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[XCE Only (Currently 0.28)] The Drone Strike Package (for all things drone!)


Max_Caine

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This Works With: Xenonauts Community Edition 0.28

Drone Strike Package unlocked!

As the title suggests the Drone Strike Package is a series of content enhancements which are all drone themed. This is a wide-ranging mod, which takes a little from each aspect of the game and put it through the filter of the ominipresent drone. This should not be considered a total overhaul mod, rather an add-on which has a broad focus and a coherant theme.

So why drones?

Because I feel that drones are criminally underused in the game. You barely get to see them throughout the game. When I first completed the game, I had never seen a medium or a heavy drone, and I wanted to do something about it. I altered the ufocontents file so drones would be more common. Then I made some drone aircraft. Then I got some artwork.. and things kind of snowballed from there.

What's in the package?

At the moment, in the package is:

  • Alteration to the contents of all ufos except light scouts to add drones to all ufos. Drones now become an "everyman" race you see whenever you fight.
  • 3 different drone aircraft. 1 recon, 2 interceptors. Drone aircraft have the following common traits: long loiter times, cheap costs, unusual armaments, middling to poor combat
  • A laser smartrifle
  • A smart grenade

Pix or it didn't happen

highwaymanpeek_zpsf8edd9b1.png

smartgrenadepeek_zps3eb9537d.png

What's the state of the mod?

The mod is considered tested and playable. However, it lacks polish and still needs balancing to shake down the various aspects.

Can I play this mod in a current game?

You should be able to, as the technology unlocks are only partly dependant on the vanilla tech tree. All drone unlocks are also dependant on DSP-specific "gatekeepers", so these should integrate into your current game as you unlock the DSP tech tree.

Where can I get this from?

Right here!

What plans do you have for the future?

I have a specific list of things I want to add. These are:

  • Add an auto-doc
  • Add a drone-assisted heavy weapon.
  • Add 2 drone assisted buildings (radar and medbay)
  • Add 1 or 2 2x2 drone vehicles ( this needs lots of prototyping and may be impossible to do )
  • Add a "tier 2" DSP gatekeeper (Drone Technologies Analysis) based on the medium drone.
  • Add a "tier 3" DSP gatekeeper (Advanced Drone Warfare) based on the heavy drone.

Those are in no particular order - I will do them however I want, depending on my desire and the resources I have at the time. At the moment, I want to polish up what I've already done and tweak the stats of various things until they feel right.

Credits

Advice on Coding

llunak - thanks a lot!

kabill - thanks as well!

Production of the first CE-compatiable package

skaianDestiny - may your killstreaks be high!

Artwork

Aircraft - Bogdan Bungardean

Smart rifle and smart grenade - Marwan Islami

Coding and Writing

Max Caine

Edited by Max_Caine
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Over the past few days I've been playing Drone Strike intensively to see what needs changing. I have some changes I'm going to make based on my playtesting.

Smart Grenade

  • Boost accuracy from 65 to 85
  • Explodes on end will turned off (grenade will explode on impact)
  • Increase cost from $500 to $1000
  • Reduce Ap cost from 60 to 51

Smart Rifle

  • Reduce reaction fire from 1.7 to 1.3

I've also got some fixes I'm going to upload. These are:

  • Researches.Lightdronewreckage changed to Items.Lightdronewreckage. This is to ensure the mod is not dependant on the vanilla tech tree.
  • Lamplighter pictures resized. They weren't appearing, because they were too big a size
  • Xenopedia wording changed

This will all be done tomorrow, as it's 22:25 where I am and I need to go to bed for work. I'm going to upload a new version to the downloader, but I'll also upload all the files that have been changed in a separate zip, which people who have already downloaded and installed the mod can directly install to the appropriate mod folder. This is not a patch - it's not technologically sophisticated enough to be called a patch. It's more "here's the changed files, you work it out".

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I want to try this out, but I'm currently in a middle of an XNT playthrough, so I may have already gone past the point where these would be unlocked as the way I understand the system is that if you've already unlocked a research that a newly added mod required, then you have no chance to unlock it for that playthrough.

Still, the content this adds looks really remarkable and useful. Will definitely add to my next playthrough. :D

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You'll be able to run DSP in addition to other mods. DSP is/will be semi-independant as the primary research predicates depend on certain items made freely available by DSP (drones). This means if you've already researched the main sequence topics which DSP requires it won't mean you can't research DSP topics. DSP is however dependant on certain research topics from the vanilla main sequence, most importantly the Alenium research line and Laser weapons. If those topics aren't present, the mod won't work.

EDIT: I'm making certain of DSP's independance today, so if you haven't downloaded yet, wait a bit until I've uploaded the new version.

Edited by Max_Caine
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Urgh. Having just learnt that my smart grenades are going to be less than smart, they are now going to be re-purposed. The drone parts instead of acting as a guidance mechanism will be used to support additional flight. Rather than being more accurate, they'll be cheaper to throw (as the drone does most of the work) and can be thrown further (because of a drone-derived flight system).

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Right, the changes have been uploaded. You can get the whole package at the OP's link, but if you just want the files that were changed, you can get those files here. I'm still working on the wording for the smart grenade, but in addition to the current changes I've boosted the added range range from 5.0 to 6.0 and reduced the damage caused to 75, as 95 was too powerful for when the grenade becomes available.

I'm working on another round of changes, I'll detail them when I get some way with them.

Edited by Max_Caine
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  • 4 weeks later...

Currently playing the game with this mod on and its sweet. The smart-rifle is just really cool looking and satisfying to use, while the drones are excellent in scouting out aliens outside the radar range, although since the money is usually tight, I personally tweaked the maintenance costs, funding and starting money to make them economically viable to use instead of just keeping another fight-worthy interceptor in a hangar.

Still yet to try the grenade since I'm saving up that precious alenium for guns, armor and planes, but I'm getting enough surplus soon to give them a try.

This is totally a mod that passes for official content. :)

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Ah, I didn't make changes to the mod, but the gameconfig of the main game, so maintenance costs for buildings are cheaper, more people fit in less buildings, so I can have more hangars.

Normally you'd have too little space to have an extra hangar in a base when that area could be used for anything from a lab, workshop, garage or living quarters. By removing the need for efficiency, I can set up a drone hangar with a peace in my mind.

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U can make labs and factories to be with more man.. so u can have more place for hangars.. sadly u can't have all same time..

This mods need a hard code change about more probe for more hangar.. I want something like too to assist my awacs with drones or special planes which u can use only together.

I want send my awacs with special escorts. And I need that escorts work only with awacs. But I need 3 hangar just only for this and I can't make the escorts special to awacs.. so not usefull at all...

Maybe special hangars can be made. 2x2 or 1x2. But I don't think u can make them special for special kind of aircraft..

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  • 4 weeks later...

Hey, thanks for your mod, i love it and it's a must have IMO. While working on my mod i looked in the logfile and i got this message :

Wed Nov 19 00:07:57 2014: Xenonauts, version .Wed Nov 19 00:07:58 2014: Pixel Shader Version: ffff0300Wed Nov 19 00:08:06 2014: MOD ERROR: Merging Excel XML for mods/dronestrike/ from mod ufocontents/airplane.alien.corvette.andron.xml failed.Wed Nov 19 00:08:07 2014:  ##### : Missing string for label '0'Wed Nov 19 00:08:07 2014:  ##### : Missing string for label '0'Wed Nov 19 00:08:07 2014:  ##### : Missing string for label '0'Wed Nov 19 00:08:07 2014:  ##### : Missing string for label '0'Wed Nov 19 00:08:07 2014:  ##### : Missing string for label '0'Wed Nov 19 00:08:07 2014:  ##### : Missing string for label '0'Wed Nov 19 00:08:07 2014:  ##### : Missing string for label '0'Wed Nov 19 00:08:07 2014:  ##### : Missing string for label '0'Wed Nov 19 00:08:07 2014:  ##### : Missing string for label '0'Wed Nov 19 00:08:07 2014:  ##### : Missing string for label '0'

I though you would like to know.

Cheers

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  • 4 weeks later...

I will progress with it when I get the time! A combination of staff sickness and staff holidays means that even doing things like updating existing mods comes at the expense of sleep, which is a commodity I'm not willing to surrender too often. I won't be able to do anything major for the next few weeks unless I break a leg and end up in front of my lappy sick enough not to go to work, but not so sick I can't do any modding.

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I will progress with it when I get the time! A combination of staff sickness and staff holidays means that even doing things like updating existing mods comes at the expense of sleep, which is a commodity I'm not willing to surrender too often. I won't be able to do anything major for the next few weeks unless I break a leg and end up in front of my lappy sick enough not to go to work, but not so sick I can't do any modding.

Sorry if my words came off as rude or anything, I was just curious because it seemed like an interesting mod. :)

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  • 1 year later...

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