Messages

31

Discussion / Re: UFO:AI Technology Ideas

« on: April 28, 2010, 08:58:01 pm »

I see this topic as general brainstorming for Ideas, tha could possibly com into game. As long as developers get inspired about the different kind of techs, there is no actual need one of theese ides find their way into the game (althoug I'd love to see some).

A new Idea: Anti-plasmatic shield

This piece of amor mainly consist of a kind a bunch of chambers storing a chemical liquid (or gas) each containing of plasma sensors on the surface. At the moment of an plasma impact the sensor will cause the hitted chamber to explode (like the airbag.tech) and atomize its liquids into the air-plasma micture. The mixture of these both gasses causes a endotherm reaction to happen, binding the ionised hydrogen into a rubbish-PU-Foamlike substate and also lowering the temperature of the incoming plasma. The energy of the plasma is even more reduced, since this foam normally melts, also using up energy of the plasma beam. (i don't know what chemical liquid could be believed to do a exothermal reaction to plasma, but there possibly is one). However, since the amor is "bombed in pieces" by usage even few shots may destroy the anti-plasmic shield. The damage to the amour is not dependet on the weapon type. A Plasma pistol will as well bring one of this chambers to explode than would a heavy plasma. It is a nice addition against plasma weapons, but helps against no other weapon. So you probably wouldnÄt like to carry arround the extra weight, as long as you don't face plasmas. Although it would be technical possible to resist a heavy plasma with nearly no ammount of damage, the extra weight of the liquid required would overcome the benefit. 

32

Artwork / Re: Additional Alien Textures To Enhance Variety There...

« on: April 25, 2010, 06:41:01 pm »

Not necessarly. If you look on animal life on earth, mostly there is only a appearent difference in shape if the animal happens to have teats (cause male subjects normally miss this body part). More often one can judge the different gender eighter because of a different body size (female often are taller) or a different skin/fur color (male are more often more colorful).

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Artwork / Re: Additional Alien Textures To Enhance Variety There...

« on: April 25, 2010, 04:43:01 pm »

Well, if you want to do different skins on aliens, as far as I am concerned a male and a female skin would do pretty awsome for some aliens (although one has to agree first, how the different gender would look like for each race and it would be properbly good to add the difference in the appearance in the description for the race, too).

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Discussion / Re: New forum skin

« on: April 25, 2010, 03:21:33 pm »

The readability has really improved. Thanks for this new theme

35

Discussion / Re: UFO:AI Technology Ideas

« on: April 24, 2010, 01:27:39 pm »

I am aware that stealth camouflage using mirrors only works if these mirrors actually exist. This would require the spectator looking from a specific angle and also movement would be a problem. There is also the possibility to project a picture from the back of a person on a led display of the front amor (as long as it is undamaged, dead pixel (like shooting holes) just are bad for this illusion). This is also dependent from the angle you look at this picture. Movement, however, would be possible (but may require the camera to move as well). But since the projection only consists of very directed lights in a reduced bandwith, this illusion may totally be visible to opticals that function a different way than human eyes.

The get down with military carmouflage method works quite fine, if the environment holds cover and if the lights are bad. With enough cover this still might work fine in bright light. But, however, tarning is only one way one could think of becoming invisible.

Why the effort?
Two answers: First I like the idea humanity is able to take advantage above physical restrictions the aliens may have. It is much cooler (and more satisfying) to have a technology developed on the weakness of your opponent instead only adopting the strenghts of the opponents. (e.g. the defeat of the dansk Johann the first didn't stay in memory because of two troops fighting on a big battlefield but because of some peasants taking advantage of the dansk army being heavily amoured and opening the dykes leaving the dansk army to drown).
The second answer is: It is a new kind of technology. The more varity this game has in technological advances, the more interesting. And this is a kind of technology that could be pseudo explained by me. Even if this tech doesn't go in final, it may inspire others to come up with their ideas and enrich the tech tree of this game. As it was mentioned in the tech branch discussion it is hard enough to come up with enough reasonable futuristic technologies even without splitting them into different branches. So I thought, one would be glad if I could ad some reasonable tech to it.

I do not have the luxus to say: Well, I like the freezing effect or I like blur, so the explanation will be a spell (like a fantastic setting would do). But I can make my mind make imagine ways how this effects could be explained (although the explanation is not neccessary correct it only needs to be believable). And, the hack, I just like the 3d effect one could see with filtering glasses in the cinema. So i totally believe aliens will die more happily if their filter eyes were tricked by exactly this effect in combat *muhaha*

36

Discussion / Re: UFO:AI Technology Ideas

« on: April 24, 2010, 12:01:31 pm »

Another new tech: Blur amour

Requirements: Obduction of at least one alien and 3 differnt kinds of aliens held alife.

Instead of just realizing the aliens to have better technologies and trying hard to overtake every single recovered tech they have so we could reduce their advantage over us, we will have the opportunity to take advantage over one of the aliens physical restrictions.

It is known that light consists of different colors. Another way to describe light is it consits of rays of different wave lengths. Rod and Cone cells react to light of different wave lengths and the percept of a color is created in the brain. Vision is, however, suspectable for optical illusions. It is, e.g. possible to see two rays with different wave lengths as the same color.

While human opticals both react to the same lights bandwith, between 380 and 780 nanometers wave length, this is not the case for the discovered aliens. Their opticals react to different bandwiths each. The reason for this behavior is not known for us, perhaps it is adaption to their natural environment, perhaps animal or plant life of their home world emmit information like poisioness warnings when emitting a different pattern in different wave lengths or it is a flashing protection, leaving one (or in some cases some) eye(s) still functional, while the other is blinded by flash. But this is room to speculation.

It is for sure, we now are able to use this fact to create an optical illusion protecting our soildiers: The blur amour. This amour is laquered with a special laque that has a prismatic effect on light. We are now able to break up light rays in a special way and reflect them in different angles, so that alien species have the optical illusion, the person wearing this amour stands on different positions at once. The research of this piece of amour wasn't as simple, since we can't determine exactly, what one alien is seeing, but we believe, we were able to create a second image of the person standing in a slightly different position. The effect however, varies from person to person and also from enviromental light. It works best in bright daylight and worse in moonlight. Within rooms still an effect will be seen, but since artifical light is much directed and reduced in bandwith, the effect will not be great. But hell, a shot in the shoulder instead of the heart is still a win.

While all alien life forms orientating through infra red (like bloodspiders) can't be fooled by this technology, especially species with compound eyes (if ever integrated into this game) will freak out totally.

This piece of amour is not perfect, however. It doesn't work well in night missions and not at all against specific kinds of aliens. It also is not changing the position of a soldiers face (since the face normally is unamoured), so the more inteligent races may be fooled by this equipment with their reaction shots and still be able to aim proper with their normal shots. Please also take note this amour is not fooling any human supporter, since their eyes don't react to unsimilar bandwith of wave length. The only effect this piece of amour has to them is glistering in the sun.

37

Discussion / Re: UFO:AI Technology Ideas

« on: April 21, 2010, 07:16:50 pm »

It has much more to do with the temperature. Nitrogen inside would exhange heat since the rest of the round is not cold, so it could theoretically explode suddenly. You could give your agents minifreezers where they would keep the ammo and prevent accidental discharges but I'd question if they would be worth it and how practical it would be.

You are totally right that nitrogen would start to boil because the exteriour temperature of the bullet is much higher than the temperature of the liquid nitrogen. Or this would be the case, if the nitrogen would have the chance to boil (Its boiling temperature would be about -200 degrees celisus). So only with extreme pressure the boiling point of nitrogen could be risen to room temperature (this is, how a pressure cooker works, the cooker is sealed so no exchange of air can be made. The pressure rises inside the cooker, the more water foam is created inside the cooker, so the water has to reach a higher temperature to be able to boil).
Theoretically liquid nitrogen sealed in a closed vessel should not be able to boil, as long as the pressure is high enough. I don`t know how much pressure has to be created to rise the boiling temperature of liquid nitrogen to room temperature (I am not a physician and I didn't even try to calculate the expected bar value, but I am sure, one could do that. But if the bullet is a sealed vessel and the liquid is filled in under enough pressure, the bullet shouldn't even turn cold. At the moment, the bullet is cracked up, the pressure suddenly will fall to normal and the liquid will start to boil instantly (freezing all material by this process, since the boiling temperature is still -200 degrees).

That is the problem I described by producing the bullet, finding a material strong enough to endure the pressure of the liquid nitrogen but still being able to crack up on impact and that is, why alien material is needed. If one doesn't like the idee of friction energy of the impact causing heat and making the alien material change its form (cracking up the bullet), one could add a contact electric circuit to the bullet activating on the bullet tip impacting (since electrical energy also causes alien material to change its form).

38

Discussion / Re: UFO:AI Technology Ideas

« on: April 21, 2010, 04:31:27 am »

As far as I understand, a shot consists of three parts: The hull, the solid core (bullet) and a powder chamber. The hull falls of at the side of the rifle after igniting the powder and speeding the bullet up. But bullet itself has the mass of about at least 1/3 of the whole shot. It could be solid (Full metal), but it doesn't has to be. I don't think this part of the shot has not enough room to store a bit of nitrogen.

39

Discussion / Re: UFO:AI Technology Ideas

« on: April 20, 2010, 05:45:55 pm »

My sugguestion is a new kind of ammo:

Nitrogen bullets

Requirements: Alien Materials

Description:

The research, to fill bullets up with liquid nitrogen, is about 30 years old. Aim was to research a flechette ammunition releasing a decent amount of liquid nitrogen over heavy armor on impact that would brittle the material and makes it useless for protection.

The only progress we made was in anti tank ammunition. The grenade consists of two different parts. The back of the grenade is just a dewar flask filled with liquid nitrogen, while the front is prepared with a contact explosive strong enough to crack up the mantle of the projectile on impact.

However, this technology was not adaptable on bullets. Bullets are too small a dewar flask would be a possibility to storage the liquid nitrogen without vaporization. The ammount of nitrogen is much smaller in a bullet than in a grenade. Both problems require to store the liquid nitrogen in the bullet with high pressure.
This leaded to the problem to research a bullet body strong enough to endure the pressure of the inserted liquid nitrogen, but still being cracked up on impact. To work with an explosive head, like we did on the greandes, was no option, because even under high pressure the ammount of nitrogen stored in one bullet is not very high, so the kinetic energy caused by an explosion would conter the freezing effect of the nitrogen.

The solution to this problem is in the alien Materials, since it is strong enough to widstand a high ammount of pressure even if the material is only some nanometers thick and changing its form depenent on heat. So we were able to produce a bullet that has predetermined  breaking  points consisting on alien materials only some nanometers thick. The material is thin enough the friction energy of an impact is enough to make the bullet change its form and to crack up on impact. The freezing effect of the nitrogen loweres the integrity of the amour and leads to frostbites.

However the production of this ammunition is still very expensive. But this ammunition has some more drawbacks. If fired on unamored enemies the friction energy on the impact may not be enough to cause the bullet to crack up. The damage done may be lesser than the damage of a normal bullet against unamored enemies.
Since the core of the bullet is liquid the flight characteristics of this bullet is slightly different. Aiming is a little bit harder with this bullets and the range is reduced. The magazine is very reactive to heat. So if you carry arround a magazine of nitrogen bullets take care not to be set on fire or be target to explosions, since the heat may be enough to cause the bullets to crack up.

Effect:
The damage of the bullets is reduced. The accuracy and the range is reduced as well. But hitting with a nitrogen shot reduces the amor value of the hitted amor part permanetly.

Greetings
Prinegon. 

40

Discussion / Re: Forking tech trees - some ideas

« on: April 19, 2010, 06:31:15 am »

Doesn't work for me.

If the first possibility is going to happen and your research tree is margled, once a scientist is captured by the aliens, you will most likely simply reload.

If we follow your second sugguestion, that could mean, you actually would want to trigger the abduction of a specific person to unlock the research branch you prefer. I don't like one trying to trigger something harmful to himself to get rewarded.

41

Discussion / Re: Medical staff

« on: April 18, 2010, 09:52:09 pm »

As already said, technicians and scientists can be assigned to seperate tasks. But at the moment biogenetic or cybergenetic bodyparts get implemented in this game, medics will be assigned to different tasks, too. Then you will have to decide, if a medic is to heal someone or integrate a cybernetic leg into a soilder.

I would feel right for me, if all medical reseach (starting with med kit and ending with the research of implants) would be done by medics, too. In real life medical research in this topic is done in hospitals, too. I wouldn't mind if authopsies were also done by medics.

42

Design / Re: Mobile Gun emplacement and new mission goal

« on: April 10, 2010, 04:06:43 pm »

This is indeed creative, but I'm afraid that this idea as it is doesn't have a high chance of making it into the game.

We already have plans for UGVs which will possibly do some of these things, although what stands out to me as a problem is:

1 - The idea of complicating the game with new mission types just for a specific new weapon/tool,

I don't think adding more options is complicating the game. One could still do missions without using gun emplacements at all. I often see the tendency do simplify some good game principals. That is the main reason why some of the old stuff is still prefered above the graphical superior new stuff. Look at the discussion started as civilization 3 was released, how mad people got, because many of the possibilities civilization 2 had have been taken out to simplify stuff.

I don't say games should get too complicated, that succeeding in a game needs to study hard in game mechanics. But I don't think, one should fear too much in a game getting too complex, as long as the game mechanics still feel natural.

The idea a gun emplacement may add a civilian exit point is a bonus for this idea. I still would love to see a gun emplacement in this game without these exit points. I just thought, if a player takes time to do some fortification, he might as well be rewarded for that.

and,

2 - The idea of lots of blasting of inaccurate "cover fire."  It has the same issues as air strikes and bombs.  Phalanx is supposed to be a secret, discrete organization, low-profile.  The player's units are more supposed to go in and cleanly pick and choose targets while saving civilians, not just blow everything up in a barrage of massive cannon fire.

Edit:  I also had a grandfather who fought in two world wars - He once told me that many people favored the idea of tons of blasting everything in an area to total destruction - a popular concept, but even in conventional warfare such a thing has been proven to generally be inefficient in defeating an enemy, and it isn't the best option for fighting.

I thought to have read a discussion about phalanx be not a secret operation, but a operation with full nato support. There was a discussion about, if phalanx should be a secret department, like xcom was, and I think it was eigher you, or mattyn, who said, it is not on purpose.
However, i understand phalanx has no desire to blow up areas big, because this could cause bad news. Phalanx is, however, a new facility, that could also be dismantled due to too much collatteral damage. But looking at the original xcom series that organisation didn t mind to use explosives, explosive ammunition and such at all. Ever played xcom apocalypse with autocannon explosive shells on autofire? :-P

The idea of cover fire is not to actualy hit anything but more in lowering the enemy morale. One in the area of cover fire might not be willing to raise his head to watch, if someone is approaching. I already wrote i intend the cover fire to be at very low accurancy. So one using it a lot will see, he is vasting much of ammunition without doing much damage.

However, if there is ever a feature added, that someone will have lower accurancy, if it was shot on him (even without being hit), coverfire may get useful, even without hitting anything. The lower accurancy would be justified, imho, because one has to fight his instinct to take cover, to be able to shoot.

43

Discussion / Re: cant find ufo hangars in build list have to sell all

« on: April 10, 2010, 10:16:37 am »

They got me on that, too. In 2.3 Ufo hangars are exterior buildings and not part of the base anymore.
After building a base, you have the possibility do build some surface buildings, like rocket bases and ufo hangars.

44

Feature Requests / Re: Melee Weapon: Laser Blade

« on: April 09, 2010, 02:49:16 am »

I think, the problem with the laser sword is not, it doesn't exist, but it doesn't make sence after all.

In all equipment integrated into the game there is a kind of explanation, how this gear could work and why it works the way it does. If you take the plasma blade for example, it is not a blade made out of plasma (cause that would be impossible cause of plasma being liquid) nor lets say, ionic plasma formed to a blade through a magnetic field (a pseudo explanation, but still, what good would a liquid blade do, that a solid blade dont?), but more like a plasma contact mine, once attached glued to the uniform and releasing plasma to the surface of your amour in a vacuum. There is an explanation, how it works, and it is imaginable to be useful against heavy amour, so there is a reason, why it exists.

The concept of a laser sword doesn't meet both requirements. There is no explanation how this could exist, because laser is light, that wouldn't stop shining at the end of the blade and because of it being light, one of the most important things, you would have to be able to do with a sword: defending ; wouldn't be doable. First there would have to be a pseudo explanation explaining the existence of a laser sword, before I'd like to see this weapon integrated in this game. And, well, there would have to be an explanation, too, why a laser rifle empties a df-ammo in some minutes autofire, while a laser sword should be turned on all the time without using ammunition.

45

Design / Mobile Gun emplacement and new mission goal

« on: April 08, 2010, 06:21:49 pm »

Hi,

there is something in my mind i would love to see integrated into games: Mobile gun emplacements. The description how i think this could work are done for bulltet guns and should be adaptable for laser, plasma and particle without problems. The mobile gun emplacement is to be the biggest possible heavy gun but the vehicle guns.

This is, how this should work:

installation
The gun has to be transported by two men. Whoever transports the gun itself needs to use up his whole backpack. He will need to have tools in his hands in order to be able to assemble the gun, too (like a stunrod, tools disable both hands but only take 6 spaces in the backpack, once unequiped. The second man transports the guns ammunition using up 4 squares of his backpack. To make the gun operable you have to construct it first unsing the tools.
If there is space in front of the soilder's facing direction, he is able to spent 30 points of movement (the same way how a weapon would be shot or a medikit would be used) and has the mobile gun emplacement in his backpack, he will be able to install the emplacement in the first square in the soildiers facing direction. The gun emplacement will face in the same direction. The sprite of a gun on a tripod will be visible on the map.

To load the gun emplacement and make it operational a soldier has to take the guns ammunition into his hands and to stand next to the gun (any square but the square in front of the gun will do). The Ammunition will be usable and load the gun for 400 shells, if used.

Any soldier behind a gun with both of his hands unequipped will be able to use the gun (instead of only kick or punch, he will have the operate gun options).

Fire modes
The gun has up to 3 fire modes: Burst, full burst and coverfire. The burst-mode works just like a normal autogun burst, shooting 3 times using up 9 shells. The full burst will use up 15 shells and works like the normal autogun full burst, firing one time and spreading a little bit.

The cover fire works a little different. A soldier can't be moved after starting cover fire. The soldier will aim on one square. Every adjectent aimable square will be in the zone of cover fire, too. (so squares below the ground will not be aimed).
The soldier will fire up two shots immediately after starting cover fire. The rest of his shots will be fired as reaction fire. If there is any movement in the zone of cover the reaction fire will be triggered with a high reaction bonus. The soldier will always shoot twice at once. Cover fire can be triggered three times in the enemy phase. Every untriggered reaction fire shot will be done at the end of the enemy movement. However the cover fire is very inaccurate. It will use up 40 shells.

mission goal
The gun emplacement can help to save civilians, because it will be a save point for them. This is, how it works: As long as there is a operational and loaded gun emplacement near the edge of the battlescape and a soldier is standing next to it, every edge square in a 3 square radius to the gun emplacement will turn into a civilian exit point. Civilians will try to reach exit points, if they see them and will disappear from battlescape, once reached the exits. Those civilians will count as saved (perhaps civilians saved this way will even give a bonus).