Messages

1

Discussion / Re: Soldier ranks....

« on: February 26, 2014, 07:28:28 am »

iirc, ranks are awarded for Mind skill. The higher it ism the higher the ranks, anything else irrelevant. Killing civilians stalls the mind skill and prevents future promotions.

2

Tactics / Re: Luring tactics vs UFOs

« on: February 13, 2014, 08:14:04 am »

well yes i know about this tactics. but you cant use it in early game. harvesters and fighters will attack your interceptors only when they are rally close. and will fly away if you try to lure them.

That's not flying away
They're just calculating the shortest path to intercept your fighter that's luring them toward the base and it turns out to be around the globe. It doesn't happen with gunboats because their speed advantage is high enough for direct pursuit to be the faster way to intercept you. You can manipulate them pretty easily toward your base actually, all while staying completely safe. With this exploit, you can shoot down anything, even gunboats with nothing but a stilletto and a single AA launcher at your base. Theonly thing required is that they try to intercept you, and I don't know for sure how this decision is made.

3

Tactics / Re: Capturing live hovernet/combat hovernet and bloodspider/c.b.s

« on: February 10, 2014, 11:17:59 am »

Honestly, I don't quite get the idea of capturing robots alive. What would be the difference between damaging a robot until it falls dead and damaging a robot until it falls unconscous? I mean, how are these two states are meant to be different in robots? I'd rather see stun damage converted to regular damage for them and having  "autopsy reports" renamed to "disassembly reports" or whatever.

4

Discussion / a small grapfical inaccuracy

« on: December 14, 2013, 09:57:37 am »

Hello friends, I first thought about reporting this issue properly to the bug thread, but then decided it doesn't really look like ufoconlose.log and savegames would be of help in identifying its cause. The thing is, the moon seems to eclipse the sun in a rather weird way on the geoscape.

I don't know much about how the lighting is rendered, but perhaps it would be more accurate if the moon was just allowed to block the inner circle as well as the corona without any actual change in lighting, or with a slight dimming of the entire geoscape

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

« on: December 10, 2013, 05:53:45 pm »

Last time I checked, armor was utterly useless and I was better off with +12TUs instead of it in 9 cases out of 10. I'll try a walkthrough to check if that's changed though, after having read your post Telok!

6

Discussion / Re: Plasma Blaster

« on: December 05, 2012, 07:26:11 am »

H-hour, that sounds like extremely good news.
I'd add my observation if I may: I tried several times targetting the ground to compensate for low accuracy and kill aliens with splash damage, but I never got any success with this technique. I think it's because splash radius is too small. However, if you raise it up again, the aliens will again start killing themselves with blasters, which is probably not the intended way, so here's my suggestion: make the splash area of plasma blaster assymetrical, ranging, say, 3 tiles forward, 2tiles to the sides and 1 tile backward. Devastating effect against (who are presumably located in front of the blaster) would then add to relative safety for the shooter (who is behind).

7

Discussion / Re: Again on reaction fire

« on: November 29, 2012, 07:47:05 am »

2krilain: that's some impressive reasoning, I wasn't actually meaning that. For me, auto-RF with remaining time is just a matter of convenience, so that I wouldn't have to cycle through the soldiers once more to find those who still have time for RF, or to check that tiny button or press x to make soldiers advance carefully.
I think that current UI regarding RF is more a thing of the past when TU's from the next turn were used for it, and then you had strong incentive to not RF. An option for disabling auto-RF, rather than enabling RF, would seem more convenient for me. idk how do other players regard that though.
As for hurting friendlies with FR: I believe the game has already some checks for this. I often tried to make aliens waste ammo or shoot each other with RF, but it seems to me they have checks to not shoot when target is off range or when  LoF is broken, even in clear sight. With this in place, how difficult would it be to add the check for friendlies near LoF? I tried once to code something for this project, but my meager c skills failed me through those heaps of code. maybe it's time to try again.

8

Discussion / Re: Again on reaction fire

« on: November 28, 2012, 10:04:54 am »

I have one more suggestion to improve RF system, or rather make it more manageable. It may be somewhat offtopic here, but I don't think it's worth it to start a new thread for such a small thing.

For now, RF is only triggered if your soldier is explicitly set to use reserved TU's for it. However, there's no other use of leftover TU's after you have completed your actions. I'd suggest that any leftover TU's at the end of turn are automatically useable for reaction fire (with the cheapest possible firemode, if none is specified).

It seems to me this suggestion takes away some unnecessary micromanagement burden from the player.

9

Discussion / Re: Again on reaction fire

« on: November 27, 2012, 11:16:10 am »

I see, what I suggest would really mean that ultra-fast aliens would never get reaction shot at under the current system. While sounding realistic (they're ultra-fast after all), this certainly does seem to ruin game experience.
Well then, looks like we have to wait for improved system with soldiers focusing on specific areas like H-hour mentioned in the second post.

10

Discussion / Re: Again on reaction fire

« on: November 27, 2012, 09:31:31 am »

First of all, congratulations with implementing a great and reasonable (imo at least) system of reaction fire. I like it very much and if I may I'd like to suggest a possible improvement to it.

I disagree that raw speed should determine the proficiency in reaction fire. In my opinion, total available TU's should be used instead, taking encumbrance modifiers into account. Using ratios of used TU's to total TU's to determine reaction fire chance would be more precise, I think.
So, if an unencumbered soldier with 45 TU's available is standing on guard with a shotgun snap shot of 10 TU's, a moderately encumbered alien (with 30TU's, let's suppose) should spend 7 TU's in soldier's arc of sight to trigger reaction fire (7/30 > 10/45, BAMM). I definitely agree with game's point that reaction should preceed the last triggering action. Maybe speed can be used to adjust this value a bit, but I think that would be unreasonable: after all, we've already taken speed into account when we calculated units' total TU's, haven't we?

This would be in accord with intuitive feeling that faster units should generally react, turn and aim and pull their triggers more quickly then slow ones.
Also this would make unarmoured soldiers a more viable option (although the latter might be a drawback instead)

11

Feature Requests / Re: Damage buildings/wall by rockets and/or explosives

« on: February 02, 2012, 10:22:59 am »

Just for interest, geever, how are destructible windows and fences done at the moment?
I recall I was so much glad to see windows shatter in 2.4. I thought "Wow looks like the guys are making their way towards destructible terrain". Too bad it's still not going to happen.
Also, is it at all possible to have maps being "pre-destructed" by UFO crashes, so that a part of the map where the UFO crashlanded would be damaged and ignited in some procedurally generated way?

12

Tactics / Re: Reaction fire problems

« on: January 31, 2012, 12:12:22 pm »

I remember reading somewhere here that the reaction fire system as it stands is crude, unfinished and planned for overhaul, so I think it's not worth complaining before it's remade.
However, it doesn't look to me like your soldiers are really meant to shoot aliens as soon as they pop into your LoS. Aliens should spend enough TU's (enough to react, aim and shoot) in front of a soldier doing something before he can do anything about them, this is how it's meant to work I think.

13

Tactics / Re: Weapons/Armor research

« on: January 24, 2012, 11:05:26 pm »

In my last game, I found that it does not matter much what I choose to research, as campaign progresses without much dependance on what you research.
I think the most important techs are those required to build advanced interceptors capable of shooting down harvesters so that I would no longer be forced to fight numerous terror/harvesting missions. (You know, ignoring the crashed UFO mission somehow feels much better than ignoring terror or harvesting).
Overall, i found myself going
Bolter > Plasma weapons(Grenade, then others) -> Nanoarmour  -> Monoknife -> Advanced Interceptors ->  Autopsies -> Orbital UFO -> Laser weapons -> Coilgun -> Other stuff.
I did only interrupt this to research some storyline techs or my favourite plasma blade.

14

Tactics / Re: Plasma vs. Laser

« on: January 24, 2012, 10:55:48 pm »

I think plasma weapons  should have splash damage.
IMHO that would fit the setting nicely. correspond to Ufopaedia texts, help to offset some of their (overwhelming) weaknesses and discourage tight formations of laser-shooting Phalanx troops, which I have found myself using too extensively. Plasma Blaster's Ball firemode could then be reworked into something even more devastating.
Aliens would become more dangerous with that, and as for players's troops, I think those would still use laser weaponry - it's just so convenient to have weapons that really do hit.

15

Discussion / Re: Looking for late-game saves

« on: January 24, 2012, 06:25:29 pm »

hi, if you're still looking for late saves please find mine attached.