Mikhail Ragulin

Needs more bear shit.

How about the ammo?

Yeah, I thought that too. There's a few ways it could go from there...multiple smaller teams, lower drop-ship capacity and rollback its range = worldwide spec ops. That'd be a good one. Kinda more like five-a-side.

Yes, the LC. The Lights Cout.

I thought that might be the case. Although if the light scout doesn't have a power source, it means I'm getting phantom alloys from somewhere. I've done a couple of crashed LC's, and finished with 2 alloys, assuming they were from the power source (as damaged LC gives no alloys, power source gives 2). What are the props inside an LC? My guess is jukebox, big chair, and big alien hairdryer, but I could be wrong. That's a coincidence - I started thinking about your UFO crash sites mod. With more undamaged UFO missions, the idea behind the power core explosion is to give a stark difference between the two sites. I'll have a proper look sometime.

The reasoning behind having alenium and not alloys in fighters & bombers is to try and keep it fitting with the other crashes...normal crash sites yield no alloys (apart from props, as long as they are kept intact during GC), so it's like all the alloys are unusable if the craft is shot down. Something lore-wise to do with the datacore disabling components in case of capture, via the magic of electrical impulses. Also the alenium the 'nauts use is low grade/pre-owned stuff, so that can be recovered even if it's in a bit of a state. Changing subject: Are certain UFO types not affected by this? I've got it set to 100 (in gameconfig), but just did a downed light scout and all was intact (besides a few scratches on the bodywork). And then I thought about it, and reckon that I haven't seen a light scout with all the tell-tale signs of an explosion before.

Set them to unlimited.

That's not a gun, it's a kiddie toy. My Magnum-nauts use the Solothurn S-18/1000. 20x138mm.

Here's one that'll need checking: http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/10530-v1-03-GC-Incorrect-tile-cover-in-terror-mission

Yeah, they're wrong in that table. It's 1 alenium and 5 alloys. Here's what I'll be trying out first: Damaged craft yield no resources...except for the props, so that means that care should be taken when breaching. Undamaged craft yield roughly one-third of the normal amount, plus what is in the props. Shot down fighters get alenium, no alloys. I've also raised the chance of landings. I'm pretty sure only research missions do landings, with a 10% chance. I'll up that to 50 and go from there. There's an 80% chance of a research mission being spawned per wave. So roughly, there's a chance of getting an undamaged craft once a fortnight...as long as it spawns in radar range. It might be too low, and I might have to up the landing % to maybe 75. In theory, it should also freshen up the air war...charlie will need escorting if he's going out after a landed craft.

Aye, it's a surprisingly big difference. Add on the props as well, and there's a veritable shitload of goodies. I've just done a landed light scout, and picked up 8 alloys. 6 for the ship, and 2 for the power source. That's a lot of alloys for not much work. I'll be changing that. Half values are probably a good starting point.

A flat 0 would remove doubt, either way. Even at 0.01, there's a chance that with all the cover props inside a UFO, and the funky LOS instances where one side can see the other but the other has not hit %, that a shot will still not qualify to be taken. 0 should remove all that as variables and allow it to be seen if min hit chance is the problem - then the ET's will fire if they have a unit in sight, regardless of LOS and cover. The shuffling, bless 'em, is best illustrated on your video, where the two sebs, as if on a merry-go-round, head for the same tiles each time as soon as the other is vacated - which suggests the weighting for the preference tiles in the UFO could be over-riding everything else.

He's suckered you in with that one. Only the randomly capitalised ones apply. Without having played around with it, I've been under the impression that the min hit chance is theoretically the problem. Try with it set to 0. Here's why. Lots of cover and props in the interior of a UFO. Even if a unit is not directly behind cover, there's a good chance that there'll be at least one piece of cover in any LOS. Throw in the obscure LOS system - picture one of those scenes where one thinks "well, he can shoot me, but not me him" - and switch it around. By setting it to 0, technically the ET would shoot if a naut was in the LOS, which then might put an end to the shuffling. However, I suspect the shuffling has also got a lot to do with certain points in the UFO, as the shuffling follows a distinct pattern - it's always the same tiles they head for.

Thanks. There's not much resources in the props anyway, some have none. I'm putting it all into an excel file, here's the vanilla numbers: Ship/Prop Alenium AlloysLight Scout 0 6Damaged 0 0Scout 4 14Damaged 0 3Corvette 6 20Damaged 1 4Landingship 10 30Damaged 2 5Cruiser 14 34Damaged 2 6Battleship 24 60Damaged 4 10Reactor 2 3Anti-grav 0 0Fusion 4 6Hyper 0 0Singularity 0 0Power Source 1 2H Engine 0 1L Engine 0 2Beam 0 1Torpedo 1 0Fighter 0 2H Fighter 1 4Bomber 2 6S Cruiser 3 10Interceptor 2 6 Obviously, it's much easier to read when it's all lined up.

Kabill - how about fighters/bombers...do you know where the alloys for these are contained?

Throw in the wheat field as well, to act as general jungle foliage, and job's a good 'un.

Yeah, the half-window tiles that provide no cover are a pain. It's become annoying since the AI has been using verticality, there was no reason to go into buildings or upstairs previously.

I'll probably go for datacore. I can then excuse my laziness by hamming something up for the xenopedia..."the datacore is intrinsically linked to the chassis of the UFO, and unfortunately commander, if the datacore is damaged or destroyed it appears to send out an impulse that renders other components useless, meaning we cannot salvage valuable materials from the UFO". Job done.

Thanks, I'll have a play with those. On first viewing, it looks like the easiest way would be to do it via the datacore spectres. With the prop spectres, what determines if they are damaged/destroyed/default...is it ground combat damage, AC damage, or all under the umbrella of "power core explosion"?

If you gave me the spectres, is that all I would need?

In regards to nerfing alenium/alloys from crashsites, correct me if I'm wrong, but this can't be done. Directly. A way round that would be to set the power core to blow on every crash site (or the vast majority), which I assume would kill the alenium...but maybe not the alloys?

Yeah, there's a lot of threads about mg's and how they should work (if one goes back through the forum pages), be it five or ten round bursts. I guess no one really bothered with the idea of having two mg's yet (apart from smg's). Having the vanilla mg's (like our gpmg's) bursting more than once per turn would make them overpowered...they nail nearly everything they shoot at, so doing that twice per turn would be overkill. But a slightly less powerful one seems to work. I've also reduced the suppression radius for the standard mg's (2 radius instead of 4), which gets rid of the supress everything on the map effect. The LMG's have slightly less suppression (90 compared to 120, with a radius of 2) as they can fire twice per turn, and both have lower accuracy (gpmg's 15% for 10 bullets, lmg's 20% for 5). It seems to be working out nicely.

The first one, the operation endgame button, should be easy enough to do. Buttons/UI are quite receptive to bodging.

How would the ticker work in such a circumstance...would it just increase the ticker, or would it provide the -$2000 funding hits, like a base does?

Are we not men? WE ARE XENO. I'll have to look at ways to get the Devo Corporate Theme music playing at some point in the game. Maybe when the funding screen appears. You might be onto something there. Perhaps crashed UFO's = cash, in that they just give money for the weapons captured, and none of the resources (because they're unrecoverable). And landed UFO's is where the resources, and cash, are. I think that sounds pretty good, combined with a higher chance of landing.