[EXPANSION]Hardmode Expansion -- General Feedback Thread

[hellrazor]

Feedback is the least I can do after so much work a mod creator has put into the game we love.

Thanks for the praise I guess the final Version will epic for LP's i hope at least.

Not much except when my soldiers were inside the Blaster blast radius

Spoiler:

By the time they showed up I had already mastered the Blaster Bomb and/or the Plasma Elerium Shotgun. They were effective against these beam firing bipedal toys. If they had a secondary weapon such as a Blaster launcher, then things would be different as more brown pants would need re-issuing for my soldiers.

Well i guess i have to give them some HE resistance, maybe 0.6 same as the Blue Cyberdiscs, so Blaster bombs against them are less effective. I found out that melee weapons are also very effective against them. But i guess the weapon of choice is still the Plasma Shotgun. Maybe i buff there Hitpoints also, so they become a real nightmare *muhahahahah* *evil grin*.

I'm including the last three important savegames: 1. Just before taking off to Cydonia; 2. Just before going to the Brain level; 3. Just before shooting the Brain.

I will take a look at them and play around abit with them soon, so i can balance out the units in a more devilish way. Chryssalid Spitters will also show up in the future in the final stage, but i guess i have to make them PSI immune, the player could abuse them against the other enemies.

My mistake was to bring those useless alloy tanks. They were all dead within a few turns at the Pyramids level. Instead, for the space, I could have brought 4x4=16 useless rookies. They can scout more .

Well, those tanks were actually intended to use together with Laser Weapons and not for the Cydonia Mission, becaue they are useless at that stage of the game.
I guess converting alive "Armored Sectopods" into X-Com Walkertanks will be something i will add in the future, so you have a strong breaching unit, which will be usefull, but maybe to overpowered since the AI doesn't know the weak points.
The only way to go is testing.

Spoiler:

At the end, the tactics were to go about into small groups of two or three, basically not engaging unless they were face-to-face, or crossfired. Blasters and Shotguns all the way, a blaster for long distance, a point-blank shotgun burst for close combat.

In the final level, those super-elite mutons were the most annoying (in a good way). I kind of got used to destroying the Ethereals and their blue mechanical pets during base or wreckage assaults on Earth, but, boy, these mutons could take, in some cases, a shotgun blast auto fire from 2 tiles over, and then turn around and return fire! Blasters were the only choice left, and even that direct hits only. Some soldiers ran out of ammo and had to reload from whatever items survived on the ground.

Looking forward to play it again in the near future. 

I am glad to hear that

[hellrazor]

Ok i put in the "Walkertank/Plasma" as i call it, it is basically a "hacked" Armored Sectopod.

So they have the same stats as those. Maybe i will make them a little bit weaker or so, i don't depends on how unbalancing this unit now is.
I found a BigOb and Sprite for them from Sectopods HWP's Mod, but both required fixing the graphics. I also made some custom Corpsesprites, just for good measure. The Production Process of these requires a "alive" Armored Sectopod. So have fun getting one alive. *evilgrin*
So they are your lategame tanks which really can soak up some damage, they are slower only having 80 TU, but the impressive Armor compensates for that, even thou they are not invulnerable.

[hellrazor]

Took the freedom of making a proper HandOb, for the Elerium Rocket

[hellrazor]

Well everyone is aware of Alloy Ammo i hope
It is quite a good idea, but the lack of sprites i found disturbing.
Bigob's were already existant, but FloorOb's abnd HandOb's were missing.
So i took the freedom and recolored those accordingly, see screenshots and attached zipfiles.
Those are for Pistol, Rifle, Heavy Canon and Autocanon.
I will also make the same for Sniper Rifle and Shotgun.
See attached zip file, also contains the Bigobs, which were not made by me.

Some people think those are only small details, but i like to have complete sets for consistency.

[hellrazor]

Muton Elite Guards (former Muton Brain Guards) are also now be researchable.
And gave them a recolored UfoPaedia Picture (Original is from XOp's Mod).
I hope it looks kinda decent, since the lack of red in the UfoPaedia Palette made this rather painfull..

[hellrazor]

SniperRifle Clip do now have proper FloorOb's and HandOb's

I also post the Sniperrifle in question to which these belong.
See screenshots and attached zipfile (Contains Bigob also).

[SIMON BAILIE]

Have you changed something in hardmode compared to a vanilla game as per screenshot, Russia defected at the end of February 2000? I thought Russia couldn't defect because of its location over more than 1 mission zone. Also attached is my latest save, I'm just wanting to check, without spoiling any surprises, am I on course in regards to getting to the final research as I haven't even researched the martian solution yet.

[hellrazor]

Have you changed something in hardmode compared to a vanilla game as per screenshot, Russia defected at the end of February 2000? I thought Russia couldn't defect because of its location over more than 1 mission zone. Also attached is my latest save, I'm just wanting to check, without spoiling any surprises, am I on course in regards to getting to the final research as I haven't even researched the martian solution yet.

I was always wondering if it was possible, and now i know. I presume this comes from the integrated Terrain pack. I am glad it works, since now all countries can join the aliens. How are you holding up?

[SIMON BAILIE]

Pretty decent, though I've lost 5 countries by now and have 6 alien bases up and running atm. Must get around to kicking over a few of those anthills. I deliberately let the ethereals get a base up and going in N America

Spoiler:

as I know you need an ethereal commander to finish the game

. I would say overall I'm very pleased with your expansion; Gazers, Muton Elites and of course Ethereals are the toughest aliens. I must admit that I never did fear cyberdiscs that much after the early part of any game but with what you've done to them, I fear them now as they take a heck of a beating. My current mission is a landed muton elite battleship and 1 of my scouts spotted 2 of them just outside the main entrance so I had my rocketeer pump a blaster bomb to hit between them and was surprised when 1 of them survived, but not for long as a scout in a stealth suit blasted it fairly close with a plasma shotgun. Really am looking forward to whatever else you're putting into v0.94.

[hellrazor]

Pretty decent, though I've lost 5 countries by now and have 6 alien bases up and running atm. Must get around to kicking over a few of those anthills. I deliberately let the ethereals get a base up and going in N America

Spoiler:

as I know you need an ethereal commander to finish the game

. I would say overall I'm very pleased with your expansion; Gazers, Muton Elites and of course Ethereals are the toughest aliens. I must admit that I never did fear cyberdiscs that much after the early part of any game but with what you've done to them, I fear them now as they take a heck of a beating. My current mission is a landed muton elite battleship and 1 of my scouts spotted 2 of them just outside the main entrance so I had my rocketeer pump a blaster bomb to hit between them and was surprised when 1 of them survived, but not for long as a scout in a stealth suit blasted it fairly close with a plasma shotgun. Really am looking forward to whatever else you're putting into v0.94.

I am reworking my research.rul at the moment. And be prepared,

Spoiler:

since you may now encounter the Muton Elite Guards in Earth.
Also the Armored Sectopod has increased resistance to HE damage (0.75).
Sectoid Elites are also in and will kick your but with Psi, i also doubled there hitpoints (30->60)
and put them in Personal Armor with some nice damage modifiers. Their Psi might need balancing thou.

Once i finished integrating all new Items, Races and such. I will work on the 3 Special Missions for
the Alien Data Slate, the Alien Data Core and the Psi Amp.
I guess once these have been tested i will release probably, maybe also add some of the Missions from Hobbes UFO Redux,
once he releases a new Version of his Mod.
I will probably wait until then, since there is some awesome stuff in there and some of it may contribute to my mod nicely.

[SIMON BAILIE]

https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,2358.msg51247.html#msg51247

In relation to the above post by yourself is the following something to do with the terrains as I've noticed most notably on supply ships that I get a view of inside the ufo from the outside without ever having been in or having any of the aliens mind controlled. It seems to happen when one of your units is next to the outer wall of the ufo, see picture.

[yrizoud]

The next time you see it, select the unit which apparently saw through walls, and hit F10 to make a "voxel screenshot" : It saves an image showing a kinda 3D view. You will probably see a "hole" between two walls.

[SIMON BAILIE]

Thanks yrizoud, completely forgot about the f10 function.

[hellrazor]

https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,2358.msg51247.html#msg51247

In relation to the above post by yourself is the following something to do with the terrains as I've noticed most notably on supply ships that I get a view of inside the ufo from the outside without ever having been in or having any of the aliens mind controlled. It seems to happen when one of your units is next to the outer wall of the ufo, see picture.

I have noticed this myself a few times already. The interesting thing, that it only reveals the inside of the UFO, but not enemy units inside.
My guess is that this has todo with the MCD Patches for North Walls, which are applied by OpenXcom, since normally those fields are not walkable. Also this only occurs in my experience if the unit is directly on the field containing the wall.

I will check myself with Voxelscreenshots if there really are "holes" in the walls. But i doubt it, since you can not see units inside throu the wall.
Maybe i have to rework all UFO Maps in my Mod and add additional inner walls, so you can not see the terrain inside, like Luke83 Darker UFO's.

And btw SIMON, did you modify the Ruleset to make the Muton Brain Guards appear?
Since in Version 0.93b they will only show up on the Cydonia Final Mission, or is this from a New Battle?

[SIMON BAILIE]

Agree with you fully that it's probably just a minor visual glitch and as you said you certainly don't get to see the enemy units and if, as I have you been,you've been playing openxcom for a good while you'll know the general layout of the vanilla ufos at least. So it can't be used as a major exploit, I just thought it was a bit odd. Those pictures were just from a test I ran in battle mode to see how often this "oddity" occurred.