THIS IS SPARTA !!!! X-Division Version

[Charon]

8 hours ago, Dapifer said:

Anyone has some tips on airplane functions or wing composition?

In all my Xenonauts playthrough, modded and otherwise, I always just used wings of 2 of the best planes available, but now we have so many options... I am a little overwhelmed.

I have foxtrots and Asierus available but don´t know what to build, since they use the same resources...

Since Asierus looks cooler/more advanced I am currently constructing 2 to replace my first Condor wing.

Any advise would be much appreciated

Use dogfighters with cannons against interceptors and small UFOs, and bombers against anthing bigger.

The advantage of cannons is that their aircraft is fast and agile most of the time, and can roll. The downside is that their damage is not on par with missiles/torpedos.

Missiles are very versatile and share the trait that they do good damage with torpedos. The downside is that you will have a hard time downing interceptors with them.

If the UFO has escorts you will need to figure out what to do.

At least thats the basics .

 

Phase 1 is just the tutorial, so there is a lot of room for mistakes and time for experiments. The airgame is like a picture, and the colors are your aircraft and weapons.

[Dapifer]

I am absolutely LOVING the airgame now!!

I don´t know if it´s because I am playing on Easy or what, but two Condors went a long way downing everything on their path all through their shelf life until the arrival of Asierus.

I was actually very proud to retire the birds as undefeated champions of a bye-gone era. I was surprised to read the scientist on the XPedia talk about them being expendable "Send one, lose one" type of sacrificial craft.

In vanilla I felt the airgame was just alpha striking, now I am using pulling and bait-and-switch tactics, shifting velocities constantly to adjust for turn rate and turn on afterburners for kill shots.

 

" If the UFO has escorts you will need to figure out what to do."

 

Hoooooeeeeey. Well, I guess R.I.P. this run, then.

 

This mod has been so much fun.

 

 

[Charon]

The airgame is definitely what you make out of it, and if you want to use condors to shoot em down go ahead, paint your picture. Dont be shy to use your imagination .

On easy the airgame is considerably easier with less health and less speed as well as a toned down AI for UFOs.

 

Good luck

[Charon]

6. Airgame Basics

 

 

[Ingeras Kurai]

Anyone have tips on taking down a battleship in phase 2?  Currently I'm using Corsair's to take out the escorts, but 3 lancers with gravity torpedoes doesn't quite do the trick.  I'm debating on trying plasma torpedoes but they seem like a downgrade as in total they do less damage which makes me hesitant to build any.  What setups do you use to take down a battleship?

Edit: Tried it with plasma torpedoes and still no luck...is it just not possible to take down battleships this early in the game?  I mainly want to take one down as that would lead to a new type of aircraft.

Edited January 27, 2018 by Ingeras Kurai

[Charon]

10 hours ago, Ingeras Kurai said:

Anyone have tips on taking down a battleship in phase 2?  Currently I'm using Corsair's to take out the escorts, but 3 lancers with gravity torpedoes doesn't quite do the trick.  I'm debating on trying plasma torpedoes but they seem like a downgrade as in total they do less damage which makes me hesitant to build any.  What setups do you use to take down a battleship?

Edit: Tried it with plasma torpedoes and still no luck...is it just not possible to take down battleships this early in the game?  I mainly want to take one down as that would lead to a new type of aircraft.

 

 

Edited January 27, 2018 by Charon

[Ingeras Kurai]

Thanks, I guess i need a lot more ships, was hoping i could do it in 1 or 2 waves.

[dalo]

I understand this expansion is for sadistic players and I am not its target audience. This feedback is based on my experience to try, learn, save scum, mod to my liking and cheat through it, which probably not worth much attention (at least read bug section).

[AIR COMBAT]
I tried hard and still can’t appreciate the new air combat. Seeing not that rewarding in saving repair time or squadron size, I turn on Easy Airgame.
The learning curve is so steep that new player has no idea what went wrong. Is it player skill? craft loadout? tech level? not a clue. There aren’t enough advice in xpedia for aircraft and loadout choices. Player was gambling in research and loadout that may be too late to revise (against construction/terror/base assault). How about revealing the minimum requirements of every encounter? Then player can work their skill up there.
Even if I imagine myself mastering the cumbersome UI, I will still need to spend 10+ minutes on every encounter. Let alone the supposed time saving auto-resolve didn’t fair, my best equipped firebird can’t score 50% against the lowest light scout. There is nearly no strategic auto-resolve win for sending the right crafts with right loadout to the right ufos.

[GROUND COMBAT]
What’s wrong with the nauts' kneels? Crouching cost as much time as moving two tiles, which discourage usage of the crouch mechanics, make game dull and not xcom-ish. I would rather nerfing the benefits of crouch than increasing its cost. Seriously, what’s wrong with the nauts' kneels? What’s the point of doubling crouch facing TU? I used to crouch facing to cut animation.
There is too much capturing, list checking, spawning, similar skins, wandering into overwatch and fruitless researches. Would it be much easier to follow if changing tech tree into OfficerInterrogation1, 2, 3 instead?
Lack of inventory space. Soldiers need their backpack for alternative damage type and ammo clips for the ever inflating enemy hp/resistance. There isn’t much room left for situational equipment and interesting tactic. Interestingly, despite antimatter weapon remove the resistance mechanics, the game feel more vivid with more toys to play with.
In theory caesan shield rewards flanking, in practice caesan just turn his face to the flanker make me save no damage either case. I could better off forget about the mechanic and attack him head on, unless I could sandwish him or able to one hit kill which never happen.
Andron doesn’t feature unique tactic to fight against. They have no clear weakness and require tedious peeling. That tactic has already been taken by tank/hvydrone. Fighting against andron isn’t fun or rewarding, they doesn’t feature specialists to capture, will destroy loots on transform, and require a high ammo loadout.

[BALANCE]
The accuracy of division sniper is too low comparing to laser equivalent or division rifle.
Antimatter is too good in accuracy and too good in saving space.
Shotgun's position is weird. With melee being the choice of close range, shotgun becomes a supplement stun rod which can’t function on its own. I would rather see using shotgun to tear down resistance/suppression/preliminary stunning from mid-range then using high risk stun rod to do the finishing. Besides, there is no place for the weaker of ballistic/energy variation.
EMP branch is not practical for now. EMPs are not scalable, have low acc and reflex, deal less damage than the universal applicable energy weapon or explosive.
Is it really necessary to have so many type of ammo clip? What should my mule carry?
What’s the position of predator armor? It has no TU reduction for firing, no singularity cannon to equip and has reflex penalty. Shield unit would tank better, wolf armor would shot faster, and heavy weapon already come with reaction penalty.
The endgame dragged too long and nothing interesting happened. In xce, I used to having endgame mission in place and waiting singularity at leisure. In x-div, even with am.mk4 in hand, cyclone&archelon at bay and researcher on leave, the endgame still took months to come. Please consider any 2 of terrordreadnought/dreadnought/mothership/infiltrator and any 2 of praetor base/terror/fleet/overmind and a shorter final research.

[MISC/WHINING]
DataHack## Function.Chance. I understand those are to fill tech tree holes but it still doesn’t justify adding unleverageable RNG on top of spawning RNG.
Please add some usage tips and comparative info to item xpedia. e.g. smg: suppression alterative of pistol, mech: designated weapons only,  f17: not replaceable with foxtrot, katana: not as good as axe, shotgun: not what used to be in xce.
Please add some enemy stats to interrogation/vivisection xpedia such as TU, HP, resistance and AddDamageBonus.
Lore wise, some enemy resistance doesn’t make sense. Drones/RoboReapers/Cyberdiscs are weak to kinetic, despite being as robotic as andron. Aren’t sebillians blind to fire in xce? They are comfortably wielding flamethrower now. Why am I harvesting toxin glands from reaper instead of xenomorphs? Xenos are those spreading acid all over the place, reaper just want to hug and share love.
The protector of humanity will never ever let pass a single terror ship, unless for antimatter...
999turns to reveal terror/base map... xenonauts are tasked to save city from terror not checking every street corner for pest. Rules like holding ufo for turns to win, capturing alien base headquarter to reveal are to cut boring play time.
DSB is busy work. Instead of having hundreds of unique dsb items, is it possible to aggregate into some universal unprocessed items? The storage screen took me 10+ seconds for every open/sort/transfer.
Too much grinding for components. I would prefer dsb some lower tier equipment for components instead of holding up on spending.
Raiding alien base reward is not good enough after the first. And there is little reason to let base growth.
Infiltrator has no ground battle
Reaction melee didn’t work
Is it possible to add some custom rocket launchers loaded with various rockets on default? (as a workaround to the default rocket launcher loadout reset)

[LIKE]
Aggressive grenade AI
Heavy weapon has low reaction
Xenomorph, those suicidal xeno bomber, setting up overwatch outside a xenomorph ufo before turn4, and executing xeno host in a crown of normal citizen.
Unlock new equipments/aircrafts for taking optional challenging missions. Sadly those are pretty much mandatory in tackling limited backpack space (am.weapon) and harsh airgame (firebird&cyclone).

[BUG]
You will never unlock singular weapons. There is a typo in researches.xml weapon.AlienEx(t)Grenade
Vehicles cannot equip singularity rocket because of missing (VV.)SINGULARROCKET in vehicles.xml
Still can't figure why can’t I unlock Researches.AV.PARTICLECANNON
Cyclone can’t evade in EasyAirgame
Two-hand melee weapon is equipped as two single-hand weapon on main-hand and off-hand (dual-wielding please? :D). Each item on hands can be removed separately (duplicating items). Placing another item to main-hand while off-hand holding such melee weapon will cause both to disappear.
Some variation of two-story ufo will have persistence roof blocking interior view in roof/normal mode view setting.
Xenogueen may not spawn when her host killed.
Despite wearing armor highly resistant to fire/emp cloud, pathfinding will still try to avoid fire/emp which I don’t recall happened in xce.
The sort button in soldier screen is missing.

[Charon]

@dalo Can you tell me what version of X-Division you were playing + a screenshot of your modloader ?

[dalo]

 X-Division 0.99.45

modloader as is installation with EasyAirgame activited

[Charon]

Just now, dalo said:

 X-Division 0.99.45

modloader as is installation with EasyAirgame activited

Please make a screenshot of your modloader, if you can help it.

[dalo]

there it is

[Charon]

@dalo You cannot activate Easy Airgame anymore, only No airgame. Delete Easy Airgame and activate No airgame.

[Charon]

@dalo #Feedback

Well, most of your problems already originated from not properly installing the game, and as a result an out of date easy airgame messed up your airgame pretty hard.

 

#kneeling
I would rather say high cost, high effect is better than no cost no effect. If something doesnt do anything why spend time on it, if kneeling isnt worth why even do it ?

 

#antimatter weapons
Antimatter weapons have been revised but since we wanted to give the player the chance to keep savegame compability we refrained from adding the updated researches.xml. The next version will have an appropriate antimatter tech tree, in regard to its strenght.

 

> In theory caesan shield rewards flanking, in practice caesan just turn his face to the flanker make me save no damage either case. I could better off forget about the mechanic and attack him head on, unless I could sandwish him or able to one hit kill which never happen.

Yes, caesan are frail as a squish they need their shield. Having a shield still rewards for tactical gameplay like splitting your squad and is heavily OP in close quarters situations like base attacks.

 

> Fighting against andron isn’t fun or rewarding , they doesn’t feature specialists to capture, will destroy loots on transform,

Andron units give you access to most armours. Thats pretty rewarding and necessary. Beyond that they give the most resources of all races.
Loot gets added back with the unit they transform in. Once you killed the transformed unit you get everything.

 

> What’s the position of predator armor? It has no TU reduction for firing, no singularity cannon to equip and has reflex penalty. Shield unit would tank better, wolf armor would shot faster, and heavy weapon already come with reaction penalty.

The Exoskelet Class armour has its niche as a highly armoured tank, with strenght settings abilties, acting as your main mule with heavy fire support/suppression capabilities. Ontop of that they are good rooky armours as they increase survivability and makes them able to carry a lot depending on tech armour without any prior training. They also increase hp, which is arguably the most important stats to run a successful Xenonauts Opertation.

I think the point of the predator armour will go right above your head if you savescum. With the power of savescumming, who needs hp, survivabiltiy or rookies ? Like aint nobody got time for that.

 

#Endgame
Hasnt been done yet.

[BUG]s
I couldnt find the research since there dont seem to be anything wrong with it.
Fixed the  (VV.)SINGULARROCKET  one
Normal Xenoqueen host should be able to spawn a normal queen. Facehugger Hosts for queens and praetors can indeed be killed before they hatch a full grown queen, as this is the intended mechanic.
Pathfinding is the same as in xce, but in X-Division they are a lot of more clouds around
What sort button ?

 

I appreciate your feedback and this is just my feedback to yours . If you played through the whole game you must have enjoyed it a bit, , and writing angry reviews is mostly because somebody really cares about something.

Thank you for the bug report, we will try to implement everything we find.

A lot of your feedback also concerns the Xpedia and advice. I think you are on point with your feedback, but if nobody is writing the Xpedia from A to Z, nobody will have one to read.

[Charon]

@dalo#Bugs Found the weapon.AlienExGrenade one.

[dalo]

I did enjoy it as a twist of one of my favorite game and as a means to understand sadistic player.

It may sound angry mostly because written at the end of diminishing enjoyment. Anything fun would have been tired out in the course of weeks playtime.

[Charon]

7. Pandis Aircombat Circus

If ´yer ever wondered to what perfection a player can play the airgame, take  a look into Pandis Aircombat circus, the man who can defeat UFOs with a single toothpick.

 

On 24.2.2018 at 5:20 PM, Pandi said:

Some time ago, @Charon asked me for some air battle chronicle. Now I finally found an opportunity to do this, and I hope it will be useful for someone.
The first wave of the 3rd phase with a terror battleship at the head. Veteran Ironman.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaDNF1hymzQ

Enjoy!

 

Edited February 26, 2018 by Charon

[Charon]

5.5 Techtree for yED

 

[Venerate]

I was wanting to change around the starting base layout for a more ascetically pleasing purpose for me, but when i tried to change the layout it kinda didn't work. Basically it reverted to another game config setup for base layout, starting money, starting ships and such. Anyone have an idea what i can do or why this is happening? 

[Charon]

57 minutes ago, Venerate said:

I was wanting to change around the starting base layout for a more ascetically pleasing purpose for me, but when i tried to change the layout it kinda didn't work. Basically it reverted to another game config setup for base layout, starting money, starting ships and such. Anyone have an idea what i can do or why this is happening? 

 

[Larry Burstyn]

Need some help.  Like to change the X-Division balance a little but have run into some problems.

1.  Like to delay the start of the phases but cannot find where that is controlled.  My eyes are not so good so looking at lots of text hurts after a few minutes.

2.  Added a new manufacture and it crashes when the item is finished being produced.  The item being produced is already in the item.xml.  I added to research.xml (unlock manufacture) and it allows me to "produce" the item (it shows up in the Engineers to do list)..added needed changes to string.xml to say what is needed to produce and what is produced.  When the item is produced the game stalls and then crashes to desktop.

 

This is entirely for myself since I get so frustrated when my forces are wiped out when the new phase begins and all my weapons are useless.  And I have not produced enough of the new weapons to outfit my soldiers better than the LOCALS.  I will not be uploading my changes anywhere or sharing it with anyone.

[Charon]

1 hour ago, Larry Burstyn said:

1.  Like to delay the start of the phases but cannot find where that is controlled.  My eyes are not so good so looking at lots of text hurts after a few minutes.

There are multiple files who work in conjunction with each other, and you would need to change all of them. You can start with the AM_* files.

1 hour ago, Larry Burstyn said:

2.  Added a new manufacture and it crashes when the item is finished being produced.  The item being produced is already in the item.xml.  I added to research.xml (unlock manufacture) and it allows me to "produce" the item (it shows up in the Engineers to do list)..added needed changes to string.xml to say what is needed to produce and what is produced.  When the item is produced the game stalls and then crashes to desktop.

I urge you to look into the

thread, as it gives you a lot of information. "How to properly test mods and changes you made to the game" and "The comprehensive guide to modding and the modmerging system of XCE" especially.

 

1 hour ago, Larry Burstyn said:

This is entirely for myself since I get so frustrated when my forces are wiped out when the new phase begins and all my weapons are useless.  And I have not produced enough of the new weapons to outfit my soldiers better than the LOCALS.  I will not be uploading my changes anywhere or sharing it with anyone.

Dont worry about that, sharing is caring. If you are struggling with the difficulty of the game you can look into the difficulty modifiers of the game in the gameconfig.xml.

<!-- DIFFICULTY MULTIPLIERS -->
<!-- The values for each are multiplied by these numbers -->

  <alienTickerSpeedEasy          value="0.8" />
  <alienTickerSpeedNormal        value="0.9" />
  <alienTickerSpeedVeteran       value="0.9" />
  <alienTickerSpeedSuperhuman    value="1.0" />
  <ufoHealthEasy                 value="0.75" />
  <ufoHealthNormal               value="1.0" />
  <ufoHealthVeteran              value="1.0" />
  <ufoHealthSuperhuman           value="1.0" />
  <alienAttributeEasy            value="0.7" />
  <alienAttributeNormal          value="0.8" />
  <alienAttributeVeteran         value="1.0" />
  <alienAttributeSuperhuman      value="1.25" />
  <alienWeaponDamageEasy         value="0.6" />
  <alienWeaponDamageNormal       value="0.8" />
  <alienWeaponDamageVeteran      value="1.0" />
  <alienWeaponDamageSuperhuman   value="1.1" />
  <alienWeaponAccuracyEasy       value="0.6" />
  <alienWeaponAccuracyNormal     value="0.8" />
  <alienWeaponAccuracyVeteran    value="1.0" />
  <alienWeaponAccuracySuperhuman value="1.25" />
  
  <humanAirplaneSpeedEasy        value="1.0" />
  <humanAirplaneSpeedNormal        value="1.0" />
  <humanAirplaneSpeedVeteran    value="1.0" />
  <humanAirplaneSpeedSuperhuman    value="1.0" />
  <humanAirplaneRangeEasy        value="1.0" />
  <humanAirplaneRangeNormal        value="1.0" />
  <humanAirplaneRangeVeteran    value="1.0" />
  <humanAirplaneRangeSuperhuman    value="0.8" />

  <maintenanceModifierEasy            value="0.75" />
  <maintenanceModifierNormal        value="0.9" />
  <maintenanceModifierVeteran        value="1.0" />
  <maintenanceModifierSuperhuman    value="1.0" />

 

Maybe you find something for youslef there.

[Larry Burstyn]

I looked at the modding discussion area and nowhere did I find a hint at a solution to my produce item and crash problem.  Now my eyes hurt and I'm no closer to finding an answer.  Maybe I need something in the manufacture xml of the item than the stock item line...but I have no idea as to what is missing.

 

In 2010 i had a incident with my left eye.  My retina tore free and covered the part of the eye that sees details.  I've had two retina surgeries but I never got back the ability of the left eye to read text...so my right eye does ALL the work...it gets tired and gives me pain (headaches and eye strain).  With my left eye everything is badly distorted.

Edited August 17, 2018 by Larry Burstyn
Some info as to why I complain about reading

[Fox]

can anyone tell(modding question) - how to add new UFOs to the game itself?

[Dariosgas]

Soo, I the mod looks promising and I've enjoyed many hours of it already, but I am having a hard time finding the kind of information I am looking for.

Is there an X-Division manual somewhere?. Knowing the mechanics is a huge part of this game, but I've searched the forums for a long time and can't find anything capable of quenching my desire for information. The kind of information I am looking for is, for example, stat gain mechanics, promotion mechanics, mental status, reflexes! and... pretty much everything. And why not extra info about the enemies because the autopsies descriptions are barely enough in most cases.

Also, and just as important as mechanics: the tech tree!- is there an easily accessible tech tree?. I know, there is a tech tree in graphml format, I even went through the hassle of downloading the required graphics editor. It *almost* worked, but I fail to find out how to search for techs unless I know exacly what the tech is called like in the graph. For example, if I search for "defender" or "shock", the editor won't find any macthes. Going through the xml with a text editor isn't exactly user friendly either.

Besides that, is there a way to tempt aliens out of the room they are guarding?. For example in an alien base raid or any larger UFO I am having a hard time clearing the last room because some aliens will just sit in one corner and discharge a full machinegun burst on your flank as soon as you pop your head inside the room, resulting in a dead soldier most times. I've tried with a shield and a knife (for reflexes, kinda guessing it reduces the chances of triggering reaction fire) with no success.

Another thing: are cannons (as in division cannon) useful at all?. All other weapons have their niche, but I still haven't found what cannons are good for. They are heavy, innacurate, clips are huge and have little ammo, you can't go for pointblank shots, they don't destroy cover better than grenades, they don't supress better than machineguns, and they destroy loot.