Which mods/settings to make late game more difficult?

[abacaps]

I hugely enjoyed playing the first few months which is very challenging on superhuman / ironman / sneaky AI, but I find it becomes a bit easy and boring a few months as soon as your soldiers have heavy plasma and flying suits (and especially once you have the avenger). The difficulty level just drops like a cliff, except for terror missions / battleships which are still a challenge pre-avenger. I was wondering what mods you might recommend to keep the early game around the same difficulty but later game more difficult.

I know there's "no psionics" but I found the difficulty drops before that stage is reached. Thanks for any suggestions!

[KingMob4313]

I disable psionics and make blaster bombs direct fire. Seriously, doing the daisy chain mind control thing makes the game crazy easy.

I'm also coming up with a mod called 'retribution' that will add elite mutons and 'outsiders' from The Bureau to late game, and give the aliens a weapon upgrade to particle beam weapons that is for aliens only.

[ivandogovich]

That is really good question.  Its that Late game walk over that I am trying to avoid with imposed limitations, in my new series: "Up Close and Personal."  No Long Guns. Period.  So, no Heavy Plasma, Laser Rifle, Blaster Launcher, etc.   Only Pistols, Melee, and Grenades are allowed.  I haven't got to end game yet, but I'm a bit concerned about sectopods and other nasties.  I have compiled a custom modpack with a few custom mods and some taken from the community.  These add a bit more capability to stun and do some higher melee damage.  So far it has been fun... but we will see if its a winnable solution.

[abacaps]

Yeah imposing limitations would be a good way to go for now. I already skip psionics. I hope there will be a mod though, elite mutons and alien weapon upgrades sound great

[yrizoud]

> The difficulty level just drops like a cliff
At this point in the game, your only goal is to get a live commander, and then go for the last battle. There is no point in scraping every scout UFO carcass, you can as well skip the crash sites, or purposefully shoot UFOs over ocean.

I'm not sure how enjoyable it would be to lengthen the game after you (typically) have 8 bases, with mostly the whole earth in radar coverage.

[Arthanor]

I try to have 8 bases and good radar coverage asap, to miss as few UFOs as possible. To me, the game should get at its most engaging in the battlescape once you have reached late-midgame/endgame, with multiple tactics and loadout choices and difficult opponents. Sadly, it is just not the case.

Hopefully, some of our rebalancing efforts will lead to a more diverse endgame. I am working on multiple crafts being relevant, not just the firestorm/avenger, multiple craft weapons, multiple squad weapons (toying with the idea of plasma being unmanufacturable), and need to look into armors (not better, but as of now, flying suit does everything: best protection and best mobility..!).

Well beyond my ability: Adding new races could be very interesting for late game. The existing new races mods already go a long way to making the game more interesting (especially gazers which are pretty tough and show up somewhat late). A few more tough races (the mechtoids mod might be one to replace sectoids in late-game?) could improve things too.

Turning off the "Psi needs LoS" to allow psi-aliens to use it (and there could be other races than ethereals with a heavy psi-focus), while refraining from using it yourself, is also a possibility.

[pmprog]

I'm with yrizoud, when you're sufficiently "equipped", you should be making your way to the final mission.
I also read on the UFOpaedia (can't remember where though) that XCOM isn't designed to be "waiting around", and that you should trying to close the war as quickly as possible.

So I guess the difficultly "decrease" is so that you don't get tiresome missions whilst trying to get the final research pieces done

[RSSwizard]

TFTD did this beautifully, because of how dangerous the aliens were, and the danger of fighting in the dark and not being able to use certain weapons on terror missions.

Their Dreadnought missions were pretty difficult, with flying cryssalids which for some reason were twice as hard to see as normal critters even if you were looking right at them.

And the Alien Array missions that would come up every single month which were like a forced alien base raid, whether you wanted to do it or not (or face bureaucracy hell from the point drain).

The difficulty was indeed amped up and could almost get out of hand. But at least the Tentaculats were only in the water.

[Roxis231]

I'm Currently working on a mod that changes how long it takes for you to get Plasma weapons.

you need to catch a live alien to understand how to use the weapons, and then an enginer to learn how to make them. ( this also includes small launchers and blaster bombs)

However, I'm not sure if this would be classed as a Late game or an end mid game change?

Its supposed to be used with my Elerium Lasers Mod, to ensure you can keep up with the aliens.

Still in the very early stages of work though.

[KingMob4313]

I'm Currently working on a mod that changes how long it takes for you to get Plasma weapons.

you need to catch a live alien to understand how to use the weapons, and then an enginer to learn how to make them. ( this also includes small launchers and blaster bombs)

However, I'm not sure if this would be classed as a Late game or an end mid game change?

Its supposed to be used with my Elerium Lasers Mod, to ensure you can keep up with the aliens.

Still in the very early stages of work though.

Great minds think alike. For the 'Fourth State' portion of my mod I'm about to release, to get to a usable plasma weapon you first need to capture an alien weapon, research it, then capture an alien engineer, interrogate them, then research 'alien weaponry' and then you can start researching the individual weapons.

I also made it so that alien weapons have to be modified via manufacturing before humans can use them.  Also, Plasma Pistols and Heavy Plasmas cannot be manufactured, only converted.

[Roxis231]

Maybe we can share filesets, Ideas and thoughts?  Could improve both mods.

[MeatLoaf]

you could try this:

items:
  - type: STR_PSI_AMP
    requires:
      - STR_PSI_AMP
      - STR_NOPE
  - type: STR_BLASTER_LAUNCHER
    requires:
      - STR_BLASTER_LAUNCHER
      - STR_NOPE
  - type: STR_HEAVY_PLASMA
    requires:
      - STR_HEAVY_PLASMA
      - STR_NOPE
  - type: STR_PLASMA_PISTOL
    requires:
      - STR_PLASMA_PISTOL
      - STR_NOPE
  - type: STR_PLASMA_RIFLE
    requires:
      - STR_PLASMA_RIFLE
      - STR_NOPE
  - type: STR_SMALL_LAUNCHER
    requires:
      - STR_SMALL_LAUNCHER
      - STR_NOPE

Which basically makes alien weapons and psionic attacks unuseable and if it's doable (I havent tried yet) build from there.

[xracer]

I do not know if this will work or not in your case scenario, but i was trying to see if i could implement it in the mod i hope to finish one day.

We all know that heavy plasma are the weapon of choice from mid to the endgame.
So i was thinking a system for preventing the user from directly using the weapons, with the excuse of human anatomy, dna based security whatever you want to call it.

So you will have Alien Plasma weapons and human plasma weapons.
humans are not capable of using Alien plasma weapons. However Engineers have been able to dismantle the weapon into 3 component, power cells (ellerium cells whatever), containment chamber and alien alloys
disassemble
plasma pistol produces 1 of each
plasma rifle produces 2 PC, 1 CC, 2 AA
heavy palsma produces 3 PC, 1 CC, 3 AA
or whatever number you want, this are just examples.

with all the components our awesome engineers can now start producing human plasma weapons.
Production cost
Plasma pistol = 2 PC, 1 CC, 2 AA
Plasma rifle = 4  PC,  2 CC, 5 AA
Heavy Plasma = 8 PC, 2CC, 8 AA

with this you can keep your engineers busy, not have money out the ying yang and your stockpile of weapons will be drastically reduced.

just an idea, i remember i posted somewhere in here, but it was too long ago

[HelmetHair]

I like it.

[tw]

I wish OpenXcom had the Limited Military option from UFO Extender.