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[1.5/X:CE] Cybernetic Armour


kabill

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Cybernetic Armour

This mod adds a number of variant armour types which give soldiers various benefits in addition to protection.

Tactical Armour: Tactical armour augments Wolf, Sentinel and Predator armour by enhancing a soldier's accuracy and reflexes, as well as granting them night-vision.

Assault Armour: Assault armour augments Wolf and Predator armour by enhacing a soldier's TUs, resiliance and strength.

Neuro-Cybernetic Shielding: Neuro-cybernetic shielding augments Wolf, Sentinel and Predator armour by increasing a soldier's bravery and giving them ablative resistance to psionic attacks.

Each of the cybernetic armour types is roughly 25% more expensive in terms of resources and time to build, and also requires a small amount of alenium. Spamming these new armours will therefore be costly.

To integrate these armours into the tech tree, a small number of changes have been made:

- Armour technology is progressive, so you cannot skip armour types any longer (mostly relevant for wolf armour as in vanilla you can skip researching jackal entirely and go straight for wolf).

- Alien Interrogations are now important for improving armour tech, as they unlock the cybernetic armour research projects. Also, interrogation of a Harridan is now a prerequisite for Sentinel Armour.

- In order to make the cybernetic armour research projects work better, I've reduced the time for auto-research projects down to 0 hours (so things like autopsies will happen immediately).

Known Issues:

- The hitpoint bonus for the assault armour type doesn't work properly yet. Hopefully this will get fixed in a later X:CE build.

Feedback:

While the mod works, I've not had chance to test it in terms of game balance. It might therefore be horribly overpowered. Feedback and suggestions are thus very welcome.

Download:

Cybernetic Armour (v1.0)

Installation Instructions:

Before installing this mod, make sure you have downloaded and installed the Armour Resource Pack.

To install, either:

1) Unpack the zip file into assets/mods; or

2) Install using the mod manager in the Xenonauts game launcher

Alternatively, for Steam users, you can install the mod via Steam Workshop.

However you install the mod, make sure you set it to 'active' in the mod manager.

Uninstall Instructions:

To uninstall, either:

1) Delete the mod's folder from assets/mods; or

2) Uninstall using the mod manager in the Xenonauts game launcher

If you installed using Steam Workshop, you should also unsubscribe from the mod (otherwise it will keep re-downloading). Note that simply unsubscribing from the mod will not delete it; you must also delete the mod using one of the above methods.

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I second chacineiro. You do phenomenal work with these mods and I wanted to drop in to say that I really appreciate all the hard work you put in on these...a sentiment I am sure the rest of the community shares. Thank you and the rest of the modding community for making a great game even better. Cheers!

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... or simply delete it using the mod installer in the game launcher.

Pff. That's what I get for being lazy. Updated the OP now, anyway.

Hey Kabill, any chance you will be integrating all your mods in a "mod pack" in the near future?

Maybe. Depends on what you mean.

I'm reluctant to put together a full modpack as it's easy enough just to download individual elements. And since all of my mods are built using the modular mod system, you can use any/all of them together without complication. (Actually, there might be some small issues but this is mainly due to a very small number of not-quite-finished parts of the mod loading system).

However, I'm planning on releasing a large 'overhaul' mod in the future which combines everything together and throws in some other stuff as well. (Although, actually, I'm less enamored by the concept I had in mind for this than I was when I first wrote it, so it might end up being a bit closer to vanilla than I originally planned.) I actually have most of the components needed for that in place - aside from polishing up a few things, it's mostly a matter of finishing off the weapons mod I'm working on and fully designing/writing a tech-tree and lore. But that still means a lot of work, I think.

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Maybe. Depends on what you mean.

I'm reluctant to put together a full modpack as it's easy enough just to download individual elements. And since all of my mods are built using the modular mod system, you can use any/all of them together without complication. (Actually, there might be some small issues but this is mainly due to a very small number of not-quite-finished parts of the mod loading system).

However, I'm planning on releasing a large 'overhaul' mod in the future which combines everything together and throws in some other stuff as well. (Although, actually, I'm less enamored by the concept I had in mind for this than I was when I first wrote it, so it might end up being a bit closer to vanilla than I originally planned.) I actually have most of the components needed for that in place - aside from polishing up a few things, it's mostly a matter of finishing off the weapons mod I'm working on and fully designing/writing a tech-tree and lore. But that still means a lot of work, I think.

Thats exactly what I mean, happy to hear you are planning this!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Known Issues:

- The hitpoint bonus for the assault armour type doesn't work properly yet. Hopefully this will get fixed in a later X:CE build.

Feedback:

While the mod works, I've not had chance to test it in terms of game balance. It might therefore be horribly overpowered. Feedback and suggestions are thus very welcome.

Okay, I have some detailed feedback;

Recommendations:

1. Lower the resilience boosts to "20" so the aliens still have a chance to kill your soldier.

2. Lower the coneAngle for Predator Armors back to "60": as it stands right now the soldiers using it aren't getting the tunnel vision that they should have.

3. Raise the coneAngle for Sentinel Armors up to "300": so they've still got excellent sight but have a blind-spot that makes the player slightly doubt their ability to protect their soldiers.

4. Make the free Jackal Armor slightly less powerful than Manufactured Jackal Armor.

5. Lower the Bravery Boosts to "25": as it stands right now it's a little too hard for the aliens to suppress soldiers using it or get them to go crazy when their whole squad gets killed within 10 turns.

6. Scrap the increase in strength but make the armors that would've used them slightly lighter than the other armors.

Minor Bugs:

1. "Jackal Armor 3" is infinite from the start of the game but Vanilla Jackal Armor may still be manufactured and used (Not sure if that was intentional or not).

2. Resilience bonuses are gained but strength bonuses are not (I'm not sure why).

Major Bugs:

1. Soldiers using the New Predator Armor Variants can throw grenades over 10 tiles away without worry of them ever missing

2. Soldiers using the New Predator Armor Variants can use normal weapons

Edited by Man of Doge
Format Fix
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Thanks for your comments. Some responses:

Recommendations:

1. Lower the resilience boosts to "20" so the aliens still have a chance to kill your soldier.

2. Lower the coneAngle for Predator Armors back to "60": as it stands right now the soldiers using it aren't getting the tunnel vision that they should have.

3. Raise the coneAngle for Sentinel Armors up to "300": so they've still got excellent sight but have a blind-spot that makes the player slightly doubt their ability to protect their soldiers.

4. Make the free Jackal Armor slightly less powerful than Manufactured Jackal Armor.

5. Lower the Bravery Boosts to "25": as it stands right now it's a little too hard for the aliens to suppress soldiers using it or get them to go crazy when their whole squad gets killed within 10 turns.

6. Scrap the increase in strength but make the armors that would've used them slightly lighter than the other armors.

1. The resilience bonus should already be +20.

2. That was a mistake on my part. I've changed it for the next build.

3. I'll be honest, I'm not really a fan of the wide vision range. Sentinel armour is already good enough; I'm not sure why it needs all-around vision as well.

4. There's not supposed to be any free Jackal. It's an unused armour type from the armour resource pack that I forgot to turn off. Have fixed for the next build.

5. Reducing to 25 wouldn't actually make that much difference (it's only 30 now). I might consider lowering it, though. I'd actually forgotten entirely about suppression when I made it.

6. Is that because the strength bonus isn't working, or because you think it would be better to have less weight than more strength? It's worth bearing in mind that having higher strength has several other uses as well aside from weight; do you have the feeling that the strength bonus is too good?

2. Resilience bonuses are gained but strength bonuses are not (I'm not sure why).

That's odd. The values are set correctly as I've just checked them. So if they're not working then that's an issue with XCE. - Have confirmed this bug. TO DO: Check with XCE people about it.

1. Soldiers using the New Predator Armor Variants can throw grenades over 10 tiles away without worry of them ever missing

2. Soldiers using the New Predator Armor Variants can use normal weapons

These two issues are related. The weapon restriction blocks the use of grenades as well, so when that's fixed it'll be fine. Not sure why the heavy weapon only thing isn't working, though. Again, it's set up properly so far as I can tell. - Confirmed this bug. TO DO: Work out why it isn't working properly!

Edited by kabill
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1. Oops, my bad--I thought it was 30.

3. Ah, okay. I just think it having less than "180" or "240" is kinda weird considering it's name.

5. TBH reducing it to "20" or "15" should do the trick while still keeping the general idea there.

6.

If the armor only gave a TU boost:

A soldier with Greater Strength (60-80) could use the armor with increased TUs despite being weighed down a ton--while the opposite would occur with a soldier that had Less Strength (35-50).

If the armor gave both a TU and Strength boost:

The TU and Strength bonuses would dramatically increase the usability of the soldier using it--essentially making the soldier using it a little too powerful.

The Lighter Load Solution:

By giving the soldier a slightly lighter load instead this indirectly nerfs both effects, but still keeps it as a viable option so long as the soldier has at least Average Strength (42).

New Sentinel Armor suggestion;

Make Sentinel Armor have a "100" coneAngle but lower it's resistance to Incendiary Damage to "50".

OR

Make Sentinel Armor have a "160" coneAngle but lower it's resistance to All Damage Types (excluding Chemical) to "56".

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Re: Sentinel - I could maybe be persuaded by a 180 vision cone but leaving its armour values as it is. That might be ok.

Re: Strength Bonus - Hmm, I'd not really thought about the double-stacking bonus. I guess the key question here is how good the armour should be, generally. My feeling was that the new armour would be perhaps a little on the too-powerful side. I'm not sure I want to remove the strength bonus entirely, as it fits the lore, but I might think about scaling back the benefits. In fact, generally, how about:

Implants are changed to +10 TU, +10 STR and +15 HP

Sesnors are changed to +15 ACC and +15 REF (and the night vision bonus)

Neural are changed to +20 BRAV and resist 3 psionic attacks rather than 5.

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Update: New version has just been uploaded.

Changelog:

- Fixed: Predator armour variants allowing the use of non-heavy weapons

- Fixed: Neuro-Shielded Predator armour didn't have the psionic defence set up correctly.

- Fixed: Removed Jackal 3 from appearing.

- Fix/Balance: Implant armour types are no longer supposed to give you a STR buff but reduce the weight of the armour slightly.

- Fix/Balance: All Predator armour types have reduced vision cone a la vanilla.

- Balanace: Sentinel armour now has a wider field of vision than most armour, but not 360 degree vision like in vanilla (currently it's 150 degrees).

- Balance: buffs generally reduced slightly. Tactical armour types now grant only +15 Acc and Ref; Assault armour types no longer add strength (not that technically they ever did); and neural armour now protects against fewer psionic attacks and grants only +20 Bravery.

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  • 2 months later...

Update: A new version has been uploaded. Also, this mod is now available on Steam Workshop. If anyone downloads it there, I'd be grateful to know if it is working correctly.

Changelog:

- Fix: Implant armour types now give a little extra protection rather than a HP buff as the HP buff wasn't working properly.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I honestly don't know as I've not tried. I know that I needed to switch to v1.52 in order to get hold of the Steam Workshop uploading tools, but that doesn't affect you since you don't need to upload anything.

Other than that, I don't see why it wouldn't work. The only problem I can think of is that after Steam has downloaded a mod for you it will be necessary for you extract it manually rather than using the mod tools in the game launcher as the current version of XCE doesn't have the mod installation/activation feature that v1.52 currently has. But all you have to do there is to go to your Xenonauts/assets/mods directory and unzip the mod files.

(I assume that when v1.5 gets released properly, XCE will be updated with the new tools so you will be able to use XCE still as well as the new mod-handling features. But I don't actually know - I'm uncertain how active the XCE project is at the moment so maybe not.)

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If you can be bothered, I suspect you would be able to opt into the experimental branch, download stuff from Steam, install it using the 1.52 game launcher, and then switch back to the XCE branch and continue from there. All Steam Workshop does is download a zip file to the right place; the file itself is exactly the same as what you could download from these forums.

I suspect all this will be worked out in the long run, though, so if you're happy to wait it might not matter.

(Word of warning, in any case: this mod requires the Armour Resource Pack to work which is only available for download on these forums at the moment as it is too large to upload to Steam. This might not matter, but I'm assuming you don't particularly want to download stuff from here otherwise you'd have done so already. I'm going to try and fined a way to deal with this, but it's contingent on what the maximum file size is and how much I need to break it down by)

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(Ironically, for all my modding, I've never actually played the game all the way through. I need to do that some time)

Yes, I really hope that someday you do. For entirely selfish reasons. Because if you did play the lategame once or twice, you'd see what I'm always jawing on and on about: that the endgame is distinctly less challenging than the early and middle stages. And then maybe you'd apply your skills toward correcting this :P

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Yes, I really hope that someday you do. For entirely selfish reasons. Because if you did play the lategame once or twice, you'd see what I'm always jawing on and on about: that the endgame is distinctly less challenging than the early and middle stages. And then maybe you'd apply your skills toward correcting this :P

I don't not believe you; the problem is trying to find a good fix for it. The only ideas I have involve a significant overhaul of the geoscape game, which is on the cards (enthusiasm permitting) but I'm trying to get other things in place first. Might start a thread about it tomorrow to generate some idea, though.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Hey kabill,

I couldn't find a thread in the discussion section belonging to your "Cybernetic Armour"-Mod, so I'm going to write it down here instead:

I seem to have a problem with your mod (or a conflict between your mod and another one I am using) concerning the wolf armor. I started a new game and got to the point where I was able to research the wolf armor (after researching but not producing the jackal armor). Strangely enough I still can't produce the wolf armor even several days after the finished research. As I'm not used to your mod yet I assumed it is the reason for that behavior (because it changes the way the wolf armor is being researched, right?). When I first started the game with your mod installed it showed me something like "Jackal Armour 3 files missing". After confirming that message I could play the game rather well until I researched the wolf armor.

I checked the gamefiles for any missing links in research or manufacturing but couldn't find anything yet (to be fair I'm really no modder, so I just tried to use general understanding to find obvious misstakes).

Maybe you could help me with this or give me a direction where to ask for help?

Thanks in advance and last but not least I really like your modding jobs. Great ideas and nice balancing!

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