Been playing my way through the popular mods on these boards the past few months.. the vanilla flavor of FMP best suits my tastes for x-com nostalgia so far -- but 20+ years after first playing, being an adult now and (slightly) wiser than I was as a 10 year old, and now with more toys to choose from, the game has lost a little bit of its challenge.
Took a peak under the OXC(E+) hood.. & must acknowledge the time and commitment of the various devs and mod authors that have shared their content here.. amazing!
Anyway, as I've played, I've slapped together a few mod mods intended to work with FMP, to either draw out research a little more, make valuable gear a little more costly in some way, or activate some of the OXCE+ features that truly fill-out the vanilla experience.
Posting here, hoping others might have done the same & reciprocate.
Most/all of this is still being tested as I play -- w/ the exception of the research tree changes, though, I don't imagine anything has the potential to be game-breaking. I'll try to fix any issues I discover
GravMod: extracting grav mod costs more corpses (they were all shot to shit, right?), and repairing damaged jump/anti-grav armor restores the grav module, rather than the armor
HK: quick attempt at making the hunter-killer UFOs in OXCE+ work, as answer to a question I always wondered as a kid ie why do the aliens bother feeding x-com all these small, useless UFOs... all small UFOs have a chance to become HK, and base might generate a HK mission if you're nearby
Item Limits: the 80 item/skyranger limit is applied, adjusted proportionally for larger/smaller craft. The 80/skyranger ratio (roughly 6 items per soldier) seems a perfect balance to bring back the vanilla x-com constraint, w/o being too restrictive. Expect to spend a lot more time at equip craft screen.
Research Stages: an attempt to prevent research on key weapons arriving all at once (eg gauss/laser/rail) -- I havent tested all scenarios yet to ensure research tree doesnt break in exceptional cases, but so far so good.
SniperSpotter: applies OXCE+ sniper ai to most FMP enemies
SynthRep: synthmuscles cost more corpses, and the suit itself can be repaired like other armors
pyramid base: early but working attempt at making 2-stage alien base missions.. will be updated further. w/ item limits, above, base assault is much harder so far
active alien base: alien base generates more missions than just supply, and more often (once every ~5 days instead of once every ~20)
