Messages

16

Bugs in older version (2.3.1) / Re: Invincible Aliens

« on: December 24, 2010, 12:55:36 am »

IIRC, there was a bug in 2.2.1 (and perhaps in 2.3.1, haven't attempted to verify) that an alien standing in the same square as a stunned entity was immune to damage.

17

Bugs in older version (2.3.1) / Re: Bug/screw up -- medkits

« on: December 23, 2010, 08:36:09 pm »

Design issue.  What's in 2.3.1 isn't particularly realistic and it has the odd issue you've noted, but it's working as designed.  The problem is to come up with a practical, plausible alternative that is also fun.

From a consistency point of view, the medikits should be able to counter the effects of stunning weapons -- that's mentioned in the documentation for either the electrolaser or the stun rod, IIRC.

From a plausibility point of view, it would make sense to change the damage functionality so that seriously wounded entities risk death by bleeding out, and the medikits' role becomes that of stabilizing them and avoiding additional damage.  This would require additional stats and tuning (how the mechanics would actually work -- e.g. base number of turns required to stabilize based on the damage and the medic's stats, in what way?), and may affect balance because it alters the present asymmetry (perhaps one could change medium armor to be considered to have a built-in medikit of some efficiency, if we don't want to figure out how to make the AI have medikits and choose when to use 'em, and to add some coordination within its team to make usage actually possible).

18

Bugs in older version (2.3.1) / Re: Aimed Shot doesnt hit

« on: December 23, 2010, 12:58:10 am »

Incidentally, one complication of how one might handle estimating how often one might hurt entities other than the target is that it is possible, AFAICT, for one shot in a burst to kill a target that was shielding another target, and for a subsequent shot in the same burst to hit the now unprotected target.  In the most straightforward form of 'mock shots' where a flag is set that skips doing damage, you'll miss this case.

19

Bugs in older version (2.3.1) / Re: Aimed Shot doesnt hit

« on: December 23, 2010, 12:51:01 am »

The most direct approach would be to Monte Carlo it -- run an arbitrary number of "mock shots" and count up outcomes (hit target, hit a different enemy, hit a friendly, hit nothing).  It'd have to be fairly careful to preserve properties like throughWall (something which I vaguely suspect the code doesn't handle; currently, it's possible in certain situations to have fairly likely hits with the hit estimator saying *0%* because you're shooting through a wall).  Run an infinite number of mock shots and it should converge to the correct values regardless of cover. 

The obvious reason not to always throw e.g. 100+ such shots (or, say, keep throwing them in batches of 10 until the estimates stabilize to within some tolerance) is the CPU cost, which might be more bearable if instead of always being calculated while you're waving the targeting cursor around (which is quite possible if you're using grenades or rockets), perhaps it should require an explicit key press or something.

20

Bugs in older version (2.3.1) / Re: Aimed Shot doesnt hit

« on: December 22, 2010, 09:33:08 pm »

What's the problem with using the same thing to determine hit probability when aiming and when the actual shot is fired?

The game doesn't work that way.  That is, it doesn't calculate a hit probability, roll to hit, and then consults tables to determine what to do with misses.  What it does do is determine how much angular deviation there is (from aim point, normally central) based on a Gaussian distribution where the standard deviation takes into account the weapon, fire mode, crouching, accuracy stat, weapon skill, and significant injury.

21

Feature Requests / Re: HEAVY duty support!

« on: December 20, 2010, 10:17:32 pm »

If 'craft weapons were fully operational from the ground, your Firebird would never survive getting anywhere near the mission because it's extremely outmatched by any of the UFOs.

22

Discussion / Re: If I fire a soldier will he still be found on the pending employees list?

« on: December 20, 2010, 06:39:11 pm »

If I fire a soldier will he still be found on the pending employees list?

Yes.  You can even use fire/hire to instantaneously transfer an employee between bases (sans gear, but you can do the same with the gear using the buy/sell mechanics).

And what happens if a Firebird is on route to or from a terror mission and a UFO lands on my base? Will there be soldiers left to defend it?

Thanks for any helpful replies!

Not unless you've got additional soldiers left behind.  No soldiers left + UFO raid = trashed base.

23

Tactics / Re: What's your favorite weapon?

« on: December 18, 2010, 05:33:02 pm »

Bolter rifle`s armor penentration is nice though... Armored Ortnok bites the dust after three hits, but to hit that ortnok three times you have to be at kissing range which isn`t something you want to do...

Bear in mind that you can *shoot through most walls* with them, at reduced damage. You can't shoot through the exterior side walls of an intact harvester (too thick, AFAICT), but you *can* shoot through, say, from the ground level to the upper deck through the ceiling/floor, or from right outside the back through the thin walls around the doorway.   You can shoot through a window, through the roof of an ordinary building, and nail a target to whom you didn't even have line of sight (with that shooter; *somebody* should spot so you know where to shoot)...

A Bolter has a 'throughwall' factor of 2.  The first wall the shot goes through, divides damage by sqrt(2) (to 46-65 from the original 65-85); the second wall, by an additional sqrt(3) (to ~26.5-34.7) and /then/ you subtract the armor's value against the shot's damage weight.  Medium alien armor subtracts 22 from the relevant damage weight, so

# walls / no armor /  light alien armor (12pt) / medium (22)
0     / 65-85 /  53-73  / 43-63
1     / 46-60 / 34-48 / 24-38
2    /  26.5-34.7 / 14.5-22.7 / 4.5-12.7

So vs. medium armor, a burst through one wall can still hurt nastily (72-114 if you hit 100%), and against an unarmored opponent a three-round burst through two walls is still vicious, but it's not that useful against a medium-armored opponent.

For comparison, a sniper rifle has a throughwall of 1, so it can penetrate one wall, but it has a higher base damage of 105 (always) and the same damage type (normal_heavy), so again 12 or 22 pt reduction.

# walls / no armor / light armor / medium armor
0  / 105 / 93 / 83
1  / 74 / 62 / 52


The coilgun has a throughwall of 3, the same damage type, and a damage of 180+/- 36 (thus 144-216).   This results in

# walls / no armor / light armor / medium armor
0 / 144-216 / 132-204 / 122-194
1 / 102-153 / 90-141 / 80-131
2 / 59-88 / 47-76 / 37-66
3 / 29-44 / 17-32 / 7-22


For reference, civvies should have ~5-10 health, Tamans 100-130, Ortnoks 150-190, Shevaars 120-160, Bloodspiders 150.  So a three-round Bolter burst through a single wall (100% hit:  138-180, 102-144, 72-114 health for no armor, light alien and medium alien respectively) is pretty significant.   Now consider that  judging from the 2.3.1 source there seems to be no penalty to precision or accuracy for shooting at a completely obscured target (just significantly reduced damage for when you hit, up to the number of thin walls allowed -- zero for most weapons), and therefore the odds of hitting somebody who's just on the other side of the wall/ceiling are pretty high, and that the aliens have no weapons which can return fire through a solid wall...

24

Feature Requests / Re: soldier camouflage: change in a single action

« on: December 15, 2010, 09:09:21 pm »

If camo doesn't matter for the game engine (I don't recall noticing ways in which it did, but then I wasn't looking through the entire source tree, nor was I doing so that recently), then you could safely use it for rapidly differentiating between your own troops -- e.g using different color schemes to indicate role (grenadier, flamer, designated marksman et al).

25

Tactics / Re: What's your favorite weapon?

« on: December 15, 2010, 02:50:53 am »

Nix on the flechettes once you run into well-armored aliens -- a flechette blast is weak shots, each of which has its damage massively reduced by armor.  At that point, stick with the explosive rounds (or plasma, once you have some).

Flamethrowers tend to stay useful, particularly for ambushing at convenient choke points where the short range doesn't matter.

26

Discussion / Re: Problem: Cannot go out from ship

« on: December 15, 2010, 01:18:06 am »

(0) actually giving more data like referencing the actual Big City mapfile with this problem
(1) using the appropriate Technical Support forum
(2) reading the numerous other reports of the same bug
(3) downloading the recommended file, which fixes this issue
(4) perhaps badgering the staff into releasing a 2.3.1-hotfix release to lessen the frequency of these threads

27

Tactics / Re: Storming harvester

« on: December 14, 2010, 10:07:48 pm »

On another side note, I can now confirm that it is indeed possible to shoot through at least some of the interior walls in a harvester.  The exterior walls may be too thick; I haven't really tested the ceiling of the cockpit, but I'm fairly sure that the side and rear walls are impenetrable.

28

Bugs in older version (2.3.1) / UFOPaedia: Bolter discrepancy, burst rate and magazine size

« on: December 13, 2010, 10:08:16 am »

Description in UFOpaedia for the Electromagnetic Rifle specifies semi-automatic and 4-round burst capability.  The latter does not exist; it fires three-round bursts.

The description also claims a 4-round capacity per preloaded barrel, while the 2.3.1 data files give 8 rounds per reload.

29

Bugs in older version (2.3.1) / UFOPaedia: Machine Pistol & ambidexterity

« on: December 13, 2010, 10:02:10 am »

(obs. in 2.3.1, on Gentoo)

Description has a blurb suggesting that "Ambidexterous soldiers may consider using two pistols at the same time, though this will negatively impact accuracy and reduce the soldier's already minimal effective range."

This fluff should presumably be removed since not only is ambidexterity and dual-wield not in the game, but IIRC the policy is that dual-wield will very specifically /never/ be implemented, so unlike various other fluff that may or may not come to pass (like lasers having trouble w/ smoke, for instance) this text is permanently wrong instead of merely temporarily misleading.



Edit:

The same issue applies for the description of the 7.62mm P-12 pistol.

30

Bugs in older version (2.3.1) / Heavy Needler damage for 'precision shot' -- typo?

« on: December 13, 2010, 05:59:23 am »

2.3.1, Gentoo.

Code: [Select]

weapon_mod needlerheavy     
{
    {                                                                                                                               
      name        "_Precision Shot"                                                                                                 
      skill       sniper                                                                                                           
      projtl        bolter                                                                                                         
      impact        bolterImpact                                                                                                   
      hitbody       null                                                                                                           
      firesnd       weapons/bolter2                                                                                                 
      speed       0                                                                                                                 
      spread        "1.8 1.8"                                                                                                       
      crouch        0.5                                                                                                             
      range       250                                                                                                               
      shots       1                                                                                                                 
      ammo        1                                                                                                                 
      delaybetweenshots 2                                                                                                           
      time        16                                                                                                               
      damage        "50 5"                                                                                                         
      dmgweight     normal_heavy                                                                                                   
    }     
}

The per-shot damage for the other heavy-needler fire modes is 110/10, normal_heavy.  The per-shot damage for the regular needler fire modes is either 80/5 or 100/5 -- the last being precision-shot.  Is the "50 5" supposed to be "150 5"?