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

[PALU]

Early on I'd expect smart aliens who care about succeeding would build bases in remote areas that hopefully are outside of your coverage, which I've seen some indications of. If they'd spawned in a remote area and stayed there when they build a base they should be able to succeed without you seeing it, rather than flying back and forth through your radar coverage to lead your aircraft to their building site... Later, when you've got more or less everything covered it's a lot harder. So far I've never been able to shoot down a landing ship (but I think I've taken out all escorts, but have probably not encountered "impossible" ones), but I'm not even sure it's desirable when they'll always land to build a base when on that mission, and that doesn't risk killing desirable interview subjects in the crash (but the fight is harder, of course). The optimum would be to let them land, build a base, and then shoot them down as they take off, for two sets of spoils from one ship (assuming you have the troops for it, of course), but that is probably rather hard to pull off.

I'm not familiar with ARMA, but it's a distinct difference between having various combinations (in particular bad ones, where the player actually messes up, rather than being misled by the game) leading to bad outcomes and what ought to be an optimal success strategy lead to failure without any indication that something is wrong. I've considered whether it would be useful to provide a hint in the landing ship description along the lines of "there's equipment that looks like it would be intended to build a base in the hold of this craft, but we can only get so much of out if when it is not assembled and loaded with the appropriate programs, so maybe we should let them build a base and attack it once built if they never manage to slip through our nets on their own?". Unfortunately, I think landing ships are used on other missions as well, which would make such a hint sometime appear from the wrong mission. Another possibility would be a loading tip.

A possible backup recovery would be to have sufficiently high ranking interview subjects provide you with the info you need to proceed with something you ought to have gotten a fair bit earlier. If so, the base stuff could be unlocked by a phase 3 leader, small base results by the corresponding phase 3 leader, and medium base by the phase 4 leader, or possibly all of those being unlocked by the phase 4 leader. That, of course, would mean messing with the research tree.

[Charon]

1 hour ago, PALU said:

A possible backup recovery would be to have sufficiently high ranking interview subjects provide you with the info you need to proceed with something you ought to have gotten a fair bit earlier. If so, the base stuff could be unlocked by a phase 3 leader, small base results by the corresponding phase 3 leader, and medium base by the phase 4 leader, or possibly all of those being unlocked by the phase 4 leader. That, of course, would mean messing with the research tree.

I thought about it ... and all it does is streamline the game for players who dont explore every angle of the game. There is a reason why chemical warfare is xenomorph/reaper exclusive. There is a reason why you definitely need to capture a technician unit. There is a reason why you won´t be able to produce assimilated alien interceptor without the navigator class. Streamlining the game just rewards less thinking and less gameplay. Whats the point of making a plan, when higher level research unlocks everything later on anyway ? If you are missing something, you are missing something.

Apart from that once the first construction missions spawn there will be the Lore+ construction mission entry for people to read. Jumping from the information "Aliens are trying to build bases" to the conclusion "Maybe i should let them build a base ?" is not a big one. Even mulligan comes to this thought in his videos very early on. But either you are premasticating every bit of gameplay for the player or you will just give them the information and let them come to their own ideas and conclusions.

Look, the point im trying to make is that todays video games try to put an illusionary freedom of choice on you. X-Division on the other hand gives you the tools and lets you explore valid strategies for yourself. That necessarily has to include failing, otherwise it wouldnt be a free choice. But you have to start small. Giving players the challenge of coming to their own conclusion will mature them. To start thinking for yourself is something no game, and no person is able to give you. You can only take it. But in order for you to start your journey somebody/something needs to pose a challenge. You need to make a point to yourself why you should put energy into independence, and somebody has to make a case for it, to you. This is why having the small steps of coming to your conclusions really matter. And i consider the voluntary construction of alien bases a really small hop, but in the great scheme of things a big step for the player.

Edited October 27, 2018 by Charon

[PALU]

It's a very big difference between "you missed out on it because you didn't bother, even when you were given hints", on the one hand, and "you missed out because the RNG didn't roll in your favor, so you didn't get a chance to bag one of those rare chances", as well as "you were doing too well, so you missed out on the opportunities failure would give you" on the other.

"The aliens are trying to build bases to help their efforts: maybe we should allow them?" doesn't make much sense unless you have some idea why giving ground would be tactically sound rather than just stupid. The only apparent reason for letting them build bases that I can see is that more alien missions = more opportunities to grab resources for myself (at the expense of the ones I'm supposed to protect).

I am for failing because you made bad decisions in the face of basic information. I am against failing because the game deliberately refrained to tell you things you can't find out in-game, or things you can find out only when it's too late: Games should generally be self contained, not dependent on meta knowledge such as previous complete failures (not getting trashed in your first mission against a foe as you can just reload a save and retry, but being told that you should have spent the last 3 months building completely different gear than you did, so you're screwed) or strategy guides. I'm also against rewarding deliberate bad strategy/performance.

[Delta]

So what happened to the ''new awacs per phase'' idea? I've looked around in the mod files and there are assets already named archelon and fortress.

Has this idea been scrapped? Right now we just start the game with an awacs which usually ends up decommissioned almost immediately from what i've seen in playthroughs.

[Charon]

I need some input. We have the chance for TU damaging weapons, but the AP damage only works if the weapon does damage in the first place. So this works best for weapons which already have a high penetration ( like snipers ), but it should actually be a buff for low penetration weapons ( like shotguns ). Any ideas on how to balance this out ?

[Charon]

@PALU I want to add the andron terror corpses in the appropriate robodogs. Can you remove the dummy from the andron terror androns ? Is that ok ?

 

Edit: Hold on a second.
So there is no way to add corpses to drops, which is not the main one.

 

Edit2: So i added the disassembled items from the andron terror soldier, warrior, elite and officier to the robodog terror soldier, warrior, roboreaper terror elite and robodog ghost manufacture. This avoids the problem of producing another corpse in ground combat and fits nicely into the exisiting transformer lore. manufactures.xml

Edited November 2, 2018 by Charon

[Charon]

@PALU Im also working on a the maim idea for shotguns and other weapons. You basically deduct TU for the next turn if damage gets through. How does that sound ? Do you think that has a place in the game ?

[Dagar]

I think the usefulness depends on how many shots it takes, on average, to kill an enemy with a shotgun and how many you need for the first point of damage. In phase one enemies go down very quickly to shotguns once their armour is degraded enough to penetrate, so the TU deduction would only matter in the small set of encounters when you already hurt the enemy with a shotgun without killing it.

Later on this might be more useful against enemies with high HP and relatively low armour.

How would you weigh TU deduction vs. damage done?

[Charon]

9 minutes ago, Dagar said:

How would you weigh TU deduction vs. damage done?

Once the first point of damage is done the full AP penalty is applied.

This is also the reason why it is so hard to find a useful niche for it, because once all the armour is gone you kill a unit in one or two shots anyway. Once again this is more likely to be a feature which supports trying to stun a single target. Think about reapers with 40% less TU at the start of the turn and you will see where it really shines.

Edit: I also really would like to have a visual indication of the AP damage, in the same manner as the suppression one. But without XCE we cant fix anything in that regard. Every feature needs a lot of support to even remotely start being fun and integrated.

Edited November 2, 2018 by Charon

[PALU]

The manufacture changes should work well to cover the transformer part, yes (although it raises the question why other robodogs/roboreapers/androns are "incomplete": if they're really all the same unit, all of them should really drop the same parts. One could argue that the transformation stations added and removed parts as necessary for weight reasons, though).

Suppression is a binary AP reduction measure that doesn't require penetration, so the function sort of exists already, but then you'd be able to suppress the unit at range as well...

I don't think "maiming" makes much sense, given that the AP reduction effect is recovered from on the next turn, so a disorientation/off balance effect makes more logical sense. Being able to sap APs from biological tanks would be rather useful, if it means living another round to finish the job (which may be capture), and might make shotguns useful (I don't use them at all, as my only experience of them is a very early mission where I shot a Sebillian at point blank with a shotgun and achieved nothing at all. I've used SMGs though, even if they frequently have been about as effective, but at least you can carry a shield with it).

I don't bother capturing Reapers except one of each for study, as they're useless, and you don't even have the "benefit" of avoiding an acid cloud release. They're the kind of units I don't care one whit about splatting completely.

[Charon]

1 hour ago, PALU said:

The manufacture changes should work well to cover the transformer part, yes (although it raises the question why other robodogs/roboreapers/androns are "incomplete": if they're really all the same unit, all of them should really drop the same parts. One could argue that the transformation stations added and removed parts as necessary for weight reasons, though).

You could simply explain it as the reason why some units can transform on the battlefield, and others cant. Most other dogs also dont carry any weapons with them, because they cant transform on the field which is why they dont need them.

 

 

@PALU @Svinedrengen @Dagar

New AP Damage System

I have added the new AP Damage to some weapons now. AP Damage will be something kinetic exclusive, except for dedicated shock and electron weapons. So here is the system.

The AP Damage has been calibrated to sap around 50% of time units from the lowest AP unit in that phase. AP Damage has been given to multi projectile low penetration weapons, namely kinetic shotguns and smgs. The way it works is that as soon as the first damage point gets throught the full AP penalty gets applied. Hence why i would explain this as temporary maiming a target, since if armour fully absorbs the blows no penalty is applied. However @PALUyou can find a suitable term for it. The string for the weapons is called "MAIM up to" since only a single debuff gets ever applied, either the highest one, or the last hit ( untested ).

What happens when an unsupressed unit gets hit ? 50 TU - 25 AP = 25 remaining TU.

What happens when a suppressed unit gets hit ? ( 50 TU - 25 AP ) / 2 ) 12.5 remaining TU

So as soon as a unit is supressed the penalty gets basically halfed.

AP Damage is more maiming for targets which already have low TU in the first place ( androns, operators, non-combatatants ), and less of a problem for higher TU units ( dogs, reapers, small xenomorphs, etc ... )

 

I dont want another unexplained feature in X-Division so i would really like to have a good explanation in the Xpedia for this. Propably in the Knowledge.GroundCombat one. @PALU I personally would make a strong connection to the maiming effect having to do with real bullets.

 

The other thing i revised are shock and electron weapons I upped the EMP damage, and gave them a slight AP Damage bonus, since they are likely to do earlier damage than shotguns, and also their high emp damage makes sure the AP debuff gets applied to the already low TU androns asap. This makes the shock and technology slightly better in what they are doing, namely stunning and disorienting targets, while maiming and dealing considerable damage to androns. Shock and Electron weapons are the least effective against biological units with high energy resistance.

 

I will upload a commit as soon as possible. Ofcourse all of this needs some testing so i would like to ask everybody who wants to try this out to be part of balancing, before the version goes live.

 

Edit: Maybe we can literally use the word SHOCK for this instead of MAIM. The String would be "SHOCK up to" than.

Edited November 2, 2018 by Charon

[Charon]

UNOFFICIAL

 

updated X-Division 1.00.10

Notes:

• X-Divison has gone the step to replace vanilla files. There has been an original file added for every replaced one in case you want to deinstall the mod. In case of doubt make a reinstall of the game or verify game integrity through steam.
• You only need to download and install the latest Patch avaialble, it contains all prior fixes as well.
• The .01 to .10 patch is NOT savegame compatible. If you want to make it savegame compatible you need to make a backup of your researches.xml, run the installer, and immediately copy your backup over the new file again. You will miss out on the fixed researches but you can continue the campaign.
• As a basic rule, never patch during Ground Combat

 

Installation:

1. The Base for this patch has to be version 1.00.00 or higher. This update is not available for versions lower than 1.00.00 .
2. Download the X-Division 1.00.10 Update:
   https://mega.nz/#!dBxUSKjQ!B0UB9WrlrSlG77Z8YNDUWyp6Yc3hLmw78C8XKlGC2aI
   Link
   ( MD5: c0083b44763a0c3f5248fd22e3871a9e )
3. Deactivate your ANTIVIRUS/UAC program(s), it can intervene with the installation. As soon as the installation finishes you can activate it again.
4. Start the executable provided in the file. Follow the instruction of the installer
5. After you have used the installer there is no need to change ANYTHING anymore, everything has been taken care of, including scripts, modloader priority, and everything else you may think of. The only time you might want to change something is if you are activating/deactivating No Airgame or change the soldier models. Enjoy .

Changelog:

Dunno, i changed a lot. These are the things i can remember:

• Fixed some bugs around the Roborex
• Roborex explosion on death no longer causes overdamage
• Roborex explosion radius decreased from 6 to 4.5
• Halfed kinetic armour for semi-shield roboreaper. Their weak point should now be weaker
• Halfed energy armour for melee roboreapers. Their weak point should now be weaker
• added mitigation to human stun gas
• added one loading tip
• improved the AI of Drones a bit
• most importantly added X-Divison Palu's Shining Xenopedia to the game
• 7 new categories for the soldier equipment screen
• I think i also added the latest Monument IV map by Svinedrengen to the map pool
• new mod: Nerf The AI: The aliens have less sightrange, deal 20% less damage and have 10% lower stats.
• new mod: X-Divison Don't Die On Me ! :If your soldier doesnt blow up, takes a minigun point blank or gets left behind he WILL survive the mission.
• new mod: X-Divison Easy Airgame: Did you ever wanted to try out the manual combat but were put off by the difficulty ? Look no further, this is what you need. UFOs have 50% less hp, while your aircraft are 20% faster and have a 20% further range. Additionally the refuel, rearm, repair and recovery rate are 30% faster.
  Only TOGGLE this during a Geoscape save.
  The Xenopedia page doesnt correctly display UFO hp values with this. Its 37.5% for the lowest difficulty and 50% for all other difficulties of the displayed hp values.
• new mod: X-Divison Slower Invasion: The Invasion escalates 25% slower
• new mod: Empower Facehuggers: This will improve the AI of facehuggers, but as a side effect they will also be able to attack vehicles. Ofcourse this is not intended gameplay which is why it isnt in the base version. If you want to give facehuggers their intelligence back while having to drive your vehicles cautiously around this is for you.
• appended unobtainable andron terror unit loot to appropriate robodog/roboreaper units
• new feature: AP Damage: MAIM/SHOCK damage that reduces TUs for the next turn.
• revised Shock and Electron weaponry

 

I think i will let a week pass and if no major issues come up this is going public. And then we can put a rest to future updates i think. @PALU The Shining Xenopedia mod still has description as its descriptions. If you want to input a proper description you have time until the release.

Edited November 2, 2018 by Charon

[PALU]

I'd rather call it "shock" than "maim" as suggested.  If I understand it correctly, real world shotguns frequently don't kill due to lethal damage, but a shock caused by the sheer mass of injuries that, had they not been inflicted at the same time, wouldn't have been lethal in combination.

Explaining the shock effect will require a bit of thinking, as I don't think there's a significant difference between getting a slug punching a hole in the body compared to a laser beam or a plasma drilling one, and while real world logic isn't the main thing here, it would still be nice to say something that can be accepted with a generous helping of suspension of disbelief. I'll try to come up with something later today.

So far I've gotten the feeling that Kinetic weapons have been a bit under powered compared to Energy ones because most things have a much better Kinetic resistance than the Energy one, so without having seen it in effect, it feels a bit like a balancing improvement to provide an edge to Kinetic weapons (I would change the equipment loadout depending on the enemy to a greater extent if I had been able to produce enough alternative weapons to use, and this would probably favor such an approach more).

[Dagar]

I'd think of something like off-balancing the unit, but I fail to find an eloquent word for that. It would however also hint at the temporal nature.

@Charonwhat happens to shocked units that are then suppressed? From what you wrote I expect them to have half TUs next turn while not being able to reaction this turn, right (so, exactly the same as if shock had not applied)? What about Xenonauts becoming shocked by enemy fire?

[Charon]

30 minutes ago, Dagar said:

@Charonwhat happens to shocked units that are then suppressed? From what you wrote I expect them to have half TUs next turn while not being able to reaction this turn, right (so, exactly the same as if shock had not applied)? What about Xenonauts becoming shocked by enemy fire?

Shock doesnt matter in the turn it is applied, but is exclusively used for the next turn. Whether you suppress a unit before or after you shock it is irrelevant. Units that are shocked and suppressed, first have the shock amount deducted and the remaining TU halfed. In our example above this would mean they have 25% remaining.

In Phase 4 this may look like this:

    <Rank  type="Elite"> 90 tu, 45 ap
unsuppressed: 90 - 45 = 45 TU
suppressed: ( 90 - 45 ) / 2 = 22.5 TU

<Rank  type="OperatorBattle"> 50 TU, 45 AP. 
unsuppressed: 50 - 45 = 5 tu
suppressed: ( 50 - 45 ) / 2 = 2.5 tu

As you can see depending on the type of unit it may completely disable a unit forever. Dont worry about Praetors, their weapons have such low tu requirements, they squad-wipe your team even with a 45 tu penalty. Still a nice bonus if you get that penalty going though.

If the damage for andron gets through in Phase 3 you have this example on average:

    <Rank  type="Warrior"> 65 tu
Electron Weapnory: 65 - 15 = 50 tu
shotgun weaponry: 65 - 35 = 30 tu

in phase 4
<Rank  type="Elite"> 70 tu
electron: 70 - 15 = 55 tu
shotgun 70 - 45 = 25 tu

Since androns mostly carry heavy weapons that means a fully controlled andron for that turn. Although it is questionable how much effort you have to put into shredding all the armour of an andron. Shotguns are not meant to be used as a counter to androns, it is just a technical example how far you could go. Electron weapons are dedicated mechanic killers, and slow them down a bit. Here is another example using a heavy sebillian tank:

<Rank  type="tankupg"> 45 tu
shock weaponry: 45 - 10 = 35 tu

That can basically take the second shot out of the equations and/or even scare the tank to retreat. Shock and Electron weapons are basically single target crowd control manipulators. Sometimes having 1 soldier deducting that 10 point of tu really takes the edge out of a situation, which otherwise could be way more dangerous. Also works well against sebs.

 

The same principles apply to xenonauts, either targeted by hostile or friendly fire. The semi-shield roboreaper already uses shock attacks, which coincidently also ignores shields.  ( Muahahahahaha )

Edited November 2, 2018 by Charon

[PALU]

The mid paragraph below has been inserted into Ground Combat in between the one above and below.

:

Our melee weapons will be a special treat because a trained soldier will almost always be able to bypass or break through the armour, but against the hardest of targets. Also note that melee attacks are able to work around shields, thus ignoring their effects, and this is valid regardless of whether the attacker is our soldier or an alien unit.

Another consideration is that Kinetic weapons, i.e. the ones we have now, seem to have an interesting side effect that's not shared by Energy ones (wielded by Caesans): they rattle the unit hit and injured (we'll call it Shock, for the lack of a better word), which causes them to lose TUs due to the need to recover. It seems even robotic units are affected, possibly because of short circuiting. A very similar, but technically distinct, effect is caused by Shock weapons, where biological units are disoriented and subjected to spasms through the electrical current playing havoc with nerves, while robotic units have their circuits temporarily disabled by EMP effects (on top of any direct damage EMP effects present).

Also, if your men think they can unconsciously sleep through a mission you should wake them up with some special adrenaline packs which you will find in the medipack.

:

[Charon]

1 hour ago, PALU said:

The mid paragraph below has been inserted into Ground Combat in between the one above and below.

:

Our melee weapons will be a special treat because a trained soldier will almost always be able to bypass or break through the armour, but against the hardest of targets. Also note that melee attacks are able to work around shields, thus ignoring their effects, and this is valid regardless of whether the attacker is our soldier or an alien unit.

Another consideration is that Kinetic weapons, i.e. the ones we have now, seem to have an interesting side effect that's not shared by Energy ones (wielded by Caesans): they rattle the unit hit and injured (we'll call it Shock, for the lack of a better word), which causes them to lose TUs due to the need to recover. It seems even robotic units are affected, possibly because of short circuiting. A very similar, but technically distinct, effect is caused by Shock weapons, where biological units are disoriented and subjected to spasms through the electrical current playing havoc with nerves, while robotic units have their circuits temporarily disabled by EMP effects (on top of any direct damage EMP effects present).

Also, if your men think they can unconsciously sleep through a mission you should wake them up with some special adrenaline packs which you will find in the medipack.

:

I would like to get pointed out that the SHOCK effect only gets applied once the armour is penetrated ( damage numbers appear above the unit ) and that the SHOCK effect doesnt get applied if the armour absorbs all damage. This needs to be in the Xpedia.

This is the reason why i would rather describe it along the lines of certain weapons with SHOCK effect are using special bullets with an anti-infantry structure. These kind of bullets are highly effective against non-, or less armoured targets, but possess next to no penetration effect. Since shotguns and smgs are mostly used against biological units with low armour, or as armour shredder weapons the bullets for those kind of weapons have received a modified update to complement their combat role. Before i talk further about the subject here is a picture which can represent such anti-infantry magazines.

As you can see these kind of bullet was designed to disperse as much of its kinetic energy on impact as possible, while loosing mostly all of its penetration power. The reason why standart bullets are not that lethal is that they dont really disperse much of their kinetic energy into the body, but pass right through it. A single bullet like in the picture anywhere on an unarmoured part spells most likely instant death, even with a medic right beside the soldier. I dont have to mention that these kind of bullets are illegal to use on humans, as their only goal is to kill. You mostly also avoid using them warfare as they have worse air resistant attributes than normal penetration ones.

The kinetic SHOCK effect is easily explained as the combined force of  hitting a target, while the bullets disperse almost all of their energy onto the target. The impact is that the whole body gets crunched, which is taxing even for alien bodies, lungs are getting pressed upon, and the muscles have to work against the sudden shock. Needless to say that your reflexes will have to take a moment to recover, as getting punched by a wall sized sledgehammer means the body simply needs a few seconds to recover their normal physical capability.

The same thing can easily be described for androns. Once the armour is done for, the dampers against physical shocks are not enough to guarantee that the bipedal system works without errors anymore, and energy has to be redirected to make sure functionality is given before taking any additional actions.

The shock/electron SHOCK is easily explained as the attempt to overload energy circuits, and additional energy has to be spend to reinstate functionality for the unit. On biological units its the spasm as you described it, although i wound point out that shock/electronic weapons SHOCK effect is not meant to be used on biological units, so their effect is limited.

Like i said we have to get into players head that only when the armoured is pierced, the SHOCK effect is applied. We dont have any visual indication for this, so we gotta bring that point across.

Edited November 2, 2018 by Charon

[Charon]

@PALUMy suggestion is to only make a rudimentary entry about the SHOCK effect in Knowledge.GroundCombat, that is that some weapons possess the SHOCK effect and that it reduces TU for the next turn if the armour should have been penetrated, but than cover the subject in detail in teh corresponding weapon entries, eg. shotgun and smg ones, as well as shock and electronic ones.

[PALU]

HIT AND INJURED was intended to carry through the message that injury is required, but it might be too subtle. Also note that there is no "wall sized sledgehammer", as the movie trope of having people flung all over the place when hit by bullets is totally bogus: the force imparted is slightly less (due to air resistance) than that felt in the recoil of the gun. Also, if there was such an effect, armor would absorb it all and still throw the unit across the street.

The reason flaring bullets are so deadly is that the tear up so great exit holes (and the hole in the body grows as the bullet expands), not because of a huge kinetic energy transfer.

Also note that there aren't any non-or lightly armored enemy target (except one...), although the non combat units aren't getting better armor. However, it may well be that those bullets are good for shredding armor, as the less mitigation you have, the more shredding you get (at a rather poor conversion rate, of course).

Lots of holes in an Andron are bound to damage at least some circuits, resulting in a need to reconfigure and re-calibrate, so I think we basically agree there.

I usually use the shock gun on biological targets, as it's usually too weak to kill an Andron, requires you to get very close, and uses a lot of TUs, so you're left standing in front of a non-killed Andron, although sapping TUs from it may change that equation (and softening it up with regular damage before the shield bearer steps up tends to work as well, but I'd probably still try to use an axe, which is a great secondary weapon for a shield bearer). Also, EMP effects (like Stun effects) aren't that easy to understand. You see damage numbers, and it does seem whacking on a target with a whiffle stick makes it more vulnerable the next turn, but it seems at least biological units recover from it at some rate.

So, if I read it correctly, the only weapons actually having the Shock effect are the Kinetic shotguns/SMGs and the Shock/Electron weapons. Is the effect restricted to shotguns/SMGs + the dedicated Stun/EMP weapons, or are the effects just smaller for other Kinetic weapons? It would certainly make a fair bit of sense that non/low penetrating bullets may be the only ones to have that effect.

[Charon]

11 hours ago, PALU said:

HIT AND INJURED was intended to carry through the message that injury is required, but it might be too subtle.

Jup, at least i didnt understand it as such, especially since the more important SHOCK explanation comes right after it.

11 hours ago, PALU said:

The reason flaring bullets are so deadly is that the tear up so great exit holes (and the hole in the body grows as the bullet expands), not because of a huge kinetic energy transfer.

That is ... the same. The reason why standart penetration bullets dont cause so much damage is because they shoot right through the body, only transfering very little kinetic energy into the target. The reason why expanding bullets are tearing holes into a victims body is because they increase their area upon impact, and thuse transfer an infinite more amount of energy from the bullet onto the actual body ( think about it like a miniature steel fist ).

Check the EMP values, i increased them greatly.

Also, that blue numbers above mechanical units appear is a pure visual vanilla bug, no stun is actually done to mechanical units. Blue numbers also dont have any correlation to EMP, EMP damage is RED, like normal damage. The way EMP works is that it checks if the actual damage, or the EMP damage ( if applied ) is higher. The game then takes the higher number and displays it as a red damage counter. Easy to understand once you know it.

11 hours ago, PALU said:

but I'd probably still try to use an axe, which is a great secondary weapon for a shield bearer)

Finally somebody happy with melee weapons .

11 hours ago, PALU said:

So, if I read it correctly, the only weapons actually having the Shock effect are the Kinetic shotguns/SMGs and the Shock/Electron weapons. Is the effect restricted to shotguns/SMGs + the dedicated Stun/EMP weapons, or are the effects just smaller for other Kinetic weapons? It would certainly make a fair bit of sense that non/low penetrating bullets may be the only ones to have that effect.

The SHOCK effect is only present on kinetic shotguns/smgs and shock/electron weapons for reasons stated above. In case of the kinetic ones, i think the modified ammunition is a great explanation for the SHOCK effect ( even though you might need to find another explanation than kinetic force alone ) and it is also a great explanation why the shotgun has such low penetration ( mitigation ) values, even though there could be models with higher penetration. The same goes for the smg.

11 hours ago, PALU said:

Also note that there is no "wall sized sledgehammer", as the movie trope of having people flung all over the place when hit by bullets is totally bogus: the force imparted is slightly less (due to air resistance) than that felt in the recoil of the gun. Also, if there was such an effect, armor would absorb it all and still throw the unit across the street.

Indeed.

There is still a difference between a trained muscular arm taking the recoil which doesnt have any inner organs to worry about, and your breast taking the recoil, with far less trained muscles against the impulse and all important organs ( both lungs, heart, windpipe, liver and stomach ) taking the shock right behind. As you correctly pointed out armour cant prevent the impulse from a kinetic force, it can only dissipate it over a greater surface area. So relatively speaking there is a difference between putting out kinetic energy where your arms can support it, and taking the impulse, where your arms cant help you at all.

Heres a bizeps for your admiration:

https://youtu.be/qqOqdyiFz9g?t=887

Edited November 3, 2018 by Charon

[Charon]

@Svinedrengen Hey, somebodys playing your map :

 

 

[Svinedrengen]

20 hours ago, Charon said:

new feature: AP Damage: MAIM/SHOCK damage that reduces TUs for the next turn.

I like this new feature, will be interesting see how it plays out. 

 

20 hours ago, Charon said:

new mod: Empower Facehuggers

2 hours ago, Charon said:

@Svinedrengen Hey, somebodys playing your map

Yeah I just saw the video, I will send you some stuff to make the brickwalls crushable later. Did you have any succes on the other props (conretepiles, fullcover woodenboxes) ? 

[Charon]

Just now, Svinedrengen said:

Yeah I just saw the video, I will send you some stuff to make the brickwalls crushable later. Did you have any succes on the other props (conretepiles, fullcover woodenboxes) ? 

I didnt work on it.

[PALU]

I've tried to make sense out of the apDamage="0" entries, and as far as I understand, 0 means use the formula, and a number means apply that number? Also, it doesn't make sense to exclude the effect from Division Mk-1 and Mk-2 SMGs (the explanation of using expanding ammo for these weapons would work well if it was applied throughout), nor to have it on one flame thrower but not the others (burns over large parts of the body might provide a similar "large amounts of damaged area/volume" explanation)?

Axes are very powerful weapons, in particular against Caesans as they bypass the shield. Not bad against Reapers either, but that has a tendency to only apply when it has gotten far too close, and their attacks are nasty.

I think I've seen the Electron Pistol in action: A Roboreaper (phase 3) was reaction shot with 4 shots (not sure if all of them hit). A weapon reload and 2 more shots bagged it, which was rather impressive. I think it was uninjured, as the missile that smashed the ranged shell probably does nothing to the next version (unlike vehicle machinegun fire from point blank range, which can tear through both the shield and ranged versions in a single burst).

[Charon]

@PALU Im not quite understanding what you are writing about, apDamage="0" is equal to the code of line not being there. The apDamage gets applied to all SMG and shotgun versions equally. No flamethrower weapons have any apDamage numbers.

Edited November 3, 2018 by Charon