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Also how about this guy finishes or even works at all on the many things in the lategame that just say "tbd" or "to be continued", instead of adding random stuff.
This is how I do things for my tabletop rpgs, I get stuck trying to figure out the big important stuff, stop thinking about it then at some point I get a random easy to implement idea like a new gun or something and put it in.
So I got to the end of Xpiratez (started on N5.2.1, finished on N6.0.7).
My playthrough lasted 3 months of real time (and 4 years in game time), and I don't know how many hours of playtime but probably too many to want to put to paper. At times I was fully absorbed in it. I woke up an hour before the alarm rang and went "great I can play a bit before work" rather than go back to sleep. I played until I needed to sleep and then I skipped some sleep to play more. X-com is just a damned good framework, and earlygame xpiratez works so well: there's always more stuff to research, more enemies, more factions, more loot, more mysteries, more lore. It feels almost roguelite in how many paths through it there are, and how you get different things depending on rng+decisions you make. The balance is tight enough that you'll feel every mistake, but forgiving enough that you won't feel the need to restart 20 times to get a good run.
There are some issues even early on: getting a base destroyed 3 days after founding it feels bad. There's too many weapons that serve the same purpose (does there really need to be 4 awful 1 tile sized ranged weapons? Do you really need pipes, handles, ball bats and fistycuffs? Not to mention shivs daggers, cutlass, etc...). But overall it's great.
But by end it wasn't nearly as good. Part of it is just fatigue, but the mid/lategame is also plagued by a lot of issues. Things that aren't done. Things that aren't balanced. So many dangling threads. So much grinding and gambling to get the final techs and ships. I kinda ran out of meaningful research halfway through year 3, and entirely end of year 3 (sure takes a while to research all 50 vehicle variants). Then I started savescumming a bit to hasten events and save editing to give me some of the key items the game was refusing to grant (and it still took me a year to finish up all the loose ends). I also save edited to get to final mission, because the cost to manufacture it properly is just ridiculous. I suspect there is an issue with the RNG; failing a 33% roll 10+ times in a row is low enough odds that it is highly suspicious.
The total makes it kinda hard to recommend or unrecommend the game. On the one hand: some of the best gaming I ever had. On the other hand: it all becomes kinda shite. And it's been under development for so long that the issues are probably due to Dioxines personal disposition, and so unlikely to change. The stuff that isn't finished is likely to remain so, possibly forever.
I want to say it is an easy recommend to start, but I can't tell you when you should stop, only that it's not really worth finishing.
Actual specific complaints below, in spoilers. First some light/generic spoilers, and then a nested super lategame spoiler stuff. If you're interested in the mod, play it before reading.
The tech tree has some issues. For a lot of it there's many ways to progress, or there's many ways to get the core techs that let you progress. But some stuff like captive bugeye or the fucking shadow lamp* can just never show up and keep you from unlock large and important branches of the tech tree for more than a year. It's especially an issue for all the various story missions, where bad rng can keep you from a tech for a few months, then bad rng can keep a mission from spawning for a few months, and then when you finally do go the design of the mission is ruined by the fact that you've progressed enough in tech to trivialize the enemies. It's also kinda frustrating when your story progress just stops for more than a dozen game hours and there's nothing you can do about it.
The variety in mission and gear restrictions can be pretty cool, but it can also feel a bit sadistic at times. You'll just not be allowed to bring any good armor, or vehicles, or strong troop types, but the enemies will still use their normal high tier troops (I guess their carapace armor is just naturally vacuum rated, while my power armor isn't).
The strong enemy factions also tend to have spotter/sniper on every unit, which removes all consideration of smoke, light, camo, invis and sanity from the equation. You either kill everything in one turn, or you make sure there's a solid wall between all of your troops and the rest of the map, because the alternative is every enemy on the map shooting at you, even though it was 2 turns since anything saw you. You learn to take all missions in daylight, just because at least then everyone sees everything all the time.
The biggest "to be continued" kick in the balls was the technocracy line for me. The palace mission is cool (at least the first 2 parts, the final one is shit), but then the reward is -3k score for killing govt troops and a "lul, the princess is in another TBD castle". And so it feels like a huge waste of time and effort. The champion gudrun story also felt a bit like this, but at least that one rewarded some cool weapons, even if it ultimately went nowhere. I'm also a bit upset I got an unfinished red mage line due to my choice of gudrun, with absolutely 0 justification for why.
The shadowrealms are really cool in theory, but the balance is completely out of whack. The necropolis mission is one of the hardest in the game, but isn't actually more rewarding than the 2nd fear land mission, which has like a third as many enemies and no strong ones. I had the gray spellbook, so I didn't have much issues with nightosphere land, but I imagine it to be pure torture for every other codex. Huge map with low visibility and flying enemies who like to fly so high you need to stand almost exactly under them to spot, and super limited ammo and weapon counts. But also, the first shadowlands mission with the fear prisons is really easy and I was never in danger of even landing someone in sickbay for a long time, let alone die.
Midgame armor choices all felt bad to me. Just piles of odious tradeoffs (no inventory, no running, crippling weaknesses, crippling freshness drain...) for marginal gains in other areas. I went straight from plate and gravboots to assault and blitz. I think I also accidentally broke the intended research progress speed at some point (80 brainers was just too much apparently), as I just ran out of meaningful techs in the middle of the third year, and the whole 4th year my brainers spent 90% of the time idling while waiting for more rare captives to come in (needing to interrogate 2 dozen live star gods who only ever spawn in ones or twos on missions sure was an idea).
The gnomedisc (and therefore also the hovertank) was a lot of fun, but all the non flying vehicles felt kinda shit by comparison. Not sure why you'd ever field a XEC over a hovertank.
The cost to build the final transport and reach cydonia is kinda ridiculous. There's an alternate way (titor), but it's just as bad if not worse. 12500 hellerium and 142 engineer years is just 10 times more than it needed to be. The craft requirements for all the different mission types can also get a bit crazy: When you need a 1 seater, a <6 seater, a <13 seater, ipl, sub, mun and primitive it starts to feel very ridiculous, even if you can combine some of those categories.
I'm a bit annoyed that factions stop using faction specific weaponry for some missions. Mercs doing base assaults with plasma isn't the worst thing, but spartans wielding heavy plasma is stupid.
* I still have no idea how you're supposed to get this. I wound up hacking it in to my save, because the ufo it spawns on just refused to appear. And during like the 4th year, when they did start spawning in decent numbers (because of stuff locked behind already having it), I couldn't manage to not explode them even when using the weakest craft weapons I still had. I could have used tractor beams I suppose, but when you're considering using endgame tech to unlock a mission that wouldn't even be particularly challenging 12 months in there's something seriously wrong.
So I got to the end of Xpiratez (started on N5.2.1, finished on N6.0.7).
My playthrough lasted 3 months of real time (and 4 years in game time), and I don't know how many hours of playtime but probably too many to want to put to paper. At times I was fully absorbed in it. I woke up an hour before the alarm rang and went "great I can play a bit before work" rather than go back to sleep. I played until I needed to sleep and then I skipped some sleep to play more. X-com is just a damned good framework, and earlygame xpiratez works so well: there's always more stuff to research, more enemies, more factions, more loot, more mysteries, more lore. It feels almost roguelite in how many paths through it there are, and how you get different things depending on rng+decisions you make. The balance is tight enough that you'll feel every mistake, but forgiving enough that you won't feel the need to restart 20 times to get a good run.
There are some issues even early on: getting a base destroyed 3 days after founding it feels bad. There's too many weapons that serve the same purpose (does there really need to be 4 awful 1 tile sized ranged weapons? Do you really need pipes, handles, ball bats and fistycuffs? Not to mention shivs daggers, cutlass, etc...). But overall it's great.
But by end it wasn't nearly as good. Part of it is just fatigue, but the mid/lategame is also plagued by a lot of issues. Things that aren't done. Things that aren't balanced. So many dangling threads. So much grinding and gambling to get the final techs and ships. I kinda ran out of meaningful research halfway through year 3, and entirely end of year 3 (sure takes a while to research all 50 vehicle variants). Then I started savescumming a bit to hasten events and save editing to give me some of the key items the game was refusing to grant (and it still took me a year to finish up all the loose ends). I also save edited to get to final mission, because the cost to manufacture it properly is just ridiculous. I suspect there is an issue with the RNG; failing a 33% roll 10+ times in a row is low enough odds that it is highly suspicious.
The total makes it kinda hard to recommend or unrecommend the game. On the one hand: some of the best gaming I ever had. On the other hand: it all becomes kinda shite. And it's been under development for so long that the issues are probably due to Dioxines personal disposition, and so unlikely to change. The stuff that isn't finished is likely to remain so, possibly forever.
I want to say it is an easy recommend to start, but I can't tell you when you should stop, only that it's not really worth finishing.
Actual specific complaints below, in spoilers. First some light/generic spoilers, and then a nested super lategame spoiler stuff. If you're interested in the mod, play it before reading.
The tech tree has some issues. For a lot of it there's many ways to progress, or there's many ways to get the core techs that let you progress. But some stuff like captive bugeye or the fucking shadow lamp* can just never show up and keep you from unlock large and important branches of the tech tree for more than a year. It's especially an issue for all the various story missions, where bad rng can keep you from a tech for a few months, then bad rng can keep a mission from spawning for a few months, and then when you finally do go the design of the mission is ruined by the fact that you've progressed enough in tech to trivialize the enemies. It's also kinda frustrating when your story progress just stops for more than a dozen game hours and there's nothing you can do about it.
The variety in mission and gear restrictions can be pretty cool, but it can also feel a bit sadistic at times. You'll just not be allowed to bring any good armor, or vehicles, or strong troop types, but the enemies will still use their normal high tier troops (I guess their carapace armor is just naturally vacuum rated, while my power armor isn't).
The strong enemy factions also tend to have spotter/sniper on every unit, which removes all consideration of smoke, light, camo, invis and sanity from the equation. You either kill everything in one turn, or you make sure there's a solid wall between all of your troops and the rest of the map, because the alternative is every enemy on the map shooting at you, even though it was 2 turns since anything saw you. You learn to take all missions in daylight, just because at least then everyone sees everything all the time.
The biggest "to be continued" kick in the balls was the technocracy line for me. The palace mission is cool (at least the first 2 parts, the final one is shit), but then the reward is -3k score for killing govt troops and a "lul, the princess is in another TBD castle". And so it feels like a huge waste of time and effort. The champion gudrun story also felt a bit like this, but at least that one rewarded some cool weapons, even if it ultimately went nowhere. I'm also a bit upset I got an unfinished red mage line due to my choice of gudrun, with absolutely 0 justification for why.
The shadowrealms are really cool in theory, but the balance is completely out of whack. The necropolis mission is one of the hardest in the game, but isn't actually more rewarding than the 2nd fear land mission, which has like a third as many enemies and no strong ones. I had the gray spellbook, so I didn't have much issues with nightosphere land, but I imagine it to be pure torture for every other codex. Huge map with low visibility and flying enemies who like to fly so high you need to stand almost exactly under them to spot, and super limited ammo and weapon counts. But also, the first shadowlands mission with the fear prisons is really easy and I was never in danger of even landing someone in sickbay for a long time, let alone die.
Midgame armor choices all felt bad to me. Just piles of odious tradeoffs (no inventory, no running, crippling weaknesses, crippling freshness drain...) for marginal gains in other areas. I went straight from plate and gravboots to assault and blitz. I think I also accidentally broke the intended research progress speed at some point (80 brainers was just too much apparently), as I just ran out of meaningful techs in the middle of the third year, and the whole 4th year my brainers spent 90% of the time idling while waiting for more rare captives to come in (needing to interrogate 2 dozen live star gods who only ever spawn in ones or twos on missions sure was an idea).
The gnomedisc (and therefore also the hovertank) was a lot of fun, but all the non flying vehicles felt kinda shit by comparison. Not sure why you'd ever field a XEC over a hovertank.
The cost to build the final transport and reach cydonia is kinda ridiculous. There's an alternate way (titor), but it's just as bad if not worse. 12500 hellerium and 142 engineer years is just 10 times more than it needed to be. The craft requirements for all the different mission types can also get a bit crazy: When you need a 1 seater, a <6 seater, a <13 seater, ipl, sub, mun and primitive it starts to feel very ridiculous, even if you can combine some of those categories.
I'm a bit annoyed that factions stop using faction specific weaponry for some missions. Mercs doing base assaults with plasma isn't the worst thing, but spartans wielding heavy plasma is stupid.
* I still have no idea how you're supposed to get this. I wound up hacking it in to my save, because the ufo it spawns on just refused to appear. And during like the 4th year, when they did start spawning in decent numbers (because of stuff locked behind already having it), I couldn't manage to not explode them even when using the weakest craft weapons I still had. I could have used tractor beams I suppose, but when you're considering using endgame tech to unlock a mission that wouldn't even be particularly challenging 12 months in there's something seriously wrong.
Yeah sounds about right from my experience, having beaten it a few years ago.
Wish someone would make a diet edition that merges all the near identical weapons. Though what the game really needs is something that lets you see what some of those insane damage bonus calculations result in without having to manually make a spreadsheet. Alas, standalone never ever.
Anyone know how X-Com Files plays like these days, by the way?
since i was following the lp, i also once tried playing the game again for a lulzy peasant assault
quit on like turn 3...
the combat ui made it unplayable to me because of the amount of mouse movement/aiming and clicking involved to get attacks off
spot enemy
1. move/aim mouse on red square
2. click red square to center on enemy
3. move/aim mouse to weapon
4. click
5. move/aim mouse to select attack type
6. click
7. move/aim mouse to enemy
8. click on enemy
repeat if its not dead...
^ shits not tolerable
some of it can be shortcuted but still
if it had a context aware mouse pointer with an auto-opening floating attack selection box, that would be MASSIVE qol/usage improvement
imagine if you spot an enemy, press 1 on keyboard, hover mouse pointer over the enemy and it shows you attack types and you click ONCE -> done! that would be playable
also all soldiers in a table for instant selection and not dos era cycling
since i was following the lp, i also once tried playing the game again for a lulzy peasant assault
quit on like turn 3...
the combat ui made it unplayable to me because of the amount of mouse movement/aiming and clicking involved to get attacks off
spot enemy
1. move/aim mouse on red square
2. click red square to center on enemy
3. move/aim mouse to weapon
4. click
5. move/aim mouse to select attack type
6. click
7. move/aim mouse to enemy
8. click on enemy
repeat if its not dead...
^ shits not tolerable
some of it can be shortcuted but still
if it had a context aware mouse pointer with an auto-opening floating attack selection box, that would be MASSIVE qol/usage improvement
imagine if you spot an enemy, press 1 on keyboard, hover mouse pointer over the enemy and it shows you attack types and you click ONCE -> done! that would be playable
also all soldiers in a table for instant selection and not dos era cycling
spot enemy
1. move/aim mouse on red square
2. click red square to center on enemy
3. move/aim mouse to weapon
4. click
5. move/aim mouse to select attack type
6. click
7. move/aim mouse to enemy
8. click on enemy
repeat if its not dead...
^ shits not tolerable
some of it can be shortcuted but still
spot enemy
1. press the number on the keyboard of the corresponding enemy type (enemy is focused now)
2. press "E" to fire with the right-hand weapon (or Q for left)
3. press 1 to fire using the first firing mode
4. click on enemy
^ takes one second
just keep clicking if not dead, no need to go through all the steps
I'm one of the developers of the UNEXCOM: Bureau 11 and Directorate 17 submods, also go by fatsycophant/Brother^2 which is what I'm listed under on the credits page.
I've been lurking on RPG codex for a little bit but just recently found this thread. If anyone has played or completed these mods, I'd like to ask you how the mod was, what you liked about it, and what criticisms you have or if you have any questions feel free to ask. These mods haven't gotten the exposure of, say, XPirateZ so feedback has been a little scarce outside the direct IDT community. I'm not sure if this is considered against advertisement rules or not since I'm only looking for feedback from people who have already played (but if I happen to introduce you to the mod, then feel free to play! lol)
I'm one of the developers of the UNEXCOM: Bureau 11 and Directorate 17 submods, also go by fatsycophant/Brother^2 which is what I'm listed under on the credits page.
Nive. I've played the Bureau but only 1-2 hours. Will post som feedback when I take the time to play a little bit more. I can't say anything for these initial hours because it's been mostly photographing evidence but I really dig this low-key gameplay style.
I'm curious, does anyone here know about the underworkings of the engine? I'd like to know if it would be possible to do something like this. Instead of dealing with alien ships invading Earth, at least until later game, you get missions that can be completed at the player's leisure that don't involve the player flying around the Earth. These missions can only be done at one location, which has a special item to allow these missions. And that location also gets special a special invasion mission involving aliens coming through the special item. If the aliens capture the base with the special item, the player can't do most of the missions until they recapture that base.
not without touching the sourcecode, i dont think so, otherwise definitely with some workarounds
you cant define 1 location for different missions to spawn
there is a siberian base mission in the game now that is persistent but you cant defend it and if you win, it will despawn
you could spawn it again but only on new month
ask it on the official forum, the dev sometimes answers weird questions
https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Ruleset_Reference_Nightly_(OpenXcom)#Mission_Scripts
facilities and items can enable missions. We know you can also trigger events through base geoscape location since piratez does give bonuses that wa.
If you can spawn a base with a special lift (or "upgrade" that lift with an event), you can enables missions that require that specific base.
You can approximate something for sure.
Great post (though I've skipped spoilers).
But hands off shivs and daggers! IIRC, they're the best dmg/ap early game melee weapons for untrained and trained gals, respectively. If you need this kind of weapon, that is. IIRC I've used them as secondaries vs animals.
I, personally, don't like that cats seem to make gobs obsolete.
There's lots of missions gobs can go on that cat's can't. But yeah, gobs don't really have a place in missions where you can send normal troops. I don't think that's a cat problem though, feels more like a gobs being bad problem.
There's lots of missions gobs can go on that cat's can't. But yeah, gobs don't really have a place in missions where you can send normal troops. I don't think that's a cat problem though, feels more like a gobs being bad problem.
I thought (though I've never played past early game) that before cats they were the best spammable pilots, mages and stealth snipers so they fitted support and specialist roles (to compare, gals are rarer, peasants are much longer to train, SS and ogres have shit camo, bugs and syns are lategame).
There's lots of missions gobs can go on that cat's can't. But yeah, gobs don't really have a place in missions where you can send normal troops. I don't think that's a cat problem though, feels more like a gobs being bad problem.
Afaik, gobs are pilots. Both for the vessels and tanks. Gyrocopter in particular is great for it's price early game, especially when you have slots to spare
(i.e. big ship or base defence).
I just completed the original X-COM ufo defense, original version 1.4 for the very first time and I had a blast.
I dragged it all the way to january 2000 and by that time, they were sending TWO battleships on alien inflitration at the same time filed with Ethereals and and it was impossible to stop both of them at the same time... so the final mission felt easy-ish after the last few regular battleship missions.
For my second game, I want to give OpenXcom a try.
The ONE THING I wanna change is the stats of the Heavy Laser, and Laser Cannon.
I wanna make Heavy Lasers actually viable: faster and more accurate.
And I wanna give more range to (aircraft) Laser Cannons.
And I want to leave everything else the same.
Is it easy?
I just completed the original X-COM ufo defense, original version 1.4 for the very first time and I had a blast.
I dragged it all the way to january 2000 and by that time, they were sending TWO battleships on alien inflitration at the same time filed with Ethereals and and it was impossible to stop both of them at the same time... so the final mission felt easy-ish after the last few regular battleship missions.
For my second game, I want to give OpenXcom a try.
The ONE THING I wanna change is the stats of the Heavy Laser, and Laser Cannon.
I wanna make Heavy Lasers actually viable: faster and more accurate.
And I wanna give more range to (aircraft) Laser Cannons.
And I want to leave everything else the same.
Is it easy?
You shoud have started with OpenXcom instead of the original game/engine.
OpenXcom fixes several bugs of the original game (one of which is the fact that the game switch to easy difficulty automatically after the first combat - if I remember correctly)
and also allow you to fix some weird design choices conserning the psionics.
More than a year and a half of work has gone into finding and editing music for this mod!
200+ new tracks! Each one selected specifically for each faction. Any feedback is highly appreciated, and the team is also open to suggestions to further improve. I tried to follow the same style as original X-Com Files does.
Perhaps its biggest addition is a new soundtrack for factions that previously had no music, but it adds new tracks for factions that previously had music as well. It doesn't replace the original X-Com Files tracks, but I took some liberties for some missions. It was for the best, trust me!
WARNING: Do not check the tracks or you might get some SPOILERS. sadly, it is not copyright-friendly. credits are in the mod's folder. contact me for revised credits or removal. thanks!
