RaccoonTOF

Yup, already planned on tweaking the damage types when I got to the plasma/mag rebalance (and was looking into the need to add/alter alien armor to add proper resistances to them as well). But even without changing the base damage type, there is a lot of differentiation that can be done with RoF (by tweaking TU costs and by altering burst sizes), accuracy, dmg per round, clip sizes, reaction modifiers, range, etc. For example, all of the "suppressed" ballistic weapons will have a slight reaction modifier bonus to them (best I could do to simulate the advantages of a silencer), while having a slightly lower max range and in some cases a mild accuracy penalty (not all suppressors decrease accuracy within their operating range, but they DO all have max range penalties - at least all of the weapons I'm including with them...in the real world, they would be firing subsonic ammunition, but I'm not going to be quite so nitpicky as to require using different ammo, I'm adding enough new ammo types already). The general idea is to have all of the weapons work "generally" like the do in the vanilla game, but with minor variations between sub-types, and to give each "tier" a definite niche that it is best at.

This is much along the lines of what my regional weapons revamp is growing into as well

Totally agreed on the usability, which is why I am adding the advanced ballistics as well. Also, each of the different weapons will have slight variance from the "generic" versions currently in game also, in line with their real-world counterparts (the clip size and round shown in the images above being just one example of this.) In general, ballistics vs energy weapons will do more damage with less accuracy (lasers and advanced ballistics will be roughly equal in overall DPS, and I plan to rescale plasma and mag weapons along similar lines). Plus, ballistics are unlimited in supply (including advanced, once researched), while the rest require manufacturing time and cost. That alone will give a bit of an edge to the advanced ballistics over lasers, to help balance the added in-game value of accuracy trumping sheer damage. As for the sprites - there is no need to edit the actual poses or general appearance, like would be necessary with an armor mod (although the 3d models are provided to us for doing so I believe, I've not looked too closely yet at the models posted here). For the weapons changes though, it is primarily an issue of recoloring stocks and adding/removing scopes from the current assets, which can be done manually fairly easy for a SINGLE image, as it is only a few pixels that need changing in most cases. The main reason it is such an issue is because of the sheer number of individual images that need changing - a few dozen images for a single short animation, such as firing...from a crouch...wearing basic armor. Repeat for each possible combination of weapon, armor, pose...it's just a LOT of small changes to make - and if possible I'd like to spend my time working on the larger-detail images and the stat balancing

Yup, that's exactly the frustration I was running into and why I was looking for assistance with that if anyone was willing to do so

This started out with me wanting to add some more regional diversity to ballistic weapons - adding in a full starting suite of Soviet weapons, which then led to adding some European weapons. And then I decided that I wanted to redo even the existing weapons, to base them off of real-world weapons and match the same style of the others. Eventually I want to have a full set of basic ballistic weapons for each of US/Soviet/Euro (pistol, assault rifle, sniper rifle, LMG, shotgun, carbine/SMG) and then an intended later research for "upgraded" versions of them all, for those that want to continue using ballistic weaponry (which will flat replace them in the purchase/equip screens, just as grenades and medpacks auto-upgrade now). Currently I've got a fair number of the weapons created, but thus far I've only got the Dragunov SVD-63 implemented fully in game. My choke point right now is with animations - some of them I can use existing assets with, as due to the small scale in GC, the difference between say, an M16, M4, and G3 are not really noticeable. For others though - particularly the M21, Dragunov, and the SMGs I'm currently working on - none of the existing animations are really a good match. So, I'd like to put a call out for anyone willing to help with these; it's not particularly difficult, and is fairly simple "pixel art" for the most part, but there are a LOT of images to update for each weapon (every angle of every pose and every action taken, with each of the different armor types...). Meanwhile, I'll be finishing up the artwork and XML for at least the first round of regional weapons, plus the batch of restyled laser weapons. Below is what I've got so far (although again, only the Dragunov is fully-implemented in-game thus far, but the rest will be coming soon). Ballistics Revamp Updated Laser Weapons

I've been working on "Regional" ballistics myself, although I've not gotten around to putting them into a modular mod format yet. I'm also re-doing the stock ballistic images as well, to maintain the same "feel" for all of the weapons. Currently, the only one I've got finished completely so far is the Dragunov SVD-63 (with a planned "modernized" version to be included as well with later research - similar plans for other "modern" ballistics options). If anyone has any particular weapons they would like to see included (bearing in mind appropriate era), feel free to post here. XenoNUT, if you are interested in any of the images, I'll be happy to share them as well. The issue with shields is likely because the animations for shield+pistol are different for the animations for just shield, or just pistol (there are 3 separate sets, for each armor type). Animations are my current "choke" in getting new weapons added as well, especially distinctive weapons such as the Dragunov (the animation sprites for an M4 vs an M16 vs a G3 are virtually identical at the scale they are shown in, and so existing assets are just fine there...). Dragunov SVD-63 in-game image Dragunov SVD-63 Hi-Res version Dragunov - Advanced Version - HiRes AK-74 HiRes H&K G3 HiRes M16A1 HiRes M16A4 HiRes M21 Sniper Weapon System HiRes M25 Sniper Weapon System HiRes

Game crashed midway through ground combat mission (upon successfully stunning/capturing the officer), so I restarted and went to reload the autosave that is created at the start of ground combat. Crashed again before even fully loading. Loading a previous save works fine - except that when my dropship reaches the target site, it no longer appears to be an officer capture mission...still, I'll be continuing the game from that point and just waiting for another officer opportunity, but I figured I should report the issue here and attach the bugged save for you to check out [ATTACH]5920[/ATTACH] Also note that the above save is significantly larger than any of the other saves in the directory - though I don't know if that is normal for a ground combat autosave or not (it's the only one I've got in there, and the first time I've looked at them...) Aut.sav Aut.sav