[1.65/X.CE V0.35.0] X-Division 1.00 Beta (1.00.11c)

[Nekonomimi]

The game freeze when preator(at alien base) shoots back

[eropadreco]

1 hour ago, sfarrelly said:

Can i ask you to try playing without those modifications. It's quite possible that one of the changes you made caused this freeze.

In the case that it still occurs without any modifications, then let us know and we'll look into it

 okay

[Sectiplave]

12 hours ago, Nekonomimi said:

The game freeze when preator(at alien base) shoots back

Confirmed this, any reaction fire from a Praetor gives the issue where the game tiles are still animated but the game is otherwise frozen.

[Nekonomimi]

the issue where the game tiles are still animated but the game is otherwise frozen repeated when reaction fire triggered  when steping on teleport,alien shoots destination point,but picture freezes before.

Edited September 17, 2016 by Nekonomimi
misstake

[drages]

18 hours ago, Nekonomimi said:

The game freeze when preator(at alien base) shoots back

 

5 hours ago, Sectiplave said:

Confirmed this, any reaction fire from a Praetor gives the issue where the game tiles are still animated but the game is otherwise frozen.

 https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B27Z44zoal_VeFpLWEI5RWhYRms ( MD5: ed3b69206211f4c781a1ae589358eb55 )

here is your hotfix for game freezing preators.. how can you beat those at early game? i gave them shittone of resistance and weapons.. 

Sadly, probably, you will need to restart that mission, from geosphere.

Edited September 17, 2016 by drages

[sfarrelly]

Hi everyone

We're currently looking at the economy of the game and how ground combats can be better integrated into it, so we'd like your feedback on a few questions.

All feedback is welcome and all will be noted.

1. Do you think the current money return for capturing an alien specialist alive is worth it ? What should be the appropriate money return for the effort of capturing a specialist alive?

2. How do you feel about weapon sell prices for every phase ? What amount should they be ?

3. How much money do you think should you make from a crashsite if you sell all loot for each UFO without datacores ? Should there be a race difference ?

4. Do you think you should receive money for capturing non-specialists alive?

5. Are there any items which you feel you receive an excess of from ground combats?

6. Are there any items you feel you don't receive enough of from ground combats? (i'd like to exclude both alien alloys and alenium from this as they're not exactly related to economy, more to manufacturing).

If you have any other related issues you would like us to address, then feel free, just bear in mind that we're talking about how the "rewards" for ground combat missions affect your in-game economy

[Nekonomimi]

8 hours ago, drages said:

how can you beat those at early game?

Yea that was hard...even more than Super red xenomorph mom...i made it with help of extreme stun granades looted from dead cae.

Is there a way to retrieve lands?..If i leave without attention alien bases,i will lose control of lands...

[Sectiplave]

I was able to beat the Praetor via stun grenade spam, I'm also in the middle of Phase 3 using Mk.3 Pulse & Mk.2 Gauss weapons along with the OP Spiritwolf mech, it does soo much damage it's crazy! It can one shot Alien Fortress Queen Xeno.

BUG#2, capturing the Praetor alive didn't give me any research option, just gave me $1,000 for the live subject. I assume capturing one alive should lead to a research?

@sfarrelly Here are my thoughts, my current play through I'm mid Phase 3 (May 1980) my top soldiers have been on over 90 missions, I'm playing on Normal and I am not using Easy Airgame mod as this mod imbalances the whole game heavily in favour of the player.

1. It's currently not worth it to capture specialists when you have already researched them, you can sell their guns for $5,000+ so the current bonus of $1,000 isn't enough incentive, especially considering you are spending $100/$250 per stun/shock grenade thrown at them, when bullets are free.

2. Weapon sell prices for Phase 1 are in a good place, you can make some bonus cash early on, however you sacrifice your potential cores when it comes time to make Mk.2 or Mk.3 weapons so it does present a valid choice to the player. In my experience Phase 2 weapon prices are irrelevant as you can make more than enough money selling downed Alien fighters and excess ship cores.

3. If you sell everything minus the data core I think the value should be close to what you would earn from air-striking the crash site, the incentive especially in X-Division from sending troops to the crash site is capturing alien specialists alive and taking their technology to gain more weapon cores and researches.

4. I would say yes, as non specialists are in my experience harder to stun a lot of the time. However this might need to be balanced with weapon sell prices as you could easily earn too much money from selling all guns and capturing enemies alive.

5. Lots of grenades that after you research one they have no further use. Balance idea = each phase you can mass manufacture Alienium / Plasma grenades but the advanced versions require an alien grenade from that phase to manufacture etc.

6. During the phase transition from 1 to 2 you can run out of alien stun grenades and not yet have shock grenades unlocked, this was a bit of a problem until I was able to research phase 2 stun grenades.

Economy balance thoughts; I sent Charon a copy of my save file at the 200 days mark, from memory I had almost 13 million dollars spare and I was running 4 fully equipped bases, my main base had absolutely plenty of supplies, lots of spare alien fighters, heaps of guns, over 1000 alloys and 500 Alenium and I hadn't performed DSB on any alien reactors etc. my thoughts are that the economy is currently far too generous both with starting money and how easily you can make money.

If you can perform to an average level in the Air game, the unlimited country funding also leads to you making more money than your bases require in upkeep. During the game I've been able to keep my funding about one million dollars ahead of my upkeep.

Suggestions;

• Reduce starting funds, give the player enough to setup three mid-sized bases before they have depleted all starting funds, this forces the player to make decisions about building up supplies for Mk.3 weapons or selling them to push for base growth or more bases.
• Set a limit on the funding provided by countries, obviously this needs to be higher than Vanilla due to the maintenance costs on Phase 3 and 4 aircraft being very high. This forces the player to cover more of the globe, and stop the possible exploiting of unlimited funding.
• Reduction in sale value of downed alien fighters, datacores and base cores. You can build up excess funds at the end of Phase 1 / start of phase 2 by assaulting alien Outposts before they can upgrade to a Base / Fortress and selling the basecore.
• Increase in manufacture prices of early game equipment, vehicles and aircraft, many of these vehicles / aircraft have cheaper manufacture costs than monthly upkeep costs.

My suggestions come from looking at difficulty of this mod comparatively to XCOM Long War, in which playing on Normal difficulty is very very difficult but gives you a decent chance of winning. Then once you know the whole mod well, you can try it on Insane for a challenge that you only have a ~50% chance of winning if you know all mechanics, and use optimal tactics.

This is an assumption on my behalf, what sort of difficulty are you guys looking for in this mod? Is Normal balanced around players who have come from Veteran Ironman XCE? That's where I came from myself.

Edited September 18, 2016 by Sectiplave

[sfarrelly]

Thanks for the feedback @Sectiplave. It should prove quite useful.

6 minutes ago, Sectiplave said:

BUG#2, capturing the Praetor alive didn't give me any research option, just gave me $1,000 for the live subject. I assume capturing one alive should lead to a research

This one is really surprising. Are you sure you stunned him? I have played through and captured a praetor with the base 99.3 files and doing so unlocked his interrogation so i don't really understand this.

[Sectiplave]

Yeah I intentionally didn't shoot the Praetor, just threw about 8 adv. stun grenades and 5 shock grenades until he passed out. I knew something was wrong immediately as he didn't show up in the list of things sent to Research, so I checked what happened to the Praetor and it didn't say corpse, just gave me the $1,000.

It maybe related to starting this play through in 0.99.2 and patching to 0.99.3 when I was already in Phase II.

I'm thinking once the next patch rolls around I might start a new play through. I've run into another bug at the moment, where I've been using the manual work around on 0 CD bug on terror and base attacks, but now they aren't showing up at all.

Also one other thing that would be useful, is the Sebillian and Caesan advanced profiles, it lists Operator Medium base Operator Cruiser, then it lists Operator Terror3, Operator Assault3 and one other one that is similar, it'd be real helpful to list something a bit more specific about where they can be found.

[sfarrelly]

4 minutes ago, Sectiplave said:

Yeah I intentionally didn't shoot the Praetor, just threw about 8 adv. stun grenades and 5 shock grenades until he passed out. I knew something was wrong immediately as he didn't show up in the list of things sent to Research, so I checked what happened to the Praetor and it didn't say corpse, just gave me the $1,000.

It maybe related to starting this play through in 0.99.2 and patching to 0.99.3 when I was already in Phase II.

Fixed.

4 minutes ago, Sectiplave said:

I'm thinking once the next patch rolls around I might start a new play through. 

I'll be doing the same thing

5 minutes ago, Sectiplave said:

Also one other thing that would be useful, is the Sebillian and Caesan advanced profiles, it lists Operator Medium base Operator Cruiser, then it lists Operator Terror3, Operator Assault3 and one other one that is similar, it'd be real helpful to list something a bit more specific about where they can be found.

Emm, i thought it was kind of obvious, but they can easily be changed i guess. Assault operators are found directing base assaults and terror operators are the ones directing the terror attacks and so on. The number is for what phase they can be found in, but yes, its not exactly "real" so we can give them ranks instead.

I need to talk to the rest of the team about this, but we'll sort something out.

[stem111]

Hi, thank you for continuing making this mod. I managed to finish it and want to post some issues/bugs I have found (for 0.99.3). By the way, it has good quality for the beta.

Minor issues:
- There was a map where tank can't exit chinok due to the presence of a kiosk.
- Sebillian terror operator corpses are red but while alive they are green.
- Alien Ballistic cannon (p1) is named as ### in the research screen.
- There is no research for reaper Alpha (and some other aliens like hariddan officer) – it is just executed. So you don't know should you capture them or not.
- Enchanted shield in X-pedia is written as Enhanced.
- If a plane is under construction (e.g. corsar) it is named in base view as foxtrot.
- Mag/Rail machineguns can't be equipped on Saviour/Hyperion.
- Hyperion on the battlefield looks like a tank and not like in the vehicles screen on the base.
- It seems that info about HP of alien ships or Aircraft weapons in X-pedia is not correct.
- Heavy smoke grenades appears without researching advanced smoke grenades first.
- Some elements demand different components (like xenomorphs, andrones, etc.) some don't. E.g. Sentelin armor demands only alien alloys and Ripper - demands alien components. The same with aircraft weapons – some demand alien weapons (which are in short supply) some only demands alloys and alenium (which are in abundance).
- The clothes of the crew in the base changes before “base upgrade” is researched.
- Bomber carrier - caesans with reapers (reapers should be with sebs?) (according to quantum cryptology center).
- Can't disassemble base cores.
- Alien dark rifle/cannon/pistol dsb etc. in Manufacture are in Basics section.
- It seems that there are no upgrades for base missile defence.

Serious bugs.
- It seems that there is no research after capturing high ranking aliens (e.g. caesan tactical commander, sebillian professor, caesan head engineer, caesan fleet commander, sebillian weapon commander). Since there is already no low ranking specialists it is impossible to get researches for previously missed aliens.
- (As I see this is already fixed.) Praetor's attack/counterattack (on alien bases) often freezes the game. Praetors in big ships and the final boss don't have such problems.
- Some dsb manufactures (e.g. incineration cannon/heavy) in p4 cause crash.

 

[drages]

You finished it? We did not finish it.. we did not even see phase 4 :). The mod is finishable at least :). Happy to hear that.

Thx for great bug catches. 

The most important one is about late game specialist. It should work as intended. We will check it again.

Do We have Hyperion? I thought I did not put it in to 0.99.. very strange. Can u send us a save?

 

[drages]

@Sectiplave

The difficult is planned as you said. At veteran difficult , you get a good challenge, normal is hard too but more forgiving. We wanted to add difficult to all phases as rising. So p1 would be easy p2 normal p3 veteran and p4 insane. Because all the xcom games get easier at late game because of the tech you got. Every phase at X division is like a new game with totally new coded aliens and their techs. So you never fight against lesser enemies. Even a veteran xenonauts or xcom player would have hard times because we are the only one who uses damage types and resistances so much with a complex research tree. 

We will do much more. A preator level race will be added. All the armour and vehicle manufacture system is changing now. New legendary weapons will be added. Buildings are mostly planned but waiting for a mapmaker. I hope a map making player want to join our team in future. We are praying for xce 035 to give you much better UI.

I don't think someone who likes old times challenges and a true management will play another xcom style game after this mod finished. 

[stem111]

1 hour ago, drages said:

You finished it? We did not finish it.. we did not even see phase 4 :). The mod is finishable at least :). Happy to hear that.

Thx for great bug catches. 

The most important one is about late game specialist. It should work as intended. We will check it again.

Do We have Hyperion? I thought I did not put it in to 0.99.. very strange. Can u send us a save?

 

Hi drages,
Thank you especially for this mod (I have played it since 0.98). I will send you a save after some time. Also I will post later some other my impressions.

I noticed that the end is “still under construction”

After Praetor interogation there is a research which leads to nowhere (wait a month for a bomb setup but in fact even 3-4 month doesn't change this situation). The ending is like in 0.98.

 

[sfarrelly]

7 hours ago, stem111 said:

- There was a map where tank can't exit chinok due to the presence of a kiosk.

Fixed.

7 hours ago, stem111 said:

- Alien Ballistic cannon (p1) is named as ### in the research screen.

Fixed

7 hours ago, stem111 said:

- There is no research for reaper Alpha (and some other aliens like hariddan officer) – it is just executed. So you don't know should you capture them or not.

Currently a live subject is required for some researches (The game keeps track on whether you've captured one or not, regardless of them being executed or sold). This will change when the new manufacture system is implemented.

7 hours ago, stem111 said:

- Enchanted shield in X-pedia is written as Enhanced.

This is deliberate

7 hours ago, stem111 said:

- If a plane is under construction (e.g. corsar) it is named in base view as foxtrot.

Noted.

7 hours ago, stem111 said:

- Mag/Rail machineguns can't be equipped on Saviour/Hyperion.

This is being fixed.

7 hours ago, stem111 said:

- It seems that info about HP of alien ships or Aircraft weapons in X-pedia is not correct.

The information in the small side-panel should be 100% accurate as it is pulled directly from the game files by the code. The information in the main text panel is roughly 0% completed except for new items which have stub entries indicating the most important information. This will be dealt with over time.

7 hours ago, stem111 said:

- Heavy smoke grenades appears without researching advanced smoke grenades first.

Fixed.

7 hours ago, stem111 said:

- Some elements demand different components (like xenomorphs, andrones, etc.) some don't. E.g. Sentelin armor demands only alien alloys and Ripper - demands alien components. The same with aircraft weapons – some demand alien weapons (which are in short supply) some only demands alloys and alenium (which are in abundance).

This is a part of the manufacture system which is not fully balanced yet. 

7 hours ago, stem111 said:

- The clothes of the crew in the base changes before “base upgrade” is researched.

That's correct, it is the same for the vanilla one. There are currently 4 stages AFAIK.

7 hours ago, stem111 said:

- Bomber carrier - caesans with reapers (reapers should be with sebs?) (according to quantum cryptology center).

The game code refers to both Reapers and Xenomorphs as Reaper in the quantum cryptology box. They are Xenomorphs in this instance if you actually play the mission.

8 hours ago, stem111 said:

- Can't disassemble base cores

Fixed.

8 hours ago, stem111 said:

- Alien dark rifle/cannon/pistol dsb etc. in Manufacture are in Basics section.

This is intentional as they appear in every phase from 2 onwards so rather than having to scroll back through all phase 2&3 DSB's while in Phase 4, you simply go to the basics tab.

8 hours ago, stem111 said:

- It seems that there is no research after capturing high ranking aliens (e.g. caesan tactical commander, sebillian professor, caesan head engineer, caesan fleet commander, sebillian weapon commander). Since there is already no low ranking specialists it is impossible to get researches for previously missed aliens.

This will be fixed. Research exists, but the corpses/stunned bodies still need to be fully implemented.

8 hours ago, stem111 said:

- Some dsb manufactures (e.g. incineration cannon/heavy) in p4 cause crash.

Fixed.

Thanks for the detailed list.  

[drages]

Muligan finished it.. i will miss them

[Sectiplave]

18 hours ago, drages said:

@Sectiplave

The difficult is planned as you said. At veteran difficult , you get a good challenge, normal is hard too but more forgiving. We wanted to add difficult to all phases as rising. So p1 would be easy p2 normal p3 veteran and p4 insane. Because all the xcom games get easier at late game because of the tech you got. Every phase at X division is like a new game with totally new coded aliens and their techs. So you never fight against lesser enemies. Even a veteran xenonauts or xcom player would have hard times because we are the only one who uses damage types and resistances so much with a complex research tree. 

We will do much more. A preator level race will be added. All the armour and vehicle manufacture system is changing now. New legendary weapons will be added. Buildings are mostly planned but waiting for a mapmaker. I hope a map making player want to join our team in future. We are praying for xce 035 to give you much better UI.

I don't think someone who likes old times challenges and a true management will play another xcom style game after this mod finished. 

Cool, then yes my feedback is that Normal difficulty economy is definitely too easy, I never struggled with funding and I was far from being optimal in my play style.

Yeah I am definitely spoiled now, I tried to play XCOM2 again and I found the game just didn't capture my attention. The only thing that could get me into XCOM2 would be if the Long War team made Long War 2.

Edited September 19, 2016 by Sectiplave

[a23s4a]

Some problems I noticed:

1) Shock rockets leave a bleeding mess of aliens very often. I thought that is correct because of rocket explosion power but at the end of a ground mission it turned out that I had taken many aliens alive!!! I don't have other stun weapons than shock rockets (I wasted all the materials for stun rockets production and all the stun rockets).

So this bleeding mess is my captured aliens!

I think this wrong animation is somehow misleading. By the way I could capture the alpha reaper alive only with a shock rocket though he and a couple of zombies near him literally disappeared (evaporated? :-)) after the rocket explosion.

2) I am at phase 3 now but the most effective and universal(!) weapons from what I had to research (rocket launchers are useful too but you don't have to research them) still seem to be antimatter rifles, antimatter pistols and antimatter miniguns. Their only weakness seems to be their damage per hit. May be I don't know how to use different weapons against different enemies but nevertheless I still can't bring the whole arsenal with my soldiers. Is there any table that shows different weapons effectiveness?

[drages]

11 hours ago, a23s4a said:

Some problems I noticed:

1) Shock rockets leave a bleeding mess of aliens very often. I thought that is correct because of rocket explosion power but at the end of a ground mission it turned out that I had taken many aliens alive!!! I don't have other stun weapons than shock rockets (I wasted all the materials for stun rockets production and all the stun rockets).

So this bleeding mess is my captured aliens!

I think this wrong animation is somehow misleading. By the way I could capture the alpha reaper alive only with a shock rocket though he and a couple of zombies near him literally disappeared (evaporated? :-)) after the rocket explosion.

2) I am at phase 3 now but the most effective and universal(!) weapons from what I had to research (rocket launchers are useful too but you don't have to research them) still seem to be antimatter rifles, antimatter pistols and antimatter miniguns. Their only weakness seems to be their damage per hit. May be I don't know how to use different weapons against different enemies but nevertheless I still can't bring the whole arsenal with my soldiers. Is there any table that shows different weapons effectiveness?

Hmm.. i think shock rockets are hitting hard :).. we will look for it.

You can find the info at aliens xpedia infos resistaces infos.. we will add more detailed info soon.

[drages]

And some good news.

Thx to Solver, he will soon solve our main problems. XCE 0.34.2 will come soon to handle our main problems.

- Manufacture UI: We will able to have as many categories as we want and with a new command to erase manufactures. This will result much more clean UI for you!.. With this support, we will bring you totally new armour and vehicle manufacturing with using alive/dead alien/drone bodies. Also new one time manufacture-update system will handle your micro management problems. We will only touch some annoying ones like shields, so don't worry.

- Melee creatures attacks vehicles: Yeah you won't able to hides behind your tanks from now on.

- A full overhaul at zombify system from reapers: With new code, we will change zombification from just one it zombies to zombify when killed. So the alien should kill to zombify. But it won't be only this. Now any creatures you killed spam something different when died, maybe a worse thing, maybe a little dangerous one.. Charon got sick ideas for terror missions.. welcome to new hives..

- Terror Mission Timer: We hope to get a fix for this too. 

This 4 things will change this mods future. 

Please continue to send us any bugs and balance problems. So before this new XCE version we can handle as much as old problems. At next version probably you will need to restart because we will add/change many things. 

[Sectiplave]

@drages "This 4 things will change this mods future." These are all significant game play improvements for the player 

Also it will fix the biggest battlescape exploit I know of in X-Division; where you can block hallways with your vehicles on Base assaults, making melee aliens invalid.

I am really looking forward to this one!

[blackwolf]

2 hours ago, drages said:

And some good news.

Thx to Solver, he will soon solve our main problems. XCE 0.34.2 will come soon to handle our main problems.

- Manufacture UI: We will able to have as many categories as we want and with a new command to erase manufactures. This will result much more clean UI for you!.. With this support, we will bring you totally new armour and vehicle manufacturing with using alive/dead alien/drone bodies. Also new one time manufacture-update system will handle your micro management problems. We will only touch some annoying ones like shields, so don't worry.

OH SWEEEET LORD HAVE MERCY, heeell yeaaaaaaaaah!, this is incredible news, i always get lost after phase 2 (even in phase one itself with so mk2 and 3 projects)...i hope that this new UI stuff includes some kind of "sort" algoritm or something so weapons try to keep with the same TIER between them (so all mk1 and mk2 stay separate and in order for example)

[drages]

5 hours ago, blackwolf said:

OH SWEEEET LORD HAVE MERCY, heeell yeaaaaaaaaah!, this is incredible news, i always get lost after phase 2 (even in phase one itself with so mk2 and 3 projects)...i hope that this new UI stuff includes some kind of "sort" algoritm or something so weapons try to keep with the same TIER between them (so all mk1 and mk2 stay separate and in order for example)

Everything will be in its own category so i don't think there will be a problem anymore.

[stem111]

@sfarrelly Thank you for quick fixing.

Here there are some my impressions about the game (it is my IMHO). I played 0.99.3 on normal without any other patches/hotfixes and didn't install any other mods (like easy airgame).

In general the mod is great. It has many new improvements in comparison with 0.98, and I have strong feeling that 1.0 will be even better.

- Due to high numbers of alien specialists it is difficult to follow who you already have captured. This can lead to situations where you miss some vital research to succeed in the game.
- To get a core of the ship you should capture it twice (one for research the second for disassembling). Taking into account the number of different ships for each phase (which differ only in their crew and color) – it can become boring.
- In X-pedia there should be more headings, otherwise it may be difficult to find something through many items (e.g. through dozens captured aliens).
- Due to many items it is difficult to find something in the Storeroom.
- Maybe it is only in my game but alien bases appear too often. Virtually every week I have an ufo trying to build a new base. Also they grow rather fast.
- Aliens big vehicles/mechs are cool but often they stuck somewhere or move very awkwardly. Though I think this is the problem of the game rather than the mod.
- Terror missions (both aerial and terrestrial) can follow one by one.
- IMHO AI in some aspects was better in 0.98. The reason is that now aliens are so aggressive that they often even don't try to fire from the distance but first go face to face to my units. Even reapers don't hide and move in the open.
- The presence of many civilians is more interesting. But terror missions with reapers in few turns transform the game from “xenonauns” to something like “walking dead”.
- As in 0.98 there are many reseaches and it is difficult to say which one will lead to better aircraft/armor/weapon. So the current solution is to research everything.
- Sometimes new weapon types in research go one by one (e.g. in one month it is possible to get all weapons of one type from MK-1 to MK-3). Maybe it is better to make MK-1 for p1, MK-2 for p2, etc.
- Airgame is more interesting but is very punishing. It would be nice to have something like a tutorial where different aspects of different weapons will be shown/described. Also to intercept big ships you often need more than 1 fleet with high probability of losing some of ships. Maybe it is worth to create new buildings like small angars (1 tile instead of 2) in the base for some small ships to make more fleets.
- IMHO new phases should begin slower (for example first 1-2 month only a couple of new ships from next phase) so that players could research new techs and manufacture new ships/weapons.
- I think that closed ufo doors make it easier to catch ufo since there are no backfire (ideally they should be closed only for xenonauts and not aliens). This maybe OK for big ships but not for small ones.
- In most big ships there are no aliens except in the cabin (e.g. cruiser - all clear but 12 aliens in the cabin). Though in p4 on some ships there are a few aliens in the first floor. Battleships have teleports to go outside the ship without breaking doors. I have a suspicion that all aliens leave the ship through these teleports to attack my troops.
- Endgame is not properly finished.
- As was already noted there is more money, alien alloys, alenium then you could spend.