Fucille

You can remove armour degradation by going into config.xml and changing 25 to 0. In the end, it's mostly there so that if you rushed vehicles or wolf armour, your troops can't wade through the entire battle as invincible tanks. The only aliens that even have an armour score are androns and drones. Hell, I really think the aliens should just get scaling armour with a smaller boost to HP. The mitigation on precision rifles and LMGs is sort of worthless when you're not fighting elite androns or heavy drones and having decent weapons tech means you always kill the alien in one or two hits anyways.

Speaking of mind control, is there any way to mod that so it only works on Line of Sight?

I really have to agree here. It's far too common to wing a Sebillian only to watch it run off into the shadows or behind cover to wait for its regeneration to kick in. They're also the only early game enemy aside from Caesans, so it'd be nice if they played differently. A casual examination of their pathing file shows that they have a huge predisposition for staying out of sight, sticking to cover and lying in ambush, which is really a bad combo with their regeneration.

You appear to be correct. For some reason the pistol burst files were already in sounds_gc.xml so I just assumed it worked with anything. Thank you!

After a little looking, I found it. <RegenerateHPPercent>50</RegenerateHPPercent>

I believe it's based on bravery, which the aliens have a 1.25 modifier to on Insane.

Pretty much, but the difficulty is almost solely due to it being Insane mode; not because he's facing Sebilians. Reserving a few guys to all shoot at the same time at the same target will make sure regeneration never even comes into play.

I'd actually go as far as to forward HP as one of the most vital stats to select for, simply because you can't train it up. You only get 1 point of HP for every 5 points of other stats you gain, meaning that your HP can only increase as much as the average of your other stats can, and that's only if you actually manage to train up reflexes and bravery to 100. A soldier's HP total is often extremely important in determining whether he dies instantly to an unlucky shot or can be recovered with some suppressive fire, repositioning and a medipack. The second one I would probably pick is bravery. Everything else just goes up by itself.

The fact that you're playing on Insane difficulty is the entire reason there is a balance issue. It doesn't matter what armour your men are wearing with the ridiculous damage multiplier Insane difficulty has and the massive damage variation the vanilla, unmodded game has. They can and will frequently be oneshot. Sebilians are only really a problem because of their slightly ridiculous HP regeneration. Everything else is due to the aliens' stats getting huge bonuses. Basically the difficulty jump is much higher between each level in sequence. Easy to Normal isn't much of a difference, Normal to Veteran is a big different, Veteran to Insane is a HUGE difference.

So I found in the audio files that there are "10burst" versions of each of the "burst" sounds for the LMG weapons. I know how to change sound files since when I experimented with pistol bursts, just changing the name worked fine, but for some reason when I change each "plasma caster burst" for example to "plasma caster 10burst", the sound file refuses to play in game.

Oh I'm sorry I forgot that one. Base building price is in gamecongif.xml under BASE BUILD COST. All the other Geoscape things are there too. If you have a mod installed that drastically changes up the ballistic weapons I'm not sure I can help you there. What might be happening is the game isn't equipping the LMG referenced in the files, but the one it has in default, due to their positions being shifted around. I remember that the Carbine mod I have replaced the M16 with the AK47 and though my soldiers kept their M16s they had already equipped, removing them put rifles in my stockpile and starting a new game gave then no equipment at all so I had to manually outfit them with AKs. Try starting a new game, removing the LMG, doing a mission, then adding the LMG back on. Also does putting stun damage on bullets even work? That might be a problem.

Can you post your weapons_gc.xml? Also make sure it's in the right folder.

I installed this mod halfway through an existing game and for some reason after equipping my guys with some plasma carbines, they come off the ship with two weapon slots as if the carbine is one handed, but adding a grenade in the second slot makes the carbine and all its ammo disappear. It also can't shoot at anything because it seems to have zero or negative range. This is a pretty serious problem since plasma shotguns didn't unlock due to the research already being done at the time of mod installation. EDIT: The carbine disappearing appears to be permanent. Lost it in the status screen too. EDIT2: As it turns out, it's JUST the plasma carbine. The regular and laser carbines both work perfectly fine.

I don't want to make the OP any more wall-ish so I'll do it here if that's okay. I've experimented with all of these (didn't keep all of them though) so I know they work. Just make sure you install all your mods FIRST (though I think you know most of these). ____________________________________________ Config.xml contains the default LOS angle and distance which the aliens use. armours_gc.xml sets the soldier's viewcones by armour type. I put the predator to 90 and everything else at 120 to preserve its limited vision disadvantage. Doubling all weapon ranges is as simple as going into weapons_gc.xml and editing props range= to twice whatever the value shows there. The LMG fix is done by going to each of the 4 machineguns, looking under <burstfire and changing AP to 40 and Shot Count to 5. The max percentage is under config.xml as MaxChance in the first paragraph near the top. Same for DamageRandomChance. Unfortunately the AI pathing bit was just a ton of selective copypasting over the pathing weights in aiprops.xml. Airstrike values are in airplanes.xml as the last string in each group (you'll see 15000, 25000, 35000, etc in the first few UFOs). Overdamage is as simple as going to grenades and rockets in weapons_gc.xml and vehicleweapons_gc.xml and changing the overdamage=1 flag to 0. Giving pistols burst fire means going back to weapons_gc.xml again, copypasting a burst fire line from a rifle, inserting it under the pistols singleshot/>, and then altering the delay to 0.3 and the sound file name from rifle burst to pistol burst, etc. Giving them lower TU costs and lower ACC is as simple as looking under <singleshot and editing the ap= and accuracy= values. I think we have entirely different definitions of fun then, because I find the initial stages of clearing the fog of war extremely tedious with a very narrow view cone and short sight range; especially when you're already moving at a very slow pace so your guys have enough TUs to use reaction fire and your gunner either has to barely move at all, or never get to shoot keeping up with the group. Not even the original X-Com took as long to get to the aliens in a night city mission. Having an enemy walk out of an area I couldn't see him/he couldn't see me, and then popping off a lucky shot that rolls a +50% on damage and oneshots an armoured major with nothing I can do about isn't terribly fun either. The AI is a little tepid by default too, so they like to hide on the map rather than actually trying to assault you. You might be surprised how dynamic the line of sight changes make firefights. It requires a lot more maneuvering from cover to cover and setting up ideal firing lanes to actually hit anything at the full length of that distance without getting shot up in return. I mostly did it so I wouldn't get bored of map-scouring, but now I much prefer it over accidentally blundering into an alien and having the entire group fire on him at practically point blank. I've actually seen someone do similar on this forum and promote it as a tactical mod.

It seems Airstrike values can be found in airplanes.xml at the bottom string of each craft type. That's another one down.

So I've been experimenting with little changes to the game's more easily tweaked assets after installing a few mods I liked off the forums and generally getting a handle on the .xml structure. Aside from the AWACs plane, the carbine+shotgun mod, Armoured Assault, true laser beams, I started on easy mode expecting a brutal game, but wound up manually editing all the Easy difficulty values to those of Normal because there was no way to change after the game had already started. Small tweaks I've already done that improved my enjoyment of the game: Increasing default sight to 30 tiles long from 16 and a 120 degree cone instead of 90 to emulate more natural human sight. Makes scouring the map for stray aliens far less painfully time consuming, and allows firefights to happen more often. Doubling of all weapon ranges to compensate for the increased sight distance. Gets to the shoot-outs faster. Includes burst fire reaction distance. Halving the LMG type weapons burst shot count and TU cost. The default sound effect is already for 5 or 6 shots anyways (despite a 10 shot one existing oddly enough) and a 40% TU cost means that the gunner actually gets to fire some shots during the mission instead of being absolutely required to camp. Movement penalty still applies. Adjusting the max chance cap to 99% to correspond to the minimum 1%. Some AI pathing from Into Darkness as far as I could work it out to make the AI more aggressive and less likely to be cheesed by opening doors, unloading and then closing them. Reducing the damage randomization to 25% instead of 50%. The roulette was just kind of ridiculous and only really advantaged the aliens in the end since it allowed them to oneshot your highly trained soldiers with sufficient luck. There are many more of them than you, and an individual soldier takes more shots over their career than any one alien. Now with those in mind, I'm thinking of experimenting with other features, but I don't want to ruin what is still my first playthrough too much: Airstrikes. Currently a ship that gives me 90k from stripping its resources and killing its crew nets only 25k for striking it and no alenium, alloys, or soldier experience. I'm only in november, I've had no terror missions, base attacks, or enemy bases, and yet I'm already well into the 30s of crash site raids despite shooting plenty of UFOs down over water. The same scouts and corvettes are starting to get old when I'm simply trying to build up gear for my guys so they don't die, yet I really can't afford NOT to go on every mission because of the huge wealth disparity and the way funding is so tight. Is there any way to mod airstrike values so I can safely skip a few fights in maps I hate (industrial nighttime) and not lose a ton of money? I've pored through the files and haven't seen it. Overdamage. So far I haven't used a single rocket or grenade in the entire playthrough because of aforementioned money grind. Actually looking at the stats however, they seem pretty well balanced for what they are. Is there any reason to slap on this extra penalty? Does the game become really easy if you can use them fairly freely? Manufacturing. It takes forever compared to research. With 45 engineers and 30 scientists, I can't even fully equip my A team with the latest gear before I'm already a tech level ahead. I'm into plasma weapons and I have yet to fully arm my squads with lasers after I outfitted them all in wolf. My B and C teams are all still using ballistics. This is with the shop running 24/7. Is there any reason not to cut these times in half? Likewise, is selling things for profit, or at least at their original value, such a game breaker? Losing money on each investment seems like an incentive to skip tiers rather than gear up progressively so you waste as little as possible. Especially since you can't transfer gear between bases, leaving you to wait for a workshop and engineers just to kit out your transfers. Pistols. What reason is there to use them other than wanting a shield? Proactive shooting and good armour usually means your guys don't take that much damage, so a shield is rarely necessary outside of the very early stages, at least before heavy weapons show up I assume. I get that you need to trade some offensive power for that defense, but they shoot at the same rate as rifles despite being weaker, shorter ranged and having no aimed mode. Would reducing the TUs to fire them, or else giving them the 3 shot burst mode the have the sfx for, make shield troops OP? Lastly, base cost. 500k just to build a command center? 10 days to wait, then 250k for a radar and another 10 days, plus the cost of a hangar and plane? That's without factoring in the transport and crew facilities. Considering all the countries outside your sphere constantly take funding damage, prompting you to rush at least 3 bases for coverage, how does the game expect you to come up with this kind of cash so early? I'm only at 2 bases with a team prepared to move to a third and my upkeep is at 2 million of 2.8 million monthly cash. Would dropping that cost to make a few unmanned outposts for nothing but radar and interception make the overworld gameplay really easy? If you read that wall, congratulations! Now gimme your opinions! EDIT: On further inspection, pistols actually do the same damage as rifles despite my experience to the contrary. Probably no change needed then. Bad luck is all.