Messages

16

Discussion / Re: Notes from veteren XCOM player after his first UFOAI game

« on: September 14, 2013, 03:47:04 am »

I had 58 scientists for quite a while. Basically, whenever I had scientists available, I recruited them. Only when the available projects disappeared did I stop recruiting.

"Have you built ufo storage facilities and started researching ufos?".  No, since I have never seen a UFO in flight. Does this building release new options?

Just to be sure, just because you recruited 58... did you actually have lab space for all of them?  A lab is pretty expensive, and allows 20 scientists to work.  58 scientists would need 3 labs.

But yeah, if you can't build ufo storage facilities in simple game mode, then you won't see a significant portion of the research tree.

17

Discussion / Re: Notes from veteren XCOM player after his first UFOAI game

« on: September 13, 2013, 08:10:11 pm »

My current game is in November when I somewhat stopped playing.  But I'm researching Dragon Interceptors, have a few autopsies to do, I'm seeing the big green guys (forget the name), am still researching parts of the main story line, etc.

Maybe it's just the opposite of my assumption, maybe I'm more aggressive at keeping the story line going and researching parts so I've opened more of it up.  I can't see how he could have possibly got this far unless he just loaded up with scientists and labs.  I have two research labs going with 30 scientists total.  They are pretty much always busy.  It seems there was a time when I was close to having a gap in research topics, but it filled back up again.

Have you built ufo storage facilities and started researching ufos?

18

Discussion / Re: Notes from veteren XCOM player after his first UFOAI game

« on: September 13, 2013, 01:02:19 am »

I just want to add that in playing 2.5 I've been amazed at how few times I've played the same maps.  The number and variety of the new ones is great. 

I'm also surprised at having all the research done by August.  I've never gotten to a point like that, but maybe I'm not aggressive enough in research.

19

Tactics / Re: Shot down after succesfull mission

« on: August 28, 2013, 12:29:36 am »

Take this as a lesson on keeping savegames.  Really.  They're free.

One tactic you might take is try to manually fly back by going opposite directions from where he is intercepting you.  Sometimes the UFO tries to intercept you by circling the globe and taking the longest route possible, actually flying away from you.  It may or may not work.  It might by you enough time to get an interceptor there.

20

Tactics / Re: security camera usage in base defense

« on: August 07, 2013, 02:49:39 am »

Maybe there is some confusion about the naming. The Command Centre is a base building, while the Camera Control Centre is a room within the Command Centre.

I was hoping the binky winky screens would be enough of a hint for the players. Unfortunately they only work in Skirmish mode, not on a baseattack mission in the campaign.

They work in base attacks.  I hate leaving a soldier in there though instead of out fighting. 

I found out by reading the hint on the opening screen.  I think a confusing part is that there are multiple screens on desks in the control center.  Took me a bit to figure out it was just the little room.

21

Discussion / Re: An Open Letter to the Developers

« on: August 07, 2013, 02:41:07 am »

i did that, but i still didn't know what happened. i have no clue about craft distances or damages done. i need numbers.

How many games do you play that give you numbers during an encounter?  There is often an abstraction of the fight.  Bit of a spoiler here, but as you research UFO's, you'll see their health bars.  Then you can see how the fighting is going.  And the graphics and sound do match the weapons that are being used if you pay attention, at least for our vehicle (though it may not be perfect), and the range of the weapons is shown graphically as the circle around our fighters and the ufo.  One thing that is bad is that you can't really disengage safely like you could in XCOM.

But you're also missing a big part of the game.  I rarely shoot down ufo's with fighters... I leave that job to my missile installations,which I build usually in groups of 3 around my base.  If a UFO survives my missile traps, then I can usually shoot them down with a fighter before they take any damage.  I don't try to engage every UFO, and many of them will land and then I can attack them there.  Very few ufo's leave the earth on me.  I take out 80% of them easily. 

Also, don't forget to equip all the parts of your fighter.  I don't really like this part of the interface, but there are multiple areas where you configure your fighter with weapons and utilities.  Be sure all spaces are equiped with something.  A stilleto will shoot down a fighter/scout well over 90% of the time.  And make sure you put a good pilot in it.

Point being that there are multiple ways of dealing with UFO's in UFOAI besides just sending fighters at them.  You really just haven't played long enough to learn them.

22

Discussion / Re: An Open Letter to the Developers

« on: August 04, 2013, 05:51:38 pm »

Some of this I agree with, some I think you just need to learn how the game works.  I've played ufoai a lot more and eventually, the interface gets more natural.

better highlight active soldier in battlescape - i often moved the wrong one
Show the movement path that my soldier will take before i click
show grid in battlescape, i often moved to the wrong space

These three seem related.  This happens to me once in a while too, but usually it's because my computer is a little slow and the fps gets a bit low, and also because I've zoomed into a new char and think I have him selected, but the guy I really have selected is not visible.  That's my error though.  Your suggestion about seeing the tracks of soldiers would help with this, and there is a way to see it in game, but I only see it when I'm waiting my turn.  We both may need a little info on this.

add soldier information (stats etc) in ufopaedia. i would like to read up there, how movement points are calculated for example.

This is in 2.5.

option to quickly launch an aircraft for a patrol mission (suggestion: right click on base)

Agree.  Launching a craft is a bit cumbersome right now, unless I'm missing something.

remove the repair aircraft cheat. it's alot faster to unmount everything, sell and rebuy the aircraft (suggest to make price depending on aircraft health at least, and remove sold aircrafts completely). this is an interface issue for me, because it is like a fast repair option, that requires many clicks. alternatively speed up ship repair speed by ALOT or add a single click cheat button.

You don't have to cheat, you know.  They repair fast enough.  You can also just let the UFO go and get it later.

show aircraft health when i can select one for a Mission, and also in the message about won air combats.
show me how the air fight went. i just see "lost a battle" but i have no clue why or how i lost it. this makes fitting aircrafts very frustrating because i have no clue how the air combat goes.

Hit the slowest speed button just before you engage, 5 seconds  I think.  Then you can watch it in painful detail.  I usually watch on the 5 minutes setting and I can tell what's going on.  If you watch it any faster than that, yeah, you'll just see the end result without knowing what happened.

take me to the proper screen when i click a message (for example when i click a research finished message, take me to the lab, when i click a lost combat message, take me to the battle site etc)
it would also be good to add a shipping time when buying anything, like xcom

Sounds like good suggestions.

medikits can heal soldiers quite easily, but when i leave them wounded in combat they take forever to heal (i think also already being worked on in 2.5)

2.5 changes med kits and healing dramatically.  I like the new system better, though some will find it makes battle a too tough.

23

Feature Requests / Dead Soldier Stat View

« on: July 28, 2013, 10:45:46 pm »

I take care of my squadies, but I don't always remember them.  Also, some turns happen so fast all of a sudden someone is dead and I don't really have any idea who it was if I missed the quick flash of a message that shoots by.  I would like to be able to click on their remains and see their names and stats.  That will help if I want to retry the mission.  Really need to know who's willing to be sacrificed.

If that's too complicated, maybe a button on the interface that pops up a quick list of soldiers and their stats that are on the mission, and just gray out the ones who've died.  The list could just be stat numbers; don't need the fancy bars or anything, so you can get all of them on one quick screen.

And I do add short notes to their names to help remember who is what, but again, sometimes they die so quickly, I lose track of who's who.

24

Windows / Re: Invalid Video Mode - v. 2.4

« on: July 27, 2013, 01:32:24 pm »

I'll just add that when I got that message, all my openGL games were broke, even Wine.  UFOAI was just the first one I discovered it on. 

25

Windows / Re: Invalid Video Mode - v. 2.4

« on: July 27, 2013, 04:21:56 am »

I got that same error on the Linux version when Linux Mint upgraded my video driver without using the NVidia installer.  It broke my OpenGL layer.

I would suggest deinstalling your driver and reinstalling the latest Nvidia driver.  It may be Windows decided to automatically install it for you, but the Nvidia driver does additional stuff the basic Windows installer doesn't.

26

Discussion / Re: Again on reaction fire

« on: July 21, 2013, 05:28:09 pm »

About reaction fire, just remember, they can't fire at what they can't see, and your actions only count on their reaction calcs for units they can see.  Just assume they will get the first shot no matter what you do, and plan accordingly.  Also, watch how they attack you for clues on how to beat it.

27

Discussion / Re: 2.5 sucks completely

« on: July 17, 2013, 01:47:11 am »

Kk, QQ is over.  Played with it more, and figuring out tactics to counter the quick reactions of the enemy.  Casualties are up from previous versions.  Hightend sense of dread against the enemies, something that was somewhat missing in the previous versions of UFOAI, and something the original UFO Defense had in plenty.

Bottom line, reaction fire sucks, but it can be beaten, and the game seems to be better for it.  Good job.

28

Discussion / Re: 2.5 sucks completely

« on: July 15, 2013, 03:13:00 am »

Adding to this thread, but it's about reaction fire.  This may be a bit of a wounded pride rant.

It sucks.  It is way overpowered for the enemy.

Sorry for the QQ.  That's how I feel about it after encountering them and watching them decimate my team.  For the first few battles, it was about even and reasonable.  Then all of a sudden they just became near invincible, reacting before my troops can do anything.  At this rate, nobody will last long enough to build up stats to be a match for them.  I'm playing on hard mode, and I don't mind a challenge, but this is sort of beyond reasonable for this early in the game.  I'm only in the second month and they're pulling out blasters and one shotting everyone with them before I can barely get a shot off.

That may be what you want, but it's not really the experience I want (though I might get used to it).  I want to be challenged, but when I can't lay out a decent strategy since every move I make causes them to just react and blow me away, the only thing left is to cower in the drop ship and hope they can't fire through it (bug reported).

"version" is "UFO: Alien Invasion 2.5-dev AMD64 Jul 13 2013 Linux DEBUG"

29

Linux / Re: Running 2.5 in Mint (solved)

« on: July 14, 2013, 03:05:07 pm »

Ok, figured it out and posting in case someone else comes across a similar problem, and they might.

Apparently, after I did a round of updates a while ago, the Mint repositories had a graphics driver update that didn't install correctly and broke my openGL settings.  A few openGL games were crashing the same way.  I downloaded the latest and reinstalled the driver using the nvidia installer and ufoai came right up.

30

Linux / Running 2.5 in Mint

« on: July 14, 2013, 01:33:24 pm »

I'm getting a run-time error with X when I try to startup ufoai.  Here is the dump:

~/Games/ufoai25 $ ./ufo
---- endianness initialization -----
found little endian system

---- filesystem initialization -----
Adding game dir: /usr/local/games/ufo//base
Adding game dir: ./base
Adding game dir: /home/mark/.ufoai/2.5-dev/base
using /home/mark/.ufoai/2.5-dev/base for writing
executing filesystem.cfg
executing default.cfg
couldn't execute config.cfg

----- network initialization -------
libcurl/7.27.0 OpenSSL/1.0.1c zlib/1.2.7 libidn/1.25 librtmp/2.3 initialized.

------ server initialization -------
WARNING: cvar 'sv_maxsoldiersperplayer' out of range (0.000000 < 1.000000)
added 11 maps to the mapcycle

----- console initialization -------
Console initialized.

------- video initialization -------
SDL version: 1.2.15
I: desktop depth: 32bpp
I: video memory: 0
I: Available resolutions: 1680x1050 640x360 320x240 (3)
I: video driver: x11
I: setting mode -1
I: set multisample buffers to 0
I: set swap control to 0
X Error of failed request:  BadWindow (invalid Window parameter)
  Major opcode of failed request:  154 (NV-GLX)
  Minor opcode of failed request:  4 ()
  Resource id in failed request:  0x280000f
  Serial number of failed request:  36
  Current serial number in output stream:  36

Not sure what to make of it, whether it's a bug or just something in configuration.  I built the maps and everything compiled fine without error, though I had to skip uforadiant.  I don't see a log file to include, though if you need me to run something with a command switch or look somewhere, let me know.

Also, I have a nVidia Geforce 550GTX running the 310.32 nvidia driver.

I believe I'm running Mint 14.1 64 bit with KDE, on an AMD Athlon 64.  I have run 2.4 successfully before, but now I seem to be getting the same error with it as well.