UFO:Alien Invasion
General => Tactics => Topic started by: Anarch Cassius 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.
-
+1
Smoke grenades are a bit of a paradigm shifter and I'm surprised I haven't heard more talk about them since they were implemented.
-
I forget to use them early on because the first generation of weapons take so many TU to fire so there's nothing to spare between movement and firing and reaction fire. And later I don't because Lasers don't fire through them. Haven't finished researching plasma weapons yet, so it might be more useful then.
Frankly? I find Flashbangs to be more useful. Lob that in front of the alien and they aren't shooting at all. They seem inaccurate enough already to make it pointless to lower it further.
Of course this is all based on 2.4 so...
-
Flashbangs are great but you need to be able to hit an alien. They are perfect for live capture. But on the Tower and cold Industrial Zones you are often facing aliens in a good position with a long way to go for you to get to good cover.
You simply can't get a flashbang to the enemy at that distance, moveover they are often coming from many angles so flashbanging or cloud covering one firing group isn't enough. So you take some pot shots then lay down a cloud and move your troops in to the center. The aliens will vent their frustration on civilians but they may advance to less defended positions to try and get at you. Next round you can keep going to real cover and begin the fight in earnest.
This is in 2.5 so the firing costs are a bit different. It's 1 to pull the grenade from holster and 8 to toss a smoke grenade. This lines up with quick attacks so you can spend 1/3 TU picking off lightly covered aliens and 2/3 getting to the cloud center. Also I don't bother with reaction fire when employing this tactic. You won't be able to see them or vice versa anyway if it goes right. Troops just shoot, one tosses down the cloud and they all run like madmen to the center with their guard down.
-
I'd have used them more if they didn't murder my poor, poor FPS every time I popped one.
But yes, they are singularly awesome. I no longer have to put my troops' lives in the hands of the RNG and its one-hit-kill particle beam rifles!
On that tangential note, do flashbangs work in 2.5-dev? I couldn't tell what they do the few times I tried them.
-
On that tangential note, do flashbangs work in 2.5-dev? I couldn't tell what they do the few times I tried them.
Flashbangs reduce TU instead of HP. When used successfully they can prevent reaction fire.
-
I admit that the only maps I use flashbangs on are those small maps where they're very effective. For the industrial and industrial cold, I've never had the problem with not dying because the quarters are so cramped in the first place, that the aliens can't really hurt me anyway, or they're so far away they can't actually hit me even with open lines of sight in the second.
-
Industrial Cold is cramped? The fact that it's not cramped, but very expansive and open with larger buildings seems to be what makes it different from the cramped temperate industrial zone.
Of course you're playing 2.4 aren't you? When I switched one of the biggest differences in 2.5 was that the aliens are now spawning all over the map in well-entrenched groups. Before they would usually appear in one cluster without cover.
Flashbangs don't seem to do friendly fire. I've accidently hit my people several times with no loss in TU.
-
Are your soldiers wearing Power Armour by any chance? Power Armour protects against this damage type. I think I wrote about it in the research text, but honestly can't remember I've edited so many of those things.
-
Nah, that would make sense. As is our first set of nanocarbon armor is a few hours from being finished.
I'm thinking it may be the fact they are still active is meaning they aren't affected but I haven't looked at any code. They may be
-
In fact, the code specifically prevents flashbangs from affecting teammates.
-
Yes, 2.4, because it seems silly to have to redownload the game every night. I'm going to give it a go tonight though.
No, I was referring to Industrial Cold as having the aliens pop up so far away they can't actually shoot me. Oh, they fire. But I have to close way in before they can actually hit me, and since I move cover to cover, it turns out that they still have a hard time hitting me.
It's also a little cramped because I only ever see it with a Harvester on it, so there's a big chunk of space taken up essentially by a building.
Speaking of, is it possible to have a landed model of a fighter? Or does it only exist as a crashed ship?
-
In 2.5-dev all maps use 'randomspawn' by default, which isn´t the case in 2.4.
Speaking of, is it possible to have a landed model of a fighter? Or does it only exist as a crashed ship?
You can see a list of maps where this would be possible here (http://ufoai.org/wiki/index.php/TODO/Mapping/Crafts_Tiles).
-
Ah, thanks.
Okay, so I'm still seeing no benefit to smoke grenades. I tried to put one near one of my troops so she wouldn't get shot long enough to get up close to stop her bleeding out, and it rolled past once and bounced past the second time. 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.
-
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.
-
Yes, I figured that might be the case. ;)
No, what I mean is, had I thrown a flashbang instead, the alien would have been unable to move and kill her at all.
-
If the alien is close enough to flashbang you're better off flash banging, I agree. I've seen aliens do a lot better with long range shots overall than you describe. 2.5 in general seems to do longer ranges.
So basically I'm using the smoke grenades in situations where they aren't going to be able to walk up to it but I do feel threatened, which is most of the time they can fire regardless of distance. Even a near miss with plasma can hurt.
Also I've seen what appears to be aliens using area effect weapons and firing blind at the cloud. So it's not perfect but it reduces you're odds of loosing a soldier while running for cover from long range fire from like 50% to like 20% which is pretty nice. It comes up in other situations too.
I guess really I'm just paranoid and like keeping soliders alive without retrying so every little bit helps. There aren't many defensive tactics in the game and I hit upon this after dying like 10 times horribly trying to take a Cold Industrial zone.
-
What I'd like to see is the ability to walk up on top of some of the drop ships. It'd be an assured vantage point, and give you the ability to strike back against enemy targets which are either higher or otherwise hidden. Of course that would require some of the models be altered. Or the maps. Either way it's not vital.
And I thought I was far enough away. There shouldn't have been enough TU's left for an attack after the alien walked through the cloud. I'm pretty suspicious of the additional reaction shot that was available to the alien afterwards as well.
-
it rolled past once and bounced past the second time.
Speaking of which, can we not have impact detonation grenades optional like the launcher? Those crazy things bounce like superballs sometimes.
-
... Those crazy things bounce like superballs sometimes.
This depends on the nature of the floor. At least in theory, as we need to define the properties (like "bouncefraction") of every texture used for floors in the terrain.ufo file. Nobody took on this task yet.
-
Got an example with all the necessary properties defined I could use as an example?
-
/base/ufos/terrain.ufo
When you edit the .ufo file, you just need to restart the game to test the changes.
-
What does bouncefraction default to? It isn't set in many of the materials. Interesting note: apparently flowers are made of rubber. Highest bouncefraction in the file.
Would it also be possible to define multiple footstep sounds for each terrain and have it randomly pick one to add some realism? With an XML data file it would but I am not familiar with this format.
-
I'll give it a shot. Do I need to remove the .pk3 file so it doesn't over-write the file changes?
-
No, you don´t. The extracted files have a higher priority than those in the .pk3 archive.
Unfortunately I have no experience with this terrain settings yet. So I cannot tell you how to find out which textures need to be defined right now. Maybe we have a script for this? Mattn?
The tex_buildings/floor017 texture (grey tiles), which is defined in terrain.ufo line 532 is used in the bungalow map.
The tex_nature/grass001 texture, defined in line 8 is the grass texture in the pipes_const map.
If you try those maps in Skirmish, change the parameters in the terrain. ufo and try again, you should be able to figure out whats going on. But remember you need to restart the game after the changes to make them work.
Any help with this would be very much appreciated, so, whatever happens, please report your findings.
-
Cool. I also fixed the hot tip while I was there, and rebalanced the Dragon.
I'll give those two a shot.
-
In looking at the grenades I noticed that frag grenades don't have a bounce attenuation property while the rest do. Is this a deprecated property or just an oversight? Does it make any difference?
I added the bouncefraction to all the materials in my terrain.ufo. Usually about 0.5 for hard surfaces like concrete and pavement, 0.4 for wood or hard dirt, 0.3 or less for grass and dirt, and 0.1 for snow and sand. Some may prefer the top end being higher, but grenades can still bounce a fair bit. These values seem to be OK to me, at least for now.
-
How do you feel about extending your work? It's been 4 years since the terrains.ufo saw significant additions. That means that a lot of our textures will not have any bouncefraction defined in terrains.ufo. If you're willing to take on this task, let me know and I can offer a few suggestions that might make it a little easier.
-
I'd like to help, but my computer sucks. I tried building from the source and it would have taken days to compile the maps with my single core.
-
You can download compiled maps from the server (http://ufoai.org/forum/index.php/topic,4688.0.html), which automatically compiles maps whenever they are changed, so you get the latest. Run /contrib/map-get/update.py to download the latest compiled maps.
-
OK, I reinstalled Git and TortiseGit, got the source, and ran the Python script to download the maps.