If you consider gauss and lasers to be early game alternatives to each others, adding Elerium (and alloy?) to it is a bit harsh. If you want to promote the progression from conventional to gauss to lasers to plasma, that might work well.
That's exactly how it is! Lasers are definitely mid-game weapons, unless you get some from the Men in Black earlier - but you can't reproduce them anyway, so it's not really related.
Elerium lasers : In vanilla, I have had some playthroughs were I was unlucky with detection and crashes, and couldn't capture an intact UFO power source (and thus Elerium) until my tenth or twelth battle, in February or March.
In FMP, it's extremely unlikely to get lasers that early. In my current game I got them in the second half of the year. My playstyle was not really optimized, since I cared more about going forwards quickly than doing everything perfectly, but still you need at least several months to collect all prerequisites to lasers; I think July would be reasonable.
In the FMP, you have alloy ammo and gauss weapons to hold you up until you find elerium. I think that kind of delay is not unreasonable, if lasers require something like 1-2 elerium per weapon, 0 for clips. Then even getting one power source is enough to outfit your squad and it is one more reason to try to assault landed UFOs instead of making them crash.
Well, clips require Elerium too, but it's only 1 unit per clip. By the time you can make them, you'll probably have much more Elerium than you need at that point.
Or, from a different perspective: 1 Elerium is 1 Plasma Beam shot. Considering you can make a whole clip from this amount, or later an eternally charged weapon, I don't think it's too harsh. Come on, how many Laser Rifles do you need, 15? I think you'll likely need 25 advanced laser weapons in total, unless you have a gigantic force or lose them often.
1 elerium per clip, as I said above, would conflict with plasma and seems like a really harsh thing to do to lasers.
But plasmas are normally acquired months later. Besides, who's even producing plasma clips, when you have immeasurable amounts of them stored?
You say that like for the past two playthroughs I didn't capture an Alien Power Source intact until August. Listen, not all of us know the secret to acquiring everything you need on your second UFO. It would take me in game months before I could acquire anything of value which would move my game forward. That's why I don't like the idea of all this Elerium being tossed around and used in every goddamned mod now. I would be stuck on alloy ammo for a long time, and that doesn't seem appealing to me in July.
No Elerium until August? Come on man, you're pulling my leg here. As I said, I'm not playing very well, but I still have thousand of units! I mean, a UFO Power Source in a downed UFO has only 75% chance of exploding, and you probably get at least 10 ships per month, and some of them with multiple Power Sources. I think getting Elerium is not hard at all, and not just because I'm such a pro (because I'm not); it's pure statistics.
Canonly, even in XCOM 2012, lasers needed nothing more than Alien Alloys/Nothing at all. I can deal with Alien Alloys being tossed around to produce lasers, that is a good balance that I've gotten used to with XCOM 2012. In fact, the first time I played UFO, I was surprised at how fast I got the laser weapons.
Hmm... I never really considered this particular detail to matter at all. I added the Elerium requirement for logic only, not for balancing, because it seemed insubstantial to me. I just thought it's weird that you need to research UFO Power Source to get to a tech that doesn't use this technology at all. Frankly, I never expected anyone to care.
But Elerium Laser weapons? It just seems like you are trying too hard to make everything longer, more drawn out, and harder with Final Mod Pack.
That's the general idea, though finding the sweet spot between "too quick" and "too long" is hard...
That particular issue concerns many decisions, not just lasers. As I mentioned before, I didn't think this change to lasers was meaningful in any way, considering how abundant Elerium seems to be in my opinion. But I guess I need more opinions.
I generally see no point in using laser weapons now. I'd rather just skip them if possible and head straight to plasma in that case.
I'd stick to Gauss Weapons if I had to until I got plasma. Would be a lot cheaper than producing Laser weapons, since I'd already have stocks upon stocks of plasma weapons.
My true feedback? Alloys for Laser Weapons. That's it. Want Elerium Laser weapons? Put Roxis's Elerium Laser Weapons mod into FMP.
I don't really know this mod, so I'll refrain from commenting.
I have no problem with lasers requiring Alien Alloys, this can be justified. But to be honest, I keep finding myself having trouble with getting enough Alloys rather than Elerium.
Fortunately, you can produce them.
I'm just saying he's trying too hard now to accomplish this.
I should explain further: I'm not really trying to make the game longer for its own sake, I'm trying to give all stages of weapons some time. I never liked the fact that your basic rifles and other firearms get obsolete after a month, because it makes them pointless. So now we have the following stages:
1) Firearms (normal ammo, then alloy ammo) - around 6 months
2) Lasers/Gauss weapons - around 4 months
3) Plasma - later
Of course some weapons retain their usability after their age has ended, but that's beside the point.
Nevertheless, I treat such feedback very seriously and may actually back off from the Elerium in lasers. But it really puzzled me; of all things that were controversial, of so many instances of making the game harder, this one get attention? I never thought it would...
But this doesn't change the fact that now Laser Weapons are more expensive than before. This makes them on par with Plasma weapons, even though they are weaker, making them less cost-effective for what they are worth.
Yes, of course they're less effective, resource-wise. However, they come much earlier. And you can't really fight large Muton crews with rifles, so they're helpful in getting to plasmas, which is likely another few months unless you capture and interrogate Engineers like crazy.
It would probably be easier to research them but not produce them in order to get to Plasma weapons and stick to the cheaper Gauss weapons.
Well, you don't have to research lasers to get anything else... So if you don't like them, you can just ignore them. That's why the mod has alternative paths: Gauss weapons which are stronger and cheaper to produce, but doing AP damage, and lasers which do Laser type damage (which is better due to alien resistances) and which at some point get unlimited shots, but are weaker and less accurate 9that last thing is a vanilla thing).
Solaris Scorch: ping me an email at gerv at gerv dot net if you want to chat about getting the FInal Mod Pack into source control. I promise you, it will both make development easier, and allow more people to contribute.
OK, I'll contact you, thanks
One piece of feedback, although I've only really played a little bit - there are far too many starting weapons. It looks like you took every mod and threw the kitchen sink in there. It leads to player bewilderment. I'd reduce it a bit.
Oh believe me, everything was carefully selected and most content was unused.
I can understand the list is a bit long though... Still, every single weapons has a different tactical role, so I wouldn't know which one can be removed.
Also, did you make the cyberdisks extra tough? I got a Sectoid terror ship and got wiped out single-handedly by two of them...
Nope, I changed nothing vanilla except the two starting tanks. They're just that badass. (I personally think the best way to deal with them in early game is the flamethrower, if you can get close enough.)
I cannot see craft launchers for the stormlance missile, yet i can only purchase the missiles itself?
Well, shit. I forgot to disable the buying option for them. (They should only be manufacturable by you.) I'll post a fixed version soon.
To sum up this very long post, I am confused about the entire Elerium lasers issue... I mean, how much will you spend all laser stuff you're ever make, 50 units? Maybe 100 if you build insane amounts of clips and laser tanks... But I need more feedback regarding this. Can you tell me the month you get the lasers (both normal and improved) and how much Elerium you have at that point?
EDIT: I'll just add that the best source of Elerium are alien bases. You get a lot for something you should be doing anyway.
