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Equipment addons?


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Equipment addons.  Jagged Alliance have it.  Afterlight have it.  XCOM 2 have it.  How about X2?

Pros:

  • Extend useful life of old equipments.
        New weapons addons can make old guns more powerful, a middle point between new weapons and old weapons.
     
  • Fine tune tactical experience.
        Scopes may increase aiming mode accuracy for higher TU.  And weight, of course.  Put it on a rifle and you have a sharpshooter rifle.
     
  • Interaction with perks and base slots.
        Soldiers with sniping perk may be able to target body parts with a scope, but scope is still useful for soldiers without the perk.
        Some addons, like googles, sights, and laser weapon addons, may require an optic building to produce.

Cons:

  • It'll surely complicate things, both tactical and strategic.

Examples:

  • Medkit: Painkiller (morale) or stimulant?
  • Body: Ceramic plate or rebreather?
  • Battery: Night vision google or Mindshield?
  • Gun: Underbarrel grenade launcher or underbarrel taser? (Yes. Taser.)
  • Sword: EM shock or vibration chamber? (gunblade style)
  • Robot: Overclocker, optics, or stabilizer?
  • No addon, I want to bring more grenades.

Expansion:

If the addons have multiple levels, they can even completely take over firepower upgrade, so that new weapons can focus on other enhancements instead.

For example, in Afterlight you slap "accelerator" and "advanced accelerator" to the barrel, to increase the damage of firearms.
You'll have soldiers wielding heavily modded firearms (even pistols) right into final mission.
What new weapons do is they open new tactical play.  Laser rifle has very high hit chance, and EM weapon gives you guided projectile (blasterlauncher).

This is not necessary a good thing. But I have to say it is refreshing (laser weapon is not always better) and add depth to production strategy.

Edited by Sheepy
Rename mod to addon
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  • 4 months later...

I like the idea of customization choices; they could be saved like soldier default gear.  

It would also allow for vehicle and aircraft customization - speed vs armor vs weapons vs cargo vs techtoys.

And this opens the field for soldier upgrades (bionics, alien dna, hybrid earth animal organs, whatever).  We see in XN1 a vet with a cyberlimb - what if xenonauts sometimes lost those limbs, and went to a retirement home until we have the prosthetics to field them again?  Warning: if based on Andron technology, expect the Androns to know where those soldiers are - at least until Research realizes their "oops" and allows for alternate (potentially less powerful) augmentations.

Ooh, and what if such surgeries were NOT guaranteed to succeed?  Surgery, especially early game, could be more dangerous than sending your soldier into combat.  The prep time, the risk, the recovery time - is it really worth it?  What if some technologies that improve odds/reduce damage are learned only by doing?  Is a 10% more likely to revive fallen soldiers worth getting the nickname "The Butcher"?

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On 2/24/2017 at 6:16 PM, endersblade said:

Gear customization is one of the things I absolutely loved about the UFO: Afterblank series, as well as the new XCOM games.

Afterblank didn't use that until Aftershock, and is probably the only reason why you didn't simply produce only one weapon and nothing at all. Add to that the various resistances that are a staple of the series and you're forced to haul multiple weapons because there isn't one 'powerful' weapon. Addons can even change the capabilities of these weapons like adding sniper scopes to precision rifles makes them able to be aimed at a body part after the user gets a skill. 'Accelerators' make kinetic weapons far more effective by improving muzzle velocity while silencers make it hard to pinpoint the shooter. Then there is the shit that some mods would add in like a giant fuck-off AMR that kills pretty much anything one-shot but required sniper and heavy weapons training to use and power armor to wield.

2 hours ago, CommissarGeneralClark said:

I like gear customisation, but felt sometimes it got out of hand. I wouldn't mind seeing a simpler, more streamlined version. 

That really isn't a problem with the Afterblank series as the KISS principle really applies there. There you've got your basic and advanced variants of equipment that generally modifies how they work in a general straightforward way.

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This is actually something we're looking into this time around, although it'd be a relatively simple system that allows you to make minor changes to each piece of gear if you want to - e.g. do you want to pick a close combat scope for your rifle, or a long range one? Do you want extra ceramic plates in your armour to make your soldier tougher at the cost of lowering his TU? Do you want a rebreather on your helmet at the cost of reduced vision range? That sorta thing, hopefully.

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@Chris

Been a long time fan of Xeno and an original X-com player.  It is time for me to get involved again, since you guys are one of the few companies that actually listen to the players.  Which BTW is greatly appreciated.

I will stay on topic here, and It really is imperative that add-ons be implemented into the the game. Even if they are done simply for the game at first. The most important thing here is for modders like myself to be able to implement great ideas, so the level of control needs to be there for the add-ons.  Like your examples listed above, the ability to adjust any item with an "add-on" will greatly increase the immersion to the game.  It will also allow the modding community to greatly expand the game with great ideas, you guys might not think of.

This is definitely one of the best features in X2- which BTW I actually despise in almost all aspects other than the characters and weapons. Please stay away from "mainstreaming" or simplifying game play like they did to X2, because that is not the kind of game most of us are looking for.

I.E. Putting on a 6x scope should increase accuracy at a min distance, but increase TU's to fire the weapon.

For explosives, you could have different types of sensors or triggers like proximity or remote detonation.

Edited by Xeryx
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