Xenonauts: Community Edition discussion

[Solver]

That is odd. Predator should only do one thing. I haven't changed the strength boost code so I am pretty sure the Predator still behaves as always, and anyway there is no real difference between setting strength to 100 and boosting it by 100.

I'll take a look at it again though for the next version

[KevinHann]

I am sorry for asking but could someone using the patch try to check if disabling alien movement animations in aiprops will always crash their game during alien turn when there are teleporters/wraiths present?

If that is the case, would it be possible to salvage the situation?

[kabill]

It's not a big deal. I just wanted to check whether it was supposed to be set up like that, in case it was an error.

[Sentelin]

I am sorry for asking but could someone using the patch try to check if disabling alien movement animations in aiprops will always crash their game during alien turn when there are teleporters/wraiths present?

Just one quick question do you use Intel CPU ?If you do then that's the source of crashing ...and even if you don't you will anyway run into "untargetable alien" bug (it's just matter of time ) because "DisableMoveAnimations" was causing that bug and that's why Chris disabled it by default.So if you have Intel CPU you will have to deal with the fact that this feature is not an option.

Edited June 23, 2014 by Sentelin

[KevinHann]

Just one quick question do you use Intel CPU ?If you do then that's the source of crashing ...and even if you don't you will anyway run into "untargetable alien" bug (it's just matter of time ) because "DisableMoveAnimations" was causing that bug and that's why Chris disabled it by default.So if you have Intel CPU you will have to deal with the fact that this feature is not an option.

Yes I use the GMA imitation of a video but I also used the disabled animations in 1.0 without any problems. Which means it is possible and something changed for the crash to begin occurring now. And it is a major issue for me as alien moves on carriers and battleships take exceptionally long meaning I have to spend more than an hour on a single mission. For this reason I am willing to run past the untargetable alien bug.

If it can't be addressed or is considered not worth the time/effort, I may just be forced to downgrade to 1.0 and discard all magnificent changes that are coming. You can understand I'd like to exhaust all other options prior to that.

[catmorbid]

Hey, awesome work! I'll have to integrate next version of AWTPAB into this A few requests, if you may:

1) Make the grenade bullettype generic. Basically, what it would need would be a few booleans for the grenade behaviour so you could in fact make arcing projectiles otherwise behave just like any other weapon with fire modes etc. In fact bullettypes should be determined in separate xml through a bunch of variables.

2) I'd like support for multiple burst modes. It could work exactly like aim levels do in xml. In game if you press B to enable burst mode, then right clicking would again toggle aim levels but instead now it would scroll through burst levels.

XML Example:

<SingleShot sound="Weapon Assault Rifle Single" delay="0.6" suppressionValue="20" suppressionRadius="1">   <Set1 ap="28" accuracy="45" />   <Set2 ap="40" accuracy="80" />   <Set3 ap="53" accuracy="130" /></SingleShot><BurstFire delay="0.6" burstdelay="0.1" />   <Set1 ap="45" accuracy="45" sound="Weapon Assault Rifle Burst" shotCount="3" suppressionValue="60" suppressionRadius="1.5"/>   <Set2 ap="75" accuracy="30" sound="Weapon Assault Rifle Full Burst" shotCount="10" suppressionValue="120" suppressionRadius="1.5"/>

For GUI you could separate single shot AP and Burst AP aim levels with a slash. e.g. in above rifle example youd see 28 / 45 in the battle gui for aim level 1.

Then you could also scrap the separate burst level and replace it with room for more than 3 aim levels.

3) I'd also like to change how recoil works: instead of a static penalty for every shot, it would add a cumulative penalty to NEXT shot in burst based on STR vs RECOIL. I.e. first shot would be unaffected by recoil but further shots would again be affected. The actual recoil could be calculated as:

Min( MaxRecoil, Max(MinRecoil, 1 - STR / RECOIL)*RecoilMultiplier*(n-1) ) where n is the index of a shot in the burst meaning the last shot would have highest recoil while the first would always be unaffected.

4) One of the major mod helpers would be to remove all the stat redundancy that we get from having separate geoscape and groundcombat stats for weapons... Also, the tooltip for weapon stats should be concatenated to the string based on the actual stats, not a separate string. While at it, the same tooltip should be available when hovering over weapons in inventory.

5) Ground combat inventory should show your armour and its condition.

6) Armour degradation rate adjustable per armour and minimum damage leakthrough variable. E.g. with leakthrough of 0.01, 1% of damage inflicted before subtracting armour would always leakthrough in the minimum.

7) An expanded wound system: allow us to define wound effects with more complex rules on when they occur with various effects such as stun damage, tu loss (pain), different kinds of bleeding etc. THEN allow linking those with damage types.

--

I think that's it for now.

Too much?

Edited June 24, 2014 by catmorbid

[Ragnarok]

I think Suggestion 7 is a good and "easy" one.

Instead of a "fixed damage per turn if > % on hit" Wounds should be flexible. You should be able to set how much bleed per turn (based on dmg %?), and maybe even based on a weapon variable. Something like "$bleed = 10, 5;" which would mean "has 10 % Chance to inflict a 5 Point bleed each turn".

So you could do weapons that bleed the target out. Imagine a Shredder Grenade that causes only minor damage, but Major bleeding damage. For example, $bleed 100, 30; 100 % to cause 30 Points bleeding per turn.

[catmorbid]

8) if you could somehow make savegames more compatible with research-altering mods so new research could be properly unlocked when you load a game. But I can't think of many ways to do that, except simulate the research tree every time you load a game (or geoscape) or use a relatively complex search/lookup.

9) While we're at it, generic time-based events. E.g. research or knowledge unlocks with enough time. Maybe this could also be used to add custom time-based missions, which could be used to create a more traditional story-like experience.

[Anderty]

Huge doors in alien crafts still use basic door open-close sound. Could be nice to finally change that to some heavy door sound, or for now just use already used big-door sound. It's human-metal like, though. I'm not huge audio-editor, so after 30 min experiments, could not generate interesting sound from that. (

[catmorbid]

Here, did a quick mix of the alien sounds and the heavy door sound.

http://www.mediafire.com/listen/82q66cr7t2xmg9s/alien_door_huge.ogg

Close enough? Feel free to use it if you want to.

[Max_Caine]

Oh, there is one thing I also forgot. This one would require a bit of work, so bump that down the list. Reaction fire is currently based on snap or a burst shot if you're close enough. The reaction fire slider to the side is pretty pointless. If you can find a way to bring reaction fire to "best shot for APs left" that would be super sweet.

[KevinHann]

Oh, there is one thing I also forgot. This one would require a bit of work, so bump that down the list. Reaction fire is currently based on snap or a burst shot if you're close enough. The reaction fire slider to the side is pretty pointless. If you can find a way to bring reaction fire to "best shot for APs left" that would be super sweet.

It would be even better if it allows the player to opt for the reaction fire type of shots he prefers - there are numerous situations where you would pick three snap shots over one aimed.

[catmorbid]

It would be even better if it allows the player to opt for the reaction fire type of shots he prefers - there are numerous situations where you would pick three snap shots over one aimed.

Yes, that would be brilliant!

To resolve this, you'd have to take the Expected Value of hits per each attack type, then take the highest EV. Basically just determine how many times you can hit with each type (rounding down, because with either have enough tu for shot or not), then multiply that with the Probability to hit. The highest value is the best expected number of hits and thus the best choice for the situation.

However, what would be even better, if we could make this an AI variable, so different AI types could react differently. e.g. a Berserk Ai would always use the burst if possible, while a careful AI would prioritize the best single probability. Then again smart AI would consider all possibilities and pick the optimized outcome - i.e. Andron and drones come to mind... Maybe we could then give human soldiers the same ability based on rank - i.e. pure combat experience.

[llunak]

Oh, there is one thing I also forgot. This one would require a bit of work, so bump that down the list. Reaction fire is currently based on snap or a burst shot if you're close enough. The reaction fire slider to the side is pretty pointless. If you can find a way to bring reaction fire to "best shot for APs left" that would be super sweet.

That seems rather unrealistic though. Reaction fire is about reacting quickly to something and firing, so it's unlikely somebody would stop and pose long enough for a carefully aimed shot.

[ventuswings]

I concur. Reaction fire slider to the side is clearly just for the TU reserve. Sounds like feature creep to me. While editing the code so that even the most minor details can be modded are perfectly fine, but to add more features on base game itself should be put under consideration.

(So if done, put it as another value such as PersistentLOS that people can enable it for themselves).

Edited June 24, 2014 by ventuswings

[Frakel]

This thread is a good place to post variables that you would like to see in XML, and such things.

I dont know if this is within your reach, but allowing the game to use more tilesets would be awesome.

There is a jungle tileset just luying idly about, waiting for a chance to shine in the game

[Mathalor]

"- Continents are now properly lost at the end of the month, not the moment your funding drops to or below zero. Negative funding now means you still have a chance to improve your relations until the end of the month."

Could this be optional, possibly in one of the .xml files? Some people may want that small extra bit of difficulty in the first few months, or just the idea of an immediate no confidence vote rather than a short grace period. Some people, possibly, being just me.

Edited June 24, 2014 by Mathalor

[TallonHunteR]

can you make it possible to give units multiple activations based on a pool of activations? or is this already possible?

[Solver]

"- Continents are now properly lost at the end of the month, not the moment your funding drops to or below zero. Negative funding now means you still have a chance to improve your relations until the end of the month."

Could this be optional, possibly in one of the .xml files? Some people may want that small extra bit of difficulty in the first few months, or just the idea of an immediate no confidence vote rather than a short grace period. Some people, possibly, being just me.

Well, that was not intended to be that way in the game, and was acknowledged by Chris as a bug/imperfection due to a negative cap on funding, so I've fixed that.

Trust me, unless your funding drops to negative in the first days of the month, it will be extremely difficult to regain a continent, that's extra difficulty if anything!

[Skitso]

One thing I'd really like to get fixed is how the cover work. I think the cover value should decrease the furher away a target is from it. If you hunker behind a rock, it should provide it's full cover value, but if you are for example 5 tiles behind it, it should provide only maybe 50% of it's base cover value. So in shooting calculation, it could maybe be something like: cover = (100 - 10 * tiles to target)/100 * base cover value. A rock with a base cover value of 70 would only give you a cover value of 35 if standing 5 tiles from it.

It would add a huge amount of realism to shooting, as if you think about it, a small rock doesn't help much if you stand away from it, but can cover you almost completely if you are crouching right behind it.

Related to this, I'd love to have scatteted shots hit the (possible) cover more than just land somewhere in the general direction of the target. It would look more realistic and also give more terrain destruction, which is always nice.

Edited June 25, 2014 by Skitso

[WarStalkeR]

I also though of making two variants of hangars:

Small, 1x2, used for fighters and light choppers.

Big, 2x3, used for huge planes such as Tu-160.

[Nibelung44]

UI wise I think the most demanded feature is possibility to delete a custom role (not the base default ones), so we can safely add then remove them.

[Max_Caine]

If there's a flag which identifies base attack missions and terror missions, could it be externalised as some kind of a setting or item or what-have-you which can be identified by researches.xml, please?

[Mikhail Ragulin]

Another useful one to have would be a crashed UFO timer, for how long the crash sites stay on the map. It would open up quite a few possibilities, as discussed in this thread.

For example, there's one in gameconfig for how long a landed UFO stays on the ground:

<!-- MINIMUM LAND TIME FOR ALIEN MISSIONS --> <minimumMissionsLandTime value="360" comment="The minimum landing time (in minutes) for the alien missions" />

One like this, but a maximum amount of time instead of minimum (or with both, like the the ones the terror missions use), would be swell.

[Solver]

Max, sorry, I did not understand that last request. You want base attacks to be disabled until a certain tech or what?

Mikhail, you just basically mean customisation of the time until crashed UFOs disappear like they always did, right? Sorry, I am a bit slow today.