[EXPANSION]Hardmode Expansion -- General Feedback Thread

[hellrazor]

Hellrazor: I recall you saying once that the mod is only designed to be played on Superhuman. If you want to "enforce" Superhuman difficulty, you can add the following into your ruleset:

Code: [Select]

difficultyDemigod: true
difficultyCoefficient: [4, 4, 4, 4, 4]
aimAndArmorMultipliers: [1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0]This is assuming your mod is using vanilla difficulty values at present.
difficultyDemigod makes it so that any aliens that haven't spawned when the map runs out of spawn points will spawn onto the map anyway, possibly all piled up at one spot. This happens on Superhuman anyway, but with this setting it will happen on all difficulties.

Thanks for pointing that out, yes it basically uses vanilla settings in this regard Difficulty.rul. But forcing it would be the way to go *evilgrin*

[hellrazor]

Hi! I can't tell - I'm playing latest master branch from github, and it's not tagged (commit: f6c4255317d56e12ced4202727f2be9da6c218fe )

Yeah, I don't mind. I'm actually not a big fan of TFTD - it had its perks, but long missions had a feeling of wasted day without any progress

Feel free to update, i introduced some changes in regard of Alien Plasma weapons and a little change in the research tree.
To long missions were the reasons i stopped playing TFTD. Is was just to time intensive to systematically search alien colonies to destroy the Synonium Device or whatever ist was called....

I didn't think of the hitbox size, thanks for the hint! I may still revisit drones - the game has progressed, and I'm facing new challenges. More on that below.

Please do so

My tactics now is based primarily on heavy smoke - I always try to keep all my soldiers inside the area that's been covered with multiple smoke grenades, and progress slowly, with scouts exitting the smoke area and returning to it during their turns. I've had numerous encounters where an alien was first seen from about 10 tile distance. I didn't even try using heavy lasers, although I admit that against Muton Elite (Guard) even multiple soldiers with scatter laser fire are sometimes not enough. Anyway, I got to plasma shotguns and sniper plasmas now, so maybe laser weapons are not so interesting any more.

I added new toys to the alien weaponry. Heavy Plasma is now finally the best direct fire weapon again (doing 135 Plasma Damage when loaded with a special type of ammo).
Smoke is good, but can also work against you and your troops.

I got them! I got a few very interesting encounters since my first post - spitter chryssalids, blue sectopods. It was very fresh to me:
- chryssalid spitters are deadly, and these bastards have insanely high reactions I guess - one of them, attacked with scatter laser fire from a distance, took down two my soldiers. That base assault was a disaster (fortunately, with my rookies squad).
- blue sectopods are mighty opponents, and a serious threat to solitary soldiers. Each time I take my chances and do some freestyle, they put me to the ground. With patient tactics though, they stand no chance. It takes at least 3-4 hits from scatter lasers to kill them, true, but when I can attack them with multiple soldiers from more than one spot, they can be stopped.EDIT: this is not true, and I made a terrible mistake. Will describe later.

 I'm not sure I mentioned - I'm a big fan of heavy fire concentrated on a single opponent. With base assaults (they got much more complicated with muton elite guard bases, but still doable), I hide behind corners, throw smoke grenades generously, and spend a lot of time on camping with motion scanners.
- another day, another base assault - I got my blaster launchers this time! The mission was a big failure - I won, but took heavy losses. It turned out that making holes in the walls may not be a good idea, when I rely on the fact that I can use 6-8 soldiers during a single turn to focus on a single target, and somehow I have more than four muton elite guards in front of me.

Chryssalid Spitters are special, they do take increased damage from explosives, same as normal Chryssalids. Indirect fire out of reaction range works wonders against them.

Since my last post, things got complicated. For a brief moment I've had an impression that the game is becoming tiresome, forcing me to take missions I don't want to take - a lot of ufos landing, lots of alien base missions, and lots of infiltration missions. I may be mistaken, but I think during last game month, I had 3 infiltration missions - each with a supply ship, lab ship, battleship, and some smaller ones. And I never know which of these ships I need to take down and ground assault to prevent the infiltration - so my rookies have had plenty of training.

But then the invention of the psi lab happened, and also first serious plasma weapons and flying suits. With that, new strategic challenges appeared:
- base layout - how to remodel my bases, so I can train 30-40 soldiers in psi-labs?
- with 150 scientists, really needed expansion, as research is progressing very slow -> moved most experienced soldiers to a new base, put 7 psilabs these, and also started building workshops there. The initial base will have more labs in the future, and will be primarily for research. But this took a lot of money!
- upgrading power suits to flying suits, and building new flying suits took a lot of elerium!!! Oh, this hurt.
- now, I'm chasing for alien medics, and they are rare. I go for the examination room -> ..... -> psi amp path, but have no medics

Anyway, the next 2-3 game monts will tell if my strategic decisions were good or not.


Yeah, learned it the hard way. BTW. do I need both the Snakeman *and* Chryssalid corpse for a medikit research, or only one of them? Chryssalid spitter didn't unlock medikit research for me.

Anyway, let me see... I checked in the savegame file - since the beginning of the game I killed 4 snakeman soldiers. I don't remember seeing them. I have no corpses. Maybe that mission was a failure? Anyway, 4 snakemen during 17 months I guess I had bad luck, or maybe snakemen wave was during the time I was struggling and couldn't afford much battlescape at all?


Will do. And we'll see if my smoke cover is worth anything then

Anyway, again, thanks for this mod!

It depends how you progress in the game, I usually have Lasers researched and in production latest beginning of ingame June and usually also Power Suits.
Also Superhuman Difficulty gives more enemies and more loot, so you have more cash for bases. See possible base designs here

Disabled the psionic line of sight, and just had my first mission - lab ship with sectoids against 16 rookies (unevaluated psi strength). Lost 6, despite flying suits. Other 4 are wounded. Man, that was bad!

Quick question: the original UFO:EU had a bug (??) (ufopaedia says so, I think), where if psionic alien saw any soldier, they could attempt to capture any of the soldiers. Does openxcom replicate it? My smoke curtains have had lesser efficiency than anicipated But perhaps some of them have seen me from behind, who knows.

EDIT: okay, I just have had a guy on the roof of the supply ship psionically attacked. How is this working?

Anyway. I have had two terrible missions, one (lab ship) won with heavy loss, other (battleship) I've abandoned after 4 turns; now with the sectoid supply ship, I think I have some reasonable strategy for psionic attacks with unrestricted psi line of sight: use even more smoke, and after every encounter, when the alien dies make sure to retreat. It seems to greatly reduce the occurrences of the psionic attacks, although it's my third mission, so can't tell if it isn't a coincidence.

Anyway, hellrazor, I'm aware that this is the mod feedback thread and not a general openxcom strategy guide, so I shut my mouth now.

EDIT2:

I did a terrible, terrible mistake :[ - it turns out that i was playing on the beginner all the time! Beginner!! I thought that ironman is automatically implying superhuman difficulty, but no. I've found this out when I looked at the armored sectopod ruleset for armor and realized that it should be impossible to do any harm to it with scatter lasers. I guess this means all my observations about scatter laser efficiency against heavily armored units are trash, beginner has greatly reduced armors.

I edited my savegame now, to set superhuman, and still won a base defense mission (20 my best soldiers vs 55 muton elite guard, blue sectopods and spitters), and I still can kill sectoids with laser rifles and scatter lasers, but it feels like i have underdeveloped teams against elite aliens now - good results in the past months caused aliens to progress to the best units while I have severely underdeveloped teams. We'll see how long it takes to lose the game xD I have shitloads of plasma shotguns and sniper rifles.

BTW, hardmode on the beginner was much harder than FMP on veteran for a good part of 1999

Well i the economic and research changes do not care about the difficultylevel soo much.
In regard of Psionics, the ingame AI gets a peek at all XCom unit positions at predetermined turns and with that knowledge it then uses its psionic powers. It is not a bug! Thats how it was designed.

[hellrazor]

Hardmode Expansion 0.99.8 - Bugfixes/Rebalances/OXCE Support/Terrain Pack Reactivation

Download Links Hardmode Expansion

A General overwork of the mod has been done, several things have been adjusted for balancing purposes.
A lot of bugs have been fixed and some new tools introduced
I hope the tools, both an X-Com and Alien side will introduce more hurt for both side

OXCE will now be the new Official Development target for the mod, I make sure that it will also run under OXC, just to satiesfy purists.

Yes Meridian and Yes Yankes you did it, you converted me to the OXCE church of QOL!

I also got official permission from Hobbes to reintroduce the Terrain Pack content i use in my mod. Please see README.TXT, CREDIT.TXT and the respective Licence file: TERRAIN_PACK_LICENSE.md
This Licence only applies to content from the Terrain Pack Mod and the derivates I made from those. Just to be clear!

Last but not least the mod has getting some more translations. Japanese, Russian are 95%+ supported, German 80+! (see detailed list below)

If you wanna help translate, the mod is on Transifex

Please use newest Nightly, or at least Nightly Version: openxcom_git_master_2022_04_29_0633
Please use newest OXCE Version, or at least OCXE Version: OXCE 7.5.3

Documentation:
Current ToDo List
Credit List
Changelog

Changelog:

Version 0.99.8
 - Add Support for OXCE (HOOORAY!!!)
 - Add Elerium High Explosive Ammo for Heavy Cannon and Auto Cannon
 - Add EleriumClips for Aliens
 - Add more Civilians
 - Add Chryssalid Spitter Zombie
 - Add Terrain Pack 4.3 Licence file
 - Add Terrain Pack 4.3 Author List
 - Add Terrain Pack Licence Graphic (by-nc-sa.png)
 - Add Ufopaedia Graphics for Globetrotter Medal by Holomorph
 - Add Ufopaedia Graphics for Martyr Medal by Holomorph
 - Add Ufopaedia Graphics for Mindcontrol Medal by Holomorph
 - Add Ufopaedia Graphics for PostMortemKill Medal by Holomorph
 - Add Ufopaedia Graphics for PsiPanic Medal by Holomorph
 - Add Ufopaedia Graphics for Slavekills Medal by Holomorph
 - Add missing Commencations Licence file
 - Add new Manufacture categories for Drones/Tanks/Personal Armor
 - Add more possible upgrades for tanks
 - Add partial language support for french (FR)
 - Add Overworked Research Tree by mlavia
 - Add Rulesetbased globe info as replacement for Hobbes IMPROVEDGLOBE.DAT
 - Adjust Armored Sectopod Damage modifiers
 - Adjust sizes of tanks and drones/ammo slightly
 - Adjust xcom score penalties
 - Adjust Terror Mission asignments
 - Adjust Taser Drones
 - Adjust Hovertank Laser and Plasma
 - Adjust Taser Pistol
 - Adjust Heavy and Auto Cannon
 - Adjust blastradius for Smoke Ammo/Grenades
 - Adjust Terrormissionasignments and Mission Calls
 - Adjust Alloy Drone energy recovery
 - Add Language files for: pt_BR, es_ES, es_419
 - Fix Mod not loading under OpenXcomExtended (Missing Zombie corpse)
 - Fix Drones getting stunned/zombified under OpenXcomExtended
 - Fix Missing Sprites for Taser Drones
 - Fix Hair and Face recolor for Armored Vest and Alloy Vest
 - Fix wrong asigned BigOb/FloorOb for Sailor
 - Fix requires for Support Drone Ufopaedia Article
 - Fix requires for Alloy Drone Armor Ufopaedia Article
 - Fix Craft spawn position for CargoShip
 - Fix some typos while doing Terrorsite restructure
 - Fix listorder for Taser Pistol/Pistol
 - Fix listorder for Stun and Fire Grenade
 - Fix bulletsprite/arcingshot for Hovertank/Ebomb
 - Fix wrong upgrade for Drone/Scanner
 - Fix wrong Map tiles for EXPANDEDUBASE_21b/d
 - Fix wrong manufacture dependency for Alloy Drone Medikit
 - Rebalance Taser Drones
 - Rebalance Armored Sectopod
 - Rebalance Alloy Ammo
 - Remove AREA51 Terrains as requested from Hobbes
 - Remove IMPROVEDGLOBE.DAT as requested from Hobbes
 - Restructure Ufopaedia Section to be more sane
 - Restructure Resources Files
 - Update Language files for: ja, ru, de, fr, it, ko, pl, cs, hu, en-GB
 - Overwork README.TXT and CERDITS.TXT, to satisfy Terrain Pack Licence File

[Steelpoint]

I must get around to finishing the wiki someday 
In any regard, I'm happy to see further updates, and VERY happy to see the map pack added back.
Great work

[hellrazor]

I must get around to finishing the wiki someday 
In any regard, I'm happy to see further updates, and VERY happy to see the map pack added back.
Great work

That would be really awesome, if you would be doing this. I will of course also contribute, when the time.
Thanks in advance. You did a awesome so far.
😇😇😃

[Steelpoint]

That would be really awesome, if you would be doing this. I will of course also contribute, when the time.
Thanks in advance. You did a awesome so far.
😇😇😃

Thanks.

Most of the remaining work is transcribing stats to their pages, while I've made good progress in starting the rest of the alien pages

One are that anyone with experience with hardmode can help with is the strategy sections here: https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Strategy_(Hardmode)

Im focusing more on hints and tips relevant to Hardmode, if anyone wants to add anything or thinks of something worth mentioning that would be great

[hellrazor]

Thanks.

Most of the remaining work is transcribing stats to their pages, while I've made good progress in starting the rest of the alien pages

One are that anyone with experience with hardmode can help with is the strategy sections here: https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Strategy_(Hardmode)

Im focusing more on hints and tips relevant to Hardmode, if anyone wants to add anything or thinks of something worth mentioning that would be great

I am gonna add some stats and hint to the units.
Probably tomorrow evening after work.
Thank you so much so far.

[Steelpoint]

Wiki work is mostly finished I just have to flesh out a few pages and get around to describing each individual alien unit  The strat guide section is quite subjective and I am no major veteran, so I'll come back around to it later.

After playing the mod some more I thought to myself how surprising that hellrazor didn't do something to make it that X-COM can't use alien plasma guns right off the bat. You don't really need to manufacture any plasma weapons since you'll have a massive stockpile by that time. Minor point in any respect.

[hellrazor]

Wiki work is mostly finished I just have to flesh out a few pages and get around to describing each individual alien unit  The strat guide section is quite subjective and I am no major veteran, so I'll come back around to it later.

After playing the mod some more I thought to myself how surprising that hellrazor didn't do something to make it that X-COM can't use alien plasma guns right off the bat. You don't really need to manufacture any plasma weapons since you'll have a massive stockpile by that time. Minor point in any respect.

Thanks i am waiting again for my wiki password. Forgot mine unfortunately....
I have no clue why it takes so long to get a new password on my ufopaedia account....

So far great work. I wanted to work also on the wiki, but without my ufopaedia password...

[hellrazor]

Announcement for Players Upgrading from 0.99.7 to 0.99.8 mid campaign

All players, which started their run of Hardmode Expansion 0.99.7 and upgrade the mod Version during their campaign to 0.99.8 have to edit their savegames. To prevent a crash which can occur at the end of the month, when the game is executing the missionScripts.

You need to take the following five steps:

YOU NEED TO EDIT YOUR SAVEGAME!

Step one:
- make a geoscape save of your current campaign.

Step two:
Open up the the savegame with a texteditor (for example notepad++)

Step three:
Goto section "alienStrategy:" subsection "  regions:"

EXAMPLE:
A entry like this:

Code: [Select]

    STR_ANTARCTICA: 4
    STR_ARCTIC: 4
    STR_AUSTRALASIA: 10
    STR_CENTRAL_ASIA: 12
    STR_EUROPE: 16
    STR_INDIAN_OCEAN: 5
    STR_NORTH_AFRICA: 12
    STR_NORTH_AMERICA: 18
    STR_NORTH_ATLANTIC: 5
    STR_PACIFIC: 5
    STR_SIBERIA: 10
    STR_SOUTHERN_AFRICA: 8
    STR_SOUTH_AMERICA: 10
    STR_SOUTH_ATLANTIC: 5
    STR_SOUTH_EAST_ASIA: 15

Needs to look like this:

Code: [Select]

    STR_ANTARCTICA: 4
    STR_ARCTIC: 4
    STR_AUSTRALASIA: 10
    STR_CENTRAL_ASIA: 12
    STR_EUROPE: 16
    STR_INDIAN_OCEAN: 5
    STR_NORTH_AFRICA: 12
    STR_NORTH_AMERICA: 18
    STR_NORTH_ATLANTIC: 5
    STR_NORTH_PACIFIC: 5
    STR_SOUTH_PACIFIC: 5
    STR_SIBERIA: 10
    STR_SOUTHERN_AFRICA: 8
    STR_SOUTH_AMERICA: 10
    STR_SOUTH_ATLANTIC: 5
    STR_SOUTH_EAST_ASIA: 15

Step four:
Goto section "alienStrategy:" subsection "  possibleMissions:"

EXAMPLE:
A entry like this:

Code: [Select]

    - region: STR_PACIFIC
      missions:
        STR_ALIEN_BASE: 15
        STR_ALIEN_RESEARCH: 15
If you can not find the region: STR_PACIFIC under "  possibleMissions:" please add at the end of the list the following entry also.

Needs to be changed to this:

Code: [Select]

    - region: STR_NORTH_PACIFIC
      missions:
        STR_ALIEN_BASE: 15
        STR_ALIEN_RESEARCH: 15
    - region: STR_SOUTH_PACIFIC
      missions:
        STR_ALIEN_BASE: 15
        STR_ALIEN_RESEARCH: 15

Step five:
Goto section "regions:"

EXAMPLE:
A entry like this:

Code: [Select]

  - type: STR_PACIFIC
    activityXcom:
      - 0
      - 0
      - 0  
    activityAlien:
      - 0
      - 0
      - 0

Needs to be changed to this:

Code: [Select]

  - type: STR_NORTH_PACIFIC
    activityXcom:
      - 0
      - 0
      - 0  
    activityAlien:
      - 0
      - 0
      - 0
  - type: STR_SOUTH_PACIFIC
    activityXcom:
      - 0
      - 0
      - 0  
    activityAlien:
      - 0
      - 0
      - 0

After this you are good to go.
You can check if your editing weas successful, by checking the graphs and see the two new regions there.

DO NOT CHANGE VALUES OF ANY OTHER SECTIONS OF YOUR SAVÈGAME FILE!


While you are at it, please also apply the following patch to "items_HM.rul":

Got to items_HM.rul Line 3251 and replace

Code: [Select]

bigSprite: 57

With:

Code: [Select]

bigSprite: { mod: xcom1, index: 57 }

This also fixing a crash in lategame.
I am sorry for this inconvinience and hope that you are all having fun playing the mod.

Kind regards,
hellrazor

[Steelpoint]

Thanks i am waiting again for my wiki password. Forgot mine unfortunately....
I have no clue why it takes so long to get a new password on my ufopaedia account....

So far great work. I wanted to work also on the wiki, but without my ufopaedia password...

Sorry to hear about the issue, I do recall you seem to have bad luck with ufopaedia. The work continues either way, and the wiki will always be there whenever you get access.

Anyway, I forgot how useful laser weapons are. Fancy alloy ammo is good and all but mutons quickly shut that down.

[hellrazor]

Sorry to hear about the issue, I do recall you seem to have bad luck with ufopaedia. The work continues either way, and the wiki will always be there whenever you get access.

Well we will see. The problem is yes the wiki is nice, but there a lot of information which is not 100% precise, which is ok because any information is better then none. But being able to correct or clarify things would be really nice.

Anyway, I forgot how useful laser weapons are. Fancy alloy ammo is good and all but mutons quickly shut that down.

Did you give the EHE Ammo for the Heavy Cannon and Auto Canon a try? I designed it to be anti Muton ^^ Of course it involving throwing Elerium-115 into the explosive aether

[Steelpoint]

Well we will see. The problem is yes the wiki is nice, but there a lot of information which is not 100% precise, which is ok because any information is better then none. But being able to correct or clarify things would be really nice.
Did you give the EHE Ammo for the Heavy Cannon and Auto Canon a try? I designed it to be anti Muton ^^ Of course it involving throwing Elerium-115 into the explosive aether

I've skimmed over the explosive weapons, I've never bothered to research HC/AC explosive ammo and I've done well enough to get to Lasers/Personal armour without researching elerium yet. Considering how long it takes to research even the most basic of things I've found I hyper prioritise things I find critically important rather than minor things that may not be as important.
Stronger explosives are nice, but lasers will handle most enemies and I can equip them to anyone. Once I get to full Lasers and Power Suits I tend to go back and pick up the minor things I've missed.

Also I've never really found a home for the AC/HC in my armoury. Most of my early soldiers run with Rifles with Shotguns in their backpack, and then some combination of Grenade Launchers, Rocket Launchers and Snipers.

I've been quite lucky in my current campaign to have only had to endure one terror mission into July (which I immediately aborted as it was a cruise ship one) so I've not run into early cyberdiscs.

In terms of the wiki management, I do concur some things are likely incorrect or not 100% factual, just the process of updating it sadly which can be quite difficult over time. I try to fix things over time.

[psavola]

I've skimmed over the explosive weapons, I've never bothered to research HC/AC explosive ammo and I've done well enough to get to Lasers/Personal armour without researching elerium yet. Considering how long it takes to research even the most basic of things I've found I hyper prioritise things I find critically important rather than minor things that may not be as important.
Stronger explosives are nice, but lasers will handle most enemies and I can equip them to anyone. Once I get to full Lasers and Power Suits I tend to go back and pick up the minor things I've missed.

Also I've never really found a home for the AC/HC in my armoury. Most of my early soldiers run with Rifles with Shotguns in their backpack, and then some combination of Grenade Launchers, Rocket Launchers and Snipers.
(...)

Similar take in my two campaigns. By the time mutons start appearing regularly, you have been able to rush the lasers if you concentrate on building the research infrastructure quickly. (I usually farm the supply cruisers for a while and do the first base in Feb/Mar, depending on money and other factors). Against mutons in close combat, laser shotgun is great and over longer distances multiple sniper rifles do the trick. I also never used AC/HC, they seemed too heavy and too inaccurate in the beginning to be useful. In the beginning I usually used 3-5 grenade launchers (almost overpowered against beginning foes?), 3-5 sniper rifles w/ alloy ammo and some shotgunners. Biggest difficulty prior to lasers and alien grenades were certain terror units which required quite a few even heavier explosives (especially if you have a cyberdisc, and silacoid to lesser degree, terror mission while still working with grenadiers and alloy ammo).

[hellrazor]

Bugfix for Plasma Weapon Research in 0.99.8 mid campaign

Attached to this post you find a patched research_HM.rul, which fixes a bug I found today in regard of Plasma Weapon research, which was not correctly unlocking. Now it works is intended.

Just copy the here attached file "research_HM.rul" into the Hardmode Expansion Ruleset folder und overwrite the old "research_HM.rul" then you are good to go

I am sorry for the inconvinience.