(Mod Update) XNT Into Darkness V6.0 - "Hellgate" (DISCUSSION THREAD)

[podbelski]

... to please TD:

I can't imagine playing Xenonauts w/o the XNT mod!!! BIG thanks for the effort to all XNT team!

[radek]

... and I will sum up what I agree with in radek's post, first come concrete suggestions:

- I'd like main weapon tiers to be designed differently, but it's hard to even imagine how. It's boring to see the same pistol/shotgun/rifle/MG variations with different animations and plain better stats

You miss my point. In my opinion we dont rly need completely different weapons every Tier. They are great as they are. Btw dont look at my feedback like on 6 separeted cases. They are all conected. What i think the problem of late is (one of them at least) is that no matter if soldier is noob but well equipped or pro but poorly equipped, he is useless. Only well expierienced and equipped soldier has value. When I said that Tiers hugly replace each other i did not mean to say that they are boring. They are not.

Maybe we should nerf dmg of ever Tier (each tier -10% respectively so -10, -20, -30) It would change the scale from useless-useless-lowThreat-Powerfull into something more smooth like lowThreat-mediumThreat-bigThreah-evenBiggerThreat

And by this provides more variety into battle. And also provide possibility to buy for money something that makes a difficult battle less difficult not a Impossible Battle completely easy. Do you know what i mean?

Generally what i was talking about was the fact that both weapons and aliens (all gc in general) do not scale properly with time. And u can see a great example of it, just look at the flashbang. Normal grenades scales up right? Flashbangs dont. What makes late game worse than early is that in late much of the game mechanics just become desynchronized (they desynchronize over time).

Edited November 8, 2014 by radek

[podbelski]

well I mean _on top of that_ I am bored, but was lazy to repeat what you just wrote. Laser/plasma shotgun are even making me crazed)

[radek]

About late game balance I completly disagree. I make lot of changes in lategame are focused not only in ground combat, humans become agile and competent dealing, xenonauts learn from the war how to deal and desing new wepoundry for war. The real balance coexist in Macro, the founding damage, the amount of UFOs and bases can overcome the player. If you play om veteran and insane you will notice this quickly. In that moment you discover the value of smoke grenades and flashbangs.

Strategic level and gc are two different layers. GC has problems with weapon scaling(like 2nd shield or flashbang), aliens scaling (in late some of them are useless, others are too op), expierienced soldeirs outclassing newbies and having no possibility to compansate it with quantity, no reason for taking risk or going at night etc. Read carefully what i have read. I was talking about detalis i know. Overall game is good dont worry.

Case 3: Yes I agree but here is on of the most stupid thing about the system. The soldier experience is gained faster if your soldier is a veteran, new soldiers gain experience slower.... that need to bw at the contrary.... but I can make soo much about it. The solution dont relay on increase the range of stats of new soldiers, relays on increase soldiers learning speed and reduce the maximun, why? Because your soldiers become veteran faster and the veterans dont have too much power.

Case 4: I desing the AI to respond to difficulty levels, if the alien have more TU the AI is improved, if you play in normal or easier the AI make mistakes.... If you play om Veteran or Insane the AI gets harder.

Its sad that system is made this way.

As to AI hmm im to weak for veteran.

Well latter I will write more answers.

Maybe if you write something good about the version?

Thank you!!!!

AI is good, graphics in xeno are good, air combat is better, laser rifle looks more sexy, new enemies, more dynamic combat system etc.

This mod is really good just when i started writing thins feedback i realised that it will be huge so I concetrated my self only on gc and only on mistakes

[drages]

Research tree is another issue..

I finished all the alien and human weaponary art for next XNT..

I coded the enemies weapon, and i will give them to enemies..

I will code the human weapons..

Even after those finished need to put about 50+ weapons to research tree.. can u imagine the tree? Coding is easy after u used to it but the main problem is to add them to tree with a logic.. and after research there will be manufacturing phase.. just to organisation of this parts takes tons of hours of brainstorming..

If u want to help about this, i can give the weapon lists... i dont give it here becouse it would be big spoiler..

Just know that, u will have all advenched flashbang-smoke-stun-chemical grenades and high explosives and enemy will have their own too..

Some enemy weapons can one-two shot u.. so u will use shields for sure and try to use guerilla tactics rather then rushing over..

As the name of the new version is "Before the Fall", you will die in vein .. i even remade all the mainmenu.. and i liked it

[podbelski]

... one more thing about "-10/-20/-30" nerfing: if you go this way you have to avoid the opposite drawback, when intermediate layers become too little of the benefit to spend money/workshop time to produce. Like you can realize you don't want lasers b/c it's better to wait for plasmas etc

I mean these things are tricky and personally I'm not currently inclined to one or another particular change. Adding more weapons can complicate everything even more, but lets hope Drages knows what he is doing)

[drages]

Yep I hope I know what I do..

But it will be not only damage as I said for 5 times..

Anyway u will die.. u won't care much ur weapon when u try to stay alive..

Aliens will have forcefield armor and health.. u will try to make enough damage to kill them.. die with honor at least..

[podbelski]

... I can try to further explain what I mean

within each tier you need a short range weapon, a universal rifle, a sniping gun etc. My vision is it will be more "realistic" to drop some cases, like there will be no dedicated short-range laser weapon. Or if it will be, it should not be such a dumb clone of the shotgun, though the possibilities might be constrained by the vanilla code... Eg throw away that plasma shotgun, make a plasma burner (a flamethrower upgrade).

Laser/plasma/MAG sniper weapons are probably good as is. Pistols also might be ok, maybe remove the MAG one. Not sure about MG-type, probably ok. But something is better be done to rifles, can't say exactly what... maybe later

I also partially dislike MAG weapons. My understanding is they are just electro-magnetic guns currently being prototyped in real life. AFAIK bullet speed is not linked to damage with straight proportion, eg there are special bullets with lower speed but higher "stopping effect". Or special bullets to damage flesh, the opposite is armor piercing ammo... This makes me scratch my head when MAG is presented as ultimate guns just b/c of the speed of the projectile. Maybe I don't understand correctly what the xenopedia says?

Edited November 8, 2014 by podbelski

[drages]

I got it know.. ur right.. I did like that but reconsider some branch. .

But u will die anyway..

[The_D]

I think I've made some progress, but I am still struggling and would appreciate any help:

"1. Use a clean Xenonauts build (Community Edition In steam). DONE

2. Download the XNT - CorePack DONE

3. Extract the content of the Corepack in "Xenonauts" folder. DONE

4. In the Launcher go to "Modding Tools" section, select "XNT" . . .?

So, I go to steamapps, common and I select the "Xenonauts" folder and I extract the package as the directions state WITHIN that folder; however, the mod does not appear in the modding tools when I initiate the launcher. Now, when I place the entire mod directly in the "mods" folder within Xenonauts, assets, mods--The mod DOES appear on the modding list! But, sadly, nothing happens when I active the game.

Yes, I am a daft fellow. But please--will someone guide me to the light?

Thanks.

[drages]

You need to have version 1.09.. but i dont know how to downgrade it from the steams v. 1.5...

u did right that as coping it to mods.. then u will select it at modding list then it should work..

probably its a version problem..

Edited November 8, 2014 by drages

[The_D]

Hi drages. Thanks for replying.

According to the launcher, I do have 1.09.

I'm thinking I am simply putting the file incorrectly into the game files or making a simple mistake because I put the ZIPPED mod in steamapps, common, "Xenonauts" folder and UNZIPPED (extracted) it there--of course, after doing so, nothing showed up in my modding list in the launcher.

So, maybe, if I ask you these questions, it would clear things up:

Drages, lets say you have the entire mod (already extracted) file on your desktop and you were going to manually move that mod into a folder in Xenonauts.

Which file would you move it into? Steamapps, common, Xenonauts? Or Steamapps, common, Xenonauts, assets, Mods?

And also, would you move the whole thing or would it be just the Hellgate folder within the main hellgate folder? Does that even matter?

Thanks again!!

[drages]

Just take the hellgate directory to the assets/mods..

Then copy the 2 exe files to the Xenonauts..

Start Xenonauts and choose the mod..

If it starts with new mainmenu screen its ok...

u should have 1.09 and 0.28 CE..

[The_D]

I've made further progress. Awesome. But not quite there yet.

Okay, I've downloaded 4 pictures showing you the directory of xenonauts and the mod directory. Also, there are pictures of the mod in the startup and, finally, a picture of the crash after trying to launch it.

(I obviously renamed the copied exe files by adding a "1" at the end because the other two originally in the mod file had the same name--not sure if that matters.)

I've tried to use both EXE files to start up the game and both fail.

Xenonauts1 just crashes like in the picture and xenonauts_gc_editor1 also crashes and then makes this memory dump file.

EDIT: I'm sorry, but the forum will not let me make them any bigger.

But it is the right version now.

Edited November 8, 2014 by The_D

[TacticalDragon]

The_D

Try to search for a command cleanfolder.bat in the assets folder.

Your running windows 8 that seems suceptible to temporal files.

good luck.

[Leng]

im a the only one who has a crash whenever i try to build a hunter with either rocket or laser and switch to the vehicle tab?

edit: and just noticed i cant build a corvette either without the same crash occuring..

Edited November 10, 2014 by Leng

[podbelski]

@Leng

is there any "disassembly" project on the list of your workshop?

[Leng]

i have a "corvette disassembling" one in aircraft yes

[podbelski]

known bug, there is no art for this project thus game crashes when goes to hangar.

either don't go there while such a project is on workshop list, or replace your XNT manufactures.xml with this one (unzip)

[ATTACH]5846[/ATTACH]

...or edit the file yourself (entries like ManTech.CorvetteDSB, the last tag should not be empty...)

manufactures.zip

manufactures.zip

[Leng]

do i need to start a new game for it to work? and also the 2 vehicle ones(laser and rocket) still crashes the game.

[podbelski]

no, just reload your savegame

can't help with vehicles (I don't use them), probably similar bug

[podbelski]

Omega's toxic smoke does not dissipate over time, is it possible to change this?

[podbelski]

... regarding the "burning smoke"

it appears after napalm grenade explosion or a flamethrower usage. I've made the animation a bit reddish to distinguish from normal dense smoke... I'm going to release this as a small mod soon (as well as a separate sound for elevators/teleports and psionic attacks)

[LORDPrometheus]

no, just reload your savegame

can't help with vehicles (I don't use them), probably similar bug

I've noticed that this bug is old and was present atleast as far back as 5.31. I've also found that switching to a different base while in the vehicle or plane tab then immediately moving to the storeroom crashes the game

[podbelski]

...uploaded my fix for napalm grenades