Difference between revisions of "User talk:NKF"
m (→Stats Card: Just jotting down some of my thoughts on making the (normal) stat card template) |
m (→Stats Card: Thoughts schmoughts) |
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* Other useful useful info like research hours? | * Other useful useful info like research hours? | ||
− | Difficulty level and rank will unfortunately result in a template that would require up to 75+ fields. That will not necessarily work, plus some alien | + | Difficulty level and rank will unfortunately result in a template that would require up to 75+ fields. That will not necessarily work, plus some alien species don't have some ranks, or don't use ranks. |
− | Probably the easiest way to work this is to leave a general listing showing the range of possible values in the unit | + | Probably the easiest way to work this is to leave a general listing showing the range of possible values in the main unit article, but create a separate spreadsheet page with ordinary hand-coded tables (or multiple instances of the template) detailing ALL the race and difficulty level combinations. The monster fun stat page if you will. |
− | Other useful information may best be left out of the table or a companion template can be created for them. Research hours, corpse value, body weight, turret info, etc. | + | Sortable tables will be incredibly tricky with the orientation of most of our current tables, as all of the values in each column are so variable. Rotating the table on its like the following may work, but wouldn't be practical. |
+ | |||
+ | <table {{stdCenterTable}} class="sortable"> | ||
+ | <caption>'''Cheesetoid Armour by Rank'''</caption> | ||
+ | <tr{{StdDescTable_Heading}}><th align ="left">Rank</th><th>Front</th><th>L/R</th><th>Rear</th><th>Under</th></tr> | ||
+ | <tr><th {align ="left">Soldier</th><td>1</td><td>1</td><td>1</td><td>1</td></tr> | ||
+ | <tr><th align ="left">Squad Leader</th><td>8</td><td>8</td><td>8</td><td>8</td></tr> | ||
+ | <tr><th align ="left">Navigator</th><td>9</td><td>9</td><td>8</td><td>9</td></tr> | ||
+ | <tr><th align ="left">Engineer</th><td>7</td><td>8</td><td>7</td><td>255</td></tr> | ||
+ | <tr><th align ="left">High Lord Generalissimo </th><td>65</td><td>60</td><td>70</td><td>55</td></tr> | ||
+ | <tr><th align ="left">The</th><td>55</td><td>45</td><td>65</td><td>0</td></tr> | ||
+ | </table> | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | This leaves me with this feeling it'll end up with lots and lots and lots of little tables. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Other useful information may best be left out of the table or a companion template can be created for them. Research hours, corpse value, body weight, turret info, etc. | ||
==Alternate Stat card == | ==Alternate Stat card == |
Revision as of 09:57, 12 March 2009
NKF:Talk
Welcome to NKF Talk. NKF once asked the question "What is NKF Talk?" - he didn't have a clue, so he decided to make it up as he went along. NKF Talk is now NKF's personal but ultimately temporary soapbox for ... well anything NKF jolly well wants, but it will be for X-COM-related articles in this wiki, that's for sure.
NKF is referring to himself in the third person for no apparent reason - although is rumoured to be absolutely bonkers, which explains a lot.
P.S: NKF is not NFK. NFK is some weirdo that keeps stealing NKF's thunder. Also NKF doesn't have any hidden psychological meaning, and are merely initials.
The NKF-Centric TO-DO-List of Doom
- The first of the articles I'd like to see started is an "X-Com Apocalypse Starter's Guide", as I've been concentrating far too much on UFO and TFTD, might as well get started on the third game. I've written a lot about the subject on several different Apocalypse forums - it's high time to gather everything into one place. Where to begin? Time will answer that question. Hopefully not too much time.
- An article on radars to explain everything you need to know about them.
Try to understand Wiki page transclusion to allow easy use of templates and all that.
Them Articles
Or rather, short paragraphs that will eventually lead to a larger article that may very well get a page of its own.
X-Com UFO Radar Info | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Radars
Radars - and Terror From The Deep's radar parallel, sonar - can be installed in any of your bases for the purpose of detecting and then tracking enemy ships. Each base comes with three different radar abilities. Short, Long and Hyperwave detection. As would be expected, you can access these with the short and large radar systems, and the hyperwave decoder, respectively. Short and Long range detection function exactly in the same manner and Hyperwave detection provides the additional benefit of decoding UFO mission data.
Radar AbilitiesEach radar can only add its abilities to the base once. Refer to the following table to see how the radars can build on each other.
Compare how different the values in the table are to text in the Ufopaedia. It can probably be assumed that the 10, 20, 30 and 100 values are in percentages. Therefore it we could say that 10 short range scanning will provide a 10% scan for every sweep of the radar. Once the UFO has been spotted, it'll be forever painted on your radar except when it drops out of tracking range. Radar Stats on the Base Information ScreenWhen referring to your base details, you will see two bars representing the long and short range radars. The short range bar increases for every small radar system, and the long range bar increases for every Large Radar system and Hyperwave decoder. Although you are presented with this information, it is highly inaccurate and should never be relied on. The listing only counts how many radars are currently assigned to the base as opposed to the base's actual ability to locate enemy ships. Refer to the Phantom Radar section further along for more insight on how radars work.
Brief Radar Range ComparisonIf we use the town of Novosibirsk as our point of reference, the tracking radius for the Small Radar can go roughly as far as Moscow. The large radar goes all the way to Berlin, and the Hyperwave Decoder can go as far as London and perhaps slightly beyond. Multiple Radars?Though it's natural to believe that installing multiple radars of the same type at a base will make your radarsmore powerful, they certainly do not. Refer to table 1 above. Notice how when two radars of the same type are combined that they do not provide any additional benefit over a single radar. This means that only one of each type of radar is able to stack its scanning abilities on top of another. In addition to the detection ability, multiple radars of the same type do NOT extend a base's detection radius or its tracking radius. Therefore, multiple radars of the same type do not work. The only multi-radar combination worth pursuing is the small and large radar combo. Once you get the hyperwave decoder, the small and large radar combo are immediately outclassed. Still, there's no harm in having a 30% and 20% contingency even if you've got 100% detection and the money to hang on to build the older modules. The only practical reason for including multiple radars of the same type would be for base layout purposes. The small radar, for example, has a clear corridor, making it a good place for combat with weapons that have a wide radius of effect.
Spike 10:44, 2 October 2008 (CDT)
Phantom RadarWhat is a Phantom Radar? A base with a phantom radar, as I've coined it, is a base that is able to continue detecting ships without actually physically owning the radar. This is achieved by removing your existing radars. The game will retain the base's radar ability until another base module is built. Basically, you're retaining the ghost of your previous radar, or radars. The modules themselves do not retain the physically ability to detect ships. It's The base itself has the ability, however the game only assigns (and recalculates, if there are existing radars) the strength of the scanning ability at the moment a new module is completed. If you want to test this yourself, start a new game and remove the default radar and let time run. Phantom Radar: Life SpanThe life span of the phantom radar lasts until the next base facility is built at that base.
Phantom Radar: AdvantagesThe advantage of removing the facility will be that you can downsize your base just that bit more, making it much easier to defend. Although this can be a disadvantage if your entire strategy hinges around the lower level layout of the module. Plus, the empty dirt module will start costing you money. The phantom radar is extremely useful if you choose to upgrade your radar from an older type to a new type by simply removing the old radar and building the new radar in its place. This avoids the Paying for Dirt bug. This only works as long as the next module to be built is the radar. Otherwise the base will be flying blind in the interim. Phantom Radar: Questions
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All of the salient information I've mentioned will have already found its way (or been corrected) into more relevant articles on the wiki by now. These sections may need some rewriting or revising as much of what has come about regarding how the radars operate and how they function is very useful stuff .
However, do I need to keep this old article in my talk page? I've been a little hesitant to clear it, but it was never meant to be a permanent fixture in this section either. -NKF 04:14, 12 March 2009 (CDT)
Total Randomness
UFO Base Kit
The UBK is a transclusion template I made that lets you insert your own custom X-COM UFO base layouts into your discussions or articles:
A quick way to include it in your article is to copy the following:
{{UBK|= |dirt|dirt|dirt|dirt|dirt|dirt|= |dirt|dirt|dirt|dirt|dirt|dirt|= |dirt|dirt|dirt|dirt|dirt|dirt|= |dirt|dirt|dirt|dirt|dirt|dirt|= |dirt|dirt|dirt|dirt|dirt|dirt|= |dirt|dirt|dirt|dirt|dirt|dirt|=}}
And replace "dirt" with the following entries:
dirt lift lab workshop psi containment storage quarters small_radar large_radar hyperwave grav mind missile laser plasma fusion hangar1 hangar2 hangar3 hangar4
The hangar is cut into quarters. 1 = NW, 2 = NE, 3 = SW, 4 = SE
In action, the following block:
{{UBK|= |dirt|dirt|hangar1|hangar2|dirt|dirt|= |dirt|dirt|hangar3|hangar4|dirt|dirt|= |dirt|dirt|lift|quarters|dirt|dirt|= |dirt|small_radar|stores|lab|workshop|dirt|= |hangar1|hangar2|dirt|dirt|hangar1|hangar2|= |hangar3|hangar4|dirt|dirt|hangar3|hangar4|=}}
Produces:
Have fun. One of these days a TFTD equivalent (or TFTD equivalent keywords) will have to be made. A more ambitious one would be to create one for X-COM Apocalypse too!
Stats Card
This slot is reserved to rough out a unit specifications sheet.
Vital Statistics | |
---|---|
Time Units | Lobsterman |
Energy | 56-82 |
Health | 90-133 |
Bravery | 90 |
Reactions | 90 |
Firing Accuracy | 60-81 |
Throwing Accuracy | 21-87 |
Strength | 62 |
M.C. Strength | 70-86 |
M.C. Skill | 35-43 |
Front Armor | 0 |
L/R Armor | 78-115 |
Rear Armor | 8-24 |
Under Armor | 8-24 |
A little bit of dabbling has brought about another interesting point to remember: You can pass a whole paragraph of text, with text formatting and wikilinks through to them, just as long as they aren't too complex. You can't pass other templates though.
A few problems I feel that need to be worked out or worked around:
- Difficulty Levels
- Ranks
- Making the tables sortable
- Other useful useful info like research hours?
Difficulty level and rank will unfortunately result in a template that would require up to 75+ fields. That will not necessarily work, plus some alien species don't have some ranks, or don't use ranks.
Probably the easiest way to work this is to leave a general listing showing the range of possible values in the main unit article, but create a separate spreadsheet page with ordinary hand-coded tables (or multiple instances of the template) detailing ALL the race and difficulty level combinations. The monster fun stat page if you will.
Sortable tables will be incredibly tricky with the orientation of most of our current tables, as all of the values in each column are so variable. Rotating the table on its like the following may work, but wouldn't be practical.
<trstyle="background: #c0c0c0; color:white">Rank | Front | L/R | Rear | Under |
---|---|---|---|---|
Soldier | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
Squad Leader | 8 | 8 | 8 | 8 |
Navigator | 9 | 9 | 8 | 9 |
Engineer | 7 | 8 | 7 | 255 |
High Lord Generalissimo | 65 | 60 | 70 | 55 |
The | 55 | 45 | 65 | 0 |
This leaves me with this feeling it'll end up with lots and lots and lots of little tables.
Other useful information may best be left out of the table or a companion template can be created for them. Research hours, corpse value, body weight, turret info, etc.
Alternate Stat card
Just to derail my progress on the above for a bit, my mind went-a-wandering.
I got to thinking of the old specs cards that you got with some toys, like GI Joes - they had dossier profile cards.
Probably something like the following?
Lobsterman | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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This is a staggering creature, taller than a man and boasting six limbs, it resembles nothing more than an aquatic Demon. The similarities between this creature and the Earth lobster have earned it the nickname of Lobsterman with the X-Com troops. This is a behemoth of the deep. A carefully designed fighting creature of incredible strength and practically invulnerable to missile fire. Its pincers alone can crush steel. |
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Autopsy
Once past its virtually indestructible shell the creature is an amazing construction. Powerful muscles ripple around a titanium skeleton, a sophisticated targeting system with multi-band scanning ability is hooked directly into the creature's brain. Its multiple eyes are protected by harder than steel plastics and it is clear that when well deployed by their masters these creatures are all but unstoppable. Buried deep in its body are devices of unknown construction and function. |
This could easily be converted into a template, using the exact format as the earlier test sample. It would only have to add a few extra fields. One for the MC/Psi string, followed by two more for the official ufopaedia entries. Perhaps not with the above formatting or colours! It was mainly to get the idea down so that I did not forget about it.
I have to say, that looks really cool! Spike 10:00, 1 March 2009 (CST)
- It would probably look even better if I used a monospace typewriter font and the stats were done in graphs that you could view with 3d glasses! Ink splotches and official looking stamps in the background would be icing on the cake! Eh, maybe I'll just try the monospace font instead.
- Hmm, not too bad, but can be easily dropped.
- The main thing though, would it be usable? -NKF 01:19, 2 March 2009 (CST)
Main page - distributions
NKF, thank you so much for all that great Apoc advice. Would you mind if I moved parts of it onto the Wiki? There is a real dearth of even basic Apoc information anywhere I can find. If I can post your points verbatim and signed as Discussion, in appropriate categories, it will be hugely useful. Spike 03:27, 17 October 2008 (CDT)
- Some of it might need touching up, but go ahead. It'll add something to work off in the rather bare Apocalypse section. Some new sections like explaining how psi in Apocalypse works might also be in order, so if any come to mind please do suggest them. -NKF 03:52, 17 October 2008 (CDT)