Kyzer

I can help with lore and testing. I've some programming knowledge, but no experience with game modding as such and will need some reading material to chip in there. Edit: Regarding the researches.xml file, I've managed to remove the requirements, which works on a new game but not on existing campaigns. I've no unfinished research to tie them into, so how do I trigger the changes on a save file?

Yes, that does solve the mass detonation exploit, while still allowing the tactical option of a controlled detonation. What are your thoughts on EMP tech though? As it is, there's really limited incentive to use them. Thanks for the quick response! Any way I can help?

In my opinion, cores alone won't solve the issue. Early on, cores are too limited and will prevent us from building shock charges at all, while later on cores are too plentiful for a slight cost to matter. I suggest the following: Change the roles of shock tech and EMP tech. EMP's only use is to damage mechanical units, and by the time it's unlocked, they're no longer necessary; Androns are much harder to fight in early game when X-Division has limited options for energy damage, and aren't much of an issue later on. I barely ever use EMP tech for that reason. Perhaps if shock tech is nerfed, but EMP tech changed to be a direct upgrade with higher stun damage but higher costs to compensate? To elaborate on the above, shock charge's current costs can be kept, but the initial stun damage decreased and the gas effect improved to be much more reliable. This makes them still useful for destroying mech and capturing aliens, but not as overpowering when detonated en masse. Then change the EMP grenades and charges to be an upgrade with stronger initial stun damage, but at much higher cost. This will require some change in the lore though. Rather than energy cores, perhaps use Andron corpses as materiel? Currently, Andron DSB isn't very efficient with either light nor dense fibre, so it shouldn't affect players' supply of them much. If those changes are too much, then a simpler method is to increase its size & weight so people like me can't carry a veritable stockpile of them into each battle Katana need to be heavier. Comparing a katana to an axe, the katana as a two-handed weapon can be considered a primary weapon and should be significantly heavier for how good it is at killing anything in melee range. Meanwhile, knives and axes need to be better. They're one-handed, 'secondary' weapons, meant to be use in combination with either a shield or a one-handed gun. Using one means giving up safer options like a rifle or a pistol & shield combo, and should be rewarded as such. The knives aren't strong enough, and the axes aren't light enough. I actually like the blood effect as a concept, but it needs to do significantly lower damage. Getting surprised by a blood weapon should be punishing, but not immediately mission ending. If the blood effect does, for example, around 10-20% hp damage/turn in a large AOE, it'll be manageable and makes positioning and terrain more important in any mission against Sebillians, forcing players to re-position or risk dying to the blood effect's poison damage in a drawn out fight. Chemical weapons need a niche. Right now there's no good reason to use them over other options. Praetors are too weak. Dread is a pain to fight against, but the actual units themselves aren't frightening. They're the alien leaders, and should be more dangerous than their subordinates. Right now I'm on guard against Caesan stun grenades, terrified of Sebillian blood weapons, ever watchful of Harridan sniping, and paranoid of Wraiths teleporting behind me. Androns have their niche in just being plain hard to kill and immunity to control effects. Praetors don't have something about them to punish carelessness and make them priority targets. Even just increasing their TUs and hp would be nice, and go a long way to making them feel like boss units. Late game Xenomorphs need higher mitigation to be a threat. One of the reasons why capturing Xeno kings is easy is because with top tier armor, it's possible to take no damage from their first attacks, and drones becomes jokes I routinely treat as last priority targets. Reapers are always scary because of their one hit kill mechanic, and the Xenos need to match that level of threat somehow.

Yes. As long as the charge is within the explosion radius, using shock or EMP grenades to detonate it works every time. Any kind of incendiary grenade destroys the charge completely, and others have no effect, from my own testing. Also, if one shock charge is in range of another shock charge, detonating one will chain detonate the other. Being in range of multiple shock charges at once will cause the target to take damage from all of them. This doesn't apply for incendiary charges because, as said above, it'll destroy the other charges, so only one charge will actually detonate. Well, yes. Queens are difficult because of their ranged spit, but kings are pretty easy unless it's a complete surprise. Once I scout one, I run my scout back to a choke point, throw a bunch of shock charges with timer 9 on it, and I have 9 turns to wait for the king to walk into the choke point, at which time I detonate it with a shock grenade. The stun damage of multiple shock charges at once will either KO it outright, or I then follow up with melee weapons and shotguns/carbines for an easy capture. Shock charges only cost alloys and alenium, which are in plentiful supply at the moment, so I use them very liberally. As a general rule of thumb, I savescum when a surprise blood grenade/shot hits me from out of visual range. That's the only thing I find too ridiculous. I have all MK-1s, but for some types I don't have MK-2s, let alone MK-3s. Oh, so the requirements are there. By unlock, I assume you mean to remove the requirements for that particular research? If so, I'll give it a shot. I was looking in the item files and not the research, silly me. Thanks for the quick response, @Charon!

Hey there! First, great job on the mod; definitely made the game more interesting. So, some comments and questions to follow: Flamethrowers aren't worth taking right now. Too heavy, with too little ammo, doing too little damage at too close range, in addition to destroying loot. There is no situation I've experienced thus far where I'd wished I brought a flamethrower. For those downsides, it drastically needs some stat buffs. Rocket launchers have their niche, but there isn't enough incentive to use them over other options; specifically, explosive charges. A rocket launcher has a 90% TU cost for good accuracy, and is too dangerous to snap shot with due to its AOE possibly causing friendly fire. In comparison, charges have comparable AOE and damage, can be used without a rocket launcher, are safer to use (a miss still gives time to move any affected soldiers away from the radius) and its primary downside of needing a turn to activate can be entirely mitigated by detonating it early with a shock grenade (is this intended behavior?). Smoke grenades are God's gift to men. The AI seems to avoid taking shots with too low a hit % and that can be abused with smoke grenades. Drop three on the ground and huddle inside while moving forward, and often the aliens won't even shoot (they do still grenade though, which has led to some unfortunate results). My general strategy for taking an alien base's command room is to smoke everything until hit percentages drop to single digits, then move in to kill everything with melee weapons. Though, can the visual effects of higher tier smoke grenades be made less opaque? Right now I literally can not see my soldiers after I drop some smoke, which is pretty inconvenient. Stun grenades are way too effective on troopers, and way too ineffective on aliens. An extreme stun grenade in phase 4 can maybe knock out some aliens when I throw one into a group, and it's oftentimes a squad wipe hazard when an alien throw one into my team. Higher tier armors don't seem to make much change in preventing stun grenades from knocking out my team, and the low dissipation rate means I've had to draw out firefights with less than half my team for multiple turns before I could move in and revive the unconscious soldiers. Which is really exciting, if it didn't happen so often due to its prevalence on Caesans. Even worse than stun grenades though, are the alien blood weapons. I have found only one reliable method of dealing with them; I walk my tank/mech in and kill everything with a blood weapon before even daring to peek out with my soldiers. Kill them before they kill me. Nothing else works. Reducing their hit chances doesn't matter because the AOE is horrifying. Suppression is limited because they have enough TUs to walk in from out of sight and then throw a blood grenade, or fire at me. Even with my squad in Ripper and Guardian armors, the blood cloud effect can still one shot me frequently. It's beyond ridiculous. With Caesan stun grenades, as long as I keep one soldier out of the fight with a medkit, I can counter it with some planning and effort. Blood weapons have no counter that I know of. X-Division weapon ranks are not well balanced. In the first half of the game, Antimatter MK-1 weapons made up my bread and butter. Incendiary damage, great mitigation and fantastic TU costs for their accuracy make them reliable weapons that are great for training soldiers with. Before getting to build a Quantum Cryptology Center, alien crews are a mystery. Bringing kinetic weapons against Androns, or energy weapons against Caesans makes ground combat much harder. Antimatter weapons aren't as powerful as using the right weapons types strong against particular aliens, but they're consistently reliable. A squad outfitted with mostly Antimatter weapons, a few energy weapons, and a kinetic vehicle weapon has an answer for any alien type. At least until... Pulse weapons. I don't know how else to put it, so I'll say it plainly: Pulse weapons are overpowered. Good range, decent damage & mitigation, amazing ammo capacities and those ridiculous TU costs for their range & accuracy. A trained soldier with a Precision Pulse MK-3 can fire three 95% snap shots across the map as long as he/she has an unobstructed line of sight to the target. A trained soldier with a Pulse Rifle MK-3 can fire three bursts of 95% shots at a range comparable to precision rifles of other types. They are by far the most reliable ranged weapons in X-Division's arsenal. You've unlocked Plasma tech? Good, now keep using Pulse tech because a weapon that consistently hits almost every fired shot deals more damage than one with higher damage but can't hit anything. You've unlocked Sonic tech? Great, now use Sonic weapons as close range shotguns while still sniping anything across the map with Pulse tech. Find a tall rooftop with a good view, park some Pulse users on it, send a shield soldier out to draw the attention of aliens (load him up with smoke grenades to survive), and proceed to have accurate, free shots at aliens from beyond their sight range. Alien energy resistance doesn't matter when you can whittle them down with barely no drawbacks. Unless the aliens are in close range, Pulse weapons dominate everything. So let's say the aliens do close in, and Pulse weapons don't do enough damage in an equal firefight. Thankfully, Pulse tech happens to be very light. So give everyone a katana. Melee weapons are almost as good as Pulse tech, but in a different way. They're effectively Antimatter weapons due to their mitigation, and I've already commented on why those are good. High damage, low TU costs, manageable weight, and they can all fit into the belt. Every single soldier should have a melee weapon as a Plan B. I tend to run two soldiers who primarily use katanas, and use them as scouts and flanking units. Three slashes with a Katana MK-2 can kill most aliens I've encountered in phase 4. They're especially effective against Caesans, because melee weapons bypass Caesan shields. Most Caesans die to only two slashes, using only half my soldier's TUs. Move in, slice & dice, move out to cover. In combination with Pulse weapons, this becomes devastating. Is the alien highly resistant to energy damage? If yes, slash them. If no, shoot them. You now have a working strategy for all the alien units that don't explode on death. That's what your vehicle/mech is for. Now that I'm done ranting about the strong weapons, I should do the opposite. Though it's mostly limited to just one type, which is weak to the point of being barely usable. Shock weapons. I've read that they used to be overpowered in previous versions, but as they are now, they're outclassed by... everything. I have no reason to use them, be it to deal with Androns or to capture aliens. Too weak, too heavy, too limited. Right, that's all the comments done with. Some questions next. Is there any other way to unlock things? I'm in phase 4, with Operation Endgame researched, and still missing quite a few things, it seems like. I've captured aliens whenever possible, but no new researches have been unlocked for months now. I'd like to have the ultimate mech, and I'm still stuck on Antimatter MK-1 for example. Is anything locked behind the mothership? It's the only UFO I've yet to bring down, and the only one I can't seem to find a way to bring down, so it's the only thing I can think of to unlock more stuff. Also, I'd like some advice on how to take down a mothership. Any particular aircraft or weapons are more effective against it? Whew, that was long. Thanks again for the great work, and thanks in advance should you reply!