X-Chronicles Release, v.0.99.6

[Nord]

...I'd suggest waiting for the balance pass before continuing; I am.

I'm working on it.

[Nord]

Version 0.99.6 is up.
Changelog:
 - added new UFO - the temple ship;
 - IMPORTANT: rebalance, no powerful invaders will spawn while x-com posess no magic nech;
 - bugfixing, all prefious hotfixes included;

[xcommie]

Thanks Nord.
I've taken a look at the changes (via WinMerge), and unfortunately there's nothing in there to address the tedious grind aspects. Per my previous posts, there are simply too many geoscape events and too many enemies at those events with far too many hitpoints. But maybe that's just me.
It's a shame, your TWoTs mod was incredible and excellently balanced. I fear I'm going to have forgo continuing this mod. Ah well. Thanks again.

[Nord]

Thanks Nord.
I've taken a look at the changes (via WinMerge), and unfortunately there's nothing in there to address the tedious grind aspects...

Well, there is changes. Dont know how you rank them via WinMerge, but as you wish.

[psavola]

I resumed my earlier play. No legionaires anymore (yet). Some small ships are reasonably difficult, when they include a fire and/or rune mage (alienRaces.rul:STR_FEUDALS suggests about 1/10 odds for small UFO being full of mages and wizards, in most cases these are straightforward). You need reasonable RNG and/or save scumming to avoid heavy casualties. Also, just a moment ago (October 2021), a large ship landed on a terror mission. First look outside shows a rune mage and a baron facing the osprey entrance. If I understand correctly, these have started spawning after you get the !X-contract! (why this spelling, by the way?) ie. STR_INTERNATIONALIZATION. At least with that spawn location the mission appears to be impossible, so I might need to skip that (or save scum it)

I kind of agree with xcommie that there are quite a few of "boring" events, which are usually relatively easy but might take some time (graveyards, rifts, other animal encounters, a mad psion). I suppose it could be argued that it's good to have some kind of missions. But these won't really give you much money or points, so I suppose the main point is getting training for the soldiers. I guess there are less than five a month, so not a huge problem.

It is also interesting how the economy of XCHR differs from the main games. At least until now you are almost completely dependent on council funding, you don't get much from missions - except when you can sell ships' rune glyphs. This means that the game needs to run for multiple years (waiting for more money from the council to be able to expand). Likewise, at least so far manufacturing has been useless; there is not much to produce with your engineers, so to date I have only kept 1 engineer. I suppose this results in a "grindier" game based more on waiting for the time to pass by.

[Nord]

Do you suggest to increase funding? Or maybe increase prices of invader stuff?

[eclecticbibliophile]

Can I ask why the x-series weapons are so heavy? The rifle clip weighs as much as a normal rifle, and the x-sniper is actually heavier than the Heavy Cannon.

EDIT: the rifle is heavier than the rocket launcher??

[Nord]

Can I ask why the x-series weapons are so heavy? The rifle clip weighs as much as a normal rifle, and the x-sniper is actually heavier than the Heavy Cannon.

EDIT: the rifle is heavier than the rocket launcher??

They are meant to be used not by normal humans, but by psions.

[psavola]

Do you suggest to increase funding? Or maybe increase prices of invader stuff?

I'd suggest increasing sell prices of invader stuff, at least. Also, I'd suggest making various special events (beast terror missions, graveyards, rifts, etc.) yield something you can sell for some money (currently the corpses aren't worth much at all), for example shai-huluds could be disassembled to produce expensive teeth or something. At the moment, these missions are money-wise worthless, yet take some time to complete (especially if you have village mazes, tough enemies, etc.; FWIW I also got glass spider once in antarctic and the mission was unsolvable: one of them was camouflaging on an inaccessible ice island, and I had to use debug mode to get rid of it)

I'm currently in January 2022 and total council funding is at 19M (I have the whole globe covered with 6 bases). There's still 3-4M surplus every month (with about 150 scientists). Yet I'm still only 19 % through the research tree. To make the game progression faster and reduce the grinding elements somewhat, I suppose you could also increase the council funding and how fast it grows. There could also be some items engineers could manufacture and you could sell, to make use of engineers and earn money, but I understand completely if you want to avoid that kind of economy (I have felt it's rather stupid myself).

They are meant to be used not by normal humans, but by psions.

Hmm? I wonder if these are phased properly. You are able to get X-contract likely much earlier than getting psions. It seems you get on the path leading to psionic powers through researching fire mage, rune mage, etc. I have postponed researching them to delay legionaires and more difficult enemies appearing.

But for what it's worth, X sniper rifles are at least very usable with humans. Others I haven't used that much (though rifle could be useful with spare clips).

BTW, I think the first alien base (hive) appeared in October 2021 or so. I don't think there's much chance of dealing with it yet, so I have had to leave it be and grow. Also, there have been some other enemies that seem to be non-defeatible for now (for example the UFOs with stalkers and the other beasts, the other ice thingies behind ice rift).

[eclecticbibliophile]

I only just got a psi lab running, but have been using the x-weapons for months. Can't carry much other gear but they can actually burst down shields

[Bonegnasher]

I think there still should be some time limits after which the stronger enemies would start coming, otherwise it's awfully nice of them to just wait for X-Com to get strong enough to deal with them. But they should be higher than the ones in the previous version.

Hmm? I wonder if these are phased properly. You are able to get X-contract likely much earlier than getting psions. It seems you get on the path leading to psionic powers through researching fire mage, rune mage, etc. I have postponed researching them to delay legionaires and more difficult enemies appearing.

But for what it's worth, X sniper rifles are at least very usable with humans. Others I haven't used that much (though rifle could be useful with spare clips).

BTW, I think the first alien base (hive) appeared in October 2021 or so. I don't think there's much chance of dealing with it yet, so I have had to leave it be and grow. Also, there have been some other enemies that seem to be non-defeatible for now (for example the UFOs with stalkers and the other beasts, the other ice thingies behind ice rift).

Spoiler:

If you have built a psi-lab and have a surplus of weak artifacts, you should start researching wizards and rune mages asap if you want to progress, you are super close to getting soldiers with a higher potential and the ability to use magic. Don't know where the red line for the appearance of the temple factions is, but I figure it's higher than just learning what you can from those two. Don't go deep into the runes tree though, to be safe.

What would more money achieve? Let the player hire more scientists?

[eclecticbibliophile]

This feels like a mistake lol

[psavola]

What would more money achieve? Let the player hire more scientists?

Yes. That would accelerate getting into mid- and end-game. I have already played over two years game time, and am still in early game phase (though I suppose I could have entered mid-game already if I had rushed it). *) It could have gone a bit faster with more research and (to lesser degree) more efficient tech to capture essential and tougher live invaders. But it is of course up to the author how long a campaign he wants to create. In contrast, I loved the pacing of TWoTS, but this mod is obviously intended to run much longer.

*) Other alternatives to accelerate the game could be making the traditional weapons, X-rifles etc. more efficient - to make the missions faster as most enemies would be knocked out with 1-2 hits - and/or reducing the amount of rather useless encounters (animal terror missions, rifts, etc.) that after a couple of instances do not really progress the plot.

This feels like a mistake lol

I reported similar with TWoTS (by the same author). It was intentional that even tanks can be taken out of action temporarily by certain weapons. Of course, the message is confusing - but it is probably engine limitation and cannot be changed. I suppose it's the same here.

[psavola]

Just noticed something strange. If Irungu Tikolo launches a grenade at a Footman, the game freezes just before the impact of the missile (and you can't do anything). If you shoot the footman twice using rifles, he dies all right. Previously in the mission I already killed a footman with a grenade launcher. I wonder if Nord/OXCE dev has ideas what's going on? I'm using the OXCE snap 2022-06-16. I still have debug enabled in options.cfg if it matters.

There are some warnings in the logs about some things to fix in the mod, but I don't suppose they are relevant.

[27-06-2022_14-52-46]   [INFO]   Creating transparency LUTs for PAL_BATTLESCAPE...
[27-06-2022_14-52-46]   [INFO]   After load.
[27-06-2022_14-52-46]   [INFO]   Supressed Error for 'STR_MALE_VIP': This unit has a corresponding item to recover, but still isn't recoverable. Reason: (the unit is marked with 'capturable: false'). Consider marking the unit with 'liveAlien: ""'.
[27-06-2022_14-52-46]   [INFO]   Supressed Error for 'STR_PHOENIX': This unit has a corresponding item to recover, but still isn't recoverable. Reason: (the first 'corpseBattle' item of the unit's armor is marked with 'recover: false'). Consider marking the unit with 'liveAlien: ""'.
[27-06-2022_14-52-46]   [INFO]   Loading ended.
[27-06-2022_14-52-46]   [INFO]   Data loaded successfully.
[27-06-2022_14-52-46]   [INFO]   Loading language...
[27-06-2022_14-52-46]   [INFO]   Language loaded successfully.
[27-06-2022_14-52-46]   [INFO]   OpenXcom started successfully!
[27-06-2022_14-52-46]   [INFO]   Using software scaling routine. For best results, try an OpenGL filter.
[27-06-2022_14-52-53]   [WARN]   Image Resources/TerrainPack/Geoscape/TEXTURE15.png (from lodepng) has incorrect transparent color index 255 (instead of 0).
[27-06-2022_14-52-53]   [WARN]   Image Resources/TerrainPack/Geoscape/TEXTURE36.png (from lodepng) has incorrect transparent color index 255 (instead of 0).
[27-06-2022_14-52-53]   [WARN]   Image Resources/TerrainPack/Geoscape/TEXTURE57.png (from lodepng) has incorrect transparent color index 255 (instead of 0).
[27-06-2022_14-52-53]   [INFO]   MCD BOAT_FURN object 0 has 0 armor
[27-06-2022_14-52-53]   [INFO]   MCD BOAT_FURN object 17 has 0 armor
 

[Bonegnasher]

Yes. That would accelerate getting into mid- and end-game. I have already played over two years game time, and am still in early game phase (though I suppose I could have entered mid-game already if I had rushed it). *) It could have gone a bit faster with more research and (to lesser degree) more efficient tech to capture essential and tougher live invaders. But it is of course up to the author how long a campaign he wants to create. In contrast, I loved the pacing of TWoTS, but this mod is obviously intended to run much longer.

*) Other alternatives to accelerate the game could be making the traditional weapons, X-rifles etc. more efficient - to make the missions faster as most enemies would be knocked out with 1-2 hits - and/or reducing the amount of rather useless encounters (animal terror missions, rifts, etc.) that after a couple of instances do not really progress the plot.

This mod is similar to something like Xcom Files so it's got tons of research topics that are just fluff or of minor importance. So you don't have to complete many of them to progress the plot or get cool tech.
Making traditional weapons more effective would raise a question why the countries even bothered with the XCom project in this story. Why learn magic or develop better guns when you can just shoot the guy with a sword? Magic shields have elemental weaknesses so some weapons are better suited to wear them down or can straight up ignore them. As for mission types,

Spoiler:

I like rifts, there are higher numbers of enemies but also good rewards if the mission is complete and they give only a small reputation hit so you can ignore them if you don't want to play them.
Animal hunts are more demanding but shorter and also can be ignored.
Cemeteries are short and rare.
Spirit hunts and mad psions are almost like free exp and rep, they are super short. Very rare.
I think one aspect that could be improved would be the maps. I am not a fan of that railway station with a long 2-3 story building across it, for example.