Messages

91

Bugs in stable version (2.5) / Re: [2.5_dev_12/12/23] No email notifications for Alien Electronic Warfare Suite

« on: January 01, 2013, 12:05:00 pm »

Yes, I did. But all I got when the research became available was a message in the event log - no mail.

92

Bugs in stable version (2.5) / Re: [2.5_dev_12/12/30] Base attacks not counted correctly

« on: January 01, 2013, 12:40:50 am »

Nope, I just let the UFO come at my base. This happens when the UFO reaches the base and the window with the "Team" and "Enter" buttons comes up. It doesn't matter whether the base defense is successful or not - I threw one just to try it out, and it still had the message in my event log twice and incremented the "Attacked" counter by 2.

93

Bugs in stable version (2.5) / Re: impassable area in stadium map

« on: December 31, 2012, 05:04:54 pm »

I had a similar problem in a suburb-kind of map, where a hallway on the right-hand side of the map was impassable. I'll post a screenshot when I get that map again.

94

Bugs in stable version (2.5) / Re: [2.5_dev_12/12/23] (Map: Office Complex) Crash to geoscape upon starting combat

« on: December 31, 2012, 05:00:45 pm »

So does that mean it is fixed now (post-12/12/23) ?

When I got the map again, I had to replay it a few times. It played fine the first time, but when retrying, it crashed again. Overall the success rate was about 20-25%.

95

Bugs in stable version (2.5) / [2.5_dev_12/12/30] Base attacks not counted correctly

« on: December 31, 2012, 04:53:56 pm »

When my base gets attacked and I have to do a base defense mission, for some reason the game counts two attacks. The event log shows two attack notifications (see screenshot), and in statistics it says my base has been attacked 8 times, even though I've only played 4 base defense missions.

96

Feature Requests / More intel-gathering items for the battlescape

« on: December 31, 2012, 03:57:12 pm »

I'd like to have more items available that let you gather intel on the battlefield - spend TUs / turns to find out where the aliens are in order to avoid risk. I think it's fine that reaction fire is no guarantee of avoiding casualties, but I feel the player should be able to do more to locate aliens even outside the current line of sight. I hate clearing a big harvester mission map and then losing a soldier going into the UFO to get the last alien hiding out in there.

Proximity mines might be useful, too.

97

Discussion / Re: Changes for 2.5

« on: December 31, 2012, 03:47:36 pm »

Is there a place where I can see what changes get added to the nightly builds? I've taken a look at the commit logs, but that doesn't look very useful to someone who isn't hip deep into the coding part of the game's development process. I'm looking for something more like patch notes.

98

Bugs in stable version (2.5) / [2.5_dev_12/12/23] No email notifications for Alien Electronic Warfare Suite

« on: December 31, 2012, 03:32:42 pm »

Both the research proposal and the research results for the Alien Electronic Warfare Suite don't spawn a mail in the mail client, even though it appears the UFOpaedia pages for them are completely written.

No idea if this is fixed in one of the newer nightly builds, but I thought I'd mention it, just in case. I don't have a save game at a point shortly before unlocking the research, but I could upload one that can produce and equip Alien ECM and should have the mails in the mailclient, but doesn't, if you request.

99

Bugs in stable version (2.5) / Re: Graphic anomalies on Mansion and Urban Periphery

« on: December 30, 2012, 10:15:34 pm »

City High-rise is messed up like this, too.

100

Discussion / Re: Funding Nation mood whiplash

« on: December 30, 2012, 01:58:42 am »

I tried sending out ships to look for landed UFOs or UFOs that flew out of my detection radius, but I never got anything when I did. I guess I could be more persistent about it.

Stillettos with Sparrowhawks to start, at some point supplement with Saracens using particle beams. Once you get Dragon and above, whatever alien gear you can afford and fits the ship... but keep your original planes too.

How many planes do you keep at each base? Those hangars take up space that can be used for other things, so I don't think I can justify more than two interceptors and a dropship per base. I'm not that far from building my first dragon - it's researched, I just need to finish salvaging another UFO before I can start producing them. Once I do, I figure I'll be able to start taking down harvesters for real and slowly replace all my Stilettos with Dragons. How much antimatter do they eat? Is it troublesome to keep them supplied? (I plan to keep dismantling UFOs anyway to supplement my income.)

My first base is set up something like this:

2x Interceptor Hangar
1x Dropship Hangar (2 sq)
1x Entrance
1x Command Center
1x Power Plant
1x Advanced Radar
1x Storage
1x Alien Containment (2 sq)
1x Antimatter Storage
1x Hospital
4x Living Quarters
4x Laboratory
2x Workshop  (2 sq)

The second base is almost done, having all of the main infrastructure built (except antimatter storage), with 2 out of 4 workshops built right now. I decided I need a real production center since 300 hours to dismantle a harvester is still unreasonably long, and 40 researchers keep me on top of research topics as they become available pretty well. I haven't had nothing left to research yet, but I expect it to happen any week now.

101

Discussion / Re: Funding Nation mood whiplash

« on: December 29, 2012, 10:58:27 am »

Yeah, one of my bases has two stiletto interceptors, the other only one. I have taken down a harvester UFO without losing one of them, but it took several tries. Unfortunately, it all but cripples one of them for a good long while, and the UFOs also like to fly into my direction range at an angle and immediately exit again. They don't always conveniently approach my base. >_>

Anyway, what armaments do you use on your interceptors? Once you unlock aerial laser cannons, should you replace sparrowhawk missiles with them? I've also salvaged a few copies of the particle weapon from UFOs - I assume they are superior to everything else I could possibly field for now?

The troublesome bit is, weapons with ammunition have their stats written on the ammunition, weapons without have them on the weapon, and the beam weapons don't have their range written on their stat pages. Also, the ammo and reload part isn't entirely clear. Is reloading time during flight, or back at base (you only get what ammo you launched with in one flight)?

102

Discussion / Re: Funding Nation mood whiplash

« on: December 29, 2012, 10:20:03 am »

I see... well, if terror missions can happen even off camera, that explains things (I assumed all terror missions are brought to the players attention). I have harvester UFOs buzzing around left and right, and no reliable way to take them down without losing ships yet. Guess I should get that first Dragon Interceptor built, eh?

103

Discussion / Funding Nation mood whiplash

« on: December 29, 2012, 12:50:06 am »

Check out this screenshot; I've marked all mood changes for United America in the past few days of play.

The lowest one is a change from Pleased to Happy, after doing a mission. No problems here, as long as I understand it right that this is a step up.

The next one is a change from Happy back to Pleased at 00:01 the next day. Again, not a problem, since I assume this is natural decay and that mission earlier can't have gotten it all that far above the boundary between the two states.

The next one is an announcement two days later that happiness has changed back to Pleased. Now I'm a bit confused, since I thought it already was at that level - why does the game feel the need to tell me what I already know?

Then, 14 minutes (!) later, happiness drops from Pleased to Content. Okay, what the heck? Why did it drop more than a whole happiness level in just over two days of in-game time? It's not like I skipped a terror mission or anything - there weren't any missions that I was aware of since the first mood change in this log. I only have a tiny radar tower in North America, so I guess I could have missed a few UFOs flying around, but that's all.

After doing the next mission, it went back up, so at least it seems it didn't continue to drop at that rate. But I'd still like to know, what gives? Is there a random element to mood decay and I just got unlucky? If someone understands what happened here, please explain it to me.

104

Bugs in stable version (2.5) / [2.5_dev_12/12/23] Soldier stuck in animation after firing Grenade Launcher

« on: December 29, 2012, 12:30:18 am »

After firing a shot from the grenade launcher, my soldier is stuck in animation. I believe it's her shooting animation - she keeps moving her arms while the gun hovers in front of her face. When moving the soldier, she stops and does her regular breathing exercises again.

I have observed this on two occasions now. They don't do this on every shot; there may be other factors that need to be present for this glitch to occur. Some coincidental things that may or may not be related:

 - My soldier got shot (including fatal wounds) before firing.
 - It was an impact shot, not timed. (My other soldier with a grenade launcher did not get stuck in their firing animation after firing timed grenades)
 - The soldier was standing, not kneeling.
 - It may only happen to a soldier with a specific appearance (see screenshot).
 - It may happen only to female soldiers.

I was able to reproduce the glitch with the same soldier it first happened to, but was unable to test firing impact grenades with my other soldier during the same mission. I will attempt some further testing on this.

105

Discussion / Re: Game mechanics lookup?

« on: December 28, 2012, 11:53:18 am »

Ok, more details: as mentioned it all depends in TU cost of the reaction shoot, once an unit - like one of your soldiers - has used the same or more TUs as the opponent - say an alien - needs to reaction fire *while in the line of sight of said opponent* then reaction fire is triggered (assuming target is in range, high enough hit chances, low enough friendly fire chances, unit is not panicking, ...), note that RF is checked when you are about to shoot, if the cost of your shoot *will* cause RF to be triggered, then the unit which needs less TUs to fire will shoot first -so if you are trying to full-auto an alien in the face, they are more likely to plasma-ball you in the face first- and if you haven't noticed the AI will always choose the first fire mode for reaction fire, which is also the one that uses less TU

Okay, the general gist of that is clear, but what about walking? Usually I don't get plasma balled in the face when I try to walk a short distance around an alien to whack them from the side, out of their line of sight. Do the TU for all the steps you take within an alien's sight radius pile up until the RF cost of the alien's action is lower, at which point it fires?

Also, if an alien is in front of me with a RF mode that costs 12 TU, and I try to shoot it in the face with something that costs 12 TU as well - what happens? And how does hit chance factor into it (and why? I'd rather waste ammo with a shot that might not hit the broad side of the proverbial barn rather than have my soldier not RF because he is suddenly feeling gun shy)?

That reminds me that I wanted to disallow the player from trying to heal a not wounded unit, just as it was disallowed to 'heal the void' (unlike other weapons you shouldn't be able to shoot the air with the medikit), I will probably forget again though.

Yeah, fixing that would be nice. I don't think the void is going to mind.

BTW, did you know that stimulants actually work as sedatives for the aliens? (disclaimer: only if they are *already stunned*)

Really, is that true? Interesting. I usually just whack their corpse a couple more times with my stun rod, just to be safe. (If a stunned alien wakes up, do I get a turn's worth of warning, or can they go on a rampage immediately?)

I'm guessing antipsychotics are for morale damage (not that I've had any call to use them yet - even if a soldier is all but a smoking wreck and is going to bleed to death on the next turn, his morale is still peachy. Are psionics in the game yet?). Any other applications for that?