After intense inner debate I decided to give this mod another chance. Oh, it is so good that I did that! After an intense and seemingly endless early game grind with “civilians” (this time I was morally prepared for it) something entertaining finally began to happen. The true “beginning” of this mod is when you acquire “strong artifact”. Before I share my impressions and everybody falls asleep, I want to report about multiple bugs.
Some articles in ufopedia are missing (texts in translation files are present): Nest study report #6, Stalker, Blood magic and Invader interrogation 2, which is especially disappointing, because this 1 of 2 indicators, that invaders know about aliens (the other is chronomancer legend).
I managed to get “Nest study report” even after killing the queen. After reading “Alien origins” I assumed that you need live queen.
No animation for dying Insectoid. My blood lust demands it!
When Wight dies it produces a stray pixel. Yes, I am very nerdy right now!
Machine guns of tanks eats ammo even if I don't shoot. I know that in X-Piratez there is no such problem, so it should be solvable, I guess.
Something is wrong with the intellect of many units. Often, when there is no trajectory (bows) or too far away (wands), enemy unit just stands still.
Staffs are 2 handed weapons, but red “2” is visible only in inventory screen. Also, it looks like mages don't know about that and often have knives in their second hand. This prevents them from shooting at me. But some mages actually are able to use staffs with one hand!
Ufopedia says that Fire Shields don't protect from smoke, but it does.
Ufopedia says that Dragonsnake has 80 Fire Shield, but in reality it has 180.
Something wrong is with the research of Spitter. When I researched Naked spitter, I got an article about Armored spitter. When I researched Armored spitter, I got an articles about Creeping spitter and Naked spitter. Also the images in Ufopedia (and in battlesacape when middle clicked) of all 3 spitters are the same.
Araja produces footsteps sound while moving. How cute! Actually many units produces footstep sound while clearly shouldn't.
Frost geode does not extinguish flames on the floar. Does it suppose to work only on units?
And finally the most funny bug. Battle cocktail: “... Extremely unhealthy, those who uses it will suffer a -30 penalty to morale.” There is one caveat: you can't use it on yourself. And the one who is loosing morale is the “doctor”. A remorse, I guess...
If someone is still reading this, I want to talk about not necessarily bugs, but strange things.
“Rift Stabilization” article suggests using “the isolating equipment”. I guess article means gas mask, what else could it be? Well, nothing on the other side was toxic. Sometimes it was cold, once there were no air at all, but nothing that gas mask could solve. Also, none of enemies uses gas weapons (except gas balloons), only me! Why gas mask even exists in this mod?
There is no indication whether Flash grenade was effective or not. (X-COM files has.) This is one of the reason why Flash grenade as almost unusable. Do they even works through shields?
Does Farsight chamber works as mana detector? Looks like no, but that should be noted in the article.
Lumen suppose to fly around and light up an area, bet it is subjected to the same “L” rule. So, if you want that Lumen to actually shine, all your soldiers have to shine as well, and that is not what you want at night!
Sometimes you can't see an alien in alien nests at all, despite standing right next to it. I figured out what is the problem. While you are standing on top of pipe-like terrain, your head is inside the ceiling, so you can't see anything (checked with F10). Is that an intended behavior?
Can you please explain the difference between QBL-06 ammo? I can't understand that.
Can you please explain how blocking with shield works?
And now, when nobody is still reading this, I want to talk about an overall experience. No, I haven't finish the game. It is the November 2022. Still waiting for an arrival of an Archmage. (15% per month... I hope I will not have to modify game files to proceeder.) Not seen any Temple ship yet. (Do I have to stop assaulting other landed ships?) But I managed to capture the Tentaculat. Initially failed to research the Savage Magic before goblin raids stopped occurring. It was literally the last thing I got from shaman. Never saw a goblin leader. Will he ever come? Luckily there was one goblin raid recently, so I got that Savage Magic.
As I said earlier, the beginning was very tedious. Not so tedious as previously, because I already knew what was coming. But that also means, that transition between “civilian” soldiers to “supermen” psions was even more satidfying. Normally, if mod is good, I can't wait to play it again. This time I am actually horrified by the necessity to go through the early part of the game. But it could be even worse if there was no “shield left” indications. I actually wish such indications were in other mods with shields too. Normally I rarely use explosive weapons, but here they are very effective, somewhat different experience for me.
In the middle game it was somewhat unpleasant to constantly patrolling the globe with balloon in search for new nests. Sadly this process cannot be automated. Luckily I already build large detectors, so most of the globe is covered.
I often used a possible exploit to train mana. You just stand in smoke while wearing Psion suit. You don't even need to participate in battle. Is this an appreciated tactics?
Runes and most other amulets are so underwhelming! How many damage I must take to confirm that they are actually working as intended? Because if they are not, then I will probably will never notice it. Also their research is very time consuming and leads nowhere. I think runes should be reworked into something tangible.
Next problem is not unique to X-Chronicles, but here it is much more obvious. Most corpses/live animal researches gives nothing except flavor text. You need one corpse to unlock a containment, but what to do with the rest of them? Discard them just because you already saw their articles in the previous champaign? I strongly believe that player should not choose between lore and progression. And I have a solution! For each corpse/live specimen that does not unlock anything, besides what every corpse/live specimens unlocks, there should be 2 research projects: lengthy project (100 scientist-hours) and quick project (10 scientist-hours), that have the “containment” prerequisite. Once you research your first corpse (lengthy project), quick projects for all other “lore” corpses unlocks and all lengthy projects are blocked. Now you don't need to spend tons of research for an essentially useless project. What do you think about this idea?
X-Chronicles is probably the only mod where “mana” is mana and not something else. X-Chronicles finally taught Celatid how to multiply. Ufopedia of the original game mentioned Celatid ability to clone, but Celatids were never able to do so. Until now.
