While starting my third big replay (I guess I'm not as experienced as some of the people here), I decided to try my hand at modding some of the things I didn't like about the game or about other mods.
While I have created an extended number of mods for other games, I haven't modded UFO before, so I thought I would try my hand at it for a challenge.
I have created a few simple mods that I think are worthwhile sharing, and hope to have more up over the next little while. For me this is mostly a practice/introduction to XCOM modding, I'm not doing anything fancy.
Simple Pilots
While exploring mod options, I found the Top Gun mod. I think adding piloting is a pretty fantastic idea overall, especially because the air-game is one of the less developed aspects of UFO's gameplay. However I found that having pilots as separate soldier classes was a bit confusing and added too much management to piloting, and I also found it a bit immersion-breaking that my pilot could die on a mission, and the remaining troops would be able to fly the skyranger back to base somehow. As a result, I created an alternative mod which is a simpler take on the same idea. The gist is that all crafts need piloting, similar to Top Gun, but there's no such thing as a "pilot" anymore. Now, any soldier can pilot any craft (you can assume they got some basic pilot training as part of their combat training), which should create a pretty seamless experience - assign the soldiers you want to the crafts you want, and it will all be taken care of automatically.
Simple Craft Item Limits
I fully expect this to be a very controversial mod. The original UFO had an 80 item limit for all crafts, which was due to a technical limitation. OXC removed that limitation, and while I believe this was generally the right thing to do, I feel like the item limits added some small amount of depth and resource management to crafts - when you're limited in what you can carry, you might have to make important choices about what you take with you and what you leave behind. At the same time, a hardcoded limit of 80 per craft is completely insane for the Avenger which can hold a whopping 24 troops, where the limit is absolutely crippling. I have decided to adopt a middle ground to try and bring back some of that item management without adding frustration and unfairly limiting the squad. The Skyranger now allows 80 items, the Lightning is limited to 60 on account of being a small and agile ship, and the Avenger can carry a whopping 160, which should be far more than anyone needs. These numbers are designed to enforce some level of item management on crafts without completely undermining the player when they have extremely large squads in the mid/late game. I am likely to adjust these numbers based on feedback. I consider the balance "about right" when you can't just take along everything you'll ever want on a mission without thinking, but still have enough space to comfortably equip your squad with what they need. You might have to leave behind a few grenades or an extra rocket, or some other "luxuries", but that feels rewarding to me, and is also quite realistic for a military craft.
These currently only work for UFO, not TFTD. I may make TFTD versions at some point, although I kind of hate that game so probably not.
