I eagerly give you my feedback Kingmob, along with an attached filesave once I get back to my place (you can infer MANY things from there I suppose).
The only thing I can't speak of is the Hyperwave decode/encoder thing: I discoreved HWD right before you entered the encoder part....I was saving three alien bases for it
Manufacturing times in my opinion feel right, VERY much so.
The only "problem" I had was with producing Tier 1+ armors, which takes what seems to be an egregiously LONG time compared to the tier 0-0.5 stuff (ESPECIALLY against alloyed conventional armors, which are done overnight by a 50 eng team), and THAT basically is the main reason I felt so compelled to introduce armor repair....seemed to me to make sense and balances out nicely.
Right now the only problem is that once you're stocked with armors, you RARELY ever lose them since it most always come back damaged at worst from a mission, you only destroy them when destroying friendly corpses with HE damage or leave behind fallen comrades when aborting.
In that very case I do my best to recover as much equipment as possible when running away so that might be a gameplay enhancement in a way
I just wish there would be a way to RANDOMLY determine if the recovered damaged armor is beyond repair, but the game engine offers no way to do that currently.
From a manufacturing point of view I had no troubles keeping my Alloy ammo stocked nor my Light rockets or Satchels. Satchels are great, I find myself using them even thou I have a decent stock of alien grenades, I THINK that they might weight s bit more to balance out, but honestly with the added Power Armor strenght I struggle to give my soldier ENUFF stuff to carry w/o being overdone.
Barring the shotgun, whose issues might have to be carried over the botched shotgun mechanics (I say that because NO ammo on the shotguns could match the firepower of a LASER PISTOL which can fire a LOT even w/o autofire given the extremely fast snap), I think that rockets are the suffering bits in the amrory:
- Enhanced Light rockets dwarf all the other alternatives, cheap, manufactured quickly, light and small, you might want to reintroduce the "3 squares" light rocket to balance in.
- The Armor piercing Rocket finds next to no usage in my playthrough, I only used it when I was wary of the area effect engulfing MY own soldiers (during base defense). then again when Enhanced Light rockets entered the scene their nice blast power given the not overwhelmingly large blast radius make it a perfect weapon for Sectopods and Cyberdisks (the latter might be killed off W/O exploding as a bonus, the former MIGHT be softened up since the're the x4 damage to 4-tiles HWP).
- The large rocket I find it more useful for demolition than any other use, to save my guys from concussion damage, so I usually carry ONE or TWO of them, but I consistenly stayed with one in the later stages.
- the incendiary rocket is superseded by the MGL incendiary grenade ammos, I have used ONE in all my playthrough so far and don't plan to ever use one again.
Well, summing it up...about manufacturing I think that given the greatly improved arsenal available, it only makes sense that manufacturing becomes more important and more unwieldy, it balances the enhanced weapon choice and availability, raising costs and maintenance.
For a more comprehensive picture, again look at my save: it's a no psi superhuman ironman, I lost THREE commanders and TWO Skyrangers teams (you can look at the dates in memorial to hint some history). But my score has always been in the very high grounds and I never struggled economically.
To be fair I also think I am NOT a particularly good player.
It's a bit biased from the easy HWD availability and no PSI perhaps, but there's no unbalancing matter in the player's side I guess, and there's a fair challenge to be had going on, but nothing TOO scary.
I disabled PSI because at this point I would be MCing most anything in the battlefiled, that is the thing in the game that needs SERIOUS workout and don't think mods can ever strighten up the thing.
Basically I would have had my squad wiped a couple more times and *maybe* a base lost to Sectoids (the Japan one) if I had psi in the game but I guess I would be roughly in the same (winning) position by now since I could be PSI impervious.
Going furhter, your mod is so tactically sound that now the players has means to crush the AI to the point that it's no longer smart enuff to compete, the Laser LMG can easily be dubbed "Sectopod DDT" and the Laser sniper rifle is BRUTAL against those (from the side mostly) since it can one-up them at times....it's not AUTOMATIC, but a human player can leverage things "easily" and fight fairly a team of ethereals.
If I may, to "equal" those terms we definitely need a final tier alien race, tougher than ethereals and maybe with PSI wielding leaders and commanders.
Coupled with NO Psi active use by humans except from some form of PSI Resistance training that can come from this late game alien.
Oh and also Melee stun for all the regular weapons, oh I won't use it all that much but I really miss it; BTW I think that keeping this in a separate ruleset could still be worth.
Also up to now the blaster launcher only worked in my favor, since REGULARLY the leader of the UFO fires one shot in panic and kills himself along maybe the navigator, causing major panic havoc in the regular alien troops, giving away their position berseking or dropping weapons (I do not play with alien pickup weapons thou, I've seen some strange behaviour in my trials).
Well that was quite a random train of toughts! hope the're some usefulness there...and simply Keep up the good work.
