(New version) XNT Into Darkness V5.2 - "PlatinumDragon" (DISCUSSION TREAD)

[TacticalDragon]

Just wanted to say bye, and refer anyone who would otherwise PM me to TD, Sentelin or Selgald.

Goodbye community

Thank you Theon,

We'll be waiting for you to come back.

My best wishes and good luck.

*Art by Theon for the update V5.3

[Theon Greyjoy]

* actually a picture taken from the interwebz

[Gengis Dhen]

Good luck Theon! Hope to see more of your work again someday

[Darki99]

irgendwie funzt net mit pers .nachrichten oder ich war zu nervig ...schäm.

hab ne frage war auf einer mission und hab ne plasma waffe ergattert die ich vorher auch erforscht habe,habe das schlachtfeld abgegrasst und die leute mit ausgerüstet nun wieder zu hause alles wech -verkauft .Ist das normal ?danke für eure antworten

[TacticalDragon]

irgendwie funzt net mit pers .nachrichten oder ich war zu nervig ...schäm.

hab ne frage war auf einer mission und hab ne plasma waffe ergattert die ich vorher auch erforscht habe,habe das schlachtfeld abgegrasst und die leute mit ausgerüstet nun wieder zu hause alles wech -verkauft .Ist das normal ?danke für eure antworten

When sentelin or selgald were online they will send you answer to your questions. Thank you ^^

[Selgald]

I am always online, problem already solved. ^^

[TacticalDragon]

I am always online, problem already solved. ^^

Always

!

[ToothlessShark]

Love this mod. Tried it for a bit and it changes gameplay a lot. I won't bug you with this weapons is too good/bad or this alien is too strong/weak - if I have any problems with any items/units in game I can change it myself. I'll just post what you may find actually useful in improving this mod and fix any possible bugs in it.

First off a tip. You should prioritize adding xenopedia entries in game for any new aliens you add. I still, for example don't know what small aliens (that look like they came from aliens movies) are called or what is that larger version of them (looks like alien queen) or the name of the bloated zombie like aliens are or what do you call those (now moving) eggs. The reason why you may want to do xenopedia entry for all new aliens is because if any player runs into bug or wants to report something about them he will have problems doing so. For example, someone may want to report or complain about those 'little black fast moving aliens moving too fast and killing all civilians in first few turns of the terror mission', but in the end scrap it because he doesn't really know what they are called and has no name-picture reference anywhere in the game to use to send you this information. Basically, it will make bug reporting much easier for everyone.

Now a bug I didn't see reported here (could be wrong). When I played older version of this mod (briefly, since I really don't have much time to play) I ran into bug with rocket turret manufacture. If you produce rocket turret for hunter vehicle but don't already have a hunter vehicle, then switching to vehicle screen will cause a CTD. I ran into this bug in 5.1 version of this mod. However I didn't check it out in this version of the mod. Since I checked out Xenophobia mod thread and saw a report for similar bug, I'm guessing that it's still here. My guess is that you guys changed the way that rocket launchers are produced/upgraded over vanilla one and some change in this mechanic is causing CTD. Probably because rocket turret requires machine gun hunter to upgrade it but when it can't find one - it crashes.

And finally, just a small observation. That stun gun aliens use, the one with large area effect, it has a bit too large destruction effect on the environment. For a gun that mostly stuns but doesn't kill, you'd think it will be far less destructive to buildings, rocks etc. However, many times I have seen aliens bury themselves by destroying building they were in, or blasting ufo doors when they tried to shoot me. I prefer to engage them at long distance and always have 1-2 snipers and a rocket launcher guy so they aren't really that big a threat to me and that aoe damage to the environment usually ends up hurting aliens themselves (like blowing their cover). I'm not sure it's possible to reduce environment damage without changing actual damage values to soldiers or other units in game, but I just thought to mention this. The way it works now, actually, makes things easier for me.

It's visible that you guys put a lot of work into this mod and it's quite fun to play, and plays quite differently then vanilla game. When I play this mod I can't shake the feeling that this mod, with it's increased difficulty and amount of changes to actual gameplay is what Misery mod is for Stalker COP game. I guess I played too much Misery for my own good but I mean it as a compliment, not everyone liked Misery but those that did like it, just couldn't play vanilla anymore. After playing this mod, I also can't play vanilla anymore. Thanks for all this hard work guys and keep it up.

[radek]

First of all thanks to all the XNT team for creating great mod which fulfils all my needs and wishes!

Great job.

Also congrats to Selgrad for victory of his team over France in football championships (did France rise a white flag after 20 minutes or play until the end? JOKE!). Great job.

Technical Stuff:

XNT V5.22

Skitso MapPack 2000

Bloodmod

Roles icons from Skitso’s Oppressive UI

Difficulty: Normal (although I basically almost never do reload game)

=== Early game review (first 3 months) ===

Air Combat:

Since war against aliens occur during cold war my air strategy was rather also cold war like (slightly like in the red army cause my mind couldn’t invent anything more sophisticated than a frontal attack )

But then came Josh Eales with his Anti-Scout “Cobra Maneuver”. And it was brilliant (not to mention he invented it before Scouts have even been seen by the human kind – what a smart guy!).

Never have time to read the Xenopedia cause you are too busy killing aliens? Better check this out!

I said ok if this guy invented this it must work. And it did work.

I have to say that Air Combat is now waaaay better that it used to be. Planes have more fuel and rockets. Can perform dodge and shoot more often. Air skirmishes last longer and are more interesting. Especially 3 v 3 fights.

Big bravissimos for that. Too bad aliens do not have their “Josh Eales” and every time they just pick one target which then furiously chase. If they could from time to time change target at least or try to escape or whatever that would be great.

BTW: I hope Josh Eales will also invent some “Apollo Maneuvers” cause I’m still a noob pilot and can’t figure it out. I just have no hangar space for such a weak planes

Infantry Weaponry:

First of all, basic Shotguns SUCK BALLS. Not only it has no range but also no damage. Sucks completely. When zombie come close to you just shot couple of rifle’s bursts and he is done.

Advanced ballistics are nice. They weight twice as much but I guess it is because alenium is heavy or something. Anyway its cool. Zephyr is my favorite but advanced MG is not bad as well.

But there is a mess with weapons. You have 4 types of pistols. Basic, which is obviously the worst one, then is smg, then some kind of strong revolver and same revolver but doubled (one per hand).

In the last case obviously u can’t hold shield. So we have 3 types of assault units. Shotgun which sucks, better shotgun which also sucks and 2 revolvers that can literally melt any alien early game units. And I don’t want to listen any of “But pirate advanced shotguns can pierce armor and…” – I don’t care. No one can stand double revolver no matter if he has armor or not.

What next? For example pistols than can shot almost as fast as rifle on burst mode. Or revolver which 3 level aim just to compare sniper rifle has 2.

As to sniper rifles. There are quite low. Hard to say what is wrong with them. Maybe adding +5 range would make them better and more “sniper”. I don’t know. I use them no matter what but it is definitely one of the “forgotten weapons” like shotguns.

Sometimes aliens can be really smart. Do you see that mess around Ufo’s entrance? The last fucking alien is playing hide and seek game over there. Fucking blue robot with a grenade launcher. After two attempts we are already out of soldier. Of course he won’t leave his position which makes continuing of this mission pointless. Time to retreat.

What next? Machine guns In my opinion have lost their purpose. It is so hard to suppress anybody. Valiant Sebillan will rather die than humiliate himself and whole his family by showing that he gives a damn about bullets and rockets flying all around.

And also such a big weapon isn’t very handy right? But here it is extremely dangerous in close combat. It’s hard to imagine soldier holding such a weapon to be able to kill very agile and quick Viper. But here he can. Maybe this is a chainsaw or something. I think MG.’ should have lowered close accuracy bonus.

Also there is no consistency with Vanilla. Sometimes our scientist can invent 4 different laser weapons at once when some other time they are tinkering with every single pistol separately. If I could chose I would like to have Vanilla “one big project” policy everywhere. So let’s say 2 techs – “Advanced Ballistics” and “Advanced Rocket Launcher”.

Manufacturing and general game flow:

Manufacturing is well balanced. Now u have to choose wisely what to buy. Unfortunately money is problem so air striking is none an option anymore. Grind, grind, grind bro.

But after all its better. You don’t only high end equipped soldiers and so much money that you can 10 million dollars on charity. Nothing really to say about manufacturing – just good job guys! Very good.

Here is a losses table. As u can see in early game aircraft are relatively safe. Aircraft loses seems to be linear and relatively low.

30 ground battles in total (2 lost)

1 terror (lost)

1 attack at alien base (won)

0.7 soldier’s lost per mission

Aircraft loses are very low and stable with periodically occurring events (like Tu-10 run out of fuel and was shot down by a small scout etc.). Air combat outcome is very predictable. Ufos behave more or less in a predictable way. Their potential is known and our potential is known so I guess in a good hands air losses can be lowered and hold at level zero.

Which brings me to an idea that maybe it would be better to make aircraft unrecoverable? Like tanks and troopers. Or at least recoverable in let’s say 50%. What do you think about it? But what would be definitely the best option is add some randomization to air combat.

Ground Combat:

Small Scouts and Scouts presents none threat at all.

Corvettes and Alien Bases presents medium threat and can be easily performed with acceptable losses.

Terror mission happened once and presented overwhelming alien charge.

Soldier losses tend to increase linearly mostly due to fact of lineal increase of battle frequency not because of increase in enemy soldiers quality.

Losses are acceptable and new soldier relatively fast can replace lost ones. Elite squad can be formed no lack of equipment or well-trained soldiers.

After introduction of Corvette Ufo Type Tanks are becoming more and more obsolete – which I basically don’t like. Tank losses rises rapidly and tanks can be used only as a support unit for less dangerous missions. It is barely seen at the chart but I would have lose 2 or 3 more if I haven’t been lucky.

Tank becoming obsolete so fast is a big hole in my opinion. But lets assume it is somehow explained by storyline.

Alien Technology Capturing or rather “Alien’s Thanksgiving Day”

One of the biggest Alien mistake in early phase of the war was allowing human forces to localize and capture their base at the November, 21 1979.

Alien base is equal in difficulty level to Corvette but from enemy base you can recover not only huge amount of viable resources like alenium, alien alloys or medals for your soldiers but also a very important technology which will increase effectiveness of your laboratories and workshops by 50% practically for free.

So as we can see aliens giving away important base technologies is a pretty common thing here but when it comes to capturing alien’s officer oh god it’s a different story. He is like a freaking PAC-MAN! But instead of eating yellow dots he eats STUN GRENADES. If you want take him alive bring 15 or 20 stun grenades (im not joking now) , 1 or 2 shotguns (they do no dmg but stun a little) and a machinegun to suppress that mother fucker. I don’t even want to think how tough Sebillan Commander can be.

A.I.

Looks like it’s getting better all the time. Vipers attack in swarms. Zombies are walking around like zombies should walk. Regular soldiers can throw a grenade in the less predictable moment. I even had a situation when Sebillan’s officer retreated two times towards his ufo in a row when rest of the Sebbillians were covering his retreat. Nice.

It would be nice to have also some kind of unpredictability. Like for example in 1 per 10 crash sites all aliens are outside the ufo. Or charging at u. But what they do doesn’t matter, just to have this nice surprise gift “oh its finished already – I don’t need to attack ufo this time” .

Tanks:

I love to use tanks. They provided everything I need. They do tank (being focused by enemy) are relatively tough, provide suppress and can be send as first.

That’s theory. Anyway tanks got nerfed hard. They are slower and less accurate at short distances. But they still kick ass and finally behave more like tanks. Very good.

They have low upkeep so you can have some of them in reserves. Or in case of a base attack.

My suggestions: Make their accuracy more linear. Lower a bit short distance accuracy bonus and increase at long range a bit. Armor values should be rebalanced for a bit (if possible) against rifles and pistols. It looks stupid when an officer with bazooka does 20 dmg to tank and a regular trooper with one busrt can do 9 + 21 + 22 = 52 dmg so twice us much. It also looks funny when a dude with Jacal armor is sometimes harder to kill than your Scout Car.

Rear armor is made of paper now (to big difference between rear and front armor). Basically dmg against tanks should be more predictable. Let’s say that pistols now do 5 dmg bazooka 20 rifle 30. It should go towards something like 7 20 17 u know what I mean? Variation has to be lowered both minimum and maxim amount of dmg taken.

To recompense Hunter could be for example more expensive to produce (but not to upkeep)

Another problem with tanks is that they are getting obsolete really fast. And there is no replacement. (In mid game there will be another tank but im not there yet)

Of course absolutely super would be making them able to be upgraded. Like for example some kind of buyable extra plating or being able to attach better hmg’s (laser scatter) but it is I guess its technically impossible.

Edited July 5, 2014 by radek

[Kirill Selivanov]

agree with radek in question of suppresion.

my soldiers are less resistant to suppression, firstly they really fear: alien heavy plasma. from first shot - everybody in 2 tile area in 100%

doese it really frightening? more than machinegun? 3 fires from machine gun doeso 0% supression in 30 trys from sebils and caesians.

make blue super armored be supressed is a miracle too. 6 machingun rounds, 3 rifle, 4 sniper shots, 3 shotgun 4 pistol and 2 rockets, + 1 grenade... it is alive!!!-))) hopfully it died in its own turn from fire in its tile... but no suppresion.

[Sentelin]

@Radek

As always you bring feedback that's just too much for one person to stomach so I will leave to TD to fill the gaps of my response.

Ground Combat:

Small Scouts and Scouts presents none threat at all.

Corvettes and Alien Bases presents medium threat and can be easily performed with acceptable losses.

Terror mission happened once and presented overwhelming alien charge.

Soldier losses tend to increase linearly mostly due to fact of lineal increase of battle frequency not because of increase in enemy soldiers quality.

Losses are acceptable and new soldier relatively fast can replace lost ones. Elite squad can be formed no lack of equipment or well-trained soldiers.

Wait until you try v 5.3 .. Yesterday I lost 3 of my soldiers on the first mission.First of all we changed range of weaponry that aliens use in GC.In other words we reduced chance of those stupid vortex guns so aliens now carry plasma guns,assault plasma rifle... and only 10% chance to draw Vortex/Spine Thrower.Early missions are now much more difficult you are going to lose soldiers and I mean lose it not just get them knocked.

A.I.

Looks like it’s getting better all the time. Vipers attack in swarms. Zombies are walking around like zombies should walk. Regular soldiers can throw a grenade in the less predictable moment. I even had a situation when Sebillan’s officer retreated two times towards his ufo in a row when rest of the Sebbillians were covering his retreat. Nice.

It would be nice to have also some kind of unpredictability. Like for example in 1 per 10 crash sites all aliens are outside the ufo. Or charging at u. But what they do doesn’t matter, just to have this nice surprise gift “oh its finished already – I don’t need to attack ufo this time” .

Well pal you are going to love AI in v 5.3 even more then,that's all I will say.

Infantry Weaponry:

First of all, basic Shotguns SUCK BALLS. Not only it has no range but also no damage. Sucks completely. When zombie come close to you just shot couple of rifle’s bursts and he is done.

Advanced ballistics are nice. They weight twice as much but I guess it is because alenium is heavy or something. Anyway its cool. Zephyr is my favorite but advanced MG is not bad as well.

But there is a mess with weapons. You have 4 types of pistols. Basic, which is obviously the worst one, then is smg, then some kind of strong revolver and same revolver but doubled (one per hand).

In the last case obviously u can’t hold shield. So we have 3 types of assault units. Shotgun which sucks, better shotgun which also sucks and 2 revolvers that can literally melt any alien early game units. And I don’t want to listen any of “But pirate advanced shotguns can pierce armor and…” – I don’t care. No one can stand double revolver no matter if he has armor or not.

What next? For example pistols than can shot almost as fast as rifle on burst mode. Or revolver which 3 level aim just to compare sniper rifle has 2.

As to sniper rifles. There are quite low. Hard to say what is wrong with them. Maybe adding +5 range would make them better and more “sniper”. I don’t know. I use them no matter what but it is definitely one of the “forgotten weapons” like shotguns.

I will leave this part to TD but I don't agree with you in almost anything expect that dual Warhawk do insane amount damage against everything.

Manufacturing and general game flow:

Manufacturing is well balanced. Now u have to choose wisely what to buy. Unfortunately money is problem so air striking is none an option anymore. Grind, grind, grind bro.

But after all its better. You don’t only high end equipped soldiers and so much money that you can 10 million dollars on charity. Nothing really to say about manufacturing – just good job guys! Very good.

Click image for larger version.

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Here is a losses table. As u can see in early game aircraft are relatively safe. Aircraft loses seems to be linear and relatively low.

30 ground battles in total (2 lost)

1 terror (lost)

1 attack at alien base (won)

0.7 soldier’s lost per mission

Aircraft loses are very low and stable with periodically occurring events (like Tu-10 run out of fuel and was shot down by a small scout etc.). Air combat outcome is very predictable. Ufos behave more or less in a predictable way. Their potential is known and our potential is known so I guess in a good hands air losses can be lowered and hold at level zero.

Which brings me to an idea that maybe it would be better to make aircraft unrecoverable? Like tanks and troopers. Or at least recoverable in let’s say 50%. What do you think about it? But what would be definitely the best option is add some randomization to air combat.

We consider to make aircraft unrecoverable but it is too much micro managing and it's rather annoying.TD can fill in details why is that the case.

BTW: I hope Josh Eales will also invent some “Apollo Maneuvers” cause I’m still a noob pilot and can’t figure it out. I just have no hangar space for such a weak planes

Apollo right now doesn't have any define role.It was suppose to be low damage craft with good radar coverage.It was meant to fill role of scout/support craft.But with Dynamic UFOs implemented this changed and now you don't have to use it at all.But good news TD came up with something interesting although we need to discuss a little more about it.

Edited July 5, 2014 by Sentelin

[Sentelin]

And finally, just a small observation. That stun gun aliens use, the one with large area effect, it has a bit too large destruction effect on the environment. For a gun that mostly stuns but doesn't kill, you'd think it will be far less destructive to buildings, rocks etc. However, many times I have seen aliens bury themselves by destroying building they were in, or blasting ufo doors when they tried to shoot me. I prefer to engage them at long distance and always have 1-2 snipers and a rocket launcher guy so they aren't really that big a threat to me and that aoe damage to the environment usually ends up hurting aliens themselves (like blowing their cover). I'm not sure it's possible to reduce environment damage without changing actual damage values to soldiers or other units in game, but I just thought to mention this. The way it works now, actually, makes things easier for me.

I tried almost everything to make this gun "useful" in the end we decided to reduce commonness of it and it is amazing how simply change like that solved our problems

[TacticalDragon]

Love this mod. Tried it for a bit and it changes gameplay a lot. I won't bug you with this weapons is too good/bad or this alien is too strong/weak - if I have any problems with any items/units in game I can change it myself. I'll just post what you may find actually useful in improving this mod and fix any possible bugs in it.

Thank you so much for your review!

We take all this comments in consideration

- Your right about Vortex weapons, we are right now planing and testing rebalance for this kin of weapons.

- Maybe we underestimate a bit the xenopedia entries for new aliens, but we have a single reason for that. In the next build we'll include new xenopedia entries and images for almost all the new elements in the game!

- I will check the crash that you report of Missile launcher for vehicles.

We hope that you stay tunned to the mod and Im very glad that you write us with all this comments

[TacticalDragon]

First of all thanks to all the XNT team for creating great mod which fulfils all my needs and wishes!

Great job.

@RADEK

As always your complete reviews give us the best insight and guidance about lot of stuff. I really appreciate this complete and didactic, deep review. I have no other words but THANK YOU!

Now I try to full fit the sentelin answer (Thx sentelin ^^)

Also congrats to Selgrad for victory of his team over France in football championships (did France rise a white flag after 20 minutes or play until the end? JOKE!). Great job.

Difficulty: Normal (although I basically almost never do reload game)

Maybe is time for Veteran/Ironman

Air Combat:

Theon (Josh Eales) make a wonderful job in aircombat system. This is his legacy and we'r working on new Apollo rebuild.

Infantry Weaponry:

First of all, basic Shotguns SUCK BALLS. Not only it has no range but also no damage. Sucks completely. When zombie come close to you just shot couple of rifle’s bursts and he is done

Note taken! I will work on suppression, standard colt pistol, machineguns and shotguns.

As to sniper rifles. There are quite low. Hard to say what is wrong with them. Maybe adding +5 range would make them better and more “sniper”. I don’t know. I use them no matter what but it is definitely one of the “forgotten weapons” like shotguns.

In this point I disagree, Snipers is a safe weapon, very precise and deadly. Also snipers are the only "armor perforating" in Tier1-. Try a common build that I use. I use a hibrid soldier with a sniper rifle and shotgun.

Pistols are intended to be a side weapon, thats the cause of the diversity. A sniper or shotgunner can have a Lasersight Warhawk if they have enough carry capacity and support for close and medium range.

What next? Machine guns In my opinion have lost their purpose. It is so hard to suppress anybody. Valiant Sebillan will rather die than humiliate himself and whole his family by showing that he gives a damn about bullets and rockets flying all around.

I will try some test on this suggestion.

Manufacturing and general game flow:

Thank you! We make a deep statistical analysis of economy in function of the game, including UFO Dissembling feature.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]4770[/ATTACH]

Here is a losses table. As u can see in early game aircraft are relatively safe. Aircraft loses seems to be linear and relatively low.

Because your playing on normal, Veteran and Insane difficulty are... a bit more aggressive and Aliens AI change a lot. We dont want to punish players that want to explore the mod in normal, still for normal difficulty the game is a hard challenge, you also have loses and your like "Veteran on XNT mechanics"

Which brings me to an idea that maybe it would be better to make aircraft unrecoverable? Like tanks and troopers. Or at least recoverable in let’s say 50%. What do you think about it? But what would be definitely the best option is add some randomization to air combat.

We make some test but I need to say that is ... too deadly. This make the game very hard and increase micromanagement a lot. The incorporation of Dynamic UFO spawn and the modifications included on V5.3 makes very aggressive the alien invasion.

Ground Combat:

Small Scouts and Scouts presents none threat at all.

Corvettes and Alien Bases presents medium threat and can be easily performed with acceptable losses.

Terror mission happened once and presented overwhelming alien charge.

We'r working on encounter rearrangement.

Soldier losses tend to increase linearly mostly due to fact of lineal increase of battle frequency not because of increase in enemy soldiers quality.

Losses are acceptable and new soldier relatively fast can replace lost ones. Elite squad can be formed no lack of equipment or well-trained soldiers.

This not happend on Veteran, at the contrary, the multiplier of Aliens Attributes make much much harder high ranked Aliens in Tier2+ and Tier3.

Alien Technology Capturing or rather “Alien’s Thanksgiving Day”

[/i]

You have issues capturing the officer? I will check because I run multiple test, yes is hard but not that amount of grenades.

A.I.

AI is one of our stronger part, but I need to say that is hard make it more unpredictable. The amount of parameters are not enough to make it more random. In V5.3 we'll introduce some kind of mechanics about "Enemy Influence", when you test it, you tell me.

Tanks:

Work on tanks is very hard, they are very hard coded and only few variables left to change it. I have some changes in mind and this opinion falls under the best moment!

THANK YOU RADEK!

I will have a nice surprises for you.

We'll make a new unit in the game called Radek "The Zephyr Hero"

Edited July 5, 2014 by TacticalDragon

[TacticalDragon]

agree with radek in question of suppresion.

my soldiers are less resistant to suppression, firstly they really fear: alien heavy plasma. from first shot - everybody in 2 tile area in 100%

doese it really frightening? more than machinegun? 3 fires from machine gun doeso 0% supression in 30 trys from sebils and caesians.

make blue super armored be supressed is a miracle too. 6 machingun rounds, 3 rifle, 4 sniper shots, 3 shotgun 4 pistol and 2 rockets, + 1 grenade... it is alive!!!-))) hopfully it died in its own turn from fire in its tile... but no suppresion.

Thanks!

I will check the suppressions values, this thing is hard to balance and there is a problem with suppression already. The suppression is subjected to the armor values.

I have something in mind.

[Kirill Selivanov]

airfight testing:

2migfoxtrot with mamoths easely take out corvete without maneveurs. just at the begining make trusters to minimum to give them time to lock mamonths. corvete fired just once.

intresting-)

doese it normal that one corvete (first corvete in the gameline) with probably terror mission (xenopaedia xint after defeating him popuped) cout weak chaos in all australia? (for 2days it make about 10+ news of different civilian attacks). in the result australia in first month dropped finance - 160.000 $(its about 45% of all income from the region)

Edited July 5, 2014 by Kirill Selivanov

[TacticalDragon]

airfight testing:

2migfoxtrot with mamoths easely take out corvete without maneveurs. just at the begining make trusters to minimum to give them time to lock mamonths. corvete fired just once.

intresting-)

doese it normal that one corvete (first corvete in the gameline) with probably terror mission (xenopaedia xint after defeating him popuped) cout weak chaos in all australia? (for 2days it make about 10+ news of different civilian attacks). in the result australia in first month dropped finance - 160.000 $(its about 45% of all income from the region)

Yes, the build 1.07 brings again more Funding damage errors, we are researching them.

The Mig31 is an aircraft unlocked by Corvette Dissembling, their propose is deal with capital ships like corvette and later UFOs, this aircraft was destroyed easy by fighters and later UFOs (Carrier and Battleship), in that moment become less efficient.

[FaterW]

Hello Everyone!

First of all it's a fantastic mod! Sure it needs some balancing, but has a lot of great content already, so thanks for the hard work guys!

I made some observations regarding research progression both by playing and checking the xml files and I wold like to share them with you, so you could look into them if they aren't working as intended I put them in spolier tags, so people who don't want to know about research dependencies can skip it.

(It may be a bit long, but I like to write The conclusion is in the second half under the line And these are only my opinions, I appreciate your work and mean no offense in any way)

My problem that made me look into research is that by January 1980 I shot down a few cruisers and the first carrier just appeared, I was already using some Predator and Sentinel armors and I had Hyperions, but my soldiers were still using simple laser and advanced ballistic weapons and my aircrafts were equipped with ballistic guns too (even the UFO-killing Corsairs and it seemed that I also skipped the Scimitar completely. This made shooting down cruisers and carriers a bit hard, and GC combat as well, especially against Androns, because the lack of armor penetration/mitigation. In other words my weapon research was stuck.

I have researched every piece of alien plasma I've ever found, and then finally finding an AlienBattleRifle made MAG research available, and that made me think. I can research probably the most advanced weaponry (at least advanced then plasma according to its description on the research screen) just by analysing alien plasma weapons, without actually inventing the human variant of the plasma technology. Plasma doesn't necessarily have to be the requirement of the kinetic-based MAG weaponry, but I think it should be harder meet the requirements to skip like 1.5 tier of the game weapon systems

Also it would be a more viable research path if the weapon systems progression wouldn't be so tier-like/linear. They could have some different characteristics like your custom advanced ballistic weapons for example. They make even some laser weapons obsolete, but they are heavy and hard to handle and so on. Maybe laser could have more range and precision, plasma overall shorter range but great damage and armor pen/mitigation, while MAG cold be less damaging then plasma, but with the precision of the laser and the armor shredding ability of the plasma. They could also have differences in weight, recoil and ammo capacity, making laser a good option for rookies and the other two more like the weapons for the more experienced soldiers. But that's a different thing, I got a bit off-topic here I think it could be done but would definitely need a lot of testing and balancing...

---

Anyway, back to the weapon research problems. Looking into the xml files I think I found what was the cause (I will use the names of things from the code and not their ingame names):

-AdvancedLasers require a certain AlienCombatPlasma to be researched.

-AlienCombatPlasma is not a very common alien weapon, if I'm correct only Andron and Harridan Warriors have it. (AlienBattleRifle is even more rare, but Caesan Elites and Officers have it and they appear pretty soon and are much easier to kill to be honest).

-I haven't encountered any Harridan Warriors up until this time, and the lack off armor piercing capabilities made me obliterate most of the advanced Androns with heavy explosives most of the time, also destroying their equipment in the process, or simply bomb ther sites to avoid them completely.

My conclusion is that because these understandable reasons it's possible that a player who keeps using the same good-old blow'em up tactics against Androns can not improve his weapon systems further. The only reason that I overcame this situation is that I looked into the files and found out that I must not béow up the light blue coloured droids, but a lot of players won't/can't do that, and so it can become a frustrating and nearly game braking balance issue for some of them.

My suggestions to resolve this issue and some others in connection with weaponry:

-AdvancedLasers should have a more common requirement than AlienCombatPlasma. I don't know the game that much to suggest what it should be, but something more appropriate than a vortex-based heavy rifle for scatter and pulse laser maybe

-The HyperionTank should have AdvancedLasers as it's requirement, because it has a PULSELASER on it by default.

-MAGWeaponry should have some additional requirement(s). Not necessarily plasma weapons, to breake the tier-like progression, but maybe some more advanced thing that only can be found later in the game, in bigger UFOs or something like that.

-Warhawk2 should always need VortexTech to be researched. Currently capturing a live Omega specimen is a substitute for the technology actually needed for that weapon to exist which is a bit silliy in my opinion Capturing an Omega is a remarkable deed and maybe could be rewarded in a different way, but I see no connection between the two things.

-There are some redundancies in the requirements, but these maye be vanilla things. For example PlasmaWeaponry requiring both LaserWeaponry and AdvancedLasers while the latter implies the former.

I also experience a constant CTD problem with vehichle weapons (tested with laser and plasma). When one is present in the manufacture list of a base and I switch to the garage screen of that base the game always crashes, either the garage is empty or it has one vehichle in it and an empty slot. After the gun is completed it wokrs again without problems, it can be fitted and used.

Thank you for your time reading my post! And again, great mod!

[HARD_Sarge]

what good or use is the elestun granade ? all I see it do is take some blue damage, and since the aliens have large amounts, it does nothing to them

I think one hassle with this mod, is the modders know it inside out, and the players are guessing, I am in march of 1980, and am running into UFO's I cant fight, ground troops I cant kill, foxbat is my top fighter, advance MG last weapon built, and most battles I am still with the starting aliens, but seems wrong when it takes half a squads firepower to take out one weak alien, had one (grey) take 2 advanced rockets, 2 advanced granades, and bursts of MG fire and assult rifle fire, and still didnt go down

had a bombing mission that two foxbats and a SU couldnt defeat

either need more hints, or plans on the battle is suppose to be played

[Sentelin]

elestun granade

What a what now ?

had one (grey) take 2 advanced rockets, 2 advanced granades, and bursts of MG fire and assult rifle fire, and still didnt go down

Which one alien ... "Grey" description doesn't help at all.

had a bombing mission that two foxbats and a SU couldnt defeat

You should have used 2 SU and one Fox ...

either need more hints, or plans on the battle is suppose to be played

We are working on hints but seriously can't you just search this tread a bit to find them ?There dozen of hints just use "search" or ask question which is related to your problem or problems.

-MAGWeaponry should have some additional requirement(s). Not necessarily plasma weapons, to breake the tier-like progression, but maybe some more advanced thing that only can be found later in the game, in bigger UFOs or something like that.

But player don't even have to research MAG weapons until late game.Because there are tier -3 and tier -2 weapons in the game added with intention of breaking this linear path.

Edited July 5, 2014 by Sentelin

[TacticalDragon]

Hello Everyone!

First of all it's a fantastic mod! Sure it needs some balancing, but has a lot of great content already, so thanks for the hard work guys!

Thank you for your suggestions!

A new insight of interesting point of view. About Heavy Vortex maybe you need to try not abuse explosives. The idea about MAGs and Energy weapons is what we want to do. Make branches of diversity in the game, just the same your pointing.

In other hand, we are working n one more comprehensive and full of hints research tree. To avoid that problem that you have or reward system that you tell us about the Omega.

I hope you enjoy the next update that brings new mechanics, more polished and comprehensive material.

Thank you and We await that you keep playing and give us your wonderful reviews!

[FaterW]

I have experienced quite the opposite with the Electroshock Grenade and sometimes I think it's kind of OP.

It usually does like 100-250 stun damage so most of the time 1 or at most 2 of them can stun any living thing and has a great explosion radius to hit multiple enemies at once. Hell 2 of them puts even a Delta to sleep every time for me.

And about the guessing thing, if you would be fighting aliens in 1980, I think you would do a lot of guessing But jokes aside, they just told us that they are working on hints and xenopedia entries for 5.3.

[Sentelin]

@FaterW

Whoa it took me a lot time to read all of that but here is my opinion on some arguments you brought

Warhawk2 should always need VortexTech to be researched. Currently capturing a live Omega specimen is a substitute for the technology actually needed for that weapon to exist which is a bit silliy in my opinion Capturing an Omega is a remarkable deed and maybe could be rewarded in a different way, but I see no connection between the two things.

That's just alternative path.If player somehow manages to do that he receives great reward,otherwise what's the point of capturing alive specimen ?

AdvancedLasers should have a more common requirement than AlienCombatPlasma. I don't know the game that much to suggest what it should be, but something more appropriate than a vortex-based heavy rifle for scatter and pulse laser maybe

Yeah i would agree if we are talking about pistol but sniper is just way too powerful to require less requirements.You will use that sniper rifle over plasma and even MAG.

-MAGWeaponry should have some additional requirement(s). Not necessarily plasma weapons, to breake the tier-like progression, but maybe some more advanced thing that only can be found later in the game, in bigger UFOs or something like that.

There are tier -3 and tier -2 which purpose is to break infamous linear progress of vanilla .We also plan of adding additional weapons to increase diversity and player doesn't need this to use until late game because of tier -3 and tier -2.

It usually does like 100-250 stun damage so most of the time 1 or at most 2 of them can stun any living thing and has a great explosion radius to hit multiple enemies at once. Hell 2 of them puts even a Delta to sleep every time for me.

Yeah they can be OP but once in awhile player should recieve some kind of way to "cheat" a little ^^

Besides this reminds me when someone said:"I did 700 stun damage and I couldn't capture Andron alive " Men I burst in laugh when I read that (you can't capture andron alive)

Edited July 5, 2014 by Sentelin

[FaterW]

That's just alternative path.If player somehow manages to do that he receives great reward,otherwise what's the point of capturing alive specimen ?

I agree with you, capturing a live alien should yield a reward, I'm just saying I don't feel the connection between the tech and the alien in this specific case.

Yeah i would agree if we are talking about pistol but sniper is just way too powerful to require less requirements.You will use that sniper rifle over plasma and even MAG.

You are talking about AdvancedSniperLaser tech, which is required for the HLDread. That's a powerful weapon for sure, but needs totally different things and I already had that too, without reaching the advanced laser techs.

By the way, it actually should require AdvancedLasers which I'm talking about It's currently needed primarily for Scatterlaser, aircraft and vehichle and base defense laser weapons and the Scmitar tank, and also for PlasmaWeaponry. It's an important step in weaponry and it currently needs an uncommon and not really related incendary vortex rifle

Yeah they can be OP but once in awhile player should recieve some kind of way to "cheat" a little ^^

Besides this reminds me when someone said:"I did 700 stun damage and I couldn't capture Andron alive " Men I burst in laugh when I read that (you can't capture andron alive)

I like them very much, actually I thought they will do a lot of damage to electronic devices like androns when I read it's description in the xenopedia and wanted to use them for that instead of blowing androns to pieces, but I was sad to see that they don't do that much damage to them.

Edited July 5, 2014 by FaterW

[HARD_Sarge]

What a what now ?

electroshock

Which one alien ... "Grey" description doesn't help at all.

Caesan (since there modeled after the greys)

You should have used 2 SU and one Fox ...

well if I had 2 SU, and a fox, but that base had two foxes and a SU

We are working on hints but seriously can't you just search this tread a bit to find them ?There dozen of hints just use "search" or ask question which is related to your problem or problems.

I have read every post in this group

But player don't even have to research MAG weapons until late game.Because there are tier -3 and tier -2 weapons in the game added with intention of breaking this linear path.

not trying to get the mag's, my latest is the advanced MG (mini Valcan)

Edited July 5, 2014 by HARD_Sarge