Mikhail Ragulin

I might have them as two shots (like the BR's/vanilla snipers) per turn, and have the ruger as one shot + reload per turn. Or, drop the ruger (I'd prefer to keep it the other way around, but I haven't found any other non-magazine rifles of a similar size with even above-average power). I noticed it happening on one weapon in particular - an AR that did 50 damage per shot. It was landing a lot of shots with damage in the 80's, so much so that I checked the weapon stats and damage variance but it was all fine. It had mitigation of 15 (or maybe 10...or maybe 20). Once I got rid of the mitigation, the damage normalised. I didn't look any further into it. I've had fun with damage values before - back in Magnum Force, the Spas was using stun rounds, and I set the damage to 1. However, this would often result in a pellet doing 10000 damage (ouch!). This is also why the flammenwerfers are set to 2 damage, instead of 1. Thanks, I'm glad you're enjoying it. I actually considered having the pistol in the belt (it would be easier if we could have L-shaped items), but went for this style instead. A good way to do it would to cut the left side of the inventories out, instead of the right side like I've done. This would give a rectangular belt of 3x2. I'll try and make some time to have a look at it.

I'm not sure, but I think armour mitigation is a bit funky anyhow - that's why I've gone back to using vanilla values for it. Weapons that had it seemed to be doing more damage than they should against unarmoured aliens (most aliens have no armour anyway), and this stopped when I took away the mitigation. Role overlap can be easily avoided by adding characteristics to the weapons. For example, the carbines and AR's are nearly exactly the same stats, apart from a few key areas. Like, the carbine gets a reaction bonus (which makes a huge difference in game), but the AR's have greater range and hold their damage. Little things like that. The new weapons will fill a role similar to that of the AT rifle - firing once per turn, huge damage. But the difference from the AT's will be the short range and the reaction modifier (as they are are quite small weapons, despite the calibre). Also, there's a new variable which forces the use of strength or accuracy, whichever is lower - ideal for big-ass, recoil-heavy weapons (this variable is mentioned in the vanilla GC loading tips, but it appears that it's only just made it into play), which will further help to differentiate between weapons. The initial list is looking like this: Winchester Model 88, Winchester 1895, Browning BLR, and then the Ruger No. 1. The range might have to be a bit abstracted on some of them (can't find definitive values), but the Ruger is certainly a sub-100m weapon. They'll probably have the range of the SMG's to model this, or maybe a bit higher, somewhere between SMG and carbine.

Photoshop - much more than just celebrity shemales.

Call it ricochet. In fact, that's not a bad idea at all...ricochets. That's a good one about the shotguns, but I'd still be a couple short - say 12ga, 12M, 10, 10M, for pumps and semis, and I'll be damned if I can find info on any more 10ga than the two currently in game. However, this led me onto another idea - one that mvm900 mentioned earlier, about rifles... Single-action rifles, like the Ruger No.1. These puppies fire insanely powerful bullets (maybe not as big as slugs, but in pure energy terms, they're 4x as powerful as the in game BR's) like the .458, and are designed for short range work (effective at ~50m-ish, which translates the same as shotguns). So these would be like the AT rifles of the breaching weapons - immensely damaging, but one shot per turn - very situational, but filling a role none the less.

So...the LMG has decided to ignore the fact that there's no room in the bag, and superimpose itself over the charge? What a stubborn git. You might be onto something there kabill - it could be the shape of it. Probably because there are no vanilla weapons of that shape (2x5) - I bet if it was 5x2, it would have been alright, and the lmg would make its way to the floor.

No - I just explained it badly! I was saying that by the late game, soldiers generally have more strength (due to experience), and also predator armour is available. It took me a while to notice the SMG - I didn't have a soldier that I deemed strong enough to use it until today. And even then, it took me a few missions. Looked kinda cool, but I don't think it had an effect on gameplay. I didn't consider the ground to be dirty, that's a good one. Hopefully, if the community coders can come up with coding support for the inventory sizes, there could be other ways to model the backpack and storage space - but from what I've read, it's a part of the code that doesn't behave itself.

The only thing that needs setting in weapons.xml is the clipsize (and the x/y sizes...and the ammo). Most of the values (damage, accuracy, range, weight, etc) are redundant in weapons.xml and can be ignored. Set them in weapons_gc.

Maybe I didn't explain myself clearly - I know that there are bigger bores than 12/10ga, but finding specific guns (and sufficient information and pictures regarding the guns) that use them is next to impossible.

Patch: Click here Spotted a little error with the A-180 SMG (it was using the wrong "bullet type" - basically the target cursor was displaying an area of effect, like a rocket instead of a bullet). Also included is the hidden movement screens which I accidentally missed out of the original download. This patch won't break savegames. It's only needed if you've downloaded before this post, as I've updated the link in the first post. I won't be doing frequent patches/updates - I prefer to space them out so everyone gets a chance to play the same game, if you see what I mean - so there won't be new patches/versions/hotfixes every few days.

5 missile defenses used to get the job done (they auto upgrade, so there's no need /chance for variety). But...I read that they've become more powerful after a recent patch, so I'm not so sure if that many are needed.

From the first post: Can they also decrease any stat, or does it just make superman armours even more super? If I wanted to add negatives to an armour, would that work? For example, if I wanted to make predator armour have a downside by having reduced reflexes, could I give it say a -50 value?

It's almost the opposite - the biggest limit on how much a soldier can carry is the weight of the kit more than the size of the inventory, and this is countered in the late game both by having stronger soldiers and predator armour. I'm in the other camp when it comes to the inventory. When I play vanilla, I look at the backpack and think "holy shit, batman, that's bigger than the batcave". If anything, I think these ones are still too big! Here's why... This is because I've been playing with them for quite a while. I think the biggest change is visually, and getting used to how it looks. Only very rarely is the backpack full on any of my soldiers (only the medic class really, because the medkit fills the bag), as weight is an issue before it gets full. I'd suggest giving it a few days or so of using it, because once the visual hurdle is overcome one doesn't even notice the smaller sizes. The troops can still carry way more kit than they actually need. A couple of examples: Assault - shotgun, 3 x ammo, 2 x C4, 7 x grenades Support Gunner - LMG, 3 x ammo, 7 x grenades Rifleman - rifle, 2 x ammo, 1 x machine pistol & 1 x ammo, 1 x truncheon, 4 x grenades That's a lot of kit. No-one ever goes short - except for heavy weapons guys, like the flamers and AT rifles, because they are so heavy, and then it comes down to tactical decisions and how or why to use those guys. With all this in mind, I'd say just keep using them - once the visual difference wears off, they're a lot of fun. They do have their quirks, like Lerzan points out about having to drop the primary weapon to pull out the sidearm - this might come down to individual playstyles. For example, with the range of weapons available, only my rifle troops have a sidearm in their bags, and they only switch to them for breaching. At this point, I'm happy to leave the primary on the floor, as it's less weight to carry and therefore more TU's to get into effective pistol range. If anyone does want to change them back, the instructions/info are in the UI thread linked at the end of the first post. All the weapons would need re-sizing too, so it's quite a lot of work unfortunately. Finding info on shotguns bigger than 12ga is like finding rocking-horse shit. It's nigh-on impossible. The only two I could find good info (and a picture) about is the two that made it into this version - the two 10 gauges, the Ithaca Mag-10 and the Winchester 1901. I originally wanted to go something like 12ga>10ga>8ga>6ga, but there's no info out there. The only one I could get info on is a 4ga (or equivalent, as it's made from old AA tubes), the KS-23. It's a gun I used back in Magnum Force, but it's too late for this mod (it was mid-80's). If anyone does know where I can get info on bigger gauge shotguns (that are still hand held, not punt guns!), let me know.

I'd love to have different ammo types. But, and it's a big but, it's just not practical at the moment as the UI doesn't support multiple ammo types. There is a way (there's one in the Xenophobia mod) that's been tried out by different modders over the course of the game development, but the generally accepted rule is that it's just not feasible. However, and it's a big however - your mention of the AT rifles has triggered some thinking - there is a way I could include different ammos, for shotguns at least. What I could do is further split the shotgun category, into pump-actions and semi-autos. Then, for example, the pumps could use a slug round (giving them just one pellet, and maybe a range touching the current carbine range), and the semis could be buckshot guns. The slug guns would then be like the AT rifles are in the rifle department - hard hitting but costly to fire, and the semis could carry on as usual. If that's an idea that people like, I'd put it in. The only downside of this would be that shotgun gauges aren't particularly varied. For the four tiers, I'd have to go something like .410 > 20ga > 12ga > 10ga. But that might not be a problem - I could just explain it in the 'pedia as "we've chosen the .410 as our stock range due to it's manageable recoil". So, effectively we'd have two choices of shotgun, using a different ammo type each. As for the snipers - yep, the battle rifles replace them. They're more accurate and more powerful than the AR's, and also have armour mitigation - so essentially, they do everything the vanilla snipers do, but just under a different name. The combat takes place over too small an area to have big-scoped snipers I think. The AT rifles fit a class of their own - they're not as accurate as the other rifles (they didn't need to be, shooting at big-ass tanks), but much harder hitting (potentially the most damaging guns in the game) - so there isn't a gun to compare them with from vanilla. But yeah, the battle rifles replace the snipers. The AT's are just a bonus.

Thanks. Go ahead and take a look at the flamethrower code, it's pretty simple. The key is assigning it a good projectile spectre - the animated ones are the best (in the particles folder). There's all kinds of different colour explosions (and even non-explosions, like the teleport animation) that work well (red, green, blue, yellow) - some of which would look really good for an alien flamethrower in XNT.

Thanks. And in other news, I'm going to add a few more hints and tips to the first post, so people don't end up getting noobed like I've just done: Check the date. I'm only just in October and the buggers have wiped my unguarded second base. One may have forgotten to man the post.

Just had a go with it - seems to not be able to bypass cover that is more than 50% blocking chance.

Thanks. Those AGL's were lethal, I found myself killing my own troops with them quite often. But this was okay, as it was hilarious seeing them blow up. They didn't make it into this version though (although they may come back in the future). However, they were replaced by things equally as invigorating - flamethrowers. And, I still manage to kill my own guys with these quite regularly too.

Speaking of which...was this designed for bullets passing through cover on the way to the target, or passing through the target? If it's the former, and it works a bit, that could be a sneaky workaround for grenade launchers, mimicking their trajectory by going through cover instead of over it.

This is what I've been trying to replicate with M'nauts, with success - crashed UFO's yield virtually zero recoverable goodies. Landed ones have all the good stuff, and need to be raided before they fly off. The choice/luxury of waiting until daybreak and avoiding night missions has been largely removed. If anyone's interested in these kind of mechanics, it might be worth having a go.

Predator guns use the "is big gun" in weapons.xml. The "is heavy" determines which weapons suffer the heavy weapon move penalty.

Ah, so it's like the line in gcloading_tips - <Tip>Shooting with heavy weapons uses the lower of Strength or Accuracy.</Tip> - has just come true.

Thanks. Only other place I can see it is back in v21, where it's on only the rifle (but set to zero). Do you know what the strength limit is?

So...when did it start appearing? Is it something that was accidentally missing?

I've just noticed this in some entries in weapons_gc. Now, seeing as I've spent a fair bit of time in that file, I assume it's something that's sneaked in very recently. Does anyone know what it does?

That's right: I've made them less accurate for balancing - not so that they can carry more ammo. 3 hits out of ten is still a killer at any range for each tier of vanilla mg's - it's the only weapon that can reliably do this on nearly every turn, which is what makes it overpowered. Shotguns can get off 3 shots per turn, but that's only effective up close. Ar's can shoot up to 4 per turn (using burst and snap, both 35% accuracy...not going to hit much unless it's real close) at low accuracy and damage, with no mitigation. Snipers/precisions can only do a max of two bullets per turn, with better accuracy (apart from close range, where they don't get the close range hit bonus) and mitigation. The mg's have the ability to reliably land more shots per turn than all the other weapons; the only gun that can reliably kill at all ranges every turn. Turn its accuracy down a bit, and it fits in better.