Fire in the Hole! - Destructible UFO Hulls and Dynamic UFO Assaults

[Skitso]

I took a quick test on this and wow, just... WOW! Amazing mod. Really good, I love the fire and the smoke, the new ufo layouts, the breaching, everything. Chris really needs to make this the official go-to mod to be bundled with the game.

I need to make few fixes to the item graphics though, and maybe try to polish your xenopedia picture a bit too if you don't mind. Umm.. speaking of xenopedia: the breaching article still unlocks only after alien invasion. I suggest to put it in the /scripts/_basebuilt.lua.

EDIT: Uh, forget about the xenopedia stuff, I was blind.

Edited May 26, 2014 by Skitso

[kabill]

Glad you like it.

I just checked on a new game and I'm getting the Breaching Charge entry immediately. In the downloadable folder, the altered scripts file is in and there's no command to unlock the page after alien invasion. Are you sure you didn't accidentally miss it?

And yes, I'm more than happy for you to make the images better. If you - or anyone else for that matter - fancies coming up with a better image for the destroyed hull segments as well that would be excellent. I've tried several times but my cut/paste reskins just don't look that good, sadly. They're serviceable, but it's more or less the single remaining issue I have with the mod.

[Skitso]

Yep, the xenopedia unlocks correctly, I was blind, sorry. I'll check out the destroyed hull segments too if I have time.

[kabill]

Cool. It would be great if you have the chance.

Also, just got wiped *again* assaulting a Landing Ship (that's three wipes in the same game, now, one each on a Scout, Corvette and Landing Ship). Apparently I suck at beating my own mod!

[TacticalDragon]

I run some test of the mod and is great. I suggest you to imprpve and motivate player to carry BrschCharges reduce the nominal inventpry size to 2x2.

Thanks!

[Solver]

This is top notch stuff.

I know it's hard to get variety inside of UFOs, but would it be possible to use both the modded and vanilla versions as submaps, thus giving 2 layouts per UFO? This is not because I like the vanilla layouts more, but I think it would create better balance through less predictability.

These modded layouts are very much like in the original X-Com, but that game didn't change accuracy based on distance. This game does, and it has shotguns for short range. So with these modded layouts, shotguns are far superior. In the default layouts, on the contrary, there are sometimes bigger spaces, especially from Landing ship upwards, making machine guns and even sniper rifles interesting options. I'm thinking that a mix of vanilla/modded UFO submaps would add a nice element of surprise.

Other than that, I am really glad this exists. I miss blown-out hulls from severely damaged UFOs, and I miss sending a squad to attack from the roof.

[Skitso]

I run some test of the mod and is great. I suggest you to imprpve and motivate player to carry BrschCharges reduce the nominal inventpry size to 2x2.

Thanks!

But it's supposed to be big and heavy. We are talking about making a hole in alien metal slab from space. Updating it to a plasma version makes the charge significantly smaller and lighter though.

[kabill]

This is top notch stuff.

I know it's hard to get variety inside of UFOs, but would it be possible to use both the modded and vanilla versions as submaps, thus giving 2 layouts per UFO? This is not because I like the vanilla layouts more, but I think it would create better balance through less predictability.

These modded layouts are very much like in the original X-Com, but that game didn't change accuracy based on distance. This game does, and it has shotguns for short range. So with these modded layouts, shotguns are far superior. In the default layouts, on the contrary, there are sometimes bigger spaces, especially from Landing ship upwards, making machine guns and even sniper rifles interesting options. I'm thinking that a mix of vanilla/modded UFO submaps would add a nice element of surprise.

Other than that, I am really glad this exists. I miss blown-out hulls from severely damaged UFOs, and I miss sending a squad to attack from the roof.

In principle, it would be possible. However, I'd have to rebuild the vanilla maps more or less from scratch. It wouldn't be quite as bad as this, but in terms of map design it would be like making the mod all over again and I don't have the time to dedicate to that, at least at the moment.

I've written this elsewhere, too, but I don't think the vanilla maps are well suited to the mod. Their openness simply turns additional entry-points into bonus firing lanes, making it easier to snipe aliens from outside the UFO at least with the smaller UFOs.

If I could get good looking debris and had the time to do it, I'd contemplate adding in some more open sections, though, which have been opened up by internal explosions. That would be a lot less work and produce a similar effect. But still not something I'm likely to do any time soon.

(In terms of effect on weapons, I'm fine with shotguns being king in UFO assaults. Outside of UFOs, shotguns are decidedly weaker than other weapons, so having a role they excel in is fine with me. Although, also, *grenades*. There's a lot of places where you can't quite get LoF but you can get them in AoE of a grenade. I pretty much never used grenades at all playing vanilla, but I was throwing loads around before.)

I run some test of the mod and is great. I suggest you to imprpve and motivate player to carry BrschCharges reduce the nominal inventpry size to 2x2.

Skitso's already said this, but the size of the breaching charge is by design to make it a trade-off between carrying them or something else. And they get upgraded to a smaller version later.

This said, I've been contemplating turning the charge round 90 degrees so that it's horizontal rather than vertical. At the moment, it's shape is such that it blocks carrying another weapon completely, while if it was the other way around you could still carry extra large items if you really wanted to. More importantly, I think it would look better visually, as the image gets really squashed when you equip it in hand and it's inconsistent with other weapons of a similar size.

[Skitso]

I've already fixed the squashed image and I'll send it to you tomorrow as I get back to my computer. When I designed the item, I thought it would be a good idea to make it impossible to carry additional big weapons at the same time but, I'll rotate the fixed image for you too so you can use whichever you feel suits the mod better.

Edited May 26, 2014 by Skitso

[KevinHann]

I seem to recall the demo allowed you to rotate all items in the inventory, was this a feature that was later canceled or my memory serves me badly?

[kabill]

If it was possible at one stage, it definitely isn't now.

@Skitso: thanks again! And I'm undecided on the rotation issue precisely because of the point you made. I'm wondering whether the weight of the charge isn't disincentive enough to carry an additional weapon, though. Certainly, my soldiers struggle to carry one and their main weapon, let alone a second weapon too!

[KevinHann]

If it was possible at one stage, it definitely isn't now.

@Skitso: thanks again! And I'm undecided on the rotation issue precisely because of the point you made. I'm wondering whether the weight of the charge isn't disincentive enough to carry an additional weapon, though. Certainly, my soldiers struggle to carry one and their main weapon, let alone a second weapon too!

I think it's better to give the player the option of carrying a weapon at the expense of TUs but perhaps you may want to factor in there are ways around it - drop the charge in round one, clear the map, return to pick it up and use it.

[kabill]

It's a good point, but to be honest I'm happy for people to exploit the game that way if they want. Personally, I'm to impatient to do something like that*, but if someone more patient than me wants to, I see no reason to stop them.

*(Two of my failed UFO assaults using this mod were in part down to the fact that my charge-carrying soldier had already perished and I was too lazy to go and get it! I've learned my lesson, though. The next time it happened, I made sure to pick the charge up before carrying on).

[KevinHann]

Well you can't just neglect different tactical solutions in a game like this, it will always cost you dearly

[kabill]

Balance Question:

Something I've noticed when playing is that the aliens inside the UFO like to move around a lot at first from their spawns to preferred camping areas. The result is that, often, there's a lot of doors left open.

I can correct this by setting the doors to auto-close. I think I'm going to do that with the main doors for sure, as I'm not a massive fan of not being able to see the UFO hull any more just because I've glimpsed the inside of the UFO though an open doorway.

Internal doors, however, I'm less certain of. On the one hand, leaving the doors open takes away some of the claustrophobic feel. From some of the breaches, it's possible to see and shoot across pretty much the entire ship, albeit with a very narrow line of fire. On the other hand, I think it's adding to the difficulty as it's very hard to move through the UFO interior without being spotted by something, and it takes pretty much any advantage doors might give away from the player.

Personally, I'm inclined towards making the doors auto-close, but that's mostly because it seems silly having most of the doors in the UFO open. That's not necessarily a good reason to do it, though. So I'm looking for thoughts on this.

[Skitso]

Kabill, are you sure you want the breaching charge to be used only by droping it to the ground? Is there a reason why it couldn't work similar to C4? (It would be that much cooler if you could really attach it to the hull) Also, we need a ground graphics for it. I'll work something out for you.

[Victor_Tadeu]

Also, we need a ground graphics for it. I'll work something out for you.

Good guy Skitso!

[kabill]

Kabill, are you sure you want the breaching charge to be used only by droping it to the ground? Is there a reason why it couldn't work similar to C4?

I've not tested this, but I'm not sure you could throw the charge onto the tile containing the hull segment. I might give it a go at some point to check though.

On the other hand, there's some balance issues to consider. I don't want the charge to be throwable at all, 'cause I don't want any chance of it being used as an actual weapon (since it will kill anything in one hit). At the moment, it's blocked from throwing by applying a large range penalty. If it was to be 'applied' to the hull, I'd have to remove that penalty, but there's no way I could give it a range of 1 for all soldiers because the main throw-range calculation is dealt with elsewhere.

It would also be impossible to use it like this when in the air, since you can't attack when flying. And, in fact, the weapon would be equally effective if placed on the ground which would probably use less TUs (it costs no TUs to drop an item, in fact, so it will always be more efficient to drop it anyway).

So I guess I am sure, yes! (Unless there's something I've overlooked).

Also, images are cool

[Skitso]

Heh, you've thought of everything, it seems.

[kabill]

I have now, maybe. I'd not thought it through thoroughly before, though, so it was worth bringing up.

[Solver]

So what are some good tactics people are using to assault UFOs on this one? I find that most assaults turn into a bloodbath, the cramped rooms don't let me gang up on aliens, and their reaction fire isn't helping matters. Currently I'm considering obscene amount of grenades lobbed around every corner.

[KevinHann]

Wouldn't a rocketeer or even two help a lot?

[kabill]

So what are some good tactics people are using to assault UFOs on this one? I find that most assaults turn into a bloodbath, the cramped rooms don't let me gang up on aliens, and their reaction fire isn't helping matters. Currently I'm considering obscene amount of grenades lobbed around every corner.

As evidenced above, I'm not necessarily well qualified to give advice! However, some thoughts:

- Light scouts are easy enough to do if you breach both hull sections. It's more or less like vanilla after that point. One charge can be enough, but you run the risk of all the aliens being in the other side of the ship and it can be a pain suppress them coming in through the door.

- Again, Scouts can be handled fairly well if you come in from both flanks. If the internal doors are open, you can more or less shoot through the entire ship. Entering the UFO from the north-east side can be problematic, though, as often there's an alien to the south that will shoot you through the doorway as you move to take cover behind the data core. Smoke might be a good plan before entering the breach, then? (If not fighting Sebillians, of course.)

- Corvettes are nasty. I think 'nade spam might be order of the day here. I don't typically rush for stun grenades, but I wonder whether they wouldn't help vs. non-Androns since they've got a larger area of effect than regular 'nades. I've not tried this, but bringing some extra breaching charges to destroy some of the internal walls might help too.

- Shields, if you're that way inclined? I don't like them personally, but it might be useful to block doorways with them or to draw reaction fire away from assaults/grenadiers.

Don't have much experience with UFOs beyond that, though. Landing ships are pretty tough, though ironically the one I tried might have gone better if I'd have just stormed the front entrance, since there were several aliens in the main loading bay and my soldiers were too divided to deal with them effectively.

(It's good to know the interiors are doing their jobs, though. I hope it's an interesting challenge/puzzle rather than a frustration).

[Solver]

Oh, I definitely like the interiors. Although they may not yet be ideally balanced, and breaching with charges should be an additional powerful option, not a 100% requirement.

Light Scouts are okay, breach and clear.

Scouts seem to require a breach on both hull sides, going through those doorways is the most dangerous moment because some alien usually camps in the corner and reaction fires. Scouts in particular tend to be much more difficult when facing Sebillians, as I then fail to mitigate the danger with a smokescreen.

Corvettes are indeed a pain. Firing a rocket down the hallway through the front door seems to be helpful, but it's my Corvette experience so far that makes me consider massing grenades.

Are inner walls only destructible by breaching charges? In the original X-Com, inner walls were weaker and could be destroyed by heavy regular weaponry.

Oh, and about the fire/smoke lag, I for some reason only get that on night missions. Day missions are fine, night missions are extremely laggy.

[kabill]

Oh, I definitely like the interiors. Although they may not yet be ideally balanced, and breaching with charges should be an additional powerful option, not a 100% requirement.

Light Scouts are okay, breach and clear.

Scouts seem to require a breach on both hull sides, going through those doorways is the most dangerous moment because some alien usually camps in the corner and reaction fires. Scouts in particular tend to be much more difficult when facing Sebillians, as I then fail to mitigate the danger with a smokescreen.

Corvettes are indeed a pain. Firing a rocket down the hallway through the front door seems to be helpful, but it's my Corvette experience so far that makes me consider massing grenades.

Are inner walls only destructible by breaching charges? In the original X-Com, inner walls were weaker and could be destroyed by heavy regular weaponry.

Oh, and about the fire/smoke lag, I for some reason only get that on night missions. Day missions are fine, night missions are extremely laggy.

Yeah, it sounds like you're having the same experience as me more or less. The rocket in the Corvette sounds like a good idea; I might try that.

re: Walls: IIRC, they have 500hp, which means you can destroy them fairly easily with normal weapons (two LMG bursts will destroy a wall; I think from the plasma LMG onwards you could reliably destroy a wall section in one burst). So while charges help because they'll one-shot the wall and give you a full turn to exploit the gap, but weapons fire is quite viable if you can afford a turn or two.

re: Lag: Yeah, I've noticed that too. It's not major on my machine, but there's slight jumps and skips in the animations. It's probably the same issue that was causing massive issues with fire during night missions a while ago; they fixed it, but I'm not sure it was a 100% fix.