Warspace Extension Discussion

[wilting]

Hi BlackAlpha,

 

I swapped out my own changes for warspace extension for a change, pretty much the same philosophies at work in both, but you had obviously spent more time figuring things out. Although I have figured more things out myself as a result of taking a gander at warspace.

 

There are a couple of things I have fiddled with to suit my own purposes (I like to give outsiders lots of HP to make them a kind of mini-boss). I'm finding the battlescape generally fairly easy, so I might have to switch to hardcore mode, or maybe augment certain aliens. I like to give the starting armour an extra inventory slot to extend its life.

 

I don't quite like the arc thrower in pistol slot because of the way it gets stuck in the soldiers hand/clips with other weapons (I fiddled around a lot with giving different classes different weapons options, and putting different weapons in different slots, but ultimately decided to can it, partly for this reason).

 

I found that I didn't need to build labs at all really in warspace as opposed to my own changes (I radically increased research times), and I don't quite agree that increasing the effectiveness of labs is a solution here (the better an individual lab is, the less labs the player needs to build). The change I have now settled on is reducing the number of scientists you can get per month, to make labs more necessary to boost research.

 

I didn't quite get the 'increased funding from European countries to increase motivation to build sats there' thing. Europe is my preferred starting location (for the bonus), and I like to fully cover a continent before expanding to another (if panic allows) to keep my interceptor costs down. I don't mind actual funding increases if its met by cost increases - increased maintenance costs was a good idea that I didn't do myself - although relatively realistic funding from different countries is a mild concern.

 

Anyway, the main reason I wanted to post is that for some reason I'm not getting any panic increase in countries whose abductions I don't respond to, which I'm a bit baffled by, as it shouldn't be happening.

 

Also I agree with the comment that 'makes combat more logical' doesn't really explain anything. That's a relative/opinion thing. When I first saw your mod I dismissed it because I didn't understand what elements of it even did. After doing some modding myself I understood 'oh right, it just means that number has been changed, why didn't it just say that?'

 

For example, I couldn't understand what you meant by ending panic friendly fire until I realized it meant you set the panic fire chance to zero, ending ALL panic fire. Panic fire isn't necessarily a bad thing, it can be a quite useful free shot when that berzerker in amongst your squad needs to die now. Its also one of those charm of the game things; the first time my poisoned soldier killed the VIP he was supposed to be protecting I found it to be a delightful 'xcom' moment of the kind the franchise is all about for a lot of people. That's not logical or illogical, its just an opinion. Overall I agree with the philosophy of your changes though, when I came to take a second look they were a lot of the same stuff I arrived at independently, or maybe a different way to achieve the same goal.

 

But yeah, I'm mostly wondering about the no panic from not responding to abductions thing.

[BlackAlpha]

Panic doesn't go up? Can you double check that? Panic should be going up in countries you don't help.

[Skodmunk]

Hey there, just started using your mod, couldn't help but notice that flanking seems to not work properly, I know there are a few problems with vanilla, but I have not seen it this bad before.

In 2 of the images im the only one getting flanked, when the enemy also should be flanked.

 

http://xcom.nexusmods.com/Images/925490-1351551274.jpg

http://xcom.nexusmods.com/Images/925490-1351551540.jpg

http://xcom.nexusmods.com/Images/925490-1351551589.jpg

Edited October 29, 2012 by Skodmunk

[bokauk]

Hey there, just started using your mod, couldn't help but notice that flanking seems to not work properly, I know there are a few problems with vanilla, but I have not seen it this bad before.

In 2 of the images im the only one getting flanked, when the enemy also should be flanked.

It looks like flanking/cover is working almost exactly as intended in those pictures, although the last one does seem a bit off.

 

img 1. Not sure what this is supposed to show, no one's getting flanked, which is right.

 

img 2. The enemy is closer to the fence than you and so can use the long side of the wall he's standing against, as cover (see cover system explanation pic below).

 

img 3. I suspect that you're flanked and the enemy isn't, is because you aren't against any cover, whereas the enemy is at least against the wall of half cover. The sides of slopes don't count as cover at all. I'd say the reason why he's not flanked is more likely to be a bug with the cover system in the game rather than the mod.

 

See this graphic to better understand the cover system :)

http://i.imgur.com/eqnBg.gif

Edited October 30, 2012 by bokauk

[SectoidSquisher]

Warspace is a great mod, I love it but there are a couple of things that don't seem to be working properly for me.

 

First off, I've followed all the instructions - download latest version and install it over an unmodded exe. and so on but Carapace armour isn't giving me an extra item slot, and I'm still not seeing many UFO contacts.

 

Am I doing something wrong, or is this how the mod is supposed to work? Everything else is working fine - the Arc Thrower in the pistol slot for example. How would I go about increasing the UFO contacts if I want to do it myself? One other thing: seems to me that gravely wounded and wounded are mixed up - those that are gravely wounded have a much shorter recovery time than those merely wounded.

 

Thanks in advance. :)

[Skodmunk]

 

It looks like flanking/cover is working almost exactly as intended in those pictures, although the last one does seem a bit off.

 

img 1. Not sure what this is supposed to show, no one's getting flanked, which is right.

 

img 2. The enemy is closer to the fence than you and so can use the long side of the wall he's standing against, as cover (see cover system explanation pic below).

 

img 3. I suspect that you're flanked and the enemy isn't, is because you aren't against any cover, whereas the enemy is at least against the wall of half cover. The sides of slopes don't count as cover at all. I'd say the reason why he's not flanked is more likely to be a bug with the cover system in the game rather than the mod.

 

See this graphic to better understand the cover system :)

http://i.imgur.com/eqnBg.gif

 

Image 1 edited for clarity:

 

http://xcom.nexusmods.com/images/925490-1351557541.jpg

 

Image 2 edited for clarity:

 

http://xcom.nexusmods.com/images/925490-1351557638.jpg

 

Image 3 is the one I think should speak for itself, it doesn't matter that my guy is not in cover, but yeah it "may" be the engine, however in 3 playthroughs I have never seen a shotgun at melee distance with anything but 100% hit.

[Skodmunk]

Oh yeah by the way, my paint skills are off the chart.

[BlackAlpha]

Warspace is a great mod, I love it but there are a couple of things that don't seem to be working properly for me.

 

First off, I've followed all the instructions - download latest version and install it over an unmodded exe. and so on but Carapace armour isn't giving me an extra item slot, and I'm still not seeing many UFO contacts.

 

Am I doing something wrong, or is this how the mod is supposed to work? Everything else is working fine - the Arc Thrower in the pistol slot for example. How would I go about increasing the UFO contacts if I want to do it myself? One other thing: seems to me that gravely wounded and wounded are mixed up - those that are gravely wounded have a much shorter recovery time than those merely wounded.

 

Thanks in advance. :)

 

If the Arc Thrower works and you are using only Warspace (unmodified), then everything should work. Are you sure Carapace armor doesn't have two small item slots? Go to the inventory, switch to the starting (default) armor and then switch to Carapace armor. Does that fix it?

 

Are you running Steam in offline mode? Did you install any other mods? Did you make changes yourself?

 

About UFOs. It's percentage based, which means it's possible you sometimes see very few UFOs. Generally, the further you are into the campaign, the more UFOs show up.

 

The wounded thing is randomized quite a bit. Not much I can do about that for now.

 

 

Oh yeah by the way, my paint skills are off the chart.

 

It's a game bug. Happens all the time in vanilla as well. You both could be at the same corner, but none of you gets a flank bonus, and you both miss at point blank range. That's XCOM.

Edited October 30, 2012 by BlackAlpha

[bokauk]

Image 1 edited for clarity:

Yea, it looks like you're right about img1, bottom right example.

 

img3: you're both not exatly horizontal. He's slight further back nearer the fence, so the line of sight is slighty in his favour.

 

I'm not keen on how the cover system works, but just that the above is my understanding of how it's implemented :) .Of course, I could be wrong though (again) ;)

[BlackAlpha]

I'm looking for testers to help test the next version that I plan to release this saturday, maybe friday. Note that it might be buggy. Only apply if you want to help test. PM me if you are interested.