A modification for the 2012 Game X-Com: Enemy Unknown with the 2013 expansion, X-Com: Enemy Within.LW-EW Beta 15f3 * Release Date: Aug. 18, 2015
'Takes XCOM to a new level.' -- XCOM lead developer Jake Solomon, via Twitter, April 23, 2014https://twitter.com/SolomonJake/statuses/469913573578530816
'We're basically a 20-hour tutorial for Long War, and that's okay.' -- Solomon, via IGN, June 9, 2015http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/06/08/xcom-2s-exciting-modding-potential-ign-first
'This mod is the absolute best way to play XCOM' -- Wired, Nov. 17, 2014http://www.wired.com/2014/11/mod-absolute-best-way-play-xcom/
'This is a collection of profound and surprisingly careful changes .. It's like a free expansion pack ..' - Rock, Paper, Shotgunhttp://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/05/16/xcom-hardcore-mod/
'Terrific ..' -- Kokatu, Aug. 6, 2014http://kotaku.com/5878852/the-12-best-games-on-pc
Named by PCGamer one of 'the 15 most brutal mods of all time' and in November 2014 was the site's Mod of the Week.http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/10/05/the-15-most-brutal-mods-of-all-time/3/http://www.pcgamer.com/mod-of-the-week-the-long-war-for-xcom/
- Chief Designer and Programmer: JohnnyLump
- Chief Programmer and Designer: Amineri
- Chief UI Programmer and Artist: XMarksTheSpot
- Programmer and Chief Quality Assurance Specialist: Ellatan
- Senior Contributing Programmer: WGhost81
- Senior Contributing Sound Editor and Programmer: TrackTwo
- Senior Contributing Artist: JCLewis
- Contributing Artists: Ebolii, Obstbanane, Zyxpsilon, lfish, Kordolius, IvanDogovich, Neonin, AlexGlitch
- Contributing Programmers: Liquid911, SpazmoJones/Eclipse666, Orost, Part Time Commie, Uberjumper, Drakous79, Peasly Wellbott, Bertilsson, Bokauk, BlackAlpha, Guicomir, MuckBeth, Oddball_E8
- MapMaster: Liquid911
- Contributing Sound Engineer: Matt Lees
- Translators: Noganeto1 (Spanish), Aldo32 (Spanish), Kordolius (French), Ciome (Italian)
- Cultural Researcher: Uzifeline
- Linux Port: Shivoc, Falex007, WGhost81
- Mac OS/X Port: Thither, Anderkent
- Thanks to: Kevin Schultz, Dan Price, Roland Rizzo at Firaxis Games for some expert assistance
- Additonal thanks to: DubiousIntent (X-Com's modding archivist), Hobbes (for hosting the Long War XCOM wiki), Gugacuardo, Tapkomet, Ogel, and Thunder_GR (soldier name lists), Heramael (copyediting)
- And even more thanks to longtime feedbackers, wiki organizers and beta testers, including: 8wayz, Amanasleep, Anderkent, Beaglerush, Bilfdoffle, Deducter, Devon_v, Ucross, Xwynns
Voice Actors
Gerrit Aalbers (South African Male 1)Jezdamayel Caster (English Female 1): https://www.youtube.com/user/GamingWithJezdamayelIan Chisholm (English Male 2): http://www.clearskiesthemovie.comJurgen Delaere (South African Male 2)Ian Dransfield (English Male 1): https://www.youtube.com/user/iandransfieldLouise Dumée (South African Female 1)Eveline Frei (Swiss/Euro Female 1)Jakub 'Faleg' Janicki (Polish/Euro Male 1)Sean Lally (English Male 3): http://steamcommunity.com/id/fiindilJustin Loke (SE Asian Male 1)Russell Meyer (Australian Male 3): http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=292007783Bec Pelvay (Australian Female 1)Michael Richardson (Australian Male 2)Graydon Schlichter (Irish Male 1): http://voice123.com/graydonschlichterBenjamin Smit (Dutch/Euro Male 1): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1DIA43WBkpaR7T6DDIRlwgPing Teo (SE Asian Female 1): https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9980849/1/XCOM-From-The-Ashes-of-TemplesJamie Williamson (Australian Male 1)Jordan Wistuba (Scottish Male 1): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUPoLC-dedTwEL9ntT4qJcQ
You must have a legitimate version of Enemy Within to play this mod. This mod is for games with the March 10, 2014, patch, what we're calling EW Patch 3. The game version is still listed as 401776.An Enemy Unknown version of this mod is available on the Nexus.
For the latest version of this mod, go to XCOM Nexus: http://www.nexusmods.com/xcom/mods/88/Endorsements on the Nexus are welcome! They help promote this mod so other players can find it.
The Long War wiki is here: http://ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Long_War
We want your feedback! Please post on the Mod page on the Nexus. Please read the 'known issues' entries below before reporting a bug, but if it's not there, let us know!
THANK YOU TO ALL OUR DONORS!
Blatant Self-Promotion
Once Long War is complete, some of the Long War team will be developing original games. If you'd like to stay updated on their efforts, drop an email to [email protected]
Check out mod designer John Lumpkin's science fiction novels, Through Struggle, the Stars, and its sequel, The Desert of Stars, available as an e-book and paperback on Amazon and elsewhere. Visit www.thehumanreach.net for details. In its May 2012 edition, the venerable Analog Science Fiction magazine called it 'all good, great fun.' A sequel, The Desert of Stars, was published in March 2013.And take a look at Long War artist lfish's portraits and illustrations here: http://www.danaillustration.com/
PLEASE READ THIS README, ESPECIALLY THE ENTIRE FAQ, OR SOME GAME EVENTS WON'T MAKE SENSE. This mod makes hundreds of changes, large and small, to the vanilla versions of the game. It is harder and longer than the vanilla version but gives you many more tools to combat the alien threat.
Long War Summary
Some of the changes in this mod include:
- An extended campaign requiring far more missions to complete
- Tactical missions that allow up to twelve XCom soldiers per mission with the right upgrades
- Eight soldier classes: Infantry, Assault, Sniper, Scout, Gunner, Rocketeer, Medic and Engineer, and eight MEC classes: Valkyrie, Marauder, Jaeger, Pathfinder, Goliath, Archer, Guardian and Shogun
- New and modified perks, including Ranger, Sapper, HEAT Warheads, Lock N' Load and Javelin Rockets
- New and modified technologies, including Xenopsionics, Alien Biocybernetics, Pulse Lasers, Gauss Weapons and Advanced Aerospace Concepts, and many new foundry projects
- Five tiers of XCOM weaponry, many new weapons, like SMGs, marksman's rifles, and the sawed-off shotgun, armors and small items, and SHIVs that can be equipped with perk-granting small items!
- Much earlier access to psionics and vastly expanded psionics tree, with new psi powers unlocked by alien autopsies and interrogations
- A system of commissioning and promoting XCOM officers who provide bonuses to your entire squad during missions (replaces the EW medals system)
- Overhauled interception game, with five new UFO classes, such as the fighter, raider and harvester, as well as six interceptors per continent, foundry projects to upgrade your aircraft, individualized pilot names and pilot experience, and the Stingray Missile weapon system
- Overhauled strategy game, in which the aliens gather resources and conduct research -- efforts XCOM must interdict if it hopes to save humanity. XCOM can now retake countries by finding and conquering alien bases in those countries. Help council countries defend themselves by fulfilling their requests for alien technology!
- Aliens and EXALT forces now grow tougher over time, gaining stats and perks. Enemy units will have leaders who are particularly challenging, and will sometimes be real monsters! You will also see greater variety in alien pods.
- Requirement that soldiers rest after each mission and repair damaged items, requiring the player to build a much deeper roster of soldiers and larger stockpile of gear
- A variety of starting country options, each granting XCOM a special ability from the campaign start
- Modified second wave options to support longer campaign
- New English voicepacks in a variety of international accents
Most of the specific changes will be detailed in in-game text .. many game mechanics have changed, so read perk, tech and item descriptions closely! They may not do what you expect from vanilla.
Perk trees for all classes and the tech tree are in files in your XEW directory.
THANK YOU FOR TESTING A BETA. PLEASE NOTE IT MAY HAVE STABILITY PROBLEMS AND OTHER BUGS, SO PLAYING IRONMAN OR WITH AUTOSAVE OFF IS NOT A GOOD IDEA. IT MAY ALSO HAVE BALANCE ISSUES. If you want a cleaner version of this mod, you should play the EU version or wait until this version is final.Please check the Known Issues first, and if your issue isn't listed, we want detailed feedback on all of those things on the Long War EW Beta feedback forum.Make sure you post your difficulty level, any Second Wave options you are using, and whether you started a campaign under this version, or a prior one.Also note that Future Betas/Final versions may invalidate existing campaigns.
To install:
- If you have ever played with any other mods on your EW install, or have changed some files yourself, verify back to a vanilla installation of EW before installing Long War. If you have any trouble with installation, do this as well.
- Disable any antivirus software. We have specific reports that Comodo security software can prevent a proper install; some have reported installation problems with it on while others with it installed but off. We have separate reports that BitDefender Free will crash XCOM with this mod.
- Make sure you have the latest .net framework installed.
- Close and exit Steam.
- Run the installer.
- When you select your path to install the mod, you should receive a warning that the directory already exists, although we have had reports that it doesn't if you run in the installer in admin mode. If you aren't in admin mode and don't get this warning, you may have selected the wrong path. Atypical Steam installations may require a different path.
- Start the game once. You may receive a CTD error; this appears to be some aspect of the mod completing installation and making nice with Steam. Start it again, and it should run.
- If you have been playing vanilla XCOM in a language other than the one you installed it in, switch XCOM to the installed Long War's language via its properties in Steam.
If you get multiple CTDs upon starting the first mission, and/or see only four soldiers in the Skyranger during the first mission, or see graphical glitches with some of the new weapons, this may be evidence of a bad install. You may try the following steps:
- Go to C:UsersYOUR WINDOWS USERNAMEDocumentsMy GamesXCOM - Enemy WithinXComGameConfig
- Delete all files in that directory.
- Start the game and see if it works.
- Make sure three files are NOT present. They will cause CTDs on launch. If they are, delete them and start the game:{app}XComGameCookedPCConsoleXComGame.upk.uncompressed_size{app}XComGameCookedPCConsoleXComStrategyGame.upk.uncompressed_size{app}XComGameCookedPCConsoleEngine.upk.uncompressed_size
- If that still doesn't work, Go to C:UsersYOUR WINDOWS UDERNAMEDocumentsMy GamesXCOM - Enemy WithinXComGameSaveData
- Delete or rename the file profile.bin. You should to check your graphics and other settings ingame after this.
- If that doesn't work, we've had reports that installing Long War again, over the existing copy, may fix the issue.
- If none of these work, see the full troubleshooting guide included in your download.
Installation notes:
- This mod will overwrite several game files and likely render multiplayer unplayable until you uninstall.
- The mod will not work properly on vanilla EW campaigns, so you'll need to start a new one. Campaigns are saved even if you uninstall, so you should be able to return to vanilla campaigns. Long War campaigns probably won't work well in vanilla.
- If Firaxis / 2k issues any patches to vanilla XCOM, they will overwrite and disable Long War, and almost certainly make the mod unplayable until the modders are able to update it. Unfortunately, turning off automatic updates to the game in Steam, via the game menu / Properties / Updates tab, does not prevent patches from loading. Your savegames should be preserved, though.
- If you want to use alternate game textures via Texmod, install them AFTER you fully install Long War and any other mods.
To uninstall:
Uninstall via the usual Windows Control Panel Add/Remove Programs feature, or verify back to vanilla.
Troubleshooting
If you hit something that seems to be a bug, try the following steps and see if any of them clear up the problem:
- Save your game and reload.
- Save your game, shut down XCOM and Steam, and restart.
- Save your game, shut down XCOM, and restart your computer.
- Save your game, shut down XCOM, delete all files in C:UsersYOUR WINDOWS USERNAMEDocumentsMy GamesXCOM - Enemy WithinXComGameConfig, and restart XCOM.
- Consider verifying your XCOM install back to vanilla and reinstalling the mod per the instructions above. This will not remove your savegames.
- If you are getting periodic slowdowns or lockups on the Loading User Settings popup, try: 1) deleting most of your old savegames (in C:UsersYOUR WINDOWS USERNAMEDocumentsMy GamesXCOM - Enemy WithinXComGameSaveData) 2) turning of Cloud synch in Steam, or 3) Playing in offline mode.
- Find the file Long_War_EW_Detailed_Install_Troubleshooting.txt in your XEW folder and follow the instructions there.
- Report the bug on the Nexus. Please include the difficulty and any second wave options.
IF YOU GET A CTD:
Please help us by posting crash output on the LW EW Beta Nexus subforum.
- Describe the circumstances of the crash.
- On most installations, go to this directory: C:UsersYOUR WINDOWS USERNAMEDocumentsMy GamesXCOM - Enemy WithinXComGameLogs
- Open the file Launch.log in a text editor.
- Scroll to the bottom of the file and look for the line that says 'Log: Critical error: '
- If it is present, copy that line to the end of the list of functions that were called and post on the subforum. It should look like this:
- WE CAN ONLY USE SCRIPT CALL STACK DUMPS. Unfortunately, this stack dump doesn't occur very often in the log, and if a function list isn't present, it is unlikely we can do much with your post.
- If you can repeatedly reproduce this error after reloading your save game and taking the same steps, we may want your savegame. Please post on the Nexus bug forum with details, and johnnylump will get you an email address for you to send the save.
- In any event, accept our grateful thanks for helping us debug the mod.
Included software:
XCOMEUModHelper by UberJumper
Acknowledgements:
Amineri and XMarksTheSpot for UPKModderEliot van Uytfanghe for UE Explorertwinj for discovering how to rescript functionsGildor for Unreal Package DecompessorInno Setup 5, by JRSoftware.orgAlso special thanks to Neonin for the Long War logo on the Nexus mod page! Check out Neonin's UI Texture Replacement mod for livelier in-game icons and other graphics: http://xcom.nexusmods.com/mods/382//?
FAQ - General
I'm fairly new to XCom. What difficulty should I start with?
Normal.
I'm an XCom vet. What difficulty should I start with?
Normal.
But I'm really awesome at --
Sorry to interrupt, but just start with Normal. We don't have easy difficulties in this mod that hold your hand while you learn the ropes, and we've removed every bit of code we can find that cheats for the player on the lower difficulties. It's going to be hard. The other difficulties are just harder versions of normal; feel free to move up when you get a handle on all the new mechanics.
Say what? Ten HP outsiders with regeneration in the first downed UFO mission? I love all the new X-Com options but don't like the difficulty. Why did you make a mod that is so hard?
This mod was made by people who loved the vanilla game but saw lots of opportunities within the engine for much deeper strategic and tactical play, and for a greater variety of problems to throw at the player. When someone tells us it is too hard, there might be any of three things going on:
- The player hasn't adapted to the changes in the mod and expects their suboptimal strategies to succeed (We believe this is the case with outsiders). We have a Long War strategy subforum on the Nexus page you can go to for advice.
- The player's definition of fun is different from ours; they expect the game to provide them easier situations, make solutions more readily available, or be geared to provide the illusion of challenge but actually make it pretty easy to win. In this case, the player should play an easier difficulty setting and/or use the cinematic mode second wave option, which gives accuracy bonuses to both XCOM troops and aircraft. The player can also mod LW to their personal preferences or play another mod. Long War isn't for everyone.
- The mod really is unreasonably hard (or bugged in a way that makes it too hard) and should be changed. Specific feedback about the situation and how you attempted to address helps us; general complaints about difficulty really won't induce us to make any changes.
Okay, I get it; it's hard. But I'm a casual player without a ton of time or Grognard levels of strategery. What starting settings would you recommend?
Play normal difficulty with only the Dynamic War and Cinematic Mode Second Wave options activated. This is probably somewhere close to vanilla classic difficulty and Marathon duration.
I'm supertough and insist on playing Ironman.
That's not actually a question, but understand there could be campaign-ending bugs or corrupted savegame issues that we can't do anything about. Periodically back up your savegames or face the prospect of losing all your work. The Bronzeman SW option lets you restart tactical missions. You've been warned.
I want to mod feature X myself. How do I do that?
Many, many game settings are contained in the file XEWConfigDefaultGameCore.ini, which can be edited with a text editor, and your changes will take effect the next time you load the mod (no other changes are necessary!). Some more are in DefaultGameData.ini. Ingame text is in INT files in the localilzation folder. If it's not in either of those files, you'll probably have to make hex changes to the upk files, which is considerably more complicated. See the 'Modding Long War' subforum or the general XCom Mod Talk forum on the Nexus for details.
Can you make a shorter version of Long War?
Try the 'Dynamic War' Second Wave option.
Can you make a longer version of Long War?
Try the 'Liberators' Second Wave option, and/or try 'Dynamic War' and adjust the mission density value (SW_Marathon) above 1 in DefaultGameCore.ini.
I love this! Can I give you something?
For those who want to directly support the modders, we have placed a Paypal donation link on our Nexus page, but we are not allowed to request, reward or publicly acknowledge any specific gifts (sorry, but we really are deeply grateful), in accordance with Nexus' policies that prohibit any kind of appearance of 'selling' the mod. In addition, you're always welcome to buy JohnnyLump's sci-fi novels through www.thehumanreach.net.
May I redistribute this mod on the Nexus or another web site?
No, not without specific permission from JohnnyLump. See the permissions list above for what you may modify and distribute.
I want to make some changes to the mod and redistribute that. May I?
It's complicated.
- You have unrestricted permission to distribute alternate ini files for players to install
- You have unrestricted permission to distribute alternate int / localization files for players to install
- You have unrestricted permission to distribute UPKUtils mods that change core Long War upk files -- really, it isn't even our place to expect to give permission for these.
- If you are a modder who contributed to the mod, of course you have permission to redistribute your own work in other mods.
- However, you do NOT have permission to alter and separately release our upk files, specifically XComGame.upk, XComStrategyGame.upk, and LongWar.upk.
If you want to make small mods to those files, we strongly encourage you to use UPKUtils: It is more user-friendly; players can install and uninstall individual mods at will; it won't overwrite other small mods players have made, and your mod is very likely future-proofed and will not need further updating when we update Long War.If you are working on a huge overhaul based on Long War and still think redistributing our core files is the way to go, contact johnnylump via PM on the Nexus. Again, permission isn't granted unless we say so.
Do I still have to disable phone home like in Long War EU?
No longer! The mod fixes the exe so that is no longer required.
Can I use other mods like Toolboks with Long War?
It depends, but often you may not. Other large-scale overhaul mods (if anyone every makes any others) will not be compatible, nor will mods that change ini settings or ingame text by overwriting ini and int files. Mods that make individual changes may be compatible if they search and replace hex. If they search by absolute offset within the upk (like Toolboks), they will not be compatible unless they are made specifically for Long War, but those that search and replace hex regardless of location in the file have a good chance of working. Keep an eye on the Long War modding subforum; we'll post possible changes you can make yourself if they are easy to implement and frequently requested.
I keep getting the same maps every other mission! Is there a fix?
Press ALT-F10 once during the game. The only feedback you will see is the XCOM shield spinning briefly in the lower-right corner, but this resets the file that tracks which maps you've already played. What is happening is some of Long War's repurposed maps are being treated as 'new' and repeatedly pushed to the top of the queue; by resetting your log the game will treat all maps equally.
I installed the mod, but got error 0xc0000142 when I try to run the game.
This error is known to occur when people install mods on pirated copies of XCOM. The mod only works with legitimate Steam versions of the mod. This includes the boxed DVD version, which requires Steam to install. While this occurs because of something the pirates did (and not us), we don't support pirated versions and will not troubleshoot these problems; the solution is to buy a legit copy of the game.
FAQ - Specific Gameplay Questions
How do I win?
Win the Temple Ship mission, same as vanilla.
How do I lose?
All 16 council countries have to defect from XCOM. That's it. A succesful alien assault on XCOM HQ no longer ends the game.
Hey, I lost a country with little panic in the first month! Is that supposed to happen?
Yes. And if the aliens grow strong enough, they'll do this again, although you can stop those missions once launched. (It's just really hard.) Find and defeat the alien base in lost countries and you can get them back.
A really big UFO just landed in my home country in March! How am I supposed to beat that?
Basically, you're not. (It's possible, though.) The aliens have an active strategy now, gathering resources and conducting research and going on other missions not directly related to XCOM's operations. They're going to do their thing, and sometimes you'll cross paths with them when they are doing something they feel is rather important and have brought along a massive force to defend it. The penalties for XCOM aborting that mission early on are usually small, so don't feel obligated to sacrifice your force to win that one. Try to avoid the temptation to repeatedly save scum through these missions; you are denying yourself the full Long War experience by hamstringing the alien AI so much.
I just ran into a mission with tons of powerful aliens. How am I supposed to beat that?
Again, you're not. Part of the tactical challenge of the mod is to recognize a bad situation and retreat.
What's that little shield by each country in the Situation Room?
That represents the country's ability to defend itself from the alien incursions. Fulfilling council requests from that country fills the shield and increases that country's ability to resist panic increases caused by alien activity and helps protect any satellites overhead from detection by alien scouts.
Why do some of my starting soldiers have genemod armor?
That's a new armor, the tac vest, which anyone can wear. Long War EW introduces 7 new armors (for a total of 14) generally built as lighter armors allowing more mobility at some cost of protection; we used the genemod armor bases to represent these armors. If you don't like the look, try some of the alternate decos, which will minimize the sleeveless effect.
Why do my starting soldiers have Exalt weapons?
Exalt weapons have been repurposed in Long War and now serve as the default ballistic weapon set (along with the traditional shotgun). Exalt lasers are now the beam-laser class of weapons; vanilla XCOM ballistic weapons are now the Gauss class of weapons, and XCOM lasers are now the pulse laser class of weapons.
One my weapons did zero damage after a hit! Is that supposed to happen?
Yes. When this happens, you'll usually see a blue icon with a shield and a number. That's a measure of 'Damage Reduction' -- how much damage bounced off the enemy after a hit.
I just bagged a sectoid that had mind-merged to another sectoid, but it didn't die; it only took some damage. Is that supposed to happen?
Yes. XCOM Psi troopers can get mind-merge, too, and we suspect you wouldn't want the effect to kill two XCOM troopers at once, would you?
My soldier's status shows 'fatigued.' What does that mean?
After missions, soldiers need to rest for several days to recover from the intensity of combat and exposure to strange alien chemistry. During this time, they will not be auto-loaded into mission rosters. You can still send them on a mission (with no loss in capability), but after the mission they will suffer a light wound, representing exhaustion, and will be unavailable until they recover.
Why are my arc thrower stun chances so low?
Arc Throwers are no longer nearly automatic; your best case is a 55 to 60 percent chance to stun an alien. This is to make capturing aliens a meaningful and dangerous challenge. With Long War's increased mission count, you'll have far more opportunities to stun aliens and get their stuff, and you wouldn't want Alien Containment to overflow, would you?
I only got a few Meld from a canister on the first mission? Is that supposed to happen?
Yes. The amount of meld you get will vary, based on something we'll let you figure out.
I saved some of the civilians on a terror mission but panic still went up! Is that supposed to happen?
Yes. Your job on terror missions is to minimize damage by saving lives; every civilian killed raises panic in both the country and on the continent.
I captured an alien but can't interrogate it. What's up with that?
Review the tech tree and you'll see that you need to perform an autopsy on a species before being able to interrogate it.
How do I set default colors / armor deco / headgear for my soldiers?
Look for the file DefaultGameCore.ini, which is in C:Program Files (x86)SteamSteamAppscommonXCom-Enemy-UnknownXEWXComGameConfig in a standard Steam installation. Open it in a text editor like notepad. About 40 percent of the way down you'll see a comment 'Initial soldier appearance.' The next several lines set various default appearance numbers for various classes. EDIT THIS FILE AT YOUR OWN RISK. The range of allowed colors and styles are in a separate text file, Long_War_EW_Armor_Kit_Codes.txt.
##New Commands
###Tactical Game
Key(s) | Action |
---|---|
ALT-1 through ALT-8 | Select individual soldiers (doesn't work with soldiers 9+) |
ALT-O | Overwatch all soldiers with moves remaining (Note there is no confirm dialogue when you hit this; it doesn't work if the currently selected soldier is in motion) |
ALT-F1 | Toggle HUD (for screenshots) |
F2-F9 , ALT-F2 through ALT-F6 | New camera angles, F2 is overhead; ALT-F5 and ALT-F6 are closeups |
ALT-F7 | Sets slomo to 1.0 (normal animation speed) |
ALT-F8 | Sets slomo to 1.15 (accelerated animation speed, still looks pretty realistic) |
ALT-F9 | Sets slomo to 1.5 (extremely accelerated animation speed, looks unrealistic). NOTE: THIS MAY CAUSE BUGGY BEHAVIOR. |
ALT-F10 | Reset map cycler (Do this once if you are repeating a few maps over and over, but this should no longer be necessary with campaigns started under 3.0 Beta 10 and later) |
MAX ZOOM | This option, in your interface menu, lets you set the closest zoom level the camera can normally go |
CAMERA PANNING | This option, in your interface menu, lets the center mouse button activate full control over camera pitch and yaw. |
RESTART MISSION | This option, in your pause menu, lets you restart a tactical mission, possibly in a new location. The map and enemies will not change. This is not available in Ironman unless Bronzeman Mode is active. |
Mission Control, Strategy Game
F1-F7
Rotate Hologlobe to XCOM base on each continent, plus North and South Poles (we've also fixed the vanilla bug that disabled mouse control of hologlobe positions)Any Time
ALT-F12
Hard Quit to DesktopDev Console only
Giveperk -X
Using GivePerk and a negative number will permanently remove perk #X from a soldier. Works in tactical game only.SetMedalPowerA X
This will toggle on and off Second Wave options. Works in the Strategy game only. May have some weird effects with more complex SW options like Dynamic War.Tips
- Many players have reported this mod to be more difficult than vanilla X-Com. A number of strategic game elements are more random, and no longer are the parts of the strategy game that drive the narrative forward so simple to accomplish: They take meaningful amounts of time and resources, even as the aliens gain additional tools to beat you. Be prepared to abort missions and lose satellites and countries. Improvements in soldiers and technology will often be incremental rather than transformational. There isn't some dominant strategy deliberately embedded in the settings for you to root out; instead, you'll have to mix both long-term preparation with short-term flexibility to deal with crises.
- Expect to lose some battles. A key part of tactical play is knowing when to retreat to preserve your force. Save-scumming to win extremely difficult missions can have a dramatic impact on the rest of the game and deny you the full Long War experience.
- You may attempt to retake alien countries by defeating the alien base there. You'll need to orbit a satellite over that country to find it, and the aliens will do everything they can to shoot it down! You'll also need a new skeleton key for every additional attempt.
- Your interceptors now have a chance to detect UFOs on their continent in countries where no satellite is present. If the aliens seem to be concentrating on a country where you don't have a satellite, stationing interceptors nearby will give you a chance!
- Council nations will now hit you with many more requests for items than you can possibly fulfill, so be selective. Every request you fulfill gives that a country a better chance to resist panic (as indicated by the filling in of the small shield in the Situation Room).
- Any soldier can attempt psi training, even if they have failed in previous attempts. A greater will score makes you more likely to succeed. Note that Psis cannot become officers, however.
- Armor-piercing aircraft weapons are necessary to down certain UFOs, even early in the game.
- Satellite spam is no longer an effective strategy; you'll fall too far behind on research. Labs are now vital.
- Keep a spare satellite on the launch pad. You can't get every UFO, and the survivors will sometimes send hunters after your birds.
- Plan ahead! Everything takes time to build now. Minimum Engineer requirements may also be more of a factor.
- You'll find you'll usually want more than you can afford; be prepared for shortages in cash, meld and alloys, in particular, in the early and mid-games, and weapons fragments and Elerium late game. Selling alloys and elerium may come back to haunt you later. Landed UFOs are a terrific resource.
- With the long injury recovery times and soldier rest requirements you should maintain at least 40 troops in your barracks.
- Interceptor buffs are much more useful than in vanilla, but don't expect to bag every enemy UFO. You can still keep panic at bay by at least making an attempt.
- UFOs will blow up entirely more often if you use high-damage weapons for the final hit.
- SHIVs are no longer a sideshow, but a crucial part of your team from the start. MECs are something you won't be able to field until midgame.
- In the late summer months, casualties of experienced soldiers may mount. Look for projects that help you maintain the ability to field a powerful combat team.
- You absolutely must have HEAT weapons or chem grenades to take on Cyberdiscs and Sectopods. They will be very difficult otherwise.
- Enemies with area-of-effect weapons can be hindered with suppression, poison, mindfrays and flashbangs, all of which reduce their range.
- In emergencies, you can take fatigued soldiers on missions, but they will suffer the equivalent of a light combat wound (from all the drugs you had to juice them with plus overexposure to alien chemistry.)
- Both low and high cover provide more protection than in the past, and offer a measure of damage reduction from most weapons. Low cover is now 2/3 the value of high cover in many respects (instead of half).
- Don't neglect psionics early on! You need a highly developed psi soldier to win the game.
Permanent known issues, don't think we can fix:
- CTD on first attempt to play after install. We think this is Steam adjusting to the larger LW files. Solution: Try again.
- Changing game difficulty in the middle of a tactical mission will reset all alien leaders and navigators to base hit points for that species and should be considered more of a cheat than it normally is.
- Loading savegames in tactical missions can cause problems, including cancelling hunker down status and resetting certain flags intended to prevent you from doing things like using Run and Gun and Close Encounters on the same turn. These can be exploits and you should feel really, really bad for using it.
- Sometimes critically wounded soldiers have a bad z and can't be revived. Save and reload often fixes.
- Certain map errors. These are probably hard to tell from other errors, but if the problem is related to something in the map itself, we may not be able to fix it.
- Close Combat Specialist is rather particular about triggering. We didn't change it; it's unlikely we can fix it.
- Rapid double-clicking (such as with a dying mouse that inadvertently does this) can screw up your interactions with the engineering UI and charge you tons of cash for a single transaction.
- Periodically, the map script for the XCOM HQ assault mission will be interrupted. Reload an earlier save or (with ironman) use the dev console to restart the mission.
- Female weapon models not aligning with pawn correctly
- Flying creatures will sometimes stack on the same tile during movement
A current list of known issues will be kept on the bug report thread.
Changelog
BETA 15 to BETA 15b+ Issues
- If you are well into a campaign and have researched advanced Medikits, all of your soldiers will suddenly have the Deadeye Perk. If you want to remove it, use the Dev Console and the command GivePerk -116 on that soldier in a tactical mission.
- Meld costs have doubled (as have meld incomes), so you'll be behind. If you are well into a campaign, workaround is to download dev console and give yourself 2x your current meld using giveresource 7 xxx, where xxx is the amount of meld to give yourself.
BETA 15a to BETA 15b+ issues
- Because of a 15a bug, some new campaigns will lose their starting country bonus. The workaround is to go into DGC.ini, lines 1420 to 1453, and increase the iCash value on each line by 1, and change the iCash value on line 1419 (Cadre) to 6.
BETA 15,15a,15b campaign to 15c+ issues
- To add the new Drum Mag item to an existing campaign, try the developer console command GiveItem END_SHIP_WEAPONS 99 OR GiveItem Drum Mags 99 for a nearly infinite amount. Any counterfire pods from previous versions will also convert to drum mags.
BETA 15,15a,15b,15c to 15d+ issues
- Some D2 fixes may cause issues in tactical saves from Beta 15d or earlier. To avoid CTDs, we recommend finishing tactical missions in your current Beta and upgrading to D2 from a geoscape save. An alternative is to restart the tactical mission from the menu, although we aren't 100% sure that will cure all CTDs.
BETA 15,15a,15b,15c,15d to 15e+ issues
- Units that previously had the old (pre-combined) 'Ranger' perk will show having the 'Pyrokinesis' perk and will have to repick a perk in their tree. Only psi units will be able to use pyrokinesis in combat (it's a level 4 perk that they should train, however). To remove it, use the Dev Console command GivePerk -49 on that soldier during a tacitcal mission.
- Reworked trees will require re-selection of perks. You can remove excess perks with GivePerk -(PerkEnum) command in the tactical game, where (PerkEnum) is the number of the perk. See the ArmorKitCodes file for a list of perks.
Beta 15f3
Aug. 18, 2015
- German/Euro Male 3 voicepack my Michael Berkholz
Bugfix:
- CTD when Regen Biofield being used to Cure Poison
Beta 15f2
Aug. 12, 2015
- Scottish voice pack by Jordan Wistuba
- Italian translation
Fixes
- CTD when starting covert extraction at liquor store
- CTD when too many items finish repairs at once. You will no longer be informed of the identities of items that have just finished repairs.
- Lockup when regen biofield is used on panicked soldier. RB no longer affects panic, but automatically cures poison/acid effects.
- Command bugs with granting Platform Stability, extra action with Smoke Grenade for officer, shots on movelimited weapons
- Invisible bombs
- Extra actions granted sometimes when returning to cover
- More map fixes
- Updated Training ini so certain values match regular DGC
- Controller should work with perk selection now
Beta 15f
July 16, 2015
- Dutch Male voicepack (Euro 2) by Benjamin Smit
- Resp implant confers +1 hp
- All suppression-based reaction fire will get the opportunist bonus (not just LMG/SAW-series) and ignore cover
- Improved Fusion Core council request rewards
- Rework Jaeger tree to make ITZ spec perk, Squadsight to TSGT, VPT to MSGT, Remove LEU and replace with LnL at MSGT.
- Rework of Goliath tree. Welcome Covering Fire, Rapid Fire, and Extra Conditioning. Farewell Platform Stability, Bring 'Em On and Ready for Anything.
- Rework of Shogun tree
- Alloy Carbide Plating now grants flat +4 hit points
- Attempted to set autopause before a mission expires one hour earlier
- The seven special soldiers will have 0 defense rather than random value
- Smoke will now help against reaction fire
- Aliens will stack terror and infiltration missions on the same country less often in non-DW games
Bugfixes
- Flying units will have flying defense bonus against reaction fire
- Units granted a free move by Psi Inspire, Command and Revive will no longer get infinite Close Encounters or Hit and Run shots. These abilities will now prevent activation of CE/HnR -- this change was necessary for the bugfix.
- Hardened units will get bonuses again on Absolutely Critical.
- Meld/Bombs will be invisible in the fog as intended. Added SW option to make them visible.
- Controller should work with new SW table now
- More map patches
- Updated South African Male 2 pack
- Alien negative defense will show up on aim readout now
- Fix to reported psi chances
- Fix when revived covert operative comes home dead
- Fixes to reported overwatch shot %
- More unclickable bomb node issues
- CTD in post mission soldier-sort
Beta 15e
June 20, 2015New Stuff:
- Van Doorn voice pack. Thanks Firaxis!
- Added 'Euro Female 1' English accented voicepack by Eveline Frei. Created a new Euro / English voice category and put Faleg's voice there, too. (Note his VO may have to be reassigned after upgrading). Added 'SE Asian Female 1' English accented voicepack by Ping Teo. Added 'South African Male 2' voicepack by Jurgen Delaere.
- Officers commanding a mission now have a new ability, 'Command,' which allows officer to end their turn to grant a yellow move to a soldier who has used up all his/her movement for the turn. Limitations: 1 charge per officer rank, (so 1 for lieutenants, etc.), 4 turn cooldown; soldiers must be in visual range and have otherwise completed their turn; can't use on panicking, strangled, overwatching, hunkering or steady-aim soldiers, or VIPs. Does not reset your ability to use 'free' actions (like Paramedic or Hit and Run) if you've already used them. Notes: You can't use it on OW, HD or SA soldiers primarily because I haven't figured out how to turn off those abilities if the free move is granted. In addition, this borrows a MEC variable (flamethrower charges) to work, so those of you who like to mod things so MECs can be officers will have problems with flamethrowers going forward.
- Added capability so bomb missions can take place on any abduction/terror type map. Added 3 new maps to roster.
- Stood up Pyrokinesis perk, a level 4 psi perk. It allows you to ignite fires over multiple tiles anywhere within sight range. Does no harm to units in AOE. 4 turn cooldown. Unlocked by Muton Elite interrogation. Will be interested in feedback about utility of perk and may adjust settings. NOTE: This perk is taking over Ranger's slot, so using the devconsole and GivePerk -49 is necessary to remove Ranger from soldiers in ongoing campaigns. I think I've got it so having the old Ranger perk won't give you the ability unless you are a psi, at least.
- New Item: Motion Scanner. Here's working design, subject to change before and after 15e final is released:
- When used, it activates the radar for that soldier for the rest of XCOM's turn. It shows aliens, civilians, meld cans, bomb nodes and the bomb. It works roughly 5 tiles beyond visual range.
- It currently uses no movement. This has a moderate chance of changing if item is OP.
- It is available for cheap construction at campaign start.
- It has 3 charges, 4 with packmaster (base charges ini-moddable). This also has a moderate chance of being reduced if item is OP. You can only equip one per soldier. It can be used by any soldier or SHIV. It cannot be used by MECs (for technical reasons; we had to borrow a MEC variable to hold the charges).
- It takes over the battlescanner icon in the abilities bar.
- It uses the 'EXALT art' item enum (so that colorful bit of flavor has been removed (sorry, but better than than a real soldier item). Upon winning the EXALT HQ raid, the player just gets a straight injection of cash of equivalent value. It also uses the old Smartgun kit image, which itself was an unused vanilla Motion Tracker image,
- Battlescanners are now restricted to Scouts and Engineers only (regardless of whether they have the perk). The 1-item-per-soldier limitation for Battlescanners has been removed. Battlescanners now use the 'close cyberdisc' icon, because it's round (looks vaguely like a battlescanner) and not one the player has previously seen. Battlescanners may see their duration reduced. (Remember they are bugged in a couple of ways we can't fix.)
- Long War now supports up to 36 second wave options. We'll add some but leave some options blank for future modders if they want to add some.
- Modified console command SetMedalPowerA so it will turn on and off Second Wave options for all future checks of that option. You'll need to install the modified engine.upk (existing 15c+ one, available in downloads) to activate the console, plus you'll need the internal number of the option (rather than the string) to turn it on and off. The numbers will now be printed in the after the name of the perk in ingame text for reference. NOTE: This isn't what we'd call a supported gameplay feature, so you may get some strange interactions if you use it a lot. Turning off Red Fog is probably pretty straightforward, but turning on or off Dynamic War mid-campaign could lead to wonky outcomes.
- New second wave options:
- Hide perk tree (ini toggle that does this no longer works; use console command to rehide the trees in ongoing B15 campaigns)
- Deactivate repair system (ini setting that does this no longer works; use console command to turn it off again in ongoing B15 campaigns)
- Deactivate Exalt missions
- Split Cinematic Mode into separate ground and air options
- +2 squad size at start and on covert extractions
- Repairs only cost time, not money
- Many missions have alien count reduced by 40%
- Show alien to hit chances with various abilities
- SpazmoJones' show XP mod in soldier list view implemented
- XMarksTheSpot's larger-soldier-modification-slots mod implemented. The ini setting PSI_NUM_TRAINING_SLOTS will now set the number of slots (simultaneous soldiers who can be trained/modified) in the Psi Lab, Gene Lab and MEC Augmentation chamber in the Repair Bay without any UI bugs, unless you add so many slots they exceed the size of the screen.
- Zhang, Annette and the guards' voicepacks can now be assigned to any soldier. They are in a 'Special' category in the Customize UI. Only bug is that there's no VO triggering when you select a particular voice, so it's hard to know which you've picked until a mission. (The characters are first; the guards are last)
- All plasma primary weapons have a special bonus stat or ability attached to them
- Updated advice to the loading screen tips
- Added an alternate 'training' DefaultGameCore.ini in the download with easier settings from normal through impossible. No text changes accompany this, so 'impossible' in training mode isn't really all that. If I can figure it out and have time I'll jimmy the installer so it will load automatically on install. To use, replace the regular DefaultGameCore.ini with this file.
Balancing:
- Psi Panic now has Berserker interrogation as a prereq. Psychokinetic Strike now has Sectoid Commander interrogation as a prereq.
- Van Doorn now receives Steadfast perk. His starting level will be higher if you get him later in the campaign. His aide will also join XCOM after the mission as a low-ranking soldier.
- Furies made stronger. The Egyptian twins start out as level 2 psis. The other guy starts as a level 4 regular soldier and a level 1 psi. Each of them gets a different level 1 psi perk.
- Made MEC-1 less expensive to construct and gave it Body Shield perk
- Council mission reward soldiers can cap at sergeant instead of corporal. This only affects a couple of missions (and not item requests).
- Boss monsters on council missions will trigger based on months passed instead of council missions completed, so participation in DLC missions shouldn't accelerate their appearance. Increased threshold for boss monsters to appear by a couple of months.
- Deluge will not trigger until a minimum number of months has passed AND you build the PsiLabs. Previously it has triggered only on PsiLab presence.
- Ammo Conservation grants +1 ammo to SAW-series instead of +2, now consistent with all other guns.
- Captured drones will no longer have the repair ability, because unlimited repairs is too exploitey. Reduced cost of Capture drone foundry project.
- One medic with Field Surgeon will provide 1 hp wound reduction in calculating timeout 100% of the time instead of 75%. Multiple FS Medics on the same mission will have no additional effect.
- Ranger and Gunslinger perks combined. Retaining Gunslinger icon but calling Ranger. Replaced perks on trees that had both (Sniper, Scout, Assault gain Deadeye, DGG and Executioner, respectively).
- Reaper Rounds renamed 'Reaper Pack' and now only works with laser weapons. Unlocked by Supercapacitors. Removed some alloy and meld requirement from SC foundry project.
- Gunner gets Opportunist instead of AFC, +2 aim at Covering Fire, +2 aim at Ready For Anything.
- Reduced Gollop Chamber build time and alloy cost.
- Plasma Mauler reduced to -1 mobility penalty, so it entirely obsoletes the sawed-off shotgun when built.
- Significant drop in alloys required for weapon research (removed 400+ alloy costs across all weapon techs, and 150 elerium as well). Marginal increase in research time for advanced weapon techs. Increased alloy costs of construction most individual weapons by between 2 and 10 alloys depending on tech and weapon power. Elerium costs went up on items unlocked by techs that saw the elerium research cost went down (pulse and plasma). This is to define the role of alloys and elerium better (primarily serving gear, while fragments serve research), and to hopefully give you some more flexibility in loading out your troops -- you don't have to go all-in on a particular tier because you invested so much in just unlocking it. Also reduced some research item costs for armor and mec techs.
- Added one more turn to initial timer on bomb missions
- Slight increase in meld timer
- Removed pier map from possible covert extractions
- Augment cost reduced to 60 meld
- Removed kill XP penalty for MECs
- Added +1 base damage for flamethrowers
- Regen Biofield will now prevent a critically wounded soldier from bleeding out if the soldier is in range of the psi trooper.
- Floater Leaders won't get CCS until level 4, sted 2.
- Harder Heavy Floater escort table delayed one month
- Created an easier Muton Elite escort table for early months in which they are encountered. Basically 'harder' tables mean RNG favors harder enemies as secondary and tertiaries in pods led by these aliens.
- Your reaction shots will display to-hit chance in text scroll.
- Wrote code that would remove reported pro-player cheating reducing chance of critical hits on normal and classic when XCOM soldier is flanked or exposed.
- Wrote code that would remove native bonus defense against psi attacks on brutal and impossible (+10/+20). Gave full bonus will to non-psionic aliens on those difficulties to compensate, half bonus (+5/+10) will to psionic aliens (who can also use it for offense). Minor balance change.
- Zhang gets Lone Wolf perk when joining XCOM.
- Late in the game, countries with high defense ratings may offer sergeants for item requests.
- Lowered permanent will penalty on critical wounds to 5. In addition, soldiers receive 24 hours (ini-moddable) extra fatigue after missions per critical wound suffered in the campaign. The latter is not prevented by Secondary Heart (or anything else, except PSI Armor).
- Shadow Armor has 2 item slots.
- Removed CCS from Sectoid Commanders.
Fixes:
- CTD when AC units are destroyed on Roadhouse map. THIS IS THE MAP WITH A SMALL CRASHED UFO UNDER A BRIDGE AND A BAR/GAS STATION.
- Obscure CTD on visibility updates during Mind Controls. This seems to happen when mind-controlling an alien activates a new pod.
- Updated bomb nodes code, including a fix for when nodes (and the bomb itself) can't be clicked, particularly after a savegame. You can also now set the initial timer for bomb missions in DefaultRandomSpawns.ini. Also other fixes to bomb placement code. Install hotfix here: http://www.nexusmods.com/xcom/mods/499/
- Firing at a flanked unit moving through
- Fixed fuel cell inventory image
- Pulse Carbine aim bonus corrected to +6 instead of +7
- Rookies arriving after Tactical Rigging is developed will no longer have a 4th inventory slot until they change armor. Had to disable auto-equipping of grenade in 3rd inventory slot to fix this bug.
- Genemodding and PsiTraining soldiers should no longer count as available soldiers in class counts in soldier list
- Techs that require exactly one of an item (like captives) will always require exactly one of that item regardless of Dynamic War setting
- More map patches
- Item card weapon range descriptor should be more accurate now
- iDefense line in BalanceMods_Classic entries for weapons should work now
- Fixed at least one instance of Concealment being broken when it shouldn't be.
- If you have more than 15 ability icons, Ability HUD will now show all icons
- You will no longer be able to see meld canisters or bombs in the fog.
- Clarified shredder ammo perk text that it only works on SAWs, LMGs and MEC primaries
- SpazmoJones' attempted fix on kill and miss VOs happening at the same time
- Battlescanners will no longer block Exalt hack on Covert Data Recovery missions
- Bring 'Em On granting extra soldier actions
- Too-high XP penalty for Augmenting a soldier corrected
- Controllers should work better in Squad Select screen now
- Flak ammo damage will be counted for calculating whether a kill shot occurs
- Psi Panic success changes should report correctly now
- Extra 'x1s' after use of Command should be repaired now
- Fixed bug in Mechtoid AI
- Some stability improvements in targeting and damage calcs in tactical game
- Dashing against reaction fire should provide correct defensive bonuses now
- Body Shield will provide crit protection now
- Some improvements to bomb mission stability
- Combat Drugs bonuses will appear in crit bonus list now
- Fixed bugs when sending soldier with negative will into psi training
Beta 15d2 April 23, 2015
Balancing:
- Drop-down aliens will drop down in cover. Reduced number of drop-down aliens on some early council missions. Settings in DefaultRandomSpawns.ini can be used to turn this off.
- Bomb nods should spawn a bit closer to players
Fixes:
- CTD when visibility of unactivated alien pod changes (Some experimental code slipped through into release version)
- Ammo numbers on shotgun-series weapons descriptions
- Soldier initial position gone wonky (x2)
- CTD on exiting smoke and possibly other volumes
- 2 new map patches
- Lockup when aliens drop down on special missions
- Hit-and-Run CTD
- World rebuild when bomb positions randomized
Beta 15d April 20, 2015
Features
- New British/English Female accent from Jezdamayel Caster
- Bomb Disposal missions will have randomized (but regulated) locations for power nodes.
- Incorporated SpazmoJones/Eclipse666's display weapon fragments, display soldier formation and show class breakdown UI mods into release version
Balancing
Nexus Mod Xcom Enemy Within Long War
- Shotgun-series ammo changed from 5/3/4/3/3 to 4/4/5/4/4. Reflex Cannon now requires Advanced Plasma Weaponry instead of Sectopod Autopsy.
- Knocked down some alloy costs here and there (larger mec suits, pulse weapons, a few other places). Upped some elerium costs.
- Altered harvest UFO AI's relationship to alien aggro slightly
- Made it a little more likely for DW AI to reduce aggro
fixes
- Attempted fixes: CTDs during targeting with psi perks, possibly others
- Bad offset in UISightlineHUD_SightlineContainer.OnMouseEvent that may have been associated with CTDs
- CTD when using explosives near gas pumps on Crashed Small Scout - Roadhouse map
- CTD when police car blows up on terror Office Paper Terror map
- New Map Patches: 2
- Drum Mags should no longer appear in gray market (DGC line 2589, change iCash to -1)
- Level 6 Seeker leader should get Damage Control as intended (instead of Intimidate) (DGC.ini line 726, change iMobility=134)
- Fixed MEC-6 Vanguard cost (DGC.ini 2506, ItemBalance_Nor1mal should be ItemBalance_Normal)
- Hit and Run will now process on squadsight distance flank in at least one case where it wasn't
- Drum Mags will actually provide extra ammo now. I swear I tested it before release and I am now doubting the nature of reality
- Adjusted volume levels on South African Female 1
- Corrected map patch id on covert ops street overpass ewi map, which was causing some random cover to appear on that map (DefaultMaps.ini, line 204, change string 'patch_streetoverpass' to 'patch_streetoverpassewi' )
- XCOM with Adaptive Bone Marrow will correctly provide +2 hp regeneration per turn
- Failing a council mission will correctly remove it from Geoscape mission options
- Dense Smoke will no longer provide an extra 20 defense for flanked targets above the intended +40. This was not reflected in UI reports.
- Fix to untextured box in Quagmire map
- Soldier names with spaces in them (Van Doorn) should now appear in full in the soldier list. Fixed up some Dutch surnames.
- Attempted fix: Widened conditions for ability icon rebuild after taking an action in attempt to further address free action issues
- Breaching ammo will now be properly restricted to shotgun-wielding assaults in equip UI
BETA 15c April 12, 2015
NOTE: YOU WILL NEED TO DOWNLOAD A NEW VERSION OF THE DEV CONSOLE TO WORK WITH BETA 15c. OTHERWISE YOU MAY HAVE SEVERE BUGS WITH THE NEW MAPS.
Fixes:
- CTD when fighting Uber ethereal
- CTD in harvest location selection logic during periods of high threat and near-total satellite coverage
- CTD in research archives, seems more likely in late game
- Cleaned up some possibly bad code supporting what perks can appear in Training Roulette (XGStrategySoldier.IsRandomPerkValidToAdd)
- Pistols should be equipped properly upon class assignment in Commander's Choice games
- Attempted Fix: It appears that Aurora and Vortex Armors and Mind Shield were having their will bonus counted twice in some circumstances (including in the UI to-hit display). This may have impacted balance in favor of the player and we'll want feedback on how effective psi powers are after this. (This involves changing the parameters in a call to native code, so it's hard to be sure exactly what's happening).
- Fixed bad jump in Absorbdamage that may have been causing acid debuff to cause extra damage (rather than just remove DR) when a soldier suffers additional damage
- Truly amazing amount of map fixes
- Alloy SHIV available to build alert should process correctly now on tech acquisition
- Corrected Laser Lance and Rail Gun strategy game descriptions
- Advanced Suppression Module now actually grants Danger Zone perk as intended
- HEAT and Flak Ammo damage bonus to barrage should be working now. Reworked logic in HEAT ammo and warheads application a bit.
- Fortiores Una should provide DR bonus now
- Blank items should no longer show up in what-got-broke debrief UI
- Minimum repair time for items corrected to intended 3 days instead of 3 hours.
- Interrogations should no longer remove two captives (if you have more than one), only one.
- Resolved remaining issues with conditional aim modifiers that we've modded in
- Mindfraying soldiers and aliens should return to cover now
- Incinerator module will no longer supply +1 ammo to primary weapon
- Temple Ship Heavy Floaters will no longer get excessive aim bonus
- Correct subclass icon will show in postmission debrief UI
- Attempted Fix: Free actions sometimes granted when soldiers returning to cover after a shot
- Blaster Launcher range should scale properly with aim and perks now. Possibly some other fixes to range of free-aim weapon.
- UFO Scanners should work properly for raiders and some other UFO classes now
- Council Corpse requests should scale better with DW games
- Level 7 Outsiders will properly get Damage Control instead of Intimidate
- Fixed Triggers to give a couple of aliens special names
- Regular soldiers should be able to equip flak ammo now
- Quenchguns will now benefit from weapons credit; coilguns will not
- Aerospace tech credit will no longer give bonus to all foundry projects, just aerospace ones
- Air base attack missions should no longer make alien resource count go haywire
- Gave up on attempts to remove bombard perk from Muton Elite, Cyberdiscs and Heavy Floaters and to give it back in certain circumstances, changed triggers for special unit names for leaders in each class. (This doesn't represent any gameplay change; it's basically a failed nerf attempt on aliens being cleaned up.)
- Navigators will a 99 value will have perk 100% of time instead of 99%
- ITZ will now drop damage correctly with each successive kill
- Flashbangs will no longer trigger any VO (It was erroneously triggering an unused hunker down VO)
- Rookie icon (double circle) will show up in right places; Genemodded rookies should have proper icon now
- Attempted Fix: You should no longer be able to select a specialist covert operative until they have picked a subclass. This is to prevent commander's choice players from picking a covert operative, CC-ing them to a heavy, and then sending them on a mission, which caused crashy behavior because the heavy didn't have a pistol equipped.
- Heater reaction range fixed to 30.
- Map patches now number 64 distinct files with various fixes to flanking bugs, sightlines, terrain not providing cover and other issues.
- Removed one each research outpost, commercial alley and truckstop abduction map entries, now redundant with the multiple start spawn code (may have been causing these maps to appear too often)
- Attempted Fix: Attempted to address reports that weapon fragment artifacts may have been retained across mission restarts
c2 fixes
- Fixed Quenchguns frags cost
- Fixed Core Armoring text
Balancing and other changes
- New VO Packs: Polish-accented English Male from Commander Faleg, Irish Male from Adam Miller, South African female from Louise Dumée
- Neural Feedback no longer requires Floater Interrogation to unlock; it is available at Xenopsionics with MindFray
- Crashed destroyer missions will now take place on Overseer maps (with overseer mission-related stuff stripped). Destroyers now carry 4 UFO Power Sources that can be salvaged. They will have a few more aliens than in the past.
- Added PierA map to terror roster
- More AI work
- Reduced req engineers for Adv Suppression Module and Ammo Conservation. Reduced cost of Ammo Cons slightly; increased cost of Tactical Rigging.
- Deadeye now provides +15 aim and no crit bonus against fliers
- Put a hard cap on alien aggro in DW campaigns so they still run some non-anti-XCOM missions. This is an attempt to address the 5x terror missions per month apparently happening in DW games.
- Battle Rifle / Heavy Rifle series of weapons reworked. Compared to the assault rifle of the same tech, they offer +1 damage, -1 mobility and a -10 aim penalty after taking any non-turn-ending costly actions. Crit, base aim, and ammo are equivalent to assault rifle of the same class. They can be equipped by infantry, scouts, assaults, medics and engineers. (These values are subject to change). Some rifle costs lowered to be roughly on par with assault rifles of same tech level.
- Terror mission offscreen deaths are now calibrated against activated aliens, not seen ones.
- Added Drum Mags small item. They are infinite and available from campaign start. They grant +2 ammo to assault rifle, carbine, and battle rifle series weapons and may not be equipped by snipers, gunners or rocketeers. They cost 2 mobility and 4 aim to equip. They cannot be stacked with Hi Cap Mags item. To add them to an existing campaign, you should use the console command GiveItem END_SHIP_WEAPONS 99 for a nearly infinite amount. Counterfire Pods removed from game.
- Modified version of Nuked City map set up as terror map. The UFO is removed and replaced with some debris. Thanks to Liquid911 for making this possible.
- Floaters on Normal lose 1 mobility and 5 defense, floaters on classic lose 5 defense.
- Heavy Floaters on normal lose 5 defense.
- Drones on normal lose 5 defense
- Exalt Elites lose 1 hp on Normal
- Heavy Floaters on impossible gain 1 mobility
- Increased alloy income from UFOs on Normal by 25%, Classic by 10%
- Increased frags on classic slightly
- Reduced elerium from power sources by 5 on brutal and impossible, increased by 5 on normal
- Increased overall monthly cash from sats by 10% on normal
- Reduced meld costs of MEC primary weapons by roughly 33% to 50%
- Reduced meld costs of MEC secondaries by 15% to 25%. Increased elerium costs on several secondaries.
- Reduced meld costs of advanced MEC techs
- Changed meld costs for several genemods
- Fishing village will no longer spawn chryssys from map objects during terror missions on that map
- Made UFO crashes instead of complete destruction for scouts, fighters, raiders and destroyers marginally more likely
- For the first 75 days, alien satellite hunts will be conducted by fighters and raiders only. After that, it will be fighters, destroyers and battleships per normal alien supply tests.
- Increased 'free' minimum alien supply from 7 * Months passed to 9 * Months passed
- Hover SHIVs lose 4 defense, 2 flight fuel, 1 mobility, 2 hit points
- MEC-6 Vanguard gains +1 mobility
- Dormant alien pods will now activate if you fire at them and miss
- Dormant alien pods will now activate if you use a flashbang on one of its members
- Dormant alien pods will now activate if you use a chem grenade on one of its members
- Dormant alien pods will now activate if you drop a prox mine in range of them
- Reduced engineer requirements for Enhanced Lasers and Enhanced Beam Optics
- Exalt cell panic enhancers will now cause the lesser of 10 or the base panic from the panic event, instead of 15 regardless.
- Soldiers may equip only one battlescanner item each (although it still gains bonus charges from various perks, and BS perk is unchanged)
- Scout tree reworked
- XCOM base on normal gets +2 'free' power
- Reduced power requirement for hangar by 1 (essentially +1 free power on all difficulties)
- Meld cans will last a little longer before closing
- On Dynamic War games < 1, timeouts from fatigue and wounds reduced to balance out mission rates from exalt and council missions (which aren't subject to DW rates).
- On Dynamic War games < 1, slowed Exalt activity in accordance with DW setting. This does mean it takes longer for them to build cells as well as run operations, so it will probably take you longer in campaign time to wipe Exalt out, but they should make up a reduced proportion of your missions in any given month.
- Removed mobility penalty for taking Shock-Absorbent Armor perk.
- All UFOs shot down in first month with generate crash missions and not blow up. I'm selling out because there's zero narrative justification for this being possible.
- Thin Men pods will be slightly more common
- Floaters lose 1 base mobility, get it back on day 90
- Heavy Floaters lose 1 hp during level ups (day 360), gain 2 mobility (360 and 500)
- Shifted the extra damage curve on impossible. Earlier aliens don't get bonus damage, later aliens get more.
- Titan Armor now costs 8 meld.
- Quenchguns anti-DR bouns now 2x base gauss DR, not 3x (so .67 default instead of 1). Reduced price of QG foundry project.
- Gave aliens a slight bonus in their saving throws against mimic beacons
- Various minor price adjustments
- Adjustments to Guardian (starts with Opportunist; Sentinel goes to old Opportunist slot), Archer, Goliath trees
- SHIV Defenses foundry tech renamed 'Mechanized Unit Defenses' and moved to Carapace. It now unlocks Core Armoring and Alloy-Carbide Plating. Core Armoring now available to MECs. Damage Control Pods unlocked by Heavy Floater Autopsy.
- It will be harder to get Terror Ships on research missions.
Beta 15b March 11, 2015
'Feature'
- Added cheat code functionality with dev console to permanently remove a perk from a soldier in tactical missions (not sure if it works in barracks). Use Giveperk -X where x is the perk number. So giveperk 3 grants Squadsight. Giveperk -3 removes it. To remove Deadeye from a soldier, use Giveperk -116.
Fixes:
- CTD on terror mission initialization when DW > 1
- Fixed bug when covert extraction on military base map. Workaround, fine StreamingMaps[1]=( MapName='patch_militaryammo', Loc=( X=0, Y=0, Z=0 ), Rot=( Pitch=0, Yaw=0, Roll=0 ) ) from end of line 190 in DefaultMaps.ini, and change the[1] to [2]
- Medikit II bonus may not be applying correctly in upgraded campaigns in which you already had it
- Some more map patches
- Council requests for meld will scale correctly with meld income now
- Fixed bug in which upgraded saves were getting wrong country bonus. THIS WILL MESS UP SAVES FROM NEW CAMPAIGNS IN BETA 15a. Workaround is above.
- Fixed bug in which DW < 1 dead alien loot drops were way too large and way too small in DW > 1
Balance:
- Outsiders now have Muscle Fiber Density
- A few more Weapon Fragments on normal
- Swapped Lance and Corporal perk choices on Scout tree
Beta 15a (March 10, 2015)
Features
- You will receive a popup after missions displaying which items have been destroyed and damaged.
- Perk trees will be revealed on soldier class selection in non-Training Roulette Games. In TR games, it will be hidden by default, but you can change that by setting BLUESHIRT_WILL_MOD to 1 in the file DefaultGameData.ini. (NOTE FILENAME) Unlocked psi powers on psi tree will be revealed as well.
- Gave Canada a second starter bonus, 'Cadre,' which grants 4 corporals at campaign start. (They need to survive the first mission as rookies, more for technical reasons than anything). Old 'Cadre' UK country sat bonus remained 'Sandhurst.'
- Activated Deadeye perk, which grants +10 aim and +10 crit against airborne targets. Will be available to Infantry, Scout, Shogun and Pathfinder. Scout tree gets a little rework to accommodate perk.
- Added 3rd Australian Male voicepack.
Fixes
- CTD when 16+ items finish repair at once. CTD caused by trying to add too many text notices at once, so the geoscape text scroller will not list every item that is fixed if you repair 16+ items at once.
- Illuminator Gunsight will no longer show 'requires research' and be unequippable if you take ancient artifact
- Cinematic Mode ini value restored. Self-fix: Add line ABDUCTION_REWARD_SCI=15 to DGC.ini after ENABLE_SECOND_WAVE=1 line (around 1753). Soldiers previously created in a campaign will not get the better bonus, but new soldiers and aircraft will.
- English Male 3 VO pack now in installer. Sorry, Sean.
- Numerous map patches fixing bad cover. Removed bugged UFO door on farm map, which should solve a CTD when overwatch fire goes through the door.
- Fixed bad ini setting on one of the furies (landed abductor) maps, not sure what effect would have been
- Fixed: Incorrect Squadsight perk text (crit hit penalty is -20%)
- Improved Combat Exoskeletons will now appear in research UI when requirements are met. Workaround: Dev Console command GiveTech Placeholder_13 may give you the tech
- Lots of other text fixes
- Adjusted Gauss eng reqs and LMG series costs
- Code change that will fix CTD with Training Roulette in Mac/Linux versions
- Fixed: Incorrect ini setting with Resourceful start not giving Alloys foundry project. DGC.ini fix: line 1444, change iEng=19 to iEng=25. This will only help new campaigns.
- Flak Ammo will display correct inventory image now
- Annette and the Furies should receive psi perks appropriate to their levels
- Fixed assault-psi icon
- Removed Armor-Piercing Ammo unintended crit bonus against hardened targets
- Fixed goof in which I intended to decrease big ship speed on the hologlobe (allowing more interceptions) but instead decreased combat speed
- Adv Suppression Module will show up in correct build tab in Engineering now
- Removed ability to see facility construction UI detail when you can't afford building it. We put this in to let you see time to build and rush costs but it apparently enabled the ability to build themo generators everywhere as well. XGBuildUI_OnChooseFacility
- Enhanced Beam Optics and Alloy Jacketed Rounds should equip properly with Laser Lance / Rail Gun now
- Fixed up Blaster Launcher range code
- Found second place required to change Dense Smoke & Combat Drugs AOE and fixed so Dense is same as SG and CD is much wider.
- Many bugfixes to repair and R&R chances that were damaging items far more than intended and creating problems with covert operatives. Individual item damage chances exposed to ini in iWill variable. We're also testing to see if this fixes bug reports that items are simply vanishing after missions.
- Any item or facility that requires exactly one of an item to build will not have that item requirement scaled with DW
- You can no longer augment specialists per design
- Jungle Scouts will now give bonus small slot to Phalanx per design
- Cans will supply a minimum of 1 meld (for extreme DW games)
- Attempted fix: Attempting to trigger neural feedback will call the code that ends suppression first. Attempt to correct reported CTD. No savegame to test on, so unsure if it will work or not.
- Reworked terror mission offscreen kill code that wasn't doing what it should
- Fixed a bunch of display bugs related to Reaper Rounds
- Removed sound when repairs finished
- UFO Scanners should provide damage readout on researched UFOs now
- Worked on Mechtoid and overwatch AI
- Enhanced Plasma Foundry project provides +1 all purpose plasma damage now.
- Old Path country bonus should correctly impact psi training time now
- Rapid Fire no longer works with Sawed-off shotgun (it was granting a free shot despite SoS 1 ammo)
- DW: Alien loot drops will now scale with DW setting
- Heavy Laser Rifle now correctly unlocks at Advanced Beam Lasers
Balance changes
- Alien strategic AI will try harder to avoid countries with satellites for harvest missions when they have high aggro
- Adjusted down a few meld costs (don't get excited, it's 10-20% on a few items)
- Adjusted down a few fragment costs for weapon techs (ditto)
- Made Wingtip Sparrowhawks a bit cheaper
- Gauss Long Rifle now halves enemy hardened bonus against critical hits (so a hardened target only gets 30% crit protection instead of 60%)
- Damn Good Ground now only a mid-level leader perk for Heavy Floaters, DGG on reg floaters will also come only on more advanced leaders. A few other adjustments to alien perk trees.
- Swapped back TSGT and GSGT on Gunner tree
- Will to Survive consistently provides +3 will on perk trees
- Removed most of elerium cost from UFO scanners
- Reduced a cooldown variable concerning country requests for same item to b14 levels
- Roughly doubled all meld income and meld costs, with a few adjustments here and there. This provides more granularity for repairs and for meld gains from dead aliens. Cans will grant 5 to 30. NOTE: THIS WILL UNBALANCE ONGOING 15 GAMES (unless you've spent all your meld). Fix is to download dev console and use giveresource meld command to double your stockpile.
- Total Loss SW option now has an DGD.ini-adjustable chance to lose soldier gear on death. This same variable also governs soldier gear loss on death AND mission failure that is present in regular game.
- Inserted code in case of DW > 1 that delays appearance of some hardcoded (difficult) terror mission rosters that were triggered based on how many terror missions you had been on
- Slight bump in fragment income on Normal
Beta 15
Beta 15 requires a new campaign.
Features/New Functionality
- Functionality for new soldier voice packs is in game. Voicepacks will be assigned to soldiers of the appropriate nationality and may manually be assigned to any soldier of the designated gender. More voicepacks are in production and this list will be updated when they are complete. Many props to Long War Sound Editor TrackTwo for his tireless efforts getting this working, and special thanks to Firaxis, who helped us with some processing settings to get the voicepacks sounding similar to the vanilla ones.
- A new bonuses system is in place: 1) Players may choose from a number of starting bonuses tied to which of the 16 council countries you put your first satellite. You have multiple options for some countries. The bonuses aren't balanced against each other, so to some degree this is a way to play a somewhat customized campaign. 2) When launching a satellite, a player gains a specific country bonus. These are less powerful than the starter bonuses, and some of the countries that offer less monthly $$ have stronger bonuses to make them attractive. Some costs were rebalanced in light of bonuses now available. 3) Continent bonuses are now gained with ONLY full satellite coverage over all countries on the continent. Some have been rebalanced and the OTS discount is no longer tied to any continent. The strength of each bonus, and the country assignment, can be modified in DGC.ini.
- XCOM will draw soldiers from roughly 90 new countries (with unique flags) in addition to the existing group, with dozens of new namelists by Uzifeline. Countries include all of Europe (save microstates) and South America, with almost all of Central America and Asia, and lots of African countries. And New Zealand. Players can still control frequency of all countries providing soldiers with ini edits. Van Doorn gets UN flag, because he really represents all of us. SHIVs get XCOM flag in strategy game lists.
- Major overhaul to Not-So-Long-War, which has been renamed Dyanmic War. Instead of planning missions monthly, with this option the aliens will check supply and threat to launch most missions constantly. This allows mission frequency in NSLW to be tunable with the ini setting -- even setting it to 1.0 will provide a different feel than regular LW, as missions per month isn't set, but probabilistic (although the variables are set to on average generate the same mission count if set to 1.0). You can set it to .3 for a much shorter campaign, or above 1 for even greater mission density.
- You can now build seven MEC suits. MEC-1 is tier one, MEC-2 and MEC-3 are tier 2, and MEC-4 through MEC-7 are tier 3. They split along survivability/mobility lines and some grant body shield or jet boot module perks. MEC suit bonus will has gone down somewhat, and some MEC perk trees significantly reworked.
- Critical wound bleed out timer now randomized between 2 and 5 turns. The timer is concealed to the player.
- Respirator implant item now does the following: (in addition to strangle and partial acid immunity) 1) Causes first death of mission to instead automatically be a critical wound; 2) Adds 2 turns to bleed out timer; 3) Transmits bleed-out timer data to central. It does not prevent will loss. Raised price for item.
- Long War classes have distinct icons now
- You can always enter build facility detail screen for readout on requirements, even if you have insufficient resources for build
- Commander's Choice (pick each soldier class) now available as a Second Wave option. Removed 'Alternate Sources' SW option. Thanks to Peasly Wellbott for letting us pick this up.
- Missions that can expire now have a countdown timer on the Geoscape UI. Geoscape will also pause when a mission is about to expire.
- Activated Tandem Warheads perk, which causes explosives to do full regular and environmental damage to the extent of their area of effect. This will be a high-level perk appearing on the Rocketeer, Engineer and Archer trees.
- Added UFO Scanners foundry project. This is an upgrade for your interceptors that will show precise damage taken by UFOs in air combat (using XMarksTheSpot's new interception UI mod) If you have already completed the analysis of the UFO class you are facing.
- Small items that grant non-perk bonuses (like Ceramic Plating or Armor Piercing Ammo) will now be described in your F1 HUD in tactical and have an icon with all your perks on the main tactical screen. You'll see a bit of doubling up of icons, 'cause we're out.
- Individual aliens and Exalts with certain perks will show different names in F1 detail if you have autopsied the species, giving a clue to their capabilities (and providing some flavor). eg Mutons with 'Covering Fire' will be called 'Muton Sentry' unless they have a stronger perk that takes precedence.
- Spruced up the MEC conversion UI.
- Reinstituted MEC repair and added repair of regular soldier items. Many items can now be damaged during (technically, after) combat and will have an increasing chance of needing repair following combat based on how many 'true' (non-armor) hp a soldier has lost. (Items will always function for the duration of a battle.) Armor, weapons, and small items that aren't infinite or fundamentally consumable (like grenades and ammo) are in the mix, although the chances they'll need repair is capped even if a soldier is killed varying on how likely something is to get damaged (armor=higher chances; pistol=lower chances, etc). Cybernetics Lab is now called 'Repair Bay,' is much cheaper, and may be built from campaign start. Cost to repair an item is initially set of 20% cash, meld, alloy and elerium cost, and a formula for time to repair is also in place that starts with a baseline of 60% of build time but goes down as you develop Advanced Repair and add engineers to your staff (minimum is 72 hours). The following items are ini-adjustable: repair time% of baseline build time, resource cost as% of baseline resource cost, and you can turn off repair requirements entirely with one variable. Removed Second Wave option 'More than Human' and replaced with Wear and Tear, which gives a chance that items will be damaged on missions and require repairs even when a soldier isn't hurt. The chance is initially set at 20% per item, and this value is ini-moddable. Many item costs are being adjusted downward to make up for reduced utility when they are in the shop.
Fixes:
- Code that was rolling up leaders at somewhat too high of a level and occasionally letting Temple Ship aliens out on regular missions
- Restored code allowing 50/50 chance for recovery of gear on soldier MIA/death + mission failure. Also MEC suits from dead soldiers can be recovered again.
- Adjusted some spawn code to reduce incidence of aliens spawning in range of soldiers at mission start (without pressing them all against the back wall of the map as was happening previously)
- Some overloud stacking sounds (overwatch all and research new-item alert) won't be so loud
- You will no longer get meld from failed alien and Exalt base assaults (vanilla bug)
- Mayhem will apply +4 damage bonus precision shot for snipers with sniper rifles (instead of +2)
- Rounding error that was causing Ethereal Psi Drain to not gain any HP when Ethereal was down only 1 hp
- Repair perk will provide correct bonus arc thrower charges now
- Flush will not cause flying units to attempt to move
- Mimic Beacon throw range correctly limited
- Various fixes to Critical Hit chances and interactions. Targeting Module (which isn't broken, contrary to reports) fix to displayed crit chance in some circumstances.
- Mayhem will now provide SAW/LMG damage bonus when using Rapid Fire and Flush
- Reward soldiers should now adopt your class coloration and headgear settings when class is selected
- Building/Tearing Down GeneLab/PsiLab should provide immediate impact on lab bonuses
- Having the Snap Shot perk and 1) carrying any primary weapon without the movelimited property (ie strike rifles) or 2) using the second shot of double tap confers a corrective to the snap shot aim penalty, canceling it out in those cases, as long as the calculated to-hit before the corrective is greater than 1%. This mostly corrects a vanilla bug.
- Smoke and Dense Smoke will now provide defense to flanked targets on the condition that the attacker's chance to hit is otherwise less than 100. If the chance to hit is 100, smoke/dense smoke provides a flat -10/-20 defense, because we are unable to access how much greater than 100 the pre-smoke to-hit is.
- Interceptor aim module now turns two misses into hits, instead of just making sure the next two shots hit regardless of roll. This fixes a bug in which Sparrowhawks were counting as an aim module hit if it was going to hit anyway.
- Fixed, at long last: Bug in which flanking bonuses for to-crit and ITZ purposes were not being applied to Squadsight shots.
- Fixed bug in which Fortiores Una wasn't conferring enough Damage Reduction. Changed its mechanics so it doubles base cover bonus, (so low is about 1.3, and high is 2.0).
- Fixed bug in which Mind Control wasn't supplying PsiXP.
- Bring 'Em On now counts enemies at Squadsight ranges in crit bonus calculation
- Alien Salvage actually provides salvage now
- Council Reward probability shift when you have a bunch of engineers should work properly now
- Adrenaline Surge perk actually provides crit bonus now
- Chameleon Suit actually provides bonus defense when using Lightning Reflexes (ouch)
- Aliens will now run harvest missions as intended at supply 1, threat 4 on mission matrix. Also a couple of other adjustments on the matrix.
- A soldier with both Concealment (old Psi Shadow) and Low Profile will no longer conceal, move to low cover, and immediately reveal; instead they won't conceal at all. This should allow a soldier with Lightning Reflexes, Low Profile and Concealment to trigger OW shots and retain high cover bonus by moving to a low cover spot.
- Attempted fix: Shouldn't face any fresh panic checks when reloading a game with a critically wounded soldier
- Triggering the HQ Defense mission will no longer crash game while Skyranger is in flight
- Fixed some map bugs on police station and small scout nuked city
Balancing and other minor adjustments:
- Alien roster for XCOM HQ Assault will scale up in difficulty a little more slowly
- Not So Long War SW option now applies modifier to soldier timeout and interceptor repair time -- meaning they will both be out longer
- UFO upgrades to accuracy, damage and hit points now stop at 32 months (alien research 960) so interception game doesn't become truly impossible for persistent-game players
- Significant nerf to the power of large lab blocks to reduce research time
- Packmaster provides +1 Proximity Mine charge instead of +2
- Dramatic increase in Weapon Fragments required for various technologies
- Increased Neuroregulator psi bonus; wearing it 3 times will reduce missions to level up by 1. Adjusted PsiXP to normalize missions per level at 5 for all levels and 3 on current (.6) NSLW setting. NR grants +10 will.
- Armor Piercing Ammo item now nullifies 2 points of enemy DR. Armor Piercing Ammo item now available to MECs, SHIVs and Engineers, but won't help with shotguns or sidearms.
- HEAT Ammo and HEAT Warheads damage reduced to +50% from 75%. HEAT Ammo perk made available to engineer class at Gunnery Sergeant rank (in place of RFA). HEAT Ammo will not work if carrying a shotgun. Both HEAT Ammo and HEAT Warheads will provide a minimum of 2 bonus damage. Both HEAT Ammo and HEAT Warheads bonus exposed in separate ini variables, using up our last two spare floats for ini settings.
- Weapon-tech damage-bonus items (alloy jacketed rounds, enhanced beam optics, plasma stellerator) now usable by humans, SHIVs and MECs. Depleted Elerium Rounds, Laser Pumper, Zevatron Booster removed from game.
- Laser Sight and Hi Cap Mags now usable by humans, SHIVs and MECs. Weapon Gyros and Autoloader removed from game.
- Targeting Module now provides +8% crit and +1 base damage when critical hits occur (so 1.5 critical damage).
- Abductions will be spaced out over an entire month regardless of how many the aliens plan. Previously they were stacked in the early month. Reduced allowed Abduction response time.
- Reduced meld from dead aliens to make you go after cans more. Exposed a couple of alien meld variables to the ini.
- Ghost Grenades renamed 'Shadow Device' and no longer gain additional charges from Packmaster or Smoke and Mirrors.
- Engineers may now use shredder ammo small item. Added engineer-specific item property for additional modding.
- Recovering from being strangled reduces your grenade throw range.
- Increased damage and reduced AOE of Proximity Mines. AOE and trigger range should now match.
- Increased AOE of grenade launcher grenades.
- Reaction Fire against Mecs, Mectoids, SHIVs and Sectopods (what we're calling large mechanized units) is more accurate unless the targeted unit has Lightning Reflexes, or attacker has Opportunist / Advanced Fire Control (which already provide this accuracy bonus). Specifically, added a variable to cancel the REACTION_PENALTY (which is 0.7) when firing at these units. Dashing bonus still in effect. This can be removed with an ini edit. Purpose is to reduce effectiveness of big tanky units as super-dodgy Reaction Fire busters (although their DR will still help), and enhance utility of Lightning Reflexes perk on scouts.
- Equipping multiple Kinetic Strike Modules now confers +3 damage for each extra module equipped. Stacks with Thumper and MEC Close Combat advances.
- Firing a rocket/shredder rocket now grants +1 mobility for the remainder of the mission (for each rocket fired)
- Major Rework of rocketeer tree, some changes all other trees
- Sightline HUD (red alien heads) will now display up to 20 aliens in view instead of 10
- Phoenix Cannon is back (replacing Phoenix Coilgun). It is available at Alien Materials and is probably a middling upgrade to the missiles -- it has base laser cannon armor piercing (enough to do full damage to Raiders) and slightly higher damage per second than Avalanche, and all the shots should mean it should provide more consistent results than the missiles.
- Added foundry project 'Quenchguns' that triples the anti-DR capability of Gauss weapons (to 1) and is available after researching Advanced Gauss Weapons.
- Added foundry project 'Phoenix Coilguns' that improves all existing Phoenix Cannon to Phoenix Coilgun stats and is available after researching Gauss Weapons.
- Foundry projects will be more moddable in the ini now.
- Strategy Game alien resource numbers moddable in the ini now.
- Improved impact of Snap Shot for rocketeers.
- Mimic Beacon item provides 1 base charge, not 2
- Increased 'Reasonable Attack Range' for drones and flying units in hopes of reducing derpy behavior
- Aliens with Lightning Reflexes will now care much less about overwatchers when deciding what to do
- Offscreen kills on terror missions will be proportionally reduced with the number of aliens you can see. To compensate, aliens can rarely kill 3 civilians a turn if you have revealed few or no aliens.
- Master Sergeants will roll for a +1 bonus to a random stat (offense, defense, will, hit points) every 4th mission. 10% chance of hit point, 30% chance of one of the other three.
- Transports (UFOs) will tend to have more troops than previously.
- You will see more alien 'monsters' (level 9 leaders) by the by on alien base assaults, larger UFOs and late-game council missions.
- Resources reworked a bit. Reduced base alloys from each UFO class by about 30%. Increased average alloys and elerium recovered on UFO crash missions. Foundry alloy and elerium projects now provide 20% bonus to ALL alloys and elerium recovered from missions. UFO Analysis techs provide 20% bonus to alloys and elerium recovered from that specific class of UFO after mission win (crashed or landed). Slight increase in chances of UFO Power and Nav Computer surviving mission. Altered how EMP Cannon works (bonus to artifact survival instead of flat chance). Slight decrease in alloys recovered from certain alien species. The goal here is to steady out your resource income and force some investment to improve it, particularly in the early game (making bagging a big landed UFO a little less swingey in overall campaign progression), make an early alien materials tech path more enticing, and make crashes somewhat more rewarding.
- Reduced base flamethrower damage by 2. Jellied Elerium foundry project now provides only bonus panic chance on its own, but it also unlocks a small item, the Incinerator Module, that provides +3 flamethrower damage.
- Reduced Chryssalid will by 10 or 15 or so.
- MEC Railgun will now use Minigun model and effects. Laser/Pulse Lance will use Railgun model and effects.
- Arc Rifle now available to all squishy classes but gunner and rocketeer. You may now move and fire it without penalty. It still suffers close-range penalties like sniper rifles (This a technical limitation -- disabling shot can't be divorced from short-range penalty), but otherwise operates like a rifle. It no longer operates at beyond visual range. It confers +10 aim.
- Alloy Belt item removed from game. Alloy Carbide Plating provides Extra Conditioning bonus (2-4 HP) but no DR.
- All MEC units gain +4 hp upon conversion instead of +2. MEC Armors lowered by 2 hp.
- Reworked DR calculation formula so additive modifiers are calculated before multiplicative ones, with the exception of cover DR. This reduces the effect of Absorption Fields and Shock Absorbent Armor.
- MECs have slightly higher average timeout between missions
- New Item: Flak Ammo. Unlocked by Floater Autospy and MEC Warfare Systems. Can be equipped by anybody. Works like HEAT Ammo, granting greater of +2 or +20% base weapon damage against airborne units with primary weapon and rockets, and allows MECs with Collateral Damage to target airborne units with its AOE weapon attack (and gain the damage bonus).
- Reduced damage for MEC Minigun, Laser Lance, Railgun by 1, so it scales up by 1 at each tech level like every other weapon.
- Combined Arms perk now nullifies 1 point of all DR, not just cover-based DR. (Note all MECs have this perk innately).
- Attempted to make EXALT less suicidal in rushing transmitter volume with AI change to GetMaxDangerLevelForMovement
- Vital Point Targeting no longer applies to Collateral Damage ability (was never intended to). Ranger, and Shredded effects still do.
- HEAT now applies a flat +2 damage bonus when used with collateral damage against robotic enemies.
- Increased harder aliens' damage by 2 on Impossible, and easier aliens by 1. Increased alien research rate on Brutal from 105% to 110%, and 120 to 130% on Impossible.
- Mid-level Cyberdisc and Sectopod leaders will get HEAT ammo. A few alien leaders/navigators will get Combined Arms.
- Increased meld cost to convert a soldier to a MEC. Decreased meld cost of all suits.
- Converting to a MEC confers a loss of one level (rank) and a proportionate reduction in XP; that is, a Sergeant 50% of the way to TSGT converts and becomes a Corporal 50% of the way to Sergeant with XP. MSGTs reset to minimum XP to become GSGT.
- Gave SHIVs a little armor HP that won't need time in the shop if lost. Regular SHIV now has 15 defense (vice 10); Alloy SHIV has 10 defense (vice 15).
- Rework of equip UI so it alerts you when you are equipping an ammo type or other small item that isn't compatible with one of your primary weapons, and unequips the small item if you swap to an incompatible primary weapon. Damage enhancer ammos will no longer apply bonuses to sidearms. If I get another spare item, I'll think about a pistol damage enhancer item as an option.
- Three special ammo items -- Flak, Shredder and AP -- cannot stack.
- Moderate rework of some aim and defense: Items will gain aim/crit/defense on a 4/6/8/12 scale rather than a 5/7/10/15. Perk gains unchanged. Soldier aim gains on level ups will range from 18 to 28, with 18 or 21 for most classes (Scout is 25, Sniper is 28 ). Soldier recruit aim range changed from 55 to 75 to 58 to 72. Wider range for MECs, with a peak at 28 again for the Jaeger. (Note MECs can use Scope now.) Adjusted rocketeer scatter so a point of aim is worth slightly more, as they have fewer perk-based options to increase aim. Aliens lose some defense on level-ups. This is intended to do several things: 1) increase value of aim and defense-related perks on the trees, most of which are conditionally activated, challenging you to employ them effectively. 2) Increase value of cover and flanking mid-to-late game by reducing impact of general purpose defense. 3) Make it harder to reach 100 to hit 4) Flatten aim differences between classes somewhat and help supports be somewhat useful riflemen.
- Three aim gainers -- Scope, Neural Gunlink and Illuminator Gunsight -- can no longer stack. Neural Gunlink and Illuminator Gunsight now provide +12 aim/crit. Scope provides +8.
- Platform Stability now available on Sniper, Gunner and Rocketeer trees. Platform Stability now helps reduce rocket scatter.
- Alloy Bipod is now a flat aim/crit gainer equippable only by snipers, providing +6 aim at zero weight.
- Slight bump in XP to reach high ranks. (Master Sergeant is 4200 instead of 4000).
- Squadsight shots now suffer only a -20% crit penalty
- LMG series no longer provides a 5% crit bonus
- In the Zone hits do one less damage with each ITZ kill in a round. ITZ crit per kill penalty reduced to -10% per kill from -25%. (And note Squadsight ITZ-related bugfix above).
- Titan armor is now .5 DR, 12 HP, and carries the Damage Control perk.
- Rework to simplify and bugfix explosives and perk interactions. Sapper now provides +1 damage to HE, AP, Alien, and Grenade Launcher grenades and Prox Mines. Mayhem applies +2 damage to all those weapons and +2 to rockets. Completing the alien grenade foundry project applies +2 damage to Needle and Grenade Launcher grenades and a 60% AOE bonus to HE grenades. So a maxed out Needle Grenade can get 9 damage, alien grenade 8 damage, HE Grenade 6 damage + large AOE, Grenade Launcher grenade 9 damage (with Ranger) and Proximity Mine (again with Ranger) 13 damage. Rockets go from 7, 9 and 12 to top out at 11, 13 and 17 with Mayhem, Ranger, and damage enhancers.
- Trying to train drones and Mechtoids not to double move when enemies are around.
- Trained drones to use their overload ability in certain special conditions (Without giving up the triggers, I'm showing some restraint here.) Debating whether to up the damage a bit.
- Trying to train aliens to set up overwatch walls when they are defending landed ships and their own bases.
- Removed Smartgun Kit item (Advanced Fire Control is now on Gunner tree). Replaced with Advanced Suppression Module for SHIVs, which grants Danger Zone perk.
- Memorial now displays soldier class of deceased soldiers
- Savior now also provides 2 item-free medikit charges and +4 healing bonus.
- The first soldier on your roster will always be from XCOM's home country.
- Taking Battlescanner perk now lets you throw scanners a distance equivalent to having Grenadier and Bombardier perks. Those perks will also increase BS throw distance, but it won't stack with perk bonus.
- Regen Biofield now has a 50/50 chance (in separate rolls) of curing poison and reducing panic duration of nearby soldiers, in addition to healing bonus. Adjusted psi perk tree so Regen Biofield is level 1, Psi Inspiration and Distortion Field are level 2, and Psi Panic and Mind Merge are level 3. (Changed requirements a bit too). Psi fatigue increased to 24 hours for first level, and then to 6 hours for 2nd and 3rd level to increase cost of spamming low-level psis just to get at the gear.
- Combat Stims grants adrenaline surge perk (+10 aim, +10 crit if you get wounded) for duration of mission, in addition to current use.
- Slowed down pace of country item requests slightly.
- Chameleon Suit now provides immunity to Opportunist crits
- Psi Shadow perk renamed 'Concealment' and removed from Psi Tree. Now a MSGT perk on Scout tree. Hacking an Exalt array and capturing meld now reveals hidden soldiers.
- Slight reduction in flight fuel for flying armors and hover shiv
- Larger UFOs have more hit points and go slower on the strategic map, allowing for more interceptions while they are on missions.
- Dense Smoke perk no longer provides AOE bonus for smoke grenades.
- UFO initial base will not be on your starting continent.
- Doubled alien alloys and elerium income from UFOs, missions and aliens. Doubled alloys and elerium costs for techs and items. Reduced $$ cost for alloys and elerium. Increased usual amount for council item requests of alloys and elerium. This makes the repair system a little more granular -- the amount of alloys/elerium needed to repair early game items (0/1/2, etc) was making too big a difference in the utility of the item. Otherwise the overall economy should be the same.
- Scores of minor adjustments
Hotfix 14i (Dec. 4, 2014) -- special toddler banged at my keyboard edition
Fixes:
- Possible CTD when using Heal charge with Field Medic perk and carrying no medikits
- Missing Chaingun icon (with ammo count) in tactical
- Neural Feedback not doing correct damage
Hotfix 14h (Dec. 3, 2014)
Feature
- Arc Thrower modifier exposed as an ini variable for modding
Fixes:
- CTD when sectopod AI hunting for cluster bomb targets
- All-Exalt HQ assault shouldn't occur anymore
- Bad XCOM spawns for soldiers 7+ in Linux version and cleaner 7+ spawns overall
- Some ghost grenade-related adjustments listed in g that weren't fully implemented
- Rebates when buying multiple items should work correctly now
- Third shot on Rapid Reaction should fire now
Hotfix 14g (Nov. 29, 2014)
Features:
- You may now select and equip your soldiers for the HQ defense, with some important limits: You will be required to equip 12 soldiers (this number is moddable in DefaultGameData.ini and LW default may change based on feedback), but only a random five will be available immediately, with three more as reinforcements (one automatic, the other two dependent on losses). The remainder were pinned down somewhere else and will not show up on the mission at all (and receive no fatigue or XP). Blueshirts will be largely unchanged from B14, although reinforcements will almost always arrive based on keep you at 6 XCOM soldiers and 2 blueshirts, so no more gamey sacrifices of those guys. Aliens will also sometimes bring leaders on the HQ Assault, which the leader level and frequency increasing with alien research. They will also work to protect their assault carrier better.
- Hangar ship list will contain an icon indicating whether aircraft is a standard interceptor or Firestorm
- Critical Wound will penalty now exposed as an ini variable for modding
- Added scroller to soldier equip UI allowing more 6 items (armor+weapons+items) to be equipped. Note for modders: Small items in slot 4+ may not supply charges in tactical game; we may try to address this in the future.
Fixes:
- CTDs and some other weird behavior at interception initiation (with short-range weapons and maybe Sparrowhawks)
- CTD when an ethereal psi-reflects twice in a turn (we think vanilla bug)
- Lockup when SHIV tries to reinforce a HQ assault and gets stuck in the door. Shivs will no longer go on these missions.
- Lockup when you have covering fire, sentinel and Neural Dampening all on the same soldier, you overwatch, and a mind control is used against you. (Fix: Being dazed cancels any overwatch shots)
- Bug in which randomized alien drop downs were not taking place
- Added explicit check for panicking in whether Close Combat Specialist triggers
- Incidents of zero damage will still do zero damage if targeted is shredded. This is to fix cases of shredded ethereals taking 1 damage when a psi reflect event occurs.
- Reworked how item discounts/rush costs are calculated so rounding issues don't make it advantageous to build a single item rather than several.
- Ready For Anything will now trigger when Adrenal Neurosympathy fires after a kill
- Combat Stims provide immunity to crits when not flanked or exposed
- Psi Abilities will no longer apply shredding debuff with Shredder Ammo
- Cyrillic font should look nicer now
- Officer bonus perks properly removed from MECs now
- Removed hyperwave beacon from list of salable items (due to bug in gray market); increased sale price of alien entertainment to compensate
- You shouldn't be able to co-equip Psi Grenades and Flashbangs now
- XCOM reinforcements in HQ Defense should spawn in order of barracks sorting now
- Sectopod AI won't try to clusterbomb airborne units
- Medikit preview blinkies will correctly take Smart Macrophages into account in all cases
- EMP Cannon should work properly in providing loot chances now; exposed its effectiveness to the ini
- You can change hairstyles on special soldiers now (Zhang, etc)
- Finishing a lab should correctly update time to completion of current research project in UI
- Added IsLocationOccupied check to prevent aliens from dropping on tiles already occupied by soldiers.
- Reverted Commander spawn points to default for Supply and Battleship UFOs, because of UFO volume not being determined properly for those ships.
- You should be able to train Rift before activating Gollop Chamber again if other requirements are fulfilled
- Some crit bonuses will no longer be displayed twice in shot detail when attempting precision shot
- Field commander rank should show up correctly in barracks now
- Drone self-destruct will actually entail them self-destructing and not just taking damage
- Panicking units will automatically unstealth, and cannot be stealthed with ghost grenades. This was to fix some buggy behavior but we're fine with the nerf to stealth, too.
- Some scrolling improvements
- Fixed bug in which abductor research missions were providing no alien research bonus
- Attempted Fix (again): Tried to remove Steady Weapon ability from EXALT AI possibilities in a second location in the AI code
- Attempted Fix: Found and eliminated case in which you could generate XCOM HQ assaults two months in a row, contrary to design intent for that not to happen
- Attempted Fix: Rare cases of units blocking tiles after death.
- Attempted Fix: Tile blocking after a suppression-caused reaction fire shot
Balancing:
- Lowered sectoid commander aim significantly so their AI decides to use psi powers more often.
- Removed brutal and boring Van Doorn map from terror mission roster. Added new gas station map in its place.
- Steadfast perk (and Alien Trophies and Mind Shield) now provides immunity to Muton Intimidate ability. Mutons will no longer intimidate XCOM soldiers that they can't see (so at squadsight ranges or hidden).
- Mind Merge provides greater DR (1 per 45 will)
- Adjusted spawn settings again to better spread out alien pods, but again raising the still-slight risk of a spawn appearing in visual range of XCOM LZ.
- Mayhem provides +4 damage (sted +2) for sniper and strike rifles
- Thin Men should show up more often in general encounters
- Reduced meld provided by mectoids (3 to 2) floaters (.5 to .4), Heavy Floaters (1 to .8 ) and Exalt Elite (1 to .8 )
- Slightly changed Commander Pod location randomization algorithm to produce more diverse results.
- Rapid Reaction now allows a third overwatch shot if the prior two hit
- Buffed will of Temple Ship Muton Elites
- Some aliens will have access to Neural Damping perk
- MEC-3 armor now has two small item slots instead of one. Removed tactical sense perk from MEC-3 armor. Increased engineer requirements for MEC-2 and MEC-3 armors slightly.
- Mimic Beacons now work on a caster will versus alien will mechanism, so aliens have to fail a will-based saving throw to be affected by it. Raised cash price and will penalty of MBs slightly.
- Scientist and Engineer Loss on defeat during HQ Assault will cap at 1/3 of current staffing
- Increased meld cost of some items and foundry projects
- Amped up alien base forces a bit. Aliens will have a higher chance of rolling navigator abilities, and 'Itchy Trigger Tentacle' will be activated for the alien side during base assaults (representing them being on the defensive).
- Removed some sectoid automatic will upgrades, made some more powerful navigator sectoids instead (so the critters will vary more)
- New soldiers and blueshirts will equip assault rifle or assault carbine and tac armor or tac vest based on their aim and mobility rolls. You can set their ability score threshold for equipping them in DGC.ini.
- Soldiers will cost $25 on all difficulties.
- Increased damage caused by drone self-destruct for big drones.
- Increased costs significantly for Ghost Grenades, somewhat for Chem Grenades. You'll need more bodies.
- Increased elerium costs for flying and psi armors.
- Tweaked up frequency of interceptor base attack.
- Frontloaded some rocketeer aim gain to early levels, removing some from later levels.
HOTFIX 14f (Nov. 4, 2014)
Fixed: Major bug since 14d that broke alien resource-gatheringFixed: Typo in Supercapacitors ini entry that may have made it too cheap or possibly not available at all
- Updated Spanish translation(2) removes debugging code that snuck in build
HOTFIX 14e (Nov. 4, 2014)
- Fixed: Bug forcing you to reselect Fire In the Hole after each mission
- Fixed: Red Fog will apply movement penalties now
- Fixed: Shredded effect no longer enhances poison damage. This was causing suicidal AIs.
- Fixed: Covering Fire and Steadfast on Infantry tree will provide correct skill bonuses again (+3 aim and +5 will). DGC.ini update
- Fixed: Swedish last names not randomizing properly, also removed some special Swedish characters from defaultnamelist.ini that weren't showing up correctly on some machines and possibly bollixing array; updated several namelists
- Fixed: Medikit ability UI will show savior bonus correctly now
- Fixed: Ship Weapon card will show correct to-hit for pilots with 11 or more kills
- Fixed: Removed Repair Servos from Seeker leaders, as it was showing repair popup while they were cloaked. Gave them Rapid Reaction instead. Wondered briefly how'd they do with Absorption Field.
- Fixed: Tactical Mission summary should report correct number of soldiers killed / lost on failed council missions. Suppressed the soldiers-killed report for covert extractions because it wasn't working correctly and we don't have a mechanism to fix it.
- Updated French translation
HOTFIX 14d (Nov. 2, 2014)
- New feature: Damaged UFOs (at 50% damage or greater) will show an explodey effect in the interception UI that will increase in intensity as damage increases. (XMarksTheSpot strikes again)
- New feature: Distinct name lists for Swedes, Canadians (French and Anglo), Australians, Spanish, Ukrainians, Nigerians and South Africans (thanks to freshman LW contributor Part Time Commie). Note: If you use non-LW custom name lists, you will have to reformat them in accordance with new file standards, which are explained in the file DefaultNameList.ini
- New feature: Removed some camera angles and replace ALT-F7, ALT-F8 and ALT-F9 keybinds with SLOMO commands (1.0, 1.15, 1.5 -- normal, slightly accelerated, significantly accelerated)
- New Feature: Man of Bronze second wave option. This option enables tactical mission restart option on Ironman campaigns. E-299 SW option will no longer be available.
- Fixed: Bullrush CTD
- Fixed: Another barracks sort CTD
- Fixed: Linux CTD on Seeker behavior, was probably causing some goofy Seeker behavior in Windows
- Fixed: Obscure Geoscape CTD when council mission target being selected
- Fixed: Improved scrolling in Tactical F1 and on strategy game item cards
- Fixed: MedikitHeal/Stabilize abilities will no longer show up on MECs
- Fixed: Restorative Mist + Field Medic providing too many charges
- Fixed: Remove Steady Weapon entirely from EXALT's options; they're too stupid to use it well
- Fixed: Reworked officer promotion UI so it's purdy and doesn't have incorrect perk icons
- Fixed: Shredded no longer applies bonus damage to mindfray
- Fixed: UFO icon in Sit Room screen will now disappear after aborting landed UFO mission
- Fixed: Visual bug in which seekers strangled in incorrect location when strangling a suppressor
- Fixed: Bug in which soldiers 7 and 8 on HQ defense are apparently reverted to default loadout
- Fixed: Mind Control perk should work again
- Fixed: Bombard perk will show in icons stack in lower left corner in tactical missions
- Attempted Fix: Tried again to make it impossible for seekers to do double-stealth fail when up against battlescanner
- Attempted Fix: F2 camera angle not allowing certain camera movements with controls
- Attempted Fix: Small Scout map where soldier can spawn out of map bounds
- Adjusted a key spawning variable to spread out aliens on smaller maps a bit more and work around some failed pod placement issues. This slightly increases the still-small chance of seeing members of an unactivated pod upon landing, but the alternative is squishing the aliens into a highly restricted space on some maps.
- Sapper, Stay Frosty, Band of Warriors, Legio Patria Nostra, Into the Breach and Fire in the Hole, some others get better perk icons
- Some available resources information will appear in more places in the StrategyUI
- Balancing: Made it harder to spawn battleships on hunt missions; a little easier on bombing missions
- Balancing: Expanded conditions in which an interceptor base assault may be generated
HOTFIX 14c (Oct. 26, 2014)
Fixed: CTD when 'Serkers look for bullrush targets on pod revealFixed: CTDs due to barracks sort code, including CTD after FLIPFixed: CTDs when covert operatives hits extraction LZFixed: Colors for hit points and armor points above pawn should be clearer nowFixed: HP Display can handle up to 80 hp nowFixed: Healing items will blink hp/ap when considered for useFixed: Adjusted Pulse and Beam laser environmental damage so Pulse is higher as intended (relic of switching their roles several Betas back)Fixed: Civilians will no longer show armor HPFixed: Vortex Armor description will note fatigue reliefFixed: Suppressors will return to cover nowFixed: Council will only request laser rifles once beam lasers tech is researchedFixed: Skyranger will automatically empty when a mission expires as long as it's not on a mission -- so soldiers aren't stuck in limbo until next mission popsFixed: Field Surgeon will no longer bring back the deadFixed: Dead Aliens killed without explosives will provide meld again. As a side effect, killing navigators will net more XP if the navigator has multiple bonuses.Fixed: Novosibirsk city name will show up nowFixed: VIPs can escape properly on yellow moves nowFixed: Durand won't get Close Encounters but instead a psi perk as intendedFixed: Laser pistol gets beam laser aim bonusFixed: New scrolling works in Hangar nowFixed: Display bug suggesting hidden-but-equipped large weapon was providing mobility bonuses/maluses for covert operative (it wasn't, so no need to go into barracks and add SMG to CO thinking it will give you mob bonus)Fixed: Apparent longstanding bug in which some bonus ammo + Dr penetration we were granting MECs (via assignment of free Combined Arms perk) was getting removed from MECs after their first mission. This caused Rapid Fire and Collateral Damage to be unavailable when it should have been. To correct MECs on existing campaign, select the MEC and use the dev console command GivePerk 138 during a mission, or give perk 138 to all MEC weapon items in DGC.ini.Fixed: Gauss Machine Gun and Sentry Gun will have Reaper Ammo FX nowFixed: Covert operative will be fatigued after missionFixed: Suppressors losing LOS to target when in high cover. We may have fixed a couple of other wonky LOS bugs at the same time by forcing a vision check in a certain place.Attempted Fix: Tried to delay Slingshot start by a couple of weeks in a second placeUpdated Spanish translation
Beta 14b notes (Oct 20, 2014)
Bugfixes:Fixed: Freeze when Progeny mission firesFixed: Bad offset when new council mission checked, potential freezeFixed: Europe continent bonus will actually apply to OTS projects nowFixed: More bugs in whether covert ops mission awards intelFixed: Van Doorn now says something when he fires a rocketFixed: Removed two XCOM spawn points from Grand Cemetery maps that required grapples/flight to extract, which was a little unfair even for usFixed: Some spawning issues on fishing village mapFixed: Corrected Fuel Cell and Cognitive Enhancer inventory imagesFixed: Removed Van Doorn head from heads available to general soldiery (to fix bug where they wouldn't retain hair). Van Doorn's hairless head thus becomes unique to him. Any soldiers with Male Caucasian Head 14 may need to perform temporary race swap to avoid CTDs.Fixed: Gauss Weapons should apply anti-DR correctly nowFixed: Gauss Rifle and a few pulse weapons weren't classified correctly, meaning weapon-tech based bonus items weren't help like they should
Beta 14a notes (Oct 19, 2014)
Bugfix:
- Fixed bug in which some successful covert extractions weren't awarding intel
Beta 14 notes (Oct 19, 2014)
Beta 14 should not require a campaign restart; however, a new campaign is recommended for a balanced and less buggy experience.
Beta 13 to 14 known issues
- Fix to soldier heads can cause CTD in the tactical game. IF A SOLDIER HAS NO PAWN APPEAR IN THE DROPSHIP SCREEN, THE WORKAROUND IS TO CHANGE THE RACE/ETHNICITY OF THESE SOLDIERS (and change it back if desired), WHICH RESETS THEIR HEAD TO A DEFAULT. IF YOU DO NOT DO THIS, YOU WILL GET CRASHES IN THE TACTICAL GAME.
- Changes to perk trees will not take effect for existing soldiers, as usual
- XCOM Soldiers with Mind Control perk will lose the perk (and get Fire in the Hole Instead). Currently unsure they will be able to retrain it, but they can add it with console command GivePerk 100 or GivePerk PsiControl.
- On normal and classic difficulties, new XCOM soldiers no longer get a defense bonus; instead all aliens get an equivalent aim penalty. This will mean existing soldiers will be very hard to hit (as they will maintain their defense, but the aliens will all lose aim). Player upgrading mid-campaign may want to adjust ini values to compensate.
Features:
- Most maps will now have start zones and escape LZs in new places.
- Aliens will now sometimes attack your interceptor bases, using a map previously available only to MP games. Failure to defend your bases will mean destruction of and damage to many of your aircraft.
- Soldier hit points display in tactical UI will differentiate between armor/item HP bonuses and permanent HP
- Added sort in engineering UI. Items will be categorized by size, then alphabetically.
- Reworked soldier sort in barracks menus; will now sort down fatigued status soldiers below active and above wounded soldiers, and sort primarily by XP and secondarily by officer rank within each status.
- Adjusted scrolling behavior in strategy game and savegame menus. Should be a lot easier to use now.
- For non-Ironman games, added 'Restart Mission' option to pause menu (thanks Drakous79 for unocovering this). This offers a way to get out of bug-induced mission problems (like script interruption on the base assault) and also a perhaps somewhat more honest savescumming method, in that you take the mulligan on an entire mission rather than a single shot.
- More new inventory art. More unique HUD images from JCLewis. Art for the new techs and foundry projects.
- Added two new options to Interface Options Screen: 1) Default Zoom Level Slider, lets you adjust default zoom level from between 50% and 200% of normal, and 2) A checkbox that lets you activate an alternate set of camera controls, where you can click the middle mouse button to directly control camera yaw and pitch
- You may now recruit soldiers from two new countries: Honduras and Bosnia-Herzegovina! (Please don't ask why those two over other deserving countries like Turkey or Iran.) (Sigh. You asked, didn't you? Look, these are perfectly fine countries who want to fight aliens, so consider them representative of two important world regions: Central America and the Balkans.) (The real answer is technical. From what I understand, Firaxis coded in the Honduran and B-H flags in the texture that supplies flags to the back of soldier pawns, along with the 29 flags you are familiar with. These textures are prohibitively difficult to change, while changing all the other stuff to get these countries in the game was fairly simple.)
- Brazilian soldiers will now get Brazilian names, rather than Spanish-based ones. Combined English and Australian namelist (please don't hate me) and two Spanish namelists to make this and the new countries happen. Added a bunch of names to multiple nationalities for more variety.
- Alien Missions can now take place in a bunch of new cities in council countries
- Premission squads are loaded blank. Your premission squad will now be saved if you leave the dropship room and return.
- Completing the Exalt HQ assault will net three unique items, a really nice scope (an improved illuminator gunsight usable by any soldier; old IG no longer buildable) and items that respectively grant 20% bonus XP and PsiXP whenever carried on missions.
- Added French translation, now available as separate download
- Added Field Surgeon perk, which reduces wound recovery time after missions
- Gauss Weapons will now use Reaper Ammo sound and visual effects to differentiate them better from ballistics. Reaper Ammo will no longer cause special FX.
- Added Hit and Run perk, which allows a free shot against a flanked or exposed target (basically works like Close Encounters, except target status rather than proximity is the trigger). Will be available to scouts, assaults and probably MECs. No, it can't stack with CE (it uses the same resources, for one thing).
- Added Fire in the Hole rocketeer Perk, which grants 10 aim for purposes of reducing rocket scatter if your soldier has not moved. Grants 10 aim worth of additional range for blaster launcher.
- Added two cheap Base Security foundry projects, which will allow base security to automatically equip any spare laser rifles and phalanx armors during an XCOM HQ assault. Note these will only help if you have unequipped instances of these items in storage.
- Geoscape will pause when new recruits arrive.
- In rare cases you will get landed assault carriers. These will use battleship maps (which have fires and damage because we only have shot-down battleship maps available to us).
- Added ini settings to control likelihood of new soldiers coming from a given country
- Added ini settings to set costs (meld, money and days in the tank) for genemods. Also added ini settings to set extra fatigue timeout for individual genemods and psi powers, and fatigue timeout per officer rank.
- Added ini setting to set initial alien bonus research
- Added ini setting to increase/decrease meld from cans (multiplier)
Bugfixes
- Fixed: Hang when alien panics
- Fixed: CTD/Hangup when MEC troopers forced into base defense mission without any available MEC armor to be equipped
- Fixed: Potential CTD bug with seeker AI
- Fixed: CTD when reloading mission with lots of aliens
- Fixed: CTD when reloading Exalt HQ assault
- Fixed: Geoscape rarely becomes semi-frozen after missions (clock doesn't roll for item construction, Skyranger does not return from mission site). Apparently a vanilla issue that failed to give Skyranger return-to-base mission in some cases; it may be more likely to occur in LW for some reason; added an error check that should prevent it.
- Attempted Fix: Altered hardcoded defaultloadouts in attempt to catch versions of Sectoid Commander crash that isn't fixed by our prior fix for reasons we do not understand
- Attempted fix: Found bad local in CalcHitRolls that may have been messing up HEAT/Shredding damage modifiers when applied to Rapid Fire and In the Zone. We think this will fix the Rapid-Fire-2nd-shot-always-missing-bug.
- Fixed: Aliens sometimes start out in view of squad
- Fixed: Lock N' Load perk will now work for MECs; turn ends on reload
- Fixed: Lock N' Load perk will no longer allow a reload+turn for sidearms, as designed
- Fixed: UFO command pod sometimes spawning on UFO roof, which is a problem if spawn point is inaccessible or invisible
- Fixed: Can no longer sell Ethereal Device on Gray market. Increased price of Hyperwave Detector so it's worth selling after multiple base raids. Lowered alien entertainment price somewhat so base raids don't get that much better.
- Adjustment/Fix: Gave sectoids, sectoid commanders and seekers 'Gunslinger' perk and reduced their plasma pistol damage by 1, effectively leaving their weapon damage unchanged but removing range penalties. Their AI probably isn't smart enough to know how to compensate for the range penalties.
- Fixed: Hi Cap Mags and Autoloader will no longer show 'Lock N' Load' perk when equipped. These items and the +1 ammo from LnL will still stack.
- Fixed: Scatter Laser, Alloy Cannon and AP Grenade showing inaccurate damage in equipping UI card sometimes; cards for Grenade Launcher, Kinetic Strike Module and Flamethrower damage will now reflect bonuses from foundry projects
- Fixed: Precision Shot will not give crit bonuses to strike rifles (only sniper rifles) per design
- Fixed: Marksman's Rifle icon looks more impressive now in the HUD
- Fixed: Hyperwave and Gollop Chamber do not require Hyperwave/Ethereal Device to build on top of research requirement that consumes those items. Research requirement will consume items; after which you don't need them to build the facilities.
- Updated Spanish translation.
- Adjusted: MEC conversion will return to 9a mechanism: set to fixed stats (what you'd get with strict screening on the same difficulty level), except a measure of very high will will be retained.
- Fixed: Removed soldier heads of Ken, Sid and Carter from being available to random soldiers in the mod. These were bugged when combined with various headgear options.
- Attempted Fix: Exalts floating in during 'fliers-only' part of HQ assault
- Fixed: Lightning Reflexes will now apply to reaction fire shots that otherwise have a 100% chance to hit. Vanilla issue.
- Attempted Fix: Last round of your clip with Ammo Conservation doesn't seem to allow to set overwatch. You can steady weapon, fire that round, can't overwatch with it. It's faded out and says 'not enough ammo.'
- Attempted Fix: RFA still allowing multiple overwatch shots on a berserker.
- Fixed: Dismissed officers do not see billet recycled back; vanilla bug manifesting (Recycling code in MoveToMorgue; not present in DismissSoldier)
- Fixed: Targeting Reticle now shows expected scatter instead of % when aiming with rockets
- Fixed, sort of: Getting some UFOs being spawned outside the range of designed ships, causing the 'Independence Day virus' in which you get free kills on nameless UFOs. Can't figure out cause, but added some code to catch these errors and spawn mission-appropriate craft instead.
- Fixed: Blueshirts will properly level up and be assessed fatigue if they survive the base defense mission
- Fixed: Catching Breath (and probably freshly revived) soldier cannot draw sidearm.
- Fixed: Plasma Pistol no longer confers -10 aim.
- Fixed: Skeleton key now consumed by base assault
- Fixed: Removed Automated Threat Assessment from Alien perk list
- Renamed Rocketeer perk 'Shock and Awe' to avoid confusion with class name
- Fixed: Missing to-hit percentage on sidearm
- Fixed: Text errors for Sniper Rifle series, Heavy Plasma Rifle, Plasma Mauler, Seraph Armor (which was also renamed), Titan Armor, Archangel Armor, Mind Shield, Alien Trophy, Shredder Ammo perk, Steadfast perk, Secondary Heart perk, MEC Close Combat foundry project, Smartgun Kit, Laser Pumper, Packmaster; Added armor mobility benes to text and clarified Sprinter perk
- Fixed/workaround: Firestorms stuck at zero hours repairing if you reduce ini setting INTERCEPTOR_REPAIR_HOURS to below 75 (or possibly even 16. Solution: Don't do this (added warning in ini). Fix manually by setting IRH to 800 or so, then switching back.
- Attempted Fix: Arc Thrower showing 0% or 1% chance when circumstances suggest it should be much higher (in the 40s or 50s); some reports that this is a display error only.
- Fixed: Touchpad + Expanded perk tree perk selection bug
- Fixed: Tactical Sense perk no longer confers immunity to being exposed/flanked (an unintended bonus)
- Fixed: Being suppressed and/or poisoned should properly apply scatter penalties to rockets
- Fixed: Aliens will no longer attempt reaction fire when hit by Disabling Shot
- Fixed: Soldiers with squadsight will no longer get a couple of squadsight-range tiles for their non-long-range-weapons (like sidearms).
- Fixed: Alien Entertainment council request unlocks with Hyperwave sted Sectoid Commander Autopsy
- Added text to clarify Rift only works if you are wearing Aurora or Vortex armors
- Added text to clarify suppression doesn't cancel overwatch; it prevents reaction shots from taking place (so the eye is working correctly; overwatch is still there is suppression ends for some reason)
- Fixed: Psi Inspiration does not help allies on a different Z
- Fixed: Lone Wolf crit bonus always applied, instead of selectively
- Fixed: Steady weapon bonus maintained through grapple action when it should go away
- Fixed: DR popup not always appearing even when applied
- Fixed: A bunch of under-the-hood references that were generating log warnings but no known game effects; who knows, maybe we'll fix something
- Fixed: Lock N' Load doesn't reset UI and refill ammo in HUD gun icon
- Fixed: MEC small items give IMG placeholder in select-squad dropship UI. The are fine in barracks equipping view. The same small items appear fine on SHIVs.
- Fixed: Paramedic use still not refreshing ability icons
- Fixed: Alien AI wasn't getting angry enough when you assault one of their bases
- Fixed: Plasma Sniper bonus crit put in line with other sniper rifles
- Fixed: Rework of Sitroom objectives display with a lot of corrections and clarifications on how to move the plot forward
- Fixed: Interrogation techs still being available even if you sold/lost your captives
- Attempted fix: Psi Inspiration should remove multiple mindfrays.
- Fixed: Soldier suppressing from high cover and taking reaction shot now returns properly to cover after shot. At long freaking last.
- Attempted Fix: Mind Control beginning and ending should clear all suppression
- Fixed: Mind Control beginning and ending should clear all panic
- Fixed: Will penalty from being Mind Mergee.
- Attempted Fix: Cyberdisc spin attack is sometimes at the wrong altitude, doing no damage. Vanilla. Attempted to teach CD AI that it only works on same altitude.
- Fixed: Mind Control not showing correct to-hit in some cases.
- Fixed: Suppressing pawn ends suppression with messed up (twisty) pose.
- Attempted Fix: Critically wounded soldiers not showing up as dead on post-mission popup in tactical game. Update: Occurs only on squadwipe.
- Fixed: You may no longer suppress using shotguns or sniper/marksman rifles. (The latter wasn't possible anyway by class setup)
- Fixed: Some bugs in Exalt cell placement AI that might lead to them selecting Russia over and over.
- Fixed: Having a VO underway when a council request registers will no longer oddly freeze the geoscape but instead popup the request.
- Attempted Fix: Pods should no longer spawn outside playable area on L-Shaped Highway 1 map. (Thanks WGhost for fix)
- Fixed: Added a series of restrictions for overwatch all button to work on an individual soldier, such as if it is panicking.
- Fixed: Tech image for Thin Man Autopsy
- Attempted Fix: Removed goofy death animations
- Attempted Fix: Vahlen should stop nagging about psi testing so much
- Fixed: Double Tap won't trigger when no targets in view, or you are out of ammo.
- Fixed: During extractions, Covert operatives now actually leave the map when finishing a mission, rather than just go invisible. (vanilla bug)
- Fixed: New MEC available descriptions popping up when armor tech completed but other key research isn't
- Fixed: A soldier throwing a battlescanner can no longer have her tile occupied by another soldier if she does NOT step out of cover to make the throw.
- Fixed: Battlescanners no longer occupy a tile and make it impassible.
- Fixed: Platform Stability no longer applies to second shot of LEM, consistent with Double Tap.
- Fixed: To-hit score on red heads now consistent with ability being considered for use, rather than always standard shot.
- Fixed: Mindcontrolled XCOM personnel no longer acquire 'dead allies' debuff when an alien is killed.
- Fixed: Scientists will not float in weird places on the ant farm after an interrogation.
- Fixed: Mindfray targeting now blinks 1 hp off an enemy's HP bars, instead of 5
- Fixed: Unequip all will strip gear from fatigued, injured, psi-testing, augmenting in addition to active soldiers. These guys should have been stripped in most cases anyway.
- Fixed: Expired meld containers no longer provide cover when destroyed
- Attempted Fix: Rapid Fire shouldn't pop up extra 'missed' if miss then hit occurs
- Fixed: Progeny characters should now get purple psi overlay on character cards
- Fixed: Non-damaging Psychokinetic Strike no longer triggers you-will-hurt-allies warning when friendly troops are in range
- Fixed: Rocket Launcher shot following Shredder rocket shot should now do proper damage through cover
- Fixed: Reactive Targeting Sensors will no longer trigger on Rift or Psi Inpsiration
- Fixed: Can no longer enter psi labs from covert operative selection screen, removing ability to be simultaneously on covert op and psi training
- Fixed: Geoscape should pause properly when a UFO is overhead and a fighter refuels or repairs
- Fixed: Reaction shots against drop-in aliens will now check weapon range
- Fixed: SHIVs will no longer count +1 for total ranks for OTS purposes
- Fixed: Item stat bonuses now show correct for covert operative
- Partially Fixed: On escort missions, the escortee suffers an acid hit and can't extract, and is instead treated like a regular soldier, and you get queries to abort mission (which you shouldn't do). WORKAROUND: Save and reload. Then move escortee out of Skyranger's LZ and back, and escortee should extract properly.
- Fixed: Mission debrief Promotion UI now displays promoted officers ranks correctly
- Fixed: Combat Stims no longer gives out of ammo message when used
- Fixed: Steady Weapon button suppressed when you are out of ammo for all weapons that can benefit from the ability (including rockets)
- Fixed: Bradford sometimes says 'densely populated urban area' for UFO missions to rural places
- Fixed: Female Voice 6 plays 'I'm suppressed' when she means 'I'm suppressing.'
- Attempted Fix: Mechtoid AI double-moving when firing is a much better choice (vanilla; I wonder if Mechtoids had a melee weapon at some point)
- Attempted Fix: Capped alien rosters at 50 on supply barges and alien base in a vain attempt to prevent the loadgame CTD. The two reproducible examples I have received, along with other anecdotal reports, suggest the CTD occurs when alien rosters are greater than 50, but I have no idea if this will be partially/fully effective.
- Fixed: Fixed loadgame CTDs in alien base assault.
- Attempted Fix: Tried alternate method of canceling phone-home for users reporting slowdowns during play. Until B14, solution is to play in offline mode.
- Fixed: Made sure AbsorbDamage was tested in KSM kill animation
- Fixed: Collateral Damage range limited to MEC Weapon range
- Fixed: Exalt shouldn't use steady weapon ability if they have no ammo.
- Attempted Fix: Mayhem perk should now work as advertised with proximity mine and grenade launchers.
- Fixed: Rift abilty icon suppressed if you have incorrect armor
- Fixed: Clarified Hunker Down info to say it doesn't mitigate crit penalties if you are flanked
- Fixed: Acidified aliens will no longer attempt to suppress in team-attack mode
- Fixed: Civilians on terror missions can not be randomly killed if they are within sight distance with one of your soldiers, regardless of whether that soldier can be seen.
- Fixed: Promotion available VO won't happen as much
- Fixed: Mayhem+Suppression properly costs more ammo now
- Fixed: So Shall You Fight has icon now
- Fixed: Failing / skipping a terror mission in a country you've already lost should no longer penalize your monthly income again for the lost country, but instead only incur continental panic
- Fixed: if you have low profile and psi shadow, reload or go into overwatch for the smidgen between the end of the running/crouching animation and the deactivation, the ghosting effect stays on for the rest of the mission (unless the soldier is moved to half cover again to 'reactivate' it): the soldier can now just stand invisible and unharrassed out in the open. But: Will drops like a rock (I think 15 a round).
- Lame Fix: SHIVS for some reason don't extract on mission aborts if they fire in the round they extract. Added warning to SHIV item text that they need extra time to load on the Skyranger and should not take any actions in extraction zone-Fixed: Multiple mindfrays not wearing off in temple ship mission-Fixed: Ethereal AI should be able to target Rift effectively at flying soldiers
- Fixed: Dodge consumable only appearing to provide 1 dodge. This was a display error; we fixed it by having aircraft formerly with short-range weapons (laser, phoenix, EMP) close distance to the UFO. We believe that those weapons don't lose any shots during the closing of the gap; their actual range remains as long as the other weapons.
- Fixed: Aggression and Lone Wolf crit bonuses should show up correctly at squadsight range.
- Fixed: Suppressors no longer get free shots at drop-down alienses
- Fixed: Goofy double pawn in barracks after soldier finishes augmentation
BALANCING AND SMALLER ADJUSTMENTS:
- Reworked Mind Merge again. For humans, it no longer will grant hit points, doing away with unlimited healing exploit. It instead grants damage reduction to the recipient of the merge, scaling upward with caster will (sort of like a shield). For aliens it will behave more or less like it did originally, with bonus hp scaling up with caster will (it's somewhat off in B13). This change addresses the reported issue of variable feedback damage on caster kill.
- Significantly increased opportunities to get reward soldiers from council requests, particularly in the late game
- Alien research bonus from dead and left-behind XCOM on mission failure sharply reduced (4 to 1 per), giving squadwipes and lost missions with heavy casualties less impact on alien progression
- Alien Grenades require foundry project to be completed before you are able to equip them. You can no longer sell alien grenades as loot.
- Neural Gunlink provides +10 crit
- SMG series granted 'steady weapon' ability
- Reduced resources required to build phalanx armor, slight increase in resources for Advanced Body Armor, minor increase in research time for Mobile Power Armor and Pulse Lasers
- Reworked UFO mission panic and bonus research mechanics slightly; now you can eliminate alien bonus research from UFO missions if you reduce the UFO's hit points to below 50% of max, and only have a 50/50 chance of a bonus research if the UFO takes any damage at all. This also eliminates the last possible gamey bonus from engaging a UFO and fleeing immediately (previously, doing so always reduced change of bonus research to 50/50, regardless of whether you fired on the UFO or not). Damaging a UFO also can now reduce the panic it generates if it escapes. (Previously this only happened with air raid missions).
- Primary Weapon aim bonuses/penalties (like the +7 with carbine or -15 with heavy rifles) no longer apply to rocket launchers. All other aim bonuses (small items, steady weapon) still apply.
- Made Gauss Weapons generally cheaper and gave some more ammo; made pulse weapons slightly more expensive. Pulse weapons now require Alien Power Systems instead of Elerium as a tech prereq.
- Made Laser Cannon and Supercapacitors foundry project more expensive.
- Gave Phx Coilgun a bit more damage.
- MEC subsystems (Flamethrower, etc.) now all have a mobility penalty, while the mobility bonus granted by the armors have been increased to compensate. This means you can leave off subsystems for greater mobility.
- Removing many mobility bonuses from perk trees; between all the ways to gain mobility from armor and weapons this is growing unnecessary
- Rocketeers can now use Heavy Rifles
- Infantry, Medics, Assaults, and Engineers can now use Arc Rifles (along with snipers and scouts), gave Arc Rifles unlimited range for squadsighted soldiers
- Removed randomness from number of Steam Vents in campaign start; it's now exactly what the ini setting says it is. Changed ini setting to 2.
- Increased area of effect of Combat Drugs.
- Gauss tech weapons reduce enemy DR by 0.33. Exposed this amount to a variable in the ini
- Armor Piercing Ammo item now reduces enemy DR by 1.33.
- Chem Grenades and alien acid now nullify up to a maximum of 3 DR.
- Transports gain a few more resources from successful harvest missions.
- Reduced resource loss slightly when aliens lose various UFOs.
- Adjusted alien AI so that they will consider paying some resources to find a country without an XCOM satellite to send harvest missions. The chances of this increase when they perceive a greater threat from XCOM.
- Enhanced Plasma foundry project now grants +1 damage to all plasma-tier weapons in addition to unlocking Plasma damage enhancer item. Increased reqs to get project.
- Made hit and dodge interceptor consumables a bit cheaper.
- Adjusted some MEC / SHIV weapon combat values.
- Adjusted some UFO hit point / gain values.
- Adjusted some alien perks and level ups.
- Reworked Flamethrower panic chances to make it less than perfect; Elerium fuel now increases panic chances.
- Aliens' will will be generally be higher and will slowly increase during campaign. We've left low will a weakness on some species.
- Pistol I crit bonus reduced to +10%
- Increased primary alien research modifier on all difficulties, with a small increase on normal and larger increase on greater difficulties. Our observation is we significantly overcompensated for the error in this setting in B9a and earlier, as the aliens can't keep up with the humans.
- Dead Exalt Elites provide 1 meld as loot if you don't kill them with explosives. Floaters and Heavy Floaters provide a bit more meld.
- Defeating the Exalt base provides a lot more bonus meld
- Aliens will tend toward more dangerous UFOs once they develop sufficient research
- Wearing Vortex Armor eliminates all post-mission fatigue
- Aurora and Vortex Armor no longer requires meld
- Alien Operations tech now requires Xenopsionics as an additional prerequisite (along with any interrogation)
- Destroyers will get a late-game armor upgrade to ensure they remain a threat.
- Increased variance of most Hidden Potential rolls.
- Increased starting roster to 40 soldiers and cost of recruiting a rookie to $25 ($30 on advanced difficulties). (Working numbers; may alter these before release). New recruits now take nine days to arrive at base.
- Increased engineers needed to build each Nexus
- Sentinel Drone foundry project made significantly more expensive. It no longer provides unlimited healing but instead the Repair Servos perk.
- All Exalts lose 2 hp on Normal; 1 hp on Classic
- Initial country panic will now show more variance between countries; added ini setting to allow you to mod degree of variance
- Battle Computer can now be equipped by SHIVs
- Council missions won't always be Thin Men in regualr pods. Dynamic alien drop-downs on council/DLC missions now drop to randomized locations (thanks WGhost!
- Using Psi Inspire on a panicked soldier will grant that soldier a yellow move only, like revive.
- Removed MoveLimited and Snap Shot from Marksman's / Strike Rifle series
- Gave aliens a small buffer within high panic to roll to capture a country (95+). This means a single UFO shootdown or abduction victory late in the month will not save a country at max panic from defecting, but launching a satellite still will. This is necessary because countries can't go above 100 panic.
- Adjusted aiming angles SW option so cover provides 120 degrees of full protection instead of 90.
- Added explicit warning to equip top soldiers if a UFO on an XCOM HQ assault mission is detected.
- Aliens get 50 days of free research if you incorrectly accuse an EXALT country
- PFCs (Rookies) may no longer be covert operatives
- Panicking units caught out of cover will no longer get free move to cover, eliminating advantage of panicking in those situations. Panicking units in cover will still hunker down.
- Increased cash reward from exalt missions
- Increased Zhang mobility
- Gave Annette level 2 psi power
- Gave Furies level 1 psi power
- EMP Cannon does less damage with higher ROF, increasing chance of shootdowns vice total destruction
- Messed around with oppo forces on EXALT missions; covert extractions will now often have a kind of singular guard / big QRF setup.
- Marksman's Scope item reworked to give Squadsight to scouts (useful only when they equip Marksman's/Strike Rifles). Will be available with Alien Weaponry tech.
- Soldiers who are injured get max fatigue timeout (144 hrs) instead of rolling 96+d48 like uninjured soldiers
- Field Medic perk now gives 1 free medikit charge and +1 charges for carried medikits. Packmaster applies bonus to free charge and each medikit. Field Medic unchanged for restorative mist (+2 charges, no freebies)
- AI: Made pod-level AI less likely to decide to flee. Robot pods will never flee at the pod-level AI.
- Psi Lab now provides lab adjacency bonus
- Eight XCOM soldiers and six security personnel comprise the HQ defense, rather than 6+8.
- Walker Servos now available to all soldiers. Made slightly more expensive to reflect increased utility.
- Battleships should show up a little more often
- In lieu of too-complex-to-code learning, Thin men have a 50/50 chance to avoid using acid spit on completely immune (genemodded) soldiers every time they consider spit targets. Also turned down freq of spit usage.
- Alien AI will consider overwatch perks in deciding whether to overwatch.
- Reworked the shooting/hasvulnerabletarget/team attack/haspotentialkillshot AI a bit to take into account improved cover and low aim, meaning some low-aim aliens will more likely to consider sub-50% shots a better option than overwatching yet again. Exposed a couple of AI variables to the ini in this regard. To help the aliens think, XCOM soldiers no longer will get a defense bonus on lower difficulties; instead the aliens all receive equivalent aim penalties. This will create oddities in normal and classic upgrades from B13 to B14 -- existing soldiers will keep their defense, but aliens will have worse aim, so you may want to edit these values back for the duration of your save.
- Mayhem perk now applies to grenades, offering +1 damage for frag and needle and +2 for alien. Mayhem perk added to Engineer tree. Sapper perk should now apply bonus regular (non-env) damage to grenade launchers and proximity mines.
- Civilians on terror missions will move around a lot more on their turn
- Psi XP reworked; you no longer gain psi xp for successful use of contested powers; instead, every psi power at the same level grants the same psi xp per mission as long as the mission is an Xcom success.
- Psi Panic attacks will be a bit more difficult now, controllable by ini setting
- AIiens with target only in squadsight range should now seek cover if they are still kinda close to the battle
- Savior heals more
- Thumper hurts more
- Precision Shot + Sniper Rifle series cancels -30% long-range crit penalty, in addition to +30 bonus crit and extra damage. So basically +30 crit when using PS at squadsight ranges with sniper rifle
- Bullrush: Does less damage, smashes through more stuff. OH YEAH.
- Adjusted Firestorm and Plasma weapon build requirements
- Berserkers all receive muscle-fiber density genemod
- Meld positioning now randomized on maps
- Uber Ethereal gets some help
- Toggling Flight Mode on a flying armor now costs 1 fuel. Increased fuel slightly available to those armors.
- Adjusted council mission rewards, including those from Newfoundland mission
- Various adjustments to perk trees and item and project costs
- Europe now provides discount to OTS projects. Asia no longer provides OTS discount.
- Progeny missions no longer trigger on XCOM HQ Assault. Will leave you to figure out new trigger.
- Chameleon Suit now scout only, provides +5 defense and helps reduce chance of getting hit when LR fires
- Danger Zone + Suppression covers wider area (and exposed area var to ini)
- EXALT will no longer spawn in target volume on Capture and Hold Missions
- Slight reduction in strength of mobility debuffs. Alien AI was cracking up when unable to move.
- Due to psychic strain, soldiers may now only carry 1 ghost grenade item. It still gains charge bonuses from S&M and Packmaster.
v3.0 Beta 13 (July 6, 2014)
Beta 13 should not require a campaign restart.
- Mostly Fixed: Inventory/hp/fatigue/DR bug. Known issue: Mind Merge will heal too many hit points.
- Fixed: Blowing up abductor or harvester causes CTD
- Fixed: Perk and related descriptions for Platform Stability, Double Tap and Snap Shot to change 'without moving' to 'without using a costly action' to clarify you lose bonuses by taking any action that consumes one of your actions, like the benefits that the Lock N' Load or Smoke Grenade perks provide. Also item descriptions for sniper rifles, strike rifles, and LMG weapons.
- Fixed: Removed all Vahlen nagging about outsiders/arc thrower
- Fixed: Jump Boots / Leg genemod animation gone screwy
- Updated Spanish translation
v3.0 Beta 12 (June 29, 2014)
Beta 12 should generally be compatable with Beta 10 and Beta 11 campaigns. Tactical game saves with the Sectoid Commander issue cannot be fixed.
Additions:
- Inventory art for ammo variants by Obstbananae
- Unique HUD images for ballistic weapons
- ¡Spanish translation!
Balancing:
- Reworked pistol stuff again to include long-range penalties that are now negated by Gunslinger perk. Also, aim-bonus small items (SCOPE, Neural Gunlink, Laser Sight, Laser Designator) no longer provide aim bonuses to pistol-slot weapons. Removed other accuracy penalty from pistols and lowered machine pistol accuracy penalty to -10 (-3 for heaters).
- Reinforced Armor provides +1 hit point and noted in description.
- Scout perk tree adjusted to reemphasize scouting perks and gain squadsight at GSGT, Rocketeer gains opportunist
- Removed Laser Designator item, added Targeting Module item
- Battle Rifles +5 crit chance
- Scouts can no longer use sniper rifles
- Marksman's Rifles gain movelimited penalty and Snap Shot perk, so net effect is -10 aim when moving and firing.
- Increased flying creatures' flight fuel; they were running out while on patrol (this didn't happen when patrols teleported)
Bug Fixes
- Fixed: Plasma techs will be accessible. Overhauled how item requirements were processed; this may lead to some unexpected consequences, because certain intended item requirements for techs may not have been previously processed correctly.
- Fixed: Removed Gatling Laser meld cost
- Attempted Fix: Verified CTD on March Site Recon when prespawned zombie tries to birth a chryssie in view of a soldier
- Attempted Fix: Drone AI has gone stupid
- Fixed: Using AP, Alien and HE Grenades on successive turns on a soldier with Grenadier and/or Packmaster prevents the ability to employ one of those grenades for the rest of the mission even when charges remain.
- Fixed: Duplicate running pawn in barracks after Mec augmentation
- Fixed: CTD apparently due to Sectoid Commander loadouts. This will not fix tactical saves from B11 or earlier with SC's in them.
- Fixed: Laser Lance and Pulse Lance causes MECs to use normal soldier animations in mission. Unfortunatley, this required having the lance weapons revert to Railgun and Particle Gun models.
- Fixed: Gave into the silent masses and renamed the Saburai the Shogun
- Attempted Fix: Far-off Aliens occasionally appearing in LOS for squadsighted soldiers for no good reason
- Fixed: Clarified precision shot help text
- Fixed: Game hang when seekers are destealthed beyond range of battlescanner by battlescanner
- Fixed: Drone pod leader doing nothing on reveal
- Fixed: Removed limit preventing Sectopod from overwatching or using itchy trigger tentacle when pod activated
- Attempted Fix: Extended time allowed for Suppression animation to complete to 4 seconds, this will hopefully eliminate failed returned to original spot error.
- Fixed: Small item crit bonuses not showing up in list of bonuses in UI (but being applied correctly and appearing in total)
- Fixed: Using Paramedic and Smoke Grenade doesn't refresh abilities without switching to another soldier
- Fixed: Vahlen will no longer nag you about an Outsider after you already got one
- Fixed: Clicking one number key and then Double-clicking another in tactical game to rapidly activate ability should work again -- it may take an extra click.
- Fixed: Grapples should work again
- Fixed: New Economy, randomization isn't applied
- Mostly Fixed: Ammo fill in tactical HUD sometimes only gets 1/4 of image
- Fixed: Vanilla exploit that hamstrings Exalt's ability to run operations against you
- Fixed: Commercial Restaurant abduction will display clue correctly.
- Fixed: Bug in uninstaller that wasn't restoring vanilla executable. (Leftover changes to exe wouldn't disable regular gameplay, so people wouldn't notice any difference)
- Fixed: Mind Merge / inventory bugs
- Fixed: Ready For Anything (and maybe Covering Fire) interacts weirdly with Berserker charge
v3.0 Beta 11 (June 24, 2014)
Should work with Beta 10 campaigns.
Additions:
- Added capability to include unique HUD icons for new weapons. For now, we're using squashed/extended versions of regular icons but will be adding fresh icons in the future.
- New look for soldier character card in barracks
- Unique Kestrel, Aurora, Tac, Phalanx and Corsair Armor Inventory images, and Alien Trophy image
- Easier access to your psi abilities in barracks
Bugfixes
- Fixed: CTD when EXALT mission fires. (Workaround until B11 out -- don't send covert operatives on missions.)
- Fixed: Slight relative will penalty on levelups with Hidden Potential (probably costing you 1 will relative to non-HP games)
- Fixed: Completing excavation will stop Geoscape again.
- Fixed: Head Shot (renamed Precision Shot) should work now. We've also given it a different capability for strike rifles .. it will instead allow you an infinite range SquadSight shot (like it was a sniper rifle), but with no damage or crit bonuses.
- Fixed: Sawed-off shotgun should reaction fire against aliens consistently
- Fixed: Interceptor stances should map correctly to buttons now
- Fixed: Adjusted the cyan glow for a few new items
- Fixed: RFA triggering multiple overwatches after every action
- Fixed: Sawed-off shotgun now only equippable by Infantry, Scout, Assault, Medic and Engineer
- Fixed: Aegis Armor inventory image has black background, rather than see-through
- Fixed: CTD after completion of soldier augmentation
- Fixed: Workshops providing massive rebates (looks like 1-x instead of x)
- Fixed incorrect engineering text about class-limited items
- Fixed: Fast build on certain (possibly aerospace) items not reducing time (at early engineers -- it works when cheating in 10k engineers)
- Fixed removed some duplicate heads
- Fixed again: Acid on a soldier with Shredder perk is still applying Shredded popup (and effect?) to that soldier
Balancing:
- Returned hard range cap on pistols, standard shotguns, and Machine Pistols to visual range. Gave pistols and Machine Pistols -10 and -20 aim penalties, respectively. Shotgun falloff penalties at long range have been increased by 50%. Gunslinger now gives +10 aim bonus for sidearms instead of increasing effective range (and still provides +1 damage). This is a temporary fix.
- All SMG-class weapons have 1 less ammo.
- Reduced Sawed-off shotgun damage by one.
- Increased some early game engineer requirements
- Increased mobility bonus from covert ops armor, lowered defense bonus
- Adjusted SHIV rebuild project requirements so more engineers / rush-building can help
Additions:
- Added capability to include unique HUD icons for new weapons. For now, we're using squashed/extended versions of regular icons but will be adding fresh icons in the future.
- New look for soldier character card in barracks
- Unique Kestrel, Aurora, Tac, Phalanx and Corsair Armor Inventory images, and Alien Trophy image
- Easier access to your psi abilities in barracks
v3.0 Beta 10 (June 21, 2014)
A new campaign is required for Beta 10.NEW FEATURES:
- Before most missions you will receive some general information on the type of map you'll be on. This won't apply on council missions.
- Many new types and classes of weapons will be available, including a line of Marksman rifles (for scouts and snipers), machine pistols, submachineguns, battle rifles and LMGs. Scatter Blaster and Reflex Cannon will no longer be foundry projects but distinct weapons. MECs will have access to laser weapons, and SHIVs a new laser weapon. The Arc Rifle (with Disabling Shot perk) and a sawed-off shotgun (equippable in pistol slot) will also be available. These will use existing models, but they will be sized differently than other weapons of the same 'look.' LMGs and Marksman's and Strike Rifles can shoot 5 tiles beyond visual range (M&S Rifles require Sniper's Squadsight and are only weapon that can react beyond visual range; LMGs grant squadsight to Gunner when equipped)
- Some aliens will occasionally have Extended or Squadsight range weapons.
- A more involved encumbrance system will now be in use. The net effect is that some powerful and large small items will impose larger movement penalties on soldiers, and you can gain mobility by taking no small item at all. In general, you will be trading off mobility, offense and defense when you equip items. Some extant items balanced against new standards.
- You may now set a combat stance for your interceptors as they launch on a mission. Aggressive gives +15% to hit for both you and the UFO; balanced plays out like normal, and Defensive gives -15% to hit for both you and the UFO. You may not use the dodge consumable when aggressive and you may not use the autohit consumable when defensive.
- Added Ready for Anything (overwatch after firing if you didn't move) and Paramedic (free action to use medikit once per turn) perks
- You now receive feedback on panic rolls and help from Steadfast perk
- You now can see who is on overwatch (eye) and who has steadied weapon (small yellow ring)
- Added a bunch of soldier heads
- Exposed Red Fog penalties to DGC.ini for player modding
- New Items: Reinforced Armor, Chameleon Suit, MEC Battle Computer, Fuel Cell, and a little number we call 'The Thumper.' Deprecated SHIV Targeting Computer.
- Keybinds Alt-1 through Alt-8 select individual soldiers
- Made some changes to weapon ranges. Shotguns, pistols and machine pistols now capped at 2/3 visual range. (Gunslinger now provides +1 pistol damage and pushes most sidearms to visual range). Jaeger and Pathfinder can have Squadsight at Master Sergeant, allowing shots for 5-7 tiles beyond visual range.
- Overhaul of engineering capabilities. Workshops and WS adjacencies now provide cash discounts and rebates on alloys and elerium, via a diminishing return function approaching 50%. Engineers no longer provided by building workshops. Engineers now reduce build times. There are no engineer minimums to build items; instead, having too few relative to the item requirement significantly increases the time to build. Engineer minimums for additional workshops increased, and for radars they are still in place.
- Reworked starting stats to reduce some extremes and SW options affecting stats
- New Foundry Project: Wingtip Sparrowhawks, a secondary weapon system that is applied immediately to all interceptors and fires alongside your primary weapon. They have all Stingray stats except they do half damage relative to Stingrays.
- Alien HP bars now show up to 60 hit points. This should cover almost every alien. Almost.
- 'Cinematic Mode' Second Wave option (replaces High Stakes) -- All soldiers, SHIVs and interceptors get +15 to hit in all cases. This bonus can be adjusted by an ini change.
- Adding new inventory images as received from contributors
BALANCING:
- Spaced out early Drone DR upgrades
- Spaced out EXALT trooper upgrades
- Scaled back pace of difficulty increase of Exalt missions
- Sniper Rifles and Marksman Rifles will have much greater aim falloff at close ranges
- Adjusted several perk trees
- Ignored UFOs raise panic by 2 (just like damaged ones), so there's no reason to game the system by quick-intercepting/retreating UFOs
- Adjusted panic rolling so the chances of catastrophic panic outcomes are lower, but panic remains a problem for longer in the campaign. You will now get some onscreen feedback about your panic rolls.
- HEAT Ammo perk now only applies to your primary weapon.
- Using training roulette means you no longer get stat bonuses from specific perk selections
- Eliminated multi-country Exalt clues, meaning it's gonna take awhile to find their base
- Lock N' Load now grants +1 ammo in all cases, and if you take it as a perk ability, using reload as your first action does not end your turn
- Adjusted Diminishing Returns SW option to be compatible with LW
- Red Fog aim penalty capped at -40 instead of -50.
- NSLW: Increased threshold for XCOM HQ Assault to occur
- Captured plasma weapons may no longer be used directly by XCOM; instead they are necessary for XCOM to construct their own plasma weapons of any type
- Significant increases in many mid/late game research times and engineer requirements
- Foundry buildable at start
- New foundry project to unlock air consumables, available at alien materials. UFO Tracking (Boost) unlocked with project; Aim and Dodge unlocked with project and prior techs. Some changes to costs of all consumables.
- EMP Cannon effectiveness at causing artifacts to survive a crash reduced to keep late-game economy from getting out of control.
- Increased engineer and scientist minimums to build more workshops and labs
- Reworked some council item requests to grant more engineers
- Rookies will equip alien grenades instead of HE grenades once you finish the alien grenades foundry project (when they randomly roll up that kind of grenade)
- Significant rebalancing of Not-So-Long-War SW option so the economy scales properly with reduced mission density; removed most time-related settings impacted by NSLW
- Improved Ethereal Psi Drain ability
- Abduction cash reward now scales a little with mission difficulty
- Removed short-range interceptor weapon quality entirely from the game; all interceptor weapons will now fire from the same (long) range. Balanced several weapon values and alien UFO upgrades in light of this increased capability for certain weapons.
- Interceptor experience now provides +3% to hit per kill (up to + 30%) and +1% damage per kill (with no top limit)
- Genemods now have variable timeouts that scale with their utility; Amount of extra timeouts for genemods and psi powers now described in perk texts (current +12 for all psi powers, +3 to +12 for genemods)
- Added condition that will force alien assault on XCOM HQ late in the game if you haven't had one yet.
- Smart Macrophages genemod now also confers complete immunity to poison and acid
- Repair Servos perk made more interesting, now heals up to half your HP at rate of 2 per turn (total healable amount goes down as you take more damage)
- In The Zone confers a cumulative critical hit % penalty after each successive shot
- Lotsa little stuff
BUGFIXES:
- Fixed: You can now shoot down the Overseer instead of just blowing it up
- Fixed: Ghost Grenade, Psi Shield, Neural Gunlink will now be equippable by psis
- Fixed: Laser and Pulse carbine strat game texts
- Fixed: Borked Phalanx/Carapace and other decos
- Attempted fix: Altitude strings being buggy; shortened to NOE (old Low), Low (old High) and High (old Very High/Suborbital)
- Attempted fix: Intact UFO Power Supplies blowing up after a turn
- Fixed: Acidized rocketeer fires shredder rocket and gets shredded effect
- Fixed: You can't sell 'rebuild SHIV' projects in the Gray Market
- Fixed: Bugged settings for alien upgrades; they should scale properly with difficulty now
- Attempted Fix: Rapid Fire does not work on Carbine weapons
- Attempted Fix: Certain items applying Alien Grenade charges
- Attempted Fix: Ammo Conservation failing sporadically with soldiers
- Fixed: Seekers re-strangling targets when they should be running away.
- Fixed: Seeker AI also trying to cloak repeatedly when in range of battlescanner. Reported CTDs possibly related to this (or vanilla bug)
- Fixed: Suppression bugfixes leaving space formerly occupied by suppressor closed off and interfering with sightlines
- Fixed: Should be able to equip advanced MEC weapons now
- Fixed: Soldiers should properly load saved loadouts during alien base assault
- Attempted fix: Satellites being randomly shot down with no visible hunt mission at end of month
- Attempted fix: Implemented updated pod randomization code to eliminate bad spawns and mix up the altitude an alien will appear at on multi-level maps
- Fixed: SCOPE upgrade bonus not appearing for SCOPES in crit line items (but is appearing for laser sights)
- Fixed: Rush-building a Foundry project initially displays the wrong (unrushed) time in the upcoming events list.
- Fixed: Rush-building a facility is confusing. In the upcoming events list, it displays the full time required to build, which then decrements twice as fast. In the facilities UI, it is displayed correctly.
- Fixed: Proportional meld on rush build projects not working
- Fixed: 'Click to remove' option in gene lab (after picking a gene mod, and then trying to remove it) doesn't remove the gene mod from your queue
- Fixed: Covert operative loadout doesn't report hp bonuses from covert ops armor/plating items
- Fixed: You sometimes have a 'build the arc thrower' objective after building an arc thrower
- Fixed: Removed Neural Damping from aliens (was causing lockups)
- Fixed: Animations firing at odd times when using certain carbines
- Fixed: Psi soldiers can no longer select neural damping
- Fixed: Too much psi training success
- Fixed: Removed ability to build alien grenades after they are made infinite
- Fixed: Panic bars for terror alerts and exalt propaganda should work correctly now
- Fixed: All new campaigns will automatically reset the map cycler, so there should be no more need to do this on your own
- Fixed: Bombardier and Grenadier perks will now properly increase range for MEC long-range weapons
- Fixed: Random stats on level up SW option was giving WAY TOO MUCH STATAGE, now fixed
- Fixed: Some work on malfunctioning psi-related AI that should make sectoids take flanking shots way more often
- Fixed: CTD on using Flush on a brainsucking seeker
- Fixed: Soldier mind-merge / heal issue
- Fixed: Vanilla-rooted exploit that gave you unlimited rocket launcher range
- Fixed: More work on psi-related AI so they are smart about when to shoot
- Fixed: Removed too-buggy launch ability from seraphim armor, and improved SA's mobility & defense stat instead
- Fixed: Disabling Shot can no longer cause critical hits
- Fixed: Mayhem bonus damage now applies to Head Shots
- Fixed: Repairing SHIVs with an Arc Thrower will now remove Red Fog penalties
- Fixed: Upsized aliens will remain upsized upon reloading tactical save games
- Fixed: VANILLA bug in which ITZ didn't trigger if kill was caused by bonus shredder or HEAT damage
- Fixed: VANILLA bug in which the Aim interceptor module DID NOTHING HELP YOU AT ALL. SERIOUSLY. THIS HAS NEVER WORKED.
- Fixed: Bug in which unequip all button gave SHIVs an assault rifle
- Fixed: Too-large MEC armor inventory images
- Lame Fix: Updated XCOM database text to explain that all construction and research stops during combat missions, as all personnel are busy providing mission support
v3.0 Beta 9a (May 10, 2014)
Bugfix: Corrected starting weapon for Interceptors to Avalanche Missiles
v3.0 Beta 9 (May 10, 2014)
Bugfixes:
- Fixed: Some campaigns still lock up on start because of armor deco settings for reasons I can't fathom. Going forward, armor deco will be set to default (-1) to avoid this, but can be changed by players in DefaultGameCore.ini.
- Fixed: CTD Bug when alien regenerates when offscreen
- Fixed: Carbines now have armorkits, meaning you won't lose armor decos when equipping carbines
- Fixed: North America will supply proper number of scientists with 3 countries on Normal and Classic
- Fixed: Phoenix Coilgun unlocked by Gauss Weapons again (erroneously put under Advanced Gauss in B7/B8)
- Attempted fix: Changed text string 'Suborbital' to 'Very High' to address missing altitude text strings on hunts
- Attempted fix: Swapping weapons after activating run n gun initializes the regular set of ability options
- Fixed: CTD when finishing Tactical Rigging project
Balancing:
- Larger pods will now be distributed over a wider area when spawned
- Adjusted starting cash -- Can now set starting cash bonus as specific to starting continent .. South America and Africa get a large relative boost; Asia a small one, Europe stays the same and North America a small reduction
- Rewrote mechanism that generates satellite hunts from scout missions; now damaging a scout and/or native country defense (the shield thingey) reduce chances of a hunt, while alien research increases it. This does not change whether a hunt is successful, or the direct generation of hunt missions without scout missions that can occur. Also slightly reduced conditions under which a destroyer will spawn on a hunt and increased conditions under which you'll get a fighter instead
- Swapped the effects/themes of pulse and beam lasers on the tech tree, with beam lasers doing less damage and pulse more. The aim-bonus-beam laser is available early (with lower overall damage), and the crit-bonus-pulse laser late (with higher overall damage), possibly making them more interesting alternatives to plasma.
Changelog
v3.0 Beta 8 (May 8, 2014)
Bugfixes:
- Fixed: CTDs on map selection for Fighter, Raider, Terror Ship and Assault Carrier UFOs.
- Fixed: Various typos
- Fixed: Psionic Alien AI should now weigh its situation differently and use psi powers in a more measured and dangerous way, rather than spamming
- Fixed: CTD when killing a mindmerger-sectoid
- Fixed: Randomized subclass selection option sometimes picking from the pair of subclasses you don't want
- Fixed: Regeneration always fully healing aliens; now it should just heal the proper amount
- Attempted fix: Some animation hangs when seekers try to stealth near a stealth-denying unit
- Fixed: On NSLW various projects that require an item to complete will no longer drop 1-item requirements (so rebuild SHIV projects will now properly require 1 SHIV chassis)
- Attempted Fix: Gave outsiders some movement related settings so they can jump off a UFO roof if necessary
- Damage when poisoned will now say 'ACID' so it makes more sense when a robot takes this kind of damage
- Fixed: Panicking suppressor will now move to cover before hunkering down
- Fixed: Unlimited moves bug when swapping to pistol
- Fixed: Exploit in which swapping weapons transferred some bonuses that shouldn't be transferring
- Attempted Fix: Removed Vanilla EU Tutorial map from rotation to attempt to address Mid-mission CTDs
- Fixed: New Economy
- Attempted Fix: pawn weirdness in mission setup
- Attempted Fix: Removed a set of conditions that could generate a hunt mission in an attempt to address satellites randomly blowing up.
- Fixed: Hitting alt-O during a dash lets dashing soldier go into overwatch. You may now only hit alt-O and get results when the active unit isn't doing anything, and it will only apply to other units with moves left and aren't doing anything.
- Fix try 2: Dead officer billets not cycling back to availability after a few missions
- Fixed: Alien flags visible in fog of war
- Sorta fixed: Battlescanner showing poisoned if thrown through poison cloud (Attempting to address). Should now show 'immune'
- Fixed: Put in LR adjustment code that was noted in Beta 7 (code was using Beta 6 version of Lightning Reflexes)
Balancing:
- Alien Trophies and Mind Shield now grant 'Steadfast' perk. Alien Trophies no longer provide will bonus; MS will bonus reduced to 25 from 30.
- New explosives damage falloff code will use a different calculation for how much damage at a given location. Net effect should be more damage near the center of an explosion. Lowered AOE of AP grenade so it's equal with HE; reduced base throw range of all alien grenades, so they max at visual range with grenadier+bombardier. Returned rocket launcher damage to Beta 6 levels.
- Acid (Poison) damage will be assessed no longer every turn; instead, it will ONLY be assessed when you take any action other than hunker down (head down for civilians). Skipping your turn and doing nothing will also prevent this damage. Alien AI trained to know this, as well.
v3.0 Beta 7 (May 4, 2014)
Bugfixes:
- Fixed: Messed up decos on Phalanx, Carapace, Banshee and Corsair armor
- Fixed: Bug preventing sectoids from Mind-merging most of the time
- Fixed: Some interrogation texts, Experimental Warfare text, Chryssy autopsy text, Smart Macrophages description, Mec-1 and Mec-2 descriptions
- Fixed: Bug causing too much critical damage
- Fixed: Some behind-the-scenes bugs generating log warnings
- Fixed: Soldiers appearing on wrong plinth with expanded squads
- Fixed: SHIV items not displaying more detailed tactical text in engineering UI (when you hit the question mark)
- Fixed: Targeting Detail displays incorrect total crit % chance
- Fixed: Muton Elites showing up as Mectoid escorts
- Fixed: Some cases where tutorial-related code was triggering
- Fixed: Psi troopers should now be able to equip Mind Shield
- Fixed: Vanilla bug in which targeting a piece of cover granted perfect rocket accuracy
- Returned BattleScanner to default settings because we've been getting a bunch of reports about bugs related to battlescanner but I really don't know if this will do anything
- Fixed: Bug in RestoreBackedUpInventory which wasn't restoring your first small item
- Fixed: Text bug misreporting possible Mindfray damage
- Fixed: So Others May Live text
- Fixed: Bug in NSLW code that granted too little elerium from Power Sources
- Fixed: Bugged code for Site Recon mission preventing chryssalids from showing up in sufficient numbers
- Fixed: CTD when volunteer tries to change equipment
- Fixed: Psi Grenade animation & displacement issues
- Fixed: Bad leader assignments of Sharpshooter perk
- Fixed: Text bug when you don't have OTS prereqs
- Fixed: Some bugs with perks when tearing down/rebuilding OTS and Foundry; you can no longer remove those buildings once built
- 'Fixed': Distortion Field not giving bonus to psi who has the ability, even in cover. We can't change this, so this is no longer a bug but a feature.
- Fixed: Superheavy Plasma inventory image.
- Fixed: In the Zone perk should work now
- Fixed: Core Armoring SHIV item should display correct inventory image
- Fixed: Holo-Targeter text
- Fixed: Basic and Pulse weapons should display proper images in HUD
- Fixed: Reaper Rounds will now work with Alloy Cannon
- Fixed: Text reporting various plating items don't help covert operative
- Fixed: Muton Elite late game tertiary escort options
- Fixed: Aliens not regenerating when out of view
- Fixed: CTD when you lose your 21st country (meaning you've retaken and lost several)
- Fixed: MECs sometimes showing up as eligible for Psi training, also added doublechecks to ensure officers and SHIVs aren't eligible
- Fixed: To Hit detail displays incorrect total %stun chance
- Attempted Fix: CTD when MEC panics
- Fixed: Some replacement soldier orders getting lost (when one is already queued up) VANILLA BUG, THANK YOU
- Attempted Fix of reports of MECs getting unearned wounds from first mission (set fatigued flag to false when MEC undergoes conversion)
- Attempted fix: Officer promotions not cycling back after soldier deaths in designed time frame
- Fixed: Red Fog display in target screen showing up as bonus instead of penalty
- Attempted fix: Nasty Vanilla suppression bugs when soldier becomes 'unglued' from terrain
- Fixed: Outsider shard creates two distinct items in gray market (will no longer be available for sale)
- Fixed: Soldier can mind-merge with a battlescanner
- 'Fixed': Updated psi-power text to better fit inability to use both mind-merge and psi inspiration on same soldier
- 'Fixed': Lowered Cyberdisc death blossom preference to almost nothing (the attack wasn't working right, so this deals with the bug by preventing them from using it)
- Fixed: Bad pod support alien call when rolling up an elite operative, could be causing black screens on mission start
- Fixed: Losing or dismissing an interceptor or Firestorm wasn't decrementing correct item
- Fixed: Int and FS Maintenance costs incorrectly calculated
- Fixed: CTD bug when overseer blows up (no longer reachable in any case)
- Fixed: Balanced to get additional HP on level up with random stat increase SW option
- Fixed: Reversed Plasma Carbine and Plasma Rifle item requests
- Fixed: Alien plasma Weapon crit chances were zeroed out instead of being equal to crit chances of comparable XCOM plasma weapons
- Fixed: Mectoids unable to reload after being hit with Disabling shot
- Fixed: Swapping weapons on damaged fighters sometimes resets repair time
- Fixed: Adjusted AI governing psi powers so ethereals should use psilance more
- Fixed: Vanilla bug preventing mouse control from rotating geospace
- Fixed: Set a check and a default Armor Deco value of -1, meaning the game should ignore the special code for altering initial decos and go with vanilla default; you can still set it manually (in case this is causing first-mission lockups)
- Partial Fix: Airborne AI units sometimes freeze -- seen a suppressed floater and an unsuppressed drone appear to do nothing (we think this was a vanilla bug)
- Workaround: Setting starting armor deco to 67 (kevlar deco 0 .. sleeveless with no elbow pads) causes lockup: Set it to -1 (or 0 in Beta 6)
- Fixed: Pilots reverting from Cmdr. to Col. after 10th kill.
- Fixed: Leaders were upgrading defense and not aim from aim stat
- Fixed (I think) Weird pawn appearance on plinth before mission, related to cybernetic augmentation. Newly modified soldier maintains some elements of prior deco until deco modified when MEC suit added.
- Fixed: Furies unable to level up for Psis
- Fixed: Bug in which canister meld was granted when you fled mission
- Attempted fix: Finishing Tactical Rigging would overwrite (and destroy) whatever items were in your second slot
- Fixed: Perks assigned to SHIV AutoSentry Turret and Adapative Tracking Pods corrected to what text says the should be doing
- Fixed: Buggy assignment of Fire Rocket to Engineer subclass
- Fixed: Removed Rapid Reaction from list of perks exposed to Training Roulette because it was still showing up on trees with Sentinel
- Fixed: Soldier jumping genemod perk animation sometimes missing. This fix may fix some other perk-related animation issues as well.
- Attempted Fix: Continent bonuses not being properly restored upon liberation of base (satellite sometimes providing it over country before base is liberated)
- Fixed: Banshee armor inventory image missing, incorrect depleted elerium rounds inv image
- Fixed: Missing mission-based PsiXP for Psi Shadow
Features/Gameplay changes
- You will now see chief soldier stats (Health, Mobility, Will, Aim, Defense) in most soldier lists
- Alien spawns will now be randomized on maps (thanks WGhost). Added a few maps back into various rotations.
- Significant overhaul of Grenade, Poison spit and Rocket launcher mechanics. New calculation method for rocket scatter, and a number of abilities (suppression, disorientation, poisoned, mindfrayed) apply penalties to range (for grenades, spit, Exalt rocket launchers) or accuracy (for XCom rocket launchers).
- You may now set rookie headgear in DGC.ini
- Included a list of candidate colors & decos in a text file for use in changing ini settings
- Gas Grenade is now a 'chem grenade.' Against unprotected targets, it applies a mobility penalty plus damage for every action you take, but hunkering down or standing still reduces the damage. Against all targets who aren't poisonous themselves (including robots, but not Thin Men, Zombies or Chryssies), it also acts as acid, reducing non-cover based damage reduction and conferring an aim penalty. This effect also applies to Chyrssalid and Thin Man poison (which is basically the same stuff).
- Soldier supra-class (Tactical, Weapons, etc.) will now tilt toward the class you have the least of, with a 50/50 chance of being that class; otherwise it will be one of the other three. Added ini setting so you can adjust chance of getting least common class.
- Progeny now activated by default
- Temple Ship mission should be quite a bit more challenging now
- Added Super Skyranger foundry project, which gives +2 squad size on alien base and Exalt HQ assaults, and +4 on the Temple Ship (max of 12, even if you mod the game to give a higher base)
- Surviving Blueshirts from base defense missions join XCOM as PFCs
- Deceased Blueshirts from base defense missions are honored on the memorial wall
- Added Alien Nucleonics foundry project to increase elerium extracted from UFO power sources
- Added Improved Salvage Techniques foundry project that increases Weapon Fragments from missions by 25%
- Added Fast Mover perk that functions as a half-power sprinter (but can be stacked with sprinter). This will generally be attached to items.
- UFO alerts now include an altitude indicator, providing a clue of the UFO's mission (and whether it will land)
- Landed UFOs will now infrequently be ambushes, with many, many extra troops than a normal landed UFO. This will become more likely if the aliens are suffering serious losses at the hands of XCOM.
- Rewrote critical hit code from scratch to fix vanilla issues with smoke grenade. Should mostly work the same, with following changes: Sharpshooter gives +10% crit in all cases. Executioner gives +10% crit when targeting a unit at 50% or less health. Foundry Scope upgrade gives +5% crit chance to laser sight. Squadsight-range shots face a severe crit penalty, but it isn't eliminated entirely.
- Four new primary weapons are available: Assault Carbine, Gauss Carbine, Pulse Carbine, Laser Carbine. They all get an aim bonus, crit penalty and do -1 damage relative to the equivalent rifle. They all (along with the plasma carbine) grant the 'Fast Mover' perk.
- You may now use the F1-F7 keys in the Geoscape view to shift the camera to focus on your five interceptor bases, plus the north and south poles.
- Added a series of UFO class-specific UFO Analysis technologies that are unlocked by Alien Materials & a successful raid on a UFO of that class. It will provide +10% damage on all hits on UFOs of that class (as well as some guidance in the text about effective weapons against this particular UFO). They'll be quick research projects for the most part -- shorter than autopsies.
- Significant overhaul of seeker AI and capabilities.
- You can now build a skeleton key before orbiting a satellite over an occupied country.
- Aliens will now steadily introduce pod leaders with new capabilities, and higher-level leaders will grow more frequent in the late game and on alien base assaults.
- Aliens able to field monsters and other unique opponents on a few terror missions now.
- Exalt now has a true boss and some lieutenants.
- Damage popups now display Damage reduction effects (if any)
- Suppressing with an LMG-class weapon now temporarily grants Opportunist perk and bonuses if an suppressed target tries to move; removed Opportunist from Gunner tree
- Added New Combat Systems foundry project that unlocks some heavy- and assault- specific small items, such as Reaper Rounds, Alloy Bipod (with Alien Materials), Armor Piercing Ammo (with Alien Materials), Smartgun Kit (Gauss LMG also renamed Gauss Autorifle to avoid confusion) for Heavy and Breaching Ammo (with Alien Materials), Shredder Ammo With Alien Materials) and Impact Vest (with Mobile Power Armor) for Assault; Marksman's Scope, Illuminator Gunsight, and Laser Designator for Scout, and Chem Grenade (with Thin Man Autopsy) for everyone
- Added Walker Servos, an assault-only item granting Fast Mover perk, granted by Advanced Servomotors Foundry project
- Added Psi Warfare Systems Foundry project, necessary to unlock certain psi-only items that provide significant bonuses: Aurora Armor (with Improved Body Armor), Psi Grenade, Psi Screen (with Mectoid Autopsy), Neural Gunlink (with Alien Biocybernetics), Ghost Grenade (with Seeker Autopsy), Mind Shield (with Sectoid Commander Autopsy). Ghost Grenade is now Psi-only. Some Psi-only items temporarily draw down the soldier's will, while others raise it.
- Added Tactical Sensors MEC small item, conferring, you guessed it, Tactical Sense perk
- Added Shredder Ammo perk (reworked Shredder Rocket). Functions as before for Rocketeers; On other classes it adds shredder effect from hits from gun. Added to Gunner, Valkyrie and Jaeger trees.
- On Covert Ops Data recovery missions (not Capture and Hold), you may only bring a maximum of four soldiers. (Thanks to whoever suggested this!
- 'ALT-O' key combo now puts all soldiers with moves remaining on overwatch (with no confirm, so be careful -- and remember snipers don't fire overwatch shots at squadsight ranges)
- Added ability to repair destroyed SHIVs via engineering projects. Adjusted SHIV build costs and reduced regular repair times.
- Explosive damage now scales downward from point of detonation (although it is still moderately randomized) to edge of area of effect. Adjusted some explosives stats to compensate.
- When leveling up rookies, you now have a third 'random subclass' option if you want to go for something other than the pair presented.
- Added 'Psychokinetic Strike' psi power that allows psi soldier to blow up cover
- MEC gear (except armor) will now appear in 'vehicles' tab with SHIV gear instead in regular soldier gear tab. This allows us to combine a half-dozen small items to make them equippable by both MECs and SHIVs.
- Completion of rearming, refueling, repairing or transfer of an aircraft on a continent when a UFO is overhead will now pause the geoscape, allowing you to launch an interception
Balancing:
- UFOs that are to land on harvest and research missions will now head straight for their destination rather than fly around like a great big target, giving you less time to shoot them down. This means that you should see more landed small UFO missions (which have been too easy to miss because they are fairly easy to shoot down). In addition, larger UFOs on certain missions will fly in ways that give a clue to the nature of the mission and what's coming next.
- Hunter UFOs are now visible anywhere in the world, regardless of satellite or interceptor coverage. This gives you a mechanism to prevent undetected UFOs on hunts shooting down satellites as you launch them.
- Reduced array of conditions that will generate a Hunter UFO.
- Thin Man poison spit range reduced slightly; Suppression now reduces it by half, gave Thin Men access to perks that can increases its range
- Minor AI changes to sectoid and in a few other places
- Increased some perk bonuses when selecting on level-up. Taking Steadfast, for example, should give +5 will. Covering Fire will give better aim bonuses.
- Steadfast perk should now protect against chain panic
- Various grenade-throwing aliens no longer receive Bombard perk by default; instead it can show up as a leader or navigator perk.
- Significant rework of Interception Armor/Armor Piercing numbers. The intent (we'll see how it plays out) is to create smoother tiers of both weapons and ships
- Using a fatigued soldier on a mission deals 1 wound, not 2
- Scaled down some damage upgrades for various aliens
- Aliens take research hit when they lose a base
- Gray market will offer 20% item value instead of 50% for non-artifact item sales; workshop rebates significantly reduced; cash rebates will be capped at 25% of item value (instead of total value - 1). This is to prevent exploit of selling items for more than their manufacture cost.
- Reduced outsider accuracy on Normal difficulty
- Stretched out many alien upgrades so they will happen over longer timeframe (general easing of difficulty)
- Reworked UFO encounter table some, should impact alien resource-gathering and frequency of raiders/destroyers in particular
- Blueshirts no longer receive will and HP nerfs
- Little more meld; little less in NSLW
- Increased cyberdisc frequency
- General increase in engineer requirements for many items, with a particular increase for mid- to late-game items
- Adjusted council requests for weaponry
- Engineer receives -1 mobility upon first promotion. (Solution: Use a carbine)
- Gene mods made cheaper again; extra timeout per genemod reduced to 6 hours
- Slightly reduced alloy recovery on normal (which I'd bumped in a prior Beta, but it's still more than other levels) and increased fragment recovery on all difficulties
- Adjustments to some research times
- Aliens marginally less likely to retreat, particularly in large pods that have taken losses
- Capped many council item request rewards at 2 scientists / engineers instead of 3
- Reduced Infantry and Goliath aim bonuses on level up slightly, increased Guardian aim bonuses slightly
- Adjustments to some soldier armor stats; added an early armor tech for greater granularity in developing upgrades. Phalanx Armor is reasonably accessible early on; Carapace and Kestrel moved to 'Advanced Body Armor.'
- Chance of UFO blowing up versus crash-landing now scales with UFO size. Small UFOs slightly more likely to blow up; mediums the same as prior Betas; larger ones less likely. Overseer will never blow up, 'cause I think Insufferable Smartypants will blow a gasket when he finally kills an Overseer and it goes boom.
- MEC adjustments: Absorption Fields perk nerfed to cap at 40 percent damage reduction (vice 50), all MECs get +10 defense and 1 DR (2 DR if using One For All), and they get the Combined Arms perk, nullifying 1 point of enemy Cover DR; MEC-3 suit gets Tactical Sense perk automatically (see also new Tactical Sensors item for MEC-1 and MEC-2)
- Basic and Alloy SHIVs given +10 defense. (Hover SHIV gets +10 from new air evade bonus)
- Adjusted all MEC perk trees except Archer, removing Tactical Sense and Lock N' Load
- Adjusted Rocketeer tree to put Javelin Rockets at Master Sergeant
- Significant rewrite of Exalt mission code; elites should appear in a timely fashion and difficulty will ramp up as time goes on. Did some sprucing up of Exalt HQ raid, too.
- Set minimum damage on Neural Feedback to 1 (if it did 0 damage, it would appear it did nothing sometimes)
- Kinetic Strike Module now does variable damage
- Flamethrower now causes a panic roll, not auto-panic
- Railgun and Particle Cannon now get 3 ammo before reload is required (instead of 2)
- Lightning Reflexes now provides a 90% reaction fire to-hit penalty on the first shot, and 70% penalty on 2nd and additional shots
- Alien Neurology no longer requires so many fragements, but some sectoid corpses instead
- All environmental damage somewhat randomized; aliens now apply damage bonus to environmental damage as well.
- Defeating the Exalt base grants 25 meld
- You may sell SHIV chassis (from destroyed or dismantled SHIVs) on the gray market
- Alien AI will have a lower threshhold of determining a target vulnerable, which should making them a bit more shooty
- Telekinetic Field psi perk improved to not apply bonuses to enemies within field
- Neural Feedback now has a chance to protect nearby friendlies from psi attack
- Removed smoke grenade from TR exposed perks, added Vital Point Targeting in its place
- Medics and Scouts may now use shotgun-class weapons. Scouts may now use Sniper Rifles. Scout tree adjusted for Snap Shot at Gunnery Sergeant (and some other balancing moves). Scout won't have access to squadsight. This is to see if scouts can work as an optional 'designated marksman' role that differs a bit from snipers.
- Lowered mission-based Psi XP from non-contested powers
v3.0 Beta 6 (March 29, 2014)
Bugfixes:
- Kinetic Strike Module, Electropulse will correctly have multiple uses (instead of 1)
- Aliens can now shoot down your satellites again
- Rookies are properly made ineligible for MEC conversion (and other fixes to MEC conversion candidacy)
- Fixed: Incorrect prompts for level 4 psi to finish game by entering gallop chamber.
- Fixed: Possibility for negative meld collection from containers. Also adjusted meld reward amounts to be more granular.
- Added missing text for Sectoid Commander prisoner transfer
- Fixed potential CTDs on most UFO missions after alien research gets particularly high (Thanks Minoitos and Teemredd31 for the savegames! )
- Removed Combined Arms from showing up in Valkyrie perk tree and corrected with Packmaster
- Fixed: Aliens should use grenades again
- Fixed problem with Advanced Servomotors with workaround by creating new MEC small item that grants sprinter perk. Still applies general mobility bonus to all SHIVs.
- Reduced northernmost parts of UK and Germany slightly to see if that will reduce North Pole bug
- Fixed bug causing newly freed countries to be at max panic, should now be freed around 80 panic
- Fixed: You should no longer be able to access the vanilla MEC construction interface
- Attempted Fix: Using disabling shot on an alien in overwatch should no longer give the alien unlimited overwatch shots.
- Attempted Fix to CTD -- Suppressed sectoids will no longer try mind-merge
- Attempted Fix: Sending an interceptor after a landing UFO should abort interception after the UFO goes to ground
- Fixed: Prereqs for Alien Propulsion
- Fixed: Damage Control Pods should function now
- Fixed: Accidentally swapped SHIV Heal and Drone Capture requirements and tech tree position.
- Fixed: Alloy-Carbide Applique should show up as SHIV inventory item
- Fixed: Phoenix Cannon shows up under Gauss Weapons in line with posted tech tree (instead of Advanced Gauss Weapons)
- Fixed: Full list of unlocked foundry projects should appear when you complete a tech
- Fixed: Removed Suppression from candidate Training Roulette perks to avoid conflicts with class skills
- Fixed: Heavy Plasma tech now correctly requires Heavy Plasma items
- Reworked Rush build, adjusted some costs and bonuses (it should generally be better). Still one display bug, noted in Confirmed issues.
- Restorative Mist should show charges in equip UI now
- Set range of alien supply to keep things from getting out of hand (in either direction) and avoid weirdness of negative numbers
- Reduced size of largest big aliens to avoid graphical glitches
- Rewrote code that determines Exalt HQ assault forces
- Attempted to fix issues with multiple UFOs spawning simultaneously by randomizing their appearance time
- Psi icon will glow purple at level 1 sted 4
- Fixed: Psi Training time should show correctly in barracks listing
- Fixed: Hyperwave should show correct alien counts
- Fixed: Bug in BuildPod preventing second main alien from being added
- Fixed: MEC suits will be available for use again if their driver is killed
- Fixed: Code to send best pilots to Firestorms should work now
- Rewrote tech credit code from scratch to better apply techs to credits
- Returned MEC weapon env damage to default
- Attempted fix: Reinforcements during base mission should show up properly now
- Fixed: Equipping multiple units of MEC large items now grant bonus charges
- Fixed: Each dead civilian on terror missions should be +3 panic in country, +1 on continent, instead of +4/+1
- Fixed: You should properly get high mission XP from tough missions (such as terror missions) now, instead of zero
- Fixed: UFOs on certain types of missions will appear further away from their targets, giving you time to intercept them.
- Fatigued Soldiers defending against a base assault should no longer suffer exhaustion wounds, just more fatigue
- SHIVs may get called up for base assault defense
Features / Gameplay changes:
- Aliens now employ a UFO to assault XCOM's base. Losing the base mission does not mean the end of the game, but instead inflicts heavy damage on your resources. The aliens can now assault XCOM's base multiple times.
- Added ability that lets you set soldiers' initial armor deco and color via repurposed DefaultGameCore.ini entries, and one-time class-dependent color and headgear change upon promotion to specialist
- Added Alien Metallurgy Foundry project, which increases the alloys you recover from UFOs you shoot down
- Added small items: Alloy Belt for SHIVs (Alien Materials) and Alloy Hauberk for MECs (MEC Warfare) (provide bonus HP); Psi Grenade (enhanced Flashbang for Psi Troopers)
- Added some armor deco choices. Genemods will no longer be restricted to eight genemod-specific decos.
- You may now transfer damaged interceptors to other continents for repair.
- You may now rearm damaged interceptors, freeing up their weapon for other aircraft. Rearming an aircraft now takes 7 days for all weapons derived from alien techs; 12 hours for basic missile weapons.
- Interceptors and UFOs may now score (and suffer) from critical hits, in which a hit does double damage. Armor Piercing weapons increase the chance of critical hits, while armor (not hit points) reduces it. This may lead to interceptors being shot down more often.
- Using Steady Weapon ability now plays overwatch sound effect
- You may now sell captives directly on the gray market. The amount of money offered is low; the primary purpose for you to check your inventory of captives at any give time. (Thanks for the suggestion!
- Added a few of the larger abduction maps to the terror mission rotation
Balancing:
- Testing increased throw and scan range of battlescanner
- Mec-1 and Mec-2 get 1 extra small item slot
- Basic SHIV gets +1 hp and 1 extra small item slot
- Increased Meld recovered from canisters; when playing with Not-So-Long-War second wave option you should get A LOT more
- Reduced cost of some genemods
- Reduced timeout per genemod to 8 hours per
- Reduced cost of Alloy SHIV to $250 and Hover Shiv to $350, Increased Alloy SHIV engineer requirements and moved to Improved Body Armor as prereq
- Added Alien Materials as prereq for Alien Biocybernetics
- Significantly reduced chance to lose countries with max panic each month if you have a satellite there
- Reduced cyber's preference for death blossom
- Increased MEC trooper conversion time to 10 days
- It will take longer for aliens to begin accumulating significant 'bonus' research; Also lowered somewhat multiplier determining when aliens level up on lower difficulties
- Tanks now get same defense bonus as XCom on lower difficulties
- Lowered build times but increased cost of mid-tier interceptor weapons
- Improvements and stronger upgrades for sectoid, thin man, outsider, Muton
- Rocketeer gets a more aim on level-ups, less hit points
- Spread out level-up will bonuses quite a bit more
- You now should generally have more time to engage UFOs on missions
- Cyberdisc Death Blossom should be more hurty now
- Increased panic chance when nearby soldiers panicking
- Aurora Armor now limited to Psis only
- Rework of HEAT and explosives damage code to provide more even bonuses
- Reduced base crit chance provided by gauss sniper rifle
- Reworked seeker AI
- Reduced some alien damage upgrades
- All MEC armors have +2 hit points
- Little more damage from EMP Cannon, little less expensive
- Significant reworks to Goliath (Damage-absorbing monster) and Guardian (not forced into medic path, best overwatch perks), with adjustments to most of the other MEC classes
- Mimic Beacon now psionic-only item and much cheaper
- Increased mechtoid accuracy
v3.0 Beta 5 (March 15, 2014)
Bugfixes
- Fixed: SHIV unloading Tread Deck after mission and equipping kevlar armor instead
- Fixed: Extra Conditioning should work with all armors now
- Fixed: Psis should no longer be locked out from all items
- Fixed: Tech report for Advanced Beam Lasers should display properly now
- Fixed: HEAT Ammo and Shredder Rocket text on damage bonuses
- Attempted Fix: CTD after alien grenades foundry project completed
- Fixed: CTD when Berserker uses Bullrush ability
- Attempted Fix: Hang when defeating second alien base
- Removed poorly performing terror maps (dam and fishing village) from terror mission rotation
- Attempted fixes to unimpressive enemy forces on Exalt missions
Features:
- Pilots (if you rename them) will now carry ranks commensurate with the number of kills they have achieved
Balance:
- Some adjustments to alien encounter table, net effect will be slight easing of difficulty
- Adjusted when council missions may occur
v3.0 Beta 4 (March 13, 2014)
- Rebuilt to work with EW Patch 3 (March 10, 2014 patch)
Bugfixes:
- Terror Missions should properly scale up now
- Game no longer freezes when you finish Iron Skin or Smart Macrophages projects (there will be no cinematic for these)
- Removed nonfunctioning Squadsight from Jaeger tree and reworked tree a bit
- Fixed: Medikits (and possibly other items) provide charges in Slot 2 regardless of loadout
- Rewrote malfunctioning supra-class selection code to just randomly pick after the one of each of the first four classes have been awarded
- Code to prevent alien grenades from being sell-able in the gray market once they are infinite
Gameplay/Features:
- Close and Personal renamed Close Encounters, because Hicks
Balancing Adjustments:
- Alien unit upgrades significantly slowed on lower difficulties.
- Alien Computers council request now for 2 instead of 5 units
- Alien Power Source council request now for 2 instead of 3 units
- Increased Sectoid Will gain over time
- Slight reduction in Pulse Laser, Xenopsionics, Xenogenetics and Alien Biocybernetics research time and resources required
- Slight increase in Advanced Aerospace Concepts research time
- Significant reduction in cost and maintenance requirements for psilabs
- Relative increase in drone pods after first few months
- Aliens will launch terror missions in a few more strategic situations
- HEAT Ammo, HEAT Warheads and Shredder Rockets made somewhat more effective
- Alien Grenades foundry project upgrades needle grenades by +2 damage
v3.0 Beta 3 (March 9, 2014)
Fixed issues for Beta 3
- Soldier deploys on cover on pier council mission.
- Bug in Assault perk tree (Close and Personal)
- Bug in Rocketeer perk-based stat upgrades (mobility)
- Training Roulette fixed
- A bunch of text fixes for items (including Phalanx and Aegis armors, also council item thank yous shouldn't overflow into reward line anymore)
- Certain MEC 'items' that shouldn't appear in engineering won't appear in engineering
- Attempted fix: Installation fails when XCom isn't in primary Steam folder. Hex edit solution appended downforum.
- Probably fixed: Some users reporting rotating through a very small set of maps
- Fixed MEC Warfare Systems foundry project not initializing
- Fixed War Weariness.
- Fixed Results Driven.
- Fixed MEC equipping problems.
- Fixed bugged XP check for Psi level-ups.
- Fixed some problematic base assault code
- Fixed Xenopsionics not showing up in research archives
- Fixed SHIV Suppression and MEC Close Combat not appearing in Foundry list when tech tree says it should
- Fixed Sectoid corpse council item request (was requesting alloys for cash, should now request corpses for scientists).
- Fixed live Berserker and Muton requests
- Requests should now properly alert you that they include panic reduction as a reward
- CTD in genemod selection (occurs sporadically after several clicks on double-click of brain damping and maybe another mod)
- CTD when Exalt Heavy fires rocket; also issues with ranging
- Attempted fix to seeker staying stealthed indefinitely
- Attempted fix soldier not always leveling up when selecting Steadfast
- Attempted fix: Certain gear changes not being properly saved; Loadouts after missions should be saved; any changes made in barracks will overwrite saved loadout and generate new saved loadout
- Fixed: CTD in psi selection, and some other bad code
- Item cards should now display correct charge information (including perk info in equipping screen)
- Some inventory image fixes
- Fixed: Completing Armored Fighters project leaves fighters 'injured' but not repairing
- Fixed: Game freezing when applying flush and panic-move effects on hunkered soldiers and aliens; hunker now provides immunity to any forced-moves
- Fixed: Mind merge animation doesn't always disappear when sectoids get zapped
- Fixed some discrepancies in rush build code, not sure if was causing problems or not
- Attempted fix for mindmerge-Mectoid shield misbehavior
- Fixed bug that was providing wrong cash payouts for blowing up UFOs
- Attempted fix to Arc Thrower stun fails
- Fixed bug in which using keyboard to select soldiers allowed you to violate squad size limits
Added Features / Gameplay changes:
- Alt-F1 toggles HUD in tactical game
- Alt-F2 through Alt-F9 offers some new camera angles
- Grenadier now applies +1 greande to direct-damage grenades only
- Smoke and Mirrors now applies +1 grenade for all support grenades
- Lightning Reflexes now applies a severe aim penalty to all reaction/overwatch fire directed at the unit, rather than affording perfect defense against the first shot. This mean units activating LR can always be hit, but it should be pretty rare.
- When a unit is suppressed and breaks cover to run, the reaction shot now takes effect after the unit has left cover, making doing so more dangerous
- Fixed: Scatter Laser now properly becomes available with Advanced Pulse Lasers tech
- Attempted Fix: Covert Operative not fatiguing properly
Balancing adjustments:
- Made Phalanx Armor a little more expensive and removed defense bonus.
- Reduced initial Cyberdisc DR by 1.
- Reduced flashbang effect duration by 1/2 turn.
- Reduced Psi Training time
- Swapped Dense Smoke and Smoke and Mirrors on Engineer tree
- Reworked psi XP to avoid gamey opportunities to get more
- Rush-building any item costs a minimum of 1 meld
- Rush-building facilities costs 10 meld
- AP Grenade now ignores cover-based DR (and will do more damage)
- Blowing up UFOs entirely provides some alloy salvage
- Floaters now offer a little alloy salvage; Seekers now offer alloy and elerium salvage
- Aliens will be grow more annoyed at XCOM when they lose a big ship relative to losing a little ship
- Fighters and Destroyers a little better at initiating hunts
- NSLW: Officers have reduced requirement for missions in grade before being eligible for promotion to next officer level
- Gauss Sniper Rifle starts with one-round magazine
- Adjusted several level-up perks with bonus status to make them more enticing
- Slight increase in rocket accuracy
v3.0 Beta 2 (March 2, 2014)
- Fixed bug in which soldiers never hit on normal difficulty.
- Fixed bug in World Diversity Code granting thousands of hit points.
- Fixed bug that was displaying AI debug code in objectives window.
v3.0 Beta 1 (March 2, 2014)
First Beta release.
Versions 2.12 and earlier are Long War for EU.
Special Thanks for advice, ideas, support and feedback from many people, including but not limited to:
Ante Up ProductionsAntibody SoftwareAventador EnterprisesBusinessware Technologies Inc.Computers and MoreGotbaka ConsultingTBF Media Ltd.Adam T.AgammamonAlbrecht S.Alec K.Alex E.Allen S.Allen M.AnaxiboisAnders H.Anders J.Andreas S.Andrew D.Andrew P.Andrey S.Angel R.Anthony C.Anthony S.Anthony S.AntiocheAnUserApostolos M.ArmarnisArthur B.ArzooAustin P.Avenger93Ayur S.Ben C.Benjamin G.BigRowdyBinkleywalkerBjlindenBowen X.BoyskiBrandon C.Brian C.Brian F.Brian H.Brian K.Bryan B.BuffaloBurgerCal0004Carson F.Casey A.Casey W.CasnimotChunkuai H.Charles B.Charles-Henri G.Charles M.Charlie G.Charlie R.Chris D.Chris H.Christian P.Christian P.Christopher M.Christopher Y.Colin H.Commander GordaComputeraddictCurtis J.Daniel H.Daniel H. A.Daniel P.Daniel S.Daniel S.Daniele O.Danny B.DarkrenownDavid C.David E.David N.David S.David W.DeaconIvoryDeadCrowsFoodDemianskyDennis W.Devon_vDominique V.Duong N.Dustin K.Dustin S.drake8888Ed M.Edward O.eld10Elliott F.Eric M.Erik H.Evan R.Fang W.FeldelmFelerysFelix T.FerrardFinn P.Firestorm10FilthyRobotFishboFlorian E.FlyingHigh10000000FmodFreman H.Geoffrey N.Gerd G.Gernot S.Gorgon01Gregory C.Guillaume B.Guy M.GyogenHaerzogHagen R.HambilHaruspiceHawkeye2777HazapuzaHenrik B.Henry W.HellraptorHeramaelHo Jin C.HoumieIan R.IceciroInsufferable SmartypantsIsaac M.Istvan S.Jahmai L.Jacob B.Jacob S.Jake D.James C.James P.James S.James S.James Z.Jan-Michael M.Jan S.Jan V.Joachim W.John K.Jonas S.Jared B.JeanclyJeffrey E.Jens R.Jeremy B.Jeremy O.Jeroen K.Jeroen M.Jesse N.Joachim W.Joao M.Joey B.Johan K.John E.John K.John S.John S.Jonas L.Jonas M.Jonathan A.Jonathan F.Jose O.Jordi C.Joris B.Joseph B.Joseph H.Joseph S.Kara42Kaya E.Ken D.Kevin C.Kevin H.Khamza D.Kirill Z.Ki-Young J.Kostas A.Kristin H.Lee J.Lee M.Linda S.Low Low H HLuixLars H.Luke A.Madigan341Maik A.Marco J.Mark J.Markus L.Martin E.MarbozirMathieu B.Matthew P.Matthew W.Matthias L.Maxim I.MelloAceMichael B.Michael C.Michael D.Michael G.Michael I.Michael M.Michael N.Michael P.Michael S.Miguel P.Mike B.Mike O.MinoitosMitchell B.MrBimsMSpain77MufuksMuhammed Y.Nachie C.Nathan J.Nathan W.Neil P.NeoSeetherNesi N.Nicholas G.V.Nicholas H.Nikolai T.Nikolay B.NontaloNorbert N.Oleg E.Oliver L.Olle N.OrostParker T.Patrick A.Patrick F.Patrick M.Patrick P.Paul G.Paul S.-H.Paul W.Paul Viktor v.M.Pean H.Peter T.Philip A.Philip M.Philipp D.Philipp L.PhwopP.J. M.RaymondHouserReid A.RenrawRex F.Rob v.h.h.Robert C.Robert F.Robert H.Robert M.Robin C.Robin S.Roel D.Roman T.Rory K.Ross C.Rudiger S.Saph7Sarah P.SaxapScott N.Scott T.Sean L.Sebastian B.Sebastian C.Sebastian S.Sebastian T.Shane F.SibiryakSimon L.SirDrDSkrzacikscSoren W.Spyker92Squee913Stefan B.Stefan S.Steffen K.Stephen D.Stephen M.Stian J.Stig D.TalhydrasTeemredd31Teilen K.Thomas G.Thomas M.Thomas M.Thomas P.Thunder_GRTim E.Tim H.Trevor R.Tyrel L.Uri M.ValakovVesa P.Vladimir B.WalterJWeston L.William B.William M.WintermistWorthlessBumsXaxyxYun J.YustariusYzaxtolZiggRolls20ZybertrixLee M.Manuel G.Bryan M.Radek L.Alex J.Mario K.Juho R.Joshua C.Bent J.Evan G.Cem M.Richard H.Daniel W.Rob J.Nick K.Joseph H.Daniel W.Kathryn H.Aaron F.Curtis L.William B.Alexander D.Bernhard S.Jonathan W.Tom D.David P.Jason S.Christian F.Manfred K.Mark B.Ross D.Dana S.Michael D.Niko A.Alassane M.Jonas L.Joseph S.John B.Riley S.Nick Y.Martin R.John L.Christopher S.Jan K.Evan T.Ryan T.Joel F.Brian L.David G.Sergey P.Serge D.Matthew H.Nathan J.Julian M.Dean C.Davitt W.Kim M.Luciano F.Gailon E.Alexei L.Albert S.Michael Z.Christopher S.Alexander L.Andrew C.Ingo S.Kristofer B.Joshua C.Kostyantyn S.Kevin De J.Wayne S.Christopher H.Johan C.Paul G.Sergio M. S.Jamie W.Steven B.Christoffer P.Timothy G.Soren B.Matthew B.Francisco M.Sebastian E.Lukas S.Hamzah H.David G.Andrew M.Victor R.Greg L.Daniel M.Ketil J.Roel D.Stefan V.Thompson D.-D.Daniel W.Erika W.Donghun L.David M.David L.Ian R.Scott D.Adam R.Pawel K.Chris H.Patrick J.Sergey B.Christian L.Dane D.John R.John W.Istvan K.Leith M.William H.Emre E.Julius G.Derrik H.Dylan S.Michael B.Steve V.Nicholas M.Sebastian R.Daniel K.Jason L.Victor B.Collin K.Jonathan F.Christopher N.Kevin O.Wolfgang K.esnqPeter S.John P.Todd B.Marcus E.Colin H.Jimmie W.Andrew P.Evan C.Ronald F.Artur W.Thomas S.Antoci B.Andrew C.Ralf K.David S.Morgan J.Ben R.Mikael J.B.J. A.Michal T.Kristine B.Eric K.Kryuk K.Kristian C.Tomi H.Stefan R.Peter K.Amelia K.Richard H.Ju Z.Mahieu S.Rhys C.Samuel H.Yoshua S.Thomas M.Ahad O.Christoph L.Kevin H.Michael W.David C.Derek N.Fred B.Ahmad F.Christian J.John C.Fred K.Jimmy H.Joshua W.Steven F.Kieron H.Ian T.Jack H.Zebadiah M.David S.Aleksandr S.Tony T.John B.Steve H.Robert F.William C.Paul S.Vadim A.Knut M.Peter A.Michael F.William C.Lorcan M.Matthew T.Donnchadh M.Bradley N.David B.Colby A.Bill T.Cameron M.Jonathan U.Lin Tung Y.Robert Z.Josh K.Piotr P.Michael V.Julie K.John C.Ognjen T.Marcus S.Bob E.Gregory W.Dmitry D.Tan C.Neil C.Ingo W.David C.Alexandre M.Kieran E.Johann V.Herby G.Steven R.Ravi P.Tom L.Mateusz M.Marcin P.Charles B.Paul W.Michael H.Morgan J.Andrew C.Glen T.Sheri N.Jesse H.Ryan T.Mark F.Alex F.Alex B.Nick L.Chris R.William C.Eric J.Brian T.Adam K.Thomas R.Teppo P.William H.Derek H.Kris L.Bill B.Connor L.Sylvain 'Zyxpsilon' P.Chad F.Jesse D.Frank H.Mikhail P.Timi L.Taryn A.Barry S.Simon H.Carl F.Keith C.John H.Daniel P.Richard B.Oliver R.Curtis L.Sebastian S.Steve G.Dotstry J.Sebastian R.Jared L.Brian G.Jonathan R.Robert B.Matthew C.Andrew S.Ian C.Tran B.Dirk R.Fredrik H.Danny M.Nicholas P.Cesar S.Thomas F.Paul W.Ben H.Nathan M.Peter B.Roy D.Kevin S.Taylor D.Folkert D.Jonas F.Maximillian M.Petr B.Henrik B.Michael T.Garret L. D.Alexandar V.Mats Erik C.Charles S.Keith W.John L.Greg H.E V.Nash S.Suzanne S.Scott H.Burton D.Jean Claude A.
Free XCOM 2 mod Long War 2 has been released on Steam Workshop so you should download it.
Long War 2 lengthens the campaign; adds classes, guns, aliens; changes how things work; expands squad size and even lets you take more than one squad out on missions. It's possible to have more than one Avenger transport ship too.
Long War 2 is The Mod for XCOM 2 in other words. That it's free is frankly ridiculous but also brilliant. And it's free because developer Firaxis paid for it, having been so impressed with Long War for XCOM 1.
We interviewed Long War developer Pavonis - not pronounced 'pavlova' FYI - just over a week ago. We talked about how Long War wasn't just for hardcore players; it has a bit of a reputation you see.
XCOM 2 came out early last year on PC, then in the autumn on PS4 and Xbox One. It was of 2016's best games. In our XCOM 2 review we said it was 'one of the most demanding - and thrilling - strategy games ever'.