johnnylump Posted December 11, 2012 Share Posted December 11, 2012 (edited) Cool! 25 and 26 (0 and 1) are problematic. Steal the byte or let it be. Speed on geoscape, engagement speed while intercepted (faster craft escapes sooner / less time to shoot). Makes sense -- For a first try I'm reversing the speeds and engagement speeds of small scouts and battleships, and large scouts and supply barges. Edited December 11, 2012 by johnnylump Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FlyingHigh10000000 Posted December 11, 2012 Share Posted December 11, 2012 Why in the world would Firaxis put the speeds in reverse order? Isn't that just making it more complicated without reason, for a programmer? o_O Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnnylump Posted December 11, 2012 Share Posted December 11, 2012 Cool! 25 and 26 (0 and 1) are problematic. Steal the byte or let it be. Speed on geoscape, engagement speed while intercepted (faster craft escapes sooner / less time to shoot). Makes sense -- For a first try I'm reversing the speeds and engagement speeds of small scouts and battleships, and large scouts and supply barges. I suspect this is done below the level Firaxis' programmers work at -- that is, it's done by their compiler, rather than the coders. It probably helps the processor to read the numbers backwards; it always knows the first bytes it encounters are the hex equivalent of the "1s" digit, then then "10s" etc. BTW, after an absolute minimum of testing, putting battleship speed numbers on a small scout seems to achieve your desired effect. Versus interceptors with avalanches, you have less than 8 seconds of engagement time. I had one escape, and one shot down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlackAlpha Posted December 11, 2012 Share Posted December 11, 2012 (edited) Cool! 25 and 26 (0 and 1) are problematic. Steal the byte or let it be. Speed on geoscape, engagement speed while intercepted (faster craft escapes sooner / less time to shoot). Makes sense -- For a first try I'm reversing the speeds and engagement speeds of small scouts and battleships, and large scouts and supply barges. I suspect this is done below the level Firaxis' programmers work at -- that is, it's done by their compiler, rather than the coders. It probably helps the processor to read the numbers backwards; it always knows the first bytes it encounters are the hex equivalent of the "1s" digit, then then "10s" etc. BTW, after an absolute minimum of testing, putting battleship speed numbers on a small scout seems to achieve your desired effect. Versus interceptors with avalanches, you have less than 8 seconds of engagement time. I had one escape, and one shot down. What I noticed is that the higher the number, the less time you get. With a number of 60, you get about 5 seconds ingame. A number of 20 is about 15 ingame seconds. Edited December 11, 2012 by BlackAlpha Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FlyingHigh10000000 Posted December 11, 2012 Share Posted December 11, 2012 (edited) So, I'm going to try the following speed changes: Small Scout - BattleshipLarge Scout - Supply BargeAbductor - AbductorSupply Barge - Supply BargeBattleship - BattleshipOverseer - Overseer This way, ships are much faster, but at the same time, hopefully still able to be shot down sometimes. To balance it out, I'm also lowering the cost of the satellite consumables, that way the player isn't just watching everything speed out of view. Edited December 11, 2012 by FlyingHigh10000000 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnnylump Posted December 14, 2012 Share Posted December 14, 2012 So, I'm going to try the following speed changes: Small Scout - BattleshipLarge Scout - Supply BargeAbductor - AbductorSupply Barge - Supply BargeBattleship - BattleshipOverseer - Overseer This way, ships are much faster, but at the same time, hopefully still able to be shot down sometimes. To balance it out, I'm also lowering the cost of the satellite consumables, that way the player isn't just watching everything speed out of view. How are your results so far? I like the engagement speed adjustment for the small scout. Large scout may still need to be a bit faster, particularly if we want to make it a challenge to prevent abductions late game. (I haven't tested the bigger ships on my playthrough so far) Moreover, I think I'm going to test making both scouts even faster on the geoscape. I'd sorta like it to be that if you don't get the scouts with your first interceptor, you aren't going to get them at all. I'm assuming that speed on the geoscape translates in ability to "get away" after an interception. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlackAlpha Posted December 22, 2012 Share Posted December 22, 2012 Did anyone figure out how to change the chance of running into small scouts rather than the large ones? It seems that after a short while you stop seeing small scouts entirely. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnnylump Posted December 22, 2012 Share Posted December 22, 2012 Did anyone figure out how to change the chance of running into small scouts rather than the large ones? It seems that after a short while you stop seeing small scouts entirely. Looks like the at least some of the random UFOs are generated by XComStrategyGame.XGStrategyAI.FillUFOPool and/or XGStrategyAI.AddUFOs. They call MakeUFO, and UFO #4 is the small scout, and #4 isn't called after April. Not sure if that's the whole story, though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnnylump Posted January 10, 2013 Share Posted January 10, 2013 Following up: Has anyone figured out more about UFO assignments? Specifically, I'm looking for the code that assigns a large scout and an abductor to abduction missions when SHOW_UFOS_ON_MISSION is true. (Thinking about changing the first ship to something tougher than a large scout). It's probably also where the game assigns dual battleships for terror missions. FillUFOPool seems to add UFOs based on month; I guess that's the random UFOs you run into. Oddly, I can't find any reference to the SHOW_UFOS_ON_MISSION variable; I'm poking around in XGStrategyAI. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlackAlpha Posted January 10, 2013 Share Posted January 10, 2013 Following up: Has anyone figured out more about UFO assignments? Specifically, I'm looking for the code that assigns a large scout and an abductor to abduction missions when SHOW_UFOS_ON_MISSION is true. (Thinking about changing the first ship to something tougher than a large scout). It's probably also where the game assigns dual battleships for terror missions. FillUFOPool seems to add UFOs based on month; I guess that's the random UFOs you run into. Oddly, I can't find any reference to the SHOW_UFOS_ON_MISSION variable; I'm poking around in XGStrategyAI. I'd very much like to know this as well. I wasn't able to figure it out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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