[v1.09/X:CE v0.31] X - DIVISION - Destiny Denied v0.98+

[en489]

Hi drages and hi everyone! I'm a 3D modeler/sculpter/texturer.

If you need some kind of help, I would be glad to help this project.

[drages]

Hi drages and hi everyone! I'm a 3D modeler/sculpter/texturer.

If you need some kind of help, I would be glad to help this project.

Hey!.. Thank you for your kind offering. For now i stopped modding until some new modding features coming up to hype me again. 3D is needed at creating for new UFO's but all the 3D guys came here and wanted to help disappeared after some days/weeks. So i gave up about asking something about this.

Maybe another modders need help too..

[Lament]

I only came across this game recently and this mod compilation. I somehow missed the release of Xenonauts last year and don't have a good enough PC for X-com 2.

Have to say hats off to everyone working on this mod. It's like the long war mod for X-com: Enemy Unknown. I'm only about 4 hours in so far, but it's just superb.

[TheDestroyer]

Hi,

first of all thanks for the great work. From what I read on this mod it sounds amazing!

Unforunately just after a fresh installation I meet a game crash right from the start.

Details:

* I installed

** the steam community version 0.34.1

** and the latest version of X-Division Ver.0.98.2.7

* I configured all mods and priorities as instructed (see screenshot, position 27 not visible but correct)

* I modified the weapon.grenade.incendiary attribute in weapons_gc.xml inside the mod directory

What happens is that right after starting the game (normal difficulty) the game crashes if I open the Equippment tab (or press F7) - other tabs work fine.

Any help would be appreciated because I am dying to start playing this game mod

[GoodKnight]

So... Question..

I installed the game via steam updated to the community pack.

Inserted the files of the mod and set the order of the mods correctly.

The start of the game first like 3 missions I got my ass kicked.

Then I started to notice the AI was not shooting me lol And then I noticed they have no guns.

Apparently I forgot to change the Insert to replace..

Is that the reason why the enemies have no guns?

I just don't want to restart the campaign and have this happen again...

[en489]

Alright!

I can model spaceship, so let me know if you'll have something in mind.

[Valerian]

I'm just starting a game for the first time with X-Division, only did 2 missions yet, but I already love it! This is exactly the game I wanted! The very first missions are much more interesting with more soldiers and weaker weapons, plus the improved alien AI, it adds a lot of tactical depth, and I really like the variety of weapons and technologies to research.

When this mod will be completely finished and balanced, it would really deserve to get some kind of official status (like CE, and available ins Steam), this is really the remake of X-Com I wished for since a very long time.

So far, the current version makes a really good first impression. However it would be nice to focus a bit on finishing to write the early game Xenopedia entries

Thanks to all of the people contributing to this mod, this is a great project that really deserves to reach completion.

PS: Drages you should really fix all of those then/than typos (sorry for being the grammar nazi)

Edited February 26, 2016 by Valerian

[Valerian]

I would like to contribute to the project by fixing some typos, rewriting a few sentences that didn't feel right, and also maybe trying to write a few xenopedia pages.

How can I do that efficiently? Is there a git repository somewhere on which I could send pull-requests?

[Valerian]

Ok, after playing it for a few hours I'm starting to see the flaws and balance issues, I might have been a bit too enthusiastic at first

I will list a few constructive criticism and remarks regarding that experience.

This is only my first playthrough (normal on ironman) and I have only just reached laser and B-17, so my opinion is obviously not based on a comprehensive experience.

Please excuse me in advance if my comments seem harsh, I like to say what I think without taking detours. However remember that I respect all the work that went into this mod, and I really like the ideas behind it as well as the direction it's taking, but there are still many things to do regarding the execution.

I'm a modder myself for other games (mostly for KSP) and I know how hard it is to get all of that hard work to be appreciated, and to get enough feedback.

Like I said earlier, I'm willing to help.

Sorry if I repeat things that were already said or are already planned/done in 0.99, here are my remarks, in no particular order:

• The number of things to research is growing really fast and can get overwhelming, but this could be improved by one or several of those suggestions:
  
  • Provide a full tech tree (however some players might not want to see it in order to not get spoiled).
    
  • Provide some hints about which research subjects really matters, and/or give more hints about what they could lead to.
    
  • Have some kind of automatic suggestions of what to research next (kind of like in 4x games such as Civilization).
    

  [*] It is extremely hard to track which aliens had already been captured alive, I often end up damaging/killing a few of my crew just for capturing an alien that I already had.

  [*] It's hard to know which really important technologies are missing because of aliens that were not captured yet, and which of those aliens I still have to capture.

  [*] I really appreciate the lack of deadly reapers during early game (from my experience, yet), and the bull reaper and xenomorph are nice additions.

  [*] I really like that the AI is trying to throw grenades against shields, the anti-explosion armour really makes sense for them.

  [*] There are always 2-3 aliens stacked behind the door of their ship, instead of properly getting behind covers or doing smarter moves.

  [*] Some alien weapons fire sounds are way too loud (it made me jump on my seat a few times lol), I think there are some tools that can help automatically normalize the volume between all of them.

  [*] The nexgen sniper firing sound (and possibly vanilla too, not sure) does a weird rearm sound at the end, which sounds a bit like a dying gargling alien (I picture a Xenomorph). Maybe it's just too loud compared to the shot sound itself.

  [*] The hunter scout feels too armored compared to vanilla, I can just freely move around while usually resisting 90% of the damage. And then I get access to the tank really early.

  [*] Things are really not clear about how to equip vehicle weapons and which can equip what: I unlocked the tank but I can't equip the cannon. Why are those vehicle weapons unlocked so early, while the vehicles that can use them are only unlocked later?

  [*] Bug: (maybe this is already the case in vanilla/CE, or related to fire in the hole) I noticed that the hunter scout machinegun could suppress through the alien ship walls.

  [*] The B17-X is really too much of a silly and hard to believe idea: this is a bomber, as in dropping bombs over a ground target, not a fighter plane. Anyway how could such an old design be any relevant? It's not at all shaped to go fast, and on the xpedia picture it clearly displays its original radial engines: you should at least photoshop them and put turbofan or turbojet engines instead.

  [*] I think there is a bit too much variety in the aircrafts, but I would need to play more to get a better opinion.

  [*] The AWACS radar plane is a great idea, however it's weird that it cannot be bought, is there a research to unlock it later?

  [*] Many of the xpedia articles or other game texts are not well redacted and break the immersion, either because those are written in a bad english with many typos which makes them look childish (the amount of "then" typos is REALLY cringeworthy), and/or because the tone is not serious/believable enough. (I'm willing to help fixing them!)

  [*] The "rebel alien knocked at our door" event is really hard to believe.

Edited February 28, 2016 by Valerian

[Charon]

@Valerian

As a player with way over 100 hours (Veteran, Ironman) in X-Division i have to say that the solutions to your feedback are minor or redundant.

Sry,I like to say what I think without taking detours.

[Valerian]

@Valerian

As a player with way over 100 hours (Veteran, Ironman) in X-Division i have to say that the solutions to your feedback are minor or redundant.

Sry,I like to say what I think without taking detours.

I understand, however my point of view is different since I'm not a veteran, I wanted to give the impressions of someone who is currently discovering the mod.

Now that I have put a few more hours in it since my last post, I really find that my early annoyances do not affect me much anymore, I kind of got used to do with them and focus on what there is to enjoy.

However this does not make them less relevant for new players, and that's the point: I want to give feedback to make this mod easier to get into, and more polished.

[drages]

Valerian, thanks for your feedback.

I know most of them, and you are right too.

The problem is the mod being huge. And 0.99 is maybe 3x bigger then 0.98.. even most of the 0.99 finished, i can't finish it because this is so big for a one man with bad english...

I need one or two dedicated helper to make the scenario and xpedia to explain new things to people. The game needs more softcoded things to mod to make the mod more playeble to players. I mean with tons of things, UI should be much more friendly or you can easily lose control within new content.

For this reasons, the mod halted.

[Valerian]

Like you said, this is a big mod and really hard to do alone, I agree.

You made a lot of changes in 0.99, but you can't finish it completely because of the limitations of what can be modded, and the lot of time it takes.

Meanwhile, the current "stable" version is 0.98, and it will probably be for a long time until 0.99 gets finished.

So that's why I think it would be worth the effort to still fix a few things in 0.98.

I don't want to be a dedicated helper, but is it ok if I try to do some updates for 0.98, and send them to you in PM?

Also I have another comments:

From what I see in the XML files the breaching charges for "Fire in the Hole" are not implemented, and you made the breachable walls with about 50% more HP: it seems that there is no way to breach them early/mid game unless you use tons of rockets and explosive charges. What is intended there exactly?

I found a nice bomber plane that you might use, google "XB-0"

Edited March 1, 2016 by Valerian

[Lament]

Hey drages, I could certainly take a crack at helping flesh out those xpedia entries. At the very least I can make sure all the grammar is in order. Been a long while since i've done any modding. Just starting to see how things works.

I wanted to log some hours in the mod first to come to grips with it. Looking forward to the next version greatly.

[Blackhorn]

I just wanted to report a bug (however I don't know if it's fault of the mod), the thing is when I click on the crashsite the description says it's a desert area, but when the dropship arrives it turns out to be a city. It started happening recently when bigger ships showed up.

Edited March 6, 2016 by Blackhorn

[Valerian]

I have spent many more hours now in my game and I would like to update my review with a few more remarks and bug reports.

I think I should have played in Veteran instead of Normal, the balance would have been better, however I think it does not affect the balance issues I will be reporting.

I looked into most of the XLS files while playing to better understand how the mod works and to get details on some inner mechanics, such as which vehicles can use which weapons, which UFO can spawn which specialists, and which specialists lead to which research projects.

I might take some time to write a little bit of documentation about that to help other players.

My game currently is in May 1980, and most of the UFOs are corvettes, with a few landing ships and scouts, the the balance remarks will be related to that game period.

Bugs:

- I already unlocked some tier 3 weapons, I can build them, but I can not equip them, such as the quad rocket launcher, the plasma flamethrower, and the alenium multi-barrel minigun. It seems that the T3 "High" category in the equip screen is hidden, and will only appear if I capture a Caesan Weapons Officer and research plasma weapons. Unfortunately, I have no luck with this specific Caesan .

- After a research project is finished the game usually displays one or several Xenopedia pages describing the new discoveries, however sometimes (about 15% of the time) I see a black Xenopedia window with no text or image, and no title.

Economy balance:

- Alien alloys are too easy to get compared to alenium

- Recovered equipment gives too much money for corvette, landing ships, and fighters. At the current state of my game those are making me really rich.

Enemy balance:

- Xenomorphs are too weak, they never killed any of my soldiers. They should be much stronger and almost as fearful as reapers.

- On my game there was only 1 alien base created, at the time when corvettes started appearing, but this base is very high level, it has a leader, large drones, and the highest ranks of harridans and androns: is this normal? I obviously couldn't clear it yet, it has been there for many months.

- enemies tend to very often camp in small buildings in the corner next to the door, it's way too obvious and easy to find them. I find that they usually stay hidden way too much, often without ever firing a single bullet, instead of trying to flank and surprise my troops.

- damage resistance/weakness of different alien species does not seem to matter much, I do not feel the need to have specialized weapons to deal with them, maybe I will after T2? Anyway, specialized weapon damage type should be useful, I don't feel compelled to use chemical, ballistic, flame (except for breaching hull), and ballistic weapons at all, especially since they all have lower damage than standard T2 laser (except for the alloy sniper).

Item balance:

- The shields have increasing weight with new upgrades, but this is too heavy for new soldiers with low strength: you should leave access to lower technology of shields that are lighter.

- The sniper armour (Direwolf) is not very useful compared to the Buzzard scout armor, except maybe for alien base assaults.

- The light tanks cannons are really bad at destroying covers because of the ballistic damage type, maybe it should be incendiary?

- Most of the AP weapons are useless, because their mitigation+damage are much lower than the mitigation+damage of the normal weapons, and they usually have a shorter range and/or require more TUs.

- The alloy sniper rifle is quite OP compared to the other sniper rifles in T2: it allows me to fire 2 times in a round with 200 accuracy, and with a very high damage+mitigation.

- The shock stun/emp cannon and gun are not very good compared to the pistol and rifle. Actually, the rifle is even a bit OP because of the powerful burst.

- The alloy heavy machinegun is very weak

Aircraft balance:

- The B-17 is too strong and is good at everything, the other aircrafts are not really interesting compared to it: maybe you should use more specialized planes like in vanilla game? That's strange, because in your mod you made the soldiers and weapons very specialized, but for aircrafts you did the opposite! I have 2 B-17 with alenium and laser at each base and I can auto resolve every encounter with them and only lose 25% ammo, it's way too easy!

Other suggestions:

- It would be nice to see details on vehicles, vehicle weapons, aircrafts, and aircraft weapons in the manufacture screen. By details I mean damage, rate of fire, range, type of damage, HP, armor, speed, etc ...

- There are many unused/junk/temporary files in the mod folder, such as the "hotfix" folder or "weapons-.xml" (maybe you should use GIT to organize your work better? )

Edited March 8, 2016 by Valerian

[Charon]

@Valerian

May i reply to your post in my style without hurting your feelings?

[Valerian]

@Valerian

May i reply to your post in my style without hurting your feelings?

Of course, go 100% your style, no feelings to hurt, I'm just expressing my opinions as an inexperienced player discovering this mod in a difficulty setting that was not intended .

I always appreciate honesty and constructive criticism.

Edited March 8, 2016 by Valerian

[Charon]

Here we go.

Bug:

- Weapon Officiers and Seargents are easy to spot. They are usually one of the first specialist aliens to engage you. You will immediately encounter them on you LZ entry or soon afterwards. They are also better equipted than other specialist aliens, having heavier armor and better weapons.

So what i found out about specialists is that they have designed places where they appear. So if u want to catch an weapon officier inside a UFO, good luck because thats unlikley to happen, like EVER. Their places simply dont get rotated and they have certain AI so they engage in certain situatuions or stay passive.

Good luck as well for finding an engineer. In over 140 hours (2 campaigns) i captured only one in a landed landing ship.

Eco balance:

-Alenium/Alloy: I think thats fine. The bottleneck of alenium really makes you think about what you want to build because you cant build everything ( raiding every UFO in 1 BASE RADAR range). While masses of alloy units makes you capable of producing some cheap weapons/equipments for a second or third squad. You wont be able to produce the best of the best, because that requires alenium, but some cheap standart improvements are possible. You can even sell them for money ( didnt check the profit rating).

-Sold Equipment: I think thats fine too. January, Veteran/Ironmann, and i can barely build everything i need. I once needed to fire 40/60 scientists and 40/100 engineers to keep the ecenomy balanced.

Enemy balance:

-Xenomorphs are fine. They are not there to kill your soldiers (only in the worst case scenario) but actually to be a dangerous meta thread which you have to calculate. Even if you have no TUs and a ceasarian 15 tiles away from you there is always a chance that he will miss. Having a xenomorph warrior means 100% death no matter how u turn it. Xenomorphs are also there to shake up your weapon resilience thinking. Nothing is more terrifying than a xenomorph drone resisiting 2 full machingun burst shots to the face. And 2 more shotgun shots. And than taking 4, 8, and 3 dmg. Xenomorphs are an early thing until alpha xenomorphs appear. In comparasion reapers, although their nature is deadly, are very weak resilientwise and on hp. Nothing compared to how fast and strong xenomorphs are.

The worst case scenario is a xenomorph amidst your soldiers. A reaper can be killed easily by most means even if 1 soldier dies, but if you fail to kill an Alpha Xenomorph in the first turn, that could be it for the mission with a whole team wipe.

It´s a meta thing thats why it never happens.

-Base: Yes this is normal. If u fail to prevetn UFOs from building bases AND fail to prevent supply runs, then you are bound to have a base which can only be taken down with the highest gear equipment. A Battleship crashside is easier to complete than a full base raid, way easier. A full base raid is the hardest thing in the game.

-AI issue. Nothing can be done about that. Think about it that way. If you are a soldier and trained to spot good sniping positions than everybody else who is trained in spotting those positions can easily guess that IF someone wants to take up position in that area than that is the most likely and safest position for the sniper. Which in turn makes it unsafe again. Again its a meta thing of thinking. "If everybody knows where the best position is than i should take the second best positioning, because thats what they dont expect." Now translate that into the AI code. But dont worry, you will experience a brutal squad wipe every once in a while. The game makes u think you know everything and if you slip for a moment than it ends in a disaster.

- Damage types: Agree

Item balance:

tank cannons are there to suppress targets, not destroy cover. If you want to destroy some cover equipt rockets.

-AP Weapons: Agree

Aircraft:

As far as i understood it the Aircraft things are 90% not done and balanced. The 4 phases of the game are roughly laid out and the Xenonaut Aircrafts are roughly done and just about balanced that you can advance from one stage to the next. Nothing special just 1 aircraft for every phase. Drages autoresolves 95% of the fights for testing anyway.

So dont judge this mod by its aircraft/geoscape dynamic, its not done yet. Dont ask me about 0.99 though.

What i wanted to see were UFO base raids/terror missions for every phase of the game. But that is next to impossible, because of the reason the game is coded. You cant tell a certain ship to do a base raid/terror mission. There is a chance what the UFO that spawns will do: research/bombing/scouting/etc ... and certain ships can do certain tasks. So you can restrict a UFO to only do base raids/terror missions but that UFO would than be missing from the normal research/bombing/scouting/etc ... missions. The ideal thing would be to add a base raid/ terror mission UFO for every phase of the game. But that is impossible because the types and number UFOs are hardcoded. The only unused UFO assets are for the assault UFO and the dreadnought, which makes 2 UFOs for 4 phases. Not bad but suboptimal. Here is the thread about the FTD mod:

http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/11009-FTD-Mod

Maybe kabill can actually make adding additional UFOs possible. That would be a great step.

I actually want to make my own mod adding the geoscape/aircraft/ UFO dynamic i always wanted to experience in Xenonanauts. It would be a direct, optional Add on to whatever drages is doing with X-Division, taking resources from the FTD (assault,dreadnought), XNT mod (especially the apollo aircraft is worth mentioning) and other plane adding mods.

Yes, i know im a lazy jerk .

Love,Peace and some aliens to shoot at .

Edit: I just read that you can actually add UFOs. Is that true and possible ?

Edited March 13, 2016 by Charon
Edit

[Valerian]

Thanks for your comments

Regarding the weapons officer my issue was not to capture one, I was just a bit unlucky with the game RNG and it was the last specialist that I needed, and I'm perfectly fine with it. My actual issue was that I unlocked and started to build some tier 3 weapons, but those were invisible in the loadout screen so I could not equip them, because I didn't have the weapon officer.

I consider this a bug because the game allows me to build them, without explaining why I can not equip them yet.

(I had really no issues capturing both Caesan and Sebillian engineers, multiple times, RNG again )

Regarding eco balance I was just expressing my personal feelings on my current game, but by no means I consider that I have enough experience to judge it.

Regarding xenomorphs, I'm starting to find them much more interesting in higher level UFOs, but they felt kind of useless in lower level ones.

Fine for the base, I was just not sure that it was intended to have an end-game base suddenly appear at the early/mid game, instead of starting small and growing over time. This is the only base that appeared in my game, shortly after that I got full air coverage and superiority in the world.

Regarding the tanks cannons, my issue is that the Xenopedia says that their role is to destroy covers, so the Xenopedia article should get fixed.

[Charon]

I suggest u download 0.99.

There you will see how much has changed and added. It´s 2,01 GB compared to 4,61 GB. The mod is incredible.

Simply dowmload 0.99 and temporarly deactivate 0.98 to get a quick sneak peak. I garantee you that its worth it.

[Valerian]

I suggest u download 0.99.

There you will see how much has changed and added. It´s 2,01 GB compared to 4,61 GB. The mod is incredible.

Simply dowmload 0.99 and temporarly deactivate 0.98 to get a quick sneak peak. I garantee you that its worth it.

Thanks for the advice, however it seemed that a lot of things were missing (not done yet) in 0.99, so I figured it was there only for testing purposes and not for actually playing it.

Actually I went back to XCOM:EW, which I didn't play since 3 years, to try to actually appreciate it for itself, without comparing and being bothered with the differences compared to original X-Com. I'm having a lot of fun with the latest Long War mod. I stopped complaining about the lack of realism of the 1 action + 1 move system and the simplified loadout, now I enjoy it more like some kind of grand strategy chess

[Ngong8]

While I'm playing ground combat mission with this X-Division mod,I end my turn,but the alien turn takes too long time even there's stuck on that,how can I do for this condition? The "Hidden Movement" and "ALIEN TURN" screen just stuck at here but the music still playing. Everyone can fix this? If you can,please tell me how to solve it,thx!

(I downloaded v0.98,seems like v0.99 is released?)

[Charon]

0.99 is only the testing ground for the final version.

Never encountered that bug, but its very common in the XNT mod, regarding the eggs. Basically it happens when an alien tries to move but cant, and thus waits forever to end his turn.

As far as i know there is no workaround but reloadign an earlier save. That you have that bug means something went wrong in the first place since i never encountered it in X-Division.

[Ngong8]

Where to download v0.99 X-Division? And the update will fix "Hidden Movement" stuck screen?