BuzuBuzu

One of the reasons why I'm avoiding playing on insane (even though I'm doing quite well on veteran) is that after getting used to veteran the geoscape nerfs (especially plane speeds) are going to be very annoying.

I agree that firing mechanics from elevated positions are not very intuitive, and from my experience parking someone on a roof very often turns into a turkey shoot for the aliens. Shooting at ground level means you often have a clutter of objects to shoot over, but when you're elevated it usually means there's at most one piece of cover between you and a clear shot. However the real value of elevated positions in my opinion is that they you see far more of the map and enemies than from ground level (although in most instances it's very unrealistic, like being on a southern edge of a building roof and being able to see every single thing below the northern edge of the same building). This really lets you increase your situational awareness and Buzzard armor is in my opinion the single coolest item in terms of gameplay in the game. Like others have said already, if you do leave someone in an elevated position, make sure they're crouched behind at least one piece of cover or not within sight of aliens.

Yes, this would be useful.

You can also try this to get everything visible in the Xenopedia when you start a new game (I didn't test it though): 1. Go to your game install directory. Find the scripts folder inside the assets folder. Find the file "_basebuilt.lua". 2. Back-up the file. 3. Open the file in a text editor. 4. Copy and paste the following into the file: 5. Save the file. 6. Start a new game. Once you place your first base, all the Xenopedia should be unlocked.

I agree that this would be useful but it's not the most pressing issue I can think of.

Nice! Looking forward to testing it out. It can be surprising what a big difference a small change can make.

I don't know if it's related but I've experienced this too. I find the other problem way more annoying though because it prevents me from organizing my troops correctly. The other columns are good for finding best candidates for specific roles, but the name column is the only one you have full control over which is why it would be so useful. I know that you can assign roles to soldiers and sort by those but as soon as you start manufacturing gear, giving roles to all your soldiers gets super messy because of finite gear that can only be equipped by one or two. A related fix could be to script role outfitting by having soldiers equip a lesser tier weapon if the one asked for by the role loadout is unavailable.

But since crash sites only stay around for 24 hours it's often impossible to reach all of them if they're spread around the globe. It gets easier with the Shrike, but if you have the money to support another team (that will also double as a base defense force), it's not such a bad idea. Soldiers only cost 10,000 per month which is a meager 80,000 for a whole squad, but the real cost of fielding a 2nd squad comes a little later when you need to kit everyone one out in better gear for them to stand a chance against the later aliens. That's when base defense batteries come in handy because they have a fixed cost and get upgraded for free. I have five installed in my third base (currently at laser level) but haven't had the aliens attack that base (or my other two) so I don't know how effective they are.

Hi llunak! I've posted about a bug related to sorting renamed soldiers by name in the bug forums since v.1.03 but it still persists in the v.1.07HF that I'm playing right now. Could this be fixed in the Community Edition? Basically, renamed soldiers keep getting sorted by their old name in the Barracks screen instead of the new name you give them. To me this defeats the purpose of renaming soldiers and is a constant source of irritation. So if the game gives me the following starting soldiers 1. Angel 2. Brutus 3. Charlie 4. Dick 5. Edgar and I rename Angel to Zorro and Dick to Xerxes and then sort by name, they will get sorted alphabetically but by their old names (which the game somehow remembers): 1. Zorro 2. Brutus 3. Charlie 4. Xerxes 5. Edgar Is fixing this feasible?

This bug persists since v1.03 when I first reported it. Renamed soldiers keep getting sorted by their old name in the Barracks screen. So if the game gives me the following starting soldiers 1. Angel 2. Brutus 3. Charlie 4. Dick 5. Edgar and I rename Angel to Zorro and Dick to Xerxes and then sort by name, they will get sorted alphabetically but by their old names (which the game somehow remembers): 1. Zorro 2. Brutus 3. Charlie 4. Xerxes 5. Edgar Please fix this. Letting us rename soldiers and use the new names for sorting is a great tool for helping organize our troops in a meaningful way but it's NOT working.

I'd recommend dropping the difficulty before uninstalling the mod. This mod does make the game a little more difficult but it also adds so much more variety. I think I've had the exact opposite experience from you. I've done two partial playthroughs of the game since it was released. Both were on veteran difficulty. I stopped my first playthrough because I was swimming in money and getting bored with steamrolling the alien invasion. I was also sick of seeing the same UFOs over and over again month after month. I started my second (and current) playthrough with this mod installed to remedy the problems I had in my first one. I love the increased variety but I'm once again swimming in money and shooting down all the UFOs per each wave leading to my funding hitting maximum level for some regions (Russia and Middle East). I'd tell you in detail how I play but I think there's enough advice like that available on these forums, not to mention in the game manual and quickstart guide. There's also a really good FAQ on GameFAQs. The one piece of advice that I want to give you is that you really need to prioritize air power in the beginning of the game at the expense of nearly everything else. Also don't buy more than one Condor per base and research and build Foxtrots ASAP (three to four per base is my standard).

MrTwentyThree, It may be frustrating to loose funding right off the bat, but as ViewThePhenom said, just "Roll with it". You will loose funding in the first months before you expand enough to cover most of the globe. $30K in a day may seem bad, but in terms of your entire funding it's only 2-3% and any ground mission should pay at least that if you're not too crazy with explosives. Another player raised a similar complaint in an old thread HERE. You might find some of the replies useful. Trust me, once you get a hang of the air game, you'll be wishing for more of the challenges that this mod offers.

What do you think of increasing the landing chances for Scouting and Research missions? Say to 25 for Scout and 50 for Research (Im assuming those are in percent)? I think I've seen only two UFOs land in my playthrough. It would be nice to see this a little more because they force a change in air strategy for a particular wave (sending aircraft to circle over a UFO or holding aircraft in reserve for when a UFO takes off). It may also provide incentive for more night missions since you more or less have to dispatch a dropship to a landed UFO as soon as possible to have a chance of getting there before it takes off again (especially with the Chinook). It would also introduce more variety for ground combat since you would end up facing the full complement of crew for a landed UFO. Regarding Corvettes being a huge boon to research if downed too early, I think you may be overestimating the impact on the game. There's quite a bit of research to go through to get 2nd tier aircraft and you'd really have to make research a hardcore focus (2-3 labs in your first base) in the beginning of the game to take advantage of Corvettes appearing early. Even then you'd probably have to ignore other research and manufacturing or early game expansion. Plus, as effective as Corsairs are against alien fighters, foxtrots are much more cost effective and useful against the larger alien craft.

I've been playing with your mod for over two weeks and I dare say it is almost "essential". The very linear UFO progression in the vanilla game made me quit a little way into my first playthrough because all I was seeing were the same UFO recovery missions over and over again (this was also exacerbated by having no mod packs installed). Since installing your mod and Skitso's map pack I've put in around forty hours into the game and the added variety still has me itching to run out of work early to go home and play the game. My thoughts: I'd suggest making corvettes start showing up right off the bat. As I've mentioned before, my first two months felt the same as vanilla with only light scouts in September and scouts in October, though I did get my first corvette at the end of October. I think downing corvettes at the very beginning should still pose no problem and the added ground combat variety with the increased risk/reward would be really good. I'd push the frequency of special missions even more than current. I had my first terror mission in November and loved it. I wish I had a few more. Haven't had an alien base or an attack on my base yet but that could be because I was fairly good at shooting down alien craft. One thing I wouldn't do is increase the likelihood of aerial terror missions in the first few months because without coverage over the globe there's nothing the player can do. Even with three bases it's still possible for them to spawn and not be reachable. One aerial terror mission spawned over Anchorage for me and even with a base in Central America it was out of range for my Foxtrots. If possible, I'd suggest changing crew loadouts to include more "sidekick" aliens. I'm in January at the moment and haven't seen any reapers yet. I've only seen the scout drones twice. I think the bigger UFOs should maybe all have some medium or heavy drones. In the Firaxis XCOM I liked how the battleships had two sectopods and there was always an ever present sense of dread mixed with anticipation regarding where you'd run into them. Eliminating the automatic alien base detection is a no-brainer and I like the idea of alien bases growing. I'm not sure how you can balance that with funding reductions for presence of alien bases. If they need two months to grow to the biggest size, then a player who lets one grow that much would be punished via funding and possibly end up with a base they can't assault. To guarantee alien base creation you could have them be constructed by ships way ahead of the difficulty curve (ie landing ships at the beginning, with cruisers, carriers and battleships during mid game). Finally I want to bring up the idea mentioned in another thread though I don't know if it's within the scope of this mod. Having UFO's escorted by something other than fighters/interceptors would fit well with this mod and bring even more variety to air combat. Depending on how escort UFOs are handled in the code, this could also increase the success rate of alien special missions (ie three landing ships on an alien base mission, each one capable of making an alien base).

I could be wrong but I think the cost of removing and putting stuff back into inventory is also dependent on size of the item. Dropping stuff on the ground doesn't cost anything either I think.

My first base is in Sudan, south of Khartoum. With three radars it covers nearly all of Europe, North and South Africa, Middle East, and a good chunk of Russia. This is my main base with a dropship and my main fighting force. I usually put another lab in my main base for a total of two. My second and third bases are build in Panama and Taiwan for covering most of the Americas and Australasia. I usually build the second one wherever the UFOs are causing the most funding losses. Third base gets build in the other remaining location. Second and third base are first focused on intercepting with only hangars and radars, but my second base slowly evolves into a manufacturing center where I build as many workshops as I can financially. Second base usually gets a garage with a vehicle or two and I rotate and station a few troops there to form it's defense team. Third base usually gets loads of Defense Batteries (around 5) and remains an intercept base.

LOL, I'm an idiot. Affirmative on no troops in the drop-ship. Thanks for the help. Now I'm really looking forward to sorting out the aliens on those Corvettes.

I've finally got Corvettes, and not just one but THREE, all in one wave at the end of October. I shot down two over Europe and Africa, while the third is causing havoc over Central and South America. I ran into a problem though, maybe a bug with your mod or maybe a bug with the game. After shooting down the two Corvettes and one Light Scout, the game won't let me send a dropship to do a ground mission at any of the three crash sites. The only mod I'm running is yours along with CE v.24. I've attached a save if you want to have a look: [ATTACH]4834[/ATTACH]. Pre Operation.sav Pre Operation.sav

Must be just my luck I guess. I looked at the AM_ files and I saw many m:airplane.alien.UFONAME entries. These are the modded entries I suppose. I'm going to keep playing to see if anything else out of the ordinary shows up though I really did want to see a Corvette in the first two months.

Where I come from, those three Bs are never alone without a fourth: Babes. Just dropping in to say that I've been using your map pack for two in-game months and love the variety. I really like the new forest maps, just did one mission in a forest divided by a road and it made for a great fire fight across the no-man's-land that was the road. I also did a desert village one with some nice high vantage points. My soldier Pretty_Good_Accuracy_3 sends his thanks.

Hey kabill, I'm at the end of October while using your mod and the ship progression is more or less the same as vanilla. I've had all Light Scouts in September (except that fighter I wrote about before), and all Scouts in October. I read through all the AI variables in gameconfig.xml and don't really see where the AI decides what ship to send. The only variable that's not self-explanatory is "parabolicPower", is that what's responsible for bigger ships appearing? Is it some kind of ticker multiplier?

I feel your pain! Sounds like RSI (Repetitive Stress Injury) from too much mouse use. I've been waging a war against this scourge for nearly a decade. Things that help me: Moving the mouse to a central position in front of you instead of off to the right hand side. I use a number of notebooks and my mouse always sits between me and the notebook keyboard, that way I don't have to engage all the muscles in my shoulder just to grab the mouse and move it. Jack up the mouse/cursor sensitivity as high as it can go so you only really have to twitch the mouse to move it across the whole screen. Making sure my elbows are resting on something so my arms are relaxed and not constantly under mild strain. Doing shoulder and neck stretches before using the mouse for long periods of time (sounds ridiculous right? It's not like you're running a marathon. But trust me, it helps). I find the above four things most useful, but the following might also help: Ibuprofen is your friend but don't take too much or you'll get stomach ulcers like me. Switch from using a mouse to using a touch-pad (easy to do if you use notebooks like me). Start mousing with your left hand (it takes getting used to and even after weeks of practice I'm only semi-productive when using it). Hot cold therapy works but I found it too time consuming, maybe do it only when you're really in pain.

Does anyone know the code for the function ReplaceItem("OLD_ITEM","NEW_ITEM")? I found a bug in my mod for new aircraft weapon entries in the Xenopedia and I think it might be caused by the way the ReplaceItem function works.

That's interesting, thanks for bringing it to my attention. In "researches.xml", whenever you research an upgrade to an existing technology (for example researching "Advanced Lasers") aside from unlocking Xenopedia entries with function UnlockKnowledge("TECH NAME") there are also calls to a function ReplaceItem("OLD ITEM","NEW ITEM"). I think this is responsible for automatically upgrading your aircraft weapons. But maybe what this function also does is swap weapons stats into the Xenopedia entries for starting aircraft weapons. Or maybe it's just the way that the replacement of weapons happens in that the base weapon research slots (Autocannon for CANNON, Sidewinder for LIGHT, and Avalanche for Medium) also serve as current weapon stat slots. So when your aircraft weapons get upgraded the current weapons stats get copied to the Xenopedia. Or the Xenopedia entries for starting weapons are reading from another location which is getting the updated stats. I have a hunch that you can observe similar behavior without my mod installed, in that the currently researched aircraft weapon stats will show up in the vanilla game's Xenopedia entries for Autocannon, Sidewinder, and Avalanche. So when you research Gatling Laser, the stats for the Gatling Laser will show up in the Autocannon Entry. I'm going to see if it's true. If true then it's probably a bug in the original game, or maybe this was some half finished idea of having the Xenopedia display entries for the current aircraft weapons (the stats get updated but the text and image is missing).

I agree that it would be a slightly radical departure from the game. I haven't lost a region during play yet, but my main gripe with the mechanic is that even if you have until the end of the month to rescue a region you're still dependent on UFO's spawning there so you can shoot them down to do so. Since UFOs spawn randomly, sometimes you don't get UFO's in a particular area even though you really need them there. The other thing is that if you're losing a regions it's probably because you don't have adequate enough coverage over it. That is likely because you're short on funds and can't afford to deploy radars/aircraft in the area. Since maintenance gets tabulated at the end of a month, there's no cost cutting measure that you can take (firing scientists and engineers, decommissioning aircraft, scrapping facilities [these do give some money back I guess] and even whole bases) that will give you more money during the month when you really need to put it to better use. Basically, if you're losing a region it's usually a fait accompli unless you get lucky and a terror mission spawns there so you can complete it and get a big boost in funding. I though a neat idea would be to give you the option of cutting your losses and retreating from a region to regroup and take it back at a later stage. But make the process of regaining a region extremely difficult to do (three or more alien bases to clear for example). This would give people who don't do well or dislike the air combat portion of the game the possibility of clawing their way back from the brink instead of starting a new game. This isn't FTL where a game can take an hour. Grinding through the early part of the game to try a new strategy in a later part doesn't interest everyone. Just a brain fart anyways, I understand not everyone's going to want to take a whiff.