OpenXcom Forum
OpenXcom => Fan-Stuff => Topic started by: abacaps on August 20, 2014, 07:59:59 am
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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!
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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.
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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. :)
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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 :)
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> 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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Maybe we can share filesets, Ideas and thoughts? Could improve both mods.
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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.
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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 :)
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I like it.
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I wish OpenXcom had the Limited Military option from UFO Extender.
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This actually involves the critical question how one would see this game.
My characterization of this game (the ideal setting of this game) is that it should get tougher every month so you really have to do anything to send decent agents to Cydonia before you lose the game. But as you have said, this game does the exact opposite since while agents become incredibly more powerful each month, the power of aliens remain relatively constant.
The biggest threat in my opinion is the period where ethereals start to come out, and that wihout psionic LOS mod: it's because psionic attack is based on probability, so no matter what you do you have some chance that one of your soldier will do something that you probably don't like ;). And if the Cydonia mission were so hard that you really cannot win the mission with just only rookies, the loss of experienced soldiers at the ethereal missions would have been the real threat to many commandors.
Well, anyway here are some thoughts of mine:
(1) Turn on the aggressive retaliation mission mod: I haven't used this one before though. You can loot a lot from the mission so I'm a bit doubtful that this would make the game more challenging. But what can I say is that the chance that you'll lose your newly built base would be quite high (if the alien ship goes into a base with no soldier, then the base is just lost :P). Maybe this is just too stressful? I don't know... Anyone have tried this?
(2) Change the ruleset to your taste: 100% accuracy for aliens, increased hit points etc
(3) Find or Make a mod that makes the game harder as you progress: This can also be done by slightly modifying the ruleset. For example, make aliens that come late much stronger (sectoid, floater -> snakesman -> muton -> ethereal: am I right?). There is also a mod that changes the order of sectopods and cyberdisks (of course, sectopods got nerfed).
I doubt if there is a mod to control the frequencies of UFOs, but if there is, you can use it to make it really hard to get a positive score in late months (so many UFOs so some of them will accomplish their missions, thus getting points). I also think Russia cannot be infiltrated, but if there is a mod that even Russia can be infiltrated by aliens and forcing you to lose when you lose every country by aliens, I think it would be also a great option :)
By the way, how can I disable the guided shooting of blaster launcher? I also think that's too much so want to know how to disable it ;D
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Pretty good advice! Unrestricted psi-attacks is indeed a good part of the alien threat, you just have to restrict your own use of psi.
1) Aggressive retaliation is a pain! I am using it and you really have to be careful. It's a good way to add more UFOs and increase the challenge. It works well with the "Air Combat Rebalanced" mod, which makes it more difficult to shoot down UFOs. That limits your ability to intercept as your crafts get damaged more. An alternative is my XCom Armoury Expanded: Crafts, which also nerfs interceptors and early weapons, but also offers new crafts and craft weapons. It makes the early game more difficult, but not so much the later game because of the new additions. The YetMoreUfos! and Alien Armoury Expanded: UFOs mods also add UFOs, amongst which the fighters are quite deadly.
With the retaliation on, you have to shoot down UFOs before they come anywhere close to your base so they don't find it, and sometimes there is nothing you can do, you lose 'em. I usually have an empty hangar somewhere so I can quickly transfer the interceptor of the doomed base, along with all the materiel I kept there to cut my losses.
2-3) A risky thing to do, since those changes will also affect aliens in the early game. I guess you can "safely" buff mutons and ethereals. Another thing to do is use the gazer race by robin, those guys are tough! And it is a new challenge to deal with armoured aliens.
I have never had issues with losing too many countries to alien infiltration (and I think the russian immunity is a myth?). Aliens need to launch a specific mission to steal a country and at the rate of 1 mission/month, 2/month in the later game, there are enough countries that it would take them years to infiltrate them all. Increasing the point values of alien missions would be one way of making things harder though. Then you really have to respond.
To make Blaster Launchers direct fire, you can either:
- Go in your ruleset folder, open XCom1Ruleset.rul and then find the STR_BLASTER_LAUNCHER under items, change "waypoint: true" to "waypoint: false".
- Put a new file called DirectBlaster.rul (or whatever with a .rul extension) and in it write:items:
- type: STR_BLASTER_LAUNCHER
waypoint: falsethen enable that in your mods, under options.
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You touch on a lot of good ideas here.
About this one inparticular:
I doubt if there is a mod to control the frequencies of UFOs, but if there is, you can use it to make it really hard to get a positive score in late months (so many UFOs so some of them will accomplish their missions, thus getting points). I also think Russia cannot be infiltrated, but if there is a mod that even Russia can be infiltrated by aliens and forcing you to lose when you lose every country by aliens, I think it would be also a great option :)
Personally I find that by late game I am spending most of my time shooting down retaliation flights on every continent, and with the delay that gets added to the next wave when you shoot down a UFO can make it so you are seeing the ending waves of one mission at the same time that the beginning waves for a new one start... There already is a ramping up from one mission/month to two. Beyond that maybe you could make a mission that features multi-craft waves and has all raceWeights at 0 for the first few months and then goes up to 100 later.
By the way, how can I disable the guided shooting of blaster launcher? I also think that's too much so want to know how to disable it ;D
items:
- type: STR_BLASTER_LAUNCHER
waypoint: false
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actually once an inflitration mission STARTS in a region, it doesn't ever stop, so if we assume the mission schedule averages one completed infiltration run per month, that means you'll lose one country per month in that region. it is possible, assuming a run of really bad luck and minimal xcom activity, to have all the funding nations drop out as early as january 2000, if not sooner.
the russian immunity to infiltration is not a myth, you can see it in the main ruleset: the aliens don't schedule infiltration missions in siberia.
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Hum.. I count 16 countries total. Month one is hardcoded research. Month 2-5 are one mission each: up to 4 infiltrations. Months 6-12 are 2/months, so up to 12 infiltrations, total 16 infiltrations in 1999. Indeed, potential game over by the end of december 1999. That's really unlucky!
Regarding Russia, isn't it also part of Europe, which can be the target of alien infiltrations? I do see Moscow listed in Europe under regions. I got that from Hobbes in this post (https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?topic=1501.msg29476#msg29476).
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you're counting the countries, not the regions. countries are inside regions.
missions are run on a per REGION basis, not a per country basis.
there are 8 regions that can be infiltrated, once an infiltration mission "succeeds" the first un-infiltrated country found in the region signs a pact, and the mission starts over, so for example in europe, you will always lose the UK first, followed by france, then germany etc...
remember it's possible for more than one country to sign a pact per month, as missions all run simultaneously.
so in this example (given appropriate circumstances), you'd lose one country on the first month, two on the second... and so on until the fifth month where you'd have lost a total of 15 countries (1+2+3+4+5)... given that russia doesn't get infiltrated, you've already lost everything you can and it's not even july.
also, moscow is a city. cities are used for terror sites, and nothing else. it's counted as a european city due to its geographical location being closer to the euro mission zones than the siberian ones.
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countries are inside regions.
missions are run on a per REGION basis, not a per country basis.[...]
also, moscow is a city. [..] it's counted as a european city due to its geographical location being closer to the euro mission zones than the siberian ones.
how can i find the connection between country and region in the ruleset ?
the only thing i can imagine is region with most overlap with country areas => countryregion i dont see any other way to connect them
is moscow in europ because of the location that is in the regionbox of europe or because moscow is a element in the region[type=europe]->cities list?
better question: to what region are terror missions in jakarta added (jakarta is in the austarlasia region area but in the southeastasia-regionm->cities list
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it uses the country label coordinates. whichever region the country label falls inside is the region it belongs to (using the order listed in the ruleset as the priority in case of overlaps)
as for moscow and jakarta... don't ask me, i didn't make the data, but a terror mission in region X will choose a random city in that region.
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Hum.. I am confused. By "the mission starts over", do you mean that:
1- The aliens keep infiltrating the same region immediately after one country signed and that it doesn't count as a new mission? (That would work with your 1+2+3+4+5, with the infiltration missions keep going and new infiltrations are launched every month)
2- The next time an infiltration mission is picked in that region it will start from scratch, but result in the second country signing? (That would cap the number of country signing to 1/month until June, then 2/month)
And I only have a "Europe" region, with Moscow in it, in my XCom1Ruleset, no Eastern Europe? In fact, a search for "eastern" (case insensitive) returns nothing. Looking at your new post, I understand that since the country label for Russia is in Siberia, it counts as belonging in Siberia for missions and thus never gets targeted by infiltration. Fair enough.
Still not 100% sure how the order you describe of UK, France, Germany for signing is determined though..
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the first one, but remember that an infiltration mission is only one possibility among many. for the purposes of the example i gave, i was assuming the player has such bad luck that every month results in an infiltration mission.
by eastern europe i simply meant the eastern part of europe.
the order i described is the order as listed in the ruleset.
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Oh, just the order that they are listed in the "countries" section? I see. Thank you.
Infiltration missions never stopping until the every country in the region has fallen is nasty! I thought a mission was considered completed as soon as one country fell.
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Russia never signs a pact...ever.
Their deep cultural sadness and alcoholism and experience of being screwed by everything repeatedly means they are all but immune to Alien MC and also allows them to easily spot infiltrators.
"What you mean new comrade no drink Wodka? Well, maybe he get thirsty in gulag"...
Or
" Comrade, Is not Tolstoy the greatest of authors, so happy his books in give misery"
**Alien infiltrator shoots self after reading**
"Yes, Comrade.... you agree"
Or
" I feel uneasy, I better drink more"...
Only love to my Ruskie Bros though!
-HH
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Russia never signs a pact...ever.
Their deep cultural sadness and alcoholism and experience of being screwed by everything repeatedly means they are all but immune to Alien MC and also allows them to easily spot infiltrators.
"What you mean new comrade no drink Wodka? Well, maybe he get thirsty in gulag"...
Or
" Comrade, Is not Tolstoy the greatest of authors, so happy his books in give misery"
**Alien infiltrator shoots self after reading**
"Yes, Comrade.... you agree"
Or
" I feel uneasy, I better drink more"...
Only love to my Ruskie Bros though!
-HH
That was fun :D
But seriously, why the original developers let Russia as the last defense? I know nothing about Russia so wondering why. My best guess is also that aliens got frightened by vodka or something...
To be precisely...
(1) Was a plan to let certain countries uninfiltratable intentional?
(2) Was it also intentional to choose Russia as the only such country?
(3) If it was intentional, why?
I got the impression from several video games that France is often described as the last rebellious country (whatever the situation is) (ex. Deus Ex). Not Russia taking that role, though.
Well, back to the topic. I've thought more about my plan having more UFO appearances in the late games, but as NoelBuddy had said, unless the UFO battle or recovering UFO themselves become more difficult it would rather give more points to players :-\ But if those problems can be modified suitably (there are many good attempts already out there I guess), with Russia being able to infiltrated, I think it would be one option to make game more interesting.
By the way,
the russian immunity to infiltration is not a myth, you can see it in the main ruleset: the aliens don't schedule infiltration missions in siberia.
if it is just a matter of aliens not having any infiltration schedule in Siberia, I can just assign such missions using current ruleset, am I right?
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(1) Was a plan to let certain countries uninfiltratable intentional?
(2) Was it also intentional to choose Russia as the only such country?
(3) If it was intentional, why?
only Julian knows for sure.
if it is just a matter of aliens not having any infiltration schedule in Siberia, I can just assign such missions using current ruleset, am I right?
yes.