Messages

1

IDT Modding Hub / Re: Reaver's Harmony Megamod - A Massive X-Com Expansion

« on: August 26, 2024, 05:18:21 am »

There is an additional background consideration: fleshy type enemies with low armor (such as Reapers) have slightly lower inherent resistance to autofire damage types (Ballistic, Rapid Laser, Rapid Plasma) but slightly higher resistance to penetrator damage types (Armor Penetrator, Penetrator Laser, Penetrator Plasma). High armor low health enemies (such as Cyberdiscs) have the inverse. This is just a small fudge factor, usually causing them to take 10-20% more or less damage (after resistance but before armor) which helps ensure that cannons are great against armored targets while machine guns are great against fleshy targets.

Here are some example calculations for HC-Alloy and Machinegun-Alloy vs. Cyberdisc and Reaper in Genius difficulty:

Heavy Cannon/Alloy: 60 Armor Penetrator // armor effectiveness: 36%
Machinegun/Alloy: 24 Ballistic // armor effectiveness: 75%
Cyberdisc: 60 Health 52 Armor // damage effectiveness: Armor Penetrator 120% / Ballistic 80%
Reaper: 197 Health 11 Armor // damage effectiveness: Armor Penetrator 56% / Ballistic 84%

Heavy Cannon base damage: 45-75
Heavy Cannon hit vs. Cyberdisc deals: 45-75 * 1.2 = 54-90 - (52 * 0.36 = 18.72) = 35.28-71.28
Heavy Cannon deals percentage of Cyberdisc's health: 35.28-71.28 / 60 = 58.8%-118.8%
Odds of Heavy Cannon killing Cyberdisc in one hit: 11.28 / 36 = 31.3%
Heavy Cannon hit damage to Cyberdisc armor: 54-90 * 0.036 = 1.94-3.24
Machinegun base damage: 18-30
Machinegun hit vs. Cyberdisc deals: 18-30 * 0.8 = 13.5-22.5 - (52 * 0.75 = 39) = 0.00
Machinegun hit damage to Cyberdisc armor: 13.5-22.5 * 0.075 = 1.01-1.69
Machinegun hitx5 damage to Cyberdisc armor: 13.5-22.5 * 0.075 * 5 = 5.06-8.44 (heavily biased toward the median value, ~6.8)

Heavy Cannon hit vs. Reaper deals: 45-75 * 0.56 = 25.2-42 - (11 * 0.36 = 3.96) = 21.24-38.4
Heavy Cannon hit deals percentage of Reaper's health: 21.24-38.4 / 197 = 10.8%-19.5%
Heavy Cannon hit damage to Reaper armor: 21.24-38.4 * 0.036 = 0.76-1.38
Machinegun hit vs. Reaper deals: 18-30 * 0.84 = 15.12-25.2 - (11 * 0.75 = 8.25) = 6.87-16.95
Machinegun hit damage to Reaper armor: 15.12-25.2 * 0.075 = 1.134-1.89
Machinegun hitx5 vs. Reaper deals: (15.12-25.2 - (11 * 0.75 = 8.25)) + (15.12-25.2 - ((11 - 1.134-1.89) * 0.75 = 8.25)) + (15.12-25.2 - ((11 - 2.268-3.78) * 0.75 = 8.25)) + (15.12-25.2 - ((11 - 3.402-5.67) * 0.75 = 8.25)) + (15.12-25.2 - ((11 - 4.536-7.56) * 0.75 = 8.25))
(15.12-25.2 - (11 * 0.75 = 8.25)) + (15.12-25.2 - ((9.866-9.11) * 0.75 = 8.25)) + (15.12-25.2 - ((8.732-7.22) * 0.75 = 8.25)) + (15.12-25.2 - ((7.598-5.33) * 0.75 = 8.25)) + (15.12-25.2 - ((6.464-3.44) * 0.75 = 8.25))
(15.12-25.2 - 8.25) + (15.12-25.2 - 7.3995-6.8325) + (15.12-25.2 - 6.549-5.415) + (15.12-25.2 - 5.6985-3.9975) + (15.12-25.2 - 4.848-2.58)
6.87-16.95 + 7.7205-18.3675 + 8.571-19.785 + 9.4125-21.2025 + 10.272-22.62 = 42.8-98.9 (heavily biased toward the median value, ~71)
Machinegun hit deals percentage of Reaper's health: 6.87-16.95 / 197 = 3.49%-8.60%
Machinegun hitx5 deals percentage of Reaper's health: 42.8-98.9 / 197 = 21.7%-50.2% (heavily biased toward the median value, ~36%)
Machinegun hitx5 damage to Reaper armor: 4.25-7.09 (heavily biased toward the median value, ~5.7)
Machinegun hitx5 deals percentage of Reaper's armor: 4.25-7.09 / 11 = 38.6%-64.5% (heavily biased toward the median value, ~51%)

2

IDT Modding Hub / Re: Reaver's Harmony Megamod - A Massive X-Com Expansion

« on: May 31, 2024, 08:33:36 am »

Ever since I updated from v1.10 to v1.11, I'm getting the following errors:

1. The ufopedia article can't be looked at without crashing the game.
2. A lot of the missions are now coming up as STR.....

See attached

Sorry for the late reply! I haven't been on the forum much lately. You can reach me more quickly on Discord, I am thereaverofdarkness there and I am in the OpenXcom discord.
I am not getting this error without other mods and I haven't installed Brutal OXCE to try it out, but I believe you can fix this error by moving Harmony to the bottom of your mod list.

Hello, reaver
I'm currently playing your mod after xcom files and really enjoying it. I really like the extended tech tree and the smaller maps, like the outposts, which make the middle and late game less of a chore. I guess I'm close to the end, after the three stretches.

Thanks for putting do much work in this mode! Will it have more updates?

I just released an update! Harmony is essentially complete, so any updates from here on out are mostly going to be balance passes and bug fixes. I may add more features, but only small things and only if they feel like they fill a hole.

There's a handful of larger changes I did want to put into Harmony eventually, such as a globe overhaul, but it's not seeming likely for these to happen at this point. You can play Harmony with the Community Map Project globe, though it does have some known compatibility issues and I haven't worked out what to do to fix them. For best results, make sure Harmony is underneath other major mods in your mod list.

3

IDT Modding Hub / Re: Reaver's Harmony Megamod - A Massive X-Com Expansion

« on: May 06, 2023, 04:32:34 am »

1.1.1 update is out! It is available now in the mod portal, link is in the original post.

#  1.1.1:   Distinctive Launchers, Combat Psionics, Brawler UFOs, General Improvements
#       * Increased Grenade Launcher's accuracy and decreased its TU cost to fire.
#       * Increased Rocket Launcher's accuracy and decreased snap shot TU cost.
#       * Greatly decreased Small Launcher's aimed shot TU cost, plus other adjustments.
#       * Incendiary weapons now reduce the target's time units in addition to morale.
#       * Rebalanced psionic energy costs.
#         - Fear Projector panic costs much less TU but more PSE.
#         - Psi Amp panic costs a bit more TU and PSE than Fear Projector.
#         - Psi Amp mind control TU cost unchanged, PSE cost drastically increased.
#         - Fear Projector and Psi Amp weight reduced.
#         - Psi Disruptor has low panic, medium stun, and high mind control PSE costs.
#         - All Psi Disruptor TU costs reduced significantly.
#           - Psi Disruptor is for sustained psi siege while the others are for quick bursts/mixed tactics.
#           - Psi Equipment attack info now displayed in the respective UFOPedia Reports.
#       * Attack rate of Medium Scout, Cargo Ship, Harvester, and Supply Ship greatly increased.
#           - Attack rate of Patroller and Light Destroyer significantly increased.
#       * Did a full rework of Elite UFO attack speed and damage--overall power should be similar to before.
#           - Weaker elites are considerably buffed while the strongest elites are slightly nerfed.
#           - Elite UFOs show up more commonly and in a broader variety, after they start showing up.
#       * Retaliation missions are made even less frequent and annoying.
#       * Ambush Suite speed increased by 200 knots, and 10% damage bonus removed.
#       * Increased Heavy Fusion Ball accuracy.
#       * Increased Plasma Rifles and decreased Heavy Plasmas in the early game.
#       * Reduced weight of all melee weapons.
#       * Added new Combat Shotgun and AP slugs available only via outsourcing.
#       * Tweaked basic and plasma shotgun accuracy and range values.
#       * Power Suit Pistol has been reworked into an autofiring marksman weapon.
#       * AE Grenade Round now unlocks with Alien Grenade Arsenal instead of Alien Explosives.
#       * AE Grenade no longer requires Alien Grenade Arsenal research.
#       * Alien Explosives research is now called Alien Explosive Ammo for clarity.
#       * Alien Explosives manufacturing recipe is now unlocked as soon as you research Alien Grenade.
#       * Rebalanced the costs of inefficient manufacturing projects.
#       * Manufacture categories improved.
#       * New manufacturing recipes added enabling production of tier 2 large craft weapons.
#       * New manufacturing recipes added which make use of alien lasers.
#       * New inefficient recipe for Alien Laser//buy and build now require Heavy Power Suit Weapon tech.
#       * Reduced how frequently green repositories appear on operations vessels.
#       * Reduced TU costs for moving items between Shoulders, Belt, Legs, and Hands.
#       * Fixed bug with Terror Site in which destroying beacon did not give credit.
#         - New bug introduced in which aborting mission after destroying beacon saves all remaining civilians.
#       * Crashed UFOs cause less damage to surrounding terrain. Landed UFOs are less explosive.
#       * North-South and East-West corridors now properly block movement in other directions.
#       * Hopefully the hole in the Mastodon and Stormcharger are fixed (properly!)
#       * Fixed a minor map bug.
#       * Increased Sectopod Plasma and Stun resistance.
#       * Flagship research divided into three portions in order to show progress more clearly.
#       * Research time for data cores and capsules cut in half.
#       * Titan Laser and Rampage Missile UFOPedia reports updated.
#       * Added several UFOPedia reports for UFO and salvage components.
#       * Some UFOPedia text tweaks.

4

Offtopic / Re: Ai generated images.

« on: April 29, 2023, 11:40:08 pm »

With all of this in mind, lets just call people who anyhow produces interesting pieces of art artists, and people who will lose their jobs craftsmen as they should be called since forever.

Yes!

It's the difference between an artist and an artisan. Back in the Renaissance, artisans were in high demand because it took so much time, effort, and resources to learn to do a high quality job. But these days machine artisans produce FAR better work than a human artisan ever could. The number of artists in the world keeps going up as people become more educated and industries become more automated, but the number of human artisans is going down just as it has been for some two centuries.

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IDT Modding Hub / Re: Reaver's Harmony Megamod - A Massive X-Com Expansion

« on: April 17, 2023, 01:18:11 am »

Hi Reaver, I reached the final mission. I observed that the assassin armour in the final mission changed to the space version which reverted its colour to black (I was using the white colour mod). Do you mind updating the colour mod to enable that the space armour is also white for the final mission?

Sure, no problem! It was an easy update. This also provides example ruleset for coloring the spacerigged variants of any other Harmony armors.

But to anyone making variations on this mod: note that the strings for spacerigged power suits use _SPACE whereas all other non-suit armors are spacerigged as _SPACESUIT. Example:
&STR_ASSASSIN_ARMOR_SPACE_UC
&STR_NIGHT_OPS_ARMOR_SPACESUIT_UC
And if it doesn't work, check the base ruleset to make sure all of your like terms are an exact match, and make sure you don't have any tab indents (only spaces).

6

OXCE Support / [Solved] Item Pile Shows Wrong Floorob

« on: April 12, 2023, 10:02:14 am »

An item pile is supposed to show the floorob of the heaviest item in the pile, for example: an alien corpse (rather than any of the pieces of equipment that the alien was carrying).

Currently, the sorting seems to be using a semi-alphabetical system. As I picked up items off the pile, it would show the floorob of an item slightly higher in the alphabet, however the item pile was only maybe half gone by the time it wrapped back around to near the beginning of the alphabet again, only going forward it seemed to select item floorobs at random all the way to the end of the item pile.

It also seems to be inconsistent, as alien corpses are correctly showing on the ground where the alien died. Alien corpses always seem to go to the top of the pile, while alien artifacts list high on the pile but not necessarily above the equipment which had been brought to the mission.

I can't figure out a pattern to it.

- - - - -

Edit: I realized after some more playing around with it that any pile I make after the mission starts will correctly put all items in order from heaviest to lightest. It is only the starting pile which does not follow this order. On reflection, I think it is quite possible that the initial pile sorting is done by the order in which things were assigned to the craft.

Edit 2: Ah, I see.

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OXCE Support / Re: Best mods for OXCE 2023?

« on: April 11, 2023, 10:25:07 am »

Cyborg and psi refers mostly to soldier types and armours, maybe some equipment like big Psi-Amps. There are also enemies who are cyborgs or psionics without being aliens. All in all, I don't think there's a strong storyline attached to these two specific aspects, there are just a number of arcs that play with one or the other to some degree.

Ah. I think there are plenty of mods which have at least some exploration of these, including probably every megamod and total conversion listed in this thread.

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OXCE Support / Re: Best mods for OXCE 2023?

« on: April 10, 2023, 06:08:28 pm »

1: Xilmi's Brutal AI, you can apply it along with other mods.

2-3: I don't think I have yet seen a megamod which doesn't add more intermediate-tech content. And most of the more developed mods also add further advanced tech. These are something of a given.

4: Hybrid mods are hard to come by currently, however they do exist.
 - Apparently XCF has underwater bases, according to one of the comments here?
 - I think Piratez was trying to head in that direction though I am skeptical it ever got there.
 - The Hybrid Mod by Precentor Appollyon is an unfinished abandoned project which is technically a functional hybrid mod but it is buggy, underdeveloped, and lacks direction.
 - The Hybrid Mod Megamod by Mutantlord is a project attempting to combine Precentor's Hybrid Mod with Hobbes' Terrain Pack, Reaver's Faithful, The World of Terrifying Silence (TFTD), and Final Mod Pack. I don't know very much about it yet but it is probably early in development. And given how ambitious it is, odds are it'll never truly finish.
 - Community Map Pack has a hybrid globe and you can load it with another megamod, but it can cause conflicts and also you won't get very much use out of it if the primary megamod doesn't make use of both land and water features.
 >> Most megamods simply don't have that yet, as until relatively recently nobody had even successfully made a proof of concept of the hybrid capability.

5: Plenty of mods have a sophisticated and well-developed story. But what do you mean by both cyborg and psi lines? It sounds limiting and like something you're unlikely to find outside of Piratez, XCF, 40k Mod, and maybe From the Apocalypse or Area 51.

6: Combat shields for soldiers show up in a few mods. I'm not well-referenced on the specifics but the following mods may or may not contain them: Piratez, From the Apocalypse, 40k Mod, XCF, FMP, TWoTS. Other mods probably do not, for the most part. Reaver's Harmony has shields on aircraft and alien spacecraft but not on soldiers or alien units.

7: Most mods don't really expand the map sizes above Vanilla. Some mods which I know contain larger maps are Piratez, XCF, 40k Mod, Harmony.

- - - - -

If you want something which matches all of these, the closest I think you'll get is X-Piratez with Brutal AI. It likely doesn't have proper hybrid integration and underwater bases but I think it might contain some earlier iterations of trying to push the concept. X-Piratez is a total conversion which takes place far in the future after the first war ended in defeat: the aliens took over and the world is drastically different. The mod combines serious and silly elements, and at least according to some people, it is filled with dangerous levels of boobage. This is the largest mod in the community and contains tremendous amounts of content, with nearly every feature which existed during its development (and some that didn't) present in the mod.

If you're willing to let go of hybrid integration, shields, and/or cyborgs, then there are more which I can recommend to you:

40k Mod is a total conversion set in the Warhammer 40k universe. The mod is well developed and features some of the most advanced use of OXCE scripting features I have seen yet. As a player, you will be able to do many things you can't do in most other mods, such as place a soldier inside a larger combat vehicle or use a bipod-mounted weapon.

From The Apocalypse is or very nearly is a total conversion which takes place at approximately the timeframe of the alien invasion during X-Com: Apocalypse. This mod is only available from the forum. It features tons of original spritework done in the style of Apocalypse as well as many items, techs, aliens, etc. which may be familiar to anyone who has played Apocalypse. But it goes well beyond simply recreating Apocalypse but rather greatly expands upon the concept. It is currently a work in progress but it has been in high-paced development for quite some time and it is in a high quality and very much playable state.

The World of Terrifying Silence is the only big and popular TFTD megamod in the OXC modding community thus far (though one or more others are in the works). It is designed in the vein of the original TFTD but greatly expands upon the concept and adds many new and terrifying enemies and things to encounter, maintaining the theme of being loosely based on the C'thul'hu mythos.

UNEXCOM is a megamod which re-imagines the alien invasion as having taken place during the Cold War, and thus the available technology as well as the political scene is significantly altered. The politics side of things also takes a more significant role in UNEXCOM than it did in the original game. In addition to this, the mod features many improvements and diversification of options and gameplay. It is not as strongly story-directed as some, but it has a distinct focus. It is complete but not fully polished, though it is fully playable and should be generally bug-free.

All five of these mods are well-developed and story-driven for the most part, and in my opinion stand above the rest of the community in terms of offering fresh content and a unique feel. There may be others which would fit here as well but which I am just not familiar with.

- - - - -

My own mods Reaver's Faithful and Reaver's Harmony have been mentioned here already, but I wish to clarify:

Harmony isn't what I would say offers a sophisticated story-driven experience like the five above. Much to the contrary, its sophistication of story is in cleaning up the haphazard mess of the original game's story and polishing it up into a more cohesive hard science fiction narrative. Based on what players have told me, Harmony is arguably the most well-polished and well-balanced megamod in the community and it offers more-or-less the feel of the original game with expanded content and a better grasp of gameplay mechanics. It is also a much less frustrating experience than most (where XCF is known to be arguably the most frustrating megamod), though the predictability of gameplay has led at least some players to find it easy even on the hardest difficulty. (Harmony also greatly extends the difficulty range from Beginner through Superhuman.)

Faithful is an earlier step in the development of Harmony. It exists at a point in which I chose to add far more unique content than I had originally intended, and that is why I switched development to the name Harmony, because I knew several players would not appreciate the new direction. Faithful is, as named, more faithful to the original experience. It is well balanced, pretty well polished, and generally complete but simply with less fresh content. It is, more than anything else, the original game but way less broken. To that end, Faithful still has plenty of fans who prefer it over Harmony.

9

Offtopic / Re: Ai generated images.

« on: April 10, 2023, 04:50:00 am »

The images in the linked video clearly are heavily influenced by a human-designed source material. The consistency of the world demonstrates this: the humans being beneath the androids, the similar architectural styles of each android from many angles, the consistent cyborg elder, the same look and feel of the setting, the logistical consistencies such as rubble being adjacent to ruined structures, corpses next to murderers, just the way things are juxtaposed together. It has human design written all over it. And not only is it clearly influenced by a human, but most importantly the human design work is almost entirely what makes it so exciting. All the AI did was the busy work of making more images, views, and angles. What the AI can do is akin to a team of animators who replicate cartoon characters designed by the lead animator.

AI art isn't going to reduce the amount of work available. People will lose jobs over it for two reasons:

1.) Most importantly: Expanding the amount of people capable of being professional artists by more than the amount of expansion of the field of professional art will inevitably result in some of the existing people falling out of the field. Mostly this will be people who do busy work and don't contribute much by way of creativity such as base-level animators or illustrators--however with any change there is going to be some significant amount of actual upheaval in the community just as we have seen every time large changes happen rapidly.

2.) Most critically: Large and greedy corporations will take advantage of every opportunity to make people poorer. In many cases they aren't even doing it to save money directly so much as to disempower the people and smaller organizations from competing with them. Consider what Levi's is doing with their "diversity" program in which they use AI instead of paying brown people. Obviously they're downgrading the quality of their modeling, and the cost of modeling compared to their income is insignificant. So it isn't about the money, clearly, it has to be about something else. People say don't ascribe to malice that which can be ascribed to incompetence, but it just seems too convenient to me that these plots always seem to hurt the same people. I think it's blatant racism and/or classism. Either way, it's corporatism at the core, not AI. The AI didn't make Levi's, the AI didn't corrupt Levi's, and most importantly, Levi's has been one of many anti-human corporations all along. The AI didn't create, cause, or even exacerbate the problem. It was always humans, and the AI is just a scapegoat like always.

But much as they tried to scapegoat corporations (and not the people who run them), they are now trying to scapegoat the computers. And in both cases, they will continue to use the corporations and the computers to further their self-serving ends at cost to the quality of life of everyone else. And just as the scapegoating made the corporations stronger, this new scapegoating is just going to make the computers stronger.

Unless...

Unless we can finally take a stand against the actual threat: excessive wealth, belief in meritocracy, and the idea that extremely rich people actually earned their wealth or have any positive value to society.

10

IDT Modding Hub / Re: Reaver's Harmony Megamod - A Massive X-Com Expansion

« on: April 06, 2023, 09:46:46 pm »

I'm not sure myself about the OXCE+ visuals mod and I was under the opinion that the STAT BULLET SAVING mod or Boolet (EU) used to be on OXCE  but was removed and made as a stand alone mod.

It's a rule, and it's off for vanilla but Harmony has it on. I guess the mod is good for any other mod which has not switched it on.

Code: [Select]

statisticalBulletConservation: true
I realize now that the fix for the Mastodon is not applied in 1.1.0 but is coming up in 1.1.1. I had forgotten that it was not yet released. Apologies.

Code: [Select]

# changelog:
#  1.1.1:
#       * Hopefully the hole in the Mastodon and Stormcharger are fixed (properly!)
edit: I took a peek at some of the mods. It looks like none of them are overpowered, in fact they are reasonably balanced relative to Harmony.
The Naymore Mine is comparable to a Demolition Charge but is proximity-activated.
The Railgun is comparable to the Heavy Cannon using HC-AP in overall power but with various differences.
The Shotguns are significantly different from Harmony shotguns though not necessarily stronger.
Robin's Extra Weapons Machine Pistol and Sniper Rifle are a bit stronger than the Auto-Pistol and Rifle (respectively), but much slower firing without having a significant accuracy advantage. The small rocket change may also be nerfing Harmony's Smoke Rocket.
Extra Pockets has slightly fewer inventory slots than Harmony, but that's because Harmony puts more in the backpack and belt. Harmony does not have a quick draw slot.
The Electro-Shocker is much slower and less accurate than Harmony's normal Stun Rod, though I suspect much more powerful because I don't think it will remove several of the Stun Rod changes simply by not declaring them.
Dart Rifle is a fascinating extension to what Harmony offers, and clearly inspired by X-Com: Apocalypse!
Flamethrower also adds something unique to the available arsenal! And with Harmony's buff to fire damage, it would make a very strong weapon at very short range!
And the Stunblaster is unfortunately quite expensive despite being pretty weak by Harmony standards. It also appears to have a defective research setup, and might possibly enable the player to unlock the Small Launcher earlier.

Also all of these items take up way more space in stores than Harmony items do.

11

Work In Progress / Re: How to trigger a base defense mission?

« on: April 05, 2023, 05:25:52 am »

I wanted to toss this in on my previous post but I couldn't find it. Well, I eventually did find it!

Retaliation heat map

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Released Mods / Re: Roland CM-32L (MT-32 equivalent) musics for UFO/Enemy Unknown!

« on: April 05, 2023, 05:20:51 am »

Could you also upload the old version to the mod portal? I am sure that some purists out there will want it. =)

13

IDT Modding Hub / Re: Reaver's Harmony Megamod - A Massive X-Com Expansion

« on: April 05, 2023, 05:01:47 am »

More holes-see attached, trooper hyun in stormcharger.

I can't load your save properly because you have a lot of mods in use, some of which I can't even find. But after scanning through all your mods and your save file, it doesn't seem like any of the mods are causing it. Yet the copy of the tileset I have works perfectly. I guess just put this copy down below into your ReaverXcom Harmony\TERRAIN\ folder (overwrite the existing one).

I noticed you were using several mods which you probably don't need and which may be causing other overwrites and possibly errors:

UFOextender_Gun_Melee ver: 1.0 - While Harmony does not have gun melee, it makes so many changes to vanilla weapons that any number of them may accidentally be overwritten by this mod.

XcomUtil_Skyranger_Weapon_Slot ver: 1.0 - I don't think this will even affect the game since the vanilla Skyranger isn't even in it, but the Skyraider and Mammoth already have weapon slots. There could be conflicts since the mod references a craft which Harmony deletes:

Code: [Select]

crafts:
  - delete: STR_SKYRANGER
  - delete: STR_AVENGER
Extra Pockets ver: 1.0 - Is this an inventory mod? (I couldn't find it.) Harmony adds quite a lot of bonus inventory space to soldiers. It should be plenty. This mod could potentially be overwriting Harmony's changes or even causing an inventory conflict.

FireStorm ver: 4.0 - I couldn't find this mod, but Harmony's Firestorm is greatly overhauled and most likely doesn't need this update. Also, several of Harmony's changes to the craft are very nonstandard; a vanilla-style rework will be much less compatible with Harmony's craft equipment system.

Improved Avenger ver: 1.1 - Same as with the Firestorm, but may also cause conflict with the deleted Avenger.

The following list of mods are not likely to cause problems (assuming I understand correctly what they are doing), but are unnecessary nonetheless because of features already in Harmony:

Aliens_Pick_Up_Weapons ver: 1.0 - Harmony even uses improved (generally increased) attraction values.
TFTD_Damage ver: 1.0 - Harmony uses 75-125% damage model which actually works better with Harmony's weaponry options.
XcomUtil_Improved_Heavy_Laser ver: 1.0 - Harmony's Heavy Laser is not this strong but it is much stronger than vanilla and also has armor penetration bonus.
XcomUtil_Pistol_Auto_Shot ver: 1.0 - All Harmony weapons have some kind of 'autoShot' even if it's just a 1x quick shot.
XcomUtil_High_Explosive_Damage ver: 1.0 - AE High Explosive breaks UFO walls. It's not available at start but can be unlocked fairly early.
Boolet (EU) ver: 1 - I might be wrong, but I thought this was default in OXCE.
eleriumflares ver: 1.0.1 - Large Electro Flare is available at game start.
oxceplus-visuals ver: 1.0 - The current OXCE is already merged with OXCE+ so this should be in the client.
Shotgun ver: 1.1 - Harmony contains shotguns.
Viewing Range ver: 1.0 - Harmony already increases soldiers' daytime sight range to 30. Larger values may cause client-side lag.

Some of the other mods could significantly affect game balance, though I'm hesitant to ask you to remove them if you're playing on Superhuman WITH Brutal AI 
Naymore Mine ver: 1.0 - looks very strong
Railgun ver: 1.0 - I don't know what it is but it sounds strong
robin_extra_weapons ver: 1.0 - probably doesn't, depends what's in it, I couldn't find the mod
OpenXCom_Unlimited_Waypoints ver: 1.0 - Harmony actually reduces available waypoints. Yes, it does make it more difficult to land precision long-range hits with these weapons. That's intentional.

And just a few more appear to simply add items which should be fine in terms of balance and likely will not cause conflicts, but I mention them because they won't include some of the weapon updates that most Harmony weapons have, such as armor scraping, armor penetrating, advanced damage types, etc. It's not important, but it will make a big difference sometimes.

dart-rifle-mod ver: 1.6
Electro Shocker ver: 1.0
flamethrower ver: 1.1
STUNBLASTER v1.1 ver: 1.1

The last eight mods all seem fine as far as I can tell. As a general rule of thumb, Harmony doesn't play well with other mods. I'd like it to be compatible with stuff, but I often don't see good ways to implement it. I think optimally you'd do best keeping your mod list trimmed down pretty well when playing Harmony.

XcomUtil_Statstrings ver: 1.0 - Harmony changes soldier base and max attributes so it'll throw off the ratings a bit.
ALLOYS AND E115 ON TOP ver: 1.0
amiga-psx-plus-fonts ver: 1.3
BETTER UI v1.0 ver: 1.0
Varana-EU-MMcolors ver: 0.1
commendations ver: 3.2 - Big mod, I don't know everything it affects. But I don't see any potential conflicts.
V Music ver: 1.0

14

IDT Modding Hub / Re: Reaver's Harmony Megamod - A Massive X-Com Expansion

« on: April 02, 2023, 12:07:54 pm »

Can you folks tell me, where is a download link for 1.1.0? I can se 1.0.8 in the original post, but no 1.1.0 :/
I think I should be fine with isntallation itself, I'm quite sure there is a guide nearby ;-)

Looks like I forgot to update the forum for 1.1.0. (And the forum was offline when 1.0.9 came out.) I was keeping up to date versions on the forum as well as the mod portal years ago because I felt like the forum community was a unique place and I didn't want to push potential commenters away. But I suppose with Discord and the new mod portal, that's not so much the case anymore. I'll just link to the mod portal so I no longer need to update the mod here.

But I will still be coming back here for comments and I am always excited to hear from you guys! I hope this small change won't negatively affect the community here.

Does anyone know if its better to wait to upgrade your troops to super soldiers? Does transitioning a freshly bought 'Sniper' soldier to the Supersoldier medical procedure have any downsides?

Also im not too sure on how to word this next question but:
I see that the cost of a fresh SS bought off the market has a much higher price and that means it would cost more money per month for wage, right?
example: if I buy a sniper for 80k, that means I pay 80k for it each month. If I transition that Sniper to a SS via the bio lab, does the cost of the sniper stay 80k?

The salary for a soldier is independent of their hiring cost, and is most commonly half of the hiring cost. You can see the salary values in their UFOPedia articles. When you upgrade your own soldiers, their salary increases accordingly, same as if you purchased them at that state.

As a general rule of thumb, there should be no hidden downsides/losses/"you made a wrong move" from choosing something. Anything which comes with a large or permanent downside should have a warning. If you discover otherwise, please report it as a bug. There are some minor differences between buying a super soldier versus upgrading an existing soldier--in particular, you can buy them without a surgical facility in your base, but the existing soldiers may already have experience and increased attributes as a result. Their ultimate maximum potential shouldn't be affected.

Flagships taking 9000 scientist days is really bs. Assuming the "standart" research base of 250, that's 36 days on average. Meaning sometimes you get lucky and do it in 18, and sometimes you get screwed and stalled for 54. Research time randomization works fine for multiple small projects, because luck averages out with enough rolls, but having one super-long outlier project messes that up.

I also feel you've misunderstood the root of the progression speed problem. The aliens don't need to tech up faster, they are fine. Players progress too fast, mostly because they get near infinite money from too many UFO landings. You get like 10 landed mediums every month, plus smalls. It's both tedious, and overpowered for the player, because selling the loot enables degenerate strats, like rushing 500 scientists before the first summer. Instead of making aliens progress faster, they need to spam less landed mediums.

Exploding deuterium pods need to go. It's funny the first time the entire map blows up, but it gets old real fast. Sometimes you literally lose people before the first turn on the crash sites because the initial explosions reach troop transport if it landed right next to the UFO.

I have been bothered by the 50-150% range of research projects, especially with the flagship project. There didn't seem to be much I could do about it, but thanks for bringing it up. Taking another look, I have an idea: I can split the project into three phases which will greatly reduce the odds of a very short or very long project while also giving a much better progress report. But it taking such a long time overall is intentional and is probably best done when you run out of other things to research. I think perhaps I will implement this for the upcoming patch--but it will need some bug testing to make sure it doesn't break existing saves who are currently researching Flagships.

There has been too many alien craft for a long time, but I think I finally tackled the issue in recent updates. (In pre-existing saves it may take a month or more after the update to take effect.) I still needed to increase the progression rate of the aliens. The game was getting stagnant for too long, so it would get pretty boring even if it did take the player that long to progress. I only have about a year and a half worth of content, so it shouldn't take three years for it to all show up.

The exploding fuel was originally supposed to be as an alien killer plus loot denial system for crash sites. It's not supposed to turn the ships into minefields and traps, at least not to the extent that it does currently. I read your post earlier (yes I am just that slow to respond) and had a few ideas to try out. I've got some changes in the next update which so far are helping to contain the blast inside the alien ship while also reducing how much damage is typically caused by shooting them in a landed craft, while also reducing the odds that they go off from stray shots as well. I will continue to seek changes which make this function better. (To any OXCE devs reading this: If I had a way to make custom variants of the UFO power source to explode on crash with a custom power value, this process would be both easier and more successful.)

Are there holes in this craft as troop selected can see 2 aliens through the shut door-see attached? Is this the same for opposite door?

Yes, that is a big gaping hole in the door. This is fixed as of Harmony version 1.1.0.
Also, thank you for the FPSview screenshot. If you find any more terrain/craft irregularities this way, sending me these images will make it much easier to fix them.

P.S.: I see you have a Cerberus tank. I'd be happy to hear your thoughts on it!

Note: my observation is made as a person who has never really played xcom, I have only played this mod. My opinion may be unreasonable due to how unexperienced I am with the game. Maybe this issue is also present in vanilla and isnt simply an issue with the mod.
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After playing ironman genius and superhuman the main issue I find is that use of psionic mind control is beyond a doubt the most optimal way to ensure your soldiers are safe and min maxxed. You are basically forced to use it to play optimally. It changes the dynamic of the game and removes tons of stress/tactics. It makes it kind of boring due to how safe everything gets. It doesnt even make things more fun, if anything it is tedious at best and borderline as bad as save scumming at worse.
    Take for example attacking an alien base: no longer do you need to use tactics to move through the compound feeling stressed about getting ambushed the entire time. Just mind control a unit and scout with him. Unload and drop his weapon and he probably wont even move from where you placed him so you can use him again next turn. Find the control room with MC'd alien and MC one in the control room to shoot a deut pod and kill all of the aliens.
    You can get to the point of MC everything easy by spamming fear projector for a few UFO recoveries, buying the illegal psi combat armour to augment your ability until you unlock the psi attack power suit. 2 psi soldiers was all I needed to trivialize almost all encounters on genius. I never even used the psionic disruptor, I could MC most things most of the time with the normal amp.
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    How to address this problem? I am unsure. Nerfing it by making it harder to land MC on a xeno would just make you be forced to end turns spamming MC until it worked. Maybe there is no way to fix this issue aside from the player choosing not to use psi at all? Is that something the mod envisions and is balanced for though? I am not sure nor am I an experienced enough xcom player to be able to answer that. Just stating my opinion and still enjoy the mod regardless!

I'm glad to hear from someone who started X-Com on my mod! Ideally I want my mod to work well for first-time players, so your input is particularly valuable to me! (Anyone else playing Harmony fresh, let me know when you comment! How I interpret your comments can vary greatly depending on your experience level.)

Yes, psionics is OP in the late game. This is MUCH less true of Harmony than vanilla, but it still needs work. I'm not too bothered with its net power level per se, but rather the lack of alternative valid playstyles. Also, if it ever makes Superhuman easy, then that's a problem. Only Genius and below should ever reach a point in which the player can coast through the game without any difficulty, even for very skilled players. But I do like the inverse difficulty curve as a general principle. I have always felt that the high stress of the early game is too much to want to keep playing if I don't ever get ahead of it. Also, if the player can feel like they earned their progress, then coasting along can still feel rewarding. And I'll still toss the occasional obstacle at them!

You've given me an idea. I had the psi disruptor consuming psi energy faster than the psi amp, but perhaps this is backward. I am going to try greatly increasing the psi energy cost of the psi amp and decreasing the cost of the disruptor. (Plus other balancing tweaks to go with the change.) ((Don't worry, I almost know what I am doing!)) This way, the disruptor will be optimal for a psi wizard to use from a hiding position, while the psi amp will be good as a portable device which a psi soldier can combine with their other combat tactics.

I am open to other ideas as well, and I also will try to find ways to make other tactics more viable in the late game so that they can compete. You can still choose psi, but nobody should feel forced to use it as a primary tactic.

The next version should be coming out soonish...hopefully.

15

IDT Modding Hub / Re: Reaver's Harmony Megamod - A Massive X-Com Expansion

« on: March 15, 2023, 09:00:37 pm »

realized this was a wall of text, excuse my autism I have over this mod its just a lot of fun
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I figured out the issue with the training I was having, I needed to click on the SOLDIERS tab then click the drop down combo box. All is well!
Playing it on genius iron man despite being new. Had to restart a few times. Ended up getting the star blazer. The starblazer is great. Armed with 2 devastators, the attack suite and a heavy tractor (also ran it with 2x tractors for forcing ships to land while trying to capture aliens alive)
 I used it as my primary ship transport. I like the various doored exits it has and it works great as a platform for staging my attacks.
A bit of a 'noob' moment but I wasnt sure how to get to cydonia despite doing all of the interrogations. I skimmed hadrien's stream and seen I can access it via the intercept screen on geoscape. I think this issue is only because ive never really played xcom to completion before.
I got a bit sick irl so I havent went to cydonia but since the new patch came out I may just re roll a fresh game on genius or maybe even superhuman (im the kind of weirdo who likes games that make me want to consider throwing my PC out the window).
I use the motion scanner a ton (every troop has one) and 1 troop stays in the transport dedicated to using the mind probe. I dont see many people using either of these items and they seem to be some of the most powerful in the game. The probe lets you see how many TU a target has so you can determine if youre safe to attack without getting reactioned. The scanner has a feature where you can see the blips via pressing alt key which changes the game completely.
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Not sure if this is too much a spoiler but the elite mutons.. I tried alot of diff things on them but not everything. RAPID PLASMA seemed to be the best on genius. They arent impossible to deal with by any meams and I dont think they need nerfed, was just curious if the machine gun aka rapid plaz is the best tool for the job?

Lastly, the FATE, Doom lazer and Scourge are all cool but I wasnt able to tell what their strong points were based on reading their info text. The doom laser is great for 1 shotting sectopods and the scourge is a powerful shotgun that seems to be able to delete walls as well which is incredibly useful. Anything about the fate pistol? Is it just like a stronger version of the plasma rifle but 1 handed? Any properties I may be missing?

Dang, for a sec there I thought you were saying you have autism. I was going to be like "me too!" X) Hey I love walls of text.

Ah, another Starblazer fan! (Dang, nobody has gone for the Amaranth yet (that I know of).)
Yes, a lot of strategic tools are very strong, but people sometimes just don't feel like bothering with the extra hassle. If you enjoy that sort of stuff, I'd love to hear what cheese you can invent with the Cerberus tank!
I couldn't really tell you what is the best weapon for fighting mutons, but there are plenty of good ones as well as poor ones. But I'd rather leave it up to the playerbase to discover, anyway.

The Doom, Scourge, and Fate weapons don't particularly revolutionize your arsenal but they have some distinct advantages if you're willing to pay the cost (the weight). Doom is not just very powerful but also highly accurate over long range. Scourge, yes, can destroy walls. (So can power swords!) Fate is like a stronger plasma rifle except one-handed, yes. It also has pistol-like shot types, in particular the aimed shot having a much lower TU cost but with less range and accuracy. They also all have small ammo clip capacities but quick reload times, which primarily serves just to add even more weight.

In that case, may I recommend combining Reaver's Harmony on Superhuman with the Brutal-OXCE-client? I suppose it should be a good combination for that purpose. :>

That sounds unbelievably difficult!

Really enjoying your mod atm. I'm playing v1.10 on superhuman and it's very challenging. I'm also playing it through brutal ai v3.80(see attached) which ramps the difficulty up another notch.

I really want to see this gameplay on video!


P.S.: I realized that one or more of you may have tried to talk to me on Discord and got ignored. Please send me a message and not just a friend request. I often ignore friend requests if there are no servers in common, no message attached, and I can't send a message back without accepting. Sorry for any inconvenience.