WHAT? Noooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
It sucks if it's not being developed anymore. The last update was from September this year, so surely it's not a true death. A sadness if it is.
The thing is, it's a herculean task to get this thing working. Not just because of stitching together the two games, but stitching together the gameplay. I've played the latest version. I have some thoughts. I want to put them somewhere, because
There are a couple of technical wrinkles but taken as a whole it is epic. The ability to go land or sea is cool.
Now to the nitty gritty. Nothing I say here should be taken as an attack. The vision and ambition of this project is simply insane, and I love it. I point out issues because wcho035 has asked for help on game balance. I'm not a modder, my ability to monkey around with the code is very rudimentary. But I love xcom, and I've played almost all forms of it to death, so I know the game side of it inside out.
The biggest problem with the game balance in this mod is that the vanilla research tree is simply nothing like deep enough to go with the extra size of the game. This is the big one. More than anything else.
As a corollary, there's not enough aliens because it goes on for longer and takes longer to get going. That's not bad, but it gets a bit samey killing the thousandth floater. You could say that this is okay because there's TFTD research as well as TFTD aliens, but two things- 1 they don't come along for ages, as the early game in this mod seems to go on a lot longer, and 2 even then we all know that there's a lot of reskinning going on there (and I say this as a massive TFTD fan).
The obvious answer to this is the FMP. A work about Area 51 though, there's some fun content, but the hunter killer (HK) mod in that shatters the balance of the air war and almost demands savescumming. I love the ironman superhuman game, and believe it's the gold standard for game balance - if you literally cannot complete ironman superhuman without dumb luck, it's a badly balanced mod. The beauty of the original UFO:EU and also TFTD is that you really, really can beat Ironman Superhuman without luck, just good strategy. It's hard, but very doable. That's the sign of an excellent game balance.
I made the suggestion on the Area 51 thread to create some kind of counterattack trigger condition where the HK behaviour begins after a certain point in the game though - that might work beautifully in this hybrid mod: the obvious point would be the fall of Cydonia - the massively more intense air war would be a cool new element and would test the player's advanced air force to the limit. Even on a low level it is chaos, my problem is not with the HK mod, it's starting a game with it, as it just makes it dumb luck if your skyranger gets shot out of the sky on any given mission. And don't tell me to send interceptors to 'clear a path' because they get shot down too and that's 500k you're pissing up the wall every time they do. This kills the early game and means that it's only plausible to beat with savescumming. So early HK behaviour is bad game balance, but later HK'ing, triggered to start at some point when the aliens "kick it up a notch" would be epic. As long as you have time to get your air force developed first.
The FMP has an amazing loadout of planes and air weapons, and they all have a use and a value.
What I think would work brilliantly is to force a jump between UFO:EU tech tree (including the FMP) and the TFTD tech tree. Basically, very, very few of the UFO weapons would work underwater. A normal gun *might*, but it would depend on the gun. But normal ballistic weapons underwater might easily break or jam, especially anything automatic. Laser weapons would be far less useful as the particulate matter in seawater would absorb the light far more than air would, so halving the damage of laser weapons underwater makes sense. Plasma would simply explode, as the 'liguid' plasma would be unable to penetrate water very far, and so would disperse rapidly, dumping all its heat into the water itself, creating a massive explosion of superheated steam. I thought what would be cool, if a little evil, is not to tell anyone that, but just to have it so plasma weapons are set to explode the second they are fired.
A quick note re the railgun in the FMP - a railgun would be a very unwise thing to fire underwater, because unlike a gauss gun (coilgun) there must be direct contact between the projectile or projectile housing, and the rails. This would make them very difficult to waterproof. As a huge electric current is being passed through them underwater, this would immediately electrocute the user.
These are ways to make the FMP weapons semi-redundant at a stroke when TFTD happens. I say semi-redundant because alien base missions (the lower part at least) and land-based terror missions could still see you use your whole arsenal. Which would be cool, and would keep it relevant. But it would also force you to get those sonic weapons found and researched. The only thing that could still work from the FMP is the gauss weapons (which are different to the TFTD gauss weapons). I prefer the FMP gauss weapons, just because they're their own thing, not just reskinned laser weapons with clips. FMP gauss has no autofire, which goes quite well with the TFTD feel. You do need to choose between the two though because you can't have two weapons called 'gauss' as I would find it frightening and confusing, and start to cry. I'm very emotionally fragile about electromagnetic catapult technology.
I love, love, love the psionic solution - just make it line of sight. I still think it would be better not to allow psi amps at all, and force the player to wait for molecular control disruptor before they can get their psi freak on, but maybe that's just because I'm bored with psi. Either will work well, line of sight sorts the big game-busting problem of it, leaving it still very powerful and cool. Waiting for M. C would just leave something really, really juicy at the other end of the research tree to aim for with your heart. So I think that would work well to drive research, right into the TFTD section. The reason I say this is that you have to realise that once you've taken Cydonia, you're going to be tough as a thousand bastards, so you need something to keep the game interesting. The HK mod would be very good here. Pushing psi right to the end of the TFTD research tree (by just eliminating the psi amp research option in the code so forcing MC Disruptor as the only option to use it) would be cool too.
Having the FMP just roll straight into TFTD, with the HK mod (and alien hives) kicking off as soon as Cydonia falls, and then forcing the full development of molecular control before psi is usable (and having it line of sight even then) would make this game fucking killer. Like, straight up, fucking killer. The best thing about the FMP, Railgun Sniper Rifles notwithstanding, is that it preserves the beautiful balance of the game in a way Area 51 doesn't. FMP is very doable on ironman superhuman if you really, REALLY go for it, and have a really strong mix of tactical and strategic savvy. And a strong heart when you inevitably lose everyone to the ONE FUCKING CHRYSSALID that SOMEHOW MANAGED TO GET INSIDE YOUR LIVING QUARTERS.
Oh, and that reminds me. The maps on base assaults are too big. Every time I had to go to debug mode to discover some alien that had run away into a hole somewhere and I couldn't find after (I shit you not) 100+ turns of looking. I love what you've done with the surface, with the sea and the land, it's awesome. It's too big, it doesn't work. Or, you somehow trigger a suicide rush from unarmed aliens. Or maybe give everyone a super-weak melee attack and trigger a suicide rush on turn 50 or something. There's no challenge hunting these fuckers down, there's no fun in it, and no real way to avoid it. If you want to make it so they pick up their guns by default and then go on the attack, do that, but only as long as that 100% solves the problem. That would be a great way to do it if it would work, because I really do like the new surface level on the base defence missions, it's a great touch. But that needs something sorting it, and sorting it from inside the mod, not something you have to remember to do before you start through some different option.
The Area 51 mod has some really interesting stuff with the men in black. That's the coolest thing about it that the FMP doesn't have. I raise this because I didn't think the 'mercenary ships' worked as well as they should. They were like this seeming story element that didn't lead anywhere. There was no research to be done on them, no extra stuff (apart from tungsten core bullets, cool idea, but outclassed by plasma and lasers so not that much of a game impact). If you can fold the MiB stuff from Area 51 into the mod, that's got research trees, a little sub-story, all sorts of stuff. It's great fun. If not, then something needs to be done with these mercenaries. Also (and sorry if this upsets people) I don't think it's a good idea to have the mercs named after forum members. It just breaks the fourth wall, it doesn't really add anything to what's happening. If you can think of an actual story in which these nicknames have a plot relevance within the XCOM world, great, but otherwise just cut them.
Oh, and you need to remove the 'lend me money' option, or at least make that an optional extra, or something that only exists on easy mode. It really kills a big part of the early game, especially if you know what you're doing.
I haven't done TWoTS as much as I should have, I've dabbled, but not delved. It's on my list, probably next
. That's the only reason I'm not mentioning it. But anything that adds content and challenge to the TFTD section should be applauded and added if possible. This could be magisterial.
Wish I could give you more. Seriously, don't give up. This is an awesome mod with astounding potential. It truly could fuse the two games together, and if done well would represent something just astounding in XCOM history. I'm not kidding, it would be an amazing addition. If you're feeling tired and frustrated, take some time off, but don't you dare give up. Make it happen.
Humanity is counting on you.
On your feet, soldier. Don't you know there's a war on?
