Re: The X-Com Files - 3.5: Whispers In The Dark

[Dr.Crowley]

After playing Area51 I deceided to try this mod. The result was... "wow!" Thanks for your work here, mr. Solarius. I really like how it goes. There not just aliens - woohoo! And thank god the scale of events are somehow smaller now. No need to chase aliens - unless I'll be forced to hijack civilian planes for this Some thought about what I saw at this moment:

- Chupakabras using Zergling sounds - errr, okay. Anyway they tried to zergrush me in our first encounter
- Yetis... sorry, shamblers has issues with walking frames - some angles are looking glitchy.
- "capture the cultist/abductee"-type missions are really good feature. Virtually these are only mission type with next-to zero mortality rate!
- Zombie Infection missions - it's Resident Evil time! Or... Doom time (because zombie death sprite looks very familiar for me and some civilians have zombieman death sound)?
- Mongorn? Who the hell... oh, hello Grey Witch.
- panicking Giant Beetles - lolwut?

And now for the questions:
- what about compatibility with music packs? If I'll try to use PSX music pack, will something be broken?
- is there any priorities about "story-wise" researches? I mean, is Alien-related research my primary object or I can follow exclusively any other branch (mutants/zombies/cults)?
- compatibility question again: are my current saves from 0.5.4 compatible with 0.5.5?

[Solarius Scorch]

After playing Area51 I deceided to try this mod. The result was... "wow!" Thanks for your work here, mr. Solarius. I really like how it goes. There not just aliens - woohoo! And thank god the scale of events are somehow smaller now. No need to chase aliens - unless I'll be forced to hijack civilian planes for this Some thought about what I saw at this moment:

Thanks for the kind review! Every time I see one I feel that this mod is something worth doing after all.

- Chupakabras using Zergling sounds - errr, okay. Anyway they tried to zergrush me in our first encounter
- Yetis... sorry, shamblers has issues with walking frames - some angles are looking glitchy.
- "capture the cultist/abductee"-type missions are really good feature. Virtually these are only mission type with next-to zero mortality rate!
- Zombie Infection missions - it's Resident Evil time! Or... Doom time (because zombie death sprite looks very familiar for me and some civilians have zombieman death sound)?
- Mongorn? Who the hell... oh, hello Grey Witch.
- panicking Giant Beetles - lolwut?

Zergling sounds are not the first pack I used, but it seems like the most appropriate.
Problems with frames are not related to the mod directly, but to the code. Will be fixed.
Yeah, the dead zombie sprite is taken from Doom.
Of course Giant Beetles can panic!

And now for the questions:
- what about compatibility with music packs? If I'll try to use PSX music pack, will something be broken?

To be honest I don't know. It should work, but no guarantees. You can always give it a try; if it crashes or anything, just disable the music pack mod.

- is there any priorities about "story-wise" researches? I mean, is Alien-related research my primary object or I can follow exclusively any other branch (mutants/zombies/cults)?

There are crucial researches. Follow the advice of your staff, especially the strategy researches for subsequent promotion levels.

- compatibility question again: are my current saves from 0.5.4 compatible with 0.5.5?

Yes, they are compatible.

[HelmetHair]

To be completely honest, it never happened to me, I've always been swamped with all sorts of mutants. But I hear and recognize your problem, and I think you can relax - various steps were taken to rebalance the early game, so hopefully it'll be improved.

Awesome! I hated to have to go digging through the research tree... forbidden knowledge So what did you change the balance on?

[Solarius Scorch]

Awesome! I hated to have to go digging through the research tree... forbidden knowledge So what did you change the balance on?

It's kinda complicated... I haven't changed the enemy spawning as such, but the early biological tech tree was changed - with the new bio lab facility you get some researches done faster, for example.

What was it exactly that gave you trouble?

[HelmetHair]

I kept getting railroaded because of a lack of body armor, and not so good weapons. Tons of activity but simply bottle necked by an inability to progress with any equipment. Casualties were mounting from stupid preventable shit by having inferior equipment. Better equipment comes with promotion so thus I needed to get promoted.

I couldn't research Promotion II.
I couldn't research Promotion II because I didn't have All Staff Contacted.
I couldn't research All Staff Contacted because I couldn't Recruit Head Researcher
I couldn't Recruit Head Researcher because I couldn't research Mutant Physiology.
I couldn't research Mutant Physiology because I couldn't get a live specimen of applicable creatures.
I couldn't get a live specimen because the creatures were not spawning.... except for once a Fenir wolf.... but it died on its first turn because it charged my dudes and they shot the ever-loving shit out of it with MP5s and magnums during reaction fire.
 
Seriously...poor fucking wolf.

I was getting every critter except the ones I needed. Beatles, chupas, zombies (oh lawd the zombies), scorpions, shadow bats. TONS of cultists missions, aliens even!.... I had 3 successful alien missions in a single month!  So, I'm sitting there on a metric fuckton of captured alien technology,with the Sectoid corpse researched and a dozen more on ice. I can't research Alien containment to get a live alien and I can't get promotion II.... fuck.

I'm thinking "how the fuck am I supposed to prove there is a threat to the world when I'm literally killing aliens? do they want a live one? Well, I cut one open and know how they work, or could figure it out to get an alien containment." Nope.

So, I thumbed through the research tree and saw the problem.

Edited because cold medicine makes me trippy as fuck

[Solarius Scorch]

OK, I understand now... But I can't imagine how fucked you were with not getting the right creatures, since at every single playthrough mongorns and shamblers are like a quarter of alien life form missions.

In other news, I realized that cult bases have no random loot, lol. I forgot to finish it long ago and never noticed. Will be done in the next version.

[HelmetHair]

Eh, imagine or don't. It was probably a fluke and not really all that important really; just frustrating.

[Solarius Scorch]

Eh, imagine or don't. It was probably a fluke and not really all that important really; just frustrating.

Yeah, I need more tests to see if it was a one in a million fluke or a one in a four fluke. The first is acceptable, the latter is not.

Also, I finally started working on Syndicate offices... Expect very tall (for X-Com) and very random buildings.

[HelmetHair]

I think that the Black-OPS CAW may be a touch OP with AP rounds.

[Solarius Scorch]

I think that the Black-OPS CAW may be a touch OP with AP rounds.

I think it's OK... Used to wander about it, but I met too many players who think it's useless.

[ohartenstein23]

It's a nice rookie gun when they're poor enough shots to not use Nitro Express or Arasaka 3000, but it's damn heavy and not that much better than the first Shotgun you can get with AP slugs.

[mrbiasha]

I would say it is a fairly good assault weapon, quite useful when you need to enter tight spaces and buildings, fast and accurate enough. I find it more useful to myself than blackops shotgun.

[Dr.Crowley]

I encountered a weird thing while playing 0.5.5 - 70% of "Strange Life Form" missions have zombies instead any other mutants. And right now I met bloody zombies IN THE "CROP CIRCLES" MISSION! Can't remember something like that happening in 0.5.4...
Here's a screenshot:

Was it intended? I sent my "inquisitors" (team of agents with non-letal weapons for capturing cultists and abductees) for this mission but I don't think they can handle zombies 
UPD.: I wanted to see if this will happen again so I loaded autosave. Crop Circle mission appeared again, different map this time... BUT DANG IT! I found a zombie again  I used "full display" option for bigger picture:

[Solarius Scorch]

Yes, fully intended. Research stuff to learn more on why.

I'm glad you made these comics, they show that the intended effect was successfully achieved. I wouldn't mind seeing more comics!

As for zombies appearing on strange life form missions... Well, it's a mater or RNG. But I wouldn't mind having more monster types. I'm still adding them (the last one was the beetle), but it is quite time-consuming (and I also need some sprites to convert, since I'm not drawing them completely from scratch, no way).

[HelmetHair]

Does Xcom files allow for multiple items per hour to be manufactured?

I can't tell... all I know is the option of  "multiple items per hour" in OXC Vanillla is not included in the the XCom files.