I have been playing a whole hell of a lot here recently to be able to offer some meaningful feed back and have been mulling over some of the things I experienced.
The new HWPs kick ass.
They are power pieces upon the battlescape and allow serious firepower to be brought to bear in a meaningful way. They are perfect for clearing and controlling the outside of UFOs and offer the ability for flexible tactics and demolition work in a single package and have good survival rates. I will push forward with a GMG HWP and use it to ice windows and roofs of buildings while pushing forward and run soldiers right up its tracked ass and duck to use it as a piece of mobile cover and smoke them all with a scout drone. Scout Drone will then make the initial penetration of the UFO before my soldiers basically ROFLPWN any aliens inside.
The ability to turn the turret independent of the tracks is a blessing and a curse. It saves a LOT of TUs and can give you an advantage in surprise, which is good for a unit that has low reactions, but it also exposes the side armor which is weaker than the front Glacis... fair trade in my eyes anyway, but a GREAT deal in ET2 because tanks are so much better at surviving.
The tanks are going to be nerfed a bit, as far as their toughness and I expect before 2.0 they will be bumped back up to somewhere in between, so expect them to be weaker than now, but not too much.
And the way you re using the tanks is exactly how you are supposed to use an armored vehicle tactically, it becomes the bullet sponge and used to clear structures and fight other armor.
The ability to designate equipment that compliments the ability scores of a soldier is VERY powerful and makes me smile. I can easily assign equipment that gives maximum tactical flexibility to an individual, so more soldiers are as useful as they can possibly be to the squad as a whole.
The starting armors suck, but give a way better chance for soldiers to survive a friendly fire accident and I dig that.
That's exactly the idea behind this mod, providing tactical options, especially in a turn based squad game like this is just huge. What really disappoints me is that this sort of modding can only be done in games that have this level of depth, like openxcom and jagged alliance. You could never wedge something like a DMR or a Submachine gun into the 2012 Xcom, because there's not enough breadth of tactical options in the game.
The rocket launcher is redundant in my own personal opinion... With SSRL and ISSRL everyone becomes a rocketeer and the increased aimed accuracy for the rocket launcher doesn't make up for the fact that EVERYONE can have one in their backpack. The power of it is meh, but I'm using it to pop cyberdisks... who effectively take 4x damage from HE so even if I have to shoot it twice, I am way more likely to have two guys with a rocket to do it.
I am going to have to address this, unfortunately, with a nerf to the SSRL and ISSRL's aimed accuracy and by doing some adjustment to armored HWP, like I did with the X-com tanks. Most likely, 1.0 for damage resistance is going to become 0.35. I'll have to play with it a bit.
SAW is pretty good... it is about right for what it is happy with it.
It's a bullet hose. Without a suppression stat, it loses some of it's tactical punch, but I think it works just fine without it. It's one of my favorite midmap dominators. Two guys with SAWs across the street as two guys with SMGs or Shotties cross. If something ugly pops up, get the scouts out of the alley of fire and then just open up with two massive auto fire strings from both gunners.
Auto pistol is pretty cool, but needs an increase of accuracy extending two more squares.
I assume you mean autofire dropoff range. I'll play with it a bit. The gun isn't supposed to be as accurate as say a Glock C, but it's because of using the powerful 5.7mm rounds. It's for that close work inside UFOs.
Magnum is perfect.
Shot gun is better than previous versions, still a little wonky.
The magnum is just so much fun to use, even if it looks and sounds much cooler than it actually is...
Marksman's rifle falls in a middle ground that I hate. The assault rifle is a better choice in almost all situations because the difference in accuracy is negligible and costs way less TUs because of percentages. The difference in damage and being able to take WAY more shots with an assault rifle vastly outweighs the bump in aimed and snap accuracy of the markman's rifle. In comparison with the sniper rifle it makes me shake my head because the TU percentage of the Sniper rifle is too high for the damage. Yes, accuracy is high and it offers great accuracy but is so overshadowed the mobility offered by either the MR or AR that why would I take the Sniper? like ever? It sucks for reaction fire, and gives basically zero mobility for being able to take a shot that could save the life of a soldier.
I find that my DMR guys get most of the kills in the map, and while my snipers don't do much on standard maps, they dominate on terror sites and turn base defenses into murderfests.
I actually propose a fix that is this.
1. Up the snapshot accuracy of MR by 5% (to 75) and reduce aimed shot accuracy of MR by 10%(to 110) and Reduce aimed shot TU% of MR by 5(to 50)
2. Reduce aimed shot accuracy of AR by 10 (to 100) and reduce TU% of aimed shot to by 5 (to 45%)
3. Increase snap shot accuracy of SR by 5 (to 55) and reduce TU% by 5 (to 35) and decrease aimed shot TU% by 15 (to 55%) and increase damage by 5 in all ammo categories
This should make the differences a little bit more pronounced so you can get two aimed shots with the MR without moving or 3 slightly more accurate shots. Gives the assault rifle guy a little bit more options on engaging a target and makes a sniper rifle a little bit better for reaction fire and allows a little bit more of shooting and scooting so a sniper can actually snipe instead of standing there like a dumb shit because he can only take on average 1-2 steps and a facing movement. or one step and crouch which often breaks line of sight. Meaning most of the time my snipers get replaced with Assault rifles or DMR because they can actually take a few steps.
Going to push these numbers into my spreadsheet for this and see how they look and then take it for a spin. Those adjustments wouldn't do too much to change the essential feel of those weapons and if they massively improve the utility, it may be worth it.
Other thoughts....
I hate PSI with a purple piss passion because it is OP and has some serious flaws and quirks that would be cool if addressed properly... let me give a few examples.
In vanilla we have psi and the actual user does not need to see the target... As long as the target is seen by an alien then they are fair game. This is silly. If a PSI user doesn't have to see the target then that would mean that a Psi user can "feel" the target and thus should know immediately on landing where the aliens are at and conversely the aliens would know where the humans are at. Can we say broken?? What about the fact that aliens can basically hack unmodified humans. WHAT? that is like Using WIFI to hotwire a 57 Chevy and have it go all Christine. I could actually see an HWP being controlled more than an unmodified human because of the technological nature of an HWP. Anyways...
On board with you for the PSI. I haven't used PSI since 2002. I kinda wanted to see about making a code-change mod where instead of getting MC via a psi-amp, soldiers can get a 'hacking module' that lets them set weapons off (panic fire), empty the weapons (set weapons to zero shots) or even explode grenades and explosives on the target (this would require a great roll and high skill and strength). Kinda like an omnitool does in Mass Effect. It would tie well into my narrative I created about having to hack alien technology to get it to work.
The aliens need scaling races/ modified races that increase in difficulty and number to reflect their change in doctrine. We see this on the horizon of the community already with mods adding cybernetic enhanced sectoids. I personally would love to see at least seven new races/ variants using both recolored sprites and new art work.
1. Mechtoids- Love these guys!!!
2. Cyberlids- I have a thread on these guys and looks like Arthanor is picking up the ball https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?topic=2986.0
3. MVII- Muton, variant two. the ones that get rolled out when a species is not being conquered fast enough by alien standards (Tougher, stronger, more TUs) think Spartan Mutons.
4. Snake Mutants- Suggested by Arthanor and he's doing it as far as I know.
5. Waspite- obviously an improved floater
6. Gazer-sons of bitches....
7. Mechtereals- Uparmored etherals...with Blue Cloaks instead of orange. Nightmare time for xcom soldiers.
8. Grim Reapers- Reapers with sectopod like traits of gun and armor... blacked out except for their bright shiny alloy jaws
9. Dread pods- Sectopod with higher armor and a full auto plasma gun and higher reactions
10. An entire range of cyberdisks equipped with different weapons
Was starting to head down this route in my head, since I was going to roll out a changed Sectopod for this 2.0 release and in my planned 'DLC' called 'Retaliation', there was going to be another set and a half of weapons based on the response from the aliens. I wanted to do more than a few new units, but creating new units is extremely time consuming so I was just going to settle with one from previous games.
Alien weapons.
1.Infection weapons that are used to turn more people into Chrysalids
2. Alien small launcher bombs that go boom
3. Maybe fourth or fifth class of Alien weapons that are equate to DRT (dead right there) for all but the most heavily armored troops.
4. ??
1 is horrifying and awesome. Maybe a grenade or a satchel, but I need to see what the AI can handle.
2) Already was looking at this for the 0.5 tier, but thanks for the further support, definitely needs to be in there.
3) Particle beams, oh yeah.
4) Profit?
Thanks, seriously, for all the awesome feedback. This is going to help immensely.