X-COM OpenXcom Thread

[Average Manatee]

What does Hyper & Trajectory

Makes bullets much faster, so combat plays faster. They hit instantly like the shotguns do. It does add a bullet trail that remains for a few seconds after the bullet is fired to see the path. Very cool to see barrages of bullets.

Facility Expansion

Adds garages (starting facility for cars) and advanced hangers that hold more craft. It does make the early game slightly harder since it also limits storage and living quarters until promotion 1.

Super Bughunt

Turns on bughunt mode (the thing that shows remaining enemies on the minimap) after 30 turns. It is basically cheating but its freaking annoying finding things sometimes.

making it easier for the stunners to nab them non-lethally.

Sounds too chancy for me since you might kill them. I find just shooting everything and taking captives/people who get stunned by bullets works fine early game, past that I have better weapons. Milkor MGL is actually really good I'm finding, convenient to carry and great range/arc so multiple soldiers can spam a single target, 6 shots too.

I agree that Colt is better than Magnum, range-wise, but you shouldn't be using either at long range for very long. At medium range and beneath, the Magnum owns because it has far better firepower.

13 range is still a little limiting. I do think Magnum is definitely eventually better vs. things that start having even moderate armor though. But by then you're like 90% using rifles, and there's even stronger guns coming shortly (wildey, UAC pistol, blackops magnum).

I need to try the two Shotgun Revolvers sometime, I suspect they can be very good as 1h pistols for zombie missions.

Kludge and Mateba? Not that good imo. 12x5 damage is a joke vs. even 5 armor zombies and 10 armor ones don't flinch at all. UAC pistol could punch through though.

 

[Gumsmith]

So, some numbers:

Colt .45 DPT: Snap 125 (range 15), Aimed 75 (range 20)
Glock 18: Auto 95 (range 14), Snap 105 (range 15), Aimed 79 (range 20)
Magnum: Snap 126 (range 13), Aimed 98 (range 16)

Glock is just worse than Colt, especially considering even weak enemies have about 5 armor which will hurt it much more. Magnum is kind of only good against heavy armor but also more close ranged, I'm not a huge fan.

You misunderstand me. Yes, Glock is worse than Colt... but in that case, that's a good thing! Because you see, the point of the first use for glock is not to kill enemies, but to wound, weaken and bleed them. You can literally plink a cultist once and then avoid them until they fall down on the ground, dying. You can decrease their HP, making it easier for the stunners to nab them non-lethally.

I did that too on suspect apprehension missions, not really necessary but more living guys is more score.

In spiderhell I consider anyone melee fighting a spider to be doomed, the hope is for the dog to bark them so that they can be shotgunned but this usually doesn't work because dog's reactions is untrained, that's why I take the less trained agents on that mission. Otherwise my dog usually gets shot if I use it offensively because there's no cover, I should probably stop taking them to forests and deserts.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Makes bullets much faster, so combat plays faster. They hit instantly like the shotguns do. It does add a bullet trail that remains for a few seconds after the bullet is fired to see the path. Very cool to see barrages of bullets.

I will have to see that myself.

Adds garages (starting facility for cars) and advanced hangers that hold more craft. It does make the early game slightly harder since it also limits storage and living quarters until promotion 1.

Ooooh, that's interesting! Did modders finally find a way to make facilities which hold multiple vehicles? Something like that could make cars and stuff Great Again. Having a fleet of smaller vehicles sounds awesome

Sounds too chancy for me since you might kill them. I find just shooting everything and taking captives/people who get stunned by bullets works fine early game, past that I have better weapons. Milkor MGL is actually really good I'm finding, convenient to carry and great range/arc so multiple soldiers can spam a single target, 6 shots too.

Its chancy yeah, but its mostly meant for targets that can take a glock bullet and live.

13 range is still a little limiting. I do think Magnum is definitely eventually better vs. things that start having even moderate armor though. But by then you're like 90% using rifles, and there's even stronger guns coming shortly (wildey, UAC pistol, blackops magnum).

Yeah, the range is limiting.
Pretty sure Magnum got nerfed, because it used to be superior to Colt in every way.

 

[Average Manatee]

Ooooh, that's interesting! Did modders finally find a way to make facilities which hold multiple vehicles? Something like that could make cars and stuff Great Again. Having a fleet of smaller vehicles sounds awesome

Yeah, Garages are small 1x1 and cheap so you can have multiple cars and vans. The 3x3 hanger has 4 landing pads. There's also an advanced alien tech 2x2 hanger that has 3 landing pads.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Well, the Temptation got too big and I decided to play X-COM Files again. Superhuman Difficulty because I'm nuts that's why.

Quick play, but lulz my first mission ended in two agents being shotgunned to death by some Dagonite asshole. At least the second one went better.

Decided to go for two bases right out of gate, one in NA so I can protect US, Mexico and Canada and fight EXALT, and the second is going to be a base to cover Europe, MENA and most of Africa, in which I'm going to conduct operations against Cult of Dagon and Red Dawn. Far East is going to be for a future third base. These two bases should cover three out of four cults.

The moment my third hangar gets built, I'm buying a Mudranger in case of a big close-by mission. Getting a real opportunity to use one of these is rare, but oh-so-worth it.

I don't remember the appearance of your new staff at game start giving you some items, looks like a new feature, that is actually pretty cool. Got Secret Files, Weapon Box with an Uzi and a Money Briefcase.

Already got with a -250 points negative event out of gate (Council Member's Child was kidnapped). Yeah we're off to a good start, yey.

 

[Average Manatee]

I think Xcomfiles uses the default Xcom funding change formula. The way it works is pretty lenient. I don't have the formula but IIRC it's something like this:

Take Xcom Score. Subtract total alien score. Then for each nation subtract each alien score in that nation times two. From there a chance to be happy/neutral/mad is calculated. This is where my knowledge of the formula is lacking but basically if the end result is 500 then each nation is likely to increase funding. It's random and each point does increase the chance but with heavily diminishing returns so that 5k points is only marginally better than 500. Once they've decided to increase funding the increase is entirely random between 5% and 20%.

So basically if you have like 1k net points and don't suffer any horrific defeats you'll do fine. And even horrific defeats will only really hurt you in their home country, which there are like 50 of in Xcomfiles. I'm not sure how the event points work, I'd hope its just a global score penalty but it might be to wherever your first base is located or something. You should generally be pretty OK, Xcomfiles has way more missions than vanilla where there may only be 1 or 2 missions a month. Also remember that research adds points.

Incidentally, they've apparently added some feature where you get rewarded with skilled agents depending on your score each month. The tech was "Requesting Veteran Agents" I think. Pretty good idea IMO, the mod relies on supersoldiers to get over the bumps in the promotion system and previously 1 or 2 bad grenades on a mission could torpedo a run. The recruits are randomized but are legit excellent, I think at a minimum all stats are better than what a gym would train. Only downside is that psi strength does still appear to be 100% random so I'm still obligated to dump 3/4ths of them.

 

[Covenant]

New version of Piratez is out.

From what I've heard since I last played (a couple of versions back), Dioxine's added even more of those commendations that give you stacking penalties for using certain weapons, is that right? It was bad enough when he added the freshness drain to whichever one you get for using charm knockouts (Succubus? Arouser?), but even more? Why does he have such a need to dive ball-deep into mechanics that the majority of his playerbase seem to find aggravating?

 

[Demo.Graph]

Why does he have such a need to dive ball-deep into mechanics that the majority of his playerbase seem to find aggravating?

I'd say that he tries to balance unit builds (race-weapon-training pack combos) against each other and fluff.
The majority of the playerbase probably didn't try to spreadsheet it all.

 

[Covenant]

Why does he have such a need to dive ball-deep into mechanics that the majority of his playerbase seem to find aggravating?

I'd say that he tries to balance unit builds (race-weapon-training pack combos) against each other and fluff.
The majority of the playerbase probably didn't try to spreadsheet it all.

Transformations and armours are a much better lever to use for that than weapons. There's way more than enough logistical micromanagement in the game already; having to keep track of which weapon is part of which commendation, what its effects are, and whether your soldier can afford to get a few more kills with it, is just needless pain.

It's all well and good to say 'You don't have to min-max and take it that seriously', but it's a game where the typical campaign length is measured in the hundreds of hours, and if you're playing it like a man, you're not reloading when you die/lose. So of course people are going to want to try to not accidentally kneecap their team. I don't particularly mind for minor things, but the ones that have stronger effects like increased freshness drain and reduced stamina regen are galling, and contribute to that pervasive sense throughout the game of 'Well hold on, if I'm giving you something nice I better make sure I shit in it in some way' (e.g. x4 freshness drain on the best armours).

 

[Jaedar]

New version of Piratez is out.

From what I've heard since I last played (a couple of versions back), Dioxine's added even more of those commendations that give you stacking penalties for using certain weapons, is that right? It was bad enough when he added the freshness drain to whichever one you get for using charm knockouts (Succubus? Arouser?), but even more? Why does he have such a need to dive ball-deep into mechanics that the majority of his playerbase seem to find aggravating?

Eh, I don't mind the commendations at all. They're good flavor, and even if you don't metagame it you're going to end up with way more + than -. I beat the game and I never tried to minmax any commendations.

Even the one you complain about, has these effects at final level:
Stats:
‏‏‎10 ‎Energy
· ‏‏‎3 ‎ VooDoo skill
· ‏‏‎10 ‎️Bravery
Recover per turn:
Health 3
Freshness -3.6
Stun 5

-3 freshness per turn is pretty rough (depending on unit type. A peasant or SS won't care), but 3 hp recovery and 5 stun is also a lot.
And if you really dislike it just use one of the other 5 ways (so, more than dozens of particular weapons) to capture people? It doesn't actually drain anything until level 3, so there's plenty of time to abort and change tactics if you decide you don't like it.

pervasive sense throughout the game of 'Well hold on, if I'm giving you something nice I better make sure I shit in it in some way' (e.g. x4 freshness drain on the best armours).

I disagree on commendations, but I do agree with this in general. There are so many armors and ships I would never ever use, because everything good about them is undone by a crippling in some other way.

 

[Average Manatee]

New version of Piratez is out.

Nice. Will have to see if I have the will to continue X-Com after finishing Xcom Files (which also got an update but it looks incredibly minor).

 

[Jaedar]

A while back we had a discussion in this thread about how sniping/spotting is not the coolest of mechanics. As a result of that I made a suggestion on the official oxce forums that spotters spotting when being shot at feels bad and should be optional. It seems this has now lead to implementation in the codebase, with a variable exposed to modders called extendedSpotOnHitForSniping.

https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?topic=12278.msg169242#msg169242

Possible options:
0 = no spotting on hit (this is the new default)
1 = spotting only if the hit unit doesn't die or fall unconscious
2 = always spotting on hit (this was the original default)

Presumably this will be in the released version of openXcom soonish, so spotting will become a way more fair mechanic (unless the modder decides to keep the current behaviour, but it seems it's really easy to change a mods config file to have the behaviour you want as a player). As long as it is 0, stealth should be a viable mechanic against omni-spotter factions.

 

[lightbane]

Let's hope it's automatically applied 0 for Piratez and XCF.

 

[Average Manatee]

Definitely a better implementation. I see that Meridian rejected your suggestion (happened to all mine as well) until Solarius Scorch agreed. Since he's the X-Com files guy I guess that mod will get it.

It would be better for modders if it was a per-unit attribute rather than a global rule but I guess its too late to make that request. I have a feeling that Dioxine will go "well some of the highest tier units should have magic brain link powers of spotting and since it can't be disable individually they all get it".

In practice I predict 0 will be way too imbalanced with current popular mod spotting rules (base vision range 40 rather than 20 which makes night fighting with flares OP). I wonder whether 1 activates if you shoot an enemy, hit them but don't kill, then kill them with the next shot.

Also I really wish there was some kind of rule that your reaction fire can't reveal you because its basically punishing you for something that should be good to do.

 

[Jaedar]

I wonder whether 1 activates if you shoot an enemy, hit them but don't kill, then kill them with the next shot.

Yes, almost certainly.

Also I really wish there was some kind of rule that your reaction fire can't reveal you because its basically punishing you for something that should be good to do.

Every kind of shooting at the enemy is good to do

I see that Meridian rejected your suggestion (happened to all mine as well) until Solarius Scorch agreed.

Yeah. Bit annoying, but I can also see why the policy would be "do nothing unless a modder asks for it", since if modders aren't interested it won't be used anyway.

I have a feeling that Dioxine will go "well some of the highest tier units should have magic brain link powers of spotting and since it can't be disable individually they all get it".

My understanding is that Meridian also exposed this to scripting, so if you really wanted you could control it with very fine detail. We'll see.

 

[Average Manatee]

Every kind of shooting at the enemy is good to do

Depends on how outmatched you are at the sniper/spotter game. Sucks when a single unthreatening low level dude walks into one of your flares halfway across the map, gets killed, then you take multiple grenades/rockets in return.

Yes, almost certainly.

Yeah. Reading the code the spotting happens on hit, so even autofire would reveal you if a single bullet doesn't get the kill. Kind of a shame. I feel like Xcom mods are commonly going too far in the direction of advantaging single shot high powered sniper rifle-type weaons with >100% accuracy as opposed to the chaos of OG Xcom troops autofiring everywhere and hitting half the map.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

One interesting possibility would be making a stat-dependent roll somehow. Perhaps based on Reactions?

There's a difference between knowing you are being shot at, and knowing from WHERE you are being shot at.

 

[Average Manatee]

I wasn't aware the Auto sniper rifle was that good. I liked the CAWS shotgun to combine it with the tactical shield armor.

Auto-sniper is 1% ACC^2+ 25% REA. With 100 ACC and 80 REA this works out to an effective base accuracy of 120. And those are pretty mid/achievable stats for the majority of characters, my better characters were all more like 130 ACC/100 REA which works out to an accuracy of 205. It's also got a damage of 25 + 25% of ACC which works out to be roughly 50 damage.

Other great weapons:

CAWS: as you say, I like to use it for <85 acc recruits
BlackOPs LMG: <85 acc recruits who need range
Mateba autorevolver: Damage goes up to around 42, great with a shield for CQC cult missions
BlackOps smartpistol: Absurdly fast and accurate and works in spy missions. By "works" I means "absolutely humiliates the intended balance of them".
Thanatonautian Manus: Psi-based small AoE nuke weapon that bypasses 90% of armor (though won't work on mechanical enemies). Does cost sanity and energy to use but you can absolutely go ham on shit for a single turn with this, and its a 2x2 item that nicely fits into inventory as an emergency weapon. Collect them from the ghost missions.

 

[Average Manatee]

Trying Piratez on highest difficulty, mostly to see if its possible to survive a year. I've really come to appreciate the power of glamour. Getting 12 points per glamour * 333 for end month income = 4k per glamour. Little Bird gets a glamour bonus and shooting down shitass raiders and finishing the map in 2 turns gets 22 glamour with it, adding 88k eventual cash bonus to a mission that was worth next to nothing. More if you sell the glamour, which I feel I should with how much I'm bringing in but I can't bring myself to. Cats and lokknarrs can usually clear maps at night in 2-4 turns with close to no risk. I used to do a lot more capturing but slowing down to capture safe lowers glamour while killing everything quickly gets you 5ish surrenders per map usually anyway.

Also, I don't think I ever realized just how dominant the Tommy Gun was before. 3 shot snap shot is insane and lets you extend your effective killing range way out further than other SMGs while also making your reaction fire incredibly deadly.

Income and points was pretty shitty the first few months, Ninja activity definitely nukes you on that front. My points weren't even enough to advance past brigand (mostly because one really good scoring mission took me a few too many hours to get to and appeared on the next month). This screwed me hard by keeping me out of bounty hunting for months. I actually had to sell around 400 glamour to pay the bills last month. But this full month of the heli doing full ~500 point apiece shootdowns has really paid off.

Spoiler

Getting the heli and getting Chateau de la Mort researched is definitely the big roadblock to making money. Downside is that... I still can't build flak defenses. I'm almost to being able to recycle necroplane parts into them but that still only gets me one flak tower at the moment. I could have gotten irradiator defenses... but that's both incredibly expensive and really penalizes you being in the home base. Not sure what the play is to defend yourself before June, hopefully there's no missiles? Unfortunately I'm several months of rank leveling behind being able to just buy the 25mm cannons I need to build flak towers.

Trying out gold just to see what happens. Figured the lump sum of cash would come in pretty handy.

You absolutely cannot do this ironman though. At least, not with the airgame. I've been barely scraping by on income despite running near perfect missions and the random interceptions (not even around bases) have destroyed my aircar 4 times already. I don't see how you would either recover from that or survive without those missions.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I'm curous what the optimal start would be for the highest difficulty on Piratez. Codex aside, there's a lot of potential nation bonuses that might be worth considering. I'm sure there's at least a few that might help with the early air game, if only indirectly. On top of that there's just plain geography to consider, with certain mission types spawning in certain locations.

Still, I'd imagine straight up RNG is the biggest factor by far, even with save scumming. Don't the highway men drop AA related stuff? Not sure when they first show up, but seems like that'd be the fastest route to flak cannon stuff. And if you really want to get cheesy, once you unlock gambling, you can probably get insane amounts of money pretty much instantly if you're willing to reload often enough.

 

[Average Manatee]

I'm curous what the optimal start would be for the highest difficulty on Piratez. Codex aside, there's a lot of potential nation bonuses that might be worth considering. I'm sure there's at least a few that might help with the early air game, if only indirectly. On top of that there's just plain geography to consider, with certain mission types spawning in certain locations.

99% sure its cali for catgirls. Without catgirl night advantage you'll just take too many wounds and not be able to run missions.

Spotting distance advantage at night over a standard human:
Hand: 3
Hand w/ Camo: 7 (+1 anticamo)
Cat: 7 (+2 anticamo)
Lokk: 12
Hand w/ Night Ops: 14
Cat w/ Camo: 15 (+3 anticamo)

7 is decent enough to avoid problems most of the time if you're very careful, but you really want 10+ with how many TUs enemies have. Problematically, Camo causes additional stress and freshness loss for Hands which makes it hard to continually run on them. You can run lokks once you get them (you should have at least 6 around for cave missions anyway), but that takes a good amount of time to get and they still aren't as good as cats. It's only once Hands get Night Ops that you can really stop relying on the cats.

The only other way I think you could do it would be to really hardcore commit to a cowardly hide and snipe strategy during daytime. Problems: 1. You're gonna need to abort a bunch of missions where you don't have good cover, 2. enemies have a ton of reactions so you shoot at max once per turn, 3. It's gonna take forever lowering your freshness and score a lot, 4. next to no chance for captives either.

Other bonuses are nice but I don't see you being able to stay afloat without the raw income and score from mission running. One thing I did screw up badly on was not being able to do sea missions. Instead I had bikes hoping to win a bike race but never did. The two sea missions available probably would have been worth 500k if I'd done them.

Still, I'd imagine straight up RNG is the biggest factor by far, even with save scumming.

Yeah, impossible missions (due to not having range early on, or having awfully hard enemies, or due to an awful spawn point) are what will drag you down.

Don't the highway men drop AA related stuff? Not sure when they first show up, but seems like that'd be the fastest route to flak cannon stuff.

They do... but only one gun, and you need two per flak. And I think you need 2 flaks + overcharged radar per base...

EDIT: Also, while converting necroplane parts into flak is clearly the only way to get lots of them at first, it's only available if you have Aspect: Bookworm from your personalities.

 

[Average Manatee]

1st missile attack arrived Jul 2nd. Good news is that Overcharged Radar + Armored Vaults does kill it. Well, 70% of the time. I think damage is non-random so you just need both to hit?

2 flak towers will be up by next month, and 2nd base in Asia is being developed to shoot down more things. Unfortunately this has me concerned:

Spoiler

God damn they are fast as fuck. I guess I should really get on assaulting the low level ones.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Hmm, have you tried abusing fire arrows to create light sources at a distance? I can't recall how much research you need for that, but it can't be very much. I suppose you'd still want the extra night stealth, regardless of how far away you can spot enemies from.

Found my old .txt of notes and found two starts that might be promising if the missiles become the sticking point and you can get by without cats:

Iron tribe = necroplane and junk parts. I can't recall, but this might have been a recurring event? Might get you enough to get the required number of kits once you get the research.
Hidden expanse = 3 flak tower kits. Might work with the highwaymen and then you don't need to worry about necroplane parts at all.

The other one that caught my eye was Romanica starts you with crusader armour and gives you special zombie slaying missions, which I'd assume give a lot of infamy. Frequency and rewards might not be high enough to be worthwhile though.

I was hoping you might be able to get flak kits via gambling but no such luck. Not even stuff like crushing rocks- though that can lead to old earth weapons boxes, which have some decent stuff. It's the proper gambling that really goes crazy though- as soon as you get that, you can get crazy prizes; Gyrocopters, Assassin suits, rimrider laser weapons (the ones with infinite ammo) and other OP shit.

 

[Average Manatee]

Hmm, have you tried abusing fire arrows to create light sources at a distance? I can't recall how much research you need for that, but it can't be very much. I suppose you'd still want the extra night stealth, regardless of how far away you can spot enemies from.

Molotovs work better and easier. I have everyone carry one. But you can't really just light the whole place up and slowly creep across the map.

That said there is a good way to light places up. Crate of Violence

Spoiler

Its really the key to winning in any tough mission without too much risk vs. a lot of enemies. If you think there's even a chance of being in a tight spot have 1 or 2 of these primed and in your strongest gal's hand ready to throw.

 

[lightbane]

How's the Hybrid Path? Anyone tried it? You get Reticulans late, I wonder how you do it here.