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


Charon

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While I believe the text is correct technically, I agree it's hard to understand, so I'll rework it. The box movement wasn't changed that long ago, as I've seen them move, but it's true I haven't seen that in quite some time (and I've never seen roboreaper boxes move, if they've ever had that capability).

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Better?

"Commander, I am sure you heard about the little commotion by the hidden, main surface entrance to our base the other day. Let me try to fill you in on what happened:

A Caesan, dressed in the red shirt of a non-combatant, approached our gate guards with his hands in the air. He spoke to them! He actually spoke to them! Thankfully, one of the guards on duty was a soldier who has battled the Ceasans before, so when the Alien came up to the guards and and tried to talk to them, that guard thought it very odd behavior so he “subdued” the specimen for further study. By subdue I mean clubbed him on the head until he stopped moving. I am thankful that the big oaf who secured our specimen didn't hurt him too much...

After I had had a long talk with him in our isolation chamber I found out some very interesting things from him. For the sake of brevity I will just give you a synopsis of our conversations.

I started the interrogation off with asking him how he had found out where our base was. He stated that he was on one of the small UFOs that they used to track down the area where our interceptors were coming out of. He convinced the pilot to set the UFO down in the area so he could collect some samples and he then detonated the UFO's Alenium power source, killing everything else on the UFO. After a few days and some fumbling about he finally found the area where our base entrance was located (he was wearing a crude breathing mask that protected him from the usual oxygen toxicity aliens otherwise succumb to).

Apparently, the aliens are not as cohesive as we once thought they were. He claimed that he was with the Caesan rebels who were fighting against their masters. He also stated he was the last known rebel that hasn't been captured by the loyalists, as they raided their main headquarters on their home planet. He joined the loyalist invasion army heading to Earth and planned to get in contact with us to help us against the loyalist invasion. I wanted to see if he could get us access to some of their equipment so we could do some more testing on them.

Unfortunately, after much discussion, I found out he has the equivalent rank of a scientist and is part of their alien support team, very similar to the role we have in X-Division, Commander. Although that is not a bad thing, this means he doesn't have a lot of authority to request any kind of munition or equipment drops. He however told me that he is one of their linguists and has a brain implant that can translate his psychic “speech” transmission into actual verbal voice of any language he wants. It is a very complicated implant that runs off of the Alenium in his blood stream and it can't be removed without killing him. He told me he can speak to any of the species of the alien invaders, including the Reapers, although that species lack the intelligence to do much of anything but be trained for violence (much like our soldiers here at the base). When I showed him a deceased specimen of a Xenomorph, he started trembling and told me that this must be the new bio weapon the loyalists have made, as he has never seen anything like it. I think we can trust him, Commander. Based on their attack patterns, I highly doubt the aliens need to stoop to such nefarious ways of wiping us out as to send us an undercover agent. He could give us a significant edge against the aliens and his abilities will help us immensely. Plus, we don't have a lot of options open to us and I think we should take any and all advantages we can get.

Obviously, trust is a commodity in short supply these days, so despite trusting Paul, that's the human name he's adopted, we keep him in shielded facilities at all times to block any potential communications."

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I'm about to end the first month, and I've had a bunch of xenopedia entries refer to an alien defect named Paul that I don't think I have actually had the chance to meet yet.


Also it was pretty funny when I finally researched Alien Power Source, only for its xenopedia entry to basically consist of "We don't know what this material we are dubbing "Alenium" is and what the laser array around it is for", when I had already researched Alenium and other alenium-knowledgeable things weeks prior. You sure the "Alenium" research shouldn't require Alien Power Source, even if only for the lore consistency?

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16 minutes ago, Mr. Mister said:

Also it was pretty funny when I finally researched Alien Power Source, only for its xenopedia entry to basically consist of "We don't know what this material we are dubbing "Alenium" is and what the laser array around it is for", when I had already researched Alenium and other alenium-knowledgeable things weeks prior. You sure the "Alenium" research shouldn't require Alien Power Source, even if only for the lore consistency?

For X-Division gameplay and Lore will always be 2 different departments, with orders only flowing into one direction: from the gameplay to the lore one.

Apart from that everything alenium based needs the basic Researches.Alenium. So if you read that entry carefully you will see that it has already been dubbed like that for the necessary researches to be unlocked. The rest is just a minor heavily vanilla research based lore of what-is-it-that-came-before.

The rest is up to @PALU.

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@Mr. Mister The way things work makes it impossible to get lore to show up in a "correct" order on every play though, because technically entries depend on only a few requirements being fulfilled, and those requirements can appear in a wide variety or orders, while the texts are static, and can't take what's already available (and what's not) into consideration beyond the research order dependencies. If you try to ensure a strictly logical order, some paths will get stalled because a particular item didn't happen to show up, resulting in the player sitting with an empty research facility and a stalled development until you finally find that elusive key research item that unlocks research again. There are still research bottlenecks that can cause trouble, such a e.g. consistently failing to get e.g. any Sebillian missions (because the RNG didn't generate them, you failed to shoot them down, or they all had to be downed into the drink [or because you just had to play in in an oddball way to see what happens]).

When it comes to preexisting lore entries I've massaged them, but left them mostly intact (removing/replacing/correcting what's definitely incorrect when detected), which means some things may have been a little scrambled when X-Division has adjusted the research conditions. That's an explanation, not an attempt at an excuse.

I haven't tried to analyze the dependencies to determine where the current research order means entries ought to be reworked. Alenium is found very early, and you can get it independently of reactors, so if anything, the reactor description should be reworked (and I think both the core of the texts and the research order is essentially from the vanilla game).

I've made an attempt to decouple the entries from each other:

"Despite only being the size of a household fridge, the power unit recovered from the UFO still produces enough energy to power a city the size of New York. Surprisingly, however, the device proved utterly inert once switched off - not even appearing to radiate heat.

The construction of the device is equally peculiar. It consists of a cylindrical outer casing of alien ceramics, the interiour of which is dotted with hundreds of tiny laser emitters. Sitting inside this is a rotating inner casing that is packed with a lattice of Alenium crystal.

Preliminary scans suggest that there is an almost incomprehensible amount of energy stored within these Alenium crystals, despite the lattice being no larger than a football.

The rest of the power source contains little of interest. All of the materials used in its construction have been encountered in larger quantities elsewhere in the hulls of recovered UFOs and the machinery itself is not overly complex; studying it has yielded nothing worth commenting upon.

The only discovery of interest is the sea of identical laser emitters covering the interior of the outer coating, which probably is key to releasing the energy stored in the Alenium.

Studying a couple of examples have provided only minor advances in our understanding of laser technology, mostly in the areas of beam focusing and miniaturisation of optical amplifiers. I very much doubt that the aliens are unable to produce far more powerful laser emitters, suggesting that they have deliberately been designed to only emit low intensity beams.

Finally, I understand you have received a request (from personnel in a department which will remain nameless) seeking to prevent me from dismantling such devices inside the base in the future. I must object to the repeated usage of the phrase "reckless disregard" and I can assure you I am no more keen to end my life in an enormous fireball than anyone else in this base. I therefore request you tell the staff concerned to stick to what they know (i.e. building things, making unintelligible grunting noises)..."

and

"Alenium is the fundamental power source behind all alien technology encountered. It is a translucent yellow material that resembles amber in appearance.

Detailed analysis of Alenium's molecular structure reveals an incredibly dense atomic arrangement, allowing the material to store energy in quantities previously thought impossible without resorting to fission or fusion. Despite this, the material remains inert and has a half-life of nearly a trillion years. It can be cracked if enough mechanical force is applied, but this will not cause an energy discharge. This can be explained by the exceptionally stable arrangement of atomic chains, which also contain a clue as to how to unlock the energy trapped within: each chain contains regular "weak" bonds that can be broken with precise application of energy. By specifically targeting and breaking these weak bonds with a laser, one can easily generate a controlled energy release of virtually any size.

This leads me to believe that Alenium is no more than an incredibly advanced alien battery. The molecular structure is not one that would occur naturally nor contain any inherent energy of its own, but it makes a perfect method of storing the output from a far greater power source. As we have no way of recharging Alenium and will almost certainly be using it to power any new technology we develop, we should make an effort to recover as much as possible from UFOs and alien ground forces."

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@PALUI want to preserve as much vanilla text and information as possible, as i am not fond of cutting content short just for "logical progression".

 

Original entry:

Quote

Sitting inside this is a rotating inner casing that is packed with a lattice of unidentified yellow crystal, again cylindrical in shape. The origin and composition of these crystals has yet to be determined, but there is no question that they form the heart of the reactor. For want of a better name, my team have dubbed the material "Alenium" and are in the process of removing the lattice from the casing to allow further study.

Your version:

Quote

Sitting inside this is a rotating inner casing that is packed with a lattice of Alenium crystal.

Better merge:

Quote

Sitting inside this is a rotating inner casing that is packed with a lattice of yellow crystal, we presume Alenium, again cylindrical in shape. The origin and composition of these crystals has yet to be determined, but there is no question that they form the heart of the reactor. Our early naming suggestions for this have been "Alenium", and are in the process of removing the lattice from the casing to allow further study.

 

Lore work doesnt mean to just remove things which dont fit, it means to take out the whole thing, and recast it into a new form ( the text above is borderlining on laziness )

foundry-equipment-600x280.jpg?resize=600

Recast it or leave everything as it is, but this version is not acceptable.

Edited by Charon
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@PALU That's much better indeed for the UFO entry; I can't comment on the Alenium one because I don't remember how it was before.


If anything, I think the coining of the term Alenium should be in the small pre-research description of the Alenium research. Adding something like "The grease-monkey/box-mover that brought it to the lab came up with the term " Alenium" and it stuck with the less imaginative of us, which sadly is most of my team" to the end of it would guarantee that the term Alenium is coined before any research mentioning it, as techincally it will be when the "Alenium" research first becomes avaliable, even if you delay the actual researching.

 

EDIT: @CharonWhat about

Quote

Sitting inside this is a rotating inner casing that is packed with a lattice of yellow crystal, again cylindrical in shape. The exact origin and composition of these crystals has yet to be determined, but we presume them to be Alenium-based and there is no question that they form the heart of the reactor. For now me and my team are in the process of removing the lattice from the casing to allow further study of the material and this particular implementation of it.

This way you completely remove any implication of not knowing things explained in the ALenium entry.

Edited by Mr. Mister
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12 minutes ago, Mr. Mister said:

EDIT: @CharonWhat about

Quote

Sitting inside this is a rotating inner casing that is packed with a lattice of yellow crystal, again cylindrical in shape. The exact origin and composition of these crystals has yet to be determined, but we presume them to be Alenium-based and there is no question that they form the heart of the reactor. For now me and my team are in the process of removing the lattice from the casing to allow further study of the material and this particular implementation of it.

This way you completely remove any implication of not knowing things explained in the ALenium entry.

That sounds even better and more coherent than my version. It is exactly what i mean with "Recasting". Want to be our lore writer ?

:D Just kidding, but thats what i would like you @PALU,to do. Just with the whole entry.

Edited by Charon
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1 hour ago, starscream said:

ok got a concern with unofficial patch 1.00.10 i dont seem to have medikits or c4 explosive that tab for other is gone and replaced with a melee tab have i installed new patch wrong or something ?

There are 3 more tabs in the game which should look like this:

Unbenannt2.thumb.png.a573ed17a9a5ae170a97b770a9e374e6.png

Did you try to look down ?

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Yes, Mr. Mister's version looks good, and I've adopted it.

On the technical side, I haven't dealt with the description of researches (the ones you get when trying to figure out which of the many researches you're going to tackle next), and don't even know where they are located (because I haven't tried to find out). In general I've found them to be fairly good.

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47 minutes ago, PALU said:

On the technical side, I haven't dealt with the description of researches (the ones you get when trying to figure out which of the many researches you're going to tackle next), and don't even know where they are located (because I haven't tried to find out). In general I've found them to be fairly good.

The basic vivisections could use some work; I think they all are "You've managed to capture a live alien! Let's see what we can learn from it".

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3 hours ago, PALU said:

In general I've found them to be fairly good.

They better be, @sfarrelly wrote them personally.

@PALU Can you send me the revised versions ?

2 hours ago, Mr. Mister said:

The basic vivisections could use some work; I think they all are "You've managed to capture a live alien! Let's see what we can learn from it".

Over my dead corpse. We worked extensively on them and everything is in the right place for them. The impression they make on the player is exactly the impression we want them to have. You might see that some of them have a XXDescription, because @sfarrellyis gone, and i cant fill them alone.

 

 

 

 

Newbie questions [X-Division]

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I'm an Xcom veteran who just started playing X-Division, skipping X:CE against recommendations. I definitely want a balanced and challenging experience with as few magic bullets as possible. On that note, rocket launchers and grenades do seem like magic bullets so far (as in Xcom) for two reasons: They're very easy to score a hit with, and they don't draw reaction fire. If I open up with rockets and follow up with grenades as needed I find that I can easily avoid damaging corpses and items. As long as I can take my time and don't get rushed by superior numbers (looking forward to seeing this later), this should do nicely.

On to questions, sorry if these have been answered elsewhere. My gaming time is extremely limited these days, so I'm trying to make the most of it.

  1. How does stun and suppression work? I've been unable to find a comprehensive post on the details of these.

  2. How do I control which direction to roll in air combat? EDIT: Got it, found the hotkeys. New question: How do missiles work? Do I need to obtain a lock before firing, or do they automatically fire?

  3. Got a link to a good post explaining experience gain? I've seen Charon post that I basically get rewarded for playing normally (which is great), but I'd really like to know the details.

  4. What's the best use of smoke grenades? Do you use them mostly to reduce the enemy's accuracy or their line of sight? Do you use them all the time because there might always be enemies lurking, or in specific situations to block specific aliens? It's always felt like a paper armour to me, helping as a last ditch effort when you've been compromised. Please enlighten me on how I should view it instead.

Thanks (to all involved) for what seems to be a great mod and a great game! The interface is very user-friendly, I'm usually the first to criticize and I'm not finding much to be unhappy with here.

Thanks in advance for any assistance!

 

I definitely want a balanced and challenging experience with as few magic bullets as possible. On that note, rocket launchers and grenades do seem like magic bullets so far (as in Xcom) for two reasons: They're very easy to score a hit with, and they don't draw reaction fire. If I open up with rockets and follow up with grenades as needed I find that I can easily avoid damaging corpses and items. As long as I can take my time and don't get rushed by superior numbers (looking forward to seeing this later), this should do nicely.

The challenge of X-Division lies in capturing enemies. Phase 1 is a tutorial, yet if you want to complete it to 100% you will have to capture at least 28 enemies, and thats only if you get every capture right. Usually you will stun around 40 to 50 aliens for resource purposes and because you couldnt remember if you already captured that color ( keep a list ). Later grenades and rockets will not only kill the aliens, but also destroy the corpse and all the equipment with it, and thats your main income source. Early grenades are a bit more forgiving, because, you know, its a tutorial and everything, but that doesnt detract from the fact that you need to capture stuff in order to progress.

Later on you will wish that you had magic bullets. Rockets/Explosives/Grenades are usually only for 3 situations, A. You already captured everything and have enough resources or B. You cannot make that mission without the assistance of stronger firepower, and the alternative would be to get no loot at all. C. Alternative purpose excluding killing aliens.

 

  1. Stun at the beginning of the mission is equal to the enemies health pool. High Health = High stun threshold. 50% of red damage numbers get dealt invisibly as stun damage, blue numbers add ontop of it. Robotic enemies cant be stunned.
    I havent looked too deeply into how suppression works, but the observed patterns are that for Xenonauts only the current TU are getting taken into account. The higher the remaining TU during suppression the higher the resistance to suppression ( eg. the suppression threshold is equal to the current remaining tu, once suppression exceeds the threshold the unit is suppressed, but only after a suppressive action ).
    For aliens its the same with the difference that moral is actually getting taken into account. Killing civilians/locals/xenonauts/vehicles gives alien moral, and so you will find that a very succesfull alien on the battlefield is way harder to suppress than usual, but the moral can be chipped away with.

  2. You absolutely need a lock on. You can look at the right top of the right side which UFO is currently locked on by which aircraft. Right click on an empty space to clear any lock on. Left click on a UFO to assign a new lock on. Missiles and Torpedos only fire on locked on targets, and nothing else.

  3. Easy to understand. You gain progression points for every action indefinitely, saved from every mission to mission. Except Strenght, which is the odd one in the progression chart. You gain str points logarithmically, which means fast str points in one mission, but highly diminishing returns for that one. Getting +5 is the norm, trying to get +7 in a mission requires a loooooong mission. Str is gained by having 80% or more of your carrying capacity used, while running around. So fill your soldiers to the brim, even if they dont need that equipment.
    TU is gained by spending TU. Acc is gained by shooting, this stat is the hardest to raise ( because it statistically increases the damage of your squad ) but also has the highest cap. Reflexes are gained by making overwatch shoots, or getting shot by overwatch shots. Bravery gets increased for panic, running away or getting suppressed by alien fire. HP gets increased by leveling up other stats.

  4. Every time, all the time. If you have an open flank, then throw a smoke grenade in there. Or two. If you have your first turn, you throw a smoke in every direction which you can get attacked at. If you have as much as an area of which you are unsure about, throw a smoke.
    I dont know what you are used to by other AIs, but the X-Division AI will take advantage of your openings mercilessly. That doesnt mean that they can teleport across the map ( some aliens can ), but they will send one or two aliens to flank you for sure, if you have a habit of leaving it open. The AI simply understands the battlefield, and tries to make educated decisions in their battleplan.
    Phase 1, very forgiving as i said, but the fact that you have to have and use so many smoke grenades means that the tactically, fast playing, fast mission ending players get rewarded, because you will run out of supply if you play it defensively too long. You spawn with your equipment, and you try to complete the mission before you run out of it.

I hope you will find new ways of mastering the game, experiment with it as much as you want.

Cheers :)

Reddit link: https://www.reddit.com/r/Xenonauts/comments/aauduf/newbie_questions_xdivision/

 

Edited by Charon
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Rockets are great for removing some aliens that do not yield anything useful anyway, and there are definitely situations when you'd rather sacrifice the potential loot to get down to a situation of just being severely overloaded and ones where a particular enemy is extremely dangerous with instakill potential. Note that the first case is one where you may want to consider using smoke as well to reduce the overload (and you can't see most of the enemies because they're out of visual range anyway). There's also a kind of situation where you can remove enemy protection with no potential for enemy destruction due to overkill, where rocket attacks are rather useful.

xenopedia.xml

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Uhm, how do I ALIENALLOYS? I was excited to finally produce my first laser weapon, only to discover it requires an ALLIENALLOY, of which I seem to have none. And I also can't find how to craft them, despite havinga already researched "Allien Alloy Fabrication".

1 hour ago, Charon said:

We worked extensively on them and everything is in the right place for them.

The problem isn't the contrastingly unspecific research preview description per se, but that it's the same for two/four different researches (I can't remember if the Guard vivisections had the same ones too).

 

Maybe just add aliitle bit to the Sebillian one/s "You've managed to captured a live alien! And a bitey one too! Let's see what we can learn from it." You can also make the GUard ones different (if they aren't already) by adding "guard" after "alien", or maybe "heavily-armed" before "alien".

Edited by Mr. Mister
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Alien Alloys is a resource recovered from aliens, primarily through disassembly of craft "cores". Alien Alloy Fabrication is not manufacturing OF alien alloys, but rather manufacturing WITH alien alloys, i.e. the technique to shape the alloys you've recovered. Alien Alloys is a resource you'll probably have to use with care, as it's rather easy to use up more of it than you can recover. It's not the only resource that's available only from the aliens themselves, but rather one of a number of such resources. Some of these I now have in abundance (fairly late in the game), but most require a fair bit of decision making to decide whether you need this piece of equipment, or whether to continue to use what you already have to save up for the next step, and it was definitely the case early on.

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19 minutes ago, Mr. Mister said:

On another note... how screwed am I if the maintenance bill of the firt month put me a bit over one million in debt?

That i dont want you as my accountant.

But 1 million in debt is only 5 successfull corvette missions. Doable.

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Are you sure that's how the tree block example goes? Because, if that is true, then each piece of cover essentially provides its cover bonus twice; first on the "does the bullet fly towards the alien" calculation and second on the "is the cover hit instead" calculation. Which just seems odd.

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