Messages

166

Tactics / I <3 Smoke Grenades

« on: October 30, 2012, 10:17:18 pm »

There are certain maps where even attempting them felt like slaughter. Troops get off the dropship and get gunned down from five angles immediately. You know what I'm talking about. You wonder why they pilot couldn't find another place to land.

For these situations Smoke Grenades are amazing at giving you the cover you need to establish a good position. My initial attempts to use them involved trying to block enemy LOS by putting them in the cloud but it's actually often better to cloak your troops directly if the terrain is very open.

167

Feature Requests / Re: Alien base defended by UFOs

« on: October 30, 2012, 10:03:09 pm »

Isn't that also how the aliens pinpoint our bases? Seems only fair.

I try to launch interceptors from as far away as possible to minimize the odds of them being tracked back to base. If a UFO is right on top of a base when I spot it and I don't think the aliens know about then I maintain silence. Unless that UFO is heading right for the base in which case it's probably an attack anyway.

Now if I'm making my strategy unessicarily complex because I read too much in to some flavor text this may not be viable. However if this is really about how detection works the aliens just need a reasonable AI for it. If the aliens think the base's location is known because you are making a beeline for it or because you've attacked before, then and only then do they launch defenses.

Of course this is an asymmetric war so maybe it wouldn't work this way. The alien ships seem to fly around with little regard for fuel once they enter atmosphere. They may have less need to keep them docked at a base. In this case the ideal alien response would be a bit like how the buggers in Ender's Game organized a fleet... keep ships close to the base/queenship but not in such a way as to make the location of it obvious if not already known.

168

Discussion / Re: Final Feedback (2.5)

« on: October 26, 2012, 04:44:46 am »

Right the bleeding edge human tech Phalanx is developing needs to be prototyped. That makes sense and I've just gotten something along those lines. Still, they could more useful I feel.

169

Discussion / Re: UFO/X-COM as an RTS

« on: October 26, 2012, 04:44:08 am »

Given that this game engine is somehow related to Quake2 and that Fallout Tactics had modes for both turn based and realtime gameplay I'm wondering if you might be able to do this as a mod of this game. I mean I saw a Quake mod that made it in to a freaking RTS where you built and controlled the enemies from single player. Very simple but a fun proof of concept.

170

Discussion / Re: UFO/X-COM as an RTS

« on: October 25, 2012, 10:34:50 pm »

Actually no. RTS is fun for a lot of things but for a super gritty game like this I'd rather see something where the strategy is basically like the campaign mode, with bases and radar and battles are handled under the tactical system. Building and harvesting just don't happen on the same timescale as combat.

For something realtime I could see a real-time version of the combat engine like Fallout Tactics used. Basically regen TU over time and everything happening simultaneously. Skills and stat still play a major role but things become more fluid. Fallout Tactics and the canceled Van Buren show a pretty elegant way of converting these sort of rules to real-time.

171

Discussion / Re: Suspension of belief

« on: October 25, 2012, 10:23:17 pm »

I think the deal with PHALANX funding is politics. Despite relative peace you can imagine the wariness the alliances may feel about turning over their defense to a 3rd party. Where you put you base is a big deal and that country gets good protection. It's hard not to imagine this having political ramifications.

So they all start willing to play ball but they aren't going to stop funding their own individual defense and this is all very expensive. PHALANX may be Earth's best hope to some people but others may argue that they'd be better off fighting on their own instead of subsidizing other nations' defenses. If one or two alien incidents go unresponded to you can see how their attitude could quickly go from helping PHALANX to suspecting it's a power play by the other nations to weaken them. Their citizens are being mutilated in the street while an organization they've put tons of money in to is attending to the needs of other regions.

172

Discussion / Re: Final Feedback (2.5)

« on: October 25, 2012, 10:16:53 pm »

• The same is true of workshops.  I can't keep my teams outfitted with the gear they need because I don't have enough people to keep production moving at an acceptable pace.

Huh, is the Workshop actually of any value? I mean I have to pay my Workers to make stuff at the same price it goes for on the market. I'm assuming this becomes more useful once I've unlocked more alien stuff but so far by the time I've unlocked an item for use I've scavenged plenty to equip my squads.

Also the fact that you can buy and sell at the same rate on the market makes equipment transfer meaningless. Why send something halfway across the world when I can just sell it here and buy it there? There defenettely needs to be price differences for buying, selling and making items.

In 2.5 I'm scavenging fewer UFOs because they are coming more slowly and the armed ones seem more dangerous. This hurts my money a bit but I'm missing fewer alien incidents and thus keeping nations happy is almost trivial so far (3 monthes in). It went from feeling like a lot of battle grinding to like I have nothing to do but I've only played a few games so that could be partially random.

I'm loosing more troops, I tried to avoid abusing health kits in 2.4 and the overall combat doesn't seem much more deadly in 2.5 so I'm chalking this up to AI improvements. At first I was like, holy crap that's too many potential recruits but after loosing a dropship off the coast of antartica and having 5 die during the next mission I'm reassesing that. Also with Pilot stats the variety is nice and you can never have too many scientists. I just don't know what to do with all these Workers.

I really like the lots of tech and gritty research though I would by no means objects to more practical applications. I just would rather see more stuff than fewer techs.

One thing I do find confusing is alien capture. I understand the need for research some tech before capturing them but what and why is really only made clear in retrospect or via guesswork. There's also at least one reference to capture via gas grenades that came up before containment was feasible and I've seen no such gas grenades in campaign mode. Given what you learn about the alien tech I can see why they may not work but this is one confusing area.

173

Bugs in stable version (2.5) / Re: Battlescape is completely FUBAR

« on: October 25, 2012, 09:42:25 pm »

Here's the logs after I just tried using shaders. I get either a black screen, or a black screen that flickers to the loading image or a garbled UI. The game hangs without fully crashing and actually locks up the system unless it's fullscreen. When it's fullscreen alt-tabbing out works and it can be manually closed.

174

Bugs in stable version (2.5) / Re: Battlescape is completely FUBAR

« on: October 25, 2012, 04:53:02 am »

Confirming same problem in Oct 24th 2.5 on Windows 7. Shaders worked fine in 2.4.

Is this a temporary bug or are shaders getting removed or no longer supported on some systems?

175

Discussion / Re: Thanks for making this game

« on: October 24, 2012, 12:52:21 am »

I would also like to say thank you. I've been wanting a game like this for ages. I love old tactical games and am glad to have a good one with multiplayer that's totally customizable.

As for reaction fire. I just got 2.5 after 2.4 randomly closed on me after I hadn't saved my campaign for a bit so I don't know what's changed fully yet. But in 2.4 reaction fire definettely not just triggered after firing. What ShipIt said makes perfect sense.

Every movement point you spend once they spot you adds on to their reaction shot. Once you've spent more movement then their gun takes they fire. I've often been shot at approaching an alien and the aliens have done the most damage and gotten their only kills against me via reaction shots. I actually think this is a great system since it's not an instant shot once they see you and the faster their weapon and further you have to close the more shots they take.

Blind fire suppressing vs taking aim at targets that enter LOS seems the difference between setting the reaction shot for quick shot vs aimed shot. Same goes on offense, the quicker the attack you make, the less reaction the enemy gets. This is also nice since it gives a use for quicker weapons like pistols and knives, and a reasonable use at that.

So all in all I think the current system handles it about perfectly. A way to toss flashbangs around corners would be awesome though.

176

Discussion / Re: Medpack

« on: October 23, 2012, 01:55:13 am »

This is actually really re-assuring. I just got 2.4 and am loving it but I noticed right off the bat the Med kits were overpowered. I'm glad to see it's already being fixed.

The only two things I could suggest for the system would be maybe limiting uses of health kits and the possibility of a paramedic Skill and the ability to specialize troops as medics. In the campaign in would take some time to get a medic good enough to do serious HP recovery and in multiplayer it would give you a bit better recovery since MP characters are badass and downtime doesn't exist.

With the stun rules dedicated medics would also be good for bringing aliens in alive.