Merciless Mod - A Punishing Strategy Mod

[Yzaxtol]

Merciless - An Enhanced Strategy Mod

Merciless News

Just about to release v0.5 for anyone in Mod Talk to help test it and general feedback to be received.


Mod Info


This mod was designed, using Warspace Extension v1.72 - http://xcom.nexusmods.com/mods/18 , because I believe that there wasn't enough 'Touch Choices' in the original game. Engineers and Satellites anyone?

Every change i've made in this mod is to balance each and every choice that you might have to make, be it choosing which ability you want for your Heavy, if you want to save a country from Panicking or gain Scientists for a research project, to make those choices meaningful every step of the way. The choices you make will matter, every choice should come with great consequences good and bad.

This mod is designed to be played on Normal difficulty (the Main Menu has been renamed), which was previously Classic, so that the AI is unshackled and more of a challenge to the player. Hard also has unshackled AI with a lot more enemies spawning and significantly rarer resources. Easy has resources in abundance, AI is shackled again and combat is slightly easier in sections.

It is reccomended to play on Ironman mode in this mod, it has been balanced that while you may suffer set-backs and the occasional lost battle, the war is still there to be fought and won.

The Tutorial is bugged in this mod and will not work, so please don't enable it or your game will crash.



Summary of the changes


Tactical Combat

The tactical section of the game has been overhauled, enemies now come in many different varieties, ranging from the Huge, slow, easy-to-hit Sectopod that's tougher then a coffin nail. To the elusive Thinman that is very hard to hit, but really only needs to be hit once. In Normal and Hard difficulties the AI have been unshackled to be much more agressive and to hunt your team down instead of being granted ridicoulous stat bonuses.

Equipment

The weapon types each have their main strengths and weaknesses, so weapon choice is essential for eliminating aliens efficiently. Covential weapons are Average in everything, Lasers are accurate with unlimited ammo, Plasma weapons are highly dangerous but difficult to aim.

Armours are now in Heavy, granting you extra gear slots and more HP at the cost of mobility or Light, fragile but highly mobile.

Many items have been modified to provide more meaningful choices throughout the entire campaign.

UFO Combat

UFO Combat has ben re-vamped and now is another in-depth gameplay section that you must decide to focus on or ignore. It takes multiple Interceptors to take down UFOs, they are slower now to allow you to catch them multiple times. You start with 4 Interceptors to help you get on your feet. Interceptors gain experience and become more accurate with their weapons the more UFOs they shoot down. Most of the resources for this game comes from shooting down UFOs so progressing through the UFO combat is a good way of staying on top of all production requirements.

Resources

A greater focus is now on collecting Alien Materials, the more advanced the technology you want to create, the more rare the material you will need will be. The Gray Market has been significantly improved with the value of the item in question heavily dependant on the usefulness of it. Damaged items now sell for next to nothing while UFO Power Sources go for $120.

Research

The Tech-tree has been tweaked to allow for a more sublte twist on UFO combat. Items now cost roughly half of the materials required to research them, once you have finished a research you will have a good idea what the item will cost in materials, never feel like you wasted a research because you can't afford to create the item you wanted. Longer story-based research loosens the pressure for the player to finish the story.

Panic System

Panic is now a system that requires great attention, though you are no longer rewarded greatly for it. You must decide when a country is worth preventing from defecting to the alien menace. Satellites are now significantly improved in combating panic, even being in the same continent prevents most countries from defecting. As long as you have the air-force to defend your satellites, they will help stem the flood of panic that is sweeping the planet.


Soldiers

When you receive recruits for the XCOM project, they may be experienced soldiers but their first sight of the alien menace could send them into a panic. Soldiers start out being pathetic and must be guided through their first mission before they start to kick arse and take names. All of the ability trees for the soldiers have been overhauled. Now the Supports have ample tools in their arsenal to help their teammates. Heavies are now slow, but unstoppable machine of war with unlimited supplies of ammo. Snipers now start with Squad-sight with extra training into special shots or extensive Overwatch training. Assaults now balance themselves between bringers-of-death or being indestructible juggernauts.


Miscellaneous

Be immersed in your XCOM game as many of the game-like terms have been replaced with more in-character wording, Important Research Reports and Item descriptions have been modified to explain certain sublte gameplay changes. Light Plasma Rifle has been renamed to Plasma Carbine, just because. And many more....



Credits


Merciless was created using the Warspace Extension 1.72 by BlackAlpha (http://xcom.nexusmods.com/mods/18) as a base. Though a significant portion of the mod was modified, the essence of the mod and some of the changes have stayed that were definite improvements on the original game.


BlackAlpha (Creator of Warspace Extension): For his invaluable help and mentoring, personaly and with his XCOM UPK Modding Tools. Allowing me to use Warspace Extension 1.72 as a base for creating my own variation of XCOM.

johnnylump (Creator of Long War Mod): Interceptor Experience + Starting with Situation Room

bokauk (Creator of XCOM Toolboks): Starting with 4 Interceptors

graa: Helping design/balance out the perk system.



Thanks to all the testers that hellped balance and tweak the finer points of the mod until it shined. They are (in no particular order):
Mezmure

Special thanks to:
Dreadylein (XCOM Nexus) for creating the mod patcher, which helped the modding community to grow.

Daemonjax (XCOM Nexus) for creating XSHAPE, allowing us to modify the UPK files.

JRSoftware.org for creating Inno Setup 5, a pretty cool installer.

Firaxis Games for creating XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Edited March 7, 2013 by Yzaxtol

[Yzaxtol]

Ouch, making some edits to the big forum post, somehow converted into HTML and back again :S

 

Edit: Fixed Now

 

Any Opinions, advice, feedback or casual observations will be appreciated :biggrin:

 

Edit2: It broke again :(

Edited February 22, 2013 by Yzaxtol

[graaa]

The resource management idea is interesting! I think it'll be quite a fun challenge if the resource issues can continue into late game (I always enjoyed it in vanilla but it stopped around mid game for me when you get an abdudance of everything except now you're short on sectoid corpses! :P)

 

The UFO Combat idea is essential, especially with what's been done with long war and warspace I feel this part has improved the game and should be a part of any mod.

 

Research changes are a good idea. Why not make engineering story items longer too? (like skeleton key, hyperwave, gollop chamber etc) I agree that story arc research should take more time (this would make alien base more of a challenge kinda forcing you to do it later when the whole world is probably at 4 bars of panic lol.) Also it could make the post-alien base game a bit more challenging, bringing back the panic levels while you are strugling to build a 1-month hyperwave chamber.

 

Soldier Changes: are you saying you increased the ammo for the LMG for heavies?

[Yzaxtol]

i cheated with Unlimited ammo, and reduced mobility and accuracy.

[morro123]

Many of the ideas look nice.

Resource Management

"The Gray Market is back and in full swing, the more important and powerful the material the more the countries funding you will pay for it".
I think it would be great if prices in the Gray Market decrease over time.

"A great focus has been put on resource management, you will not be able to build everything all the time, and priorities need to be made".
Would it be possible to vary facility pricing/building time depending on the number of engineers in your staff?

"All the good stuff, Plasma, Titan Armour etc will require lots of the elusively powerful Elerium"
Great idea

UFO combat

"The scouts for the alien invasion need to be taken down with 2 maybe 3 Interceptors with Avalanche Missiles"
Sounds good to me.

Research Changes
"Every time you research an item the standard material cost of the item will be half of the research, engineer availability will also affect the price"
VERY nice, this should aim to make your decisions in research count.
Is there a way to create the possibility of interrogation fail?

[Yzaxtol]

 

 

Is there a way to create the possibility of interrogation fail?

 

I don't know if it's impossible, probably is, but I can say it would probably be insanely difficult to modify the code to that extent.

[johnnylump]

It would certainly be a challenge. There isn't any kind of mechanism in the code for a research project to fail, so you'd have to generate it from scratch, find the right place to put it, make sure it only applies to the set of interrogation projects, then figure out whether the system would allow a failed project to be re-attempted. Adding functionality is now in some cases possible but very difficult: Because scripts cannot change size or parameters, you must delete some existing code, so if the critical function doesn't have anything you can tighten or give up, you're very likely out of luck.

 

I'd suggest honing your skills with less complex upk changes before attempting this. (Perhaps you already have, which is good; the size of the modding community who does this I gather is very very small)

[Yzaxtol]

Major Design decision:

 

Make UFOs show up BEFORE they do a mission: Terror/Abudction

 

OR

 

Add panic for ignoring/failing to shoot down UFOs

 

OR

 

Both

 

There are Pros and Cons to all decision. I'd prefer to be able to fine-tune panic however shooting down UFOs is the primary method of gaining resources and having them both will cause ALOT of un-avoidable panic and will make abductors cause 3 panic instead of 2 on every country with a satellite.

[graaa]

I personally enjoy being able to shoot down abductors and terrorships late game so YES make them appear.

 

Add panic for ignoring? No, because when they appear early game you'll be too weak to shoot them down. Thus you'll get flooded with panic too fast too soon for anyone to win.

[Yzaxtol]

Yeh, pretty much what I was thinking too, it's a shame that the panic system was so simplified it's hard to scale it properly.

 

On another note, I've pretty much departed completely from Warspace's UFO system and modified most alien weapons and UFOs to be abit different then normal. E.g. Large Scout is now a Sword-Class Destroyer, being slower and with Dual Cannons that fire really slow, guaranteed hit and does alot of damage (perfectly countered by dodge modules. and appear in the same months, and doesn't make Lasers/Pheonix seem like a waste of an investment.

 

UFO 1 - Rapid Fire - Medium accuracy (Dodge useless)

UFO 2 - Slow + Precise (Dodge Super Effective)

Avalanche - High Damage low accuracy (Aim Super Effective)

Laser+Pheonix - Rapid Fire - high accuracy (Aim useless)

 

Ships that destroy you/destroy them before time runs out (Track useless)

The other ships (Track Awesome)

Edited February 25, 2013 by Yzaxtol