Adding Perks to Aliens

[Amineri]

Bullet Swarm would have to be unlocked, too, as it is currently tied tightly to the Heavy class.

 

Looking at the UIGermanMode code, it looks as though the game WILL by default display any perks that the alien has. While surprises are nice, if mini-bosses are created with powerful stat combinations, and the models for these aliens look no different than any other alien, then it might be a bit over-the-top to not display those perks.

 

Would probably require an additional mod to turn off display of alien abilities, but it should be doable for those that like pain.

[Amineri]

So, wow, complete success.

 

All I did was add the perk "Low Profile" to all aliens (no filtering or randomization, for testing purposes).

 

The command was as simple as GetCharacter().GivePerk(5); -- exactly the same as I would use (in the tactical game) for XCOM soldiers.

 

Here is the result:

http://wiki.tesnexus.com/images/4/40/XCOM_Outsider_w_Low_Profile.jpg

 

Yes, that's an Outsider with the Low Profile perk. It is actually behind low cover, but you can see that it is getting the high cover -40% thing.

 

Brutal.

 

I also had a Thin Man with Low Profile.

 

I think this will be an easy way to upgrade the aliens that appear early so that they are viable in the late game. This looks to be a pretty straightforward way to make the mid- and late-game tactical missions a LOT more challenging.

 

I won't post up a screenshot for every single perk -- I'll just list which ones work.

[Yzaxtol]

*screams and giggles like a school-girl*

[Amineri]

I'm not sure how exactly I can configure this to make it easy to implement. Right now it basically requires coding up everything by hand in the DebugAnims function.

 

Each call to assign an alien a perk takes up 30 bytes of space, and the DebugAnims function has 2560 bytes, so there's a good amount of room to spare.

 

Alien stat randomization is pretty straightforward. Can make it the same +/- amount for all aliens, or can select based on alien types.

 

It's also very possible to get the count of number of elapsed days to help decide when to grant perks to aliens.

 

If people want to create mini-boss aliens (say like a super-Chryssalid with 15 HP, and +20 defense, with Lightning Reflexes and Tactical Sense perks), what sort of triggers would people think of to use?

 

It could be something as simple as a fixed (presumably small) % chance per alien, like 2% or 4%. I might be able to come up with some sort of formula base on alien type and number of elapsed days. Could look at the number of deceased soldiers / number of days and punish the player for not having enough dead soldiers. So many options!

 

If I make aliens this deadly maybe I'll have to try and build a UI mod so the player can take more meat ... erm ... soldiers ... to a mission <_<

[Yzaxtol]

Squadsight for Thin-men, Cyberdiscs and Sectopods pls :biggrin: And Holo-targeting for Drones.

 

My main plan is to provide alot more specialism among the aliens so that each alien is approached differently and priorities made in the tactical combat.

 

E.g.

Taking out the drones so they stop granting the Cyberdisc/Sectopod greater range and Aim bonuses from Holo-targeting.

Not getting too close to Floaters as they're crazy good up close.

Getting near to Thin-men as they, like Snipers can't aim well in close combat.

 

etc etc, and I'll try and get a list of perks that I'd love to see assigned to each alien as basic.

Edited May 11, 2013 by Yzaxtol

[anUser]

hmm .. making it configurable is quite a challenge. I suggested somewhere else (or was it this thread?) creating new ini entries for each alien to store perks for each alien. I like Yzaxtol's idea of giving more specialization to each alien, but I'd also like some variety, so an ideal solution (at least for me) would be having 2 extra entries for alien (optional, and in any order if possible), so for each alien it has a pool of up to 7 perks that would be granted just for being of that class (leaving a setting to 0 wouldn't grant perk), and in the other entry there's 6 perks (perk ID) and a value that could be used to choose (up to) how many of those perks are selected.

 

an example:

Characters=(iType=22, // ID for the alien
HP=3, // pick up to 3 perks from the list at random
Offense=2F, // perk Covering Fire
Defense=XX // some other perk,
Mobility=0, SightRadius=0, Will=0, Psionics=0, CritHitChance=0, CritWoundChance=0, FlightFuel=0, Reaction=0, (...)

 

... but I think I'll go with a hand-coded mix of custom and random perks per alien by now

 

maybe there could be a way to group common perks among aliens and grant an amount of them proportional to the time elapsed since invasion started, a la: while (I < days elapsed / factor vaule) {pick perk at random; I++} so that could be covered in a single block and then manually place those perks unique to certain aliens...

[Amineri]

It looks like the order Pods are deployed in the following order:

 

1. DeployMissionCommander();
2. DeploySecondaryAliens();
3. DeploySoldiers();
4. DeployHunters();
5. DeployRoaming();

SecondaryAliens are basically "Terror Mission" class aliens. Terror Missions get only Secondaries, Abduction missions get only soldiers. UFOs always get a Commander, some soldiers, and possibly some secondaries depending on ship type. All this can be edited in XcomStrategyGame.upk of course.

What I'm getting at is that the squad position 0 will always be the mission commander if there is one. On abduction missions all units are soldiers, so which type of soldier is in squad position 0 is a bit random.

I'm looking to see if there is a way to mark the pods in the strategy game so that upgradable aliens could be designated at the strategy level and simply implemented once the tactical game is reached. Will have to see.

[misterbonk]

Hi there, I am new to modding, but as far as I know XGUnit.Init in the XComGame.ukp is the right place for it...

 

...so in vintage xcom crash landed aliens were wounded.

 

Is it possible to do the following?

 

1) Check for mission type, which is 3 for Crashed UFOs. So there is the need to check for something along the lines of XComTacticalGRI(class'Engine'.static.GetCurrentWorldInfo().GRI).m_kBattle.m_kDesc.m_iMissionType == 3

2) Check for AI character with IsAI() function, and try to decrease the health of all crew members maybe with the TakeDirectDamage function (???) with value e.g 5 points