News or not?: MeleeOnly works

[babyjebu5]

So, I kept reading people wanting melee on their units. So I did a little experiment. I added MeleeOnly to the ini file on those "soldier" ! Well, I checked my soldiers and found none of them could melee. I subsequently lost most of them during that mission gone south, so I found myself recruiting soldiers when I returned without a care for the future. I later reverted to vanilla, and repatched without that MeleeOnly property on "soldier". Gameplay continued... I think you can see where this is going..

 

There are four troops in my barracks without the ability to fire a normal attack from a weapon, unless at range 1 (adjacent) to a target. That is meleeOnly at work, for sure. It just shows up later, when new recruits are hired, since the previous recruits wouldn't get changed (duh I shoulda known that). Well, I don't know if this is news or anything, but finding this out on a fairly tough cargo mission really scared me but was laughable in the end. I ended up playing overwatch creep style, and then not taking a single hit (like I said, with special firing modes you can still make attacks, and set yourself on overwatch to successfully make reaction shots). But yea, I had noone who could shoot on my orders except my two rookies I brought along for the experience. I don't think my SHIV has done this much killing in a mission via overwatch yet!

 

I digress. The melee attack thing works; its just ingrained into the character from "birth", and removes the ability to fire a normal attack (even if you leave ShotStandard in).

 

Anyways: Is this news (that it does produce a change we can build upon)? If so, I can attach video, explain which lines I changed, post up the file with a patcher, but I doubt that would be necessary since I am a mod newb.

 

The snip I changed should suffice to at least eliminate confusion (lines I edited are styled differently):

Characters=(iType=eChar_Soldier,HP= [...] ABILITIES[0]=eAbility_TakeCover,ABILITIES[1]=eAbility_NONE,ABILITIES[2]=eAbility_NONE,

ABILITIES[3]=eAbility_NONE,ABILITIES[4]=eAbility_NONE,ABILITIES[5]=eAbility_NONE,ABILITIES[6]=eAbility_NONE,ABILITIES[7]=eAbility_NONE,

Properties[0]=eCP_CanGainXP,Properties[1]=eCP_MeleeOnly,Properties[2]=eCP_PoisonImmunity,Properties[3]=eCP_Hardened,Properties[4]=eCP_None,

Properties[5]=eCP_None [...]

 

Observations

Notice the PoisonImmunity. I added that one to see if it would work, and I see now that it does prevent poison from killing a thin man with melee.

 

Also, I added Hardened to troops using this. Really makes them troops uber tough to be nearly immune to crits so dont add it to recruits without wanting the game to be much easier. This actually served as a necessary balance factor for the addition of MeleeOnly. Same with PoisonImmunity, since without it the soldier poisons himself anytime he kills a thin man.

 

these meleeOnlys have been in my roster since day 10 (after the first Abduction mission), and are now ranked to Captain (among my best ranked soldiers! funny, that..). I will probably keep them around. The fact they have those extra qualities makes them valuable as overwatch soldiers if nothing else, so I don't plan to exclude them from my missions at all despite the fact they can never actively choose to perform a normal firing action.

[PepprmintButler]

I don't remember anyone making a detailed post about MeleeOnly in particular, but it's been known to work for a while. So do ImmunetoPoison and Hardened.

I didn't actually think about modding back and forth to recruit only a certain number of modded soldiers, that's kind of smart :)

 

The next big things to do with melee would be to actually give soldier melee weapons, and possibly a dedicated perk tree.

In debug (non-retail) mode, you can actually give your soldiers chryssalid weapons, which make them melee units - but they also inherit the chryssalid animation skeleton, for hilarious/creepy results. I suspect this even removes the need for meleeonly property, and possibly the capability to use shot abilities (needs testing). No idea how to do that in a full game though; maybe the giveweapon command might help if we get it to work (I did not).

For the perk tree, until we can actually add classes (that's not likely in the near future) that would mean converting one of the existing classes; there's a difficult choice there.

[babyjebu5]

I don't remember anyone making a detailed post about MeleeOnly in particular, but it's been known to work for a while. So do ImmunetoPoison and Hardened.

I didn't actually think about modding back and forth to recruit only a certain number of modded soldiers, that's kind of smart :)

I can't claim that one: t'was a total mistake!

For the perk tree, until we can actually add classes (that's not likely in the near future) that would mean converting one of the existing classes; there's a difficult choice there.

Honestly, I think the existing Assault class could be tweaked to make a good almost-melee-only class. For instance, with such a restriction, it makes no sense to wield anything but a Shotgun - this is good. The abilities should be a mashup that is mostly Assault and a lot of passive abilities where there were active abilities (to make sure the meleeOnly is only circumvented when it doesn't ruin the melee option):

 

Run n Gun

Sprinter -or- Lightning Reflexes

Smoke -or- Flush

Low Profile -or- Aggression

Extra Conditioning -or- Killer Instinct

Resilience

Executioner -or- Will to Survive

 

and you have an awesome melee only class - using a shotgun mind you, but he can't use it from afar due to that MeleeOnly, so it feels more like a greataxe :)

and unless he uses Flush (Which I chose for it being the lowest damage attack with the most ammo usage), the only ranged ability in the class, there is no long distance damage option without it - but plenty else to help him out. The Flush ability is a tough choice between Smoke in my opinion, since the smoke will get you in close without getting owned as well as help the team stay alive. The other ranks bring different elements of strategic possibility to the class, so you could play a sneaky devil using smoke, sprint, and low profile, or a ballsy attacker with lightning reflexes, flush, and aggression

 

EDIT: Another great decision point would be at 5th rank, extra conditioning or killer instinct; the HP is huge at that point, and will go well with Resilience, but Killer Instinct makes your best ability even better, and ensures someone dies everytime you hit using Run n Gun. I'd be choosing for awhile I think.

 

The imagery I picture for Flush is throwing the axe at the aliens to get him to move :) and a smoke cloud with axe-wielders running out is a frightening thought indeed. :)

Edited November 12, 2012 by babyjebu5