TFTD Tech-tree Rework and Lore Expansion 0.2 [WIP]

[skyhawk]

After almost two years buried under a pile of rubble on the back burner, I'm back with v0.2!

TFTD Tech-tree Rework and Lore Expansion 0.2

DOWNLOAD at the Mod Portal: https://openxcom.mod.io/tftd-aqua-plastics-rework
CheatSuite for the Rework: https://openxcom.mod.io/tftd-cheatsuite-aqua-plastics-rework

This mod completely reworks the TFTD tech-tree, with aim to expanding the lore and making the technological progression a bit more believable. There are more options and buildables early game, and the late-game Ion armors are enhanced, but take longer to get to.

Game balance at this point can probably be described as 'lol'. I need to take some time to spreadsheet things out to get the overall research hours similar to vanilla.

I'm trying to avoid making large changes to the gameplay experience [And I have the artistic ability of a turnip], so little new artwork or battlescape units are planned.

This mod REQUIRES OpenXCom Extended 7.0.5 or newer (Changes were made to how getOneFreeProtected behaves in 7.0.3-Test) - At time of writing this can only be found in the main OXCE forum thread: https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,6586.msg138583.html#msg138583

Changes to vanilla:

* Too many to count. More variety and flexibility with early game units and armors, with late-game equipment taking longer to get to.


Wishlist/Todo - Feedback, suggestions and contributions for the below are welcome!

* Lots of artwork (UFOPedia artwork, mostly) and level design (New base facility artwork and Battlescape maps). Assistance is more than welcome!

* I've got palette problems with a bunch of the Battlescape artwork I've done. Most visible with the Plastic (Grey) Coelecanth and basic Ion Armor (Orange) showing red highlights during motion or line-of-fire-obstructed flashing.

* Translations are welcome! I've only supplied English text. English proofreading suggestions are also welcome.

* I still really don't like a lot of the UFOPedia text for the Alien descriptions and autopsies, these will likely be revised in the future.

* I'm considering (Have pretty much planned and have a good idea what the flavor text would be) adding an 'Advanced Gauss' family of weapons to the game, requiring late-game research and infrastructure to build. These would be all-around better than the early-game Gauss, and require small amounts of Zrbite to build, but would be overall much more economical than Sonic weapons. Seems like a waste of time considering that Lobsters are nearly immune to Gauss, and by that point every alien you drop leaves a Sonic Cannon for you to use.

* Lots more shit I'm forgetting right now, I'm sure.

*** CHANGELOG ***

Version 0.1 - Initial Release
Version 0.2 - Way too many changes to list, project name changed to 'Tech-tree rework and Lore Expansion for TFTD'

[skyhawk]

*** CHANGELOG ***

Version 0.1 - Initial Release

[Solarius Scorch]

Looking at the list of changes, all this looks very reasonable. I haven't really played TFTD mods yet, so I have no idea how original it all is, but I like it.

[skyhawk]

As I work through and figure out what I'm doing with the research tree, I'm basically re-writing it. There's going to be no more nonsensical "You have to autopsy this alien because we arbitrarily picked it because it's uncommon" bullshit. I'm building up a Dia drawing to try to keep this all straight. Actually writing the new research.rul is not going to be fun.

This mod is rapidly blowing out it's original intended scope, and I suspect there may be balance problems (On the "Too Hard" side due to increased research costs and dependencies for late-game stuffs), but the next release will be making MAJOR changes. Alien Technicians are going to become one of the most valuable resources in the game.

I think I'm going to use some OXCE extended functions to implement a few new base facilities too. I'm wanting to break the Hyper-Wave Decoder into separate detection and decoding facilities [So they can be unlocked at different times], and a "Plastics workshop" that will be required for advanced Aqua-Plastics fabrication. The next release will probably see the mod renamed to "TFTD Research Rework and Lore Expansion"

Thinking about the base in advance, I may have to remove the Pulse-Wave Torpedo defenses. PWTs are very expensive in Zrbite, and the PWT defense gets them for free and gets to fire as many times as your base is attacked for no charge. That might actually be a worthwhile OXCE enhancement request - ammunition requirements for base defense structures; No ammo, no pew-pew.

As far as originality goes, I don't think I've played ANY mods for TFTD at all. Other than maybe a few blurbs I've read on these forums or the mod portal, any unoriginality is entirely coincidental.

[wcho035]

Lord kane is doing something like this, why don't you coordinate with him in your rebalancing quest?

[WIP] [OXCE] [TFTD] TFTD Rebalance.

[skyhawk]

Because for the most part, I'm not trying to rebalance. I'm trying to expand the lore and make the research less broken and more sensible. Futzing around the balance is just an undesired side-effect of that.

[The Reaver of Darkness]

A Technician alien would make sense, but they're too common. Is it possible to setup so you have to interrogate _several_ technicians to unlock the secret?

You could add the technology to the technician's getOneFree list, and the player might get it on first try but they probably won't. If you want the number of technicians to vary less, you can instead add multiple different prerequisite techs to the technician's getOneFree list, and all must be obtained to unlock the tech.

[Solarius Scorch]

You can also use the consecutive research option, where the first technician gives you A, the second one B, the third one gives you C, and C is the relevant one.
Or you can use getOneFreeProtected for the same end, but it is a less elegant solution.

[skyhawk]

GetOneFreeProtected is what I've been building my tech tree around.

I feel a little variability will be good for player immersion. You don't always know exactly what you're going to get, but you know it will always be useful.

[skyhawk]

Archive of original forum post:
[TFTD] Aqua-Plastics Rework v0.1 [WIP]

TFTD Aqua-Plastics Rework for OpenXCom

This makes a number of changes and introduces several plastics-integrated versions of Earth technology to the game. Plastic coelecanths,  flying subs, and crude plastic-plated diving suits. This mod includes my research fix for the Gauss Coelecanth, which removes the nonsensical New-Flying-Sub prerequisite for it.

The intention is to make Aqua-Plastics discovery and research make a bit more sense, and be a bit more believable (at least for me). I find it absolutely incredulous that your best-and-brightest scientists, engineers and technicians discover this new wonder-material and do absolutely nothing with it until mid-late-game. I'm trying to avoid making large changes to the gameplay experience [And I have the artistic ability of a turnip], so little new artwork or battlescape units are planned.

This is tested on OpenXCom Extended, though to my knowledge it should work fine on vanilla OpenXCom.

Downloads
Balanced - https://openxcom.mod.io/tftd-aqua-plastics-rework
CheatSuite edition [See https://openxcom.mod.io/cheat-suite] - https://openxcom.mod.io/tftd-cheatsuite-aqua-plastics-rework

Changes to vanilla:

* The economics of the Gauss Coelecanth required a tweak, making them less viable as a money-making item. Realistically this makes no difference as you're better off selling the big Gauss Cannon anyways.

* A tiny tweak to the Aqua-Plastics UFOPedia page is needed for any of this to make sense.

* Plastic Aqua Armor now requires dissection of either a Deep One or a Lobsterman (As both autopsies mention plastics integrated into their bodies). This fixes the (unlikely) potential issue where you don't have any dead Deep Ones a few months into the game when they disappear.


Wishlist/Todo - Feedback, suggestions and contributions for the below are welcome!

* UFOPedia page for the Plastic Plated Diving Suit. Ideally this would be based on the Diving Suit page, but there ISN'T ONE!.

* Differentiated Battlescape Paperdoll for the Plated Diving Suit is probably a good idea.

* Fix prerequisites for Ion Armor. You can't figure out how to make powered armor until you've interrogated a Deep One terrorist that has questionable intelligence and appears to make no use of technically-powered armor. What? I'd like to change this to something sensible and less broken, but I'm not sure what I could change it to without disrupting the balance of the game. A Technician alien would make sense, but they're too common. Is it possible to setup so you have to interrogate _several_ technicians to unlock the secret?

* I'm considering making Aqua-plastics a prerequisite for Gauss technology, with small amounts being required for construction of Gauss weapons. That would help explain why your small team of scientists is able to develop it when the rest of human civilization has not, and why you command a market premium on Gauss weapons throughout the game.

* Translations are welcome! I've only supplied English text.

[skyhawk]

After almost two years buried under a pile of rubble on the back burner, I'm back with v0.2!

TFTD Tech-tree Rework and Lore Expansion 0.2

DOWNLOAD at the Mod Portal: https://openxcom.mod.io/tftd-aqua-plastics-rework
CheatSuite for the Rework: https://openxcom.mod.io/tftd-cheatsuite-aqua-plastics-rework

This mod completely reworks the TFTD tech-tree, with aim to expanding the lore and making the technological progression a bit more believable. There are more options and buildables early game, and the late-game Ion armors are enhanced, but take longer to get to.

Game balance at this point can probably be described as 'lol'. I need to take some time to spreadsheet things out to get the overall research hours similar to vanilla.

I'm trying to avoid making large changes to the gameplay experience [And I have the artistic ability of a turnip], so little new artwork or battlescape units are planned.

This mod REQUIRES OpenXCom Extended 7.0.5 or newer (Changes were made to how getOneFreeProtected behaves in 7.0.3-Test) - At time of writing this can only be found in the main OXCE forum thread: https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,6586.msg138583.html#msg138583

Changes to vanilla:

* Too many to count. More variety and flexibility with early game units and armors, with late-game equipment taking longer to get to.


Wishlist/Todo - Feedback, suggestions and contributions for the below are welcome!

* Lots of artwork (UFOPedia artwork, mostly) and level design (New base facility artwork and Battlescape maps). Assistance is more than welcome!

* I've got palette problems with a bunch of the Battlescape artwork I've done. Most visible with the Plastic (Grey) Coelecanth and basic Ion Armor (Orange) showing red highlights during motion or line-of-fire-obstructed flashing.

* Translations are welcome! I've only supplied English text. English proofreading suggestions are also welcome.

* I still really don't like a lot of the UFOPedia text for the Alien descriptions and autopsies, these will likely be revised in the future.

* I'm considering (Have pretty much planned and have a good idea what the flavor text would be) adding an 'Advanced Gauss' family of weapons to the game, requiring late-game research and infrastructure to build. These would be all-around better than the early-game Gauss, and require small amounts of Zrbite to build, but would be overall much more economical than Sonic weapons. Seems like a waste of time considering that Lobsters are nearly immune to Gauss, and by that point every alien you drop leaves a Sonic Cannon for you to use.

* Lots more shit I'm forgetting right now, I'm sure.

*** CHANGELOG ***

Version 0.1 - Initial Release
Version 0.2 - Way too many changes to list, project name changed to 'Tech-tree rework and Lore Expansion for TFTD'