Is Cult of Apocalypse supposed to have 50 to 100+ enemies spawn?

[noneerror]

Are Cult of Apocalypse missions supposed to have 50-70 enemies on the lowest difficulty? And 100+ enemies on the highest difficulty? There a spawning error or something? It feels like it.

For example I believe 1 to 3 'subcultures' of the 8 possible are supposed to show up, rather than all 8 at the same time. It would be reasonable if the initial spawns started at an 8th or a 4th or 3/8ths of the amounts I'm experiencing. That would be ~7-38 enemies. Which is far more in line with other missions.

Putting aside if it is easy or hard, 50-100 enemies on a single map is way too many. It takes too long and isn't fun for me even if my team is powerful enough to handle them. It's a grind.

Are you intended to see an insane number of enemies and just hit the abort button? That doesn't work either. There's a single cleric somewhere out of the 50+ enemies that has to be captured alive and they only spawn in one mission type. It is the only way to advance the plot. The entire mission becomes a waste of time if that one guy dies. Back to hoping another mission spawns to fight another 50-100 guys. It does not feel intended.

And if this is intended, how do I modify it for my own game so that I use just one of the Alien Loadouts from STR_OUTPOST_OF_APOCALYPSE and not all of them? Ie if it randomly picked [Alien Rank 9] it would spawn 5-12 of [Luchador, Luchador, Luchador, Luchador, Male Stormy, Male Stormy, Female Stormy, Cave Girl, Cave Girl, Cave Guy, Cave Guy, Cave Guy] Total. Not repeating that for every single rank.

I can edit the numbers so that {lowQty} {highQty} and {dQty} in "alienDeployments_XCOMFILES.rul" but that doesn't seem to do anything. What am I doing wrong? Changing any of the .rul files never changes anything for me. For example changing manufacturing costs in "manufacture_XCOMFILES.rul" does not change costs in-game.

[Juku121]

As far as I know, it's intended.

I don't think you can easily have the game pick a loadout rank at random and then populate this loadout rank with unit types. Edit: Removing all ranks but one is not a particularly good idea anyway. /edit I suppose you could make a bunch of copies of the deployment and pick one at random if you really wanted to.

Otherwise, specific units per rank are already randomised. Edit: If you're concerned with fixing a random equipment list for those present, I suppose you could remove items from the deployment and make copies of the units with fixed item lists instead. Would also require a custom deployment or using 0-turn reinforcements. /edit


As to why your changes are not taking, most likely because you're not running the changed file. Either you have duplicates, are using several versions of the mod at once and changing the wrong one, or something similar.

[noneerror]

Thanks to your tip I figured out why my changes weren't working. I made a backup copy of  "alienDeployments_XCOMFILES.rul" before making changes. The backup file had a different name. Apparently the backup was still being read in instead of "alienDeployments_XCOMFILES.rul" When I removed the backup entirely, then the changes I made started appearing in game. Thanks.

I wasn't concerned about equipment. I just didn't want 50+ enemies on a map. If I'm reducing the numbers, it makes more sense to me to have the entirety of a single Alien Rank spawn. Rather than one or two from 9 different ranks.

For example "STR_MONSTER_TERROR" has 15 different enemies. Megascorpions OR Giant Rats. But never both at the same time. That's what I feel "STR_OUTPOST_OF_APOCALYPSE" should be. And if not, I want to change it to that. IE  [Luchador, Luchador, Luchador, Luchador, Male Stormy, Male Stormy, Female Stormy, Cave Girl, Cave Girl, Cave Guy, Cave Guy, Cave Guy]  =OR= [Wizkid, Wizkid, Wizkid, Wizkid, Wizkid, Wizkid, Wizkid, Wizkid, Easy Rider, Easy Rider, Pinky Devil, Pinky Devil] But not both at the same time.

It doesn't need to be that particular Alien Rank spawning. How the game handles it under the hood doesn't matter to me. I just want that result when loading into a mission. I'm not sure how though. However I know that result is possible by the way "STR_MONSTER_TERROR" is random, then a random subset.

[Juku121]

Ranks are more sophisticated than just "this enemy spawns". Most cryptids spawn as a single rank because they're vicious but dumb animals. This is not the case for Apocalypse.

If all you want is a thematic assortment of enemies, I guess the most straightforward way is to create some new 'races' in alienRaces_XCOMFILES.rul that are mostly mono-cult as in your examples, and then replace the 'raceWeights' for STR_COMMUNION_OF_APOCALYPSE in alienMissions_XCOMFILES.rul with a list of those. I imagine you can just recycle the STR_CULT_OF_APOCALYPSE 'race' and replace most of them with a single type of cultist. Don't forget to create new strings for 'STR_CULT_OF_APOCALYPSE_WESTMEN' or whatever you name them in en-US.yml (plus whatever language you may be using if it's not US English).

[Meridian]

There is also one breaking change in OXC since February.

The dQty and extraQty are not random anymore when Demigod option is enabled.
In that case, it spawns the maximum, instead of random quantity.
I.e. instead of RNG(0, dQty) it spawns directly dQty.

OXCE also respects this change since v7.8.9

[noneerror]

Yeah Juku121, sadly that's a bit beyond my skill level.

[Empiro]

I like the fact that there are missions with a ton of enemies -- it lets you put those big explosives to use. On the other hand, I absolutely hate the fact that so many will spawn right next to your craft. There's basically very few tactics and strategies involved, other than maybe just pulling out as soon as you land if that happens.

If the maps were bigger, and you're guaranteed that they spawn away from you, I think things would work way better.

[psavola]

Nearby spawns are one of the challenges of the game. You'll definitely want to go out on these missions at night, so that when you eliminate the nearby spawns, you don't get reaction fired by over a dozen other enemies. Then you progress gradually by throwing out flares. Using this tactic these missions have been very easy even with the maximum number of spawns (SH). The only thing you really need to watch out for is that some of those enemies have explosives that they can throw out at you. So you'll need to be careful not to let them get too close and/or see you.