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[Robsoie]

Robsoie: yes, you emit actual light. Some armors more than others.

So all that time i was playing the game thinking my Gals were hidden and had an advantage of night vision to observe enemy, it was all wrong because i was revealing my position due to this automatic self-light ?
I will have to remember now to always press L before exiting the ship.

So why is that self-emiting light even enabled by default ? Is there a bonus of having your Gals emiting light out of becoming easier to spot for the enemy ?

[amjh]

My bugeyes natural voodoo isn't doing enough to have an effect, is that just because they have low skill or is it not that good?

Today, my game decided that rotoguns are now accurate. That raider mission didn't go well.

[MCreeper]

I have said somewhere around there that peasants will never cast magic better than bugeyes. Turns out, sometimes they do. It's pretty late game stuff, but still. And they cast even better in shadowrealms (currently waiting for mission).

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

My bugeyes natural voodoo isn't doing enough to have an effect, is that just because they have low skill or is it not that good?

Today, my game decided that rotoguns are now accurate. That raider mission didn't go well.

They don't do anything or they don't do enough? If they do something, there is window popup. In general, is voodoo skill maxed out? If no, spam spells uselessly until it is. If yes, get closer to enemy for maximum power. Although that is not really necessary ost of the time.

[amjh]

I thought terror attack only gives a message if it's enough to immediately cause panic?

[Rolan7]

Robsoie: yes, you emit actual light. Some armors more than others.

So all that time i was playing the game thinking my Gals were hidden and had an advantage of night vision to observe enemy, it was all wrong because i was revealing my position due to this automatic self-light ?
I will have to remember now to always press L before exiting the ship.

So why is that self-emiting light even enabled by default ? Is there a bonus of having your Gals emiting light out of becoming easier to spot for the enemy ?

So Dioxine addressed this on Discord just now, which is nice because I was worried too:

Some armors produce a lot of light, and their presence prevents NV mode from switching on automatically (Apparently sea missions are "meant" to be completed by lighting yourself up like christmas trees in order to see 5 tiles into the murk- sure w/e interface screw can be fun I guess)

Most (all?) armors provide that tiny amount of light, but that's only for the player's benefit to see our units.  It doesn't hit the threshold to ruin stealth.  (Light's also "highest value" not cumulative, so it's completely harmless).

Aside though, personal computers (according to their entry) *do* provide enough light to ruin stealth, which is a nice inconsequential touch heh
Heh, J14 nerfed gambling but it's still pretty crazy what you can get with it.  Like 1420 Jack Bounty Tokens for 500 spins
That got nerfed in a hotpatch, but I... haven't downloaded it just yet.  I think this run is almost over anyway, I already unlocked the important Jack stuff, and I just want a ludicrous pile of gems don't @ me.

[notquitethere]

I honestly don't know if there's a good way of doing gambling: either on average you make money (as was the case) and it's worth doing but not really gambling; or on average you lose and it's not worth doing. Maybe the idea is it's tempting for rare drops but you'll generally lose out over selling the chips?

[Rolan7]

J14a analysis:  Gambling is half as lucrative as before, which is still a lot better than anything grindable!  About $2500 per runt-hour.  The mint's best purpose is to make blue chips, and consider robbing people to get more (though research is good for score).

You can exchange copper and iron coupons with merely a mess hall, and it's lucrative too.  But if you pick through the vendor trash, there are some occasional goodies like glamour to set aside.

Titanium and Tritanium require 1 and 5 Jack Bounty tokens.  Are they worth it?  I have no idea, how exciting!
Neutronium and Zortrium require a casino and are horrendously expensive compared to selling them.  But you arguably get what you pay for.

Spoiler: i took some notes (click to show/hide)

I haven't rerun the math but I think it's tending toward the latter.  Profit (compared to just selling the blue chips and using runts elsewhere) is presumably low now, but a lot of the rare rewards are tricky to get enough of.  Value beyond money.

(There's no need to guess, I just ran the math again (pre-hotfix but mnyeh) and it's still extremely lucrative.)

Glamour is a good example.  You can't buy it, and the sources don't seem grindable.  But I'm also trying to produce a bunch of lascannons now, which requires Laser Weapon Parts which only come from breaking down un-purchaseable guns.  Which the casino also provides.
(Infantry lasers only give lenses and crystals.  Craft Charger Lasers are somehow purchaseable eventually, and give Energy Weapon Parts, but I'm not there).

It seems to allow skipping the tech tree a bit, since you can equip armor and some (most?) guns that haven't been researched.  I just tested Doom 2 and GI armor, and the Scorchy laser-pistol.
Anyway...  1000 spins (for 1000 runt-hours) increased base value by $4,851,010.  $4,851 per runt-hour... about the same as my last test.  Huh, I guess it wasn't nerfed at all until the J14Apatch.  *downloads*

There we go, 1000 spins produced about 2.47 million.  $2470 per runt-hour is still much better than anything purely grindable, so blue chips are still valuable, but it does look like a 50% nerf.  No Jack tokens either, though it did give 14 Valuable Coins for Goblin Zaxx (that's almost 3 Taskmasters, a nice bonus)

But that's assuming we sell the coupons.  Trading the coupons in requires a casino (Not a security corridor!  That would be ludicrous.  I love funny bugs.), but does it increase their cash value, or provide rare/useful materials?  Or both?  I honestly don't know yet.
Copper - wait, wait this doesn't require the casino anymore WTF?  Okay that changed in J14, only the last two versions need the casino!  That's pretty nice actually, since the Casino is pretty advanced.

So copper (I think ~78): $198,940.  Including 3 glamour
Copper (29): $63,625.  No glamour but some signet rings and celatid essence
Titanium... wait why can't I reclaim titanium?  ...Ohhh.  Now I see.  Since J14, reclaiming Titanium+ coupons requires Jack bounty tokens.  I just didn't notice because spinning the wheel in the first place was granting huge amounts of them.

jeez maybe I should just call this run win a financial win and restart...  No wonder I'm getting weird golden autocannons and stuff out of the Neutronium coupons, they take 125 Jack Tokens per trade!

Is there a way to get Jack Tokens that I'm missing?  Since copper and iron coupons can be used for non-negligible Goblin Zaxx tokens...  I don't think so though.  Just assassination targets and- ohwow
_ohwow
Straight-up cheating now, running 1000 Zortrium coupons.  Only 200 get through before space fills up, that's fine.  Net change... 19.4 million over 200 runt-hours.
19.4 million LOSS.  And that's just valuing the 5000 lost Jack Tokens at $100, when they're actually worth...

But this loot, though.  Such treasures.
also 3000 bottles of water, which is why the stores filled up.  I noticed that before, still not sure what's up with it heh.

TLDR; J14 is completely broken fhtagn, definitely update to J14a ia ia

[notquitethere]

Nice analysis. I'll try to keep my tokens for gambling then. I've been play a new game on J14, after getting about 8 months into the previous version. May the RNG just like me more before, but I seem to be getting loads of properly dangerous missions this time, some of which I've had to run away from. I faced chryssalids when the equivalent mission before would have just had academy nurses!

[sambojin]

Tried to get j14 going on Android, dies to a segmentation error. No stack dump available.

I'll try an earlier version. 3gig ram phone, but WAY less than three available.

Not even sure why I want OXC/OXCE on my phone (dosboxxing original works fine), but just as a thingy, it probably should be there. And for Xpirates and misclicks

[sluissa]

I used to have openxcom on a 7 inch tablet I used and worked fine... better than expected. That old dos interface was perfect for tablet touch screens. But xpirates is significantly chunkier simply in the number of assets it has loaded. I know I'm surprised by how much ram it uses on my desktop when I start trying to multitask and realize it's slowing things down to a crawl, go in, check the task manager, and bam, openxcom needs to go away for a bit.

I have successfully run it on a chromebook, however. So it doesn't need a TON of power behind it. A low end phone might simply be pushing it a bit.

[ConscriptFive]

Hmm, not sure I could play on a touchscreen.  Right click to turn and open doors is pretty key even in vanilla.  Xpiratez-wise, CTRL-LMB to sprint is pretty essential in the battlescape when you need to melee somebody this turn.  Also, I'd have no idea how to decipher tech progression if I couldn't MMB a topic.

[MCreeper]

I got highway house mission in old save, so there is no need to restart each time. I'm not sure if i should get it at this point, though. 

[sluissa]

Hmm, not sure I could play on a touchscreen.  Right click to turn and open doors is pretty key even in vanilla.  Xpiratez-wise, CTRL-LMB to sprint is pretty essential in the battlescape when you need to melee somebody this turn.  Also, I'd have no idea how to decipher tech progression if I couldn't MMB a topic.

It's been a while, I forget exactly what it was, maybe a long press on the touch screen... but there was a "right click" available... the extra keyboard commands though, they could be troublesome. I never had any issues in vanilla though.

[Robsoie]

Most (all?) armors provide that tiny amount of light, but that's only for the player's benefit to see our units.  It doesn't hit the threshold to ruin stealth.  (Light's also "highest value" not cumulative, so it's completely harmless).

I got highway house mission in old save, so there is no need to restart each time. I'm not sure if i should get it at this point, though. 

Thanks for the confirmations guys.

[notquitethere]

Not my proudest achievement.