Reaver's Alien Mix

[The Reaver of Darkness]

This mod adds a variety of mixed race crews to the game to spice up the late game experience. It also nerfs alien psionics by making them much less likely to psionically attack soldiers that are not seen by aliens.


Latest Version: 0.3.0
See post #2 for details and download.
edit: There are no plans for a full release as a standalone mod. This mod has been wrapped into Reaver's Faithful Megamod but if you want a standalone mod really badly you can send me a message requesting it.


There are two mixed race crews you'll find occasionally in the late game
Operations Mix: This group has a mix of floaters, snakemen, and mutons. Larger vessels will contain sectoids or ethereals as command ranks. Regular UFOs will sometimes carry this crew type in the late game.
Terror Mix: This group has a wide variety of terrorist units, with chryssalids being the most common. They will have a few sectoid leaders to manage the group. This crew type will only be seen on Alien Terror missions. If you see them operating in a normal vessel, it means that vessel was part of a terror operation.





edit: I have discovered that this part of the mod does not work. It should be fixed in the upcoming release of Reaver's Faithful Megamod but it takes so long to generate new alien bases and check them that I cannot reliably test this part of the mod in the short term.
Alien base commanders are always ethereals now. This may make bases much harder to assault in the early game. You may occasionally see Ethereal Commanders in ships, but most ship commanders will be the same race as the rest of the ship occupants. Ethereals and mutons are much more closely entwined now. Ethereals command the alien forces while mutons defend the ethereals. Ethereal bases have muton soldiers, and muton bases have Ethereal upper ranks.
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Ethereals' firing accuracy and reactions have been reduced, especially the leaders and commanders. They will cease to be an elite fighting unit and will rely more on their psionics as well as their muton companions for defense. They are still very durable but otherwise vulnerable in close quarters. The psi skill of the Ethereal soldier has been reduced, while the psi strength of the Ethereal commander has been increased. This means in a mission with lots of ethereals, you'll get fewer effective psi attacks, but the top effectiveness of psi attacks has been increased significantly. If you combine this with Reaver's Soldier Classes, you'll find even the strongest psi wizards cannot stand very well against the sheer psionic might of the ethereal commander. But if you get rid of the commander quickly, the rest will fall pretty easily.





The alien psionics nerf goes well with the addition of ethereal commanders at all of the bases. You'll need to be well prepared to assault a base, but regular craft will be much easier to take down. When you do encounter psionics, it'll help to spread your soldiers out. You won't get psionic attacks on units the aliens can't see, but they can still attack a unit they saw during your turn immediately prior to theirs. They can also see through the eyes of any unit they control. Using this information, you can learn to shield your units from psionic attacks. You can also use tanks to assault the base commanders.

This mod is meant to be used with Psionic Line of Fire turned OFF. You'll be able to continue using slightly cheaty psionics, while the aliens' psionics won't be much cheatier than yours. When Fred spots a sectoid soldier on the far end of the map, Nancy will be able to perform psionic attacks on the sectoid even though she cannot see it. Likewise, the sectoid leader hiding in the UFO can perform psionic attacks on Fred. But Nancy and the sectoid leader cannot perform psionic attacks on eath other.

Try to get rid of all psionic aliens before turn 20 or before you reduce their population down to 2. After either one of those things happens, the aliens can see your troops.



This mod is in development so let me know how you feel about it or any ideas you have regarding it. I'm open to new ideas for changes to the aliens. My goal is to remove all fake difficulty and replace it with content that's actually challenging, while presenting a game that feels much like the original game but less buggy and better developed. I don't want to add unnecessary content, but I'm happy to fill in gaps where the original game had too few possibilities or not enough meaningful choices.

[The Reaver of Darkness]

Version 0.3.0

Lots of important changes and fixes, getting close to version 1.0!


I fixed the issue in which alien bases had standard crews instead of base crews. Turns out I had forgotten to apply the changes to Alien Base mission crews! Now you'll find the Alien Base crew on any new alien bases made after you install version 0.3+ or in any ships that are involved in an Alien Base mission. Old bases should continue to have the same old crews they got when they were formed.

I changed the alien race layouts a bit:
Sectoid bases now have sectoid commanders, and floater bases have sectoid commanders. Mixed Terror now has only 1x1 terror units appearing in Medium and Large Scouts involved in terror missions. These scouts will now come with sectoids in addition to chryssalids, silacoids, and celatids. Mixed Terror has sectoid leader rank placed at soldier rank position so that more of these will spawn. You may experience psionic attacks on mixed terror missions. The terrorist units have plenty of sectoids along to manage them.


I am developing some fan lore suggesting that Sectoids are a middle-management leader race acting fairly independently under the rule of the Ethereals. The Sectoids are often seen working with Floaters or terrorist units. The Floaters are a loyal race that can be made to perform moderately skilled menial labor. Snakemen, on the other hand, are useless for skilled tasks but are excellent combatants. To that end they are paired with the frighteningly aggressive Chryssalids, and the two are more or less left to their own devices, being inserted wherever the aliens wish to inject some chaos. The two are essentially a type of biological weapon. Mutons operate in close quarters with Ethereals, acting as guard and muscle to their overlords.



Further changes:

I removed a lot of redundant data as I sorted out what changes I wanted. The file should be significantly smaller now.

I changed the spawn rates of UFOs. I felt that mediums were way too uncommon, now you'll see way more of them. Abductors will now spawn in infiltration missions as well as abduction missions. Harvesters will spawn in research missions as well as harvest missions. Battleship spawns have been reduced and now only spawn in alien base and retaliation missions. Mediums should feel more generic now, and battleships should feel more special.

Terror ships had a couple slots removed, but now some of the retaliation missions will use terror ships instead of battleships to attack your base. Unfortunately I cannot currently change retaliations that spawn as a result of you shooting down alien craft, but time-based (about 1 year in) and research-based (after completing Martian Solution) retaliation will usually be a terror ship. There is now a purpose for having even a few defense facilities, as it won't take much to shoot down a terror ship.
(I haven't tested the defense facilities against a terror ship yet)