Messages

16

User modifications / Re: [MOD] Easy Radar Rangefinder

« on: May 31, 2013, 06:10:38 pm »

me considering base placement one of the more interesting challenges in the game, i decided to try out this mod to experiment with some possible base placements more quickly.

tried the same way that i am enabling my own battlescape hud mod, with same version of 2.5-dev (that must be somewhat outdated by now), and it did something, but not what i would have expected.
there was blackness where the globe should have been in the geoscape, and the 'create installation' menu was empty, and the rest i didn't check, because that was probably not intended.

any instructions on how to get it to work correctly?

17

Discussion / Re: PHALANX base design

« on: March 20, 2013, 08:27:04 am »

[...] For goodness sakes, the production workshops shouldn't even have doors to the outside world. [...]

As far as I remember, they didn't have doors in the past, but then, as smoking was prohibited inside, the trade union demanded that they added the doors for the workers.

Adding some weird looking civilians with move 0 as some breakable things in command center and antimatter storage has been suggested before, but perhaps the devs have a better plan and try to avoid such temporary hacks.

About pathfinding, that sounds like it might be a non-trivial problem. I am wondering how difficult would it be to make aliens not know the location of humans unless they see them, or at least not try to move towards humans (but move randomly) unless they can reach them in a few turns? I have read some alien aggressiveness setting being mentioned in the forum, but no idea where it could be found to try lower aggressiveness which might alleviate the problem of getting stuck.

18

Feature Requests / Re: Left click should work on mouse button release, not mouse down

« on: March 01, 2013, 08:55:52 am »

interesting, this must be the first time i have ever read some user complaining about the modern clicking standard not being applied.
the world might be changing, and the clicking standard might be becoming something the users expect, and complain about its violations.

but why are you suggesting differentiation of clicks by their orientation?
i would rather suggest treating left and right clicks equally.
otherwise the result would be conflicting behavior (worse than leaving both as is, in my opinion).

19

Discussion / Re: Add soldier voices

« on: February 01, 2013, 10:18:16 pm »

well, i would not be so sure i would want voice acting from the community, but some mod that allows to add such self-recorded sounds could be fun for a little while.
i mean, some points where the game would play a sound file with a specific name, and some documentation about what the default words would be.

e.g. when selecting a female soldier with a mouse, i might record some girl saying 'oh, a mouse!'

20

Tactics / Re: Struggling not to fail

« on: February 01, 2013, 09:39:51 pm »

I did notice that my interceptors got knocked out pretty quickly - any tips on equipping them early on?

if you are not attacking harvesters (those more triangular shaped bigger ones) you should be ok if you use the time arrow that looks like the play button on your media player (not fast forward).

at least this is what it looks like to me.
if that sounds absurd, you can think of game tick and fire rate messing up at higher game speeds.
not confirmed by devs, though.

21

Discussion / Re: Tiny poll about what do actually contributing mean

« on: January 21, 2013, 08:33:54 pm »

"Eheh, I can imagine the accidents if you release the grenade by error while dragging it."
it would snap back to its original position, as in the inventory window.
with that joke out of the way, back to business:

no, it was not about getting my hud integrated in mainline (huh, i was going somewhat against mainline policies as far as i understand), it was about getting criticism to direct further development (like prioritizing).

the feedback from before the hud was completed (mostly MCR, and some devs) was often useful (except the purely motivational feedback, but i cannot blame people who don't know me), but when it was completed and the feedback would have been most precise and useful there was total silence.

i did get mouse wheel support included more than it used to be in mainline huds, and that was the original point, so it was success in that way.
but developing this particular hud turned out to be a feedback failure.

some questions could be (hidden in the previous post in a less obvious way):
do you get benefits from contributing to ufo:ai in other fields in rl?
do you get useful feedback even if what you do is crap?

like i tried a campaign in wesnoth, and got constructive negative feedback, the result of which was improvement of the campaign, and also a considerable increase in my writing skills which was useful in real life.

22

Discussion / Re: Tiny poll about what do actually contributing mean

« on: January 21, 2013, 06:43:04 pm »

other than some useless translation contributions the only thing i have done is a hud that goes against the intentions of the real developers in that it enables dragging a grenade from belt to hand in battlescape.
so, how would i answer that poll, like a black sheep?

unwillingness to develop it (or anything else) further comes from:
1) lack of user feedback about the soldier numbers not corresponding to numbers on keyboard (and i don't know if this matters at all, it doesn't for me), or the team panel not reducing its size for a smaller team (less than 5) if a larger team has been used (more than 4).
so, from that i derive that in ufo:ai forum it is nearly impossible to get even the most simple feedback (constructive criticism).
2) learning the ui scripting language does not seem to help me in any other field. i better learn wesnoth scripting, because i get a glimpse of how some scripts work that can be useful in rl. to my knowledge, ufo:ai scripts live more in their own world with their own standards than wesnoth scripts. and, add to that the trouble from some confuncs being called twice when once would be enough, and the confunc that provides the wounds info was called about five times when a soldier with one wound was selected (at least at the time that i scripted).

this might have sounded extremely negative, but really i have a lot of other things to do, and some things failing is natural and there is no need to feel bitter about a failure now and then.

23

Tactics / Re: Where/why/how many bases do you build?

« on: January 20, 2013, 08:31:22 pm »

as i wrote, i use dragon against harvester.

i use 2 saracens against fighter because i don't want my saracens to take much damage.
because the next fighter might appear soon.
maybe this habit is a remnant from the time the ufo-s were more abundant.

24

Tactics / Re: Where/why/how many bases do you build?

« on: January 20, 2013, 07:51:23 pm »

thanks for the clarification about the multiple radars, it has been years that i have been puzzled about it (not that i have been playing actively all that time).

i was thinking like: in an average base i want 2 saracens, 1 dragon, 1 firebird, 2 workshops for dismantling (to fuel the dragon that is used against harvesters).
so i would have free space for, say, more radars.
with more radars having better detection, the game would become more or less impossible to win (because ufo-s cannot land and create a base).

25

Feature Requests / Re: Base Improvements

« on: January 20, 2013, 07:42:32 pm »

In fact the ability to choose the base location anywhere on the globe already harms this point which I don't like either. I'm thinking about a feature which offers you 2 random locations per nation to select your 1ST base. It would be more realistic. (Some of you will probably hate it.)

How many nations we have, 8? That's 16 possible position for the first base. And I would only restrict location of the first base. Other bases will need to be built up from nothing anyway. And if random location doesn't work we can set up a fixed list for possible first-base locations (which is reasonable either: Nations want you to cover most of their area, they can say "We give you one of these bases only").

Read again.

-geever

sorry, so it is just the first base.

i guess you have probably noticed this post.
the placement is somewhat high precision thing there, because some of the bases are at small islands.
also, there are islands like the marshall, and the ones west of panama where a base could be built, and there is a chance for further radar coverage optimization, using those locations.

those fixed island locations can be a pain already, luckily some of them fit the scheme.
so the point somewhat remains, but to a considerably lesser extent.

26

Feature Requests / Re: Base Improvements

« on: January 19, 2013, 02:16:09 pm »

if bases are at predefined location it takes away the one and only interesting challenge in the game (imho), which is optimizing the radar coverage.

if you are a perfectionist you can avoid the unfavorable bad tile layouts by reloading.

x-com:apoc had an interesting solution in that you had a preview of the base layout before you bought it.

27

Design / Re: Base Defence

« on: January 19, 2013, 02:01:37 pm »

[...]if they discover there dead bodies they should be in rage and become the most agressive possible.[...]

i would find it unbelievable that the aliens could have conquered space with this kind of lack of discipline.

28

Coding / Re: Formula for TU penalty

« on: January 19, 2013, 01:56:08 pm »

interesting, i equipped nanocomposite and my soldier's TU dropped just a little, something like, from 32 to 30 (i may check if needed), and that certainly does not look like a 20 % or 30 % drop.
or am i playing a different version?
downloaded 2.5 last week, to see how the soldiers now remember their equipment even when they are not assigned to firebird, but i also don't seem to notice that feature.

29

Tactics / Re: Where/why/how many bases do you build?

« on: January 19, 2013, 01:47:48 pm »

i start in asia (the greatest money source) and build the second base somewhere near central america (well, unless i want a perfect base without interceptors and firebird, that is. in this case first base at the island near antarctica and the second base in asia).

as for nation happiness it is enough to build just two bases, one in asia and the second in central america, and most nations will be exuberant.
this would let you save money from not having to pay upkeep for too many bases.
assuming you start using energy weapons (PB  , laser) on your interceptors as soon as possible, you also don't need to pay a lot for sparrowhawk missiles.
and when you have gathered about 2 billion cash then you can build the rest of the bases at once and get radar coverage sooner that way.

btw the question about multiple radars in same base having higher detection rate (or not) is still without any answer or hint about it, i wonder which should be the right forum to ask it, tech support or what? or should i start a separate thread about it in tactics?

30

Tactics / Re: advanced combat hovercraft

« on: January 19, 2013, 01:33:47 pm »

i have never had any hovernet use reaction fire, so when it is your turn you are free to shoot at them no matter how many time units you use in its sight.

there is something like hovernet plasma ammo, is there anything that can be done with this item?