Anomalies, Discrepancies, and Outright Bugs - v0.2a

[Straylight]

Happy Winter-een-mas.

Rather than reviving that huge old thread by this name, I thought I'd start a new one for the new release of that mod I've been working on. Yes, I've finally made a second release. Kolya is kindly hosting it at Strange Bedfellows, but it's a 28MB file, so you may want to start downloading now if you were interested in the previous release. You can come back here and read the rest of this (and maybe a book or two if you're still on dial-up) while you're waiting.

I'm still not done, but I probably never will be. I have been hacking away at it now and then, and I've reached a point where I've made enough progress for another release and everything I've taken apart has been put back together in close enough to working order. (Why are there always one or two more screws left over?)

It's still alpha, because I've only played through it once since the last changes to make sure it even works. I didn't encounter any significant problems, but that doesn't mean they're not there. If you do find any problems with it, let me know, because it's certainly possible I may have missed them.

Of course, it's also possible that some of you may not like some of the changes this time around. These changes are a bit more significant in their effects on gameplay. Standard weapons and Grenades are the biggest change.

Standard weapons in this version require little skill to use, but still require the usual six points to master. The Shotgun can be used with Standard 2 and the Assault Rifle with Standard 3, but they do less damage at that level than they did in the original game. You have to keep increasing your skill if you want to get the same damage you're used to.

In the original game, three of the five grenades had scaled damage. They got damage bonuses for everything bullets did: skill levels, sharpshooter upgrade, research, and modifications. I tried making all five grenades scale like that, for consistency, but I don't think it's possible with Proximity grenades, and it really just doesn't make any sense anyway. Everything needs to do more damage as you progress through the game, because the enemies get tougher, but that can be accomplished by just having access to more powerful grenades as you progress. Making the Disruption grenades actually powerful accomplishes that, since the EMP and Incendiary grenades are already properly distributed for that use.
So I disabled most of the damage scaling on all the grenades and significantly increased their base damage. Now extra skill, researching your target, modifying the launcher, and being a "sharpshooter" have very little effect on the damage the grenades do, which makes more sense. And the damage they do isn't as good as it could be with all those bonuses stacked together, but it's an extremely good deal for only 1 point of skill. The result is a single easy-to-use weapon with a variety of ammo for every occasion, but the ammo is the rarest and most expensive ammo in the game. The EMP grenades are not as good as the EMP Rifle, and the Incendiary grenades are less powerful than the Annelid weapons, but when you're playing Impossible and can't afford all the cyber modules for the specialized weapons, here's your cheaper alternative. Oh, and Disruption grenades will kill just about anything with one direct hit, so how many of them you find depends on the difficulty level you're playing.

Speaking of difficulty, here's another big change. Impossible just got more challenging. I removed all the Auto-Repair Units, French-Epstein Devices, and Ice Picks from Impossible mode. On Easy mode, all the original ones are still in their original locations. That's 8 ARUs, 7 FEDs, and 5 Picks. Normal mode has 4 ARUs, 6 FEDs, and 4 Picks. Hard has 2 ARUs, 3 FEDs, and 3 Picks. And none for Impossible.

Oh, and if you're not familiar with Winter-een-mas, you can look it up on Wintereenmas.com.

[Spitter]

Shouldn't you still have at least one Ice Pick for impossible? Currently, you are forcing players playing on impossible to invest in Hack skill so that they can hack the replicator in Command Control to get the bomb you need for blowing up the shuttle.

[maxdmg]

Happy Winter-een-mas.

Still a month off it even says so on the website

Strange Bedfellows, but it's a 28MB file, so you may want to start downloading now if you were interested in the previous release.

Yay more modifications to try...will be looking into it over the next week or so.

Standard weapons in this version require little skill to use, but still require the usual six points to master. The Shotgun can be used with Standard 2 and the Assault Rifle with Standard 3, but they do less damage at that level than they did in the original game. You have to keep increasing your skill if you want to get the same damage you're used to.

A nice change I think everyone will agree especially seeing as the assault rifle is only at hydro saves lugging an unusable weapon around.

Now extra skill, researching your target, modifying the launcher, and being a "sharpshooter" have very little effect on the damage the grenades do, which makes more sense. And the damage they do isn't as good as it could be with all those bonuses stacked together, but it's an extremely good deal for only 1 point of skill. The result is a single easy-to-use weapon with a variety of ammo for every occasion, but the ammo is the rarest and most expensive ammo in the game. The EMP grenades are not as good as the EMP Rifle, and the Incendiary grenades are less powerful than the Annelid weapons, but when you're playing Impossible and can't afford all the cyber modules for the specialized weapons, here's your cheaper alternative. Oh, and Disruption grenades will kill just about anything with one direct hit, so how many of them you find depends on the difficulty level you're playing.

Brilliant, just as I always thought it should be

Speaking of difficulty, here's another big change. Impossible just got more challenging. I removed all the Auto-Repair Units, French-Epstein Devices, and Ice Picks from Impossible mode. On Easy mode, all the original ones are still in their original locations. That's 8 ARUs, 7 FEDs, and 5 Picks. Normal mode has 4 ARUs, 6 FEDs, and 4 Picks. Hard has 2 ARUs, 3 FEDs, and 3 Picks. And none for Impossible.

I think that taking out all of the picks is somewhat unfair on impossible especially if someone likes the other changes but wanted to go with no hacking(not many would but still..)

Can't say happy winter-een-mas just yet but a merry christmas to you. I shall be looking forward to trying these modifications as I can't get my new games to work yet .

[Straylight]

Heh. I guess I should ask for input a little more often. It's been so long since I played without Hack skill that that one mandatory hack completely slipped my mind. Yes, it is unfair to take away all the Ice Picks on Impossible. I'll leave one of them in. That's a quick fix. I'll have an update ready ASAP.

And you're right about the date of Winter-een-mas. I guess I missed the part where it got narrowed down to just one week. I was thinking in the more general sense of the holiday season that is the preferred target for major video game release dates. So Merry Christmas, or whatever winter holiday(s) you like.

[TheNightTerror]

Would you be able to give the player the option of installing the versions with ice-picks and such on impossible? I really, really dislike the idea of playing without ice-picks, I may end up installing everything except the .mis files. I hate hacking, and I don't want to be forced to do it. I'm sorry if I sound ungrateful.

[RocketMan]

If you hate hacking then you've been playing the wrong game all this time.

[Kolya]

No, that's her style. But you knew that.

Straylight, water was pink for all of us in a MP in MedSci2 . Didn't check in SP yet.

[Hemebond]

Were there lots of upright dead hybrids for you Kolya? Most of the dead hybrids were upright for, but that may have been my computer. I've installed a house-fan now, so it should run a bit better now.

[Kolya]

Yeah, but the upright corpses are a genuine MP problem. Whereas the water is pink in SP too. Just had a quick trip down there and checked.

EDIT: Updated version 0.2.1 available at SBF. Incorporating the icepick for the mandatory hack on Command level.

[TheNightTerror]

That's not the only mandatory hack, though. What about the computers controlling Shodan's shields? I suppose a ranged weapon fanatic could blast the shields away, but melee only players have to hack them.

[Kolya]

Remote Circuitry Manipulation (common: PSI Hack) costs 110 CMs on Impossible including the fee for tier 4.
That basically means a PSI agent has to buy non-PSI skills in the beginning that rival his/her corresponding PSI disciplines lateron.
What I would like to see would be a general drop in tier cost and slight raise in individual PSI discipline costs to make PSI more attractive.

[RocketMan]

Psi always seemed too expensive to me to go "all out" with....it was fun dont get me wrong but i always missed the fact that i couldn't do more....with the other careers you can explore much more of the career with the same cyber modules. Unless of course you just max out on tier 1 and 2 disciplines...but how fun can that be? ther's some cool stuff in the upper tiers

[Hemebond]

Are there enough CMs to buy every PSI power?

[Snarespawn]

Are there enough CMs to buy every PSI power?

Well, if you were on Easy and neglected your other stats you could probably do that. You can't do it while maintaining you stats though.

Besides, why would you want to? "Look, I have three self-heals, two of which aren't very good compared to the last! Look, I have the choice between putting people to sleep or changing their loyalties! Look, I can spend psi points to attempt a half-assed version of what the Recycler can do reliably for free! Look, I can choose between a 5% shield and a 15% shield!" Of course, I might have gotten a couple numbers wrong there, but you get the idea.

[TF]

Besides, why would you want to? "Look, I have three self-heals, two of which aren't very good compared to the last! Look, I have the choice between putting people to sleep or changing their loyalties! Look, I can spend psi points to attempt a half-assed version of what the Recycler can do reliably for free! Look, I can choose between a 5% shield and a 15% shield!" Of course, I might have gotten a couple numbers wrong there, but you get the idea.

There are two heals, one for level 2 and one for 5, getting both is kind of mandatory in my book due to the distance between them. Lvl2 is good because it's early, 5 is good because it heals a lot and it helps save your life later on when you have around 50hp.
The Transmutation gives you more nanites than the recycler, ex: 3 frag grenades - 6 with recycler, 8 with transmutation.
The two shields are four levels of psi tiers away, getting them both is mandatory, especially since they stack. And getting the numbers wrong is a little important because they're 15% and 50%.

psst check your facts next time before turning on the rambleomatic

[Snarespawn]

psst check your facts next time before turning on the rambleomatic

Yeah, I know all that. There are several powers that I would never ever take and I couldn't remember what they were, but I was in a bad mood when I made that last post and I felt like ranting. Sorry to subject you to it.

I was thinking of Soma Transference as a heal, actually. I suppose it doesn't really count. Honestly, after some experience with that power, it falls under the "never use" category for me.

I'd give some valid examples, but I don't have my disk with me and I don't really feel like Googling for a power list.

I still consider that having all the powers would be less than useless, though. It'd make it hard to cycle to the right one for any given situation (unless you only used 12 powers) and many of the powers wouldn't get used in your entire career.

Unless... Hmmm... is it possible to bind keys for "quickuse" (or whatever it's called) for numbers higher than 12? If so, I might have to play OSA all over again. I could bind up to "quickuse 22" on the regular number keys and it would be mighty handy. Anyone know?

Edit: Many, not most.

[weirwood]

>The Transmutation gives you more nanites than the recycler, ex: 3 frag grenades - 6 with recycler, 8 with transmutation.

yeah, but the benefit is less than what the psi points you spend are worth in nanites. That power, like many others, could do with a little balancing.

Straylight, I'm curious as I didn't find it in your changelist: have you fixed the bugged double damage that the crystal shard gets in overhead mode?

[ctx]

congrats for your efforts for developing this terrific game to a further level.
downloaded it from strangebedfellows, and I can only say it is awesome. : )

I really liked to see that the AR doesn't put down a rumbler in three hits. I especially appreciated the tweaking on

spoiler:

the Polito scene, "username: GODDESS"

: )

I'm currently running through it at normal level and have been to ops. there are some issues. as Kolya mentioned, all the waters are pink, both at the medsci and hydro decks. When I hacked a security computer and a crate in medsci 2, there were description texts appearing on the hack interface but they were spreading towards the dots you press on, but I didn't see any on engineering. and when I looked at the Malick and Yount logs at the central room of Ops, there wasn't any text or picture appearing.

I'm sorry if here's a wrong place to post bug reports.

and could you please tweak the psi discipline CM costs? maybe lowering the tier costs and increasing the individual skills? if you had done these, the mod would make the game more balanced for every strategy.

keep up the good work!

and btw, it's my first post on ttlg. I've been reading the forums before and it seems like a nice place. So, hello to everyone.

edit: I forgot to say, could you make RunFast and WormBlend implants available in some place of the game? Like, WormBlend in the corpse in the radiation water in BOTM, there was WormHeart in it, and you could change it with WormBlend, since the players already have a chance to get the wormheart from

spoiler:

Diego's corpse.

RunFast is definitely the best implant in the game, imho (swift is the second, i like going fast : ) ) and it's the only cause for me to cheat, at times when i can't resist the cancer and try to remove it forcibly : P. Should it be in somewhere secure, like in a high security crate?

[Ultraviolet]

ctx:
The problem with RunFast is that it can KILL you if you're maxed on speed and run into a wall. You don't even have to have room to reach full speed, really.

Try this: Do the ubermensch cheat. Summon a swiftboost, put it on, and recycle it. Summon a runfast, put it on, and recycle it. Cheat to get the cyber modules for any psi disciplines relating to agility, get them, and turn them on. Summon a speedbooster and use it. Pick a direction and run into a wall.

Now, that'd probably save you from some really far falls, but falling speed is limited, I think by your agility stat, and thus keeps you from smacking the ground really fast. Running speed has no such limit.

You don't have to do all of those steps in order to be so fast you kill yourself, but it's the best way to make the point.


TF:
The only problem with using the stacking psi powers is that in order for them to become reasonably useful, you (almost) have to pop a psi booster, use a psi-boost implant, do a recursive psionic amplification (all the way up to critical charge), and then enable the two shields. I think there was an FM once where I ubermensch'd and then did that, and greater overlord shots still killed me in 2 or 3 hits. (I think it was Proov. The one where if you trigger an alarm EVER you're FUCKED.)


General audience:
HOLY MOTHERFUCK, how did I not notice this sooner??? My eye is ON this. Straylight, give us blue water again so I can download this!

[Hemebond]

and could you please tweak the psi discipline CM costs? maybe lowering the tier costs and increasing the individual skills? if you had done these, the mod would make the game more balanced for every strategy.

The idea behind high tier/low power costs is so the player can't just pick and choose from any tier. That would make PSI much more powerful than the other disciplines because they basically have to choose between, and focus on, the different weapon classes.

[Ultraviolet]

The idea behind high tier/low power costs is so the player can't just pick and choose from any tier. That would make PSI much more powerful than the other disciplines because they basically have to choose between, and focus on, the different weapon classes.

And that's why OSA is so many orders of magnitude more difficult than the other branches. By some that might be considered "imbalanced." Now, what I think is that the game itself (without regard to the player's character choices) should be made more difficult to compensate for that, rather than, say, requirements for Marines and Navy being increased to make them as hard to play as OSA. TF's better melee hybrids in SecMod is a good example of the kind of change I'm talking about.

(In fact, Straylight, I don't suppose you could speed up that stupid hybrid underhand pipe swing like TF did, could you? It's SO ridiculous... I think using the modified fast hybrid attacks would be good all around, but I figure I could easily get people to agree on the underswing for a start.)

[ctx]

ctx:
The problem with RunFast is that it can KILL you if you're maxed on speed and run into a wall. You don't even have to have room to reach full speed, really.

Try this: Do the ubermensch cheat. Summon a swiftboost, put it on, and recycle it. Summon a runfast, put it on, and recycle it. Cheat to get the cyber modules for any psi disciplines relating to agility, get them, and turn them on. Summon a speedbooster and use it. Pick a direction and run into a wall.

I mentioned that I wouldn't summon anything if I could, but anyway,

Well, it depends on your reflexes, really. In a long passage, you can just RUN to the wall in front of you, which is hundreds of feet away, and you can run backwards just before you're about to hit the wall, and you can get along without crashing to anywhere, since it acts like a braking mechanism. (I hope I could explain.) So you can run through the crew quarters in rec in about six seconds. I understand that it sounds weird, but why shouldn't anyone be able to use it, when there's a chance to do?

And in the tight walkways, you can just walk around instead of running, and it should be safe enough, imho. The fact is, I think it should be available, when there is something out there.

And, as a more sensible reason, marines and navy can just focus on their technical or weapon skills instead of spending CMs on Agility. If it sounds weird, in an Impossible game, you have to boost your primary skills, and CM costs are quite high, no matter what.

The idea behind high tier/low power costs is so the player can't just pick and choose from any tier. That would make PSI much more powerful than the other disciplines because they basically have to choose between, and focus on, the different weapon classes.

It sounds right, but do the OSA guys HAVE TO use weapons? I ran through the game PSI only on hard difficulty, but in impossible, it just gets nearly impossible because you don't have the chance to get vital skills like psi hack and invisibility at best before hydro.

Well these are only some minor points that shouldn't be taken seriously, after all. But I really insist on WormBlend, because it's one of the most interesting items in the game, and is quite useful in BOTM.

[Hemebond]

And that's why OSA is so many orders of magnitude more difficult than the other branches. By some that might be considered "imbalanced."

Yes, it's more difficult, but PSI is also more flexible. You know how you have PSI, Navy and Marine paths? PSI contains all these again. You can be a PSI Marine, blasting your way through everything; PSI Navy with item replication, remote hack etc; or PSI PSI, using the enemy against itself, sneaky passed them invisible, etc.

PSI is not for new players. It may be a little more difficult, but it offers another rich path to play, that experienced players will appreciate. PSI requires more focus and skill than the other paths. That's a good thing.

[redrain85]

I've been replaying SS2 again recently, and decided to use Straylight's mod. Very nicely done. There are so many fixes, it's astonishing really. (Though it did turn my water pink, like it has for everyone else. )

I might have another fix to add to the list. I noticed a mistake in the first log you find from Prefontaine.

spoiler:

It's the one entitled Floating Psi-Users. The text of the log says "Their real source of power comes from a small control organism, which is usually located somewhat nearby." Obviously, this should read "somewhere", and is correctly stated in the audio.

[steo]

Have I got this installed properly or does anyone elses AR still require 6 standard? I used zombe's mod manager and just renamed the zip to .ss2mod and ran it like that. Other bits of the mod worked fine but my AR and shotgun requirements were still the same.