[UFO MEGAMOD] Reaver's Faithful Megamod

[The Reaver of Darkness]

Is a file missing as when I check the ufopaedia in debug mode the game crashes per attached log file. This happens whether I run the game off nightly 01/08/17 or oxce+ 3.9a of 14/07/17. Using v0.9.4 of your mod.

It was a typo with a late game ship. You could play the whole game and never see it, but I included a fix. Get 0.9.5 if you feel it's important.


edit: Try psionics early. You should be able to build a psi-lab with very little research in that field, and get your training started early. You'll need it for when you finally get psi-amps, also it's just good to know what your soldiers' psi strength values are.

[The Reaver of Darkness]

Version 0.10.6

This update integrates my new LIGHTNIA.MCD tile pieces into the maps of the Lightning, Heracles, and Stalker. I have completely re-done the Heracles and Stalker maps, I think they look better now. I also added a set of baseview and interception icons for the Stalker.

I added some debug "races" which are just the terrorists, but with regular aliens in the terrorist slots. You won't see them during normal play but you can use them to test the terrorist units easily in a custom battle.

There are some other minor changes listed in the metadata file.

But the most important impact on gameplay is from the change to craft radar ranges. On an earlier update, I released the 2x2 Large Radar System facility, making it much more difficult and expensive to have a large radar at your base. I increased the range of either radar very slightly, but overall you'll find you have less radar coverage from your bases. But now I have increased the minimum radar range of your aircraft. They used to be 672 but now are 900, about a 34% increase. All of the other craft radar ranges have also been increased, with the larger ranges receiving a smaller increase. So mostly this makes it easier to patrol with your non-patrol-specialized aircraft. The game now expects you to fly your aircraft frequently, scanning for alien activity.

Eventually I intend to release the Large Hyper-Wave Decoder, a very expensive 2x2 facility which will have 1/3rd longer range than the Large Radar and will wrap nearly 30% of the way around the planet. This will enable you, in the late game, to easily cover the world with your ground-based radars if you choose to devote enough resources into that pursuit. I need to make resources for this facility: the map (easy) and the baseview sprite (not so easy). Please let me know if you have a decent sprite for the large hyper-wave decoder. edit: done!

I increased the radar range of the Skyranger and Interceptor a bit past the 900 that other craft have. This makes them "baby patrol craft" and gives you some decent patrol options before you unlock any dedicated patrollers.

You can check out the changes to LIGHTNIA.MCD here.

[Dwarmin]

Time for me to pillage another mod for resources. I've been grabbing bits and bobs from everything lately. But as someone who uses tank strategies pretty heavily, this mod is really welcome as an addition to area 51.

Eventually I intend to release the Large Hyper-Wave Decoder, a very expensive 2x2 facility which will have 1/3rd longer range than the Large Radar and will wrap nearly 30% of the way around the planet. This will enable you, in the late game, to easily cover the world with your ground-based radars if you choose to devote enough resources into that pursuit. I need to make resources for this facility: the map (easy) and the baseview sprite (not so easy). Please let me know if you have a decent sprite for the large hyper-wave decoder.

I got just what you are looking for! Xeno Operations mod has a 2x2 base facilities for both extra large radars, and extra large Hyper-wave decoders.

https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,2913.0.html

It contains both sprites for the map and the base. I made sure, just had to edit the battle.cfg file.

[The Reaver of Darkness]

Time for me to pillage another mod for resources. I've been grabbing bits and bobs from everything lately. But as someone who uses tank strategies pretty heavily, this mod is really welcome as an addition to area 51.

Great! I love using tanks! I need to check out other tank mods and get some resources to snag.

I got just what you are looking for! Xeno Operations mod has a 2x2 base facilities for both extra large radars, and extra large Hyper-wave decoders.

It's been a while since I checked out Xeno Ops, looks like a lot has happened since I was there last. Thanks for showing me that! I can use that large laboratory as well! I see the large radar graphic uses a similar trick to what I did, but overall it looks much better. The Hyper-wave decoder is simple and brilliant!


Do you know where I can get alternate guns and chassis for tanks, to make my guardian and assault variants look different?

[Yataka Shimaoka]

Try the SAR mod by Drages

[The Reaver of Darkness]

Cool mod, but it doesn't have the kind of variety I'm looking for.


I got my hands on Falko's sprite and palette converter tools, and made some color swaps to make the different tank types at least visually clearer, which is in version 0.11. Maybe someday I'll make my own graphics for the tanks but for now at least they're all visually distinct.

I might post an update for 0.11 later, or maybe I'll jump straight to 0.12 and include the large hyperwave decoder and laboratory.

[drages]

Cool mod, but it doesn't have the kind of variety I'm looking for.

I nearly (maybe missed a few) searched for all OpenXcom mods for all vehicle sprites for SAR mod. I used and created the most vanilla friendly versions with all possible weapon turrets. There is more sprites out there but mostly from other games and without turret options.

If you want to use 3 tank types, you can use TFTD-UFO/SAR default-SAR heavy tanks for that combinations.

[The Reaver of Darkness]

Don't get me wrong, they look great, they just don't look like a light, medium, and heavy of the same tank. Same deal with the turrets, it's just going to look funny if one of the laser turrets is a round tube with red paint while the other is a rectangular tube with green lights.

I didn't want to use the disk SARs either, because while they have a clear light, medium, and heavy, they look too much like cyberdiscs.

I might be setting my aspirations a little high, but I want the battle tanks to look like the originals, and the assault and guardian tanks to look clearly similar yet significantly different.

It's alright though, I'm not asking anyone to whip up difficult sprites on my behalf. If I never find or make what I want, I still have decent recolors already which make the tanks easy to tell apart, like they're painted colors based on what type they are.

[The Reaver of Darkness]

Major update: 0.12.1!

I've made some important changes, and I have finally finished the large facilities! I also made it so you can tell different tank types apart by their color. The Large Hyper-wave Decoder is very expensive but covers a very substantial portion of the planet's surface.

I've added a new line of tanks which fire rockets made from Alien Explosives. These are like the laser tanks with improved armor and time units, and they are more powerful than the basic rocket tanks. It's an advancement of the alien explosive technology that I had previously added to the Heavy Cannon, Autocannon, and Rocket Launcher. The explosive weapons line is complete, offering a variety of early, mid, and end-game options for all of you demolitions "experts"!


I added several spawn points to Forest, Jungle, Desert, Mountain, Arctic, and Urban tilesets. Aliens will normally spawn in the old places, but if there isn't enough spawn points they will have new places to spawn now. This will make a big difference in higher difficulties especially, as it was previously very common to have aliens fail to spawn on large UFOs or terror missions. In my preliminary tests, I found that all aliens were able to spawn with a few spawn points left over even on the largest craft. What you'll notice is that if your map gets a lot of empty segments (just flat terrain), you may see one alien in the center of each map segment. I made every segment have at least one spawn point, though I added some extras to the normal spawn segments so it should usually look pretty normal. I didn't have to touch the Farm tileset, in fact it was so well done that it helped me understand how the spawn nodes work. Props to MicroProse for getting that done! I'm guessing they were going to put more time into the others but didn't get around to it.

Many research projects grant more points toward your score when completed now, especially late-game research. It's not a lot, but it should be significant. If you get a lot of labs and blaze through the research, you might get some very high scores for a while, and that might help improve your funding or at least pay for all those scientists.

The craft Cannon has had its damage and rate of fire greatly increased. It's still crap range, but it deals damage even faster than the plasma autocannon now. I'm not saying you'll often want to use it, just that finally you might ever want to use it. It's not good, but it's not completely useless. You might use it to shoot down an abductor or harvester early in the game, or a supply ship in the later game. And as before, you can still use it to ensure the small scout makes it safely to the ground.

The larger alien craft are quicker to run away now. Usually you still won't notice anything different, but if you take too long to shoot them down, even the biggest ones might flee. I noticed it especially when using Firestorms equipped with laser beams to attack abductors. The abductor can go slightly faster, thus is able to flee combat from a Firestorm. I had mine equipped with a laser beam and plasma autocannon, and any ship I could out-range I was saving my ammo and beating them slow. After enough abductors ran away, I learned it's best to spend the elerium to shoot them down faster.

More details in the OP.

[SteamXCOM]

The Reaver of Darkness==>>>This will make a big difference in higher difficulties especially, as it was previously very common to have aliens fail to spawn on large UFOs or terror missions.

I thought all the actors spawned, in experiments on terror maps I added like 30 civilians  for experimental purposes and they all seemed to appear;
.. its interesting to know they all apparently do not spawn.

[The Reaver of Darkness]

On superhuman difficulty they will be forced to spawn in, but they will all group up around one spawn node if there aren't enough. If you get enough of the larger buildings, you can easily have extra spawn points. But it is not uncommon that a terror site gives you very few spawn points. On forest, jungle, desert, or arctic it was nearly guaranteed.

I made a race that was cyberdiscs in all of the regular rank slots, but sectoids in the terrorist slots. I ran it on a terror mission on superhuman difficulty without my extra spawn nodes. First try, this is what I got:

Spoiler a satisfying end to the menace:

This was caused by one shot from the selected tank.

The large units can only use a spawn point which has free spaces to its south and east, apparently not including free spaces on the next terrain segment. This is problematic for terror sites in particular as the small segments often have spawn nodes along their south or east edge. In the above example, all of the extra cyberdiscs attempted to spawn at the 2-floor store. When testing this, I have often seen the large terrorists clustered up around a single 2-floor store, and also sometimes around the fenced hotel.

In the second try, there were 5 fenced houses, a short house, a small warehouse, and an orchard. The rest of the tiles were ground or street. Not a single large segment spawned on the map. This gave zero large spawn points on the entire map, and so the large units could not be force-spawned. There were about 8 sectoids on the map, carrying no equipment because they are in the terrorist slots. The 20-ish cyberdiscs that were supposed to spawn were completely absent.

- - - -

If it's run with my added nodes, this is what you're more likely to see:



Remember, this is with cyberdiscs in all of the regular rank slots. On a normal sectoid terror mission you'll get much more standard results, but it will eliminate all of those times when you get few or no large spawn points, or not enough total spawn points. Main changes you'll notice, aside from more total aliens on genius difficulty, is you won't ever see them clumped up, and you'll sometimes see them arranged "symmetrically" on flat terrain, with one alien in the center of each segment. The "symmetrical" arrangement should happen most commonly with terror missions as well as desert, forest, and arctic tilesets with large UFOs.

[The Reaver of Darkness]

Final release!

I am releasing version 1.0 of my mod. There are some things I wanted to do with it that I'm temporarily leaving behind, because I met up with my brother and got him to playtest my mod for me, and he helped me uncover several balance and feature problems. I've got a bunch of ideas for some very major changes, and I am planning to release these under a new mod name. When I am finished, the mod won't seem as faithful but it's really all about delivering the content in a way that is as palatable and fun as possible for new and veteran players alike, free from frustrating bugs, balance inconsistencies, and other shoddy development work. Sometimes I just need to add something new to fix a problem from the original game. I'm going to keep it as vanilla as I can, but I feel it's more important that it be good quality than vanilla.

I won't go into detail on the changes here, but at some point you'll see the new mod go up. For this mod, I am mostly ending further support, however if you encounter any major problems in playing it, please let me know and I may yet release a patch to fix it. I never got around to playtesting the tier 4 aircraft so I expect bugs in those. The manufacturing profit is also a little warped due to various changes disrupting the development process and I haven't got around to fixing the whole thing. Some of the prices are pretty high so it might get a little grindy, but I'm managing to get by in my game so it's not close to impossible.

For the final release, I have changed the heavy armor from that awful green to a nice brown, I buffed alien rocket tanks a bit, I tweaked some tank and aircraft attributes, and I doubled the craft item limits. My brother was hitting the limits very quickly because he plays with much more items on his crew than I do, so I am going to re-think the item limits over time but for now I'm raising the ceiling.

[SteamXCOM]

On superhuman difficulty they will be forced to spawn in, but they will all group up around one spawn node if there aren't enough. If you get enough of the larger buildings, you can easily have extra spawn points. But it is not uncommon that a terror site gives you very few spawn points. On forest, jungle, desert, or arctic it was nearly guaranteed. 

Thanks for the explanation about testing and spawning, Reaver. 

Here is my takeaway:
1--all units will spawn if  not blocked by objects or other units; else they cannot spawn. there may be a limit as to how far they can spawn from a crowded spawnpoint.
2--If more units than spawnpoints, units will multispawn around said spawnpoints creating clusters (said clusters should disperse as the AI begins to control the units on subsequent turns).
3--more spawnpoints better disperse the units and reduce inappropriately placed or possible no show spawns

It seems to be a couple of factors at work that you introduced:
3--Units will spawn without equipment if designated as terrorists
4--Increased numbers of large units especially will have problems spawning correctly if not enough room around the spawnpoints

[The Reaver of Darkness]

It seems to be a couple of factors at work that you introduced:
3--Units will spawn without equipment if designated as terrorists
4--Increased numbers of large units especially will have problems spawning correctly if not enough room around the spawnpoints

I didn't introduce those effects, however they become apparent when you load a map with one of my debug terrorist races. There isn't any equipment listings for ranks 7 and 8, and I haven't changed that since in the normal races they are always terrorists and are thus never able to have equipment anyway. It has the neat effect of making the non-terrorist aliens in debug races spawn without equipment, potentially useful for testing. I've sure been enjoying not having my assault tanks get shot at while I explore the map to see how it spawned. Also, the debug races with large terrorists are a good way to reveal a map's ability to handle large units. If the debug race can spawn them all in, you should never have a problem with a normal race. I still get the large terrorists stacked a bit sometimes on superhuman while using a debug race, but they have plenty of space to spawn on the roads so it's minimal at worst and can't happen with a normal race.

[The Reaver of Darkness]

I'm glad to hear you found enjoyment in my mod! If you like the heavies, research alien grenade and blaster launcher to check out some of the improvements I added for the heavy weapons.

i was trying to place a High Explosive on 1 Attack Dog, and it made it TUs/mobility decreased so bad (The attack dog won't move and activate the High Explosive which is so frustrating for me).

I believe that Dioxine set the dog's strength low because you aren't suppose to equip anything to them. I think he wanted to remove their inventory slots, but settled on giving them almost no strength instead, because the first idea wasn't available.