Messages

466

Tactics / Re: I <3 Smoke Grenades

« on: November 10, 2012, 02:49:25 pm »

/base/ufos/terrain.ufo

When you edit the .ufo file, you just need to restart the game to test the changes.

467

Bugs in stable version (2.5) / Re: Weight penalties

« on: November 10, 2012, 01:18:35 pm »

We'll try to get a proper write-up of the weight system soon so you can understand it, but here are the thresholds you'll hit.

0-20% of max-weight carried will get you the full TUs (which are now 40+)
20-50% of max-weight carried will get you "normal" TUs
50+% of max-weight carried and you will have very low TUs.

We recognize that this is a particularly painful transition for those playing the dev version, but we have no simple fix for you. Sorry about that.

468

Artwork / Help us out: faces for soldier heads

« on: November 10, 2012, 01:11:37 pm »

Isen is working on making some more faces for our soldiers, but he needs good, properly licensed, source material. You can do this for us by proving some simple photos of your face. Please provide a photo from straight in front, one from a slight angle (like the attached image) and one from the side, and Isen can turn your face into a soldier.
It won't look exactly like you, as the pieces have to be adjusted to fit onto the mode.

When you post, please license your photos under GNU GPL 2 or later.

Another way you can help us is by finding good source photos for black, asian, latino or arab men, or any women since us gamers tend to be overwhelmingly male. These photos have to be licensed properly for use in derivative commercial works, which makes this task very hard. Deviantart.com's stock photo section is one place to look, but because people often fail to declare specific licenses, we have to ask the person to license it under an appropriate license. Two that work well for this are GNU GPL 2 or Later and CC-BY-SA 3.0. If you have a DeviantArt account, try putting in an hour going through their stock photo section to see if you can find useful material and sending messages to the authors to ask if they'll license under these licenses for this purpose.

469

Bugs in stable version (2.5) / Re: Weight penalties

« on: November 08, 2012, 05:34:36 pm »

In addition to NocLQ3V7's comments, I would add that adjusting TU cost to move would undermine consistency in the most persistent action in the battlescape. By mid-game, most players will develop an intuitive sense of how far they can get with x TUs, and this smooths out the gameplay considerably. Were we to introduce variable TU costs, a player would constantly have to check the TU cost for every soldier and do the math for every move they make. Since modifying the overall TUs available is effective at producing nearly identical tactical problems, it's worth preserving the clarity of this aspect of the game.

And yes, the question of whether a soldier who has already trained his gun on one area should get a TU bonus for subsequent shots in that area is a separate feature which we don't support at this time.

470

Bugs in stable version (2.5) / Re: 2.5 campaign undergoing changes

« on: November 08, 2012, 05:21:59 pm »

2012-11-08
We have added a new weights/encumbrance mechanism in the game that required increasing the starting strength stats for Phalanx soldiers. As a result, soldiers who were created in your savegame before this date will have very low strength and thus be unable to carry a normal equipment load.

At this time we have no mechanism to "fix" this imbalance. You will need to wait until new soldiers are created at the end of the month and transition to them or start a new campaign.

471

Bugs in stable version (2.5) / Re: Weight penalties

« on: November 08, 2012, 11:04:52 am »

Yes, it looks like DarkRain added the weight penalty last night. Balancing still in the works.

472

Discussion / Re: UFO: AI 2.4/2.5 Lets Plays

« on: November 06, 2012, 11:42:04 am »

I hope to make a few videos for the release of 2.5, with some tips for old players regarding the vast changes and a nod to some basic gameplay strategies. But given all the other tasks hanging around, I won't be surprised if this doesn't happen. If it does, we'll make a ufoai-team YouTube account and post them from there.

473

Tactics / Re: 2.5 dev combat

« on: November 06, 2012, 11:28:59 am »

1) The spread reduction relative to the other fire types is pretty low; you can pretty much always get more hits by firing more shots instead.

2) Aimed shots use the Sniper skill, not the Assault skill. Your soldiers are thus using the "wrong" skill, worsening the accuracy balance further.

Both intended.

@Sarin: You've got no quick weapons to handle close-quarters confrontations. Flamer may use close skill, but it's a TU hog. Try out the plasma blaster and you may see better results in reaction fire match-ups.

474

Discussion / Re: Impressions of 2.5 11/1/12

« on: November 05, 2012, 12:38:50 pm »

Alien material/antimatter numbers have not yet been balanced for disassembly/production.

475

Artwork / Re: 3D models questions...

« on: November 04, 2012, 06:42:34 pm »

First, I've just built a ship with Radiant and I would like to export it as an .md2, is that possible?

No.

Second, I am experimenting with Blender. Is there any way to import the animations and models in the /base dir in Blender? I would like to modify them or to use them as a guideline for building something.

Third, is this http://ufoai.org/wiki/index.php/Blender
up to date? I've tried downloading the md2_export.py and md2_import.py in the scripts dir of Blender2.63, but nothing is happening...

You might try an earlier version of Blender or search for another importer. I don't use it so can't advise you, but I know in the past people have used it without any problems.

476

Discussion / Re: Yet another ''thank you'' thread.

« on: November 04, 2012, 05:51:34 pm »

The UI is undergoing some revisions but it still a long way off. You may be interested in this screenshot of the battlescape HUD that is not finalized.

If you are playing 2.5-dev, you can try this UI out by selecting the ui2 mod in the options window from the main page. But keep in mind it is not even close to fully functional, so you won't want to actually play with this UI.

477

Discussion / Re: Impressions of 2.5 11/1/12

« on: November 03, 2012, 01:51:58 pm »

Also, you might consider an alternative strategy to a dedicated medic. If you fight spread out enough that you can't reach a wounded soldier, consider operating with small fireteams (3-4 soldiers in a  group) each with 1 or 2 soldiers carrying a medikit.

And running a wounded soldier to a medic is probably not a great strategy, since it will expose them to reaction fire. The wounded HP loss is often not enough to kill them right away. If a soldier can survive a turn or two with the wound, focus on clearing the threat and keeping the soldier safe before patching up the wounds.

I'm open to suggestions for new names. I don't like "staunch" because it only has a vague colloquial relationship with the activity ("staunch the blood flow") but otherwise the word has a very different meaning. I can't think of any word that means de-wound. "Triage" is a possibility, but it still feels like it could just be confusing.

478

Discussion / Re: Impressions of 2.5 11/1/12

« on: November 03, 2012, 02:23:58 am »

Medikits aren't for healing now that we have a wounds system. They do provide a very small amount of healing, but their principal purpose is to stop bleeding and thus keep a soldier alive long enough to get them to a hospital.

479

Tactics / Re: I <3 Smoke Grenades

« on: November 02, 2012, 10:01:24 pm »

And it didn't matter either time, the alien just walked through the cloud and blasted her, and then she bled out because of the new garbage damage mechanic.

Aliens can walk through smoke clouds. Humans can too. The smoke clouds are made of smoke.

480

Discussion / Re: Impressions of 2.5 11/1/12

« on: November 02, 2012, 09:59:22 pm »

The downside is that it [reaction fire] works more often for the aliens.

At the beginning of the game you're only facing plasma pistols, which are low TU weapons. When the aliens pack weapons with higher TU costs, you'll see less reaction fire.

The downsides I've noticed are two fold. First, the Rocket Launcher is now too expensive to be more than a one shot wonder. It's been pushed way too high in TU cost for it's accuracy, plus the lack of mobility to fire it means that I fire one shot at the start of a mission then drop it and pull a pistol. Should be about 18TU to fire, instead of 24.

At the beginning of the game, when you don't need the extra firepower quite as badly, the rocket launcher is probably not as useful as a grenade launcher. But later on, especially when you get the Hybrid missile and alien counts increase enough that you're seeing them in groups, it should be more useful. I may bump the damage of the basic round a bit, though.

Research: Am I supposed to research more than just continuous wave laser to get to man-portable laser weapons? Or am I experiencing an issue with the research system? I like the rebalance of how fast it goes. It means I can get lasers sometime before the end of April, rather than sometime in May. Even with only ten scientists it no longer feels like such a chore to get any research done.

The role of man-portable lasers has been changed. You'll get to research them later, now, and they'll be quite a bit more powerful when you get them (though less accurate than 2.4). The general progression will be human->plasma->lasers rather than human->lasers->plasma.