Messages

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Discussion / Re: Heavy Weapons feedback and ideas (v2.5)

« on: December 20, 2016, 02:35:27 pm »

Right now, heavy weapons aren't really needed. So long as you keep up with research and building new items, although you get occasional lag when the aliens introduce new gear, your power level keeps up with them. When UGVs make it in, some sort of infantry AT might be required but that would probably be best done as part of a wider rebalancing exercise.

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Discussion / Re: are laser turrets worth it?

« on: October 16, 2016, 02:29:31 pm »

>> Still I don't see any real value to the installation and you can only spare room for 1 or 2.

1) Combine base facilities with surface AA sites to create a deathtrap for small - medium UFO types. They can also be used to support your fighters, and up the avg DPS enough to allow earlier tech fighters to take out later / larger UFOs while you're busy researching / building late game fighter techs

2) Eventually, the plan is to rework base building to allow more "spare" slots, so you could make the base defence facilities more useful

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Feature Requests / Re: UGV weaponry and tactics

« on: December 13, 2015, 01:29:31 pm »

1) A light flying drone should be unarmed. Its' benefit should be the flight and vision, not more weapons

2) UGVs have to be balanced, though. If they were super snipers, why would you take anything else? As they can't gain XP, they should have good enough stats (and upgradable via research), but not great ones

3) Multiple weapons types per platform are in the plan, loosely. Some of the weapons will likely get ammo upgrades too, as existing weapons do (EP rounds, AM rockets etc). It's probably better if a single UGV only mounts a single weapon at a time though.

All UGVs should be able to be damaged by man(?)-carried weapons though, at least heavier ones, otherwise combat degenerates into "who has the last tank left?", and they mop up

4) I think its better that all UGVs normally carry only one weapon. I suppose it might be possible to use the existing off-hand weapon mechanics to mount a second one, but it should be expensive and limited if it exists at all. Otherwise I forsee late game tactics using 3 overpowered UGVs and a handful of psychic troops to overrun every mission (my brother did something similar in the original XCOM, had 2 uber-psychers who took down alien bases using just them armed with fusion launchers, and the power of mind control. Needs luck to pull it off, but it's beautiful when it works)

5) It's doable with the ammo selection code now, but it would leads to issues quickly. The grenade launcher is a good example. It used to fire 1 or 3 shot bursts, with 4(?) firemodes for each (aimed timed/airburst, and snap timed/airburst I think). Very messy.

Now, a even strictly single shot cannon needs at least aimed and snap modes. Should it have a burst mode? A super-snipe mode for all its' TUs, but a slightly higher to-hit? Something else? And how many ammo types should it be able to carry? These aren't full on tanks, just RC cars on steroids, remember. That cannon tank is going to have like 8 shots, maybe. Simpler is probably better, for a lot of reasons

GLs are GLs, probably best to just call it a mortar, which it likely would be, anyway

I'd just say don't go too mad with the model making until you are fairly sure what is needed / might even be possible (it's a pretty old engine) / even fits in the game.  A lot of decisions about what can and can't be done in the world have been made that aren't always obvious from the game as it stands

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Feature Requests / Re: Laser turrets for SAM sites?

« on: January 17, 2015, 01:06:23 pm »

Also, with all 8 bases up, you can have up to 24 installations. Since you probably wouldn't need any radar sites for total world coverage, you might have as many as 20 AA sites. If they could equip anything more powerful than SAMs, the aliens wouldn't be able to fly anywhere any more. Maybe if advanced air interception gets in, air combat will need rebalancing, and allowing improved AA sites would be a good way to do that. Time will tell, I guess.

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Feature Requests / Re: Armed civilians

« on: January 17, 2015, 12:59:01 pm »

I think there is a long-standing plan to arm at least some "civilians", military types and a few guards in some maps. It's pretty low priority right now though, there are still major gameplay systems not implemented

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Feature Requests / Re: Grenade Launcher time fused airburst and recon camera ammo

« on: January 17, 2015, 12:55:43 pm »

Actually, the GL used to have a time-fused firing mode, but it added a lot of UI clutter, and was rarely useful (VERY useful sometimes though). It got removed as a design decision, so I doubt it will be coming back. The GL did get a range buff as compensation though, which was probably a good deal for PHALANX, on balance. I'd rather it got a high-register fire option over timed-fused fire though, personally.

I suppose a case might be made for bringing back time-fusing as an ammo option, but then you are bringing back a different type of complexity for small gains. I suppose the code for time-fusing still exists though - maybe there is a mod with it in?

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Discussion / Re: My UFO: Alien Invasion review

« on: July 21, 2014, 05:19:25 pm »

>> Could you point those out?

Sure.

1) You said aliens don't use plasma grenades in 2.3.1 - they would (I'm fairly sure), but only sometimes. The AI isn't very good at using them, and as you noted, it does vary between versions, as AI code is tweaked, as plasma grenade spawning is rebalanced etc. They still don't use them much though

2) Morale system - it does apply to both sides, but it's quite rare to see a PHALANX solder panic, unless a lot of bad things happen to them in quick succession (ie get wounded, and see multiple soldiers / civilians killed or wounded in their LOS, death of comrades), and that has pretty much always been the case. Aliens tend to suffer the effects more, because typically when you kill one, several will see it, and aliens can typically tank more shots than a PHALANX soldier so they get the wounded penalties more often

3) Walls stop shots - Walls stop *some* shots. Several weapons (sniper rifle, bolter and coilgun, mainly) have a specific through_wall_damage rating, because you very much can shoot through walls. Some wall materials are stronger than others, of course, and shooting through a wall costs damage potential, but it is one of the humans few advantages (try UFO floors in particular... fun times). The alien plasma weapons don't shoot through walls, even if the AI doesn't know that This, particularly, is an example of just having to *know* about it, I'm not sure there is anywhere within the game that makes it clear that capping things through walls can be a thing

There were a few other points, but they were to do with changes since the version you reviewed (strength / encumberance system, deprecation of the Heavy Weapons skill and max squad size, for instance), so not really relevant

For the LP, if you can get to grips with efficient use of smoke, and thoughwall shots when assaulting UFOs, you can save many PHALANX lives

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Discussion / Re: My UFO: Alien Invasion review

« on: July 16, 2014, 06:39:17 pm »

>> I'm going to edit all those repetitive keywords out. Because you know, Penguin and Panda.

Meh, don't worry about it too much. Firstly, those penalties normally only attach to pages with a lot of incoming / outgoing anchor value on a single term matched to the same term on-page, not a range of terms like you have, and secondly editing content after being crawled / indexed can lead to yet other penalties. If the page isn't under a penalty now, don't change it, you're good.

>> But do read the review

I did, good review. I did notice a couple of places where you misunderstood a couple of mechanics, but tbh that's more to do with the game not always being very good at exposing information about how things work. A lot of that is fixed in later versions too, but there are still a couple of wrinkles in the game you just have to know about to use properly

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Discussion / Re: My UFO: Alien Invasion review

« on: July 16, 2014, 10:34:44 am »

I see the SEO-friendly copy there (well done). As a bonus, did you know that SEs see image alt text as relevant on-page text too, and in the case of image anchors treat it as anchor text?

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Discussion / Re: Soldier training

« on: July 14, 2014, 05:59:50 pm »

>>  In the present game whenever I get new recruits they are pretty useless in skills -usually Mediocre or Average at best.

Earlier versions did have "specialist" and "elite" recruits who had improved scores for some or all stats. I think that still exists in the game files, but currently it is set to 100% "average" recruits. If you dug around and found the files, you could resurrect the other types, and set their chance to spawn etc. Pretty sure there are some old threads on it *somewhere* on the forum, but I couldn't immediately find them, sorry.

As an aside, I have suggested a "Requisition Points" system, where the player would gain a bit more control over what mix of resources they gained at month end (ie in the late game, trade all the now useless pilots and rubbish recruits for 2 or 3 actually good ones, or ask for extra cash one month because you want to finance a new base more quickly, at the expense of your manpower, etc), but I never wrote it up as an FR or anything. I dunno, maybe I should

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Discussion / Re: Allow bases without dropship hangars to build and transfer dropships?

« on: July 04, 2014, 10:37:57 pm »

The whole point of unbuildable squares is to make extra bases generally less efficient. There has been talk of a 2 level base system, where bases have upper and lower layers (and hence more total spaces) to allow for greater base building gameplay

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Tactics / Re: piloting skill

« on: May 08, 2014, 11:59:10 pm »

There are plans for a new air combat mode at some point. That will make proper use of the pilot skills. There is a thread about it somewhere

Ah, found it :- http://ufoai.org/forum/index.php/topic,6771.0.html

Sounds neat

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Discussion / Re: Several users needed for a small test (no special skill needed)

« on: December 14, 2013, 03:12:47 am »

>> but has a factor the spam bots can't account for

Sadly, no such factor exists. Spambots are cleverer than you think, and if it comes to it, there's always Mturk

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Feature Requests / Re: Saving during missions.

« on: November 28, 2013, 03:49:08 pm »

It has been discussed to death, and the lack of battle saves is a deliberate design choice, which isn't going to change. If you consistently have problems with long missions, try playing more agressively, and suck up the casualties. Structure your squads to have a mix of experienced troopers, and noob cannon fodder. That's how we did it in UFO :EU, and UFO : AI is all about capturing the essence of the experience.

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Windows / Re: "[2.5 is stable]" - H-Hour

« on: November 06, 2013, 02:27:34 pm »

2.5-dev is actually pretty stable, I certainly don't have much trouble with it