Messages

1

Bugs in development version (2.6-dev) / Re: Soldiers vanishing after a transport mission and still taking up space

« on: September 28, 2014, 04:23:37 pm »

Here is the save.
The destination base is called "Factory".
The Gunboat would arrive sooner than the transport, but the 3 dragon interceptors in the "Factory" base can shoot it down.

I guess the problem is that the headcount is added twice to the base. first when I start the transfer, and second, when they arrive. I tried the following: I kicked 6 workers out of the destination base. After the 5 soldiers arrived, the living quarters were 39/40 instead of 34/40 (12 soldiers + 19 workers + 3 pilots).

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Bugs in development version (2.6-dev) / Soldiers vanishing after a transport mission and still taking up space

« on: September 28, 2014, 04:06:57 pm »

I have a production base with 4 living quarters, 30 engineers, 3 soldiers and 3 pilots.
Fearing an impending base attack (a gunboat UFO showed up and it's heading towards the base) I hired 4 additional soldiers.

Now I have 30 engineers, 7 soldiers and 3 pilots. The living quarters are now full, 40/40.

A nearby base has 5 available high-level soldiers. I fire 5 workers at the production base to make room. Living quarters now 35/40.

I start a transfer mission for those 5 soldiers. When they arrive, I get a message that the living quarters are full. The living quarters are indeed at 40/40 but the transferred soldiers were not added to this base. In fact, they are nowhere to be found. No backwards transfer mission was started, and the soldiers are not in the list of any base, although they take up living space at their "destination".

Can you reproduce this or do you need a save?

I have a save when the 5 soldiers are en route, and a save immediately after they were supposed to arrive.

Unfortunately, the last save before the transfer started is quite a while ago. Is there a way to stop an ongoing transfer? Is there a way to get these soldiers back via console commands / cheating? I wanted to play fair (and was lazy to re-equip them), so I used the transfer mission instead of teleporting them by kinking them out and selling their equipment, and hiring them and re-buying the equipment at the new location.

3

Discussion / Re: Balancing smoke grenades

« on: September 24, 2014, 10:47:14 pm »

Maybe using the terms "game-breaker" and "balance" were not that clear, so I'll try to explain what I meant:

I was referring to the tactic where all your soldiers end their turns inside smoke, they only fire from inside of smoke (to avoid RF), so at the beginning of each turn you briefly step outside of smoke, notice the aliens, return to the smoke, and fire away.

In the early game you don't necessarily need it, but in the late game this is the only way to reliably win missions without casualties, or even win missions at all. It's such a game-breaking tactic that I can have my team of 12 elites with full weapon stats in the best armor and best weapons massacred by late game aliens, while a couple of rookies using the above tactic win the mission without a single wound.

By balance I was meaning to reduce the superiority of the above tactic by at least a little bit, and increase the viability of other tactics.

By step back I meant that I step outside the smoke, notice an alien, step back into the smoke to the exact location I was at the beginning of my turn, but now the alien is revealed, so I can shoot it. Imagine yourself in that situation, when would your accuracy better: if you know there is an alien somewhere at that location, or if you actually see that alien at that location?

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Discussion / Re: Recruits

« on: September 24, 2014, 07:29:59 pm »

Still, a little bit more random variety might be useful. Now they are almost all the same and completely interchangeable as recruits.

5

Discussion / Balancing smoke grenades

« on: September 24, 2014, 07:12:31 pm »

A lot of people have criticized the smoke grenades, but how would it be possible to balance the game without altering it too much?

The biggest problem with smoke grenades is that they are totally unbalanced. If you spend most of your time in smoke, every mission is a cakewalk. If you don't use smoke, especially in late game, the game becomes literally impossible to win. Even winning a single mission (having best troops and equipment) with at least 50% survivors is a huge and rare accomplishment. This fits the definition of a game-breaker: a tactic which is so much better than every other, that it never ever becomes an option to use any other tactic. If every mission requires exactly the same recipe, and no other recipe works, the game becomes dull.

So, how to make the game more balanced? Let's see how to reduce the advantage of smoke grenades:

1 - Applying a penalty to every shot which doesn't have a clear sight. It's reasonable, as you can aim much better if you see your target then if only someone tells you in which direction to fire. If you make a step forward, notice a target, make a step back, you can hit your target better if you still see it.
2 - Making the AI a bit smarter, by giving them a small chance to fire a random shot at a smoke cloud if they don't see any other target, or don't have anything better to do. Make this chance a bit higher if they have seen a human enter that cloud last turn. Make it rare enough to not be too effective, and aliens shouldn't actively seek out smoke, just maybe fire a blind shot at them if they happen to encounter one. Of course, only with a low probability, to prevent it from being abused. This way smoke still offers a great protection, but doesn't make you 100% invulnerable.

This, of course, will make the game harder, so other parts might have to be made a little bit easier (or aliens a little bit weaker) to compensate it.

Another way would be to offer viable alternatives, for example, situations where a tactic other than smoke might also be at least somewhat useful.

3 - implementing a possibility to fire from cover. It still troubles me to see that my soldier cannot shoot past a thin lamp post directly in front of him. Even games made freaking 20 years ago (like Jagged Alliance) managed to do it! This way, shooting from a crouched position from behind low cover or from around corners would provide a significant protection, by drastically reducing the chance to be hit. This would make the game more tactical, as you will have to find a way to flank those who are using cover. This might make a game a bit easier as humans might be able to use it better than the AI, so it can be compensated by other factors, or by points 1 and 2 which make the game harder.

While point 3 would be quite difficult to implement, I guess 1 and 2 would be fairly easy.

6

Tactics / Re: Assault and CRC weapons choices

« on: September 09, 2014, 09:20:55 pm »

Once encased plasma becomes plentiful, I use assault rifles for almost everyone, including CRC. For CRC (and even at longer ranges) I use smoke before firing, in groups of at least two. One throws smoke, the other fires = no reaction fire received.

I have plasma blades as a backup, but almost never have to use them.

I use laser rifles even late game as a training weapon. New recruits get a laser rifle because of its great accuracy, and once they are more experienced, they are granted an assault rifle. This serves another, more sinister purpose: I can see at first glance who are less experienced and therefore more expendable.

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Bugs in development version (2.6-dev) / Re: Is post-XVI gameplay supposed to be implemented?

« on: August 12, 2014, 04:44:00 pm »

At this point, catching a Bomber UFO is crucial. We had some problems with this not showing up in the past. Duke was working on this, but not sure about whether this is already solved or not. Would you mind sharing the save?

Thank you for the info. I'll play a couple of in-game months, keeping an eye for the bomber. If it doesn't show up, I'll post a save.

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Bugs in development version (2.6-dev) / Re: Is post-XVI gameplay supposed to be implemented?

« on: August 11, 2014, 04:14:15 pm »

The game can be won. What´s the state of your game?

Researched all ufos up to Corrupter, met all alien races, researched census quite a while ago but the map is all green. I suppose I have to wait until an even larger, new type of ufo, or an alien base shows up. When 2.5 was still in Dev, I played it until this point, and played months afterwards with nothing new happening until a bug made all ufos untargetable.

Now that it's fixed, I'll play longer and try to cover even more area with radar until something new pops up.

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Bugs in development version (2.6-dev) / Is post-XVI gameplay supposed to be implemented?

« on: August 10, 2014, 01:40:09 pm »

While trying to avoid spoilers, I'm curious how long the gameplay is supposed to be implemented in the current 2.6 dev?
When the XVI became available for research, its map icon on the geoscape popped up, with no other function but to turn the whole map completely green. After the research, however, that button does absolutely nothing at all.

Did I reach the end of the gameplay in the current version, or will something else happen if I play long enough? Can the game be finished or won in its current state? I posted this here on the off chance that XVI is supposed to be implemented and it just didn't work for me because of a bug.

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

« on: August 08, 2014, 03:58:14 pm »

Ehm, no one of my troopers suffocate because the smoke of these grenades. I belive you talk about the alien gas grenade.

They do, at least in 2.6.
Moving through smoke, or ending your turn in smoke will incur a small amount of stun damage, if you don't wear a face-concealing armor.
The amount is very small, but can accumulate if you spend way too much time in smoke.

11

Feature Requests / Gas masks

« on: August 06, 2014, 05:18:05 pm »

Until I can research and produce my own armor, there is no protection from suffocation if I spend too much time in smoke. Even in late game, I might prefer a few quick and lightly armed scouts, who, exactly because of the lack of armor, will need to spend quite a lot of time around smoke grenades.

What about having a gas mask, which only protects from the smoke of smoke grenades? If it made the early game too much easier, it could be balanced with a few disadvantages:

- it could take the same slot as the IR goggles, so you can't use both (and we would at last have some choices for that slot)
- maybe it just reduces, and not completely eliminates the stun damage suffered in smoke
- it has some weight.
- it might reduce accuracy by a tiny little margin.

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

« on: August 05, 2014, 10:20:48 pm »

If you use smoke grenades a lot, wearing a full-body armor (armor with closed helmet, so any armor except the one you can buy at the beginning) prevents suffocation.

13

Discussion / Re: Remaking UI for 2.6 ?

« on: August 04, 2014, 06:19:14 pm »

Thanks for the RF hint!

Maybe if I weren't used to the old UI, I would have found it sooner.

I like the new UI, but I still think there are a lot of unfinished parts. I still have yet to learn (or get used to) how to autobuy and autosell, and how to close a menu in the base without leaving the whole base and ending up on the world map.

14

Discussion / Re: Remaking UI for 2.6 ?

« on: August 03, 2014, 11:04:31 pm »

There are a few features which I remember using in 2.5 but were either removed in 2.6 or, more likely, I cannot find them at first glance.

1. I cannot rename aircraft. Besides, new aircraft don't have their numbers incremented. Every Stiletto I buy is called "Stiletto 1".

2. In battlescape, I cannot chose what kind of reaction fire I would like to use.

3. In Battlescape, the hint at the cursor sometimes shows the movement properties (how many AP to move there) even if I targeted an enemy (it should display hit probabilities, but it doesn't always do it). Bug, or a new UI feature I don't understand?

4. In the old UI, the inventory slots had solid borders. Now I only see the size of inventory slots if I try to move an item. Yes, everyone should know the shapes and sizes, but a very thin, almost invisible border wouls still be bettern in my opinion, than no border at all.

15

Discussion / Re: Unselectable UFOs

« on: March 16, 2013, 06:09:46 pm »

Here it is.