Project Dreamfall - An Immersive Total Overhaul Mod

Ok, SkaianDestiny and I have decided to collaborate together and start a total overhaul mod, project Dreamfall

Q:What is project Dreamfall?

It is a total overhaul mod that focuses on expanding the lore of the Alternative Cold War and adds in content that would flesh out the Cold War Setting, and also immersing the player with more logical(it is subjective) advancements of technologies.

Q:How is it different from the XNT mod, Xenophobia and the upcoming Xenonauts: Our last hope by Kabill?

XNT strives to be a challenge to the player and give a more hardcore experience with lots of fluff. Xenophobia gives even more fluff and variety at the cost of making it more complex. Our last Hope provides a fundamentally different gameplay from it's setting.

Project Dreamfall offers to keep the vanilla gameplay as close as possible while trying to expend on the Cold War lore that would bring Xenonauts more closely to the believability of a cold war era world struggling to fight against enemies with superior technology.

Q:Ok, so why should I hold some interest in this mod then?

Diversity. Everyone has different tastes and even when the modders here made delicious cake in this community, it has to be cheesecake(well, not all of 'em). I don't like cheesecake, and I'm sure others do prefer a different cake.(unless I'm the only one that dislike cheesecake....)

Q:Alright, so can I expect this mod to bear fruit rather than die off a slow death?

Actually, you can, and you can help by giving your feedback in this thread here. Help me by suggesting any ideas how to make a mod that emphasizes on immersion. What I need is to create something as close as what the ideal Vanilla Xenonauts would do. This is my version of that idea, but you can give feedback if you so wish to make it more refined.

Q:When can I expect the earliest release?

This Week. V0.05 will come out to stake out it's foundation in the modding community, along with the next release of the Vehicles mod. If not, well then just hit me with a stick. Just be warned though, it might not be balanced.

Mod mission and goals:

-Create a more immersive Xenonauts experience by creating new content that 'makes sense' in the fight against an alien invasion, and altering existing content that would reflect the world's planetary defense unit.

-Changing weapon tiers to make them more sensible and more diverse in combat, but still retains alittle of their tier superiority to identify the advancement of technology.

-Give lots of delicious fluff for the fans and even newcomers of the game to enjoy and read through, immersing themselves in some infomative treats

-Give even more options for the player to feel less stale about the game, while not overpowering them with abundant stuff and with proper explanation & analysis to avoid confusion.

-Tries to be as close as what Vanilla gameplay should be, same tactics will still be favoured while newer tactics are available.

What this mod does not do:

- Heavy economical overhaul

- Heavily revamp alien forces

- Improve AI

- Changes Vanilla Tactics entirely

Overhauled artwork

- Certain art assets will be entirely overhauled to give it more 'oomph' and 'xenonauty'.

3 New tanks with diverse roles, based on the Xenonauts Assault Vehicles Expansion Pack

Dragoon Tank

Rhino Tank

X-Tank

3 New Aircrafts

EF-112 Strider

Cyclops

Saracen(from unused vanilla assets)

Expanded Cold War Technology and more Immersive lore

-Fighting the alien invasion won't be just limelight to the Xenonauts. All nations across the world prepares to give the Xenonauts a hand in defeating the alien menace. So waiting for that big nose scientist isn't a forced option anymore!

Plus, experimental cold war era weapons will be made possible with alien tech!

Upgraded Xenopedia Entry

- A few new voices in the game, Chief Weapons Officer.

- Extra fluff for each weapons, with their own entry specifically and history of it that is immersive to Xenonauts lore.

- New entries for new stuff in the mod

Tweaked weapons tech

-Ballistics

Practical and diverse but not a straightforward weapon. Only some weapons can still be useful near end-game with the right tactics.

-Lasers

Accurate and damaging but inflexible. Your standard line crack trooper weapon.

-Plasmas

Deadly and chaotic but inaccurate and has low ammo capacity. More advanced weaponry to combat extraterrestrials, but suffers from imitation technology that accuracy is sacrificed.

-MAG

Top of the line powerhouse, but woefully expansive. A killer storm of a weapon, very demanding, but worth it once it's finished.

-1 Other new Tech, like Sonic weapons?

Tweaked weapon stats, vehicle stats and ground combat

Weapons will be tweaked only slightly to allow more diverse roles.

More options to outfit ground troops

- Having 2 tanks in the battlefield at the cost of more soldiers. 4 Soldiers and 2 tanks in a charlie dropship.

Longer, more diverse Aircraft combat

- Aircraft will have more roles to play such as Air superiority fighter, strike bomber, capital ship destroyer, interceptor

- Tweaked air combat. Now it won't be fire-and-forget, but a longer air combat. Auto-resolve chance will be lowered enough to make air combat more considerable but not too low as to make it pointless.

- Even 3 marauders won't be able to auto-resolve the best UFOs. Either take-em head on manually or use the Fury, which will actually have a use. Stop the battleships from dominating the sky with the Fury, but first, you have to sweat to down a battleship. Battleship might not do terror missions often to equalize the resources needed to researching a Fury.

Opposing Force

- Aliens will get new weapons to complement the Xenonauts extended arsenal

- Probably work on another heavy drone with a different weapon and tactic. possibly an artillery drone.(new model)

- New UFOs, probably a "torpedo" UFO that gets aliens quickly into terror missions as its sole purpose, but only for once a month?

- New variants of aliens, the Ironfist reaper(black), huge amounts of hp, could possibly be only placed at terror missions.

UI Updates:

-Add icons in Xenopedia to differentciate the voices of the Xenopedia

-Add soldier role icons

Features might be expended or changed, depending on feedback.

If you're interested to help out the mod do give me a PM.

Hey, I think I've got a few ideas for the mod:

First, the new weapons. Instead of Sonic, I'd love to see electroshock weapons. I think it could be implemented as alternative ammo for the ballistic weapons. Losing a bit of range and with horrible cover destroying properties, they deal a low to moderate amount of shock damage, enough to take down most enemies in two or three good hits (to avoid an OP electroshock sniper). They completely avoid armor to compensate for it's low damage, and deal extra damage to androns and drones (and obviously, they are non-lethal, allowing you to capture enemies).

This stems from my disappointment when I found out there weren't any ES rockets available after developing the grenades.

As a balancing point, maybe give knocked out units a chance to "wake up" after some time has passed, and handcuffs or other kind of restraint to reward a player closing in to secure the knocked target.

Also, a great improvement on early game versatility for air coverage, and as far as I see, the only way to avoid the first mandatory base on eastern egipt or the middle east: The ability to swap missiles in the condor and foxtrot for external fuel tanks that increase their range while obviously lowering their firepower, enabling you to score some points with the funding blocks outside the usual range of your first base(s).

Alternatively, a long range version of the foxtrot limited to light missiles would also help.

You'd still have to go blind (both position and type of UFO) on a long patrol trip, so I don't think there will be major balancing issues with that.

If you need barely-decent argentinian-accented english voice acting, I think I can help you.

Electroshock weapons can be nice, but the idea seemed more situational rather than being a tech that could stand on it's own, but I'll consider something similiar to that though.

I had that covered, it will be a recon craft that has more range than other aircrafts but only armed with an autocannon.

If you want to flesh out the cold war settings maybe add some new sorts of missions or events on the worldmap?

Maybe a ''mission'' in which you are ordered to hold a area for X amounts of turns because a important general or leader got crossed in the crossfire and it takes a while before you can evec him.

Also add an extra techtree which improve the abilities of nations to deal with the alien-invasion. Stuff like a cheaper version of the condor or foxtrot for the countries to use. Extra defense batteries around cities (X amount of chance of UFO's getting shot down).

If you want to flesh out the cold war settings maybe add some new sorts of missions or events on the worldmap?

Maybe a ''mission'' in which you are ordered to hold a area for X amounts of turns because a important general or leader got crossed in the crossfire and it takes a while before you can evec him.

Also add an extra techtree which improve the abilities of nations to deal with the alien-invasion. Stuff like a cheaper version of the condor or foxtrot for the countries to use. Extra defense batteries around cities (X amount of chance of UFO's getting shot down).

Thats what I was thinking about. Although Implementing most of your ideas would b firing yourself head first into a brick wall. I was thinking of adding extra missions like different variants of terror missions, like defense such as your suggestion of the evac idea. Or an interior UFO/terror mission involving a subway station or underground national bunker. The mission ideas can be implemented with enough effort 'as long as' it's within the context of using existing mission types and tweaking them. Making new mission types entirely of their own would need a demi-god coder.

Cometothinkofit, I think I/or someone should suggest new mission types in the forums.

The extra techtree would be the Advanced Cold War Technology that the nations of the world would offer. It would give better versatility than laser and plasma technologies, but would eventually be somewhat obsolete at end game. Only the lastest adv. tech inventions will still hold their weight at end-game assaults.

Could you elaborate how would countries use their cheaper variants of aircraft in game? You mean like ally fighters that circle around the nation trying to take down enemy UFOs that can be made possible if we can implement that in game?

As much as I'd like to have improvements for more UFOs to be shot down as I'll add in tougher UFOs in the game, I'd need to know how exactly would be done on this issue. Perhaps I'll peek in the files to see whether that is possible to do this.

All these feedback that you're giving are more towards the later releases, since I'm concentrating on the arsenal of the Xenonauts first, before moving on towards the aliens and perhaps to what you have suggested. No promises that your ideas can be implemented though.

Update: Due to the modular system that this mod follows, there are alot of obstacles as to releasing an early version, mainly due to the workarounds needed for the modular system, so the mod is a slog, even I'm trying to figure out the troubleshooting myself, even when there is blood on my living room walls.

Still, I'll release a probable update whenever I can.

I was thinking in around the same lines as you for the new missions/maps. Those are cool to.

And what I meant with the countries getting cheaper stuff is that sometimes on the worldmap a country succesfully shoots down a ufo. And that by adding some new technologies to research which increases that chance. Wouldnt require implenting new stuff. Just increasing the chance that countries can do that after you finish that research. So for example that by researching better SAM batterys for the funding nations they get an X % amount of increase in shooting down a UFO.

Further more if you want to implent tougher UFO`s thats oke, then just limit the chance for shooting down bigger UFO by nations. Shall we say that scouts, bombers, fighers and corvette, could get shot down and the after that there isnt much chance.