[BETA] Rebalance aliens

[XCOMFan419]

Theses discussion about HWP make me think to what really lack for the player : some lure to attract alien reaction fire, especially when you try to run out off the skyranger and are surrounded.

That does get annoying after a while.

- scout drone (must be either cheaper or resistant but not weak and costly)

Two mods already exist for that. Arpia's scout drone and Aldorn's Tank/Snoop.

- robot designed to seem be a soldier, unarmed, but heavily armored : just make it walk in alien line of sight and make it be the good pigeon. Buildable with same technologies than powered armors, could be a flying machine able to float in air like floatter, because it's easiest to do than legs, and less fragile.

Already a mod for this...basically. Svahn's Powersuit Drones. One Assault drone and One Scout drone, of course there is a Hammer Heavy Artillery Drone, but I don't believe it works properly. Any ways, the Scout Drone comes equipped with 150 TU and a laser rifle, while the Assault Drone comes with a 100 TU and a plasma rifle.

- holographic device, could be inspired by the holodrone terrorist

Unsure. But it could be a good idea.

[wsmithjr]

Just noticed an issue with your ruleset and don't know if it's intentional or not.

I tried to replay that disastrous terror mission I talked about above.  I did better but still got wiped out.  I didn't notice earlier, but when I abandoned the mission, I got 22 points for recovered alien artifacts.  My sole surviving soldier didn't bring any alien artifacts with him.  To test, I restarted the battle and
immediately took off, and noticed I received 38 points for recovered alien artifacts. 

Is this some general OXC thing, or due to your ruleset?  Doing some checking, I notice your ruleset has "recoverypoints" lines for the various weapons, such as Machine Pistol, Sniper Rifle, etc.  So, it seems the game is counting these weapons as recovered and assigning points.  Also makes me wonder if you bring alien weapons with you to a battle and then leave with them, if you also get the points for those.  It would appear to be so as I would think it would be consistent, so it seems like a general OXC issue.  That aside, do you really want "recoverypoints" assigned to XCom weapons?

[Falko]

you cant put unresearched alien weapons on a craft
after research you dont get points anymore
why there are recoverypoints assigned to earth tech no idea.. it should not be

[Dioxine]

There is a third option Falko missed:
If you define a thing as useable without tech prerequisite AND add recovery points (example: alien corpse), it will grant recovery points on every mission this piece of equipment is present. This is what happens here. I had the same problem cropping up in Piratez thankfully it never made it to the public release...

[wsmithjr]

you cant put unresearched alien weapons on a craft
after research you dont get points anymore

Thanks.  Wasn't at a point where I could check that myself so I'm glad I posted here first instead of making a bug report, or something.

[LeBashar]

Is this some general OXC thing, or due to your ruleset?  Doing some checking, I notice your ruleset has "recoverypoints" lines for the various weapons, such as Machine Pistol, Sniper Rifle, etc.  So, it seems the game is counting these weapons as recovered and assigning points.

This come from the MiB mod where some earth tech have recovery point if you fight against MiB.
I've thank the recovery points only apply if theses weapons are really gain in the battle and not if you bring with you ?

If it's not a bug, I will remove the recovery points for MiB weapons.

I have also found a bad issue, the game crash if you try to use the craft plasma cannon. I don't have found the problem for now, this should be come from the plasma beam.

@XCOMFan419 : I know theses various mods, but I ask a more general question. The scout drone has unbalanced stats. Powersuit assault drones don't feet to my idea because if they can shot, they can totally replace soldiers or HWP and I don't want that.

[wsmithjr]

This come from the MiB mod where some earth tech have recovery point if you fight against MiB.
I've thank the recovery points only apply if theses weapons are really gain in the battle and not if you bring with you ?

Apparently, that's only the case if you've researched it.  Now that you mention it, I recall this being discussed in the MiB topic.

As a corollary, looking through your ruleset, you are also missing the recovery points for a number of the plasma weapons including Heavy Plasma and Plasma Rifle, but they exist for others such as Plasma Blaster and Toxigun.  FWIW

[LeBashar]

Recovery points for aliens weapons are already included in the game so it is only visible for the new weapons which have not vanilla's versions.

[Dioxine]

It doesn't matter to the game if you've brought something with you or found it on the battlefield. All items go through post-battle recovery (and recovery point payments) routine. Likewise, if you bring a non-recoverable item with you from the base, it's going to disappear after the battle (thrown out the window, if you will). Long story short, never give any recovery points to an item that's not "alien artifact" (requires research). I don't think you get any recovery score for non-recoverables, but I can be wrong about that.

[wsmithjr]

Just wondering about the HWP Laser Cannons.  What's the rationale behind requiring them to have ammunition when no other laser weapons, even the craft laser, don't require ammunition.  Whether it's true or not, I always figured the HWP cannons were just the fighter cannons mounted on a thank.  Maybe it's a balance thing but the inconsistency seems odd.  Is it possible to limit the shots of the laser cannon without requiring ammo?

[LeBashar]

Long story short, never give any recovery points to an item that's not "alien artifact" (requires research).

So we can let the recocevry points for laser weaponry (if MiB use it) and they will not give any points when the player has researched them ?
I have remove recovery points for sniper rifle and uzi.

Just wondering about the HWP Laser Cannons.  What's the rationale behind requiring them to have ammunition when no other laser weapons, even the craft laser, don't require ammunition.  Whether it's true or not, I always figured the HWP cannons were just the fighter cannons mounted on a thank.  Maybe it's a balance thing but the inconsistency seems odd.  Is it possible to limit the shots of the laser cannon without requiring ammo?

The idea is lasers cannon in craft are powered by the craft himself, but HWP have some kind of battery because they use the same gun, but have no the same power engine. So I wanted to make HWP more limited than the craft cannon and tht why I have add ammunition. But thinking to it I seem you have a point, it don't seem really rationale. Maybe I just have to reduce the number of shot (maybe 15 or 20) and deleted the ammunition.

I have think to my idea of a new lure drone, and think to something could be interesting :
- use the calcinite design of TFTD
- is a robot heavily armored (in comparision to soldier, but not to HWP)
- have only a melee stun weapon (it can use his internal power to deliver high electric choc )
question : how work the zombification by chrysalids ? it should not be possible to make a zombie with a robot.

[wsmithjr]

I have think to my idea of a new lure drone, and think to something could be interesting :
- use the calcinite design of TFTD
- is a robot heavily armored (in comparision to soldier, but not to HWP)
- have only a melee stun weapon (it can use his internal power to deliver high electric choc )
question : how work the zombification by chrysalids ? it should not be possible to make a zombie with a robot.

Sounds interesting.  There's a "zombieUnit" parameter so it looks like as long as you don't define that, it'll be similar to the Stunrod.

[Dioxine]

Sadly, any 1x1 unit will be zombified by a Chryssalid when killed. I have no idea how to disable that, probably it's impossible.

ZombieUnit is a parameter of a weapon which states "what unit spawns when a 1x1 unit gets killed by this weapon".

[wsmithjr]

Sadly, any 1x1 unit will be zombified by a Chryssalid when killed. I have no idea how to disable that, probably it's impossible.

ZombieUnit is a parameter of a weapon which states "what unit spawns when a 1x1 unit gets killed by this weapon".

So, then, does it have to be a Chryssalid weapon?  Can you just define it like a Reaper or a built-in Stunrod?  The Bio-Drone in TFTD had a nice electric attack if you can use that.

[LeBashar]

There is no problem for give him a stun weapon. It's another problem I asked if it can be turn in zombie by a chryssalid and sadly it seem be. But the scout drone and 1x1 robots likes enforcers have the same problem.