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Catwalk

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  1. Forgot a really big coding request: Fixing fire damage and XP. You currently can't get any XP from using fire weapons, and you can do damage to any alien standing in fire simply by shooting a fire weapon anywhere. If both of these could be fixed, it'd be awesome. Also on my wishlist is revising the XP system, which is probably out of reach. It'd be really nice if an alien with x HP gives y XP and that doing z points of damage to it by whatever means gives the soldier x*y/z XP towards the relevant skill. That way you can't hit it 10x with a Dart Gun before finishing it off for tons of XP, or tossing 5-6 low damage grenades around it.
  2. If this is easy to code I'd love to have it. I'm pondering your grenade changes, I might go with those instead of the rules I'm using. If it's possible to change how many civilians will appear (say, a fixed 10 per terror mission) we'll be able to keep a check on this. I'll definitely want some of those, would be very interesting. Would it be possible to keep the number of missions fairly low as the game progresses but have them increase in difficulty (sub size and mission objective) instead? I don't want to require the player to do a whole bunch of missions because his score will plummet otherwise, so if we make scoring factors more severe I think we'll need to limit # of missions mid game on. Yeah, I meant they were unrelated to whether or not you shoot down the subs. I really want a way to prevent infiltration. Speaking of which, should sonar listening radius be increased? It feels kind of unfair when stuff is happening on the other side of the globe, and I hate relying on graphs to try to luck into enemy subs. While this may seem to cut off a player's choices, I think it actually allows for more diversity. With this restriction in place, it's possible to make weapons feel and function much more distinctively from each other. As an example, Snap for Dart Gun can be set as low as 15%, making it an excellent scout weapon. You can spend a large amount of TU walking and still fire, or you can use it for a bunch of reaction shots (which will still be unrestricted, of course). And I plan on making the Hydro Jet Cannon semi-automatic in the sense that it'll have a 5% TU cost for Snap shots at low accuracy (with 16 shots per clip), with no restriction on shots per round. If not for this rule, there's not that much difference between a TU improvement and an accuracy improvement, both simply give you more net damage. With this restriction in place (and aimed shots being nerfed big time), you'll really have to adjust your playing style according to what weapons your nearby soldiers are equipped with. I hope you'll come around on this one, it's a lot of fun to play with. It also makes sense to carry two pistols now
  3. I'm on vacation and forgot all about this subforum In the following, HR means House Rule and M means some kind of modification to game files. Elaboration on what I'd like to do: Combat HR - Only one shot per round per weapon (except for reaction fire, of course). This gives more possibilities to distinguish between weapons, 20% TU vs 40% TU no longer means you get twice as many shots. This applies to drills and stun rods as well. HR - Only Aimed will be allowed on aliens you can't see. This changes tactics and weapon selection in a major way, and allows for further distinction of weapons. You'll need a good mix of long-range, skirmish, explosive and melee weapons to suit the situations you encounter. If you equip your troops mainly with good long range weapons (rifles) then you risk being unable to progress fast enough. HR - Time limitation on sub missions. After x turns (determined by sub size and whether or not the sub was shot down or landed on its own), the enemy sub "takes off". You may keep fighting, but you may not enter or leave the sub. If you clear the sub, you may "land" it and leave it to fight any aliens which are still outside. HR - Messing with grenades. Only odd timers may be used, and grenades must be dropped when the timer expires. This makes grenades difficult to use and rather imprecise, but still potentially useful when you don't have a clear shot. Furthermore, primed grenades may not be relayed. Heavy explosives modded to do a lot more damage, but they may not be thrown. M - Auto-fire for Gauss only. This gives them a unique role mid-game, as they'll be the best weapon in many situations against all but Lobstermen. M - Lower ammo for all weapons, especially the strongest ones. Gauss (8-6-4), (5-4-3). While you can probably still procure enough ammo for your soldiers, they'll be spending a lot more time reloading. I also plan on making reloading a little slower, by requiring the soldier to physically move the clip into his other hand first. If he's carrying something in that hand, he'll be even slower. M - Better damage for starting weapons. They're simply not packing enough punch (with the exception of Gas Cannon and maybe Torpedo Launcher) to be remotely useful against anything but Aquatoids. M - Drill tweaks. Small drills will cost 10% TU, medium will cost 25% and heavy will cost 50%. Damage will follow a 1:2:3 ratio, making small drills more time efficient but heavy drills more potent since they can only be used once a round. You may even want to equip soldiers with two drills for flexibility and power in close quarters. M - Accuracy changes. Snap made far more accurate for most weapons, and Aimed made far less accurate. Pistols will have better Snap accuracy than Rifles, making them useful at skirmish range and for reaction fire. Aimed shots will remain useful as a means of firing at the enemy safely, but it will be grossly time and ammo inefficient. I'm fine with this if it's possible, I won't be able to do it myself. I'm planning on letting the dart gun shoot phosphor rounds so it can double as a flare gun. Shock Launcher will be nerfed in accuracy and TU. Yes, alien reactions will be lowered by around 50% across the board. If this is too low, I'll raise it back up a bit. I want reactions tactics to be highly useful since it's also highly risky. I have a bunch of ideas for this, especially for personnel management. Sales value of alien artifacts will definitely be lowered, it's far too easy to base your economy around loot as is. If the casualty rate on missions is upped a bit and the value of loot is lowered, that will be far more difficult to do. I think the house rule about aimed shots will work adequately, but I see your point. Hey kyrub I promise to get more active again before too long, having a hiatus at the moment. I'm very interested (as always) in coding assistance. AI improvements in particular would be great. Would it be possible to change the civilian scores so the first costs you 10, the next costs you 20 and so on? That way you're encouraged to save the last few still alive, even if you lose a bunch to begin with. In general, it's way too easy to keep your score very high. It would also be nice to fix the bug where infiltration happens at random, regardless of alien missions.
  4. I agree that the damage should be lowered a bit, so you stand a fighting chance against it rather than it being insta-death. By aggressive scouting, I mean giving more incentives to finding the aliens rapidly rather than playing it safe. If the battlescape is dark, you'll need to scout even more aggressively and light the place up well. I agree that it should always be worth the risk to investigate subs. If that isn't the case, victory points and cash values can be messed about with. I agree that scout'n'snipe is probably the biggest exploit, and I think my proposed rules deal with it quite well. Sniping is still an option, but often not a good one. As for reaction traps, I think it's way too risky unless you're using soldiers with 50+ reactions for it. And those are the soldiers you probably don't want to lose, unless they're rookies who happen to have high reactions. I'd much rather charge the sub competently so the aliens don't get the chance to shoot at me. I recall once I set up a reaction trap outside a room with 4 soldiers. A single aquatoid went outside, dropped a sonic pulser and got shot. And I lost 4 men. I was sad.
  5. I actually think the potential for being mutilated with grenades and DPL add a lot to the game, even without reloading. An average casualty rate of 3-6 per mission encourages diversity in squad composition, forcing you to think carefully about which men to risk for what mission. You'll always want a handful of crack troopers and then a bunch of riff raff, that way your initial casualties won't be too expensive. And with the rules in my mod, losing too much cannon fodder gets expensive after a while so you won't get too lax about that either. Facing explosive weapons have interesting implications for your tactics. They encourage you to do aggressive scouting and to spread out your men more. This is balanced by the rule requiring (weakened) aimed shots to be used if you want to fire at aliens you can't see, making it difficult to focus enough firepower in a certain area without clustering your men a bit. Makes good formation really important. I agree that specifically setting up scenarios for training reactions is profitable. That's what I want to avoid, though. I think the player should be encouraged to make use of reactions in a natural setting simply to win the battle. Right now there's very little incentive to relying in any way on reactions, you lose out on it most of the time. It only really works with high reaction soldiers, and those are likely to be the ones you don't want to risk anyway.
  6. Well, there's a lot of balancing and menial labour to be done still And I could really use the help, so let me know if you change your mind. In Master of Orion, I like trying out a different variant each game. TFTD somehow feels different to me, I prefer just fine tuning the game balance and then play with that. One of the things I don't like about TFTD is that the only real way to get Reactions is to set up training situations. It is highly unprofitable to gain Reactions through actual use of reactions in a real situation. I'm mainly interested in closing a whole bunch of exploits and removing certain disheartening elements of the game (such as the near impossibility of defending against DPL, Tentaculats being a bit too mean and reaction fire being just overall unfair and generally useless to the human player). Actually winning TFTD is such a big chore (and should be a bit harder with this mod), that I think this mod will keep me entertained for a long time to come if I manage to finish it.
  7. I agree reducing reactions helps the player, but keep in mind that scout'n'snipe tactics are extremely limited in usefulness with the mod. You need to either have immense firepower at your disposal (also takes a few more hits on average to down an alien) with great accuracy (most weapons are crap for aimed shots, and those which are good tend to have other limitations such as high TU usage or really low ammo), or take your chance on snap shots within vision range. So while it's easier to do reaction shots, you also need to do them a lot more often. And even at halved reactions, you're taking a risk that you wouldn't otherwise need to do if you fire from the safety of long distance. The suggestion you're making is already part of it, in that you may only use snap shots on aliens you can see. And snap shots are vastly better than aimed shots. I do think aimed shots should remain an option that's useful at times. With less ammo and time restrictions, it may well end up costing you a lot more to waste a bunch of safe shots on aliens, but that's a tradeoff for the player to make and sometimes it can pay off. My time is pretty limited, and I'm scattered across a bunch of different games (Master of Magic, Master of Orion, Civilization II, Starcraft, Desktop Dungeons as well as TFTD), so I'll probably be slow and disorganized as always. If you're interested in helping me complete this mod, I'd be most grateful for assistance.
  8. I'm updating this mod. It will still follow the principles mentioned and it roughly follows the outline, but many details will be tweaked.
  9. Here are two threads with a rebalancing project I was working on a while ago: http://www.strategycore.co.uk/forums/Weapons-mod-t7505.html http://www.strategycore.co.uk/forums/Challenge-t7498.html I'm still thinking about completing it. If you agree with the general intentions of the project (changed a bit since then, but still mostly accurate), would you be interested in partnering up?
  10. Other than using the alternate research with XcomUtil (which seems to be a little bugged on occasion, but nothing serious), I suggest using house rules to limit your research. Sit down with pen and paper, and make a small list of which alien corpses or prisoners you need for certain techs. Maybe multiples for certain techs.
  11. I started this a while ago, and it's time to finish it! I hope to achieve the following: 1) More diversity in weapon selection 2) Easier early game 3) Harder mid and end game 4) Nerfing the following tactics: Cannon fodder rookies, scout'n'snipe, grenade uberness 5) Easier for the player to use reactions 6) More variety in economic decisions I'll be doing this mainly through a whole bunch of number tweaks, and to a lesser extent with house rules where a technical solution is not feasible.
  12. I burned out a bit trying to make interesting videos of a TFTD campaign, it jinxed my game quite a bit that I had to keep up the pace at all times or edit out a lot of boring decision making time. In the end, I just didn't have much fun with it. If I were to do another run, I might go forum style instead with screenshots and written commentary. Entertaining video commentary and fast paced gameplay is quite an art, one that most aren't blessed with
  13. You're welcome I'll get back to killing aliens eventually, but those videos actually removed the fun for me. It was so much work making them, and quite difficult to play fast enough for it to be worth watching. In the meantime I've been amusing myself with Master of Magic, a much less stressful game which is also in need of some tender love and modding Come check us out on the forums at dragonsword.com
  14. Master of Magic has also been disassembled, leading to very extensive bug fixes and AI improvements. Come check it out on the forums at dragonsword.com, that's where I've been spending my time after I grew a bit bored with aliens for a while
  15. I prefer TFTD over EU for a number of reasons: 1) More challenging alien base design (and really cool artifact sites) 2) The weapon stats appeal to me more (didn't like unlimited laser ammo and Plasma weapons being overpowered) 3) Cooler alien graphics (matter of taste, of course) 4) Being able to open doors without entering them 5) All-round higher difficulty Hi Civilian
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