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


Sentelin

Technology tree guide or Xenopedia hints for unlocking research projects  

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  1. 1. Technology tree guide or Xenopedia hints for unlocking research projects



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You didn't encounter nothing serious yet ... wait until those "stun guns" start killing your soldiers (their main purpose is to stun soldier but improved versions can kill).On what difficulty do you play ?

Yeah I hate those can't count how many reloads I've had to do because of it, wish there was a gas mask in the game can't even get my guys in there to use a medi pak on their buddies with out passing out to , but I have to admit this is definitely not Xcom enemy unknown easy mode! :P Any one have a good tactic to fight against this?

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Thank you soo much for reporting!

This build has implemented a "feature" for some Vipers, they can climb and jump.

Can you send me the saved game for this one?

Edit: Did you replace the .exe file? Which version of Xenonauts are you using? can you check if you apply the XNT well?

1.06. Exe was replaced and all the folders were extracted in the correct places, same with that fire in the hole mod, the music pack, and the farm map pack.

[ATTACH]4465[/ATTACH]

Assuming it works for you, keep the tank alive and wait a few turns. The 'viper' i guess comes from the right of the dropship, 2nd floor, if i recall correctly.

mod3.sav

mod3.sav

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I play game on veteran. I encoutered mosty cesans, lizards(dont remember all those names), vailoet runing HtH guys i think vipers and flying freaks with camera on head :P

I presume later will be more dificult but I just compare beggining with mod and without it and at the moment its easier casue i usally lose 2 once even 4 guys but they all recovered after batle no hurt.

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Just another thought - what does the team have in mind about expanding the depth of the Geoscope part of the game? For example, would it be possible to add different ways to engage with host countries; i.e. reaching a certain relation level grants a cash bonus or free base or higher quality recruits? Or negotiating agreements when you can use their research institutes or airbases that provided limited expansions of your own capabilities?

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1.06. Exe was replaced and all the folders were extracted in the correct places, same with that fire in the hole mod, the music pack, and the farm map pack.

[ATTACH]4465[/ATTACH]

Assuming it works for you, keep the tank alive and wait a few turns. The 'viper' i guess comes from the right of the dropship, 2nd floor, if i recall correctly.

Hey I will try to reproduce with save you provided.

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Just another thought - what does the team have in mind about expanding the depth of the Geoscope part of the game? For example, would it be possible to add different ways to engage with host countries; i.e. reaching a certain relation level grants a cash bonus or free base or higher quality recruits? Or negotiating agreements when you can use their research institutes or airbases that provided limited expansions of your own capabilities?

Im preparing something that you ever imagine :)

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I don't know about you, but I'm playing this mod on normal and I'm already feeling the pressure. Couldn't do terror missions on 5.1 without getting my dropship flanked by 6 uglies and losing most of my men in 5 turns.

Yes - that happened to me too. 7 KIA in three turns. One fled for his life back to base. That was a UFO assault with at least 5-6 vipers who swarmed the landing zone. Haven't encountered that situation in 5.2 yet though from TD's general comments I should expect something very bad to happen eventually...

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I’m a huge fan of the Into The Darkness mod. So I basically do not play Vanilla at all. This mod is great I rly appreciate all of the work you guys have done here. Great job!!!

Technical Stuff:

XNT 1.06

XNT Into The Darkness 5.1

Music Pack for ITD

Sktiso’s Opressive UI

Skitso’s Mega Mappack

Blood mod

Difficulty level: Veteran

I usually lose 1-2 soldiers per battle. Now I have 25 of the December first year. I have lost only one battle and it was base defense mission. Didnt have any ground terror missions. I started with 3 bases. One (first) for technology (3 labs later 4). Second (this one I have lost recently) was for manufacturing (7 workshops) and 3rd just for air control and (later) for a extra dropship.

=== Feedback ===

Music:

Please delete Day Ground Combat 3 cause this is a bull crap and should be removed from the game. :]

Base Defense:

I was lucky. Both Missile Defense Systems hit the target. In this game this is matter of life and death.

Before attack u can equipped almost all of your soldiers to make them ready for the worst.

Why almost all? Cause for some reason those who are in the hospital cannot be equipped (and also lost their previous equipment). My poor soldier spent the rest of the fight inside command room pretending to be some kind of super commander of the Earth and the Last Big Boss (without armor and weapon btw). I truly believe that every single alien who would have come into that room would either run away in fear or take stun weapon and try to fulfill alien’s goal “capture human officer for interrogation”. ;]

Base defense missions are generally very funny and intense but in my opinion a little bit bad designed.

I mean they are funny to play only because this game is funny to play.

First of all forget about the balance or something. I was freaking lucky that’s all. Not only aliens attacked my base very late. And I had well equipped and highly trained platoon ready to fight. (8x 4-5 level soldiers, Zephyrs and Bazookas + Coyote armors – which is at this moment of the game better than everything aliens can send against you.)

Secondary my Defense System actually hit the Landership(or whatever it was) twice which is 100% LUCK because normally they can only miss. That lowered amount of aliens by 50% and number of “entrances” by I think 50% as well (from 4 to 2).

Also they sent only green and blue robots and light drones. Again lucky weak attack.

Now look at what have happened in my previous game (same mods and version, difficulty normal). Neither of the defense system hit. Attack was lunched in the middle of the October. I was unprepared completely (1st Platoon was off the base). 10 rookies with Jackals and m16’s couldn’t even kill ONE STUPID ALIEN and I lost the game.

It leads us to a sad conclusion that Base Defense missions output (which is extremely important cause losing a base means most of the time game over) highly rely on the pure luck. You can be either attacked by unstoppable alien “Zerg Rush” with officers, 4 entry points and those teleporting dudes in the middle of the second month or by bunch of “free kills” that came into your base just to give you extra 200k $.

There is also another problem with base defense.

THERE IS ONLY ONE LANE OF DEFENSE. Who the hell designed this base is stupid. How the hell aliens can choose where do they drop. Why they have the first turn. Why there is no fucking first lane of defense. Oh wait actually there is… it’s a COMMAND ROOM. The first and the last lane of defense. During the briefing some smart dude tells you: “Try to protect all the base rooms from the alien to save money and after zillion of turns god bless will give a sight and blah blah blah.” OK. HOW? First turn and I’m pinned to the wall. 3rd turn and either me or them are dead. Really entire battle is happening around the HQ.

I think HQ should be localized at the bottom and you should be able to dislocate your troops around the HQ and in the squares next to it. And aliens should have spawn points only at the north or something.

Or base should be a rectangle 5 x 7 squares with HQ 3x2 at the bottom.

Alien could also attack in waves. Like wave 1 – dead. Wave 2 dead. And so on. (just a suggestion)

where the fight take place.jpg

Area around HQ entrance is where 80% of the Base Defense fight always takes place. Rest 20% is hunting some “hooligans” that came into your base not to play with the other kids but to break down public property.

Base attack:

It is ok, aliens do counter attacks once per year to keep you happy. Rest of the time they try to defend. Relatively easy missions. Very good. There is just one problem – I think there is not to many different alien base maps cause I got Déjà vu after a while.

Morale System:

Morale system is still a lottery for me. During one mission one of my soldier (rank private) panicked just at the second turn. We saw maybe one alien running across the street or something and she panicked.

Mother fukin... aliens are so freaking scary. Thx god no one have jumped off the helicopter when we were getting here. Just imagine message like this: “Pvt. John Smith was unnerved by the whole thing and jumped off the helicopter. He had the keys to your Tank in his pocket. Do You want to continue? Really? Do You want to start a Terror Mission without one soldier and a tank?”

Sometimes they also tend to flee towards the alien positions. Ok…

Or soldier that had panic attack in the middle of the 3x width door. And stood there like a frozen statue… He didn’t even crouch…

In general morale system is in my opinion way to randomized. It doesn’t reflect the situation of the battlefield.

Tanks:

deal with it.jpg

“If you want to hit anything with your tank soldier, go next to the target - put the cannon to the target’s head – press fire.” – Driver Manual’s entry for the Hunter Scout Car’s drivers.

Tanks still are just a slightly modified human version of the Big Raptor. From 1 square away tank can hit 8 of 8 bullets and literally fuk up enemy over the wall when from around 10 squares distance away they are become completely blind and can hit maximally with 1 bullet per burst.

Not to mention that there is not any plating improvement tech. It looks pretty bad when we are able to invent 2 different types of personal armor out of nothing basically just after we get very first alien gun into our hands and we can’t invent anything similar for tanks. Also it leads to some stupid situations when soldier with Coyote Armor is more tanky than tank… Pretty illogic.

Potential solution doesn’t even require new look. Just replace Scout Car with Scout Car V2 or something that looks exactly the same but have better stats.

Aircrafts:

I don’t really get what Appollo and Su-30 are for. Couldn’t figure it out. Waste of pixels. Condors are just better.

Weapons:

Very sexy (especially Zephyr) but technology is not very well balanced. At second time I just rushed to laser instead of investing another extra pistol. I think all advanced ballistics should be packaged in one tech. Cause it leads to stupid situations when u don’t use half of the roles cause current mg is worthless in compare to rifleman even despite rifleman do not provide any suppression.

For example u don’t need shields anymore when you have Coyot armor.

soldiers do you.jpg

"Soldiers do you remember those times when we had to use one shield one mg 3 rifles and a sniper? Those times are gone. Our great sciencist have invented Zephyr so we dont need weapons becouse we are weapons. Our great sciencist have invented Coyot armor so we dont need tanks and shields because we are tanks and shields. We are strong enough to carry everythng with us and brave enough to not look behind us. We are not soldiers anymore. We are SuperSoldiers." - Generalissimus Motivational Speach - November, 17, 1979

That’s why Vanilla was nice with 4 Tiers of exactly the same type of weapons with every Tier being invented entirely (almost) by one tech. I dont want to suggest that the way you are going is wrong but is definitely more difficult.

It seems like lasers are somehow at the same level as advanced ballistics. So the purpose is to have 2 types of weapons at once? Interesting. I have no opinion about it yet.

Pistols have 3 levels of zoom when sniper rifle has only 2 ok…

Double pistols for commandos? And also you have to manufacture special “double” version. Looks very unprofessional (“hey look our game engine do not allow you to hold anything in the left hand, but don’t worry pal our code masters will etc etc”). Never show such a technical details.

Bugs:

There is billion of them. Invisible trees. Aliens shooting through the walls. Game crashes. Soldiers throwing grenades under himself. ETC.

Alien weapons:

Very nice, especially stun cannon. But it is also very unbalanced cause u don’t need to bring any stun weapons anymore. Aliens will stun themselves automatically ;] (“How convenient for me!!!”)

Economy:

I really like the idea of producing items for sale but I think it allows to perform the “snowball” effect. More many u have more base u can have more base u can have more workers u have even more money u have. For example why not to build In every single base 7 workshops for example? Would be boring as fuck to click “produce more jackets”, “sell more jackets” but it is like 2-3 million per month for free.

Unfortunately you have to go on every single mission (Airstrike gives like 3-4 times less money + exp). Please make some Ufos disappear after being shot down and recompense loses in money for player somehow.

A.I.:

Strong point of this mod. Very good. Just one thing. How the hell aliens know when we are approaching to UFO and somehow always decide to run out of the UFO and perform heroic counter attack? It looks so silly and is so predictable (happens in 90% of crashsites).

Graphics:

Destroyed objects looks like they would have been leveled down by bulldozer. Destroyed ground tiles, when there is many of them in one place, looks like some kind of a Turkish Carpet.

Destroyed objects (some of them like for example trees cars may be randomized) should leave some kind of impassable rubble instead of passable texture.

Damaged tiles and damaged objects looks very nice.

New Aliens:

Venoms are great.

What is the difference btw between Zombies Venoms and Raptors? Do we really need all of them? If it is somehow explained by story then np but for me it was the same shitt :]

Eggs are great! Good job!

deal with it.jpg

where the fight take place.jpg

soldiers do you.jpg

577e7cfcbd163_dealwithit.thumb.jpg.15d4e

577e7cfcde1d8_wherethefighttakeplace.thu

577e7cfcf300a_soldiersdoyou.thumb.jpg.ca

Edited by radek
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And the award for longest post in the history of XNT goes to...

lol :D

this is too much to address for one person (hopefully Sentelin and TD will follow)

Bases:

Till a few days there was no hope to modify them, lots of things were hardcoded, and only recently one of the players (Solver) got permission to access the code. I think that sb already requested that types of starting buildings should be made moddable....so some changes might be seen in the future.

Morale system:

Don't expect heroics from privates (they never saw an alien before). Remember that moving together and sticking to high-ranked soldiers grants a morale bonus in XNT (it was removed in vanilla)...so don't send your soldiers rambo - like.

Graphics:

That is the engine. Not much can be done here.

A.I.:

How the hell aliens know when we are approaching to UFO

Look at my avatar, now back to the post, now to my avatar again

ALIENS! (they use cameras)

Bugs

Mostly engine based, vanilla ones

Aircrafts: are you playing manually or with auto-resolve? (Manual is prefered, as balancing auto-resolve is a nightmare with the current engine code), even though t1 aircrafts with t1 weapons should be balanced. Su provides more than twice the damage of a Condor (and costs much less than having 2 Condors, it also serves well as a defensive craft when a landingship comes near...if you have only Condors...tough luck prepare to be boarded :D), Apollo is a rapid response aircraft with lots of radar range so you won't lose those targets... Apollo is mostly useful early when you don't yet have multiple bases to cover geospace.

Thanks for the feedback :)

Edited by Theon Greyjoy
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I’m a huge fan of the Into The Darkness mod. So I basically do not play Vanilla at all. This mod is great I rly appreciate all of the work you guys have done here. Great job!!!

Technical Stuff:

XNT 1.06

XNT Into The Darkness 5.1

Music Pack for ITD

Sktiso’s Opressive UI

Skitso’s Mega Mappack

Blood mod

First of all! Thank you!!!

As always your reviews are very complete and helpful, its a shame that I don't have some kind of review for the current version V5.2

:D

I read all the review and I need to ask you that some of the ... bad features is caused by vanilla by itself.

But well I point out some of the features and make a comparison whats happen in V5.2

Difficulty level: Veteran

I usually lose 1-2 soldiers per battle now I have 25 of the December first year now. Have lost only one battle and it was base defense mission. I started with 3 bases. One (first) for technology (3 labs later 4). Second (this one I have lost recently) was for manufacturing (7 workshops) and 3rd just for air control and (later) for extra dropship.

Sounds hard lose the Manufacture Base, but I think that assume it is nice.

Congrat for been a good player and accept some loses :D

Music:

Please delete Day Ground Combat 3 cause this is a bull crap and should be removed from the game. :]

Yep, meybe its too lousy, what about other tracks?

Base Defense:

About Base attacks thinks became unpredictable some times, but this is a vanilla feature, the design of the base and the objective of the mission. I understand your concerns and see what can we do with "Base Design" for the next releases

Base attacks are very dangerous thing if you don't have defenses some of the times deadly. The real problem with Vanilla/Xenonauts/XCOM Type games is that the base attack require that the UFO reach the base, most of the players intercept the Alien Ship before they reach the Base attack point. The Base attack encounters has been redesigned to V5.2

Morale System:

Morale system is still a lottery for me. During one mission one of my soldier (rank private) panicked just at the second turn. We saw maybe one alien running across the street or something and she panicked.

The moral system is fixed in V5.2, but I need to point at some part of players. Lot of players choose the soldiers by their other scores and dont even see the Morale that they have. When hire soldiers be sure to not choose a coward ;)

Tanks:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]4469[/ATTACH]

“If you want to hit anything with your tank soldier, go next to the target - put the cannon to the target’s head – press fire.” – Driver Manual’s entry for the Hunter Scout Car’s drivers.

Tanks still are just a slightly modified human version of the Big Raptor. From 1 square away tank can hit 8 of 8 bullets and literally fuk up enemy over the wall when from around 10 squares distance away they are become completely blind and can hit maximally with 1 bullet per burst.

Here are lot of things; First the thanks are fixed again in V5.2 its already corrected. The machinegun tank is intented to make suppression and scout, is not too deadly but is capable enough to shot down some aliens. Second I miss to Disable short range bonus of this weapon. Balance Thanks in this game is quiet hard.... you can nerf it because they are over powered but if you lower ther stats players don't use it... admit that is a hard question.

Aircrafts:

I don’t really get what Appollo and Su-30 are for. Couldn’t figure it out. Waste of pixels. Condors are just better.

With the introduction of DYNAMIC UFO SPAWNS, we notice the necesity of a long range scout. This aircraft is awesome reaching some points of the map and intercepting certain types of UFOs. There is other feature of this aircraft, they are cheap and cost less to maintain.

Weapons:

Very sexy (especially Zephyr) but technology is not very well balanced. At second time I just rushed to laser instead of investing another extra pistol. I think all advanced ballistics should be packaged in one tech. Cause it leads to stupid situations when u don’t use half of the roles cause current mg is worthless in compare to rifleman even despite rifleman do not provide any suppression.

For example u don’t need shields anymore when you have Coyot armor.

We notice the same problem in version V5.1, but in V5.2 laser weapons are other different type of weapon. The use of Advanced Ballistics is clear, the aliens progressively become more aggressive and players need small tools that can be easy to reach to take some advantage in GC. At some point AV.Ballistic become equivalent BUT different in role from lasers, if you research the complete tree of advanced ballistics you have some nice bonus for late Tier2/3 games, The HMG Korhang and Tactical Launchers.

Double pistols for commandos? And also you have to manufacture special “double” version. Looks very unprofessional (“hey look our game engine do not allow you to hold anything in the left hand, but don’t worry pal our code masters will etc etc”). Never show such a technical details.

This is something that in some part we cant control, the system dosent support dual shots, so we make the same weapon BUT different opcions, why? because single warhark has laser sight and the Duals dont. Laser sight gives a little range boost and accuracy boost for this pistol.

Bugs:

There is billion of them. Invisible trees. Aliens shooting through the walls. Game crashes. Soldiers throwing grenades under himself. ETC.

Dont ask me, this is obviously vanilla issues.

Alien weapons:

Very nice, especially stun cannon. But it is also very unbalanced cause u don’t need to bring any stun weapons anymore. Aliens will stun themselves automatically ;] (“How convenient for me!!!”)

This is part of the problem of Vanilla system, I try everything to avoid it... in V5.2 I found a kind of solutions. :)

Economy:

I really like the idea of producing items for sale but I think it allows to perform the “snowball” effect. More many u have more base u can have more base u can have more workers u have even more money u have. For example why not to build In every single base 7 workshops for example? Would be boring as fuck to click “produce more jackets”, “sell more jackets” but it is like 2-3 million per month for free.

Unfortunately you have to go on every single mission (Airstrike gives like 3-4 times less money + exp). Please make some Ufos disappear after being shot down and recompense loses in money for player somehow.

Yes this is a issue that we found in V5.1, but is already fixed in V5.2. The new version has a NEW complete system of economy. Part of the job is recover UFOs and Dissembling in you hangars. ABout the micro 99/99 manufacture I will talk to Solver if there is some kind of solutions to avoid this issue. :)

A.I.:

Strong point of this mod. Very good. Just one thing. How the hell aliens know when we are approaching to UFO and somehow always decide to run out of the UFO and perform heroic counter attack? It looks so silly and is so predictable (happens in 90% of crashsites).

THANKS!!! 40% of the coding time is reviewing the AI system, is time consuming and very hard to set... Maybe the AI dont have enough parameters. The Aliens have cameras and sensor outside their ships, they detect the incoming Humans. This fancy counter attacks only happend in small ships, and I think that is completely valid. If you are in a ship srrounded by aliens ... at least you try to use surprise factor. :D!

Graphics:

Destroyed objects looks like they would have been leveled down by bulldozer. Destroyed ground tiles, when there is many of them in one place, looks like some kind of a Turkish Carpet.

Destroyed objects (some of them like for example trees cars may be randomized) should leave some kind of impassable rubble instead of passable texture.

Damaged tiles and damaged objects looks very nice.

This is part of the vanilla system, we add some features for tiles, like "UFO PortHoles".

New Aliens:

Venoms are great.

What is the difference btw between Zombies Venoms and Raptors? Do we really need all of them? If it is somehow explained by story then np but for me it was the same shitt :]

Eggs are great! Good job!

Im glad that you like it, about Gargols and Reapers, they have HUGE differences and tactical roles in combat, In behavior, in Background (Gargols are captured altered humans that has forced to live in a feral state). Reapers are intuitive and inteligent frontliners and gargols are reckless, non intelligent distrupters.

Thank you soo much for your review! !!!!

Your awesome!

I will be glad if you run a test like this on V5.2!

Thanks!!!

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Yea. For some reason the installer wasn't correctly overwritting the files. Now I just could use some tips, as I haven't played much xenonauts anyway, some questions I have thus far:

1-When should I build another base? Is it Good to diferentiate the bases, as some in Air support etc? And what kinds of Airbases can and should I build?

2-Best way to deal with certain aliens? From what I have gathered thus far, snipers make a short work of those reptiles, and even grenades and a whole lotta shooting take their time to take out those zombie thingies.

3-Scout plane. What for? Usually If i need to find a UFO i should also need to shoot it down, but the Condor seems much better at this. Can you do certain things such as airstrike or support local bases with them?

Any sort of tips or general guide is apreciated. heck even linking to a vanilla Xenonauts guide will help. Also anyone else here, ignoring the games, does think that X-COM project sounds way cooler than Xenonauts (which kinda remembers me of a kids musical :P coount to three and shoot the alieeennn.... Oneeee Twoooo Threeee KABLAMO)

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Yea. For some reason the installer wasn't correctly overwritting the files. Now I just could use some tips, as I haven't played much xenonauts anyway, some questions I have thus far:

1-When should I build another base? Is it Good to diferentiate the bases, as some in Air support etc? And what kinds of Airbases can and should I build?

2-Best way to deal with certain aliens? From what I have gathered thus far, snipers make a short work of those reptiles, and even grenades and a whole lotta shooting take their time to take out those zombie thingies.

3-Scout plane. What for? Usually If i need to find a UFO i should also need to shoot it down, but the Condor seems much better at this. Can you do certain things such as airstrike or support local bases with them?

Any sort of tips or general guide is apreciated. heck even linking to a vanilla Xenonauts guide will help. Also anyone else here, ignoring the games, does think that X-COM project sounds way cooler than Xenonauts (which kinda remembers me of a kids musical :P coount to three and shoot the alieeennn.... Oneeee Twoooo Threeee KABLAMO)

Here's what works for me:

1. Use cover. If you operator is in the open, he will get hit.

2. Use LMGs. They are much more flexible now.

3. Use smoke and grenades aggressively.

4. Organize for success. Designate specific roles for each operator and know how that role will contribute to winning.

5. Be aggressive. It's easier to replace ammo and weapons than experienced operators.

6. Watch your spacing. Grenades have a tendency to arrive precisely when and where you don't want them.

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Yeah nvm. Now it's happening with Caesans in base defense. wtf

Oh god ... this what you get from giving aliens "wings".Can you upload save file ?Someone will check it tomorrow or tonight (I know that I am not going to because I am barely awake).

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