Topics

1

Bugs in development version (2.6-dev) / Soldiers vanishing after a transport mission and still taking up space

« on: September 28, 2014, 04:06:57 pm »

I have a production base with 4 living quarters, 30 engineers, 3 soldiers and 3 pilots.
Fearing an impending base attack (a gunboat UFO showed up and it's heading towards the base) I hired 4 additional soldiers.

Now I have 30 engineers, 7 soldiers and 3 pilots. The living quarters are now full, 40/40.

A nearby base has 5 available high-level soldiers. I fire 5 workers at the production base to make room. Living quarters now 35/40.

I start a transfer mission for those 5 soldiers. When they arrive, I get a message that the living quarters are full. The living quarters are indeed at 40/40 but the transferred soldiers were not added to this base. In fact, they are nowhere to be found. No backwards transfer mission was started, and the soldiers are not in the list of any base, although they take up living space at their "destination".

Can you reproduce this or do you need a save?

I have a save when the 5 soldiers are en route, and a save immediately after they were supposed to arrive.

Unfortunately, the last save before the transfer started is quite a while ago. Is there a way to stop an ongoing transfer? Is there a way to get these soldiers back via console commands / cheating? I wanted to play fair (and was lazy to re-equip them), so I used the transfer mission instead of teleporting them by kinking them out and selling their equipment, and hiring them and re-buying the equipment at the new location.

2

Discussion / Balancing smoke grenades

« on: September 24, 2014, 07:12:31 pm »

A lot of people have criticized the smoke grenades, but how would it be possible to balance the game without altering it too much?

The biggest problem with smoke grenades is that they are totally unbalanced. If you spend most of your time in smoke, every mission is a cakewalk. If you don't use smoke, especially in late game, the game becomes literally impossible to win. Even winning a single mission (having best troops and equipment) with at least 50% survivors is a huge and rare accomplishment. This fits the definition of a game-breaker: a tactic which is so much better than every other, that it never ever becomes an option to use any other tactic. If every mission requires exactly the same recipe, and no other recipe works, the game becomes dull.

So, how to make the game more balanced? Let's see how to reduce the advantage of smoke grenades:

1 - Applying a penalty to every shot which doesn't have a clear sight. It's reasonable, as you can aim much better if you see your target then if only someone tells you in which direction to fire. If you make a step forward, notice a target, make a step back, you can hit your target better if you still see it.
2 - Making the AI a bit smarter, by giving them a small chance to fire a random shot at a smoke cloud if they don't see any other target, or don't have anything better to do. Make this chance a bit higher if they have seen a human enter that cloud last turn. Make it rare enough to not be too effective, and aliens shouldn't actively seek out smoke, just maybe fire a blind shot at them if they happen to encounter one. Of course, only with a low probability, to prevent it from being abused. This way smoke still offers a great protection, but doesn't make you 100% invulnerable.

This, of course, will make the game harder, so other parts might have to be made a little bit easier (or aliens a little bit weaker) to compensate it.

Another way would be to offer viable alternatives, for example, situations where a tactic other than smoke might also be at least somewhat useful.

3 - implementing a possibility to fire from cover. It still troubles me to see that my soldier cannot shoot past a thin lamp post directly in front of him. Even games made freaking 20 years ago (like Jagged Alliance) managed to do it! This way, shooting from a crouched position from behind low cover or from around corners would provide a significant protection, by drastically reducing the chance to be hit. This would make the game more tactical, as you will have to find a way to flank those who are using cover. This might make a game a bit easier as humans might be able to use it better than the AI, so it can be compensated by other factors, or by points 1 and 2 which make the game harder.

While point 3 would be quite difficult to implement, I guess 1 and 2 would be fairly easy.

3

Bugs in development version (2.6-dev) / Is post-XVI gameplay supposed to be implemented?

« on: August 10, 2014, 01:40:09 pm »

While trying to avoid spoilers, I'm curious how long the gameplay is supposed to be implemented in the current 2.6 dev?
When the XVI became available for research, its map icon on the geoscape popped up, with no other function but to turn the whole map completely green. After the research, however, that button does absolutely nothing at all.

Did I reach the end of the gameplay in the current version, or will something else happen if I play long enough? Can the game be finished or won in its current state? I posted this here on the off chance that XVI is supposed to be implemented and it just didn't work for me because of a bug.

4

Feature Requests / Gas masks

« on: August 06, 2014, 05:18:05 pm »

Until I can research and produce my own armor, there is no protection from suffocation if I spend too much time in smoke. Even in late game, I might prefer a few quick and lightly armed scouts, who, exactly because of the lack of armor, will need to spend quite a lot of time around smoke grenades.

What about having a gas mask, which only protects from the smoke of smoke grenades? If it made the early game too much easier, it could be balanced with a few disadvantages:

- it could take the same slot as the IR goggles, so you can't use both (and we would at last have some choices for that slot)
- maybe it just reduces, and not completely eliminates the stun damage suffered in smoke
- it has some weight.
- it might reduce accuracy by a tiny little margin.

5

Discussion / Unselectable UFOs

« on: March 16, 2013, 08:42:09 am »

In January 2085 UFOs started to appear, which I cannot select and cannot send fighters at them. This first appeared with Fighter 115, but after that I tried for a while, and neither could I select other types. Until this time, everything was fine, I intercepted and shot down a lot of UFOs.

If I select crashed or landed UFOs, the menu pops up normally so I can send out my troop transports.
If I select a flying UFO, it's type and speed is displayed, the circle around it changes color, but if I click on them again, nothing happens. The dialog about which interceptor I wish to send, does not open. I do have interceptors in working condition (repaired, fueled, manned, equipped) in many bases, including a base within range of the UFO.

I can send out interceptors manually, but can't find a way for them to attack those UFOs.

Is this a bug, or is it a feature about some new type of stealth UFOs or something similar?

6

Discussion / Impressions with playing 2.5

« on: January 28, 2013, 10:48:09 pm »

Firstly, I would like to congratulate everyone for the nice work! I played UFO:AI once when it was still in the beginnings (no geoscape at all), and returned to it now by downloading and playing the latest dev version of 2.5

I've read the most recent forum posts, so I'll try to only address stuff which I did not read before. I would like to share my first impression and a few issues about the game, so I hope it's not a problem if I list everything here instead of opening a dozen topics. If something proves to be important, we can open up a topic for it later.

(as a sidenote, I prefer the "nearly permadeath" playing style. Instead of playing on very hard and savescumming, I play on easy and never reload unless a Total Party Kill or very serious disaster)

1. Is there a way to transport antimatter between bases? Or do I have to make my main disassembly base which packed full with workshops to also be my main airfleet base?
2. Opening up the bio stats of a wounded soldier in battlescape requires a long time, up to 10 seconds, and might crash the game. Opening it for a healthy soldier is always instantaneous and without problems.
3. The story is great, and I like the Stanislaw Lem - style of realistic approach to sci-fi, especially in the research notes. What I appreciate (and would like to see much more of it), is the theories and assumptions scientists make and get disproven when researching a new field.  It looks great on the reports screen, but what about integrating it into the game? For example, having a fruitless research, or at least not knowing the exact percentage of completeness until at least some progress is made? Or having several assumptions after a first-encounter type of research, like first ufo or alien, and have to research more of them, some turning out to be incorrect assumptions? Some tiny bit of randomization at least in time needed, if not in topics and red herrings?
4. The electromagnetic bolter rifle has an ammo capacity of 2. Is it a bug? The graphics show more than two bullets. Even with this small bullet cap I can still make some use of it, as my soldier equipped with it makes a fine share of the aliens killed. However, a slightly larger magazine, of at least 4 bullets would make it much less frustrating.
5. As the only significant income is funding, will it ever significantly increase? The nations have always good happiness values, but I'm always short on cash and can hardly keep up more than 2 or 3 bases. It's not a big problem, I like the difficulty curve, but I'm unsure if I'll ever be able to support many more bases in the future. (I'm at around 6 months of in-game time, researched all plasma and laser weapons, all ufos up to harvester, and aliens up to the universal serum, with no new unresearched topics)
6. I can spare a lot of money by firing all my staff at the last second of the month and rehiring them a few seconds later.
7. Is buying always planned to remain instantaneous?
8. Will I ever need more than one alien containment? I have no new research topics after the universal serum, and my containment is full with 10 aliens inside. Do I need new ones, and do I need them in the same base? If no, can I transport live aliens? They don't show up anywhere besides the containment. I can't even transport and sell dead alien bodies, only their armor (or did I miss something?)
9. A few live alien research reports indicate a few aliens died in the process. It is not implemented in-game.
10. I played Jagged Alliance 2 with the 1.13 mod. While the JA2 engine is much, much older, it has in my opinion, a much better combat system. In UFO:AI, my soldiers cannot shoot around corners or around a lamp post (even 20 year old roguelikes have solved this problem), cannot throw items, units don't lose action points due to suppressive fire, can't target body parts, etc.
11. I liked the realistic laser research tree (handheld laser is much harder to be developed than vehicle-based), but I find ground laser defenses to be utterly useless. While SAM sites can sometimes manage to destroy even harvesters if I'm lucky, the ground lasers in my base fail to even scratch any ufo at all, even if it flies right over my base so spends a lot of time in-range. The base fires at it quite often, with absolutely no damage done.
12. Hangars and storages have no security cameras. Those are the places I would expect security cameras the most after the entrance.
13. The selection of conventional weapons is extremely limited, with only one item in every category. Or is it just my prior experience with the thousands of guns from Jagged Alliance 2 which makes me need lots of guns with only tiny variations between them? We have pistol / machine pistol / smg / assault rifle / sniper rifle. It could be backup pistol / large caliber pistol / machine pistol / SMG / PDW / assault carbine / assault rifle / battle rifle / DMR / sniper rifle / anti-material rifle just for the magazine-fed guns. There are no gins with multiple ammo loaded, like underbarrel grenade launcher (maybe not possible due large engine/gui requirements?) Maybe I'm too biased here because of JA2.
14. My radar-equipped base was once stormed without any ufo closing on it. It only happened once, so it might be that I was not paying enough attention.
15. Will scientists and workers ever have stats? If not, why the hassle of having to hire them individually? It would also be nice if we could sort soldiers, based on rank, stats, etc.
16. In the buying screen, what are the checkboxes at the beginning of the rows for?
17. It would be nice to either automatically buy ammo especially for aircraft if below a certain amount, or at least give a warning.

Please don't misunderstand me, I intended this list more as a description of my first impressions, not as a critic. I enjoy it very much, despite its unfinished looks and some balance and stability issues.