Thankyou and help!

[Ghostcom]

WOW.

 

What a fab website - I thought I was quite good at Enemy Unknown until I saw ufopaedia.org.

 

What a masterclass! I'm gonna scrub all my current campaigns, and start again at 1 difficulty level higher (where I used to get creamed)

 

 

 

 

I've got the latest bug fixes (again WOW!) UFO Extender but someone fried my brains and I don't get the installation instructions.

 

 

Could someone please explain in Rookie language!

 

 

 

However, I also have a tip of my own - which makes a HUGE difference in both battlescape and equipping your soldiers:

 

Basically you hardcode the soldier's key abilites into their name.

I use a Poor Medium High scheme to record TU; Stamina; FA; TA and Str in a 5 letter code after the soldiers name

 

40-44: p

45-49: P

50-54: m

55-59: M

60-64: h

65-69: H

for the 70's use e/E (Exceptional)

for the 80's use o/O (Olympic)

for the 90's use u/U (Unearthly)

 

The same system records strength values but starting at 20

 

So:

Stan Rookie pmphm is clearly cannon fodder but;

Captain Alan MhHEh is a sniper unit with optional heavy weapon capability for terror missions.

 

It's a really good quick reference tool in battlescape. You can quickly see a unit's firing accuracy and can therefore quickly decide whether the unit is better on Autofire for the low accuracy units or Snap/Aimed for the sniper types.

 

Note, it's a good idea to recheck names every 3 missions and upgrade the names as the stats increase - especially with the info on how primary actions result in stat increases. Hmm. I think my soldiers are going to throw a LOT more grenades when they are bored just to build up all those scores!

 

 

Look forward to a reply on the installation of UFOLoader.zip!

[NKF]

Welcome to the boards.

 

I'm not familiar with it myself, but the creator of the extender, Seb76, maintains running documentation on his profile on the ufopaedia wiki. See: https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=User:Seb76

 

Basically unzip it into your game directory. Open the ufoextender.ini file with a text editor and adjust it to add the fixes and other fun options that you want to use then save it. Then run the ufoextender.exe to and it'll launch the game for you.

 

- NKF

[Ghostcom]

Welcome to the boards.

 

I'm not familiar with it myself, but the creator of the extender, Seb76, maintains running documentation on his profile on the ufopaedia wiki. See: https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=User:Seb76

 

Basically unzip it into your game directory. Open the ufoextender.ini file with a text editor and adjust it to add the fixes and other fun options that you want to use the save it. Then run the ufoextender.exe to start the game and it'll launch the game for you.

 

- NKF

 

 

Duh. Yep makes sense now.

Really useful - One question though.

 

Most of the lines are set to

Apply =0

or

Pay For Dirt=0

 

Do I assume that 0 is off, and if I want to apply the whole lot, change all the zeros into 1's??

 

Thanks

[NKF]

Well, since all the options are off by default, and with the .ini values being 0's, my best guess here is yes.

 

Just give it a go. Perhaps experiment with an option that would have a very obvious change. Something visual, or even the music if you have the MP3's or any audio cd.

 

- NKF

[Ghostcom]

Well, since all the options are off by default, and with the .ini values being 0's, my best guess here is yes.

 

Just give it a go. Perhaps experiment with an option that would have a very obvious change. Something visual, or even the music if you have the MP3's or any audio cd.

 

- NKF

 

Oh happy days!

 

 

[Knan]

*chortle* Nice one!

 

Welcome!

[NKF]

Well, glad that worked.

 

On the topic of naming, there are a lot of methods you can use to make your life so much easier. I've not really needed to use the name stats anymore, bar marking soldiers that have low psi strength or get mind controlled in combat, in which case they earn a ! at the end of their name and hand in their armour. The ! makes it easier to get rid of a number of soldiers at once - or it helps keep them marked until I can find a replacement.

 

However, that's today. In the past I have used a couple different stat naming methods.

 

First I used XComutil's default stat strings.

 

Then, I refined it down to what I called the STAR system. It concentrated on the 3 of the stats I pay the most attention to: strength, accuracy, reactions. Soldiers with over 40 strength got a S (40's the magic number for a number of strength related tasks). When the got really good it upgraded to a S+. Decent accuracy earned them an A and high reactions got R. So before long I had a lot of folks with S+AR's after their name. I don't remember if I assigned different meanings to character case, but I made sure to keep it simple.

 

One other add-on method I'd actually forgotten (due to switching to the Collectors Edition of the game for a long while) but recalled because of this was a type of self-awarded medal system. For some soldiers I would add a medal after their name by typing in ctrl+backspace to generate a copyright symbol. Weird way of getting it, and it only works in the Dos edition of the game. This symbol forms the medal. Then to create the ribbon, I'd use between 1 - 3 lesser-than (

 

- NKF

[Ghostcom]

I like the medals Idea.

 

All went fine except that I got a funny error when I tried to run - something like "invalid parameters".

 

Could someone please cut and paste the opening section of a working extender into a post so I can check my formatting?

 

I assume this gets installed in the X-COM main folder, which just has the sub folders UFO Defense and TFTD.

 

Do you then need to change the .ini file to give a full path for the Executable=UFO Defense.exe?

 

Also I amended the .ini file with Notepad+. I assume this is not a problem?

 

Finally I installed the VC2008 from supplied file and I run Windows XP.

 

Any Ideas where I got it wrong??

[NKF]

The Extender currently doesn't work with TFTD, so I imagine it needs to be in the UFO Defense folder. That might be one good place to start.

 

As I inferred in my earlier post, I don't use the extender, but could you copy and paste your ini file here and we could have a look see?

 

Any old plain text editor works fine for editing it.

 

- NKF

[Ghostcom]

The Extender currently doesn't work with TFTD, so I imagine it needs to be in the UFO Defense folder. That might be one good place to start.

 

As I inferred in my earlier post, I don't use the extender, but could you copy and paste your ini file here and we could have a look see?

 

Any old plain text editor works fine for editing it.

 

- NKF

 

I found the problem. I had a patched version. Once I scrubbed and re-installed without the patch it worked fine.

 

Now all I have to do is remember that I turned HOT GRENADES on!

 

That oversight cost me half a skyranger crew in my first mission. Ooops!