X-COM OpenXcom Thread

[Alienman]

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.

Ah, great idea! Thanks.

 

[Falksi]

So does anyone actually like un-modded OpenXcom as much as the original?

I've only played it unmodded, and whilst the performance improvements are great, some of the things which change the game balance kill the experience a bit too IMO. Later difficulties in particular feel attritional as opposed to suspenseful.

 

[Average Manatee]

Not really sure what you mean. OpenXcom on default settings is identical to original game balance in most ways. Only major difference I can think of that makes the game easier is the 80 item cap on the skyranger being removed

 

[robinox]

[...] OpenXcom on default settings is identical to original game balance in most ways. Only major difference I can think of that makes the game easier is the 80 item cap on the skyranger being removed

I've been following OXC for a long time and AFAIK you are right.

 

[eXalted]

the 80 item cap on the skyranger being removed

For which OXCE comes with a mod that enables the cap if you want it back.

 

[Alienman]

The X-com Files Alternative Art 1.2 is here, and hopefully it is final! I have changed most of the dossiers. My thinking was that these people feel larger than life - that's what makes them unique enough to stand out in the X-com world. So my plan was to get that to come through with the art I picked and have it remain fairly consistent. I also tried to match their personality as much as possible going by their dossiers. Another change I have made is the vehicle art. Most are the same, but I updated some of the art that looked a bit less interesting. I also changed out two "anime-like" subculture pictures to something less anime (sorry anime lovers )

Dossier examples:

Spoiler

Vehicles:

Spoiler

Subcultures:

Spoiler

Download X-com Files Alternative Art 1.2 here!
Backup download since Tinyupload seems to be down.
------------------------

How to install:

Put the files in:

C:\ ... Documents \ OpenXcom \ mods

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

Good luck commander!

 

[Alienman]

Started to play X-com files, and how do you survive the negative score? I get spammed with missions/investigations and I don't have enough teams or time to cover them all.

 

[Efe]

you can go in and out turn 1 for most msisions without civillians for 0 score.

 

[Alienman]

you can go in and out turn 1 for most msisions without civillians for 0 score.

I've noticed that... hehe.

Was wondering how to tackle all these zombie/cultists missions with 10-15+ dudes with 4 agents, and apparently - this is the way!

 

[lightbane]

Alternatively, try shooting (and hopefully killing) some dudes, then tactically retreat for some extra score. Or capturing one important enemy unit, then tactically retreating.
You can use fire extinguishers as improvised smoke bombs before you unlock smoke grenades, if that helps. Sounds stupid but also fitting for an action movie.

 

[Efe]

zombie missions i would not skip unless you see those red platemail zombies that rape your crew. easy xp and they make money liive or dead.
honestly having a very hard time enjoying xcf after piratez.
arbitrary mission turn limit,s a single enemy on a big map as alien lifeform that does nothing but run away. my first ever xcf map took me 50+ turns as i cleared the night map inch by inch.
horrid scoring. hey you just killed a dozen gangsters with just two of you.. have 12 points.

 

[lightbane]

One new feature of the latest update of OXCE is the possibility of having enemy reinforcements in a map, fucking finally. Expect major changes in the two super-mods (Pirates and XFiles).

 

[Alienman]

Would love if someone made a Jagged Alliance/mercenary mod for OpenXcom. Or maybe some kind of Commandos/SAS thing during World War 2. Would work perfect with the reinforcement thing too.

 

[Average Manatee]

One new feature of the latest update of OXCE is the possibility of having enemy reinforcements in a map, fucking finally. Expect major changes in the two super-mods (Pirates and XFiles).

I like how the majority of the new features in OXCE seem to be about giving modders more ways to fuck with players.

 

[lightbane]

Would love if someone made a Jagged Alliance/mercenary mod for OpenXcom. Or maybe some kind of Commandos/SAS thing during World War 2. Would work perfect with the reinforcement thing too.

There's mods similar to what you say. One is the XCOM UN mod, and the other one is the War of the Worlds one, which features WW1 stuff vs martians.
Still, I would say the gameplay of XCOM is too specific to work for a "normal" WWII game. What would research and Chrysallids be replaced with, for example?

 

[Alienman]

Would love if someone made a Jagged Alliance/mercenary mod for OpenXcom. Or maybe some kind of Commandos/SAS thing during World War 2. Would work perfect with the reinforcement thing too.

There's mods similar to what you say. One is the XCOM UN mod, and the other one is the War of the Worlds one, which features WW1 stuff vs martians.
Still, I would say the gameplay of XCOM is too specific to work for a "normal" WWII game. What would research and Chrysallids be replaced with, for example?

Could go the Wolfenstein route, with magical, occult weapons/creatures maybe. Or the research could just be about intel, for missions, researching officers to kill etc.

 

[AgentFransis]

The more pertinent question is what the geoscape looks like. What are the UFOs, what do missions look like? On a tactical level it's not a problem, there's already a subset of piratez where you fight Nazis with WWII era weapons. Research wise - well, there was plenty of research and advancement during the war but of course the most interesting parts were the advances in armor and aviation and not so much infantry weapons and armor. So it can work but would be kinda boring without the research going into sci-fi.

 

[Alienman]

The more pertinent question is what the geoscape looks like. What are the UFOs, what do missions look like? On a tactical level it's not a problem, there's already a subset of piratez where you fight Nazis with WWII era weapons. Research wise - well, there was plenty of research and advancement during the war but of course the most interesting parts were the advances in armor and aviation and not so much infantry weapons and armor. So it can work but would be kinda boring without the research going into sci-fi.

I assume you can check whatever speed you want on UFOs, so they could represent convoys or something like that. Important targets of opportunity. Missions maybe raiding supply lines for bases, taking out key officers, infiltrating bunkers. I would assume the geoscape would look as normal, but you would have to make certain restrictions, like you can't place your bases in occupied territory.

Last mission: "Führerbunker or bust!"

 

[lightbane]

Why not play as Germany instead if that's the case and use magic and Nazi-tech to fight against the Allied Forces then?
Kinda like Silent Storm but without fighting against evil cultists.

 

[lightbane]

Fun pic I found in this topic: https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,6791.msg131494.html#msg131494

Still working on the voxel editor/engine. I've adapted much faster voxel raycasting algorithm from the Nvidia's paper ( https://www.nvidia.com/docs/IO/88889/laine2010i3d_paper.pdf ) it is lightning fast, so raycasts can be used without any hesitation now.

Also, Ukraine has X-COM internet provider. They have appropriated even the X-COM logo

Spoiler

Can an Eastern Codexian confirm?

 

[AgentFransis]

40k let's you call a bombardment from a battleship in orbit (at a massive resource cost):

 

[AgentFransis]

So I finished my 40k Space Marines campaign a while ago (essentially. I unlocked everything but got bored waiting for the final mission). It was fun but the difficulty curve is a bit wonky. It took a while but far less than a piratez campaign.

The start is hard. Your marines suck, your weapons are shit and you're facing off against chaos marines pretty much from the get go. Your marines in scout armor get 1-2 shot by their bolters and your own bolters barely scratch the pain off their armor and have trouble hitting the wide side of a ship. So you rely heavily on missile launchers, snipers and krak grenades and your memorial list fills up rapidly.

Slowly it gets easier. You gradually put your guys in real armor made from looted adamantium. You unlock better weapons (most notably lascannons and master crafted bolters and bolt clips). Master crafted bolters with master crafted clips are massively more accurate and deadly than basic bolters and can reliably take out chaos marines at longish ranges especially as your marines learn how to shoot straight. From there it's just gets easier as you unlock stuff like terminator armor, plasma weapons and dreadnaughts as well as larger crafts. The opposition however doesn't really improve too much. At some point chaos marines are replaced by chaos terminators but by that point your guys are so elite and decked out that they don't represent any meaningful difficulty. So at a relatively early point most missions become pretty trivial and you'll only rarely take casualties.

There are some nice special missions too. Special chaos bases like in previous post. Space hulks (I did two and they were full of Orks but supposedly they can also contain Tyranids). Eldar can also show up but I never saw any. The air game is also a bit weak. Most ships will simply land at some point and can just be assaulted. Really only terror ships never land and need to be shut down if you want to tackle them before they spawn a terror mission (careful, they're can be full of dreadnaughts or demons which actually are pretty pathetic). Enemy fighters do spawn and attempt to intercept your landers but they can't catch droppods and are no threat to the later dropships. Craft weapon progression is also bizarre with later weapons being sidegrades at best. You can also build auxiliary systems to customize your craft but for some reason they cost honor badges to make which are much better spent on master crafted weapons and special armors.

Some special notes on gear:
- Melta guns. Can be useful early to melt chaos marine armor but they didn't impress me terribly in that role. More importantly they can burn through ship walls so are quite useful in breaching larger ships. I always had a marine in devestator armor carry one in his backpack (other armors don't have backpack space).
- Assault marines are very useful against the larger ships. I chose the tactical strategy so I only unlocked them when I finally met some chaos raptors. The bigger ships usually have a roof access that provides a back door for assault marines to come through and chaninsword those annoying buggers hiding in the back rooms.
- Chapter Standard is incredibly OP. Wielded by someone with high bravery (I used my captain in captain armor to be thematic) it can restore full TUs to your entire squad if they're standing close enough together. It costs a lot of energy to use but an apothecary can just top it back up with some juicy combat stims. I stopped using it after a while since it made things even more trivial.
- Plasma rifle, especially the master crafted version, is very strong. Wielded by an elite marksman it can snipe half way across the map and make short work of anything. I unlocked it pretty late but you can rush it as soon as you unlock mid-tech.
- Castaferum dreadnaughts are incredibly strong. Tanky obviously and armed with a rapid firing plasma cannon that can melt anything across the map. Moreover even when a dreadnaught takes damage it doesn't suffer any healing time and can go right back to the field with full health.
- Tomes of smoke. Unlocked early through the chapter teachings tech (btw in openxcom you can press q to search the full tech tree). When used by someone with high bravery it creates a massive smoke screen on demand.

 

[lightbane]

Check the newest update. It fixes some stuff. There's also a fanmod for this mod that introduces variety on orks and Sororitas, as well as general fixes.

Craft weapon progression is also bizarre with later weapons being sidegrades at best.

Seems fitting considering the bizarre tier progression (or lack of thereof) with WH40k weaponry.

Melta guns. Can be useful early to melt chaos marine armor but they didn't impress me terribly in that role. More importantly they can burn through ship walls so are quite useful in breaching larger ships. I always had a marine in devestator armor carry one in his backpack (other armors don't have backpack space).

Do they have shit range?

Plasma rifle, especially the master crafted version, is very strong. Wielded by an elite marksman it can snipe half way across the map and make short work of anything. I unlocked it pretty late but you can rush it as soon as you unlock mid-tech.

Loyal to canon then. Plasma weaponry without overheating issues is usually strong.

I wonder what replaces Chrysallids and zombie spawns here. Genestealers?

 

[AgentFransis]

Melta guns. Can be useful early to melt chaos marine armor but they didn't impress me terribly in that role. More importantly they can burn through ship walls so are quite useful in breaching larger ships. I always had a marine in devestator armor carry one in his backpack (other armors don't have backpack space).

Do they have shit range?

Yeah. Like 10 tiles or something and it's hard capped and max 2 shots a turn. The way meltas are implemented is that they are a shotgun with 0 spread that fires 10 low damage "pellets" that do 100% pre damage armor damage. So they melt right through armor but do no damage to the unit until the armor is fully stripped. Later you unlock multimetas that have much higher effective range and they fire a double shot but they can only fire once per clip and each clip takes two inventory slots so it's very cumbersome.

Plasma rifle, especially the master crafted version, is very strong. Wielded by an elite marksman it can snipe half way across the map and make short work of anything. I unlocked it pretty late but you can rush it as soon as you unlock mid-tech.

Loyal to canon then. Plasma weaponry without overheating issues is usually strong.

Yeah. Personally I would have given plasma rifles a weaker auto burst. Right now they can fire triple bursts so they're just as strong an assault weapon as they are a sniper.

I wonder what replaces Chrysallids and zombie spawns here. Genestealers?

Slaanesh demonettes and corrupted brothers/sisters. Don't remember if they actually spawn a new demonette when killed though. They're pretty weak since, well, they're naked. A better "oh shit it's coming kill it kill it!" equivalent would be Khorne berserkers that rush you on sight swinging their chainaxes and screaming blood for the blood god. And they're quite hard to kill.

 

[lightbane]

Slaanesh demonettes and corrupted brothers/sisters. Don't remember if they actually spawn a new demonette when killed though. They're pretty weak since, well, they're naked. A better "oh shit it's coming kill it kill it!" equivalent would be Khorne berserkers that rush you on sight swinging their chainaxes and screaming blood for the blood god. And they're quite hard to kill.

Odd, I expected it would be Nurglites if daemons are the infestor equivalent here. I suppose Slaneesh demons could easily turn people into degenerates instantly though, so I suppose they wanted to make something fresh for a change. As for being neekid, so are Chrysallids and zombies and that's not an issue. Are Tzeench demons a thing? A Lord of Change would be something like an Uber-Ethereal.