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XCOMUFO & Xenocide

Compendium of ideas to make some weapons more viable via editor. Also


Guest ProFF7

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Guest ProFF7

- making M4000 rifle shoot faster, so it becomes the faster weapon instead of the toxi gun.

 

- Making the Laser sniper rifle deal a lot more damage, but rechargue much slower, and increase bullet speed to make it almost a insta hit (makes sense since laser travels at the speed of light) . that would make it work more like a true sniper rifle and make it a little more viable.

 

- Beefing the Vehicle's Auto-cannon. It seems to be an equivalent to the gatling guns of real combat aircraft, so it may be a good idea to not touch the damages and instead increase its rate of fire a ton, because as it is now it is worthless even when just beginning the game.

 

 

BTW, is there any way to create new weapons from scratch? or you have to edit something already existent?

 

I was thinking if it would be possible for a weapon to fire multiple proyectiles (to make a shotgun). I also noticed that when some weapons blow up in the ground because of fire or explosions, they send proyectiles around as shrapnel. I think it would be extremely interesting if that effect could be controlled so AP Grenades throw great amounts of shraphnel, making them worth using.

 

I would also like some kind of flamethrower :devilburn: , it may be just a close range, fast firing auto-cannon, using the fire animation as proyectile?

 

Or how about a Grenade Launcher, that uses the system of the Brainsucker launcher. not sure if that would be easy to do xD.

 

Gauss weaponry would be cool to see too ^_^ , probably with very high proyectile speed and good armor piercing ability, as gauss proyectiles travel at hyper-velocity.

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Making the M4000 even faster seems like a bad idea, maybe decrease speed of the toxigun instead?

You have to be careful with projectile speeds because if they travel too fast it's possible they might go right 'through' objects

The auto-cannon is better than the small laser in the early game I believe, until the armor of the alien UFO's becomes too thick.

 

There's no way to create new weapons, you can only edit existing weapons, and some of them have hardcoded effects, such as the Dimension Destabilizer and Tracker gun. multiple projectiles on agent equipment is impossible unfortunately :(

I've tried turning the brainsucker launcher into a grenade launcher, though I've had no effect so far. I'll keep trying though :)

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Guest ProFF7
Making the M4000 even faster seems like a bad idea, maybe decrease speed of the toxigun instead?

You have to be careful with projectile speeds because if they travel too fast it's possible they might go right 'through' objects

The auto-cannon is better than the small laser in the early game I believe, until the armor of the alien UFO's becomes too thick.

 

There's no way to create new weapons, you can only edit existing weapons, and some of them have hardcoded effects, such as the Dimension Destabilizer and Tracker gun. multiple projectiles on agent equipment is impossible unfortunately :(

I've tried turning the brainsucker launcher into a grenade launcher, though I've had no effect so far. I'll keep trying though :)

 

The M4000 has good RoF, but its not near of how fast a rifle/smg would fire, and the toxigun fires much faster anyway, plus it does about 3-4 times more damage to aliens AND ignores shields. I dont think making the M4000 ROF a little higher than the toxigun would unbalance things in any way (if they fired at the same speed, I would still pick the toxigun)

 

The autocannon is very short ranged, the bolter laser at least can fire from some distance.

 

 

 

Today Ive been doing weird things with clips of ammo, placing 30 on some point of the ground and throwing a grenade on it. the resulting shrapnel will sometimes wound unarmored ppl, specially if blowing up autocannon ammo :devillaugh: . Damn, it would be great if there was some way to control the way shrapnel works. maybe transforming a AP grenade into a clip of ammo? ill try later (who knows, maybe cluster grenades would be a possibility)

Edited by ProFF7
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The problem with M4000 Machine Gun is that unlike Laser Squad and X-Com1/2, X-Com3 doesn't have a real auto-fire mode and other modes RoFs are calculated from the same rate of fire. As for the rest, sniper rifle is as powerful as X-Com1 Heavy Laser and vehicle autocannons have much better RoF in my mod. Edited by Sorrow
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Don't forget to factor in dual-weilding in as well. With the vanilla weapons, it's pointless to dual the Toxigun thanks to its 3.0 ROF,. The second weapon doesn't really add much - on top of the high damage it already deals to aliens. On the other hand, it is highly beneficial to dual the M4000 and sacrifice accuracy for a greater rate of fire.

 

With that in mind, I'd recommend keeping the M4000 at 2.0 and just alter the toxigun as well. Many ways you could do it. Perhaps drop the speed to say 0.9 and and set the accuracy to Plasma Gun levels to compensate.

 

One suggestion of my own: Law Pistol - keep it as it is, but alter the cartridges to maybe carry an extra 5 rounds. It's always been a great M4000 alternative, but harmed by its low ammo count.

 

- NKF

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Guest ProFF7
Don't forget to factor in dual-weilding in as well. With the vanilla weapons, it's pointless to dual the Toxigun thanks to its 3.0 ROF,. The second weapon doesn't really add much - on top of the high damage it already deals to aliens. On the other hand, it is highly beneficial to dual the M4000 and sacrifice accuracy for a greater rate of fire.

 

With that in mind, I'd recommend keeping the M4000 at 2.0 and just alter the toxigun as well. Many ways you could do it. Perhaps drop the speed to say 0.9 and and set the accuracy to Plasma Gun levels to compensate.

 

One suggestion of my own: Law Pistol - keep it as it is, but alter the cartridges to maybe carry an extra 5 rounds. It's always been a great M4000 alternative, but harmed by its low ammo count.

 

- NKF

 

yup, not a bad idea, but it is a pistol. Pistols are supposed to have smaller clips. Not trying to seem like a realism fundamentalist, but I like weapons to mantain some coherency with the real world counterparts they are emulating. and 16 rounds is already a high amount of ammo for a pistol clip, maybe increase to 18 max, which would simulate enlarged clips (Like this one http://www.jcweaponry.com/images/G182.jpg ) and would be fair, considering one of the points of a pistol is to have a sidearm which weights almost nothing, and pistol clips weight the same as M4000 clips while having less ammo. if that was possible, I would make pistol clips weight 0.3 or 0.4, but as thats not the case, a small increase of ammo would be a fair trade.

 

what I would do with lawpistol, is maybe increase 1 or 2 points of damage (after all, its using bigger calibre rounds than the M4000, and pistols are often loaded with special ammo, like armour piercing or explosive tip, which tend to make them more destructive than smgs) and increase the rof a tiny bit to keep in par.

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Guest ProFF7
M4000 isn't a SMG, it's a LMG/Assault Rifle.

 

nowhere does it state it is a LMG or an Assault rifle. the designation Machine gun is valid for any automatic firing weapon.

 

In the Ufopaedia it defines it just as a "Military automatic firing projectile weapon"

 

 

So lacking a official description to see what kind of weapon it is, I use in-game mechanics to determine which role it fits.

 

 

- has the same bullet speed than the lawpistol. so game-mechanics wise, it would not be using rifle ammo.

 

- does less damage than the lawpistol. a rifle would do more damage just because of the higher proyectile speed and better ability to penetrate armor.

 

- In the game it fits the role of short-range killing weapon, while a LMG or assault rifle would be more fitted to medium or even long range combat.

 

 

Also, it seems to be based on the design of the thompson gun, which is a submachine gun used in the 1940s-1950s

 

http://thetruthaboutguns.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/thompson_45_machine_gun.jpg

 

All the game aesthetics seems to be based on the "exhuberant styling of the 1950s" as it says in ufopaedia.

 

 

Based in all that, I would be much more inclined to think its a submachine gun rather than a LMG/Assault Rifle.

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1. Take a look at the M-4000 magazine and compare it to a Thompson magazine. It's long and full of sharp-tipped rounds. It looks like an intermediate ammo to me.

2. Game mechanics are meaningless as X-Com3 doesn't follow the real life logic and brutal semi-realism of the previous games, but instead uses a more gamey concept of balance. If M-4000 would get a similar damage as the X-Com1 rifle, it would kill most humanoids in 1-2 shots and it already has high RoF.

If it would be accurate on long range, then there would be a serious balance problem, because both aimed mode and snap shot are derived from the same RoF as the automatic mode. And full auto/burst mode in assault rifles is for short range fighting.

If Lawpistol would do appropriately lower damage despite having lesser RoF, then no one would use it because it would be significantly weaker than M-4000, so it had to have higher damage. Also, Lawpistol itself looks pretty weird. It may be a powerful high-caliber hangun firing AP ammo.

Take into account that the person that made these statistics thought that a laser sniper rifle that is over 2 times weaker than ordinary Laser Rifle from X-Com1 is an awesome idea. heck, these guys managed to reverse the stats of personal armour and power suit.

 

Which is the main reason why I decided to start working on my mod.

Take a look at how X-Com3 with weapon damage and armour based on X-Com1 works:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY1u94QU-Rw

Just change the video resolution to 480p as for some weird reason it runs in 240p by default.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bk3xfq_k7Zc

This one has some M4000 combat - most of kills are with two shots. I managed to get a few one shot kills in other missions.

 

3. M4000 machine gun is based on a M4000 Machine Gun from Laser Squad, which is an assault rifle.

Edited by Sorrow
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I'm no weapon expert, but like a lot of things in this game, the M4000's ammo design is probably also more for its retro-20's/30's atomic future styled appearance than for realism. The Lawpistol too looks like it should be doing much heavier damage than it should if you look at its ammo.

 

Just based on the size of the front hand grip, the M4000 does seems to fit more in scale with the Thompson. The Autocannon on the other hand would be quite easily fit the ehavy machinegun classification considering the powerful bullets it packs. Or minigun rather.

 

Say, has anyone noticed that the main image of the Autocannon's Ufopaedia image is missing the forward hand grip?

 

- NKF

Edited by NKF
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Guest ProFF7
I'm no weapon expert, but like a lot of things in this game, the M4000's ammo design is probably also more for its retro-20's/30's atomic future styled appearance than for realism. The Lawpistol too looks like it should be doing much heavier damage than it should if you look at its ammo.

 

Just based on the size of the front hand grip, the M4000 does seems to fit more in scale with the Thompson. The Autocannon on the other hand would be quite easily fit the ehavy machinegun classification considering the powerful bullets it packs. Or minigun rather.

 

Say, has anyone noticed that the main image of the Autocannon's Ufopaedia image is missing the forward hand grip?

 

- NKF

 

yeah the designs are a bit strange, the ammo from lawpistol in fact looks like rifle ammo which is weird.

 

The autocannon is a weapon difficult to fit into a real world role. when firing AP ammo, it would do somewhat the role of heavy MG as you say, if a bit too slow firing for that. (I did some tests editing the AP rounds only, reducing the damage from 40 to 28, and increasing the rate of fire to be just a little faster than the lawpistol, then it would fit perfectly in a support MG role)

 

 

However, with HE-IN ammo, its role would probably fit as portable grenade-launcher. I find this one (

) is the most similar to X-COM Autocannon I found, but Auto-cannon would probably fire smaller grenades.

 

I noticed the lack of handle of the AC too, thats strange. It could be that it has a detachable handle (hope its called like that cause my english sux ^_^ ) that can be set in position before firing. or just that the designers put it that way in the ufopaedia for coolness xD

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Just based on the size of the front hand grip, the M4000 does seems to fit more in scale with the Thompson.

The looks seem to be based on Thompson (which was pretty big for a SMG) with removed stock and LMG magazine + some sci-fi decoration.

 

I'm no weapon expert, but like a lot of things in this game, the M4000's ammo design is probably also more for its retro-20's/30's atomic future styled appearance than for realism. The Lawpistol too looks like it should be doing much heavier damage than it should if you look at its ammo.

Well, taking in account how the damages got scaled down in comparison to X-Com1, Lawpistol is pretty powerful. The retro looks are dictated by the city regulations.

 

The autocannon is a weapon difficult to fit into a real world role. when firing AP ammo, it would do somewhat the role of heavy MG as you say, if a bit too slow firing for that. (I did some tests editing the AP rounds only, reducing the damage from 40 to 28, and increasing the rate of fire to be just a little faster than the lawpistol, then it would fit perfectly in a support MG role)

 

 

However, with HE-IN ammo, its role would probably fit as portable grenade-launcher. I find this one (

) is the most similar to X-COM Autocannon I found, but Auto-cannon would probably fire smaller grenades.

Autocannon itself doesn't make sense. The original autocannon in Laser Squad was firing high explosive ammo only and had only one barrel, so it was more like an automatic grenade launcher. It didn't make sense even back then as using auto-fire with it was a suicide and no sane person would do it.

It seems that someone watched Predator too many times when making UFO and they made it a combination of a high-caliber minigun and grenade launcher.

Which is kinda silly, especially that X-com1 had only 3 round bursts and the gun itself has only 14 rounds of ammo.

Edited by Sorrow
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Autocannon itself doesn't make sense. The original autocannon in Laser Squad was firing high explosive ammo only and had only one barrel, so it was more like an automatic grenade launcher. It didn't make sense even back then as using auto-fire with it was a suicide and no sane person would do it.

It seems that someone watched Predator too many times when making UFO and they made it a combination of a high-caliber minigun and grenade launcher.

Which is kinda silly, especially that X-com1 had only 3 round bursts and the gun itself has only 14 rounds of ammo.

Vs. 16 per clip in Apocalypse. Not that much of an upgrade.

 

The absurdly effective armor is what drives up the number of shots/kill. An unarmored target would usually die in 1-2 hits from a M4000.

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Not really. It's not only the weapon damages that got changed. Amount of health has also increased in comparison to UFO. Starting health for X-Com soldiers in UFO was 25-40 (30 for civilians) - it was higher in Apocalypse - I remember having to decrease it for all humans in my mod to that value. Armour isn't absurdly effective - take into account that X-Com wears heavy armour, probably made from alien alloys and armour worn by the rest of organizations can't fully stop even M4000 rounds.
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The slowness of the autocannon is actually explained partially in the UFO intro. Well, it explains UFO's autocannon's slowness at the very least. The barrel needs to be rotating before the bullets can be fired. Like ye good old Gatling gun where they had to crank the handle.

 

Apocalypse's autocannon does feel more like a machinegun because it appears to fire much faster. Certainly, not a fast machine gun, but a steady one with powerful bullets.

 

Still has that grenade launcher or micro-missile launcher feel to it thanks to its explosive ammo.

 

- NKF

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...

- ...and increase bullet speed to make it almost a insta hit (makes sense since laser travels at the speed of light) . that would make it work more like a true sniper rifle and make it a little more viable.

-

....

 

Last time I have played Megapol mod I have greatly increased laser speed for vehicle weapon. Lasers became better but no much. So it would be good idea to change bullet speed in laser rifle.

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The slowness of the autocannon is actually explained partially in the UFO intro. Well, it explains UFO's autocannon's slowness at the very least. The barrel needs to be rotating before the bullets can be fired. Like ye good old Gatling gun where they had to crank the handle.

UFO autocannon was slow because there was only a three round mode. Also, that gun simply doesn't make sense.

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UFO autocannon was slow because there was only a three round mode. Also, that gun simply doesn't make sense.

 

It's not so much the three burst mode itself, but if you imagine them having to get the barrels spinning for each of the bursts, then the amount of time wasted really stacks up. ;)

 

- NKF

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