kabill

It's not likely, no. I spent some time early this year trying to make a new version but could never produce something that I was happy with. Sadly, the problem is more or less intractable. Because the air game is deterministic, one you have learned the correct knack for winning you can win indefinitely. Changing how air combat plays shakes things up by requiring the player to learn a new knack but once they have it you're back to the same place you started. That's the problem with this mod: it's harder at first but once you know what you're doing it's not much different, only it takes 10 times longer which overall makes it a net loss. What I really want is an entirely reworked air combat game that adds some level of randomness and focuses on strategic input rather than skill. Basically, like a more sophisticated version of the air game in the original X-Com. When I was working on XCE I drafted some mechanics for such a system but while I could probably have designed the behind-the-scenes stuff I don't think I would have been able to make a UI or graphical elements to make it work in game. So not likely to happen.

All that was added was the size of the explosion and the chance of fire. The chance of the explosion itself has always been in gameconfig and sets it for all power cores. The only thing you can change in the spectres is whether something is flagged as a power core or not.

I'm pretty sure the Alenium tech is unlocked by the alien reactor rather than Alenium (a hang-up from when the former used to have it's own research project). That doesn't entirely solve the issue you're having but collecting Alenium itself isn't enough.

Ah, there we go. It's kills/missions rather than missions/kills. It's because I'm using Oppressive UI and therefore using an old version of the barracks LUA script. Guess it must have been like that all along and I just didn't realise the numbers were off 'til now. Never mind.

Just had the same issue in a game I am playing. The memorial screen was working fine but when I just checked it now it has reversed the order of kills and missions (e.g. I have a soldier who supposedly had 1 kill and 0 missions). It may or may not be relevant but I noticed this just after I aborted a mission where most of my squad was killed or left behind. I can upload the save if this is useful but it would be after the fact so probably not much use.

I'd assume not, no.

To make something crushable, you just need to change a variable in the relevant prop spectre. However, I suspect what that does is instantly destroy the prop and therefore would probably result in the vehicle exploding. Don't know if it would become passable as a result - it might bug out if the destroyed state isn't passable. Might be worth experimenting in case I am wrong though.

My point was that you couldn't have the current final stage (burnt out destroyed car) as well as a totally-destroyed state ('flat junk') as you've called it. Or you could, but then you would lose the damaged state. You'd need a total of four to move through all of them and that's not (currently) possible.

Not without code support. Props have three states (undamaged, damaged, destroyed) and it's not possible to add more. You could do it by changing the damaged state to one which is passable but then you'd lose one of the other states.

XCE just allows you to increase the time. I thought it might have been possible to mod the speed changes for each of the settings but that doesn't seem to be the case.

If that's the case then I suspect it isn't possible. My only recommendation would be to try adding a "People" entry to the races.xml file and see if that helps. It probably won't but is worth trying just in case.

I'm not sure actually. I thought all the alien races were specified. Although perhaps that file was meant only for allowing new crew rosters (i.e. is related to something else) and not adding new races to GC. Honestly I don't remember now. In terms of why the units aren't spawning in GC, I would guess it's either a modmerge issue or because you're using the existing entries which may well not work due to their entries being obsolete. I'd recommend adding a new type of human unit copying the structure from another alien type and seeing if that works.

1) I might be misreading you but there is no way to set the overall crew limit. Basically, for each UFO you set a variety of different alien types and ranks with different AI dispositions. You can set a minimum and a maximum for each race/rank/AI combo and the game will randomly spawn a number of that type within the range specified. However, there's no way to make these selections contingent on whether another type is selected. For example, you cannot set things up so that the game will pick one Leader rank alien from a variety of different races; all you can do is set the minimum and maximum for each and the game will randomly roll the number. I think that answers the question; sorry if it doesn't. 2) I don't know about those specific race categories. I don't think their format has been updated in a long while so I don't think you could use them as is. However it might work as a racial category. In any case, if you look in the ufocontents folder (I think) you will see an .xml file called 'races'. You can add extra entries in there which adds in new races which can then be specified in aiprops. 3) Kind of, yes. If you look in gameconfig you will find a variable which toggles static UFO escort chances (can't remember the exact name; see the changelog for XCE 0.33 for information). Setting that to '1' will override the game's typical calculation for escort spawns (which are all done internally otherwise) and instead use the escort value in the various AM_* alien mission files as a % chance of spawning an escort. That way, you could set the escort chance to 0 for a particular mission type. Note however that this only works on a mission-type basis; there is no way to stop a particular kind of UFO from having escorts without excluding it from all mission types which spawn escorts. Hopefully some of that is clear!

Don't think any of my mods add in new types of alien unit but Dynamic UFOs makes changes to the UFO crew files so might be worth taking a look. If you have access to Excel or another program that can load .xml spreadsheets it's really easy and should be obvious what you need to do when you load up the files.

Thanks!

Were you looking at the vanilla file or the one in assets/mods/xce? If you were looking at the former, you need to look in the latter instead. Alternatively, it might be set in either the xcesettings or xcebalance mod folders

Noo! The link in the OP doesn't work any more. Any chance of re-uploading?

Further to the above: I think I might be able to solve it. Starting with a new map from scratch I just added in some power core explosion points without making any other changes to the map and when I tested it there appeared to be no camera issues. For some reason all the smoke and fire caused by the power cores disappeared but I assume that's an issue with the game and not the mod. As such, I may be able to solve the camera issues. However, it comes with two costs: 1) (Irrelevant for everyone else) I'd have to build the entire mod (and FitH too) from scratch. 2) There would need to be an XCE-specific version of this mod and FitH because extensive use of power core explosions is only possible due to changes made in XCE 0.33. I really, really didn't want to have to produce XCE-specific versions of mods because that's just asking for confusion and hassle. However, without being able to work out what the problem is with the two mods I can't think of another solution. It should be quicker to make these mods again then it was the previous times, though, as I can just use power core explosion points rather than having to make bespoke changes to the maps. As such, I'll probably look into doing this but can't offer an ETA.

To the best of my knowledge, yes.

No, can't be done (outside of the game code, anyway). Alien inventories are static. The closest you will be able to get to doing this is creating duplicates of some alien types and using those duplicates in later UFOs rather than the original. The duplicates can be armed with different weapons. E.g. if you wanted to upgrade the weapon carried by Caesan Guard aliens you could creates a new Caesan Guard_Advanced alien with a better weapon for inclusion on Landing Ship and larger UFOs. However, this wouldn't allow you to apply those upgrades to smaller UFOs' crew as crew lists are also static. I'm also aware that this doesn't tie the upgrade to a particular tech (there's utterly no way of doing that) but if you're just looking for a mid-game upgrade this might be sufficient?

You definitely can't load an XCE game with vanilla, regardless of version. I can't remember whether it works the other way though. You might be able to get it to work with a v1.5+ game but 1.09 might be too old. (Best bet is just to try it. It shouldn't damage your save game to try and you could always create a backup just to be sure).

So I've spent a few hours trying to work out what the problem is and I've not had much success. I've been using the cruiser to test and what seems to be happening is that the game more or less always wants to display the main hull section regardless of whether it should or not. So, for example, if a player unit is in one of the wings of the Cruiser the main hull section will display when it shouldn't. When a player unit is in the area covered by the hull that's fine until the player's cursor moves into or out of that area (or possibly UFO wall tiles, not quite sure). And while it's definitely something to do with changes made by ECS, it doesn't seem to be the fire and smoke props as I've deleted them from my test map and can still reproduce the issue. I'll try a few other things but it's not looking good. I've been using a Cruiser to test. What appears to happen is that if the active unit is in the area cove I'm able to reproduce the issue regardless of whether the smoke and fire props are placed so that doesn't appear to be the cause.

Paralyse strips the target of their TUs for a turn so they can't do anything.

UPDATE! A new version (v3.1) of this mod has been released. Changelog: - Reintroduced morale recovery at a rate of 3 points/turn. - Increased the morale damage caused by injury and suppression to values comparable with the vanilla game. - Caesan Psions now use Paralyse instead of Berserk (haven't checked this is working but I've been informed by others that it should). Comments and feedback are welcome as always.

A guess, but this seems like you have overwritten some of your vanilla game files with something from a mod which has affected mapping elements. If this is the case, you might need to delete your assets/tiles folder and reverify your game files (if you're a Steam user) or otherwise reinstall.