Messages

1

Tactics / Re: Beginner's guide

« on: August 10, 2010, 11:12:49 am »

Electromagnetic rifle (bolter) is quite useless, just needed to research for coilguns.

I appreciate the bolter much more when aliens start to wear heavier armor. The damage and armor penetration of the 3-shot is excellent and TU cost is fairly low. But this is definitely not high priority in the early game.

Laser technology is fast to research and gives the best boost at the start, in particular since your soldiers cannot shoot to save their lives, so the accuracy really helps. The laser rifle and heavy laser are the main tools in the early game, the heavy laser effectively replacing the sniper rifle. Then the priority is armor, but it takes time to research & disassemble ships for materials.

2

Tactics / Re: Snipers vs Medium-armored aliens

« on: August 10, 2010, 10:58:35 am »

Heavy laser works much better as a sniper weapon than the sniper rifle. The only problem is that is uses the "heavy" skill instead so you need different specialists.

3

Discussion / Re: Feedback 2.3

« on: August 03, 2010, 10:06:11 am »

- you can reserve TU for reaction fire. How much you save depends on the fire mode you choose (tick mark next to the fire mod). To update it you must cycle the reaction fire button back to no reaction and then to single or multiple reaction. There is a known issue with reaction fire not working sometimes... or many times.
- The healing in the tactical mission was mentioned to be changed.
- Fatigue is weird. Elite soldiers get fatigued from running 50 meters across the map?
- The radar tells you the kind of UFO if you researched it (at least on the version I play). Otherwise, you will learn to recognize them by their looks.

4

Linux / Re: New to Linux -- Not Clear On How to Install UFO AI

« on: July 26, 2010, 05:52:37 pm »

When I compiled it before, I always skipped the "make install" step because I was using "make deb" instead. This time, I did "make install" and now the game works. It doesn't make sense to me, but that's what happened.

I guess something in the deb packaging was wrong. The only problem with "make install" is that it installs files without tracking them as part of a deb package. Makes removing/upgrading software a little messier, but not a big problem. I prefer to install as debs as much as possible, but nothing prevents doing it the old way of placing files in random directories...

Enjoy

5

Tactics / Re: What are PHALANX supposed to be? I.D.I.O.T.S.?

« on: July 26, 2010, 05:46:28 pm »

RF triggering, at least judging from 2.4-dev code, depends upon (among other factors, such as visibility and having ammo, of course)
- the number of TUs that the target's action requires
- likelihood of hitting friendlies (under normal conditions, no more than 5% is acceptable, with freaked-out humans accepting a higher likelihood; but an insane alien will completely ignore the possibility of hitting other aliens; I've even seen one kill the alien standing right next to him)
- likelihood of hitting enemies (min. 30%)
- having a faster weapon (in terms of TU cost to fire) for the 'outdraw' test

So I guess the last one includes the fire mode I select for RF?
No wonder I stopped getting RF since I put all my troops on higher damage, higher TU modes instead of the "snapshots". I'll try going back to snapshots instead and see if it makes a difference. If true it makes pistols more useful in close quarters to proc those RF as the alien comes round the corner.

6

Discussion / Re: When will development will be finish?

« on: July 26, 2010, 05:34:58 pm »

It obviously has to end before 2084 when the aliens invade.

7

Linux / Re: New to Linux -- Not Clear On How to Install UFO AI

« on: July 23, 2010, 01:34:46 pm »

TC, what you describe is pretty much what I get, also using Kubuntu 10.04, but much less sever for the dev version. I get the "can't end turn" bug (very rare), but when I 'retry' the mission it works fine. I had a few occasions in the middle of a mission of dropping out of combat into geoscape, just as if the mission has not started. Not necessarily associated with injury.

Very rough estimate I would say these things happen once for every 8-10 missions. Annoying, but still playable. I also could not get 2.3 to work.

8

Tactics / Re: What's your favorite weapon?

« on: July 19, 2010, 11:54:15 am »

Several ufopaedia articles about pistol type weaponry mention dualwielding...that is inconsistent with game.

Well, you can dual wield, just can't dual shoot...

I see there is not much love for old Bolter. The crazy accuracy of the laser weapons just overshadow it even with its supposed better armor penetration. Still, it is a decent weapon and I like at least 1 assult guy using it, just because I like the concept. The 3 shot burst gets the job done quite well up to medium ranges. Perhaps its accuracy needs to be increased a bit to make it more viable as a semi sniper as the description and "aimed shot" ability suggest. For some reason the "snap shot" mode tend to miss much more than expected even from very short range (or does not do damage?).

9

Linux / Re: New to Linux -- Not Clear On How to Install UFO AI

« on: July 16, 2010, 10:18:00 am »

I'm using Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid). I installed an earlier version from files I downloaded from Ubuntu.com and later let Ubuntu upgrade itself to this version.

I should mention that I wasn't able to follow the instructions under "Building Debian Packages". Commands like "make deb" and "dpkg -i ufoai-tools[...].deb" fail, even though I followed all instructions up to that point.

-TC

"dpkg -i ufoai-tools[...].deb" - I assume you replaced the [...] with the actual file name that was produced?
Did you install "equivs" and "devscripts" ? You need those in order to build the deb packages:
sudo apt-get install devscripts
sudo apt-get install equivs
Only then the "mk-build-deps" step will actually produce the ufoai-tools[...].deb package (is it in your current directory?). In any case, this is a short-cut to install dependencies. If you went through all the steps above you do not really need this.

Did the compilation steps passed without failing? If something failed, post the text so people can help you.
Also, run the ./configure again (or look at the log file) and watch the output for "no" results. Some are not problematic but perhaps you are missing some dependency.

Other notes I just remembered:
In Ubuntu libxvidcore4-dev is actually called libxvidcore-dev, so install that.
sudo apt-get install libxvidcore-dev
And this is also only mentioned in the notes and not the code boxes:
sudo apt-get install libtheora-dev
These are checked in ./configure so it is good to look at the output.

Okay, I'll try it. I just wanted to double-check before I started. To a newbie, it seems very suspicious that I would need to work through a 12-step procedure just to install a program. After all, if it were really just cut-and-paste, wouldn't someone have made a script to automate it?

It is not fully automated because you install code libraries that are not specifically related to UFOAI. The proper "debian way" would have been simply releasing compiled deb binaries for 32bit, as the team did for 64bit. For some reason they didn't. I don't really blame them, but for major milestones releases I would have expected it. The up-side is that once you have the dependencies installed and you got tired of your current version, you can compile latest development versions to check all the new goodies.

10

Linux / Re: New to Linux -- Not Clear On How to Install UFO AI

« on: July 14, 2010, 09:38:44 am »

C'mon this is not so difficult - just copy and paste... it worked for me and I am an idiot.

If you have a 64bit Ubuntu/Debian version you can simply use the pre-compiled deb packages... I think.

For the 32bit, you have to compile yourself. I just did that 2 days ago (used 2.2.1 before). Notice that 2.3.0 did not work for me, but the current version (the SVN version as explained in the link you posted) works with only few bugs.
Some tips:
To get started, after you download the source from SVN (follow the link you posted), open a terminal and go to the directory where you downloaded the code to, where you will find a file named: "configure". Start following the "compile" section of the guide from there (skip compiling the maps! see below).

To save yourself A LOT of time, do not compile the maps - go to contrib/scripts/ directory when you downloaded the source and there you will find "map-get.py". Run that ("./map-get.py") and it will download pre-compiled maps.

If you use Ubuntu/Debian, do not "make install". Instead, skip to the "Building Debian packages " section and do the "make deb". After it finishes you will find several *.deb files one directory above your current. To install all of them:
sudo dpkg -i *.deb

"