podbelski

ok that sounds reasonable, my points: 1) soldier stats do grow, some of them slower than vanilla, Accuracy at the same speed, TUs are faster. The next release I'm lowering some starting stats a bit. 2) regarding rewards: you seem to miss the point as the main reward is monthly funding and you haven't mentioned it at all. Funding bonus is given when you either shoot down the UFO, or win GC against a _landed_ one. Crash sites give _additional_ minor bonus in cash, and a standard exp boost. Also, UFOs that do not land have much weaker crews. 3) base defense: I reported a bug about this, the game does not give a funding bonus and that's wrong. On the other hand, there will be not a ton of such GC, so the main bonus is fun from a battle in non-standard environment. as to your advice, I'm thinking about giving +1 UFOs per wave, which will result in 10 UFOs/wave in March, totally like +20 UFOs from Sep till April, probably will try it. Note that modders have little options on balancing the UFO spawn formula, some limitations are a consequence of it. which difficulty level were you playing? How far did you progress?

... and one more question, wounds inflict damage at the start of the turn, yet I remember something about moving this to the ned of the turn to allow healing... wasn't this implemented in XCE?

recently I saw a sudden building collapse after I shoot in a completely different direction. Happened 3 times, was shooting with rifles, never seen this before, could not reproduce when tried it again. The last map was one of the standard Skitso's farms. Can only give screenshots after collapse to illustrate

... fwiw, the bug will be fixed in the next XCE release

OMG just have noticed a xenonaut on the top! Unbelievable

ok, I had similar thoughts but asked just in case I'm missing something the workaround is probably not useful in all cases, eg if there will be the "AND" operator... hope this won't be necessary, have to do a test

for instance, we have the following field: Researches.AdvancedHP(AND)Researches.CaesanVivisection(OR)Items.DeltaCorpse I want to remove the colored part of it, what is the best way to do it using MODMERGE commands? The goal is to avoid collisions with other mods that might alter this field as well

cool!

hey Khall are you still supporting this pack? I have a few bugs to report but have to prepare screenshots for that. the one that does not require a screenshot is the Ulaanbaatar terror cite: unlike other maps, this one puts the attacking UFO onto the battlefield

... regarding weapon tooltips text alignment: I tried hard but could not win a battle against the engine. The fixed width font is required for precise alignment, the default one is not fixed width, and setting it to "tahoma.mvec" which comes along with the game does not affect anything

wow I finally sorted out how the "recoil" parameter works, not how it's written in tooltips etc. Instead, the difference between recoil and strength is divided by 2 and subtracted from actual %-to-hit (if str < recoil) have to think about the best way to fit this into the mod, will include into the next update ... will also decrease starting accuracy and reflexes by 10 for rookies

... v1.02 is another minor quickfix, just two things in aircrafts.xml: - decreased Bomber HP from 3k to 2750, to make it possible to intercept it with two planes at certain point. - put back Astra missile onto a Foxtrot, but just a single one. Already built Foxtrots stay overpowered by roughly 30% (previous setup was done by a mistake just prior to 1.0 release)

... v1.01 is a tiny update: a conflict with "Armored Assault!" resolved (Hunter Rocket Launcher upgrade to Alenium missiles), and few gcloading_tips updated

updated hints (3rd post) and re-uploaded XNT6_patched (now modinfo is filled)

4. exactly and watch out for their interceptors also, ufos on a scouting mission do not land as well, and they don't produce "events". Taking them down is also a moderate priority as their persistence affects the game ticker ... and I think Insane difficulty will have even tougher GC in the next updates. You see, some players beleive it's too easy ))

1. don't rely just on radars. Once you see a wave send planes to scout beyond radar coverage. And note it is expected that you won't always catch all of them. Personally I feel happy when an alien base appears on the map meaning they managed to trick me)) 2. morale should not be a big issue until you face 3-4 psipowered aliens in a mission (psions+officer+leader). If you save/load excessively this might be the cause, I even reported a bug about this. Basically psi attacks occur every turn when you save/load, not once per two turns as it is supposed to be. Also note that psi powers have limited range. It is quite big for "fear" though, but anyway temporarily retreating far from the ufo to regain morale is an option 3. stun baton is strange, but not related to my mod or XNT 4. again, it is supposed you won't be able to take down all the battleships. Just have to live with it: some of them will be flying and bombing out your funding. The goal is to catch a Praetor before it is too late. 5. I think the described airstrike/GC misfunding is actual only for the smallest UFOs anyway. Also note that going a GC gives your soldiers experience and a few additional alloys/alenium (I guess). 6. Currently scout DTC is auto-sold after a GC. But note that DTC is _destroyed_ in a shot down UFO, like engines and reactors. I'm going to put some tips into the 3rd post today. Some of them already in gcloadingtips.xml, you can examine it right now

@Raywalker good feedback TY! I read it full but have to sort this out a bit to give good answers. very quick points: - game randomizer can make it easier or harder the first months, but I think in any case it won't result in a loss by itself. Try playing the veteran (or reduce the fundingDamageModifier in gameconfig) to somewhat counter the effect of bad randomizer. - fat battleships is an intended feature. The whole goal of this mod is to disallow air supremacy situation. So you need two attacks to take down a battleship, and 3xFoxtrots won't be enough. Normally you can win by April. After that more and bigger UFOs will be coming, it's an alien invasion after all)) - you can perfectly play w/o a morale mod, just turn it off in game launcher. That's all I can do. Note that Wolf+ armors provide psionic defense - I will be balancing things further, but the money from airstrikes/GC are not on the top of my list. They seem fine now, but I made them very quickly, they were the first thing I altered when I started this mod )) just have cut weapons costs by 10, and later had to reduce batteries value to miserable b/c some ships give you hundreds of them and that was very unbalanced. Again, maybe will get to it later

@WTYD I think the problem is b/c of v1.51, personally haven't tried it yet... just have tested again with a clean v1.09+XCE+XNT_patched and don't see any problems I'll update the top post with game version required and reupload XNT6_patched with a filled modinfo. For now I'm not sure what can be done about v1.5 glitches, have no time to mess with all of it

... meanwhile I've found a "bug" in my mod that hurts the "armored assault", have to update research.xml... also, vehicle weapons prices probably has to be tweaked I also played till December on Insane difficulty and admit it should be harder, it's "insane" after all...

yep exactly, I mean this was already suggested and I overlooked it

in a GC, turn off all sound and music. During alien turns the sound is still turned on - shooting, screams etc

... what I haven't tried is going with completely different strategy: quickly set up 4 or even 5 "interception" bases doing just a minimum research and see for how long can you survive. if it's possible to break off the majority of attacks, then capture the Praetor and win the game probably it "breaks" the mod as again the big part of the game is thrown away, like in vanilla. But I expect sooner or later you will be forced to fight on the ground and catch up with the research, ok maybe some values in gameconfig have to be tweaked further for this. The latter case is actually a good one as it's good when there are more than just one winning strategy

... regarding soldier stats, I definitely agree current setup "is bit inclined in favor of the player". I even think to reduce the accuracy a little bit. yet there will be players who still find it hard. After 2-3 months into a game you start facing tougher foe and personally I can't play w/o losses even on veteran. I'm sure it's worth trying other approaches to stats balance, yet they also have drawbacks... For instance, I think too much focus on "training" the rookies, like forcing them to run a lot or carry heavy weights, are kind of artificial and erode the gameplay. Or, if they start as useless pups but _very_ quickly grow to reasonable stats then what's the point? And probably they will grow to the top values too fast and it's not good. if we had more flexibility in stats growth formula it might change my opinion, but that's another story. For now, I can say for myself: OOS values play better for me. Suggest other parameter combination, I will be glad to see it and try out

@drages I'm open to criticizm, my main hope is this attempt will give some insight to still unsolved game problems. And maaaybe something implemented in OOS will find the way to further game overhauls, which I hope will happen. as I said much earlier, about two months ago, this is mainly a try out of different concept inspired by Kabill's thread (about lowering the air combat value forcing the player to have all the kinds of available GC).

... I will stress it again: the goal was not to make the game very hard. What is hard to one person is easy for another, and I put myself somewhere in the middle if it matters. the goal was to make all the major parts balanced relative to each other, and to disallow shortcuts making the player enormously rich and strong at a certain point of time. instead, the gameplay is planned to be smooth, the difficulty is cotrolled by few critical parameters: fundingDamageModifier and GC bonuses/penalties. Balancing those between the four difficulty levels is a relatively easy task, I just need concrete feedback, and not only for the initial game period.