[EXPANSION]Hardmode Expansion -- General Feedback Thread

[hellrazor]

Thanks! I like your difficulty changes, but after failing several times without a saves I will play again your mod with some modifications that I already did.
1) Increased amount of HP - soldiers have initial 100 HP with a cap of 200 HP like old school shooters of ID software.
2) medikit heal 15 HP, 20 HP, 25 HP per wound.
It's not a realistic and don't have a right balance especially with tanks that has only 90 HP (easy to hit, can't survive against blaster burst or alien shootgun), but I like an idea of high reuseability of soldiers with field medic.

Well feel free todo so if you like, even thou you are seriously unbalancing it with giving soldiers more hp. I hope you get punched in the face lots of times, for this disgression by some Muton Berserkers, which are hilarious in ironman mode.

[Xtendo-com]

Well feel free todo so if you like, even thou you are seriously unbalancing it with giving soldiers more hp.

May be you are right, but I balance that with surprise effect (I don't know what I can expect during an year), without any saves to revert an action and random unlucky situations like 200% damage.

In attachment
1) Two field medics.

I hope you get punched in the face lots of times,

2) A guy with M79 missed and hit to my skyranger with full of ammunition...

[Solarius Scorch]

Well feel free todo so if you like, even thou you are seriously unbalancing it with giving soldiers more hp.

Not at all! It only requires boosting all weapons damage by something like 250%. Oh, and aliens' HP too.

[hellrazor]

Not at all! It only requires boosting all weapons damage by something like 250%. Oh, and aliens' HP too.

Actually its defeating the purpose of playing a mod which is based upon difficulty.

May be you are right, but I balance that with surprise effect (I don't know what I can expect during an year), without any saves to revert an action and random unlucky situations like 200% damage.

In attachment
1) Two field medics.2) A guy with M79 missed and hit to my skyranger with full of ammunition...

I usually do not have dedicadet Medics, no reason to have too, once you get normal Medikits half of the Squad gets one, the other a Motionscanner and you are set to go.
I actually also do not advise useing the OpenXcom builtin Ironman mode, there might be still bugs in the Mod, which i do not have found so far.
They can be small stuff which is easy to fix and does not break savegames, but you only know what they are once they occur.
It is much better to enforce your own ironman, and still have the possibility to reload another save if such a bug occurs.
Otherwise, the key to actually succeed in the early groundbattles, especially in _January, is useing 1 tank as a scout. A large proportion of aliens will carry Plasma Pistols,
which only do minor damage towards tanks, if at all. Also you get a Tank/Cannon and a Tank/Rocketlauncher for free, its sitting in the Storage.
The Tank/Cannon actually is really good early on, since it fires High Explosive Rounds and has 3 Shot Autofire. All early games enemies will basically fall to its fire, exception are Cyberdiscs. Even vs Chryssalids it does good work.

[Countdown]

2) A guy with M79 missed and hit to my skyranger with full of ammunition...

Haha, this is actually what prompted me to make my first post on these forums a few months ago. A cyberdisc blew up by the skyranger and took all my equipment with it. Pissed me off at the time, but now I look back at it and it's hilarious. Crazy random stuff like that is part of the appeal.

[Xtendo-com]

Believe me or not I started again without HP modifications. I lost two free tanks with one shoot of blaster and my tanks don't even got out of the skyranger.

[hellrazor]

Believe me or not I started again without HP modifications. I lost two free tanks with one shoot of blaster and my tanks don't even got out of the skyranger.

I hope you won the mission and recovered the corpses of them, so you can repair them (50% of cost).
Also try to avoid night missions they are really terrible. Otherwise i wish you good luck. Btw you can try to rush power suits, makes for a early Base Raid thou.

How about smoking your landingzone and skipping turn one? That sure helps believe me...

--- posts merged by Solarius Scorch-nya~! ---

Some small convinence SubMods:
Adapted XcomUtil_AlwaysDayTime
Adapted XcomUtil_AlwaysNightTime

For all terrains and ufos in Hardmode Expansion.

Edit: Also added my Screening Statstring Mod.

[Xtendo-com]

Question about terror mission. It's really possible to save enough civilians without getting worse rating? I can't manually control civilians so they are doomed anyway.

[Cooper]

Question about terror mission. It's really possible to save enough civilians without getting worse rating? I can't manually control civilians so they are doomed anyway.

You could stun as many of them as possible, aliens don't care about stunned civilians.

[hellrazor]

Question about terror mission. It's really possible to save enough civilians without getting worse rating? I can't manually control civilians so they are doomed anyway.

That depends you will most likely have a poor rating. But better that as to take the 2k penalty if the terrorsite despawns.

You could stun as many of them as possible, aliens don't care about stunned civilians.

Well if he is able to do so, thats the way to go.

[Arthanor]

Stunning civilians is a great way to prevent them from being targeted and killed, or worse targeted by a chryssalid and turned into a zombie. It's well worth doing as saving half the civilians would have netted you a score of 0, and saving all of them (obviously a rather unlikely outcome) would have gotten a positive score of the same magnitude as what you got.

This is actually a very interesting scoring example, where score is centered around rescued civilians and everything else averages out.

[Xtendo-com]

I recommend to get Alloy Ammo and Alloy Vests first, since with Alloy Ammo Shotguns will solve your reaper problems and Rifles get a significant boost.
The best success assaulting the base so far, i had by useing a mixed team of Shotgunners/Motiondetector dudes, Rifle dudes for support and some Auto Canons.

I found another way to get base quickly without any additional researches except for motion detector. I don't ever used a mixed team, everyone wear one pattern. Pistol versus floater, high explosive versus aliens when pistol useless, motion detector. Reaper and silacoid dies after one detonation of high explosive. Floater dies after few or sometimes after one shoot.

[hellrazor]

I found another way to get base quickly without any additional researches except for motion detector. I don't ever used a mixed team, everyone wear one pattern. Pistol versus floater, high explosive versus aliens when pistol useless, motion detector. Reaper and silacoid dies after one detonation of high explosive. Floater dies after few or sometimes after one shoot.

Well thats a creative way I presume you liked the Pistol autoshot ?

[Xtendo-com]

Well thats a creative way

I noticed that my team turns into heavy demolition squad after that base assault. Everything in map explodes. Scout noticed an alien - BOOM with grenade, heavy explosions or M79. Alien hides in building - BOOM with heavy explosions and M79. Alien hides in UFO - BOOM with sensor grenade. Someone killed my scout - BOOM with primed high explosion just for case. It's really fun... But... I completely forget that... I explode also my loot... Nooooooooooooooo

I presume you liked the Pistol autoshot ?

I only used autoshoot in order to shoot three times without reaction fire since three snap shoots requires the same amount of TU and more accurate.

[hellrazor]

I noticed that my team turns into heavy demolition squad after that base assault. Everything in map explodes. Scout noticed an alien - BOOM with grenade, heavy explosions or M79. Alien hides in building - BOOM with heavy explosions and M79. Alien hides in UFO - BOOM with sensor grenade. Someone killed my scout - BOOM with primed high explosion just for case. It's really fun... But... I completely forget that... I explode also my loot... Nooooooooooooooo
I only used autoshoot in order to shoot three times without reaction fire since three snap shoots requires the same amount of TU and more accurate.

Blowing up loot is bad. You will need all the money you can get. Especially for financing your research. Well you will see how it goes. Getting your frist 100 scientists will give you some ecpnomic trouble. Expect being activly being on the hunt for more money, even more so if you loose countries to alien infiltrations.