Gurbo

I doubt there will be a release with the changes you want, even in the community edition, but the CE makes it much easier to install mods, and if you head to the modding discussion subforum, I bet you'll find someone willing to try to add those features.

Wow... did you make those pictures yourself? What sprite do they use in game? They look impressive, I'd use them even if they shot paintballs just for the epic look.

If you're only interested in the modding question itself, jump to the 5th paragraph. I have a really simple mod in mind to add a new set of weapons. It would just add an upgraded set of ballistic weapons, with barrels and other exposed parts reinforced or made entirely out of alien alloys, bullets with alien alloy tips and using an alenium based explosive instead of gunpowder (to explain the necessity for reinforced mechanisms). With high penetrating power, I want the final damage to sit around plasma level, maybe just a bit lower, so I also want to add an alternative ammo type to give it enough versatility to make it a good tactical choice to have one or two of these even when you have MAG weapons available. As it would be a mid game tech that has to hold out its ground until the very end, and the techs that would logically develop into it are realtively early ones, I have to find a way to balance it to keep it from being overpowered when you get them. My intended solution was to make it a weapon oriented to elite forces, and the easiest way I found to do it was to optimize them for a 100 TUs unit. I want to know if there's any known way to set, for example, a pistol, to have a 30% + 10 TUs firing cost for a normal shot instead of 40%. That's the easiest way I found to make them hard for privates to pick up while a higly trained soldier would just use it as a regular ballistic weapon. An alternative would be to make it a full flat cost if mixing is impossible. P.S.: I'm fully aware of the complications of adding a regular weapon with multiple sets of ammo, but I have a few ideas that could get me around that problem.

I guess it's to balance the fact that the starting shields are almost useless. Once you get the upgraded ones, they'll usually hold out for the entire mission. Yeah, the decreased chance of reaction fire is a big plus to Pistols and Shotguns/Carabines, but IMHO, to use them effectively they need to be too close for comfort. On the rocketeer side, once you unlock the stun weapons, you can carry several stun rockets to have a decent AoE attack that doesn't destroy anything, and it works decently well against anything except androns. Later in the game, I'm just concerned about not losing Alenium and Alloys, so blowing up all the weapons isn't such an issue. As a minimum, you'll always get a bit more than if you aistriked the ufo anyway. And yes, I'll repeat it, I love how this game lets you set up your troops in any way that works for you, except for the "new tech is always much better than old tech", there isn't much of a defining optimal strategy.

I use a really personalized mix, but I guess you could get some ideas from it. Two "Grenadiers", frontline scouts dual wielding shields or an upgraded shield and empty hand, and carrying a large array of grenades Two Riflemen, the main attack force, requiring much less setup than the rest, pretty standard Two Snipers, those are my main damage dealers, and usually end up being my top ranked officers pretty quickly because of the combination of taking most of the kills and safety from their range One Rocketeer, pretty straightforward, it blows stuff up, also makes a heavy use of stun rockets. One HW. Because of the heavy TUs cost and heavy weapon penalties, I limit myself to one of these lawnmowers on the early-mid game. Once I get the predator armor I replace one of the grenadiers for an extra HW. They are just too good to have just one. Also the instant 100 strenght makes it perfect to place otherwise potential sniper privates in this role. When I get the shrike I get a tank, so no changes there, and by the end, I just take whatever I can afford. Maybe changing the rocketeer for a grenadier and adding 2 more HWs, riflemen and/or assaults could be good. I'm very partial to the "drop the weapons" approach to avoid mind control and berserk incidents, so I really don't bother that much with the high reflex weapons (I've also been pretty lucky regarding the amount of reapers I encountered so far, so this is prone to change). There's so many possible approachs to take on ground missions that it's impossible to reccomend an optimal setup, you just have to try what seems logical to you, and you'll eventually succeed.

I lost the bet, then Well, then the Xenopedia is showing the values for Normal on that page. Have you tried modifying the values for the Normal multiplier and see what happens? I don't know much about the xenopedia, but it would be worth checking if it's just aplying the normal numbers to all difficulties. Are all aircraft entries 1.1x of what they should?

This. Aircraft get a diff multiplier. Off the top of my head, I think it was 1.2/1.1/1/0.9 for Easy, Normal, Veteran and Insane respectively. So I'm willing to bet you're playing in Normal diff.

Because it's like trying to improve a battleship by looking at a raft made of logs tied with vines.

Sure, but it's still an option... it would be interesting to try a playtrough with that tactic.

Just send a private with good TUs and C4, activate it, run in. Voila! Suicide unit

That feels a bit excessive... but you'll probably see one eventually.

That's because you're playing on Easy, one of the things difficulties change is the speed at which the invasion progresses (tech, alien classes and ships). On Normal, at that point in time I'm getting my first chances to try to capture a Praetor (the next game objective).

It could kinda work with the Atlantis arc, defending the city and rediscovering tech... but still, I don't even know if you could change that much.

The time between special missions (terror, terror bombing, base construction, base attack) can be modified independently, so if one of those is what bothers you, you can modify it without affecting the rest of them.

So... has anyone found the crash site timer?

1) Yes. They all use the same ammo. 2) I'll leave this one to someone who actually knows.

Go to weapons_gc, look for the weapon you want to modify and in the row that starts with "<burstfire" change shotcount to the number of shots you want.

I've just finished reading the thread (skimmed over a few posts), and no one seemed to mention something pretty important imho: if you reduce the number of missions per wave, also tweak the alien invasion ticker, or you'll probably won't be able to keep up with tech.

Reasoning = 0 RNG = 1

That's the thing, I don't want a straigtforward upgrade, I want to give them enough versatility to be a viable option. It would be something similar to the dart gun mod (but with great damage vs androns and drones), but just as an alternative ammo instead of an extra weapon. If you have the choice of equiping your last soldier with yet another laser/plasma weapon or using a not-so-good ballistic weapon with an extra mag that just incapacitates the enemy it might make the setup choice a little bit less linear. I'm in no hurry to even begin making it, I have some exams coming my way, so I have enough time to fiddle around and check if it's even possible. Now that I think about it, laser and plasma weapon mags are the same for all of them... I'll check how's that done and I might find a clue.

Well, I'm not into modding (yet), but I think it might have some relation to the fact that the rockets aren't on the regular ammo screen. If I start modding, my first attempt will be an advanced ammo research for the ballistic rifles (Electroshock rounds), to make them a situationally useful alternative mid to late game, so I'm reading a bit to prepare for that, the situation is similar, I think.

AI is pretty stupid, that means that your aicraft shot it's payload but then kept going into the target's range instead of turning around. That's why learning how to manual resolve is so important.

If you put such a srtong weapon so early in the game, it seems right to have it reduce your income if you overuse it. It's a really interesting idea, but I'd have it as a new research after the antigravity generator, it just makes a little more sense to learn how to manipulate graviton beams while researching antigravity.

Yeah, 100 is the absolute max for most of them, IIRC excepting HP that capped at 99, but individual soldier stats depended on their base and how you leveled them.

Doesn't it depend on the starting strength? If I understood correctly, the skill leveling is really simple, but it gets capped when your soldiers get to max rank, so you either have to sacrifice the leveling of another attribute to rank up slower or pick a really high base.