Max_Caine Posted May 30, 2013 Share Posted May 30, 2013 (edited) I've been working on equipment and weapon mods which provide interesting and novel effects. They aren't things that you'd spam, but they provide tools that create specialists who can help the line solider (especially when you get to the shrike and have a larger squad to play with). The first of these tools is the Firewall Weapon Details A suppression-centric weapon, the Firewall is good at locking down the enemy but not very good at much else. It has a range of 20 tiles, does 20 pts of damage with 0 mitigation, fires a burst shot of 4 shots, with a suppression value of 80 and a suppression width of 5 tiles (so 80 suppression on the target tile and up to 2.5 tiles, then 40 suppression outside of that). You need to research lasers before you can research the Firewall (it takes a very short time to research the weapon), and it costs 5 units of alien alloys and $50,000 to manufacture. Alas, given the way the game works, if you've already researched lasers you can't research the Firewall and will need to edit the researches.xml file so you can research it after your current subject. Mod Details This is a almost-full mod, which includes research, a xenopedia entry, manufacturing, a gui and xenopedia image (made by Ferry Susanto, one of my regular artists), tooltip entries and a custom sound (by me!). The sprite chosen was the scatter laser sprite. Advice The mod doesn't seem to work with the modding system Giovanni has created on the installer, so the only way to use it is to overwrite the current files. I haven't included backup files (as I don't know how you have modified your own game files), so please backup your files if you intend to try this mod. Download the zip here Any feedback would be most welcome. EDIT: Wups! Forgot to add the custom sound. All fixed! Edited May 30, 2013 by Max_Caine Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lightgemini Posted May 31, 2013 Share Posted May 31, 2013 Looks interesting. The weapon picture and description are nice, good work. Im curious about what other ideas you have. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raziel1981 Posted May 31, 2013 Share Posted May 31, 2013 looks fantastic Max Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GizmoGomez Posted June 4, 2013 Share Posted June 4, 2013 Hey Chris, you out there? Can this be added to the game please? I think that would be excellent. (With the permission of Max, of course. It's his beautiful, extremely uncomfortable, baby, after all.) It would give us more options in load out, and a dedicated suppressing weapon would be pretty neat to have. I mean, we wouldn't even need to have a plasma/MAG variant (for one it wouldn't make any sense, considering what it is), just this one lovely device from laser tech. It would keep it's usefulness throughout the rest of the game, I'd expect, because a suppress is a suppress, after all. To Max, excellent work, sounds incredible. I cannot convey how much I like this idea. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wintermist Posted June 5, 2013 Share Posted June 5, 2013 Sweet, really fits the current designs as well! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Khall Posted June 6, 2013 Share Posted June 6, 2013 If the flamethrower template was implemented (cant remember if the coding wasn't done or just the animation), this would be a good weapon to use it, with a long and narrow cone. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grazgul Posted June 7, 2013 Share Posted June 7, 2013 Really liking this, can't wait to see what your next weapon is!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GizmoGomez Posted June 7, 2013 Share Posted June 7, 2013 Hey Max, how were you thinking this tool would be used primarily? My thoughts were that it would be most effective for suppressing targets (needed for interrogation, research, etc) without killing them, so a guy with a stun rod could rush up and knock them out. Also, does it always suppress the target? What does an suppression value of 80 mean in gameplay terms? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Max_Caine Posted June 7, 2013 Author Share Posted June 7, 2013 The design of the weapon is multifunctional, as suppression inflicts certian general staus effects. Providing suppression works correctly for AP deductions, it is, as you say, very good for locking down an alien in place so a shock jock can come up close and kiss it good night. However, it's also very good for stripping reaction shots away from recently discovered aliens. Suppression damage isn't affected by terrain, so it makes more complex play possible as your scouts and spotters can either call in fire from the fireman, or pull out a Firewall and neutralise a target's ability to shoot back before your other troopers get their collective asses blown off. As for suppression effectiveness, it's more difficult to tell post-Steam, as this was orignally written for Hotfix 3 when aliens were a lot more resistant to suppression, but it was good at suppressing anything up to soldier. Anything up to solider-class had a bravery between 65-80 so taking into account armour even LMGs/Scatter lasers would have trouble suppressing the higher classes before they killed them! The Firewall does lots of raw suppression damage so it could suppress noncoms with a burst, guards (most of the time) with a burst, soliders with 2 bursts. (I think I should have made it more expensive to shoot, tbh. I'll give it some tweaks). It also affects Androns and Drones, which I believe it shouldn't have. I remember Chris saying robots wouldn't be affected by suppression. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sathra Posted June 8, 2013 Share Posted June 8, 2013 I think weapons apply suppression per shot, so it'd do about 320 suppression 'damage' per burst. But I don't know how it interacts with Bravery. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cybrbeast Posted June 8, 2013 Share Posted June 8, 2013 Great concept, would love a YT video of it in action. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Max_Caine Posted July 17, 2013 Author Share Posted July 17, 2013 (edited) So, I finally got around to doing something I had the art assets to do since last week - an upgrade for the smoke grenade. Weapon Details The Glitterglass grenade is an upgrade of the smoke grenade. It has 100% coverage on detonation, a 70% reduction for shots targeted through it and reduces los by -6. It also only has a 10% per-tile dispersion chance every turn. However, Glitterglass is toxic so anything entering the cloud suffers a 15HP chemical hit, it costs $5000 and a unit of alien alloys per grenade manufactured. It's intended as an outdoors style of weapon, something that provides a useful covering cloud when advancing across open terrain without phasing out the smoke grenade. Mod Details The mod is an almost total conversion with research, manufacturing, new art assets (grenade art assets by Ferry Susanto, gas art asset by me) and uses the standard sound assets. I'm not certain about the new smoke asset I made - I went through 6 different versions before I settled on one that looked reasonable but I notice it's hard to tell which square it's on - I may have to make further adjustments. This has been tested with v18 and v19.4 and seems to work with both. To prevent savegame breaking and ensure backwards compatability, the glitterglass grenade research predicate is the datacore of a scout, corvette, landingcraft or cruiser. There also seems to be a problem with research, in that the game will bring up the Xenopedia, but it wont open the appropriate article (which is under "Xenonaut Weaponry") - I don't know why. Download here Feedback is always welcome. Other For anyone wondering about the Firewall, I am having difficulty making it work in v19.x. I shall endevour to make it work. Edited July 17, 2013 by Max_Caine changed "alenium" for "alien alloys" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WalrusJones Posted July 17, 2013 Share Posted July 17, 2013 Interesting. Your oddities are all very interesting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Max_Caine Posted July 17, 2013 Author Share Posted July 17, 2013 This one isn't quite the oddity the last one was, but I gave it my best. I was inspired by games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. where one has a tendancy to hang on to the good stuff and never use it because you don't know where the money for more good stuff is going to come from (or that there might ever be good stuff again). 5 grand might not sound earth shattering, but that's 5 grand you aren't going to see again any time soon if you throw a grenade, and manufacturing glitterglass grenades can quickly become a costly business, so I'm hoping the play style will alternate between smoke grenades which are free, and glitterglass which is awesome but hella expensive in comparison. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WalrusJones Posted July 18, 2013 Share Posted July 18, 2013 Same logic as my T3 alloys ammo. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Max_Caine Posted September 17, 2013 Author Share Posted September 17, 2013 (edited) I've put off this particular new weapon for almost four months - ever since I got the art back in v18.5 and was testing it then. There was a lot of fiddling to get it right, and I couldn't be arsed with all the fiddling. However, over the weekend I was able to get done a new weapon for my warehouse. This being... I worked out quite a while ago how sort-of to do minefields. You see, a gas as defined in gas_gc can have a disspation rate of zero. That is, it will never dissapate. And while the file is called "gas_gc", you may as well call it "semi-permanent land-based effect_gc", because you can point a "gas" at any animated or non-animated sprite with the appropriate spectre. This is actually quite exciting. With the proper extensions, you could do cool shit like make a decoy hologram, because the underlying functionality is present in gas_gc. Anyway, I said a sort-of minefield. It's sort-of, because this is a self-resetting minefield. Each time someone steps into a non-dissapating gas tile, they will suffer damage, but it won't vanish on being used. Furthermore, unlike "proper" mines, there isn't a set-up time. So I looked for a reasonable rationale for a self-resetting minefield. And I hit on it! Chemical weapons! The toxigun is your stereotypical "goo gun", inspired by Unreal Tornament and Awesomenauts' goo guns. It fires a blob that does 40 chemical damage and leaves behind a patch of death - each gas tile causes 80 chemical damage! I'm currently testing it out verses the New and Improved aliens of v19, to see if it will need tweaking, but I thought I'd release it now. Here's some screenies of before: And after The art was made by Ferry Susanto. I made the firing sound in BFXR, but I couldn't work out how to make a satisfying splat noise, so I have used one taken from freesound, by Audionautics. This particular research topic is live capture locked. You have to capture a live Caesan - any will do - in order to unlock the project. In addition to the Toxigun, I also updated the Firewall and the Glitterglass grenade to v19 standards, and packaged them all in one. This may cause problems for you, dear reader. The Firewall is research-topic locked. So if you've gotten past lasers, you won't get the Firewall, and it's possible that it might play hob with your saves, so BACK THINGS UP BEFORE APPLYING THE MOD. Here's the mod, in all its glory Edited September 17, 2013 by Max_Caine Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thothkins Posted September 17, 2013 Share Posted September 17, 2013 bonus points for having the Aliens counter on there. Extra brownie bonus points for labelling it the X-Com Apocalypse Toxigun. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Betuor Posted September 18, 2013 Share Posted September 18, 2013 bonus points for having the Aliens counter on there.Extra brownie bonus points for labelling it the X-Com Apocalypse Toxigun. I just loved the UT reference. I LOVED that game. It was all I was thinking about when reading that weapon's description. I'm really looking forward to it. Love the art look. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EchoFourDelta Posted September 18, 2013 Share Posted September 18, 2013 Sick work, Caine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ishantil Posted September 18, 2013 Share Posted September 18, 2013 I loved that thing in X-COM Apocalypse. Good work, sir! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
a333 Posted September 25, 2013 Share Posted September 25, 2013 Max, did you thought about making the clouds lower, so they won't be so intrusive? This would probably matter since they will never dissipate, and prolonged warfare will probably turn the map into the toxic version of Silent Hill. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NoirWolf Posted September 25, 2013 Share Posted September 25, 2013 Max can I put in a request for a modified goo launcher? (one that fires, at least, a napalm like substance which can then be ignited by something say like... I donno... lasers? ). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Max_Caine Posted September 25, 2013 Author Share Posted September 25, 2013 Noirwolf, unfortunately, I can't make something like oil which would improve the flammability stat of a tile. And there isn't a damage over time flag or stat, so the sticky-burn of weapons like Napalm wouldn't work. However, I have made a version of the toxigun which does cause fires - it's quite an easy thing to do. I can in fact make an "improved fire" as a type. however it won't be classfied as actual fire. a333, I am trying to make a proper animated goo tile. It's a lot harder than I thought it would be! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NoirWolf Posted September 25, 2013 Share Posted September 25, 2013 Noirwolf, unfortunately, I can't make something like oil which would improve the flammability stat of a tile. And there isn't a damage over time flag or stat, so the sticky-burn of weapons like Napalm wouldn't work. However, I have made a version of the toxigun which does cause fires - it's quite an easy thing to do. I can in fact make an "improved fire" as a type. however it won't be classfied as actual fire.a333, I am trying to make a proper animated goo tile. It's a lot harder than I thought it would be! That could work too , granted not as satisfying to my inner physicist ( getting lasers to be more deadly even late game ) but still good . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WalrusJones Posted September 26, 2013 Share Posted September 26, 2013 Ohh god. Xcom Apocalypse. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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