[Feedback] Any mods or practical advice for enemy grenades & psionics haters?

[Afro Herbalist]

I love XCOM & TftD and XCOM X-Files. Its so addictive and satisfying, but ONE thing that often ruins things for me, is the aliens mad love of grenades & explosives (and psionics, as I've recently discovered...).

1 well placed frag can guarantee a mission failure, which to me, is a bit too much. I think I've figured out the 'nade trigger: "If enemy sees player get closer than ~5m to other player, frag their asses", but this means you can never play as a squad (which is my fave playstyle, everyone close together, or split up into sub-teams...).

So I wanted to know if theres any mods out there that either make enemy grenades much less deadly than players, or completely disables enemies grenades ("but thats cheating!"... "I know!").

"All enemy eplosives have been confiscated" would be a 10/10 must have mod for me LOL. Also "Only XCOM can use Psionics"!

[Afro Herbalist]

Anybody out there? Its been quite a while now, I really need some help with this! If theres no mods, maybe someone could tell me a simple INI/CFG edit to get the desired effect (EG: "Enemy grenade chance, Enemy grenade damage = [lower number]" or "Enemies can use grenades = False").

I love the classic XCOM's but unlike the 3D reboots, grenades/explosives are far too punishing and just tend to turn enjoyment into frustration. A bit of unfairness or cruelty is fine, its XCOM, but losing 4-5 soldiers immediately is a bit over the top IMO.

[Progger]

For grenades and blasters

Another way is to add what you want to the ai section (example from XComFiles user/mods/XComFiles/Ruleset/vars_XCOMFILES.rul):

Code: [Select]

...
ai:
  fireChoiceIntelCoeff: 5 # Make the choice of attack more RNG dependent
  fireChoiceAggroCoeff: 5 # Aggression doesn't matter as much
  destroyBaseFacilities: true # default false
  # add here
  useDelayBlaster: 100
  useDelayFirearm: 100
  useDelayGrenade: 100
  useDelayMelee: 100
  useDelayPsionic: 100
  # end
mana:
  enabled: true
...

[Ethereal]

Afro Herbalist A simple way out of the situation.

Code: [Select]

items:
  - type: STR_ALIEN_GRENADE
    blastRadius: 3

  - type: ALIEN_PSI_WEAPON
    LOSRequired: true
P.S. By the way, does anyone want to finally teach the aliens to use PROXIMITY GRENADE?

[Afro Herbalist]

Thanks guys I'll try and get these edits/tweaks into my game

Just got a few 'confused noob' questions (I'm 100% new to this so please bare with me if these questions sound silly haha):

@Ethereal: I found those lines in the original "items.rul" file so it looks like that will be an easy escape from grenade city, but (after looking at some ruleset files in the mods folder), if I didn't want to edit the games original files, would it be literally as simple as just 1. making a .rul file, pasting those lines, 2. making a "metadata.yml" file, 3. putting these into a folder, and then it would be a working mod?

@Progger: I could be completely misunderstanding this, but do I need to copy & paste those code lines into a new .rul file (as a new mod), or directly into the "vars_XCOMFILES.rul"? When I looked inside "vars_XCOMFILES.rul" I didn't see an "AI:" section but there was a "Mana:" section.  I did find the 1st 3 lines in the "AI_XCOMFILES.rul" file though. I think I might need this explaining like I'm 5, I'm very confused and out of my depth but I really want to get this stuff put into the game so I'm willing to learn!

[Ethereal]

@Ethereal: I found those lines in the original "items.rul" file so it looks like that will be an easy escape from grenade city, but (after looking at some ruleset files in the mods folder), if I didn't want to edit the games original files, would it be literally as simple as just 1. making a .rul file, pasting those lines, 2. making a "metadata.yml" file, 3. putting these into a folder, and then it would be a working mod?

In general, it is correct. Well, in order to make a modification, you need to study other modifications and imitate them at the beginning.

As for the grenades, the aliens do not throw grenades if they do not see the enemy. So it's better to fight them with tactics and smoke grenades, and not to spoil the object, which you can use yourself. In my modification, I did this;

Code: [Select]

armors:
  - type: SECTOID_ARMOR0
    heatVision: -75
This means that ordinary sectoids see 75% worse in the smoke than before. And so it is with all the other aliens and soldiers. And this is not a cheat. I just didn't find a global option, visibility in the smoke.

[Afro Herbalist]

In general, it is correct. Well, in order to make a modification, you need to study other modifications and imitate them at the beginning.

Thanks for the advice. I'm slowly learning how to make very simple mods. As an experiment I made a TFTD version of the already existing mod "1 TU Motion Scanner".

As for the grenades, the aliens do not throw grenades if they do not see the enemy. So it's better to fight them with tactics and smoke grenades, and not to spoil the object, which you can use yourself.

I'll try to use proper tactics EG smoke grenades and stuff (I've rarely ever used smoke/dye). I just wish there was a way to play the game with your soldiers closer together. I feel like the squad play is more "exciting" when the team sticks together. I guess its not "true XCOM style" but more like my "ideal style"

In my modification, I did this;

Code: [Select]

armors:
  - type: SECTOID_ARMOR0
    heatVision: -75
This means that ordinary sectoids see 75% worse in the smoke than before. And so it is with all the other aliens and soldiers. And this is not a cheat. I just didn't find a global option, visibility in the smoke.

Thanks I'll try and put this into the game it sounds like a good idea (I'll check your mod out too).  Again, I've hardly ever used smoke/dye so I'll experiment with them and see if they make survival easier. In your modification where you have "heatvision", I didn't see that in the "Armors.rul" file, so does this mean "heatvision" comes from another .rul file and we can combine different ones together?

[Ethereal]

Thermal vision is an OpenXcom Extended feature. Read the instructions. https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Ruleset_Reference_Nightly_(OpenXcom)#Armor
There is a lot of useful stuff.

[Afro Herbalist]

Thanks again, I'll check out the UFOpaedia pages