UFO:Alien Invasion
General => Discussion => Topic started by: kbs666 on September 25, 2012, 01:21:25 am
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Found this project while googling for xcom info. 2.4 ended too fast so I DL'd 2.5 (sept 20th build).
Been reading the forums but there seems to not be much clear info on some details.
Pilot skills: How much do they matter? What precisely is the diff between piloting and evasion? Do pilots get experience for shooting down unarmed scouts?
Soldier skills: Accuracy and the weapon skills. Which really effects soldier accuracy with a specific weapon? Any reason why grenade
launcher use improves HE skill so much faster than sniper rifle use improves sniper skill?
Soldier promotions. Just fluff or is it something more than highest xp soldiers?
Why have turrets and ammo for UGV but not actually have them? just a place holder or am I missing something?
Manufacturing everything costs as much to make as to buy off the market. Makes having workers pointless until you get something to build not already on the market.
Tempo. the amount of ufo activity versus the healing rate of soldiers is a little off. Ideally by June or July I'd like two mission squads, the veterans to do the harder stuff and a rookie squad to deal with shot down scouts etc.. But you simply don't get enough recruits and wounded soldiers heal too slowly to make that viable.
Mostly great fun and a nice way to kill time waiting for XCOM.
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Pilot skills: How much do they matter? What precisely is the diff between piloting and evasion? Do pilots get experience for shooting down unarmed scouts?
Each time a UFO is shot down, the pilot of the aircraft which shot the UFO down gets 1 extra Targeting point. If the UFO was carrying weapons, the pilot gets 1 extra Evasion point.
A pilot with higher Targeting skills has a higher chance of hitting a UFO when he fires. The increase is on a curve that slows down as the pilot reaches a Targeting skill of 70. The maximum bonus is 29% better chance to hit.
It is the same for Evasion, but with a maximum 29% decrease to chance that a UFO will hit the pilot's aircraft. If you want to see the actual equation, the commit in which this was added is here (https://github.com/ufoai/ufoai/commit/208fef894c43e449932d45f5cd098859f8044302#src/client/cgame/campaign/cp_airfight.cpp).
Soldier skills: Accuracy and the weapon skills. Which really effects soldier accuracy with a specific weapon? Any reason why grenade
launcher use improves HE skill so much faster than sniper rifle use improves sniper skill?
Every firemode of a weapon has a skill associated with it (close, assault, explosives, sniper). When the projectiles are being fired, the game will use the associated skill to modify the distribution of rounds (ie - the accuracy). I don't know the exact equations.
Skills improve based on kills. It's possible you're just killing more with the grenade launcher. It's also possible that the skill increase is a bit different for sniper skill. Someone would need to dig into the code to see.
Soldier promotions. Just fluff or is it something more than highest xp soldiers?
In theory, soldiers with a higher rank cost more. But I haven't verified if this is working. To my knowledge, that is the only intended effect of rank.
Why have turrets and ammo for UGV but not actually have them? just a place holder or am I missing something?
Just a place-holder. They've been on the agenda for a while, but still more work to do to implement them.
Manufacturing everything costs as much to make as to buy off the market. Makes having workers pointless until you get something to build not already on the market.
Production for (a very small) profit will probably be implemented in the future, but we need to go through and set appropriate numbers. We're not interested in making it a core part of the game's economy, but I think we do plan to give your workers something to do all the time.
Tempo. the amount of ufo activity versus the healing rate of soldiers is a little off. Ideally by June or July I'd like two mission squads, the veterans to do the harder stuff and a rookie squad to deal with shot down scouts etc.. But you simply don't get enough recruits and wounded soldiers heal too slowly to make that viable.
I think this will be changed in the future. At least you'll start off with more recruits on standard difficulty. Not sure if the rate of new recruits will change. Alien difficulty has recently been increased so soldier attrition is probably a bit off at the moment.
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In theory, soldiers with a higher rank cost more. But I haven't verified if this is working. To my knowledge, that is the only intended effect of rank.
It works. But really noticeable only on high difficulty level when veteran's salary rise in two or three times compared to newbie.
On high difficulty i found use for idle workers - i have to produce plasma blades because aliens stopped to carry them. :(
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Thanks for the answers.
Each time a UFO is shot down, the pilot of the aircraft which shot the UFO down gets 1 extra Targeting point. If the UFO was carrying weapons, the pilot gets 1 extra Evasion point.
A pilot with higher Targeting skills has a higher chance of hitting a UFO when he fires. The increase is on a curve that slows down as the pilot reaches a Targeting skill of 70. The maximum bonus is 29% better chance to hit.
It is the same for Evasion, but with a maximum 29% decrease to chance that a UFO will hit the pilot's aircraft. If you want to see the actual equation, the commit in which this was added is here (https://github.com/ufoai/ufoai/commit/208fef894c43e449932d45f5cd098859f8044302#src/client/cgame/campaign/cp_airfight.cpp).
So based on the above and the code liked piloting skill does nothing? If so why not remove it?
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It is planned to make piloting skill useful.
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I am in favor of removing it, but at the moment Piloting skill effects a pilot's chance of surviving a crash (I believe). In theory we will have rescue missions if a pilot survives. Personally I think the skill is entirely superfluous and haven't heard a good use for it yet. Some people have suggested better fuel consumption, or the aircraft flies faster, neither of which make a lot of sense to me.
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I am in favor of removing it, but at the moment Piloting skill effects a pilot's chance of surviving a crash (I believe). In theory we will have rescue missions if a pilot survives. Personally I think the skill is entirely superfluous and haven't heard a good use for it yet. Some people have suggested better fuel consumption, or the aircraft flies faster, neither of which make a lot of sense to me.
I think you could make a reasonable argument that general piloting skill could improve range (reduce fuel usage), by better navigation, and higher speed, experience/skill at throttling engines and maneuvering at high speed. Dropping it in favor of less complexity would be fine with me as well.
Would be nice if dropship pilots got some improvement in evasion skill over time. I'm reluctant to shift over a combat ace to dropship piloting but without doing so the dropship never gets better evasion for those instances when the UFO's attack the dropship.
Another question: is it a bug that I can't look at some levels of some maps even though the aliens can move around there and my troops can get there if I send them to a lower/higher level I can see? Heppened on the ferry, mine and human base maps.
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Another question: is it a bug that I can't look at some levels of some maps even though the aliens can move around there and my troops can get there if I send them to a lower/higher level I can see? Heppened on the ferry, mine and human base maps.
Sorry to ask a stupid question, but are you away you can change the level you are viewing with the number buttons on the left of the hud (or the up and down arrows)? I just loaded ferry and could see all levels without a problem.
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Sorry to ask a stupid question, but are you away you can change the level you are viewing with the number buttons on the left of the hud (or the up and down arrows)? I just loaded ferry and could see all levels without a problem.
Yes, I'm aware and for me that didn't work for some reason. I could see the level if I could see an alien there or if I selected a trooper that got there somehow.
Next time it happens I'll post a bug report with a save right before the mission.
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Would be nice if dropship pilots got some improvement in evasion skill over time. I'm reluctant to shift over a combat ace to dropship piloting but without doing so the dropship never gets better evasion for those instances when the UFO's attack the dropship.
You can "train" pilots on Interceptors and reassign to Dropships ;)
-geever
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Next time it happens I'll post a bug report with a save right before the mission.
A screenshot (F12) will probably be more useful.
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A screenshot (F12) will probably be more useful.
A screenshot wouldn't show much. The numbers on the side of the HUD lit up like normal. It was just that pressing them did nothing.
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Skills improve based on kills. It's possible you're just killing more with the grenade launcher. It's also possible that the skill increase is a bit different for sniper skill. Someone would need to dig into the code to see.
According to the code, the Explosive, Sniper and (unused) Heavy Weapons skills have an equal increase* for the same number of kills, Close Combat increases at 75% that rate and Assault Weapons at 50%.
So most likely is the number of kills (with explosives dealing splash damage and all), but also keep in mind that snap shots use the Assault skill even in sniper rifles
* But kills with Sniper skill increase accuracy 50% faster.
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... Production for (a very small) profit will probably be implemented in the future, but we need to go through and set appropriate numbers. We're not interested in making it a core part of the game's economy, but I think we do plan to give your workers something to do all the time.
I think this will be changed in the future. At least you'll start off with more recruits on standard difficulty. Not sure if the rate of new recruits will change. Alien difficulty has recently been increased so soldier attrition is probably a bit off at the moment.
On the other hand you could argue that you can always give workers a few UFOs to dismantle (though I have no idea whether selling all its material and components is more profitable than selling the UFO as a whole)
I tend to ensure my soldiers are fully healed by the end of a mission. If for some reason the mission ended earlier than expected, I'll heal the soldier in the first turn of the next mission.
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I tend to ensure my soldiers are fully healed by the end of a mission. If for some reason the mission ended earlier than expected, I'll heal the soldier in the first turn of the next mission.
Are you sure you are talking about 2.5-dev here?
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Are you sure you are talking about 2.5-dev here?
Fair point, a few missions further into the game I've now noticed that this is a big difference from 2.4
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Do soldiers heal at all at bases without hospitals? I tried rotating my injured soldiers off to my fighter bases to serve as the defenders. However they don't seem to be healing at all which defeats the purpose.
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Why would they? They aren't receiving any medical care.
In fact in a base with no hospital, soldier will recover HP very, VERY slowly, but wounds won't get better until they receive proper medical care, otherwise they will have lasting sequels, nothing permanent, but their combat performance will degrade, until they are healed properly.
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[...]in a base with no hospital, soldier will recover HP very, VERY slowly, but wounds won't get better[...]
if health regenerates but wounds don't heal, i wonder if it is possible to "heal" the wounds by overflowing them to the negative, perhaps with some additional benefits like negative stat decrease?
(if some reader doesn't know what overflow is, it basically means that the soldier's hand will get so much wounded over and over that the hand will become antimatter (makes sense, doesn't it?))
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Ahem: What he means is that the stack will reach a point where it's no longer possible to contain the number of wounds, and invert the value to believe it's a positive number.
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it is 'int' type, so good luck overflowing that :P
In fact, due to network messages sending it as a byte, it is capped at 255, so it would need to overflow in a single attack, before the stats are sent over the network channel, with the sanity checks capping it to 255 (and if overflown it would be capped to 0, so no negative stat decrease)