Topics

1

Bugs in development version (2.6-dev) / User interface problems in 2.6 dev IA 32 March 6 2015

« on: March 10, 2015, 12:32:16 pm »

Hi after playing 2.5 I downloaded and installed 2.6

I started a new campaign and built my first base. Now the problem is, I can't find the button to hire staff. Where is it?

I have to say I think the 2.5 user interface is better. The 2.6 one has mystery icons and it is not obvious to the user what they are for.

Also when I look at the pilot for an aircraft in the aircraft screen, and then click on another aircraft, a lot of useless info about the pilot pops up above him, like his stats for strength, speed, accuracy, CQB etc which are all 0.

2

Feature Requests / Hyperwave Decoder from Alien Psi device

« on: March 05, 2015, 07:49:36 pm »

Perhaps the alien psi device that you get from raiding an alien base can be made into a hyper wave decoder so you can see what missions UFOs are on, so you can decide whether you need to shoot them down or not.

3

Newbie Coding / Number of turns for incendiary and smoke effects

« on: February 22, 2015, 04:54:28 am »

How does one alter the length of time that smoke or fire persists when a smoke or incendiary munition is fired?
I see in the .ufo files a line that says rounds. How does that work?

Is it possible to make a shorter duration incendiary grenade that only burns an area for the turn when it is fired, then the alien movement time, so that civilians don't walk into the flames and your troops can move through the area in the next turn?

4

Bugs in stable version (2.5) / Reaction fire for pistols held in left hand does not work

« on: February 21, 2015, 04:59:52 am »

My squads have a heavy weapons dude packing a grenade launcher and a pistol. When he is near places where aliens come out, like doorways etc, i have him hold the pistol in his left hand and turn on reaction fire for the pistol. (I tick the fire mode in the pistol, then turn on the reaction fire icon at the bottom of the screen).  However, he never takes a reaction fire shot with the pistol.

5

Feature Requests / Research Tree Tweak - earlier anti-alien gas

« on: February 15, 2015, 04:06:55 am »

In 2.5 by the time the anti-alien gas becomes researchable, I have usually finished all the research requiring live aliens so there is no longer any need to stun them or take them alive. Either there should be more research requiring live aliens, or the stun gas should be earlier in the research tree.

6

Tactics / Which UFOs land so they can be captured intact?

« on: February 07, 2015, 03:11:33 pm »

Hi, which UFOs will land so they can be captured intact with all their antimatter? So far here is what I have noticed:

Scout - will sometimes land

Fighter - will sometimes land, but less frequently

Harvester - often lands for terror missions or alien activity or base assault. Sometimes just flies around looking to bomb radar towers and SAM sites without landing.

Supply Ship - always lands to build or supply alien bases, but can never be attacked when landed so no use, have to shoot it down.

Corrupter - as for harvester

Gun boat - I have never seen it land, has anyone seen one land?

Bomber - I have seen too few to know how it behaves but I think I saw a landed one once.

7

Feature Requests / Alien carcases should be sellable or useable in some way

« on: February 01, 2015, 01:02:56 pm »

There should be a way to sell alien corpses or maybe use them to make biological weapons or something. Or maybe they could be burnt in the base power plant to generate power, or skinned to make leather clothing for Phalanx soldiers, or fed to specially genetically modified alien-eating dogs that can be set loose to hunt aliens.

8

Bugs in stable version (2.5) / Frozen landscape map with crashed corrupter has a black spike

« on: February 01, 2015, 07:55:05 am »

In 2.5 in the frozen landscape map with a crashed corrupter has a long black spike-shaped patch on the ground under the unbroken side fuselage of the corrupter. It is black like the area outside the map, but it works like ground. It should be white since it is a snow map.

9

Bugs in stable version (2.5) / Raptor is facing backwards in the aircraft equipping screen

« on: February 01, 2015, 01:39:30 am »

In the screen where you load equipment and weapons onto aircraft, the raptor is facing backwards so that when you install weapons, they are pointing backwards.

The raptor will therefore have to turn around in mid air to fire it's weapons backwards at enemy UFOs.

10

Bugs in stable version (2.5) / Researchig Alien Psi Device gives Re:(null) message

« on: January 31, 2015, 06:25:59 am »

When you have invaded an alien base and killed all the aliens, you get an Alien Psi Device to research. After researching it, you get a mailclient message entitled Re:(null).  Should it not be entitled Re: Alien Psi Device or something like that?

11

Feature Requests / Faster loading of saved games please

« on: January 30, 2015, 11:10:54 am »

Is it possible to make the saved games load faster? The longer you play into a campaign the slower the saved games load, until i have to wait several minutes to load a game. Why does it take so long? Is it replaying the enitire campaign and if so is that necessary? Can't the saved game just save the current positions and status of objects?

12

User modifications / Super Humans mod for UFO:AI 2.5 (cheat)

« on: January 26, 2015, 06:42:28 pm »

If you like your games hard and challenging, this mod is not for you. It gives the humans many advantages and seriously unbalances the game. It is basically a cheat mod. It does not add any new objects, just modifies specs for weapons, craft, base buildings in the game to make the humans super powered.

Some changes:

• All human weapons need less TU to use.
• Alien guns can earn you a lot of money when you sell them. After stealing them from dead aliens, just keep one for researching and sell the rest. You won't want to use them as human weapons are better.
• The shotgun can shoot through thin walls, fences etc. So can the assault rifle snap shot.
• The assault rifle aimed shot can go through more walls. So can the sniper rifle (both shot types).
• Laser weapons rock. They are like the XCOM ones which need no clips. They shoot through walls (the bigger the gun, the more walls).
• The aircraft laser cannon is the only weapon you will ever need to mount on your aircraft.
• The base laser cannon will shoot down any UFO that flies within range. You may want to turn it off by opening your base view and clicking on the laser building and turning off auto fire if you want UFOs to land undamaged or attack your base so you can defend it.
• D-F clips are not used for laser guns. They are instead used for making the assault rifle, sniper rifle, and pistol fire like the laser versions.
• The pistol now fits on belts like the machine pistol.
• Bolter and Coilgun can shoot through even more walls than heavy laser. Be careful not to shoot civilians or your own troops through walls when shooting aliens.
• Grenade launcher now launches high trajectory grenades, enabling you to shoot over hills and low buildings to hit aliens hiding in defilade. However, it does not work well indoors because it will hit the ceiling.
• The stun rod now shoots stun beams so you don't have to be standing beside the thing you want to stun.
• The medikit can heal from a distance too.
• Base buildings are faster to build and have more storage room inside.
• Your starting base has a better layout for defence.
• Stand alone radar towers now have greater radar range, similar to the basic base radar, with more tracking rage.

How to install / uninstall this mod: 2 ways

The quick and dirty unofficial way:
Just put the 1superhumans.pk3 file in your base sub-directory (and base is in your UFOAI install directory).
For example, the path to the file on my Windows system is: C:\Program Files\UFOAI-2.5\base\1superhumans.pk3

To uninstall just move it somewhere else or delete it.

The more complicated official way:

• Create a sub-directory in your UFOAI install directory called mods (if you have not done so already for a previous mod).
• In the mods sub-directory, created another subdirectory called superhumans (or whatever name you want this mod to have).
• Open up the 1superhumans.pk3 file (using 7-zip or PakScape) and copy out the ufos folder into that subdirectory.
• Run the game with the command line switch +set fs_gamedir superhumans (or whatever name you called it).
• Alternatively start the game as normal, then pull down the console using ~ and type fs_mod superhumans to load the mod.

Update: New version uploaded 01/02/2015, bolter/EM rifle antimatter bullets will now explode when they hit aliens.

13

Feature Requests / Stingray interceptor icon / model should be smaller on geoscape.

« on: January 25, 2015, 07:31:53 am »

On the geoscape view, the stingray interceptor looks too big, it is bigger than the biggest UFOs. When it closes with them for air combat it looks like it should be ramming them.  Maybe it is meant to be the biggest flying machine in the game, but it just looks too big.

14

Bugs in stable version (2.5) / Extremely laggy maps in 2.5 / low fps maps

« on: January 25, 2015, 03:55:03 am »

In 2.5 there are a couple of extremely laggy maps or low frame rate maps where the lag is so severe it is unplayable. The lag affects the mouse so when I move the mouse around the screen the mouse cursor does not move and the view does not pan.
I am running Windows XP SP3 and a dual core intel processor and on board intel graphics.

One map is kind of a mix of the hedgerows from the cemetery map and the big white house with a huge underground basement but i am not sure as i could not pan around the map to see all of it. It was so laggy my computer acted like it was hung so I had to press and hold the power button to reboot it. I only saw this map once, and it may have had "jungle" or "tropical" in the name.

Another map is the one called "Bridge", which has a long railway viaduct on pillars running across it, and brown ground and lots of junk and something burning on fire and lots of uneven wooden fences.  It is often used for a crashed small UFO. This is just about playable if I zoom in and look down on my soldiers.  If I zoom out or tilt the view to look across the map, it becomes so laggy that it is unplayable. This is a pain because the aliens are often far across the map and I want to tilt the view to see what is blocking a line of shot to them or to see if civilians are in the way but I can't because it will lag so bad it becomes unplayable.  I suspect it may have something to do with too high a poly count, perhaps with all those uneven boards in the fences or something.

15

Tactics / Best base building layout for base defence

« on: January 24, 2015, 05:49:05 pm »

For defending your base against alien invasions (which are a good thing when they bring a big UFO for you to dismantle later), here are some general principles for building placement, which you have to bear in mind from when you start the base:

1. Try to have the buildings that aliens enter the base from, all together at one side of the map, and only joined to the rest of your base via one building.  This creates a bottleneck or choke point through which aliens have to come to get to the rest of your base.

The buildings that aliens enter through are: The entrance ramp, the drop ship hangar, the workshop, and very rarely the standard radar (I have not build advanced radar so I don't know about that).

2. The standard radar building has a tower sticking above ground which makes a good sniper's nest to snipe aliens on the surface.  I like to make the radar the choke point building and place it near the entrance buildings so that I can send a sniper up the tower to provide enfilade fire on aliens milling around the entrances of the other buildings.  The drop ship hangar also has a tower that you can snipe from but the hangar roof blocks a lot of the field of fire from it so it is not that useful.

3. Try to put buildings with no above ground structures, or low above ground structures that will not block your fields of fire from the radar tower. These buildings have low or no above ground parts: antimatter storage, hospital, alien containment, command centre.  Build these near your radar tower, and those with higher above ground bits further back so they will not block your fire from the tower.

4. The Phalanx soldiers will spawn mostly in the command centre, with a few in the accommodation blocks and hospital. Build the command centre close to the choke point (radar building in my case) so you can quickly concentrate your forces there. The command centre also has not too much stuff above ground so it will not block your sniper fire from the radar tower.  The accommodation blocks have big above ground rooms so be careful where you put them.  If you have guns that can shoot through walls (bolter, coilgun), you can also do some limited sniping through the walls of some of the above ground accommodation rooms, and also the interceptor hangar.