ACM (UFO Aftershock)

[ERISS]

Never played Aftershock and wonder if I should apply the mod now or play vanilla?

Would this be the only mod to pick for this game or do you guys recommend any others?

Depends on the time you have. I'll say play vanilia in difficulty 3 (with sound and skins mods), then only once you've finished restart a vanilia in difficulty 4, then you can play ACM which is more difficult. But that will be huge game time doing like this.

[ShadowFox]

404 File not found...

 

Had this mod been deleted?

 

https://www.okim.nickersonm.com/ufo/acm1.9.rar

 

 

Hope it will recover - as i understand many modders use that server of his

 

Here is an uploaded archive: https://www.profinstrument.ru/ACM1.9.rar

 

 

I'm getting the same 404 errir from both links. I can't download them at all.

[Okim]

I'm getting the same 404 errir from both links. I can't download them at all.

 

 

Strange. The server suddenly became case-sensetive. Try okim.nickersonm link now.

[ERISS]

On 1st post, you should tell the 1.3 patch is needed.

EDIT: Woops sorry. https://www.gog.com/en/forum/ufo_series/ver...ftershock/post3

[Okim]

On 1st post, you should tell the 1.3 patch is needed.

 

 

This patch isn`t necessary to play ACM.

[pincushionman]

Okim,

 

Here are my thoughts on 1.9:

 

Overall, this mod is extremely well done. There are only a few minor discrepancies I can see. Please correct me if they are issues with UFO's engine and not your mod.

 

Bug 1 - Cyborg Cultist Wears DroneWalker skin

I have a strange bug with cultist cyborgs - perhaps 1 in 20. I don't know what weapon they are supposed to be carrying, but even when they change weapons, this issue persists. It does hurt me when he shoots. Is it possible he is picking up a drone weapon? I don't seem to recover what he had. I've included a screenshot, and can provide several savegames at around those tactical points if you wish.

https://img835.imageshack.us/img835/16/ufo201109261057.png

 

Bug 2 - Melee weapons don't cause Kills for commandos

On searching this thread, it appears the Katana does cause kills, but the pipe, combat knife, chainsword, and powersword do not.

 

Bug 3 - Rangers cannot used mixed types of melee weapons with ambidexterity (such as a Powersword/Chainsword combo, or a Chainsword/Combat Knife combo) - this is probably a limitation of the engine, but it seems to work with mixed types of laser and projectile weapons.

 

A pair of powerswords in the hands of a Psionic Ranger will typically take down the common Wargots in one (pair) hit

 

 

Bug 4 - Psionic rangers cannot use dual psionic weapons (like 2 paralysis projectors) at the same time. I understand that this is probably good for game balance issues.

 

Bug 5 - it is entirely possible to have multiple people with the same name. For some reason, the factions seem to frequently offer the same names. Perhaps this bug is related to the head bug that you had earlier?

 

Bug 6 - Lvl 3 Medics cannot bring someone back from 'the dead'. When you do, they get 28 HP, but fall right back down again. However, the cultists have no problems raising their 'dead' companions. I've not seem them raise a non-cultist unit yet, FWIW.

 

That's all for now. Let me know if you need anything else.

[pincushionman]

Here's another view of the Cyborg Cultist bug, taken from a different mission. In this mission, I used a door judiciously to have my ranger carve up the cultists. Because of the door, they were unable to use grenades. Doesn't always work, definitely depends on the door.

https://img7.imageshack.us/img7/3461/ufo201109261240.png

 

[Taken from Mission 192, save 6]

[Okim]

Bug 1 - Cyborg Cultist Wears DroneWalker skin

Known bug that i was unable to fix. Probably there is a bad entry somewhere in BORG files.

 

Bug 2 - Melee weapons don't cause Kills for commandos

Hell knows. Never bothered with this one, but i do remember someone complaining about it somewhere.

 

Bug 3 - Rangers cannot used mixed types of melee weapons with ambidexterity

Bug 4 - Psionic rangers cannot use dual psionic weapons

They never could actually.

 

Bug 5 - it is entirely possible to have multiple people with the same name.

It is possible that this is related to head-bugs. I honestly don`t see a major problem here.

 

Bug 6 - Lvl 3 Medics cannot bring someone back from 'the dead'.

They can and they do. Perhaps one of your revived one gets hit by smth. I personally always use a level 3 medic in any encounter with wargots/cultist as i usually allow my people to get hurt badly. Never had any problems with reviving people.

 

UFO AS ACM is finished at its current level of development and probably wont be supported in any projectable future. I`ll try to try to find some time for the dron-borg problem, though i can`t promise anything, sorry.

[pincushionman]

UFO AS ACM is finished at its current level of development and probably wont be supported in any projectable future. I`ll try to try to find some time for the dron-borg problem, though i can`t promise anything, sorry.

 

Okim,

 

Thanks for the reply. I also want to thank you for one hell of a top-notch, highly polished mod. It took me eight months to find those bugs I mentioned, and like you said, half of them weren't yours. If you'd like help testing anything, feel free to drop me a line.

 

By the way, the Bug 6 - medic cannot revive unit - The unit had died by fire. Even though the fire was out, I suspect the unit was still in a 'burning' state, even though it never displayed the 3 times I tried to raise her (psionic sniper). I would see 28 health and boom, back on the floor. Repeated 3 times. Gave up. I thought you'd found a way to disable it to make the game harder! At least until the cultists started raising their friends with those nearly invisible psionics... Good times!

 

Anyway, thanks for all the hard work!

[Okim]

By the way, the Bug 6 - medic cannot revive unit - The unit had died by fire. Even though the fire was out, I suspect the unit was still in a 'burning' state, even though it never displayed the 3 times I tried to raise her (psionic sniper). I would see 28 health and boom, back on the floor. Repeated 3 times. Gave up. I thought you'd found a way to disable it to make the game harder! At least until the cultists started raising their friends with those nearly invisible psionics... Good times!

 

You can try to save your psy-sniper after compliting the mission by clicking on 'end mission' button right after you`ve revived her. I think this should work.

 

And i agree that this might be related to burned/poisoned soldiers.

[Erenoth02]

Ive encountered several Cultists, Humans, Cyborgs, and Psioncs who carry ammo instead of weapons, a full backpack full of ammo and 2 ammo packs in their hands, Its rather annoying since to end a mission I have to chase them all down and round them kill them, whenever I run into them their always in a dead run away from any of my troops so nothing short of sniping them works unless you can corner them....

[Okim]

Ive encountered several Cultists, Humans, Cyborgs, and Psioncs who carry ammo instead of weapons, a full backpack full of ammo and 2 ammo packs in their hands, Its rather annoying since to end a mission I have to chase them all down and round them kill them, whenever I run into them their always in a dead run away from any of my troops so nothing short of sniping them works unless you can corner them....

 

 

Sounds to me like a corrupted file or multiple mods installed. Surely not the problem with the UFO AS ACM mod.

[Okim]

Can`t launch UFO AS in win 7. ATI recovery (HD 6800 card) keeps saying that it restores a non-responding GPU driver. Game doesn`t launch in windowed mode either. UFO process is present after GPU drv recovery however.

 

Patch 1.3 installed over 1.21 which is installed over GOG version of the game (1.2 install says that the game isn`t installed on my PC, so i assume that GOG version is 1.2 already).

 

Someone had any similar problems with UFO AS or knows a sollution?

[pincushionman]

Can`t launch UFO AS in win 7. ATI recovery (HD 6800 card) keeps saying that it restores a non-responding GPU driver. Game doesn`t launch in windowed mode either. UFO process is present after GPU drv recovery however.

 

Patch 1.3 installed over 1.21 which is installed over GOG version of the game (1.2 install says that the game isn`t installed on my PC, so i assume that GOG version is 1.2 already).

 

Someone had any similar problems with UFO AS or knows a solution?

 

Okim - I have AMD/ATi hardware myself on Windows 7-x64. I use the same version of UFO AS, patched in the same fashion - I believe you instructed me how to set it up almost a year back - thanks! One thing - it is a laptop, so I had to use 'patched' inf files to get the darn ATi drivers to update.

 

What version of the Catalyst driver are you using? I've also had issues a time or two with Catalyst drivers not fully uninstalling when they said they did. So, a clean install *may* help.

 

I think the current Catalyst version (10.9) can be found here: https://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/Pag...on_win7-64.aspx

 

If they gave you a disk, or if the card used an older Catalyst driver in your system (or worse, the default Windows one), you also might see this problem, but Aero and other 3d things may work passably well.

 

I'm angling for a DirectX 9 on Windows 7 issue. To get my older games to work, I had to run dxwebsetup to get the current DirectX 9 bits in place. It seems they use a Month/Year patch level for their SDK, and will call it something exotic like d3d9c_35.dll (or similar).

 

Anyway, you can get that file here: https://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=35

 

Are you having issues with Sword of the Stars, too?

 

One other thing - how much RAM does this video card and system have? It's possible that the devs at Altar didn't consider that video cards could have access to gobs of RAM due to 1) huge RAM sizes on video cards and 2) AMD's Hyper-whatever technology that allows them to steal system RAM as video (more likely happens on laptops ). Perhaps there are knobs to tweak to hide the extra RAM for UFO AS? Or lets go the other way, what's your screen resolution? 1920x1200? 1680x1050? Perhaps with 2xAA or 4xAA turned on, the card just doesn't have enough RAM.

 

Hopefully you can squelch this issue soon. Good luck!

[Okim]

Well, i`m not at home right now, so i currently can recall a minimum of info...

 

My ATI vision is up-to-date as i recently used steam`s utility to update my drivers (version 11.9). This was long before i installed UFO. BTW i`m using a fresh and clean WIn7 32 install. System has 3 gigs of Ram and card is 512-1 (can`t recall correctly).

 

I have DX9 and 11 installed properly. At least SOTS and other non-dx11 games do work nicely.

 

My desktop resolution is 1280x1024. I`ve tried to launch UFO in full screen and in windowed mod, with additional options in shortcut provided by default and without those by simply launching from game folder.

 

The machine itself wasn`t upgraded - everything is the same as on my old windows XP. UFO worked well on XP.

 

P.S.: i have a thought that UFO might be requiring MS Office (which i have to install yet) and some of its applications/libraries/files to run properly, but i can`t see a connection to hunging GPU here...

[pincushionman]

Well, i`m not at home right now, so i currently can recall a minimum of info...

 

My ATI vision is up-to-date as i recently used steam`s utility to update my drivers (version 11.9). This was long before i installed UFO. BTW i`m using a fresh and clean WIn7 32 install. System has 3 gigs of Ram and card is 512-1 (can`t recall correctly).

 

I have DX9 and 11 installed properly. At least SOTS and other non-dx11 games do work nicely.

 

My desktop resolution is 1280x1024. I`ve tried to launch UFO in full screen and in windowed mod, with additional options in shortcut provided by default and without those by simply launching from game folder.

 

The machine itself wasn`t upgraded - everything is the same as on my old windows XP. UFO worked well on XP.

 

P.S.: i have a thought that UFO might be requiring MS Office (which i have to install yet) and some of its applications/libraries/files to run properly, but i can`t see a connection to hunging GPU here...

 

You've got me there - I do have Office 2003 and Office 2010 on this machine. UFO AS has worked without Office 2010. That's a heck of a dependency for a game, still, you may be onto something. Perhaps not MS Office itself, but one of the subsystems it installs, like .NET 2/3 or MS JET or ADO or something. I do development from time to time, so I usually have Visual Studio or Platform SDKs of one type or another installed.

 

I have heard it is a bear to silently install .NET 2.0 on 7 because it comes with .NET 3.5 - then again, that was at work and they were trying to push it out as an MSI when a user logged in.

 

Oh, according to GOG's readme, there is a UFO AS graphical Safe Mode to try, have you tried that, or does that also cause the GPU to hang/crash? I don't know where that would be hidden on Windows 7 though, as there isn't a proper start menu 'tree'

[Okim]

Installed netfix 4 and office 2010. Didn`t fix the problem.

 

I think i`ll have to rollback ATI drivers one-by-one to figure out which one will be compatible with UFO...

[Okim]

Safe mode doesn`t help... I can`t figure out what to do with the game ((

 

P.S.: i found this command line for a shortcut to be a safe mod trigger, am i right?

 

--options use_safe_refresh=TRUE use_shaders=FALSE old_va_mode=TRUE scale_texs=2 nosound=TRUE enable_system_console=TRUE

[LeFire]

Hi Okim,

 

Would just like to thank you for adding so much to this game.

 

I'm running a Superhuman-level ACM 1.9 / ironman (no tactical saves or reloads for losses) / human-troopers only style game and am enjoying it greatly. It was admittedly difficult at the start, requiring me to constantly rotate troops to replace the wounded (the muckstars being the greatest cause of sickbay visits, since they tend to see and shoot you first), but now I have hit a pretty good stride with a platoon of 24 experienced troopers (including 2 level 3 medics). Casualties are 6 KIA (including 2 of the 4 originals), 2 released due to severe injuries / irritating voices (1 of them from the 4 originals) and uncountable WIA... Every single one of the 24 has been wounded before.

 

Stuff I really love are:

 

1.) The helmet and armor injectors: Amazing stuff. Allows troopers to get training done a lot sooner than before (due to the temp stat boosts qualifying them). Yeah, it may feel like a little 'exploit' getting trainings earlier than they should, but it adds to the RPG fun of getting specialised troopers early.

 

2.) The handheld injector kits: A +3 punch to a stat is a big jump in combat ability. However, I limit myself to just 1 hit of intelligence booster per trooper, as more than 2 hits turns experienced troopers into critical hit killing machines (no fun in that).

 

3.) The printing of the aiming speeds in the weapon description: This was the biggest plus that converted me into an ACM user . Time management is critical for high level play, and ACM provides the right info for it. I use a lot of fire-and-movement to keep my troops alive. By knowing which weapons are fastest, I can constantly make sure a covering buddy with a sufficiently fast weapon is always in range to drop any threats spotted ahead by a moving soldier.

 

However, I feel that I need a harder game to keep things exciting Can I combine shadowarrior's Heroic Assault mod with ACM and not break my game?

[LeFire]

Btw, I tried it out and it worked perfect. Had 20 rets against my 7 man section. More challenge, a little more exp, and one of my troopers actually received a light laser rifle injury (hadn't had any injuries for the last 10 or so missions).

[Okim]

Shit... And i can`t even launch the damn game!

[pincushionman]

Shit... And i can`t even launch the damn game!

Okim:

 

Have you tried loading the VC++ runtimes for 2005 (or maybe 2008)? Remember to load both the 32 and 64 bit ones - and some things use the SP1 runtimes, and others don't, so that's 8 more things to try .

 

Good luck, man!

 

LeFire: Thanks for the tip, but I'm 0wned enough as is on Veteran level. I can't imagine 20 (or so) Rets with Launchers (and better) weapons to pummel my team. Would that work out to about 40 cultists per mission?

 

Lefire/Okim: Have you noticed that (cultist) drones don't normally fire? I usually whack them with knives and katanas until they fall down, and they nearly never fire back. I had one fire back once after I had nailed it for 30 or 40 whacks.

Now, once I was able to build one, on the walker compose screen (similar to the rifle compose screen) if I tried to load different ammo, I wasn't able to. Not sure why. Interestingly, once the cultists wearing the walker skin appeared, the walker drones never showed again.

 

-- PincushionMan

[LeFire]

I don't know about cultist drones, oddly haven't encountered those yet. And I think (hope) up to 30-40 cultists may turn up with a combi of ACM and Heroic, haven't had time to play a Cultist mission today yet.

 

Btw Okim, seems like Aftershock doesn't need MS office to be installed. My machine uses Open Office and Aftershock is pretty stable (only crashes if I fire a 40mm directly at an enemy).

 

I found the following 7-man team setup the most flexible and successful, might be helpful to anyone looking for a balanced team for ACM games.

 

1st Section / 2nd Section (two 3-man teams)

Fast Rifle (FR) 1 and 2: (Trooper/Sniper/Gunman)

Heavy (HV) 1 and 2: (Gunman/Sniper/Technician)

Long Rifle (LR) 1 and 2: (Sniper/Leader/Medic)

 

Stay-In-Landing-Pod / Backup medic

Medic: (Medic/Sniper/Leader)

 

- All troopers have sniper training (usually sniper 1 training asap so they can use the +25% scopes) and eventually do kneecap shots to knock down at any range. All also have either Gunman or Leader HP bonus for survivability. All wear medium armor and med helmets (with int boost).

 

- Fast Rifle 1 (and 2) uses a 5.56mm weapon with the fastest aim time possible, underslung 40mm explosive grenade and agility mod on his armor. The purpose of FR1 is to move forward first, take a spot of cover, then allow HV1 and LR1 to move up parallel to his position. Then FR1 moves forward again. FR1 can take down solo targets if they can be dropped with 1 burst (eg unarmored rets), but otherwise, FR1's job is to simply draw fire... Once the enemy aims at FR1 (he stops and raises his gun), FR1 breaks line of sight, forcing the other guy to reaim. By then, HV1 and LR1 are already firing. In panic mode (FR1 runs into a big crowd), he fires the explosive 40mm (for mass knockdown) and runs like hell (eventually, Gunman 3 will stop knockdown, allowing point-blank 40mm fire). FR's train Trooper 1, then Sniper 1 first.

 

- HV1 uses a machinegun and carries landmines. Since FR1 always draws fire first, this gives time for the slower MG to be aimed. HV2 uses a dedicated sniper rifle, e.g. a 50 cal. The purpose of the HV is to deal with hard targets (e.g. cyborgs with gunman 3, wargot power armor) that can't be knockdowned. Raw damage is preferable for those foes. HV's train Gunman 1, then Sniper 1. Armour usually has strength mods for their heavier weapons.

 

- LR1 (and 2) carry longer ranged 7.62mm type weapons. Their purpose is to give supporting fire and leader auras to FR1 and HV1. The longer ranged 7.62 allows them to hang back a little (they are not knockdown-proof). LR's train Sniper 1, then Leader 1 and 2, then Medic 1, 2 and 3.

 

- Pod medic simply acts as a fallback plan in case both LR's get killed. Trains Medic 1, 2 and 3 first.

 

- I don't use melee weapon specialists, they break the immersion of my game.

[G3n7r0]

Great job on the mod. I just have one question (to anyone really who played the mod/game).

If I'm to have a single one, first-time Aftershock playthrough do you recommend playing vanilla or ACM?

[rabbitz]

Hey Okim nice work on the mod - I love it!

 

Just finished my first playthrough on the 2nd difficulty and here are a few things I've noticed:

 

1) p90 seems a bit overpowered especially since you can dual wield it. I have a human using dual p90s that can clear the entire game by himself.

 

2) You can easily get 'rare' weapons by doing the missions where you are supposed to help a faction fight off invaders, and then killing all of them but one (the people you are supposed to be helping) after the mission is done. This is an easy way to get SCARs, although I've found that cyborgs usually only have useless shotguns and psionics have those useless reticulan lasers.

 

3) There don't seem to be too many options in terms of energy weapons... I have beat the game but haven't seen a single warp weapon yet so I don't know about those, but laser weapons are severely underpowered and plasma weapons have terrible accuracy. Gauss weapons are superior to both in every way... especially a gauss cannon on a sniper with mechanical at super heroic +1 giving 95%+ headshots in burst mode. Or a gauss sniper rifle with crazy range doing up to 15000 damage per shot whereas a laser sniper rifle does 6000. I think the laser rifle should also have a higher burst count... what is the point of low recoil if you only shoot twice?

 

4) You can pick up and use wargot weapons on the wargot mothership missions... don't know if this was intended

 

5) you have to 'reload' miniguns multiple times to get them to full ammo

 

6) The missions with the reticulans and the mutants give a LOT more exp than the ones with wargots/cultists/starghosts while being much easier.