[SOLDIERS] Alien Hybrid Soldiers 1.3 - Now with more armor!

[Emong]

This is an ultimately fairly simple mod that lets X-COM research how to create Alien-Human hybrids and then recruit them for use as soldiers. In order to get them you'll need to research Psi-Labs, Alien Reproduction (which means you'll need a mod that makes that obtainable), and a Sectoid Corpse (mostly for flavor).

Hybrids have slightly lower stats in most ways (lower starting stats and lower caps), but have much higher psionic potential and come with a built in psi-panic attack, the same way mind controlled aliens do. They also have a custom set of names, so they'll show up being called things like "Subject Delta" or "Experiment 003". Once you've unlocked them you'll also be able to research and manufacture a personal armor equivalent for them, and a slightly worse version of power armor for them.

I made this mod mostly for myself, but I decided to release it partially because Solarius Scorch asked if I would and partially because I don't think there are any other mods that add new soldier types quite like this available and if nothing else it shows how it's done pretty clearly.

Credit goes to Solarius Scorch for the Hybrid sprites I used for unarmored hybrids, and XOps's Xeno Operations mod for the sprites I used for armored ones, shadics for the sprites for motorized armor, and Zane for the motorized armor inventory sprite.

[Arthanor]

Nice work! Cool stuff

Now with your example, I should try to mod brutes into XPiratez! 

[Slaughter]

Fantastic mod!
The age of Soldier types is upon us, people!

Also this makes a Alien mod more possible.

Do the hybrids come together with the normal soldiers you recruit or are they recruited/made differently?

[Emong]

Nice work! Cool stuff

Fantastic mod!

Thanks!

Now with your example, I should try to mod brutes into XPiratez! 

You could probably do some much more interesting stuff in XPiratez thanks to the fork it's built off of, too. I was initially going to try to make attack dogs as a proper soldier type, but it doesn't look like there's a way to add a player-usable built in melee weapon right now (or a way to restrict them from using guns for that matter). They'd also be eligible for promotions, which I think would be a little weird.

Do the hybrids come together with the normal soldiers you recruit or are they recruited/made differently?

They show up in the Purchase/Recruit screen as a separate (slightly more expensive) option than normal soldiers. It'd be nice if there were some kind of pop-up when a new soldier type becomes available, but this whole feature is still pretty raw yet.

[Emong]

Double post, but I've updated the attachment to the post with a new version. It finally occurred to me that copy and paste exists, so now hybrids don't wear helmets when they have armor on (except when they're a corpse, CTRL+X only takes you so far).

I also made the hybrid breeding program slightly less time-consuming to research and, perhaps most importantly of all, corrected the spelling of "armour" in the en-GB strings.

Just look at all these hybrids hanging out in a Lightning, looking like some kind of artist drew them.

[Slaughter]

Graphics quibble: Going by Apoc they look a bit too alien. If I remember right the Hybrids were made for infiltration, right? So once someone revamps them artistically then they should look human-ish - from nearly human to alien-ish but disguiseable.

Of course, maybe those are the alien hybrids, and the X-COM are made deliberatelly alien to prevent... problems.

Hey, just perceived another possible bonus: Night Sight Range!

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[Emong]

Graphics quibble: Going by Apoc they look a bit too alien. If I remember right the Hybrids were made for infiltration, right? So once someone revamps them artistically then they should look human-ish - from nearly human to alien-ish but disguiseable.

Of course, maybe those are the alien hybrids, and the X-COM are made deliberatelly alien to prevent... problems.

I did originally envision them as being closer to Apocalypse's hybrids, but I've grown attached to how visually distinct they are in the Battlescape. Part of the reason I bothered to get their helmets off was to keep that going. Hopefully if someone is nice enough to graphics these guys up, they'll keep some of the spirit of that.

Besides, these guys are meant to be human-bred in secret labs across the world and more or less leased to X-COM to fight off the alien threat. I think it's acceptable if they don't look like they'd fit in.

Hey, just perceived another possible bonus: Night Sight Range!

Sadly (unless I've overlooked something) I don't think it's possible to mod sight ranges without going to OpenXcom Extended or something like that. I don't feel like it's worth requiring that for such a small mod.

[Hobbes]

They'd also be eligible for promotions, which I think would be a little weird.

If bears can become corporals, or a corporal goat can be demoted back to private for misbehavior, or even penguins become colonels-in-chief of the Norwegian Guard, why can't dogs get promotions?

Of course, it would be weird if your commanding officer started every meeting by licking everyone's hand and smelling their behinds...

[Emong]

Well it's not like that was going to be the thing that stopped me :V

[Emong]

I've just put up another update to the mod.

Mostly a clean-up this time, since I've finally managed to play through a campaign far enough to unlock them. I've bumped up their minimum starting firing accuracy to 40 (since that's about the low end of me being able to deal with it) and lowered their max strength to 60 (honestly just because it felt better to me).

I also set a list order for everything that would need a list order, cleaned up and edited the text a bit, renamed their armor from "Alien Hybrid Armor" to "Hybrid Alloy Armor" and gave them an additional death scream (either Snakeman or Sectoid now instead of just Snakeman).

Finally, I added "Agent" and "Operative" to their list of "first names" and expanded their "last names" to include the entire Greek alphabet, the numbers 1-30 and 6 random letters from the Phoenician alphabet to round it out. That brings the total number of unique hybrid names up to 300.

[Emong]

With an unprecedented triple post, here's another update.

Most importantly I've added a new pseudo-power suit for hybrids (its defense is exactly average between personal armor and power suits) using modified sprites from this thread. I've PMed both shadics and Zane for permission, but neither have yet gotten back to me. I'll pull the mod down if either of them show up and say they don't want me to use their sprites, I just needed to get this uploaded somewhere before I forget about it.

Beyond that there were some spelling corrections in the GB strings and I bumped up the minimum psi-strength of hybrids to 65.

This will likely be the last update to this mod unless something comes up. I'm pretty satisfied with it, and I'm slowly moving out of the XCOM phase of my game playing cycle.

I hope you all enjoy the mod!

[new_civilian]

Nice mod! 

I took the liberty and changed the faces of the Hybrids a bit, here's the result in case someone wants them.

[Solarius Scorch]

Cap-toor-ing the improved face for kay-oss!
Thanks!

[new_civilian]

You're welcome.  Those hybrids are ariginally from the FMP mod, aren't they?

---

Updated the screens again and corrected the centering of the images which was somewhat off.

Also, here a cleaner hyprid.PCK with those strange white stray pixels removed.

[Solarius Scorch]

Many thanks, I'll use this too. It was my very early days of spriting.

I actually wanted to replace the entire sprite with something more like the hybrids from Piratez, but eventually never got around to do this.