[WIP] Chiko's Alternate Xcom

[Chiko]

As some might remember, this thread was an old sprite repository. Modding the game was not as hard as I imagined so I started to make my own mod, Alternate Xcom.

The idea is mostly to expand the content and the duration of the game campaign by extending the tech tree, adding more items, rebalancing some stuff, changing the lore a bit, but all of this within the Xcom universe. Major changes include:

General Changes:
-New inventory graphics for some of the vanilla weapons.
-The Rifle has been separated into two weapons, Assault Rifle and Sniper Rifle.
-Auto Cannon now fires in auto mode only and their ammo has smaller blast radius but it needs considerable less TUs to use, fires 5 rounds per attack and has more rounds per clip.
-The Cannon has been replaced by a new weapon, the Siege Cannon. It can fire over obstacles and buildings with the help of a spotter. Their ammo has smaller blast radius since now it's a lot more deadly. It's basically a grenade launcher.
-The Piercing Ammo for Siege Cannon has been replaced by Smoke Ammo for for tactical uses.
-Changed the resistances to fire to make that damage type more deadly to unarmored characters.
-Renamed some damage types. Armor Piercing is now Piercing, Incendiary is now Heat, High Explosive is now Blast, Acid is now Chemical.
-Replaced laser damage with shock damage. Shock damage have been rebalanced to better suit its new role. Laser weapons now deal heat damage.
-Added a new grenade, Incendiary Grenade. It can cover a decent area with flames.
-Added a short range fire dealing weapon, Spitfire Cannon. It's similar to a flamethrower in concept but it launches 5 bolts of fire that can cover a small area with flames depending of the spread of the shots.
-Researching all non mechanical corpses, Alien Alloys and Alien Polymer will now let you research a Dart Rifle, which can deal either chemical or stun damage.
-Researching All mechanical corpses and a muton corpse and Alien Alloys will let you research better armor piercing ammo for pistols, assault and sniper rifles.
-Hovercraft HWPs now need a Cyberdisc corpse as main component to be built.
-Edited many of the vanilla description to better suit and describe the changes made by this mod.

Shock Weapons:
-Shock weapons will be the first human weapons available for research. Laser weapons will be available after all shock weapon tech is researched.
-Shock weapons have limited range and ammunition and they cannot be recharged in the field but they deal extra damage to mechanical enemies or targets with implants.
-The shock rod also needs this research to be available.

Laser Weapons:
-The Laser Weapons research has an actual ufopedia entry now.
-Laser Weapons now use Power Cells so their ammo is no longer infinite.
-Having all basic Laser Tech Tree, Alien Alloys and Elerium 115 will allow you to research Elerium Lasers.
-As soon as you research Elerium Lasers, you will be allowed to manufacture powerful ammo cells for personal laser weapons. (HWPs, Craft and Facilities with Laser Tech are unaffected for now)
-Laser power cells do a bit less damage than vanilla laser weapons and the new Elerium ones do damage between the first Laser power cells and Plasma weapons.
-Laser Rifle has been split into Laser Assault Rifle and Laser Sniper Rifle.
-Laser Sniper Rifle uses Heavy Laser Power Cells or Heavy L115 Power Cells.
-Heavy Laser now has auto shot, is less accurate but uses less TUs.

Plasma Weapons:
-All plasma weapons have reduced rounds in their ammo clips.
-Plasma Pistol and Rifle cannot fire in auto mode.
-Heavy Plasma cannot be fired in aimed mode now but it can be fired over obstacles, making it more useful.
-You will be allowed to research alien plasma weapons and learn how to use them but you cannot manufacture them, and their ammo.
-Once you have researched all laser tech, Elerium 115, Alien Alloys and all alien plasma weapons and their ammo clips, a new research topic will appear, Plasma Technology Adaptation.
-When you finish researching it, you will also get a free research, Human Plasma Pistol, and be allowed to research the rest of the human version of alien weapons, along with Plasma Defense and Plasma Cannon for Craft and HWP.
-There's also a Tank/Plasma HWP, which is available as soon as you research the Plasma Cannon.
-There's now further research for human plasma weapons which allow you to develop new ammo cells to deal heat or shock damage.

Fusion Weapons:
-Researching any Fusion Tech (Fusion Grenade, Fusion Blaster or Blaster Bomb) will give you the Alien Fusion Weapons Ufopedia Entry.
-Soon after researching a fusion weapon, your agents will be allowed to use them but manufacturing them won't be possible.
-Upon researching all Fusion Weapons, a new research will appear, Fusion Technology Adaptation.
-Researching that will allow you to manufacture fusion grenades and will unlock the rest of the fusion adaptation research, including Craft, HWP and Facility Weapons.

Non-Lethal Weapons:
-Researching any dead alien will unlock the Non-Lethal Weapons research.
-Researching that will allow you to research Electro-Shock Rod (renamed Stun Rod) and the Alien Containment Facility.
-Upon researching either an Alien Stunner Gun (renamed Small Launcher) or a Stun Bomb, you will be given the Alien Abduction Weapons ufopedia entry.
-Researching a Stun Bomb will also give you knowledge of Alien Polymer, which you will be able to manufacture and use in the construction of more Stun Bombs and other Non-Lethal Weapons.
-Having knowledge of Alien Polymer will allow you to research Stun Grenades, which are hand thrown version of Stun Bombs.
-Having knowledge of the Alien Stunner Gun, Alien Alloy and Alien Polymer will allow you to manufacture human version of Stunner Guns.
-Having knowledge of Electro-Shock Rod, Alien Alloy and Alien Polymer will allow you to research and develop the Stunner Rod, which will need ammo but it will do more stun damage.
-Stunner Guns will shot their Stun Bombs in an arched manner, just like the Siege Cannon, to make them more useful than Stun Grenades.


Here are some of the item sprites. Some of them are in the mod, others are vanilla sprites put in there for comparison, and the rest are unused sprites:


Standard-Issue Weapons
Combat Knife / Pistol / Assault Rifle / Sniper Rifle



Heavy Weapons
Siege Cannon / Auto Cannon
AP Ammo / Explosive Ammo / Incendiary Ammo



Self-Propelled Weapons
Rocket Launcher
Small Rocket / Large Rocket / Incendiary Rocket



Throwable Devices
Explosive Grenade / Smoke Grenade / Incendiary Grenade / Explosive Mine / Electro-Flare



Electromagnetic Weapons
EMP Pistol / EMP Rifle / EMP Cannon
EMP Grenade / EMP Mine



Laser Weapons
Laser Pistol / Laser Rifle / Laser Cannon



Alien Plasma Weapons
Alien Plasma Pistol / Alien Plasma Rifle / Alien Plasma Cannon
Plasma Power Cells



Human Plasma Weapons
Plasma Pistol / Plasma Rifle / Plasma Cannon
Plasma Power Cells



Mass Acceleration Weapons
MA Pistol / MA Rifle / MA Cannon / MA Autogun
Kinetic Rounds / EMP Rounds / Plasma Rounds / Fusion Rounds



Alien Explosives
Alien Grenade / Alien Proximity Grenade



Alien Abduction Weapons
Alien Stunner Gun
Stun Bomb



Advanced Non-Lethal Weapons
Stunner Gun
Stun Bomb / Stun-Gas Grenade / Stun Ammo



Handheld Devices
Motion Scanner / Personal Shield / Personal Cloaking


WIP Mod: https://www.dropbox.com/s/u6veu3znnxwcgdk/ChikoXcom008.rar?dl=0
Known Issues:
-Most of the new items have no custom hand/floor sprites.
-Some of the items are not sorted correctly in the lists since I'm still adding new stuff.

[Yankes]

I dont like it, because you remove laser rife
but except that your set look good.

[Chiko]

Lolz. I'll probably reuse the laser rifle sprite style in another type of weapons. Maybe for EM Weapons.

I'm trying to make all weapons of the same type look similar in looks.

[Daiky]

Would you be able to make a knife in that similar style? Lot of people find a cheap, simple melee weapon missing from the game...

[Chiko]

Sure I can try. Never thought of making a Knife before.


Edit: Here, I gave it kinda the same size of a pistol so it can fit in a Belt in the inventory screen.


         
Combat Knife

[Daiky]

Nice, I can see myself stabbing a sectoid in the back with one of those

I would give it an attack power of 30, cost of $400, weight of 4, TUCost 10%, accuracy 150%. So a cheap, fast weapon with pretty good damage in early game. (you can one-shot a floater or sectoid with it). Every soldier should have one on their belt, you never know when it may come in handy

And for the upgrade idea: knife that needs to be manufactured with a blade that cuts through armor , which also costs elerium to produce the blade, see thermic lance of TFTD. (the special skin of the muton needs to be research first before you can manufacture this advanced knife)

[hsbckb]

I really hope that this knife can be introduced before v1.0 . 

[Yankes]

I would give it an attack power of 30, cost of $400, weight of 4, TUCost 10%, accuracy 150%. So a cheap, fast weapon with pretty good damage in early game. (you can one-shot a floater or sectoid with it). Every soldier should have one on their belt, you never know when it may come in handy

300 dmg per tunr? isnt bit OverPowered?

[hsbckb]

Chiko, Can you tell me what software you use to create /modify these art work?

How can you match the style of art work with the original xcom?

[Chiko]

Chiko, Can you tell me what software you use to create /modify these art work?

How can you match the style of art work with the original xcom?

Well, I'm using Paint Shop Pro. It's old and similar to Photoshop but I'm too used to it to actually upgrade to something better.

The way I use to make this stuff is just cutting parts of other sprites and then I put the ones I want together, then I modify them. The Knife was a bit harder coz the only thing I used from another weapon was the handle. I took it from the Stun Rod. I made the blade from scratch.

So this can be done with pretty much any software.

[hsbckb]

Chiko, thank you and keep up your good work!

When I have more spare time, I will do some modification of the paper dolls in the equipment screen.

[luke83]

Hey those images look pretty cool, are you going to work on the sprites for your new weapons also?

[Chiko]

You mean the ones from the Tech Tree I mentioned before?

Sure, I'll then post them here as separate weapon ideas. I was thinking about posting the Tech Tree here but it's a bit... extensive. It has Tech ideas taken/inspired from different games.

Also, I tried to make like human versions of the Alien Plasma Weapons. I couldn't really make much... Anyways, I also added like an idea of the differences.



Alien Plasma Weapons
Increased Damage / Decreased Weight



Human Plasma Weapons
Increased Acc / Decreased TUs usage

[Yankes]

only one word, Awesome
one small fix I think, you can made ammo clip same size in weapon like stand alone clip. It would be better if every thing is same scale.

Different property should be based on handicaps, you cant use properly alien version because your hand dont fit it.

[MKSheppard]

One thing I always thought weird about the original XCom was that human researchers could reproduce alien technology so easily. Yeah, you hardly ever need to build Plasma rifles or their clips if you scavenged them from aliens, but you could build them, along with pretty much everything else.

When you think things through, alien tech scavenging and reuse is a major flaw in gameplay in UFO and it's sequels.

Consider: You research Heavy Plasma and that's it; you basically never ever need to manufacture personal weapons anymore; except maybe for small production runs of Stun Bombs for the Small Launcher since you now have weapons piling up after each mission.

It makes more sense if you cannot use alien weapons because they are:

A.) Designed for alien hands and musculature.
B.) The weapon itself has a wireless RFID chip that interfaces with a RFID chip in each alien soldier.

Thus explaining why your soldiers can't just pick up a heavy plasma and push the firing stud and fire it; thus requiring research into how to overcome the RFID encryption to 'unlock' the weapon.

Thus, you would then need to "remanufacture" alien weapons into human-useable weapons, e.g. replace the alien handgrips with human ones, remove the alien RFID lockout, and add other useable indicators. Maybe the aliens use psionics to tell the soldier that there are only five rounds left in the magazine; requiring the design of a LCD panel on the side of the weapon to make it useable to humans, etc.

And all this remanufacturing has a non-trivial failure rate -- e.g. you need to have three heavy plasmas to make a remanufactured heavy plasma; and the gun has a random chance of breaking after each mission.

I'm not quite sure how well that last point would be received. There's a lot of stuff that makes sense -- on paper -- in Game Design. It would add a lot of overhead to the player if they had to go: "welp, I had five guns broken from my last shootout, guess I need to remanufacture more guns."