[EXPANSION]Hardmode Expansion -- General Feedback Thread

[SIMON BAILIE]

I've upgraded now and upon an intial test a save just before land site 13 goes fine, will let you know if there are any probs. Thanks for the info.

[hellrazor]

A new Version compatible with the new Nightly Version, will be released end of this week.
Since OpenTFTD is drawing all the attention, i decided that i can finally catch up on rechecking/overworking some Maps.
I give this priority at the moment, since i do not wanne be burdened with past problem sites.
And my perfectionism is demanding it!

[SIMON BAILIE]

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.

A new Version compatible with the new Nightly Version, will be released end of this week.
Since OpenTFTD is drawing all the attention, i decided that i can finally catch up on rechecking/overworking some Maps.
I give this priority at the moment, since i do not wanne be burdened with past problem sites.
And my perfectionism is demanding it!

Based upon the two above quotes I'm looking forward to version 0.92 and I assume that "Mechtoids" will be compatible with this version and whichever nightly 0.92 will work with as Sectoids, discounting leaders, commanders and of course cyberdiscs, aren't a major challenge at the minute. But keep up the good work!

[hellrazor]

Based upon the two above quotes I'm looking forward to version 0.92 and I assume that "Mechtoids" will be compatible with this version and whichever nightly 0.92 will work with as Sectoids, discounting leaders, commanders and of course cyberdiscs, aren't a major challenge at the minute. But keep up the good work!

Jeah, well depends, with normal equipment (i know you use gauss mod) they can be quite hard, especially on Terrormissions.
I wish you good luck when Snakeman appear, and of course Mutons. Mutons will field one if the new Terrorunits, which is pretty resistant and hard to kill.

I finished rechecking the vanilla UFO variant Maps and corrected some Minor stuff in them, their Routes are ok but i do not like the Route/Node Importences, so i will probably overwork them at some point, they are bugfree, but not ambushy enough for my taste.

I also found some minor issues on some Excavator and Labship Routes, which i also fixed.

Then there are the Maps/Routes from "Lukes Expanded Terror", which still have some minor Maps issues and the Routes..., i have to redo all of them since they are in some cases not correctly connected and Aliens probably get stuck somewhere.

Also the "Chryssalid Spitter" will enter the Game, for the time being it will only show up on "Mars - The Final Assault" Mission as a replacement for normal Chryssalids and later maybe on a Specialmission.

I also have to overpolish the Expanded Ubase Maps, since i noticed that you actually need to destroy all UFO Navigation type tiles, to destroy the Alien Base Control, and they appear on a couple of Map Tiles.

Also some Minor Sprites issues and some missing HandOb's.

I played a little bit around with Chryssalids and with "aggression: 2" reactionfire is less likely to stop them from approaching you.

I have not wrapped my head about the Special Missions in details, but most of them will actually be fought against a Human Faction.

[SIMON BAILIE]

I'm actually encountering the Snakemen at the minute as I'm now in April, with an odd 1 or 2 Mutons thrown in for good measure but H/E's are quite effective vs Mutons and a Mortar Tank. Noticed though on my last mission Snakemen can sometimes survive an ordinary proximity grenade, but not a heavy proximity mine. Although with the mine being weight 12 and a blast radius of 7 very few of my troops, if any, are strong enough to use them effectively. I really must do the first base to open up the research tree a bit more, trying to get them strong enough that they'll have a reasonable chance. Just when you mention about gauss weapons they may be a bit op as the gauss sniper rifle's aimed shot tu useage isn't that much more than the snap shot but its stated shot accuracy is usually 100% or more. Mutons are a completely different challenge with respect to ap ammo.

[hellrazor]

I'm actually encountering the Snakemen at the minute as I'm now in April, with an odd 1 or 2 Mutons thrown in for good measure but H/E's are quite effective vs Mutons and a Mortar Tank. Noticed though on my last mission Snakemen can sometimes survive an ordinary proximity grenade, but not a heavy proximity mine. Although with the mine being weight 12 and a blast radius of 7 very few of my troops, if any, are strong enough to use them effectively. I really must do the first base to open up the research tree a bit more, trying to get them strong enough that they'll have a reasonable chance. Just when you mention about gauss weapons they may be a bit op as the gauss sniper rifle's aimed shot tu useage isn't that much more than the snap shot but its stated shot accuracy is usually 100% or more. Mutons are a completely different challenge with respect to ap ammo.

You should really man up and do the base. Since it provides some nice financial bonuses as well.

Spoiler:

The new Terror Unit which comes with the Mutons, doesn't care much about HE, AP and even Laser damage (Heavy Lasers will do usually).

You won't be getting any advanced Armor without live interrogations and you are delaying yourself even more with not doing the base, because getting access towards the Alien Data Slates requires a alive Interrogation (any should do). Without the Alien Data Slate, no Lasers, no Alloy Tanks, no Retaliators, etc.. it is a research bottleneck by design. I advice a combination of Shotguns+Alloy Ammo, Heavy Cannons and some Rockets Launchers (Proxy and Incendiary Gren do well of course also).

Spoiler:

The spawn possibilty of Blaster Launchers can vary between 1 and 5 or maybe even 6 (at your current time position), so be careful who you leave exposed.

So be careful.

[hellrazor]

Uhh and btw,
i sweeted up CF08 (from Lukes Expanded Terror Maps) a little bit:

[SIMON BAILIE]

Looks like good sniping positions on those balconies. I really detest snakemen terror sites because

Spoiler:

By the rul file a snake terror site should have been 32 aliens in total, including 15 terror units. As attached I wiped out 44, bloody Chryssallids, stupid civilians as well because they always run straight towards them!

[hellrazor]

Looks like good sniping positions on those balconies. I really detest snakemen terror sites because

Spoiler:

By the rul file a snake terror site should have been 32 aliens in total, including 15 terror units. As attached I wiped out 44, bloody Chryssallids, stupid civilians as well because they always run straight towards them!

Jeah they are designed in this fashion, it took a while to find the perfect mapsize an the somehwat ideal spawncounts for this

Spoiler:

The described effect, will be even more severe since aggression: 2. So no more retreat or holding back creating zombies. They do charge like crazy!

[Harald_Gray]

Okay, I'm almost ready for the Cydonia mission. I'm at the point where I ignore most of grounded UFOs, I've practically stopped caring about money, my bases are nearly invulnerable, my team is ready... But...

There's no way for me to research the Cydonia mission because there's no Ethereal base on Earth and no alien mission planning to build one. I've even downed an Ethereal battleship but there was no commander in it, which I believe is a design choice, not a random effect. And with almost 500 detected UFOs and sixteen months of in-game time behind me the wait is getting kind of boring.

So my question is, is there something in the code that might give me a hope that an Ethereal alien base mission might generate anytime soon? I'd hate to wait for maybe even another year or more of ingame time, hoping the random number gods will take a pity on me.

[hellrazor]

Okay, I'm almost ready for the Cydonia mission. I'm at the point where I ignore most of grounded UFOs, I've practically stopped caring about money, my bases are nearly invulnerable, my team is ready... But...

There's no way for me to research the Cydonia mission because there's no Ethereal base on Earth and no alien mission planning to build one. I've even downed an Ethereal battleship but there was no commander in it, which I believe is a design choice, not a random effect. And with almost 500 detected UFOs and sixteen months of in-game time behind me the wait is getting kind of boring.

So my question is, is there something in the code that might give me a hope that an Ethereal alien base mission might generate anytime soon? I'd hate to wait for maybe even another year or more of ingame time, hoping the random number gods will take a pity on me.

Ok that was something which was bothering me from the beginning and i didn't had a proper solution for this.
Missions are picked randomly, and i had only 1 Month with 100% Ethereal Base Mission.
Since now Missionscripting is avaible, i will write a Alien Base Mission for the Ethereals in Month 14. Which will then be executed 100%.
This will go into Version 0.92, which i am currently working on.

I suggest for the time being, so that you can finish your playthrough the following,
edit in the Ethereal Alien Base Mission into your savegame (geoscape save) using the following Code:

Code: [Select]

  - type: STR_ALIEN_BASE
    region: STR_NORTH_AFRICA
    race: STR_ETHEREAL
    nextWave: 0
    nextUfoCounter: 0
    spawnCountdown: 120
    liveUfos: 0
    uniqueID: 2
    missionSiteZone: -1

Insert this after

Code: [Select]

alienMissions:

So you have a active Ethereal Base Mission in North Africa.
I am sorry about this serious oversight, but i was busy balancing out stuff, making Maps etc..
My own Testrun is currently in the beginning of December so i would have run into this sooner or later on my own.
May i ask how your overall experience was?
What could be improved?

EDIT: You can also shortcut by adding a Ethereal Commander into your Alien Containment if you want.

[Harald_Gray]

May i ask how your overall experience was?
What could be improved?

Ummm, I'm not sure my experience is entirely relevant, considering I've kept the 0.84 version installed for the whole playthrough. However, for what it is worth:
- I like the increased difficulty
- numbers of aliens in small ufos are sometimes too high, to the point where one begins to skip missions that would be boring and unimportant
- those high numbers of aliens also mean money quickly becomes much less of an issue
- long research times plus more research topics require way more scientists; I've ended up with 250 for much of my game
- research paths are sometimes too unpredictable for a first-time playthrough
- heavy laser/auto is such a great weapon that I've never switched to plasmas
- gazers are perfect for soldier training; stun/disarm one, wait for it to wake up (or make a medic waste his shots on your tank), keep emptying pistol magazines into it until your soldiers train up
- I'm happy that neither laser cannons nor plasma beams need ammo, so keep it that way, please
- pacing the game into 14+ months seems too much, as by that time one has so many ufos appearing that one ignores most crashed ships
- muton elites are nasty, so I've made it a habit to leave their crashed ships alone; there are so many other races regularly appearing by then that there's little point in facing them repeatedly without a good reason

And I guess I'll wait for the 0.92 and try again before I make any more suggestions on how to improve it.

[hellrazor]

Ummm, I'm not sure my experience is entirely relevant, considering I've kept the 0.84 version installed for the whole playthrough. However, for what it is worth:
- I like the increased difficulty
- numbers of aliens in small ufos are sometimes too high, to the point where one begins to skip missions that would be boring and unimportant
- those high numbers of aliens also mean money quickly becomes much less of an issue
- long research times plus more research topics require way more scientists; I've ended up with 250 for much of my game
- research paths are sometimes too unpredictable for a first-time playthrough
- heavy laser/auto is such a great weapon that I've never switched to plasmas
- gazers are perfect for soldier training; stun/disarm one, wait for it to wake up (or make a medic waste his shots on your tank), keep emptying pistol magazines into it until your soldiers train up
- I'm happy that neither laser cannons nor plasma beams need ammo, so keep it that way, please
- pacing the game into 14+ months seems too much, as by that time one has so many ufos appearing that one ignores most crashed ships
- muton elites are nasty, so I've made it a habit to leave their crashed ships alone; there are so many other races regularly appearing by then that there's little point in facing them repeatedly without a good reason

And I guess I'll wait for the 0.92 and try again before I make any more suggestions on how to improve it.

Well jeah Waspite, Gazers and Muton Elites were readjusted (some serious buffs compared to v0.84). Also new Terrorunits are in, Heavy Laser/Auto will not suffice for the new stuff. So jeah.
Actually it would be better if you edit the Mission in. Since i cannot let Ethereals built one base each Month after month 13, they would just swarm you. Hm.. but maybe this is a hint go the fuck to Cydonia! So actually i will let them ^^
I had some minor research fixes between Version 0.84 and the current one, so research behaves now like in the Research Tree Graphic.

[SIMON BAILIE]

Well I finally got the courage up and did the floater base in Africa, quite tough. Currently at the end of July.
 

Spoiler:

Was wondering why I was encountering virtually nothing but Mutons in July and I see that it's to do with the mission weights, like May is Snakeman month. Not looking forward to Muton Elite month or February of the second year which seems to be Ethereal month. Did my first terror mission with Mutons, Waspites, both the blobs terror units as I call them and armored cyberdiscs - very very tough. Boy they take some pounding, I think one armored cyberdisc took 12 or more hits from a laser rifle before dropping and exploding. I must have been a bit unlucky on the damage RNG and 68 armor is very impressive.

I must say that I'm getting a very challenging and fresh approach to UFO via Hardmode. Any word yet on version 0.92?

[hellrazor]

Well I finally got the courage up and did the floater base in Africa, quite tough. Currently at the end of July.
 

Spoiler:

Was wondering why I was encountering virtually nothing but Mutons in July and I see that it's to do with the mission weights, like May is Snakeman month. Not looking forward to Muton Elite month or February of the second year which seems to be Ethereal month. Did my first terror mission with Mutons, Waspites, both the blobs terror units as I call them and armored cyberdiscs - very very tough. Boy they take some pounding, I think one armored cyberdisc took 12 or more hits from a laser rifle before dropping and exploding. I must have been a bit unlucky on the damage RNG and 68 armor is very impressive.

I must say that I'm getting a very challenging and fresh approach to UFO via Hardmode. Any word yet on version 0.92?

I am glad you like it.
Well i have to redo the routes one 1 or 2 maps for the Expanded Terror, once this is done i release Version 0.92. Probably this evening, took me a bit longer then expected, but my room is so hot in the evening i really can't concentrate.

EDIT:
Actually i finished all routes for the Expanded Terror Maps, with the exception of one.
This one: