You got me wrong, Psi Str improvement allowed you to MC Star Gods and easily soak their own attacks, which is a major problem otherwise (and not every other enemy is controllable even with 66 VStr/56 Vskill... but trivially so with 100 VStr). Even the Academy is able to put a dent on your plans if you have psi-untrained soldiers below 50 VStr. The Dark Ones in comparison are controllable even without that cheat, when only you get decent VooDoo users.
Afaik the Blaster impotency is directly linked with the fact it is a homing weapon; an AP round would certainly make the AI a bit more comfortable with using it, but for this, I have another weapon planned
I'll think about spear yet, better spear is planned at some point anyway.
Humanists are supposed to be quite rare, and you don't need them for scientific progress at all (a couple of second-rate side techs, yeah, but they're pretty much useless in advancing the main tree). They have their own mission + Pogrom, and quite possibly another mission in the future, and that's enough.
Like I said before, I might add govt 'right sector' Pogrom missions, and I can control them to only happen, say, from Fall 2601 onwards, but I'm not a fan of lose-lose missions, to be honest (such govt op would be using only low-negative, or neutral-score units). That's why I hated how XCom 2012 ended. High difficulty is fine, dirty tricks are even better, but forcing you to go on a lose-lose mission is not what I want. At least when the govt makes a Crackdown, you may lose a lot of points but you come out much, much richer. Plus I'm not fabled firaxis, I don't have the "We Are Legendary Gaming Company" crap to defend my design decisions, I have to be more careful.
I haven't played Long War (the basic campaign did a good work of putting me off) but various traps (trap ships, trap missions & trap enemies) were planned in this mod for a long time... just not implemented yet. I feel more encouraged to do so now
What kind of official missions would you expect the Probe to run? Star Gods spying on themselves? What kind of sense would that make?
I will add some more world lore in the future, and I will remember your question about orbital infrastructure.
Blackmarch SMG is too weak for such a Contact to make sense. Unless there will be more Blackmarch weapons to use, which isn't out of the question.
Note that in every ammo type description, there is some sort of vague reasoning why only select weapons can benefit from it. For example, BM SMG is not a high-velocity AP weapon and would not benefit from more rigid ammo. Of course you can always say it's load of BS, but it is there. Basically there is no point in adding special ammo which is *never* going to be used (you could have MAG ammo for Assault Pistol, but you'll be only using the Eagle anyway, since the damage difference would be too dramatic to even consider using Assault Pistol). Plus, the fact that each gun can only use 1 or 2 of about 5 existing types of special ammo makes each weapon more unique.
Melee combat is naturally an integral part of this mod and I'm not saying it is bad or anything
It will be curbed a bit in Piratez Extended - the damage bonus will be closer to 0.5-0.75 Strength score instead of full Strength, and melee attacks will cost some stamina (Imp Wand will be tied to Psi Str instead, and all psi attacks will cost considerable amounts of Stamina). Speaking of Piratez Extended:
At some point I will drop support for basic Piratez and base the mod on Yankes' custom OXCom build. Some of the features that will be enabled by this:
Craft Combat
- Up to 4 weapons per craft
- Varied weapon slots. Ex. fighters will usually carry 2 missile weapons and 1 small cannon, while Bonaventura 2 small & 2 large cannons, etc.
- Non-weapon craft equippables, like extra fuel tanks, improved radars, shields & more.
Night Operations
- Custom night/day vision. Some armors will allow to see in the dark. Not all enemies will be able to see in the dark. Merc Engineers will snipe you from beyond your FoV.
Psi balance
- MC and Panic attacks of your soldiers will have severe range limit (probably 16 tiles).
- Psi attacks will cost a lot of stamina.
- There will be damage-dealing weapons with power based on your VooDoo stats, like Imp Wand.
Fun weapons
- Damage and Acc of some weapons based on exotic stats like Throwing (ex. Fuso Knives are useless now, but in Extended, a maxed-out Throwing Skill soldier will be able to do 100 or so damage with them and strike with unerring accuracy - while they will be even more useless than now for an untalented soldier).
- Fire damage will cause severe Morale losses.
Mecha suits
- No X-Sectopods. They will be replaced with 2x2 armor suits WORN by soldiers, and equipped with custom weapons.
