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Messages - TBeholder

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31
Discussion / Re: My Let's Play UFO: Alien Invasion 2.5 Series
« on: February 12, 2015, 12:01:26 pm »
Wait are they claiming copyright on UFO:AI music?
Alas, it's a known problem...
The song in the image, (file base/music/van_geoscape.ogg in ufoai) was composed and produced  by Manuel Marino (aka Vanethian) it was released (along with the other van_*.ogg songs — which BTW include UFO:AI's theme song...) under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0, they have been part of the game since time immemorial, he recently (as in 2012) released them as part of his album 'Science Fiction Story' (Which I'm guessing is being distributed by Awal?), so yeah the song is free even if the version he released for his album has a different license... that said... well I don't know what to advise...
See above.
Jumping through hoops of CIAggle is an option, and if he values his YouTube channel he needs to (due to "3 strikes"), but it's not known for being particularly quick or pretty process. And was "until the next time" even for NASA, so what do you expect?..

32
Discussion / Re: My Let's Play UFO: Alien Invasion 2.5 Series
« on: February 11, 2015, 12:43:22 pm »
Apparently. So, use some CC music, e.g. from Jamendo (and attribute as needed), that's it.
Oh, and put it on Vimeo next time.  ;)

33
Feature Requests / Re: Armed civilians
« on: January 16, 2015, 06:19:26 pm »
There probably should be an intermediate type, "guard" or something, with separate AI behaviour. For convoys, but also in settlements for local police, gangs, etc.

34
Discussion / Re: Nation Happiness - what are the different feelings?
« on: January 16, 2015, 12:48:12 pm »
Hi, can someone better versed in the English language than me give us a ranking of the different words for feelings used in the nation happiness stats? Like is pleased better than happy, or is happy better than pleased?
"Giving up" < "Furious" < "Angry" < "Mad" < "Upset" < "Tolerant" < "Neutral" < "Content" < "Pleased" < "Happy" < "Exuberant"
But yeah, not everything is obvious, maybe a color bar would improve the situation.

35
Discussion / Re: Why is this so goddamn hard?
« on: November 22, 2014, 03:33:34 am »
Yeah, armor, medikits and minimum weight otherwise.
Also, crouching helps a lot, especially combined with (bad) other cover. And it improves accuracy, of course, which matters at long range. Kind of funny when occasionally a sniper gets to hit something with reaction fire even despite near-impossible TU requirement.

36
Linux / Re: SF-username
« on: November 05, 2014, 03:58:41 am »
Code: [Select]
git remote set-url --push origin ssh://<SF-username>@git.code.sf.net/p/ufoai/code
git remote set-url origin git://git.code.sf.net/p/ufoai/code

However my bash terminal is confused by SF-username.  Am I supposed to replace SF-username with something then execute these commands?
Try to put the whole argument in quotes (double or single, there may be difference). Use codes (%20 for space). Check whether SF really uses what it displays - e.g. in URLs of your user pages.

37
Linux / Re: PlayDeb.net has 2.4.1 on it instead of 2.5
« on: October 13, 2014, 08:21:27 pm »
Depends on the version (either because it needs some library that pulls dependencies after it, or simply because no one bothered to compile and update for the older releases):
Code: [Select]
Ubuntu 13.10: 2.4-1~getdeb2~saucy
Ubuntu 14.04: 2.5-1~getdeb1
Ubuntu 13.04: 2.4-1~getdeb1
Ubuntu 12.04: 2.4-1~getdeb1
Ubuntu 12.10: 2.4-1~getdeb1

38
Feature Requests / Re: Some suggestions
« on: September 29, 2014, 08:47:51 pm »
You should be able to send ships to arbitrary locations on the world map, this way you can scout and eventually find alien ground bases.
You can. It also allows to intercept faster UFO (even Firebird can shoot down some scouts) - under "intercept"   they try to go around the planet.
You should be able to make your ships follow UFOs from a safe distance, so you can attack the UFO as soon as it has landed and grab the intact UFO and not just the damaged one, and also be able to follow it to alien ground bases. As an extra gameplay element the UFO could realize that it is being followed and start attacking, or try to flee, maybe even a stealth device for the own interceptors or drones could be possible.
See point 1. If your aircraft is faster, manually clicking outside firefight distance usually does the trick. Also, dropships have radar, lots of fuel and low fighting capability, so they double as AWACS.

After the shotgun and the plasma blaster where great, but then there is no good weapon for close combat, so after a while I just had to change the profession of my close combat soldiers, in skirmish mode there is a double barrel shotgun, but I did not find it (yet? I just finished production of power armor) in the campaign.
Yup, without burst mode on the Riot shotgun, double barreled version starts to look attractive. It's configured (in equipment.ufo and equipment_missions.ufo) to be available only in skirmish and appear in the hands of local armed guards (farmers, police, gangsters...) too. Except this part apparently doesn't work.
Also, different magazine volume means seems to be a problem with the current way of ammo handling.
One of the coolest weapons is the grenade launcher, I think it deserves flash, gas and smoke grenades.
Yup. Currently, the way magazines are implemented doesn't allow partial load and thus unloading, though.

Initial base design is far from ideal (the alien containment is right besides the dropship hangar and living quarters are far away, the workshop is on the opposite side of the dropship hangar and you have to defend/take two entry points), maybe there should be an option to assemble the initial base in the campaign instead of using the standard layout.
Yup, it's horrible. Containment is isolated (heh), Powerplant in two steps from the stairs, and Radar is between entry points.

Another suggestion (this one will probably much more complicated to implement): What about the possibility to hover over the map first and see the surface (maybe even try to shoot some aliens with an onboard cannon) and choosing a landing site
  As it is, a map preview showing main passages, alien craft location and choice of several landing positions would be a good start.
there could be places where the dropship could land and places, where the team had to go down on ropes or parachutes. I think this would add another tactical element to the missions. If the dropship stays in the air, there could even be some airsupport (not only with the board cannon, but also with visibility like in the base defense missions), of course this would have to be balanced and the AI would need some counter strategy and the ability to adapt to this (e.g. like staying in buildings, being able to shoot in the air...).
Air support - yes, but it's not exaqctly sniping, and the map is supposed to be a small location already with civilians, and either way with friendlies after drop... Of course, this brings up the point as to why crash landing in the middle of nowhere always spawns civilians who are tethered to this little spot of land.  :D
Perhaps target designators on soldiers could help. Then again, if you want to get targets in the open and have target designators, just roll a low-caliber mortar or bundle of missile tubes into dropship and have indirect fire support - much faster than remotes (once you have them) can get to the scene, and more precise (and less splash-y) that air support.
As to parachutes and fast-roping - why not, but a lot of aliens are going to use reaction fire.  You have seen that "Fast Roping 101" picture, right?  ;)
But if it was more Apocalypse-y and "more than one dropship" was implemented, this could be a good idea for reinforcements.
Alternatively, drop a few UGVs on parachutes before landing or dropping troops: little boxy tanks are both less vulnerable and easier to fix, and even if they slagged one, at least now you know where's the trouble. Speaking of which, why ever waste trooper compartment space on UGV like in X-Com, and even then, why so much? They look squat, more than enough to be stackable 2x, and/or could be hung right on the door or ramp - it makes sense to lead with these anyway.
Same applies even more to deployed cameras: 3-4 webcams with tranceiver, wire landing gear and parachute can be cheap and small enough to cluster-bomb the whole map with eyes - losing a lot of them is expectable, but provides information too. A lot of fun can be had beyond visual range.

(1) After a while zero bombs showed up in the equip solders menu, but I was not able to purchase any of them or make them in the workshop.
There's one map with bomb puzzle. It could be made much less arcade-ish if there were more destructible objects, of course...
(3) I was not able to find out what smoke was good for.
my ufoai version is 64bit, 2.5-1~getdeb1
Did you miss all the threads here about how smoke is overpowered?  ;D But mostly, you see civilians ahead - throw a smoke behind them, now aliens (who will probably walk out right after them once you end the turn) won't see and mow them down.

39
Discussion / Re: Balancing smoke grenades
« on: September 26, 2014, 10:00:52 pm »
What if smoke could be semi-transparent? If there is only 1 square of smoke on LOS then an object has, say, 75% probability to be spotted. 2 smoke squares on LOS means 50% to see it. 3 squares - 25%, and only 4 squares of smoke make you totally invisible.
That's not how optics (or physics at all) works.
Also, perhaps it's enough to use distinctions between "visible" targets - i.e. anyone in the first layer of smoke falls between "obscured" and  "clear sight": still can be acquired from the outside, and partial obscurement doesn't interrupt RF timing but is targetted badly, much like ones painted by someone else (rather than precisely aimed at and sniped like clearly seen tarrets).

40
Feature Requests / Re: memorial
« on: September 25, 2014, 11:00:02 pm »
This feature would mean that we need to keep every soldier's records for the whole game.. We already got reports about slow game load times related to the employee record counts in some special cases. And while I believe I sped that up quite much recently, I don't think it would worth loading lots of data just for this feature - which have no gameplay value at all.
Why load data like this until it's needed (or idling)?
Then again, why keep in memory any data that isn't going to be used any time soon or in some time-critical way?

41
Feature Requests / Re: memorial
« on: September 24, 2014, 09:40:48 pm »
I guess you did play "Cannon Fodder" too... :)

42
Discussion / Re: Balancing smoke grenades
« on: September 24, 2014, 09:31:57 pm »
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.
Early missions are fairly easy to do without smokes with 1-2 light wounds tops - bar very bad luck (or moderately bad luck plus plasma grenades). The problem is, civilians are there like fish in the barrel (running around in panic without having evacuation areas on different edges like in Apocalypse) and aliens are cllairvoyant, so on a big map aliens tend to mow down a lot of civilians simply because they are already there and you will need time to get there. Thus, smoke is necessary to protect civilians.

  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.
It would if use of smokes in itself constitued "a tactic" - just one ay, and mutually exclusive with others. Which isn't the case, so it doesn't fit. Just like "using armor" - yes, it is nearly impossible to play without using armor at all, but that's not what "game-breaker" means...
If every mission requires exactly the same recipe, and no other recipe works, the game becomes dull.
  There are at very least labyrintine vs. open terrain.
So, how to make the game more balanced?
When you put some articulate meaning into this word, please define it. Because in computer games (and even more so in RPG) "balance" is used mostly as a meaningless word supposed to denote superiority of concepts that are too vague to actually phrase them.

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.
Good point.
Technically, this can be done using a common targetting/positioning system. Which should be a separate piece of hardware with cost and weight (and destructible, when equipment will be), of course. Though it still can't be as precise as when people see "vhat ze hell zhey are doing"(c).
Also, a better model for sniping could involve reducing the value of cover, which cannot be done well without seeing that cover from the shooter's own point of view.
  If you make a step forward, notice a target, make a step back, you can hit your target better if you still see it.
Speaking of which, there's no "step back" and suchlike...
Perhaps skill such as "spatial sense" or "coordination" could be useful? That would affect things like sidesteps, throws, blind shots and wide-angle (outside the "forward" arc, but still in sight) reaction fire.

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.
  Or rather "anything that the current weapon counts as soft cover and is close enough to be a possible threat".
Also, if an opponent using cover invites an attack, so could an invisible attacker: a combatant not seeing the attacker of one's ally, but seeing the attack may try to area-attack the apparent origin: "a grenade flies out of the door, a grenade flies into the door, maybe it'll bounce right" sort of thing, same for soft cover (more with needlers than plasma, though). That's where splash damage and Sweep modes should be used.

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
So true. In part, a side effect of grid movement, but still obviously needs improvement.
Also, with vertical cover having the weapon in one or other hand would make difference, and thus left/right handness would be worth adding.
For low cover - if certain weapons are normally (MG, sniper) or optionally (AR, rocket) used with bipod, it could be set on the cover if the height is more or less right, which would make value of different firing positions more situational.
This might make a game a bit easier as humans might be able to use it better than the AI
Depends on whether they expect an attack from a specific direction - but so does RF.

43
Discussion / Re: Changes for 2.5
« on: September 18, 2014, 07:46:35 pm »
Hi, is somewhere official/unofficial binary of Ufo: AI 2.5 for Linux (Ubuntu, Debian)?
The current version on GetDeb.net is "Ubuntu 14.04: 2.5-1~getdeb1".

44
Discussion / Re: Some thoughts about 2.5...
« on: September 18, 2014, 07:39:11 pm »
By the story you're already getting the best soldiers, so even rookie from Phalanx could easily beat few elite soldiers from nations armies. But it's not enough to beat aliens, of course.  And aerogel is extremely light, so armour weight should go down.
Is called "ablative layer". I mean, you don't want to run in just glorified styrofoam on top of a shirt?..
Btw, for different armours, it's not only coding but also modeling, and modeling isn't as easy as coding.
Base armour + variety of additions... in plate pockets, and thus invisible anyway?  :D
Which also may make R&D tree longer: you got a new material, you produce reinforcement plates first, then your guys have necessary experience to do it with full armour. After all, research got to have "item X" as a prerequisite to deal with alien equipments, so it can be expanded to items that needs to be produced.

45
Feature Requests / Re: Few things I want to tell
« on: August 19, 2014, 04:23:37 pm »
1.: Make a global experience increase for soldiers(you are fighting a war more and more soldiers get involved with aliens. So you could get a lot of soldiers who had survived combat in what you wasn't involved/you can send away your best soldiers to train better soldeirs). Maybe get better soldiers based on nation happiness?
If they think high of you, they should be less stingy with proposing good recruits, yes. As to the first part - it would be neat if missions with saving civilians had greater impact on general relations, but missions helping military would affect a chance to get extra recruits.

4.: Number of bloodspiders should be increased. There are only a few and they aren't pose any threat at all. Make them gang on you and go all out assault on you. Maybe even at the cost of smaller size and less health. But they should use different AI behavior if possible and close up on you. Maybe rise the number of hovernets too by a miniscule amount.
A melee-only unit? Single spiders serve to divert fire from armed aliens, being too nasty to ignore and too small to hit easily. If they'd come in swarms, it would only make them a better target for MG and explosives.

5.: Make advenced weapons worth the price. Snipers can one shot something for 20 TU-s wich is becoming good later. EM rifles on the other hand let me down a bit. Coilguns also have the same TU problems. Why rising TU with damage? They get out sniped by far lighter weapons… Throughwall capability should be explained a bit.
I got to agree: heavy/bulky weapons should have slower Snap shots, that's fine - but an Aimed shot takes time mostly for aiming, thus the difference should be less significant, not more.
Splitting TU costs between phases of a shot (which was asked somewhere here) would be also different.

Sheevars could some kind of really heavy ballistic weapon with so high recoil(railguns do still recoil) a human can't handle even with the integrated recoil dumpening what make a sheevar be able to use it. But this could lead us to improve our own weaponry into using much stronger orinary ballistic weapons wich use alien ideas but human technology in it. Laser rifles are good idea but these things would be stronger than that still weaker than particle beam weapons, or something like this.
Yeah, strength affecting how well a shooter handles recoil would be good. Not necessarily as a hard requirement like in Fallout. E.g. taking a little stun damage with decrease in accuracy for a while if using a weapon that's a little too strong for the actor. With TU split it could also be expressed in draining extra TUs for recovery (after [reaction] fire) phase (i.e. forget about multiple reaction snap shots).
Of course, powered armor should help with this.

Also more squads would make the game more warlike.
Apocalypse -like squad mechanics would help a lot, yeah. Given that usually it's something like "fire team 1" (4) + "fire team 2" (4) or "fire team 1" (3) + "fire team 2" (3) + "roof / long-range team" (2)

9.: Sidearms should be made a little bit stronger TU vise(except plasma pistol and other alien stuff).
Yup, needs better differentiation. Then again, do you use them? I did when trying 2.4 on easy. But as it is in 2.5 and on medium skill, a strong armored soldier can lug around: medikit, 3 grenades (different or all smokes) and maybe spare ammo - there's neither place nor weight allowance left for sidearms. Nor much need (except RL and maybe GL).

10.: Out of base buildings(radar,sam site,ufo silo). These aren't really useful as they numbers are far too low. Maybe rising their number by 1-2/base. Would help a lot with early radar coverage. Wich also would make unlucky early games less happening(sometimes I didn't got any missions in the first month).
And/or even better, make sponsor states give alerts about UFO - but it's an alert, not tracking (you cannot launch SAM at it, only see where an UFO goes for intercept purpose). Also, their hardware is not optimized for UFOs, thus best ones are equivalent to a basic radar tower - and it stands where they already put it, of course.

rising their effectiveness at everything. Maybe with separeta research for mass manufacturing. Like ok you built X number of laser rifles now you have the knowledge to make the crafting process fairly easier, faster and cheaper. It could effect you. But also it could make it so the nations start to pump out laser rifles on large scale. This will also increase their chances of succeeding without your direct actions. Also this could be maybe only an alternate to that phalanx is always ont the front.
They do produce some stuff, just not right away... And right now manufacturing is very sketchy.
Allso,  an experimental workshop and a factory are very different things indeed. Maybe, somewhere between (after you make N instances of an item) an experimental stage and "available on market" there should be an option to contract the outside parties (which may depend on their nations' relations, of course) to produce X items for price Y for you - cheaper than in workshop, but only large enough parties?..

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