Messages

1

Coding / Re: lua design thoughts

« on: September 18, 2014, 01:31:59 am »

I guess the easiest solution would be to use the .lua file extension, however, this might bring in some unwanted side effects in external tools (e.g. makefiles, packaging tools) [...so we're using a different extension instead.]

Did we actually verify that this would be a problem? It seems a bit silly to call things something other than what they are, especially if it turns out we don't actually need to.

2

Design / Range time?

« on: September 16, 2014, 04:53:48 am »

It might be worth thinking about having a way to train soldiers other than real combat. Obviously simulated fighting isn't a substitute for real experience, and off-duty soldiers shouldn't gain EXP as fast as active ones, but it'd be a neat way to solve the "your heroes got shot, so now you're boned" syndrome.

Maybe just have another base facility that slowly increases soldiers' stats up to a certain point, resetting whenever they gain experience on a mission. That is, they'd get maybe ten points total of "free" stat increase, then they'd have to get an increase from the real thing to reset the counter.

3

Discussion / Re: Soldiers shooting soldiers

« on: July 04, 2014, 07:43:21 pm »

On a related note, it would be really nice to have a "This shot might hit a teammate! Are you sure?" dialogue come up when firing at far-off targets with wall-penetrating weapons. All my friendly fire incidents have been with the electromagnetic rifle when I didn't notice there was a guy standing between the alien and my sniper, and the line either stayed green or I thought it was picking up terrain.

4

Discussion / Re: Where can I put bases? (Azores, Madeira and other islands)

« on: July 04, 2014, 07:39:11 pm »

It is. Slightly less effective.
In 2.5 it is difficult to keep nations happy because aliens are so effective in killing civilians. Honestly, a beginner mode with boosted civilian health or aliens not shooting on them would make sense. A snap shot by anything is enough to kill one of these cluelessly running around weaklings. There are a few maps where I never managed to save at least half of them, so these missions necessarily make nations unhappy. In 2.4 on the other hand I never actively protected civilians (throwing smoke at them and posing as a replacement target).

I always thought the aliens had messed-up priorities when it came to selecting civies over PHALANX agents. Seems like it would make more sense to deal with the guys who can stop you from achieving your objective first, then actually achieve that (defenseless) objective.

5

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

« on: July 04, 2014, 07:34:25 pm »

Well, fair enough then.

But in that case, maybe we should have a way to clear out those unbuildable sections?

6

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

« on: July 03, 2014, 11:57:18 pm »

Is it?

I do it mainly just 'cos I want to get as much research as I can done in the beginning, so the first base ends up being entirely labs, and then I really just don't need to build labs in any other bases afterwards.

7

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

« on: July 03, 2014, 10:53:39 pm »

My base-building strategy is to specialize the first two; the starting base gets lots of labs, and the second is my factory. All my science and manufacturing are done at those two, and the rest are completely devoted to housing soldiers and intercepting UFOs.

The problem with this is that my manufacturing base (which will, of course, inevitably have those annoying un-buildable sqares- what game-design purpose do those serve?) has no room for dropship hangars. I fit one interceptor hangar in, and just transfer the interceptors to one of the dedicated combat bases as I build them.

It'd be great if instead of just refusing to build dropships without hangars to put them in, it'd just show you the "you have no room for this" dialouge box like it does when you already have an aircraft in all your hangars.

8

Feature Requests / Medical attention on the dropship?

« on: September 30, 2013, 07:40:21 pm »

How hard would it be to make that big red cross sign on the dropship actually have a medikit effect on a soldier who is standing in front of it? It'd be nice if I can have some of the folks who get shot right out of the dropship patch themselves up instead of tying up another soldier each for three turns...

9

Feature Requests / Re: "We'd rather get et by alien robot spiders, thanks anyway." (Possible spoilers!)

« on: September 30, 2013, 02:16:58 am »

Well, that's the thing (and it's been discussed in other threads, I notice); PHALANX is, as far as we can tell, the only entity on Earth that is actually doing anything about the aliens.

I was thinking they'd set up transmitters that broadcast the telepathic signal, with a few guards to watch the thing, and you'd have to send a dropship to the transmitter to shut it down.

10

Feature Requests / Re: "We'd rather get et by alien robot spiders, thanks anyway." (Possible spoilers!)

« on: September 30, 2013, 02:04:04 am »

That'd be an awful lot of people, though.

11

Feature Requests / "We'd rather get et by alien robot spiders, thanks anyway." (Possible spoilers!)

« on: September 29, 2013, 08:11:45 pm »

Why do the PHALANX supporter countries pull out?

In X-COM they had a good reason; the aliens offered 'peace treaties', and though the aliens weren't exactly trustworthy it seems reasonable that governments might see a treaty as an attractive option if X-COM shows it can't win the war.

UFO:AI doesn't have that though; at least, as far as I'm aware. PHALANX is the only hope; however poorly they're doing, pulling their funding isn't going to make the bloodspiders any less interested in sucking out your guts. Now, we could just rip off X-COM, but I don't like that idea. So, here's two more (mind you, I haven't read all the story yet in the latest dev version, but don't worry about spoiling me):

My first thought is that the member governments simply can't fund PHALANX anymore. The aliens target infrastructure and factories instead of just randomly collecting biomass like the current research text seems to suggest. Eventually, if PHALANX doesn't succeed in shooting down enough UFOs, the supporter nations just can't economically function anymore, and have to pull out. This doesn't make perfect sense though; surely 'avoiding species-wide annihilation' would be absolute top priority above everything (of course, that raises the question of why PHALANX has to buy its own equipment...)?

Second thought, which is slightly better, is mind control. I assume there's plans to implement mind-control tech like X-COM had, since soldiers have Mind scores and everything now, and we know the aliens are telepathic. If the aliens scaled that up, they could simply mind-control large masses of people to not pay their taxes (or, perhaps more likely, just make them lie down and do nothing). This kind of ties into the former, with the governments simply being unable to fund PHALANX anymore, but doesn't require that the alien strategy change that much and seems to fit a little more with their nature. One successful op by the aliens could disable a huge number of people, making them easier to collect. Plus, the player could launch missions to destroy the control transmitters, giving us a way to take our funding back!

Of course, both of these assume the governments are taking the alien threat seriously; I realize they don't ever actually come out and say "we intend to exterminate everyone". But I don't think it's really very realistic that any government would say "yeah, they're killing people and experimenting on them and all, but I really think we should be spending more on schools and roads..."

EDIT:

I put this in Feature Requests because there's no 'story discussion' board. I request that the plot make sense!

EDIT:

Oh, I suppose that's what the Design subfourm is for. Got too excited, I guess.

12

Mapping / Re: randomspawn in maps

« on: July 16, 2011, 01:52:27 pm »

It might be interesting to have a sort of "grinder" mode in Skirmish for these randomspawn maps where the aliens keep spawning until all your soldiers are dead.

13

Discussion / Skirmish mode is too easy

« on: July 12, 2011, 01:58:35 am »

Thread title speaks for itself.

There just aren't enough aliens. Is the alien count always the same as the number of alien spawns in the map, or can it be changed? If it's the former, then we definitely need some larger skirmish maps.