Weapons/equipment suggestions

[sirg]

A real mortar would never get past Winter, so you should probably forget about that for the stock version of the game

why? I think a mortar weapon would be a big advantage, but still I don't see why it doesn't fit the setting or something like that. I have never understood Winter's guidelines, or what those might be.

The truth is that I really want and expect to see more weapons in the future. What is wrong with having lots of weapons types, each with pros and cons? Most games have a wide array of weapons, even though you'll use just a fraction of them, but it's fun to have. Any military organization, not to speak of a crime organization, has access to much more weapons than available in this game.

Having alien weapons at one time is fine and makes sense, but I think it's reasonable that PHALANX scientists would develop manmade weapons based on alien tech, rather than saying well, this weapons isn't designed for human hands, but you'll have to live with it.

I really want to see a high end armor covering all the body, maybe something like the powerarmor from Fallout, which would enable the soldiers to use heavy weapons like the minigun.

Vibroblade is something that I would like to see too

[BTAxis]

What is wrong with having lots of weapons types, each with pros and cons?

Speaking for myself here, but what's wrong with it is that it's impossible to have more than a certain number of weapons before they start being dead weight. Take Aftermath. It had tons of weapons, but I only ever used a small selection, with the rest beaing worse versions of the ones I was using. I hated that, and I don't want to see UFO:AI make the same mistake. I'd rather have a small arsenal where each weapon is truly unique and useful in its own right than 500 versions of the same weapon.

More practically, the reason why we (most likely) won't have many more weapons is that it takes a lot of time to make them. We need models, sounds, particle effects, etc. It's easy to demand loads of content, but I don't see YOU contributing, and the people who do contribute have many other things to make, almost all of which take priority.

[sirg]

The fact that I'm acting on this forum is a form of contribution, because I don't have the skills required for modeling weapons, programming, or composing music... so, the least I can do is came with ideas and test your game...

I'm pretty disappointed by your atitude.

...

And regarding weapons - until you came up with a final release, it's ok to test lots of weapons and ideas to see how they work, instead of dismissing everything from the start. You can play with alot of ideas and in the end lose everything you think it doesn't fit or is redundant to the game, but let the community test it also and see what is the input on that... in the end it's your call anyway, but you'll never know if you won't play with ideas and concepts.

Who said anything about new models and stuff.. you can have some test weapons using the same models with a different name, because it's a game under development, but it's more important to see how the gameplay would be affected by a certain weapon or concept.. that's all really.

[BTAxis]

I'm pretty disappointed by your atitude.

That's an amazing coincidence, because I don't care much for yours either. You act like you own the place and that we should be ashamed of ourselves for not doing everything you say. You're not contributing. You're just making demands.

[sirg]

That's an amazing coincidence, because I don't care much for yours either. You act like you own the place and that we should be ashamed of ourselves for not doing everything you say. You're not contributing. You're just making demands.

You've just reminded me why I left this forum one year ago and moved my attention to other projects.

I was just making some suggestions and I'm not demanding anything, because I can't. You missed the posts where I said how much I appreciate the work being done...

However, if this is a forum open to suggestions, and the section is called Bugs & Feature Requests, it's logical to make some requests. It is also logical that people will disagree and argue about some issues.. that's the purpose of any forum. I have nothing to be sorry about, I was just trying to be helpful, comming up with ideas...

[BTAxis]

However, if this is a forum open to suggestions, and the section is called Bugs & Feature Requests, it's logical to make some requests. It is also logical that people will disagree and argue about some issues.. that's the purpose of any forum. I have nothing to be sorry about, I was just trying to be helpful, comming up with ideas...

Of course. I don't mean to tell you to shut up or kiss up to us. Criticism is allowed, as is asking for new stuff.

What gets to me is that you don't put it as a suggestion, you put it as an order, and then when I explain why we probably won't do that, you tell me I don't know what I'm talking about (basically) because I haven't tried it. Maybe you didn't intend it like that, but it comes off as very arrogant.

[sirg]

What gets to me is that you don't put it as a suggestion, you put it as an order, and then when I explain why we probably won't do that, you tell me I don't know what I'm talking about (basically) because I haven't tried it. Maybe you didn't intend it like that, but it comes off as very arrogant.

I appologise, but you got the wrong impression here... and maybe that's because I'm quite passionate about this kind of game, being a great fan of all related games. I got really sad when I saw that the old URL was broken and I thought the project was canceled, then after months I have found the new address.. and I was really glad to see how much progress has been done since 2.0...

 I have never tried to tell you what the devs should do, like an order or demand, like you said, instead it was just a personal opinion or desire - "I want to see that, X item should be great to have" and so on... I was even thinking about learning how to model things in 3D, in order to help with some weapon models or simple objects.

[Surrealistik]

Sorry, offtopic again. The accuracy penalty sounds okay to me. Not sure what you meant with the random movement - this should be in the enemy's turn when flashbanged, using reserved TUs, yes? As I said earlier, I intend to alleviate the frustration of having a soldier sit around doing nothing, so I'd like for a player to at least move the soldier, but at an increased cost. If the soldier moved randomly during the player's turn, that would be worse than what we have now.
I must insist that flashbangs disable weapons fire during the enemy's turn, though. That's what they're FOR.

No movement during the flashbang user's turn. What I mean, is that when a flashbanged soldier tries to move during its controller's turn,  it has a X in Y chance of staggering off course to an adjacent tile in front other than the one selected. X = # of viable adjacent tiles in front of it other than the desired tile. Y = the # of viable adjacent tiles in total. Here is an ASCII diagram to help clarify:

1 2 3  Tile #
[][][]  Adjacent Tile
  \|/   Direction
   O    Soldier

If all tiles are clear, and the fbed soldier has the TUs to move into any of them, while the player tells him to move into tile 2, he has a 1 in 3 chance of doing so, and a 2 in 3 chance of moving into the other adjacent tiles immediately ahead. If tile 1 is blocked, it's a coin flip. He has a 1 in 2 chance of moving into tile 2 or 3. This is a crude but functional simulation of staggering while a flashbang victim is blinded, dazed and unbalanced.

RF is effectively blocked, even though an affected soldier can technically fire because affected soldiers have no LoS. No line of sight, no reaction fire.

On topic: A real mortar would never get past Winter, so you should probably forget about that for the stock version of the game, but maybe something like that on an UGV would work. Seriously though, at this point I'd rather focus on filling out the alien arsenal than the human one. We've got more than enough human weapons as it is.

I don't care how it's implimented, but it should be. Yes, the human arsenal is expansive, but long range indirect fire is an extremely valuable niche, and it's simply not covered. That alone is reason enough to introduce a mortar like weapon, which I, and many others certainly would use. Such a weapon would be far from dead weight. As for the alien arsenal, giving it a new family of monomolecular ranged weapons, and antimatter explosives would solve its issues. The main problems it suffers from are a lack of viable sniper/long/extreme-range weapons (this makes lasers extremely effective against them), and direct/indirect aoe fire support.

[SpaceWombat]

Ok, now that the cat fight is over () I think we all can agree that no one is giving commands here and if it's just for one reason, no one is taking them. No one wants to offend any else, we all want to stay constructive, even though we might sometimes be passionate or "harsh".
Some decisions will be made in the end that one will like while another might find stupid.
My point is the more input -no matter if passionate or not (just don't take everything that personal, it's a marketplace of ideas)- the better. Throwing ideas away is not cost intensive.

Back to topic:
Any comments on the power suit weapons/alien rocket launcher?

[sirg]

A powerarmour (having best armor and enhancing strength) would be a great addition to the campaign.

Why - because from what I read in the UFOpedia, some of the alien weapons are so heavy that can't be even carried by a normal human, and operating them would require alot of strength. This would open up the posibilities for more heavy weapons, including the minigun, or a .50 cal machinegun, which are to heavy and recoil intensive to be fired by a human. I like projectile weapons same as energy weapons... and I would hate to see them made obsolete by plasma and particle weapons...

I think that by adapting a medium armor or at least salvaging some of it's servomotors etc, the techies in PHALANX labs could make a powerarmor

[BTAxis]

No movement during the flashbang user's turn. What I mean, is that when a flashbanged soldier tries to move during its controller's turn,  it has a X in Y chance of staggering off course to an adjacent tile in front other than the one selected.

Ah, I see. That's what I wanted to model with the TU penalty, actually. The soldier having to "grope" his way along. I think the staggering thing would be hard to do, because it severely complicates pathfinding, which is calculated before the animation starts, and currently has no random factors. It also can not be interrupted manually yet. If anything, I think that should be remedied before anything like this comes into the picture.

[BTAxis]

A powerarmour (having best armor and enhancing strength) would be a great addition to the campaign.

We actually have one. In trunk, not 2.2, that is. It doesn't adjust any stats though, nor are there plans for stat-altering armour. That area is going to be taken care of by implants.

[Zorlen]

On mortar/artillery - this kind of thing would certanly be widely used, though I am worried about balance issues. Aside from that, UFO games were about careful moving through an area and thrilling gunfights rather then raining the area with firepower from safety and  finishing survivors. Though sometimes I do want such sort of the thing, just because those freaking alien bastards keep killing my squad!

I agree that weapons like minigun or heavy machine-gun can only be used in powerarmor. Some alien weaponry could too, like particle cannon. I think something on the subject was hinted in their description.

On alien launcher - I think it would deprecate standard launcher if you can salvage enough ammo for it. Maybe add othe disadvantages, like smaller range?

[BTAxis]

Oh, about the minigun: it's a multiplayer-only weapon.

[SpaceWombat]

I do not think that alien weapons need to be in balance with human weapons at all. The alien rocket launcher could be a middle- to lategame substitute for the human launcher. It needs research and is more expensive thus is not that easy to get (maybe the market for alien weapons will be reduced or cut which will make the workshop more valuable). It would be fair for me to let it be better in every respect.

I just had a thought about that mortar weapon. What if it is only mountable on some vehicle which might get implemented in the far future? Needs some balancing but sounds better to me.