Messages

16

Discussion / Re: Unselectable UFOs

« on: March 16, 2013, 03:41:37 pm »

Most of them have only particle beam weapons, and they fought a lot of battles before. I have both stilettos and dragons, and have plenty of antimatter. I'm playing 2.5 from 26. January. Should I redownload and retry, or post a savegame?

17

Tactics / Re: 2.5 dev combat

« on: March 16, 2013, 08:59:19 am »

I divide my soldiers in 3 categories (as loadout and role, not as squads)
1. The beginners. They get the best armor, and are in the front rows.
2. Experienced soldiers. They have no armor at all, to benefit from increased time units, and carry laser, plasma, or enhanced assault rifles. They end their turns behind solders of type 1.
3. The best of the best of the best. They begin to wear armor again, and have a wide variety of loadouts. They travel with the group, but have special roles, like flanking, etc.

18

Discussion / Unselectable UFOs

« on: March 16, 2013, 08:42:09 am »

In January 2085 UFOs started to appear, which I cannot select and cannot send fighters at them. This first appeared with Fighter 115, but after that I tried for a while, and neither could I select other types. Until this time, everything was fine, I intercepted and shot down a lot of UFOs.

If I select crashed or landed UFOs, the menu pops up normally so I can send out my troop transports.
If I select a flying UFO, it's type and speed is displayed, the circle around it changes color, but if I click on them again, nothing happens. The dialog about which interceptor I wish to send, does not open. I do have interceptors in working condition (repaired, fueled, manned, equipped) in many bases, including a base within range of the UFO.

I can send out interceptors manually, but can't find a way for them to attack those UFOs.

Is this a bug, or is it a feature about some new type of stealth UFOs or something similar?

19

Tactics / Re: Mary Sue Aliens

« on: February 21, 2013, 09:53:44 pm »

I found a very different approach to dealing with end game (or all) aliens. Just pop a smoke grenade outside the dropship and move all troops into it. Now wait for the AI to orc rush you. Move units out of smoke cloud 1 tile then back in to provide LOS for all other units. End game.

I've seen a solution to this overpowered feature in other games (maybe JA2?): units who don't see their targets directly (so they target only by shared LOS), get an accuracy penalty. No too big, so this tactic is still useful, but not game-breaking.

20

Tactics / Re: Mary Sue Aliens

« on: February 21, 2013, 06:39:43 pm »

I also experienced a huge difficulty spike in the game when the above mentioned aliens first appeared. It was at the time when I felt in control, I had great equipment and I was steamrolling the aliens in every battle. I got utterly destroyed in my first battle when the aliens returned with better forces.

However, I think I've found a way to counter it. The trick lies in how you use reaction fire.


         . UFO
        .
       .
      .######
       ######
       ##
      @##

#: wall
@: your soldiers facing North
UFO: expected enemy position.
... : path the aliens take
    


With the above RF strategy, you will get on at the beginning with some casualties, and by the mid-game with some new researched weapons you might even feel invincible, defeating the aliens every time with no or few casualties. And when the aliens begin to send better troops, you will fail miserably.

Why? Because the aliens spot you the same time as you spot them! They try to fire their guns, receive exactly one RF from each of your solders which at this time is not enough to kill them, then unload their full magazine of needles into you, wiping out most of your squad in one turn.

         ... UFO
      ...     
   ...#########
...   #########
         ######
         ##
        @##

In the above case, the aliens walk trough your field of vision, and receive reaction shots just by walking! Even if they spot you, they are already wounded and further reaction shots kill them with high probability.
If you don't have buildings with the features depicted above, you can create this situation with smoke grenades. I never used them before, but they proved to be very valuable for this job. Even if your situation is not exactly as I depicted, you can see the general idea: let the enemy walk through your field of vision, rather than into your field of vision from the front.

21

Discussion / Re: Changes for 2.5

« on: February 06, 2013, 03:13:50 pm »

Thank you, and sorry for mentioning the spoiler (I thought it was common knowledge as there is a map for it even without the research) I thought it was just a bug

Another thing came to my attention. It happens very rarely, but the AI might hang when it does not have much to do (one or a few aliens left, they are inside a building, and maybe unable to shoot / either out of ammo, or wounded, panicked, and dropped their weapon) Shouldn't the AI have some kind of a watchdog timer, so when it thinks for more than a predefined amount of time, the process should just stop and the alien would then do nothing? Still better than hanging/crashing the game.

22

Discussion / Re: Changes for 2.5

« on: February 06, 2013, 02:37:33 pm »

Did I miss something, or was the *spoiler* research removed from the 2.5 version?

*spoiler*... I remember seeing it a long time ago in one of the older dev versions of 2.4 or 2.3.

edit - I removed mention of a lot of spoilers, which we are trying to keep out of this thread.

23

Discussion / Re: Add soldier voices

« on: January 30, 2013, 06:54:42 pm »

Sokat mean I could not do that experience , at least I számomra.Ha up the question in the wrong place or not , please correct sharpening

Google translate?

_{(írd meg magyarul a kérdést és lefordítom, az automatikus fordítás teljesen érthetelten szöveget eredményezett)}

24

Discussion / Re: Soldiers should be able to self-heal

« on: January 30, 2013, 12:14:51 am »

So whenever solider is hit he well bleed and even if its just a scratch he will eventualy die? So all soliders have hemophilia?

Read the ufopaedia articles for even the weakest alien weapons, and you'll see how horrifyingly large wounds they can cause even for a glancing hit.

25

Discussion / Re: New encumbrance/TU system

« on: January 29, 2013, 11:37:12 pm »

The big problem seems to be that the encumbrance system completely disables some actions, it should make those actions much slower (so performed much rarely) rather than not allow them.

(The time units are just representing how much time passes until an action can be performed, and in reality everything happens simultaneously. Encumbrance, especially if still within the limit of what you can carry, should only make you slower or less efficient, and not prohibiting to ever fire your weapon)

I gathered a number of solutions for this problem I've seen in other turn based squad combat games:


1. Allow time units to go into the negative (and start the next turn with that much less TUs) if and only if the action is the first action in the current turn.

2. If you finished your turn with some TUs left (after subtracting reaction fire, of course), allow a tiny amount of it to carry over to the next turn. So you can perform your "expensive" action every other turn.

3. Having more random variety in stats. Why should an average soldier become stronger than any new recruit you hire after a few missions? With more varied stats, you could hire a weightlifter to carry your heavy equipment around, of course, his other stats might be terrible.

4. Firing is divided into mini-actions, so it does not always take the same amount of TUs. Movement always consumes the same amount of TUs, just as aiming, etc., so units with higher TUs are faster. However, squeezing the trigger should take the same time. (time does not equal time units, as faster soldiers can consume more time units in the same time it takes a turn) So squeezing the trigger is not a fixed cost, but a percentage of the total TUs the unit has. If I remember correctly, the original X-COM used this system, and Jagged Alleince also used a somewhat complicated variation of it. It might be far from the current concept, I only included it for the sake of completeness.

26

Discussion / Re: Impressions with playing 2.5

« on: January 29, 2013, 12:02:33 am »

Thank you for your time and your quick and professional answers.
It makes me really feel that the project is alive.

I've almost thought that I reached the limit of what was planned for the campaign in 2.5 dev (as I've researched everything I've seen, and I developed up to a point where I can defeat anything - not an easy task for a permadeath game where few soldiers reach an old enough age to gain enough of exp), but based on your answers it seems it will go much deeper.

27

Discussion / Impressions with playing 2.5

« on: January 28, 2013, 10:48:09 pm »

Firstly, I would like to congratulate everyone for the nice work! I played UFO:AI once when it was still in the beginnings (no geoscape at all), and returned to it now by downloading and playing the latest dev version of 2.5

I've read the most recent forum posts, so I'll try to only address stuff which I did not read before. I would like to share my first impression and a few issues about the game, so I hope it's not a problem if I list everything here instead of opening a dozen topics. If something proves to be important, we can open up a topic for it later.

(as a sidenote, I prefer the "nearly permadeath" playing style. Instead of playing on very hard and savescumming, I play on easy and never reload unless a Total Party Kill or very serious disaster)

1. Is there a way to transport antimatter between bases? Or do I have to make my main disassembly base which packed full with workshops to also be my main airfleet base?
2. Opening up the bio stats of a wounded soldier in battlescape requires a long time, up to 10 seconds, and might crash the game. Opening it for a healthy soldier is always instantaneous and without problems.
3. The story is great, and I like the Stanislaw Lem - style of realistic approach to sci-fi, especially in the research notes. What I appreciate (and would like to see much more of it), is the theories and assumptions scientists make and get disproven when researching a new field.  It looks great on the reports screen, but what about integrating it into the game? For example, having a fruitless research, or at least not knowing the exact percentage of completeness until at least some progress is made? Or having several assumptions after a first-encounter type of research, like first ufo or alien, and have to research more of them, some turning out to be incorrect assumptions? Some tiny bit of randomization at least in time needed, if not in topics and red herrings?
4. The electromagnetic bolter rifle has an ammo capacity of 2. Is it a bug? The graphics show more than two bullets. Even with this small bullet cap I can still make some use of it, as my soldier equipped with it makes a fine share of the aliens killed. However, a slightly larger magazine, of at least 4 bullets would make it much less frustrating.
5. As the only significant income is funding, will it ever significantly increase? The nations have always good happiness values, but I'm always short on cash and can hardly keep up more than 2 or 3 bases. It's not a big problem, I like the difficulty curve, but I'm unsure if I'll ever be able to support many more bases in the future. (I'm at around 6 months of in-game time, researched all plasma and laser weapons, all ufos up to harvester, and aliens up to the universal serum, with no new unresearched topics)
6. I can spare a lot of money by firing all my staff at the last second of the month and rehiring them a few seconds later.
7. Is buying always planned to remain instantaneous?
8. Will I ever need more than one alien containment? I have no new research topics after the universal serum, and my containment is full with 10 aliens inside. Do I need new ones, and do I need them in the same base? If no, can I transport live aliens? They don't show up anywhere besides the containment. I can't even transport and sell dead alien bodies, only their armor (or did I miss something?)
9. A few live alien research reports indicate a few aliens died in the process. It is not implemented in-game.
10. I played Jagged Alliance 2 with the 1.13 mod. While the JA2 engine is much, much older, it has in my opinion, a much better combat system. In UFO:AI, my soldiers cannot shoot around corners or around a lamp post (even 20 year old roguelikes have solved this problem), cannot throw items, units don't lose action points due to suppressive fire, can't target body parts, etc.
11. I liked the realistic laser research tree (handheld laser is much harder to be developed than vehicle-based), but I find ground laser defenses to be utterly useless. While SAM sites can sometimes manage to destroy even harvesters if I'm lucky, the ground lasers in my base fail to even scratch any ufo at all, even if it flies right over my base so spends a lot of time in-range. The base fires at it quite often, with absolutely no damage done.
12. Hangars and storages have no security cameras. Those are the places I would expect security cameras the most after the entrance.
13. The selection of conventional weapons is extremely limited, with only one item in every category. Or is it just my prior experience with the thousands of guns from Jagged Alliance 2 which makes me need lots of guns with only tiny variations between them? We have pistol / machine pistol / smg / assault rifle / sniper rifle. It could be backup pistol / large caliber pistol / machine pistol / SMG / PDW / assault carbine / assault rifle / battle rifle / DMR / sniper rifle / anti-material rifle just for the magazine-fed guns. There are no gins with multiple ammo loaded, like underbarrel grenade launcher (maybe not possible due large engine/gui requirements?) Maybe I'm too biased here because of JA2.
14. My radar-equipped base was once stormed without any ufo closing on it. It only happened once, so it might be that I was not paying enough attention.
15. Will scientists and workers ever have stats? If not, why the hassle of having to hire them individually? It would also be nice if we could sort soldiers, based on rank, stats, etc.
16. In the buying screen, what are the checkboxes at the beginning of the rows for?
17. It would be nice to either automatically buy ammo especially for aircraft if below a certain amount, or at least give a warning.

Please don't misunderstand me, I intended this list more as a description of my first impressions, not as a critic. I enjoy it very much, despite its unfinished looks and some balance and stability issues.