X:CE Balance mod - optional balance changes

[Solver]

Most changes in X:CE do not affect the game balance. There are three categories that most X:CE additions fall into - bug fixes (too many to list), modding features (that allow mods to make possibly radical changes but don't affect anything without mods), and "quality of life" improvements, mostly in the user interface.

There are also several changes that impact the gameplay. The idea behind those is, generally, to fix things in the spirit of the original game's design, addressing issues that were not polished or balanced by the original game. While I am personally quite convinced that the balance in X:CE is, on the whole, better than in the original game, it's also true that X:CE balance makes the game somewhat harder, and of course people may prefer to play with the original game's balance for any reason, not just for the sake of difficulty.

This is why X:CE has consistently tried to avoid making balance-impacting changes in the core component of X:CE, and instead ships with an "X:CE Balance Mod". Players can disable it entirely if desired, or tweak individual values. In order to facilitate understanding of how X:CE changes balance, I want to list the main changes of the Balance Mod here.

Door open/close changes

Perhaps the most significant change in the X:CE Balance Mod. In the vanilla game, there is a low Time Unit cost for opening and closing doors, and aliens never reaction fire through an opened door. This allows for a very effective tactic in breaching UFOs, or individual rooms - open the door, evaluate the situation, and then in most cases suppress aliens with a machine gun or flashbang. If, at the end of the turn, the room isn't clear, just close the door again. This is a very powerful, low-risk tactic.

The Balance Mod increases the time unit cost for opening doors (especially large doors) and enables reaction fire when doors are opened. You can still open and close the door on the same turn, but the soldier doing that probably won't have the TUs to shoot in addition to that, and reaction fire makes every time you open a door be more dangerous.

These changes are in config.xml.

Teleporter changes

Unlike doors, reaction fire for stepping through teleporters was enabled in the original game. However, going through teleporters had the same TU cost as normal movement, reducing the danger significantly. Also, teleporters didn't work if someone was standing on the other end - you could thus place your own soldiers on teleporters, effectively sealing off a floor, preventing aliens on other floors from joining the fight.

The Balance Mod addresses this by making teleportation cost 8 TUs, and by introducing telefragging - teleporters work if the other end is occupied and just kill anyone on the other end. On some rare lucky occasions, you get to telefrag aliens, but mostly it means that you're forced to guard teleporters as aliens from higher floors can show up.

These changes are also in config.xml.

Air combat AI

The AI of enemy alien UFOs in air combat is extremely simplistic in the original game. Most notably, UFOs would choose a single airplane to target and would fly towards that airplane for as long as it's in the battlefield. This could easily be exploited in the air combat mini-game if you didn't have a decisive advantage - you only had to see which one of your airplanes was targeted and have it move away. While UFOs are chasing it, you can comfortably hit them from the side or rear with other planes.

X:CE adds some intelligent code to the aliens, which is enabled by the Balance Mod. This change makes the UFOs switch targets somewhat intelligently so that the above tactic no longer always works.

Human aircraft changes

The refueling and rearming mechanic has been changed slightly. In the Balance Mod, airplanes rearm before refueling, but can be launch without being fully rearmed. Fully refitting a plane takes a bit more time, but if you were fighting close to your base, you may be able to launch faster.

A 20% randomized damage spread is also applied to aircraft weapons.

Xenonaut soldier changes

Both the Strength and Accuracy of your soldiers now matters when throwing grenades, and throwing a grenade a longer distance is more difficult than a short distance. This means that grenades may often land near where aimed, but not exactly, and that soldiers with low Strength won't be able to accurately toss grenades. The same changes also apply to aliens, so with the Balance Mod enabled you can occasionally see aliens miss really badly with their grenades.

Incendiary items

Incendiary ammo (grenades, rockets) is available in X:CE. In the Balance Mod, fire also serves a purpose against Sebillians. They can see through smoke, rendering smoke grenades useless against them. In the Balance Mod, fire has the same effect on Sebillians that smoke has against other aliens, making incendiary grenades effective defensive tools.

Reapers vs. vehicles

In the Balance Mod, Reapers can attack vehicles. They'll kill a Hunter car in 2-3 hits. This was supposed to work in the vanilla game, and prevents the tactic of entirely neutralizing Reapers by using vehicles to block their path.

[Charon]

6 minutes ago, Solver said:

Incendiary items

Incendiary ammo (grenades, rockets) is available in X:CE. In the Balance Mod, fire also serves a purpose against Sebillians. They can see through smoke, rendering smoke grenades useless against them. In the Balance Mod, fire has the same effect on Sebillians that smoke has against other aliens, making incendiary grenades effective defensive tools.

Never knew and good to know.

You guys seriously need a place where everybody can read the full changelog.

Edited July 19, 2016 by Charon

[Jean-Luc]

There've been changes to psi too, right?

It's nice to have this clearly listed. 

[Charon]

3 minutes ago, Jean-Luc said:

There've been changes to psi too, right?

It's nice to have this clearly listed. 

I want to point this out again: a FULL list, EASILY accessible would do XCE very good. People dont even know what you were doing. I dont either, nobody actually knows what the XCE is all about.

[Solver]

9 minutes ago, Jean-Luc said:

There've been changes to psi too, right?

It's nice to have this clearly listed. 

The psi changes are among the changes that made their way into the official Xenonauts patches. So since the release of version 1.5, psi has been the same in vanilla and X:CE.

4 minutes ago, Charon said:

I want to point this out again: a FULL list, EASILY accessible would do XCE very good. People dont even know what you were doing. I dont either, nobody actually knows what the XCE is all about.

I think the change notes in each individual release announcement do a pretty good job of summarizing the changes. Every significant change is in those. A full, exhaustive changelog cannot be published - there have been about 1700 commits in the code.

[Charon]

14 minutes ago, Solver said:

I think the change notes in each individual release announcement do a pretty good job of summarizing the changes. Every significant change is in those. A full, exhaustive changelog cannot be published - there have been about 1700 commits in the code.

This is EXACTLY why i say NOBODY knows ANYTHING about XCE. Who is going to read through about 34 changelogs which are god knows where. MAKE a summary to tell people what XCE IS about. Than people will start to CARE again.

At the very least make a link summary, although i dont think ANYBODY without a full dedication attitude is going to read it or search for the things he(she wants to know.

Forgive me my aggressive tone and dont take it personally, i appreciate what you and the XCE team is doing :).

Edited July 19, 2016 by Charon

[Jean-Luc]

XCE does have an exhausting change log but it can be daunting for a new player to find and make sense of it. Pointing out major changes is useful. 

Explosives not always doing over-damage and slower interceptor patrol speed (and lower fuel consumption) are among the significant yet probably overlooked changes imo.

[Charon]

11 minutes ago, Jean-Luc said:

XCE does have an exhausting change log but it can be daunting for a new played to find and make sense of it. Pointing out major changes is useful. 

Explosives not always doing over-damage and slower interceptor patrol speed (and lower fuel consumption) are among the significant yet probably overlooked changes imo.

I just stumbled upon those things in an accident.

[Solver]

There's a pinned introduction thread here with summary information about what X:CE is and a summary of some features. This thread about the balance mod should have probably existed earlier, but should be helpful. But in summary, I think most of the important changes are quite readily visible, though please point out major omissions.

It's also strange to see the information of X:CE being criticized by people behind X-Division, an enormous overhaul mod with hundreds of additions, but the useful information in the mod summary is limited to about ten items.

[drages]

33 minutes ago, Solver said:

X:CE being criticized by people behind X-Division

You got us (or charon) wrong, solver. I made this conversation with Ilunak year ago. This is not a critic.. I wanted maybe 100 times to know any codes XCE added to modding. There are many codes for many things but you can only see them at other (now at very old ones) mods. When i start to modding, i nearly downloaded every mod and looked for what they used. This is a wish to use everything possible.

I don't care any change logs, probably it will confuse more. But the codes i can use different things, like the random research code.. some older codes which comes before 0.30 or older versions just vanished probably. I see tons of codes at aiprops.xml file at civilian AI but i don't have any idea how they work.. maybe there is very simple solutions out there but i just don't know. Probably i already used %95 of them but even "1" unique code can make huge different. 

Don't get us wrong please, why would we critic the XCE which makes us do our dream project? We never critic any of the balance or XCE mechanic because we are moders and if we dont like something, we just mod it and we never say no new modable things..

(X-Division Mega Thread is the 0.98 version one (and at nexus) and it's the biggest mod thread as info at this forum tbh. We did not make a new one yet for 0.99 because it's still at alpha and we are working on it still. But i hate to write that long "change logs with new 1000s of things" with my bad english too.)

[Solver]

Quote

I don't care any change logs, probably it will confuse more. But the codes i can use different things, like the random research code.. some older codes which comes before 0.30 or older versions just vanished probably. I see tons of codes at aiprops.xml file at civilian AI but i don't have any idea how they work.. maybe there is very simple solutions out there but i just don't know. Probably i already used %95 of them but even "1" unique code can make huge different. 

Then gather a few of those questions and ask If you see some XML tag that you don't know how it works, I can usually figure out what it does in 5 minutes with the code.

Not enough activity on this forum? Yes, I sometimes don't read this forum for several weeks, but I usually reply to emails within a day. You can PM me for my email address if you want.

I also think that the modding features thread contains explanation for most new XML tags that X:CE has added.

Quote

(X-Division Mega Thread is the 0.98 version one (and at nexus) and it's the biggest mod thread as info at this forum tbh. We did not make a new one yet for 0.99 because it's still at alpha and we are working on it still. But i hate to write that long "change logs with new 1000s of things" with my bad english too.)

Yeah, I wasn't saying it's small. I was saying it's a very big mod, but from the thread it's really just the "Global Additions" section that explains what it does. Everything else says basically "a lot more stuff", which doesn't make sense until you actually go and play X-Division.

[drages]

The problem is, you need to catch that "tags" to understand/use it. If you don't know, it's ever existed, you can't do anything about it. For this reason, if there is a section with a list of this tags and one sentence about it, the moders can make plans and use those options..

To be honest, after i saw Stellaris modding, it was horrible.. No info, tons of codes, "ultra modable" game advertisement but you can't add even a new weapon size? it was a total joke. XCE moding is much more clear and i am happy with it.. 

I really hate long change logs and as i said with my bad english, it will be much more pain to read for players. X-Division is "Xenonauts x 5", so when there is 160 research at main game and you make a mod with more then 1000, it's hard to right as a detailed change log. It's better to write "- You got more then 1000 researches" :P.

[Solver]

You are right about the tags. Most of the mysterious ones are probably from the vanilla game though and not X:CE. We cannot write explanations for all those, but again, ask if you have specific questions. 

[drages]

For the past:

The only tags i saw but i am not sure, are from XNT aiprops.xml:

<AI MODMERGEATTRIBUTE="race" MODMERGE="update" race="Human">
  
	<Behaviour>
		<Pathing 
				Environment = "-5"
				Sight="1.5" 
				Sound="1"
				Cover="-1"
				ShotPotential="-18"
				EnemyInfluence="2.0"
				AlliedInfluence="0.5"
				EnemyLOS="1"
				AlliedLOS="0.5"
				NearestEnemy="1"
				Goal="-1" />		
		
	</Behaviour>
	
    <Sounds death="CivilianDeath" injury="CivilianInjury" />
    <Props sightRange="25" />
	<GibbedSpectre name="particles/gibbed_human/gibbed_human" />

	
	
    <Rank MODMERGEATTRIBUTE="type" MODMERGE="update" type="NonCombatant">		
      <Props APs="45" Resilience="60" Strength="40" Accuracy="50" Reflexes="40" Bravery="35"
             PsionicPower="" Recklessness="0" Tactical="0" Grenade="0" Situational="0" PreferredRange="Medium"
             CrouchDisabled="0" />
      <Armour kinetic="0" energy="0" chemical="0" incendiary="0" />
	  <Items killed="Items.HumanNonCombatantCorpse" stunned="Items.HumanNonCombatant" />
	  <BloodHitSprite name="particles/hit_blood/hit_blood" />
    </Rank>
  </AI>

There is Recklessness="0" Tactical="0" Grenade="0" Situational="0" PreferredRange="Medium" and i never saw those at any other place. Can i use them at enemy AI too? what is tactical and Situational?

For future!

Can you make a topic with your next XCE release and we can talk, discuss, and give you some headache there?

[Charon]

2 minutes ago, Solver said:

You are right about the tags. Most of the mysterious ones are probably from the vanilla game though and not X:CE. We cannot write explanations for all those, but again, ask if you have specific questions. 

Wait, let me intervene right here. You still dont get what Drages tries to say. So let me explain: There are codes AND commands which are nowhere written, except in mods which used them and deep down in some XCE changelog version thread.

For example: Function.Chance(AdvABTChanceName,1,40)

This command is nowhere written excep buried in some XCE changelog thread. So what do you do if you dont know about this command and encounter it nowhere ? Right ! You dont use it because you dont know it ... exists.

Your offer to ask about lines of code we can actually see is very generous, even the email, but we cant ask questions about things we dont even know they exist and are nowhere written down. And there could be more of those and we cant ask about them either because we dont know ... they exist. Puff Magic.

Picking you up on your offer do you know how the <MissionType name="Common">, <FriendlyAI> and <Ticker> in missiontypeprops_gc.xml work and how they behave and in what ways i can change them ? You can answer here if you want so we distract from this thread too much:

 

[Solver]

Replied there as suggested.

[OzoneGrif]

Lots of good things in XCE.

About the balance mod, I don't agree with Telefrag for a few reasons. The alien technology is supposed to be evolved, I don't see them build telepods which are potentially deadly everytime you use them (nobody would put a foot in these butchery machines). Secondly, it is a truely an unfair death if you are stuck on a telepod at the end of your turn, unable to move away, then an alien decides to use it.

The Telepods should inverse the pods contents upon use. So, if an alien teleports and you are on the other side, your soldier may end up inside the alien ship in front of two other aliens. The same occurs if an alien is on the other telepod and you want to go in. This time, the alien will be teleported down, right in front of your soldiers if they are all grouped downstairs.

This would be funnier to play, and less unfair. Also more pleasant if you are the one forcing the alien to teleport down.

Edited August 22, 2016 by OzoneGrif

[kabill]

12 hours ago, OzoneGrif said:

The Telepods should inverse the pods contents upon use. So, if an alien teleports and you are on the other side, your soldier may end up inside the alien ship in front of two other aliens. The same occurs if an alien is on the other telepod and you want to go in. This time, the alien will be teleported down, right in front of your soldiers if they are all grouped downstairs.

This would be funnier to play, and less unfair. Also more pleasant if you are the one forcing the alien to teleport down.

That's a pretty good idea.  I like that.

[Slider2k]

No mention that close range accuracy bonus is drastically reduced from 12% to 7% per tile. Was unpleasantly surprised when riding a shotgun. I mean, close range bonus is what makes shotguns viable. The last thing I want when sticking a shotgun up xeno's ass is a high chance to miss.

On a closer inspection it turns out this change is in XCE base config. WTH? I thought XCE base claimed to be balance tweaks free.