Policenaut

You just have to add mod merge to every nested entry, i.e race, rank and equipment/belts. I'm 100% sure this is not a mod merge issue.

Mod merge, I don't see how it would make any difference.

In my tests they can use both but are more reluctant to attack in short range and after a while they stop attacking all together. Sometimes they never attack at all. You could replicate it by copying Caesans in aiprops for example and renaming them into something new and then editing the lightscout UFOcontents entries to only have the edited Caesans. Then shoot down a lightscout and see the faulty AI behaviour. If this whole thing is too complicated to figure out, a way to hack this would be to allow the specific settings that can only be applied to a race, to be applicable on individual rank entries so we can put new aliens into the existing working races and just adjust the race exclusive settings for the new rank entry.

Yeah, this is most likely caused by having a doorway which is passable and a wall that is unpassable on the exactly same tile, creating some kind of quantum state which makes the pathfinding go haywire. Hidden movement works a bit different so it might be able to deal with this situation. Anyway, I will try to fix this for the Xenonauts Fix Pack as it's a mapping error exposing a situation that shouldn't happen normally, caused by placing two buildings exactly next to each other. Other than it being a desert and Corvette map I won't have any way of knowing exactly which map it is so could you please attach a picture in this thread of your modlist so I can see which map packs you use to help narrow it down.

New custom alien races introduced in aiprops.xml suffer from passiveness that does not effect the standard alien races. Custom alien races often end up moving next to Xenonauts without doing anything. They also seem incapable of reaction fire. I've also noticed that if a standard alien race unit stands next to a custom alien race unit, it kind of activates the custom alien race unit making it behave like it should and be more aggressive. However, if the custom alien race unit is alone or together with only other members of its race, it will retain the faulty AI. Copying the exact settings of a custom alien race and its ranks into a standard alien race, i.e Caesan, makes them behave like they should, so there seems to be some part of the AI code that is hardcoded to only accept the names of the standard alien races (i.e Caesan, Sebillian, Andron etc). I tried seeing if it was related to the Soldier, Warrior, Elite etc. rank naming convention as well, but it made no difference for custom alien races. While on the topic of AI and aiprops.xml I would like to request the ability to change the "zombify/spawnreaper" animation and sound effect on a per race basis. The standard animation and sound effect does not fit some of the new alien types I'm creating that use the new "spawnreaper.race.rank.turns" functionality and being able to change it on a per race basis would be of great help.

I tried using both melee and normal bullettypes with impact radius AOE but unlike rocket bullettype they didnt seem to damage the attacker, only the targets. Another problem with the rocket bullettype is that reaction fire doesn't seem to work with it in my experience. I will play around with DamagePreference and other AI settings as well, thanks for suggesting them. Ideally would be a new feature in X:CE but I'll try working with what I've got and I'll share any future findings in this thread.

I'm trying to create a new alien type that is supposed to act as autonomous mines (i.e suicide bombers) that move around and explode when they get close to Xenonauts or when Xenonauts get too close to them. Making them explode on death is already easily doable but making them kill themselves is proving to be a challenge. The closest I got was experimenting with their sight range and a rocket bullettype weapon with very short range. However, the AI seems to be too good for this as it simply tries to avoid killing itself (as it should, heh) but that's working against this idea. Could the ability for a new bullettype or an ability which causes damage to the attacker instead of the target be implemented? It should be capable of "reaction fire" and have the ability to always perform "reaction fire" no matter how many TU they spent last turn etc. Edit: Alternately an ability which just makes the unit die when you move in the proximity of 1-2 tiles around it.

Try setting the value for female soldier percentage to 100%? A tedious work around would be editing all the male names in soldiernames.xml to be female names and replace the male soldier graphics with female soldier graphics. You would also have to edit the sounds_gc.xml so male xenonauts use female sounds. I think the customSoldierCreationChance affects the chance for the "custom" soldier faces (kickstarter backer faces I believe?) but that's only activated if you enable it in the options.

@Solver Perhaps the suggested nerfs for the shootdown bonuses shouldn't be made and just increasing the bonus for completing the GC missions is a better way. That will at least give GC missions some more significance when it comes to relations but still not penalize the player if they decide to skip GC missions. When it comes to the dropships - making them invulnerable might just be a more simple and elegant solution. They don't really have an effect on the air war and it's just bothersome when they get shot down and the RNG isn't any fun. Is this something that is possible currently by massively increasing their health or will X:CE have to add this feature? When it comes to alien HP and armour rebalance I was thinking of making it fairly easy to understand visually. If the unit wears armour visually, they have armour, and the more it covers the body, the better it is. Robotic units should be generally more armoured than the biological units as well. Frail and feeble looking aliens like Ceasan and Harridans should have low HP, while more though ones like Sebillians or Wraiths (with their subdermal plating) should have more HP. I was thinking of editing the Lore+ class analysis Xenopedia entries as well for more clarity and fix some of the inconsistencies in it (like Ceasan non-combatants having armour according to it). You are also right that it's probably not a good idea to make every weapon viable throughout the whole game. I'm thinking of keeping the main weapons progression but changing the transition from Plasma to MAGs. Plasma weapons could deal more base damage but have less mitigation, while MAGs have less base damage but more mitigation. This gives you both energy and kinetic forms of damage in the late game and Plasmas would excel more against less armoured units, while MAGs are more effective against the more armoured robotic units for example. I'm not sure if I should keep the Smart Weapons though. They offer different things like less TU cost, more accuracy and higher reaction modifiers in exchange for various penalties like movement causing lower accuracy, being heavier and having smaller bursts etc. They might be superfluous, so tell me what you think. If I add an anti psionic armour it should probably be ineffective against Praetors. I'll probably go for the route of it losing its effectivity after a certain number of psionic attacks. Instead of adding new alien roles I'm thinking of maybe making it neccesary to capture the non-combatants before being able to decode UFO datacores. I'm also considering making the new "utility" weapons tied to the various alien races in some way. When it comes to alien weapons I was thinking of them being an early game alternative - use the true and tested ballistics or the powerful but penalized alien weapons. The alien grenades are also neat since they're the only anti-personal grenades that deal incendiary damage and explode on contact. They obviously should get replaced when you develop your own weapons after studying them. Perhaps make them auto-sell after that to reduce micromanaging? Though I'm not sure if it's possible to use replaceitem on them to make them use the "capped" behaviour again without causing bugs, will test it. @Charon 1. I'm not sure we're thinking of the same thing. I mean the setting for map tile spectres called "Crushable (Heavy Units)". It's never used in vanilla Xenonauts so I'm not sure of its actual function but what I hope it does is make it only crushable by vehicles which has the heavy tag. The Scimitar is the only vehicle with that tag but it doesn't seem to be used for anything. 2/3. Thanks for the heads up! 4. I've experienced that the UI changes remain when I disable UI mods so that's why I added that. Deleting the internal scripts folder fixes it for me.

So I've been working on a project that I've decided to call the Xenonauts X-pansion Pack (XXP). The goal of the XXP is to spice up the gameplay of vanilla Xenonauts by adding new unique content and try to rebalance/fix various flaws in its design, while still maintaining the general feel. XXP also aims to include a bunch of minor additions like various sound effect and graphical improvements. Basically making Xenonauts into an even better X-Com remake that it deserves to be. There has been several Total Overhauls in the history of Xenonauts modding and while they're all neat experiences, they often stray too far from the general feel that vanilla Xenonauts tried to achieve. I personally was for example never a fan of the tedious amount of micromanaging in X-Com and really enjoyed how Xenonauts streamlined this, although perhaps a bit too much reducing player choice somewhat. In XXP there will be a bit more choice, for example whether you use the powerful alien weapons for yourself (even though they have penalties applied to them for humans) and thus hamper your economy or sell them all for maximum profit. It will also introduce a "black market" later in the game which allows for profiting on selling captured live aliens, thus giving players an incentive to actually capture aliens more than once. These are just some of the many changes that the XXP will introduce and more of them can be found in the design document which you can find below. It also comes packed with a very WIP version that is not really properly playable, however like the design document mentions you can test some of the new weapons and see the two new alien types. Just shoot down a lightscout as they've been added to the crew. The new weapons should be unlocked already. There is no need to report any bugs or problems in the WIP version as I'm already aware of them. Some ideas and details I have been thinking of are not yet in the current design doc but they will be added in later and I will update the whole thing together with your feedback as well. NOTE: Make sure to delete the internal scripts folder (i.e C:\users\username\Application Data\Goldhawk Interactive\Xenonauts\internal) after trying it since it messes with some UI .lua scripts I edited while experimenting. In case you just want to read the design document I've added an alternate download as well. Download Design doc + WIP Design doc only I'm still in the arduous process of implementing most of the new weapons, aliens, UFOs and aircrafts etc, so I haven't actually been able to test most of the dramatic gameplay changes proposed in the design document. What I'm looking for is input and feedback on the ideas though. Don't be afraid to critique it since I will use your feedback to improve upon the XXP. Also since the XXP builds upon many mods and ideas from the Xenonauts community merged with my own, I'd like to thank all of the great people who've contributed in some form or another. This wouldn't have been possible without your previous efforts and I'd like to think of the XXP as being an "indirect" community expansion. Thank you. If you'd also like to help or contribute in some way, just say so. Credits X:CE team - for making most of the changes possible. zzz1010 - Original Creeper Pack mod which was edited, rebalanced and improved upon to create the new Creeper. Max_Caine - Max_Caine's Warehouse mod which included the original Toxic Goo Launcher, Firewall and Glitterglass Grenade which were all edited, rebalanced and bug fixed. Drone Strike Package which included the Smart Weapons, Drone Aircrafts, Attack Frigate UFO and Drone Carrier UFO. These were all edited, rebalanced and bug fixed as well. Ferry Susanto - Toxic Goo Launcher, Firewall and Glitterglass Grenade artwork. Bogdan Bungardean - Drone Aircraft artwork. Marwan Islami - Smart Weapons artwork. skaianDestiny - Vehicle alienium/plasma/fusion rocket artwork. Kabill - Inspiration for the vehicle and dynamic UFO gameconfig changes. Also the Unique Psionic Attack and next soldier button graphics. Axiomatic - Inspiration from the UFO and crew diversity mod. The "Furies, Terror, and Dreadnoughts Oh My" team (SkaianDestiny, Kabill, Dpelectric, Langy and Ilunak) - original versions of the Assault Lander and Dreadnought that were edited and slightly rebalanced. [Tribe] Lorebot - Inspiration from the Saracen Reborn mod which was edited and slightly rebalanced. IgnusDei (Francois Cannels) - UFO Xenopedia artwork. HenryPonciano - Various Xenopedia artwork. LordJulian - Jackal Armour Graphics and Aegis armour helmet. Skitso - Inspiration for darker nights among other things. Ilunak - Next Soldier UI button which was slightly edited. chuumink (Henry Wirawan) - Xenopedia artwork. JSleezy - New Buzzard Helmet. Lightgemini - Improved Projectile Particle effects. AAJS - Inspiration for the Personal Anti Gravity Generator. Screenshots

An idea regarding base assaults - make them more common and implement the retake ability as well, however instead of an alien base spawning you actually fight in the base layout itself. If too hard to implement, an alternative is giving it a unique ticker value like retakable continents so you can attach one of the extra alien base entries which I could create new maps for (human base in progress of being converted). Slightly lowering the range of the dropships could be added as well. This should encourage multiple strike teams or at least better equiped garrisons to defend your secondary bases and the retake ability makes it a little bit less punishing. @Charon I couldn't find any mods that did exactly that though. I have collected bits and pieces here and there around the forums so I'm good and I can also create my own content. I am also able to edit graphics, do scripting, I can test myself (and if anyone else is interested just PM me), I understand the LUA scripts for the UI, Solver showed some interest, I understand the mapping system in Xenonauts and I have already written a bunch of Xenopedia entries in the style of the vanilla ones for the new content. I've been modding other games for years and the process gave me these abilities. You are right that balancing is the toughest part but I've played a lot of video games and I feel I have a pretty good understanding of game balance. I've worked a lot on modding gamebryo engine games so I know a thing or two about mod compatability. I also do not agree that games should be a service, they should be enjoyable products first and foremost. Good service is a plus but doesn't mean anything to me if the product isn't enjoyable. You come off as pretty negative towards me but I'm not offended just so you know. I understand that it will take a lot of time to create this but I am confident in my abilities and I have the interest in doing this.

That bodes well. Here's a quick idea, slightly lower the relationship shootdown bonuses for UFOs, increase the GC mission relationship bonus and increase the chance for landing UFOs. Give dropships limited countermeasures to protect them when going for landing sites and make crashed UFO GC missions give much less resources so that going for landed UFOs is more preferable, though they will be harder to complete still making crash sites relevant. This might be something worth experimenting with. Edit: Make it possible to attach interceptor escorts when sending a dropship directly to a GC mission/terror site/alien base. It will share the range value of the dropship so they don't suddenly return to base when the escort normally run out of fuel. Make it so you can't change destination to exploit as well, you can only continue to GC mission or go back to base.

Regarding the relationship bonus for completing GC crash sites that X:CE adds the possibiliy for, does it apply to landed UFOs as well? Making GC missions give a much larger relations boost than just shooting down UFOs might give an incentitve to do GC missions more for funding rather than just going all out in the air war for the relations.

Alright, I will PM you later with the WIP (which is not exactly playable, just so you can look at the stuff I've got so far) and a document with the ideas I had in mind Solver, so you can look it over and give your input and feedback. One thing I can directly think of is better support for secondary vehicle weapons. I've got a work around so far that works, but requires me moving around the ammo counters in the GUI and adding a new button which activates secondary weapon fire (normally it is only accessible by pushing the L key but this will confuse a lot of players). It's also not possible to change secondary vehicle weapons but I might not need this, though it's still a useful feature to have. About dropships not reaching the out of range landing sites, perhaps giving them countermeasures or something similar that lets you escape in manual aircombat might be something worth experimenting with. @Charon Thanks for the input on Geoscape balancing. I too am thinking of merging things that could conflict to make it as easy as possible for players. The reason I want to work on this project instead of joining the X-division team is because we have different ideas when it comes to gameplay design. I want to create an expansion that retains the general feel of the Vanilla Xenonauts while expanding upon it with new content that each has its own niche and rebalancing various flaws. However, you are allowed to use content I've made for this project in X-division, just be sure to credit appropriately. I particularily think you might find the "Glowing Orb" new alien type I've made interesting...

I would love on collaborating on a "community" expansion! It already includes many things and ideas taken from various mods both finished and unfinished, that I've rebalanced and merged with my own additions. At the moment I'm still implementing most of the new aliens, weapons, UFOs i.e new content, so I haven't personally been able to the test the Geoscape changes I've implemented but your observations are interesting. Maybe making UFOs stay grounded for a much longer period might alleviate the issue with out of range landed UFOs? The general goal I had in mind for the expansion is to add new things with unique purposes and try to rebalance existing content so they each have their unique purpose as well. For example I'm planning on making each vehicle viable in different situations by making the Hunter into a utility vehicle with access to different rocket types + a secondary MG. The Scimitar retains its cannon but gains a secondary MG as well and the ability to drive through walls (if the heavycrushable setting for map tile spectres even work, I haven't tested it yet - this is where you can come in and help). Lastly the Hyperion also retains its cannon and ability to drive over water, but cannot crush walls like the Scimitar + gains a cluster rocket secondary. This is just one example but this is the general mindset I have in mind when designing this. I haven't worked on a mod with a team before, but is working via github they way to go? We could start one and I'd upload what I've got so far there and you could take a look. I don't have any proper design document for all the changes I'm thinking of yet but I could whip up some quick summary. Edit: About UFOs, forgot to mention that I thought of making landing UFOs much more common so you don't actually have to shoot them down as much to initiate GC missions.

They might still have contacts there and might be able to directly influence them more and even get in proper contact with them. Act as a bridge between the Xenonauts community and PlayFirst, connecting the two. The more important question is if it even exists anymore and they might have insight on that.

As the previous efforts to directly contact PlayFirst didn't work, perhaps tracking down the people responsible for actually making the engine is worth a shot. They might not even work at PlayFirst anymore and it seems likely that the company itself isn't very helpful about this, as they didn't care before and probably won't now. I think Chris' even tried offer them money for it but well the result speaks for itself. I'm not an expert at internet detective work but I don't think this is an impossible task, although not an easy one.

I've seen old threads of people trying to get the company behind the engine to give the source code and even found some of Chris' posts asking about it when searching around about it. If the source code still even exists at this point I wouldn't mind trying to revive the efforts of aquiring it again. I really like Xenonauts and I wish its flaws could be fully fixed but without full source code access that seems not quite feasible. Nevertheless thanks for still supporting Xenonauts even though Xenonauts 2 is closing in. Expect to see some mods from me for Xenonauts in the future, including bugfixing of the building destruction, more tilesets and an unofficial expansion/rebalance mod.

I like most of these ideas and I will implement variations of them in the Xenonauts X-pansion Pack I'm working on, and which I will create a thread for at a later date. One question though, is the local forces landed UFO detection in X:CE 0.34.2? I see two settings for it in the gameconfig.xml that control how long they keep it landed for, but I can't find any reference to it in strings.xml or when studying the Xenonauts.exe.

Alright, that's a shame about this seemingly being an engine issue. Stopping the entire group="1" + ambient sounds system when the GC result screen pops up might still help with GC to Geoscape crashing though. Thanks for the effort though. @Charon I think Goldhawk never got access to the engine source code and the company behind it has abandoned all support for it.

This might be worth doing since I made the ambient sounds use the group="1" sound group used for general sounds instead of the group="2" sound group used for music. Could you see if there's some issue with repeattimer that ambient sounds use as well? It might be related.

I think it might be tied to the shield bullettype in the code, so I don't think you can change it through modding.

It should work if the map uses the default setting for local forces/civilians (-1 I believe). Almost all maps use their own value for local forces/civilians though so that's why it seems to not be working. I added that to the tropical/swamp tileset in case someone makes new maps for it and don't manually set the local forces/civilians count to 0, since both tilesets don't have any graphics for them.

Bump for interest!

Both the Tropical/Swamp tileset and Ultimate Ambient Sounds have now been updated on both Steam Workshop and Nexusmods.