X-COM OpenXcom Thread

[Cael]

It ends up that you can and will die to piddly laser rifles even in the best armour available in the base game.

Doesn't lasers have additional effect that deteriorates armour?

All weapons do.

 

[AgentFransis]

XCom has a weird damage calculation.

Armour absorbs between 1 and the armour value (so 1-110 for front power armour), IIRC

Weapons do anywhere between 50-200% (again, IIRC) damage (so a heavy plasma at 115 can do upwards of 230 damage) before armour absorption is subtracted from it.

It ends up that you can and will die to piddly laser rifles even in the best armour available in the base game.

No. Damage is randomly modified (0-200% in UFO, 50-150% in TFTD and a mix in mods, each weapon can have it's own settings). Armor is always a fixed flat reduction. Some weapons have a degree of armor penetration and some weapons degrade armor when hitting.

Haven't played vanilla in a long time but you can see it very clearly in piratez where anything in carapace armor or better is completely immune to things like pistols, smgs and most shotgun shells.

https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Damage

 

[Average Manatee]

All damage sources degrade armor when hitting. If 20 damage gets through armor then armor is also reduced by 20 on whatever side was hit. But some weapons in OpenXcomEx can also have a modifier that causes them to degrade armor automatically without even needing to beat the armor value. This is used for e.g. acid spray like attacks that melt through armor on contact even if they don't go through.

You can find out lots of the specifics through the info button in the ufopedia which lets you directly see the weapon and ammo definitions. If you want to see a completely filled up UFOpedia start a custom battle and hit 'U'.

 

[lightbane]

Adeptus Arbites are basically a remixed Imperial Guard. Not much to be said about it.

Which makes sense, since they're police with military gear. Who are they gonna call in the case of Chaos? The Chaos Bust- Imperial Guard!
You also can execute soldiers with a Commissar to restore morale, but it's something IMO should be done sparingly, as losing a veteran soldier from a "disciplinary action" hurts.

Sisters of Battle are space marines except instead of all their soldiers starting with scout armor (50) they start with Sororitas Power Armor (100), which is just insanely better. Granted they don't get +30 TUs from scout armor or really high strength from the stronger armors but just 100 base armor just means everything when trying to be a tanky, aggressive faction. Seems like Sisters of Battle are just all out better at being space marines than space marines. Also doesn't have retarded drop pods.

Starting with power armor is a bid advantage, since Sororitas don't have "lesser armor" as an early-game equivalent like the Marines. They use a special Faith resource though, but I don't know the mechanics behind it.
I wonder if there are male Sororitas as well. IIRC in previous versions it was possible to have female Marines randomly generated, heh.

 

[AgentFransis]

Tried the 40k mod and I really don't get how its supposed to be played.

Been playing my self for a bit and my impressions are sadly the same. Assaulted a couple of ork ground transports and it was brutal, lost half the squad every time. Your weapons are mostly dogshit while the orks seem to have no trouble landing accurate bursts from half the map away. Also the battlemaps themselves are weird, I have a lot of trouble assessing line of sight and cover in many cases.

 

[robinox]

XCom has a weird damage calculation.

IMO you have to think UFOEU damage as "chance to kill".
for an unit with 30hp, a weapon with dmg=100 (so 0-200 dmg) has:
* 85% chance to kill the unit unarmored
* 60% chance to kill the unit wearing 50 armor
* 35% chance to kill the unit wearing 100 armor.
it's a double gamble: first you gamble with the accuracy, then with the damage.
if you want to have a more realiable damage chance, you use explosives, which are a much more controlled resource (limited ammo, no autoshot, high-ish TUs cost, moderate accuracy) compared to non-explosive firearms.
X-pirates AFAIK does a lot of things with the damage (penetration rules and so on) that vanilla UFO does not have.

 

[AgentFransis]

Played 40k Some more. First game I had non stop orks and kept attacking their ground transports. Took terrible casualties, lost my initial armors pretty fast and eventually died in a heroic last stand in an ork terror mission. Second game now is going much better. Conclusions so far:

- The ground transports (and escorting fighters) are optional side missions. They don't generate activity in the graphs, don't seem to affect the score and don't provide any useful loot (besides potentially traitor guardsmen corpses). They're quite hard so it's better to ignore them in the early game unless you have the right tools and are confident you can take them with acceptable casualties. Orks have two transport types: one without a turret that gives a 100k bounty and one with a turret that gives a 250k bounty. In both cases you will end up surrounded by orks which are somewhat tough and their guns hit hard, and the turret needs at least a few krak rockets to take down and can mess you up. Then you have traitor guardsmen chimeras (500k bounty) which are best just avoided all together. The guardsmen themselves are quite annoying and will chuck grenades and fire grenade launchers at you, while the two chimera turrets will just tear you a new one and take serious firepower to take down (at least a few krak rockets or melta bombs each). Don't try to intercept them either as they can tear up your fighters.

- The snipers are great and can 1-2 shot even traitor marines with AP ammo.

- Give everyone a combat knife. The drop pods will often put you in melee range to a bunch/most of the enemies and they can peel open power armor much faster than bolters. I also like to have one armored marine with a chainsword and pistol.

- It's explained in the pedia but bear in mind that the mod has special weight mechanics: being overweight doesn't reduce TU anymore - it reduces energy. So snipers and heavy weapon guys still have full TUs to work with, they just can't move very fast. Also pay attention to the recoil mechanic. When a gun has more recoil than you have strength your accuracy will suck even harder. You need to give your rookie marines the light bolters, not the normal ones. And probably ignore the heavy bolter until later.

 

[lightbane]

Someone started a LP of XCOM Files. May be worth keeping an eye on it.
https://www.lp.zone/t/the-x-com-files-the-truth-is-out-there/4030/2

 

[eXalted]

Someone started a LP of XCOM Files. May be worth keeping an eye on it.
https://www.lp.zone/t/the-x-com-files-the-truth-is-out-there/4030/2

Nice. Also, ClosetYeti is streaming Tuesday-Friday from 09:00 GMT. He is in the late-game already.

 

[lightbane]

https://openxcom.mod.io/

Here there are some mandatory mods for the WH40k mod, such as more armor variants for the IG, and better bravery stats for the Marine recruits. They are supposed to have no fear, so IMO they should have Bravery of 90-100 and immune to morale damage. I would make an exception for the cowardly Chaos Legions and the barbaric Frost Wolves, but neither are playable in the mod.

 

[AgentFransis]

https://openxcom.mod.io/

Here there are some mandatory mods for the WH40k mod, such as more armor variants for the IG, and better bravery stats for the Marine recruits. They are supposed to have no fear, so IMO they should have Bravery of 90-100 and immune to morale damage. I would make an exception for the cowardly Chaos Legions and the barbaric Frost Wolves, but neither are playable in the mod.

You just linked to the mod.io homepage. And I don't see any submods there, nor on the forum.

 

[lightbane]

That's odd. They're just there in plain sight, the first pics. Here there are the two links, just in case:

https://openxcom.mod.io/and-they-shall-know-no-fear-a-40k-submod

https://openxcom.mod.io/advanced-carapace-for-others

 

[AgentFransis]

Oh yeah I see them now. I didn't look at the full list, just searched "40k" which only found the base mod (abysmal search implementation).

 

[Alienman]

For you that have played Final Mod Pack might have noticed that some of the UFOpedia art don't really feel right. There is some anime, cartoony stuff that I don't think fit the setting. Anyway, in my autism I have changed some of those pictures to more... Sci-fi-ish art.

Spoiler

Alloy ammo

Cannon

Incendiaries

Launchers

Machine-guns

Melee weapons

Pistols

Rifles

Shotgun

Submachine-guns

Sniper Rifles

How it looks in-game:

Download here!

How to install:

C:\ ... Documents \ OpenXcom \ mods \ Final Mod Pack \ Resources \ FinalModPack \ UfopediaTechPics

Not sure about the graphics in the mod The X-com Files - if it use the same art for these sections, but if it does I assume the replacement will work there too.
---------------------------------------------------------

EDIT:

Decide to tweak the pictures a bit, wasn't 100% happy with some of them so changed out a few pieces of art.

Spoiler

Cannons

Machine-guns

Rifles

Shotguns

Sniper rifles

Download the updated pack here!

You can of course switch between the graphics however you like.

 

[Alienman]

Alright, decided to change the remaining art. It's not that the original is all bad, but mostly did it for consistency and fun I guess. This will be the final pack, aka version 3 and will have all the changes in one pack. The other packs will remain if someone wanna switch out some art for something else since I decided to switch out the rifle art once again.

Spoiler

Alien Biology

Alien gardens

Alien neuro-psychology

Alien subjugation

Antimatter

Fusion calibration

Fusion explosives

Fusion weapons

Gravity generator

Optical processor

Plasma calibration

Plasma weapons

Tractor beam

And the new rifle-art:

Download the final version here!
----

How to install:

C:\ ... Documents \ OpenXcom \ mods \ Final Mod Pack \ Resources \ FinalModPack \ UfopediaTechPics

 

[eXalted]

Alienman They look pretty good. Going to use them. Thanks.

 

[AgentFransis]

40k is a good mod. It's not as expansive and addictive as piratez but what it does it does very well - the style and artwork is great and it's very appropriately brutal.

I'm at the start of the fourth month playing as tactical marines and I tried my first base assault. Turns out it was a traitor guard base and instead of the usual xcom underground base it was a realistic looking above ground guard outpost - a central barracks, supply and vehicle depots all around, parked lightnings etc. And crucially a pair of fully armed chimeras. And of course a shitload of guardsmen all around armed with fun stuff like missile launchers, grenade launchers, melta guns and plasma pistols, including a few nasty dudes with personal shields. My drop pods put me right next to the chimeras so my only chance is to take out their turrets on turn 1, then smoke and sweep. I give four marines pre-armed melta bombs. The first two land right next to one turret. The other two fucking miss and land behind the chimera. Yada, yada, yada the guard kicks my ass.

I've killed a whole bunch of chaos marines of all sorts by this point, including nasty fucking Khorne berserkers, chaos psykers and a Tzeentch sorcerer and the humble guardsmen and their chimeras are the toughest by far

 

[agris]

Alienman doing Yahweh’s work. You interested in de-weebing XPiratez?

 

[axx]

Brilliant art Alienman.

 

[lightbane]

Alienman doing Yahweh’s work. You interested in de-weebing XPiratez?

I remember someone already tried making an "all-ages" rated mod for Piratez. He eventually gave up.

 

[Alienman]

Alienman doing Yahweh’s work. You interested in de-weebing XPiratez?

Sounds like a big project. And I have not played X-piratez much actually, so I wouldn't know what the graphics represent. Like I went through the X-com files (not played that one much either) and there is pictures of ghosts and stuff. Is there an actual ghost faction in the game?

 

[eXalted]

Is there an actual ghost faction in the game?

Yeah, there are Ghosts (and some missions where you fight them) and I think it has something to do with dead gals but I am still in mid-game.

 

[lightbane]

Is there an actual ghost faction in the game?

Yeah, there are Ghosts (and some missions where you fight them) and I think it has something to do with dead gals but I am still in mid-game.

Ghosts are a thing in both Piratez and XCOM files. Obviously, in the latter they're treated more seriously.

 

[Alienman]

Finally done with the 1.0 version of the X-com Files alternative art. I didn't change everything, since some stuff look good already. I did tweak some of the art to my liking though, but I won't post those here. I haven't changed the dossiers yet though. I'm still thinking about that. The biggest offender to my senses and immersion in this mod is the commendation graphic. For some unknown reason Solarius Scorch ditched the excellent commendation mod/graphic he made for Final Mod Pack for this weird collection of pictures masquerading as commendations. Anyway, I changed the medal graphic to the most basic one from FMP and it's now the default replacement for all commendations.

Otherwise, I have only touched the UFOpedia. I got rid of the excessive cartoony/anime stuff and art that makes references to other games/movies (still some left though). To me those things are immersion killers. Too many to list them all, so here is an sample:

[Spoilers down below!]

Spoiler

I can't guarantee that all will work without graphical issues, since well, I can't see them all in-game. But the ones I can see work at least!

Download the X-com Files Alternative Art 1.0 here!
-----------------------------

How to install:

C:\ ... Documents \ OpenXcom \ mods \ XcomFiles \ Resources \

(Remember to make a backup of the files, and you can pick and choose however you like. It's easy to switch around stuff!)

EDIT:

X-com Files Alternative Art 1.1 is done, and thanks to eXalted it's now a mod! Mostly done some tweaking/cleaning up, but a few new UFOpedia sections have changed. Some examples:

Spoiler

Download 1.1 here!
-------------------------

This will be the last update to the UFOpedia art, so that part won't get updated more (hopefully ). I have not yet decided if I want to update the dossier art, since it looks like it will be very time consuming, and full with spoilers. Unfortunately I have to read the dossiers to get a grip on what the person in question are supposed to look like.

Since this is now a mod, just unzip the files into:

C:\ ... Documents \ OpenXcom \ mods

And activate the mod from the mod menu in-game.

 

[eXalted]

Alienman Those are great. You know, you can have them as a separate mod so that they don't overwrite the originals. Like this -
https://www42.zippyshare.com/v/8qVBFNrM/file.html

This way you can update the mod and still have your images as alternatives because they won't be overwritten.