[ALIENS] Mechtoids - armored and upgraded Sectoids

[Harald_Gray]

I'm playing with the mod now, on a savedgame which previously wasn't played with it. The don't seem to accur at all. Do I have to start a new Campaing-game in Order to run into them?

There's two reasons for this. One, these guys are supposed to be somewhat rare. Two, new missions are IIRC only generated once per month. This means that if you're unlucky or don't wait long enough, you'll see no new races, no matter what mod you use. So you don't have to start a new campaign but if you're getting impatient or you're too unlucky you might need to take more direct measures.

I'm afraid I can only offer three remedies, though. You can edit the ruleset and increase the missionweights, they are at the beginning of the rulefile, but you'll still have to wait and it'll stay subject to random chances. You can manually edit your savefile and add in a Mechtoid mission. Or you can use the New battle feature to test the tactical aspects of this mod.

Oh, and one more detail. The Mechtoids are kind of tough, so they can't appear sooner than in March, being replaced by plain Sectoids before then (and sometimes after) should you get a Mechtoid mission in early game. Fully Mechtoid crews start in May.

[7Saturn]

new missions are IIRC only generated once per month.

That's probably it. How nice, that the next month just began. =)

if you're getting impatient or you're too unlucky you might need to take more direct measures.

I already tried them with creating a new battle and choosing them as opponents. With heavy Plasma, they don't seem as threatening . =)

[Harald_Gray]

With heavy Plasma, they don't seem as threatening . =)

Well, they're just buffed Sectoids, what did you expect? 

You see, they're not supposed to be the toughest eliens of the bunch. They're an attempt to make Sectoids appear somewhat useful in late game so they're *designed* to retain some weaknesses. Their armor gives them higher chances of surviving single laser/plasma hits but they're no Mutons. Plus they do use powerful weapons.

Just to make sure, though... Have you also tested high-item-level Mechtoid terror missions? The kind where you're also facing power 110 rockets, battlesuits that completely ignore about half of frontal heavy plasma hits, and civilians perfect for being zombified by drones and then bursting into everyone's favorite unit, the Chryssalid? Because Mechtoids need their own mission deployments to reach their full beauty 

[7Saturn]

I didn't test them to that extend, no. But I was waiting to see them in regular missions. ;-)

[Harald_Gray]

They don't appear in regular missions. You can only meet them in their own missions, in retaliation missions and very rarely in alien bases.

The reason is that they need their own missions to be able to utilize their own weapon loadouts.

[7Saturn]

OK, that's a further limitation, making them a little rare.

[Harald_Gray]

Uh, I planned them to spice things up a bit, they're not intended as a new cannon fodder.

But if you do want to be meeting them more often, simply increase their mission weights in their ruleset.

[7Saturn]

No, no. To be blunt, I'd like that for every race. I always was a little bothered, that even with enough races to begin with in vanilla, there always were these waves, during which you have more or less always the same aliens. First it's Sectoids, then the floaters begin. Then the Snakemen come, followed by Mutons and then the Ethereals. But not in a mixed way. More like 10-50 missions of a race one after another until there's some change. OK, sometimes paused by some Sectoids of Floaters, but in general, always big waves. Only in late game you begin to have some variety, where you don't have this likelihood of knowing, what's to come. Having more races probably spices it up, if they don't occur in this wave-like fashion.

[hellrazor]

They don't appear in regular missions. You can only meet them in their own missions, in retaliation missions and very rarely in alien bases.

The reason is that they need their own missions to be able to utilize their own weapon loadouts.

Well if they bring there own weapons. I will certainly not integrate them. Since my weaponset is now fixated (no further changes).

[Harald_Gray]

No, no. To be blunt, I'd like that for every race. I always was a little bothered, that even with enough races to begin with in vanilla, there always were these waves, during which you have more or less always the same aliens. First it's Sectoids, then the floaters begin. Then the Snakemen come, followed by Mutons and then the Ethereals. But not in a mixed way. More like 10-50 missions of a race one after another until there's some change. OK, sometimes paused by some Sectoids of Floaters, but in general, always big waves. Only in late game you begin to have some variety, where you don't have this likelihood of knowing, what's to come. Having more races probably spices it up, if they don't occur in this wave-like fashion.

Problem is that there's not that many missions during early game and every mission has a fixed race (or has a fixed racial mix) and some races might be too problematic during early game. You're likely to have say half a dozen active alien missions tops, probably less of them, in March to May. If you shoot down the first ufo of a mission, you can expect a copy of it arriving later, with the same race aboard. This doesn't leave much room for racial variety during early game, regardless of what mods you use.

Well if they bring there own weapons. I will certainly not integrate them. Since my weaponset is now fixated (no further changes).

They use vanilla weapons plus three new types. And I do understand the reasons for not including them, no hurt feelings here 

[hellrazor]

Well you can make sure that Races do occur on Terrormissions.

[Harald_Gray]

Well you can make sure that Races do occur on Terrormissions.

Well, I don't like spawning Mechtoids without their special weapons. A Burner without his Scorcher or incendiary rockets is just a Sectoid who's a little funny in the head and wears light armor, a Commando wearing a stealthsuit but holding a fully visible rifle looks stupid...

So I gave them their own terror missions 

[new_civilian]

For my personal mod I gave them TFTD-Ufos, make them even more unique 

[hellrazor]

I am sorry to say but i just tested, and your Mod is not compatible with my "Hardmode Expansion" Mod.

You define your own Racelist and Missionlist, which will probably overwrite the original Missionlist of my Mod,
leaving Core Mechanics not accessible to the player.

EDIT: Which dosn't mean that we can't reach a possible compability once Missionscripting has arrived, i could then make my Basemission independent from the Mission/Race list occurancy and therefore people could use our to mods together.

The new Version 0.91 of Hardmode Expansion, which is adapted to missionscripting, should be compatible with this Mod again. If any trouble arrises please tellme maybe i can be more compatible.

[7Saturn]

Well, I tested it a little further and I find it quite nice. However, I'm not quite sure about the texts in the research-results. I'm not a native English speaker, so maybe I'm getting it completely wrong. But some passages seem a little bit odd to me. Example:

Spoiler:

These elite Mechtoid soldiers use light power suits that are less durable than what we would consider the limits of alien technology, the main reason probably being their masters' unwillingness to dedicate enough resources to the Mechtoid experiment. Analysis of their neurochemistry indicates unprecedented levels of aggresivity.

I'd rather write it like that:

Spoiler:

These elite Mechtoid soldiers use light power suits which are less durable than what we would consider the limits of alien technology. The main reason probably is their masters' reluctance to dedicate more resources to the Mechtoid experiment. Analysis of their neurochemistry indicates unprecedented levels of aggression.

I know, it's minor, but this run-on sentence and the choice of words sometimes simply feels wrong. There are some other parts with similar look and feel. So maybe a native speaker could have a look at these strings.

Also some minor aspects seem to be inconsistent:

Spoiler:

The greenish "skin" of these aliens is actually bioarmor.[...]

When looking at he picture aside, it looks not green at all. I'm not a graphics crack, so I won't be able to help with that. But maybe somebody else might be able to make the picture consistent with the text coming with it.

And one small »bug« also comes along with it. See the screenshot. There seems to be not enough space for the entire text.

But aside from that, I like it!