Messages

1

Discussion / Suspension of belief

« on: September 07, 2012, 12:59:03 pm »

Hello.

In all sci-fi there is a element of "suspension of disbelief", IE things that break the feeling, logical or item or something. Like watching Armageddon, pretty much everything was wrong in it.

So: Lets discuss about what breaks suspension of belief in UFO-AI. No long explanations, just list of things what makes things look "wrong" somehow. Devs: don't take this as blame, just what could be made better. Love the game.

I'll start:
- All beginning human techs are basically 1960-era techs. Some modernization of basic combat equipment is in order
- Aircraft designs, while nice, looks more like slow helicopter than fast jets.
- Aliens (at least in 2.4) seems to prefer killing civilians over your team.

Anything else?

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Discussion / Re: Plasma blaster in 2.5 dev

« on: August 15, 2012, 12:03:54 pm »

Blaster launcher in XCOM was extremely dangerous, especially in hands of aliens (have got all my marines killed in first turn by it more than once). Not like that, IMO it was too dangerous and took some of the challenge away.

If added, maybe ammunition could be kind of very fast remote-controlled plane more than rocket or missile with a lot of TU:s, but not infinite so that you could not shoot it around many twists at once. Make turns cost a lot of TU:s. High, but limited range, explodes immediately if shooter gets killed or stunned. Can be shot down by aliens (or you) in mid-flight. Launcher and ammo costs very high (just like real world guided missiles vs rockets). Also controlling it should take all TU:s from the shooter, so he can't do anything else while it is in flight.

Too complex?

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Discussion / Re: Can't make money/keep nations happy on Easy

« on: August 14, 2012, 12:12:50 pm »

It also sounds to me like you're not expanding fast enough. You only see (some) UFOs that are within your radar coverage. You need to get bases up as quick as possible to extend radar coverage around the world. You are probably losing nation happiness because of UFOs that land out of range of your radar coverage.

That's the reason I suggested using radar towers. Those are a lot cheaper than building bases and they finish faster.

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Discussion / Re: Can't make money/keep nations happy on Easy

« on: August 14, 2012, 09:40:52 am »

Why should they care if a few aliens fly over their heads?

My rationalize for that is that every UFO means some sort of alien mission, and you (or the country in question) just don't get alerts from most of them until it is too late. Shooting UFO:s down means pre-emptive strike which means less alien missions.

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Discussion / Re: Can't make money/keep nations happy on Easy

« on: August 14, 2012, 09:12:17 am »

However, in order to build the second base, I have been forced to sell everything, including my one interceptor and all alien tech I obtain, leaving none for research.

I think your error comes with selling that interceptor. In order to keep nations happy you need to shoot down as many UFO:s you can, and take every single mission that comes with preference to landed UFO:s (harvesting, terror, whatever). UFO:s shot down are not going anywhere very soon.

My almost first buy in normal difficulty was another stiletto in order to shoot as many scouts and fighters as I can. Harvesters are too big, those I leave alone until I have much better weaponry and crafts.

Also, build radar towers in strategic positions. Those are cheap and allow you to catch more missions.

6

Bugs in older version (2.4) / Re: chars had no health

« on: August 14, 2012, 06:44:31 am »

Ok, good to know.

Then I guess the real problem was to get all my soldiers killed in auto-mission. Looks like it was ordinary five or so Tamans, nothing special that could kill all my soldiers, not with the gear I had. I would have accepted one or two getting killed (which sometimes seem to happen with auto-missions), but this was first time all of them died.

7

Offtopic / Re: Firaxis Games announces XCOM: Enemy Unknown

« on: August 13, 2012, 10:59:21 am »

I hope for playable demo before buying. Bought Orion 3 because I loved Orion and Orion 2, but Orion 3 was not even close to same as those older games, it was complete disaster. I fear this happens again in this new XCOM game, gameplay has been forgotten because preference has been in graphics and cinematics.

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Bugs in older version (2.4) / chars had no health

« on: August 13, 2012, 08:40:02 am »

Odd bug, can't reproduce, but figured I should inform about it anyway (if this is old I couldn't find it with search)

I got a mission about crashed fighter and pressed "auto" to get back in more interesting things. To my surprise all of my chars died, and there was "try again" button. Pressed it got in normal mission (not auto) and noticed that only two of my eight chars had weapons and armor, others had only what was in their backpack or in belt, and every single one had zero health. I think I actually got message about civilian getting killed when one of my chars died.

Every retry produced same situation, so I finally load a lot earlier game.

Only thing that was different than all the previous missions was that I had put some weapons, soldiers and other stuff in transit to other base when I got this mission, perhaps managed to transport some of the soldiers that were assigned to dropship (stuff didn't include lasers or armors, and most of my chars in dropship should have had lasers and all of them should have had armor).

2.4 final release in XP SP3, some old ATI Radeon that I can't even remember which type.

If I get this again I'll copy the savefile and attach it here.

9

Discussion / Re: Playing 2-5 dev

« on: August 03, 2012, 02:35:37 pm »

My main concern with a mechanic like reduced damage based on range is that it is not very transparent to the player. Our current setup is already very unhelpful for players who want to know precisely how much damage a weapon will do and how much damage they need to do to kill an alien.

This can be advantage rather than disadvantage for some of us, because it makes battle a bit more "fuzzy". You would just need to tell that damage does dissipate with range in weapon description. A bit mystery and randomness is good IMO, and too much info ruins that. A bit ungrateful situation to dev-team, do this or that, some part of the player base will not be satisfied.

OTOH if wounds system with different bodyparts is extended to aliens telling exact damage needed to kill doesn't apply anymore: alien gets huge damage to leg and lives, gets less to torso and dies.

Either way I'm happy, I can't stop playing even if this is still heavily WIP.

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Discussion / Re: Playing 2-5 dev

« on: August 03, 2012, 12:37:49 pm »

Some misconceptions in this thread which may lead to you not understanding the weapon changes in 2.5. This is partly because the UFOPaedia text has not been updated to reflect some of the changes in weapons. These include:

1. Plasma Blaster is now supposed to be a shotgun-like weapon. It's close skill, close quarters, extremely high damage, very poor accuracy (Ball mode recommended).

Can you make damage dissipation based on range? It would make perfect sense for shotguns and plasma weapons. With shotgun flechette hit should be rather guaranteed even at rather high distances (definitely at distances usually encountered in normal ufo missions), but because flechettes spread and only few actually hit at longer distance they don't do that much damage. For plasma same principle as shotgun flechettes, dissipation with range, easy to hit target. That could also help with "aliens hit too easily" complain. They still hit, but because of distance not quite so deadly as now. Same for lasers BTW, air is actually pretty bad medium for high power laser, you hit for sure, but beam dissipates in air quite rapidly.

So very high accuracy, but less damage with distance (shotgun flechettes and plasma), very poor accuracy but high damage for shotgun slugs.

(IMO current shotgun range is too weak for saboted slugs, you should be able to easily shoot at distances used in typical ufo mission, but hitting the target would be way less guaranteed than with proper rifle shots)

Maybe not in 2.5, but for future consideration.

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FAQ / Re: Campaign types?

« on: August 03, 2012, 11:22:43 am »

the static campaign will indeed be more linear.

currently it's still in development. you can't save the progress of the missions yet, and there is no end mission yet.

Is the "static campaign" same as "simple campaign" in 2.4? I started a new game and this time selected simple campaign instead of full, and I'm not getting any ufos, only terror missions here and there. In full ufos appeared almost immediately. Or am I experiencing some sort of bug? Couldn't find any explanation what are the differences between full and simple campaign.

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Feature Requests / Re: save and quit

« on: August 01, 2012, 11:19:16 am »

If you search the forum you will find other reasons we don't implement it.

btw. you don't  need to load a 24hrs old save on starting a battle auto-save is done.

-geever

I assume that would lead to start that too long mission again which is not useful. Quitting during long battle without losing current status is absolute requirement for this game to be usable to anybody else than hardcore players without life outside cyberspace, or alternatively all missions should be playable in few minutes (10-15 minutes tops). I personally like long missions as long as I can take a break every now and then to do RL stuff and those missions turn out to be something else than just hunting aliens (more tactical selections, ambush possibilities, traps with proximity grenades and other such things)..

In couple of messages I found a link to some thread that gave 404, I assume that is where that explanation should be. (http://ufoai.ninex.info/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=937&highlight=save) I assume reason is technical, because otherwise it doesn't make any sense. All other explanations I found are just poor excuses, like "it takes fun out of game because you can abuse it by backing up the savefile". If player is gonna cheat outside the game he can do it already simply by modding the game. It doesn't take away the fact that quitting during mission is sometimes unavoidable. Autosave before mission doesn't help in that.

Anyway a decision to not ever implement it needs to be reverted. I don't care if it takes long time and is not done for next few releases, but it just plain has to be done. Otherwise this game becomes unplayable for great many potential players, especially if there are unavoidable long missions. For severity it equals crash every time long mission starts.

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Feature Requests / Re: Soldier status under soldier number

« on: August 01, 2012, 10:06:04 am »

please open a feature request on our sourceforge.net tracker about it. i like the and might be able to look into this in the next fe days.

Done under category "User interface". ID: 3553030

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Feature Requests / Re: Air combat alternative

« on: August 01, 2012, 09:55:20 am »

That's possible to do manually. I mean select your aircraft, point where to fly, repeat if needed.

Tried that. It turned out to be stupid idea (tracking large ufo), apparently ufo has quite a bit longer detection radius than my already damaged stiletto, so it just killed it. Probably not worth implementing just because that is not smart tactic anyway unless your fighter is faster than ufo in question

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Feature Requests / save and quit

« on: August 01, 2012, 09:49:57 am »

Just to confirm, I did read that saving while combat is not allowed because that has been decided. period.

However, I would like to propose "save and quit" save slot with "continue current game" button when you come back to game, which saves game and quits at any point of game.

I just got a base under attack - mission and it took me about ten times more time to find and eliminate all the aliens than usual ufo battle, and it started to get way too time consuming. I just walked around in my base for nearly a hour before I found the last few aliens. I didn't have much time so I considered to just plain quit and load situation 24 hours (game time) earlier. This is a issue which just plain has to be fixed, if not immediately then some point in future. Game with unplayable missions because real life limitations is broken IMO. If someone abuses that by making backups of that savegame I say let them do that. It's cheating, but you can also cheat by modding the game so that your characters are basically invulnerable easily enough anyway.

Other way to fix that is to ensure that there is no such long lasting missions. In my above case my soldiers spawned almost as far as it was possible from the enter points of the base and they had no idea where the aliens were. Some sort of motion detection system to alert where aliens have been detected has to be implemented. Maybe add entity "motion detector" which works as "civilian" target for aliens in corridors. When alien attacks that you might then lose the knowledge of the alien activity in that area, but you know that there has been alien in there. Haven't played game long enough to know if there are other such missions (like alien base missions in x-com), but if there is and speeding up them becomes too hard this "save and quit" becomes necessity.

If it is technically difficult, then just put it on to-do -list until someone has time to implement it. Because game is in "work in progress" -stage it doesn't matter much if that is not done this instant, but it needs to be done.