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Messages - TDarklighter

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1
Discussion / Re: Some tweaking views from a UFO veteran
« on: July 14, 2010, 08:24:18 pm »
LOL..  If only we could make armor out of that, our soldiers wouldn't need anything else!

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Discussion / Re: Some tweaking views from a UFO veteran
« on: July 14, 2010, 04:35:49 am »
Magnificient post, good sir, and I agree with you on just about every point.  I am surprised you didn't mention the maplist, so I'll provide backup.  2.2.1 had a lot more maps so it was an adventure every time you would land to capture a UFO.

I like the idea of a training facility/weight room/shooting range that soldiers can be assigned to so they gain a small percentage to their skills over time.

@H-Hour
I've seen them try to shoot me through the floor too, especially in the industrial "winter" map.  Never hit me, though.  I think it's just a fluke because of the very close proximity, wherein they try to shoot through the grating or something.  Corrugated iron is impervious to plasma, eh?  :D

3
Discussion / Re: production much much slower than research
« on: July 14, 2010, 04:11:24 am »
Research goes faster than the production for me as well, at least until I tweaked the code to my liking.  Human technologies I can now produce faster than alien ones(makes sense, being native to Earth), while disassembling UFOs takes much less time than it used to.  Four or five days as opposed to two weeks with 80 workers is a little better - I know we're trying to be realistic about this, but is it not easier to destroy than create?

The good balance should be where your research lasts long enough to keep it worth it to have scientists and laboratories.  You'll always want to have workshops and plenty of workers, they're just less important at the beginning when you're just starting up.  Another idea I've implemented with my own files is to boost occupancy of labs and workshops to 20 per building, thus giving me more bodies to work, which made it a little easier to construct bases that could at least protect themselves while being able to build or research.  I was having trouble making specialized installations that either fought (with interceptors, dropships, soldiers, and batteries), researched, or built, but not all three.  I may start over at some point and reset the code to release standards, then build my bases in clusters so they can have a builder and researcher with a defender base within radar range to protect them.  Boosting the occupancy allowed me a little more flexibility in base design and brings the production/research balance more in tune before the tweaks to the time requirements.  The tweaks... well... I took 10% off the research and production times for most stuff and it put the game at near X-Com: UD/EU levels of productivity, in my opinion.

It works out well enough for my satisfaction.  I did not bother with changing cost on productions - there has to be some catch to keep the challenge.  It is already slightly cheaper to produce than to buy from the market, which is fine with me.  Do I want to save a few credits or do I need it NOW? :D

4
Discussion / Re: what's with auto missions?
« on: July 14, 2010, 03:43:04 am »
Auto-missions always succeed, and though it may be a bug, I consider it a blessing in disguise.  During my routine few hours of play, Earth is swarmed by fifty some odd active UFOs and about ten or twenty terror missions.  If I stopped to fight every single battle, a day would never pass in the game before I had to log off for bed before work.

The fact that they always win is not a bad thing in my opinion.  The soldiers gain no experience from the fight and the spoils are usually minimal if there are any, meaning I'm only getting credits off the sale of the UFO itself.  This keeps the game flowing while giving me the option to lead a ground mission every few UFOs.  The only catch is the "Crashed UFO" which wasn't mounted with the Auto-Mission code.  Only way to keep the map clear is to hit those for ground missions, or wait until they go away on their own which can take a couple of days of game time.  Given the choice, I hit those for my body count.

In another post, it was mentioned that the game sometimes confuses base assaults with normal ground missions.  When I first saw this, I thought I was going to be attacking an alien base like the news page said.  I haven't seen any alien base missions yet - how will we know when those are available?

Edit:
I figured out why the Crashed Ufo missions are not auto-missionable.  They're flagged as story elements and thus they must be played out.  Is it safe to change the "true" to "false" without breaking the game?

5
Discussion / Re: Reaction Fire Fix
« on: July 14, 2010, 03:15:13 am »
I've fooled with it some more and still can't quite make it work just right.  It's the compile issue - I'm not sure it was the NULL at all now, but rather the qtrue line I mentioned.

Something interesting to note is that when I leave enough TUs for one or two more reaction snap shots, my guys will take a reaction shot up TO the amount saved for TUs, and then stop.  I'm taking a guess here, but I think the issue lies in a combination of range, accuracy, and spare time units.  If the reaction will take time units that will drop the TU total below the amount being saved for reaction fire, the soldier will not shoot.  (A paradox, I realize, but it seems to be a common occurance)  When I save more than enough, the soldier will shoot, even at range and down to roughly 40% accuracy, but very very rarely anything below that.  I think the amount of cover the target has plays a good part in whether the soldier will fire at it, which I understand is by design.  I'd rather my guy not waste bullets on a wall. ;)

I admit I'm still growing familiar with the code, so I don't yet fully understand everything I'm working with; in specific how the reservation system works for saving TUs to reaction fire.  I'll keep experimenting when time allows and see if I can come up with something more solid.  In the meantime, I'll submit any future postings of changes in a diff or at least in the form of a file.

6
Discussion / Re: primary vs. secondary weapons
« on: July 14, 2010, 02:39:13 am »
Does that hold true for the SMG as well?  I know you said it doesn't really fit the mold, but I'm starting to run into armored aliens now and I've upgraded my assault rifles to laser rifles to good effect.  However, I'm not sure what to upgrade my SMGs to (if anything?)  Would laser pistols be a good upgrade?

Laser pistols make a really good upgrade for SMGs.  The way you can whip them out of holster and fire them without having to drop the mainhand weapon is good, especially as they do a decent amount of damage.
I've also played with the plasma blade some.  They're pretty evil little weapons, if you get caught up close.  Especially with grenade launcher guys - try out the 25mm PB grenades for those, when you get the chance.  They're really potent!

@Sarin:
I'm toying with the weapon code and designing a plasma rocket.  It seems like it would make sense to incorporate the technology for the rocket launcher - why only make it for the grenade launcher, eh?  Alternatively thinking about swapping the PB grenades for the PB rockets, then creating a gas grenade round for the GL to replace it with.  Should be pretty nifty, whenever I get around to not being at work long enough to build and test it.  But either way, I'd like to see the RL get a second wind like the GL gets.  And somewhere around here, I saw a mod for plasma fuel for the flamethrower - not a bad idea.  I think I'll try that one out, just to see if it amps the fun level; though for the time being I think the flamer is very powerful on its regular ammo.  Maybe when new, tougher aliens and bots show up, plasma fuel would be awesome? :)

7
Discussion / Re: do explosions travel thorugh walls
« on: July 03, 2010, 02:45:08 am »
Explosions do not travel through walls, though I would like to tweak the range on mine so they damage a bit further out than they do (like one or two more squares tops).  My people can't seem to throw hand grenades to save their lives.

Speaking of which. The game needs more half sized civilians that run a lot, are a harder-to-hit-target, and will run into your soldier's LOS at every given chance. I mean those little human vermin known as Kids.

Great, something else for an alien to try to hide behind when I'm using my flamethrower!

Funny story - I was at a farm earlier today with one of my flamers searching through a house.  Alien ran by her and ducked into a bedroom.  My turn came up and my flamegirl walks around the corner - there's the alien, standing in front of a civilian in the corner of the room, apparently thinking that I wouldn't risk hitting her.

Russia paid well for that harvester a few minutes later and we kept the story of the flame-broiled civilian between us.  ;)

8
Discussion / Re: primary vs. secondary weapons
« on: July 03, 2010, 01:44:31 am »
The best way to describe the difference between primary and secondary weapons in-game is "Does it fit the holster?" but also "Is it one handed?"  With the exception of the SMG (and micro-shotgun, I think?), all the secondary weapons are one-handed use. It would make reasonable sense if the SMG (or both) were usable in a single hand, as secondary weapons allow you to carry something in your soldier's other hand, like a grenade or stun-rod or medikit, while still permitting your soldier to defend or attack.

Secondary weapons are just that - secondary.  They make good weapons at the start of the game, but they fall into second place the moment armor appears on your opponents.  A 7.62mm pistol just does not have the stopping power of, for example, an assault rifle or flechette loaded riot shotgun, although it does get more shots per TUs than either of the mentioned weapons.  It is still possible to design a strategy around their use for extensive combat use, though there will likely be better weapons at this point that renders "pistol" weapons obsolete.

I am not sure how it is in other countries' armed forces, but American parlance refers to secondary weapons as a "side-arms"; they are worn at the side in a holster and used when the primary weapon (usually a rifle) runs out of ammunition or is otherwise disabled.  In general, a side-arm(secondary) weapon is a pistol-type weapon that can be wielded with a single hand - this is by design: in case a fighter breaks or loses their arm, they can still defend themselves.

In UFO: AI, the most logical use of a secondary weapon is for ammo shortages (such as your stores running out of clips for your primaries and for whatever reason it goes unnoticed), rocket launchers, and laser pistols (they are very accurate and pack quite a punch when you first get them!).  In personal experience, I use rocket launchers as one-shot-drop weapons - they're too inaccurate for my enjoyment and the reload time is, appropriately, expensive.  Grenade launchers are more accurate, though sometimes impractical and my soldier switches to his pistol for close-quarters fighting.  Once I get laser rifles, my guys generally don't carry sidearms anymore - the holster space gets used for grenades - gas or plasma, depending on how many prisoners I've got.  Or just for more DF-cartridges - it never hurts to have spare ammo! :)

9
User modifications / Re: Can the music be customized?
« on: July 03, 2010, 12:58:07 am »
I had to take out the ufo2 track.  It was just too loud, too frequent, and began to grate on my nerves when I'd have to hear it looping for ten minutes while I worked on my soldiers' gear and stuff.  However, I think it's going to be necessary to put a file of some sort in its place because my game crashed today, total lockup.  Couldn't even drop back to desktop.  Ironically, the crash happened right after I downed a UFO and was prepping a ground assault to go pick up the pieces.

10
Discussion / Reaction Fire Fix
« on: June 30, 2010, 06:52:10 am »
I'm not sure if we're allowed to modify the code, but I believe I've found a fix for the "No Reaction Fire" issue that a lot of people are having and want to submit it.  This may not work for everyone, but it did make a change for me.  This fix requires modifying a source code file, so be careful not to fool around with anything else unless you REALLY REALLY know what you're doing.  This was all done with code I found in 2.2.1's g_combat.c - all I did was compare notes and copy and paste what seemed to be missing.

The process:
Open up the reaction.c module with a C editor (Pelles C is what I use), and then scroll down until you find the entry of:

/* see how quickly ent can fire (if it can fire at all) */
tus = G_ReactionFireGetTUsForItem(ent, target, RIGHT(ent));
if (tus < 0)
  continue;

Replace the first line under the "see how quickly" comment with this:

tus = G_ReactionFireGetTUsForItem(ent, target, NULL, RIGHT(ent));

Also, at the end of:
/* An enemy entering the line of fire of a soldier on reaction
* fire should have the opportunity to spend time equal to the
* sum of these values. */
ent->reactionTUs = max(0, target->TU - (tus / 4.0));
ent->reactionNoDraw = qfalse;

Add the line:
queued = qtrue;

Put it between the last line and the } mark right below it.

The result:
My soldiers now occasionally make reaction fire.  I ran through three battles like this and there was at least one instance where my guys shot in response to being shot at.  It was worth it just to see them defend themselves finally. :)  I'm not sure how to make them fire with a left-handed weapon, but the three reactions I clearly remember were one flamethrower (cooked a bloodspider), and two laser pistol shots: One from my Lance-Corporal and one from one of my rifleman-ranked guys.  Both missed, but it was pretty to see, lol.

Hope this helps!  Awesome game, guys, and great work.  Keep it coming! :)

11
Tactics / Re: Reaction Fire
« on: June 30, 2010, 02:17:00 am »
Yep.  And then there's the "You just landed and now three aliens are firing at your soldiers every step any of them takes" scenario.  It might not be bugged in the sense that it's crashing the game, but it's bugged in the sense that if you turn your guys towards the aliens and end turn with almost full TUs, the aliens will shoot or run out of sight while your guys just stand there.

On the other hand, I haven't built up any of my guys to very high levels of mind yet, so maybe that's the trick.  I recall in 2.2.1 that my starting guys at least fired off a shot every few aliens to go by.  I wouldn't mind having that, with accuracy and frequency increasing the higher their traits go up.  It would be better than sixty missions of watching them die horribly as entire squads of aliens frolick by them with plasma guns blazing.   :P

12
I spent eight hours last night performing close to one hundred missions.  Not once did any of my soldiers use reaction-fire.  Aliens would run around in front of them at varying distances like Scooby-Doo in a hall of doors, and none of my soldiers would fire on them, even when they got shot at.  Not with a machine gun, not with a pistol, not with a flamethrower, not with any rifle, not with a shotgun, not with a fox in a box with green eggs and ham, Sam I am.  TUs for one shot, multiple shots, all TUs available... nothing at all.

Meanwhile I'd land a combat site and there would be an alien facing towards my men getting out of their Firebird.  No matter who I would move or what that man would do, the alien would fire relentlessly on one of the soldiers it could see, inevitably killing him/her without a chance to save them or fight back, shooting at the next the moment that man dropped until the alien's TUs ran out.  If any others saw my men, they too would shoot, creating a very ugly crossfire and a frustrated click on the "Retry" button.  Typically the soldier they'd be targeting would be the one with the rocket launcher or sniper rifle and they missed horribly despite being proficient in rating with their weapon, so putting a stop to the shooting frenzy in one or two shots was rarely an option - for some reason rockets and sniper rifles have become horribly inaccurate weapons that do little damage (what happened to the head shot option, by the way?). 
I thought maybe it was coded to match "X-Com: Enemy Unknown's" RF rules, in which soldiers would sometimes(rarely) shoot at moving enemies, while the aliens would fire at moving objects much more frequently.  It was around mission 40 that I noticed my men had not fired a single reaction shot at all and there were very blatant points where three or four of my soldiers would be massed for an ambush and a Taman would walk right into their kill zone - surely one of them would have taken a shot.  This happened again and again and my soldiers would be like mannequins in a mall, being shot at and never reacting. 

The aliens have no problem with their RF working.  Player's soldiers, however, need it turned back on.  Standard, Easy, Very Easy - all three of these difficulty levels seemed the same.  The combats became very difficult, even on the easiest setting, as I had to adapt new tactics as I could no longer use RF to assist my squads' movements through the battlefield.  At the start when all the aliens had were kerrblades and plasma grenades, it wasn't so bad, but once they got plasma rifles it became ridiculously difficult to approach them and kill them before I lost my men to extremely accurate, extremely long range reaction fire and normal fire.  I don't think the solution is to reduce the accuracy on reaction fire, but rather to re-enable it for the player's forces.  I can handle the challenge of the aliens' accuracy, as long as my men have the fair advantage of shooting at them as they move around too.    Reaction Fire makes a huge difference and while I enjoyed 2.2.1's very frequent RF rate, I could learn to adapt to a less frequent rate after the no reaction experience I've recently had.   :)  If there is a method to turn it back on by manipulating the source code we have, I'm all ears.

**

While this is unrelated to the RF topic, it is relevant to tweaking.  The research seems to have been slowed WAY down.  It's taking a long time even with two bases and seventy scientists split between them just to get the early tech out of the way.  If possible, I think it would be a good idea to make the starting(human) tech choices research fairly quickly (I spent over three months just developing laser pistols and DF cartridges!) and leaving the alien technologies around the current rate, possibly tweaked slightly lower on some stuff like plasma weaponry, slightly higher on more advanced topics like UFOs... just an idea.

Hoping to hear back on a fix for the RF thing.  Keep up the good work - I'm eager to see what gets done with 2.4!

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