[Balancing] [MOD Collection] version 0.3 07.07.2014

[clownagent]

Attached is a mod collection I am currently using. It does include some content from existing mods,
but tries mostly to tweak and balance the existing rules.
Aim is to remove some bad aspects from vanilla but keep and expand the good ones and add a little more variety.

Main gameplay differences to vanilla are:
- ECONOMY: not so much money from manufacturing items and prices of most items adjusted
- UFOS: Increased UFO weapon strength and durability
- PSI: Psi is nerfed strongly and psi research is more complex

Mod-Compatibility:
To prevent interference with other mods I recommend to not use other mods along this one, which change items, alien deployment or UFO stats. 


Detailed Changelog:

Ver 0.3
- Apply MeleeSkill for aliens and X-Com (this means sometimes a melee strike might miss, which makes wounded melee aliens a little less dangerous)
- Adjusted soldier starting stats for melee and psi
- adjusted combatknife and stunrod stats, sounds and animations
- Sniper-Rifle Sprites from MIB Mod
- Flying Armor: Combined Moriarty's Armor sprites with modified flying armor sprites
- Added sprites for jump armor and grav-module
- Included Fusion Torch (Ran)
- Added Taser (Ryskeliini)
- Added Flamethrower (Dioxine)
- Improved Silacoid and Reaper, made Zombie a little weaker and less melee competent
- Improved standard jumpsuit
- Added Psioline based advanced psionics (Raindau)
- renamed stun bomb and stun grenade (Murmur) to cryo bomb.
- Added medipack (yrizoud)
- Added GrenadeLauncher (Ryskeliini)
- Added Anti-Gravity Research (connected with the floater anti gravity device)
- Reduced build time for living quarters and storage



Ver. 0.2
- Adjusted starting items in the base stores and the skyranger
- fusion blaster listorder fixed
- changed sell prices for Ligthning and Avenger
- adjusted handob_sprites for the assault cannon
- fixed: plasma cannon uses elerium as ammunition
- reduced TU for stun rod



Ver. 0.1

Economy:
- Prices adjusted. Selling always gives 75% of the original price
- Cost of manufacturing items is adjusted. Now one cannot earn so much money by manufacturing+selling items.
- All crafts cost maintenance 100000 per month
- Increased cost of scientists and engineers
- Facility maintenance increased
- Facility prices and build times adjusted

Battlescape Weapons:
- Autoshot only for rifles and autocannon
- All Weapon stats adjusted
   Plasma weapons: most damage, medium weight, smaller clips, medium accuracy, medium TU
   Laser weapons: medium damage, large weight, unlimited ammo, best accuracy, slow firing
   Standard weapons: low damage, low weight, medium ammo, least accuracy, fast firing
- Changed sprites for Plasma and Laser weapons (from Chikos images, terranplasma and Alien armoury expanded mods)
- Added incendiary grenade (from custom grenades mod)
- Added Mind Missile
- Added SniperRifle (from Toshiaki)
- StunRod uses Melee Skill
- Motion scanner needs only few TU's for activation
- Blaster Launcher exchanged by Fusion Launcher and Fusion Blaster

HWP:
- Improved weapon stats for Tank/Cannon and Tank/RocketLauncher

Armor:
- Changed graphics for Power Suit and Flying Suit (Moriartys Armor)
- Made Flying Suit weaker than Power Suit
- Flying Suit needs a dead floater for manufacturing
- Added Jump Armor (Solarius Scorch)
- All Armors are recoverable and repairable in the workshop 

Crafts and Craft weapons:
- Plasma cannon needs Elerium for rearming and is weaker
- Avalanche is a single, expensive but devastating missile (nuclear!)
- tweaked other craft weapons a bit
- Avenger is more expensive and needs more elerium for refueling than Lightning and Firestorm (it has two reactor chambers)
- Improved UFOs (Both weapon strength and durability).
- Two alien alloy interceptors added(Seeker(from firestrom restyle mod) and Sentinel)

Psi:
- Usage of Psi-Amp needs more TU
- Usage of mind probe needs less TU
- Increased minimum psi defense and bravery of Xcom soldiers to 20
- Psi research and facilities are more expensive

Aliens:
- Alien Item Levels are changed so that the plasma pistol and rifle are not phased out so fast.
- Some Aliens uses a Fusion Blaster (Sprites based on plasma rifle)
- Etherials are more vulnerable to fire (because of their cloak)
- Added alien inventory images (from alien inventory mod)
- Sectopod uses laser animation

Research:
- Research cost and points of most topics balanced.
- Medkit and motion scanner are available from the start
- Alien containment facility needs to be researched
- Alien Alloys are needed for researching and manufacturing Laser weapons
- Elerium research is needed for manufacturing Elerium based alien stuff



Credits and Mods used as resources:
- Sentinel (Warboy)
- Firestorm Restyle (Shadow)
- Jump Armor (Solarius Scorch)
- Alien Inventory (luke83)
- Chiko's laser and plasma weapon sprites (Chiko, civilian, luke83, ascadix)
- Moriarty's Armor (Moriarty)
- Sniper Rifle (robin, Toshiaki)
- Incendiary Grenade from CustomGrenades (simon-v)
- MindMissile (clownagent)
- GravArmor (clownagent)
- Laser Sectopod (LouisdeFuines)
- Combat Knife (Warboy)
- Images from Tyran-Nicks Mod (tyran_nick)
- Images from the piratez mod (dioxine)
- Images from the terran plasma weapons (Shadow)
- Images from alien armoury expanded (Solarius Scorch)
- Fusion Torch (Ran)
- Sprites, images, Taser from Ryskeliini_GunsNGadgets(Ryskeliini)
- Parts from Final Mod Pack (Human Ktulu, Solarius Scorch)
- Sprites from Stun Grenade Mod (Murmur)
- Advanced Psionics (Raindau)
- Some sounds from HQSound (Daedalus)
- Medipack (yrizoud)

- Probably resources from other mods I forgot to mention. Notify me and I will add you to the list. Thanks a lot!

[Sectoid_Soldier]

Dude, I'll try it. :thumbsup:

[wsmithjr]

Tried out the mod for a bit.  Lot of cool ideas.  Never thought of making the auto canon auto-only and similarly with the sniper rifle.  Great way to balance them I think.

That said, is there some way in the ruleset to prevent a sniper rifle from being fired like an automatic weapon when the soldier holding it is panicking?  Was getting down to the end of a Floater terror mission and night, and things went well in the beginning, but try to locate the last of the floaters pretty much wiped out my force.  A panicked soldier used up the last of my sniper rifle ammo in one shot.

Looked at some of the stats in the ruleset.  Is it really intentional to sell a Lightning for 4.8 million?  I know it requires a lot of time and materials, but on the surface, that seems quite a haul ... not that I'm anywhere near seeing just how feasible it is.

BTW, I like the idea of charging rent for any ship.  Just wondering about your logic for the amount, especially the alien technology ships.  I also figured fuel and spare parts accounted for that cost, but that wouldn't be as much of a factor with elerium-powered ships, and crew and supplies could always be accounted for in the hangar maintenance cost.  Anyway, not really complaining just thinking to myself how I might fine-tune it.

Thanks for sharing.  I look forward to exploring more of it.

[Solarius Scorch]

That said, is there some way in the ruleset to prevent a sniper rifle from being fired like an automatic weapon when the soldier holding it is panicking?

It's possible to disable reaction shots by not giving the weapon snap shot, but I'm not sure it'd work for berzerking - probably not, because it's berzerking!

[clownagent]

That said, is there some way in the ruleset to prevent a sniper rifle from being fired like an automatic weapon when the soldier holding it is panicking?  Was getting down to the end of a Floater terror mission and night, and things went well in the beginning, but try to locate the last of the floaters pretty much wiped out my force.  A panicked soldier used up the last of my sniper rifle ammo in one shot.

I don't think one can change this behavior via the ruleset, maybe in the future

Looked at some of the stats in the ruleset.  Is it really intentional to sell a Lightning for 4.8 million?  I know it requires a lot of time and materials, but on the surface, that seems quite a haul ... not that I'm anywhere near seeing just how feasible it is.

Yes you're right, that is a mistake. I reduced the price to 2800000.  Thanks for notification.

I calculated the prices of all manufactured items from the raw materials, manufacture cost and engineering hours, and then rounded up a bit. Obviously I made some mistakes

BTW, I like the idea of charging rent for any ship.  Just wondering about your logic for the amount, especially the alien technology ships.  I also figured fuel and spare parts accounted for that cost, but that wouldn't be as much of a factor with elerium-powered ships, and crew and supplies could always be accounted for in the hangar maintenance cost.  Anyway, not really complaining just thinking to myself how I might fine-tune it.

I think neither the vanilla price list nor my adjusted pricings are anywhere near to "free market" prices. For example, a single Stingray missile would probably cost approx. 1,000,000$ and not 10,000$.
I always thought that X-Com as a government agency gets special prices and special contracts with other organisations or companies, all worked out by "ambitious" politicians and business men. Think of all the admin staff doing paper work for X-Com. 

In that thinking the flatrate 100,000 cost stands for a service contract for maintenance of any X-Com craft regardless of real expenses. 

[wsmithjr]

I don't think one can change this behavior via the ruleset, maybe in the future

Wishful thinking on my part.  If it needs a "realism rationale", I suppose you could say that nothing stops you from unloading a clip in a few seconds into mid-air ... it's the aiming that takes all the time.  Not that it makes me any happier about it. 

[wsmithjr]

Been trying out your mod while also fiddling with other things.

I'm not very far into the game but I am a little disappointed in auto fire.  I'm glad it's not the be-all-end-all like it is in the unmodded game but it just seems a bit too useless.  Even at near point-blank range, unloading an auto shot seems pretty risky.  Up close, an auto burst should probably be pretty devastating assuming a sufficiently power weapon.  But even at point-blank range, my guys have trouble hitting the broad side of a barn.  I noticed your ruleset doesn't use weapon ranges.  I've seen the following available in other mods:

    aimRange: 11
    snapRange: 8
    autoRange: 6

I'm wondering how it might work out to increase the accuracy of auto fire but then set it to a fairly low range so that up close it is suitably deadly, but you still can't autofire units across the map with impunity.  I don't know what the accuracy fall-off is or if that can be controlled via the ruleset.  What do you think?

'Course, then if we're doing that, we can do all sorts of other things with various weapons such as keeping a pistol from firing clear across the map, etc.

[clownagent]

Been trying out your mod while also fiddling with other things.

I'm not very far into the game but I am a little disappointed in auto fire.  I'm glad it's not the be-all-end-all like it is in the unmodded game but it just seems a bit too useless.  Even at near point-blank range, unloading an auto shot seems pretty risky.  Up close, an auto burst should probably be pretty devastating assuming a sufficiently power weapon.  But even at point-blank range, my guys have trouble hitting the broad side of a barn.  I noticed your ruleset doesn't use weapon ranges.  I've seen the following available in other mods:

    aimRange: 11
    snapRange: 8
    autoRange: 6

I'm wondering how it might work out to increase the accuracy of auto fire but then set it to a fairly low range so that up close it is suitably deadly, but you still can't autofire units across the map with impunity.  I don't know what the accuracy fall-off is or if that can be controlled via the ruleset.  What do you think?

Right now, if you use the Autofire from 4-5 tiles or less, a typical rookie will probably score ~2 hits with a normal rifle. That seems ok for me.

In the ruleset you can define a 'dropoff' value which should define the amount of accuracy loss per tile.
For fine-tuning, of course one could fiddle with the range-dependent accuracies.

[clownagent]

I included some additional mods to increase variety of the collection, especially parts of raindau's "psioline" based psi ruleset.