Messages

16

Discussion / Automissions - under the hood (v2.4)

« on: May 20, 2012, 03:43:31 am »

Which things exactly determine the outcome of automissions?

1. I assume more soldiers is always good?
2. What about weapons? Does it matter if I bring knives or plasma rifles?
3. Do soldiers' skills play a role?
4. If I give a PB Pistol to my sniper, and not a sniper rifle, does it make a difference?
5. Does the equipment in soldiers' backpacks affect the outcome?
6. Does the time of the day affect the outcome (with the possible advantage for the aliens)?
7. How come the automission option is not always available? At first I thought it was about the map size, so that the autoresolve wasn't available for the smaller maps. But that's not always the case. Although it seems at least 2/3 of the time when autoresolve isn't available, it's a small map. What gives? Is it a bug?

17

Tactics / Re: My battle strategy

« on: May 18, 2012, 09:51:54 pm »

- All my guys get medkits and infrared glasses (in backpack).
- Mixed weaponry in the team. I try to keep one sniper around. The rest is what it is. I try to have only one of each weapon.
- Only sniper(s) and grenadiers get backup weapons, or more accurately ,the 7.62mm handcannons.
- I employ the infrared glasses a lot. Usually I leave 1-2 guys outside a Harvester constantly scanning the interior. That guy is most often the sniper or any recently wounded guy.
- I move my guys in 2-4 man teams. Always.
- Being observant and knowing what I'm about to engage is vital. VITAL. It's common sense to look at the alien and see what weapon and armor it's carrying. Alien autopsy reports are mandatory reading in all of my UFO games. No exceptions.
- If a wounded guy is still at risk, a healthy guy nearby will provide cover. With his body.
- Sensible and frequent use of cover is obligatory.
- Bolter gun is just a shotgun on steroids. Best used at melee ranges.
- When in doubt, use full auto firing mode. It's better to overkill than to underkill.
- When in doubt, check the soldier inventories. Await inspiration.

18

Discussion / Re: Looking for late-game saves

« on: May 18, 2012, 09:01:16 pm »

Whoa, whoa, whoa! What's a Heavy Needler? And Orbital UFO Activity? XVI? I never had any of those! And I had the Alien Base discovered. What the hell.

19

Feature Requests / Hidden soldier traits! (but revealed later)

« on: May 15, 2012, 12:11:44 am »

The key surprise element in the early X-Com games was the Mind Control thing, and you'd find out the hard way how your favorite killing machine operative was prone to alien mind control, and you'd have to fire him, if not do a kamikaze attack right on the battlefield. So, it got me thinking, what if each soldier had 2 hidden traits, and they would be revealed after a semi-random number of missions or kills, like, after 10-20 missions/kills. I envisioned these traits to be such as:




Diagnosed PTSD
Increased morale drop whenever a fellow soldier or a civilian is killed. You might want to think twice to send this guy to the Final Mission, whatever that may be in the future. Picture a dramatic verbal fight between this guy and his CO once he finds out he's not going be a part of the last battle.

Talented [weapon name] operator
Boost to the hit chance with one particular weapon (only if the weapon has been researched). At later game, you might get rookies with bonuses to newer weapons (since they've heard rumors of them and they can't wait to try them out), while you'd still have those seasoned machine gunners and such, adding flavor to the mix.

Dislikes [weapon type]
Slight penalty to the hit chance with all weapons of this type. Penalties to reaction fire. Note that this could be possibly circumvented by using certain firing modes or ammo types since they rely on various proficiencies.

Medic
Unusually skilled medic sometimes gets more healing done with the same amount of TUs. This chance goes up over time as the medic gains battle experience.

Alert gunner
Slight bonus to the hit chance when doing reaction fire. Slight bonus to the chance of doing reaction fire. Weapon is fired only if the hit chance is 70% or above, or whatever. Or possibly the trait triggers when an alien is just about to fire. Hit chances and reaction fire chances are increased when soldier is confirmed to have the perk.

Fast aim
Aliens have harder time interrupting a soldier who can wave his gun as if it were a pencil.

Hates [alien race]
Extra damage against a certain alien race since one such alien killed the soldier's brother / mistress / random nice lady next door / jaywalked. Can you picture a necklace made out of Ortnok toes? Needs autopsy research.

Fears [alien race]
Less likely to do reaction fire against a certain alien race, since he's seen them do inhumane things to human beings first hand. Smaller chance to hit these aliens. Severe to-hit penalties at close ranges.

Quarterback
Slightly increased throwing range and accuracy. Bonus gets bigger once the soldier is confirmed to have the trait.

Diagnosed antisocial behavior / dislikes crowds
Penalty to morale when in a team with 5 or more soldiers. Bonus to all skills when 4 or fewer members in the team. Trait would need to be checked again every time an agent dies.

Sniper
Option to spend more TUs to do an extra-aimed shot with select few weapons. With increased accuracy, of course.

Die hard
Generally more damage resistant than others. Faster health stat growth.

Nyctophobic (fear of the dark)
Unless the soldier is wearing infrared goggles, his morale is decreased, his aim is worse and he's more likely to do reaction fire during night missions.

Likes [operative name]
Soldiers can grow to like other soldiers. Increased accuracy when the buddy soldier is in the same team on a mission. Incur (recoverable) penalties if the buddy soldier dies.

Patriot
The soldier requires no upkeep as soon as the trait is discovered since he has donated his entire funds to PHALANX to fight the aliens. Instantly gain 10,000 credits or such.

Security specialist
Bonus to all skills during base defence missions.

Recon specialist
Lowered AP cost for infrared goggles as soon as the trait is discovered.

20

Discussion / Re: Looking for late-game saves

« on: May 14, 2012, 10:10:42 pm »

Here you go.
2.4 official stable release.
8 saves + a quicksave, all from the late stages of the game, I believe. They're all from the same game, chronologically close to each other, so I guess you might as well just pick one of them.

I've used an 8-man team with mixed weaponry. I've switched their weapons only a few times. Much to my surprise, I guess they've learned from each other, since ALL of their skills have grown over time considerably! I started with a 4-man team, and much later added 2 guys, and then bit later another 2 guys. Difficulty set to "Easy". I didn't allow any deaths.

21

Tactics / Re: What's your favorite weapon?

« on: May 14, 2012, 09:53:38 pm »

Machine gun.

BUT. Plasma grenades get a special mention. There's just something oddly satisfying in tossing a plasma grenade at an alien's feet and be like "Burn, you piece of s*it alien". Plasma is like napalm on steroids. Or when you see two or more aliens close to each other, and you have your grenade launcher w/ plasma grenades in range. At times like those, just for a fleeting second, I sometimes wonder why did they even bother putting the single fire mode on the grenade launcher anyway...

I get similar delight for using plasma rifle on full auto at a close range. I consider plasma rifles merely to be superior shotguns.

22

Discussion / Re: how smoke nades work?

« on: May 10, 2012, 08:37:34 pm »

Note that the Shevaar aliens supposedly can see in infrared, according to the autopsy report anyway. So, they should be able to see you even through walls, not to mention some measly smoke. I have no idea how the AI handles smoke though. I mean, do the aliens know they can shoot through smoke, and that it's not hard material like walls, even if both block line of sight?

23

Tactics / Re: beach resort map tactics

« on: May 10, 2012, 08:20:49 pm »

Smoke grenades, my dear Watsons.

24

Bugs in older version (2.3.1) / Re: health over maximum

« on: January 17, 2012, 06:53:23 am »

I guess one does not simply reduce the health to allowed maximum, or place extra checks after combat that the health is within acceptable limits...

25

Bugs in older version (2.3.1) / Re: Looong time for disassemble ships, and others

« on: January 17, 2012, 06:50:26 am »

I have started hard campaign and have very long time to disassemble any UFO. No matter standing UFO hangar next to base, or it's on other end of the globe.
500 hrs for scout, 550 for fighter, and 851 for harvester(4 workshops)

I agree, these numbers are bit ludicrous. But this is why I built an extra base which sole purpose is to dismantle captured UFOs. It's kind of stupid that even the shot-up UFOs take just as much time to dismantle as the fully intact ones.

26

Feature Requests / Ufopaedia and the lacking equipment information

« on: January 17, 2012, 06:42:48 am »

Note: I'm playing the latest stable release, the Nov 2010 release, I believe.
I for one would like to see more information on researched buildable aircraft and aircraft weapons, just so that I don't have to build that aircraft or a weapon to see the stats. The aircraft info in my opinion lacks :
- the weapon and equipment slot counts
- maximum weapon mount size for each slot
- the aircraft armor/HP (assuming there are differences)
- weapon damages and ranges for aircraft weapons, to say the least

and... well I forgot. Too much to remember. It's especially the aircraft that bother me, because they take such a long time to build, and right now I'm doing research on the 3rd researchable craft, soon to be building one just to find out its characteristics. Not fun being in the dark like this

27

Feature Requests / Simple but (hopefully) powerful UI tweak

« on: January 17, 2012, 06:25:45 am »

(See the attached screenshot)

See those tiny triangles with which you can browse through bases? I want them in every window. That is, in Transfer, Production and Buy/Sell windows at least. I believe it would make things easier in a good way.

28

Feature Requests / Re: Request: Miserable burst-fire sounds and slow animations.

« on: March 10, 2009, 10:57:06 pm »

Just tried out 2.3 (fairly recent build). Looks like the shot count for at least MG is changed. Anyway, you are right, I should focus on 2.3.

Also, editing the new sounds for various shot counts is minimal work. Literally, it takes maybe 5 minutes to extract the sound file, load it in Audacity, edit it (=select the area to be repeated, repeat it X times with the Repeat command, add the original single shot as the final round), save, and add it to the pk3 file. And there aren't that many weapons in UFO:AI or that many different shot counts. In fact, can anyone list the weapons with burst fire capability? Assault Rifle, Machine Gun, and Machine Pistol come to mind at first.

This is what they did in Jagged Alliance 2 (v1.13, which is heavily revamped JA2). There are separate sound files for each shot count and for each weapon. Some use, of course, same sounds. Burst bullet count goes up to 50 there, so that means 50 sound files for a gun. And might I say, there is a s***load of guns in that game now.

"If the interval between shots changes"? Doesn't seem very likely that it would ever change. Why would anyone change the interval between shots for a weapon?
I'm telling you, this is totally one way to overcome the clumsy sounding short burst sounds. It would absolutely guarantee steady sounding bursts and it's less work than you think. Sure, it might take extra few minutes of future modders' time but that's all.

29

Feature Requests / Re: Request: Miserable burst-fire sounds and slow animations.

« on: March 10, 2009, 05:41:34 pm »

There is? I didn't see it. Just checked it twice. Using version 2.2.1. Perhaps it's in 2.3?

Also, made those burst sounds for Assault Rifle and Machine Gun. 3-round and 8-round bursts for AR, 6-round and 14-round bursts for MG. Corresponding to the ingame burst sizes. Built from original sound files, just trimmed and repeated enough times. Gods bless Audacity (open source audio editing program). See attachment.

[attachment deleted by admin]

30

Windows / Re: Getting...static?

« on: March 10, 2009, 05:24:07 pm »

After I did that, the game freezed 2 seconds after loading a savegame. :|