[COMPILATION] Final Mod Pack (FMP)

[Dioxine]

Cut the authors some slack, the FMP research tree is still bugged, because of how huge it is (and shifting all the time);

- Rare sightings of some aliens. This doesn't have to be by design. With around 10 alien races available, and only about 2 missions per month (3 from the fall 1999 onwards), and the fact some missions go by undetected as they're happening far away, some aliens WILL be hard to encounter in some games due to random factor.

- Hobbes' novels are available on fanfiction.net. Good stuff but they're HUGE so reserve a lot of time

- Aliens do get their stats boosted as the time passes (Health, Accuracy, Reactions, TUs, Strength), as well as getting higher stats based on the diff level. This still seems strange with TFTD damage formula in force...

[SIMON BAILIE]

Yep I agree as I'm into April on my current game and have only encountered Floaters, Reapers & Sectoids so far. Took me til the middle of March to get any weapon better than convential ones except for Railguns. Exciting times and stuff ahead though. As the mod says it is very heavily influenced by live alien capture. Without psi abilitiess this would have been extremely hard but for the Batman mod I've also got going, gives your cock eyed rookies a chance. Also it helped to tweak the Xcom1 and Final Mod .rul files in respect to facilities and Xcom craft and intial starting stats of troops.

[Bfox]

Once you get the Elerium Mace you basically need to zerg rush aliens (I had to use this over the dart rifle as I couldn't for a long time get any of the upgraded clips) you basically have to not care about your soldiers and capture as many as feasible.

This is much much easier in confined spaces (like UFO's/bases etc.) until you get engineer's then they unlock some sort of ocular implant research for plasma weapons I'm not sure what other research you need to get this but this is what opened it up finally for me.

For a long time I was just using Gauss weapons. 

Ethereal's are just insane you basically have to hide your entire squad in the sky-ranger and pray your HWP's can clean up the outlying ones so you can capture some inside the UFO's and zerg rush stun them (sometimes these bastards take three stun hits)

Once you get the psi-amp though and train up some strong psi users the game becomes exponentially easier to mind control / drop equipment and capture.

[Recruit69]

What's happening with the Alien Data Slate, seeing this remains researchable forever with one item with the latesst version you uploaded?

[Solarius Scorch]

Took me a while to respond, I was working on graphic resources for the Commercial tileset and you know how it is... I need a break from FMP once in a while.

As for the aliens' appearance, it's largely a matter of random numbers. Each campaign is different in this regard; sometimes I mostly fight Floaters, and another time I almost never see them. That's normal.

Hobbes' novel can be found here. Read it.

Also it helped to tweak the Xcom1 and Final Mod .rul files in respect to facilities and Xcom craft and intial starting stats of troops.

Care to elaborate on what exactly you changed? I'm curious!

Once you get the Elerium Mace you basically need to zerg rush aliens (I had to use this over the dart rifle as I couldn't for a long time get any of the upgraded clips) you basically have to not care about your soldiers and capture as many as feasible.

This is much much easier in confined spaces (like UFO's/bases etc.) until you get engineer's then they unlock some sort of ocular implant research for plasma weapons I'm not sure what other research you need to get this but this is what opened it up finally for me.

For a long time I was just using Gauss weapons. 

Ethereal's are just insane you basically have to hide your entire squad in the sky-ranger and pray your HWP's can clean up the outlying ones so you can capture some inside the UFO's and zerg rush stun them (sometimes these bastards take three stun hits)

Once you get the psi-amp though and train up some strong psi users the game becomes exponentially easier to mind control / drop equipment and capture.

Yep, all valid tactical advice! Though it should be added that the Stun Rod, while weaker, has one advantage over the Elerium Mace: it always hits.

And man, kudos for even fighting Ethereals with no decent weapons...

What's happening with the Alien Data Slate, seeing this remains researchable forever with one item with the latesst version you uploaded?

It appears that you need to enable the "item is destroyed on research" option to prevent this cheat. I need to include it in the mod description.

[Avalanche]

I always found the maces to be too much of a hassle to be worth it. Their hit rate is so abysmal that you're much better off with the stun rod.

Personally, I used the stun grenades quite a bit. It took me forever to research the launcher, but I got the grenades really early. Stronger than the stun rod and the dart gun, and the blast radius makes them much easier to actually use than either.

[SIMON BAILIE]

I increased the speed of some of the craft, made Avalanche, Fusion Ball and Stormlance 6 ammo. As I was getting creamed on Superhuman changed all but access lift in base facilities to 1 day construction, $1000 to build/maintain and their capacity. I also reduced the cost of soldiers, scienctists & engineers dramatically. Initially I only changed FA and REACTION stats for new troops til I had 25 over each of 8 bases. The game may seem too easy now to some players but I think it's still a challenge as I've lost a troop even with all the tweaking. On a further point are live hybrid important in the long term and bigger picture as the game crashes if you research one, you can research a corspe though. Is this a bug as I know this point has already been raised. See my attached save file.

[XCOMFan419]

No offense to you Solar, but did you even test the Hybrids or did you just slap them into FMP and call it a day? Most of the bug reports here are about the Hybrids now.

[Solarius Scorch]

Thanks SIMON.

What version are you using? The hybrid problem was fixed two releases ago (or was it?).

No offense to you Solar, but did you even test the Hybrids or did you just slap them into FMP and call it a day? Most of the bug reports here are about the Hybrids now.

I slapped them into FMP, tested with debug, tested some quick Battles and then called it a day. The research part was not tested and I forgot to add one entry... But it should be fine now, no?

[MeatLoaf]

Okay so I have a confession to make, as I said earlier I've had to learn a lot of new tactics while playing this mod. One of my tactics involves not botherin to research aliens until I have the important stuff... even though all of my troops have the dart rifle in their back packs :/

2 missions later I have every single rank of sectoid and chtont (sp lol) and a tunlun across my bases. Oh HAI gauss tech

Also you weren't wrong about hobbes' work being long but worth the read

[SIMON BAILIE]

I'm currently running of the nighty of 08/21/2014 11:20 and using version 0.9 of the final mod pack. An interesting thing happened last night, one of bases had to do a defense vs Ethereals in April, is this just another random part of the mod as I thought Ethereals didn't appear til @ least June!

[Solarius Scorch]

I'm currently running of the nighty of 08/21/2014 11:20 and using version 0.9 of the final mod pack.

Yeah, that one's still buggy, please use 0.9.1 o better yet 0.9.2.

An interesting thing happened last night, one of bases had to do a defense vs Ethereals in April, is this just another random part of the mod as I thought Ethereals didn't appear til @ least June!

Yeah, I'm afraid Alien Retaliation don't seem to respect the timetables! This can be extremely nasty, true. I can't do anything about this...

By the way, with the next version armour overhaul will finally start. I will add an alloy version of the human combat armour and move Personal Armour a bit higher on the tech tree. I will also balance the Personal Armour and Power Suit a bit; while I didn't want to change the original stuff, I need to do something about them if we want to get anywhere with potential alternatives. Don't worry, they won't get any worse in most respects, and I think they'll overall be even better.

[XCOMFan419]

Don't worry, they won't get any worse in most respects, and I think they'll overall be even better.

Solar, Buffing something? No way. I should go back to bed. When I wake up everything will be back to normal and the Personal Armor will require two sectopod corpses and a UFO power source.

But slightly related:

REMOVE WEIGHTS ON ARMOUR
I get it "realism" but it's annoying. If I want my soldiers to wear armour I can buy from the start it's just aesthetics in a game where everything is brown. Even so, it helps against early game plasma pistols and will allow some survivability for the few good men that are sent out on the first missions that have 0 accuracy and 0 health.

Plus they look cool when wearing armour.

[Solarius Scorch]

Solar, Buffing something? No way. I should go back to bed. When I wake up everything will be back to normal and the Personal Armor will require two sectopod corpses and a UFO power source.

Not true! I'm buffing the aliens all the time!

REMOVE WEIGHTS ON ARMOUR

No.

Suffer the weight or buy more rookies.

[MeatLoaf]

REMOVE WEIGHTS ON ARMOUR
I get it "realism", but it helps early game for the few good men.

The few good men shouldn't be on the front line, they should be 2nd line taking sniper shots at spotted targets. I think 5-10% of recruits are keepers which means 90%+ are cannon fodder laying down their lives to keep the elites alive...