Brainstorming Thread For Rb Mod Ideas

[Aralez]

Ok maybe you have some ideas for future versions of the Rebalance Mod. Post them here. Remember, the more difficult your proposal is, the longer it will take to implement or it may even be impossible to do some of your ideas. But don't let this worry you for now, gimme ideas!

[Nameless]

ok now this will even hopefully improve the strategy asdpect of the game.

here goes: good strategy is made from choosing the right way out of many options, right now this game is very linear, what it comes down to is bullets rock, lasers suck, plasma's are ok and explosives are so so.

what is needed is different weapons for different jobs. this would require modding armors and transgenant armor levels and alien armor, and modding guns so that they excel in one particular area and keep lacking in another. and thus bullets would rock, but only versus reticulans, and you need a flamethrower for those rotten blowfish (now that would be funny) and you need a good laser to cut up those deathbellows.

etc, youd need a well balanced team with enough weapons of all types and need to do more planning before hand.

and youd need a different strategy because now your sniper dude cant just go kill that deathbellow, he needs a rifle dude with a much more close range laser weapon. it would make the game harder and less linear.

offcourse the diffculty offset could be compensated by reducing monster stats for difficulty levels.

 

its already in the game a bit but you cant even really notice

[Llama8]

It may well be over-kill, but do you reckon you can have negative resistances?

[Nameless]

armor giving you negative resistances?

realisticly that doesnt seem too possible

how could heavy armor amplify damage taken?

not like it actually changes your metabolism or whatnot

alien armor, maybe it substracts substances from your body to sustain itself that normally play a role in your bodies natural plasma resistance?

i like the idea, it would be hard to justify though

[Llama8]

I was more thinking of using it to increase the range over which you could balance an alien/transgenants damage taken without changing the weapons.

But given the lifespan of an alien/transgenant later on, you probably wouldn't need negative resistances...

Imagine an armour that is flamable, if you got hit by a Firetick, not only would you have the damage from it's weapon to deal with, your own armour would be on fire. Not a particularly good idea, but...

Or crystaline armour which is v.good at refracting light away from the user, but shatters when hit by AP rounds.

Or armour that conducts/intensifies psi energy?

 

And why doesn't the alien armour (being biological in nature) assist the wearer in healing? Even if only by supplying pain-relief/tourniquet?

[Nameless]

excellent ideas!

this fits perfectly into what i suggested

[Aralez]

An armour turning energy from a shot into some kind of health is absoloutely possible in AM. Imagine a Reticulan with his "negative plasma shield" getting hit by some plasma shot and actually heals because of it, hmmm sounds interesting.... We could use shields for that, no need for an armour (saves time and modelling). Different colours for different resistances, great idea, the only thing one would need to change would be the equipment files for the reticulans a bit... What do you think of that....?

 

Btw, i tested to equp the Retis with a modded human Bio-Armour (the ones manufactured by humans), they work fine. (model-wise)

[Nameless]

shields! what a ingenious idea!

if you need to use them in your left hand than handguns will get popular real quick and yet again add to gameplay! i remember the shield from XCOM apocalypse, it had a personal cloaking device too, hows about that?

problem is writing AI for rets to use the thing right?

[Aralez]

oops I actually was thinking of "energy shields" as used in the actual Reti-Armour (that energy-field thingie), your idea is better, i admit, but i don't know how to add an equpiment item with armour values.

[Llama8]

If I understand this correctly, a negative resistance would increase the damage taken (if it worked), to have a type of damage heal the target you would (logically) need a resistance of >100%.

[Nameless]

yup, thats exactly what were talking about Llama

maybe it will already work to in fact add damage when you increase a resistance above 100%, maybe the game will lock up or simply do no damage nor add health =S

in the last case, someone needs to find out how damage resistance is calculated or how regular damage is calculated and edit it. you could take a look at how the med kit adds health

[Fnurg]

Medikits add health by appling -100 damage which is defined in the listofweapons.txt

 

setting a minus value for armor resistances caused the game to lockup. mabey someone else will ave better luck with it

[Llama8]

The game actually stores the damage taken % in the armour data file, rather than the resistance, so if an armour resists a damage type by 25%, the value stored in listofarmor.txt is 0.75.

So I would assume that UFO:A multiplies the damage from the weapon by the value in listofarmor.txt (unless the weapon is the microslug accelerator, then it multiples that number by either a random number ~the to-hit probability, or the to-hit probability) & then subtracts the result from the targets health. So if we make the value in listofarmor negative, it should add health to the target.

 

The medkit is simply a very short range weapon that does negative damage (-100) to the target. I would assume that the -100 is then modified by the Medical skill in the same way that "normal" damage is modified by the Aliens skill...

[Nameless]

ok could someone try? i dont really know how and im currently working on collecting good sound files for the weapons, nabbing them from other shooters and whatnot.

ive gotten 10 of the 66 needed good sounds from counterstrike, long time to go to get all 66, and im looking to get my hands on rainbow six raven shield because i remember it having a lot of good sounds for different weapons in single and burst shot mode

il post it as soon as possible but it isnt all too easy.

[Fnurg]

The game actually stores the damage taken % in the armour data file, rather than the resistance, so if an armour resists a damage type by 25%, the value stored in listofarmor.txt is 0.75.

So I would assume that UFO:A multiplies the damage from the weapon by the value in listofarmor.txt (unless the weapon is the microslug accelerator, then it multiples that number by either a random number ~the to-hit probability, or the to-hit probability) & then subtracts the result from the targets health. So if we make the value in listofarmor negative, it should add health to the target.

 

The medkit is simply a very short range weapon that does negative damage (-100) to the target. I would assume that the -100 is then modified by the Medical skill in the same way that "normal" damage is modified by the Aliens skill...

Yea, your absolutly right. It was a rushed post on my part. About 5 mins spent checking before I had to be out of the door.

 

however, you say that " So if we make the value in listofarmor negative, it should add health to the target." but i've already tested it. You cant have negative values for the armor resistances/damage taken. The values have to be between 0.0 and 1.0 otherwise it locks up when loading at 85%. Obviously, i'd love to be proven wrong here

 

Your point about the medikit is quite interesting. I'm gonna have a look to see if minus values with damage other that "HL" heals.

[Llama8]

However, you say that " So if we make the value in listofarmor negative, it should add health to the target." but i've already tested it. You cant have negative values for the armor resistances/damage taken. The values have to be between 0.0 and 1.0 otherwise it locks up when loading at 85%.  Obviously, i'd love to be proven wrong here

It does? #### I might have a look myself, though I don't doubt that you're correct...

See ya Monday.

[Claw]

I think it`s BAD idea to make healing armour..

It will make GREAT hole in balance - immortal fighters can appear..

I think better make 100% resistances for several kinds of dmg for some armour..

 

And, on forums.ag.ru was proposal to make armour of top levels same as Power Armour from fallout - it shoud increase streight, capacity, decrease dexterety , shooting, observation, stelth ets. skills .. I think it`s a good way to make balance wider ..

[Aralez]

Atm i see no way of adding attributes like stealth etc to an armour. What possibly could work would be an armour with negative weight, didn't test that, though, this could make the person in it "stronger".

 

But you do have a point there regarding immortal fighters....

[Nameless]

immortal? not really, how many missions with aliens with only 1 kindof weapon did you encounter?

the healing would be very minimal, and would be compensated by very low resistances for other damage types. plasma absorbing armor would be great but theres ALWAYS some of those twats with laser pistols ready to fry your ass off.

and maybe the healing armor is so heavy you cant really run very fast when one of those comes along, and he kills you.

i do see your point though, and a tweak in AI to make more diverse alien armament would be the only real solution.

but you can acheive alot with some good balancing

[Claw]

immortal? not really, how many missions with aliens with only 1 kindof weapon did you encounter?

the healing would be very minimal, and would be compensated by very low resistances for other damage types. plasma absorbing armor would be great but theres ALWAYS some of those twats with laser pistols ready to fry your ass off.

and maybe the healing armor is so heavy you cant really run very fast when one of those comes along, and he kills you.

i do see your point though, and a tweak in AI to make more diverse alien armament would be the only real solution.

but you can acheive alot with some good balancing

In fact i don`t like UFO:A healing at all..

If you add this type of armor you need fix AI to let aliens atack your man with another type of weapon when current type not effective..

Minimal healing&resistance will make such kind of armour useless..

for combat..

U can use soldier in such armour , against group of aliens with weapos what can just heal him it as a shield for all group..

 

I never see such things in games..

It smells like cheeting for me .. sorry I dont like it..

I`ll better prefer 90% resistance ..