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).