Are we going to get our incendriary rockets back? Can we have incendiary grenades?

[StellarRat]

The rockets were removed from the game many builds back. I don't know why this was done, but now that the programming and better handling of fire by AI is finished can we please have them back? I know this is relatively easy to mod, but I see no reason why they can't be in the base game. Also, an incendiary grenade should be very simple to add. Since we don't have any true area denial/protection weapons (like the proximty grenade in the OG), I believe these would add an extra option to tactical combat. I believe this is only fair as the AI has improved and will soon be employing grenades of their own and possibly poison gas.

Edited September 24, 2013 by StellarRat

[NoirWolf]

The rockets were removed from the game many builds back. I don't know why this was done, but now that the programming and better handling of fire by AI is finished can we please have them back? I know this is relatively easy to mod, but I see no reason why they can't be in the base game. Also, an incendiary grenade should be very simple to add. Since we don't have any true area denial/protection weapons (like the proximty grenade in the OG), I believe these would add an extra option to tactical combat. I believe this is only fair as the AI has improved and will soon be employing grenades of their own and possibly poison gas.

It's probably got something to do with the reason they pulled the flammenwerfer out too (yes I went german there).

[Ol' Stinky]

It's probably got something to do with the reason they pulled the flammenwerfer out too (yes I went german there).

Well, Chris said in the flamethrower thread:

Flamethrowers are a major regret of mine. Aside from the animation issues, you guys have seen the chaos caused by hypervelocity weapons in bug terms so I dread to think the issues flamers would cause.

A more robust shooting model is very high on the priority list for any future turn-based combat games we make, believe me.

I think we can all agree that the flame sprites that are currently in the game are pretty damn sweet, and incendiary rockets/grenades don't use any new mechanics like hypervelocity. As StellarRat says, you can plonk incendiaries in the game right now - in fact, incendiary rockets are still sitting in weapons_gc.xml.

I remember the devs did say why they removed the rocket, but annoyingly, I can't find the post. Going out on a limb here, I reckon it's one of these:

a) they were overpowered in terms of stats

b) they were overpowered because the AI wouldn't move out of fire and would sit there burning to death

c) people didn't use them

d) they didn't have a niche.

Most of these reasons are outdated now that aliens have AI, with a) being something that can be tweaked by playing around with fire damage (which seems to be hardcoded) and the radius. The niche is to drive aliens out of cover and area denial/control, which would be incentive for people to use them.

It might also work better if fire damage wasn't a flat damage number, but increased as you spend longer in a fire tile. So the first turn on a fire tile might cause 20 damage, the second 40, the third 60, etc. I realise that's a new mechanic and that it's not necessary for incendiary wepaons, but it seems like a neat way to distinguish fire damage from other types. Or maybe being on a fire tile could hammer bravery, since being immolated tends to make people a little bit panicky.

Also, I guess androns should have a ton of incendiary armour when they get their Terminator AI. Androns marching relentlessly through the inferno would look pretty cool.

Edited September 25, 2013 by Ol' Stinky

[Solver]

I concur with Stinky here, incendiary rockets should be in with their niche being flushing non-mechanical aliens out of cover and also illuminating the battlefield in low-light conditions. It may not be the most significant weapon but was an excellent addition in the original.

The AI is now a lot smarter and surely it can be told to avoid fire tiles. It's not as much of a priority in my opinion as getting aliens to use their grenades, but would still be very sweet.

[Max_Caine]

There's a problem with fire itself - it's not very potent. Oh, it's potent enough verses unarmoured civilians or xenonauts (does 35pts of damage, as I remember), but even starting aliens have a high HP so fire, while harmful, probably isn't dangerous enough to be valuable. Jackal armour can absorb almost all the damage from fire, so if you wanted fire to have more of a battlefield effect, it needs to be more potent... and accessable to the aliens as well, tbh.

[Solver]

It is like any other weapon in that it can be balanced. And I would consider it valuable enough for the occasional use even with low damage - it still might mean I need a shot or two less to kill the alien. Night missions would still make for a nice opportunity to use the fire, combining its illuminating and damaging effects.

[NoirWolf]

The foul xenos resist our flames? Upgrade time:

And before anyone asks: No, I don't particularly like nuns with guns, just that they seem to have some of the better fan art around I can find readily ( still curious how flame weapons worked in Xenonauts that they'd have hypervelocity weapon-like issues and if they fix hypervelocity weapons and put them back in why would flame weapons then still be out ? )

[Ol' Stinky]

There's a problem with fire itself - it's not very potent. Oh, it's potent enough verses unarmoured civilians or xenonauts (does 35pts of damage, as I remember), but even starting aliens have a high HP so fire, while harmful, probably isn't dangerous enough to be valuable. Jackal armour can absorb almost all the damage from fire, so if you wanted fire to have more of a battlefield effect, it needs to be more potent... and accessable to the aliens as well, tbh.

I don't think that's a problem - I think that's how it should be! If fire both ignored cover and did high damage, then why would you use anything else? We've been down this road with sniper rifles: when they pretty much ignored most cover, they were the only show in town. It made for really boring squad composition, and harridans with alien sniper rifles were absolutely brutal. The value of fire is that most aliens won't want to walk across it (so you can seal off corridors in base missions) nor stay in it (so you can flush them out of that rock cover).

I thought that fire did more damage than that, something to the tune of 40-50 damage, but I'm glad if that's changed. I wish the fire variables like damage and chance to continue burning were in config.xml or a fire_gc.xml file though (hint, hint).

And before anyone asks: No, I don't particularly like nuns with guns,

Surrrrrrre you don't. You certainly don't have a folder called "nuns with guns" on your computer, ha ha. Don't worry, your secret's safe with me.

Edited September 25, 2013 by Ol' Stinky

[StellarRat]

Your right that is wasn't/shouldn't be particularly potent, but it wasn't in the OG either. It was just a good way to flush aliens. It pretty potent if the alien couldn't escape or actually caught fire. Remember, in the OG the aliens could actually catch fire and keep burning. Remember the flaming Sectoids running out of the barn and dying? Come on you know you do...

[Elydo]

I remember massive sections of shopping malls being ablaze in Apoc. Not only did it help with battlefield control, it was a reasonable defence against multiworms and those damn rippers. Fire was also a way to kill multiworms without them spawning. Plus, not only did apoc have sympathetic detonation, it also had munitions cooking off, so a few turns after an arthropod died in flame, you'd sometimes have his grenades and ammo exploding. Occasionally I saw it kill a buddy of his that was still nearby, heh.

I maintain apoc is underloved, though I do find the endgame really tedious for some reason.

[StellarRat]

I maintain apoc is underloved, though I do find the endgame really tedious for some reason.

I thought it was great all the way until the final mission which was so annoying I never finished it.

[Gorlom]

I thought it was great all the way until the final mission which was so annoying I never finished it.

I thought it was great all the way until the cinematic/epilogue after you won the final mission. It was so minimalistic, pointless and dissapointing that I repressed it.

[NoirWolf]

Hmmm kept meaning to ask someone this but never found the right group for it: Which game do you guys recommend out of the old series of games for a new guy? Gonna be getting Xeno tomorrow or at latest on Friday but I also saw quite a few UFO/Xcom games on Steam the other day .

[Gorlom]

Hmmm kept meaning to ask someone this but never found the right group for it: Which game do you guys recommend out of the old series of games for a new guy? Gonna be getting Xeno tomorrow or at latest on Friday but I also saw quite a few UFO/Xcom games on Steam the other day .

Afaik Steam sells all of the X-com games. They even have a bundle for them.

Go with the first one (if you can figure out what name you should be looking for! moahahha)

Then go for TFTD

[Queamin]

I liked apoc a lot but never finished it some of the idea's were cool and just protecting the city was great it was a change from the whole world, it is a pity it was rushed out and somethings were never fleshed out as much as they wanted.

at NoirWolf

I would do x-com 1 ufo defense first as the second (tftd)terror from the deep is a lot harder, then you could try apoc or tftd after x-com ufo defense.

[Elydo]

Hmm.

The OG is what started it all, and the Gollop Brothers were visionaries in my opinion. It's really expansive and far reaching. But the interface can be really annoying, there are a lot of fiddly features that can screw you if you forget they're necessary (like having to manually reload ammo before each mission).

Terror from the Deep is a reskin of the OG done by a different team, so it's the same game with different clothes. Some people hate it for that, I kinda like it. They responded to a bug with the difficultly settings from the original by upping the difficulty across the board with the sequel though, I think that Easy in TftD is equal to the hardest difficulty from the OG. Plus Lobster Men, who are nightmares.

Apocalypse is a foray into real time, it works well enough but turn-based is still in there anyway so no need to hold it against the game. You can even choose which mode to play on a per-mission basis. The game is set within one giant city with various factions and corporations you need to balance the approval of, rather than nations and the geoscape. Aliens invade from portals above the city and start attacking stuff, you need to stop them. You can raid facilities to search for alien infiltration (at the risk of annoying the faction if you're wrong) or just to wreck stuff, build defences within your own bases, you have to hire scientists and engineers like soldiers (with their own skill levels) and there are three types of soldiers to hire; regular humans that stat up (you can even train them in the base over time), androids that start with really good stats but never improve (good for early game but you're crippling yourself later. They ARE immune to those damn brainsuckers though) and mutants that are weaker but psionic.

Across the board I consider Apoc to have more versatility and replayability, but it's by no means perfect.

Interceptor is X-COM gameplay with interceptors instead of soldiers. You build space stations and have to try and interdict alien activity across a stellar cluster, and you need to pilot the interceptors yourself, with wingmen. Not bad, not to everyone's tastes.

Enforcer doesn't exist.

The Aftersquit games, if they're also under consideration, are a re-imagining of the genre. The first deals with the aftermath of an invasion and trying to fight back. Lots of guns, lots of ways to train your soldiers with various specialties. Not bad, but somehow lacking in 'soul' in my opinion. I never found it that immersive.

The second puts you on a floating space station after one of the endings of the first, it's a little more restrained with a little more character (more story but a little further from realism) but still doesn't manage to do what it wants to well. Quite buggy. Three types of soldiers akin to Apoc.

The third is possibly the most polished, but it's effectively an action-RPG. Incredibly limited number of soldiers, each with their own personality, and you run a base on Mars alongside the events of the second game, trying to terraform the planet for a bunch of frozen colonists when Martians appear. Then it gets worse. It can be quite a lot of fun, but it's only superficially akin to the original X-COM.

Have I missed any?

[Ol' Stinky]

I remember massive sections of shopping malls being ablaze in Apoc. Not only did it help with battlefield control, it was a reasonable defence against multiworms and those damn rippers. Fire was also a way to kill multiworms without them spawning. Plus, not only did apoc have sympathetic detonation, it also had munitions cooking off, so a few turns after an arthropod died in flame, you'd sometimes have his grenades and ammo exploding. Occasionally I saw it kill a buddy of his that was still nearby, heh.

I maintain apoc is underloved, though I do find the endgame really tedious for some reason.

Well, the missions into alien territory was the Xen of turn-based games. It went on for far, far too long. I do agree that Apoc, despite its many flaws, was a cool game. Invading the Cult of Sirius and setting the entire place on fire is a really fond memory of mine, as was raiding the slums and planting explosives at the base of the buildings, causing it to all come tumbling down...

One thing I'd like to see from Apoc is smoke grenades extinguishing fires. That was neat.

Noir, I'd start with the first game then go onto Apoc. Check out OpenXCom to go along with it, it'll ease the pain of travelling back to a decades-old UI.

[NoirWolf]

Well' date=' the missions into alien territory was the Xen of turn-based games. It went on for far, far too long. I do agree that Apoc, despite its many flaws, was a cool game. Invading the Cult of Sirius and setting the entire place on fire is a really fond memory of mine, as was raiding the slums and planting explosives at the base of the buildings, causing it to all come tumbling down...

One thing I'd like to see from Apoc is smoke grenades extinguishing fires. That was neat.

Noir, I'd start with the first game then go onto Apoc. Check out [u']OpenXCom[/u] to go along with it, it'll ease the pain of travelling back to a decades-old UI.

I think I will pick Apoc up on steam, I think I can get the first game to run on a tablet I am expecting to arrive soon so gonna keep that for Xcom on the go.

[TrashMan]

Your right that is wasn't/shouldn't be particularly potent, but it wasn't in the OG either. It was just a good way to flush aliens. It pretty potent if the alien couldn't escape or actually caught fire. Remember, in the OG the aliens could actually catch fire and keep burning. Remember the flaming Sectoids running out of the barn and dying? Come on you know you do...

SET THEM ABLAZE BROTHERS!

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/lets-play-wh40k-chaos-gate-looking-for-new-recruits.80439/

Edited September 26, 2013 by TrashMan

[NoirWolf]

SET THEM ABLAZE BROTHERS!

-snaps fingers- PUNY MORTAL! MY POWAH CANNOT BE TAMED BY SUCH PUNY TRICKS! -cracks knuckles and the terminator next to you keels over snapped in half at the waist-

[EchoFourDelta]

I think I will pick Apoc up on steam, I think I can get the first game to run on a tablet I am expecting to arrive soon so gonna keep that for Xcom on the go.

Trufax, if you get the OG, go to openxcom.org, get the 0.9 version, then get the most recent nighly build. Run the installer, merge the patch in. It gets rid of literally every bug and DOS limitation that was present in the original game, and has a host of advanced options on the front end that range from enhancing the UI to making the aliens sneakier and more dangerous to integrating novel things from the newer one like having their weapons self-destruct if they're killed.

You need an actual copy of X-COM for it to work, but all it does is sample some data from the original X-COM install, and runs completely independently after that. Also, compared to digging at Xenonauts, modding and content creation on it is an absolute dream.

Edited September 28, 2013 by EchoFourDelta