire city, or stand by and let the military deploy tactical nuclear weapons to wipe out the...twenty or so aliens that are terrorizing the entire city. (On a side note, whose tactical nukes get used when the terror mission is in, say, Mogadishu? I know it's a tiny, trivial detail, but could we amend the failure message to only say that when the country in question HAS a nuclear arsenal, and just mention intense casualties when they're...Somalia?) In my opinion, there should be more than those two choices. We have plenty of fighters that can be used to wrest air superiority or at least air parity over the AO, and we have helicopters that can be used in evacuating civilians from the AO. Why not give players these as alternate choices rather than the current "send soldiers or let everyone die" forced dilemma? Sure, sending fighters to provide support would be less pleasing than sending boots on the ground, and sending dropships to evacuate civilians would be less pleasing than either. But it still would be much, much better than the "all or nothing" bizarreness we're looking at now. Sending fighters would result in an air combat screen just as sending soldiers results in a ground combat screen, while sending a dropship or two would just take them out of ready status for twenty-four hours or so. The idea being there's more than one way to assist the host nation's forces than just being the big damn heroes and mopping up with eight dudes the mess their whole army couldn't fix.
  11. They certainly don't mind color-coding their leaders on the battlefield, even though they communicate telepathically and logically should have no need whatsoever of any sort of distinguishing insignia.
  12. The one thing I've noticed about suppression values in-game is that (at least as far as I can tell) the shotgun has the worst of all ballistic weapons. I suppose this makes sense at long range where the blast has dispersed somewhat, but at close range, even when the shot misses (which is relatively common for the 20-TU option), the mere sound and power of a shotgun blast up-close should be more suppressive than a three-round burst from a rifle. Two consecutive near-misses from a shotgun at a range of four tiles just failed to suppress a Caesan non-combatant in the game I'm playing now, which is the reason I came over and posted. This just seems insane. Just a suggestion- perhaps shotguns should receive added suppression value below a predefined range, say seven tiles or so?
  13. I haven't had a chemistry course since my junior year of high school, but it made sense to me. You're fine.
  14. Flares for night missions could be treated as normal grenades (loadout-wise) for higher difficulty levels. That's one immersion-breaker for me, when I get infinite flares but only forty spare M16 rounds.
  15. Personally, I wouldn't find it too hard to believe if the alien ships had specific livery on the outside indicating a high-ranking officer was aboard. I mean, in the past, we dolled up our flagships, I don't see why the aliens wouldn't.
  16. This is glorious and needs to be a thing. As of now, I feel like we're not making an effort (in-game) to understand alien behavior. I haven't beaten the game, mostly due to my attention span mandating I start a new game every long session, so I don't know what happens past January, but still. It seems like all we do is shoot down UFOs and take their stuff. The single most frustrating thing to me about the game, that you've finally addressed, is the lack of analysis. Ironically enough, I happen to be a strategic intelligence analyst...I often find myself trying to do the P&I analysis on enemy troop movements and incidents nearly on a subconscious level, when I realize that the developers couldn't possibly have programmed the enemy to behave in the manner I'm trying to regard it in... Needless to say, you need any help on how an intel puke would handle the alien apocalypse, just let me know.
  17. As of 1979, assuming the player has access to good old Soviet titanium, they would be more than able of fabricating decent body armor. As the Soviets did. The US military issued "flak jackets" in Vietnam, which were primarily aluminum and only meant to stop shrapnel, and the occasional pistol round if the wearer were on exceptionally good terms with Lady Luck and Jesus. However, Soviet body armor of the period, like the 6Б3 or the ЖЗ-85 were able to stop high-powered pistol rounds and even assault rifle rounds in favorable cases. Obviously body armor does not mean immune to bullets. But according to this game body armor cuts weapon damage if it doesn't stop it, and if that's the mechanic, then we're using it here too.
  18. Hey guys, remember me? The "let's spitball every idea I think of because one of them might be good" guy? I'm back. The way I see it, in-game there are pretty much only fighters and dropships at the moment. Some have different capabilities than others, sure, but that's it. They're all either combat or transport aircraft. If the US Air Force had it that simple, they'd crap themselves in ecstasy. Sure, not every type of aircraft needs to be represented in-game, but there are two main ones that I feel like would improve the game without dramatically upsetting the balance or anything like that. 1) The Tanker. Every major air force has a fuel carrying aircraft to allow their combat jets to extend their range. Be it the KC-135 or the IL-78, the pathetic fuel capacities of short-legged aircraft are irrelevant so long as a tanker is around. Of course, as soon as they were introduced, tankers became the #2 priority for destruction (#1 is coming) for air force planners. The ability to let planes fly as far as they want is a horrible thing in the eyes of the person being attacked by said planes, so efforts were made to plan all future doctrine around denying the enemy that ability. Which is what the aliens would do. Tankers in-game could be sent to rendezvous with or tail jets who are patrolling or otherwise hunting down a target that's pushing their fuel abilities to the brink. When they need extra gas, they simply slow down and refuel. Tankers are defenseless, notably, so they would be shot down instantly unescorted like the Charlie, and would take the place of a valuable interceptor, so they would be balanced out. Also, the "unlimited" factor may definitely be a bit much, so let's just say each tanker can only refuel three times before being empty and having to go back home. That way it could top off a squadron exactly, and then go back for a refuel session. Also of note...most real-world fighter aircraft are capable of carrying "buddy tanks", meaning that instead of a dedicated tanker aircraft with massive quantities of fuel, another fighter can attach small fuel tanks to its hardpoints allowing its buddies to refuel off of it. Not only can it keep up with fighters (being a fighter itself), it isn't completely defenseless if attacked. While one or both hardpoints might be fuel tanks, a fighter could still have its cannon and one missile (as per Air Force guidelines) or just its cannon and an afterburner (as per our guidelines) to protect itself. 2) The AEW/C aircraft, Aerial Early Warning and Control. Most notable of this family is the AWACS system, so much so that most people just call 'em all AWACS. They are, in their simplest form, radar emplacements with jet engines. An AWACS jet can detect incoming aircraft from hundreds of miles out and relay that information to the air-battle planners on the ground below. Even better, most AEW/C aircraft have advanced radar systems that allow them to take over guidance of missiles from the planes that launched them. Whereas a fighter's radar may only reach out for, say, 200 miles, an AWACS aircraft on station can co-opt that missile and feed it the targeting information only it can see to double that to 400. However, these are the #1 targets for air battle management, and in most plans have the most powerful escort force of anything in the air. The aliens can and will learn what these are, can and will track them (radar is a two-way street), and will generally make their lives hell. They could be used as a shorter-ranged mobile radar system for probing out areas with no coverage, and the tanker-fighter system could go in when something was detected. Either of those sound appealing?
  19. In my opinion, in the middle of the ALIEN INVASION, most people would let the FIRST, LAST, AND ONLY LINE OF DEFENSE AGAINST IT (Xenonauts) play their budget a little fast and loose. I've taken to regarding this infinite store of weapons and ammo as a donation from the US government (which is why it's all US equipment) to better allow us to win the battle against the aliens. Think about how much gear a rifle company in a light infantry battalion is given (this much), and think about how many grenades and bullets we go through in the course of a game, and you realize it would be a pathetically tiny chunk of change for the US government to subsidize EVERYTHING WE DO. So guns and grenades are a nice compromise, I guess.
  20. Let me give you an example of what it takes to introduce a new sprite into the game. See this? This is how many sprites are involved in the animation for a soldier firing a laser rifle. To the southeast. On the single-fire setting. While wearing Jackal body armor. And crouched. If you want, take a peek at the file under assets called units. I'd post the address but I'm sure not everyone is using Steam, so obviously it would be an invalid location for some. That'll show you how many individual images are involved in animating a unit.
  21. Okay, here's my argument for the issue: The aliens' attack is something that TAKES TIME in the game world. As pointed out, it's not an instantaneous, magical teleportation attack where the aliens suddenly show up in your hangar, workshop, and medical center and say "Excuse me, is this the Xenonaut base?" There are sandbags around the command center. Somebody clearly knew this attack was coming hours before it happened. Why can't I equip my troops in the time it happens? Why, after a man comes off medical leave, does he get only an M16 and two magazines until I specifically say otherwise, even if the alien armada gate-crashes our base? This is what I'd like to see in terms of base defense. When the missile batteries start firing, you get the option to 1) equip your troops in the armory. 2) evacuate a number of scientists/technicians directly proportional to the space on your dropships, so not EVERYONE dies if the aliens happen to win. 3) get to conscript members of the non-combat support personnel if you don't have the full 16 troop contingent (they would suck, worse than privates, with stats in the upper 40s, but still. In the Battle of Wake Island, the USMC had fighter pilots leading chefs and clerks in the final defense of their base against the Japanese. Why our guys choose to cower under the base, even though the REACTOR MELTDOWN from the aliens winning the fight will kill them anyway, is beyond me.
  22. If you could just read the bolded text, those are a few issues I think everyone may agree on, and/or are simple to implement.
  23. I think it's funny they'll throw down their weapons and run away under extremely superior firepower, but not bat an eye at their CO's orders to STAND IN THAT CONVENIENTLY MAN-SIZED PILLAR OF FLAME FOR TWO TURNS IN A ROW. Something's rather wrong here.
  24. Out of curiosity, why the AR-10 and not the M14? The M14 would have made much more sense, unless of course you just wanted it to look more like the thing they're holding on the ground combat screen because modding those sprites is hell on Earth?
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