[XCE 0.31 + XNT 6.0] Out of the Sun: geoscape overhaul for XNT

[TacticalDragon]

@drages

But as it seems this mod is not for me, I do not waste any more time and attention. I hope this mod will get even better if the future. WTYD out.

I don't know what you both trying to do here, but I don't found any "constructive" in enter in a mod discussion and say I don't like it or disagree. If you want to say something write any feedback about the gameplay.

What is that "hard work-good advance" style that you mention Drages, you even imagine the amount of work that XNT has, and of course work that not every time see at first sight, for example BALANCE testing and gameplay design. For example the feature that your using of "Research-Lock" and "Armor Stats Boosting" was designed by Solver exclusively for XNT.

I believe that all of this post are respectfulness and don't give any real feedback to Podbelsky work.

Edited March 4, 2015 by TacticalDragon

[podbelski]

hmm... I sense a misunderstanding here guys)

Drages was talking about the gameplay - hard work of battling the aliens and as a reward good advance in money/stats, right?

[podbelski]

... v1.06 is another small update:

- Zephyr, AK47 added recoil

- minor increase to Laser rifle accuracy

- minor increase to berserk psi-attack range what makes it same power as Paralyze

- electroshock grenades: much faster research, auto-replace flashbangs when unlocked

- a couple more of GC loading screen tips

- alien grenades animation speed also reduced (overlooked this earlier)

- soldier HP growth made back like in vanilla (faster)

no further big plans on the mod, just want to finally adopt Armored assault mod but still don't have time for this

[Basck]

My two cents:

Early pistols range is too high in comparison to other weapons and later handguns (15 - starting pistol, 20 - Diablo versus 18 - AK47, 14 - Warhawk). I suggest 12 range for starting pistol and 13 for Diablo, I use these settings, it looks good.

Your mod is great, Podbeksky, well done. But there is a difficulty settings problem: Veteran is too easy for me, Insane looks too hard.

Edited March 8, 2015 by Basck

[podbelski]

TY Basck! Weapons settings are mostly from XNT, while I've made a few minor corrections. I'll try your settings and incorporate them if they are better.

try to tweak game settings to your taste as suggested here, and if you find suitable balance pls write me back

[ViniJones]

Now first, nicely done on the geoscape. I was very sceptical when reading your description, but the ground mission variety seems to have improved. I Actually had to do one nighttime. Which I didnt have to do since.. well, never.

I like what you did with the soldier stats. Though they still gain ranks too fast imho, the stats are fine. A crew of fresh privates armed with free advanced ballistics can hold their ground.

Love the morale system, I still consider psionics in this game retarded, but this is definitely a step in the right direction. I look for high bravery recruits, again never done that before.

Alien crews seem messed up? A scout crash-site had weaker aliens on board than a base assault one?

I dont like some of your GC loading tips, "Use planes to scout, but if you find a base, its cheesy, dont do that!". Wtf?

I mean its still better than "Retreat is always an option." or "Oh god, I hope its not androns.", but damn.

Cant really touch on the balance I reached Dec. on Insane, and the game started CTDing everytime an enemy should reaction fire. Was there a patch today or something?

Doing great, keep going.

Edited March 11, 2015 by ViniJones
Typos n shit

[podbelski]

hi :-)

I like what you did with the soldier stats. Though they still gain ranks too fast imho, the stats are fine. A crew of fresh privates armed with free advanced ballistics can hold their ground.

yeah ranks system is awkward to balance, still can't force myself to sit and calculate the optimal solution...

Love the morale system, I still consider psionics in this game retarded, but this is definitely a step in the right direction. I look for high bravery recruits, again never done that before.

I guess it's already modded close to the limits, and while I don't like some things cannot do anything about it. But yes it's pretty functional already

Alien crews seem messed up? A scout crash-site had weaker aliens on board than a base assault one?

this is correct IMO, why not? Scouting UFO never lands just flies and scouts, so why they should hold strong GC-ready crew? While base assault or base construction missions have strong crews. It's a general rule and is written in tips - ufos that never land have weak crews with lots of non-combatants. These GC are ideal to train your weaker strikecrews. The only thing is maybe I let recover datacores from crashsites, not sure.

I dont like some of your GC loading tips, "Use planes to scout, but if you find a base, its cheesy, dont do that!". Wtf?

I mean its still better than "Retreat is always an option." or "Oh god, I hope its not androns.", but damn.

I also don't like most of them but sorry this is the best I can do with my English skills ))

Regarding the tip itself, I mean _after_ a wave it's always easy to scout the whole Earth with your planes and immediately detect/neutralize an alien base (if it was constructed). This happens b/c bases are modelled as ufos with zero speed so the planes can detect them. Probably Kabill will fix this in his XCE updates.

Cant really touch on the balance I reached Dec. on Insane, and the game started CTDing everytime an enemy should reaction fire. Was there a patch today or something?

hmm that's strange and I don't think it's related to my mod, looks like a deeper problem, probably not even an XNT one. Turn off my mods, restart/reload a game, go GC and see if it still crashes like you said

[ViniJones]

this is correct IMO, why not? Scouting UFO never lands just flies and scouts, so why they should hold strong GC-ready crew? While base assault or base construction missions have strong crews. It's a general rule and is written in tips - ufos that never land have weak crews with lots of non-combatants. These GC are ideal to train your weaker strikecrews. The only thing is maybe I let recover datacores from crashsites, not sure.

That makes sense, though It might not be exactly what I meant. If I clear crashsite theres guards. If I let it land in my base theres an officer and soldiers. Wether or not it was the same craft though, Im not sure .

Oh yea the datacores, theres not really any money from clearing a crashsite, so while someone stated, you cant just airstrike all of them... You can, and now, its even profitable... bleh. Not to mention waiting for a corvette to research alenium. How about a chance to find an intact core in a crashsite, instead of a guaranteed one?

hmm that's strange and I don't think it's related to my mod, looks like a deeper problem, probably not even an XNT one. Turn off my mods, restart/reload a game, go GC and see if it still crashes like you said

Uh huh, I suspect XNT itself, it is one of them "secret encounters" crews... I guess ill try to finish the mission and see if the problem persists.

EDIT: Definitely not the crew. Even fresh start crash-sites CTD like theres no tomorrow.

Edited March 11, 2015 by ViniJones

[podbelski]

That makes sense, though It might not be exactly what I meant. If I clear crashsite theres guards. If I let it land in my base theres an officer and soldiers. Wether or not it was the same craft though, Im not sure .

I'm sure the missions were different or it's a bug I haven't seen yet

Oh yea the datacores, theres not really any money from clearing a crashsite, so while someone stated, you cant just airstrike all of them... You can, and now, its even profitable... bleh. Not to mention waiting for a corvette to research alenium. How about a chance to find an intact core in a crashsite, instead of a guaranteed one?

you can airstrike all the crashsites and it will be less profitable than clearing them in GC. But you cannot shoot down all the ufos, that's the point.

if I put back datacores into crash sites this will add a solid amount of cash overall, I don't know maybe 1 000 000? So I have to rebalance other parts, and I'm not sure is it worth doing...

next, you don't need a corvette to research alenium, you just need a "power source" from a landed scout ufo. Of course if you shoot all of them and/or miss landed ones you won't get a power source. Don't think it's unfair.

last thing, it's not possible to set a chance for a certain property to appear in a ufo or not.

Edited March 11, 2015 by podbelski

[podbelski]

... btw there is a known XCE bug that leads to game freeze, removing "<DeadSoldierNotificationDuration>3.0</DeadSoldierNotificationDuration>" from config.xml fixes it (the file in one of XCE folders)

[ViniJones]

Never seen a scout land. I played the early game a lot, wouldnt blame the randomness here.

As for the payout, unless you stun every crew member while clearing the crash-site, the loot is worth less than the airstrike reward, up to landing ship at least. This could be blamed on randomness though.

The game doesnt freeze, it crashes straight to desktop. The reaction fire never comes out, theres no soldier dying.

I might try re-installing.

[podbelski]

well, airstrike gives 2500 for a lightscout, 5000 for a scout, 10k for a corvette and 12500 for a landingship

GC gives similar amount of money for non-landing missions like scout or ground attack. Randomly might be a little less or more, but you also get experience for the squad.

[ViniJones]

well, airstrike gives 2500 for a lightscout, 5000 for a scout, 10k for a corvette and 12500 for a landingship

GC gives similar amount of money for non-landing missions like scout or ground attack. Randomly might be a little less or more, but you also get experience for the squad.

Aye, but soldier xp is not gonna pay for the interceptors. Ill be back, when I get further into the campaign, if I dont get pasted again.

BTW: I just got successfully reaction fired in the face, could be the reinstall could be the hotfix.

[podbelski]

... v1.07 another tiny update:

- now every 3 stat points gained by a soldier increase HP by 1 (previous version was 4). I think HP is a good stat to let player feel soldiers progress but not dramatically increase squads' brutality

- adjusted ranks system a bit, still think it's not optimal but it's hard to choose proper balance

- few weapons tooltips now properly split between XNT tweaks and OOS (just was lazy to do this earlier)

- minor change in GC tips

Edited March 13, 2015 by podbelski

[podbelski]

... v1.10

- important change to alien missions spawns during Dec-Jan-Feb: carriers appear a little bit later, but much more cruisers. Previous strategy proven to be bad, eg there was a big chance you could see a carrier before a single cruiser was spawned.

- a couple of minor corrections to GC loading tips

- mechanics of wounds is restructured, this is still experimental

[podbelski]

... v1.11

- minor but noticeable change: reduced mitigation of light/medium drones cannons. They were set 99 in XNT for some reason, it was strange to see how all the shots of the small drone are not stopped even by heavy tank armor

- another small adjustment to ranks, probably final or very close to final

- a couple of gc tooltips updated

[podbelski]

... v1.12, minor but noticeable

- now just 2 gained stat points result in +1 health to the soldier (was 3 points). The estimation is 20-30 hp growth during the game for main squad xenonauts

- a wound appears per every 5 points of damage taken, 100% chance (6/50% is XNT default). Each wound drains 1hp per turn. So you get more wounds but they are less deadly and won't drain another 15-20hp after a big hit. Also, healing consume more medkits which is good

- 3% bigger chance for a construction AM at a cost of a research AM

Edited March 20, 2015 by podbelski

[TacticalDragon]

About Drone's cannon

- This feature is quiet important in balance to reduce tge abuse of predator heavy armor, in some point this weapons are one of the ways to deal with heavy protection.

About the wound system:

Interesting aproach, is a bit lineal but sounds amaizing. :3

About soldiers stats:

I need to test on the ground.

Thanks for the advancdment.

[podbelski]

About Drone's cannon

- This feature is quiet important in balance to reduce tge abuse of predator heavy armor, in some point this weapons are one of the ways to deal with heavy protection.

in OOS, it's unlikely a player has a chance to produce lots of strongest armor, so the price is the way to deal with heavy protection )) maybe it's better to move these drone tweaks to the OOS then (atm it's part of XNT tweaks)

[Sentelin]

- This feature is quiet important in balance to reduce tge abuse of predator heavy armor, in some point this weapons are one of the ways to deal with heavy protection.

This makes sense .. well kindish.I also wondered why have you done this but whenever I was about to ask you, it somehow slipped my mind.

Ok back to the topic,you haven't really convinced me with what you wrote here,simply because you made change which affects late game to prevent "exploit of predator armor" (actually this is more of assumption) ,knowing that this will be game breaking and illogical for most people in early and mid game (now we are talking about balance issues ...).Just saying it's more of a patchwork than real solution

in OOS, it's unlikely a player has a chance to produce lots of strongest armor, so the price is the way to deal with heavy protection ))

This seems better way of dealing with "exploit",you should have done something similar.

On side note I like what you are doing podbleski with XNT.From what I've seen so far, I am not exaggerating when I say that you might be doing better balance job then we did,keep up good work.

a wound appears per every 5 points of damage taken, 100% chance (6/50% is XNT default). Each wound drains 1hp per turn. So you get more wounds but they are less deadly and won't drain another 15-20hp after a big hit. Also, healing consume more medkits which is good

I guess that logic behind this is to slowly wear soldiers down,rather than to present mortal treat (like in XNT where you have 50% chance to get wound but it's much more deadly and requires immediate attention).It's interesting change.

now just 2 gained stat points result in +1 health to the soldier (was 3 points). The estimation is 20-30 hp growth during the game for main squad xenonauts

Also interesting change and this could be solution to "hulk" soldiers (issue that XNT has in late game).

Edited March 21, 2015 by Sentelin

[TacticalDragon]

Drone armor mitigation not only affect damage, this variable affect suppression as well. This drones deals low damage but cause lot of suppression.

^^ Yeah I agree all the changes looks great!

[podbelski]

yep, now I like how a wounded soldier is able to take action for one-two turns before using a medkit. Or can survive in case if he panics due to the wounds.

previous XNT setup very often was taking all these options away. Also, it was quite possible to get hit for 20hp and have no single wound.

regarding drones, their mitigation is still quite high - I set it keeping in mind the armor values for jackal/wolf types. The idea is armors now absorb a few hits and then you take damage. I'll take a closer look at how it works, maybe something still could be tweaked.

btw I can share a detailed list of all the changes I've made if someone is interested

[Sentelin]

btw I can share a detailed list of all the changes I've made if someone is interested

Sure why not.I bet that it will attract more people if they've better insight of changes that you had made.

[gh0stwizard]

I had started on normal. Well, AI is more cheating and is not smarter (I've heard that XNT has better AI, I've dissapointed): in any terror mission there are 4-10 enemies which will stay in the houses like in vanilla, imo this is a stupid. They are terrorizing towns and does not came to sit down to watch TV Also, AI is much more annoing then in vanilla on an insane/veteran. And XNT adds even more bugs then vanilla game. I call this game buggynauts, I can't remember the game with such a lot of bugs.

Anyway, thanks for the mod!

[podbelski]

hmm... strange to hear about tons of bugs added by the XNT, can you name a couple?

regarding the AI, can't do anything about it, I even think the only way to make a significant improvement is to take part in community coding...