[TFTD] [Expansion] TWoTS+ Release (v.2.62)

[Oleg]

What do I need to do with my game without Naga sity? I need to start a new game?

[Meridian]

I've figured out the "Will not function above water" bug. Some equipment only works if you have nothing in your other hand. When you do have something, it produces the message above. It is very misleading, "You need both hands to operate this" would have been much better.

Fixed.

Meridian, say please, it is normal that unit with "specab: 3" can not be stunned? It creates a corpse instead of live alien.

Fixed in vanilla... and will be available in the next OXCE+ version too.

[Nord]

Fixed.

Fixed in vanilla... and will be available in the next OXCE+ version too.

Two good news in one. You are truely a magician!
Thanks.

[LouisdeFuines]

But it istn`t still updated into this mod, istn`t it?

[Dantalion]

Few more things:
-few missing strings
-Recycle ion cannon uses sonic cannon clip instead
-Heavy Ion cannon object overrides corpses objects for some reason. Corpse is there, but cannon is always shown on top.

[Vesparco]

Halt my game until the next version.

Good experience overall but I have to say that the USO spawning is problematic and makes a turbulent game experience. I have reached the bionic laboratory and runned through two months to see how the tech progressed. I believe I hit the wall tech until "Naga city".

In my current game I have more or less world coverage, sitting on 60-80 Millions. Several barracudas with Ajax torpedos/gauss and some morels with kraken/gauss (I can tackle up to large). Gauss and heavy aquaplastics weaponry gives me the firepower to tackle more or less what I encounter.

The problem of USO overspawning (like 50 a month) gives the following issues (taking out of the picture the balance/difficulty topic, which you can solve if you play safe):
- Frozen tech: Because you require several hours of combat to finish each month, you fight again and again with the same tools and the game seems to slow down incredibly.
- Repetitive missions: While the custom missions are excellent in terms of diversity, playthrough and lore, they become buried in the USO landing and crashsite missions you do during the month (also, these missions spawn only in the first week of the month and the rest of the month are USOs). The fresh air these missions bring is blocked by the quantity of USO missions.
- Static enemies: After the first Naga terror mission, I've seen like 250 USOs before ecountering them again. This is somewhat problematic if progression is heavily blocked by it.
- Tons of unused money: Considering the tech progression is slowed, most of the recovered items go directly into the black market due to store overflow. This generates a ton of money that you can use to push a lot the world coverage and base building, which is ok but seems "unbalanced" as money do not becomes an issues quite fast.

Sincerely, seing the nice custom missions the mod has, I would suggest to encourage more activity on this behalf rather than invigorating the USO spawning, for a more round experience in terms of gameplay.

Then I would suggest a revision on the magnetic navigation costs to Gauss weapons (such as manufacturing batches of weapons, i.e. 1 magnetic navigation = 4 pistols = 3 rifles = etc) or to be able to craft it using mollecular components. The single unit for everything makes it very restrictive to use this technology (for example, I have two tritons, several interceptors and several bases with defences that requried a lot of USOs to cover their needs).

[LouisdeFuines]

The problem of USO overspawning (like 50 a month) gives the following issues (taking out of the picture the balance/difficulty topic, which you can solve if you play safe):
- Frozen tech: Because you require several hours of combat to finish each month, you fight again and again with the same tools and the game seems to slow down incredibly.
- Repetitive missions: While the custom missions are excellent in terms of diversity, playthrough and lore, they become buried in the USO landing and crashsite missions you do during the month (also, these missions spawn only in the first week of the month and the rest of the month are USOs). The fresh air these missions bring is blocked by the quantity of USO missions.
- Static enemies: After the first Naga terror mission, I've seen like 250 USOs before ecountering them again. This is somewhat problematic if progression is heavily blocked by it.
- Tons of unused money: Considering the tech progression is slowed, most of the recovered items go directly into the black market due to store overflow. This generates a ton of money that you can use to push a lot the world coverage and base building, which is ok but seems "unbalanced" as money do not becomes an issues quite fast.

Sincerely, seing the nice custom missions the mod has, I would suggest to encourage more activity on this behalf rather than invigorating the USO spawning, for a more round experience in terms of gameplay.

I agree in all that points.

[Amoebka]

I do believe that USO overspawning and sudden jump in difficulty ~8-10 months in are caused by the same rather questionable design choice: alien coloies spawning infiltration missions with insane frequency (see picture attached). Infiltration missions consist of a lot of individual USOs AND they produce more colonies, causing even MORE USOs to spawn ad nauseam. Not to mention that if you are unprepared to destroy the first alien colony your game spawns within a month, you straight up lose, because it multiplicates out of any control VERY quickly. And chances are, you are unprepared, given how cryptic and RNG-dependent research tree gets at times (gauss tech and vibroblades are the worst offenders, imo).

Changing or keeping this behaviour is up to you, Nord, but I have to admit I've rewritten colonies to spawn only supply runs and it made the game 10 times more enjoyable for me. If anyone else is struggling with the constant flood of infiltrators, I encourage you to try this solution.

[LouisdeFuines]

I do believe that USO overspawning and sudden jump in difficulty ~8-10 months in are caused by the same rather questionable design choice: alien coloies spawning infiltration missions with insane frequency (see picture attached). Infiltration missions consist of a lot of individual USOs AND they produce more colonies, causing even MORE USOs to spawn ad nauseam. Not to mention that if you are unprepared to destroy the first alien colony your game spawns within a month, you straight up lose, because it multiplicates out of any control VERY quickly. And chances are, you are unprepared, given how cryptic and RNG-dependent research tree gets at times (gauss tech and vibroblades are the worst offenders, imo).

Changing or keeping this behaviour is up to you, Nord, but I have to admit I've rewritten colonies to spawn only supply runs and it made the game 10 times more enjoyable for me. If anyone else is struggling with the constant flood of infiltrators, I encourage you to try this solution.

@Amoebka:
Please could you post or paste the appropraite file, that must be changed?

And: Can I use my old savegame with that file?

[Amoebka]

@Amoebka:
Please could you post or paste the appropraite file, that must be changed?

And: Can I use my old savegame with that file?

Go into the mod folder, find alienDeployments.rul. Open it as a text file, search for the part of the code I posted in my picture (ctrl+F "genM" works). Change the number near STR_Alien_Supply from 50 to 100 and delete the second line (STR_Alien_Infiltration) entirely.

Your old savegame will still have all the colonies that have already spawned and all the infiltration missions that are already active. Further infiltration missions from colonies will not spawn. Depending on how far gone your game was this might not help.

[LouisdeFuines]

I got a savegame at the end of November.
Does that mean, that infiltration missions for December will then vanish?

[Amoebka]

I got a savegame at the end of November.
Does that mean, that infiltration missions for December will then vanish?

Currently there are 2 (actually more but those are race-specific scripted events) ways to get infiltration missions. The first is the standart vanilla way - they spawn regularly on their own. This kind of infiltrations will continue spawning after the "patch". The second way, unique to this mod, is connected to alien colonies. Each colony has a chance to spawn a new infiltration mission randomly every day. So, the more colonies you have, the more infiltrations get spawned each month.

Changing the alienDeployments will prevent NEW infiltrations from getting spawned by colonies. Any infiltrations that have already been spawned in your game before the change will complete as normal (spawning more colonies). This might take more than a month. After they all complete, you will notice a lot less infiltrations (and USOs in general, since infiltrators currently are the bulk of USO spam), since the only ones spawning will be regular vanilla ones. Their quantity doesn't depend on the number of colonies you have on the globe. Colonies will still drain score, mind you, since they will spawn supply runs instead.

[LouisdeFuines]

I understand:
So, isn`t it contraproductive to set STR_Alien_Supply from 50 to 100? Won`t this result in spaming Supply ships?

[Amoebka]

I understand:
So, isn`t it contraproductive to set STR_Alien_Supply from 50 to 100?

Well, you can reduce the frequency of supply runs as well by not changing the value, if you want your game to be easier, I guess. Supply runs are a lot less game-unbalancing than infiltrations, though. They only spawn one USO, while infiltrations spawn up to NINE each. Supply runs also don't produce new colonies, which is a very big deal. The main issue with current infiltrations is that their number grows exponentially.

[LouisdeFuines]

Well, you can reduce the frequency of supply runs as well by not changing the value, if you want your game to be easier, I guess. Supply runs are a lot less game-unbalancing than infiltrations, though. They only spawn one USO, while infiltrations spawn up to NINE each. Supply runs also don't produce new colonies, which is a very big deal. The main issue with current infiltrations is that their number grows exponentially.

What, if I just keep the settings the supply ships. Why should it be less then?