DarkExcalibur42

So long as it's lower than 1650, we'll see battleships getting escorts at a faster rate (which is desirable). And so long as it's still high enough, we won't really see much of the ship that comes after it if we see it at all. I just wish I could check what the ticker was at in my current save-game. It'd give me an idea of where games end. Plus! We could use the unused art assets from the Dreadnought for the after-battleship enemy. Then just stack on the scary mean stats so that the best way to bring it down is via the Fury. Boom. You've given yourself a very scary escalation of force in the air war.

Speaking of the local forces, I couldn't find their AI code. Do they just share the code with the unarmed civilians? Because aiprops doesn't have an entry for them...

You're right. For some reason I was thinking I'd need to make copies of art assets for some reason... now I can't remember why I thought that was necessary.

I forgot about the weapons.xml file. I was just looking at the weapons_gc.xml file where ammo types are listed, since the weapons.xml only deals with stuff at the base I thought... I'll report back and let you know what I break.

But that's exactly what the rocket launcher does... it uses 2 ammo types. AND it uses ammo that auto upgrades on research. Well this will definitely work, no question about that. But I think I'm going to play with the code and test to see if i can upgrade just the ammo. It'd save time and make the final mod smaller.

This? ReplaceItem("weapon.grenade.frag","weapon.grenade.alenium"); Found it in the researches.xml, though I don't think I yet properly understand the context and how to place it into the file appropriately.

WAIT.... you can do that?! I thought there were all sorts of posts on the modding boards about how we couldn't get multiple ammo types to be used by the same weapon... except for rocket launchers for some reason. Now I'm confused, because I don't see how it works in the xmls. I was just comparing rocket weapons in the weapons_gc.xml to ballistic weapons, and it looks like all that happens is they have multiple ammo types listed. So next I'm looking through the strings.xml and weapons.xml, but i need to download Libre Office to make these tables easier to read. Where is this that you tell the game to replace an old ammo type with a new one? I'm fascinated now!

Yeah.... if we had a way to upgrade ballistics, then downgraded MAG weaponry we could make a 3-tier system: Starting Ballistics Alloy Munitions / Laser Weapons Plasma / MAG weapons Ohhh.... oh yeah. I like this a lot. I'm stealing this for when I rebalance weapons and alien armor values.

This thread got me thinking along some new lines.... and reminded me of Falling Skies. If only we could code research-unlocked ammunition upgrades, like what happens with grenades and rockets where the new model replaces the old, then we could research Alien Alloy Munitions for ballistic weapons which could put starting ballistics on par with laser weapons...

I like the blue uniforms because they give the Xenonauts a distinct character. But I love that these sprites exist in the more traditional color scheme. They're highly valuable assets, and allow me the possibility to mod local forces in exciting ways. Using this I could add a Precision Rifle NPC (or any weapon for that matter) with a % chance to spawn. All I need to do now is start tinkering with their AI and I could get local forces NPCs to behave like squads and stick together...

Although it is starting to look like I'll need to talk to one of them to start learning some of these intricacies. Apparently Medkits and Shock Batons are grenade type weapons that are set to melee=1. I cannot yet understand what's going on there.

Ohhh man, you think that's bad? I was still using basic armor and all ballistics for my 8-man squad when I went to my first Terror mission. You know what I found there? REAPERS. My squad spent the entire mission cowering in the dropship with shotguns because if we went outside reapers would come out of nowhere and eat us. And if we stayed out in the open where we could see them coming Sebillians would blast us with plasma weapons. Prior to that I'd been going very tactical with lots of cover usage and crouching to make up for my absent armor. When that wasn't an option things went bad fast. The game supports control of up to 16 troops while stock dropships only ever carry a maximum of 12.... and Terror missions are the only ones causing balance concerns... hmmmm... Undoubtedly this would require some hard coding trickery, but would it be possible to assign an extra four troops under your command that spawn with the map? Admittedly, this is just a continuation of my love affair with local forces. But yeah, if you could give your squad command of 4 local forces style units which could be commanded for the duration of the Terror mission and then removed from your squad so you don't bring them home with you I feel like that'd be an ideal gameplay solution (if not an ideal coding solution). Yeah.... you'd have to edit EVERY terror map to include them somehow as well, and that would suck especially because I don't think the game is designed to permit that sort of editing with any ease.

Good warning on the rockets! I hadn't thought of that, since I assumed that for most weapons the damage characteristics were a part of the weapon and not the ammunition. If drages or TacticalDragon drop in on this thread, I'll happily listen to their insight. But I'm plenty happy with any conversation, expert or otherwise.

The weapons DO look very awesome! If I go ahead with work on a particular mod concept of mine, I may need to ask if I can use one of these variant Laser designs. With all the proper citations and credit of course.

I did notice that from my forum research, as well as my trial and error with the weapons and weapons_gc files, so I was kinda banking on that BINGO! This stuff doesn't have to mechanically be word-for-word psionic, since players don't see the mechanics. It just has to look and feel right. One other question, which I'm worried will be a negative: I can't make a gun that fires a grenade effect, can I? A rocket effect, clearly. But not a grenade effect? And thanks very much for the answers! It may not look like I'm accomplishing very much yet, but I'm learning and getting a feel for my limitations before I set a specific design goal for myself

Okay, cool. So that'll basically be the same thing which I had to do for the mapping assets! That's not a ... oh crap. Riiiight. Things did not go as planned with the mapping unpack... Hopefully this turns out better! So I'll catalog that as a long-term goal, then. Shame, that. I really enjoy co-operating with the local forces and any fluff or mechanical assistance system is the sort of thing I'd get a huge kick out of. So yeah, supplying weapons to allies via Tech tree isn't doable. But the second half of the idea still works! I could make a lower-grade mass-produced model of laser and plasma weapons for the Xenonauts to use!

You've totally inspired me to build Psy-Amp weaponry now... This is actually a really cool idea. Worn Psychic Amplifiers powered by Alenium batteries (ammo source) which enhance the wearer's natural psychic powers into a weaponized form! By making them of a sufficient weight, I could by default restrict players from equipping non-psy related gear on a soldier, thus creating a Psy-class role! This is a mod I could craft immediately.... though... admittedly it would be lacking in art assets. It's still immediately feasible and good practice whereas the original idea is something that will take me much longer to build towards or be able to achieve. The take-away? I've come up with a means of instant gratification, but this doesn't mean I've abandoned the original post.

Anyway, this thread has been mostly focused on the how-to question. I may as well describe the why (because I think the why is pretty cool). I wanted to add Techs to the weapon trees that allowed you to research "mass production" of certain weapons for distribution to Local Forces. Which would work like this: Mass-Produced Laser Weapons Pre-Requisite: Heavy Lasers, Heavy Plasma Effect; Thanks to the development of our more advanced plasma weapons, we've devised cheaper and more effective means of mass-producing our older laser weaponry. These techniques are being distributed to our allies, who will now weild these weapons in the field! Our own facilities will benefit from this as well.* And make a similar tech which unlocks Plasma weapons for allies after researching Heavy Plasma & Heavy MAG weapons. *I don't think it's possible to double-trigger laser weapons, as they're initially unlocked and set to normal upon tech completion and I'm not willing to change that. I COULD double list all the weapons... with the second set being UnlimitedOnResearch... but good god, can you imagine how hideous that'd be? Instead I was thinking of making some sort of multi-role laser weapon which unlocks on research in unlimited numbers. I just thought it'd be neat that once you'd reached some higher tier weapon, the lower tier weapons would just sort of become less significant. And it lets you equip base defenders with "outdated" weapons without having to side-track your production team in building them.

Hrmmmm.... well then. The more you know. It would appear I don't know much about spectres after all. I honestly didn't know they were a thing outside of their quantum physics style application to map generation. Where would I go to learn about spectres for character sprites?

I didn't mean they were containers. I meant that the game checks "base contains Hangar. Hangar is not assigned aircraft. Aircraft can be built/purchased". When I referred to them as precedents I meant that there are buildings which the game treats as prerequisites to recruiting units. I did have a pretty strong feeling that these would be hard-coded items. which was why I thought a vehicle-in-name-only would be a great way to go about this. If the game thinks it's a tank, what's the difference? However.... This seems to shoot down that idea. Except... the problem is mostly on the dropship screen. I've got no problem with using like a cryopod-or-whatever that takes up a 3x3 space on the dropship as the representation of the psychic. I was more worried about making the ground combat unit only take up a 1x1 space. Is that possible? Having a 3x3 Dropship icon for a 1x1 vehicle? Darn. Well, I was citing a pretty old thread. Guess that means if I were to make a psychic as a vehicle, you'd only be able to use a single psychic weapon per mission. Which makes the likelihood of a psychic being worth the two soldier trade-off even less likely. What about invisible grenades? Would that work? Heck, I could make a "weapon" that deals zero damage but drops 200 Suppression damage on a 3 tile radius. If that's not a psychic attack I don't know what is. Or can't you make weapons with a high chance to set fire to tiles? I thought there was a way to do that for some reason... didn't one of your mad armory inventions do that? For a telekinetic attack, just make a grenade (indirect fire so it can ignore some cover effects) that does loads of stun damage... these all sound like things that should be doable without heavy coding (at least I think they sound like it). Is it not possible to make a weapon that triggers the Wraith teleport effect? That's not ideally a thing I wanted to do, but it is a concept. Unrelated, but teleport armor would be a pretty sweet mod.

I don't remotely meet the requirements for becoming a community coder. I do know what spectres are, or at least I think I do from from reading the mapping tutorials... But I didn't think it'd be necessary for me to use them in this particular mod concept as all the necessary art assets exist already and would just need to be properly renamed...

Something just occurred to me. Is that ticker value the UPPER limit for these loadouts? Ballistic weapons until Ticker Value 750, after which they switch over to Laser weapons until Ticker Value INFINITE is exceeded? And by coded, I take it you mean what triggers are available is something that's hard-coded into the game? So I'd need to learn Lua or or C++ or something? Excellent, so all I'd need to do was add a new sprite folder of the appropriate name and if no plasma sprites are available I could just copy/paste the laser weapon in and it'd still use that sprite. So where is it coded what weapons the local forces use? Or is that code just double-dipping because weapon.laserrifle is also the name of the item in weapons_gc.xml?

So the missiontypeprops_gc.xml file controls what weapons local forces are going to spawn with, and part of that uses the Ticker value as a flag to determine when the laser upgrade occurs. First question, what does "inf" mean in relation to the Ticker value? Second question, is <Ticker value="#"> the only variable this will respond to? Or would it be possible to trigger these upgrades based on some other value, such as the completion status of a particular Research in the tech tree? Third question, could I add another tier to this where NPCs could spawn with plasma weapons? Because the thing is these stats identify weapon, but they don't identify sprite. I don't mind reusing sprites but I wanted to know if this value signifies both the weapon AND what sprite the local forces use. <Tileset name="industrial"> <MissionType name="Common" civilianCount="5" friendlyAICount="2"> <FriendlyAI> <Ticker value="750"> <Weapon percent="70" name="weapon.pistol" /> <Weapon percent="30" name="weapon.shotgun" /> </Ticker> <Ticker value="inf"> <Weapon percent="75" name="weapon.laserrifle" /> <Weapon percent="25" name="weapon.scatterlaser" /> </Ticker> </FriendlyAI> </MissionType> </Tileset>

Now, I know there are a lot of issues with this sort of an addition but I have solutions to some of them and an innovative approach and this is something I may want to attempt! First, lemme start off by saying I thought it'd be a neat idea to add some sort of psychic unit to the game which draws upon the classic conspiracy literature / X-Filesy sort of genre. A remote viewer or tele/pyrokinetic perhaps as a support unit! I'm quite opposed to the mod adding mind controlling units, but units that can make indirect suppression/fear attacks? That'd be pretty cool! It'd require a whole new tech tree, but that's balancey stuff and easy to do. I want to pitch my implementation concept! Modded Garages, and treating the Psykers as a class of vehicle. We can build a garage, and that can house vehicles which can take up a "vehicle slot" on our dropships in exchange for 2x soldiers. The more complicated version of this mod would require me to code a brand new building which behaves like a garage but which can only hold specific types of "vehicles" (psychics). First off, is that possible? It seems like it ought to be. We have Hangars which serve as prerequisites for aircraft and garages as prerequisites for vehicles, so there's two precedents... If it is, it may be worth going the extra mile to try and code some new UI and add a new screen for the and Base tab for psychics.... If not, the rest of this idea is still feasible and I could write up Psychics as a vehicle-like entity which fills the dropship's vehicle slot. Though I don't yet know how to avoid having them "built" by the engineers, and at present this would mean Psykers never leveled up their attributes and couldn't be equipped with armor or weapons.... This post points out that modders can still access the secondary weapon function on vehicles. Each psychic power a unit possesses could be researched as a separate weapon system, and then two powers could be equipped before a mission. So far this all tracks as feasible, right? Now, the trick would be assigning a human sprite and size to a vehicle. I recall reading somewhere that vehicles don't like being made different sizes. Something about when someone was trying to mod in the T-80 or Warrior which was a 4x3 vehicle. Could a 1x1 vehicle be produced? The other issue is one of balance. Unless the psychic's powers are just THAT good, it'd be hard to justify a psychic taking up two soldier slots. Can vehicles be modded to take up more or fewer slots? If this concept is functional, then it could provide a solution for how to implement ServantOfCTan's K-9 unit concept! Just mod in a kennel building.

Very helpful if you want to add new UFO types or new branches to the Tech Tree!