Jump to content

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


Charon

Recommended Posts

1 hour ago, PALU said:

Base assault: Weird... The completely undamaged monster ship (I save scummed past the play where I damaged it, preferring not to lose two interceptors to the escorts and a bomber [due to sloppy handing during exit from the engagement]) somehow sustained 71% damage inflicted by a single battery on landing (about 19000 damage reported),

Wut ?

Well if you have the particle turret than the damage is about right. Its 16k, plus/minus fluctuation. But if that is 71% damage than the infiltrator only had around 26760 hp. Probably 27k. That number doesnt exist anywhere if it hasnt ben changed by someone ( is my guess ).

Do you have a save before the landing and can reroll the fight and/or send me the save ?

2 hours ago, PALU said:

I did, however equip soldiers with each of the Ancient weapons in a throwaway engagement earlier (after searching and finding that "editor.exe" probably actually was "xenonauts_gc_editor.exe"), and while the effects look nice, I didn't find any of them spectacular (but I'm not a graphics whore, and so not the best person for looking at that kind of thing). I didn't find any jarring sound discrepancy between the single and burst modes for any of the weapons (that have both).

Tried the new changes and the Reaper yet ?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The attached file is from just before the UFO attacks the base (it's moving directly towards it). I also ran loaded it and ran it again, with a similar result (about the same damage from batteries, and I think I've identified both Praetors among the dead during the deployment phase, which is where I exited the game).

The soldier test I did with the Ancient weapons was using the new files. I haven't looked at the XML representations, though, just what it looked like with soldiers firing the weapons.

So, the Reaper burst mode now costs a bit more, so unless the wielder is looking straight at the victim it can fire 3 bursts, which will just fail to eliminate an undamaged shield. There's no radius specified, so it ought not to be an area effect, but I don't know what ReaperExplosion does. If that is a single tile version of the cloud Roboreapers emit when a layer is peeled off it's a nasty effect, as a single tile is still an area. I don't know what would happen on a burst, getting hit by 3 of those, but I imagine it can be quite nasty (and annoying, due to the melee weapon loss bug for weapons on the ground. Bosses tend to be among the last ones eliminated, so any unconscious troops tend to still be unconscious [with their equipment spread on the ground] when the battle ends. Losing whiffle sticks is annoying, but katanas use scarce materials).

2.zip

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ok so i ran a few tests on the save. First things first, 71% means 71% of hp remaining. So if the infiltrator was undamaged before the landing, and i confirmed it was, the batteries did 29% dmg. Which they did not, is the conclusion i came to. Another test did around 19000 damage from the batteries, at which point the percent dropped from 71% to 70%. If i would do the math i would come to the conclusion that the game really thinks the infiltrator has 480k hp ( 1% is 4800 ).

So basically here is what happened: The game spawns the infiltrator with 0% > right before the landing they deduct hp equivalent of 25% > then the batterie(s) roll their damage ontop of it.

A few things to note:

  • this kind of information seems to be present in the savegame, as Palu and I come to the same procedure even though we have different PCs.
  • the battery hit is PREDERTIMENT, which means no  matter how often you load the save, the battery will always hit. This kind of information also has to be present in the save game, otherwise we wouldnt have the same result on 2 pcs. Usually this SHOULDNT happen, a 50% hit chance means it should fail 50% of the time.
  • Damage of batteries get randomised.

A few things to note in general:

  • hits of batteries seem to get randomised. Confirmed on a different save after an infiltrator has spawned. This is contrary to the above conclusion of the predertimed hit from the Palu save.

 

I set up a new game at 1400 ATP and a single particle turret. It was weird. The first test i ran has 76% damage remaining, with the same invisible deduction of hp. But every other test after that ran as expected. That is it didnt invisibly deduct any kind of hp between landing and firing of the batteries, and particle turrets did around 3.3% damage.

I would say whatever was at work here had to warm itself up on a few calculations before it was ready to spew out the correct ones. I cant see how i can fix that, and i think these things were simply a bad seed of the program.

I would leave it at that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 3/24/2019 at 12:02 PM, Charon said:

I ... would have liked to see that :D.

It was mostly a smokey mess cuz I'd stationed my troops under all sorts of smoke grenade cover. The more entertaining part was probably me flipping my shit...

 

Here's a screenshot from a more recent mission; maybe you'll get a kick out of it. I'd been avoiding big Andron missions for the first two months of phase IV, but with my soldiers all kitted up in the latest gear, and a string of flawless victories against Caesans and Sebillians, I thought, why not give the old robots a spin again. So I went after 'em... in their landed, not shot-down, mothership. On a tiny arctic map. At night.

Well, at least I didn't have to use too many flares - flames provided all the light I needed. Check out all that scorched earth!

ScorchedEarth.jpg

Edited by dipmonk
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've recently performed a terror attack mission mounted from an Infiltrator, and there were oddities:

- The craft was reported to carry ? Caeasans (number illegible due to overloaded text), 1 Praetor, 13 Wraiths, 22 Xenomorphs, and 5 Heavy Drones. However, only one Cyberdisc was present, and I killed only 4 Wraiths (the after action report said 3, which matches with me splatting one), while two additional ones were hosting Xenomorphs, but the remainder never showed up, and there was very little teleport sound. Something was off there. I did not attempt to keep any kind of track of the Ceasans, but they seemed to be somewhat fewer that I would have expected as well (seemed more like a dozen than a score).
- Looking out from the embark zone, the number of enemies seen was a big surprise: only 3 (rather than previous experiences of half a dozen to a dozen) which included the Xenomorph hosting Wraiths (which can be recognized as they look different than normal and don't carry weapons), and one Caesan (plus a horde of human Xenomorph hosts, of course, but those can't be distinguished from normal humans except through vehicle movement interrupt [and AP loss if turning] sensing).
- The mission was surprisingly easy (note that I save scum, etc.), as the number of non Xenomorph enemies showing up was just a trickle, but the missing units would probably make a fair bit of a difference. There were definitely fewer terror units than before the adjustment.
- (The Big Boss was captured, by the way, as no other outcome would have been acceptable).
- I find the smaller drones are more of a threat than the large ones, because the small ones can single handedly suppress half your soldiers, which can be lethal when under pressure of many units (such as a Xenomorph or Andron/Robodog/Roboreaper/Robosadist horde). The large ones are a threat only if they hit (and they've got a poor aim), that manages to hit from an angle not protected by a shield, although the targeted (single) unit tends to be suppressed. This is a general comment, rather than a terror specific one.

- The Sonic cannon appears to be a monster of a weapon, and may well be overpowered, as I've splattered everything I've fired at (although that's only 3 units), including, in a previous mission, a single shot that missed the target Elite Wraith by two tiles but still splattered it through the area effect. I believe the target was unharmed (suppressed due to being somewhat near an Enforcer mech blast at a different unit, but not hit, what I saw).
- I think the reduced weight of Sonic ammo has worked out well, but I'm obviously biased. The ammo anxiety is gone, and the freed up weight allows you to carry some grenades despite also having lots of ammo clips, which sums up to total minor improvement over the Pulse tech (it's still frustrating that firing the weapon is more miss than hit, though, and the APs required for firing is on the high side, so there's [too?] little room for movement combined with firing).

Edit: No feedback on Ancient weapons wielded by enemies, as none have been fired. I've equipped soldiers with them in a throwaway loading of an embark save to fire them at the ground, and the effects look fairly nice (the minigun is a standard one), but I don't have any useful comments beyond that. I haven't looked at the latest version of the weapon details.

Edited by PALU
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Charon Do you know if this actually works ?

<useXenonautBaseTilesetForRetakeMissions value="0" comment="If 1, Xenonaut base retake missions will take place in the Xenonaut base map instead of the alien base map. The mechanics of such missions are similar to regular base defense except for Xenonauts getting the first turn" />

Edited by Svinedrengen
Link to comment
Share on other sites

45 minutes ago, Svinedrengen said:

@Charon Do you know if this actually works ?

<useXenonautBaseTilesetForRetakeMissions value="0" comment="If 1, Xenonaut base retake missions will take place in the Xenonaut base map instead of the alien base map. The mechanics of such missions are similar to regular base defense except for Xenonauts getting the first turn" />

Solver implemented it, and it never got tested. But it should work except that software never really works.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi there. You guys did a great job creating this modpack.
I wanted to ask you some technical questions:

  1. How does equipment retrieval at mission end works ? I suppose it collects all stuff that was in deploy vehicle, but what about outside of it ? Does it collect all equipment that was on tiles with bodies/wrecks and ignore all other tiles ? Because i have lost some equipment after mission despite it being in one piece.
  2. In what situations i should use aircraft anti-missile ?
  3. In what situations repaired alien fighters are better than aserius ?
  4. What is a good way to stun xeno/reaper? Gas doesn't work and stunbatons are not really reliable.
  5. How do i use smoke grenades vs sebelians ? I get it that they have thermovision, previously i could use smoke grenade with fire grenade to create black smoke, but i guess it doesn't work now. Does regular tile with fire reduce their accuracy?
  6. Can i destroy only certain floors of a building or is it only possible to collapse the building by destroying walls on ground level ?
  7. Is there a better way to destroy alien doors than improved alenium explosive ? Cause i had to use it and several improved alenium grenades to blast a door in alien base.
  8. How mission score (kills, death, civ causalities) affect funding ? is it the same results when i kill all aliens except one and abandon the mission and when i kill all aliens except one and capture the ship ?
  9. Does all alien ship interiors give resources ? or i can safely destroy consoles etc. without losing anything ?
  10. Are different alien craft operators unlocks different research ? for example does scout operator unlocks more than light scout operator ?
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@LagannPM Welcome to the community:

1. Yeah, that one is actually pretty bad Edit: see posts below for correct and detailed answers

2. Try it out I'd say. If the missile screen of a UFO is too much for aircraft without Antimissiles, you'll know when you need them.

3. Not completely sure (I am not that far yet), but I think Alien Fighters are slower but sturdier and thus better suited against medium sized targets, while Asierus are the pure Anti-Fighter plane.

4. Understand the stun system. A unit's stun threshold is as high as its max HP, so that many stun damage you will have to do. At the same time, each HP damage is halved and applied as stun damage as well. That means hard tu stun enemies should be damaged first. Note that some units regenerate HP, but nothing raises its stun threshold again. That means you can essentially stun Sebillians with conventional force if you wait for enough regenerates.

5. Nope, that's an artefact from the base game (that was not even present there I think). Sebillians are affected by smoke and fire as any unit is: smoke blocks sight, fire damages. Smoke stacking is a thing.

6. You can collapse any building if you do enough damage to it.

7. Not sure if better, but you can damage doors with gun fire also. But improved Alenium explosives do pretty good damage.

8. That I don't know.

9. Yeah, try not to destroy the stuff inside the UFO.

10. Yep. And they are two different aliens, so Scout Op does not necessarily unlock everything Light Scout Op would have.

Edited by Dagar
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@LagannPM A few corrections and extensions to @Dagar´s post.

 

  1. If the mission is succesful, most things get collected which includes ALL your guns, if it can shoot it gets collected whether or not they are equipped or on the ground (watch out for grenades when your weapons are on the ground). What doesnt get collected are grenades, explosives, rockets and melee weapons, but only if they are on the ground, if you have it in your inventory when missions ends then everything is fine. All alien stuff gets collected. In case of retreat, then you have to pick up the stuff you want to bring back. 

      2. You will need them when you encounter ships that uses drones against you, which acts as homing missiles.

      3. Alien figthers are a direct upgrade to your F-17´s. Aserius are pure dogfighters.

      4. You can also try using the ceasans ligthning weapons on the xeno´s. And your shotguns are great against reapers, look at the tooltip for shotguns, they have some unik              stats other weapons dont have.

      5. All units in X-Div are affected by smoke.

      6. You can only collapse the building by destroying enough walls on the ground floor.

      7. Miniguns works great against alien doors, explosives too.

      8. You only need to worry about civilan casualties and completing the mission. The rest doesnt really matter.

        

Edited by Svinedrengen
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@LagannPM Further comments:

1. Beware of the mission ending with one or more of your troops unconscious, as you'll lose whiffle sticks (a.k.a. stun batons) as a minimum.
2. It eventually becomes mandatory, and since changing the loadout takes a long time, you'll more or less have to have it. You can still use the old Foxtrot bomber after UFOs sporting homing missiles show up, but only against those that don't have those weapons. Thus, you may send the more modern craft after the fancier UFOs and the old ones after the ones they can take on (since upgrading takes a long time, so you'll constantly changing out older aircraft for newer ones).
3. I've use one wing of repurposed alien interceptors for smaller UFOs, one wing of human interceptors against alien interceptors, and 3 bombers (typically sent individually) on each base. However, by the time the Asierus becomes almost useless, and a replacement becomes available, the repurposed alien interceptors are probably superior to the human interceptor as it's capable of fulfilling two roles, so if I was to play a new campaign I would replace the Asierus with repurposed alien interceptors rather than the Contrail.
4. Gas works if you apply enough of it (which may be an enormous amount for some aliens). Improved whiffle sticks are fairly reliable against the smaller Xenomorphs, but as Svinedrengen said, priming aliens with damage may be required (in practice) for the tougher ones. I've use a missile as softening up tactics against the biggest Xeno...
7. The only doors I blast are the exterior doors of some UFOs, but for those I use vehicle machineguns early on (requires a fair number of blasts) and minigun blasts from my heavy soldier later, which is essentially what Svinedrengen said. Also note that a nasty side effect of stun grenades and rockets is that they somehow open ordinary doors, so the aliens get a free line of sight at your soldiers (they also trigger very delicate alien equipment to blow up).
10. The aliens that are straight replacements of earlier tier ones unlocks the interrogation research of the replaced unit as well, but that doesn't go for other operators, as mentioned, so you can miss out on some things, although it usually doesn't matter when you get better tech later on. Similarly, some UFOs unlock specific tech.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, PALU said:

Also note that a nasty side effect of stun grenades and rockets is that they somehow open ordinary doors, so the aliens get a free line of sight at your soldiers (they also trigger very delicate alien equipment to blow up).

?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If you fire a stun gas grenade or rocket (or a smoke grenade) inside a UFO interior doors may open if hit by the "blast", so in a Corvette, trying to stun a bunch of aliens in the middle section may result in the doors to the inner section, where the boss and a horde of his cronies tend to reside, opening the field up for attacks (including nasty grenades) from the innermost section. Similarly, the same kind of "blasts" tend to cause engines and power sources to explode.

I don't know how many times I've had doors in carriers open like that when I breach from the side entrances and either try to obscure the line of sight from the aliens or take them out with stun gas. Also doors opened in that fashion tend not to close again, which means you're not only exposed during the aliens turn, but on all subsequent ones as well (until you progress past them). It's natural that using explosives can (and will) destroy interior walls and doors, but a puff of gas shouldn't really be sufficient to push doors open.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 hours ago, Charon said:

?

Wait, you're telling me that flashbangs, smoke and stun grenades blowing up UFO equipment is not intended?

On 4/10/2019 at 8:29 AM, Svinedrengen said:

    4. You can also try using the ceasans ligthning weapons on the xeno´s.

This cannot be understated - using the aliens' own lightning weapons against them is incredibly effective earlygame, as well as their own stun grenades if you think using one there is worth not crafting more out of it later.

Edited by Mr. Mister
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@PALU

Following this post

and the high frequency at which it is stated that the recruits are highly trained elites, and the best of the best ( they arent ), i would like to ask if we can get it somewhere across that your recruits are not the best of the best, but simply rookies ? We are a shady organisation and recruit soldiers all across the world. Mostly people who have been unhonorably discharged, are unhappy with their employer, or have other shortcomings which makes them hard to integrate in a normal organisation. Sometimes we also get highly valuable personal, but that aside the style that we recruit in is mostly this:

 

Also something i would rather leave in the dark, but is also something that frequently comes up. How can the trainable maximum stats be so high ? The answer is simple but since children play this game its hardly incorporated. Behind the scenes there is an abundance of drug abuse and mechanical implants going on. Most soldiers start out pretty normal, but as time goes and and with the motivation of actual missions on their back soldiers get more and more motivated to get stronger, faster, and more accurate - through any means possible. Having an augmented joint might not be the prettiest sight but it hardly matters to a corpse. Depending on the mission a soldier can get more motivated than in other missions ( depeding on useage ) and existing drug doses are getting refined as well as more experienced gained on how to use the mechanical replacements.

 

This gets hinted at already with the introduction of the psionic blocking armour, the wolf armour, but you can also see it how the armour design more and more conjures the images of the soldiers. At the end of the game you rarely see a face anymore. Prostheses are getting better as shown on the soldier equipment screen later in the game, among non explicitely stated clues.

If you still want to write some stuff you can incorporate this to your liking. But go a bit easy on the drug abuse side. This is highly unoffical inside of the Organisation of X-Division.

Edited by Charon
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I certainly agree there's a rift between the "highly trained elite" soldier description and the inept noobs that you actually get. However, the gradual drug enhancement model doesn't really make much sense as the maximum stats are the same throughout the game. Augmenting armor can modify the soldier's current level, but that's a different thing that does evolve through the game and is technological in nature. Other similar games do have soldier augmentation, but this one does not, nor is there any progression in the quality of rookies, which you'd expect if you could actually boost them. It doesn't exactly help that the game explicitly describe the recruits as former members of various top level forces, some with prior combat experience, and some without. If dishonorable discharges made up the recruiting pool I'd expect some to be wrecks, but some to be formidable fighters with mental instabilities or perversions (not necessarily sexual, but such as killing for pleasure, enjoying torture [sorry, "enhanced interrogation" is the politically correct euphemism used] etc.), and some who were scapegoats for higher rankings people's mistakes and/or misdeeds, not a bunch of beginners who vary is capability from completely useless to definitely sub standard.

If you look at the real world of doping, such as the bicycle doping competitions or professional drug "sports" such as baseball (or, for that matter, state sponsored doping for the glory of the nation), they're not holding back, and drug (ab)use seems to be rampant in some armies at war, but with rather limited improvements of their performance. I very much doubt there'd be any "easing in" on drugs if there would be an existential threat to humanity (on the other hand I don't think the fighting would be left to a more or less secret organization...), in particular if drugs would actually provide significantly improved performance.

Thus, it's hard to explain away this design flaw (and it doesn't help that I consider the original X-COM games to be superior to the later takes on the same formula in having larger forces of human expendable soldiers taking on a small number of superior aliens. You needed multiple soldiers to take down each alien, and while losing troops was unfortunate, skill progression was fast enough that it wouldn't be catastrophic, and the rookies were actually useful from the start [they could e.g. be used as expendable scouts as they had enough movement to fulfill such a role, and if they survived they'd progress to the next level of usability]. This made ironman type play much more reasonable for normal players. Soldier equipment was more important than the soldiers themselves).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, im not saying that the Age of recruitable soldiers and their background still fits into the Lore of X-Division, but that would just be another thing to revise. But it is minor, and bigger problems come first on the list, which is the perception of hiring elites. If you want, you can then also revise the Age and Background Information to a more darker tone.

Btw, i never got the memo about hiring elites, where does that actually come from ?

And i also dont get your part about drugs and mechanical enhancements being unbelievable. When you are talking about doping in real life than you are talking about a very controlled environment. People who dope have months to prepare and get used to the drug and their effects with it. People dont randomely compete and take an unknown drug 5 minutes before the performance. Unfortunately X-Division doesnt have that time, normal dopers have months to prepare, you have a single month to get your soldiers asses up to a terror site. Thuse i dont think it is unbelievable at all for gradual testing and experimentation with small amounts of drugs, especially if you mix in the possibility of alenium enhancements.
I rather think along the lines of Spartan 2 Program. But in a more gradual manner, and with gradual access and risks. You dont want to kill your soldiers, but you want the better performance. Now if somebody trains up their soldier to max accuracy in a single mission than thats unbelieavable, but any system can be exploited. And this is not about an excuse for a system, it is just the real backstory.

I think stats up to 100 are more or less still humanely normally reachable. But if stats go beyond 100 than it starts to get obvious that they enhance their abilities with that little something extra. The maxed stats are also easily explained through the risk/reward of continuing to modify your soldiers versus the risk of a failure. At one point the soldier is just useable enough that any further modification has a bigger risk than just reaping the benefits of the modifications which are already done.

Small mechanical implants explain themselfes.

Ofcourse there are no visible effects on the soldiers, the game isnt age restricted.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...