Messages

1

FAQ / Re: Where are the UFOs???

« on: August 30, 2007, 03:31:45 am »

hello there!
I'm currently playin' UFOAI-2.2-dev
the trouble I have is when an UFO ship ( a scout or a harvester) a topic for research appears but it says it's not yet available for research. I've got plenty of bases, most with ufo hangars big&small. After the mission for capture is finished I click "store ufo", then go to the base to production/disassembly and...nothing...
plz help I'm stuck.

also I had one persistent game crash on a "ufo crash" mission it just closed for no reason in battlescape.

thanx!

I noticed ( same version) that I got the mission to recover the 'weakest' UFO (the scout if I recall correctly) on the first day, 11 days before I could conceivably have my first (small) UFO Hangar ready. If the same happened to you, researching the Scout may be what is needed to unlock further UFO research and since there's no way to store that first scout and from then on I encountered only fighters and harvesters, after I built the UFO hangars, so by the time I could store UFOs, I had missed my chance to capture what is presumably the first step on the UFO research ladder. This may be the same problem you have.

That or UFO capturing is implemented in the current UFOAI-2.2-dev, but researching them is not, in which case we'll both have to wait.

2

Discussion / Re: Saving game & replacing units

« on: August 30, 2007, 01:38:16 am »

I have to agree with Derrida...

Because with all due respect, but whether or not someone wants to save in mid-mission is not your concern. You have absolutely no right to tell people how they should or should not play the game, within it's own limitations.

Deciding not to add an easy-to-implement feature is your right as the makers, but trying to explain objections to that away with 'we don't want people to play the game using it' is not a good excuse.

There's more reasons to save during a mission than just perfect-scoring yourself through...

Let's say for instance (and this is a very dramatic example) I'm playing the very last mission of the game's story.. I'm almost through and I've killed all the aliens except one and all of a sudden I get a call from the hospital telling me my mother was in a serious accident and her situation is life-threatening and I should go over there as soon as I can. With your current system this means I have to either: a. quit the game and start all over again or b. leave my computer running UFO:AI for however long it takes me to get to the hospital, see whether my mother is ok or not and eventually get back.

Now in my example above, whether I finish the mission or not is no longer a real concern as my mother is dieing and for all I care the computer and UFO:AI can go screw themselves. But in less dramatic situations (for instance: I get an unexpected visitor or there's a thunderstorm and the power could go out at any minute) I'm pretty much screwed...

So yeah 'do we like it?' is the LAST thing you should considder when designing a game. The first thing you should ask yourself for every feature is a ratio of 'do people want it?'  to 'how hard is it to implement?', with the in or out of the feature being determined by whether enough people want it to justify the time you have to spend on it.

But that's just my advice and opinion, not an attempt to convince you of anything. Do with it what you want.(The advice/opinion, not the post, so don't delete it and use 'you said do with it what you want' as an excuse).

3

Discussion / Re: Robrecht, I'm sorry for what just happened to you

« on: August 20, 2007, 04:00:18 pm »

Well, my problem with the story notwithstanding, I do love the angle and direction of UFO:AI when it comes to gameplay.

So there's not need to apologise Bandobras. I dislike the way that Winter and BTAxis rejected my suggestion, not because they didn't accept my suggestion, but because they didn't get the point of it. (My post was not "replace your story with this suggestion of mine" it was more "could you please considder making the invaders less huge, because earth defeating a force that has dominated the our galaxy for a million years tampers with my SoD, by the way, here's my suggestion on how").

Nevertheless I understand and accept why they stick to their story, it IS after all, their story and they're proud of it.

It's safe to say that both sides reacted too strongly when the headbutting started.

That said, I showed the main storyline and my suggestion to my friends at Omniverse Zero (I'm not going to link to it, but you can google it if you like) and they did agree with both me and with Winter about the respective flaws of each plan.

So as far as I'm concerned the matter is done with, with my final request of 'could you, for the sake of my SoD, please change the trillions to billions?' still standing and nothing more.

4

Design / Re: Slight story-line adjustement suggestion: (Spoilers on the current storyline

« on: August 19, 2007, 01:12:39 am »

No, no, you're both not getting me.

The reason why I started showing the flaws in your story is, because as I said twice before, I AM a writer. I have published stories. You DID attack my work (especially you BTAxis, in your post).

Actually (since offending my work like that is enough to get me pretty angry and I'm holding back) my suggestion was: NOT just a random idea, I spent several days coming up with something and while I admit that it's rough and needs a little polish, it is a HELL of a lot better than "there once was this alien virus that ruled the galaxy for a million years, but that somehow never managed to find earth, they conquered everyone and everything, but then they tried to take over the earth with dozens of teeny squads instead of the gigantic mass of their several trillion population count, then the humans deus-exed them all to death and humans lived happily ever after, the end." which is what your story boils down to.

You talk about what players want and need as if you have all the answers, but you can't be sure of that and I'm convinced you're wrong and I can prove it to you:

With your permission I will post both your story outline and my suggestion on an independant forum dedicated to Science Fiction and Fantasy. Namely, the following: http://www.sffworld.com/forums/

If you are right and people like your story outline better and don't think things like the virus having Trillions of people and pretty much ruling the galaxy for a million years, I'll not only admit that I know nothing about writing Sci-fi, I'll also never publish another science-fiction story ever again, BUT if they think my suggestion is better you have to admit that you were wrong in simply dismissing my suggestion. You still don't have to use it or listen to any of my suggestions, just admit that it isn't bad just because you didn't write it.

Also, you have to realize one thing: my suggestion was just that: a suggestion, if there are flaws in it and I'm not saying there aren't, those can be dealt with. Your story outline, however is hard, set and (as you've showed in this thread) never going to change even the slightest bit, even though a population of several Trillions and a timespan of a million years are outright ridiculous.
I know that you guys are very proud of your storyline and aside from the trillions and billions and millions you throw around, it's not bad for a first try, but please don't act like it's the new Dune or Star Wars or something, because it most definately isn't.

5

Design / Re: Slight story-line adjustement suggestion: (Spoilers on the current storyline

« on: August 18, 2007, 07:13:14 pm »

Well, I'm sorry, but the general idea I get from you is that the main reason you don't want to change anything, not because you feel it doesn't need changing, but because you wrote this.

I mention the sci-fi writer angle not to appeal to authority, but to lead in my complaint that too many writers tend to use huge (unrealistic) numbers in order to give their space-empires and such, just because it sounds impressive. If you go about it logically, even a Dyson sphere is incapable of sustaining trillions of lifeform, unless it has energy-to-matter conversion in which case it can't be struggling for resources.

I guess I did mention being a sci-fi writer in order to appeal to authority, but not in the sense that it lends credibility to my claims, but rather to indicate I do know what I'm talking about.

'Trillions' may seem cool, but you have to realise that there aren't even a trillion stars in the galaxy. And my count for sleeping space was not based on rooms, it was based on the rough size of the creatures themselves. I'm simply suggesting that the story would not suffer if you used less exhorbitant numbers.

6

Design / Re: Slight story-line adjustement suggestion: (Spoilers on the current storyline

« on: August 18, 2007, 02:58:10 pm »

I don't mean to get in an arguement with you here, but if we look at accomodations alone, a mothership housing trilions of aliens would have to have atleast atleast a mass of 2x1.5x1 meters (a little less for Tamans a little more for Ortnok and Shevaar) of sleeping space alone. That means 3 cubic meters per inhabitant, assume it's only a trillion, that's 3*1.000.000.000.000= 3.000.000.000.000 cubic meters, or 3.000.000.000 cubic kilometers of mothership for minimal sleeping space alone. That's not counting: storage for weapons, armour, clothing and food, engines, powersupplies, washing facilities, airconditioning, maintenance equipment, sensors, etc.. etc... That would make it several times larger than the sun and longer than the distance between the earth and the sun. In fact.. If you do factor in living quarters, corridors, storage, food supplies etc. etc. for SEVERAL trillion inhabitants, the mothership would have to be almost two light-years in linear meters (that's meters^3 converted to meters^1 a light-year is 10 quadrillion meters, rounded up).

But even if we take only sleeping space and only for one trillion, the wormhole they plan to use would have to have an event horizon (wormholes are modified black holes) of at the very least several billion square meters across. A wormhole of that size would transport more than just the ship: It would swallow half the milky-way galaxy.

And even then that doesn't matter, because a ship that size, even if it is made of the lightest material possible, would implode in on itself. More over if you could even get it to stay stable without imploding, the thing would have STARS orbitting it.

I'm sorry if I sound extremely harsh here, but as a science fiction writer, the most annoying thing I can think of in Science-fiction is when people think you can throw around billions and trillions as much as you want.

Other things: Why would the aliens (if they have the size and resources you ascribe to them) even land on earth after they know how to modify the virus to infect humans? If they have trillions of persons, they can simply shower the earth's atmosphere in virus and infect everyone all at the same time. They don't even need to attack anyone in the first place, if they just land in a small town, they only need maybe a thousand soldiers to abduct the entire town's population for experiments. A thousand soldiers out of 'several trillion' persons is NOT a big drain on resources.  Hell, even the 20 Billion soldiers they might presumably need to make their dominance of earth 100% assured would only be one hundreth of the several trillions they have at their disposal. It wouldn't be a huge drain on resources, since the large majority of the invaders would survive, even if the majority of humans was armed (because the humans only survived the Mumbai attack because the aliens withdrew, your own backstory says that humans were being slaughtered en-masse and that the aliens didn't have many losses at all), because the aliens have such superior technology and numbers. The resources gained from earth would be more than the aliens would lose from such an action.

So while I completely understand that you don't want to cast away your story, just because I happen to come up with a different idea, I don't think you can argue that my idea has more flaws than yours.
If my story has a few crippling flaws (I know you said fundamental, but it's basically the same), yours is a comatose paraplegic.

Now... I hope you don't get angry, because all I did was react to you in the same way you reacted to me (maybe I reacted a bit more aggressive). And I DO love everything about UFO:AI, I just think the story could use some small changes to make it less of a 'yay humans are the uber-pwnzor saviours of the galaxy' story and more of a believable sci-fi epic, so to speak.

My main goal is a dialogue, not a war. The idea I posted was not my 'be all, end all' replacement story, but an example of my capacity to write. I'd like to discuss ideas and suggestions with you so we can, maybe make the story better.

7

Design / Slight story-line adjustement suggestion: (Spoilers on the current storyline)

« on: August 16, 2007, 05:28:32 pm »

This is probably a very rude first post (since I immediately start questioning things), but hear me out here.

While I know "the current story outline is fixed" and as far as I've read that's not a bad thing because it's not a bad storyline, I would like to suggest a few slight adjustments.

The reason for these suggestions is that in the current storyline, humanity either comes out as: a. completely screwed or b. extremely too powerfull in the end.

In the currently set storyline, the enemy is a bio-engineered sentient disease that's hundreds of thousands of years old and that has ravaged our known galaxy for almost this amount of time. Somehow, they never discovered earth (or if they did, they discovered it earlier, but ignored it for not being very interesting and only recently discovered humans living on it now) and now they decide to invade Earth.

However instead of sending their entire armada immediately, they apparently send scout teams (initially) small enough to be defeated on a regular basis (without effort on easy difficulty, with great effort and casualties on the hardest difficulty) by a eight person teams. Then, when the scouts/researchers achieve their goal of being able to infect humans, they still don't send in their entire armada and eventually the humans find a way to blow up the mothership which houses ALL aliens infected with the 'virus' who haven't already been killed or captured on earth.

Now, the fact where I find this to be somewhat unrealistic (and realism in the storyline is one of the things you have made clear is very important to you) is that if this 'virus' has indeed been around for nearly a million years and if it has taken over all of the Milky-way galaxy, then the mothership would have to house literally hundreds of billions of infected aliens and if they don't all reside on the mothership, then the milky-way galaxy should hold hundreds of billions of infected aliens in several dozen colonies.

It seems to me that it would be rather ridiculous for humanity to be able to defeat an alien 'empire' numbering in the hundred billions with a team of 8 (or however many soldiers fit on the PHALANX FTL transport) humans.

My proposal for an adjustment to the storyline would be this:

The 'virus' is NOT in fact nearly a million years old. It is two years old and emerged two years ago (and don't underestimate how much can happen in two years) in a research lab on a Taman mothership, the Taman being a relatively vast interstellar 'empire' with a few colonies consisting of several billion Taman each. The particulars of the 'virus' (it's goals, effects on the subject and it's hivemind) are the same as the current storyline.
The mothership, containing the original colony of the 'virus' is essential to it's survival, however, as the original colony acts as the central nervous system and brain of the hivemind, without the mothership and the original colony, the 'virus' will still exist, but it's hivemind will be shattered and destroying or curing the remaining hosts will be much easier.
Since it's inception, the Taman have tried to contain the infected Mothership with limited success: while the threat of several other Taman motherships capable of defeating the infected mothership keep the infected mothship from invading Taman space directly, the Taman government has sent one or two fleet out to destroy the mothership.
Due to the tactical superiority of the hivemind, these fleets have been largely unsuccesful. They have managed to do some light damage to the mothership, but that damage is easily repairable and many ships have become infected due to infected boarding parties from the mothership.
Despite it's increased might, due to it's newly captured ships, the hivemind decides it is not safe to try to invade Taman space yet and instead sets out to invade several known smaller species in the nearby galaxy: the primitive Ortnok and the slightly more advanced Shelaar.
While the infected mothership is highly succesfull in this attempt and soon the mothership and it's fleet contain nearly as many Ortnok and Shelaar as they contain Taman, it is not as effective as hoped: The entirity of the galaxy's Ortnok population is effectively infected, but the Shelaar manage to send a plea for help to the Taman before they loose more than a few planets and soon a large fleet, containing several motherships, arrives in Shelaar space to destroy the infection.
The fleets clash for several days and while the hivemind is tactically superior, the combined fleets of the Taman and the Shelaar have numbers on their side.
The infected mothership is the Taman-Shelaar fleet's main target and soon it is badly damaged, even if the rest of the infected fleet is only fired upon in self-defense and as such relatively intact.
Because the mothership is so important to it's survival, the hivemind decides to flee, taking most of the fleet with it and leaving only a few ships to cover the retreat.

The Taman government loses track of the infected mothership and it's fleet and the infected mothership survives with severe damage and several important systems, among which it's FTL drive, are damaged beyond repair in the escape. Without the mothership's FTL drive, the 'brain' of the hivemind cannot return to Taman space and the hivemind's plans seem ruined...

Untill.. A year after it's escape from the Taman fleet, a distant infected scout discovers a planet inhabitted by a primitive spacefaring species. More importantly: this planet might provide a suitable breeding environment for the original colony. This planet is earth and the infected mothership is slowly moving is, sending more and more of it's fleet as it becomes able to.

This several things in game:

Why the alien assault starts off relatively weak, but becomes increasingly stronger:  it's because initially the hivemind sends whatever is in the area of earth, but as time progresses and the mothership comes closer, the hivemind is able to send more and stronger ships at the earth.

It explains why the earth is able to defeat the mothership of the invaders: it's still more formidable than anything earth could hope to build before it arrives at the earth, but it's damaged enough that a tactical strike will take it out.

It explains why the invaders CAN realistically be defeated: they are numerous, but not infinite and taking out the mothership cripples the hivemind by taking out it's ability to reproduce in great numbers.

It explains why the invaders do not just swam the earth completely once they become able to infect humans: they still need crews to repair damage to the mothership and to defend themselves long enough to escape again if the Tamans find them.

Only one of the researches currently designed would have to be changed: Instead of discovering a barren planet devoured by the invaders, the FTL scout makes contact with the Taman government, who declare (after having researched the corpses on the ships left behind when the infected mothership escaped) have decided the only way to effectively destroy the infection is to completely sterilize earth after the original colony lands there. This leaves the people of earth with only one option: destroy the mothership before it lands. Otherwise humanity will become extinct, either through infection or sterilization.

Does that sound acceptable or would it be too much effort to change it now?