Messages

1

Tactics / Re: What's your favorite weapon?

« on: July 05, 2010, 03:45:31 am »

Flamethrowers. Just so damned reliable. If it's in range, it's dead. No luck, no chance, it just dies. Since quite a fair bit of time is spent with greenhorns, the flamer really stands out in that period. The riot shotgun can fail with a threeround sabot burst at the same range, and will lose effiency against armour very quickly if you're using flechettes, but for the same TU's the flamer always gets the job done.

2

Tactics / Re: Reaction Fire

« on: July 02, 2010, 06:11:51 am »

Is there any intention to change it so that timing runs more "fairly"?

IE you don't just get only one shot and then they get to shoot, regardless of TU cost?

For example, if it still cost 7 tu for the guy to stab twice in reaction fire, and the other guy was instead using an assault rifle w/ full auto (18 tu) the order would be

1)Stab
2)Stab
3)Full Auto
4)Stab
5)Stab

Whereas as it currently stands it would only check which had the lower cost for the purposes of whoever fires first

1)Stab
2)Full Auto
3)Stab
4)Stab
5)Stab

Is there any intention to change it to using the first one instead of the second one?

3

Discussion / Re: Feedback

« on: June 29, 2010, 04:39:22 am »

Welcome to the forums!

I really like the idea of having pilots for each craft, I'm hoping that they will eventually have stats that affect their piloting so you can pick up different pilots for different crafts (like some are better at combat, and others are good at landing in advantageous spots for battle).

Something like this. I believe I read something about a combat skill and a hidden survival skill and something else, but stats for pilots is planned (I think so, anyway)

One thing I always wished you could do in X-Com was set up your initial base layout, since that is something you could conceivably do if you're there starting up the group, I realize that's not really the case in UFO:AI though.  Still, I think it would be nice.

You're not the first person to come up with this complaint, you probably won't be the last.

The battlescape...  Orientation was a bit weird, it was difficult to exactly move and things, but I think that might have been due to my computer's slowness.

I agree. Is there a "result to default view" button, or plans to put one in?

The only other problem I had was with the layout of the geoscape, it's not laid out to be incredibly user friendly, I had to go searching for a lot of things that would have been nice to have them be very obvious, I do like the timing and zoom controls though.  I wouldn't mind seeing the stopping of time going away though (just my X-Com purist showing).

I think pause was added just recently (the last version I played was 2.2.1 though, so yeah). 5 seconds is still so slow as to be the same though, really. 12 seconds to a minute, 12 minutes to an hour. It can take a dropship more than 20 hours to reach your destination, do the math. Might as well keep pause anyway though, no reason removing something that doesn't detract.

Personally the Geoscape has really improved - I really like the new swivel to events tab thing (although loading a game while I was swivelling or loading a game being swivelled caused the camera to lose it, or maybe I was dragging the mouse). Would it be possible to have the same for bases (IE a menu showing all bases, but the menu can be closed, same with dropships. Also maybe like the statistics a "global production" setup as well as an automatic-transfer-equipment-to-base-setup (Say, you have a manufacturing facility pumping out ammunition or something and getting it auto sent to the base with your dropship teams, or whatever).)

The highlight nation borders setting was a bit too bright for me - would it be possible to get a brightness setting? (Then again I'm probably the only guy who thinks this, being blinded by the Skype's colours)

/rant

Anyway, tldr: Welcome new guy, agree, agree, whine, whine.

4

Tactics / Re: Reaction Fire

« on: June 29, 2010, 01:45:31 am »

Reaction fire is even pointed out as one of the game tips "Sometimes when you move a unit, it'll trigger reaction fire on another unit" or something like that.

It's not a bug, it's a feature 

But yeah, the "spend same amount of points + penalty" and the way reaction fire is suggested to work is GREAT personally, except that it doesn't work.

Theoretically if you have a, say, knife and are standing behind a door and someone walks in and you snap shot them at 4tus + say 3 tu penalty (7 total) and the guy walking in tries to use a full auto machinegun fire (25 tu)... should he fire first, or get stabbed first? (Not even sure if the knife thing is possible, just making an example). Would the knife get multiple stabs before the machinegun started firing?

Regardless the way it currently works is that you'll rarely ever use reaction fire, regardless. More accurately, the way it currently doesn't work.

Of course, turtling is still perfectly possible if you just pop out of a corner and nail the target, and even safer than reaction fire, so I'm not sure why reaction fire is punished so much. Reaction fire trades the target not being able to pop in and out of sight (cannot use cover) for the exact same effect for the wielder theoretically (out in the open to be able to reaction fire in the first place).

5

Discussion / Re: what's with auto missions?

« on: June 28, 2010, 10:29:22 pm »

Yeah, it is totally broken in 2.3 stable. Auto-mission also never loses base defense missions, even when i send guys without weapons.

Haha, I just lost a base defense automission. My reaction was pretty much "What..?"

Also, whats with the game SPAMMING UFO'S AND TERROR MISSIONS AT ME?

I've faced like 20-40 missions, every single one of them being the same 4-5 Taman format. The only difference is that eventually they got Plasma Blasters instead of Pistol/Sword combo.

6

Discussion / Re: Advice for semi-noob?

« on: June 28, 2010, 09:33:59 pm »

Thanks for your help!  I'm sure I can figure out hotkeys and stuff, and now I have a brand new question

So my base got attacked... aside from not being able to use some stairs, I found that my base had to many intersections where fire-and aliens-could come from any direction.  I decided that the preset PHALANX HQ sucked, and I wanted to build my own.  Is that possible for my first base?  Or can I only dictate building placement for my other bases after the first?

Correct.

7

Discussion / Re: Advice for semi-noob?

« on: June 28, 2010, 09:07:41 pm »

Reserve TU's just temporary restricts the amount of tu's you can spend, so that you don't accidentally miscount and walk one step further, preventing you from shooting the enemy or whatever. Alternately means you don't have to count TU as you move.

I do believe hotkeys can be found if you go options -> show keys (at the bottom right). You can also change the keybindings there.

If we knew why reaction fire doesn't work, we would fix it. 

8

Tactics / Re: Reaction Fire

« on: June 28, 2010, 12:14:29 am »

Doubt it. Used it before - my sniper fired 3 shots on separate turns, then refused to do anything at all for the next 4 turns (yes, I reloaded).

This was with the enemies coming closer, so I doubt he/she was losing accuracy.

9

Bugs in older version (2.3.1) / Misc Bugs

« on: June 27, 2010, 09:28:50 am »

First of all

Important: You should not post any bugs about the latest stable release.

Given that this is "Bugs in latest stable version", seems like an odd thing to have in the sticky for this section.

1) Living quarters are bugged in the battlescape, stairs are impassable
2) If your base is attacked while the dropship is away you can still use those soldiers on the dropship to defend it
3) On some maps the left side entrance to one of the UFO's is mysteriously blocked/impassable. (UFO_Tropical I believe)
4) One of those yellow blind kangaroo things (Sheevar?) can be found in the containment battlescape, even if you haven't encountered them yet (believe I heard discussion about this, not a bug?)
5) Aliens tend to see through walls and attempt to shoot you through them (doesn't work).
6) AlexSullencity played in a base defense map in the middle of a sunny day, even though the song is ambient with a thunderstorm.

10

Tactics / Re: IR-goggles

« on: June 26, 2010, 10:18:34 am »

On an unrelated note, the description of IR Goggles states that they are "one handed"

Can they still actually be used in one hand?

11

Tactics / Re: IR-goggles

« on: June 26, 2010, 01:09:15 am »

I'm not sure IR goggles have been implemented yet.

The last I heard, you were supposed to equip them in your hand and use the "scan" ability to see through walls, but I'm not sure if that even works. Wearing them on your head supposedly does nothing (mind you, I heard this a long time ago).

Also - when you say NVG, do you mean IR? Because while NVG uses infra-red the goggles in this game are different judging from the scan-see through light objects thing (which doesn't even work, both in the game and in real life I believe)

12

Bugs in older version (2.3.1) / Re: wrong TU visual in HUD

« on: June 25, 2010, 09:54:52 am »

Do you have autostand enabled? If so, I think it tries to reserve enough points for you to stand back up or such. Not exactly sure what autostand is supposed to do (make you stand up when you walk to save tu's was my assumption, but I really have no idea).

Try disabling it and tell us what happens.

13

Discussion / Re: what's with auto missions?

« on: June 25, 2010, 01:45:35 am »

I find it ironic that the stable versions are least stable of them all.

2.2.1 had the cloning bug, 2.3 has reaction fire and auto resolve.

14

Tactics / Re: Weapon comparison data

« on: June 22, 2010, 06:30:17 am »

As far as I know the weapon information inside the game is derived, yes. I could be wrong, mind you, but it seems to me like we're actually viewing mechanical data (ie spread 2.1 used instead of just saying "short range" or some crap). Characters are randomly generated so this is definitely derived (especially since one of the devs explained how it worked a while back or some such)

Damage however will always show the damage dealt by the selected fire mode, not by a single shot (this makes sense and is preferable, personally).

I'm not sure the up-to-date info is stored anywhere except in the game itself, really. Depends. I think one of the devs wrote something about how all the different statistics work; the most up to date WEAPON information is located in that game.

Although I'm not sure if that's outdated or implemented or what.

15

Tactics / Re: Hit and Run: shoot without getting shot back

« on: June 22, 2010, 06:20:28 am »

Not cowardly at all. This is generally the most used tactic of the aliens (especially if you just blindly advance towards them).

It's either this or reaction fire advancing, generally. Nothing wrong with either.