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


Charon

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There was no option to research the base itself, no. Just the corpses and weapons. Is my run bugged?

 

EDIT: I got the "research" notification that I can now disassemble the Alien Basis Core DSB... but no research options.

Edited by Hinchus
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Hey, Charon. Could you link me a guide or explain to me how I can add descriptions for the X-Pedia.

I'm not that great of a writer but i'm trying to fill in the blanks as much as I can. But I have no idea where I need to add those.

As example here's the one I just made for the Asierus fighter. Its only a first draft so don't go grammar nazi on me. :^)

 

"The Asierus air superiority fighter, nicknamed "Trident" by our troops, is our first attempt to try and match the agility of our enemy's crafts. Loosely inspired, quite loosely, by the american F-15. The inverted wings design allows this fighter to perform acrobatic maneuvers our older F-17 could only dream of. Keep in mind commander, that as much as I'd like to take all the credits for this advancement in aeronautics, the UFOs remains we captured made it possible. Prior to the discovery of these "new" alloys and computing systems, such a design couldn't keep up with our older fighters without breaking apart. While the "Trident" is unable to mount any kind of missiles, it can use the very best direct-fire weapons at our disposal.

"

Still need to read more of the normal X-Pedia so I get the "flavor" right. The fact so many things in the X-Pedia lacks a description makes it feel unfinished at best. I love having a bunch of stuff to read in this kind of game. Was part of the reason discovering something new in the original x-com made me happy.

Edited by dashyr
Grammar. And bit more info.
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Hey Charon,

where can I find extensive info about the weapon modifier values for reflexes? The reflex and reaction shot system in general is clear, but there are questions I'd like to know the answers for like:

  • What happens when both hands are full with different items/weapons? Which item determines the modifier?
  • What is the modifier of "empty hand", of grenades, of medipacks, of alien weaponry etc?
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On 7/14/2018 at 4:49 PM, Mark_Tullius said:

Guys, please, help!
How can i get all this weapons, which mod adds?
I only have advanced laser weaponary and standart. What is wrong?

p.s. also i have new weapons for aircraft + flamethrower, but no new balistic weapons.

X-Div1.png

X-Div2.png

Capture alien specialists alive and interrogate.

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On 7/14/2018 at 4:49 PM, Mark_Tullius said:

Guys, please, help!
How can i get all this weapons, which mod adds?
I only have advanced laser weaponary and standart. What is wrong?

p.s. also i have new weapons for aircraft + flamethrower, but no new balistic weapons.

X-Div1.png

X-Div2.png

All ships have their own unique specialist, like "Sebilian corvette operator" or "Caesan scout pilot". You should capture them and interrogate.

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X-Division 1.00.00

Installation:

0. The base vanilla version has to be 1.65+ .

1. To avoid complications unsubscribe to all other mods on steam, and delete your your whole mods/.. folder. Then make a fresh install of xenonauts.
    X-Division 1.00.00 is not compatible with earlier versions.

2. Install the latest XCE version.

3. If you downloaded the steam workshop support mod install it now. This is to show some support but has no other purpose than that.

3.5 Start up the game at least once and exit it properly.

4. Download all 3 parts of X-Division 1.00.00: Download ( Part 1 MD5: d46af869d5435a9c425d51acd1442897, Part 2  MD5: c57b4fb563ca419c9e455f0908701fe,
                                                                                Part 3
 MD5: c8ca596b39d920e45a9a45fc71611892 )

282142652_1.00main1.png.48edf6e04db99b1e669a67fbcbe08b2b.png1815788912_1.00main2.png.d8cac84482cf251105d642604bf5ee35.png

506328980_1.00main3.png.5a5e06dad83ef26ec0557edef708f013.png

5. Deactivate your ANTIVIRUS/UAC program, it can intervene with the installation.  As soon as the installation finishes you can activate it again.

Have all 3 files together and open part 1 ( = unrar the multi rar archive ). Double click the .exe file. Follow the instructions of the installer.


 

6. The advanced installation has some options to choose from, namely:

There are some optional mods you can activate/deactivate. Lets go through them one by one:

1. X-Division No Airgame

  • There are 3 ways to play the airgame, 1. Manual 2. Autoresolve 3. No Airgame . No Airgame removes the necessity to play the airgame and replaces it with a 1 click solution. With No Airgame you only have to build the latest fighters and bombers and hit autoresolve. If you quickly want to jump into the Ground Combat this is the option of your choice :). Note that this tilts the balance in the favour of the player and is not representativ of the economic balance of the game.

Recommended state: ON if you want to skip the airgame.

2. COM - Ambient Sounds/COM - Ambience Forest

  • This mods add ambient sound and add the least amount of instability to the game - it still makes the game more unstable.

Recommended State: OFF if you dont want to risk a higher instability for beautiful sounds. XCE 0.34.3 should fix the instability.

3.  COM -   [V1.08] Jsleezy's Real Fighter Portrait Pack

  • Adds alternative soldier faces to the game. Deactivate Khall´s more Portraits if you are using this to avoid art inconsistencies

Recommended State: OFF if you dont want to play with more realistic faces. XCE 0.34.3 should fix the instability.


 

Checklist in case you want to change something later on:

  • You only have X-Division Workshop Support if you subscribed and installed it from the steam workshop
  • The modloader needs to be EXACTLY in the priority order the installer sets it.
  • The modloader needs exactly this active mods. The mods you can still change after the installation are No Airgame, Khalls and Jeezlies different portraits ( only one active at a time ), both Ambient sound mods ( either active for ambient sounds or deactivated for more stability ) and  the No Click sound ( removes mouse click ).
  • You shouldn`t play X-Division with any other mods than stated. Only cosmetic mods are allowed and only if you know exactly what you are doing. Keep in mind every savegame is unique to its mods its saved with.

7. Apply the latest available patch - 3.1 Latest Patch section ^^. Every patch contains all prior changes as well. Currently there is no newer Patch.


 

DAY 707 Version 1.00.00 "New Dawn"

  • New AI behaviour set. Yes they are more capable now.
  • Total Revision of Antimatter technology tree and weapons
  • Increased radius for Cannons all around, and added a burst option for most
  • Made the Quantum Cryptology Center available as soon as you raid your first alien base
  • The Quantum Cryptology Center, now known as the Quantum Radar, acts as a radar ontop
  • Decreased weight of some grenades from 2 to 1.5
  • Harmonised weight of Pulse Magazines
  • Increased proportional stun damage from 40% to 50% again
  • Reevaluated stun properties for shotguns and carbines
  • Quadrupled chemical grenade/rocket production from alien grenades
  • Fixed chinook speed for the no airgame option
  • New valkyrie maps
  • Improved vehicle weapon descriptions in the Xpedia
  • Added weapon loadout information for vehicles in the Xpedia
  • Praetor evolved from the puppy stage and are now doggos. The overmind is a pitbull
  • Improved Katanas
  • Manufacture of EMP rockets doesnt require alenium anymore
  • Removed MeleeVehicles for Facehuggers
  • Decreased time intervall between terror missions from 22 to 18 days
  • Mauser doesnt require alloys to manufacture anymore
  • Decreased Spearcannon manufacture cost from 4 to 2 alloys
  • Archelons now need a mothership core to construct ( didnt i do this before ? )
  • Mothership loadout yet revised again, hit model made bigger, damage counter moved up higher
  • Archelon revised
  • Increased damage of reapers
  • Fixed broken reflex stats gain from max 180 points to max 100 points
  • Increased hp bonus and decreased reflex malus for Exoskelett armours
  • Revised armour reflex boni all around in accordance to the reflex stat fix
  • Revised some armour values all around the board
  • Higher level Roborexes now regenerate shield points per turn until you overload the shield
  • Downed Roborexes now have the Ghost ability
  • Removed all armour for downed roborexes
  • Revised all Roborexes in general, they are now slicker, faster, shoot further and are looking for a brawl like Mike Tyson
  • revised FOCUS aricombat weaponry
  • Alien Mech units can move freely in 1 tile tight spaces now
  • Fixed: Weapons marked as heavy actually didnt receive the full penalty after moving. Now weapons marked as heavy receive a big penalty if they are getting fired after moving. This is a fundamental gameplay changer
  • Recoil Values revised
  • Moral does not regenerate per turn anymore. It is now an absolute value that only actions/events can influence.
  • Moral event threshold increased from 40 to 50
  • Moral chance per point missing decreased from 3.5 to 3.0
  • Quickthtrow grenade slot cost decreased by -4 TU
  • Zombifying Reapers deal pure damage now. Attack cost reduced from 40% to 35%. We are giving the reapers back the fear.
  • Revised Reapers yet again. Set incendiary armour to 0, decreased kinetic armour, increased chemical armour, increased hp and added the abilitiy "Regenerate" to all Reapers.
  • Melee aliens now equally target vehicles as well as soldiers.
  • Semi shield roboreapers ( and some full shield ones ) now deal pure damage and maim units they hit with by draining their TU for the next turn
  • minimum accuracy requirement for the AI has been revised
  • Cannons now deal overdamge, except for antimatter ones
  • Endgame content starts to appear 1050 ATP
  • Roborex explosion now deals overdamage ( Thank you @Phoenix1x+52 for pointing this out )
  • Acidlings revised (They should be beasty little beasts now)
  • Increased the accuracy of the rocketlauncher immensly. The rocketlauncher is now a heavy weapon. TU useage lowered.
  • Decreased range of aircraft weapon MINES from 11 000 to 10 000
  • Increased damage of Flamethrower weapons by 50%
  • Increased range for flamethrowers by 50%
  • Flamethrowers now get the short range bonus
  • Infiltrator crew updated
  • Added Geographic addition 1.1 and Geographic revision 1.1 by @Axiomatic to the game. All thanks and credits go to @Axiomatic for letting us integrate his content into X-Division
  • Fixed AI layout behaviour for all 10 corvette layouts
  • Increased rotation for Lancers from 30 to 35 degrees per second
  • Decreased TU usage for the Shock Gun from 80% to 65%
  • new final map
  • many, many bug fixes

Sidenotes

 

[fixed antimatter mk4 sniper weight from 14 to 10]
[some shotgun/carbine stun values fixed again]
[civilian weapons adjusted to the phase 2 and 3 time decrease]
[MeleeVehicles removed from xdrone and xrogue]
[Infiltrator and Ghost ability animation stutter fix]
[removed all shields from androns, added shield hp to shield units hp]
[weapon.alienhugeshield is now able to spawn, which leads into force shield research]
[check all attributes of all armour]
[you can no longer close the valkyrie fortress, so choose your exit wisely]
[Pheonix pointed out that the heavy attribute of weapons were not working as intended. I took a look at it and saw that a line of code was actually taking the inverse of what it should. Where i intended a 90% penalty the game took 10%. Ofcourse this should not be the case and invalidates any and all experience we have build up through the last year. Nevertheless it is the intended mechanic for heavy weapons to be heavily penaltised after moving. I corrected things and heavy weapons now get a 65% aim penatly after moving ( turning doesnt count ). This ofcourse excludes Exoskelett armour which can fire a heavy weapon at their leisure without any aim penalty at any time. This is how it should have been done 2 years ago. I apologise for the inconvenience caused and i hope my testers will continue to play the game. - Cheers Charon. This change affects snipers, precision, machineguns, miniguns and cannon weaponry. This affects xenonauts weaponry as much as it does alien ones.]
[Additionally i reworked the Recoil values. I increased the Recoil for machineguns to 70, for cannons to 80 and for miniguns to 90. Energy Weapons have a special treat and dont get any recoil except for miniguns if present. This makes them great rookie weapons and should make them more attractive under certain circumstances. The Rest of the changes make the Recoil system more meaningful because most requirements were too low to even matter under any circumstances.]
[Quickthtrow grenade slot cost decreased by -4 TU]
[aim penalty for heavy weapons after moving increased from 60% to 70%]
[aim penalty for heavy weapons after moving decreased from 70% to 65%]
[Decreased some TU bonus points for the scout class]
[Fixed max stats gain to the intended round values]
[A lot of content cleaned up]
[Infiltrator weapon loadout refined]
[Reapers got their reflexes back, while i also fixed the melee reaction fire freezing after a GC load by disabled reaction fire for them. Reaction fire has been disabled for Xenomorphs as well, which should remove the melee freezing bug from the game]
[Fixed the crashed heavy shuttle hull being invisible]
[quenched infinite strings errors]
[Fixed the lightshuttle having a 33% chance to not drop the datacore]

 

New XCE code used in X-Division:

  • Moddable transfer time - transfer time of items and soldiers has been reduced from 24 to 3 hours
  • 13 new radar ranges - for now 10 new radar ranges have been enabled. This will likely get a more indepth revision later on
  • LockManufacture fixed - One Time Updates manufactures should now disappear after their corresponding research has been done
  • Zombify - Zombify now only zombifies if the damage kills the units, otherwise its damage only
  • Renaming bases - A highly requested feature for XCE and X-Division
  • Moral Cap moddable - The moral cap in X-Division has been removed, finally making you hard earned bravery something worth
  • Escort code fix - Construction missions are now able to spawn alternative escorts
  • Sightrange modifiable per rank - main races get +5 on sightrange in Phase 3 and +10 in Phase 4
  • Base Evacuation - Should a base get captured by aliens, personel and aircraft will transfer to other bases if available space is free ( this is for X1 and XCE too )
  • Dialoges - Improved dialoge redirections
  • Infiltrator and Ghost ability - The Infiltrator ability will mark units as friendlies on the map, indistinguishable from other friendly units and wont trigger reaction fire - civilian hosts for now. The Ghost ability marks units as props on the map, indistinguishable from other props, but they trigger reaction fire upon moving ( "Sir, i saw that box moving, so i shot" ) - facehuggers, robodog and reaperboxes for now
  • Aircombat - The hotkeys used for geoscape zoom can now be used for aircombat as well. There is a hotkey for afterburner now, "A" as default
  • Aircombat speed - The aircombat speed levels received two revised speed buttons: x0.5 and x0.75 for slower aircombat gameplay.
  • Bugs - The incendiary bonus damage on burst shoots against props and soldiers under certain circumstances got fixed. Now its only against props.
     

 

 

 

 

A big thank you from the team for being such an awesome community. You made it possibly that we are able to release the final version of X-Division now.

I especially want to thank the team who made it possible and accompanied X-Division through its various stages of development.

@Solver Who is totally not a member of the X-Divison development team. I want to thank you for giving the much needed code support and all the new and fantastic features X-Division players are capable of experiencing now. Without him the growing of the game would have already stopped when custom Terror UFOs wouldnt obey the Terror Site Intervall. He made it possible that passionate modders can do what they do best, while silently removing obstacles from the back. In honour of your service i grant you the title of "External X-Division Teammember"

@drages The main developer and creator of X-Division. Without him all of this Insanity would have never started. He had the vision, made the plan and strifed to fullfill it throughout many years. It is only because of him that we can finish this game today. Thank you for giving me this opportunity.

@DrakuOne of the oldest members of X-Division. He did most of the grunt and testing work during the most active development cycles. Aint no Palace without somebody to actually do the work.

@sfarrelly The string guy. He wrote most of the research preview entries. If you know what you are going to research than it is totally because of him.

@Phoenix1x+52For doing the total insane hercules task of playing through the game from A to Z. He tested everything from the working things to the not so working things and recorded everyhing for sake of me examinating every pixel in the recordings. That X-Division is in such a bug-free and balanced state is mainly because of his work epic. He has been supporting X-Division through all its stages ( hm, installer ) and has been a loyal friend to the end. Many Kudos to you.

@Maerafor giving moral support and a lot of enthusiams for new maps.

@Marandor1 The second tester in command. He tried his hardest to convince me to make the game more fun than me trying to make it challenging. You can judge for yourself if he succeeded.

@SvinedrengenFor making some good maps.

and ofcourse ...

@community for all the advice, suggestions, support and love that you gave for the game. Without you the journey wouldnt have been worthwhile. You created, enriched and made the game which it is today. Thank you for being there on this journey. I will see you in the game :).

 

 

Thank you for everybody who i didnt mention but was still part of this journey.

A big thanks to @Chris for making Xenonauts.

 

Enjoy !

Edited by Charon
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Bug: X-Division 1.00, everything installed from scratch (I uninstalled and reinstalled Xenonauts to make sure): A shadow moves over the ground to the sound of footsteps. Hunting around I found a tile I couldn't walk into, and fired at it. Eventually I walked onto the tile to find that it contained a human corpse.

This is my second mission (nothing odd with the first one) and it's daytime. I've seen the same issue with 0.99.45 once. I'll make a save in case someone is interested in investigating.

Edit: Both civilians were just shadows, while the local militia unit looked normal.

Edit 2: Happened on the third mission as well. Both "shadow civilian" cases were woodland maps (Soviet Union, if it matters).

Edited by PALU
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1 hour ago, PALU said:

Bug: X-Division 1.00, everything installed from scratch (I uninstalled and reinstalled Xenonauts to make sure): A shadow moves over the ground to the sound of footsteps. Hunting around I found a tile I couldn't walk into, and fired at it. Eventually I walked onto the tile to find that it contained a human corpse.

This is my second mission (nothing odd with the first one) and it's daytime. I've seen the same issue with 0.99.45 once. I'll make a save in case someone is interested in investigating.

Edit: Both civilians were just shadows, while the local militia unit looked normal.

If you are talking about the tundra tileset than thats not X-Divisions job. This will stay until somebody fixes the Tundra tileset and assigns the correct civilian sprites to it.

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X-Division 1.00.01

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.
  • Before applying patches withdraw all scientists and engineers from their current projects. You can reapply them afterwards.
  • You only need to download and install the latest Patch avaialble, it contains all prior fixes as well.
  • The .00 to .01 patch is savegame compatible
  • 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 1.00.01 Update: https://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/index.php?/files/file/31-x-division-latest-patch-09945/ ( MD5: 489d03269506927ae5981dbb0de816be )
  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 :).

For reference, this is how the modloader can look like after the installation, plus/minus optional mods on/off.
2116860187_Modloader1_00_01.thumb.png.a9fcf87ea916f55decc6ff867b256ec1.png

 

DAY 710 Version 1.00.01 "New Dawn"

  • Cleaned up some map stuff, added lost terror maps
  • Revised Exoskelett armour. Predator sets the strenght to 150 now, the Ripper to 190, and the Devastator to 230 from the previous 100/150/200 .
  • Soldier Class Armour got +5 accuracy bonus
Edited by Charon
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I'm not too happy about the upgrade instructions: I cancelled the disassembly of two data cores, and after upgrading I cannot restart the projects, robbing me of valuable resources.

If things work the way I think they do, I'd change that instruction line to something like:

"No engineering or research may be in progress when the game is patched. Research can be cancelled and resumed, but engineering projects consume items when they start (for each item, if multiple). Reduce the number of items to produce to the current progress + 1 (which means leaving it at 1 if a single item) and let them all finish before saving and patching."

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2 hours ago, PALU said:

I'm not too happy about the upgrade instructions: I cancelled the disassembly of two data cores, and after upgrading I cannot restart the projects, robbing me of valuable resources.

You dont have to cancel any project. You only have to withdraw the engineers/scientists.

 

You could load an earlier save and propably be fine.

Edited by Charon
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Ah, thanks for the clarification. I still think it ought to be made clear that doing it the way I did isn't good.

The earlier save was essentially the same one, but with science and engineering projects under way, but obviously the upgrade was applied after that. Since I've progressed a couple of ground battles since (getting two light scout cores instead of the light plus medium ones I lost, plus captives and loot), I probably won't risk it.

Edit:

Some questions/comments:

- I still haven't figured out how to identify sebillian operators. They're green and have no armor, but that goes for sebillian guards as well. I've been able to capture a number of operators through a "capture anything you can" strategy, but I still can't tell them apart... I apparently had a terror operator in my first terror mission (according to the after action report, which listed such a body), but I have no idea which one it was, or if it was killed by my team or local forces. It doesn't help that the game doesn't have a "look" feature, so you have to stand on anything and look at your inventory to see what it is, and that's only after the fact (and I don't expect the mod to be able to do anything about that).

- The research pages that displays different alien species roles lists the various operator roles in the list that makes up the text section (which is good), but it's not obvious that the "operator" actually isn't a single role per species. It would help if the text section said something along the lines of "Note that operators are specific to the craft they operate, so you would want to capture each kind of craft operator.".

- When would missile jamming equipment be usable? I can't have enough aircraft to have a bunch just standing around all over the world in case of the need to attack a large missile spewing ship. However, terror ships seem to cruise back and forth for a fair while, so it might be possible to change aircraft loadouts and still have time to engage the ship? It's a fairly early technology, so it ought to have some early use.

- It's curious that the heavy machine gun is actually lighter than the machine gun (as I assume the vehicle mounted version is heavier).

- In the same vein, it's somewhat odd that there's a man portable minigun development, while the vehicle machine gun is stuck with a single division version, while the division heavy machine gun comes in several improved versions.

- It's confusing that the ship basic<component> (I'm not sure which one it is, as I haven't yet come back to that level of the game with the new version. it's a craft core DSB component) is actually more advanced than the <component>. It would be less confusing if the more primitive version was called "early". There's a DSB job to degrade the basic version into the (early) version, although the naming makes it look like an upgrade...

- There's a research report that refers to a "Paul", but I've seen nothing indicating the identity of that "Paul". A suspicion is that it might be an unnamed defector I haven't yet encountered with the latest version. If it is the defector, it would probably help if that text would say they've named him "Paul" (as I haven't encountered it yet, I don't know if the text has been changed since 0.99.45).

- The research report for advance alien phaser technology (if I remember correctly) says that it can be used as a basis for player laser weaponry, but that's already been unlocked by earlier research. I think it might unlock improved laser weaponry, though. I think the text may be from the vanilla version of the game.

Edited by PALU
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23 hours ago, PALU said:

- I still haven't figured out how to identify sebillian operators.

Operators are always armour free. Guards have a single breast piece attached to them.

idle_SE.png.e96ff3bc8374d65f48071e1f86798f12.pngOperator

idle_SE.png.f3e712e8b4f550346d02484aa32103bc.pngGuard

23 hours ago, PALU said:

- When would missile jamming equipment be usable? I can't have enough aircraft to have a bunch just standing around all over the world in case of the need to attack a large missile spewing ship.

I think Terror UFOs are the only ones which you can use Anti-Missiles on in Phase 1.

23 hours ago, PALU said:

- It's curious that the heavy machine gun is actually lighter than the machine gun

The weight of the vehicle machine gun is nowhere stated afaik.

23 hours ago, PALU said:

- The research report for advance alien phaser technology (if I remember correctly) says that it can be used as a basis for player laser weaponry, but that's already been unlocked by earlier research. I think it might unlock improved laser weaponry, though. I think the text may be from the vanilla version of the game.

   <Row ss:AutoFitHeight="0">
    <Cell ss:StyleID="s87"><Data ss:Type="String">Researches.AdvAlienPhaserTechnologyDesc</Data></Cell>
    <Cell ss:StyleID="s87"><Data ss:Type="String">We've successfully completed our research on the Alien Phaser and Lightning weapons Commander.&#xA;&#xA;Now, with my towering intellect and a little help from one of your Caesan captives we believe we can increase our understanding of and start to develop our first energy based weapons.&#xA;&#xA;Leave us for now, I'll call you as soon as I've extracted everything I need from that Caesan Weapon Sergeant.</Data></Cell>
   </Row>

23 hours ago, PALU said:

- The research pages that displays different alien species roles lists the various operator roles in the list that makes up the text section (which is good), but it's not obvious that the "operator" actually isn't a single role per species. It would help if the text section said something along the lines of "Note that operators are specific to the craft they operate, so you would want to capture each kind of craft operator.".

I assume that "Well anyway now we have an good overview of the different aliens we might encounter:" implies that you can encounter these aliens.

 

Edited by Charon
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Thanks! Those two images beside each other are extremely helpful.

Yes, at the time I researched advanced alien phaser technology I already had laser Mk 1, and I assume lasers are considered to be energy based (as light definitely is energy rather than ballistic).

The problem with the alien overview is that you've got the 8 images, which are what I would expect most people are drawn to, and that contains a single operator image. Then there's a listing of all the operator sub types in the text, but I do not find it intuitively obvious that a light scout operator might give different info from a medium scout operator, for instance, as a load text tells me not to worry about missing info from lesser peers (and it obviously doesn't help that there's no text at all in the research reports, currently, at least not for the 3 operators I've got so far). Thus, I realized that the operators were different only when I did get multiple operator interrogation options on the research screen, which was a little late (things are vastly different after restarting, as I apparently have learnt a fair bit).

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13 minutes ago, PALU said:

The problem with the alien overview is that you've got the 8 images, which are what I would expect most people are drawn to, and that contains a single operator image. Then there's a listing of all the operator sub types in the text, but I do not find it intuitively obvious that a light scout operator might give different info from a medium scout operator, for instance, as a load text tells me not to worry about missing info from lesser peers (and it obviously doesn't help that there's no text at all in the research reports, currently, at least not for the 3 operators I've got so far). Thus, I realized that the operators were different only when I did get multiple operator interrogation options on the research screen, which was a little late (things are vastly different after restarting, as I apparently have learnt a fair bit).

I majorly agree, but i dont see a better solution.

Do you want to have the 3 same images, with different descriptions ? I just tried it and it doesnt look good. The whole specialist section is a tradeoff for the game, as we dont want to hand the player a list and tell them to work it off. Discovery is more important, the Xpedia entry is just a backup plan in case you might have missed something, for your next campaign maybe, like in your case. Its definitely not a "Here these aliens appear in this phase and now catch em all" thing.

So the cloudy direction is in line with the game. If you want to get a accurate picture you have to stick your head into the game and read and look very carefully ;).

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Repeating the images would not look good, I agree. At the current state of the mod, I don't think there's much need to spread intentional confusion, as the missing parts handle that just fine (since I haven't read any tech tree info, I have little idea what most of the researches do: I can guess, but that's it). I wouldn't add intentional vagueness until there's more of a context to be vague in (If the interrogation of a light scout operator had a description that hinted at the operator having knowledge limited to that craft class, that would be a hint that I might want to get hold of other craft operators to pick their brains. Similarly, I have no actual knowledge if it matters if a craft operator for the same craft is sebillian or caesan, as from an outside perspective it shouldn't matter, although I guess it does, as there are different research topics for it).

As it currently stands, the report has a list of what you should strive to gather, but I didn't realize the operator part until well into the second phase when I never increased the ballistic knowledge beyond Mk 2. Getting the balance right between hand holding and "let them cut themselves and they'll eventually learn which end to hold the sword" isn't trivial, but transforming the game into a meta gaming puzzle box (Age of Decadence, sadly) is the wrong way to go, in my view. You may want to restart a couple of times as you learn things, but there shouldn't be a lot of "Haha! We changed the rules a while ago without telling you, so now you're screwed. You have to start over and use the new rules (once you've played further in a doomed game to learn the new rules) at the point where we change them, way back there!"). New twists you have to adapt to, yes. New twists you should have gotten meta gaming knowledge to prepare for, no.

Edit: Bagged myself an early sebillian terror operator after identifying the bugger visually. There are two minor graphical nitpicks with them, however:
1. When crouched, they still have the "collar" part of armor at the back of their neck, at least when facing right.
2. When unconscious they turn pink (or whatever you'd like to call the one that isn't green). Can be used to verify you've got what you wanted at a distance, though! I think they're also pink when dead.

Edited by PALU
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