DarkExcalibur42

Keeping informed! And this was an interesting thread that I could write something about.

The problem with this is if you want to take away the tiered approach to weapons, you should probably also take away the tiered research requirements and re-balance all enemies for hit points and armor values. Changing weapons means changing everything they're connected to. However, I don't like changing fire modes or number of shots fired overly much. I do really like the idea of a specialty weapon for each weapon category. What I think would be ideal above and beyond just that is having each tier perform a specific feature more effectively than others. Laser Weapons: Should essentially be a straight upgrade from ballistics. When compared to ballistic weapons, they should: Have increased accuracy. Have increased damage and mitigation values, and do energy damage. This makes Laser weapons a sort of generic standard from which other weapons can range out and diversify. Plasma Weapons: Under a non-tiered system Plasmas should no longer act as a direct upgrade over laser weapons. Which means they need to provide trade-off incentives, such as: Having the same accuracy and range as ballistics. One could argue for LOWER accuracy and range. Double the damage increase when compared to Lasers (but offer no mitigation value). Deal INCENDIARY damage instead of energy damage (the reason for this will be provided shortly). Change the tech tree requirements to the assault and heavy plasma. Fluff-wise, Plasma weapons are now throwing balls of projectile fire (super-heated gas really). They don't really provide much armor piercing potential, but they deal a lot of damage as they spread out over the whole target on impact. These changes would make the Plasma Carbine the star weapon of this set. MAG Weapons: Have the same accuracy as laser weapons but greater range. Have the same damage as ballistic weapons. Double the mitigation value increases given to Laser weapons. Deal the Ballistic damage type. Change the tech tree requirements to just the alien battle rifle and precision rifle. This makes the MAG Precision Rifle the star weapon of the set, as Precision Rifles have the highest penetration to start with and now this one will have the highest of any of the rifles. Next, aliens need to have their armor and hit points systems totally reworked. In general, the aliens should have armor values which are ranked as follows: Energy, Incendiary, Ballistic. They're aliens! They don't consider our quaint little slug-throwers to be serious weapons, they're used to dealing with more advanced enemies who use "real" weapons like they do. Energy weapons. So that's what they should protect against. Incendiary Armor rates second because have you seen how many times their space ships caught fire? This isn't Plan 9, they know high tech stuff catches fire when you crash it into a planet. Now! Specific aliens should have different armor ratings and preferences. Androns should have the highest armor against Ballistic and lowest against Incendiary. Hard to punch through it and do damage, but easier to melt or blow up. These are some concept numbers which give a vague idea of what I'd be looking at for alien armor values. HP values are conspicuously absent (they would require the most math and rebalancing). Keep in mind I threw those together in the span of about 15 minutes. I don't feel overly committed to them, and they would very possibly be subject to change. All that said, I don't know if de-tiering the weapons would be the right move for the game. But I can see some interesting potential for if it were done.

So by editing these values, or adding all new ones, we could add entirely new salvage objects to be recovered from crashed ships?

Also, just now read your signature. I see Chris wields the almighty power of GM exactly as is proper for his station! That's exactly what I'd say if I were running a table top game.

Don't mind me as I necro the entire modding discussion board. I'm trying to read everything pertinent so I can ask fewer newb-like questions.

I could probably do that, but at present the amount of work that I will or won't complete is completely unpredictable and unreliable. Been recovering from a major depressive episode while too poor to buy antidepressants. Modding Xenonauts is the first work-like task of any kind which I have been able to focus on for any length of time in several months. So you'd better believe I'm going to put in some effort. Problem is if I push myself too hard I'll just end up back mostly dead in the Pit of Despair. So.... balancing act. How far out on this particular tree branch can I walk without snapping it clean off....

Really creative stuff!

I suspected as much after I got about halfway through typing all that, but by that point I was driven to just write it all down. I know nothing when it comes to coding. But I have an eye for game balance.

I design tabletop games as a hobby for fun. Mechanics come to me pretty effectively.

I gotta agree. Those ships were freaking gorgeous. They were a major highlight of the game for me. Yeah.... not things I could have known until you told us. Shame they were so brutal on the dev team to implement, but if it makes you feel any better they are positively gorgeous highlights of the game to me

So.... what if you modded in a new UFO type that would replace the battleship at some value earlier than 1650? Would that accelerate the rate at which Battleships received escorts? I mean... that's sort of a sloppy fix, but considering how late the Battleship shows up in game you should be able to set this fabricated UFO to a ticker value where it'll never show up but which will still encourage faster appearance of Escorts for the Battleship. Right?

So.... I must have done something wrong.... I thought it wasn't working at all because when I used the level viewer on a map I was building it was totally blank. Then I tried loading a standard map from the game in the same tileset I was working on and noticed that some things WERE showing up. Then I picked this map at random for the screenshot. I was making a desert map and had set down the 10x10 concrete ground items. None of those showed up. I loaded a different desert map. The sand didn't show up. I loaded this industrial map. I don't even know what isn't showing up on this one. Any idea where I went wrong?

Having just watched Independence Day, the idea of salvaging Alien fighters was CLOSE to the top of my mind! I think that'd be a great mechanic, and it really goes along with this whole thread and another idea I had for a sort of "Xenonauts: Guerilla Tactics" concept. And yes, this is all very Falling Skies. Which I really like. DISCLAIMER: What I'm going to outline is less of a mod and more of a total conversion that suggests an entirely new game built with the existing resources. It might not be possible, or it might have extremely difficult coding challenges. But I stand by it all. This is a lot of spit-balling, so some of it might be inconsistent. I haven't worked out all the thinking in my head.... Nooo! You've got it backwards! You're the resistance! You've already lost every region to the alien invasion. Your lose condition needs to be having lost all your bases. Your win condition needs to be RECOVERING every region. Every region, based on area, needs X number of alien bases. When all alien bases in a region have been destroyed, you reacquire that region. Regions gained this way can then provide income just as they do in the vanilla game, and be lost as per usual. However, I'd make the income provided much lower. Basically just enough to recruit new soldiers. HOWEVER! Give yourself a "signing bonus" so that when you rescue a region you get a one-time cash payout large enough to build a new base. Make this one of the ONLY WAYS you can get cash. You need to change the economy so that it is as CASHLESS as possible, and leave base construction as the only currency-demanding task remaining. Remove the building and vehicle maintenance costs. You'll only get them if you can find them. Remove monthly funding costs for Soldiers, Engineers, & Scientists. They're survivors fighting for Earth's freedom, and doing it pro bono. Yeah, it'd be neat to introduce a "Food & Supplies" mechanic to keep your forces operating, but it'd need to be a separate value from your cash and it would introduce a second way to lose. As others have said, you need to make most or all of your resources be acquired through capture. Guerilla tactics! If possible, remove sell values entirely. Would it be possible to make salvage values instead? So that you can recover half of the materials it cost to build something? Dismantle Wolf Armor (4 Alien Alloys to build), get 1 or 2 alloys back. Instead of hiring new personnel, the chief way to get them needs to be as "salvage". Rescuing them from Alien Bases. Capture an alien base? Gain X Soldiers, Y Engineers, & Z Scientists. By controlling the speed at which scientists are acquired you can control the rate at which the player reaches different tech levels. Going back to how this mod has a focus on guerrilla tactics? NO weapons should be set to unlimited. Nor should their ammunition. HOWEVER! We can still abstract ammo management so that you don't have to find a way to track ammo used in missions. Reward weapons and ammunition in finite amounts for missions. You might only have 2x units of Shotgun ammunition. That doesn't mean once you use it, it's gone. It means you only have enough ammo for one or two Xenonauts to carry a shotgun (assuming you have any shotguns). To expand on this concept, I'd recommend adding in all the Soviet weapons to give you a sort of rag-tag feel to your troops who are just carrying whatever you could find. If we could add more types of ground missions, I'd say add urban locations that you can raid for supplies and personnel. It doesn't have to function differently. Drop some aliens on it, you win if they're dead, add new rewards (ballistic weapons, equipment, armor, personnel, etc). Maybe make repeatable missions that can be taken when visiting a city? With a limit of how many times it can be performed per city, or each subsequent mission meeting heavier resistance or providing fewer rewards. Ideally, I'd set every city up so that it has an alien ship resting stationary above it that must be shot down before your team can go in (set them to heal to full if not defeated). By setting this up in advance, you could tier each funding region to appropriate difficulty levels. The highest difficulty cities would have Battleships with 2x Interceptors for defense. There are 5x starting regions, so I'd suggest breaking it down like this: Occupation Forces: Region 1: 1x Corvette (or Bomber), 2x Fighters Region 2: 1x Landing Ship, 2x Fighters Region 3: 1x Cruiser, 2x Heavy Fighters Region 4: 1x Carrier (or Strike Cruiser), 2x Heavy Fighters Region 5: 1x Battleship, 2x Interceptors This ensures that a new region cannot be taken until the appropriate technologies have been acquired and the necessary air combat craft have been built or recovered. But this brings up the topic of the air war, which you were concerned about! So... how to work the air war... Spawn a bunch of alien fighter squadrons to roam the map on Air Superiority missions that last a month each and respawn them at the start of each month. 3x Fighters for Region 1 & 2, 3x Heavy Fighters for 3 & 4, 3x Interceptors for 5. Now, we also need an incentive to keep people from farming these UFOs. A meter which displays the perceived threat level of your resistance. Threat goes up for every UFO destroyed, but is reduced only a small amount at the end of each month. Before threat reduces, spawn a UFO squadron set to the Base Assault mission for each of your bases and determine the size of the attack force by your Threat Rating. Threat must generate more easily than it can be dissipated. Plus, this means you may need to use your main base's aircraft to defend your secondary bases which might not yet be fully up and running. Threat Ratings: Minor Threat (1-20) - 1x Corvette, 2x Fighters Moderate Threat (21-40) - 1x Landing Ship, 2x Fighters Serious Threat (41-60) - 1x Cruiser, 2x Heavy Fighters Severe Threat (61-80) - 1x Carrier, 2x Heavy Fighters Critical Threat (81-100) - 1x Battleship, 2x Interceptors Previously I mentioned spawning superiority squadrons based on region. Wandering UFOs could screw that up. Alternatively, determine the category of superiority fighter by your current Threat Rating. Spawn Fighters for 1-40, Heavy Fighters for 41-80, and Interceptors for 81+. In this way, it would be undesirable to go Fighter-farming because you could provoke an attack which is much more severe than what you can defend against. And also, with the severely limited resource set-up being able to recover fighters is no problem because the length of time it takes to rebuild them is so extensive that you wouldn't want to risk it. Your fighters become a necessity for escorting your dropships because of the high number of air superiority squadrons in flight on the map, but at the same time it becomes preferable to try and plot courses that avoid the alien fighters whenever possible. In fact, a solid strategy might develop from baiting: using your Condors to lure alien fighters away from objectives. While they're chasing you, the dropship can hit the mission. Then, instead of shooting down fighters it's better to escape and disengage. This avoids Threat Generation, and maintains the Guerrilla Tactics theme. Back to Ground Combat... If possible, disable the mechanic that auto-sells alien weapons, grenades, and ammo for cash. Instead receive Alenium and Alien Alloys for them. Anyway, under this new set-up there's no longer any need for Operation Endgame. Instead, you win the game when every Occupation Fleet over every city has been destroyed and every alien base has been destroyed. For an alternative final mission, make a REALLY BIG Alien Base as their main HQ and make that your big final coup de grace. The challenge under this scenario is making sure that there is a finite number of resources with which to build your resistance. If one of your bases is destroyed, you shouldn't ever make enough money to replace it. If you implement a finite number of soldiers, then losing a soldier in a mission one too many times could cost you the game through attrition.

Good god that's gorgeous. I want this.

OHHH!!!! I'm going to want to use these sprites for NPC local forces...

I wouldn't call myself a modder yet! More of a first-rate amateur. At everything. When I started gaming, I used to tinker with game files for fun. The ease of accessibility that I find in Xenonauts combined with the wealth of unused game assets is.... enticing. Like, I really want to implement the X-44 Saracen as an alternate to the Corsair that carries 4x Missiles (not torpedoes). And I'm trying to mod the AK-47 into the game as a variant assault rifle with slightly lower damage, but a small value of mitigation (which reflects my half-assed wiki research on how the M16/AK-47 compare). I want to add the DHVRL back in as a researchable weapon for use with the Predator Armor as an alternate to machine guns (since they can't use the rocket launcher ). I want to mod most of the alien stats so that they include appropriate armor values and health values adjusted to match the change (according to the xenonauts wiki only Androns have armor). I want to add a new map/mission for late game which plays like a terror mission, but where you're called in to help defend an NPC military base using the local forces models (of which there are a reasonable number with which to do this). Sort of a siege mission. So far the only significant modding I've done was halving the weight of the Singularity cannon. Because that irritated the crap out of me. But I DO have a question about weapon modding! If people are willing to help me out on this, it would please me I'm looking at the weapons.xml and weapons_gc.xml, which as I understand it need to match.... but... I'm confused. Okay, here's what I see: In weapons.xml, the rifle has an accuracy of "1.2". So does the AK47. And the sniper rifle has an accuracy of "1.6" In weapons_gc.xml, The rifle has an accuracy of 130 if you spend 55AP The AK47's accuracy is 115 for 55AP The sniper is 165 for 65AP Are these connected somehow? They don't appear to match up properly.... And then there's range.... weapons.xml Rifle & AK47 is 32 Sniper is 40 weapons_gc.xml Rifle is 20, AK47 is 15 Sniper is 30 I feel like I've seriously misunderstood something here! But I don't know what it is... And one other thing: The AK47 currently uses the same ammo as the standard rifle according to these files. Now, from the tutorial I know how to change it to use the assets for the appropriate AK-47 ammo and how to make that a distinct ammo type. BUT! If I do that, will it screw over all the local forces equipped with the AK-47? Will they suddenly have the wrong ammunition type for their weapon? If so, then if I want to use the AK47's proper ammo I should copy paste and create an entirely new AK-47 for my troops. But if I do that the inconsistency will bug me a little bit that my AK-47 uses different ammo than the AK-47's I'd find in the field...

This tutorial was very helpful and an excellent place for me to start and learn how things work I think the rest I can learn via deductive reasoning. Also, just wanted to share something that makes all this work much easier: Notepad++

For anyone else with this problem, you should try the extremely obvious solution that I somehow overlooked: Go into your Xenonauts directory and mark the executable as "Run as Administrator". Guh! I cannot believe I didn't try that myself before reporting this. Thank you Chris! You rock, sir!

I've experienced this bug from time to time as well, but couldn't track down exactly what was triggering it until now! Thanks!

Sure thing, I'll send it to you in a few minutes.

Also, if there's anything more I can do to help with this bug report lemme know. I am a bit unemployed, so I have the time. So far this is the only repeatable bug I've experienced in the whole game! The only other bug being a very rare issue where the Geoscape doesn't load properly and I have to restart the game. I really love the art style as a whole and the direction your team took in designing the strategic level UIs. Nobody makes games like this any more, so I love that you guys did. Despite my difficulties I've already sunk 90 hours into this game (I've only had it for a few days) because the quality of game-play is way up there!

Correct. When entering ground combat, I would get to about 10% of the loading bar and then it would never finish loading. Yep, I downloaded Legacy through Steam then started up the game, quit, switched to v1.06, and started a new game (the new game is v1.06, I am not accessing a Legacy save in v1.06). But it doesn't crash, it minimizes to display a window labelled "Error" that says "Cannot save preconditions". This occurs every time ground combat is initiated. Once I click "Okay" on the error window I am able to Alt+Tab back into the game and play. This also happens when ground combat saves are loaded, but in the case of loading saves it DOES crash (Alt+Tabing back in reveals a black screen with looping music and Task Manager reports "Not Responding"). Repeated testing has shown that ground combat saves crash practically always when loaded this way (God knows why it worked the ONE time), however autosaves and regular saves made on the Geo map work just fine and can be loaded without issue. P.S. I should specify that downloading Legacy was my idea to somehow fix v1.06 so it would work on my P.C. (my plan worked, though I don't know why).

I keep poking it with a stick, so small update: not ALL of the autosaves fail to load, but I can't tell if it's specific autosaves that are okay or if it's just random.

Okay, so the initial problem that I had upon downloading the game from Steam was that any time I attempted to engage in a ground combat, the game would go to the loading screen and the load bar would stop at around 10%. After that the mission would never finish loading. I tried this repeatedly, always the same. I tried a fresh install, no good. This is an issue I've found several other people had as well. So what I eventually did that somehow fixed this was I downloaded the Legacy version of Xenonauts, ran the game in Legacy, then quit, then restarted the game in v1.06. After that ground combat was able to finish loading, HOWEVER every time that ground combat is initiated the game minimizes and issues an error "Cannot save preconditions". This occurs every time ground combat is initiated. At first I wasn't sure what that error was about, but it seems to have something to do with the autosaves the game makes when starting a ground mission. Those autosaves cannot be loaded, and if I attempt to load one I get a black screen with the music looping and Task Manager identifies Xenonauts as "not responding" at this time. The "Cannot save preconditions" error pops up when loading these autosaves as well. I'm on a Windows 7 PC with an Intel i5 processor, 16GB of RAM and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 for the graphics card.