Messages

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Tactics / Re: My worst map: small village (called "england" in skirmish)

« on: September 08, 2014, 12:06:39 am »

You want ugly? I've had aliens pop up on top of the playground wall and lob a grenade down on my troops during the first alien turn. Nothing quite like starting your second turn with five dead soldiers and two aliens covering you with close range plasma rifle RF.

Perhaps if the map were a bit larger with a little more room down below and a building basement that opened onto the lower area.

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Discussion / Re: UFO:AI sucks ? Where ?

« on: March 27, 2014, 12:19:27 am »

Except: whats wrong with Code::Blocks?

Nothing as far as I could tell.

I normally play on my unbutu box but I'll grab a windows box and try it sometime soon. The last time I played UFO on a windows system was back in 2.1.

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Tactics / Re: Is there really any point in equipping armor?

« on: December 23, 2013, 12:28:52 am »

Yeah I used the EM rifle and the assults could still out snipe the sniper. I have just not encounters wide open maps with enough frequency to merit use of a sniper and that is why I stopped using them.

I don't like the EM gun. It's too heavy, too slow, and has too little ammo. It's only benefits over the stock sniper rifle are a little more damage and a little less spread, neither of which are really amazing.

Maps where snipers are useful... The solar power plant (IR goggle and shoot through the ground), the dam (crossfire on the aliens advancing across the dam), the large mansion (through-wall shots and that balcony on the roof), the subway station (down through-floor shots to clear the main open area), that beach with the boardwalk going down the cliffs because you're thirty squares away across flat terrain with no cover, some RNG farms with huge open fields and no cover, harvesters and corruptors so you don't have to storm the stairwells into a face full of plasma/PB, the little Italy map with the bridges over the river has good sniping, the non-RNG dockyard with it's long open spaces, the alien base unless you go totally close-combat with plasma blades, the drug lord map where you can snipe from cover or cross two single file bridges without any cover, the military convoy map so you don't have to cross half the map to get the hovernet sniping at you.

It's not that you absolutely need snipers, with enough smoke and ammo spraying you can get through the game, but there are a great many maps where they are useful. You may also want to check your soldier stats, a sniper with 22 accuracy and 21 weapon skill is a total putz who can be out-shot by a grunt with a shotgun. Your good snipers will start with a 27+ accuracy and a 26+ skill (I also prefer a 35+ strength) and the difference in accuracy at 10+ squares is noticeable. The last thing to know is that the snap shot on the sniper rifle has horrible accuracy and should only be used at close combat ranges if you don't have the TUs for an aimed shot. Never use the snap shot on something that isn't close, use it to blaze away through walls at aliens that are within five squares.

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Tactics / Re: Is there really any point in equipping armor?

« on: December 13, 2013, 12:19:27 am »

One other thing that you should be aware of is the target priority of the aliens.

When the enemy has a choice of targets the AI decides which target to shoot at based on the probability of killing the target. Soldiers who are more likely to die from being hit are more likely to be shot at. This includes not only the soldier health totals and the % chance to hit, but also the effect of armor on damage done. This hit me pretty hard in my game because I was consistently replacing the newest guy on the squad. All the aliens shot at him, sometimes even ignoring soldiers who were closer and wounded.

And I did run unarmored soldiers too, they were the base defense teams for my production bases. Those guys were being one-shot by near misses from plasma blasters and hits from particle beam rifles, any needler fire was pretty much a guaranteed kill. Some of them were even one-shot by plasma rifles. By contrast someone in nano armor could normally survive a hit from a particle beam rifle and would easily come through needler fire at anything except point-blank range. At the high end the power armor guys could survive up to three particle beam rifle hits and almost always survived a single particle cannon hit.

Now I'm not saying that the starting combat armor is great, it's not. That armor is a bullet-proof vest trying to deal with hot plasma death rays, it just can't deal with that very well. But it is still the difference between surviving two plasma pistol shots with 25% of your health and those two shots taking you down to 10% that bleeds out at the start of your turn. And once you get nano armor there's no turning back, the edge it gives you is worth more to your veteran soldiers than the extra shot or three squares of movement.

Try playing a few missions in the places where you start in an exposed position. The beach side resort or the military base where you have aliens unloading full auto plasma rifles or needlers at your whole team. One or two hits starts to matter when everyone takes some hits.

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Tactics / Re: Is there really any point in equipping armor?

« on: December 10, 2013, 06:51:39 am »

I've got some stuff on the boards where I talk about playing all the way through on Hard mode. Armor matters.

It's not so much the extra hit that matters but the reduction in damage taken for each hit. Nano armor is the difference between a 70 damage hit that leaves a 8 bleeding wound and a 50 damage hit that leaves a 4 beeding wound. In the late game power armor is the difference between 120 damage with 11 bleeding and 90 damage with 6 bleeding. While these heaping mountains of pain and suffering will totally flatten a noob soldier it's not them you're concerned about. The soldier you care about is your 140 health Colonel with 100% accuracy and weapon skills.

It's the difference between using one health kit on someone and using three of them. Between someone bleeding out in six rounds or in three. Between having that wounded soldier back in the dropship in five days or three weeks.

And man, the first time a soldier gets a needler blast in the chest... His armor is what separates the lightly wounded warrior from the bloody swiss cheese corpse.

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Discussion / Re: Finished game on 2.5 Hard mode. Thoughts and experiences.

« on: October 29, 2013, 11:54:53 pm »

The Encased Plasma Ammo is essentially a shape charge miniaturized to fit inside of a traditional rifle. It consists of a small plasma core, a tip that fragments on impact and a soft outer casing. When the bullet hits its target, the tip fragments and the small plasma core slams into the armour. The speed of the blow causes the soft outer casing to deform, creating a sealed shell around the plasma core and trapping the heat so that it burns through the armour.

Ok, HEAT rounds don't work this way. This is functionally a miniaturized plasma blade made from a soft metal and launched at the target at hundreds of feet per second. From the description this should only work if the round strikes perpendicular to the armor, the soft metal melts more slowly than the hardened alien materials designed to reflect plasma away from the armor, and the soft metal can maintain some sort of seal or hard shape after impacting the armor and having hot rapidly expanding plasma released between it and the armor.

With this kind of round I would expect wildly varying results from angled hits and imperfect seals along side the devastating damage of perfect hits. I'd almost expect less damage to unarmored targets if the round fails to fragment while passing through soft tissues. It should certainly not penetrate walls at all but could easily cause a torch of plasma to eject from the far side of the wall. It's certainly not a magic no-armor bullet.

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Discussion / Re: Finished game on 2.5 Hard mode. Thoughts and experiences.

« on: October 27, 2013, 10:25:58 pm »

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you here, but regular AR ammo base damage is 42. AR EP's base damage is 90

OK, I didn't know that because I always produce EP sniper ammo first and the damage boost isn't very impressive on those, you're really looking for the armor penetration. If the MG EP ammo has a similar damage boost to the AR EP ammo then spray-and-pray might be powerful enough to do something positive for your soldiers. I dunno, I still feel that if you want mere wounding shots at long range the higher accuracy of the AR is still superior to the weight in ammo that the MG uses. I don't use needlers much either but I can see keeping one on hand for long distance, low %hit, wounding. Those hundred-ish shots normally get a hit or three where a MG at the same %hit gets 1/4th the shots and hits.

I tend to use EP over the PB line as the PB line has not so great accuracy so single shots at mid range or greater often miss (when multiple single sots form laser or EP would hit), and the rifle lacks an automatic fire mode for close in stopping power. This is best shown with the PB blaster. You only hurt an alien if you hit it, which is where the HMG is better.

I'm pretty sure my opening post noted that PB blasters are uselessly inaccurate and disgustingly heavy. Once they're out of alien hands and into mine I don't consider them weapons so much as big bags of money. But I'm pretty sure that the PB rifle compares favorably in accuracy and TUs to the human AR and it's damage is impressive. I've never missed the full-auto from the AR while using the PB rifle because the 3-round burst on the PB will kill anything if all three shots hit, and the horrendous wounds from two hits usually sends aliens into panic mode if they survive the bleeding. I don't think the PB rifle really needs a full-auto mode to be an awesome death ray.

As regards the current implementation of EP - it is designed to be an armour penetrator, and is justified in game with the research text. I am under the impression that limitations within the game mechanics are responsible for its behaviour regarding unarmoured targets, but to be fair by the time I have them in my arsenal the enemy are all heavily armoured save for the Shevaar (who have natural armour according to thier fluff text in any case). It is fairly overpowered, but no more so than PB weapons, and there is something nice about defeating the alien horde with weapons based on human ingenuity rather than taking wepons from the hands of dead aliens and using them back on them.

I think that my objection to the way EP ammo is handled is that it is supposed to be an armor penetrator that explodes during penetration. Which is fine but even armor penetrators are still affected by armor and this round isn't. The current setup really is just a magic bullet that ignores all armor. It grates on my sense of realism, and I do fully appreciate the irony of that statement. Let me put it this way, the current implementation of EP ammo violates what I know of ballistic armor penetration and ammunition construction without a sufficiently convincing explanation of it's effects. I'll read the UFOpedia again and see if I missed anything. It's not the existence or function of EP ammo I dislike, it's the magic bullet nature of the current system.

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Discussion / Re: Finished game on 2.5 Hard mode. Thoughts and experiences.

« on: October 27, 2013, 05:12:09 am »

That overlaps with the EP rounds a lot IMHO.

Not really. EP ammo doesn't cover aircraft, AA, or close weapons and has no effect on weapon accuracy.

Furthermore I'm not sure EP ammo is fully or accurately implemented. The ammunition is essentially a plasma generating widget inside of a shell made from alien materials and the rifle rounds are either a .223 or 7.62mm size (I really can't recall the exact size off the top of my head). While it should be reasonably simple to make similar rounds for 10mm pistol caliber weapons like the pistol and SMG, and there really ought to be EP shotgun rounds and perhaps even EP grenade launcher flechette rounds.

My other issue is that EP rounds just ignore armor, they really are magic bullets here. The armors have a separate EP ammo line in them that's set at 5 which means that EP ammo penetrates heavy alien armor as though it was a leather apron but does no more damage to an unarmored taman than regular lead bullets do. I don't know if this is the final implementation of EP ammo or if it's just a stop-gap for 2.5.

One question I do have: What's with all the love for machine guns? Whenever I've tried to use them they turn out to be horribly inaccurate at long ranges, a TU wasting overkill at short ranges, and they attract reaction fire like sniper rifles. Plus you can't use them defensively because the 14 TUs for a fire mode with 1.5(about?) spread means that they'll soak an attack first and then probably miss with half the bullets. That's really my experience with them from back before 2.3 up through to today. I tried a skirmish fight on the dam map with them and they underperformed the other weapons at long and short ranges.

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Discussion / Re: Finished game on 2.5 Hard mode. Thoughts and experiences.

« on: October 26, 2013, 09:35:45 pm »

You know how you have a good idea while taking your morning shower but then can't remember it later? I remembered!

Currently the laser weapons are made with Earth-normal materials. We could use the alien composite materials to open up an advanced laser weapons tech tree in late game. If you pseudo-science it, in the description, to something near the particle beam level of energy you could make them a PB-lite weapon line. Less damage, more accuracy, and using the particle beam armor resistances.

This would add a third base defense anti-aircraft weapon, another useful aircraft weapon that isn't dependant on salvaging alien aircraft, and a useful close combat weapon to compete with the PB pistol. Plus the rifle and heavy versions of course.

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Discussion / Re: Finished game on 2.5 Hard mode. Thoughts and experiences.

« on: October 25, 2013, 02:12:18 am »

Actually, by the time you get lasers, all aliens except the Shevaar will be wearing light armour .... So for all aliens but the Shevaar (who can not wear armour), the laser rifle outperforms the plasma rifle -- with the caveat that it does not have a full-auto option....
...But by the time you see Ortnoks, Tamans will be in heavy armour (and Combat Bloodspiders and Combat Hovernets have heavy-equivalent values). The aliens have reinforced their armour against lasers by this point, so it's really in your interest to move quickly to Encased Plasma or Particle Beams.

The laser rifle outperforms on a per hit basis and has better accuracy, it is a very good choice for newer soldiers who have lower skills. It's good to know that Shevaar can't wear armor because that's a good niche for lasers, I wasn't absolutely sure that we just didn't have the models for armored Shevaar in the game yet. I think that in my game (Hard mode) the lag between light and medium armor was too short for me to appreciate laser weapons and they just obsoleted too fast.

I have always liked that there is a little ambiguity in the game in how it doesn't tell you everything about your enemy. But I have been thinking that a rough gauge is important for getting in-game feedback about the impact of weapons.... Having this information seems plausible without being too number-y. If you saw an enemy combatant on the field, you could probably tell if it was seriously wounded, or if it was limping along near death. Even if you knew nothing else of its physiology....

Truth. Perhaps a 0 to 100% health bar with no numbers? Throw in a small five to ten percent inaccuracy to the calculation to help emulate the "fog of war". You'd be able to see that sniper rifles did about 2/3 to 3/5 of a health bar (armored ortnoks) while laser pistols didn't even move it. That sort of feedback would be nice.

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Discussion / Re: Finished game on 2.5 Hard mode. Thoughts and experiences.

« on: October 24, 2013, 08:12:53 pm »

Plasma rifle snap shot against alien light armour: 80 damage - 30 armour = 50 damage (with an accuracy spread of 1.2)

Laser rifle wave fire against against alien light armour: 62 damage - 5 armour = 57 damage (with an accuracy spread of 0.8 )

Interesting. I see two minor issues here, both possibly related to the in-game feedback thing. First the unarmored aliens take more damage from plasma, and second I can't tell if an alien is wearing light or heavy armor. For a time I did arm some of my garrisons with laser rifles but the lasers underperformed the plasma in close quarters and the armored ortnoks and combat bloodspiders were highly resistant. Still the lasers did rock the shevarr pretty hard but I don't know if they can even wear armor.

I think that the issue for me is that lasers are another siituational weapon. They are better at longer ranges (but I have snipers fot that) and less damage for equal or greater TUs at point blank range. In my play style lasers compete against sniper rifles rather than against plasma rifles, and they lose in that comparison.

Is there a thought of adding a health bar to aliens on the battlescape? Stick a +/- 10% inaccuracy on the bar and it is useful without being spoilery. I would advise against giving it a number display (except perhaps a % of total health number). This would help players in game to better judee the armor/weapon interactions.

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Discussion / Re: Finished game on 2.5 Hard mode. Thoughts and experiences.

« on: October 24, 2013, 03:17:40 am »

Can you tell us how many missions you had? What was the date when you finished?

And lastly: no lasers? They were my go-to assault rifle for much of the game.

It finished at (OK: shot out the mothership ufo on) April 1st 2085 with 137 missions.

I knew I missed something in the weapons. Having looked at the stats in the code I totally skipped the laser pistols, the effort isn't worth the return. I did try laser rifles and heavy lasers a couple of times (the Electrolaser got used until I had 10 aliens captured, it's a fine tool). The lasers are a moderate improvement in accuracy in exchange for more TUs, weight, and slightly less damage. Significantly less damage against armored aliens. While they compare decently to plasma rifles I felt that the heavier punch, lower TUs for reaction fire, and more shots of the plasma was a better fit for the role that assault skill weapon play in my squads.

That's an important sentence there, I'll say it again and explain in more detail.

While they compare decently to plasma rifles I felt that the heavier punch, lower TUs for reaction fire, and more shots of the plasma was a better fit for the role that assault skill weapon play in my squads.

In my squads Snipers fill the offensive role. They have good accuracy, high damage, and can penetrate some walls and ceilings (the Solar Power map is really easy once you realize this). Grenadiers are multi-task specialists, trick shots around corners and over cover are where they get kills but they fill more roles than that. They scout, IR goggle scout, are the primary medics, carry more smoke grenades than others, and are the first people issued plasma blades once their strength is high enough (GLs are heavy).

This leaves the defensive role to Assault soldiers, the Close skill weapons don't have the punch to stop or dissuade aliens from walking up to soldiers and gutting them with a kerrblade. While lasers are comparable in an offensive role they suffer in a defensive role. The laser rifle is not damaging enough to armored aliens and the heavy laser is to heavier and 50% slower than a plasma rifle. To further complicate things particle beam rifles appear on the scene and effectively obsolete both other rifles. If you have the production capacity to spare* you can have the enhanced AR ammo that ignores armor (fear the aliens if they ever figure this out) but that still ignores the lasers.

*I didn't have production capacity to spare in this game, too little money early on and too long to build infrastructure at the late game. Plus late game workshops were being built to supply armors, PB grenade launcher ammo, and advanced aircraft.

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Discussion / Finished game on 2.5 Hard mode. Thoughts and experiences.

« on: October 23, 2013, 04:59:04 am »

Save attached if anyone wants to play or data mine it.

Soldiers:
My A list soldiers were a rockin' slay-fest by the end. 100% weapon skill, 35 TU, and 160 health armed with particle beam rifles, grenade launchers (PB ammo), coil guns, and sniper rifles (enhanced ammo) made for a smooth death machine. The only save scumming I did was when I lost 2+ people on my first turn (that happened every five or six missions) or the transport got shot down by a surprise alien gunboat out past interceptor escort range (this only happened five or six times in the whole game).

My B list guys were pretty good too, except that last guy. Aliens have a tendency to target the easiest kill, which is pretty logical. But that guy is usually the newest guy, he'll have lower strength so may be in nano armor instead of power armor, and he'll have the lowest health total even when fully healthy. So I ended up hiring expendable assault rifle guys for that slot and letting them draw fire away from more valuable troops. This is pretty gamey and probably an unintended tactic but the AI pretty much required it.

When the aliens bust out the particle beam weapons you'll want a third squad and transport. This might give you time to train them up a little and maybe get some of them into power armor and the 120+ health range before things get hairy.

My C list guys are almost totally expendable. Maybe half are strong enough to wear power armor, which means that they other half usually die to a single shot from a particle rifle. That base (in Africa) has about 15 soldiers, most of them are pretty badly wounded much of the time. Almost none of them last for ten missions, the kill rate with particle beam weapons is too high for new recruits to survive gaining enough experience to get past the "mook" designation.

In future games I'm going to change my soldier skill spread. In this game I used (on the A and B teams) two assaults, three snipers, and three grenadiers. I will reduce the grenadiers to two, but I don't know if I'll increase the snipers or assaults. Plus the weight rules have caused me to disregard any soldiers with a strength score of less than 36. The weaklings just can't handle real armor and a weapon, combat armor is worse than useless against particle beam weapons. If a soldier can't handle nano armor, a weapon (plasma rifle or sniper rifle and a reload is the minimum acceptable), and a med-kit then what is he doing on the field? Dying, that's what.

Bases:
Do you see that ring of eight AA defences around the workshop base in China? That base was attacked eight times. My first base was attacked once, some other base was attacked twice, and that one workshop base just pissed the aliens off somehow. I only up-gunned it after the fifth attack, after the improvements that base must have accounted for 30%+ of the ufos that were shot down.

I also need to specialize my bases more, turning the first base into a full research/combat base is still OK, but no more combining an active workshop base with a combat squad. The hospital and large hanger reduce the available workshop space too much. Plus those stupid doors in the workshops favor a more kamikaze approach to base defence.

The entrance is still an ungodly pain in the butt to defend or attack, still a horrid OSHA violation that must be a right nuisance to carry fragile laboratory equipment or heavy aircraft weapons up and down. It's a good design for a dangerous tactical shooter set-up, but it really bad as an actual useful entrance. At the minimum that little wire cattle gate is idiotic and there ought to be a helicopter landing pad there.

Base defence consists of (for non-combat bases) expendable weaklings and a couple of snipers. I started the mooks with shotguns and slug ammo, which worked pretty well until medium alien armor came along. I tried giving them plasma blasters but that didn't work out, the blasters are too inaccurate to be effective even at close base defence ranges. Plasma rifles and plasma blades are where it's at, unless you want to spring for the enhanced ammo for assault rifles but that ties up production man-hours while plasma ammo just falls out of the sky. Set your command post right next to your entrance and lock a sniper rifle guy in the room with the security cameras, give him IR goggles just for something to do. Sniper guy is there to shoot through walls and ceilings when he's the last defender, plus the security camera views are useful. The other sniper gets to go to the ground level of an enclosed building, living quarters, small hanger, or power plant(?) and shoot through walls to wound as many aliens as possible. You'll lose two to five guys defending your entrance and another couple of guys clearing workshops or blind corners of ground level. That's why you use the weak mooks. Expendables.

Weapons:
This is what I used.
Assault rifle -> Plasma Rifle -> Particle Beam Rifle
Sniper Rifle -> Coil Gun or SR with enhanced ammo
Grenade Launcher, upgrade ammo as appropriate

I tried the following.
Plasma Blaster: too inaccurate, I missed 4/5 shots at a range of 4 squares with the Ball mode.
Particle Beam Cannon: enormous damage potential, crap accuracy. A one hit kill isn't worth the other 50 misses.
Shotgun: OK until aliens started wearing armor, needs enhanced ammo (slugs are bigger than AR rounds anyways).
Bolter: the TU, weight, and ammo issues make this not enough of an upgrade to adopt. Does the anti-matter enhanced ammo make it an area explosion? That might be worth it on a specialized support sniper, but that's still iffy.
Rocket Launcher: fun but too situational to dedicate a soldier to.
Flamers: the 12 TUs for the candle setting and the short range make this a suicide-by-alien weapon, and sometimes the tougher aliens survive.

Pacing:
Early game is still slow, waiting for aliens so you can sell some stuff for that next building or to replace a shot down interceptor. Late game is... interesting. If you play the save be prepared for waves, a week or ten days with eight to twelve ufos then a week to ten days of quiet. It's going to harsh up team 3 pretty regularly, that's why there are so many of them.

Last thoughts:
Good times, still some smoothing out to do, the AI is still in it's infancy. Implementing the dropship inventory will help with situational weapons, it'll happen someday. I don't know if 100% close weapon skill helps the plasma blaster or PB cannon, I don't know of it's worth carrying a close weapons guy long enough for him to get good enough to try. Close needs something, flamers need something, and I still don't know if the first two researched interceptors are worth the effort.

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Discussion / Re: Is there a way to change the order of your soldier on the roster?

« on: October 16, 2013, 06:59:23 pm »

Try firing them and then re-hiring them in the order that you want. I was fooling with that method before I decided it wasn't worth the hassle to re-up everyone when the second guy in the list died.

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Discussion / Re: Alien always target one soldier over all others

« on: October 07, 2013, 11:02:33 pm »

You mean it doesn't happen to you?

I can't recall anything like that. What version are you playing?