KevinHann

I don't want to be impudent, but would you consider redoing more armors as well? With CE there is certainly room for new unique armors (which I personally prefer than editing the current ones).

That's not bad, mate! Would you be willing to share it as a mod?

I'm not sure what you mean, TD? It's a Mothership, I see them as flying cities. It should be big enough if Carriers and Battleships go to them for recharging/supplies. I don't know yet - but I'm open for suggestions. How many do you think would be required to present a balanced spread throughout the levels? Bear in mind there will be a third level, although it is significantly smaller than the second one. Fair enough, it is an interesting concept on its own and I'd be curious to see what you come up with. Although this direction is of little interest for me in my designs as the current game is balanced that way anyway and I'd like to see more enemies rather than just more of the same. I have to say I went for Dreadnaught (what's the correct spelling on this one, I keep seeing it both ways?) just because the name was already in. I wanted to see a Mothership as a natural high-tier UFO upgrade and merged it with the alien base tiles as I feel they are brilliant and terribly underused in the vanilla game. I take it you don't like the concept? I could really use some additional feedback.

Out of curiosity, what did you change? Could you share a screenshot?

Is it Industrial tileset causing the poor performance? If so, you can try the fix in the bottom of this page: http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/2576-Mac-bug-reports/page28

Just finished the second floor of the Mothership. Here it is: Also a reminder of the first floor for the sake of visual convenience: Note: If you click "Open image" or "Open image in new tab", you will be able to see it full size. A few comments: The left wing is a research division. It captures living specimen from around the globe for further testing and has a tiny security buffer between the researchers and the "cages" as a precaution against a breakout. The right wing is a pretty straightforward supply depot, similar to a Carrier. The core is race specific - it's the equivalent of the orlop deck of the slave ships. This particular Mothership happens to be Andron. I will re-design it for all three races when the entire layout is finished. A quick note about teleporters: each of the three Corvette hangars on floor 1 has two of them - they lead to the two teleporters you see on the NW section of the wings. The "orlop deck" is different - the floor 1 teleporters lead to the two teleporters you see in the middle, forcing the player to choose which way to head. Despite my intentions of building a 4-level UFO, I've decided to cut the top floor as the orlop deck pretty much covered what I had in mind for the next floor. There will be just one more level. After that I will need some help in turning this into a fully functional playable submap. As usual, feedback would be appreciated.

Why do you need to get in there? Just blast the doors away and nuke them. C4 should come very handy. It explodes after the aliens move.

Impressive work!

You'll have to wait till the first anti-psi armor mods come through - on the bright side it shouldn't be long!

Stun gas?

Well basically because they are so easy to kill, I only ever had a struggle with them if they appeared before I researched laser weapons (and that only happened once when I sped up the game for some testing). If the AI was a bit smarter using other troops as decoy on purpose to let reapers flank your troops they would be more of a menace, as it is they are always sitting ducks for me. Although they seemed a bit broken in earlier versions (mostly mindlessly running around without attacking) and I haven't had many encounters since upgrading to 1.07. Of course this has a lot to do with how you are actually approaching the GC, how experienced/equipped your team is and sometimes sheer luck.

And I thought no one around here watches the World Cup

The autoresolve option equation is kind of awkward at some specific occasions, you will also notice sometimes squadrons of Foxtrots will end up taking damage even though if you play it manually they simply shoot down the UFO from a safe distance. It has values assigned to different aircraft which don't perfectly represent the actual combat. Someone with more knowledge will probably elaborate for more detailed explanation how it works. As for reapers - they aren't unfair in my experience. You need to assume there might be reapers present in every single GC before you discover otherwise. If anything I find them underpowered, I haven't suffered a single casualty to them in 1.04 and after. They are also pretty rare. You have to factor in your soldiers' reaction attribute, and the fact different weapons have different reaction modifiers. Pistols and shotguns are the best in that regard while HMG and snipers reduce your reaction.

Just to clarify - I definitely don't hate it, mate! I'll try it out, but I've spent a lot of time in my current playthrough and won't just scrap it before I've completed it. Although with my own attempts at modifying the game I've spent little time actually playing lately.

*Epic facepalm for spending the night with SubmapEditor instead*

You will need to let a Construction UFO execute its mission. I think Landingships and Carriers do this but it will be hard to get it without Quantum Cryptology Lab as you will inevitably suffer quite some funding damage.

I just used the "Resize Submap" button, adding the necessary number of tiles in both directions. The size of my Dreadnaught take is 52x56. Hope that doesn't cause a problem in game! Thank you for the feedback, it's massively important to get some encouragement to keep going! Just to confirm: there are two vanilla UFO submaps above the 30x30 limit. Carrier is 14x49 and Battleship - 30x36. To be honest I'm more concerned with getting the crew to take positions in all the areas I will need them to. It will be a 4 level map and there are a number of "rooms" that will require some presence. The only tools I can think of to use in that direction are the crew size (much larger than the regular vanilla maps) and then using "Target Point" and "Command Room" to assign their positions. Theoretically it would only let me assign two groups to specific areas but I will have little control to their movement around the ship.

Amazing work, mate! Hopefully you wouldn't mind a humble request - could you compile a separate pack of the shield related content for Vanilla? I've always wanted something like that!

I think that might be caused by layers (someone has to confirm though) - did you paint everything on layer 0?

Hope it works!

Try the fix at the bottom of the page here: Industrial Tileset Fix

After epic struggles with Paint, here is a screen of my first take at Mothership (this is just the ground floor): Note: If you click "Open image" or "Open image in new tab", you will be able to see it full size. It is the first genuine Mothership you encounter, being capable of launching a full squadron of Corvettes. I picked Corvettes because they are a mid-tier ship, therefore much more intimidating on their own than scouts. Also by the time you get to Motherships you will have forgotten how they even look. All three Corvettes differ in design - I recreated the original vanilla and the alternative vanilla versions, and threw in one of my own for good measure (you can see by the lacking doors I forgot to paint while scrolling up, down, sideways all the time...) But beware, the Mothership ground floor isn't just a hangar, it's where the Corvette crews reside in their sleeping chambers. They are fully stocked for urgent landing and the multiple exit points allow them to pour out of the UFO and overwhelm any threat. In addition, those exit points can turn into heavy barricades should someone be reckless enough to try and breach them! It is hard to see in the terrible quality of an image I patched together, but all three ground hangars have two teleports leading to the upper floor.

Amen.

Is there any limit to how big a submap can be?

Whoa, I was sure I saw something like that when I was starting my latest new game (some time ago now), I seriously thought it was already in and found it very useful. If it isn't - it's certainly great to see it in!