Messages

406

Sounds and Music / Re: A facelift for footsteps/terrain

« on: November 29, 2012, 10:40:38 am »

DexCisco: can you make a patch and upload it to our patch tracker? Then someone can look at it, let you know what needs to be changed (if anything) and then apply it to master when it's approved?

Also, can you share the code you used to parse the textures? These little bits of code are useful for future revisions should we need to make them.

407

Discussion / Re: Again on reaction fire

« on: November 28, 2012, 09:24:29 pm »

Also with the light and heavy sub types for aliens, does that 'help' with the aliens taking full advantage of the alien weapons? So even if they rely entirely on primary, you can at least switch the primary in each sub class.. or um..

This is a temporary work-around for the Taman species only. They go from unarmoured to lightly armoured to heavily armoured throughout the course of the campaign. In order to keep them from being too fast at the beginning of the game (when they wear no armour and so carry little weight) to being too slow late in the game (when they wear heavy armour), we created these duplicate variants of the Taman species. In the future we'll be able to do this within a single race without all the extra fuss, but for now this is the only way to get this balanced properly.

408

Mapping / Re: Map editor...

« on: November 28, 2012, 04:22:38 pm »

More maps are always useful.

409

Discussion / Re: Feedback and impressions after 1 campaign

« on: November 28, 2012, 04:22:12 pm »

I was expecting one of the UFOs to just bomb a SAM site eventually...

It can happen.

Too much UFOs spawns, I saw over 300 before ending the game... Balance between advancement and dozens of useless missions could be a bit better.

Significantly revised campaign progression in 2.5.

UFOs attacking your base, you should be able to shoot em down, not just engage aliens at battle inside the base.

If you see them making a beeline for your base, launch some interceptors.

It didn't help that I got stuck in the tech tree for a moment (capturing aliens... I think there should be more hints of what to do).

There is an in-game message events system now. You should get a message early in the game to capture live aliens.

Vision... You can see everything, day and night. That makes game pretty easy and night missions less spooky.

One of my wishes, but I don't think it will happen soon. Not an easy task and requires some programmers with special skills.

I think you guys should not show what kind of mix of aliens you are going to fight against, so different load screens pls

Not sure what you're talking about, but we've got a new mission loading screen in 2.5 anyway.

So i think that you should have a bit more differation between earlygame weapons and lategame (alien) weapons, ´cos the earlygame weapons are sufficient to drop every alien you encounter.

Done in 2.5. Expect it to get pretty hard by the third month.

Also there should be more troop advancement, i think they should also gain speed some times... I didn´t regognize any use of skill mind of my troops.

Known, not sure if any improvements will make it into 2.5.

Medkits... The healing system isn´t perfect. Maybe at different game skill levels you should drop the soldier max hp to half of the amount it is right now.

THere is now a wounds system in place.

Aliens should also use more grenades and explosing weapons, so you can´t form 3-5man firing groups so easily. Overall the aliens should be more unfair: more troops, better weapons and better vision etc.
I got the impression that the AI will typically fire weapons at the beginning ot the turn, and move to open at end of turn. However they have enough TUs for reaction fire even after that.

Alien AI is significantly smarter. They are still not "smart" per se, but they are definitely not as stupid as before.

Check out this thread for a run-down on some of the major changes.

410

Discussion / Re: Again on reaction fire

« on: November 28, 2012, 04:11:42 pm »

I understand the philosophy and the appeal behind what you're talking about krilain. The idea that inside the game is a living, breathing world that is beyond my control is an intriguing premise and central to a lot of claims made in open-world games like Eve or other MMORPGs. But -- and I am only speaking for myself here -- I think the premise is lot more appealing than the result. And that is especially true in a strategy game like this one.

Every aspect of our game is premised on the ability to control all the details. That is not realistic, of course, but that is also what makes it fun. You can lose control of soldiers if they freak out on the battlefield, but this is when things go terribly, terribly wrong. It's a punishment, not a regular part of the game.

I know that some players desire aleatory mechanisms which mimic the way in which objects in real life can never really be controlled or anticipated. I can only say that I'm not one of them.

Ok, I hope I didn't disturb too much this excellent thread.

No problem. I appreciate threads like this where people recognize there are trade-offs involved with new features and understand we're not necessarily going to agree on every mechanic in the game. It's much better than the threads which begin: "This game is totally ruined because of [insert minor feature]."

411

Discussion / Re: Again on reaction fire

« on: November 28, 2012, 11:11:08 am »

Telok: I have seen RF go out nearly 2/3 of the base map, so I know it can activate over large distances. And it was with a very low-probability-to-hit firemode, so RF must not take these things into account. I've also seen RF from my soldiers across the dam map.

Nanomage: It's a difficult trade-off. In some cases I may want to tell my soldier NOT to RF -- if I know the aliens will be moving out of range and don't want to waste ammo, or if there are civilians around and I don't want to go spraying machine gun fire. We tend to err on the side of extra control, but it is a lot of micromanagement.

Xeinar: I don't agree that RF with a pistol or rifle is useless. In these cases you need to team up your soldiers. Just last night I used two soldiers with a shotgun and an assault rifle to close down a corridor on ferry. It took both of them to knock down the shevaars that appeared. Regarding your other ideas, I think making all RF TU costs the same would really undermine other core mechanics regarding the different firemodes. Setting max rounds or losing morale for not moving would alter the game in ways that aren't justified for this feature (there is already a very large upper limit to rounds passed with no aliens seen).

RF is always going to be a very contentious mechanism because it deals most frequently with those situations where your soldiers are dying. This is a classic case of gamer vs. game. Gamers want to win, they want their soldiers to be better, stronger, faster -- able to cope with every situation. But the game has to set out challenges. Managing RF is a major part of that challenge. RF requires careful management to improve your odds and abilities, but if it becomes too powerful it will crowd out other mechanisms. Your soldiers will not be able to overcome every scenario.

412

Mapping / Re: Map editor...

« on: November 27, 2012, 05:24:47 pm »

Start mapping here. The Mapping for Dummies linked on that page is a good step-by-step to get you familiar with the controls and concepts.

413

Discussion / Re: Again on reaction fire

« on: November 27, 2012, 11:00:39 am »

This is not a bad idea, but I think it will lead to the previous problem we faced where it was very unpredictable, and this led to confusion and frustration. It also faces a key problem in that aliens do not have the same TUs as soldiers. Many have a lot more TUs. So the effect of a system like this would be to make reaction fire more rare, which isn't really the intention. Our TU-to-TU numbers are not really set up to balance this, and giving some aliens a lot more TUs is part of their "identity".

414

Bugs in older version (2.4) / Re: How to get the game to work?

« on: November 27, 2012, 10:55:38 am »

You may want to try getting the 2.4 stable version from a torrent posted in this thread.

415

Discussion / Re: Changes for 2.5

« on: November 26, 2012, 05:50:26 pm »

It doesn't mean that. 2.5 has some serious stability issues with multi-threading at the moment and until those are worked out we won't even think about a new release. But we benefit from people playing the in-development versions and 2.5 has an especially large number of good reasons to do so. This is a guide for them.

416

Discussion / Re: Again on reaction fire

« on: November 26, 2012, 03:39:29 pm »

The problem with the method you describe is that it promotes excessively defensive tactics. By giving the inert unit a shoot-first advantage in all encounters, you increase the incentive to camp your soldiers in a defensive place and you decrease the incentive to make contact with the enemy.

In the original X-Com, this was mediated by the fact that often aliens could see you and shoot at you from farther away. It was up to the player to make contact or he risked being picked off from the shadows. We don't have a visibility-at-distance mechanism in the game or an AI that could effectively take advantage of this.

Because we use a straight TU system, managing your low-TU firemodes is crucial to effective use of reaction fire. You may want to look into pistols or other low-TU weaponry. (Side note: this was supposed to be one of the roles the Shotguns play, but I can see now that the 10 TU firemode undermines this and so I will probably reduce it).

Regarding the use of Snipers for effective reaction fire: there is a very big danger of making snipers overpowered if they can quickly execute an aimed shot in reaction fire. This is exacerbated by the fact that many of our maps are quite open and the AI is not smart enough to hide indoors in most cases. I understand the broader point you are making -- that in real life a sniper would zero-in on an area and then be able to shoot fairly quickly. But I'm not convinced we have the mechanisms to balance this properly at the moment.

I hope eventually we will have some kind of "focus" mechanism that might, for instance, allow me to spend extra TUs to designate a small area of "focus". The soldier would then gain an advantage in response time when sighting an enemy in that area, but may lose the ability to see or respond to targets quickly outside of that area. Such mechanisms might allow a properly balanced implementation similar to what you are seeking.

I also hope that, eventually, we will have some stat that effects reaction fire, so that soldiers could become quicker at it over time. In the past we have had problems with reaction fire being very inconsistent, and this leading to a lot of confusion for players. This is why 2.5 features the very straightforward reaction fire mechanism it does -- and trust me, it's a lot better than what was there before (thanks to aDuke).

417

Discussion / Changes for 2.5

« on: November 26, 2012, 12:42:04 pm »

UFO: Alien Invasion has undergone extensive changes during 2.5's development cycle. This includes a comprehensive re-balancing of the campaign and battlescape, as well as some important additions to the game mechanics. This post will try to outline a few of the most important for players transitioning from 2.4 to 2.5.

To avoid spoilers and allow players to explore the changes themselves, I will speak in general terms. Please do the same in your replies or they may be edited. Separate threads can be produced if you want to discuss a particular weapon balance or something.

Campaign Pace
The schedule of UFOs, aliens, research and disassembly, as well as the tech tree itself, has been changed significantly. Over the course of the campaign, the player will face fewer UFOs. There should be no large chunks of time with nothing to do like 2.4, and you had better get moving quickly on research and development.

Air Combat
The aircraft vs. UFO balance has been adjusted quite a bit. Be careful making assumptions based on your previous experience.

Laser Weapons
Handheld laser weapons are no longer available as soon as you research CWS at the start of the game. They will come later. This may be particularly disorienting for our long-term players.

Ground Combat Difficulty
Expect to face more aliens who are more difficult to kill. In general, you will likely find your soldiers dying more. You will also receive more recruits throughout the game to allow you to suffer more casualties. Do not expect to be able to play a zero-casualties game as easily as before.

Weapons
The weapons have been comprehensively re-balanced and have undergone significant changes. In general, weapons have been adjusted to better serve specific tactical purposes. That means the trade-offs between different weapons and different firemodes within weapons are more significant now. Without getting into specifics, I'll just say that you should pay special attention to all of a weapon's attributes and think about which tactical situations it might be most effective.

Wounds and Healing
The game now includes a proper wounding and healing mechanism. Soldiers will get wounded and bleed out each turn based on how wounded they are. A medikit is able to heal wounds, which will stop bleeding, but it will only be able to give a soldier back a very small amount of health. Soldiers are expected to recover in Hospital. Medikits are for keeping them alive until the battle ends.

Weight and Encumbrance
All soldier items now include a weight and soldiers can only carry as much as their Strength ability allows them. A soldier will be "encumbered" and will lose TUs when they are carrying more than 50% of their max weight. A soldier will be "light" and gain extra TUs when they are carrying less than 20% of their max weight.

Soldiers Stay Equipped
Soldiers will now stay equipped when they are not assigned to a dropship and can be equipped through the employees menu.

More Soldiers
You can now have up to 12 soldiers on the battlescape. The starting dropship, the Firebird, still only supports 8 soldiers, but base defense missions and later dropships will support more.

New Weapons
New weapons and equipment have been introduced for soldiers and aircraft. Most of these become available late in the game.

Soldier Stats
Rookies will now improve stats more quickly, and the overall stat growth throughout the course of a campaign will be much higher. Veterans will be more valuable, but even late in the game you will be able to improve rookies quickly enough to make them useful.

418

Sounds and Music / Re: A facelift for footsteps/terrain

« on: November 24, 2012, 12:59:59 am »

You must be logged in to get a link to the Discussion page.

419

Artwork / Re: New weapons

« on: November 23, 2012, 11:38:47 pm »

Item "scraprifle_ammo" doesn't exist because you forgot to rename the item definition. It's still listed as pistol_ammo.

Always check the ufoconsole.log. It's very good at flagging errors with the UFO scripts. In this case it probably would have thrown an error saying that pistol_ammo was already defined (ie - there were two item definitions with the same id).

420

Sounds and Music / Re: A facelift for footsteps/terrain

« on: November 23, 2012, 10:50:45 pm »

The best place to put stuff like this is in the Discussion page for the Proposal in the wiki. The forums drift into obscurity after a while.