XMC Part 1: (Ground Combat) Version 1.0 for XCE 0.33 HF1

[aajs]

The only way to balance production profit by manufacture is making profit rates (Money / hour corelation).

This will change all manufacture times and costs.

Interesting, That's sounds good. you could at least work out a good base rate using that method.

Then maybe you could slightly adjust to keep things interesting, so players could discover what is more profitable than others. (supply & demand etc).

But not win the war on the basis of Vibranium blade production.

[Reactorcore]

Reactocore You Mercenary!!! Dont you know that the future of the Earth is at stake!

(joke) Now now, I assure you that its a perfectly legal business of selling the newest and hottest in industrial grade kitchen cutlery.

For the low price of 5000$ per knife, you can have device that will not only cut your vegetables, but also go through the cutting board and the table and also last for a thousand years before going dull. They're selling like hot cakes man.

Yes my reasearch is a bit fragmented, I did shorten all the Vanilla research times in my mod to allow more things to be reasearched, otherwise I found you had to keep your research field very narrow as you are against the ticker, however on reflection I should have just extended the game lenght a little more.

It sounds like you are proposing a complete research / manufacture time / cost overhaul. Do you fancy getting your sleaves rolled up and getting involved. We could use the help.

Rallige is doing a great job on Balancing and the Xenopedia. If you want to handle the Research and Manufacture / updates then we could get a really awesome version 2 produced.

Then we could get you to handle the broader distribution to other sites and the whole PR / Advertising bit. (You seem to have a talent there)

Well, yeah I guess it is a bit of an overhaul that I'd want. Mainly I'd unify similar researches to be of similar lenghts, make certain researches take logically as much time depending on how complex and significant the unlock is. Meanwhile for manufacturing, anything that does not use alenium or alloys, would yield only slight profit (+10% extra profit of original cost). However anything that does use alenium or alloys would have extreme profit benefit for selling them (+300%-+500% profit), because those resources are rare and hard to get.

I'll consider doing the rebalancing, but I'll only do so after I've finished my current playthrough and if I'm not too busy with real life stuff. No promises, but maybe.

As for the lasers, it be great to make the light the ground on fire for one tile, so you can use it to block passages in ufos by lighting the tile in front of the door with fire, while you keep an eye on another door with reaction fire. That would make them more interesting as things to take on a mission I think.

[aajs]

(joke) Now now, I assure you that its a perfectly legal business of selling the newest and hottest in industrial grade kitchen cutlery.

For the low price of 5000$ per knife, you can have device that will not only cut your vegetables, but also go through the cutting board and the table and also last for a thousand years before going dull. They're selling like hot cakes man.

Well, yeah I guess it is a bit of an overhaul that I'd want. Mainly I'd unify similar researches to be of similar lenghts, make certain researches take logically as much time depending on how complex and significant the unlock is. Meanwhile for manufacturing, anything that does not use alenium or alloys, would yield only slight profit (+10% extra profit of original cost). However anything that does use alenium or alloys would have extreme profit benefit for selling them (+300%-+500% profit), because those resources are rare and hard to get.

I'll consider doing the rebalancing, but I'll only do so after I've finished my current playthrough and if I'm not too busy with real life stuff. No promises, but maybe.

As for the lasers, it be great to make the light the ground on fire for one tile, so you can use it to block passages in ufos by lighting the tile in front of the door with fire, while you keep an eye on another door with reaction fire. That would make them more interesting as things to take on a mission I think.

Nice, well I won't hold you to it, but will secretely hope you are not too busy.

The laser thing sounds like a cool idea, and drages said you can make your own fire effect, so this is probably acheivable and will add that "extra" element to them, for both tactical reasons and for game imersion. I will add this to the list of improvements.

Edited September 4, 2015 by aajs

[aajs]

One more thing - good old Rank1 Charlie transports just as much troops (12 ppl) as Rank 2 dropship, making update itself kinda pointless

Aaah haa I think the second dropship is still better, but the improvements may be much more subtle. In my mods all the dropships are kitted out with weapons, the Charlie even with an escort is very vulnerable, however the second dropship is much tougher.

But more subtlety It can carry far more weight meaning it can actually carry two ground assault vehicle...

Maybe I need to put this in the Xenopedia entry otherwise nobody will know...

I wanted to add an antimissile defence to the dropship but seem to remember Drages telling me its bugged and will crash the game if its targeted by more that one missile. Since one of my main concerns is stability, I have not implemented it.

[drages]

You can use anti-missile weapon without problem if you make the time longer between two shots. When there is 2 shots in same time, the game crushes.

[aajs]

You can use anti-missile weapon without problem if you make the time longer between two shots. When there is 2 shots in same time, the game crushes.

Aaahh neat!

So it does not crash on incoming missiles but on the amount it fires.

That's cool So I can just put a big delay or make it a one shot defence system to be really sure.

Thanks so much. This is going in my next update.

[drages]

Yes the delay will handle it. Just give a good speed and maneuver ability to that weapon, or it would miss a fast missile.

[Max_Caine]

My Flying Circus Mod has several examples of anti-missile weapons. Feel free to browse.

[aajs]

My Flying Circus Mod has several examples of anti-missile weapons. Feel free to browse.

Oh thanks very much.

Think I will.

[aajs]

Whhhooo hooo finally finished my Vehicles Mod...

Just going to post its independent Mod entry for those who only want to use that bit.

Then I will come back and post a link here.

[Reactorcore]

Whoa.

I find the idea of having a Terminator 2: Judgement Day skynet anti-personnel tank roaming with my soldiers very scary.

Jokes aside, thats is really cool and I'll want to try it in my next playthrough, since currently I'm using soldiers only.

Btw, I do want to mention the dropship upgrade is always worth doing for the speed and range alone. It makes the difference of making it in time to a terror mission during day time and not in the night. I'm actually really happy the charlie can carry 12 troops.

[aajs]

Whoa.

I find the idea of having a Terminator 2: Judgement Day skynet anti-personnel tank roaming with my soldiers very scary.

Jokes aside, thats is really cool and I'll want to try it in my next playthrough, since currently I'm using soldiers only.

Btw, I do want to mention the dropship upgrade is always worth doing for the speed and range alone. It makes the difference of making it in time to a terror mission during day time and not in the night. I'm actually really happy the charlie can carry 12 troops.

Yeah, working along side fully automated self aware killer robots is normally a good thing when at war with an Alien race, however I do find that they do tend to turn rogue every now and then and try to take over the whole planet for themselves and eradicate humanity.....But other than that little bug they seem to work fine and you don't have to pay them.

Edited September 6, 2015 by aajs

[aajs]

Hi Tactical Dragon, I have managed to finsih my Vehicles mod so I have now got time to go back and build out my next set of improvements. Thought I would go back and find this post as you had a lot of interesting pointers. I though I would reply here rather than PM you so that I can pick up other peoples comments if they want to chip in.

- The general rules of targeting, distance and accuracy are awesome! I need to say that is the best part of the game, the difference of accurated shot at distance and burst shot in short range is incredible. Other Bravo for that!

Thanks for the possitive feedback here, it makes it all worth while and on the basis of this, I have imposed a "NO Change" rule on this part of my mod.

- New weapons and items, I appreciate every new content of the game but I need to point out that some of the stuff is redundant. For example when you reach one of the basic Tech. "Adv Pistols" you get two revolvers, I summit to test the differences of this two weapons and find out that they dont have different role in ground combat, is simple, one is better than other (And revolver is one of the most older weapon machinery of gun-making history).

There are indeed two revolvers, however one is in the Micro weapons category and one was in the Highpowered weapons category... The were very similar except The high power weapons do a tiny bit more damage and have slightly better armour mitigation than conventional pistols at the cost of fewer shots in the magazine. (Forcing a reload at inconvenient times unless planned).

However the Micro weapons do slightly less damage and have slightly weaker armour penetration, but with the benefit of only taking 4 slots in the inventory instead of six, they also provide a slightly higher reaction modifier as they are light, small and have low recoil etc. Of course thats all in the stats, however if in "real play" they seem very similar then I may need to go back and make the gap between the two a little broader, however I was concerned about nerfing them micro weapons to the point that nobody would use them, that making them a wast of space.

My Mods are about giving players more choices, however they need to be viable ones.

The mod has too much content for my taste, I strongly recommend reduce content, reduce the amount of researches (OR Even better make paths of research, if you need more information PM)

I am stuck with the huge content as its what my mods are all about presenting additional choices, in fact its about presenting so many choices that you cannot research everything and are forced to make some hard tactical decison for the long game.

This should appeal to us players who like a more RPG feel, but additionaly for tactical players who dont want to use the same old rinse and repeat tactics all the way through the game.

So that only leaves me only your final option "Make better paths of research". If you have any more ideas around how this would play out then I am very interested as I am not quite sure how to go about this.

- I love the aircraft module of this game, Hellicopters and ballons are smart choice and good touch to the game. Bravo again!.

Thanks I will leave this bit alone for now then as I have plenty of other things to work on for the next iterations.

*Review the use of grenades, some of then dont have relevant use in GC specially when you find difficult to use the grenades to interact with obstacles (Remove Adv. Grenade research, this grenades exist long time ago since WWII)

I take your point, I have an impoverished start to my game, so wanted the starting grenades to be nerfed but quickly replaced. I like the weakend start for the beggining of the game, because the vanilla games makes the starting levels a little easier while players get used to the interface etc and settle into the game, however Mod players have normally already played the vanilla games so starting levels can be a tiny bit easy and mundane. Starting with some rubbish weapons kind of resets this balance. So long story short, I nerfed the starting grenades, but put the option in to upgrade them to the standard vanilla ones (Frag (Pinapple)). I think my only error here is in the naming which will be adjusted.

*Give the player less content but unique feature or role for each element, in this game there are two kind of weapons that make the game easy, heavy machingunes and snipers, they are SO overpowered that you cant even with Tier 2 aliens with a full platoon of basic machinguners. Weapon balance is quiet hard and each time you add new weaposn things come up harder and harder.

I Cant really implement this as it goes directly against the definition of my mod. The only thing I can do is keep peforming reballance tuning based on feedback from real players.

*Difficulty and diversity in the game is unexistent, I recommend you check new aliens in XDiv or XNT, Xenomorphs and zombies can give some diversity to ground combat.

Yep point taken, I am going to be adding some of my own Aliens to my XMC Part 2 Mod that will hopefully suprise players and keep them on their toes.

The general overall of the game difficulty is dull, even if you play on Insane or Veteran. Make the game hard, make that Rockets has a role in combat, give grenades the importance that they have, make penalties fofr heavy weapons and add some flexibility to mobile weaponry like rifles and pistols. (You can make some test of XNT Hell Gate V6, this is a clear example of professional weapon balance).

Thanks for this, I will go make a study of XNT and see what I can do. I am thinking of a kind of Insanity mod where everything is ramped up challenge wise. But this is on back burner for now.

* Make refited UFOs a unique element of the game. Make enemy ships hard to kill, great fighters. Human aircraft are too good to refit an UFO and refited UFO are not good enough. In other words you dont need to refit any ufo, human air weaponry is HARDCORE. Make enemies faster, make enemy UFO highly resistant. When the time come your new refited recovered UFO will be your star in the sky.

Nice, I like it.

AASJ! My conrgatulation about your work, the art is amazing, the choices are incredible and the game is pretty near to vanilla game in concept and artwork.

Thanks, this has produced a bunch of additional tuning and concepts, which you will hopefully see in my upcoming revised versions.

[aajs]

Hi Rallige,

Just a quick update. I have implemented the Alenium weapons fix and distributed it out to as an emergency mod update.

I would have preferred for you to have playtested it a little more first, however as you were not around I thought I better go and updated it anyways, as I was making some changes to it to accommodate the new vehciles Mod.

However I also found in one of your older posts, a note saying how it was annoying putting the larger barracks into operation later in the game, because there was now ground space available. Well I though I would make the research available earlier, however I noticed its already available straight after the "Alien Invasion" message. Anyway by way of a fix I moved the starting buildings over to the right a little so that people can implement larger buildings at the beginning of the game in the starting base if they desire to do so...

This will be available in my next mini update.

Hope that is a suitable solution.

[Percster]

Not sure if this has been reported yet, but a quick search of this thread came up with zilch, so...

The visual range paramenter of the Sentinel Optics armour causes a crash on load (tactical map). It is set to a value of 1000 in the armours_gc.xml, which I assume to be a forgotten test. 100 works splendid on my end, at least in so far as it doesn't cause a crash anymore. For the sake of balance, something along the lines of 30 seems appropriate, same for the night range bonus.

[Reactorcore]

Not sure if bug or just lack of visual feedback, but tranqualizer gun bullets often vanish even if they seem to hit the target.

There was a problem with the game engine where bullets that travel too slowly will sometimes just not work at all. Might be a good idea to increase the speed to match those of regular bullet weapons to ensure there is no problem for sure.

[aajs]

Not sure if this has been reported yet, but a quick search of this thread came up with zilch, so...

The visual range paramenter of the Sentinel Optics armour causes a crash on load (tactical map). It is set to a value of 1000 in the armours_gc.xml, which I assume to be a forgotten test. 100 works splendid on my end, at least in so far as it doesn't cause a crash anymore. For the sake of balance, something along the lines of 30 seems appropriate, same for the night range bonus.

Thanks so much for spotting and thanks even more for testing with new values.

I has set range to 30 and 30 for night range bonus.

Hopefully that will sort the stability issues.

I might as well do a new upload as I don't like stability issues it really puts people off. Specially if they forgot to save.

I tell you its really easily getting things sorted when you get all this lovely feedback.

[aajs]

Not sure if bug or just lack of visual feedback, but tranqualizer gun bullets often vanish even if they seem to hit the target.

There was a problem with the game engine where bullets that travel too slowly will sometimes just not work at all. Might be a good idea to increase the speed to match those of regular bullet weapons to ensure there is no problem for sure.

Thanks Reactocore, I am on it. I have already speeded them up several times, however issue still seems to persist. I will bump it up a little more.

[EDIT]

Ah looks like I missed some last time, maybe you was finding the issue with on of those.

Heavy Machine gun speed: 1500

Tranq pistol LVL1 speed: 1500

Tranq pistol LVL2 speed: 1500

Tranq Pistol LVL4 speed: 1000 - Adjusting to 1500 same as rest

Tranq Rifle Asslt4 speed: 1000 - Adjusting to 1500 same as rest

Tranq Rifle Lvl2 speed: 1000 - Adjusting to 1500 same as rest

Tranq Rifle Sniper LVL4: 1500

Tranq Pistol Auto LVL4: 1500

Tranq Rifle Lvl3 speed: 1000 - Adjusting to 1500 same as rest

Hopefully that will sort it.

Will do an upload of this at same time.

Edited September 7, 2015 by aajs

[Reactorcore]

Yay, I finally beat my campaign, with a healthy +542.437.510$ from my vibranium knife industry in the end.

For the final mission, I outfitted everyone with airstrike callers and a nuke fest ensued that made the mission done in 5 turns. It was great.

Funnily enough, because alien corpses were added to the storeroom, I thought the whole time they were going to be used in manufacturing some cool tech, but turns out that was only for the antigrav device. So I ended a campaign with a literal mountain of rotting alien bodies piled up in my base lol.

About equipment, I didn't ever bother with laser or plasma weapons nor did I even manage to use mag weapons as they unlocked just before the final mission, since the advanced ballistics were excellent at taking down anything and were free, mostly using snipers, the occasional SAW, repeating shotguns or just straight up running with shield + vibranium knife combo, which was very powerful. Said weapons were effective at taking down everything in the end game too, so those usual laser/plasma upgrades were only useful for airplanes and bases.

If theres anything I felt missing, then that would be more shields and getting them earlier. Most of the time, an alien would one-shot the regular shield and I could only get an upgrade way much later, meanwhile I was getting gun upgrades very fast and very often, along with armor too, but shields were still limited mostly. Mostly I'd want a 3x3 tile small, quick light shield, a low tech heavy duty strong shield, lightweight carriable advanced shield and a super heavy extra advanced mega shield.

I also thought more alternatives to lightflares were missing, like a superlight pack that illuminates a LOT and a scatterable cheap TU-cost flares that you can spam over a wider area instead of focusing on one spot.

Most of all I enjoyed the new armors. Those were great, but I felt the descriptions didn't always give enough accurate information on what they really do, in terms of actual numbers instead of "it gives you moar sensors, go figure out if that means longer view or wider view lol".

I also never understood what did the genetic enhancement thing was about that was available research after medbay upgrade was complete. *shrug*

Speaking of buildings, those were really nice and worked well. I promptly had radars being more compressed with the more compact versions and even actual build quantum cryptology centers since I finally had free space to actually do that.

Overall it was fun, althought the research and manufacturing stuff has problems with pacing and overkill exploits like mentioned previously, although suprisingly I had quite a lot of fun by being able to manage 7 bases with lots of facilities and be more concerned with alien alloys and alenium, than money. Usually I only end up using 3 bases max in a vanilla playthrough.

[aajs]

Yay, I finally beat my campaign, with a healthy +542.437.510$ from my vibranium knife industry in the end.

For the final mission, I outfitted everyone with airstrike callers and a nuke fest ensued that made the mission done in 5 turns. It was great.

Well glad you liked it.

It would be nice if XCE edition let you disable certain vehicles and weapons on submaps so that you could not drive tanks etc around in alien bases....Or in my case call airstrikes.

Failing that as a fall back, it would be nice if we could remove items and the manufacturing process for it so that certain technologies could be locked down for the final part of the game...

Funnily enough, because alien corpses were added to the storeroom, I thought the whole time they were going to be used in manufacturing some cool tech, but turns out that was only for the antigrav device. So I ended a campaign with a literal mountain of rotting alien bodies piled up in my base lol.

Yep, I will be introducing additional Items that require alien corpses etc in time, however for now you can just sell most of them.

I may make some of the existing weapons / devices require additional recovered items for construction.

About equipment, I didn't ever bother with laser or plasma weapons nor did I even manage to use mag weapons as they unlocked just before the final mission, since the advanced ballistics were excellent at taking down anything and were free, mostly using snipers, the occasional SAW, repeating shotguns or just straight up running with shield + vibranium knife combo, which was very powerful. Said weapons were effective at taking down everything in the end game too, so those usual laser/plasma upgrades were only useful for airplanes and bases.

Rallige already reported the depleted Alenium weapon balance issue, and I have now nerfed the alenium weapons so that they are half way between standard bullets and lasers for base damage stats.... This is a bit of a power down, however they should still be appealing because they are free in unlimited quantities. However if you have the cash (hopefully not from your vibranium knife industry) then you can upgrade to the superior lasers... again you could still be able to complete the game on conventional weapons at a push.

If theres anything I felt missing, then that would be more shields and getting them earlier. Most of the time, an alien would one-shot the regular shield and I could only get an upgrade way much later, meanwhile I was getting gun upgrades very fast and very often, along with armor too, but shields were still limited mostly. Mostly I'd want a 3x3 tile small, quick light shield, a low tech heavy duty strong shield, lightweight carriable advanced shield and a super heavy extra advanced mega shield.

I agree I have got some ideas for alternate shields, but they are very tedious and time consuming to handle all the sprites, but I would like to retrofit an Alien Shield that can be captured from a Lizard Warrior. And a Vibranium round shield (with an American flag on it for some reason).

I also thought more alternatives to lightflares were missing, like a superlight pack that illuminates a LOT and a scatterable cheap TU-cost flares that you can spam over a wider area instead of focusing on one spot.

Again I think you are right on this, the game definitely could do with alternate flares / lighting it could switch the night missions from tedious to exciting. However I think drages told me they are un moddable which is a real shame.

Most of all I enjoyed the new armors. Those were great, but I felt the descriptions didn't always give enough accurate information on what they really do, in terms of actual numbers instead of "it gives you moar sensors, go figure out if that means longer view or wider view lol".

Glad you like the Armours, I would like to go back and add some additional poses to mix it up, and I actually have a request for the stats to be shown...at the moment I can add them to the xenopedia, but it would be amazing if you could get the tool tip stats by hovering the mouse over them like the pistols...However I think that would be a code change.

I also never understood what did the genetic enhancement thing was about that was available research after medbay upgrade was complete. *shrug*

Oh well I failed dismally on the explanation, but basically it gave +5 against all aliens.

Overall it was fun, although the research and manufacturing stuff has problems with pacing and overkill exploits like mentioned previously, although surprisingly I had quite a lot of fun by being able to manage 7 bases with lots of facilities and be more concerned with alien alloys and alenium, than money. Usually I only end up using 3 bases max in a vanilla playthrough.

What we need is a volunteer to take this on and remodel the whole research and manufacturing.....I think its a great subgame introducing a manufacturing for profit option, however sounds like its currently far to generous and should yield less cash.

I hopefully can get some of this implemented for my next release..

Edited September 11, 2015 by aajs

[drages]

Aaj, i said something about your weapon balancing issue but i think you missed it..

I know that you didn not touch to aiprop.xml so aliens are default. As i read here, ppl are complaining about energy weapons are not making a difference when you got same power ballistic weapons. The answer is "alien resistances" here. Give some aliens a resistance against ballistic or energy weapon. Like caesan energy resistance and sebs ballistic resistance. So ppl need to have for both weapons to engage different aliens. So you can have your weapons with same power.

[aajs]

Aaj, i said something about your weapon balancing issue but i think you missed it..

I know that you didn not touch to aiprop.xml so aliens are default. As i read here, ppl are complaining about energy weapons are not making a difference when you got same power ballistic weapons. The answer is "alien resistances" here. Give some aliens a resistance against ballistic or energy weapon. Like caesan energy resistance and sebs ballistic resistance. So ppl need to have for both weapons to engage different aliens. So you can have your weapons with same power.

Ooooh Nice,

Yes I did miss that. Thanks I think that will help a lot. That will almost fore a team to be kitted out with a mixture.

[Schraupel]

Hi aajs,

first of all: thanks a million for this amazing mod.

I have just bought Xenonauts (haven't played it yet) and will start a fresh, first and insane campaign tomorrow.

I have searched the forum and have found your collection the only range of mods I can deem "straightforward great & structured". Explanation is short and precise, i love that. The changes and additional content looks like just what a real hardcore strategy Schraupel needs.

---

Just 4 short questions regarding the process of installing your mods (after having just downloaded all of them):

1. the link to Lore+ leads to a dead end "Invalid or Deleted File"? Isnt hat mod to old for v1.59?

2. I really wondered why "Choices Part 4 – Armour" is 1.1 Gb large for 14 pieces of armor, compared to the size of the rest ?

3. The issue mentioned from drages (resistances for aliens to energy weapons):

would this be a fast fix for you to do? If not, it doesnt matter much. In the old XCOM game from 1994/95 i never researched them, because they were always weaker than the alien technology. Or did they change this in Xenonauts?

4. The use of vehicles:

I love the add. content you made. Only question is: doesn't it "steal" XP for my units? I read in themanual that skill up depends on actions, not xp. So it doesnt matter who kills the alien, right? Whoever does the kill, it doesnt matter, right? Only in that case, i could use vehicles , otherwise i would waste resources my soldiers would need to improve.

Does this ultimately mean i have to choose to either use the large amount of new ballistic weapons your mod provides instead of the newly researched technology based on alien stuff?

Just wonder if i can start a first new game tomorrow or not =)

I have installed/downloaded nothing besides all 15 (except Lore+, see above) pieces of your mod collection.

Looking forward for a nice an hard as bone round of Xenonauts (first time after 21 years, yeah!!),

all the best

Yours Schraupel

Edited September 13, 2015 by Schraupel

[mohreb]

I found the same issues then Schraupel for the lore+ mod,

i will try and see if it works with the steam-workshop versions of the mods (lore+ and the map packs seem to be on it as well, as some of the other mods, and the ones on goldhawkinteractive ask to wait between downloads anyway ...)

The one thing i am not sure is those random new maps, are they related to the map-mod alredy in the game by default, or are they on top of it?

[Schraupel]

Morning mohreb,

great, pls let me know if your attempt with steam worked or not (then i will start a new game with Lore +).

Could you answer my question regarding vehicles and combat experience? Still not sure whether to use them or not.

Thanks and have a nice day!