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[coolio678]

watching other people play this game reminds me of how bad I am at tactics . The sounds are rather nice, and I will say they fill quite a gap in the experience that I hadn't noticed before.

[Kyzrati]

watching other people play this game reminds me of how bad I am at tactics .

I sure hope you don't mean my video, because those are *horrible* tactics! Normally in that situation you'd flank right around the side of the nearest house and move house to house while covering each other. I wanted things to happen, and wanted some dudes to die, so I had them all out in the open where I knew the aliens would head. Poor bastards

The sounds are rather nice, and I will say they fill quite a gap in the experience that I hadn't noticed before.

Yes, I was just thinking yesterday it may be difficult for some to play without sound after seeing this, though the game proper will still be lacking a complete sound set for a good while... The only guaranteed complete set is available in the sandbox, and only in a separate download since the sound pack is going to vastly increase the size of the game.

Eventually sound effects should help provide or reinforce important information, so they'll be pretty indispensable.

[Aklyon]

The sounds.
They are awesome.

[mendonca]

Whoah ... phenomenal stuff

[Kyzrati]

The sounds.
They are awesome.

Now...
you can play with them yourself!

R9 is out, with a new mod to go with it: Can you take on multiple UFOs?

Regular players should just download the new Ground Zero mod to try out the sounds. (Little heavier than your usual X@COM download at 10 MB, since I packed 850 sounds into that thing so far...) The demo sandbox also has sounds, if you don't want aliens shooting back at you. But... why wouldn't you? ;p

[EnigmaticHat]

Love the new mission!  My first playthrough was a night mission... things didn't go very well.  Step one of my plan was to clear out the house next to us to get weapons and cover.  The first agent through the door was shot by an Ethereal, who our heavy weapons guy took out through the window with an autocannon and a LOT of bullets.  Another Ethereal up stairs killed a scout and mind controlled the autocannon soldier, only to be taken out by the last member of the breach team: the commander flying through a second story window with a gatling laser.  While this was happening the rest of the squad was fighting mutons they couldn't see by bombarding the area in front of the skyranger with rockets and high explosives.  At this point half the squad was dead, half of that was wounded, and we'd advanced one house.  After regrouping and retrieving our breach charges we rushed the UFO through smoke, only to be gunned down by the mutons and snakemen surrounding it.  Then awesome spoilers happened, not that it helped.

Two questions:

First: Did something happen to reduce the effectiveness of smoke?  Before a single smoke cloud was enough to keep me relatively safe even in the midst of the area 51 attack, now three clouds didn't feel like any protection at all.  (I don't mind though, it was a little ridiculous before)

Secondly, I notice that soldiers now have their role displayed instead of their rank.  There's scouts with a bunch of TUs, a demo soldier with good throwing, that sort of thing.  Are there explicit classes now or is this just way to tell soldiers apart?

[Robsoie]

I gave a try to that Ground zero mission, the sounds effect really improve the atmosphere tremendously.
At some point my crew tried to take out a single Muton in the street, we lost 4 guys in the process before he went down, those can really take a lot of punishment from our pea shooters

Not remembering the keys to use as it's been some time i didn't played, i did a mistake and on my first attack on the Muton, my first guy threw his rocket launcher at his general direction while i thought i finally found the key to shoot with it
I can imagine the Muton nearly died laughing when he saw that.

Then after taking down that muton, 2 discs and some floaters arrived on scene my flying commander destroyed one of discs (the explosion brought down half of a house, revealing 2 snakemen inside that didn't felt much disturbed) and my squad was annihilated by them all a few turn later.

Just a turn after my skyranger was hit by some kind of orbital beam

Lots of fun again, brillant job at updating this.

[EnigmaticHat]

Not remembering the keys to use as it's been some time i didn't played, i did a mistake and on my first attack on the Muton, my first guy threw his rocket launcher at his general direction while i thought i finally found the key to shoot with it

I once had a rookie out in the open in front of a collosus prime a remote explosive and then throw the detonator at it.  In my head there was a little "ping" sound when it hit and bounced off.

[Robsoie]

Ground Zero ! YES !

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

My squad was inserted next to an UFO this time, i moved them in an alley made of the UFO and a nearby house.
Shots seemed to come from the top of the ufo despite neither me or apparently the aliens were seeing my guys at this location (bug or is the alien AI able to "blind fire" ?)

Once we reached the park , horror .. a damned big reaper , a damned big Sectopod and a few aliens .
Firefight obviously occured and to my own surprise victory without as much losses on my side as i thought, the Reaper got a direct rocket hit that finished it and for some reason the Sectopod moved away.

Then moving further after an orbital beam annihilated my Skyranger, more losses from enemies that were beyond my line of sight (despite each step my troops were taking i had "enemy spotted" message despite nothing could be seen at any altitude , bug or game mechanism i don't know ?)

Fortunately the aliens moved in, so i could see them and destroy them all, unfortunately my rocket launcher guy misfired and killed himself by shooting a nearby wall instead of the target.
We managed to kill them, a few aliens ran away apparently.

My 2nd in command entered an UFO by the door in the opposite side of the park and killed 2 aliens inside in 1 turn ! (i don't remember my squads having that much accuracy previously, they would all miss an elephant in a corridor).
She took an heavy plasma rifle on one of the corpse.
Outside my squaddies were annihilated by a few more aliens that came out of the ufo hole from which my commander gunned down a disc hiding there.
But not before the arrival of a  ... Colossus !

Are you insane ! A colossus coming at that point of the mission ?

Once everyone was dead, out of my hiding 2nd in command. I was starting to wonder how she could get away as the Colossus was just walking and crushing through their own UFO on the other side of the park.

When arrived 2 prototype units ... on my side with powerfull beams and rockets.
I had them attack the Colossus with waves of rockets, the Colossus didn't seemed to care as much as i thought, only for me to see coming from the south ... an Armored Colossus !

The armored colossus shrugged off everything i was shooting, moved close to one of my HWP and annihilated it ... and died from the explosion !

The other colossus moved through a building and i lost track of it due to the smoke.

A rendez vous message appeared for evac !
I moved the remaining HWP to it , shot many, many salves of rocket toward the building in which the Colossus was supposed to be, while my 2nd in command managed to sneak outside and move to the mission zone boundary to avoid the remaining many enemies.

I think the Colossus was destroyed as i saw the bunch of red % in the building at some point, but no message about it and the final log didn't mentionned its destruction.

But success !
What a fun game it was, first optimistic with some good result (despite my badly accurate squaddies) , then bad time with my troops slowly decimated, and despair when impossible enemies appeared, and joy when HWP came to the rescue, enthousiasm with completing the mission i thought failing !

overview of the zone (notice the big square full of red % , that's where the 2 colossus have died)


the brave last survivor, Helga, running to the evac zone


saved !


debriefing

All i can suggest is maybe some sound effect for when there's an important message from HQ, in the heat of the action it's easy to not notice the text

[Kyzrati]

Glad to hear you guys are having fun with it!

Did something happen to reduce the effectiveness of smoke?  Before a single smoke cloud was enough to keep me relatively safe even in the midst of the area 51 attack, now three clouds didn't feel like any protection at all.  (I don't mind though, it was a little ridiculous before)

Hm, no change there, nope. I took the data from the original X-COM in that you are only supposed to have visibility of about 4-6 spaces through fresh smoke, if that (it's generally going to be even more dense at the center).

One difference between this mission and others is that in all previous missions the aliens generally have other targets to fire on, like the soldiers in Area 51, so you might not feel the pressure as much. In Ground Zero the aliens are a lot more focused on your squad since you're the only targets around! That and the aliens in Ground Zero are on the more aggressive side.

Also keep in mind that destruction and collapsing structures also produce smoke that combines with the effect of any smoke grenades lying around.

Later during the mechanics tweaking phase we can reconsider the density of smoke, since it's an easy one-number change.

Secondly, I notice that soldiers now have their role displayed instead of their rank.  There's scouts with a bunch of TUs, a demo soldier with good throwing, that sort of thing.  Are there explicit classes now or is this just way to tell soldiers apart?

That's just a mod feature I decided to take advantage of for this mission so you can have a quick idea of what each of your soldiers is intended to be best at and equipped for.

I originally added that for Rookie's Tale to enable the HUD to display a unit's "class". These are not official classes by any means. My intention is to eventually enable you to define your own "kits" for soldiers, to make outfitting them more convenient, and it will display the kit name on the HUD as well. (Plus a rank symbol, which for now is overwritten if a class is specified.)

All i can suggest is maybe some sound effect for when there's an important message from HQ, in the heat of the action it's easy to not notice the text

That's a great suggestion. I definitely should have put that in there, as even I sometimes missed the messages while I was playing

That was why I originally added a system to flash an indicator over the map when an important message comes in, but the messages in this case do not always occur on the same turn so I couldn't use that particular system (a temporary mod feature). That and there are a fairly large number of messages this time as the situation changes on the battlefield, so the indicator might get annoying. I'll at least attach a sound to incoming messages when I get a chance to update the mod.

My squad was inserted next to an UFO this time, i moved them in an alley made of the UFO and a nearby house.
Shots seemed to come from the top of the ufo despite neither me or apparently the aliens were seeing my guys at this location (bug or is the alien AI able to "blind fire" ?)

The aliens must have seen something and had LOS to fire. Looks like you dropped at night, so remember that the aliens can see much further than you (20 spaces as opposed to 9), making night missions especially dangerous. Throw flares or set things on fire to light up dark areas!

more losses from enemies that were beyond my line of sight (despite each step my troops were taking i had "enemy spotted" message despite nothing could be seen at any altitude , bug or game mechanism i don't know ?)

If it says "enemy spotted" then you can *definitely* see some enemy out there. Remember to press 'e' to highlight all threats on the map, since some may be hard to spot. It's not a great system, but it's better than nothing until I add the map overlay system (soon) that will actually highlight and identify new targets as they appear.

My 2nd in command entered an UFO by the door in the opposite side of the park and killed 2 aliens inside in 1 turn ! (i don't remember my squads having that much accuracy previously, they would all miss an elephant in a corridor).

Hehe, well, at that close a range you should clean up fairly well, and your 2nd in command has some good stats--I gave most of your squad better stats, as everyone is sergeant level or above. If you had rookies like before they wouldn't be too much help on this mission.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

But not before the arrival of a  ... Colossus !

Are you insane ! A colossus coming at that point of the mission ?

Fun, eh? ;p You should have the firepower to take it out, especially once the HWPs land. Or you can move *really* fast to eliminate all the power sources to prevent them from teleporting that Colossus, and the armored ones after that. Of course, moving fast is usually very dangerous in X-COM So I was sort of creating a catch-22 here to see how you deal with it. In my second test play, I had a night mission and still took out the initial colossus and both the armored ones, so it's definitely possible!

In my first I took out all the power sources right when the first colossus was teleported, so only had to deal with that one.

When arrived 2 prototype units ... on my side with powerfull beams and rockets.
I had them attack the Colossus with waves of rockets, the Colossus didn't seemed to care as much as i thought

The swarm rockets aren't all that effective against a colossus (b/c you can fire so many of them), mostly for taking out normal aliens and clearing buildings; the proton missiles are really powerful, as are the beam weapons.

But success !
What a fun game it was, first optimistic with some good result (despite my badly accurate squaddies) , then bad time with my troops slowly decimated, and despair when impossible enemies appeared, and joy when HWP came to the rescue, enthousiasm with completing the mission i thought failing !

Sounds like fun! I see you didn't get credit for both colossus kills because, as you said, one of them killed itself with its own mounted cannon explosion while fighting your HWP. You could've gotten a much better score by trying to take out the power sources, but apparently you had your hands full with enemies that shoot back ;p Still counts as a victory though, since you managed to survive after stalling their preparations.

[Robsoie]

Thanks for the hints.

I have probably not paid attention and the mission must have been at night, that would then indeed explain all those out of sight shots my guys went through. Nearly a miracle one of them survived to the end with such badly prepared and distracted commander in chief

Thanks for mentionning the "e" key, i didn't knew about this one, searching manually when "spotted" message happens on multiple height can be difficult.

With more knowledge i'll surely do better next time, or worse

[Kyzrati]

All i can suggest is maybe some sound effect for when there's an important message from HQ, in the heat of the action it's easy to not notice the text

That's a great suggestion. I definitely should have put that in there, as even I sometimes missed the messages while I was playing

I went ahead and added this sound today and uploaded a new version of the mod with it. Not necessarily a must-have upgrade, but it'll help anyone who hasn't yet downloaded/played.

[coolio678]

All i can suggest is maybe some sound effect for when there's an important message from HQ, in the heat of the action it's easy to not notice the text

That's a great suggestion. I definitely should have put that in there, as even I sometimes missed the messages while I was playing

I went ahead and added this sound today and uploaded a new version of the mod with it. Not necessarily a must-have upgrade, but it'll help anyone who hasn't yet downloaded/played.

I'm glad you added that. Half of my squad was just wiped out by the orbital beam, because I didn't notice the warning. It was quite tragic.

[Orb]

The new sounds really make the difference. The light pitter patter of leaves rolling on the ground as you start the mission, to the monstrous roar of a colossus as it teleports in, it really pulls you into the game. Even though I've beaten it, I keep playing it again and again. The only complaint I have about this mod is that you spelled bleachers wrong. 

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Funny moment/glitch. I was assaulting a terror ship, and was marveling at the alien entertainment sounds when the warning for a teleport came in. I had a rookie from below and a commando from above making their way to the power cores, but it was too late. The colossus spawned. On the power cores. "Rooa- *explosion*". The entire terror ship, colossus, three of my troops, and untold numbers of aliens melted away in the explosion. It was too funny to be mad.

A few suggestions. Once all enemies and power cores are destroyed, the mission should automatically end. Also, for future UI updates, would it be possible to show how much TU an action will use when moving with the mouse? Perhaps it could be shown by showing a depleted TU bar, like when shooting? UFO: AI has something similar to this, and it helps a lot.

[Kyzrati]

The new sounds really make the difference. The light pitter patter of leaves rolling on the ground as you start the mission, to the monstrous roar of a colossus as it teleports in, it really pulls you into the game. Even though I've beaten it, I keep playing it again and again.

Woohoo!

The only complaint I have about this mod is that you spelled bleachers wrong. 

Damn typos! I generally don't spellcheck the demo text files since there'd be a ridiculous number of words that aren't in the dictionary, so I occasionally miss those

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Funny moment/glitch. I was assaulting a terror ship, and was marveling at the alien entertainment sounds when the warning for a teleport came in. I had a rookie from below and a commando from above making their way to the power cores, but it was too late. The colossus spawned. On the power cores. "Rooa- *explosion*". The entire terror ship, colossus, three of my troops, and untold numbers of aliens melted away in the explosion. It was too funny to be mad.

Though I thought about it, I couldn't easily avoid that possibility given the current limitations of the map generation system, so I decided to let that be since it's somewhat funny anyway. So... their calculations were off?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Colossus aliens will even stomp their way through UFOs, anyway.

A few suggestions. Once all enemies and power cores are destroyed, the mission should automatically end.

I opted against this just because I didn't expect many players to actually defeat all the aliens *and* take out all the power cores, but then... there's always Orb

As part of the story you technically won't have any means of exit by the time you do that since your Skyranger is gone. In any case, the main reason for not allowing an early end was because it's somewhat difficult to implement both of those conditions at the same time given the current system for defining mission goals. I'd have to do something hacky.

Also, for future UI updates, would it be possible to show how much TU an action will use when moving with the mouse? Perhaps it could be shown by showing a depleted TU bar, like when shooting? UFO: AI has something similar to this, and it helps a lot.

Yep, I'll be adding that to the upcoming new UI. Thanks for the reminder. Before I start coding it I'll ask again about desired features. The closest you can come now is ctrl-p to see your furthest destination, though even that can be slightly off if you're blocked by a unit some distance away. (I should make that more accurate later by actually considering distant obstacles.)