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[Robsoie]

Since several years, there has been a spotter/sniper feature implemented in OXCE.
The feature allows modders to set some units as spotter and some units as sniper. 

How it works is that when an AI unit that in the ruleset has a spotter value will see a soldier of yours (it's a feature that only works against the player, basically it's an AI cheat) , it will mark your soldier and every units that have a sniper value will see them, regardless if they're in cover, in hidding or at extreme out of range distance.

Said like that it's not bad as it emulate what the player does:  spotting an enemy unit and using other units to focus fire on the enemy.

But unfortunately there's 2 nasty side effects to the way this feature works in OXCE :
- the "mark" will last for at least 1 turn (can be increased a lot depending on the spotter:X  value defined by the modder), meaning that even if your soldier is spotted and you then retreat back into hiding, the AI will still see it clear as day on its turn.
- if you have a soldier opening fire at a spotter, it will automatically mark your soldier, even if the spotter is unable to see your guy.

explaining in so many cases why i got a soldier having a better night vision than its enemies getting still hammered by lower night visions enemies at night from beyond my own soldier vision range.

Unfortunately if you have a problem with that, the coder of this feature is completely closed to any change :

I am not going to neuter this feature to make it "more enjoyable", "more realistic", or "more logical". It fits within the logic of the current AI and how it behaves

In the original XCOM ruleset there's no spotter/sniper value defined for the AI soldiers, but nearly all the megamods do have tons of units with spotter and sniper value, and so are also affected by those side effects a lot.

So in case you want to disable this AI cheating feature on your playthrough, you'll have to batch replace (notepad++ is good for that) in the megamod you're playing :

spotter:X

with X being a value, very often 1 but sometime more, by

spotter:0

that from the documentation fortunately will disable it.

edit : a very large UFO spawned, i sent 3 stormtalons and a stormraven all equipped with plasma missiles and dual.
2 stormtalons were destroyed in seconds (first time i saw an enemy ship destroy one in one shot) but the stormraven could tank hits and it helped destroy that big ugly UFO.
Checked what it was when it was on the ground ... a Retaliation ship !

Spoiler: very happy to kill it before it could do its mission (click to show/hide)

just completed my Thunderhawk, only transport ship in which i can fit 2 dreadnought !
Decided to add all my terminators with their plasma guns (+all terminator have a built-in ability that allow you to punch with a Powerfist without needing to equip one), i just wish the dreadnoughts weren't taking that much space, but still should be a very strong squad there, led by my captain with his 104 kills so far (that is the only Assault Terminator of the terminator squad).

That said, while Assault Terminators have very slightly higher armor stats than regular terminator, the forced shield (that takes an hand slot) apparently is not functional and is only a decoration (but still waste one hand slot), sad i wasted so much material to build that instead of another regular terminator armor.

Just in time for a massacre mission popping up, time to save some guardsmen

Spoiler: Thunderhawk are big (click to show/hide)

I wish the massive gun could be used (at least before landing), as cool as it looks it's yet another transport with weapons for ground battles...
But at least

Spoiler: good firepower is good (click to show/hide)

[Egan_BW]

Couldn't the AI always shoot with "squadsight" in the original? Or was that just with psy?

[Robsoie]

In the default game, the AI "remember" your position once it will spot you (the higher the difficulty level the more turns they will "remember" ) and by "remembering" it means your spotted soldier position become visible to every aliens on the map.
That's usually why in early game you feel the AI can see further than you as your squaddie that stand for a couple of turns in the same place will get sniped by a lot of aliens out of view..

A tactic very often used by the AI in the original game was to walk around and once one of them would spot a squaddie, they would move back out of view range, then every aliens could shoot at your guy if their LOS wasn't obstructed. It's one of the reason it was very important to keep moving your squaddie and get them to safety before an end of turn, to avoid becoming a target while you're thinking you're waiting for a sniping opportunity (but didn't noticed an alien spotted you before it ran back into the darkness).

Then you had a lot of units with the psy powers, even early games sectoids.

I guess that odd spotter/sniper system that OXCE added on top is for modders to increase artifically the difficulty of their mods by adding another maphack power to the AI (fortunately it's not forced on the original games when running through OXCE)

[Rince Wind]

Spotter/Sniper replaces the old system as far as I am aware and the aliens still suffer from no sight penalties (if the mod has those).
To be fair, the AI needs some kind of advantage, as it is so bad. It mitigates, in a way, that when you go out of line of sight with a soldier the AI completly forgets it, while the player can just send a unit to go round that corner and can always use squadsight.
In XPirates enemies with sniper rifles are mostly harmless if they don't have anyone in their sights at the beginning of their turn, because they'll waste too many TU moving around to be able to shoot someone usually. I don't think I've ever been reaction fired upon by an enemy with a sniper rifle.

[Aoi]

In XPirates ... I don't think I've ever been reaction fired upon by an enemy with a sniper rifle.

Is reaction fire something that even happens with player sniping? I haven't used sniper rifles since like... version H, as I find normal rifles have good enough accuracy at long range, and that the Freshness/Glamour system discourages play that involves waiting for enemies to move in on you, but I recall them being practically useless to act as squad overwatch.

[Robsoie]

There's no indication that the sniper/spotter system replace the original AI behaviour, the developer of this feature mention in his thread that it is adding an AI functionality, not replacing anything.
In the original game on higher difficulty i don't see how the AI was needing more advantage as it had many maphack powers with the psy stuff.

Remember that if you can also enable "Sneaky AI" in the openxcom options if you find the game too easy even on harder difficulties, it forces the AI to try to end its turn out of a soldier LOS so you can get surprised by more unexpected reaction fire around a corner.

edit : The Final Mod Pack ( https://openxcom.mod.io/final-mod-pack ) got a new release

Spoiler: changelog (click to show/hide)

- New soldier nationalities: Afghani, Algerian, Australian, Austrian, Azeri, Belgian, Chilean, Colombian, Ecuadorian, Egyptian, Iraqi, Libyan, Lithuanian, Moroccan, New Zealander, Pakistani, Peruvian, Tunisian, Turkmen, Venezuelan.
- Expanded Cuban names.
- New Junkfarm/Native Urban maps (by Dioxine).
- New farm map (by Dioxine).
- New jungle maps and additions (by Dioxine).
- New 30x30 maps for several terrains.
- Renamed Plasma Blaster to Plasma Destroyer for clarity.
- New Ufopedia picture for the Skymarshall (by Nord).
- Better lift animation (by Brain_322).
- Better jungle trees (by Dioxine).
- Fixed Avenger/Dropship cockpit (by Buscher).
- Fixed outdated Postindustrial tilesets.
- Minor fixes.

[Robsoie]

rosigma 1.09A released

Spoiler: changelog (click to show/hide)

UPDATE 1.09A NOTES:
**Requires OXCE 7.6.0**

- FIX: Codex text for special lasguns missing.
- FIX: 2 scrambled codex art pages.
- FIX: Dependencies for Canoness armor (and some other under the hood research topics) not applying as intended.

- NEW GUN: House Escher Lasgun, accurate high-grade lasgun available through the Market Outpost. Double-tap, no autofire, no melee. Can use Hotshot.
- Vostroya and Tanith guns can now take Hotshot power cells.
- Accatran, Lucius and Voss lasguns cost reduced (to 50k for Accatran and Lucius, from 75k/100k, and 7.5k from 10k for Voss).
- NEW GUN: Portable Multilaser. Available from a mid-tier research topic for all Imperial factions. Comes in Power Armor format for Guard and Stormtrooper version for Inquisition as well, with infinite (backpack) ammo. The handheld version requires a weighty battery for ammo.

ORKS
- New Klan: The blue and white Deathskulls! Expanded from just the Flashgitz, the Deathskulls are now present in force (united under the one big Warboss).
- Their units range from Lootaboyz, Kapboyz, LootaNobz, 'Ardnobz, Flashgitz and Meganobz. They use a few crossover ork units, such as Deffkopters and Kommandoz.
- Their special trait is their extreme levels of looting and pilfering, even for orks. Which means they carry plenty of imperial goodies for you to recover (or get shot by). They are present on Ork Bases, deserter hideouts, terror/retaliation missions and have a special Space Hulk loota team you may encounter. The odds of encountering other ork lists have been slightly lowered as a result.

[Rolan7]

Oh look it's the X-Piratez as an enemy faction

[Robsoie]

Recently manufactured a bunch of Master-Crafted Stormbolters for my Terminators squad to replace their plasma guns for a test.
Couldn't find out what i needed to manufacture the Master-Crafted version of their ammo, so i just did their normal version.

Just in time for a Space Hulk to crash, i decided to send them and see if the stormbolters are better than plasma guns vs tyranids (though sometime you may face orks in a space hulk).
And while having 2 dreadnoughts was helping certainly a lot (they were equipped with mortis armor to have some twin-linked lascannon instead of the default flamer), those stormbolters had been amazing at killing those damned sneaky genestealers.

Spoiler: that was a lot of them (click to show/hide)

So don't hesitate to manufacture master crafted versions of weapons, they usually have 10% more accuracy for every firemode and 1 or 2 more tiles of effective range (before the accuracy starts to drop) , that actually make a good difference in a battle.
Master crafter version of ammo usually deliver 15 more damage and 5/10% more effectiveness in armor/wound damage, don't overlook those .

[Rince Wind]

There's no indication that the sniper/spotter system replace the original AI behaviour, the developer of this feature mention in his thread that it is adding an AI functionality, not replacing anything.
In the original game on higher difficulty i don't see how the AI was needing more advantage as it had many maphack powers with the psy stuff.

Wasn't there a bug in the original game that negated the higher difficulties anyway? We are also mostly talking about mods here and I do no get shot at from enemies outside visual range as much as I did in TftD (I think, it has been a long time since I played it, and I played it before the original and then couldn't play that one because of the missing features like opening doors without walking through them), so it certainly seems that the AI has less knowledge about stuff it doesn't see that it used to back then.



If a sniper rifle has a snapshot mode it can fire a reaction shot. It is usually not the best way to utilize one, but at least the player (usually  ) knows to move other units first to get line of sight to be able to decide on how to move the sniper. The AI just walks around a bit and then runs out of TU to shoot the thing.

[Robsoie]

When you played the original, you very likely used xcomutils, that fixed the difficutly bug amongst many other things.
Most of xcomutils was ported into openxcom or added as mini-mods.

[Rince Wind]

No, I tried that before I had internet back in the 90s.

I had the impossible TftD demo from somewhere, and the pedia entries that were shown when I inevitably lost were what made my buy the game, the 1st one I ever bought. I didn't even know it was the 2nd game of a series then. I later got the original on some 3.5 inch floppies from a friend, as one did as a kid back then.

[( Tchey )]

Hi,

About 40K+Rosigma,

...

Did you do something eventually, about the "issue" with lots of downtime because of injuries and all ?

Also, would you say it is a whole gameplay experience, or more a testing ground ?

I really enjoyed Xcom Files when i played it, and i’m not sure i can enjoy another very long run again with a "not polished enough" other mod.

[Robsoie]

Yes, i did what Rolan7 suggested some time ago and it has worked fantastically so far :

Go to your
C:\Your OpenXCOM directory\User\mods\40k\Ruleset\
Open with a text editor the file  "terrain_40k.rul"
Look for

Code: [Select]

  - type: STR_ACCESS_LIFTadd after this line :

    sickBayAbsoluteBonus: 0.0
    sickBayRelativeBonus: 5.0

then look for

Code: [Select]

- type: STR_ACCESS_OUTPadd after this line :

    sickBayAbsoluteBonus: 0.0
    sickBayRelativeBonus: 5.0

Because Rosigma does not modify those 2 buildings (the access lift for underground base and the access outpost for surface base), that's why the change has to be made in the 40k base mode, this way regardless of the version of Rogisma you will use, it will always work.

Now for the experience.
While i enjoy it a lot i must say there's simply too much content and too few in term of balancing and difficulty progression with that content.

By example you end quickly with hundred of researches to do as every weapons seems to have a lots of minor variants (without mentionning each faction having its own variant of the same weapons that you can also research), that plus many ammo type by weapon.
And from what i experienced, a lot of those researches are useless, only adding entries in the codex, they don't unlock new researches or items, you need first to locate exactly which researches are actually usefull and which one are a complete waste of your time to improve your troops .

Because of too much content, you also end in loot and your base store with insane amount of weapons and ammo type that after testing them you'll find that you'll never use them as you'll only use the best weapons anyways regardless if weaker weapon may have a gimmick (like those guard laser gun shaving piece of armor, considering you want to kill things fast before they one shot you, you want a weapon that kill things immediately).

For the game balance, it's out of the window unfortunately, Rosigma adds tons of factions and adds lots of units to some existing ones. In Rosigma those factions are all active at the same time (in default 40k it felt you had an enemy selected amongst those factions, giving some better continuity), and it's noticable that not all those factions are equal :
Orks and Chaos Cults are very balanced, when you meet them in a mission you feel the fight is fair, sometime hard, sometime easy, but always feels that it can be done with tactics instead of only hoping the RNG will be on your side.

But for the many other factions, unless you're lucky you're always be facing units that from early to end game will one-shot your best guys (so many that can "taint" your troop by doing a successfull attack, converting them to their side without a care for how super armor, super health etc... you have), so many units feel unkillable (kill them, they spawn another full health unit, kill the new one too, they'll spawn another unit full health, and that silly respawn on death can go on 4 times, even better when each of the new respawned unit has a 1-hit kill attack like the taint one...).
And a lot of units, from early game to end game can and will spawn with high end game weapons (that you can't use because they're tainted, unless you corrupt your faction but corrupting your faction can only happen in end game).

And that while having a -very- lot of troops on a map. And how insanely costly an unit can be to replace in some factions (space marine dying means not only losing the unit, but losing a very expansive to craft armor, very expansive to craft weapon and ammo by example)
Maybe a problem is that you can't change the difficulty, so some player factions may be the same as playing in Impossible , explaining why so much alien bases are popping up monthly, why so many enemies by map etc...

And in the end Rosigma at its basis was 2 mods, one that focused on Sisters of Battle faction and the other one the Imperial Guard faction.
So it is possible that Rosigma is more balanced with both those factions than the older 40k ones.

So i feel 40k is a great mod with a very good expansion filled with content, and every playable faction are feeling very different, with different mechanics at play.
But unfortunately it lack the balancing and difficulty progression of the other megamods like XPiratez or XCom Files.
Fortunately it's still very actively developped (you can see everyday a lot of activity on their github), so it will eventually gets better on the balancing and progression

[( Tchey )]

Thanks for taking time to give details.