[v1.5/X:CE] Fire in the Hole! Destructible UFO Hulls (v1.3.3)

[kabill]

I think it should work with 0.26, yes.

Regarding the bug: Do you have a save-game? I've accidentally missed with the charge before (albeit on other UFOs) but never had that happen. I note that there's a damage marker on one of the spaces where the hull segment covers - I wonder whether it was destroyed but hasn't triggered the broken hull image or something.

Regarding the AI: I'm not sure what I could do to prevent that (in some ways, it's not a bad place for them to be, but it would be nice if they didn't all bunch up like that). I'm going to have a bit of a redesign of props in the corvette anyway, so that might help.

[silencer]

I have only this, which is the beginning of a mission. You will have to carve your way to the UFO. There was heavy fire and smoke around the UFO

[ATTACH]5136[/ATTACH]

Also on some occasion the smoke generated from crash site can blink / vanish and suddenly reappear.

By the way. What is the difference between normal charge and plasma? Bigger radius of + ?

s6.sav

s6.sav

[kabill]

Thanks, that save will still be useful.

Re: plasma charge - it's a lot lighter (3kg vs. 8kg) and takes up less inventory space.

[Larchus]

I was looking into this mod to grab it. Iwas interested in having UFOs with destructable hulls, but frankly I'm a tad discouraged by the new layouts. For example, I noticed some ship designs have doors leading to certain rooms are in an awkward L shape. It seems too deliberate -- why not just have a pair of double doors or regular flat doors leading to the bridge of the Landing ship? It seems too obvious that the doors were designed that way so the player wouldn't be able to get a clear view of the room simply from opening the doors. How too convenient for the aliens.

Another question: I notice repeated mention of the use of Breaching Charges to crack UFOs open. Would using Rocket Launchers or Ordnance also penetrate the hulls? I would hope so -- having my tank bust the UFO open with a shot from its pulse laser or plasma cannon would be preferable to weighing the designated Demoman down with the breaching charge. Also, why not just use some C-4?

I mean, it would be really groovy if there was more than ONE way into a UFO. And I get that the UFOs are clearly designed around the fact there is one Entrance, meaning adding multiple ways in is going to require some changes so that so you can't mop the floor with them by just flanking them with a Breaching squad. But man, that Corvette interior does not look appealing in the slightest.

[Reiver]

A passing thought: It'd be kinda cool if instead of 'breaching charges', you had to rig up Alenium demolition packs, with all the costs and game-changeyness attached.

If you could then rig Singularity Launchers to be the standoff equivalent, that'd be even cooler (Though I do understand there'd be, uh, balance challenges there perhaps).

In this way, it'd be closer to OG in that you couldn't initially breach - but did get the ability to do so later, and when you do it completely changes your tactics.

Just a passing thought. Would it be possible, though? I don't know.

[kabill]

@Larchus: I'm actually working on new layouts. The Corvette one in particular is currently a bit problematic, yes. More so now aliens are very good at opening doors.

As for having defensive layouts - I can see why this might be a deal-breaker for you but personally I found the vanilla layouts produced relatively little challenge and it was too easy to abuse things like doors such that it's the aliens that are severely disadvantaged in the defence of their own ship. Moreover, I'm not sure it stretches credibility that the aliens may have designed the interiors of their ships in part with defence in mind. (But the new layouts will be less like this, anyway).

And as for hull destruction: yes, you can destroy hull segments with any kind of weapon. However, this requires dealing a considerable amount of damage (1500) so while a breaching charge will one-shot this, it will take a lot of fire from other weapons. There's two reasons for this. Firstly, I didn't want UFOs to be made of paper. According to the lore, alien materials are very durable. It's galling enough that a couple of missiles can drop most UFOs; the thought of hand-weapons easily cutting through the UFO hulls is too absurd for me to cope with. But secondly, it's a game balance thing. Hull breaching gives the player an advantage when it comes to attacking UFOs. If there's no trade off to doing it, it becomes the default option. So by making breaching charges important (if not essential) to breaching UFOs, you're in a position where you need to trade the weight and size of the charge with the advantage of attacking from an additional location.

(For what it's worth, when I first made the mod I made the breaching charge basically the same size, shape and weight as C4. All my soldiers were carrying one, and it was a non-decision whether to make a hull-breach approach or not because it was so easy to do.)

As for using C4, the problem with that is that it has a very large blast radius which prevents you from stacking near the breach-point. In contrast, the breaching charge has a very small blast area, allowing you to immediately enter the breach the turn it detonates. C4 can be changed to work like the breaching charge does now, but then you lose C4 as a large-area explosive and have the no-trade-off problem I've just outlined.

@Reiver: I did actually think about having the breaching system come in later, but it seemed a bit of a waste of a feature to introduce it later in the game. So while it would be possible, I'm not sure whether I'd want to do it (certainly not as standard; if someone wants to make a variant which introduces the charges later I'm happy for them to do so).

(Actually, it's not 100% possible. Since the only way to make the hull segments vulnerable is to give them a HP value, this makes them vulnerable to any kind of attack. Furthermore - at least in the submap editor - there's a hard cap of ~2000 HP on a prop so there'd be no way to completely stop the player from doing it before they had the required equipment).

[silencer]

Kabill - alenium Explosives come very fast, so for the Small Scouts you won't be needing breaching charge, and the alenium explosives come somewhere at the end of month 1 or beginning of month 2 when you get those normal scouts. So moving the first breaching charge to Alenium Explosives is viable option. The time between alenium explosives and plasma explosives is far greater than reaching alenium explosives themselves.

And I think it would even sound better in Xenopedia. "Commander, with those alenium explosives, we have come up with idea to take C4 replace it with alenium and bang, instant breaching charge. The aliens will never know what hit them".

Also considering that C4 is the most powerful explosive we have, it is quite odd, than suddenly we have super charged nuke bomb, with range of 2 meters

Edited July 31, 2014 by silencer

[Larchus]

I understand UFOs not being made of paper, but I am talking a blast from heavy ordinance here. Not a single volley from an LMG.

Frankly, the corvette is sadly a deal breaker for me. Those damn things are a nightmare to raid in vanilla. But if you say you are revising the layputs I may just keep an eye on this project.

[silencer]

If you say nightmare I guess you are talking about the standard version. Try the experimental one. It's quite easier.

Also If you are interested in some learning I have an ongoing playthrough:

(note this is not self promotion, just a helping hand - you can skip to any of the videos in the middle of the playlist - there are Corvettes a plenty)

You can watch how I deal with the cramped Corvette. All it takes is to learn the behavior of AI and different races.

[kabill]

@Silencer: The problem I've had with alenium explosives as a pre-req is that (historically) it was always one of the most significant and powerful techs in the game due to the missile upgrades. Adding extra bonuses on top of that would have turned an already-OP tech into an even-more-OP tech.

This said, alenium explosives has become much less powerful now basic Foxtrots can solo Scout UFOs which makes adding to it less problematic. I'm still undecided whether I'd want to make it default, but I might put out an optional patch for people who want it that way.

@Larchus: The main trouble with regards to having other weapons as viable hull-breachers is that the game mechanics can't really support it. Props cannot be given armour values, which means a multitude of low-damage attacks are just as effective as a few more powerful ones. As such, there's no way to make the hull especially vulnerable to heavy ordinance but not to light arms fire.

The text case here is the LMG. Each LMG bullet does ~30 damage and you shoot 10 a turn. Assuming you're shooting from close range, all those shots are going to hit the hull for ~300 damage. In contrast, an equivalent tier rocket does something like 80 damage. Indeed, the 300 damage done by the machinegun is more than even the most powerful explosive weapons in the game can do (barring the Singularity Cannon).

As such, it's just not viable. At best, I could make all heavy ordinance weapons Incendiary which applies a modifier to damaging props. But even doing that (unless I changed the Incendiary multiplier as well) would mean you'd need 2-5 rockets/C4 packs (depending on tech level) and their effectiveness still wouldn't be much better than machinegun-type weapons.

If I could set armour values on props, though, I'd do it in an instant.

Also, re: Corvette - if it's any consolation, it's a deal-breaker for *me* too at the moment. Silencer posted a while ago about it, and I got round to trying it myself a few weeks ago and it was absurd (I couldn't finish the mission). The problem is that the maps were designed prior to the AI being able to open blocked doors. Now they have that ability, it's just too hard.

If it helps, if you look upthread a few pages you'll see some screenshots of proposed new UFO layouts up to the Landing Ship and there's a link containing a test version of those maps for people to try out. I need to make some changes on the basis of some stuff silencer has said, but other people contributing to the discussion would be great.

[kabill]

Ok, I'm thinking of starting to update the mod proper with the new layouts, at least up to the Cruiser (the Carrier and Battleship need a prototype first).

So, does anyone have any further thoughts on the experimental layouts other than what's been discussed above?

[kabill]

Major Update: New version is out, available in the OP.

The update adds new UFO interiors for all UFOs from Light Scout up to Cruiser. Overall, they're more similar to vanilla than previously, and thus should now be less hellish. I have also added some randomisation to the location of the command aliens in UFOs so they won't always be in the same place. Finally, I have made some minor tweaks to some of the props to make them align better, and changed the blue screens so that they provide only 50% cover rather than 100%

In case anyone particularly liked the old Fire in the Hole UFO maps, I've uploaded them as an extra. You can replace the new maps with the old ones by deleting the UFOs folder in assets/maps and replacing it with the UFOs folder in the optional download. Alternatively, you can add the old maps to the new ones by renaming the map files in the optional download and copying them across. That will give you a mix of UFO interiors, but some of them (the old Corvette maps) might be much more difficult by comparison with other maps.

I'm planning on revising the Carrier and Battleship maps as well at some point, but I think they're less critical so it might not be for a while. As usual, I'd appreciate feedback on the new maps as well.

[kabill]

Small But Vaguely Important Update:

I just realised that there was a slight error in the new version and have uploaded new files which fix it (forgot to remove the image for the smoke and fire markers like a muppet). Apologies to those few people who had downloaded the new version already.

[silencer]

A little comment on the new designs. Corvette - perfect. Landingship - please patch the holes above the cargo room. Right now they are bugged as hell. Previously soldiers from bottom could see upper floor. Now they don't but aliens can see all they want. Not fun oh and in order to shoot them back I need to send a soldier up the teleport to see where they are. Previously there wasn't any issues with that.

[kabill]

A little comment on the new designs. Corvette - perfect. Landingship - please patch the holes above the cargo room. Right now they are bugged as hell. Previously soldiers from bottom could see upper floor. Now they don't but aliens can see all they want. Not fun oh and in order to shoot them back I need to send a soldier up the teleport to see where they are. Previously there wasn't any issues with that.

Wait, you had instances where you could see from the bottom floor to the top? I've *never* had that! (That means it was in some way working properly once!)

I was actually on the verge of removing that section as you suggest. However, Skitso posted about the issue (albeit on a different submap) on the Community Edition subforum and llunak implied that he might look at rewriting the (apparently very poor) multi-level LoS which (in theory) would fix the issue. I therefore decided to leave it in and hold out for a fix.

If it becomes apparent that there isn't going to be a fix, though, I will remove that section because of the issues it causes. I really, really like the gap, but ultimately you're right.

(I can't do anything now, but when I'm back to my machine on Monday I might quickly do an optional patch which replaces the landing ship submaps with non-balconey'd ones instead.)

[silencer]

On second thought, I haven't played Xenonanuts for a week and I might have wrong memory recollection. Probably because I haven't had 5 aliens overwatching balconies and being on the ground floor opening the doors, so the snipers from the above had easy pot shots.. So forget what I said about "working" ground floor.

It's not that I am against that balcony, but in current situation it should be removed and when llunak fixes it, then it can be removed. It also would be nice if you can see the bottom when you are viewing the first floor.

Caesan officer does like balconies and the only alien I found in the command room was lonely soldier or warrior. I also think you could reduce that props in the command room in the middle same as you did in corvette. Aliens love being on either side of the room so it helps more Xenonanuts than aliens.

Edited August 9, 2014 by silencer

[kabill]

It also would be nice if you can see the bottom when you are viewing the first floor.

Sadly, it's not like to happen. I spent a long time trying to find a fix for that when I first made the mod, but couldn't find a solution that worked and was good enough. The best I had was simply removing the black area from the landing ship base image. But then it's inconsistent with other UFOs in terms of being able to see inside when the hull image was showing, and there were some other issues as well (although I can't remember now what they were).

[silencer]

By some strange reason, the aliens from below can see your soldiers that are on the balconies. Also about that black hole. Strangely that normal buildings don't have issues with seeing lower floors when the floor gets blown to bits. But I guess UFOs follow different rules.

[silencer]

I had a battle with Androns on new Landingship design. The balconies are a problem here. Other races open door normally if they move at all. Sebillians tend to be more stationary, Caesans move to some degree, but Androns roam the most. Androns don't want to open doors and crush through them. Once the doors that lead to the wings that you breach are destroyed, the enemies on balconies can fire to any part of those rooms, meaning any breach with Androns is quite dangerous.

[kabill]

Is that 'any part, even parts that they shouldn't really have LoS too?'

I'm asking because I've had instances with grenade throwing where it felt like grenades were being thrown down into places that they shouldn't strictly speaking be able to be thrown to. But I couldn't tell exactly. If this is the case, that might be the deal-breaker on the balconies.

[silencer]

All tiles that I've marked in the circle are possible danger zone if the doors are destroyed. That includes tiles near the inner wall. By possible I mean, it depends where the aliens are on the upper floor. Same for the other wing.

And by the way. Have you made those walls extremely tough? I've been firing at them with Allenium missiles and the walls did not get destroyed. Makes safe way to blast those aliens without worrying about cover destruction.

Here is what I mean. I've fired a rocket at wall tile marked X. Only the inner wall was destroyed.

Edited August 10, 2014 by silencer

[kabill]

Hmm, might have to do some experimentation with the LoF down to the bottom floor. It's not quite conclusive from that picture (I think all those places are viable depending on alien location; the question is where the aliens are actually shooting from).

In terms of walls, I assume you mean the interior walls. If so, they're actually *less* durable than in vanilla as in vanilla they're indestructible. In contrast, I changed them in FitH to have 500 HP. But that's more than durable enough to take an alenium missile or two.

[silencer]

Yes it all depends where the shooter is. But since you don't know where the shooters are, all of those tiles are danger zone. In order to fire at unit behind the wall, the shooter must stand on right corner of the balcony. In order to shoot more deeper inside the room, he must stand on the left side of the hole. But since there are at least 2-3 aliens on the balcony, you can presume that all corners are taken.

And about the walls. well then it seems that those from SW-NE are less durable than the other ones

[kabill]

Ah, yes, thanks. Just found the problem. Apparently I set the values on one of the walls incorrectly. I'll get it fixed for the next release.

[GerbilSchooler]

Asking if this is something intended or if it's a bug or a bad install. But, I was raiding a landing ship and was getting shot from the second floor and couldn't get a line of sight at all. Once I got upstairs I could see there were supposed to be square openings, but I couldn't see downstairs, only black. Well, just wondering if it's a bug. I rage quit cause my whole damn squad got decimated lol. Eh, I still have some majors and a commander... but, there's gonna be a lot of new red shirts coming into the Xenonauts